“What? What did he say?”
“He say I got to plead guilty. The day after tomorrow I got to go to court. I don’t know what to do. I tried calling Mr. Haverty but he and Miss Haverty gone to the Caribbean to go scuba diving. Look like the whole world lined up against me now. Looks like there’s nothing to do. I got Miss McVee to tell me how to call you. I just got your number this morning.”
“Klane.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Wait a minute. Give a phone number where I can call you back. I’ll call Edmund and talk to him. I’m sure you misunderstood him.”
“No, I didn’t. He tole me three times. He said I got to plead guilty or they might put me in the electric chair.”
“Give me a number. Do you have his home number? Give me that too.” I wrote down the numbers. “You stay right there. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll call you right back.”
I called Robert’s cousin Edmund. His wife answered and then Edmund came to the phone and told me in an irritated voice that what Klane had said was true.
“But she didn’t do it. You said they wouldn’t put her in jail because of her children.”
“The mood’s not good right now, Rhoda. I’m doing what I can. We’ll get it reduced to manslaughter and she’ll get a light sentence and if she’s good she can be paroled in a few years. It’s all I can do. No one’s paying me for this, if you remember. I’m doing this as a favor to Robert.”
“Where is he?”
“They’re making a scuba diving film. He’s sunk about four hundred thousand dollars in the project. Something crazy. Well, no one can control him. He’s going to lose the paper if he isn’t careful.”
“You can’t let Klane go to jail.”
“I don’t want her to go to jail. She killed a woman, Rhoda. She was holding the knife. I’m doing all I can. There’s only so much I can do.”
“When is the trial?”
“It’s a hearing. Day after tomorrow. In the morning.”
“Can you put it off? Until Robert gets back or until I think of something. My daddy has lawyers. Maybe I can get one of them to help.”
“I’m doing everything I can, Rhoda. Everything that can be done is being done.”
I called Klane back and told her what Edmund had said. “But don’t get worried,” I said. “I know lots of lawyers. I’ll call some of them. Edmund isn’t the only lawyer in the world.”
“I won’t go into a jail, Rhoda. That’s it. I won’t go in there.”
“Where can I call you later? I have to talk to people, then I’ll call you back.”
“I’ll be home. I was supposed to go by Miss McVee’s and clean up today but I don’t think I can make it. I’ll be here.”
“I’ll call you later. Don’t worry, Klane. This isn’t the end of this.”
“It’s the end for me. If I got to go into jail. How’s the baby? Is he doing okay?”
“He’s fine. He’s awake nearly all the time now. He’s lots better. I think he’s doing fine.”
“You give him a kiss for me. You tell him Klane sent a kiss for his little head.”
I called Edmund back but his wife said he had gone to Monroe for the day. Then I dressed and took some aspirins for my hangover and called Charles William. “Are you okay?” he asked. “I’m sorry all that happened.”
“Don’t worry about that. Something terrible’s going on. They’re putting my maid in jail. I don’t know what to do. I have to talk to someone. Are you up?”
“I am now. Come on out. Can you leave? Come out here.”
“I’ll be there in a minute. Put some coffee on. It’s Patricia’s old house?”
“Yes. But don’t be afraid of it. It’s ours now.”
“I’ll be there in a minute. Oh, God, everything happens. It’s because I left. If I’d stayed in Alexandria this wouldn’t have happened. They wouldn’t have dared do this if I was there.”
“Come on out. We’ll call Derry. She’ll know what to do.”
I hung up and stood with my hand on the receiver staring out the window. I had my hand on the telephone that had connected me with my friend. Before that I had talked to Klane. I was here in the world, connected to people, surrounded by people, people were all around me in every direction. Together we kept it whole, kept it from breaking. Nothing should break off. Klane should not go to jail. Delmonica had fallen on a knife. That was a break, a tear. But it was a web. It was flexible. If a part broke we could mend it.
I shook it off. I hated it when I began to think that way. I could barely tolerate such knowledge, such poetry, so much drama and beauty and fear.
