At the first glimpse of her, Bernard gasped. Fresh tears sprang to his eyes. She looked the same and yet completely different. She was still big. That hadn’t changed, but everything else had. When he’d last seen her, she was wounded, haunted. The woman who strolled down the street escorted by an Orange Mound dandy was restored to glory. She wore a turban of red and black and gold, a turban that tied in the back then again in the front so that a vibrant floppy bow sat on her crown like a diadem. At her nape beneath its hem, a cascade of waist-length braids snaked down her back like a thing alive. Her eyes and lips were painted, not in a garish way but in a soft, appealing manner. Her bearing, the way she carried all that weight, reminded him of the Aurora Mae he first knew young, unscarred, imbued by nature with grace and power. She was in a dress of the same vibrant cloth as the turban and wore a pair of high-heeled boots laced with red ribbon on her feet. Bernard followed the couple down the street taking care to remain where he could see them but not be seen himself. He wanted to hear her voice. Her companion spoke to her constantly while they walked. He spoke in a low tone Bernard could not distinguish. Aurora Mae did not speak. She shook her head or inclined it toward or away from him in response to whatever it was he told her, and Bernard was frustrated in his desire.
From as great a distance as he could manage, he followed them to a low brick structure not far off. When they entered, he came out of hiding and looked the place over, discovering it was an office building. There were four nameplates on it signifying that a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant, and a bail bondsman worked out of the place. It was Orange Mound’s one and only professional building if you didn’t count the bank up the way that had few depositors and functioned more as a telegraph office for wired funds than commercial institution. Bernard waited outside ’til Aurora Mae came out alone. He chose that moment to approach her, popping out of a bush more or less and scaring her. A hand flew to her chest. It was full of rings set with gemstones of every color. Bernard, she said. Is that really you?
He shook his head and opened his arms, expecting or hoping for a welcoming embrace, but his hands trembled with emotion, so she grasped them instead and held them close together between her own to still them, to comfort him while they stood there in the street, a public spectacle. Come with me, she said, and they walked arm-in-arm back to The Lenaka, entering through the back where the living quarters were. Once they were inside, she guided him to a brocade settee and sat him down as if he were enfeebled or a child. She stood in front of him, wide-eyed with her ringed hands over her mouth and spoke.
I never thought I’d see you again, Bernard.
He looked around the room, took in the lamps with cut-glass shades, the heavy wood furniture, the gilt mirrors. He said the first thing that came to his mind.
How can you live like this with so many poor folk around? I would think they’d murder you from envy.
She shrugged. I’m their medicine woman. I help their sick babies and ease their old ones into death. I don’t charge but what they can afford. It’s like it was back home. Most of ’em think I can put a hex on ’em. Then Bailey helps me, too. Most of ’ems afraid of Bailey.
Bailey? he asked, thinking correctly that she referred to the man in the pinstripe suit. But what was this man’s role in her life? he wondered. Business partner? Bodyguard? Her answer broke his heart.
Bailey’s my man, she said.
At her words, he deflated, sunk into himself. His head drooped, moving slowly side to side in amazement. He studied the swirling pattern of her carpet without seeing it.
She looked out a window so as not to have to watch Bernard try to gather himself, a sight that broke her heart in turn. Then since she knew he deserved an explanation, she gave him one. I found I needed a man after all, she said. It’s a hard world, and a hard time for a woman to be alone. All my life I had Horace, you know.
How is he?
Oh, Bailey don’t bother me much. He’s happy long as I keep him in grits and gabardine as they say.
Bernard’s head snapped up. His eyes were shiny with tears.
I meant Horace, he said.
