Reviving the Hawthorn Sisters

by Emily Carpenter

  Billy Sunday was the most famous evangelist in the country, if not the world, and a song or two on his stage was worth its weight in gold. His famed tabernacle, a wooden structure that resembled a fancy pole barn, was erected on the fairgrounds especially for the famous evangelist’s meetings. It was lit from stem to stern with electricity, covered with a thick layer of sawdust, and set out with real chairs instead of plank benches.

  In the center, there was a round stage with a carved wooden pulpit and canvas banners painted to look like the clouds of heaven. When Ruth stepped onto the stage, she felt lightheaded. A much bigger crowd would be here, maybe even from as far away as Tuscaloosa. What if someone in the crowd recognized her from Pritchard? Or worse, what if Jimmy Singley decided to come see a Billy Sunday service himself?

  Arthur pulled Bruna out behind the tent for their regular pep talk, and Ruth sang her scales and picked at her thumbnail until the skin tore. Bruna really needed to be warming up with her, not listening to sweet nothings whispered behind the tent. Or were they sweet nothings? When Bruna joined her after these talks, she sure didn’t look flushed with love. She looked agitated. Distracted. Ruth didn’t like it, but she didn’t have a say in the matter. Bruna seemed content to let Arthur run things.

  The crowd was huge. Brother Sunday himself was a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher—describing the sinner’s immoral acts in such graphic detail that it was said in one meeting, twelve men fainted and had to be carried out. Ruth couldn’t imagine why people liked him so much, but she guessed it might be the same reason they paid good money at the movies to see things like Dracula and Frankenstein. The girls had been one of eight acts that went on before the preaching, and their take from the love offering was less than at many smaller camp meetings they’d done. On the ride back to Florence in Arthur’s daddy’s Franklin Victoria, she said as much.

  “I say, let’s stick to the small meetings. People know us there, and we make more money.”

  “Better to be a big fish in a small pond,” Arthur agreed. “We could start having our own meetings soon. The Hawthorn Sisters got their own followers now. We don’t need Billy Sunday.”

  Ruth whooped and started singing a Cab Calloway song, the one about the oyster stew. Arthur joined in, and she gave him a surprised look.

  “I reckon you don’t sound half-bad for a preacher’s son, mister.”

  “You ain’t the only one who can put on a show,” Arthur shot back.

  Bruna giggled. “We can’t put on our own show, you two. We don’t even have a tent. Arthur practically had to sign away his life to borrow this car, and Mama’s not going to want to give Ruth any more days off.”

  “Besides that, who would we get to preach?” Ruth said.

  “You could tell more stories about that lion,” Bruna said. “The people really like that one.”

  “I have a plan,” Arthur said. “The Hawthorn Sisters are going to go big. Bigger than Billy Sunday if things go the way I’m planning. But you gotta trust me and do what I say. For starters, you got to be clean and sweet and look like a couple of cherubs sitting on clouds. I’ll do the preaching.”

  Ruth harrumphed.

  “And none of that horse-pucky Billy Sunday hollers about people being roasted alive in hellfire.” He glanced at Bruna. “When I preach, I’d say stuff that left folks feeling lighter. I’d respect the people that came—the people that are barely making do, who have to scrape and scrimp and go without—and I’d give them something to lift their day. I’d give them some good news. Something to make their everyday lives a little brighter. And we’ll do even bigger miracles than Sunday.”

  Ruth and Bruna were silent.

  “You know, I heard that once, John G. Lake’s wife got shot by accident. Well, Mr. Lake was halfway across the country, but when he prayed, they say that bullet disappeared right out of her stomach.”

  “My goodness,” Bruna said.

  “I heard some people found it later, covered in blood, under the stage at that very meeting.”

  “He pushed the bullet out?” Ruth said.

  “God pushed the bullet out,” Arthur said. “I tell you, God the Father is for us, not against us. With Him we can do anything . . . but if the flock don’t see it, how will they believe?”

  Ruth’s insides twisted. She didn’t like the eerie cadence of his voice.