I went into the kitchen and found Fannin feeding the boys scrambled eggs. They were in their high chairs with little pieces of scrambled eggs on their trays and arms and hands. Jimmy even had a piece in his hair. A little pat of scrambled egg right above his left ear. A golden flower in his shiny auburn hair. “You little precious,” I said, and picked it off and returned it to the tray. “You angel baby, you.”
“Where you going so early in the morning?” Fannin asked. She was in a bad mood today. That was clear.
“My maid from Alexandria’s in trouble, Fannin. I have to talk to Charles William about it. But don’t tell Momma and Daddy. Is Momma up yet?”
“She’s in her bedroom. What’d she do?”
She gave me a hooded half-trusting look. Killer ants, I should have been thinking. Webs and poison, hunting groups, feeding frenzies, death by war, we come from such terrible old odds. But I didn’t know enough to think such things. I just had to have an ally and the first black face I saw was going to have to do.
“She killed someone.” It was the first time I had said it out loud. “I don’t think she meant to though. I think it was an accident.”
“I want to go,” Little Malcolm started screaming.
“Me going with you too,” Jimmy chimed in. They both started trying to climb out of their high chairs.
“Go on then,” Fannin said. “Get out of here before you stir them up. Go on out.” I fled down the back stairs and got into the car and started driving. The streets of Dunleith were fragrant and cool. It would be another hour before the heat took over and maligned the day. I drove steadily down the highway to Fairfields. I had not been on the road since the day Daddy and I had driven home from Clay Morgan’s funeral. In the light of early morning the road seemed benign and healed. Cotton grew to the very edges of the road. There had been plenty of rain and the plants were tall and full, a dark rich green, with here and there the small bright flowers that precede the bolls. Everything grows and changes, I was thinking. Cotton comes up from nothing, from sun and rain and red earth, and we turn it into gold, into houses and cars and money. There is nothing to fear on this road. It was an old accident. It happened a long time ago. I’ll make up for it now. I’ll save Klane and that will make up for it. Nobody’s putting Klane into a jail. I won’t let them do it to her. I don’t care what she did. She doesn’t deserve to be locked up in a jail.
I turned off the highway onto the main street of the little village of Fairfields. The ladies of the town had been planting flowers along the margins of the street, poppies and chrysanthemums, iris and daisies and Scotch broom. I drove past a row of old frame houses, some very grand and some just cottages. At the very end of the street was the brick farmhouse the Morgans had bought and restored. Now Charles William and Irise were continuing the restoration. Already Charles William had built new porches along three sides. They were painted white with dark green shutters and ceilings of French blue. There was a driveway of mussel shells and a new brick sidewalk leading from the driveway to the house. The low branches of the old magnolia and elm trees were festooned with small oriental chimes and paper birds that whirled in the wind. Charles William was standing on the brick steps holding a coffee mug and waiting for me. He was wearing a pair of khaki shorts and a pale blue silk pajama top. He was barefooted. “Dee,” he called out. “Come on in. Oh, divine, you’re here.” He cuddled
me into his fine soft body. He held me for a long time. “We’ll call Derry,” he said. “She’ll know what to do. She handles things like this all the time. This is what she does, you know.” We turned and walked up onto the porch and in the front door. The front parlor had been painted a dark red. There were long red velvet drapes held back with wide velvet belts trimmed in gold braid. Golden sconces were along the walls. A huge crystal chandelier hung down from the center of what had been a farmhouse parlor. In the center of the room was the only piece of furniture, a six-foot-tall replica of the Parthenon. “It’s part of the set for a play,” Charles William said. “A production of Medea they did last month in Huntsville. I decorated the room to hold it. I had to have one ancient room. What do you think?”
“My God. It’s fabulous. What do you do in here?”
“Nothing. Anything you want. We could have breakfast here if you like. Irise is making waffles. Are you hungry?” He pushed a button on the wall. Music filled the room. “It’s Mahler,” he said. “Isn’t it divine?”
