“Oh, no,” I said. The droplet was the same size and shape as the tea drops, but this one was most definitely red. Bloodred. I looked at Oliver in silence, and he met my eyes.
“This woman was not well,” he said quietly.
I thought of the photograph I’d copied from the microfilm machine. The smiling, confident-looking girl standing in front of the huge canvas. “I’m starting to feel sorry for her,” I said. “I think maybe she really was losing her mind and there was probably no treatment for her back then.”
“I wish she hadn’t fallen off the face of the earth,” he said, handing me the dowel again. “I would love to see more of what she could do.”
“I worry she killed herself,” I said. “That’s the only explanation I can think of. Obviously she was messed up.”
Oliver nodded. “Yet for the most part, she still managed to produce a pretty phenomenal mural.”
“I want to find out what really happened to her,” I said. “Why did she turn a perfectly normal painting into a house of horrors?”
He looked at me with amusement. “How do you plan to do that?” he asked. “Find out what really happened to her?”
“I don’t know, but I have to.” I studied the bloody ax blade. The little red-haired man in the mirror. The drops of blood. The motorcycle. “I think Anna Dale is starting to haunt me.”
Chapter 26
ANNA
January 11, 1940
There was a dusting of snow on the ground late that morning, and Anna’s car slid a bit as she turned onto the long dirt road leading to the warehouse. Once inside the warehouse, she turned on the space heaters and pulled them close to her workspace. She was carefully laying out the wood she’d need for the stretcher when Martin Drapple suddenly cracked open the door and shouted, “All right if I come in?”
She jumped, startled. She’d been so engrossed in her work that she hadn’t heard his car.
“Of course,” she said, although he was probably the last person she wanted to see in her private space. She’d won the contest, so she knew she shouldn’t feel intimidated by him, but she did.
Martin stomped off the snow before stepping into the warehouse, where he took off his hat and ran a hand through his thick red hair.
“I just wanted to see if you need any help,” he said. His hands were in his jacket pockets as he took in every inch of the warehouse as though he’d be tested on it later. “A lot more space than I have in my little attic hovel,” he said, good-naturedly, she thought.
“I was fortunate the mayor … your cousin … suggested it,” Anna said, trying to forget how she’d felt the evening before when dark shadows filled the space.
Martin pulled his pipe from an inside pocket of his jacket and lit it, the sweet scent of the tobacco rising into the air. “Ah,” he said, walking toward the wall with the cartoon paper. “You have the paper up.”
“The students who are working with me helped me,” Anna said. “We did that yesterday.”
“Will you make a grid?”
“Yes, I’ve got it on my sketch and when the students arrive, we can—”
“Let me help you with it,” he said. “We can get it done in no time at all.”
Anna’s insides coiled. She couldn’t accept help from him. It felt wrong. Plus the thought of him seeing her sketch made her nervous.
“Oh, no,” she said, before she could stop to think. “I’d feel unfair accepting your help.”
His eyes narrowed and his expression seemed to darken as he held his pipe away from his face. “Don’t patronize me,” he said. “I genuinely would like to help you.”
They were off and running on the wrong foot, Anna thought.
“I apologize,” she said, giving in. “I would love some help with the grid.”
He took off his jacket and they began to work together. It was clear Martin had done this before at some time. He cut plumb lines of twine and they hung them twelve inches apart from the top of the paper to the bottom. They coated them with charcoal and snapped the vertical grid lines into place. In short order, they’d completed the vertical lines, and Anna stepped back to study their work. It would have taken Theresa, Peter, and her at least an hour to accomplish what she and Martin had done in twenty minutes.
“Voilà,” Martin said, lighting his pipe again. “Shall we leave the horizontal lines for your young charges to handle?” he asked, and she agreed.
She offered him one of the butter cookies she’d brought with her. She’d made a huge batch of them the evening before and dropped a tin of them off at Mayor Sykes’s office on her way to the warehouse this morning. Martin declined the offer in favor of his pipe.
“So,” he said, pulling one of the chairs out from under the table and sitting down as if she’d invited him to stay. “I saw your sketch hanging in the post office.”
So he’d already seen it. “And…?” She stood a distance away, her arms folded across her chest.
He nodded. “Quite impressive for someone your age.”
“Only for someone my age?” She attempted a genuine smile, but it felt forced.
“Perhaps you’re trying to please too many people by having such a conglomeration of ideas.”
That had been her fear as well, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. “The Section approved it and you know they can be notoriously difficult.”
“Also, notoriously wrong at times.” Was he teasing her or deadly serious? She couldn’t tell.
“What would you have painted?” she asked.
He looked into the distance as if imagining his mural. “I left people out of my sketch altogether,” he said. “I had more of an aerial scene. Broad Street with all the shops leading down to the waterfront, and in the distance, farmland that stretched on forever.” He sounded a bit dreamy, describing it.
“That would have been a wise choice,” she said. “Much simpler than what I’m attempting to do, throwing all those challenging-to-paint human beings into my mural.”
He gave her a sharp look, then laughed. “All right, Miss Dale, I see you can hold your own.”
