by R.J. Ellory
I opened my mouth to speak.
“In fact, I am going to make that a condition of my help in this matter. Come back to me soon with a marriage license and your power of attorney and I will do what I can. That is all I can do.”
Gabillard, once again, waited for me to speak.
“I shall take your failure to respond as a sign of agreement,” he said, and then he reached out and gripped my shoulder. “Marry her. Get the papers. We’ll do what we can.”
He released me and turned to walk away.
“Doctor?”
He slowed up and turned.
“How long does she have? My mother. How long d’you think she has?”
Gabillard shook his head slowly. “I think whatever time she had ran out a good while ago.” He held my gaze for a second longer, and then he turned once more and walked away.
I was motionless. I looked at Alex, seated there on a chair with her head in her hands.
Enough, I thought, and started over toward her.
We drove back. I spoke of the future. I told her we would be married. I told her what Gabillard had said about the power of attorney and his wish to help us. Alex’s manner changed utterly. She even laughed at one point. I did not speak of my mother, the things she’d said about the little girls. My mother’s mind was a cat’s cradle of lies, half-truths, imagination and paranoia. She could not know anything about the children. I had to believe that what she said was nothing more than the ramblings of someone without their mind.
I believed it so.
I had to believe it so.
I married Alexandra Madigan Webber on Wednesday, June eleventh, 1947, at Charlton County Courthouse before Judge Lester Froom. The witnesses were Reilly Hawkins and Gene Fricker from the grain store. After the brief and perfunctory ceremony Reilly drove us to the offices of Littman, Hackley and Dohring, Attorneys-at-Law, and, for three dollars, Leland Hackley drew up a letter of proxy. He worded it in such a fashion that all my mother would have to do was sign it, and the house would belong to me. Reilly drove us to Waycross, I in a suit, Alexandra in a pale cream skirt and blouse, her hair tied at one side and decorated with a flower, and there we met with Dr. Gabillard.
“You don’t wish to see her?” Gabillard asked as he took the paper from me.
I shook my head. “No,” I replied. “Not today.”
He nodded, smiled understandingly, congratulated us on our marriage and walked away.
“When shall I—”
Gabillard turned and shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he said. “You’ll have to leave it with me. I’ll do what I can . . . no promises, okay?”
And then he turned once again and disappeared into the hospital.
The storm lasted eight days straight. The ground swelled at first, and then sank in defeat revealing the clean roots of trees. Like gnarled and arthritic fingers they grasped with everything they possessed to hold the earth in check. The runoffs broke and swamped the crops. Reilly Hawkins made it across to see us a week after the wedding and did not dare to return for a further two days. He brought food and wine, what little provisions he could, and we talked endlessly of what we would do and where we would go. Had there been word from Gabillard it could not have reached us.
The storm abated on June twenty-first, a Saturday, and the sun broke high and clear from the bruised horizon. Nine people had drowned, seven of them Negroes in the fields, the other two a man and his wife from Folkston who had attempted to reach Kingsland on the St. Mary’s River. Teams of volunteers came from the surrounding towns and surveyed the devastation. Many of them turned around and went home.
On Monday a letter came from Gabillard. Within it was the proxy document, signed and witnessed. Reilly drove me to see Leland Hackley and he notarized the paper and drew up a letter of authority for the bank. Within an hour a loan had been secured against the property, all of one thousand five hundred dollars. I took two hundred dollars in cash, stuffed it into my pockets, and Reilly and I went to the Falls Inn to spend some of it toasting our change of fortune.
“You’ll have a new truck,” I told him. “We can take your old one and drive it into the Okefenokee Swamp.”
We laughed about such an adventure on the way back to the house, and the way Alex would be unable to contain herself when she found out what had happened.
Reilly drew the truck to a halt at the end of the road.
“Come in,” I said.
“For God’s sake, no,” he said, laughing. “Go in there and share the good news with your wife, Joseph. You don’t want me hangin’ around half-drunk and stupid at a time like this.”
“No,” I said. “You’re as much a part of this as I am. I couldn’t have done any of this without you, Reilly. Please come in, just for a little while at least.” I turned and shouted toward the house. “Alex! Alex! Reilly’s out here and he doesn’t want to come in and see you!”
“Hey!” Reilly said. “That’s just not true. You can’t tell her that, for God’s sake.”
I was laughing by then, had started walking away from the truck toward the gate. “Alex! Come see what we’ve got! Come on out here and see what we’ve got.” I pulled handfuls of dollar bills from my pockets, held them like bunches of flowers for Alex.
Reilly was following me then, and when I turned to look back at him I noticed something. A flicker of something in his eyes. He shook his head, and then he looked up at the house and started shouting at the top of his voice. “Alex! Alex! We’re back!”
There was nothing.
My heart quickened. I looked at Reilly once more and he nodded his head. He started to jog toward the gate. I was there first, pushed through, almost broke the thing off of its hinges, and then I was charging up the path, Reilly right behind me, both of us shouting Alex’s name.
