The congregation fanned themselves, enduring, since they could not change it, the heat caused by the hot day and the press of bodies in the small church. The air was thick with the smell of overwarm humanity, good clothes brought out of the back of armoires, hymn books, and varnished walls — all of it overpowered by the heavy, cloying scents of the wilting cape jasmine and honeysuckle that had been massed around the coffin to overcome the faint but unmistakable odor of death.
The preacher, mopping his face with his handkerchief, which he sometimes held to his nose, did not give a long eulogy. He finished his remarks, gulped for air, then motioned the pallbearers forward. They carried the coffin on their shoulders out the front doors and into the churchyard. A grave had been dug beside a row of graves that was each marked with a rust-colored iron rock tombstone. They set the coffin down beside it.
Johnny’s mother, moaning, barely able to walk so she had to be supported on both sides, followed the coffin to the graveside with other relatives. A chair was brought for her and she collapsed into it. The people gathered around, shuffling their feet, clearing their throats. Here and there a woman sniffed and held her head up to keep from crying. Beside Lettie, Aunt Em was blotting unembarrassed tears. Not far away stood Martin Eden, with his hat under his arm and his gaze straight ahead. Beyond him, on the edge of the crowd, was Colonel Ward, with Sally Anne and her family nearby.
The pallbearers stepped back from their task and stood shoulder to shoulder, their heads bent under the blistering sun, their hands clasped behind their backs. The preacher stooped and replaced flowers that had fallen off the coffin as it was set down. Then he took his Bible from under his arms and began to read.
“‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven…’”
Lettie allowed her gaze and her mind to wander. Scattered here and there in the graveyard were other graves marked with iron rock, some even piled with it. There were many, however, of engraved marble. In the corner was one grave with a tall monument that was covered by a small wooden structure and surrounded by an iron fence, like a dwelling for the dead. Cedars were planted here and there, along with cape jasmines and roses and evergreen periwinkle. Most of the graves were scraped clean of grass, but a few were overgrown. On nearly all of them was a vase of some kind — some expensive, some cheap — filled with the stems of dead and blackened flowers.
Her attention was drawn back to the grave. Ranny was one of the pallbearers. He stood staring at the ground, the sun striking golden gleams in his hair, his face flushed with what might be heat from his black suit and his exertion, but was more likely emotion. Johnny had been his friend, perhaps his only real friend.
The preacher concluded his reading, said an amen that was echoed with deep voices among those standing around the grave, then closed his Bible. He moved toward the bereaved mother, bending to console her. The brief, simple ceremony was over.
Almost. Ranny took a harmonica from his pocket. Looking neither to the right nor left, asking no one’s permission, and needing none, he cupped it in his hands and lifted it to his lips. He took a deep breath, let it out, took another. He began to play.
The pure, mournful sound rose, each note carefully, perfectly drawn, floating gently on the warm air. The clear, sweet melody spoke of friendship and laughter and camaraderie, of battles and long marches and lonely camp-grounds. It spoke of Johnny, with his red hair and freckles and love of life, his wide grin and quick, barbless wit, his tact and ready understanding. Wordless, unspeakably poignant, it was a tribute, a requiem, and a cry of grief.
Listening, Lettie thought of Johnny with trouble on his face, trouble that had turned to relief and to trust. They had failed him, she and Aunt Em. She had led him to his death, given him over to his killer. She had been one of the last people to see him alive. He had said to her, “I don’t guess I’ll be seeing you again.” And he hadn’t.
The last clear notes of the harmonica died away. Johnny’s mother was sobbing. The other women wiped their eyes. Men blew their noses and looked around to see if anyone had noticed. One or two went up to Ranny and shook his hand. The rest began to move away slowly, pausing in groups of three or four to talk in subdued voices. Mrs. Reeden was surrounded and taken to where a buggy sat at the nearest edge of the graveyard. Aunt Em went to speak to Sally Anne and her family, and they began to move back toward the church and their own buggy that waited beyond.
