Summer in the South

by Cathy Holton

  Outside the window, a fat bee tapped repeatedly against the glass. In the crowns of the tall trees, leaves fluttered on an errant breeze.

  “You can’t think my family will be happy about this novel,” he said.

  “It’s not really about your family.” He gazed at her forlornly until she looked away. She said, “It’s fiction, Will.”

  “You’ve made Josephine and Clara murderers.”

  “Not Josephine and Clara. Lillian and Rose.”

  “You can’t just change the names! Everyone will see through that.”

  “I’m not saying it’s the truth. I’m not saying it’s what really happened. It’s just the way my story evolved. It gave them the most motive to kill Charlie.”

  “If you publish this my family will be a laughingstock in this town.”

  “What is it you expect me to do, Will?”

  They had reached an impasse and they both knew it.

  He sipped his coffee, carefully avoiding her gaze. “I suppose I blame myself,” he said. “If I’d been more open about Charlie from the beginning, you wouldn’t have been so curious. But it’s hard, Ava. That’s not the way I am. I can’t just open myself up the way some people can. And down here, you’re raised a certain way. You’re taught to keep some things private, family matters especially. It’s just the way it’s done.”

  “Everyone worships the past but no one really wants to talk about it.”

  He sank down on the edge of the bed. “I wasn’t trying to close myself off from you. That was never my intention.”

  “I know, Will.” She stood looking down at his bowed head.

  “And you’re right. I haven’t been honest about a lot of things.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to explain.”

  He looked up at her. “Humor me,” he said coldly. His eyes slid away from her, coming to rest on the box holding her manuscript. He sat quietly staring as if contemplating a plunge into deep, frigid water. “You asked me once about the Gray Lady. The ghost. You asked me if I’d ever seen her and I said no. That wasn’t true. I did see her. Or at least I thought I did. Several times when I was a child. A small, smoky figure standing on the landing beckoning to me.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I cried. I wouldn’t go upstairs without Josephine to hold my hand.”

  “Did you tell her?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said, ‘Don’t be afraid. She’s one of us.’ ”

  Ava put a hand out and touched his face.

  “I wanted it to work with us, Ava.”

  “I know.” She sank down beside him. “And we’ll always be good friends. But I could never make you happy. You know that. I don’t want the same things you want. I’m nothing like Hadley.”

  “Hadley?” He laughed harshly. “Thank God you’re nothing like her.”

  She blinked, confused. “But I thought after the other day at Jake’s that you must still love her.”

  “I didn’t love her, but Jake did.”

  “Will,” she said gently, shaking her head. “You were engaged to her but you didn’t love her? You dated her for four years but you didn’t love her?”

  He got up without a word and went out.

  She was still sitting on the bed when he returned a few minutes later with a large cardboard box in his hands. He sat down on the edge of the bed with it on his lap, took out a framed photo, and gave it to Ava.

  “Here’s a photo of Hadley when I first met her, when I thought she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.” He reached into the box and took out a faded pressed carnation, frail and dry as old paper. “Here’s the boutonniere from our first dance, where I caught her in the cloak-room with someone else.” He laid it down on the bed and took out a small velvet box. “And here’s the promise ring I gave her that she returned to me the summer before she went to Europe. It was the most miserable summer of my life, lying up there in my room imagining her in the arms of English schoolboys.” His voice had become increasingly bitter as he spoke.

  “And here’s a photo of her the following fall when she returned to school and we agreed to see other people, which meant that I moped around and watched while she went through a steady stream of boyfriends.”

  He picked up a photo of himself, Hadley, and Jake standing in formal clothes in front of a stone chapel and passed it to Ava.

  “Of course, my own cousin, a boy who had been almost a brother to me, who had attended the same school, the one person I trusted above all else. Even I didn’t imagine that she could be capable of that. But she was. They were.”

  His expression was anguished, sullen. She gave him back the photo and he placed it, facedown, in the box. “I swore I’d never forgive them.”

  Ava didn’t know what to say. She sat with her hands in her lap, staring at the bright patch of blue sky beyond the window.

  “What you saw the other day wasn’t about me and Hadley. It was about me and Jake.” He was quiet, folding the flaps of the box down. When that was done he set it on the floor at his feet. He said hesitantly, “I may have been wrong about Jake. I realize that now. Maybe he left school and went to California to give Hadley and me a chance to be together. Maybe he thought he was doing the right thing. I know he loved her. He didn’t know her like I did.”

  “She told him you two were broken up. She lied to him from the beginning.”

  He stared at his hands. A moment later he lifted his head and gazed out the window. The light slanting through the glass accentuated his pallor, the deep shadow along his cheeks where he hadn’t shaved. Ava had a sudden desire to touch him, to comfort him, but she was afraid he would misunderstand her actions.

  “The sad thing is, all that anger wasn’t necessary because I didn’t love her anymore. I realized that after I found out about her and Jake. I guess I saw her then for who she really was. It was an ideal I loved, not the real girl, but I was too young to know that.”

  Ava slid her hand into his and he looked down at it gratefully.

