Frank had been back in Drexel for two years. When he’d joined the army and gone to Fort Benning, Georgia, to be trained as a paratrooper, he thought never to come back. He’d gotten on the bus, his clothes in a suitcase held together by an old belt, and ridden north. That whole long bus ride through Missisippi and Alabama, he’d never once turned to look at what he was leaving behind. He’d only looked ahead. For the first time in his life he’d seen the soft range of the Smokey Mountains, the bluish mist that clung to them and gave them their name. He’d met other cracker farm boys from other towns just like Drexel. He’d grown hard and tough and learned to kill. He’d picked up the pieces of his friends in brace works and foxholes after the explosion of a mortar shell. In Paris, France, he’d kissed girls who were glad to be alive. He’d done all of those things without ever a thought of going back home to the wet wool summers of Mississippi. Yet here he was, discharged from a hospital where they told him he’d healed from wounds that no one but himself could ever see. “Frank!”
He turned to look at the sheriff.
“Mr. Bramlett says his wife was wearing a red-and-white blouse and white slacks.”
He wondered what he was supposed to do with this information. “Okay.”
“Her shoes were sandals with three straps across the top.”
“Okay,” Frank said, because there was no other response. “I’m going to walk down the road,” he said. He had no real goal in walking, but it would get him away from the knot of men who were so busy kowtowing to Lucas they’d forgotten why they were on a little-used road at sunset.
There were indentations in the sand, wallowed out dips that had begun to collect the falling night, but the sand was too soft to hold any useful impression. He followed them for half a mile along the ditch, saw where they crossed the road and disappeared in the thick pinewoods.
He felt a sensation on the back of his neck, like someone breathing on him. He swallowed and stepped into the pine trees. Darkness touched him, a cool promise. He moved deeper into the trees, seeing how the trunks were black against the shafts of slanting golden light. His footsteps were swallowed by the thick layer of pine needles. Once, long ago, the land had been covered with hardwoods. Those trees had been felled and harvested, floated down the area rivers. Pines, trees that matured in thirty years instead of a hundred for an oak, were planted instead. He thought of the saw that hung on his back porch. His grandfather Gustave’s double-handled saw, the one he’d used with his brother Alfred when they were young men.
He was still thinking of the saw when he noticed what looked like a white dove. The light in the woods was dim, and he moved closer to the bird. It hovered on the ground, moving gently and making sounds like a low warble.
He stared at it hard and realized it wasn’t a bird. It was a foot. He began to run through the underbrush. He heard the moaning then. He angled through the trees so that he saw her body, white hip rising from the bed of pine needles, long legs tapered, breasts floating gently amidst the blood that covered her torso and throat.
She was alive.
Marlena Bramlett’s face was beaten beyond recognition. The eyes were swollen shut, the skin purpling and split around her mouth.
“Marlena,” he said, kneeling beside her. His hands moved over her cool flesh. She’d been cut on both breasts and sliced from her sternum to her pelvis. The wound didn’t appear to be life-threatening, but blood had seeped all over her. There was blood between her legs and all over her thighs, but he couldn’t tell the source of it.
“Marlena,” he said again.
“No,” she said, shaking her head, her blond curls stained with her own blood and particles of dirt.
He scooped her into his arms. She struggled for a moment and then stopped, her head hanging back behind him as he carried her out of the woods.
He walked through the woods for most of a lifetime. He made his way down the road, the burden of the woman making him think each step. In the middle of the road, the men turned, one by one. Frank ignored Huey and Junior and Pet. His gaze was on Lucas Bramlett. Even when Frank was close enough for Bramlett to recognize his wife, he didn’t move.
“Good Lord Almighty,” Huey said. He rushed to the patrol car and radioed the dispatcher to send an ambulance.
Frank stood with Marlena in his arms. Junior and Pet were openly staring at her, their eyes devouring her nakedness.
“There’s an old blanket in the back of the patrol car,” Frank said. “Get it.” He spoke to Lucas, but it was Pet who jumped to get the blanket, Pet who draped it over the unconscious form of the woman as Frank held her, arms and legs dangling as blood dripped slowly into the thirsty sand of the road.
