Prelude

Paul Smithson leaned back in his cane bottom chair and ran an oily rag over and around the hammer and breech block of his old Springfield Trapdoor. He was humming "Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom De Ray" over and over, and from time to time, he would squint through the sight ladder as if he were about to shoot into the fireplace where the fire leapt and crackled. Emmie Smithson, however, was trying to read her book. After a couple of deep sighs and a snort, she looked up and said, "How many times've I told you you're gonna break the legs offa that chair if you keep leanin back like that? Besides, your hummin is about to put me in the looney bin. Hush so I can read." Paul stopped humming but continued polishing, and he considered squinting through the sight ladder at his wife. Instead, he decided to tilt back as far as he could without flipping over. Emmie resumed scowling through her glasses at The Jucklins. She had bought the book back in March for a dime down at Tibbett's, and it had made the evenings nearly bearable. Tonight, however, rain was drumming on the roof, and a trickle of water was plip-plopping into a bucket in the kitchen; the fire was popping and crackling, the lantern was hissing, and her dim-witted husband had a song stuck in his head. The room reeked of machine oil. Opie Read was being put to the test.

Emmie had started the same sentence three times, and in the process had become ill-tempered.

I hope the old fool falls on his ass. It'd serve him right.

She watched the fire dance and flicker in the fireplace for a moment and turned back to the novel. She read for the fourth time:

Ha, now, a fine whim, but it's a respectful whim and shall be honored, sir. I don't understand the young men of this day and generation, but I know what respect means.

"Da-da-da-doom-de-day." Paul was humming again, and he pointed the rifle at the fire. Emmie removed her spectacles and rubbed her forehead.

Lucy Smithson was sitting cross legged before the hearth and dreaming about Darl Hitchens. He had clear eyes and smooth skin and a head of wavy hair that made the girls giggle and roll their eyes. Especially Liz Marks. Liz knew how to laugh without affectation at Darl's jokes, how to touch him lightly on the arm, and how to hoist herself up on the bench on the front porch of Tibbett's so her knees showed. Once, Teeny Miller told Lucy that Liz was a bad girl—"one of those kind of girls, if you know what I mean"—and not to be trusted. Teeny said that Liz would steal a boyfriend as soon as look at him. But Lucy knew that Teeny was spreading gossip because she was jealous of Liz. She knew that Teeny was dogged and dismayed by the unfortunate nickname which may have suited Teeny when she was tiny but now served as an ironic counterpoint to her girth. No one, and that included grown-ups, called Teeny "Teeny" without suppressing a titter. As a result, Teeny grew sullen and mean, and she gossiped about girls she thought prettier than herself. As one might suppose, that group of pretty girls included Liz Marks, who knew how to talk with Darl Hitchens without affectation.

Lucy smiled a little when she recalled that Teeny occasionally spread nasty rumors about her, too. For if Teeny had been consistently kind to Lucy, that would mean Teeny considered her to be as homely and plump as she, that is, Teeny, was, and that would have been unbearable, especially if you are in love with Darl Hitchens. When Teeny sallied forth like a stuffed dumpling on white-stockinged legs that looked like two leftover weisswurste at the Lutheran potluck and jutted out her breasts like two cupped and monumental puddings and tossed her yellow hair which was, nevertheless, unavailing to redeem the whole, she did so to demean the girls of Cambridge City. Lucy remembered the time she was walking home after school with Mary Goldman, and Mary said, "Teeny told me all the boys call you 'Loosey Lucy.'" Lucy wasn't sure what it meant to be loose, but she knew it wasn't good. Again, Thank God.

The fire crackled and popped, and Lucy returned in her imagination to Darl Hitchens.

He is so handsome.

She imagined his arms around her waist and his lips on her neck. She saw him pluck a daisy and hand it to her; his flawless cheeks were blushing and his long eyelashes quivered and his smile was awkward and sweet. She imagined processing down the aisle of the Methodist Episcopal Church and Darl facing her as he stood at the altar with Pastor Rollins on one side and his best man, Auggie Finch, on the other. She turned to see a tear slip down her father's cheek as he escorted her down the aisle, and when they passed by her mother, Lucy saw her dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. Darl was smiling, and tears stood in his eyes . . .