They both laughed. Despite the terrible burdens they carried on each other’s account, Aurora Mae sat down next to Bernard, and they held hands and talked. Bald Horace lived in a small town in Mississippi, she told him, doing what he loved best, raising goats and chickens and tending his garden. She sent him money regular though she thought it likely he just turned around and gave it away. Bernard had her write down an address so he could go visit. They talked about her shop, and he told her about Mrs. Karp. Aurora Mae asked him if he wanted to stay on awhile, and he said he didn’t think that would be a good idea. He got up when it felt like time to be going, who knew when that Bailey might be back. She walked him to the door. They continued to hold hands the entire time. He was about to drop her hand when she said, softly, I don’t love him. I only ever loved one man in my life, and he ain’t the one.
Oh ’Rora Mae.
It’s true.
He squeezed her hand, thanking her for that, and left with shoulders square as a general’s to keep him from turning around for a last look, because if she was watching him he might never leave at all. He’d live in the outhouse and shine Bailey’s boots if he had to, and that would not be good for any of them. A crowd of children milled about his car, standing on the running board and staring in the windows. He gave each one a nickel.
The second time a woman breaks your heart, he found, the healing comes quicker, because you’re used to having that sodden place in you, heavy with sorrow. He toured around some, stopped in Biloxi and New Orleans. In the latter city, he set up shop for a while. He sold tobacco and moonshine out of a truck just to have something to do. His fortunes increased. He made a friend or two. He learned about finance and invested in real estate. He employed three lawyers, and to one of them, a man named Joshua Stone, he told all his story one night when they were holed up together during a hurricane with a bottle of bourbon. Joshua never told a soul, likely because his own sins were spilled that night, which gave the two a mutual bond of silence.
When he decided he was strong enough for it, Bernard made a trip to Guilford, Mississippi, and looked Bald Horace up.
I been expecting you for two and one-half years, Bald Horace told him. Ever since ’Rora Mae made mention that you’d been to see her. What took you so long?
Bernard sighed. I needed more healin’, he said.
He found he quite liked Guilford. It was good to live near a man he thought of as his oldest and dearest friend, one who could keep him up to date on Aurora Mae’s goings-on as well. A town is not the countryside, so they couldn’t live together as they had outside Saint Louis given the difference in their race and class, but they could visit from time to time without causing talk. Bernard cast his eyes over the women of the town and knew which was his bride the first time he saw her leaving Sassaport General Emporium in the company of her mother. Beatrice Diane Sassaport was dressed in a striped blue-and-white frock with flounced sleeves and wore Mary Janes with a short stacked heel. She was beautiful, of course, and her carriage, her dignity bespoke the propriety he’d longed for since his liberation from Mrs. Karp. What stole his heart in an instant was her hair. It was thick, black, abundant, tied back away from her face that day with a white ribbon so that it rolled down her back in waves reminding him powerfully of Aurora Mae.
They were married the next year. Everything went well between them until the day Aurora Mae showed up at Rachel Marie’s birthday party. She’d been abandoned by Bailey, who’d run off with all her money and a young chippie born and bred in Orange Mound, and just when she’d taken charge of Cousin Mags’s orphaned girl and her husband, promising them jobs she could not now provide.
Bernard staked her for a new start and hired Sara Kate and Roland on the spot. He wanted to do more. If he could, he would have kept Aurora Mae in Guilford, supported her and loved her from a distance, the way he was used to doing all his life, but sh
e was having none of that.
You have your family to think of, she said. Three girls and a baby boy! Take care of them the best you can, and don’t let what happened to me happen to none of them or theirs.
He took her words to heart. He put it about he was traveling to Memphis to confer with his family on business and went to New Orleans as usual. He visited his bank and transferred the usual amount of gold coin from a safety deposit box to his cash account for distribution over time by Joshua Stone, who sent him money as he required it. He took the rest of his gold and divided it into two piles. One pile he left in a deposit box, the other he packed in the false compartment of his car. When he got home, he buried it on a dark moonless night in his own backyard. He told no one, not even his wife, Beadie, it was there. One day, he dreamed, when their children were old enough, getting married perhaps or graduating college, he’d produce it and stun them all. Until then, he didn’t want them feeling too at ease in the world or they might grow up like Bernard the handsome, spoiled and cruel. When the war came, he thought about digging up the gold or telling Beadie where it was, but that felt wrong, like he was extending a branch across the Mississippi for the ghost of Bernard the handsome to hop upon and curse his family in his absence. He decided to leave for war with his secret intact, refusing to entertain the idea he might die in battle. If the great river couldn’t kill me, he thought, a Nazi can’t do it, either.
