After that, Lewis and I spoke of our love of poetry and literature whenever we could. I told Mr. Franklin that I had loaned Lewis my books, as a good Christian would do, and he didn’t seem troubled by it. In fact, he invited me to help tutor his class of coloreds, but I couldn’t tell Mama or Daddy about it, so I told them I was tutoring other girls after school. They would let me stay so long as I was home by supper. It was nearly the only time during my days that Mama or Daddy weren’t hanging over me. I felt free.
Maybe you see where this is leading. Lewis was unlike any man I had ever met before. He was a gentle soul with a heart that was pure. I never knew men like that existed. I came from a family where Daddy ruled our world and viewed me with resentment, having been born a girl as I was. But Lewis thought every word out of my mouth was the voice of an angel. He gave me the love and respect that Daddy had denied me. I can’t describe to you what Lewis meant to me, only that he meant everything. With him, I was loved.
Now, a white woman with a colored man back in my younger days just wasn’t done. It wasn’t fitting. Lewis and I made plans to run away together and get married. In 1933, it was illegal in Mississippi for a colored person to marry a white person, so we knew we had to leave the state. Lewis had heard that we could go to Illinois and be legally married, so we made plans. Those plans became more important than ever when I discovered I was pregnant.
Dr. Latling was the town’s doctor and probably the only man who wasn’t afraid of Daddy. He told Daddy that I was pregnant. Mama cried as Daddy beat me and demanded to know who the father was, but I wouldn’t tell him. I knew what would happen to Lewis if Daddy knew and I couldn’t see him die by Daddy’s hand. I would want to die, too.
But I was weak, and I was afraid, and I told a horrible lie to Daddy when I could no longer stand his beatings. I told him that a man had raped me but I didn’t know who it was because it had been dark when it happened. Daddy went to Sheriff Meade and they determined that a colored man had raped me. After all, good white men were incapable of such things, weren’t they?
They interrogated me until I broke and screamed at them that, yes, a colored man had raped me. But I would have said anything for them to leave me alone. The night that Lewis and I planned to run away together, his brother, Aldridge, came for me. He was to take me to Lewis. But Daddy saw us together and immediately assumed that Aldridge, who worked for Daddy, was the man who had raped me. Daddy took poor Aldridge away that night and I never did see him alive again. The next I heard, his body ended up back on his family’s front porch.
After that, I never saw Lewis again because Daddy kept me locked in the house until I delivered the baby. Dr. Latling delivered the child but I never did see her. He gave me ether for the birth and when I woke up, he was gone and so was the baby. No one would tell me what happened to her and Dr. Latling would never answer my questions, but something told me he knew what happened to her. He was a doctor and doctors aren’t supposed to kill, so I have to have hope that she made it out of that room alive.
I know I’ve never spoken kindly of Daddy, so if you have ever wondered why, now you know. He never forgave me for bearing a half-colored bastard and I never forgave him, or myself, for the death of an innocent man.
Now we come to the help I need from you. In the top of my chifforobe is a small wooden box containing a gold locket. On the locket are inscribed these words – In The Dreaming Hour. Lucy, I want you to find that baby girl I gave birth to so long ago and I want you to give her that locket. If she’s dead, then give it to her daughter, if she has one. I want her, or her children, to have it because it’s the only thing Lewis ever gave me. He saved his money for a long time to buy it. And in this letter is a scrap of a poem he wrote for me with those same words. It’s the most valuable thing I own, that old piece of paper. I couldn’t ask to be buried with it, but I wanted to be.
But now I ask you – keep it safe with you. It is more valuable than anything I’ve ever owned, other than the poem. And the inscription on the locket – In The Dreaming Hour – is what I’d like written on my headstone. No one but me, and now you, will know what it means, but I’m content with that. I need some part of Lewis with me and that is all I’ll ever have.
I love you, my darling Lucy. You are my pride and my joy. Now that you know my deepest secret, I hope you won’t judge me too harshly. Love is never wrong, no matter of the color of your skin. I was lucky because I was loved more deeply than most.
