by J. D. Horn
Corinne wondered if the old doctor was just having her on. “I’m sure that may have been true when he was younger . . .”
“I must be off now,” McAvoy interrupted her, seeming not to have noticed she was speaking, “but I wish you two young people the best. If I can be of any service, you know where to find me.” He nodded in the direction of the pulp plant. “Just follow your nose.”
The steam from the train, as it fired up and chugged away, spilled into the thick haze like milk pouring into cream. The porter, a black man in a black hat with gold trim, emerged from the fog, his body not appearing to possess three dimensions until he drew near enough to pierce the mists. “Passengers’ waiting room straight ahead, Miss,” he said. “I’ll bring your bags around for you momentarily.”
“Thank you,” Corinne said, “but I was told that there would be a car waiting for me?”
“No, ma’am. No cars waiting, but I am sure your escort will arrive shortly. You just go on in and make yourself comfortable. I’ll make sure you are informed as soon as they arrive.”
Corinne thanked the porter and approached the building. Perhaps it was the fog that had delayed Elijah’s arrival? But no, if the fog’s appearance and disappearance could be timed, as the doctor had implied, then Elijah would have factored in its presence. Her hand connected with the door as another thought occurred to her, sending a shock through her system. Perhaps Elijah had changed his mind? He had been sent home with a Purple Heart six months before Corinne could arrange to be decommissioned. His letters had come regularly for three months straight, but then a month, perhaps six weeks, had passed without her receiving a word from him. He began corresponding again without providing any explanation for the break. Corinne had assumed his intervening letters had simply been lost. She shook off her worry. Coming here, marrying him. Those were the right choices. This was her new life, and she might as well embrace it.
She pressed the latch and pushed the heavy door open. Dark faces turned up to look at her, a mixture of apprehension and curiosity playing on them. A woman, not much older than Corinne herself, stopped in the process of gathering her belongings to look at her through tear-reddened eyes. Corinne could tell without asking that the other woman had just said good-bye to someone she held dear. Her sense of loss was so acute that it reached out through her eyes and needled at Corinne’s heart. “Oh, no, Miss.” The porter hurried up behind her. “This here is the colored waiting room. I’m sure you’ll be much more comfortable in the big waiting room. Here, let me show you.”
“Sorry,” Corinne said and let the door close. It banged shut with a much louder clack than she would have wished. Once it was closed, she noticed the sign reading “Colored” for the first time. She had nursed white soldiers, black soldiers, Oriental soldiers, and civilians. All of them with the same red blood.
“Nothing to be sorry for, Miss. You just follow me, and we’ll get you settled.”
Corinne had just turned to accept his invitation when she heard an unfamiliar voice calling her name. “Miss Ford? Miss Corinne Ford?”
She couldn’t make out anyone’s features in the fog, so after a moment she stopped trying to pin down the source of the voice. “Yes. I’m Corinne.”
A man with a long, steel-gray beard waded to her through the thick air. “I’m Charlie Aarons. I work for the Dunnes. I’ve been sent to fetch you.”
“Oh?” Corinne asked. “Is everything all right? Elijah had written that he’d be here himself to meet me.”
“Don’t you worry none. Everything’s fine. Elijah just has his hands busy with a difficult foaling. Thing’s coming out wrong way first.” He clasped his dirty hand over her shoulder and guided her in a bum’s rush away from the platform.
Corinne knew she was marrying into a farming family, and difficulties with horses and other livestock would inevitably arise from time to time. Rather than allowing herself to dwell on the fact that Elijah hadn’t arrived as promised, she decided to dive head-on into the role of farmer’s wife. “Take me to him. Perhaps I can help.”
The old man fixed her with his gaze and smiled. One of his eyes was covered in a cataract; it was unlikely that he could perceive more than shadows through it. His other eye remained a sharp, burning blue. “Good Lord, no,” he said. “That ain’t no kind of thing for a lady to get herself into.”
“But I’m a trained nurse,” Corinne protested.
“I ain’t questioning that, but Elijah’s mother told me to bring you straight to her, and she’s the one who pays my wages, so to Mrs. Dunne we go. Boy,” he said, addressing the porter.
“Yes, sir?”
“Put the young lady’s bag in the back of my truck, and there’ll be a shiny new dime in it for you.”
“Thank you, sir,” the porter said and, shifting the bags under his arms in order to get a better grip, crossed over to the decades-old red Ford truck that had emerged from the fog. As he neared the bed of the truck, Corinne jumped at the sudden sound of snarling and barking. Three enormous brindle canine heads with cropped ears reared up over the side of the truck, saliva flicking as they growled and showed their fangs.
The porter reacted by jumping back, but he kept a tight grip on the bags he carried. “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t think your dogs are gonna let me get any closer.”