4
The old Kimble house had once been the showplace of Drexel. Alfred and Gustave Kimble, two brothers who’d emigrated from the economic hardship of a Finland under the thumb of Russia, had used their brawn to build a house of whimsy, a total contrast to their unsmiling faces and compulsion to work from sunup to sundown. The brothers had built the house together, as they did everything. The plan was to marry and bring their brides to the turreted house trimmed with ornate gingerbread and gilt shingles that glowed in the morning sun. To entertain their wives, the brothers constructed hidden staircases and a library filled with classics, biography, and verse. The large kitchen held two stoves, two sinks, and countertops spacious enough to accommodate two cooks. The brothers planned and built, using the timber they felled with their own hands, selecting only the heartwood. By the time the house was finished, the brothers were in their forties. They were handsome men, tall and straight in posture and morality. When they decided to marry, they did so together. Alfred found his bride first, a darkling girl with eyes the color of a winter sky. Her name was Anna. The bride that Gustave found could not have been more opposite. Greta was tall and blond and filled with laughter. They held a double wedding, and the brothers married amidst red roses and white lilies, flowers symbolizing the two brides.
For the first five years the Kimble house was the center of culture in the town. And then Greta got pregnant. Stories began to float around the town that Anna had lost her mind with jealousy. Alfred’s wife began to look unkempt, her dark hair, always worn in a shining coronet, hung about her shoulders, unwashed.
Greta began to leave the house early in the morning, walking into town to shop and visit with her friends. She said she was afraid of her sister-in-law, afraid to remain in the house when Gustave was working. There were arguments that ended in tears from the women and blows from the men. By the time twin boys, Thomas and George Kimble, were born, the brothers no longer spoke to each other. The house had been divided. A thin peace was restored, until the morning that Greta and Gustave awoke to find one of their babies missing. Greta and Gustave searched high and low on their side of the house. There was no sign of the baby. The sheriff was called. Baby George was found dead in the arms of his aunt. His neck had been broken.
Gustave lost his mind. He took his pistol and shot his sister-in-law in the heart. Then he turned the gun on his brother, shooting him in the forehead. Gustave, at last, turned the gun on himself, leaving his widow to raise the only heir to the Kimble name. Greta packed her things and the baby and moved to Sumrall, where she had a sister.
The house remained empty for years after that, until Thomas grew old enough to marry and return to Drexel. He brought his new bride to the house where they shut off two thirds of the place and made their life in the first-story rooms. Frank Kimble had been born in the house. He’d grown up there, and it seemed he’d spent his boyhood watching for the true owners of the house to return. His grandfather and great-uncle and -aunt hid in the dark corners of the unused second and third floors. For most of his childhood, the house had terrified him. After the war, he came back to the house. He was not so easily frightened, and Drexel was his only option.
The old house was dark when Frank pulled into the yard. He walked up the steps, noting, as he did every time he came home, that the porch needed painting. The fi
rst summer he’d come home from the war, he’d sanded and painted the entire exterior of the house. He’d taken different shades of green and redone the shake shingles that fronted all of the turrets. He’d painted the gingerbread a gleaming white. Somehow, though, he’d never gotten to the gray boards of the porch.
The interior contained the furniture he’d known as a boy. He entered the front door, letting the screen slam behind him. The sound woke the ghosts. He caught them out of the corner of his eye, the slender form of his great-aunt Anna, the body of an infant in her arms hiding the blood that spread across her chest. He kept walking to the kitchen. He went straight to the sink where he washed his hands, the blood rinsing pink against the white porcelain. An ambulance had transported Marlena to the hospital. She’d been delirious, unable to tell him what had happened to her.
There’d been no sign of the child, Suzanna, or the owner of the Chevy abandoned on the side of the road. But Frank had begun to put a picture together. Someone had nearly killed Marlena and snatched Suzanna. If his hunch was right, there would be a demand for ransom in a few hours.
