The Stone Flower Garden

by Deborah Smith

  Eli froze. “What land?”

  Alton bowed his head into his hands, then uttered a sound between a sob and a bleak chuckle. “The land where you all lived in North Carolina. With that marble cottage on it and that garden—whatever the hell you called it.”

  Eli stared at him. “The Stone Flower Garden.”

  Alton nodded. “She says she’s going back and dig it all up.”

  Eli made the quick flight back to Nashville that afternoon in one of the bleakest moods of his life. He’d kept his boyhood promise to himself to find flat land. In a way, staying on the level had become the defining drive of his life. And yet he kept moving over the face of the world, a natural loner, always gaining altitude. When he looked back he saw Burnt Stand, that one pink town in North Carolina, the one place he never landed, where nothing had ever been even, or level, and unanswered questions could never be settled. Even after so many years he still thought of Darl every day.

  He landed the plane on a neat, paved airstrip amidst rolling pastures and wooded hills with Nashville’s famed skyline on the distant horizon. The acreage he had bought a few years before lay only a few miles from the old cemetery where Pa had been buried. Mama went every week to visit the grave, and had donated thousands of dollars to the tiny country church that owned the cemetery. She was happy being near Pa.

  Eli climbed into a mud-spattered SUV he’d left at the private runway and drove down a dirt road between fenced pastures dotted with cattle and horses. When he wasn’t traveling Eli worked the farm, trying to sink himself into the land, to put down roots. But he, Mama and Bell had moved around so much for so many years that for him, at least, staying in one place felt unnatural.

  Keep moving and don’t look back, he often caught himself thinking.

  He passed barns, outbuildings, and the small brick house where the farm’s manager and his family lived. The irony of that arrangement—the comparisons with his own childhood—always made him a little uneasy. Now he was the landlord, commanding a tenant family, though he prided himself on fairness and good pay. When he crested a knoll the yards of the main house spread out before him, verdant and pretty, the last of the summer flowers still blooming. Deep, cool shadows hovered under massive shade trees. The house he’d built for his mother stood among them with the quiet grace Annie Gwen had wanted in a home—roomy but simple, copied from a picture of a white clapboard farmhouse she’d found in Southern Living magazine.

  His mother met him at the front door with a look of soft worry on her face. Annie Gwen Wade was now almost sixty years old, straight backed but a little plump, favoring an arthritic right hip, her light brown hair going gray and cut in a short, fluffy style by a high-priced Nashville salon. She was dressed in one of her favorite plain blue jumpers and a t-shirt, with a baby blanket and a burping towel draped over one shoulder. “You couldn’t get Alton to come back?” she moaned. Eli shook his head and swept his mother into a deep hug. “But he loves her. And I’ll take care of the problem.”

  “How?” His mother pushed herself back. Her eyes were haunted. “Did he tell you what Bell did?” Eli nodded. “She says Miss Swan put the land up for sale, and—”

  “I know, Mama, I know. Alton told me the details.”

  “She’s lost her mind! She wants to dig up the very soil where we lived in Burnt Stand, but she doesn’t even know why.”

  “We’re not going back there. And nobody’s going to dig.”

  Mama raised one hand and closed her fist around the diamond crucifix Eli and Bell had given her one Christmas. Bell chased whimsies. Mama prayed for signs. “If I thought there was any way to show that your pa didn’t kill Clara Hardigree you know I’d do it. But this is foolishness.”

  “No, it’s not, Mama,” Bell said from above them. “It’s destiny.”

  Eli stepped inside the foyer and looked up a whitewashed staircase. Bell stood at the top, barefoot, dressed in jeans and a tear-splotched white silk blouse. At 32, she was still delicately sweet and a little odd, with her mother’s caramel-brown hair and the same dark Wade eyes as Eli. Annie Jessamine Canetree—Jessie—was cradled, asleep, in her arms.

  “We’re never meant to go back there,” Eli told her.

  “We’ll be haunted the rest of our lives if we don’t! Haunted,” Bell emphasized, crying and rocking the baby. “I don’t want my daughter to grow up haunted, too.”

