“I don’t know what I’d do without the work,” Mom said. “I just don’t know—”
I gritted my teeth. “Mom. Listen to me. We’ll talk soon. Now enjoy your flight and have another mimosa, okay?”
This was my fault, perpetuating Dove’s lie. But I couldn’t help remembering Althea’s words. Some people might even call it abuse. I couldn’t think straight, feelings of love and anger clashing inside me.
“Mom, I’ve got to run. Call me when you land.”
I walked into the hallway and looked up the shadowy stairs to the room that held the case of dusty error coins. We’d already searched it, multiple times, and hadn’t found the Flowing Hair. So why was I still so drawn there? What more did I think I could learn in that room?
I didn’t have an answer, but time was running out and there was nothing left to lose. “Mom, I’ve really got to run. You going to be okay?”
“I will, Eve. I’m going to be okay.”
Chapter Forty
Muscle Shoals, Alabama
1934
Singley lay on his bed in Mrs. Ezra Ennis’s boarding house in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, sleepless and raging. He clasped his hands behind his head and muttered a string of epithets at a set of cobwebs that gently swayed from the ceiling.
He’d been so calm the last few weeks, so at ease after that upset at Billy Sunday’s tabernacle. A month ago, he’d seen Ruth at that meeting, and her appearance on the stage had troubled him greatly.
Ruth was going by a new name, Davidson, and she was a part of an evangelist duo, this tasteless Hawthorn Sisters outfit. She looked like a harlot up on that stage. The lipstick, that filmy plum-colored dress with the ruffled collar that dipped below her creamy neck. She swayed when she sang, and oh how her eyes flashed and winked as she swung the hand of the girl next to her. She wasn’t the unblemished girl he’d met at Pritchard—not even the poor mite he’d pictured being helplessly ravished by hooligans—no. She was a common whore now, obviously.
But after he’d trailed her and her cohorts back to Florence, the Lord had spoken to him. Ruth’s descent into depravity wasn’t her fault. She’d been forced into it—by the hardships and the loneliness and the brutish men around her. And she still needed rescuing, still needed a Hosea to save her, now more than ever.
He had devised a plan. He couldn’t simply snatch her off the street. She’d run or her friends would fly to her rescue—and he didn’t fancy spending any time whatsoever in jail on charges of kidnapping. It was clear he had to be smart about it. He must plot his steps deliberately so that when he took possession of his intended, there would be no chance of losing her.
He committed himself to a new routine of waiting, which had begun to feel like a game to him. A delicious, drawn-out game, which involved the first move of procuring a place to stay near Ruth. He’d found this boarding house and concocted quite a story.
Mr. Robert Shallowford, ma’am, lately of Birmingham. I sold all that I had, save a small rental house in Tuscaloosa, to follow the Lord. I’ve been carrying on charity work amongst the needy children of the mills, but now I’m following the call of the Master to find myself a wife.
The woman to whom he’d told his tale swung her door wide open then, offering her cozy attic room. On the way to show him his new accommodations, she tittered on about how nice he smelled, how clean, like oranges and clove. He imagined himself strangling her.
He spent his days wandering the quaint town of Florence, asking about Ruth, hoping for a glimpse of her. He was told by the postmistress that she had cared for an elderly gentleman who’d wandered off and died most likely, a Mr. Steadfast Coe. He strolled past the great house a few times, nerves taut. Once, he thought he saw her step out onto the front porch, but he was so overcome that he hid behind a mimosa tree. He heard rumors of a young man about town. A vagabond who’d robbed a bank or two and said he knew Ruth. He saw the boy once, down at the ferry. Golden hair and broad shoulders. Handsome face and easy laugh.
His jealousy inflamed him and he fantasized about killing the boy, but he resisted the urge and continued to sniff around. He learned a few things. Namely that the boy had been involved in some bad business over in Texas. He found one of the boy’s cronies and told him the cops were hot on their tails. That they all better cut out of town if they wanted to stay free men.