I burst through the front door, stopped dead in my tracks, and then Reilly was right there behind me, collided with me like a freight train, but when he saw what was there I heard him inhale suddenly. I let go of the money in my hands. Dozens of dollar bills cascaded to the ground, floated out across the floor.
Had Alex gone with us things might have been different. She would have been present at the attorney’s, then at the bank; she would perhaps have shared a drink with us at the Falls Inn. But she had not been well, had complained of nausea and dizziness. She had chosen to stay home, for we would not be long—an hour, perhaps two. Had we gone straight from the bank we might have been present when she fell, but we were not. She did fall, from the top of the stairwell straight down like a plumb line, and when we arrived we found her unconscious in the lower hall, blood saturating her skirt, her breathing shallow and indecisive.
Later, I would remember the panic and confusion. Later, I would try to recall the exact thoughts that had filled my head, but try as I did they would not come. I remembered screaming her name at the top of my voice. I remembered the blood as I tried to lift her, the feeling of cool moisture on my hands, my arms, on my face as I pressed it to her chest to see if she was still breathing. I remembered carrying her to the truck, the way I held her head in my lap as Reilly bounced and jolted along rutted tracks to Dr. Piper’s house. I remembered blood-stained dollar bills adhered to her clothes, one in her hair, another stuck to her forearm. I remembered how Dr. Piper, immediately overwhelmed by what he saw, urged us to drive directly to Waycross, and the way that journey seemed to swallow some interminable wealth of time. I remembered Gabillard hurrying as we carried Alex through the front doors, the cacophony of voices, the commotion that broke away from us like a wave. I remembered his face—grave and dark, the way he held his fingers to her wrist, her neck, the way he barked orders to nurses.
I recalled all these things vividly, and replayed them in my mind like some old Bakelite record—over and over, until in time the grooves wore shallow, the sounds grew quiet, and nothing remained but the vast well of despair and grief into which I fell.
At six minutes past four, afternoon of Monday, June twenty-third,
1947, Alexandra Vaughan—mother-to-be, wife of twelve days—died. With her an unnamed child. My son.
It was Gabillard who told me, a man who had done all he could to rescue us from destitution and hopelessness; a man who had taken steps that would have guaranteed the survival and well-being of my family. He was my angel it had seemed, at least on that day. He gave, and then he informed me that what had been given had now been taken away.
I was nineteen years old. Alex was twenty-seven.
I took to wondering what crime I’d committed that warranted such punishment.
Years later, as I looked back, the months following Alex’s death seemed to blur at the edges and break up between my fingers. I buried Alexandra Vaughan and my child, and with them I buried the first two decades of my life. People attempted to reach me—Haynes Dearing, Gene Fricker, Lowell Shaner, even Ronnie Duggan and Michael Wiltsey appeared at the end of the road near my house, paused, looked, shared a few words, and then turned to walk away. Their efforts went unrewarded. Reilly I saw frequently, but it was as if our lives merely intersected periodically, and for the duration of our time together those lives were put on hold until we separated once more. Our meetings became less frequent, and by the time the first anniversary of Alex’s death arrived we were seeing one another no more than once a month. I did not visit my mother again. I could no longer face what she had become, and I didn’t think I could face Dr. Gabillard. It seemed that everything that could remind me of the past had to be cauterized or amputated cleanly. I had no shortage of money; when the first fifteen hundred dollars expired I merely extended my loan with the bank and signed over a greater percentage of the house. I waited for something to change. I waited patiently, trying my best to write, to keep mind and body together, but I felt the mooring rope wearing thin. Those things that had attached me to the world grew more insubstantial and transient: monthly visits to collect provisions, a visit to the Falls Inn once every five or six months, and beyond that I was insular and detached. Oftentimes I would feel the pull of company, but I would overcome it with the certain sense that whatever I might gain would soon be lost. Like Reilly Hawkins, never falling in love because he believed his heart could not stand to be broken twice, I gambled nothing in the belief that in such a way I could not lose. It was a pitiful existence, but the pity was not self-directed. I wore a veneer of resilience and fortitude sufficient to withstand the ravages of guilt and emotion.
Close to Christmas of 1948, Truman retained his presidency against Thomas Dewey, and I considered the possibility of leaving Augusta Falls. It was not the town or the county, or in fact Georgia itself, but myself that I believed I could separate from if I traveled a sufficient distance.
“Where?” Reilly asked me when I mentioned it.
“New York.”
Reilly nearly choked on his beer. “New York. New York? What in God’s name would you want to go to New York for?”
“Because it is so completely different from here.”
“No other reason?”
“Seems as good a reason as any.”
Reilly shook his head and leaned toward me through the cigarette smoke. We were in the Falls Inn, it was a Saturday evening and someone was playing the fiddle. “That’s not a good enough reason to leave for New York,” he said.
“Maybe I don’t need a reason. Maybe I could go on impulse.”
“You have to have a reason,” Reilly said.
“Have to?”
He nodded. “Sure you have to. There has to be a reason for everything, otherwise there is no direction. One problem you’ve had is that there’s been no direction. That’s why your life is disappearing, Joseph—”
“My life is not disappearing.”
