Seized with the possibility, Lucy put the key into the little hole. She had to do it four times, from different angles, before it finally engaged. Carefully, she turned the old tumblers and the entire bottom of the drawer came up on a spring system, revealing a secret hiding place beneath.
“I’ll be damned,” Lucy breathed in awe, noticing that there was something inside the hole. “Of all the….”
She couldn’t even finish as she pulled out what looked like an old book. She clutched it, very carefully, for it was obvious that it was quite ancient. Further inspection showed it to be a leather-bound journal with Victory Jewel Hembree embossed on the front.
Stunned, Lucy opened it up, very cautiously because the pages were quite yellowed and brittle, only to quickly realize that she was looking at a journal. There were dates she could see clearly written out as well as days of the week, all of it scribed in very careful cursive, a skill that all fine young ladies were taught back in the day. It made her heart race to realize what she had come upon.
A diary!
The inside of the flap had a note to Victory from her mother, Caroline, congratulating her daughter on becoming “of age”. It was dated 1931, when Victory Hembree would have been fifteen years old. Something like this was priceless, a sentimental value beyond measure. It was way better than any death-bed note.
The more she looked at it, the more excited she became.
But as she gazed at it, she realized that it was also a sad discovery. A diary hidden away where no one could see it. Lucy wasn’t particularly surprised that the journal had been stashed because southern women didn’t speak of their feelings much. They were expected to quietly weather whatever tribulations God gave them, so a journal documenting those feelings and hopes and dreams would have been the only outlet.
Maybe that’s why Victory’s mother had given her daughter that journal, knowing what was expected of a good southern woman – shut your mouth and put your feelings on paper. Lucy wondered if her great-grandmother also had a journal, hidden somewhere inside this house. She was willing to bet that the wife of Laveau Hembree would have had some pretty explosive things to say.
It was an intriguing thought as Lucy skimmed through the journal, noting the dates on the entries. In all, the journal was probably one hundred pages or so, thick and well-made paper all bound up with hand-stitching. There was writing on both sides of the pages from what she could see and there were spots where the dark ink had bled through to the other side of the pages, creating big black splotches.
But it didn’t matter; Lucy could still read the words and she sank back against the chifforobe once more, journal in hand, devouring the pages.
As people ate and drank and spoke softly of Ms. Victory’s life in the dining room on the floor below, up in Ms. Victory’s bedroom, an entirely different kind of recollection was taking place – these were Mamaw’s thoughts and feelings, her reflections, written in practiced handwriting on the brittle yellow paper.
Lucy started on the very first page of the journal, in the year nineteen hundred and thirty-one, when Mamaw spoke of a girlfriend named Eulalie who was a schoolmate at the Pea Ridge Female Academy. Eulalie brought cakes to school, made from white sugar, and Mamaw lamented the fact that she couldn’t do the same.
More entries followed, drawing Lucy into the year when the Great Depression had been particularly bad for the rural folks in the poor southern towns. Staples were at a premium and meat was only for the wealthy. At this point, Glory was still a working plantation but the acreage had been so reduced that they were barely scraping by on what they could grow. Lucy already knew that much from family stories and Mamaw touched on her daddy’s “difficulties” with the plantation, and how they had both white and black sharecroppers working the land.
But those mentions were very limited. For the most part, Mamaw seemed like a normal fifteen-year-old girl and wrote about clothing styles, hats, lip rouge, boys, and even movies. Lucy found a passage where Mamaw wanted to see a Norma Shearer movie that had come to town but her mother wouldn’t let her on the grounds of indecency.
The entry made Lucy giggle, thinking of Mamaw wanting to see a pre-Hayes code movie with Norma Shearer slinking across the screen in a silk gown and no bra. It was sure to be scandalous in the conservative small town. Reading further on the same entry, Mamaw was evidently mortified because Caroline had gone to the owner of the movie house and protested the movie, resulting in it never being shown. It was drama in Pea Ridge with pre-code movies at the center of it and Lucy chuckled through the entire entry.
