Big Lies in a Small Town

by Diane Chamberlain

  “Why on earth my mother would have it, I don’t know,” Saundra said.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I agreed. “Mama Nelle would have been a little girl when Anna painted the mural, right? Nineteen-forty?”

  “Right.” Saundra nodded. “But however it came to be in her hands, I’m just happy you want it, and that Mama was able to let me know I should give it to you.”

  “Me, too.” I hugged the journal to my chest. I felt ridiculously happy, holding something that had spent so much time in Anna’s hands.

  “Would you like to see the sketches?” Saundra asked.

  “Yes, sure,” I said, although I was answering more to be polite than anything else. What I really wanted was to dig into the diary. The journal.

  Saundra pulled a sheaf of sketch paper from the box and began spreading the portraits out on the table. There were six of them and the subjects all looked like African Americans.

  “I’m pretty sure this one was my mother when she was a little girl,” Saundra said, pointing to one of the drawings. “It looks like a photograph I have of her. And this one might be my aunt Dodie, Mama and Uncle Jesse’s older sister. I can make some educated guesses as to the others, but I really don’t know for sure.”

  “These really don’t look like Jesse Williams’s work,” I said, frowning at the sketches. “I’ll have to show them to Oliver—the curator—and see what he thinks.”

  Saundra pulled out her phone to check the time. “Well,” she said, slipping her purse over her shoulder, “do what you want with them. They have to be from when he was a kid, given the age of my mother in the drawing, so probably not as polished an artist as he was later. And I’ve got to run.” She nodded toward the journal I still held against my chest like a treasure. “You be sure to tell me what you learn, all right?”

  Chapter 58

  ANNA

  Wednesday, May 22, 1940

  I’m pregnant with Martin Drapple’s child.

  Those words make my skin crawl.

  I haven’t written anything here in so long because … I don’t know. I guess because I didn’t want to see the truth in writing. I’ve been sick, but it seems the sicker I’ve felt physically, the stronger I’ve felt mentally, and the sickness is finally waning. I’m thinking clearly these days. I paint constantly and well. The mural is once again my friend.

  Jesse doesn’t agree. He tells me I’m still not myself. “You ain’t a right-thinkin’ woman, Anna,” he says. He bases this on the fact that I have left the motorcycle and the skeleton head and the hammer and a few other odds and ends in the painting. I’ve come to see beauty in them, which worries him and sometimes makes me think he’s right. I don’t think I’m crazy, but I have changed. Of course I have. Martin no longer haunts me in the warehouse, turning out the lights, turning them on again. No, Martin now haunts me from inside. His spirit grows in my belly and I can’t get away from it. There is no question which haunting is worse.

  Miss Myrtle asked the doctor to come see me again, but I refused to let him into my room. Miss Myrtle commented on how little I eat. “Yet you seem to be putting on weight,” she said. Oh, she must know, but how? I certainly am not yet showing. Has she heard me getting sick in the early mornings? Does she think I’m carrying Jesse’s child? If she thinks I’m expecting, who else could she possibly imagine to be the father? And what exactly am I going to do? I will be able to camouflage my growing belly with my smock when I’m in the warehouse, but out in the world it will be another story. I must finish the mural and install it on the post office wall very soon before everyone in Edenton guesses my secret. I’ve already ordered the lead white that I’ll use for the installation. Jesse will help, and Peter and Mr. Arndt, and I’ll have to find one or two other people. It’s going to be quite a job. Jesse says I have to take out the motorcycle and other things before it’s installed. I know he’s right, but for now, they remain. That’s my Edenton in the mural right now. My personal Edenton. Beauty and the beast.

  This morning, I finally told Jesse about the baby. I think he’d guessed, because I’ve been so sick. His aunt Jewel, who lives with his family, is a midwife full of stories. He knows more about these things than most seventeen eighteen- (he just had a birthday) year old boys.

  He flat-out told me I have to get rid of it. “Aunt Jewel might could help,” he said.

