Reviving the Hawthorn Sisters

by Emily Carpenter

  Every time she steered the old man back, he struggled and showered her with curses, but, for the most part, he was weak and no match for her. As for the colorful language, Ruth had certainly heard worse, most of it from her own mouth.

  At night, after Mr. Coe had his glass of whiskey and regular dose of pine syrup and was safely snoring in his bed, Ruth would creep back down to the maid’s room where she slept. It was cramped and jammed between the kitchen and the side porch, and it smelled of tar and coal smoke and whatever she’d cooked in the kitchen that day. Cleaning through the night was out of the question. She was so exhausted, the moment she fell into bed, sleep took her.

  But all in all, she felt that fate had landed her in a pretty place.

  This particular night her room was especially hot, so she pushed open the window, just a crack, got undressed, and lay on the narrow iron bed. She closed her eyes, letting the smell of the Tennessee River and the demure north Alabama spring waft over her.

  Sometime later she woke, sensing a presence in her room. The window was open all the way now, rainwater on the worn floorboards. She held her breath, although that was probably the wrong thing to do if the culprit was in her room. A dead giveaway that she was savvy to his game.

  “Ruthie, you up?” came a voice from the shadows. A voice somewhere between man and boy. “Ruthie, don’t be scared. It’s me, Dell.”

  He edged out of his hidey-hole into the pale light cast by the bright moon. Handsome, with a head of tousled hair like straw and a green bandanna that kept it off his fine forehead. Tall and solid, carrying with him the faint aroma of manly things like smoke and dirt and motor oil. He wore a button-up shirt that gaped open, showing a smooth chest reddened by the sun, and brown pants cinched by a too-big, worn belt.

  “Dell! Goddamn you!” Ruth said.

  He froze. “Goddamn me?”

  “How’m I not supposed to be scared with you hiding in my room?” But she couldn’t suppress a grin. She felt something more than relief or the simple pleasure of reuniting with an old friend. It felt more like the warmth of the sun or a hot bowl of grits or the gift of a soft bed.

  And to tell the truth, she had been thinking a lot about Dell lately.

  It was usually while she was cleaning and listening to Mr. Coe’s radio. The songs made her think of Dell, and as she worked, she tried to picture the way his face would look now. She took the boyhood image burned into her memory—cornflower-blue eyes and a lightning-flash smile—and, building upon it like a sculptor might, layered on a man’s defined jaw, brisk stubble, and broadening chest. The image that’d resulted in her mind had made her draw in a quick breath.

  Now she realized he was even more handsome than she’d imagined.

  “I’m sorry.” He looked around. “This is your room? Gee, Ruth. Is this slick.”

  She sat up straighter. “Yes, I’m employed by Mr. Steadfast Coe now. But I’m guessing you know that since you climbed in this particular window. Who told you I was here?”

  “I have my ways.” He waggled his eyebrows and whistled. “Boy, howdy, this is sure some sweet setup.” He sat on the edge of her narrow bed, keeping a safe distance between them. “I’m really sorry about scaring you, Ruthie. I’ve been in Florence a couple of weeks, sniffing around, seeing what’s what, and I did get wind of you—and your situation.”

  She raised her eyebrows, hoping to look stern but failing miserably. His deep voice carried a certain timber that stirred her up and made her stomach flutter without ceasing.

  “But I didn’t tell the boys, in case they got any ideas. We won’t try nothing here, I swear to you. We got a job here and then we’re off to Texas.”

  Her heart sunk.

  “But I couldn’t leave without seeing how my old friend was doing.”

  Ruth spoke as evenly as she could manage. “I’m getting by.”

  “Good, good.”

  “And you?”

  He shrugged, and she understood immediately without anything more being said. He bent the law the same way she had since the day she left the asylum.

  “I’ve missed you, Dell,” she admitted.

  He brightened. “I missed you too, Ruthie. I hated it when you left. I can’t tell you how lonesome I was. But I was glad, also. Mackey told me what Singley tried to do, making you two get hitched . . .” He hesitated.

  She waited. Whatever he meant to say, she was not going to say it for him.