Lettie stood still, her gaze on the coffin heaped with flowers. Johnny was dead, and she had helped to kill him. And if that was not enough, she was protecting the man who had murdered him by her silence. She could make excuses, could say she was doing it for Aunt Em, but the truth could not be denied. The same weakness of the spirit and the flesh that had allowed her to give herself to the Thorn was preventing her from turning him over to the justice he deserved.
She was depraved. She had known that as she watched Ranny and heard him play for his friend. He was so simple and good. What she was doing to him was wrong, so wrong. It would be better for everyone if she went away.
She would go back to Boston where she knew what was expected of her, what was permitted and what would be scorned. She would go now, while it was still possible that she might regain a sense of who and what she was and what she must do with the rest of her blighted life. But first there was something she must do if she was ever going to be able to regain her self-respect, something she should have done weeks before when it would have served a worthwhile purpose, that of saving a life.
To her shame, she did not want to do it, even now. To her shame. The tears welling in her eyes threaded through her lashes and tracked slowly down her face.
A resolve, once taken, should be carried through as soon as possible. So Lettie had been taught, and so she did. When she and the others returned to Splendora, she went to her room, took off her hat and gloves and put them away, then sat down at the table where she wrote her letters. She drew paper toward her, unstoppered the ink, dipped her pen, and began at once to write.
The pen nib made a scratching sound that was loud in the quiet of her room. The smell of the ink was bracing. She did not pause to think; what was the need? She had composed what she must say on the drive back from the funeral, in the long twilight hours on the veranda, during the empty hours of the night, over and over again, waking and sleeping, for weeks.
The sense of finally doing something that was right sustained her until the last line was written and she had signed her name. A teardrop — where had it come from? — dropped on the page. She reached quickly for the blotter and held it on the drop until it was absorbed. The word where it had fallen was blurred. Let it go; she could not bear to write it out again.
She folded the paper with care and set it aside. Taking another sheet and positioning it in front of her, she dipped her pen again. She sat with the nib poised and ready. No words came. She put her pen down and put the paper away. It would be just as well if she delivered this message in person. She would do it in the morning, early.
The sun had gone down and shadows were gathering in the room. It was the blue hour of dusk when the summer heat began to loosen its iron grip. Through her open windows she could hear the murmur of voices from the veranda where Ranny and Aunt Em were sitting to catch the stir of the evening breeze. Somewhere in the fields behind the house a pair of doves were calling. The sound was plaintive, nearly despairing.
Lettie picked up the folded letter. She pushed back her chair and moved toward the door. She passed the dressing table and for a moment her reflection slid across the mirror above it. She paused, startled. Pale and composed and tight-lipped, her hair drawn back and severe, her mirrored image might have been that of her own grandmother, as in her picture that hung in the stairwell of the house in Boston. Swinging away, Lettie went quickly out of the room.
The smell of chicken roasting with garlic and onions and other herbs hung in the backyard near the kitchen. Mama Tass could be heard rattling silver and shaking pots on the stov
e. It would not be long before dinner was announced. She would have to hurry.
The sky in the west was shaded with lavender and gold. The colors had dyed the glassy surface of Dink’s Pond. The water, smelling faintly of fish and decaying vegetation, appeared placid. It was deceiving. Insects skated across it or hovered, nervously dancing, above it. There was a plopping sound and a small wave now and then as a feeding fish broke the surface. A slight roiling at the edge was the activity of young frogs and fingerlings. The arrow shape in the water was the track of a snake. The upright form in the shadows was a blue heron standing motionless on one leg, waiting for its supper.
Wherever there was life, death waited. It could not be avoided. But no man had the right to beckon it forward for another. No man.
There was the hollow tree. Lettie put the letter inside it and withdrew her hand.
Pain assailed her, settling in her chest. The Thorn would come and stand here where she stood now. He would put his hand inside and take her letter, touching the paper she had held. He would read it, and perhaps he would smile.