Charlie doubled over with laughter. “You right about that one, boy.”
“It’s all right,” Corinne said. “Leave the bags there, I can manage.”
“Sorry, Miss,” the porter said.
“You have nothing to be sorry for.” The porter tipped his hat and headed back toward the station.
“Wait a moment,” Corinne called to him. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” she asked, turning to Charlie.
The man stroked his grizzled beard. “No, don’t think so.”
“You promised this gentleman a dime.”
Charlie narrowed his eyes and leaned in toward her. “I promised this boy a dime if he put your cases in the back of the truck. They ain’t in the back of the truck, are they?”
Corinne shook her head, sickened by Charlie’s behavior, but not secure enough in her new surroundings to call him out. She dug into her coin purse and found two quarters. She approached the porter and held them out to him. “Thank you.”
The porter looked past her without meeting her eyes. “Oh, no, Miss. I can’t take your money off you. The gentleman is right. I didn’t earn it.” The look on his face caused Corinne to glance back at Charlie. The old man’s glower served as a warning sign to the porter, and she knew she’d be doing him no good if she insisted. She returned the coins to her purse.
“You have a good day, Miss,” the man said and hurried back to the station.
Corinne wondered how a man such as Charlie would have found himself in the Dunnes’ employ. Elijah had seemed to be great friends with Washington and Jones, two of the black soldiers in their unit, playing cards and drinking with them. Corinne didn’t believe he harbored racial hatred, or would condone this uncouth man’s treatment of the porter. She decided she would have some words with Elijah about his employee’s behavior, but for now she would say nothing.
Corinne picked up her bags. They were heavy, but she was used to moving dead weight. Charlie made a motion to help. “I can manage,” she cut him off.
“Have it your way,” Charlie said, shrugging as he walked around the truck to the driver’s side.
Corinne approached the bed of the truck and hefted the heavier of the two bags. The dogs snarled at her in unison. Corinne stopped and fixed her eyes on theirs, one after the other. “I am not afraid of you.” One of them lunged toward her, and in spite of her determination not to show fear, she pulled back. She looked up to see Charlie staring at her, the corners of his mouth turned up.
“Down,” he commanded, and all three dogs collapsed. “Go on,” he said to Corinne. “They ain’t gonna bother you now. You just got to show them who’s in charge. It’s the natural order.”
Corin
ne didn’t respond. She tipped the first bag over the side of the truck and into the bed. One of the dogs shifted, but they all stayed in prone positions.
She picked up the smaller case. “I’ll keep this one on my lap.”
“Fine by me,” Charlie said, “but we need to get a move on. The farm’s a good twenty miles from here, and if we miss the next ferry ’cross the river, we won’t get across till past lunchtime.”
FOUR
Wilson McAvoy took advantage of the empty infirmary at the mill to get out and check on his godson, whose Christian name was Ovid, but who was known around these parts simply as “the Judge.” Locals joked that a man brought before the Judge was just as likely to face the noose for jaywalking as for murder, and McAvoy had to acknowledge there might be a tinge of legitimacy to the jest. Truth was, the man for whose moral upbringing he shared responsibility had grown into a cold-hearted bastard with a twisted sense of justice that had little to do with the law he’d vowed to uphold. The only reason McAvoy felt compelled to look after him was his fond memory of the man’s father.
McAvoy hesitated before knocking on the Judge’s door. He’d stopped by several times in the two months since the death of Ovid’s daughter, but nearly every time the maid Lucille had turned him away, saying the Judge didn’t feel up to receiving visitors. Wilson couldn’t just walk away, though. A brief feeling of regret caused his shoulders to slump. Hell, Ovid might be “the Judge” now, but Wilson had helped bring him into this world almost half a century ago. He had slapped his ass and then heard his first cry. That he should feel such ambivalence toward the grown man hinted at his own failure to honor his duties as godfather.
He only wished he’d been around to help with Ruby’s birth, for then he might have saved Ovid’s wife. Perhaps Ovid’s soul wouldn’t have atrophied if his bride had survived. But there was no use playing the what if? game. Ovid’s wife was dead, and now his daughter was gone too. And while McAvoy’s regret over Ruby’s mother’s death was real, the guilt he felt over Ruby’s demise knocked the wind out of him. He’d done all he could for her, but it would’ve been better for everyone if she’d never come back to Conroy. Half the town had shown up for her funeral, not because they mourned her passing, but because they wanted to make sure she was good and gone. She’d been her father’s daughter all right—the worm-ridden apple hadn’t fallen far at all from the tree. If he had stepped up earlier, when she was still just a girl, maybe he could have set her on a different path. But he hadn’t, and he’d go to his grave regretting that he’d let Ovid mold her into his own image. What if, what if. There they were again, those words. Perhaps those two tiny words were bound to be the heavy burden of any man who’d lived long enough.