Find my baby. I named her Ruby. Give her the locket and tell her, if she is still alive, how very much I loved her even though I never knew her.
Mamaw
Lucy was sobbing softly as she read the last passage.
Hand to her mouth, the tears poured from her eyes. All she could think of was the suffering Mamaw must have gone through, the sheer hell of a love that was never meant to be and the sheer hell of an innocent man dying at the hands of her father.
God, it was just horrific, all of it. But in that horror, there was the core of a love story so true, so ageless, that even now, Lucy could feel the impact.
A baby. A murder. A forbidden love.
Lucy read the letter again, twice. No wonder Mamaw didn’t want Lucy’s father to know about the letter; her only son, and her only child with Pop, born to her when she was nearly forty years of age. Lucy had always wondered why Pop and Mamaw had gotten married so late in life, but now she was starting to understand why. Maybe Mamaw simply couldn’t bring herself to be with another man after what had happened.
Lucy didn’t really know the circumstances of Pop and Mamaw’s courtship, only that Pop had been a childless widower and Mamaw had married him after knowing him for a couple of years. William Bondurant, her father, had been born less than a year later, the only child they’d ever had.
But now, things were starting to make some sense.
All of it was such a startling revelation that had Lucy’s head reeling, but on the heels of thoughts of Mamaw were also thoughts of her father – Mamaw had specifically asked that Bill not know about the letter, but Lucy knew her father well – she knew he wouldn’t overreact to information like this. Hell, in this day and age, it wasn’t that big of a deal, at least not where Lucy came from, although she wasn’t sure that would be true in a small Mississippi town.
Maybe it would be a big deal, still. The bottom line was that Lucy thought her father might like to know that he had an older sister. She couldn’t, in good conscience, keep something like that from him. Bill had a right to know he had a sister.
A love child from a shocking love story.
Lucy didn’t even eat her fast food that night, the burger and fries stone-cold by morning. She sat up past midnight, reading the letter again and again, and then the poem, trying to understand the gist of the love story between Mamaw and a black man.
From the words upon the paper, it was clear that Lewis Ragsdale had loved Mamaw. But it was more than that; it was a deep and meaningful message from a man of color who had been beaten and suppressed in a world of whites, yet the beauty of his words didn’t convey that oppression. He hinted at the world they lived in, but not the unfairness of it. He conveyed an understanding of the times and just how forbidden his love for Victory Hembree was. He knew it; Lucy had no doubt that Lewis knew the consequences should they be discovered, but he had been willing to take the risk.
Ultimately, however, it was his brother who paid the price.
And what of this brother, Aldridge? The poor man got caught up in something of his brother’s doing and ended up dead because of it. But how was he killed? Shot? Beaten? Even lynched? Now, the rumors of Laveau’s evil were starting to make a great deal of sense because the proof of his wickedness had been exposed in Mamaw’s letter.
Until that moment, the rumors and the stories had been just that – rumors and stories. It was just gossip until evidence was presented. But the reality was that it was hearsay and Lucy was very cognizant of the fact. There wasn’t a picture of Aldridge’s dead bod
y included in the letter.
Still, Lucy believed Mamaw implicitly and tears flooded her eyes when she thought of the woman, knowing an innocent man had been killed because of her lies and her father’s evil. The man had been murdered by her father and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to save him.
God, how she and Lewis must have suffered, two people caught up in a situation completely out of their control.
With thoughts of a murder and a forbidden love on her mind, Lucy somehow fell asleep. Flitting visions of a red-haired woman, her pale hand enfolded within a black palm, and visions of a big white house and angry men with torches as they prepared to kill an innocent man.
But when chaotic dreams eased, thoughts of the plan Lucy needed to make in order to fulfill Mamaw’s last wish began to fill her mind. She’d been given a mission in life, something far away from faithless husbands and an empty life.