  Eli scrubbed a hand over his hair while he fought an urge to yell at her. “Your psychic doesn’t know what she’s talking about. There’s nothing buried there but bad memories.”

  “No, things don’t happen by coincidence. After my psychic told me the truth is buried where we lived I hired a lawyer to see—just to see what he could find out about Swan Samples and her property—she’s in her late seventies, now, and I thought maybe she’d turned everything over to Darl, who might—”

  Eli slammed a hand on the stair banister. “You didn’t contact Darl, did you?”

  “No, no, I just had the lawyer talk to real estate agents in Burnt Stand.” Bell clasped the stair railing and came down slowly, clutching Jessie to one shoulder. Mama limped up the first few stairs and anxiously took the sleeping baby into her own arms. Bell held out both freed hands to her brother in supplication. Her eyes gleamed. “And the lawyer found out that Swan Samples put the back acreage behind Marble Hall up for a sale a year ago! The Stone Cottage, the Stone Flower Garden, everything! She meant to sell it! That’s not coincidence, Eli! We were meant to buy that property!”

  “You made the deal with Swan Samples? She knows it’s you?”

  Bell shook her head. “I hid because I didn’t want my lawyer to upset her with the truth. She’s an old lady now.”

  “You didn’t think she’d get a clue she’d been lied to when you sent men with pickaxes and bulldozers to pry up the forest?”

  “Maybe she’ll be pleased—surely she wants to know the truth about her sister. They never found Clara’s body in that lake.”

  “It’s a big, deep lake. No surprise.”

  “Someone killed Clara Hardigree, but it wasn’t Pa. I’m going to dig on the land until I find something that tells us what really happened.”

  “You’re not going to find anything,” Eli said, his voice lower and more controlled than before. “Or prove anything except that we’re a bunch of fools with money, now.”

  Bell turned to him raggedly, trembling, her eyes filling with anger. “Why don’t you want to believe in Pa? How can you act as if he did it? Don’t you want to clear his name? He was our daddy. He loved us. He doesn’t deserve to be called a murderer. I don’t want my daughter to grow up hearing that her Great-Grandpa Anthony couldn’t keep his pants zipped and her Grandpa Jasper killed a woman. Do you want to tell your children that someday?”

  Eli hesitated. He felt Mama’s eyes boring into him. “I don’t have any children and I don’t expect to have any.” Mama moaned and rocked Jessie when he said that.

  Bell threw up her hands. “Eli, don’t you see what’s wrong with you? Why you live the way you do—like an old gypsy hermit, flying all over the country and dabbling in computers and making money and sleeping with women here and there who just happen to look like Darl Union—”

  “Bell,” Mama said.

  Bell took a long look at the warning expression on Eli’s face and blanched a little. “Big Brother, I’m sorry, but you know your life’s not right. It’s all because of Pa, isn’t it? You’re haunted, just like me and Mama. Going back to Burnt Stand is the only way to get over it.”

  Eli gripped the stair banister. “There’s nothing buried on that property that can change what Pa may or may not have done. I say leave it alone and get on with our lives.”

  “Get on with our lives? The way you have? I know what you’ve been doing the past few years. Mama knows, too. We’re not stupid.”

  “I’m jus
t trying to do something good with my life and my ill-gotten money.” A sharp smile cut his mouth.

  “We know about Darl and the Phoenix Group.”

  Silence. The poignant accusation colored the air and set Eli in grim silence. Bell gripped his clenched hands. “You can’t go on trying to be part of her life without her knowing. Eli, it’s not right—not fair. Not to her, and not to you.”

  “She has no reason to ever want to see me again. To see any of us.”

  “You don’t even know if she hates us. You don’t know if she believes Pa did it.”

  “She believes it,” he said between gritted teeth. “There’re a few things I won’t ever forget in my life. One is the sight of Pa on the ground with blood pouring out of his heart—” he halted as their mother’s face began to compress into misery. He took a deep breath. “And one is the look in Darl’s eyes.”

