CHAPTER SIX THE LAWBREAKERS
CHAPTER
SIX
The Lawbreakers
Benny eased his car along the pot-holed path beside Turner Creek, looking for the slip road to Green’s Whiskey. He found it just past where the trees thickened to a wood, but only because of a Green’s Whiskey sign hammered to a tree.
His wheels crunched up the drive, announcing his arrival, and Lee’s face appeared in the window of a weathered wooden barn. Before Benny could even get out of the car, his old friend came out to greet him, half walking half jogging, with a large grin across his face.
‘Benny,’ Lee boomed. ‘It’s good to see you.’ Lee pulled him into a hug and clapped his back once, twice, three times.
Relief and pleasure flooded through Benny. There were so many ways Lee could have greeted him, especially after the awkward shock of the last time they’d met, back in the Ardennes Forest at what they were now calling the Battle of the Bulge. Such an innocent name for so much carnage.
‘It’s been a long time,’ Lee said.
‘Yeah.’ Benny tried to read his face for an accusation behind the smile. ‘The last time was …’
‘Belgium,’ said Lee.
Benny’s gut clenched against the embarrassment and shame at having Lee find him like that. ‘Listen, about that …’
Lee shook his head. ‘You don’t have to explain. Who knows if I would have done the same thing in your shoes?’
Except they both knew he wouldn’t. They’d had enough blow-ups about Benny’s casual passing before the war, to buy ice cream or entry to a fair, to know that Lee thought denying who you were to get along was a form of defeat.
If they don’t want your money as a colored man, then don’t give it to them any kind of way, he used to tell Benny.
But he accepted the words as the olive branch they were meant to be.
‘Thank you for letting me be the one to tell Cora,’ Benny said.
Lee waved his words away. ‘I figured it was your news to tell.’
‘Benny?’ Cora’s voice came from the doorway of a lean-to beside the barn.
‘Oh, my God, Benny!’ She rushed out to him with a shriek and threw her arms around his neck, laughing. ‘It’s about time you made it out here to see us.’
‘I know,’ he said, pulling back from her. ‘I wanted to come earlier but …’ He saw her face and the words died in his throat as he shot an accusing, dangerous look at Lee.
‘It wasn’t him.’ Cora shifted to block him from Lee, hands out to ward him off.
Lee slipped an arm around her waist. ‘She’s safe here with me now.’
‘What the hell’s going on?’ He felt the blood tapping at his temples.
Cora and Lee looked at each other, speaking a silent conversation, his raised eyebrows asking a question and Cora’s tipped head giving mute response.
Benny grabbed the newspaper from the passenger seat and held it out to them. ‘I came out here because of this.’
He knew about Cora’s trouble in getting the GI house loan, she had written all about that, but she hadn’t said a thing about talking to the papers.
His eyes just about fell out of his head when he saw her pictured next to Lee in the Gator Gazette.
The Cora he knew did not make waves, let alone start a whole firestorm talking to reporters.
‘And now I find,’ he gestured to her face and to the two of them together, ‘all this.’
‘Why don’t you come inside, and we can fill you in?’ Lee said.
Benny watched him take Cora’s hand as he led the way to the lean-to. Inside, cut flowers sat arranged in a mason jar, which had to be Cora’s doing. And if that wasn’t enough proof that she was spending time there, the dress hanging on the line out back surely was.
Cora set three glasses and a pitcher of sweet tea on the table, and Lee pulled over an upturned crate, positioning it across from the only chair.
That lone chair probably meant she hadn’t been there long, but she went straight to the glasses and the pitcher in the icebox, more than comfortable in his space.
‘Take a seat and I’ll get another crate for me,’ Lee said, going back outside.
Benny hovered beside Cora until he’d gone, and then, leaning close to her ear and lowering his voice, asked, ‘This really wasn’t Lee?’
Cora stepped away from him. ‘No.’ She sat in the chair, back rigid.
He lowered himself to the crate across from her. ‘You can tell me if it was.’
‘It absolutely wasn’t Lee.’
‘Then who?’
She poured out the tea and Benny noticed she’d taken off her thin gold wedding band.
‘Roscoe was angry,’ she said. ‘I was angry too.’ She reached for her glass, took a small sip. ‘We don’t communicate well. In fact, there’s not much we do well together.’
‘Wait a minute. You’re saying Roscoe did this?’ Benny scoffed. ‘Roscoe would never touch you.’
She wiped her thumb over the condensation forming on the glass. ‘Roscoe’s not who he used to be.’
Over her shoulder, his gaze fell on the flowers in the jar. ‘From the looks of things, neither are you.’
She pinned him with a hard stare. ‘I guess none of us are.’
Benny felt his pale face flush with heat. He scooted his crate back from the small table and crossed his arms. ‘Why don’t I talk to him? We can straighten this out.’ He dropped his voice. ‘But no more Lee, okay? That has to stop.’
She pressed her lips together and turned her head.
‘Christ, Cora. What’s the matter with you?’
She slid her hands from the table and tucked them onto her lap. ‘Roscoe and me don’t fit together.’
‘You’re married, Cora.’ His voice climbed high, straining with frustration. ‘That’s about as much as two people can fit together.’
She shook her head. ‘No, Benny. It’s not.’
They went silent at the sound of footsteps. Lee came back to frosty glares chilling the September heat, and tension thickening the humid air to cement. He put his crate next to Cora’s chair. ‘Everything all right here?’
‘Benny thinks I should work it out with Roscoe.’