But even as she appreciated the hilarity of it, one thing was becoming clear – the yellowed, brittle pages told the tale of a young girl who was very interested in the world in general, not simply scandalous Hollywood movies or things in her immediate world. She was interested in fashion and makeup and even literature, yet spoke of her home with disdain.
Given what Lucy already knew about Mamaw’s relationship with her father, she wasn’t surprised. Caroline was greatly respected but Laveau was barely mentioned at all. And when she did mention him, it was really only in passing, as in “Mama and Daddy” together, going somewhere, or her daddy hiring a foreman. Overall, Lucy got a sense of detachment from Mamaw to the man who had fathered her.
On the pages of the old journal, nineteen hundred and thirty-one turned into nineteen hundred and thirty-two and, finally, nineteen hundred and thirty-three. Nineteen hundred and thirty-two had very few entries, mostly about school and about having a pet cat, and nineteen hundred and thirty-three had even fewer entries.
The entries, in fact, abruptly ended about three-quarters of the way into the journal with the rest of the pages being blank. The last entry was something about meeting a friend at school to do some studying. Lucy flipped through the pages, looking to see if there was any more writing, when a white envelope towards the very end of the book suddenly dislodged and fell to the floor. Curious, she was just reaching for it when she heard someone call her name.
“Lucy!”
It was her father. Startled, Lucy didn’t want him catching her with the journal in her hand. Don’t let your daddy see it! Vivien had warned. Not that there was anything inside the man couldn’t read, but Vivien had been specific. Mamaw hadn’t wanted anyone else to see what she’d left for her granddaughter.
Quickly, Lucy picked up the white envelope that had just fallen from the journal, shoved it back inside, and slapped the cover shut. Then she tried to put it back into the secret hiding place in the drawer but the old hinges wouldn’t close properly so, not wanting to break them, she simply slapped the drawer shut and shoved the journal underneath the chifforobe. Leaping to her feet, she rushed over to stand by one of the windows just about the time the door opened.
Bill was standing in the doorway, hand on the knob as he peered curiously into the sunlit room. “What are you doing up here?” he asked. “Come on downstairs.”
Lucy hoped she didn’t look as flustered as she felt. “I… I just wanted to be alone in this room for a minute,” she said, looking at the old walls. “I haven’t been in this room in years. I just needed to be here for a moment, Dad. I’ll be down in a minute.”
Bill nodded his head, dropping his hand from the doorknob. “Oh,” he said simply, understanding now why his daughter had disappeared. “Well, come down when you’re finished. Aunt Dell is asking about you. People want to see you.”
“Is Clyde still down there?”
Bill lifted his eyebrows. “You saw him, did you?”
“I did.”
“Yes, he’s still down there.”
“Then call me when he’s gone.”
Bill snorted. “Honey, you can’t ignore everyone down there just because Clyde is here,” he said. “I promise I’ll keep him away from you, okay? I won’t let him hug you or try to kiss you.”
Lucy shook her head, disgusted. “I swear to God, Dad….”
“Just come on down when you’re finished up here. Okay?”<
br />
“Okay.”
“Promise?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“You’re not going to jump out the window to get away from Clyde, are you?”
Lucy started laughing. “Not yet.”
Bill grinned and winked at her. “Then I’ll see you downstairs.”
Lucy watched him go, waiting until she could see, through the open door, that he was taking the curved front stairs down to the first floor. Quickly, she went to the door and shut it before heading back to the old chifforobe and pulling out the journal, shoving it carefully into her big Louis Vuitton purse. It wasn’t a very big journal so she was even able to zip the bag. She had more reading to do tonight in the hotel. In fact, it was all she could think of. Better to be done with Cousin Clyde and the others now and then get the hell back to the hotel.
Whispering a farewell to Mamaw’s bedroom, she followed her father’s lead to the first floor.
CHAPTER FOUR
~ Speak of the Devil ~
“It’s hotter’n fresh milk today,” Laveau said, fanning himself with his Yeddo straw hat as he stood in the plantation office. “By noon, everything is going come to a standstill. I can’t get work out of the men when it’s this hot.”