  I don’t think I could do that. The baby was fathered by a monster, yes, but it is half mine. And yet … I can’t possibly have a baby! Where would I go? I can’t return to Plainfield with a child. I have no one there to help me and I’d be ostracized by my neighbors and bring shame to my mother’s memory. But I can’t stay in Edenton, either. I would be more of an outcast than I already am. Jesse said people will think the baby is his, and he’s probably right. “Who else you been spendin’ every day with?” he asked me. If people believe the baby is his … I can’t bear to think about it, and I’m sure it’s on his mind. Negro men have been hung for less.

  I told him I’d protect him. If anyone questions me, I’ll make up a lover. I won’t let him be hurt by what’s happened.

  Jesse is with me in the warehouse only in the afternoons now, as his family needs him on the farm for planting in the mornings. He still comes nearly every day though, and I look forward to the sound of his bicycle tires on the dirt road. No one else comes to the warehouse these days, and that is fine. Karl and Pauline rarely come to Miss Myrtle’s for Sunday dinner any longer, either. The couple of times they came were nothing like our chatty festive Christmas meal. Conversation was stilted. Karl was stiff and quiet. Pauline was distant, although she does talk rather incessantly about the curtains and blankets and things she’s making for the nursery. Miss Myrtle chatters throughout the meal, seemingly ignorant of the chill in the room. I liked Pauline and I’m sad to lose her, but I have no time for her, really, now. I must finish the mural and then figure out what to do about this child I’m carrying.

  Thursday, May 23, 1940

  Odd that just yesterday I wrote about my sadness over losing Pauline’s friendship and then today she showed up at the warehouse! Her smile seemed sheepish, and I guess she felt embarrassed about letting our friendship fall to the wayside. She’d brought along a small box of ginger cookies and she set them on the table where I keep the paints. I think the cookies were a peace offering. Then she stood back to look at the mural. She said, “Why, it’s a masterpiece!” which ordinarily would have pleased me, but I didn’t want her to study it too closely. I stood in front of the Tea Party ladies where the motorcycle cut through their dresses, masking it from her eyes. Jesse’d told me I was playing with fire, leaving the motorcycle in the painting, and in that moment, I realized how right he was and how foolish I’d been. I’m not as sane as I thought.

  I swept forward, slipping my arm through Pauline’s as though we are still great and intimate pals, and steered her away from the mural. I asked about how she was fixing up her house for the baby, which I know is her favorite topic, and I could hear my nervousness as I spoke and my fake enthusiasm. I wondered if my question sounded as false to her ears as it did to mine.

  I sat her down in the chair by Jesse’s easel and moved the other chair—the one I still thought of as Peter’s—close to her, picking up the box of cookies along the way. She said nothing, but simply obeyed me by taking a seat.

  I told her how much I missed spending time with her, and my fingers shook as I struggled with the string on the cardboard box. My heart pounded with the lie about missing her. How could I miss a woman who had almost certainly spread a rumor about Jesse and me to her husband?

  She claimed to miss me, too, but I thought her smile, too, seemed insincere.

  We chatted for a bit, but it was nothing like the early days of our friendship when she shared confidences and her deepest feelings. I thought we both knew we were now playing a game.

  After eating a cookie and filling the air with a mundane recitation of the curtains she was now making for her living room window
s, Pauline got to her feet and began strolling idly through the area of the warehouse where I work. Her belly protrudes somewhat. She is a couple of months ahead of me, I think. Looking at her, I wonder how long I’ll be able to mask my own pregnancy.

  She asked me what it’s been like, painting in the warehouse.

  It struck me as an odd question to ask after all these months and I guessed she was just making conversation. My heart pounded every time she neared the mural, but she seemed disinterested in it. Instead, she studied my paints table, peered into the metal bucket where I keep my straight-edge and tape measure and other tools, all the while asking me lackadaisical questions about the trials of working in isolation. I tried to determine what she was getting at. The only thing I could think of was Jesse. She was feeling me out to see if Jesse and I were now—or were still—more than friends. It began to irritate me, her idle chatter, and after a short time I got to my feet and told her I needed to get back to work.

