A Long Time Gone

by Karen White

  “The airport. I used Dad’s Expedia account to find the closest airport to you and to book a flight with his credit card.” I could hear the pride in her voice.

  “Chloe, you need to go back home. I would love for you to visit, but your dad won’t let you. At least, not without his permission. I’ll call him and work it out, but it could take a while. And you’re an unaccompanied minor—they won’t let you on the plane.”

  “I’m at the Jackson airport. I borrowed the bimbo’s heels and makeup so I’d look older, and I used my passport for my ID.”

  I swallowed. “You’re in Mississippi?”

  “Yes. At the Jackson airport. And I need you to come get me and call Imelda so she won’t freak out when she finds out I’m gone. She’s the babysitter. Don’t waste your time calling my dad, because he won’t answer. He said he didn’t want to be disturbed because he was on his honeymoon.”

  “All right,” I said, focusing on my breathing so I could keep my voice steady. “I can be there in about two hours. I want you to go to baggage claim and sit down and not talk to anybody; do you hear me? You are twelve years old, Chloe, and you should not be by yourself at the Jackson airport!”

  “You’re shouting. Dad would tell you to go take another pill.”

  I looked at Tripp to see if he’d overheard, but his face remained impassive. “Baggage claim. In two hours. I have no idea what I did with my car charger, so I’ll borrow a cell phone and let you know when I get there. I’ll text you the number as soon as I have it so you can call me if you need me.”

  “Please hurry,” she said, her voice sounding like the lost and lonely young girl she actually was. She hung up without saying good-bye.

  Tripp took the phone and hit the hang-up button.

  “I have to go to the airport. My stepdaughter—my ex-stepdaughter—is here. Somehow. I need to go get her.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “It could be. I’m not supposed to see her. Mark said I was a terrible mother.” Remnants of the effects of my last pill allowed me to say those final two words without choking on them.

  His eyes studied me. “Then why is she here?”

  I shrugged, happy for the numbness that held my nerves hostage. “Because she has nobody else.”

  He continued to study me for a long moment and I braced myself. “And you have no place left to go.” The words were said without malice. “Seems to me you two belong together.”

  I pushed away from the wall. “I need to go.”

  “I’ll drive. You shouldn’t be behind a wheel. Especially not if there’s going to be a child in the car.”

  I wanted to laugh at his calling Chloe a child. She hadn’t been one for a very long time. But I also knew he was right. I’d been lucky that I’d made it from the West Coast without incident. It had been stupid and reckless, but that’s what I’d become.

  “Fine, then.” I leveled my gaze on him. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

  He didn’t answer right away, and I found myself wishing that I hadn’t asked. Asking Tripp Montgomery a question had always been a lot like walking across a minefield. “Because it doesn’t look like you got people standing in line.”

  I couldn’t argue with him, so without a word I led the way into the kitchen to tell Cora we wouldn’t be staying for supper, then out the back door. The branches on the fallen tree seemed to move as if they were alive, the limbs heavy with black-feathered crows shifting uncomfortably. The hole had been covered with a tarp while I’d slept, but the caution tape remained.

  The sun streaked its orange light across the fields and the yard, illuminating the peculiar house and the prostrate tree. In twenty-four hours, my life had gone from simply hopeless and lost to something that resembled a runaway train en route to a brick wall.

  “How long is that caution tape going to stay up?” I was thinking of Chloe and her fascination with all things morbid.

  “Until I decide there’s nothing left of interest down in that hole.”

  An early evening breeze lifted my hair from my sticky neck. “What have you found out so far?”

  “The remains are definitely female. And she’s been there for a while. The roots have been growing around her for a long time.”

  I nodded, my gaze fixed on the hollowed-out ground where the unknown woman had waited to be discovered. I felt a connection to her, a bond of knowing what it was like to be buried without anybody noticing, her stories left untold, held in place by the slow encroachment of her bindings.

  I tilted my head, hearing the old familiar sound of my childhood. It was a sound almost like a song, a moaning lament. Mathilda had called it the song of the cypress, made by two trees rubbing together high up in the canopy in the swamp. She’d said it was the sound of lonely spirits trapped inside the trunks invited to sing only at the whim of the wind. The music thrummed like a string instrument, melodic and haunting. It was the unique sound of home, and hearing it now made me want to cry.