As she gazed into the fire, Lucy remembered walking down to the creek on a warm morning in May. The grass was heavy with dew, and the tender flowers were blooming wildly: daffodils and morning glories and johnny-jump-ups and a broad sward of buttercups and even early daisies. Lucy breathed in the rich smell of the barnyard and the sweet hawthorn and felt the mild sun on her face. Her bare feet were wet with dew, and she was swinging the pail as she walked. Her mother had sent her to carry water from the creek because it was laundry day. Lucy was thinking of nothing and feeling everything when she heard two boys laughing, and who should come striding along the creekbank but Darl Hitchens and Auggie Finch with their fishing poles and—

Wham! Wham! Wham!

Paul stopped polishing his rifle and leaned forward so quickly his chair thumped. Emmie clapped the book shut and turned to her husband, her eyes wide behind her spectacles. "Who in Sam Hill'd be out on a night like this?" she asked.

Lucy turned to look at the door.

Darl! You've come!

Paul dug a cartridge out of the bib of his overalls and slipped it in the chamber. A deep rumble of thunder made the house quiver, and the rain redoubled its furious drumming. The plipping in the kitchen became a steady trickle.

Darl, my love!

Wham! Wham! Wham!

Then the thin voice of a suppliant: "Hello? Hello? I am a poor passing stranger! Will you please open the door?"

Still holding the rifle, Paul walked to the door and cracked it open. "What's your name and whaddya want?"

"I'm T. Allen McQuary! I'm lost! Please—"

T. Allen McQuary? Horse hooey. Can't be. But who else'd be out—?

Against his better judgment, Paul opened the door wider and looked out. Standing in the rain was a man of medium height attired in outlandish garb. Slanted across his nose was a purple mask so akimbo the man had to tilt his head back to see through the eyeholes. His shapeless hat sagged to his ears and dripped water onto his shoulders, and lying against his cheek was a soaked and despondent purple feather. The ruffled collar of his shirt was also wet and lay around the neck of his purple doublet like a prissy, purple doily. Purple ruffles emerged from the wrists of his coat and stuck to the tops of his purple gloves. His doublet had brass buttons that shone dimly in the lantern light falling through the open door, and dangling by his right hip was an amethyst-inlaid hilt jutting from a purple velvet sheath. Purple breeches reached to his knees where they were cinched and buckled, and on his calves he wore purple stockings. His boots, however, were black and sported brass buckles, and from the right boot his big toe peeked out, having worked its way through both stocking and leather. In his left hand, the stranger held the reins to his horse while the right hand was extended in friendship. The soggy, purple man managed a winning smile and said, "Good evening to your waking soul. I am a forlorn wanderer seeking shelter, for I have lost my way and fain would sleep indoors."

Paul opened the door a bit wider and stared at the guest. "Wait a minute," Paul said. "You're tellin me that you're T. Allen McQuary from Missoura?"

"At your service! This rain has all but tuckered me out, but my heart is in the trim! Please, may I come in!"

"Hey, Emmie, come here! Look who it is!"

Emmie came to the door and regarded the stranger. She scrunched her nose so as to push her glasses up. "What in the Sam Hill—? Is it really him, do you spose?" Water was running down the stranger's forehead and into his eyes, and the horse nickered impatiently.

Paul's brows furrowed, and he puckered his lips. "How d'we know you're the real T. Allen McQuary? You might be some outlaw dressed up like him, taking advantage of honest folks like ourselves."

The stranger closed his eyes behind his mask and raised his right hand. "I, T. Allen McQuary, am traveling around the world for the hand of an Arkansas girl and five thousand dollars, so help me God."

"You could've read that in the papers same as we did." Paul started closing the door.

"Wait, wait!" The stranger dug in his pocket and produced a soggy piece of paper. "It's getting hard to read, I'll admit, but this document will attest to my true identity."

