Hi Everyone! I just wanted to say thanks for all of your favorites, follows, and all of your kind comments! In the first sequence we're taking it back to when Alice was younger, in the logging camps, to where she learned an important piece of advice that she uses to her advantage.
Before:
At five o'clock in the evening, a soft crackling sound could be heard in the dimly lit bedroom of the timber tycoon's daughter, as a pair of soft, brown hands with impeccably clean fingernails gently put a vinyl record in place and set the phonograph needle down.
Queue Billie Holiday - "Easy to Love"
Outside, the light was fading in the mountains, and workers were shuffling back to camp to shower off and get a good hot meal in the canteen, maybe some drinks of moonshine outside on the back porch, maybe the comfort of a girl who had come to the logging camp to make money providing just that to the woodcutters.
A piano, soft trumpet music and the tempo of a band's music filled the room, followed shortly thereafter by the voice of Billie Holiday. Alice groaned, and pulled her left foot, which had been sticking out of her bedcovers, back underneath the warm darkness of the blankets. Lettie puttered around the room, slowly turning on lights to slowly phase Alice into a state where she was agreeable to waking. She closed the curtain, just to be sure, and lit the last lamp, the one by Alice's bedside table.
"Come on, you got to get up now! Guests comin' for drinks in 45 minutes. Heard the train whistle already."
Alice groaned again in reply. She had long ago learned to sleep through the train whistles that heralded new visitors to a logging camp, a train sometimes the only way to get in or out, and certainly the best way to move timber down from the mountains.
"Don't make me snatch that pillow right out from under yo face."
Alice groaned a third time and sat up, patting the pin curl clips holding her rolled finger waves in her hair, starting to fuss with them. Lettie swatted at her hand gently, and slid out of bed, her silk nightgown riding up as she stretched up and yawned. Lettie left for a moment and Alice plopped back down on the bed, yawning again. Lettie returned with Alice's long, slinky bias cut silk dress. It was a soft golden yellow, elegant and flattering, but Alice wasn't in the mood to wear it. She wanted to sleep. She'd been up since before dawn with her father, riding the trails to the different cutting sites. Lettie hung the dress on the back of the door and came back to her, gently guiding her arm so she'd stand and sit at her vanity.
"You got to go to dinner with your daddy now. I know you don' like to. I know you'd rather be up here, readin', or down in the canteen listening to music, or walkin' in the woods, but you gotta help your papa now, and he always say: 'Investors respond to three things: an organized camp, Canadian Whiskey, and charmin hosts.'"
Alice smiled, Lettie had always been especially good at mimicking her father's voice and expressions.
She huffed out air, plopped down and stared in the mirror. Lettie began pulling each of the pins out gently, and Alice leaned over beside the vanity to change the record, selecting something entirely different.
Queue Bessie Smith - "Sugar in My Bowl"
As the two sat together, Lettie pulling pins and Alice unenthusiastically applying makeup, the younger started singing along to her the sassy song coming out of the crackling speaker of the victrola: "Whassamatta hot papa come on and save your momma's soul, 'cause I need a little sugar in my bowl."
"What you know about 'sugar in my bowl?' Close your mouth. You need rouge."
Alice laughed. Lettie always had perspective. She let the other woman gently powder a bit of light pink blush on her face. She stood and changed into her undergarments and then let Lettie help her shimmy into her gown. As she slipped into her shoes, Lettie went to her armoire and shuffled around. Alice made her way to the mirror and looked at her reflection, checking the shape of her hair. As usual, it was perfect. Without Lettie she'd probably always look like she'd been sleeping in the pig pen with the hogs. She held out her arm for Lettie to place a tennis bracelet on it, and ducked when she needed to fasten Alice's diamond choker. Alice sighed again, looking at herself.
"I hate that I have to fuss. I thought we were safe in the woods."
Lettie laughed, that the child thought she needed protection from having to dress up but not from all of the things Lettie herself hated about the woods. She was always counting the days until they returned to Williamsburg, and later, to Charlotte. Alice sighed and looked down. Lettie moved around her and looked at her, gently taking her chin in her right hand.
