Read Online Rainwater by Sandra Brown - Free Book Online Page A

shantytown. All he could do was sit there and cry over that bloody mess left in his pasture. He’d seen most of those cows born, probably helped pull some of them out of their mamas. To see ’em just shot like that, then wasted …” The preacher lost his will to continue.
    When he stopped speaking, the only noises in the kitchen were those of the burbling percolator on the stove and Solly tapping his shoes together. Finally Ella asked, “What happens now?”
    “They’ll be buried.”
    Brother Calvin agreed to Mr. Rainwater’s explanation with a nod. “There were front loaders parked down the road from the farm, ready to roll, fill back up the hole they’d dug.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “I know men have gotta get whatever work they can. But I don’t know that I could ever hire on to shoot dumb cows and their calves. I don’t know that I could bury their carcasses in a pit while hungry children, within shouting distance, were crying and needing supper tonight.”
    Mr. Rainwater leaned across the table toward him. “You were trying to help the shantytown people and got caught in the fray?”
    “That’s right. I go down there sometimes and hold services for those folks,” he explained. “I encouraged them to be ready when those shooters went out to the Pritchett farm. I promised them meat. At least a bone for a soup pot. I didn’t count on men threatening to brain little boys with baseball bats.” His massive shoulders shook as he began to weep in earnest. “I feel responsible for ever’ blow struck.”
    Ella laid a comforting hand on his forearm. “You’re not to blame, Brother Calvin. You were trying to help.” She looked across at Mr. Rainwater. “You know Dr. Kincaid better than I do. Do you think he would go to shantytown, treat those people with the worst injuries? I can’t ask him to do that, but you’re his kin.”
    He stood up and began rolling down his shirtsleeves. “I’ll go now.”
    “Stop back here before you leave for shantytown. Margaret and I will gather some things.”
    He nodded as he left through the back door.
     
    Ella was waiting for them when Mr. Rainwater returned a half hour later with Dr. Kincaid. “I need some help,” she called from the front porch.
    The two men carried boxes of food, clothing, and household items from the house and loaded them into Mr. Rainwater’s car. “You did all this in the brief time I was gone?” he asked as he hefted a flour sack filled with clothing that Solly had outgrown.
    “I’ve been collecting it for a while, waiting for the right time to give it away.”
    While the men were stowing the last of the things in the car, Ella rushed back into the kitchen, asking Margaret to keep a close eye on Solly and promising to return in time to serve dinner. Then she grabbed her hat and went running out the front door. “Wait, I’m coming.”
    “That isn’t necessary, Mrs. Barron,” the doctor said. He was sweating profusely.
    “I know it isn’t necessary, but I can help.”
    “Maybe Margaret would be better suited—”
    “Margaret is a Negro, Dr. Kincaid. I don’t want to put her in danger of reprisal from a group of bigoted hoodlums. They enjoy bullying. They like it even better when their victims are colored people.”
    The doctor looked toward Mr. Rainwater for reinforcement, but Mr. Rainwater took her side. “You can’t argue with that, Murdy.”
    The doctor clapped his hat on his head. “Let’s go, then. Mrs. Kincaid is having a hissy fit as it is. She swore to send the law out looking for me if I wasn’t back in an hour.”
    But an hour wasn’t near enough time to see everyone who had sustained an injury in the melee at the Pritchetts’ farm.
    Ella and Mr. Rainwater doled out aspirin tablets and consolation to those with minor injuries, while the doctor treated the worst of them. He set the bones of grim-faced men who swigged moonshine to brace themselves against the pain. He bound bleeding wounds. He stitched what