Marlena was in surgery now. The doctor had said she had severe internal damage. It would be hours before she’d be able to talk, and there was the possibility that she’d never be right in the mind. The doctor had said the blows to her face and head were severe, enough to cause brain damage if there was any swelling inside her head.
Marlena’s ruined face was still in his mind when he walked to the parlor and poured whiskey into a cut crystal glass his grandmother Greta had once used for her entertainments. He drank the whiskey fast, then poured another. In the far corner of the room his uncle Alfred stood watching, the bullet hole in the center of his forehead like a third eye. Frank ignored his great-uncle. He carried his drink to the bathroom where he shaved, took a hot bath, and redressed, preparing to go to the hospital.
The hospital was a one-story brick building with a tin walkway over ramped cement where the ambulance parked. The injured were pulled out of the ambulance, the legs of the collapsible stretcher extended, and rolled up the ramp and into the emergency room. Two hard-backed chairs had been placed in the corridor for those waiting on emergency victims or those with a loved one in surgery. Jade sat on one chair, waiting for Lucas Bramlett. After he’d called her to the hospital, he’d disappeared. Marlena was in surgery, struggling to live.
When Lucas reappeared from behind a partition, his gaze found Jade and lingered. “It might be a blessing if she died,” he said.
Jade kept her face carefully blank. “What about Suzanna?”
“Marlena never said a word. Whoever attacked her must have taken Suzanna.” He sat down and put his elbows on his knees. “They don’t know if my wife will ever be able to talk again.” He stood up, as if he couldn’t bear to relax. “Will you stay with her, Jade?”
“I’ll stay tonight,” she said.
“No, I mean permanently. She’s going to need someone to care for her. She can’t even eat. Marlena’s been good to you. She—” He stopped abruptly.
“I’ll stay tonight. We can think about this tomorrow.” Jade felt her bones against the chair. She was tired. She’d worked all day in the beauty shop, then gone to the funeral home and helped Elwood prepare Horace Bradshaw for his funeral. She was just finishing up there when Lucas had appeared, wanting her at the hospital. “I’ll see about a cot,” Lucas said.
“They won’t give you a cot for me,” Jade said. “Make sure there’s a chair.”
He left her, going to the nurse’s desk where he could fire orders at the two middle-aged women in white uniforms. Jade leaned her head against the wall. She had an image in her mind of Marlena on her wedding day. Jade had been hired to help with the wedding. She’d dressed the bridesmaids’ hair and helped Marlena twist her long blond curls into a more sophisticated look.
The wedding dress had been a white satin sheath with a long train sewn with tiny crystals that caught the light. The veil floated over Marlena’s face, concealing the glint of victory in the bride’s smile. Marlena, a seventeen-year-old girl, had caught the most eligible bachelor in Jebediah County, in the whole southeastern corner of the state. Marlena had the two-carat diamond on her finger to prove it, and within the hour, she’d have the band of gold that sealed the marriage. Jade had not talked to Marlena about her prospective husband. She hadn’t repeated the stories she’d heard from two black girls who sold their bodies for white men’s pleasure. Jade had not told Marlena because she knew Marlena didn’t have a choice. Lucas Bramlett had been selected for her to catch. Now she had him, and Lucille Longier, Marlena’s mother, could go on with her role as the first lady of Drexel. Lucas’s money would buy that for her.
She heard the door of the operating room open, and Dr. Nelson McMillan stepped into the hallway. His expression was grim, his shirt soaked with blood. “Where’s Lucas?” he asked.
Jade rose to her feet, the white shoes she’d once valued so highly pinching her toes in a cruel grip. “He was at the nurses’ desk.” But he was gone. He’d left.
“I have to go home and get some rest,” the doctor said. “Tell him I’ll be by tomorrow around noon.”
“How is she?” She held him with her words. She did not call Marlena her sister—had never said the words aloud. Jade cared about Marlena, and she pitied her. Jade felt a need to protect her, from both Lucas and Lucille. The two people who were supposed to love her most seemed unable to love anyone, and Jade never failed to thank the fates for Jonah and Ruth. “Can I see Marlena?”
The doctor looked at her, something dark bubbling in his tired eyes. “Her injuries are severe. It’s a wonder she’s alive.”