Before he left New Orleans, he had Joshua Stone draw him up a trust that would husband the remaining half of his treasure for the future of his children’s children as a safeguard. He named Aurora Mae and Bald Horace trustees.
Joshua Stone returned wounded from his war in Burma to discover that Bernard died in the Ardennes. Right away, he contacted Aurora Mae and Bald Horace to give them instructions. When the grandbabies come, he told them, you are to telegraph me two code words, and I will contact Bernard’s children for birth certificates and such and release the grandbaby gold to their care accordingly.
What are the code words? Aurora Mae and Bald Horace asked.
Ghost Tree, Joshua Stone said, letting the words sink in as he knew their significance to those two. Then he repeated them. Ghost Tree.
It was twenty years gone before the code was needed. By then, Bald Horace had lost his mind. That left Aurora Mae to see Bernard’s wishes carried out, a duty she held solemn and sacred. The Levy girls had been barren, which meant that the child of Laura Anne Levy, the sole grandchild of Bernard, was a lucky child in some respects long before he was conceived let alone born.
XVIII
Nah Trang, Vietnam, 1965
THE DAY AFTER CRACKAH MICK was wounded, the battle of Chu Lai came around howling like a pack of bad dogs full of long teeth and rabies. Forty-six dead and two hundred wounded and Field Hospital 8 was the only place they had to go. The bunkers were stuffed with mangled and dying men. The docs were in high-gear triage. They put the stabilized, Crackah Mick among them, outside in the grass under tarp on poles in case the rains started and left them to speculate on what came next.
He spent his week at Nah Trang trying to comprehend what had happened to him and always came up empty. He knew his legs didn’t work, although one of them seemed to twitch now and again, and both of them hurt like hell sometimes, especially when he tried to sleep with or without the drugs. They sure wouldn’t do anything he told them to. He didn’t know if this was because they were healing and needed time or if it was because they were gone for good and would never come back. He grabbed the coattails of his doc, a Lieutenant Stein out of New York, as Lieutenant Stein was rushing past his cot and asked.
The doc said, What do I look like, a neurosurgeon? Hope for the best, son. You’ll find out when you get back home.
Mickey Moe didn’t believe he was going home. He didn’t see anybody in a hurry to ship him there. He saw other boys go off to general hospitals in country or in the Philippines and Japan. Some of them went directly home. It was as if they’d forgotten him with all the commotion going on. For all he knew, they’d keep him there in Field Hospital 8 until his tour was over. Certainly, he did not seem to be anyone’s priority.
For days, helicopters dropped off the wounded. Orderlies lined up corpses in bags near the makeshift tents of the stabilized. After a couple of days, they started to transport the bags to an amphibian hospital from which they’d be flown back home to their families and Arlington. Mickey Moe thought about crawling inside a bag himself. At least it would get him out of Field Hospital 8.
The only good part about waiting was they let him call home. He called twice. The first time, his mama fainted dead away at the sound of his voice. The second time, he reached Laura Anne before the first ring was over. She told him she loved him, and he told her he loved her. He asked for the baby. She told him the baby was fine and dandy and must be a boy, because he kept her up all night hopping around in her belly. Her words made him moan, which made them both teary. Oh Lord, they swore, I miss you so!
He told her he’d been wounded and that he’d soon be home, he couldn’t exactly say when, but maybe she knew something from the Army, what had they told her?
They didn’t tell me a thing, Laura Anne said. All I know is there’s been some fierce kind of bloodbath goin’ on out there. I’ve been tryin’ to figure out where your hill is exactly and how close your unit is to all the fire, but I still don’t really know.