  Without a word, Tripp touched my elbow and led me to his car, leaving behind the cypress trees to sing their lament to the barren garden and the felled tree with the grave dug among its roots.

  Chapter 7

  Adelaide Walker Bodine

  INDIAN MOUND, MISSISSIPPI

  APRIL 1922

  “M-i–crooked letter–crooked letter–i–crooked letter–crooked letter–i-humpback-humpback-i.” Sarah Beth’s singsong voice echoed in the front parlor of her parents’ house as she hopscotched over her father’s clean and pressed handkerchiefs we’d placed on the floor for makeshift stones. She’d taken them from her daddy’s dresser drawer, which didn’t sound to me like a good idea, but she’d told me it was okay. Mathilda sat curled up in a little ball with her arms around her knees, watching us silently, like she was wondering why two grown girls were playing hopscotch. But I saw her lips move as Sarah Beth and I sang out the way we’d been taught how to spell our home state.

  Bertha had taken out the rugs to be cleaned, but she hadn’t made it past the back porch because of all the rain. I was sick to death of hearing Uncle Joe talk about the crops and whether the levees would hold. He got like that every time the spring rains came, just as regular as a dog in heat.

  The weather had also forced Sarah Beth and me inside and out of desperation to play little-girl games like hopscotch and jacks. We were bored silly from trying to keep quiet, since Mrs. Heathman had another one of her headaches and was resting upstairs.

  I threw the large coat button we’d found in Bertha’s mending basket and missed the handkerchief I’d been aiming for. “You skip a turn,” Sarah Beth shouted gleefully. “I get to go again.”

  I figured that was one of Sarah Beth’s made-up rules. I didn’t really care. Sarah Beth was too competitive in any game to make it much fun. It was easier just to let her win. I stood back, noticing Mathilda again.

  I turned to face her—mostly to give Sarah Beth a chance to cheat so the game could be over—and Mathilda shrank back behind the sofa like she wanted to disappear. “You go to school?”

  Her large brown eyes just stared up at me, and I wondered if maybe she didn’t know how to talk. I’d heard about people like that, but I figured they were all sent to the asylum in Jackson so we didn’t see them walking around the streets and such.

  I tried again. “How old are you?” I knew she was about eleven, but wanted to see if I could make her talk.

  Then I remembered that Bertha had come with Mrs. Heathman from New Orleans, so maybe she only taught her daughter French. “Do you speak English?” I asked, very slow and loud.

  “She won’t talk,” Sarah Beth said as she moved to stand next to me. “Not to us, anyway—although I’ve heard her talking to her mama. Won’t say boo to any of us, though, and I’ve tried. Mama said she might have been dropped on her head as a baby, which is why she’s so peculiar.”

 
I frowned at her. “She can hear just fine, Sarah Beth.”

  Sarah Beth rolled her eyes, then tossed the large button behind her. “I’m so bored. Let’s go play with Daddy’s new radio music box.”

  As if to prove my point that Mathilda could hear just fine, she and I both stared at Sarah Beth in horror. Mr. Heathman had paid sixty-five dollars for his new radio music box—I knew because my aunt and uncle talked about it all the time—and had forbidden Sarah Beth to so much as look at it. It was kept in Mr. Heathman’s study, the same place where we’d snooped in the family Bible. I would have rather set my hair on fire than be caught anywhere near that radio box.

  We heard footsteps in the foyer. As quick as a cat on a fire-ant hill, Mathilda jumped up and gathered all those handkerchiefs in her arms before slipping behind the door just as it opened.

  Bertha stuck her head in the doorway while Mathilda shrank out of her sight. “You girls need to hush now. Miz Heathman is feelin’ poorly.”

  We both nodded, looking sorry. Bertha pursed her lips and nodded her head once, her eyes scanning the room before gently closing the door.

  We looked at Mathilda, who’d knelt on the floor and was busy shaking out the first handkerchief and refolding it along the pressed lines. I sat on the floor next to her and grabbed a handkerchief from the pile.