“Will she be all right?”
He considered, that restless look stirring. “I don’t know.”
“Her little girl. Did she say anything about Suzanna?”
He shook his head. “She hasn’t said anything. I don’t know if she can. If she’s lucky and she does regain consciousness, she won’t remember much.” His mouth twisted. “The bastards raped her with a pine limb. They tore her cervix and her uterus. She’ll never have another child. There’s hemorrhaging in the retinas of her eyes. She may be blind. The good news is that the cuts she sustained weren’t life-threatening. Of course, it took over two hundred stitches to close her up, but that’s minor compared to the rest.”
Too angry to remain, the doctor walked away. Halfway down the hall, he threw his mask and surgical hat to the floor.
Jade returned to her chair and was still there when the stretcher bearing Marlena was wheeled out of recovery and pushed down the hall. Jade followed to a private room. No one spoke to her. The nurses arranged the drips, turned on the fluorescent light above the bed, and left.
The hospital room was tinted green, a color that made the blood in Marlena’s hair look black and the blond look cheap. The only sound was the shush of Marlena’s breathing, the only movement the rise and fall of her chest. Outside the partially opened door, the shoes of nurses squeaked on the waxed linoleum.
Jade moved from the shadows, picking up a white washcloth and filling a basin with water. She wrung the cloth with both hands and gently touched it to Marlena’s temples and forehead, working at the crusts of blood. She pushed aside the hospital gown. The black stitches ran in a straight line from her sternum to her pelvis. It looked like someone had tried to gut her. There were more stitches on both breasts, Xs outlined with black stitches.
Jade rewet the cloth and wiped more, thinking that Marlena would no longer wear her black-and-yellow bikini at the summer parties she held at her private swimming pool. A lot of things had changed for Marlena.
5
Early morning light filtered through the yellow curtains of the second-floor bedroom window. A fly buzzed against the screen, its electric green body thumping, demanding entrance. Dotty Strickland turned her face, catching the light full on her cheek. She examined her reflection in the mirror, searching for the faint crinkling of skin at the corner of
her eye that would mark the beginning of the end. Satisfied, she put on lipstick and fluffed the curls she’d just taken down from foam curlers. She examined her reflection one last time, thinking that Jade Dupree had been right. Cutting her hair had taken at least five years off her appearance. The golden blond, from a bottle, had been her idea. Dotty ran down the stairs to the kitchen, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.
Heat blasted her face as she pulled the metal casserole pan and a baking sheet of biscuits out of the oven. She put the pan on the top burner, peeled back the tinfoil, and nodded in satisfaction at the perfectly browned crust of cheese. There wasn’t a man alive who could refuse her sausage, eggs, grits, and cheese casserole.
She put the hot biscuits in a basket and covered them with a cloth, picked up the pan, and headed to her car, an older model Ford. No traffic was stirring as she drove through the main street of Drexel. Her watch showed half past six. She was right on time.
One hand fluffed her curls as she left Drexel behind and drove two miles down the main highway to the two-story gray house where her best friend Marlena lived. A frown touched Dotty’s face. Marlena was in the hospital. She’d been attacked and nearly killed. The talk was all over town, and the details coming out of the hospital were just awful. Someone had raped Marlena with a tree limb. It was just horrible. And they’d cut her. They’d sliced her like a gutted cow.
Dotty forced that image from her mind and concentrated on the task at hand. As Marlena’s friend, Dotty was trying to help out by making breakfast for Lucas Bramlett. Lucas wasn’t a man who would know his way around a kitchen. He’d been raised with a silver spoon in his mouth. He liked to eat at six-forty-five sharp. Every morning. Marlena had told her that with a roll of her eyes. “Like the whole world will end if he doesn’t have hot food in front of his face at six-forty-five.”
Dotty had ignored Marlena’s sarcasm. Marlena didn’t appreciate having a man like Lucas. Dotty was Marlena’s best friend, but there were things that Marlena did that were just pure-dee self-destructive, Like complaining about making breakfast for the man who kept her in such style and comfort.
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