Knowing Ruth was only a few miles away gave him a surprising sense of well-being. Nights, Singley—now Shallowford—spent at the boarding house. He smoked with Mr. Ennis and the other men in the backyard and, to their amazement, whistled in mourning doves. As the days passed, Singley reckoned he finally understood what it was the scriptures talked about, that peace that passeth understanding. He’d actually come to relish the leisurely hunt, the plotting of his next move. He dreamed of the shock on her face when she finally saw him.
And Mrs. Ennis made a delicious sage pot roast.
And then all that had changed. He decided to attend one of Ruth’s meetings—one smaller than Mr. Sunday’s—in Tupelo. A meeting where he could actually see her. He took a bath. Had Mrs. Ennis press out his good suit. Then, after shaving and splashing his face with witch hazel, he snuck into Mr. Ennis’s bathroom to splash a bit of Florida Water in his hair.
But, just after his arrival, that evil old witch in a white lace dress had gone and wrecked it all. Sticking her mannish finger in his face, she told him he wasn’t allowed entrance. Accused him of lascivious intentions. What right had she, that miserable cow of a female, to look upon him with the eye of judgment? Did not God judge a man Himself? Was He not the knower of all the secrets of a man’s heart—and not a hysterical woman bound by her limited scope of imagination and experience in the world? How dare that whore!
He threw back his tearstained face and lifted his bony hands to the ceiling. The moon cast a shadow against the ivy wallpaper, casting his fingers as a thorny thicket of brambles.
“‘Blessed are ye,’” he proclaimed to the ceiling. “‘When men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.’”
There came three thumps on the wall beside him from the lodger next door. “Lay off in there, you chucklehead. Or I’ll come in there and give you a wallopin’!”
He dropped his hands and rolled to his side.
The burning was back now. A relentless, almost intolerable pain in his body. He wanted to strangle something. Tear skin from flesh, flesh from bone, and bone from socket. He yearned to pound, to slice, to bludgeon until he was blood-soaked and spent. But because he couldn’t creep downstairs and throttle the bright Mrs. Ennis, he would have to settle his urges another way.
He took the pink ribbon from the brim of his hat and wound it round and round his wrist, pulling it tighter and tighter until his hand felt large and blue and disconnected from his arm. Until it felt like it was not a part of his body at all.
In the morning, he woke late to an empty house. There was a plate for him on the kitchen table, a warm tea towel draped over it, and a copy of the Florence Times beside his coffee cup. He opened it and saw the photograph on the lower corner of the third page. Two young girls, one plump and brunette, the other like a bird—all sleek, simple lines and tantalizing eyes. Hawthorn Sisters Healing Revival! the ad above the picture proclaimed. Holy Ghost Preaching, Prayer for the Infirm, Word of Knowledge in Operation.
Singley’s heart soared and he nearly burst into holy praise right there in Mrs. Ennis’s kitchen. The Hawthorn Sisters were appearing at the North Alabama State Fair.
Ruth had called to him, he had come, and she would soon be his.
Chapter Forty-One
Florence, Alabama
Present
I was pouring sweat. And it wasn’t because it was June in Alabama—the AC on Jason’s second floor was humming away. It must have been my nerves.
I looked around the op
en second-story landing. All the doors were shut. But I could smell the mildew and mothballs. The old scent of coal dust and propane. And maybe a whiff of something sweeter. Lavender or rose water. Did old desires, unsatisfied needs, have a smell? Fear supposedly did. Maybe other emotions did too.
I ran my hands along the banister. Steadfast had lived here with his family. Then Dove. And Bruna had walked these floors too. But now they were all dead and gone.
Dust to dust.
Whatever the case, I didn’t hear any murmuring voices or music on this floor. Only the dead, dead quiet.
I arced my toe along the worn red-and-blue-patterned carpet, then pivoted to face the front of the house. I hadn’t really noticed anything the first time I’d been up here. Ancient wallpaper covered the front wall, a fuchsia-and-plum concoction of grapevines and foxes. There was a delicate fan-shaped window below the ornate molding, but I couldn’t see the street outside, only white sky.