  Bell began to cry in earnest. “That’s why we have to go back.” She touched his clenched hand gently. “Eli, don’t you ever wonder if Darl suffers the way we do? That maybe she needs to know what really happened, too?”

  “We might only end up proving that Pa killed her great-aunt.”

  Mama, who had been listening to Eli’s betraying doubts in silent agony, spoke up quietly. “Is that what you’re afraid of, son?”

  After a stark moment, he nodded. Her faced went white and she sat down on the stairs, cradling the baby protectively. Eli grabbed her by one elbow, and Bell rushed down the steps. “Mama!” Bell slid Jessie from her grasp then sat down beside her, clutching one of her hands. Eli stroked her hair.

  Mama straightened and wiped her eyes. “Your pa was a good man, and in my heart I know he didn’t kill Clara Hardigree. Maybe we’ll look like fools for diggin’ in the old dirt, but I don’t mind. Bell’s right. We do have to go back to that land, and we have to look for something, and just pray we find a truth we can bear.” She held her children and her grandchild closer, studying her cynical son and damaged daughter with a mother’s heartache.

  Eli felt as if a weight had settled on him.

  Darl.

  When he was at the farm outside Nashville Eli spent most of his time in a small, windowless building he’d constructed in the woods within walking distance of his mother’s house. A small sign on one door said Solo, Inc., the name of an all-purpose corporation he’d created for himself. The building included a spartan bedroom and kitchen, but they were almost an afterthought. Some rooms were filled with books and CDs on mathematics, science and technology. Others were a jumble of tables and shelves crowded with electronic tools and testing equipment, computers and the various systems related to them. A web of cables draped the plasterboard ceilings and snaked along the tile floors. Eli’s passion for such things had led him to invest wisely in the start-ups of several small high-tech companies, each now worth a fortune. He could afford to surround himself with soulless accessories.

  And yet that night, sitting in an old leather recliner amidst all of those implacable and ultimately logical, passionless silicon brains, he typed a command and a large computer screen filled with the opening credits of the Larry King show. King explained the night’s topic and guest, then turned to that guest as the camera switched to a wider shot.

  “Welcome back to the show,” he said to Darl. Eli exhaled slowly. She took the breath from him so many times, but never knew. He’d tried to put her out of his mind for years after he left Burnt Stand, because wondering about her was too painful.

  Now he sat back in his chair and watched her on national television. “I wish I didn’t need to be here again,” she told King. “No offense, but still.”

  “I understand. For viewers who don’t know what the Phoenix Group is, tell us.”

  “It’s a nonprofit legal defense foundation. There are five attorneys and a small support staff. We’re based in Washington, D.C. The foundation is headed by Irene Branshaw, a retired federal court judge.”

  “You take on death penalty cases. To date the foundation has freed twenty men from death row. The public tends to hate defense lawyers who do that.”

  “DNA evidence proved those men were innocent. The purpose of the foundation is not to manipulate the system and set guilty men free. It’s to provide justice for the wrongly convicted.”

  “But Frog Marvin’s case is different. There’s no doubt he killed two police officers. Are you trying to get him off?”

  “No. I’m only asking that his death sentence be commuted to life in prison.”

  “He’s scheduled for execution in Florida next Wednesday. Any luck with the most recent appeals?”

  “No, but there’s still a week. I’m not going to let the state of Florida kill a child.”

  “You always make a point of referring to Frog Marvin, who’s thirty-nine years old, as a child. Why?”

  “He has the IQ of a second grader,” she answered in a dulcet voice. “Think of putting a seven-year-old boy to death. That’s Frog.” She riveted King with the politely decorous but knife-sharp gaze that had made one commentator say drolly she had gunslinger eyes at high noon. Waves of brunette hair softened her intense face but did nothing to mitigate her searing blue eyes. Her features were beautiful, her skin—there was no better description—porcelain. Yet she was spartan in dress and attitude, favoring strictly tailored business suits, and the Marvin case had worn on her like no other. Eli had watched over recent months as she’d grown thinner and more drawn looking. Sharper. Sadder. More dangerous.