Lee’s face hardened to a mask, and he grasped Cora’s hand on her lap. ‘No,’ he said, in a tone that wasn’t interested in discussion.
Benny tried anyways. ‘He shouldn’t have hit her. I’ll deal with him for that. But she shouldn’t be shacked up with another man.’ He aimed the accusation straight at Lee.
‘We’re not the problem,’ Lee said, without a lick of shame.
‘You’re sleeping with his wife, Lee. What did you think would happen? As far as I’m concerned, that shiner has your name all over it.’
‘Stop it,’ Cora said, her voice tight. ‘You don’t know what’s going on.’
Her words stiffened in the air, like a wall going up between them. He didn’t know because he hadn’t been around: he lived in Levittown, where they couldn’t follow. He dragged his hand through his close-cropped hair, eyeing Lee and Cora, waiting for one of them to say something that made sense.
‘Roscoe’s in love with some woman in Wales,’ Lee said, drawing Cora a little closer. ‘Has been since he was stationed there during the war.’
‘He wouldn’t do that,’ Benny shot back. ‘He’s not the type.’
‘He got a letter from her,’ Cora said.
‘They were probably just friends. The war threw people together like that.’ He looked to Lee for support.
‘I read the letter,’ Cora said. ‘They’re definitely in love.’
Lee lifted their clasped hands to the table. ‘And so are we.’
Benny felt a heaviness dragging at him as Lee told him how they’d been together before the war, and how they’d hidden the relationship and been about to tell everyone when Pearl Harbor happened and Lee joined up.
‘But if that’s true,’ he said to Cora, ‘why’d you go along with marrying Roscoe?’
She looked down at her hand clasped in Lee’s. ‘That was a mistake.’
Benny remembered when Roscoe proposed and how happy she’d been.
Except, thinking back on it now, it was Benny who was happy.
And Roscoe. Cora had cried. But, surely, they’d been tears of joy.
Or if they were sad, wouldn’t that have been because he and Roscoe were leaving after the ceremony?
To his shame, he didn’t remember thinking about what Cora was feeling.
The only thing on his mind back then was getting himself enlisted and making sure Momma and Cora would be taken care of.
The marriage to Roscoe had been the perfect solution. For him.
‘So, you’re saying,’ he pinched the bridge of his nose, and closed his eyes, ‘all this time?’ How could he not have seen it?
‘Everything was happening so fast. I was scared and sad and too upset to think straight. But I should never have done it. I lost sight of myself.’
‘I just wanted you to be okay,’ Benny said, guilt tightening his throat.
‘I know, and I love you for that.’
Lee draped an arm around Cora’s shoulders, and she leaned into him. ‘You meant well, but nobody can know what’s best for someone else.’
‘Jesus.’ Benny rubbed his hands over his hair. ‘So, what now? You don’t plan to keep living out here together, do you?’
Lee nodded. ‘Pretty much. Yeah.’
‘You know that’s illegal, right? Adultery, cohabitation, all of it.’
Cora raised her eyebrows at him. ‘It’s no more illegal than what you’re doing. And a lot less dangerous.’
Benny rubbed his palms along his thighs, feeling anxious and regretting the part he’d played in making this mess.
‘We’ll be okay,’ Cora said, leaning into Lee. She picked up her glass of sweet tea and a mischievous smile spread across her face. ‘To the lawbreakers,’ she said, holding out her glass.
Benny shook his head. ‘God help us.’ The three of them clinked glasses in a toast and Benny drained his drink.
‘Now, tell me how come I’m reading about you in the paper.’
They filled him in on what they were trying to do, how it had started as Cora’s fight but how Lee had come up alongside her with encouragement and support.
He didn’t recognize his mild-mannered, non-confrontational sister in their description.
The Cora he’d grown up with would go out of her way to avoid a fight.
It was one reason he’d always felt such a strong need to protect her.
When he hugged his sister goodbye, he asked Lee to walk him out to his car. He waited until they were well out of earshot to say, ‘You know you have to let her go, right?’
Lee stepped back like the words were a blow, his face painted with shock.
‘I’m sorry all this happened,’ Benny said. ‘I wish I’d known about you two beforehand, but she’s a married woman now. If you keep this up with her, you’ll destroy her reputation, you’ll make her a pariah in the community, and I don’t even want to think about what it’ll do to Momma.’
Cora was living in the moment, not thinking about her future, and Benny wasn’t going to let one impulsive decision ruin her life.
Lee made to protest but Benny spoke over him.
‘She won’t leave you, and she won’t say no to you, even if she loses everything because of you, so you have to be the one to call it off. You have to bring her home.’
Lee’s eyes widened. ‘No. No way.’
‘I’ll deal with Roscoe,’ Benny said. ‘But if you love her—’
‘Of course I love her.’
‘Then you’ll do the right thing for her.’
‘I am the right thing for her,’ Lee said, full of defiance.
‘Maybe it seems that way at the moment, wrapped up in your little love-nest rebellion, but what about next week? Next month? Next year? When people turn their backs on her and call her a whore? I can’t believe you’d want that for her.’
Benny could see him considering that. ‘You know I’m right. A married woman shacking up with a bachelor? She’s gonna catch hell for this. Don’t do it to her.’
Lee wrapped his arms around his stomach like he’d been sucker-punched. The long breath he exhaled shook and stuttered. ‘There’s got to be a way.’
‘I don’t know. Maybe there is,’ Benny said. ‘But it’s not like this.’