I squeezed my eyes shut and steadied myself on the banister. It wasn’t just me. It really was hot. The heat, along with the smell, was making me lightheaded. But I needed to get on with it.
The mint-green bedroom was just as I remembered—the case of coins on its pedestal near the window. I lifted the lid and pressed my finger into the center, that depression in the blue velvet reserved for the Flowing Hair Dollar. I felt a jolt. The smell of silver melting. The metallic tang filled my nostrils and tightened my jaw.
Made with a fine silver by the US mint director. Pressed with lettering around the planchet that was irregular, the weight of the silver inexact. They plugged the center to make the weight match, then distributed them.
Had Jason told me all that?
No . . . Griff must have read it to me. Something he found on the internet.
I lowered the lid and scanned the room. Canopied bed, dresser, wardrobe, and door. All opulent in their day—done with heavy silks and taffetas—now gone threadbare. But there was nothing new to see. We’d already gone through this room, Jason, Griff, Ember, and I, and come up empty-handed.
I turned back to the case and lifted the lid again. Carefully, I removed one of the coins from its velvet slot, hardly even realizing what I was doing. I felt the weight of it between my fingers. Thicker than a modern coin. Heavier. I liked the weight of it in my hand. And I had just a spark of a thought, an idea that I could feel forming in the back of my mind . . .
I went to the bedroom door, and there, my fingers traced the ornate plate and keyhole. The whorled pattern was a vine just like on the wallpaper out in the hall. My gaze traveled up the door. Just a simple six-paneled piece of solid oak, worn smooth from decades of hands pushing and pulling, slamming or throwing open. I touched the mechanism again, the metal smooth and cold under my fingertips. The keyhole, a perfect coin-slot size.
I examined the coin. It was copper, laced with a bluish-green patina that hadn’t been polished off. On this one, a penny, the letters were doubled, making me feel like my vision was blurred. It was hard to believe something so small, so simple, could be desired by so many people.
I held the coin to the slot, at the same time holding my breath. I’d started to tremble, but I ignored it and pushed the coin into the keyhole. It disappeared, clinking through the mechanism, and a second later, hit the bottom. I stepped back, observing the door as if for the first time, trying to order my thoughts. Every door in this enormous house could have a whole collection of coins stuck in their locks. But if Dove had hidden the coin, and hidden it in a door, there was only one that would be.
I ran downstairs, through the hall to the kitchen and into the maid’s room.
I grabbed a hammer from the metal shelves bursting with household detritus and went to work prying the bronze lock off the oak door. Eventually, I managed to separate the metal face from the wood. I shook it, peering down into the recesses of the door.
Nothing inside. Nothing that I could see. I threw the hammer across the room, and it crashed into a file cabinet and clattered to the floor. I rubbed my arm. It was throbbing. But what did that mean? Nothing. Other than the fact that one time, long ago in my mother’s womb, a clot had formed and blocked the flow of oxygen to my brain, killing the cells that controlled the muscle memory to my right arm.
That was it.
It didn’t mean I was going to find the missing coin. I wasn’t.
The search was over. Now all I had to do was go back to the hotel and call Danny. Get ready to clean up the mess Dove had made.
Then I heard something behind me. A voice, twangy, with that hint of hillbilly.
“Good to see you again, darlin’.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Muscle Shoals, Alabama
1934
The Hawthorn Sisters were scheduled to appear on the grandstand the last three nights of the week-long fair.
Arthur grumbled when he’d gotten word of their start time. “Six o’clock’s when God-fearing folks eat supper, not when they pray.” He said they should start at eight, or even later, but Ruth was secretly relieved. She was growing more and more uneasy with Arthur’s plan. The fewer people in the crowd to witness their charade, the better.
She’d received a short note typed on a thick sheet of creamy vellum from Charles Jarrod’s secretary in California telling her that the evangelist was ministering in South Africa, but that she’d certainly forward the correspondence on to him. It had not been the assurance Ruth had been hoping for.