  “Thank you, Mathilda. You probably just saved Sarah Beth from getting herself knocked into next Tuesday by her daddy’s belt. And me, too, most likely.” I glared at Sarah Beth, who’d flopped down on the sofa and was fanning herself with a copy of Ladies’ Home Journal.

  “It’s hotter than hell in here,” she said. She thought cussing made her seem more mature. “I’m going to suffocate if I have to stay inside one more minute.”

  I looked up to find Mathilda watching me, but she quickly looked away as we each took another handkerchief to refold.

  After another bored sigh, Sarah Beth said, “My daddy wanted me to go Peacock’s jewelers downtown to get his pocket watch fixed, but it’s too rainy to walk. Could you call Willie on the telephone and see if he’d drive us?”

  I hadn’t noticed exactly when Sarah Beth had developed a crush on my older cousin, Willie, and she hadn’t admitted it to me, either. But ever since he turned sixteen and my uncle Joe had allowed him to drive the Ford, Sarah Beth had been looking for excuses to include Willie on our days off from school.

  I folded the last handkerchief, placed it on top of the stack, and looked up at the mantel clock. “He should be home by now. He and Uncle Joe went to talk to Mr. Elkins about hiring out some of their field hands for the planting. I guess I could call if you really want me to.”

  Sarah Beth didn’t bother to answer, but kept fanning herself silently.

  I made the phone call and was disgusted to hear the excitement in Willie’s voice. He was nice-looking enough, I supposed, and always cracking jokes, but he was like a brother to me, so I could never really understand the attraction. Still, if getting Willie to take us to the jewelry store could distract Sarah Beth from messing with her daddy’s new radio, it would be worth the annoyance of having him around.

  Willie said he could be at the Heathmans’ in twenty minutes, and I hung up the phone. Sarah Beth was sitting up on the sofa and eyeing Mathilda, who was now standing in the same corner where we’d folded the handkerchiefs, the linen squares neatly stacked between her hands.

  Sarah’s voice sounded exactly like her mother’s as she addressed the young colored girl. “I want you to go upstairs and stick those in my daddy’s drawer before he gets home and finds them missing. And don’t let my mama catch you in his dressing room or there will be hell to pay.”

  Mathilda silently slipped from the room, sending me a sidelong glance as she left. I wasn’t sure, but I could have sworn she smiled at me before she disappeared through the doorway.

  Sarah Beth and I waited outside on the columned porch, sitting on one of the iron benches Mrs. Heathman had purchased in France and shipped over to Mississippi. I liked our wooden rocking chairs, mostly because they were so much more comfortable to sit in than these metal ones. I never mentioned that to Sarah Beth, who would have been personally insulted and then would have repeated again what she’d heard her mama say about my home and how nobody should have a turret and columns on the same house. And having a real castle door was just tacky and low-class.

  I turned to Sarah Beth. “So, have you asked your mama yet?”

  “About what?”

  She was always like that when she didn’t want to talk about something. She and I both knew what I was asking.

  I sighed. “About those graves we found. And how come your name isn’t in the Bible and theirs are.”

  It had been nearly two years since our discovery, and each time I asked—which was about every week—Sarah Beth started acting all funny and would tell me it just wasn’t the right time to bother her mama. Seems to me that the reason people don’t ask questions is because they’re afraid they’re not going to like the answer. It’s just that I couldn’t figure out what Sarah Beth could be afraid of, and I wasn’t about to let on that there was one more thing that I didn’t know and she did.

  “It’s not the right time. Besides, I’ll just get punished because I’m not supposed to be touching the family Bible. And then I’ll have to tell them that you were with me and Mama will tell your aunt Louise. So then we’ll both be in big trouble. Daddy keeps saying that one more thing and they’re going to send me to Miss Portman’s School for Young Ladies in North Carolina.”

  I stared at her, wondering what she thought might happen if her daddy caught her touching his radio box. I kept quiet, knowing how much she hated for me to point out when her thinking went as crooked as the Mississippi River.