  “When she came to see me not long after I broke off our engagement, I told her how I felt, all the cruel, hurtful things I’d wanted to say to her for years. When she left, she was crying and I didn’t care.” He looked at Ava, his eyes wretched, bleak. “I’ve always wondered—was I responsible for her death? Was she crying so hard she couldn’t see the road? Or did she kill herself, knowing that I’d have to live with the guilt the rest of my life, knowing that Jake would have to live with the loss? Because she was capable of that. She was capable of throwing her life away in one final act of spite.”

  Ava put her arms around him and he buried his face against her, holding her fiercely. She stroked his hair.

  She said, “I’m sorry, Will. I’m so sorry.”

  Later, she went out to take a call from Jake’s mother and when she came back in, Will was standing at her desk holding the photo of Charlie Woodburn.

  “Is this who I think it is?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “He looks like Jake.”

  “A little.”

  “Was it Jake who told you about Josephine and Clara?” His voice was cool and noncommittal. He seemed less agitated over Jake now, as if whatever had stood between them all these years had diminished. Or maybe it was simply the act of telling her the truth about Hadley, the act of confession that had changed everything.

  “Jake didn’t want me asking questions about Charlie any more than you did. He knew it would upset you and the aunts, and he doesn’t seem to care what happened. It was something Alice said that got me thinking that it could have been Clara who killed Charlie. She said that Charlie used to torment Clara by threatening to horsewhip her father. It was a time when a white man could do whatever he wanted to a black man with little fear of retribution. So maybe Clara believed Charlie’s threats enough to poison him to protect her father. I knew she couldn’t have done it alone. She would have had to get his body to the river, and
that’s when I started thinking about Josephine. I found her diary, and I knew how much she hated Charlie. How much she wanted to be rid of him for Fanny’s sake. And she loved Clara like a sister. She would have been willing to do anything to protect Fanny and Clara.”

  He set the photo down carefully on the desk. She shrugged, smiling faintly. “It wasn’t too hard to imagine Josephine and Clara on one hot, fateful day finally taking matters into their own hands and getting rid of Charlie Woodburn.”

  She waited for him to say something. He stood with his hands hanging down at his sides, facing her across the room.

  “There’s something between you and Jake, isn’t there.” He said it as a statement, not a question.

  Ava met his eyes. “Yes,” she said.

  He nodded once, looked around the room. “You don’t have to be in a hurry to move out of here, you know. No one’s evicting you.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “Will you move in with him?”

  “No.” She told him about the trailer Jake’s mother had offered to let her use.

  “I know the place well. Jake and I used to have wild parties out there.” He smiled. A look of sadness passed swiftly across his face. “It’s the perfect place for a writer. Quiet, secluded.” He gave her a brief, devilish grin. “I think it even has indoor plumbing.”

  “Thank God.” She made a comical face. She folded one leg under her and sank down on the bed. He walked over to the window and stood looking out with his hands clasped behind his back.

  “He misses you, Will. You and Fanny and Josephine. I think he’s lonely for all of you but he doesn’t know how to make it right. Maybe you could see him. Put it all behind you once and for all, because I do think he’s sorry.”

  He didn’t turn around. “We’ll see,” he said quietly.

  They went into the kitchen and made sandwiches, then took them out on the verandah to eat. The sky had begun to darken. Several fierce gusts of wind rattled the windows. It was the way August was down here. Blue skies in the morning and rain every afternoon.

  They sat in two rocking chairs with their plates and glasses resting on a small round table between them.

  Will gazed across the lawn, his feet tapping lightly against the floor-boards. “I want you to know that whatever happens, we’ll still be friends.”

  “I’m glad,” she said. The rain began, falling softly. “Do you think Josephine and Fanny and Clara will feel the same way?”

  “Well,” he said, chewing thoughtfully. “You might want to wait until they’re dead to publish.”

  “Yeah. I thought about that.” And it was true, she had thought about putting the manuscript away in a drawer and taking it out later to see it with fresh eyes. To see if it was still as good as she thought it was.

  “Of course, that’s just an idea,” he said. “It’s a fine story. A damn fine story about a Colorado cattle baron and his violent offspring. It’s got it all: greed, love, murder, even a vengeful family ghost.” He grinned at her and she smiled gratefully. “You’ve got it wrong though, about Clara and Josephine.”

  “You don’t think they killed Charlie?”

  “Neither one is capable of that.”

  The rain began to fall more forcefully, drumming along the roof and gutters. They sat quietly rocking, listening to its melancholy music.

  He said, “You’ve also given Josephine a lover in your story, which is pretty far-fetched.”

  “Is it? She was an attractive woman, and she never married. Alice says it was the family disgrace of Fanny’s elopement that kept her from marrying. I imagined her being in love, and I imagined Charlie putting an end to the affair just by his presence in the house. Certainly Josephine hated Charlie. You can see that in her diary.”

  “Well, in your story that’s fine. But in reality I don’t believe it ever happened. And another thing,” he said. “I don’t for one moment think my great-grandfather James meant to give Longford to Charlie Woodburn. How did you come up with that?”

  She told him about the journal entry and the letter Rachel Rowe had found.

  “So you’re saying that if Josephine had not ignored her father’s wishes, if she had not ordered the deed destroyed, then Longford would belong to Jake today and not to me?”