I’m sorry, sweetheart. You have no idea how screwed up the Army is until you’ve been in it awhile. This doesn’t surprise me. I’m sorry if my call has shocked you and Mama.
She laughed in a short, sharp way that brought to mind how strong she was. At the sound of it, he felt proud as a Spartan warrior of his Spartan wife and his heart warmed.
It didn’t shock me at all. I knew something had happened to you. I been a wreck wondering what. Where are you hurt, darlin’? How bad is it? Oh, I know it must be bad if they’re not just patchin’ you up and sendin’ you back in. Please tell me. I can take it.
What about the baby, can the baby take it?
It was a dark and dreadful joke that he regretted as soon as it left his lips. He heard her draw in a breath. There was a piece of quiet between them that would have split open with a kiss or a tender glance if they’d been together. But they were not.
The baby is ours, she said at last. The baby can take it.
So he told her about his legs, how maybe he could use them again and maybe he couldn’t. That they’d best anticipate a long, hard haul ahead. There was another piece of quiet, only this one felt long and jagged and not even the sweetest embrace would shatter it. This quiet needed something hard, exceedingly hard, to break.
Then Laura Anne said, We’ll do what we have to, Mickey Moe Levy. Don’t you worry about it. Everything’s going to be alright. You know how I knew something happened to you? I had a dream about a week ago. I was at the edge of the backwoods up there by Littlefield, and I was dressed in these black pajamas. And you were there, in your uniform, lookin’ so smart and handsome. I pointed into the woods. You followed my direction. You went into the brush. I couldn’t see you anymore. There was a riot of noise. There was fire, there was smoke, and I was terrified, terrified you wouldn’t come back. But you did. Upright on two legs. I swear to God, Mickey. This is the truth. And I just know it means that no matter what, everything’s going to be alright.
He didn’t tell her about his own dream, the one with herself in black pajamas and the severed foot in the jungle, but he’d bet dollars to pho ga that she’d had her dream the very same night he’d had his. This seemed more than a coincidence. It felt prescient. He decided to go with her assessment. At the end of the day, didn’t a man and his woman know more than Lieutenant Stein and a boatload of neurosurgeons about their own dang lives?
You’re right, he said. Everything’s going to be fine.
And when they got off the phone, he lay back on his cot under the tarp across from the row of body bags to consider amid the echo of far-off gunfire
and the stench of death the wonder that was love.
Acknowledgments
I WOULD NOT HAVE WRITTEN One More River were it not for my husband, Stephen K. Glickman, a voracious reader with a mind that is always percolating with something new. He took an interest in the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and infused me with his enthusiasm. The tragedy of that spectacular event, the greatest natural disaster in American history, expanded my literary themes of the Southern Jewish Experience and American racism in a way I could not have anticipated, as it came to focus on the mysteries of love and friendship in the face of extreme adversity. So my first piece of gratitude goes to him, who has never bored me, not for an instant of our thirty-nine years to date.
I must also rush to thank my agent, Peter Riva, who counseled me so wisely before presenting this novel to my publisher. I might yet be struggling in a “what the hell comes next” moment without his advice. And of course, I must thank my editor, Diane Reverand, who parries my pouting protests with grace and never gloats when I give in to her wisdom. Thank you, Peter and Diane, thank you.
But I would not be thanking any of the above if it were not for Open Road Integrated Media. For their expertise in shepherding my two novels across all media, I am deeply indebted to Jane Friedman, Jeff Sharp, Brendan Cahill, Luke Parker Bowles, Rachel Chou, Danny Monico, Greg Gordon, Andrea Colvin, Nicole Passage, Laura De Silva, Ann Weinstock, Jason Gabbert, and Lisa Weinert. Their support of both my first novel, Home in the Morning, and now One More River, has been phenomenal, their energies on my behalf boundless. In today’s publishing world, when so much is expected of authors that is not writing but working in entirely different disciplines, for which we are often poorly prepared, the genius and commitment of these brilliant teammates are priceless.
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