He sat down at his cluttered desk, tossing the hat aside as he loosened his collar. He couldn’t help but notice that the sheriff was still standing in the doorway, unable or unwilling to enter. He hadn’t come in and he hadn’t moved out; he just stood there. Maybe it was just too hot for him to come into the office, the Robbins & Myers fan on Laveau’s desk just blowing hot air around.
But Laveau didn’t have time for indecisiveness. He eyed the sheriff impatiently as he settled back in his chair, putting a hand down to pet the big bloodhound lying miserably on the floor by his desk. Guapo was the dog’s name; Spanish for handsome. Laveau named the dog that because it was the ugliest damn dog he’d ever seen.
“What ya’ll need today, Terhune?” Laveau asked. “I got things I have to do today, so come to the point.”
Terhune, dressed in a crisp white shirt his wife had starched and ironed and the familiar snap-brimmed hat in his hand, waited until a pair of workers passed by the office and out towards the fields before speaking.
“One of my deputies told me this morning that Lane Haltom has been talking to the sheriff over in Charleston about the Ragsdale boy,” he said quietly. “You know Lane Haltom?”
Laveau nodded his head slowly, pulling out his handkerchief to wipe the sweat on his forehead. “Lawyer,” he said. “I heard he got one of them boys that robbed that white woman last spring– the Coffey boys – off on good behavior. I think the other one got sent to Tallahatchie Correctional for a few months. Not what they deserved, no sir. They should’ve been put away for good, both of ’em.”
Terhune took a step into the searing office. “The Ragsdale family went to him,” he said. “They told him what you did to their boy. Now Haltom is going to the papers about it. My deputy said he was approached by someone from the Charleston newspaper about it. Wanted to know what we’re going to do about it.”
By this time, Laveau seemed to be less impatient with Terhune and more serious about his reason for coming. He tucked his handkerchief back into his pocket. “He went to the papers, did he?”
“Seems so.”
Laveau stared at him with those dark, soulless eyes. Terhune had seen that stare before and nothing good ever came out of it.
“Well,” Laveau said after a moment, leaning forward in his chair and pretending to look at the paperwork on his desk. “Someone ought to tell Haltom that he’s meddling in something that is none of his business and if he isn’t careful, someone might just teach him a very harsh lesson. Does he have children?”
Terhune nodded. “I think so.”
Laveau wasn’t looking at him, instead, finding an invoice from a local livery more interesting. “I think we should find out, don’t you?” he asked. “Find out if the man has any children. Then, when you talk to him, make sure he knows we’d be very sorry if something happened to one of his children.”
Terhune stood there a moment, watching Laveau read the invoice, feeling sick in the pit of his stomach. He always felt this way when situations with Laveau leaned in this direction, like he wanted to stop the leaning but wasn’t strong enough to do it. Laveau leaned any direction he wanted to without resistance. Terhune never offered him much. Like everyone else in Pea Ridge, he simply leaned in whatever direction Laveau told him to.
“I’ll take care of it,” he said, turning for the door. He found he couldn’t breathe. “I was just telling you in case you caught wind from someone else.”
Laveau glanced up from the paper he was looking at. “I won’t hear about it from someone else because you’re going to take care of it.”
“I am.”
Terhune walked away and Laveau didn’t say anything more. He didn’t have to.
They both knew what would happen if Terhune didn’t take care of it.
CHAPTER FIVE
Present
On the curb next to Glory, two men sat in a marked police cruiser. It was a custom Ford Explorer, with all the bells and whistles, because it belonged to the sheriff of Tallahatchie County.
Beau Meade sat in the driver’s seat with his father, Tommie, in the passenger seat because Tommie had asked his son to drive him over to Glory so they could extend their condolences to the family of Ms. Victory Hembree. But Tommie simply sat there, evidently unwilling to get out.
Beau had turned the car off some time ago. Now, he was just waiting for his father to make his move.