  She looked abashed and apologized for keeping me from my painting.

  “No bother,” I said. I told her it had been a delight to have her visit. I added that I didn’t think I’d be in Edenton much longer, and she asked if I’d go back to New Jersey. I said I most likely would. How I wish I knew where I was going! I told her I’d have the supplies to install the mural within a couple of weeks, and then could have kicked myself for mentioning the mural, since her gaze darted toward it. I ushered her quickly to the door, thanked her for the cookies, and sent her on her way.

  What an odd visit! Now, though, I feel bad about it. Maybe Pauline was lonely and I’d rushed her out, blathering on about inconsequential things, when she may have had a burning need to confide in a true friend. So now I feel guilty for treating her as less than that. Perhaps she was trying to make amends. I am ashamed that I didn’t let her.

  Friday, May 24, 1940

  I’m terrified as I write this.

  No, Pauline was not looking for genuine friendship yesterday. Pauline was a damn spy! I thought she was behaving oddly, but it never occurred to me that she was doing her husband’s dirty work. How foolish of me for not guessing!

  Jesse was at his easel this morning and I was working on my signature on the mural, when a knock came on the warehouse door. Jesse and I looked at each other. We hadn’t heard a car and I had no idea who it might be. I stood up from the crate where I’d been sitting to paint my name, walked to the door and pulled it open. There stood Karl Maguire in his police uniform. I peered around the door frame to see his car parked far down the road. He’d wanted to surprise me. Or surprise us, I suppose.

  I’d told Jesse I planned to paint over the motorcycle this afternoon, but now I wondered if I was too late. I’d been too eager to paint my name, to see it glowing in the corner against the deep green of the Mill Village lawn. Now I was kicking myself for my narcissism.

  Karl greeted both of us, touching the brim of his policeman’s hat. Then he looked past me and I saw that Jesse—my brilliant Jesse—had quickly moved his easel in front of the mural, blocking the motorcycle from Karl’s view. Instead of the motorcycle, all Karl would be able to see was a detailed drawing of one of the Williams family’s mules on the easel. But Karl didn’t so much as glance at the mural. I didn’t want to let him inside the warehouse, but he stepped past me, glanced around my studio space, then stood squarely in front of me.

  “Where is your hammer, Anna?” he asked.

  I played dumb, desperately trying to buy time. Finally I said, “I don’t have a hammer.”

  Karl pointed out that I’d had one back when he was helping us stretch the canvas. He looked past me at Jesse. “Do you remember that, Jesse Williams?” he asked. “And Pauline told me she stopped by yesterday and she didn’t see one, so I was wondering what happened to it?”

  I was stunned, torn between my anger at Pauline and my desperate scrambling to find a way around Karl’s question. I could say that the hammer he saw that day hadn’t been mine. That Peter had brought one with him. But then I’d be getting Peter in trouble.

  Then Karl told us that a bloody hammer had been found in the woods near Martin Drapple’s motorcycle. “Just wondering if it might have been yours,” he asked.

  I was breathing hard and fast. Surely he noticed. I tried to figure out what an innocent person would say at that moment.

  I asked him if that’s what he thought killed Martin. The hammer.

  “No, a person killed him with the hammer,” Karl said. “And I know you had a hammer you can’t seem to produce.”

  I said maybe someone else might have brought a hammer the day we worked on stretching the canvas. Karl had brought tools, himself.

  Karl gave me a look I can only describe as disgusted and said he’d just wanted to give me a chance to show him my hammer. “I see you can’t do that,” he said. He touched the brim of his hat and wished Jesse and me a good day. Then he was gone.

  Jesse and I turned to stare at one another.

  I asked him where the hammer is, and he said he threw it in the woods by the Mill Village. He spoke quietly, one hand clutching the back of his chair. “I throwed it hard,” he said, “way out into a mess o’ cat claw and creeper and poison ivy.” He demonstrated the pitch he used to send the hammer flying into the brush. He didn’t think anyone could possibly have found it. Maybe Karl was lying? he suggested. Maybe he was trying to trick me in some way?