Irise appeared in the door. “It’s the Greco-Roman wing,” she said. “He had to have it.” She smiled and took my arm and pulled me out into the hall. “Come have breakfast. Charles William told me about your maid, but I want to hear it all. Tell us about it.”
“She may have done it. But if she did, she didn’t mean to. She has children. What will happen to them if she goes to jail?”
“Come eat,” Irise said. “Then we’ll call Derry. May Garth’s with her now. Did you know that? May Garth’s working on voter registration with her.”
“Let’s call Derry first,” Charles William said. We went into the kitchen and Charles William called the number and handed the phone to me and I told the story to Derry. “I thought I could trust them,” I added. “Now they’re going to railroad her into jail. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to start. I don’t think Edmund will talk to me. He’s mad because he isn’t getting paid.”
“Jim’s here,” Derry said. “Let me call him to the phone. He’ll know what to do. Do what he tells you to.” She called him to the phone and in a minute I heard his sweet clear voice. A voice from another world, a scary world that enchanted me and made me feel I wasn’t good or brave or smart enough. A world that seemed to ask things of me I could not give. The coin of the realm between Charles William and me was imagination. In that light I thought I was dazzling. At the sound of Derry’s voice or Jim’s I felt the way I did with my daddy. Charles William was the brier patch. This man was a river.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Tell me what happened?”
“A woman who worked for me in Alexandria may have killed someone. I got her this lawyer and he said she wouldn’t have to go to jail and then I left and came home to Dunleith and now he wants her to plead guilty and go to jail. I promised her she wouldn’t go to jail, Jim. There were four witnesses. They all say she didn’t do it. They all say Delmonica fell on the knife, so why should she plead guilty? Her name’s Klane and she’s six feet tall. A jury might convict her of anything. She looks so fierce. I think she’s a Watusi.”
“Slow down. Start at the beginning. Tell me what happened.” I began to tell the story as simply as I could. Irise handed me a cup of coffee. Charles William handed me the cream. They stood by listening. From the back of the house Mahler’s Ninth Symphony filled the halls. Sunlight poured in through the old leaded-glass windows. Pots of red geraniums were everywhere, copper pans, blue china dishes. As I talked I began to imagine Jim Phillips and me living here. We would make love all day and do good deeds for people and then sit around listening to classical music.
“Could you meet me in Alexandria?” he asked.
“I guess so. When?”
“When is the hearing?”
“Wednesday.”
“Then we need to go tomorrow. So I can talk to her before the hearing. Could you meet me there tomorrow afternoon?”
“I’ll have to drive. It takes ten hours.”
“I have to go to Atlanta today to finish some depositions, but I could fly there tomorrow. Where are you now? I’ll call you back as soon as I make some reservations. And Rhoda.”
“Yes.”
“It will be good to see you again. I’ve been thinking about you.”
“I was thinking about you too. I thought about you a lot. I’m in Fairfields, Alabama, at five-five-five-four. It’s Charles William’s house. I’ll be right here.” I hung up and turned back to my friends.
“He’s going to meet me in Alexandria. He’s calling me back as soon as he gets a plane. I’m going to drive down there tomorrow. I’m going to meet him there. Oh, God, he’s so cute. He’s the best-looking man I’ve ever seen.”
“Let’s eat breakfast,” Irise said. “While you wait for him to call.”
“This has got everything,” Charles William added, and waved his coffee cup in the air. “You’ll have to run away, Dee. They’ll never let you go.”
“Then I’ll run away. Mother’s got plenty of help. Daddy hired Fannin’s cousin. They’ve got maids in every room.” I moved to Charles William’s side. I put my arm around his waist and held him close to me. Irise beamed at us and started pouring waffle batter into a waffle iron.
Jim called back while we were eating. I talked to him, then I called Klane. “We’ll fix this up,” I told her. “This man can do anything. The Justice Department is behind him. They can’t make deals with him, Klane. He’s an honest lawyer.”
“Don’t be bringing any Yankee lawyers down here to mix into this. You just going to make things worse for me.”