  The rain had stopped by the time Willie pulled up in the Ford, but he came out with an umbrella anyway and helped Sarah Beth to the car first so she could sit up front with him. I was stuck in the backseat, as usual.

  Willie drove slowly through the muddy streets toward downtown, being careful to avoid bumps and puddles. I knew this was done for Sarah Beth’s sake, since when Willie drove just me he sped as fast as he could so that I felt like I had lockjaw by the time he stopped.

  He parked at the curb on Main Street right in front of Peacock’s Fine Jewels and Watches. The Peacock family had originally run a general store when Indian Mound was just a one-horse town, slowly selling more and more expensive merchandise as the town got bigger and the farms and plantations that surrounded it began to run their own commissary stores. As Aunt Louise had explained to me, the Peacocks had a good eye toward seeing opportunities for making money.

  Willie helped us out of the car and then held the door open for us as we entered the store. I’d only been inside once, right after my mama had walked off that bridge and out of my life. I’d come with Aunt Louise to sell some of my mama’s jewelry. She’d told me to pick out a few pieces to keep, but had explained that to pay the taxes on the farm we would need to sell the rest. I hadn’t wanted any of it, seeing no need to remember a mother who hadn’t thought to remember me.

  Mr. Peacock stood up from a large wooden desk with a tortoiseshell lamp and moved to the front of the store to greet us. “Mr. Bodine,” he said to Willie. Willie took off his hat and shook his hand.

  “Miss Heathman, Miss Bodine,” the jeweler said, nodding to Sarah Beth and me. His hair was parted on the side and slicked back with pomade, but sprigs of curly blond hair seemed to sprout from his head like weeds in a garden.

  He looked behind us as if expecting to see somebody else. “Is your daddy not with you, Mr. Bodine? I was hoping to invite him to my new establishment over on Monroe Street tonight. I got a blind pig that might interest him.”

  He winked at Willie, who twitched a bit in his starched collar as if it had suddenly grown too tight. “No, sir. He’s back at the farm. But I’ll be sure to let him know, altho
ugh you know he’s a strict Baptist.”

  “You do that,” Mr. Peacock said with another wink.

  I felt sorry for the poor pig and wanted to ask to go see it, but there was something in the way Mr. Peacock was smirking and the shade of red on my cousin’s cheeks that made me hold back the words.

  Mr. Peacock clasped his large hands together, and I noticed a heavy gold ring with an enormous diamond on one of his pinkie fingers. “And to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit today?”

  Sarah Beth opened up her clutch purse. “My daddy’s watch isn’t working—it just stopped one day. He was hoping you might be able to fix it. His granddaddy wore it when he rode in the cavalry with General Nathan B. Forrest at Shiloh, and he’s quite fond of it. Mama has no idea what she’ll do to replace it if it can’t be fixed.”

  She pulled out the gold watch on its chain, his dangling Knight Templar fob clinking against the black onyx stone of a second fob.

  Mr. Peacock slipped a monocle from his pocket and placed it in his eye to see the watch more closely. “This is a beautiful piece of workmanship. Exquisite really.”

  “It’s from Switzerland,” Sarah Beth said. “My great-grandmother bought it for my great-grandfather on their honeymoon.”

  The jeweler popped his monocle out of his eye. “So it’s very valuable in more ways than one,” he said, smiling. “And you are in luck, Miss Heathman. I have just employed a young gentleman. He’s originally from Missouri, but he has family here—the Scots who own the feed store. He’s got weak lungs and couldn’t handle the winters up north, so his family sent him down here when he was younger. His father is a clockmaker in St. Louis, and young John has been in his father’s workshop since he could walk. Knows all about the inner workings of clocks and can fix anything. As the old clockmaker saying goes, he has ways of making a clock tock.” He laughed at his own joke, and I smiled just to be polite.

  “He’s in the back right now. Let me go get him, and he can give you an estimate of how long it might take to get it fixed.” His face became serious. “I will remind him that Mr. Heathman is the president of the bank and a very important member of this community, and certainly not a man who can go without his watch for any length of time. It wouldn’t do for him to be late to meetings and appointments, would it? No, sir, it would not.”