  I don’t know what to make of it all. I knotted my hands together, trying to think. I remembered Jesse’d had the wherewithal to put on a pair of the work gloves when he got rid of Martin and the hammer and the motorcycle. My fingerprints would be on the hammer, but not his. That gives me a strange sense of peace. I don’t know what they would do to me, but if they found Jesse guilty of murdering a white man, I am sure that would be the end of him.

  I sat down with this journal and began to recount what just happened. Writing has a way of calming me, but Jesse is angry and keeps interrupting me.

  “What’re you doing?” he asked. “You supposed to fix that motorcycle!”

  I promised him that I would. I looked over at the mural, at my distinctive, prideful signature in the lower right-hand corner. I wonder if I’ll ever get a chance to see the mural hanging in the post office? What will they do with it if I am locked away in jail?

  Later on Friday

  Everything changed just minutes after I wrote about Karl’s visit this morning. My whole life changed.

  I was mixing some of the paint I’d need to cover the motorcycle and restore the ladies’ dresses when Peter burst into the warehouse. His face was red, his pale hair plastered to his forehead with sweat.

  “The cops are coming to arrest you!” he said breathlessly, his eyes on me. He said that two policemen came to his house and asked him if I kept a hammer in the warehouse and he’d said yes, not knowing he was getting me in trouble. He glanced at Jesse. He said the police think both of us killed Martin. He was bent over, trying to catch his breath. “You need to run!” he said.

  Run where? I stood up, my heart pounding, thinking, my baby will be born in jail. And they will kill Jesse. I had the mob scene, the brutal lynching, already running through my mind when Jesse jumped to his feet, pulled out his pocketknife, and stabbed it into one edge of the mural. Then he sawed at it, cutting the fabric free from the stretcher.

  I ran toward him in shock, trying to grab his hand where he clutched the knife, but he shook me off. “We gotta go!” he said. “But we ain’t leavin’ this behind.”

  I couldn’t think. My mind turned to powder. Jesse had a plan. I didn’t. I would do whatever he said, but I wouldn’t make Peter a party to our crime. I told him to leave and not tell a soul that he’d spoken to us.

  Peter hesitated only a second before taking off. I grabbed my own utility knife from the bucket and began cutting the left side of the mural free from the stretcher as Jesse cut the right side. We finished our work in a few silent, panicked minutes. Jesse crumpled the huge mass of canvas in his
arms. All my work. I felt a moment of grief, looking at the splash of colors spilling from his hands and trailing on the floor.

  “Let’s go!” he said.

  I grabbed my purse and this journal and followed him outside, my heart drumming in my chest as I looked down the road. I expected to see Karl’s car heading toward us, but as far as I could see, the road was clear.

  I helped Jesse cram the canvas into the backseat, then got behind the wheel. It took a few tries to get the car to start. I turned it around and headed back up the dirt road wondering where to go. Should we just head out of town? Which direction should we drive? How long before they caught up to us?

  But Jesse said to head for his house. His family’s farm. I protested, but I had no better idea. Yet it seemed like a mistake. Wouldn’t they look for us at the Williams farm? I didn’t want to involve his family. His parents. I felt ashamed that I’d gotten their son into such a mess. But I followed his directions into the countryside and soon I was turning down the road that ran to his family’s house.

  His father came out of the barn, and Aunt Jewel came out of the house, little Nellie by her side. Nellie ran toward Jesse, flinging her arms around his waist. Jesse spoke to his aunt rather than his father.

  “We in trouble,” he said. “Anna and me.”

  His father’s eyes widened with fear or anger, I couldn’t tell which, and Jesse quickly set him straight before I had a chance to.

  “Ain’t what you thinkin’,” Jesse said quickly. He explained that the police thought we’d killed Martin. That he had to leave. That the Williams family had to let me stay with them. Hide me. Keep me safe.