  But when Bruna spoke, her voice was soft and sincere. “Well, that is nice, Arthur, it really is. I’m sorry for doubting you. I truly am.” She smiled at him shyly, and Arthur gave her a supercilious nod.

  “Nothing can stop us,” he said. “No power, no principality. No law has authority over us, girls. We’re God’s chosen. We’ll get us our own tent and a truck with something catchy written on the side—”

  “Repent! Jesus Is Coming Back,” Bruna said.

  Arthur nodded. “We’ll have wheelchairs and crutches lining the stage, all the folks you’ve healed . . .”

  “Who God has healed,” Bruna corrected.

  “We’ll split everything three ways. Fair and square.” His jaw worked nervously, like he was just barely keeping the lid on the most wonderful secret.

  “What?” Ruth said.

  “Arthur!” Bruna said. “Out with it.”

  He hit the steering wheel. “All right. I guess y’all are gonna drag it out of me so I’ll just go ahead and spill the beans. I got us our first single bill, main attraction, three nights at the North Alabama State Fair in July. The regular church folk’ll be there, but also all the farmers will be done with the harvest. There could be up to two thousand people. It’ll be the perfect time to kick off our own show.”

  Ruth’s nerves twanged. Dell was sure to be back by the summer, and the two of them would be long gone. There was no chance she could stay just to keep the Hawthorn Sisters going. She hadn’t yet figured how she was going to tell Bruna. And now this.

  “Arthur,” Bruna said. “You know we go away the whole month of July. We’ll be in Palm Beach until the fifteenth and then up to the Greenbrier to see Aunt Venetia.”

  Arthur gripped the steering wheel but didn’t speak.

  “I thank you for going to so much trouble getting Ruth and me the job, I do, but we can’t possibly do it. Mama won’t hear of me missing the trip, and Ruth’s got to look after Grandy.” Bruna sent a desperate look back at Ruth.

  “You said you wanted to be free of your parents,” Arthur said, his voice tight. “How you going to do that if you keep taking their charity?”

  Ruth reckoned that Bruna going on vacation with her mama and daddy wasn’t anywhere close to taking charity, but she held her tongue. There were things she didn’t understand about coming up in a wealthy family. And even though Ruth couldn’t imagine what kind of misery plenty of food and pretty clothes and fancy vacations could possibly bring, she understood Bruna felt stifled.

  What she also understood was the way the air had changed in the car. Arthur was seething. Bruna stared sullenly out the window. Ruth felt a deep pit of fear open up in her. Maybe Bruna marrying Arthur wasn’t the worst that could happen. Maybe what was more troubling was Arthur’s ruthless ambition for the Hawthorn Sisters—and his determination to see more miracles.

  You didn’t just make that sort of thing happen.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Florence, Alabama

  Present

  Ember retrieved a key from under a brick at the edge of Jason’s porch and let us in. We’d barely gathered in one of his elegant front rooms when Faulk swooped in, took the stage, and started in on Ember.

  “You literally had our great-great-grandfather’s bones stashed in a tool shed?” he yelled. “And for how long again?”

  She opened her mouth to answer, but he cut her off.

  “Then, like an absolute moron, you sell them to a complete stranger you met at a bar!” He jabbed a finger in my direction. “That man assaulted Eve, did you know that? He beat her and is currently extorting her for a multimillion-dollar coin that belongs to this fa
mily!”

  “I know and I’m sorry. But I had no way of knowing.”

  “Some psychic gift you got there, Ember,” Jason said.

  Now she glared at him, refusing to engage. I couldn’t say that I blamed her. Jason was a formidable opponent. And kind of a jerk, to echo Althea’s memorable estimation. Griff, Althea, and I stood awkwardly through Jason’s diatribe, eyes trained on the luxurious Persian rug. Only Ember sat, legs crossed in a languid pose in the corner of a purple silk sofa, and kept her gaze on him. Clearly, the cousins had spent a lifetime annoying one another. This was nothing new. In fact, she actually seemed to be reveling in this new disaster. When Jason finally ran out of steam, she stood, stretched her lithe torso, and wandered over to the gleaming, elaborately burled walnut-and-ebony Steinway.