  His voice got even lower. “If I’d have been grown, I’d have flat killed him.”

  “Good thing you were a scrawny kid, then.” Ruth couldn’t help but smile. “Where’d you meet up with these boys you’re running with?”

  “Over in Georgia. At a hotel south of Macon. I was handing out towels to naked folks who smelled like rotten eggs.” He touched her hand. “Ever since I heard you were in town, all I could think was how I had to get to you. How I had to see you before you got away again.”

  She could hardly believe her ears. “Really?”

  He nodded, his lips parting. They were so beautiful, his lips. Full and pink and perfectly formed. And without thinking, she leaned forward and pressed her mouth to them. He returned the kiss. His shirt was damp from the rain, but she didn’t care. She let him wrap his wet arms around her and lower her to the bed. He tasted like tobacco and the spring rain, and he made a small whimpering sound as they kissed. She pressed her body against his.

  As their arms and legs looped and held each other, their breathing got faster and louder. Ruth was glad the house was so big, and Mr. Coe wouldn’t hear them. She felt hot all over—on fire. The way she felt kissing Dell Davidson was a force bigger and stronger than anything she’d encountered before, even that ornery, half-starved lion. The smell of this boy, the feel of his skin against hers—she didn’t have the words to describe how good it felt. How surprising and wonderful and delicious.

  Then, when Dell’s hand moved under her nightgown, along each leg, then between them, she spread them a fraction wider, capitulating to whatever he wanted to do. He didn’t have to do much. Almost as soon as he began to touch her, she started quaking against him, gasping with her head thrown back.

  He put a finger to her lips. “Shh. I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

  She blinked at him, dazed and limp. After a few moments, he scrambled off the bed, straightening his pants. He was red in the face, eyes cast down at the floor.

  “That was ungentlemanly of me,” he said. “My apologies.”

  She covered her mouth with her hand, but behind it she was smiling. He was everything she remembered—home and comfort, light and laughter. And now this new feeling. This wild, rugged desire. This perfect, unexplainable joy.

  “You better not apologize again,” she said. “Or I’ll sock you.”

  He stared at her a moment, then rubbed his brow, a smile transforming his face. “I’d let you.”

  She smiled back. “What’s the job in Texas?”

  He scuffed his shoes on the floor.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “A bank,” he said.

  She absorbed this, surprised by the way the words filled her with worry. She stuck her chin up. “Well, don’t you get shot.”

  He nodded.

  “Will you come back?”

  “I will if you want me to.”

  “I do.”

  He stared at her for a moment, but this time he didn’t smile. He looked deadly serious. “You bet I will. You bet your beautiful baby blues I’m coming back for you.” He hauled himself over the windowsill, then turned back to her. “I’m going to marry you, Ruth Lurie.”

  She felt her skin go to goose bumps. “I go by Davidson now. Ruth Davidson.”

  He didn’t answer, but his smile said all she needed to know. Then in an instant, he was gone, dropping out of the window, down to the grass below. By the time she was able to untangle herself from the sheets and fly to the window, all she could see was his retreating form, disappearing into the moonlit elderberry hedg
e.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Birmingham, Alabama

  Present

  Margaret Luster’s house was located off a winding road in Mountain Brook, an upscale suburb just south of Birmingham. The modern house sat at the end of a long, leaf-strewn drive, a low steel and glass series of connecting boxes that nestled into the rocky hillside.

  Margaret swung open her front door. She was clad in a watercolor caftan and enormous coral jewelry and gathered us into the soaring glass foyer like a mother hen. Then she got a closer look at me.

  “Your eye!” she gasped.

  “Shower door at the hotel,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  She led us through a long hallway hung with colorful abstract paintings to a library. It was lined with books and furnished with four identical green-leather chairs circled around a low marble table. She offered the leftover spread from her ladies’ Bible study—iced tea and chicken salad—but we declined.

  Griff hefted his camera. “Do you mind if I get some footage of you talking about Dove?”

  Margaret smoothed her hair. “Of course not, darlin’. I feel like I’m practically a pro after our interview last night. Sit, everyone, please.”

