He did not answer, and she wasn’t sure if she had said it loudly enough for him to hear. Or perhaps she had not uttered the question but only thought it. Why was she unsure of even this? Again, the smoky fear: Was she going mad, or were his pheromones jamming her perception receptors? Should she repeat herself at the risk of sounding like a doddering twit? In the silence, she continued to stare into the forest, hoping for an answer to her uttered or unuttered query. When it came, she was not ready for it.
“Walk away.”
She looked hard at Adams. His face was placid, as if he really believed he’d stumbled upon the solution. “Walk away?”
“Absolutely. Don’t sit there trying to force yourself on the story. Go do something. Take a trip. Run away. Live life. You got more talent in that pretty little toe of yours than a lot of people have in their whole bodies. But stories aren’t born in safe places.”
Clarissa folded her hands in her lap. His advice, she knew, was mighty damn dangerous. If she followed it, the sum total of her life—cooking supper at five, paying bills at seven, watching TV at eight, waking up to an empty bed at midnight, putting on the coffee at six, staring at the computer two hours later while engulfed in spousal death scenarios—might be shot all to hell.
“Baby, I got four letters from the English alphabet for you.”
Clarissa turned to him, studied his handsome, black Irish face.
“Just four. And if they line up right in your brain, you’ll know what you need to do.”
“Oh yeah?” In this dim light, his blue eyes had taken on a charcoal tinge. “What are they?”
“I’m not going to tell you yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because first we need to get to the liquor store so we can toast my reading and your astounding purchase.”
“Fine,” she said. “But they’d better make sense or else I’ll know you’re just like all the rest of the men in my life—hot air and no action.”
“Ha!” he said, reaching over and pinching her nose. “We’ll just see about that, won’t we?”
“Yes,” she said, “we will.” She giggled. Even to her, her laugh sounded wild, unhinged. She watched him. He appeared to be a happy man, a welcoming man. She liked that he was smiling. She liked that she felt comfortable sparring and joking with him. She liked that she was able to confess her writer’s malady and not feel judged for it. As the small-town lights of Crawfordville smudged the gathering sky, she thought, I like.
Because Adams insisted that they could not go to the beach without something to sit on, they stopped at the Walmart Supercenter and bought the cheapest comforter they could find: twin-size with a Jetsons theme. At the liquor store, they bought two bottles of Cabernet, a pint of Jack Daniel’s, paper cups, and a corkscrew.
“I don’t drink hard liquor,” she told Adams.
“Well then, I’m not going to let you have any,” he said, sliding the JD across the counter, where the clerk who didn’t appear old enough to work in a liquor store stood reading the fine print on a Maalox bottle.
“That stuff will kill you,” Adams said.
“Maybe.” The clerk, whose acne was blazing like a three-alarm fire, set down the Maalox and rang them up, avoiding eye contact, his face slack, bordering on utter despair.
“Also,” Clarissa said, counting down in her head the many problems with the present scenario, her optimism—for reasons she could not identify—suddenly quivering in preparation for flight, “I don’t think I should drink on an empty stomach.”
Adams counted out some fresh bills and handed them to the sad-sack clerk. “What’s open around here for some good eats?”
Without looking up, Sad Sack said, “Sonic. Just down the road. Milk shakes aren’t as good as Myra Jean’s, but she’s closed.”
Clarissa’s stomach shuddered. She had, in her years since becoming a married woman, sworn off fast food and had willingly, wearing her palate on her sleeve, devoted herself to all local, all fresh, all the time. It was both a conceit and a cause she believed in.
“Oh, man!” Adams’s rugged face melted into something akin to beatific as he said, “A burger, fries, and a shake. Now that’s a holy trinity you can sink your teeth in.” He looked at Clarissa. “How ’bout it, baby?”
From deep within the secret passages of her hypothalamus, Deepak said in his clipped, chimes-and-incense accent, “Yes, baby, how about it?”
Clarissa, drinking in Adams’s enthusiasm as if she’d been wandering the desert without benefit of camel or canteen, her optimism settling back in, said, “Fantastic!”
Her ovarian shadow women, taking on the throaty maw of Broadway-bound chorus girls, doing their best Ethel Merman imitation, sang, “Maaaaad! You’re going maaaaad!”
