around in the narrow space. The horses whinnied nervously, scenting the danger.
The men at the barricade shouted again when they saw what was happening, and several began to run toward the carriage. Anne’s window was turned toward them now and she watched in fascinated terror as they came closer, closer—she could see the sweat gleaming on their faces and she fancied she saw the maniacal light in their eyes.
One of the men raised a gun. “Stop, or we’ll shoot,” he yelled.
The carriage was around. The driver cracked the whip and the horses leapt forward, sending the carriage rocking and swaying wildly.
“Get back, you fool,” her husband said, yanking her roughly out of the way of the window.
A gun fired. Something struck the rear of the coach. Anne sat huddled in terror as they clattered pell-mell through the now-haunted streets. The coach tilted crazily back and forth, knocking her first this way and then that.
What if they overturned? What if those men caught them? She had horrible visions of herself dragged screaming through the streets, led to a waiting guillotine. She began to cry again.
“Oh, Mama, where is Mama?” she sobbed hysterically.
The carriage skittered around yet another corner, and again came to an abrupt stop. Two men blocked the way, one with a pitchfork in his hands, the other with a musket. The street was little more than an alley, too narrow for them to go around the men or to attempt to turn again.
They were trapped!
Anne whimpered helplessly into her hands, unable to prevent herself from watching wide-eyed as the two men approached. The one with the pitchfork remained in the center of the road in front of the horses, blocking the way. The other, with the musket, came to the carriage. He said something to the driver, then, barely pausing, came back to where they sat. His face suddenly appeared in the window. She saw that he was looking directly at her, his eyes feverish with excitement, his lips curved in an ugly snarl of a smile. He laughed, and it made her want to scream with terror.
She did not see the pistol appear in her husband’s hands, nor where it came from. He suddenly lifted it to the window and fired point-blank into the grinning face.
The face seemed to explode from within. Drops of blood and pieces of something else she did not want to name spattered inside the carriage, staining the leather upholstery and the white skirt of her wedding gown.
She slumped back into the corner with a sigh and fainted dead away.
(Excerpted from This Splendid Earth)
NEW KID IN TOWN
She had never regretted marrying him. He was the loveliest man, and certainly she had nothing to complain about. If any man knew how to treat a woman like a queen...nothing too good for her, nothing she could ask for that wasn’t forthcoming at once; and there was little to ask for, as far as that went, little he hadn’t already thought of himself and seen to. How could a woman complain about a man like that?
He was good company, too. He was certainly the most intelligent man she had ever known, and better still, he had never lost that sense of humor that had attracted her to him in the first place. Contrary to what most men believed, it really was not the handsomest man that caught a woman’s fancy. A woman likes a man who makes her laugh. She had always thought that old rogue Don Juan was probably a better wit than he was a lover.
And Arthur was successful. Everyone knew him, or knew of him, at any rate. And everyone looked up to him. Women eyed him favorably and men respected him. If you judged a man by how others saw him, you would have to say he was unquestionably the lord of his domain.
“Long day today,” he said, stripping off his clothes. “Getting those fellows to agree on anything—a dozen of them, a dozen different opinions.”
“You should lay down the law,” she said. “You are the one who decides things, after all.”
“Oh, I like them to feel they’re a part of everything, you know what I mean? I want them to feel that we’re all equals.”
He leaned down to kiss her cheek fondly, and put out the light, and got onto his side of the bed. She waited, not moving herself, not wanting to seem demanding, or needy; but he did not turn toward her.
She suppressed a sigh. Well, there was that. It was no good denying it: he was old. Of course, that was not why she had married him, but still, she was young, young enough to miss what was increasingly lacking in their marriage.
She thought he was already drifting off to sleep, but he surprised her by asking, “What did you think of the new man?”
She hesitated. Had he seen the looks that passed between them? But what were looks, anyway, where was the sin of looking? Still, she picked her words carefully.
“He seems earnest,” she said.
“Earnest?” He laughed softly. “Yes, he’s that all right. A real hell-brand, looks like to me. I expect I’ll have my hands full with that young man, keeping him on a leash.”
After a moment, she asked, in the most careful tone she could muster, “What did you say his name was?”
“Lancelot,” he said.
Lancelot. She smiled into the darkness and turned the name over and about in her mind. It had a musical lilt to it, didn’t it? Lancelot.
IN A SMALL TOWN
Eaton, Ohio, where I grew up, is an old town. It was begun in 1792 in an Ohio that was then the Wild West. It started with a fort, Fort Saint Clair.
The Fort has long since burned away but there is still the very pretty Fort Saint Clair Park just at the edge of town, with its wide green lawns (scene of annual civil war reenactments) and its all but unspoiled woods and meandering stream. There is the Whispering Oak as well, in which Chief Little Turtle of the Miami Tribe hid (according to legend, though history is less sure) to listen to the soldiers make their plans and so was able to massacre them later—which makes him, I suppose, the true forerunner of today’s gossip mavens who make a business of massacring people with collected whispers.
The town which soon grew up in the vicinity is lovely, too. Like all towns and cities these days it has suffered some from the relentless march of progress. A tornado some forty years ago destroyed the lovely old Victoria Opera House, which was then in use as the City Building. It was replaced with a hideous cement block architecture.
Though it was spared by the tornado, the splendid old Victorian library building—admittedly a monstrosity but a monstrosity of infinite fascination—was deemed too decrepit to be maintained and repaired (a fate I fear I shall face before too many years have passed by) and was torn down. In its stead is a perfectly harmless, and charmless, modern structure. I understand the benefits of its modernity but books seem to me to fit better in a Victorian structure, in much the same way that banking belongs to chunky, granite, Georgian styled buildings. I can never quite feel that my money is safe in a building made largely of glass.
Still, the wide, tree-lined streets remain and many Victorian houses and the Greek revival courthouse that occupies much of the central block downtown. Though the Seven Mile Tavern, which once graced its banks, was lost years ago to a fire, the Seven Mile Creek still follows its circuitous and beautiful path through the town. Where it widens