  Margaret, Althea, and I sat while Griff positioned himself behind us. I could sense him lining up his shot, adjusting settings on the camera.

  Margaret turned to me. “I believe I owe you an apology for yesterday, Eve. You know, for the prayer thing.” One perfectly manicured hand drifted up to her coral necklace. “I’m embarrassed, I’ll be honest. I haven’t handled my diagnosis well. I try to be strong for the young women who come here, wanting me to impart words of wisdom from all my years walking with the Lord, but lately, I haven’t had anything for them. They don’t want to hear that I’m full of doubt. They don’t want to hear how I stay awake at night remembering the moment the doctor told me I may die.” She pressed her lips together. “That I’m going to die.”

  Althea tilted her head, lips pursed in sympathy. Griff shifted his camera off his shoulder.

  “I saw you yesterday and . . . you just looked so much like her. And I had this wild, nonsensical thought that maybe you were gifted in the same way she was . . .” She sat back in her chair. “Anyway. My husband thinks I live in a fairy tale, and I know he’s probably right. But it’s a comfort, isn’t it? To believe? I mean, really believe that the order of things can somehow be reversed, and in the end, the day can actually be saved?”

  I didn’t know what to say. It was the same question Danny had asked me. And the answer was yes, I had believed that once, when I was a kid. Then Dove had ended my innocence and belief and I’d had to rely on myself.

  Margaret stood. “But you wanted to hear about your grandmother, not me. So, with that in mind, I’d like to show you something.”

  She left the room and when she returned, she was bearing a sleek silver laptop. She angled it toward us on the table. On-screen was a graphic of an audio tuner. I felt an unaccountable flutter of anticipation in my stomach.

  Margaret’s voice was breathy and dramatic. “About ten years ago, a friend of mine stumbled on an estate sale over in Tuscaloosa. It was nothing to speak of, small house, mostly junk. But in the middle of the mess, she found this suitcase full of dozens of old wire and magnetic recordings of Charles Jarrod’s meetings. Chock full of them, for less than twenty dollars. Of course, knowing I was such a nut about the Jarrods, she bought the whole kit and caboodle. I found this wonderful Dutch man, an expert in digital transfer, who put it all on the computer for me. There’s this one . . .”

  She clicked on the red “Play” button, and a young girl’s voice filled the room. I realized the sound was emanating from a variety of speakers concealed around us.

  “There’s a treasure hidden,” the girl said. “And the Holy Ghost says it’s yours to find.”

  Her voice was twangy with that old-time Southern lilt. But affected, too, in the way that old movie stars used to talk. Goose bumps ran up my arms and over my entire scalp.

  Dove. The voice of my grandmother.

  “No matter your lot,” Dove’s small voice said. “Almighty God will always care for you!”

  Griff sat forward, body taut and head tilted, adjusting the lens of the camera to get both Margaret and the laptop in the shot. I lifted my eyes to meet Althea’s. Like me, she’d gone completely still.

  “You must look with new eyes at everything around you, and He will provide,” the girl sang in a clear voice. “If you cannot cross the ocean, and the heathen lands explore, you can find the heathen nearer, you can help them at your door.”

  The singing—her voice, soft and sweet and pure—startled me. It was as if, by singing, she’d reached inside me, around my defenses, and poked at something soft and vulnerable.

  “If you cannot give your thousands, you can give the widow’s mite; and the least you give for Jesus will be precious in his sight.” She sang the chorus—“Hark! The voice of Jesus crying, ‘Who will go and work today?’”—then Margaret paused the audio.

  “This was one of the first meetings Dove and Charles did together. I don’t know what year it was. But she was so young, you know. Only seventeen or eighteen. But I don’t know . . .” She hesitated for the first time since we’d gotten there. “They never struck me as much of a match.”

  “Why not?” Althea asked.

  “He was much older than her,” Griff said. “Twelve years.”

  “Not so unusual back then, though, right?” Althea said.