Adams slipped his wallet in his rear pocket. “You want us to bring you back anything, buddy?”
Sad Sack looked up, apparently taken off guard by the offer and Adams’s random kindness. The kid had the prettiest brown eyes Clarissa thought she’d ever seen. A smile broke out across his pimply face, and Clarissa knew, just absolutely knew, that if there was a God, this kid’s skin would clear up soon and his main trouble in life would be too many girls. “Oh, wow. I already ate. But thanks, man.”
“Not a problem. You have a good night.”
“Y’all too.”
Adams and Clarissa headed to the door. She was well aware that the clerk had mistaken them as a couple. This pleased her.
“And remember,” Adams said before stepping outside.
“This stuff will kill me!” the clerk said, holding up the Maalox, laughing.
Clarissa laughed, too, and, unaccustomed to casual happiness, followed Adams into the night.
She had no choice. In order to read the menu, she was forced to lean in so close to Adams, they touched, repeatedly. Really. The contact was necessary, vital, demanded. It was a matter of sustenance and proximity versus starvation and propriety. This was Sonic, after all, a sanitized version of a 1950s carhop, where every parking space had its own bite-size, backlit, drive-through menu board replete with a call box and credit card swiper.
Seriously, touching could not be avoided. As she leaned in to get a better look at the delectable images of burgers, coneys, and frozen delights, her bare arm brushed his twice. Once, when she placed her right hand on the steering wheel in order to read the small print describing the ingredients in a SuperSonic Cheeseburger (only $6.29 for the combo), he traced the circumference of the third bangle on her left arm using only the tip of his right index finger. The fact that he smelled like Ivory soap thrilled her. Each time she moved—to brush her hair off her face, to adjust the strap of her chemise, to gesture in time to whatever point she was trying to make, to muse that the onion rings looked awfully good—her bangles chimed softly.
“Cream-pie milk shakes?” Clarissa murmured, seeking ballast.
“Doesn’t seem right, does it?” Adams ran his hand through his beautiful ringlets and gazed at her as if he’d just said something important.
Clarissa looked away, tried to refocus on the menu. “Not at all.” In her mind’s eye, she imagined herself stuffing a giant pie down the throat of a blender. In her postsurgery days, back when she was wired shut for a month, she’d had to run everything through her Hamilton Beach. “Well, I’m going with tradition. A cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate shake.”
“Ditto,” Adams said, and he reached his long arm out of the El Camino, pressed the talk button, and tripled the order.
“Wow. You must be—”
“I am. Famished. Those little cheese squares at the reading did not hit the spot. Speaking of which”—his eyes twinkled as they took her in—“where’s the wine?”
Clarissa rummaged through their collection of sacks, then handed him a bottle and the corkscrew. She fiddled with the plastic cups and held two aloft. “So are you going to tell me the secret word now?”
“After we toast. Everything in the right order.” He poured the wine.
“You know, I’d forgotten how obsessive-compulsive you are,” she said, laughing.
“To our writing, baby. The future looks bright.”
He started to tip his cup against hers, but Clarissa hesitated; she knew he meant no harm, but his words hurt. “I’m not so sure.”
“Oh, come on now. You just hit a washout in the road, baby.” With his free hand he touched a strand of her hair. “You’ll start rolling again in no time.”
His gaze was unblinking, leonine. Clarissa wanted desperately to believe him. “I hope so.”
They tapped their cups and drank. The wine’s dry, peppery bite surprised her. Adams took a second sip and then placed the cup gingerly on the dash. Without looking at her, he said, “Risk.”
“What?”
“Risk. How do you spell it?”
“R-i-s-k. Why?”
“Did the letters line up?”
“Oh.” Clarissa dug her hand into the upholstery. Smart-ass. The wine was looking like a better idea all the time. Maybe even the JD. “So, you’re saying my block”—she hated that word—“is because I started playing it safe? That I’ve become just another boring, almost middle-aged, complacent, bloated cow of a woman with nothing to write about? That my past or my pain or my future doesn’t count because I finally eked out an ounce or two of stability in my life?”