  King turned to the camera. “For viewers just joining us, twelve years ago Frog Marvin and his older brother Tom were convicted of killing two Florida police officers during a convenience store robbery. Tom’s serving a life sentence but Frog got the death penalty because he did the shooting.”

  Darl shook her head and raised her right hand in a now-wait-a-minute rebuke. Eli always noticed that she wore no rings, and very little other jewelry. The Hardigree pendant hung from a fine gold chain around her neck, catching the studio light against the blue lapel of her suit. She’s loyal to her Grandma, Eli thought.

  He steepled his chin on one fist. She would always be Swan’s granddaughter, always a Hardigree, and he would always be the son of the man who had probably killed her kin. “Tom ordered Frog to shoot the officers,” she went on. “Nobody disputes that or the fact that Tom was an abusive bully who’d terrorized Frog since they were boys. Every eyewitness to the robbery testified that Frog said, “I don’t want to hurt them,” and Tom screamed at him to fire the gun or he, Tom, would hurt Frog. Frog shot the officers, then dropped the gun and began to cry.”

  “The officers’ families were on this program last week. They say those circumstances shouldn’t matter.”

  “I have total sympathy for them—but the man who killed their loved ones was Tom Marvin, not Frog Marvin. Frog was only doing what he was told. He clearly didn’t have the capacity to defy his brother.”

  “You’ve taken this case very personally.”

  “I take every case personally.”

  “You’ve gotten to know Frog Marvin pretty well?”

  “I’ve been working on his case for five years. He was one of my first assignments after I joined the Phoenix Group.”

  “Before that you were a public defender in Atlanta.”

  “For a number of years, yes. I was hired by the Phoenix Group not long after it was formed, in 1996.”

  “You’re not going to get rich working for the government and charity foundations. Ever think of hanging up your shingle in the big-dollar world of private law practice?”

  “The rich can buy their own brand of justice in the world. They don’t need me.”

  “Cynical?”

  “Realistic.” She went on explaining the foundation’s work. Her voice was low, genteelly Southern, well modulated, a little husky and drawling, extremely sensual. She
was a natural on television, just as in court. I could listen to her forever, Eli always thought. She’d become something of a celebrity for her television interviews. Eli had stored all of them on CD. He never missed one.

  “You’ve gotten death threats over the Marvin case?”

  She nodded and shrugged. Her attitude said she was capable of eviscerating anyone who stalked her. She had her grandmother’s alluring, bloodcurdling, unfathomable blue eyes. But to Eli she was still the pink girl who lay behind those eyes. “That comes with the territory.”

  Eli lurched out of the chair and snatched a cell phone from among a table cluttered with electronic test equipment. He punched the speed-dial function. A few seconds later he said, “William? Tell me about the death threats.”

  When he got off the phone he paced. Darl continued to talk calmly to Larry King as Eli ground his fingertips into his palms. “What would you like to see happen to Frog Marvin?” King asked her.

  “I simply want his sentence commuted to life. I’m not arguing that he should be freed.”

  “If everything fails, he’ll be executed by lethal injection next Wednesday. Will you be there as a witness?”

  “On the front row, if I have to. I’ve been with him all along. I won’t desert him at the last minute.”

  “A Florida newspaper editorial called you a shark with blue killer eyes. Are you that tough?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Can you watch Frog Marvin die, if you have to?”

  She didn’t blink. “Death isn’t that difficult to watch,” she answered finally. “The hard part is living with it.”

  King turned to the cameras. “When we come back we’ll take your questions for Darl Union, attorney for Frog Marvin, the mentally handicapped convicted murderer scheduled to die in Florida next week.”

  Eli sat down slowly, watching her face until the scene cut to a commercial. She looked pale, tired. The hard part is living with it. What did she live with? How bad were her memories of Clara and his father? Of him? His thoughts whirled. He understood her fixation with death in a way few people could. He understood why a helpless, childlike man like Frog Marvin would make her fight with all her energy and devotion. This thirty-five-year-old woman had once been a little girl in pink who dived into a cluster of fighting boys to save a stranger.