"You listen here. I know you ain't fond of this, but you gotta go. And your papa's counting on you being pleasant. With me, you ain't got to be anyone different." Alice smiled; she loved it when Lettie said that.
"But not everybody's gonna feel about you how I do. The world, out there, it's not something you can predict. With them, when you got to prove somethin', when you got to protect yourself, you use that charm your daddy talks about. It'll get you everywhere. Just close your eyes, and turn it on. They'll never know what's inside."
Now:
Charley Rakes enjoyed being on assignment. He loved his job as Special Deputy, but much of his free time in Chicago was compromised by the lack of circles he was able to run in. Well respected, he nevertheless found himself restricted to socializing with only those Chicagoans who were friendly to prohibition agents, and so many of those he wished to sidle up to were professionally quite friendly but their personal approach to him wasn't the kind to afford him entree into their world, besotted as it was with illegal liquor. And the women in Chicago. Expensive and time consuming to find one he'd be willing to couple with. Liquor and jazz had tainted most of the young ladies he'd otherwise be interested in, and the rest he'd found boring, lacking a certain fire he knew he needed to keep him interested.
Enter this luscious little specimen. The one he'd been observing at the hotel. As if the Pierce Arrow weren't enough to demonstrate her taste (even Mason Wardell had turned his head when he heard her drive past one afternoon), he had watched her at breakfast in her fitted riding pants and bias cut day dresses and pretty wool suits breezing around that glamourless hotel, lighting it up like a still fire. Lighting him up. From his vantage point in the woods, once he'd come upon her, he watched her exchange pleasantries with those awful Bondurant boys. Too kind, too sweet. He could break her of that. Make her blink those wide brown eyes at him, make her lips tremble. His three piece suit started to feel warm on him. He stalked through he woods and approached her from behind, calling out to her.
"And who might you be?"
Alice knew who was behind her. Charley Rakes. The man Maggie had told her about, the one from the hotel. Very, very slowly, she started to turn until she faced him.
"I find it hard to believe that there is anyone a Special Deputy with the ATU doesn't know. Especially in a place like this." She stood there, raising her eyebrows. Rakes was holding a double barreled shotgun, and he had a revolver with a pearl handle in his belt loop. He scoffed, and broke apart the barrel, resting it on his left arm so he could put out his right hand, both to be friendly and to show her he didn't mean to shoot her.
"I'm Charley Rakes, I'm from Chicago." Alice put her hand out and shook, politely, but quickly. Softest gloves she'd ever seen on a man. Not soft and thick like her father's kidskin, more like thin rubber. Something about it was strange to her.
"I'm Alice. Ostergaard."
"And just what might you be doing out here?" He asked, looking her up and down. She immediately turned away, not without a wrinkle of her nose to show what she thought about the once-over, and started moving around, trying to pick up her things and put them in her picnic basket as quickly as possible so that she could head back to Blackwater Station.
"Fixing my uncle's house. " She wasn't going to give him any more information than he absolutely had to have, but neither did she want to alienate him so much that she made him angry. She had a habit of that as well.
Rakes looked at the house, and it was his turn to wrinkle his nose.
"I saw you at the hotel. You've got the Pierce-Arrow. Beautiful car." He was following behind her, and when she finally turned around, she was alarmed by how close he was to her, but attempted to show no emotion.
"Thank You." She tucked her arm through her picnic basket and stood to face him.
"Lots of beautiful things in Franklin since you got here."
"Well, I came just in time. The leaves are changing. The colors are certainly beautiful this time of year." Alice said, smiling, and tried to walk down the path past him but he stood in front of her and she stopped short.
"I have to ask you some questions." He said. "Shouldn't be but a moment," he lifted his right hand up and flicked his wrist and his fingers to show it wouldn't take much time.
"I haven't really the time right now, but I'm sure I can make an appointment at the Sheriff's office if you think there is anything I can be of help with." She assumed it was because she was friends with Jack and his brothers that he wanted to try to squeeze information out of her. She was just concerned about what else he might try to squeeze in the process.
He stepped close to her and stood a foot away. "I can arrest you if you interfere with a federal investigation."
Alice looked at him incredulously "And how, exactly, is my shoddy attempt at repair work a interference with the federal government?"