Suddenly, the warehouse door opened and in walked a young colored man, his hair and coat dusted with snow. He carried a sketchbook beneath his arm, and he grinned at Anna. “I’m Jesse, ma’am,” he said. “Miss Furman sent me here.”
It took her a moment to understand. “I thought Miss Furman was sending one of her students,” she said. “An eleventh-grader.”
“I am an eleventh-grader,” he said.
He must have stayed back two or three years at least, Anna thought. “How old are you?” she asked.
“Seventeen.”
He was only seventeen? He was definitely more man than child, although she thought she detected a gentle innocence in his round doe eyes.
“You’re not supposed to arrive until after school,” she said.
“I don’t need to go to my last two classes,” he said, in what she guessed was a lie.
He glanced from her to Martin and back again, and Anna wondered if he thought he’d walked in on a romantic liaison by arriving early.
“Mr. Drapple was helping me with the car … with the paper.” She pointed toward the cartoon. “He was just leaving.”
Martin got to his feet. “Can I speak to you for a moment?” he asked Anna, nodding toward the far end of the warehouse.
“Jesse, please have a seat here and I’ll be right with you,” she said. “You can look at my sketch for the mural.”
She walked with Martin nearly to the end of the warehouse.
“I’m not leaving you here alone with him,” he said quietly.
“Why? Do you know something about him?”
“No, but you can’t stay here alone with that boy.”
“And why on earth not? Plus my other helpers will be here in an hour or so.”
“It’s not right and it’s not safe.”
“Ridiculous,” she said.
“I’m not leaving until your other students com
e.”
“Yes,” she said. “You are.” Who did he think he was? Her father? This close to him, she thought she could smell alcohol on his breath. It was not even one in the afternoon. “This is my space and I make the rules.” She couldn’t believe she was speaking to him that way, but she liked the strength in her voice. “I appreciate your help and your concern, but I really do insist you leave.” She worried their voices had gotten too loud and the boy might hear them. She glanced toward him. He seemed engrossed in studying her sketch.
“It’s your neck on the line,” Martin Drapple said. “Not mine.”
He walked the length of the warehouse, flung his jacket over his shoulder, and left without saying good-bye. Jesse never even looked up from the sketch.
Anna walked over to the table.
“So,” she said, sitting down across from him. She was trembling slightly after the altercation with Martin, but pleased she’d held her own. “What do you think of the sketch?” she asked.
“You like red a lot.”
“I guess I do.” She smiled. “Do you think I’ve used it too much? The red?”
He smiled too, his gaze still on the sketch. His teeth showed. White, straight, with a slight space between his front teeth, and Anna realized who he reminded her of: Dabney Johnson from her high school in Plainfield. A big, shy, unassuming boy who did little to impress until you saw him play basketball.
“I think you ain’t used it enough,” Jesse said, his tone teasing, and she laughed.
“How about the composition?” she asked, wondering if he even knew what the word meant. He did.
“My aunt Jewel saw the picture … the photograph of this in the post office,” he said, nodding respectfully toward the sketch rather than touching it. “She told me all the bits and pieces you got here and I thought, that gonna look like a big ol’ bowl of Brunswick stew for sure. But it don’t. The way you spread it all out, and how you made this part—the trawler and the Mill Village—how you made them smaller but they still stand out. It looks right good.”
“Thank you, Jesse,” she said. “I think you have a real artist’s eye. Can I see some of your drawings?” She carefully moved her sketch aside so he could put his sketchbook on the table, facing her. He handled the book with a delicacy she understood. It was precious to him, and she was touched. She would handle the pages with the same care as she turned them.
To say she was astonished by his skill would have been an understatement. She had to keep reminding herself that he was an untrained seventeen-year-old. The sketch pad contained portrait after portrait of his family members. “This my little sister, Nellie. This my aunt Jewel. She the midwife ’round where I live. This my mama. My other sister Dodie. This my cousin Chee.” And on and on. Then there were cows and pigs and chickens.
“You have to go to art school, Jesse.” The way Anna said it, it sounded like a foregone conclusion. That’s how she felt at that moment. There was no other path for this young man. He must go to art school. “You have to hone your talent.”
“What that mean? Hone?”
“You’re extremely talented,” she said. “You’re a natural. To ‘hone’ it would be to learn all the technical aspects of art to bring your talent to full fruition … your full potential.”
He shook his head. Leaned away from the table. “I’m done with school, ma’am,” he said. “I jest want to sit on a stack of hay and draw.”
“Please don’t be done with school!” she practically begged him, and he drew back slightly. She thought she’d momentarily scared him with her intensity. “Please don’t hide this talent in your … your family barn or wherever.”
He laughed. “You sound jest like Miss Furman.” He looked toward the wall where the cartoon paper was still draped with twine. “What that for?” he asked.
She stood up, and it took her a moment to shake off the surprise of what she’d seen in his sketchbook before she walked toward the cartoon paper. “Well, let me tell you what’s happening here,” she said. She explained about the cartoon and that she would be working on it while he and Theresa and Peter built a stretcher for the canvas, which she hoped would arrive in the Norfolk art supply store shortly. “The stretcher is very exacting work,” she said, thinking that she really should have accepted Martin Drapple’s offer to help with it. It had to be accurate to the inch.