Adams shook his head, his curls bouncing, and said without a hint of reprisal, “Whoa, baby. I didn’t say any of those things.”
“Well, what are you trying to say?”
“I’m trying to say that you have to risk being scared again. Isn’t that what you told that room full of wannabe writers the day we met? That writing wasn’t for the faint of heart? That it was scary and it hurt and it welled up from the most dangerous and injured places in our fucking souls?”
Clarissa allowed herself to smile. “Gee, you were listening.” She drank more wine. “I hear you.” And although that was true, sitting there in the neon glare of the Sonic sign, she wasn’t sure what to make of her words being tossed back at her.
“Good. Now, tell me about that big house you moved into.”
“Well, funny you should bring that up,” Clarissa said. Happy to be moving off the subject of her dysfunction, she reached for the dossier she’d stashed under the seat. “I’m discovering all sorts of amazing stuff about the place.” She flipped open the file and fished out the photocopy of Olga Villada.
“Not only did this woman build my house, she owned about half the county.”
“How? Y’all couldn’t own property back then.” Adams squinted at her, the great skeptic.
“Because Florida was controlled by Spain, and under their laws, women could be property owners.”
He snapped his fingers. “Really? Wow. That’s crazy good.”
“Yes, sir. And she had a common-law husband, a black man, who was free because in 1811 Spain abolished slavery within its borders and all its territories except three in the Caribbean. Puerto Rico. Cuba. And I think Santo Domingo. Talk about crazy.”
“Wait a minute.” Adams reached for his wine. “So Florida was a slave-free zone while under Spanish rule, but right across the border in good ol’ Georgia, U.S. of A., slavery was legal?”
“That’s how I’m reading this.”
“Damn.” Adams shuffled through the copies. As the waitress arrived with their food, Clarissa reached for fresh pages. The scent of industrial beef caught her by surprise, but she wasn’t going to not eat; she’d already committed.
“Look at this,” Clarissa said. It was a pen drawing of a fiddle, replete with Amaziah’s signature heron carvings, held with all the tenderness of a father presenting a baby for its first blessing. The subject’s hands were both elegant (long fingers) and strong (wide with thick, callused palms). “These are Amaziah’s hands—Olga Villada’s husband. This fiddle—it’s exquisite.” Clarissa touched the drawing. “I think he was a magic man.”
Adams looked up from his pile of papers, glanced at the drawing, and said, “Well, honey, listen to this.” His bony index finger followed lines whose unevenness, complete with blurred-edged letters, was proof that the document had been pounded out on a manual typewriter. “ ‘No doubt the fact that Olga Villada’s beloved father was a great flamenco guitarist in Spain figured into her fierce, enduring love for Amaziah.’ ”
“What’s that from?”
Adams turned the page over three times, studying it. “Not sure. Looks like somebody wrote a research paper on your place. It has two stamps—FAMU and the Aucilla County Historical Society.”
“Oh, yeah. I read a little bit of that already. You know,” Clarissa said, reaching for a French fry, “this might sound crazy, but I swear to you I’ve been hearing music in that house. At first I thought it was the wind blowing through the eaves, but I don’t think so. I mean, sometimes it even wakes me in the middle of the night. Last time it happened, I stepped outside and was met with nothing but hot air—no wind, nada.”
“What’s it sound like?” He unwrapped a burger.
“Like my house is haunted.” She popped the French fry in her mouth.
He laughed. “No, really.”
“I’m serious.”
He grinned at her, hamburger in one hand, red wine in the other. “What, Ms. Burden, does the music sound like?”
“I don’t know. Outlaw love music or something.” Clarissa averted her eyes, knowing she had not kept at bay the flirtatious lilt in her voice. She picked at a loose thread in the embroidered poppy that bloomed all along one leg of her jeans. “I think the energy is still in the house, so every now and then, a refrain rises up to a dimension I can hear. I swear.” She looked at him; he had adorable dimples. “How’s that for a theory?”
“Have another drink.”
Clarissa ignored him. “The house is amazing, Adams. You’ve got to see it. I mean, the framing is pinned together with nearly foot-thick cypress beams. It’s all dovetailed, solid as hell, like they thought they’d be there forever.”
“You’re amazing,” he said.