“It won’t make things worse. This man is brilliant, Klane. Justice doesn’t stop in Alexandria, Louisiana. They send things to the Supreme Court if they do them wrong at home. Believe me, Klane. I know what I’m doing.”
“You thought you knew what you was doing when you got Mr. Haverty’s cousin to be my lawyer. Now look at all this mess. I can’t go into a jail, Rhoda. I can’t go back in there.”
“You won’t have to. I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon. Stay where I can find you, Klane. He’ll need to talk to you as soon as we get there.”
“It won’t do no good.”
“Yes, it will. I swear it will. You have to believe it will. Will you be waiting when I get there tomorrow? Klane, answer me. Where will you be?”
“I’ll be right here. Right here where you left me.”
Later, after we had done the dishes and drank all the coffee and listened to the Ninth Symphony again, Charles William walked me to the car. He paused at the end of the brick sidewalk and took both my hands in his. “Be careful with Jim, Rhoda. You aren’t divorced yet. Don’t get in too deep.”
“I want to be in deep. Besides, it’s not because of him.” Charles William smiled. “Well, it’s not. It’s because of Klane. I wouldn’t go down there except for her. I have to save her. I told her I would. I promised her. You like Jim, don’t you? Don’t you think he’s nice?”
“He’s more than nice, Dee. It isn’t that.”
“What is it then?”
“Well, you aren’t divorced. Be careful, honey. Malcolm’s a killer. I roomed with him, remember?”
“What could he do to me?”
“He could take the kids. This is Alabama, honey. They don’t take adultery lightly. Especially with a civil rights worker who lives in a black project in Montgomery.”
“Nothing will happen. Malcolm doesn’t even like the kids. All he thinks about is making money. He’ll do whatever Daddy tells him to to keep from paying me child support.”
“I wouldn’t . . . well, never mind. Just be careful, Dee. Be careful until you get the divorce.”
“I will. Well, look, I have to go. The house is beautiful, Charles William. It’s perfect. So were the waffles.” We hugged each other again and I got into the car and drove away. He stood at the end of the driveway waving until I was out of sight. And in the light of all that love I was emboldened. I could do anything I wanted to. I was a
part of the pantheon. Child and friend of gods.
As soon as I got home I packed a suitcase and sneaked it down the back stairs and hid it in the trunk of my car. Then I took Little Malcolm and Jimmy out to the country club and spent the afternoon teaching them to swim. They were my children. Water babies from the word go. I let them stay in the water until their fingers shriveled and their lips turned blue. Then I dragged them out and dried them off and fed them bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches and signed the chits with my daddy’s name.
At four the next morning I left. I went into the children’s room and kissed them on the heads and sneaked down the stairs and rolled my car down the hill toward Sherman Street. I had left a note in the kitchen saying I had gone out to the river house. “Dear Mother,” the note said. “I am doing something I have to do. I’ll call tonight. Leave me alone until then. Love, Rhoda. P.S. Don’t let Jimmy alone a minute at the pool. He is jumping in the deep end every chance he gets and he can’t even tread water yet.”
I drove steadily down to Birmingham, then Tuscaloosa, then Meridian, Mississippi, then Jackson, then down to Natchez and across to Alexandria. I stopped several times to get gasoline. Twice I called Klane’s number but the phone didn’t answer. In Natchez I thought of calling Karla McVee and asking her to go find Klane and be sure she was around when I arrived, then I decided it was better to keep on driving.
I was thinking of Jim Phillips as I drove, of his kindness and his strange gentle power. The Hindus have a story of a man who is wandering in a forest all alone. He falls into a deep hole at the bottom of a tree. In the bottom of the hole is a terrible serpent. The man catches onto a root of the tree and manages to keep the serpent from reaching him. Above the hole wolves and jackals gather for a feast. Vultures circle the sky above the tree. There is a beehive on a branch above the man. A drop of honey is falling from the hive. Slowly the man undoes one hand and holds it up to catch the drop of honey. The honey falls onto his finger and he puts it in his mouth and begins to suck.
Net of Jewels Page 35