“Well?” he asked. “Are you going to get out?”
Tommie was looking up at the overgrown house, the old columns sticking out from the growth like rib bones. “Yes,” he said. “I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“About what to say to this family. The Meades and the Hembrees go way back.”
“I know.”
Tommie turned to look at his son. “Then you also know that Victory Hembree wanted nothing to do with our family.”
Again, Beau nodded his head. “I am well aware of that,” he said. “That’s why I was surprised when you said you wanted to come over here. Why do you want to come?”
Tommie’s gaze lingered on his son a moment; he was a big, strapping example of a man who had been one of the youngest elected sheriffs in the state when he’d been sworn in five years ago. Tommie was proud beyond words of his boy but, in a sense, they were from two different worlds.
Tommie had never really left Pea Ridge except to go to college locally, but Beau had been all over the world. He had a Ph.D. in Sociology and even did a year in England in the course of his schooling. Therefore, Beau had a broader sense of the world in general and things like old family stigmas and prejudices weren’t something he had a lot of patience for, no matter how hard Tommie tried to pound them home.
“You just don’t know, Beau,” Tommie finally said, looking back to the house again. “You just don’t know how things were. How bad they were.”
Beau sighed heavily, glancing at his watch. “Dad, I don’t have time for this,” he said. “Either you go in or I’m taking you home. I need to get back to work.”
Tommie reached for the door latch. He wasn’t ready to go home yet but he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to go inside, either. He was all torn up inside and had been since he’d heard of Ms. Victory’s passing. Even with his hand on the door, he didn’t open it yet.
“I came because I feel like I need to apologize,” he said.
Beau struggled not to roll his eyes. “For what?”
Tommie was growing agitated at his son’s impatience. “My granddaddy and Ms. Victory’s daddy were thick as thieves back in the day,” he said. “You know that. Terhune and Laveau did some terrible things, Beau. Horrible things.”
Beau knew all about his great-grandfather and how the man had done the bidding of Laveau Hembree. Hell, the entire town
knew the stories – even though Terhune Meade was the sworn sheriff back in the nineteen thirties, it was Laveau who ran the town. If Laveau told Terhune to throw someone in jail, then he did. If he told Terhune to shoot someone, then Terhune would.
So much evil had been done between the two of them, something Beau didn’t particularly think about like his father did. Although he knew that old prejudices were hard to break down here, he found that the older he got, the more he didn’t have much tolerance for them. Hatreds and rumors and cultural stigmas would never go away if people kept dredging them up.
“It shouldn’t follow you around,” Beau said after a moment. “That’s all in the past. If you keep looking back, you’ll never get away from it. Now, are you going to go inside or am I going to take you home?”
Tommie opened the door but still didn’t get out. “It’s your history, too, son,” he said. “You’ve heard the stories about it. I’ve told you about it and I’m pretty sure Granddaddy told you about it. It’s part of you whether or not you want it to be.”
Beau groaned softly. “Dad, I really don’t have time for this,” he said. “People around here want to live in fear and remember horrible things from eighty years ago, then that’s their deal. It’s not mine. I didn’t do any of that stuff and I’m not going to let it affect me. I never have. Now, let’s go in and get this over with. I need to get back to the station.”
Tommie sighed faintly. Beau was too pragmatic for his own good sometimes. Not that he disagreed with his attitude – it was true that, four generations removed, deeds and prejudices had a way of fading. Beau’s generation just didn’t give a lot of credence to things like that, which was good in a sense. It meant that, eventually, they would all heal from the horrors of the past. But they wouldn’t heal soon enough for Tommie’s taste. Swinging his legs out of the car, he stepped out onto the curb.
Quickly, Beau climbed out as well, slamming the door and locking it when his father shut the passenger door. He didn’t want the man trying to climb back into the car again. Together, the two of them headed through the open gates to where the cars were parked, making their way to the lawn that was thick and overgrown. Both Beau and Tommie were looking up at the house as they walked, drinking it all in.
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