She felt herself blush. She picked up fresh pages. He returned his attention to the thesis. They read in silence until Adams said, “Wow!”
“What?” Clarissa nibbled at what she decided was sawdust meat.
“This thing, this thesis, whatever, it’s a danged gold mine, Clarabelle.”
“What do you mean?”
His eyes scanned the page. “It’s some heavy shit.”
“Like what?”
“Want me to read it to you?”
“Yes.”
“Now?”
“No, three years from now.” She threw a fry at him.
“I love it when you’re sassy.”
He wiped his hands on his jeans, angled the page so that the light from the Sonic sign illuminated it, and began to read. “ ‘Villada’s fearless, optimistic nature—which made her alluring to powerful, corrupt men and talented, ethical ones—also made her particularly well suited to navigate and tame the dangerous times she lived in—that is, until a new world order, inflicted under the auspices of the United States government, descended upon them.’ ” He glanced up. “Want to hear more?”
“Absolutely.” Clarissa turned so that she faced him directly. She studied his face—the strong cheekbones, the dimpled chin, the freckle that looked like a tear at the edge of his right eye.
“ ‘The U.S. takeover of the Spanish territory could not have come as a surprise to someone as smart, as worldly, as land rich, as Villada.’ God, this writer thinks he’s freaking Shakespeare.”
“She.”
“What?”
“It’s a she. The writer is a she.”
“Whatever. Are you going to drink your shake?”
She handed it to him. “Read!”
He took a long draw off the straw, set the icy cup carefully between them, said, “Let’s see here,” ran his finger down the page, and started where he’d left off. “ ‘The Florida Purchase Treaty of 1819 guara
nteed that the United States would lay claim to Florida two years hence. Did Villada and Archer not understand the wholly brutal nature of U.S. law as it pertained to black people?’ ” Adams paused, reading ahead silently, and whispered, “Jesus Christ.”
“Please,” Clarissa said, her flirtatious streak obliterated, “keep going.”
“It’s not good.”
“I don’t care.”
He nodded, his natural, happy-bordering-on-bravado demeanor replaced by a seriousness Clarissa had never seen in him. He sighed and plunged back in. “ ‘Did they not know that surely, under this new regime, a man who had been free his entire life and his equally free mulatto son (a certain Heart Archer) could be, would be eventually—without recourse, no matter how much land was in the family’s coffers and no matter what former Spanish governor Villada might have influence with—wrenched, using whatever means necessary, into slavery?’ ”
Clarissa’s stomach cramped. The horror of the situation, the unadulterated evil, the legislative stroke-of-a-pen nonchalance, made her want to scream. “You know what’s really upsetting?”
“What, baby?”
“Nobody cares. People say, Just get over it. How? I mean, Amaziah was a landowner, he had all his rights intact, and then a real estate deal took place. One day you’re free, and voilà, the next day the law says they own you: Body and soul, you’re suddenly just a piece of freaking property.” She reached for her wine. Adams poured her a fresh glass. “So they had a child.”
“Yep,” he said. “A little boy. Heart Villada-Archer. Nice name.”
“I knew it,” Clarissa said, thinking back to the morning and the kerfuffled quilt, the buoyant laughter. “Yeah, it is a nice name.” She leaned against the seat. “What else?”
Adams flipped through the pages. “You sure you want to hear more?”
“I’m sure.”
She watched him out of the corner of her eye. He looked like a scribe reading an ancient text, his finger following that bumpy, typewritten trail. She could not tell if he was skipping over anything. She hoped not. “ ‘Florida was deemed a U.S. territory in July of 1821, and by 1828 all the humane, logical, and sane tendencies that had been exhibited and practiced by Spain were obliterated. Free blacks were barred from entering Florida. What had been basic freedoms—assembly, speech, bearing arms—were stripped away. Head taxes were levied on free blacks. They were no longer allowed to sit on juries, testify against white men, or conduct commerce on Sundays. Interracial marriages were outlawed, and the children of such unions were not allowed to inherit their parents’ estates. Free blacks were captured and enslaved. Lynching—while at that time still more commonly meted out to people of European ancestry—was nevertheless well on its way to becoming the favored mode of nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century American terrorism.’ ”
How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly Page 21