She put her hand out to the tree for support, leaning her forehead against the living wood. She had known it would be hard, but not this hard.
Betrayal.
He had betrayed her. He had taken her body and her spirit and changed them in some strange manner so that she hardly knew herself. He had awakened those primitive responses that lie dormant inside most civilized human beings. Helped by this damp and warm land where life was so abundant, helped even by Ranny, he had turned her into the kind of harlot who could love a murderer.
Love.
It did not seem possible. She hardly knew him. He came and went in a hundred disguises, a hundred moods, none of them ever quite the same. But he had touched her and held her and kept her from the storm, and there was in the taste and feel and sight of him something that her mind and body craved, something beyond desire, something that had no other word to encompass its meaning except love.
If she did not love him, why did his betrayal cause such anguish? Why did she feel as if in betraying him she was destroying herself?
She could not stand there forever. It was growing dark and she would be missed. She preferred that Aunt Em and Ranny not know what she had done, not while they could stop it. They would have to know when it was over, of course; there was no help for it. They would think that she had betrayed them, too. She was sorry about that, desperately sorry.
It could not be helped. The decision, the only one possible, was made. Now all she had to do was live with it. If she could.
She straightened, turned. Picking up her skirts, she walked back toward Splendora.
Ransom stepped out of the willows on the far side of the pond. He stood staring after Lettie with narrowed eyes and his hands resting on his hips. When she was out of sight, he began to make his way toward the hollow tree.
16
ONE TWILIGHT WAS VERY LIKE another. The sun went down, the light faded, night came. It had been happening for thousands of years and would happen for thousands more. The only difference in this one from all those these many weeks past, or indeed from the evening before when Lettie had left her note in the tree, was that there was a wind blowing from the southwest. Hot, dry, and fitful, it rustled the leaves on the trees until they clashed like small paper cymbals and sent the dust from the road fogging through the house. She blamed her headache on it.
Lettie and Aunt Em sat in the hallway after dinner. Lettie pretended to read while Aunt Em stitched a pillowcase, replacing a lace edge that had come loose in washing, and made desultory conversation. Ranny and Lionel were out back in the kitchen with Mama Tass, who had decided to bake bread and tea cakes sweetened with molasses while it was as cool as it could possibly be in late July. They were to have the tea cakes, when they were done, with milk that had been cooled in a bucket lowered in the well.
“I talked to Peter while I was over at Elm Grove this morning. It seems he is reconciled to having a Yankee for a father. Thomas has promised him a pony cart and a pony to pull it. It’s wrong to try to buy the boy’s affections, but I suppose all’s fair in love and war. Who would have thought a soldier would have the means to do all he’s done? Not that it signifies. There must have been a lot of men in uniform these last few years who would never have taken up the sword except to protect what they own.”
“On both sides, I’m sure,” Lettie said.
“Sally Anne is still cool toward him, but at least she talks to him. I’m not sure whether she’s keeping him at a distance because she doesn’t care for him or from sheer pigheaded pride. Things will be in a pretty mess when all’s said and done if she refuses him, but he got himself into it. In the meantime, Elm Grove is protected from the tax collector or anyone else who might want to take over the place. That’s a terrible way to look at it, but it’s true.”
“A practical way, rather.”
“Yes, we have to be practical.” Aunt Em knotted her thread and held up the pillowcase to look at it. “Sally Anne was upset. It seems Angelique, Marie Voisin’s friend, has received what I can only describe as an indecent offer. Some man has had the nerve to ask her to go to New Orleans with him and become his mistress. If she wanted to be practical, she would accept.”
“Because she is of mixed blood?” Lettie’s voice was sharper than she had intended.
“What else is there for her? There’s no suitable man for her among the gens de couleur libre, she has too much breeding and education to marry a freedman even if she would consider it, and there is no longer the huge dowry that might have persuaded a white man to accept her as a wife.”
“But a mistress!”