  “First of all, Jason, before we go further, I think we should acknowledge that the Hawthorn Sisters are back together again. In a manner of speaking.” She struck a single key on the piano. The note sounded clear and loud in the cavernous room.

  Jason slumped, his anger energy apparently zapped. “Okay, Ember. Congratulations.”

  “Secondly, I’d like to set the record straight,” she continued. “My dad was the one who found Steadfast, not me. Probably when PawPaw Arthur was in the old folks’ home. I’m guessing he started running his mouth about what he did to Steadfast back in the day and where he hid the body, so Daddy did what any good son would do. He went and got the bones before anybody else could. He was protecting our family, Jason. He wasn’t about to let everybody know that PawPaw was a stone-cold killer.”

  She pressed a series of keys softly. Da-da-da-da . . . The sequence was vaguely familiar. The opening notes of a hymn. A chill went through me.

  “I found the bones in the basement of our house,” she continued. “But Dad threatened to whip the fire out of me if I told. So if you want to blame someone, Jason, blame the person who knew where the body was hidden in the first place. The person who might’ve even killed him—my shitty PawPaw, Arthur Holt.”

  Jason removed his jacket—a crisp blue houndstooth—and stretched his neck tiredly. “Your grandfather didn’t kill Steadfast, Ember. Quit trying to make this into an episode of Dateline.”

  She huffed in frustration. “I’m not trying to make this into anything. You called this meeting, not me. Maybe because you’re worried my PawPaw did kill Steadfast and steal the coin and somehow the stink of my family is going to get on you?”

  A look of scorn covered Jason’s face. “Are you kidding me? I don’t care if your redneck-preacher grandpa killed our great-great-grandfather. You know what a scandal like that means for a political candidate these days.”

  “Means they get elected,” Griff said. “And a million-dollar book deal.”

  Jason pointed at Griff. “And that’s for a good scandal. This one just sucks.”

  “So why are we here then?” Ember asked. “Why did you call?”

  Jason looked at me. “You tell her.”

  “Politicians may not be held to the same standards these days,” I said to Ember. “But scandal can still kill a preacher’s career. The old-time faithful don’t like their heroes turning out to be thieves or tax dodgers or pedophiles. Or cold-blooded killers.” I realized I’d been popping my knuckles nervously and folded my arms over my chest. “You know the usual suspects: Jim and Tammy Faye, Ted Haggard, the entire Boston diocese . . .”

  Griff interjected. “The media loves this kind of takedown. These guys all see blood in the water—or at least a week’s worth of clickbait.”

  I turned to Ember. “He’s right. And a week is plenty long enough to decimate our donor base. What I need is your help finding the coin. By tomorrow night.”

  “You mean my psychic help?” she asked.

  Jason snorted. “No, Ember. We need information. Did your dad tell you anything else about your shitty PawPaw stealing the coin and hiding it with the bones? Or do I have to pony up some cocaine before you’ll tell us?”

  Althea drifted to the window, looking grim. Griff walked to the piano, twisting in his earbuds. Ember looked like she’d been struck in the face.

  I cocked my head at Jason. “Would you mind . . . Could we just keep things a little more . . .”

  “Civil,” Althea said curtly from the other side of the room.

  “Sorry,” he grumbled. “I just don’t have the bandwidth.”

  “Well, you got all the Coe inheritance, Jason. You couldn’t expect to get all the bandwidth too.”

  “Ember,” I said. “I’m the one asking for help. And I’ll do anything for it. Do it for me. Please.”

  She pulled me down beside her on a striped silk loveseat. “Give me your hand,” she said abruptly. “The right one.”

  I offered it, and she closed her eyes for a couple of seconds.

  “You have it too, don’t you?” she said quietly.

  I shook my head, forehead furrowed in confusion. But I knew what she was talking about. I knew damn well.

  “You know things. The way I do.”

  Now she was eyeing me. Something in her expression, the childlike flash of vulnerability, tore at me. The way Jason seemed to consider his flesh and blood both an amusing annoyance—a dog that won’t be housebroken—and an irrelevant part of his life seemed so unfair. I’d bet in another time, he’d have her carted off to the asylum. Like I might’ve been, with my weak arm.