Now, she had a purpose. She was a lawyer, after all, and a damn good one. She had to find justice for Aldridge and Victory and Lewis. Maybe everything in her life, everything she had been through, had led up to this very moment when it was finally her time to shine. She had to do something.
And she would.
Therefore, Lucy slept lightly, fitfully, waking up at dawn feeling as if she’d just run a marathon. She was exhausted to the bone, mentally and physically, but sleep had helped her in some way because she had a rudimentary plan formulated in her head. Lucy’s mind had always worked quickly, and tirelessly, and she wasn’t one to sit around and ponder things for days. She couldn’t rest until she had a plan of attack formed.
Climbing out of bed, she booted up her laptop computer. Collecting the pad of paper on the desk with the hotel’s logo on it, she began to write.
The child
Lewis Ragsdale
Aldridge Ragsdale
Sheriff Meade
Dr. Latling
Those were people she needed to research, but at the core of that search was one simple fact – the reality was that after all of these years, the chances of finding the child still alive were slim. Lucy knew that. But, on the other hand, Mamaw had lived past her one hundredth birthday, so there was longevity in her family. Therefore, there was that possibility that the baby, wherever she was, was still alive.
Then there was Dr. Latling – he took the child away so maybe he had family left that knew the story and could tell her where the child had gone. She was pretty sure there wouldn’t be any record of the birth. As for Lewis and Aldridge, county records might tell her something. She knew that Pea Ridge had a large historical society, proud of their town as they were. Maybe they even had a record of Aldridge Ragsdale’s murder, although that was bound to be a touchy subject. She didn’t suppose they’d want to talk about that very much.
Hi, I’m researching a murder of an innocent black man that took place in your town….? No, she didn’t think the historical society would appreciate that kind of question.
But as she looked at Mamaw’s letter for the fiftieth time, something else caught her attention – Sheriff Meade. And then, it hit her – it was all starting to make sense now why Sheriff Meade, her bodyguard against Lounge Lizard Clyde, said he’d brought his father to the house so the man could apologize for his family’s sins. Big, handsome Beau Meade was a lawman just like his ancestor. It had to be the same family. In towns like this, there were no coincidences.
Sheriff Meade and Laveau Hembree had been thick as thieves in the murder of Aldridge Ragsdale.
Was that what Tommie Meade had been apologizing for? Did he know of that murder? Or was it the association in general he had been apologizing for? It was a sad legacy for both of their families as Lucy’s thoughts drifted to the hunky sheriff who had followed her into the kitchen.
Although she wasn’t in the market for a boyfriend, and not particularly ready to get back into the dating game, Beau Meade had been some serious eye candy. He seemed nice enough, too. Since he had mentioned his father’s intention to apologize for the family wrongs, she wondered if Sheriff Meade might be someone who could help her track down the Ragsdales or even Dr. Latling’s descendants. If the guy had grown up in the area and his family was a fixture here just as her family had been, then maybe he’d be able to tell her something about the key players in Mamaw’s mystery. Or maybe he’d tell her to get lost.
Either way, she supposed she really had nothing to lose. If she wanted to carry out Mamaw’s last wish, then she knew what she had to do.
She had to find that baby.
CHAPTER EIGHT
~ The Locket ~
She’d seen the heart-shaped locket in the Spiegel Christmas catalog last year for thirteen dollars and ninety-eight cents. It was real gold with a flower design etched into the cover and it opened to frame two tiny pictures, but there were no pictures in this locket. She didn’t have a picture of what she wanted to put in there.
The locket was something she kept hidden between her mattresses, some place her mother and father would never look. It had been a gift from Lewis, who had spent four months’ salary on the gift when he could ill afford it. But he’d wanted very much to give her something for her birthday.
The locket had come in a box with a piece of paper tucked up into it, a poem that he’d written for her, one of many such poems he’d written for her over the past several months. But this poem was special; it summed up everything they felt for one another and it was the title of that poem he’d had inscribed on the locket.