  Ava said nothing, staring out at the rain.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said.

  She got up, went into the house, and came back out with Josephine’s diary and a file folder filled with letters and documents Rachel had found. She set them down on the table between them.

  “This material is yours. Do with it what you want,” she said. “I’ve told my story. I’ve made all the pieces fit. The historical truth doesn’t matter. No one will ever know what really happened to Charlie Woodburn.”

  A sudden blast of wind swept the porch, jangling the chains of the porch swing. Shivering, Ava rose and went to fetch a sweater.

  On the threshold of her room, she stopped and stood, very still, staring. The pages of her manuscript lay scattered across the bed and floor as if tossed by vengeful hands. Thinking the wind might have blown them, she walked stiffly across the room to the windows, but pulling back the shutters she was startled by her pale, frightened reflection in the glass. A shiver of fear and trembling possibility rose up her spine.

  The windows, she saw, were tightly latched.

  1931

  Woodburn, Tennessee

  Pain was part of love.

  Fanny had learned that all those years ago watching Papa suffer following Mother’s death. She had learned it blindly following Josephine. And she had learned it, too, married to Charlie Woodburn, had learned to take his anger and sorrow into her own body as she did the Eucharist, to submit gracefully to the terrible fury of his despair. He knew of the suffering quality of love, too. She had heard him cry out for his dead mother at night, his hair dark against the pillow, his face in sleep so boyish and innocent, and she had comforted him, holding him to her breast until he woke and, in disgust, pushed her away.

  She had seen that same suffering in his face as he watched his son, King, toddling on crooked legs across the verandah, pulling himself up by grasping his father’s trousers in his tight little fists. How tender Charlie’s face became when he looked at King! And he would feel the same way about their own son, too. She put her hands there now and felt the child move, trailing one tiny foot across her swollen belly.

  Her own poor child who would never know his father. Fanny knew this now. She had dreamed it the other night. Papa had come to her in her dreams, holding a bowl of spiky fruit in his hands.

  It was sad, of course, but inevitable. Some things are not meant to be.

  Was it only two days ago that Charlie had climbed the stairs after his fight with Josephine in the kitchen? It seemed a lifetime ago. Fanny had been sleeping but had heard his footsteps on the stairs, waking with a start and preparing herself for the inevitable. Their voices, raised in anger, had been part of her dreams, and that’s how she knew that they’d been quarrelling, that’s how she knew Charlie would come seeking retribution.

  She was unprepared for the depth of his anger, and as he stepped into the room and she saw his face, she put her hands instinctively to her belly. He crossed in several quick strides, and Tom Penny, on the pillow beside her, arched his back and hissed. He leaned down and picked up the cat by the scruff of the neck, and Fanny, frantic now, rose and began to claw at his face. Surprised, he looked down at her and laughed. It was at that moment that Tom Penny turned and sank his teeth and claws into Charlie’s arm, and with a shouted oath, Charlie flung the cat against the wall. It hit with a sound like a ripe melon breaking. Fanny leapt up and ran to Tom Penny, kneeling and cradling his broken body in her arms, and Charlie, surprised by her tears, stood for a moment, breathing heavily.

  Then, without a word, he turned and left the room.

  She buried him in the garden where she had buried the other Tom Pennys, six neat little graves in a row. Then she took h
er shears and her gloves and her basket and went to the corner of the old stable, where she knelt and picked several spiky balls from the castor bean plants. She went inside the stable, plucked out the seeds, cut them into small pieces with her shears, and put them in a bowl, careful not to get any on her skin, and when she’d finished she took the bowl into the house. She could hear Charlie in his room, moving around. She could hear the clinking of bottles, and she went to the stove and scrambled bacon and eggs in a big frying pan. She put the eggs on a plate and mixed in the tiny seed pieces, then crumbled the bacon on top the way he liked it.

  She called to him to come for breakfast. They were alone in the house, just the two of them. He sat down and began to eat, and when he had finished, Fanny took the plate and fork out and buried them with the gloves and the shears behind the stable, just like she had seen Papa and John do with the rats all those years ago.

  The following day he was too sick to rise. Fanny offered to make him some broth and he said weakly, “You do it. I don’t trust that sister of yours.” And she went into the kitchen, and when the broth had cooled she dropped in pieces of the seeds and took it in to him, sitting beside the bed and feeding him carefully.

  Josephine came in and said, “Should we call the doctor?” and Fanny said, “No, he’ll be all right. He has a sensitive stomach is all.”

  “From all the drinking, no doubt.”

  “No doubt.”

  “Our reading club meets tonight.”

  “You go,” Fanny said. “I’ll look after him.”

  By evening he’d be gun to hallucinate, thrashing about in the bed, and when Fanny went in to him there was blood on his pillow and on the sheets. She cleaned him up and changed the sheets, then went out into the garden to bury the spoon and the bowl she’d used to feed him the broth. When she came back into the kitchen, he was standing there, fresh blood trickling down the corner of his mouth onto his nightshirt. The kitchen was dark but for a slash of moonlight coming in the long windows. Faintly in the distance, a gramophone played “Boléro.”