Reilly smiled, shook his head. “Of course, I’m sorry. There has to be something there in the first place if it’s going to disappear.”
“You—”
Reilly raised his hand. “Face facts, Joseph. Alex is gone. She’s dead—”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Reilly.”
“I don’t care if you want to talk about it or not, it’s the truth. Can’t change the truth whatever happens. She’s dead, Joseph. How long now? Eighteen months, right?”
“Eighteen months, yes.”
“And what’s happened in that time? I’ll tell you what’s happened. Nothing. That’s what’s happened. Absolutely nothing. The only saving grace is that you’re not an alcoholic. Me? Hell, I would’ve drunk the county dry and then moved to Brantley. But that’s the only thing I see, Joseph. You’ve got the house. You’re alone apart from the odd time I see you. You spend that much time alone you lose your mind.”
“Which is why I’m thinking of moving, Reilly.”
“But to New York, of all places. What the hell is there in New York for you?”
“More to the point, what the hell have I got here?”
“Your mother?” he ventured.
I shook my head. “She went, Reilly, she went a long time ago and you know it. My mother is not my mother anymore.”
Reilly was quiet for a time, and then he looked across the table at me, his expression compassionate, almost sympathetic. “You’re all grown now. I knew you when you were two, three years old. I’ve been there and seen it all as far as your family is concerned. I can’t tell you what to do, and I sure as hell wouldn’t presume to. You have some will, and somehow you’ve managed to keep things together despite everything that’s happened with your parents and with Alex. I respect you for that, but part of the reason I respect you is that you’re logical. There’s sense and reason behind the things you do. This New York thing seems to possess no logic at all . . .”
“Which is possibly the best reason for considering it.”
“You got a will, like I said. Doesn’t seem to me that anything I could say is going to influence your decisions. You do what you feel you have to, Joseph.”
“I haven’t decided anything, Reilly, I’ve just been thinking about it.”
“Well, then think about it some more, and let me know what you decide.”
“Of course I will.”
“Hell, maybe if you go to New York you could find someone.”
I frowned. “Someone?”
“Someone you could love.”
I shook my head, looked away for a while. “I don’t know that I could ever love someone like I loved Alex.”
“Sure you could. You’re young. Your heart’s strong enough to survive this.”
“A love like that,” I replied. “You think something as good as that could happen twice in one lifetime?”
Reilly sighed, and it was then that I saw a weight bearing down on him, a weight broad enough to crush us both right where sat.
“Twice?” he whispered. “From what I’ve seen it most often doesn’t happen at all.”
There was silence for a time, and then he looked up at me. “It seems both of us have had a little too much unexpected and not enough predictable, wouldn’t you say?”
“I would, Reilly, I would.”
We didn’t speak of it again. I decided not to decide, that was all, and when it crossed my mind again it was February of ’49 and they found another girl.
She was the tenth one, and she came from Shellman Bluff, Mclntosh County. Her name was Lucy Bradford. She was eight years old, had a brother of twelve called Stanley. I didn’t know who she was, had never seen her before, but she—above and beyond all else—was the reason I finally left.
“You knew Alexandra, didn’t you?” I ask the dead man before me. “You knew her, but I can imagine that you never really understood her . . . never really understood anyone, right? There could never have been anything compassionate or sympathetic about you.”
I want to stand and walk to the window, but I cannot. I feel myself growing tired. I wondered what would have happened had I not pulled the trigger, if I had somehow trapped him, tied him to a chair, made him explain who he was, what he had done . . . made him tell me what kind of person could
have killed and killed the way he did.
I want to reach out my hand and place it flat against the window. I want to look through the spaces between my fingers and see the city before me.
“She died, you know?” I say, my voice little more than a whisper. “She was pregnant with my child and she died. For a long time I thought that it was my punishment for Elena. I promised I would protect her. I stood on a hill and looked down at Elena as she stood in the yard behind the house, and I swore I would protect her, that nothing would happen to her.” I pause, I look down and breathe deeply for a while. “But it did . . . and it wasn’t like the others.” I smile and shake my head. “I can’t believe that all these years have passed, and now, here I am, right here in the same room with you, and you don’t even have a chance to explain yourself. How does that feel, eh? Isn’t that what this has all been about? Hasn’t this just been about you trying to get everyone to understand whatever madness lies behind what you’ve done? And now you’re here, now you have finally got an audience, and you can’t speak.” I laugh nervously. “What an irony this is.”
I lean down and retrieve my gun from the floor. I raise it slowly and press it against the dead man’s forehead. I cock the hammer. The sound is loud, like a branch snapping, like a whiplash of lightning in a distant Georgia field.
“Speak,” I hiss. “Speak now . . . or forever hold your peace.”
The silence roars at me, both within and without, and I wonder—just for a moment—if I haven’t made another dreadful mistake.
EIGHTEEN
TEARS WERE NOT ENOUGH.
A little girl crying would’ve brought many a man to the brink of compassion, but not this one.
What a friend we have in Je-sus—