In The Dreaming Hour.
The locket and the poem spent most of their time in the box shoved in between the mattresses on her bed, only coming out when the world around her was safe. She would often take them out late at night and read the poem, over and over, while fingering the locket. Such a tiny piece of metal that meant so much to her. Since the murder, she hadn’t seen him at all, so the locket was all she had of him now.
That, and the baby growing inside her.
The baby was very active now in the sixth month, rolling and kicking. Victory would lay on her back at night, staring at the ceiling with her hands on her belly, just feeling those little kicks and flutters. She wished Lewis could feel them, too. Every night, she shed tears for what they both were missing.
The baby… and each other.
A knock on the door distracted her from her thoughts and, in a panic, she shoved the locket under her pillow along with the box and the poem. It was right after supper and the sun had gone down, so she wasn’t expecting any visitors. Laying back down and covering herself up, she timidly answered the knock.
“Come in,” she said.
The door opened and her mother appeared, forcing a smile as she so often did. Her mother was caught between a rock and a hard place when it came to running interference between father and daughter, afraid of one and loving the other. She stepped into the darkened bedroom and turned on the light.
“Are you sleeping, Victory?” she asked.
Victory shook her head. “No, Mama.”
Her mother kept that same fake smile plastered on her lips. “Dr. Latling has come to see you,” she said, turning to the door that was partially open. “Dr. Latling?”
A round man with round glasses entered the room, his black leather bag in-hand. It was a sultry night but in spite of the humidity, he wore a suit and a tie. The jacket was damp and wrinkled, as were the pants. He set his bag down on the nearest chair as he visually inspected his patient.
“Miss Victory,” he greeted. “Your Mama says you’re not feeling well.”
Victory shrugged, keeping the covers up around her bosom. “I… I’m okay,” she said. “Just tired.”
Dr. Latling stood at the end of the bed, one of his bushy eyebrows cocked as he looked at her. “Are you eating?”
She nodded. “I am,” she said, looking at her mother’s strained expression. “Well, I’m trying to.”
Dr. Latling could see the hesitation in the young girl. He turned to the mother. “Ms. Caroline, if ya’ll let me h
ave a few minutes alone with your daughter, I would appreciate it. I need to examine her.”
Caroline was hesitant. “I… I don’t know….”
“Out, please,” Dr. Latling said more firmly. “If I need you, I’ll call you.”
He all but pushed Caroline out of the bedroom, shutting the door behind her. Once she was out and the door was shut, he waddled his way back over to the bed.
“Now,” he said quietly. “Your Mama’s not here so you can tell me the truth. She says ya’ll been fainting regularly. Is that true?”
Victory nodded. Then, her face crumpled. “I’m afraid to eat,” she sobbed.
“Why?”
“I’m afraid Daddy will poison my food!”
Dr. Latling sighed heavily. “He’s not going to do that, sugar,” he assured her quietly. “You’re his daughter. He wouldn’t do that to you.”
She was quickly growing hysterical. “I heard him tell my Mama that he hopes the baby dies,” she said. “I’m afraid he’ll make me eat something that will kill her.”
“Her?”
“My baby. Ruby.”
Dr. Latling nodded his head, unsure what more to say. It was clear the girl was terrified, which was taking a toll on her health. Given Laveau’s tendencies, he really wouldn’t put anything past the man. Maybe he would, indeed, poison his own daughter to kill off her bastard baby, so in that respect, he didn’t blame the girl for her fears.
“Well,” he said as he turned back to his black bag to collect his stethoscope, “I wouldn’t worry about your daddy. He’s upset, that’s true, but he’s not going to hurt you. You need to stop worrying about that and eat something. You’ll do more damage to Ruby if you don’t.”
That thought evidently hadn’t occurred to Victory. Her sobs lessened and she put her hand to her belly. “I just want her to be born, Dr. Latling,” she said, sniffling. “I want her to be born healthy.”
In the Dreaming Hour Page 8