She thought of the alternative. If she did really go through with Arthur’s scheme. Would the audience buy that some spindly girl was hearing, direct and clear as day, from the Spirit of God about where Steadfast Coe had wandered off? Could she pull off the acting required to convince the people?
All she’d ever really done was tell people what they already wanted to hear. Your headaches are healed in the name of Jesus . . . Lumbago, I rebuke you in the name of the Lord! I feel that rheumatism lessening . . . yes, indeed I do!
This was altogether a horse of a different color. Life and death. Surely, people would see that Ruth’s prophecy was only a stunt. They’d see right down to her black heart, and then they’d think she’d killed Steadfast.
Charles Jarrod was her only way out.
On Wednesday, Ruth planned to set off early for the grounds to get the lay of the land. She had thought she might hitch a ride on a hay truck across the railroad bridge to Muscle Shoals, but before Ruth was down the steps of Coe’s house, Bruna appeared in her father’s car.
The whole drive down, Bruna kept biting her lip, her hands gripping the steering wheel like she was wringing laundry. Once they parked, then entered the fair, she hung on to Ruth’s arm.
Ruth jostled her. “Let’s walk down the midway. I reckon you could win a watch for Arthur. I mean, they’re a bunch of junk and the hands don’t even move, but it’d be fun.”
“Why should I spend good money on Arthur?” Bruna tilted her chin up at a defiant angle. “He takes a third of everything we make, remember?”
More than a third, Ruth thought, but she didn’t say it. It was the first time she’d heard Bruna speak that way about Arthur. She took hold of Bruna’s elbow. “Let’s get some cotton candy.”
They strolled down the crowded midway, past the concessions of watered-down lemonade and hot dogs, the wheel of fortune tents and hoopla games promising safety razors or Kewpie dolls or pearl-handled revolvers for a ten-cent toss. Toward the end of the thoroughfare they came upon the show tents advertising whatsits and freaks of every shape and sort. Mostly two-headed creatures—calves and chickens and goats—and the odd assortment of mermaids and unicorns, which Ruth guessed were just gruesome fish and poor horses with paper-mache horns.
Beyond lay the Ferris wheel and the roller coaster and the grandstand where the vaudeville acts performed. That’s where Ruth and Bruna would sing and preach later that evening. Opposite that was the exhibition hall and stock pavilion.
They paid a nickel each for fluffy cotton candy and continued on to
the pavilion, a pole barn the town had built for the occasion with rows of crates for all the hogs and sheep and horses. Inside, a cacophony of snorts and snuffs and grunts and bleats greeted the girls. And the smell . . . Ruth thought she’d gotten used to it back at Dr. Asloo’s outfit, but she must’ve gotten soft working in Steadfast’s fancy house. The stench of manure and piss and creature was overpowering.
Bruna took her hand. “Let’s go look at the lambs. I love the lambs.”
They picked their favorite, a docile rambouillet from Scottsboro with a silky white face, white hooves, and the cleanest, softest pelt Ruth had ever felt. His name was Solomon.
Bruna looked wistful. “Isn’t he just the sweetest? I always did like the twenty-third Psalm the best. ‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.’ What could be nicer than that? To have someone always looking out for you?”
Ruth nodded. The way Daddy Warbucks picked Annie out of the orphanage and took her home. That had happened to her—with Steadfast. He’d given her the coin, and despite nearly getting blown to kingdom come with a shotgun and chased with an ax, living with him had turned out to be a pretty wonderful setup.
Bruna had gotten quiet again. “You don’t believe, Ruth, do you? The promises of the hymns? The things we preach at the meetings?” She hesitated. “God.”
Ruth kept her voice light. “Of course I do. Don’t be silly.”
“No, I don’t think you do. I don’t think the people can tell. But I can.”
A moment of uncomfortable silence yawned between them.
“It doesn’t matter to me,” Bruna hastened to add. “I just wanted to know because we’re friends. I wanted you to trust me enough to tell me the truth.”
Reviving the Hawthorn Sisters Page 22