  Margaret gave a small head shake. “It’s more than that. I’ve listened to these tapes over and over.” She leaned forward, her coral necklace clacking. “Dissecting every word and every sentence, hoping that I’d find my miracle in their voices. And in all that time, I couldn’t get over the feeling . . . that . . . I don’t know how to describe it . . .”

  Griff cut in. “Is it that Charles and Dove never interact with each other in an affectionate way?”

  Margaret jabbed a finger in his direction. My head swiveled to stare at him.

  “I mean, I’ve only heard a few of the old recordings, but I noticed it too. They don’t seem like husband and wife. Like lovers.” He glanced quickly at me and I felt myself go warm in the face. “It’s more businesslike, detached and professional. Almost like collaborators, like . . .” He searched for the word.

  “Partners in crime?” I said dryly.

  “I agree with you, Griff,” Margaret said, but I could feel her watching me closely with an inscrutable look in her eye. “Something in the dynamic between Charles and Dove in these early tapes has always felt off to me. Too perfect and brittle, I suppose, for a couple who were newlyweds.”

  I realized my leg was jiggling, my mind obsessing over the time that was rapidly ticking away. I didn’t want to be rude, but I didn’t need to hear Margaret opine on Charles and Dove’s onstage chemistry. I needed to find out about Steadfast Coe and the stolen coin.

  Margaret clapped her hands. “But I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves.” She bustled to the shelves and drew out a large leather album. She laid the book out on the marble table, opened it, then rotated the album toward me.

  “Before Charles and Dove Jarrod paired up,” she said reverently, “Dove was one half of the Hawthorn Sisters.”

  Affixed to the pages of the album were two bills. Advertisements, brittle-looking and faded to a faint sepia. Hawthorn Sisters Healing Revival! the one on the right proclaimed. Holy Ghost Preaching, Prayer for the Infirm, Word of Knowledge in Operation. Below that was a grainy photograph of two young girls on a stage, holding hands and wearing matching frilly dresses. One of the girls was plump and pretty, with long dark curls and a Judy Garland sparkle. Beside her, Dove looked like a child—an ethereal elfin creature with luminous skin, straight bobbed hair, and a gleam in her eyes.

  “She really does look like you,” Althea said, looking over my shoulder.

  “Exactly like you,” Griff said from behind the camera. “It’s uncanny.”
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  “Are you okay?” Althea put a hand on my arm.

  I wasn’t sure. It was all so much. My grandmother had escaped the hellhole that was Pritchard Insane Hospital only to stay in Alabama. But why? And why hadn’t she told her family the truth about this period of time? What did she have to hide?

  Margaret beamed at us. “Another friend of mine found those bills in her attic, in her parents’ things. Two of only a few remaining advertisements for the Hawthorn Sisters, from 1934. The one on the left is from a Billy Sunday revival, where they only appeared as a guest act, but the other was a solo appearance, one of the only ones. And possibly the last appearance before she married Charles Jarrod.”

  I looked closer. “At the North Alabama State Fair?”

  Margaret arched an eyebrow. “Well, that’s the South for you. Other state fairs had movie stars and vaudeville shows, but down here we had preachers and revivalists.” She sobered and laid her hand on my knee. “Of course, you know she was born as Ruth Lurie to a patient at Pritchard Hospital.”

  Just over my shoulder, Griff’s camera whirred to life.

  “Yes,” I said. “Then she ran away in 1934 when she was seventeen years old. She went to California. Where she met Charles and married him.” My voice sounded so small in the big room. “Only now I’m learning that timeline is a bit off.”

  “Correct. The truth seems to be that she went to Florence, a town about two hours northwest of here.”

  Griff cleared his throat, obviously still upset at his failure to dig up this bit of crucial information. I wanted to tell him that I appreciated his dedication to meticulous research, but he had no idea who he’d been up against. My grandmother was a master at pulling the wool over people’s eyes, and she’d been at it a hell of a lot longer than any of us could imagine.

  “I understand she called herself Ruth Davidson,” Margaret Luster went on, her eyes bright. “She told people she was the outlaw Dell Davidson’s sister. Is that true?”