  “No,” I said quietly, as gently as I could. “I don’t know things.”

  She held fast to my hand. Her face had taken on a peculiar glow. “But you feel them sometimes, don’t you? Their presence? The weight of them?”

  The nerves in my hand were pinging in a way I hadn’t felt in years. Like needles all over.

  Ember sang softly. “There’s a land that is fairer than day, and by faith we can see it afar . . .”

  Her voice was easy and professional, with a unique smoke-throated rasp. It conjured up the sensation of sun after rain. Steam rising up from a grassy field. The musty smell of straw and old wood, canvas and human bodies. I heard the piano and the bass, heavy thunder from speakers rigged to poles. Everybody in the room seemed to come to attention. I stared at her.

  Ember had drawn closer to me. “Can I tell your fortune, Eve?”

  Althea’s head turned sharply from the window. She glanced at me, but as our eyes met, I couldn’t read her expression.

  “Sure, I guess,” I said.

  Ember didn’t speak. Instead she sang again, the next line of that old revival hymn—“For the Father waits over the way to prepare us a dwelling place there . . .” She nodded. “You know it, right?”

  I realized I was clutching her hand in return now. I nodded back, then sang with her, “In the sweet by and by we shall meet on that beautiful shore.”

  It was uncanny, the way our voices blended—her soprano and my alto hooking on to the other’s notes—then broke apart again, like we’d sung this a million times together. Now both Althea and Jason were staring, and Griff had pulled one earbud out.

  Ember let go of my hand. “Your arm.”

  I met her eyes.

  “There’s something about it, isn’t there? Something different?”

  I shook my head, pressed my lips together. I could feel Griff watching us, but I wasn’t about to volunteer any information.

  Ember’s forehead scrunched as she concentrated. “Her right arm was hurt too, right? Dove’s. I remember Granny Bru told me this story. When they were at the fair—”

  “Hey, guys,” Griff tapped on his phone screen and pointed at a small white cube tucked behind a plant on a set of shelves. “The funniest thing. Listen.”

  Out of his phone came the sound of the tinny, scratched recordings. One of Margaret Luster’s old tapes on the memory stick she’d given me.

  “In the sweet by and by we shall meet on that beautiful shore,” sang the voice from the speaker. Dove’s.

  “What is that?” Ember asked.

  Griff spoke over the music.
“It’s some old tapes of Dove and Charles we were given. When you guys started singing, I realized that was the last song I’d been listening to.” His gaze met mine, and once again, I felt my skin prickle. I’d thought he had interrupted in order to derail Ember’s questioning about my arm. But in a way, in the strangest, eeriest way, maybe, instead, Dove had done it . . .

  Ember turned to me, her hand gripping mine. “It’s not a coincidence. It’s a sign.” Her eyes were wide and shining, and her neck was flushed a deep pink, and I felt an immediate, visceral need to get away from her.

  Thankfully, just then, Jason stood and clapped his hands. “Okay! We should get started looking, don’t y’all think? We have a little over twenty-four hours before Eve has to engage with this guy. In the meantime, I invite you to turn this place upside down.”

  Ember walked to Jason and chucked him under the chin. “We can pray to St. Anthony to help you find a lost item. Bet you Southern Baptists didn’t know that.”

  He ignored her. “I’ll unlock all the doors to every closet and maid’s room and butler’s pantry. I’ll also turn on all the lights and open all the curtains. No corner, no nook or cranny’s off-limits.”

  “Thanks again,” I said.

  “No problem,” he said. “And here’s the deal: For the next day and a half, I won’t tell a soul on my staff about this. But if we find the coin and set the guy up, I’m calling every local and national news outlet that exists to be there when he gets busted.”

  “Deal,” I said.

  We trooped into the wide hall.

  Griff stuffed his earbuds into his jeans pocket. “Check for hidden compartments, behind any built-in drawers or cabinets and for loose boards on stairways. Old houses are known for their creative hiding places.” His hand rested against my lower back for a fleeting moment, and normally it would’ve sent a thrill through me. But I was still off-balance from earlier. The way Ember and I sang together . . . and then her question about my arm.