Whisper Town Read Free

back, you know,” said Angel. “She always finds an excuse.”
    “Tonight’s different and you got your own friends to yammer at, Angel.” Jeb put on his jacket and warmed his hands inside
     his pockets. He shifted from one foot to the next. Finally Fern appeared at the top of the hill. Behind her, stretching his
     long bones down the path, loped Oz Mills, the banker’s nephew. His silhouette cut an intrusive figure even in the moonlight.
    “Jeb, I’m so sorry,” said Fern.
    Angel whispered something near to sarcasm to one of the boys.
    Fern talked rapidly. “Oz has come to tell me that my mother and father have shown up tonight a day early for their visit.”
    “Invite them to join us,” Jeb said. He wouldn’t look at Oz.
    “This is awful, I know. But Daddy’s not feeling well and he’s back waiting at my house with my mother. I’m sure the long drive
     from Oklahoma’s exhausted him. I should go and see about him.”
    Ivey gave the old horse a whistle.
    “I’ll see her back,” said Oz. He helped Fern slip into her jacket. As she turned to head back up the path, Oz said, “You have
     fun with the kiddies, Reverend.”
    Angel set the boys to snickering at Jeb’s expense.
    The wagon ride turned into a grueling festival of screaming girls and hay-tossing boys. Jeb’s woolen coat was prickly with
     straw and his imagination bristling with thoughts of Oz joining Fern and her family for coffee while he fended off attacks
     of hay. He jumped from the wagon, reminded Willie to see Ida May up the path, and then meandered back toward the tent site.
     He led the departing rabble by the light of a lantern and elbowed through into the sanctuary of the tent.
    Deputy Maynard bellyed up to the remnants of pie salvaged for him by the ladies’ food committee. “Don’t you look the scarecrow?”
     Maynard laughed.
    “Spare me the compliments,” said Jeb. “Any coffee left, Josie?”
    The families gathered up their children and headed back toward their trucks and wagons.
    “Sorry I missed the festivities, Reverend. We got us a for-real investigation up at Apple Valley.”
    “I was hoping it was just gossip.”
    “Nazareth hasn’t seen this kind of business since, well, since your arrest. Hey, what’s past is past, I always say.”
    “The apple pickers told it right, then?” asked Jeb.
    “Best as I can figure, someone come to some harm out in those orchards, but who it was is yet to be known. Nobody’s filed
     a missing person on anyone. But we got a shirt that says that somebody took a beating. What’s become of him is anybody’s guess.”
     He turned and told Florence what good pie she made.
    Maynard said, “Don’t like the sound of bloody-shirt stories, nosirree, nosir! Makes folks nervous. Seems to me like everyone’s
     too scared to know what to make of it, or to talk about it.”
    “You saw the bloodied shirt, Maynard?”
    “Got it locked up in the jailhouse.”
    “Anyone missing from around town?” asked Jeb.
    “Not that anyone has reported. Or no one wants to fess up. Say, where’s your schoolteacher gal pal?”
    “Her folks showed up tonight. You believe someone in Nazareth knows what happened down in the orchard?”
    “It’s the best guess for now. Florence, how about slicing me another piece of your apple crumb pie?”
    Jeb made an excuse and left the tent. The families congregated outside, laughing and talking about whose kids were going without
     shoes. Not a person from Church in the Dell could possibly know about a beating down in the orchard, not without blabbing
     it to everyone.
    He said his good-nights to the departing families and gathered up the Welby brood.
    The moon had disappeared entirely, overtaken by the evening clouds. He led the children around to the parsonage by the light
     of the lantern.
    “Tonight was like heaven!” said Angel. “Not one, but two boys like me. Both of them gave me a ring.” She slid the rings up
     and down the chain around her neck.
    “You