She snorted. “I don’t know any hunters around here who would feel comfortable traipsing through the woods with a woman. And I’ve seen you Emersons fire a weapon—you can’t hit the broadside of a barn. You’d scare all the deer away.”
The way she was talking to him, the playfulness she usually reserved for his brother, it encouraged Matthew to keep his mouth shut instead of rising to the bait. After the meat was stacked up and ready, Charlie stepped to the adjacent creek, splashing her face and scrubbing clean in the frigid water.
Hat in hand, she found him waiting just behind her, holding out his handkerchief. She took it with a grateful smile, leaning her head back to swipe the moisture running down her neck, Matthew enthralled by the show.
Folding the cloth politely, she handed it back, tugging his arm. “Come on, Matthew. Let me feed you for once.”
An hour later, the four of them sat around the fire, stomachs near to bursting on the venison steaks Charlie had grilled for them. Eli set to talking about his sweetheart, Ruth, ribbed constantly by Nathaniel while Matthew leaned back against some crates and smoked a cigar.
Where his lips wrapped around the stogie, Charlie’s eyes were seemingly drawn to it, sneaking glances from under the brim of her hat when she thought he wasn’t looking.
He caught her staring and Matthew finally spoke. “How long you been out in these woods?”
Eyes darted back to the fire, Charlie took a long swallow of applejack. “Since around noon, I suppose.”
“Lookin’ at things?” Nathaniel kidded, glad the focus was no longer on Eli’s blather.
A pretty smile lit her face. “Looking at things.”
“And just what did you see?” Matthew knew a tirade of local flora and fauna was about to burst from her lips, that she’d get all glassy-eyed, that she’d grow limp and content.
And he was right. Charlie detailed the rich earthy hills, the smell of the woods in the valley, the interesting shape of an ancient foundation half lost in briars.
“When you talk about my home, I feel like it’s a place I’ve never really been,” leaning back on his elbows, Eli slurred, already drunk. “I don’t think anyone sees Monroe like you do, Miss Charlie.”
“It’s funny you say that,” Charlie answered Eli’s sloppy boyish grin. “Since it was your stories that made me want to come here.”
“You should get out of that boarding house and find a proper home.” Eli placed a cigarette between his lips. After striking a match on the ground and pulling in a breath of smoke, he added, “A place with a big porch. I think you’d like that.”
A contemplative hum was her only answer.
“I’m surprised you don’t find Monroe boring after living in Chicago. All the excitement, Al Capone, Bugs Moran…”
Charlie sat up straighter, her soft smile gone. “I hear a touch of hero worship in your voice when you say those gangsters’ names, Eli. So listen to me when I tell you this. No matter how glamorous the newspapers make them out to be—calling men like Al Capone a modern day Robin Hood and other such rubbish—they are not like you and your cousins.”
Offended, Eli mistook her meaning. “We’re just as tough—”
Charlie cut him off. “Those men are dark-hearted, Eli. They’re evil.” She took a sip of applejack, shuddered as if it burned down to her toes. “It’s more than harmless bootlegging. I’ve seen it firsthand: extortion, corruption, murder, rape. They take advantage of the weak to build their legacy. That’s what they really are—just bad men in nice suits.”
Visibly recoiling from Charlie’s sharp and unfriendly tone, Eli asked, “What about your Beaumont Radcliffe?”
“He’s just like the rest of them. And don’t go thinking a man like that is a friend to you. He ain’t.” She gestured at the kid with her jar. “Radcliffe has his hands full with lawmen and the constant power struggle in Chicago, too busy to risk his steady supply being cut off, or worse, mass quantities sold to his competition. He knows he needs you right now; banks on the amount of product you can furnish. Otherwise Beau would never have wasted his men’s time sending them down here to make sure things were solid—that your reputation could stand up under intimidation. Had you flinched, you’d probably all be dead and your operation in his hands. Didn’t hurt I was there, neither.”
Eli had never been one to hold his tongue. “How’d you end up close to a man like Radcliffe?”
Charlie tipped her head back, leaning against a stack of crates, and closed her eyes. Silent minutes passed until, at length, she muttered, “My brother worked for Radcliffe when we were kids. The men never even noticed when I took his place. Work was hard, but I stuck around. By the time I was thirteen I was running liquor… and real sweet on one of the boys in the gang.” Her eyes remained closed, unaware Matthew leaned closer. “One day he caught me staring at him, all starry eyed, and busted my lip,” she pointed at the visible scar, “before punching me in the gut and calling me a queer.”
Shaking her head, Charlie admitted, “I didn’t know what that word meant, but I did see the look of disgust the men had on their faces, including Radcliffe. I socked the boy back, afraid I’d lose my job. He beat me good. Even so, I didn’t back down. It got so wild the gangsters had to tear us apart.”
Her eyes opened, and found they were lost in whatever spun her thoughts. “Needless to say, I was a little heartbroken. That night I was sent with a load to a small speakeasy in the midst of a turf war between the Italians and Radcliffe—basically a lamb to the slaughter. If I hadn’t been mooning over what had happened earlier, I probably would’ve seen trouble. But I didn’t. Capone himself gunned our group down. I caught a bullet in the gut and fell face first onto the street. Scarface used his shiny shoes to flip me on my back, ordering me to crawl on home and tell Radcliffe just what had been done—to let him know Capone would kill him himself if he saw one more of Beaumont’s trucks in the neighborhood.
“I drove to the warehouse, hand pressed to my belly. By the time I made it back, I could hardly breathe. One of the men pulled me from the car and laid me in the gutter. Beaumont himself stood over me with a pistol pointed at my skull. I told him what Capone said and Radcliffe just laughed. I’ll never forget watching his eyes look to my gut, Beau smiling as he told me, ‘Lead in the belly is a slow way to die. Consider this an act of mercy.’ He cocked his gun and asked if I had any last words.
“I motioned for him to lean down and whispered my secret in his ear. I told him my name was Charlotte, needing someone to know before I died.”
Chapter 9
Saying the story aloud stirred up… memory. Maybe it was the moonshine, but in a blink, Charlie could see it in her head—the flash of disbelief on Beaumont’s face, the kingpin appalled, then mortified just from the sound of her name. He’d yelled for the men to fetch a doctor and carried her inside, ordering everyone else away. Once they were alone, Radcliffe lifted her bloody shirt and found small breasts bound with strips of sweat soaked rags. He’d cursed a string of words Charlie never imagined could be put together. Even in all that pain she’d laughed.