“Such women are given a certain respect in New Orleans. They have a house of their own, horses, a carriage. The arrangement can, and often does, last for years, sometimes until the man marries, sometimes for life. Any children are educated and provided for by the father. Somewhere below a wife but much above a woman of the streets, it isn’t a bad life.”
“Possibly not, for the man.”
“I can’t help wondering who made her the offer. O’Connor was taken with her. I hope she won’t trust herself to him if that’s who it was. He may have heard about such arrangements, but I’ll be bound he doesn’t understand how they work. He’s likely to keep her for a month or two, then that’ll be the end of it. But I haven’t heard anything about him moving to New Orleans.”
Lettie made a sound that could be taken for interest. She wished the other woman would stop talking. All she wanted to do was to sit quietly and wait for the hour when she could pretend to go to bed, the hour when she must keep her appointment.
A large, pale green lunar moth came fluttering in at the door. It circled, hesitating as if testing its welcome, then flew straight toward the lamp. Lettie reached to bat it away from the lamp chimney and the scorching flame inside. The moth caught and clung to her hand, its swallowtail quivering. She sat staring at it, intrigued and repelled and oddly touched by its confidence in her. It could not know she was not to be trusted.
“Speaking of moving, they say Mrs. Reeden is going to live with relatives in Monroe. She can’t bear to stay where her son was killed, or so the story goes. It’s the scandal she can’t bear. But there, I shouldn’t say such things. We all have our burdens and carry them as best we can.”
“I suppose we do.” The moth, alarmed by her voice, lifted in the air and flew away. Lettie watched it circle and land on the gilded frame of a picture.
“Goodness, but you’re pale, my dear. I hope you aren’t sickening for something. You’ve been very healthy, but newcomers are often ill until they get used to the heat. Maybe I should have been giving you sassafras tea. The old folks swear by it as a blood thinner and purifier.”
“I just have a little headache.”
“Would you like some of Ranny’s laudanum? I’ll be glad to get it for you. I know how it is. I don’t get a headache often, but when I do it’s a dandy.”
“No, n
o, I’ll be fine.” Laudanum would put her to sleep. That was the last thing she wanted. “Here is Ranny with the tea cakes. Maybe that’s what I need.”
The evening passed, the minutes and hours going faster and faster until finally the clock in the parlor struck eleven and it was time to go. Lettie slipped from the dark house by way of her jib window. Her stockinged feet made no sound on the veranda floor or the steps. When she reached the ground, she stopped to put on her riding boots, then went quickly through the gate and along the drive to where the colonel waited. She mounted the horse he had brought for her with the aid of a leg-up, then gathered the reins in her hands.
Even then she could have stayed behind. There was no need for her to go. Her visit to the colonel that morning was enough. He and his men could have done the rest.
She could not let them. She was compelled to see what would happen. It was her duty, she told herself. She had begun this thing and must see it through. For Henry and for all the other people who had died, she must see the Thorn captured once and for all.
But there was more to it than that. She wanted to know, needed to know, who the man was who had tricked and deceived her, used her and taught her to love. She could not stand not knowing another hour, another day. Her curiosity was like an illness festering inside her. It gave her no surcease, would allow her no peace until she learned his identity and where he lived and how.
And still that was not all. As at the death of some favored dream, she felt the need to hold a vigil. She had allowed herself to think for a time, against all odds, that there might be a man who risked his life so that others might live, who held his principles strong and untarnished, who fought against what was wrong not because he had anything to gain or lose but because he knew it wasn’t right. The demise of a hero deserved a mourner or two.
But more than these things, she had to be there because she had to face him. It was necessary for her to see him as a man, only a man. She wanted him to be angry, to curse her as he was put into bonds. She wanted to see him made small so that he would resume his normal size in her mind, so that she could see him as the calculating killer she knew him to be. She wanted proof, justification, a consciousness of being right so that the nagging doubts in her mind would be resolved, so that she could sue for peace with her soul.
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