Rakes' face went cold. "You have a smart mouth."
Alice smiled without opening her mouth. "I take no responsibility. My brain does all the work."
He laughed, angrily. "You're not getting out of these woods until you tell me about the Bondurants and their little operation."
With the basket still looped through her forearm, she crossed both arms across her chest. "And why would I know anything about that?"
"You're friendly with them." The way he said 'friendly' sounded as though he had tasted something bitter as he formed the word with his tongue.
"And?" She raised her eyebrows.
"And you're going to be friendly with me!" he snapped.
He leaned closer and she turned her head away, but she could feel his dark eyes on her delicate neck. Now, he frightened her. No, he had been frightening her, but now she was petrified. Her heart was beating quickly. Thoughts of a familiar, handsome, grumpy face, scratchy wool, grunts and nods, and the smells of liquor and soap and coffee and cigars crossed her mind, and she realized the only thing she wanted in that moment was Forrest.
No time to howl like she'd heard Howard do when the prohis came around. Only one thing left. Charm. She quickly calculated her distance to Blackwater Station. That was all she needed, to get there, and everything would be all right. She could see it through the trees from here. She thought Rakes would probably have a hard time running in those fancy shoes. And she had the advantage in her riding boots. Her gun was still on the table inside. Charm truly was her only option. She heard Lettie's voice in her mind "Turn it on." She raised her eyes, opened her mouth slightly and fluttered her eyelashes ever so delicately. "Am I?"
Rakes' face relaxed. He put his hand out to suggest that she tell him whatever she was going to tell him.
She smiled her most convincing smile, hoping it would come off without evidence of her teeth chattering
"Follow me," she said, smiling. She put down her picnic basket. "I could see smoke rising from the hills over here a day or so ago," she pointed and went down to where a large pool of mud had formed during her cleanout of the well that afternoon with Howard, Jack & Cricket. "See? In between the trees there?"
Rakes squinted, but shook his head.
"Well, maybe they aren't tending it today. At any rate, you should check there." He stood near the mud, gingerly walking around it and staring out over the pond attempting to see the fictional still she was attempting to point out.
"I see nothing." Her mistake was that she turned to go back up the hill, and that was when Rakes grabbed her wrist and pulled her back to him, far too close to him, her back to the woods, Rakes' back to the pond. "You have to give me more than that." Alice's heart hammered in her chest and she laughed softly, moving her hand gently towards his chest, and he stiffened until she gently pinched his lapel
"Well, actually, I was going to compliment your tailor," she said, batting her eyelashes and gagging inside. Her mind was racing and she was trying to remember the fights she'd seen in the camps. Trying to recall the times she'd seen a smaller person take the advantage. She had it.
"Were you?" He asked
"Mmm-hmm," she said, pursing her lips. "In fact," here she put her other hand up and took his other lapel in her hand, "I've been thinking that for some time. And you know what else?" She carefully stepped towards him and pressed herself in close, stepping her left leg between his feet, keeping her face relaxed though she wanted to scream. As she did this, he was distracted, just as she hoped, and she hooked her ankle around his foot without him noticing, feigning interest in whispering in his ear. But she didn't. She shoved Charley Rakes as hard as she could off the muddy embankment of the pond, tripping him over her boot just as she'd hoped. She didn't watch him fall, she only heard the splash. She had turned to run before that. But before she ran, she summoned every bit of breath inside her and shouted "Forrest!" as loud as she could, taking off through the woods in the direction of Blackwater Station.
Then she was tearing through the woods as quickly as she could, thinking only of the big mountain of a man she wanted to hide behind.
Forrest had been seated in his office, adding up sales in his ledger. No one else, not Maggie at the counter, nor Cricket washing dishes, heard his name being called through the trees, but he heard something, and he knew. He felt it, right where he thought later that his heart must be. Before he could even think to do so, he had jumped up from his desk chair, sending it hurling backwards across the room, and, stocking out, pulled his gun from the back of his pants as he burst through the door onto the porch. That's when he heard it again. "Forrest!" Her voice. Her. His heart swelled again and he panicked. Forrest Bondurant never raised his voice, but in spite of himself, he shouted "Alice!"