“I done door framin’,” Jesse said, only his accent was such that it took her a minute to understand what he meant. “My aunties and uncles and everbody call me to do it ’cause I know how to miter them corners right. Miss Furman give me some canvas and I made frames to stretch them over, even with bevel edges and all. I’m good at it.”
“This’ll be a bigger project than any you’ve done,” Anna said. “Way bigger even than a door frame.”
“Jes’ leave it to me,” he said, and Anna began to worry that he would boss Theresa and Peter around. She shouldn’t have, though.
When Theresa and Peter arrived, Jesse changed into a different boy. His bravado and self-confidence seemed to disappear, and it took Anna a while to realize that he felt the need to defer to them. That deference was expected of him. She didn’t like seeing the change in him. He communicated with the two of them in grunts, acquiescing to Peter’s directions, which were, fortunately, excellent. She had to admit that these boys who grew up on self-sufficient farms were good with their hands. She didn’t think the Plainfield boys she’d gone to high school with would have known what to do with all that wood.
Gradually, though, the awkwardness between the boys seemed to ease up. Anna had bought some cotton work gloves for all of them to use to protect their hands, but the boys just laughed at her.
“Miss Anna,” Peter said, “we don’t need no gloves! We build fences with our bare hands!” He looked at Jesse as if for corroboration, and Jesse picked it right up.
“An’ butcher hogs with our bare hands, too!” he said.
“An’ muck out the stables!” Peter said. “An’—”
“All right, all right!” Anna laughed.
Theresa rolled her eyes in annoyance at the boys and held out her hand for a pair of the gloves. It looked like she and Anna would be the only ones wearing them.
Anna gave directions and watched the three of them work. Peter was her surprise. He was so slight and blond, such a wisp of a boy, yet he was strong and very smart. Theresa didn’t want to get down on the floor. Rather, she attempted to give orders from above.
“I told you, you need to wear pants in here,” Anna said, and the girl turned away from her in a huff.
The boys, though, worked well together. Anna realized they were missing a couple of tools they needed to work with the wood, and Jesse promised to bring them the following day. Despite Theresa’s prissy attitude, Anna thought they were off to a good start, and with the three of them there, the warehouse felt cheerful and alive and not the least bit threatening. The beams high above their heads were just beams, the huge hanging pendant lights, just lights, and she watched her young students with a sense of delight she hoped would never leave her.
Chapter 27
MORGAN
July 3, 2018
It was dusk by the time the Uber dropped me off at the end of the long driveway to the Williams farm. I paid the driver, climbed out of the car, and began walking toward the house, batting away the mosquitoes that instantly descended on me. I was here to talk to Mama Nelle again, the only person alive who had known Anna Dale. The only person besides me who might care about the artist who filled my days.
Lisa had all but forbidden my visit to her aunt. “Don’t complain to me about how little time you have to get your work done if you’re going to waste it with an old woman who can barely remember her own name,” she said, when I told her my plans that afternoon.
“All right,” I said. “I won’t complain.” I’d called Mama Nelle’s daughter Saundra to arrange a time I could come over. Unlike Lisa, Saundra seemed to welcome the idea.
“Mama loves h
aving people to talk to,” she said. “And not too many actually listen to what she says anymore. Come on over!”
Saundra greeted me at the front door dressed in yoga pants and a gray tank top. Inside the house, she offered me a glass of wine, which I turned down, of course, accepting a bottle of water instead.
“Listen,” she said, before taking me to see her mother. “How is Lisa doing? I worry about her.”
I was surprised by the question, surprised she asked for my opinion when, truth be told, I was really a stranger to the family. I hesitated long enough that she filled the silence.
“I know she’s under the gun with the gallery and work,” she said. “And still grieving over Uncle Jesse. She adored her daddy and took such good care of him. When I get frustrated taking care of my mother”—she nodded toward the hall, toward Mama Nelle, I supposed—“I remember how devoted Lisa was to Uncle Jesse and it keeps me going.”
“Hopefully everything will work out all right with the gallery and she can relax,” I said. I hoped that for both of us.
“I’m sure it will.” Saundra nodded in the direction of the hall again. “Let’s go see Mama,” she said, and I followed her out of the kitchen, down the hall, and into the small den where I’d visited with Mama Nelle on her birthday. The old woman sat on the sofa in the same spot I’d found her that day, although now that she was alone, no longer flanked by her relatives, she looked unbelievably tiny and inconsequential, swallowed up by the sofa’s fat cushions. Across the room from her, a talk show blared loudly from the TV.
I could have sworn the old woman’s face lit up when she spotted me. Her eyes shone behind her glasses and her lips curled into a smile.
“Do you remember Morgan?” Saundra asked her mother as she turned off the television. “She came to your birthday party?”
“I ’member.” Mama Nelle patted the sofa next to her. “Set down, girl,” she said.
As Lisa had done the night of Mama’s birthday party, I opted to move a straight-backed chair in front of the old woman so that we could easily see each other, and Saundra winked at me.
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