Paul took the paper and said, "Stay put. If it 'attests' the way you say it does, I'll be back. If it don't, you'd best just push along."

"Yessir."

Paul closed the door and slid the bolt while the stranger who may or may not have been T. Allen McQuary stood in the rain.

The young man said to his horse, "Well, Roz, let's hope this works. Otherwise, we'll have to bed down in somebody's barn."

When Lucy heard the stranger give a name that wasn't Darl Hitchens, she sighed and asked, "Who is it, Pa?"

"That's what we're trying to figure out." Her father leaned the rifle against the fireplace and held the paper so the fire shone on it. He asked Emmie, "Can you make it out?"

Emmie wrinkled her nose again. "Th' writing is smudged. We need more light."

"I'll get it," said Lucy. "Here."

Emmie took the lantern and turned a knob on the side to make the flame brighter. The hiss of the lantern grew louder, rather like a snake aroused from its torpor. In a halting voice, Paul read: "Be it known that the bearer of this document is none other than T. Allen McQuary, the Purple Knight of Missouri, who seeks his fortune and his wife by traveling around the world. May it please the reader to offer him succor on his way. Notarized this day, July 4, 1897, by M. S. Glenn, publisher and editor of the Mountain Grove Plain Dealer. 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' Matthew 7:12."

Paul looked at his wife and said, "Well, I'll be damned. It's him all right."

"Who?" Lucy asked again.

"The fellow in the papers. Young feller name of McQuary, but he calls himself the Purple Knight."

"We'd best invite him in before he drowns out there." Emmie laid the paper on the mantle to dry. "He'll be wantin this back."

So, Paul went back to the door and opened it. Again, the stranger tilted his head so he could see. "Well?" he asked.

"Barn is behind the house for your horse. You can enter through the back door. You got dry clothes?"

"More or less. I have more clothes in my saddle bags."

"Wife'll find you somethin to sleep in. Just knock on the door when your horse is put up."

"Thank you, sir. You'll not regret this."

"For your sake, I better not." And with that, Paul closed the door a second time. Soon enough, they heard a knock on the back door, and then he was standing in their kitchen: The Purple Knight of Missouri, dripping purple dye on the linoleum and smiling a dimpled smile. McQuary removed his mask, and there was purple around his eyes and running down his cheeks, and he tugged off his gloves to reveal purple hands.

Emmie thought, Looks like he's been a-rollin around in the poke berry patch.

Paul regarded the Knight with a mingled feeling of suspicion and wonder; Emmie excused herself to fetch him some dry night clothes; but young Lucy was succumbing to purple: sunsets fading to twilight and violets beneath dark cedars and Communion grape juice and the flowing robes of a king in a story book. At that moment, Darl Hitchens and Liz Marks and Teeny Miller swirled away as if they had been brown leaves on the swollen waters of Little Creek. For the first time in her life, Lucy Smithson considered that love might be something other than altars and wedding rings and babies in bassinets. Perhaps, love was purple and therefore nothing less than life's supreme adventure. In her innocent supposal, the girl became transformed and transported to a world beyond her pa's farm and Cambridge City and maybe even Indiana. Indeed, Lucy imagined a boundless horizon that dwarfed and mitigated the North American continent: Twilight skies and the wine dark sea and her own red heart were summoning her to a purplish consummation. And in that moment, Lucy knew that if she could figure out how—through stealth or persuasion or seduction—she would give herself to the handsome stranger that night, though she didn't know what it was she had to give. The Purple Knight saw and relished the effect he had on the girl, so he kissed her hand and said, "Alas, that my true love lies abed in Arkansas, for in all my travels, I have not seen so fair a virgin!"

Paul had also observed his daughter's expression of awed affection, and he replied, "And she better by God be that way come morning. Tonight, young feller, you'll sleep on a pallet in our room. Lucy, go on to your room. And stay there." Emmie came back in the kitchen with one of Paul's flannel nightshirts and a towel. Paul said to Lucy, "Now!"