Wilson considered heading back to the mill, but he stopped to ring the doorbell. He waited, taking in the late afternoon sun that had finally managed to pierce the pulp plant’s haze. There was no answer. Now, that was unusual. Lucille was ordinarily here at this time of day. He rang again, then circled around the porch to try and peek through a window. The curtains were pulled tight. He returned to the door and placed his hand on the handle, easing it open. “Lucille? You here?” he called, even though he knew she would have heard the bell and opened the door if she were. “Ovid? It’s Wilson.”
He stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him. Instantly swallowed by the gloom, he banged into the hall table with his ever-ready medical bag. He waited until his eyes could adjust before carrying on down the hall. “Anyone home?” To the right was the sitting room. Even though the heavy red velvet curtains had been pulled shut, there was more light here than in the hall. The air was still and hot in the house, nearly as warm as it was outside even though all the light had been blocked from the house. The curtained crimson rectangles that glowed on the western wall of the room provided the only illumination. Wilson made his way toward the rightmost one, reaching out to pull open the drape.
“Don’t.” Ovid’s voice came from the room’s darkest corner. Wilson looked over to see his godson slumped over in the wingback chair that sat there. Even in the somber light, he could tell Ovid was in bad shape. “The light bothers me. I’ve had such terrible headaches lately.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Wilson said, taking note of the man’s labored breathing. “Lucille should have had the sense to call.”
“I forbade her.”
“Well, that woman has more sense than to listen to you when you are in this state. Where is she, anyway?”
“I don’t know.”
“It isn’t like her to be late.”
“Not once in ten years,” Ovid said, seemingly exhausted from their short conversation. Wilson reached over to the table beside Ovid’s chair and turned on the lamp. His hand brushed a silver-framed photo of Ovid’s daughter, taken when she was as tiny as a porcelain doll. It teetered, but McAvoy managed to right it before it toppled. Then his eyes fell on Ovid. The sight of his godson nearly made him gasp. He wasn’t yet fifty, but he’d aged a decade since Wilson had last laid eyes on him some weeks ago. Ovid’s jet-black hair had turned a steely gray, and his skin showed an odd bluish cast and looked bruised and purple beneath the eyes. Despite the heat, he was dressed in a heavy overcoat with a thick knitted scarf around his neck. Wilson tried not to show his shock. Without waiting for an invitation—or permission—he sat his bag down on the table and went to Ovid’s side. Taking the man’s hand, he worked his fingers down to his wrist. The pulse was weak, thready. The skin cold.
“Lucille been feeding you right?” he asked.
“I don’t really have much of an appetite anymore.”
“And how are you sleeping?” Wilson let go of the wrist and fetched his stethoscope from his bag.
“Nightmares,” Ovid said as if that were a complete answer. Wilson put the stethoscope into his ears and opened his friend’s coat to place the diaphragm against his chest. The man’s heartbeat wasn’t racing, but it was still too rapid for a resting state. He undid the scarf.
“I’m so cold,” Ovid protested, but Wilson paid no heed. He ran his hands over the lymph nodes. They were slightly swollen, and a little bruising was evident on the right side of the neck.
Wilson ran his hand down Ovid’s stomach. “Tell me if this hurts,” he said, pressing in. A flinch was the only answer. “Well,” Wilson said returning his stethoscope to his bag, “I don’t know what’s causing it, but you, my friend, are showing clear signs of anemia.”
Ovid said nothing. He didn’t seem interested one way or another. He reached up and wrapped the scarf back around his neck.
“We should get you to the hospital in Tupelo, have them run a few . . .”
“No. No Tupelo. No hospital. I can’t be seen like this. You know that.”
“But Ovid, you can’t just hole up in here and expect people not to talk. When did you last preside over court anyway?” The Judge waved his hand in the air like he was trying to shoo away a lazy fly. From the gesture, McAvoy surmised that Ovid’s official duties were the least of his worries. McAvoy always made an effort to overlook the less savory aspects of Ovid’s dealings, but the Judge’s extracurricular business activities were obviously what was weighing on his mind.
McAvoy had fulfilled his duty to the Judge, and Ovid had rejected his opinions and advice. He had loved Ovid’s dad, yes, but the son had not inherited the characteristics that had endeared the father to him. He allowed himself to wonder if the world would be a better place without the Judge in it. Perhaps the best course was to do what little Ovid would allow him to do, then let God do the deciding. “Well, don’t you worry. We’ll get you fixed up right quick. I’ll get Lucille to start you on a diet with plenty of iron. And I’ll drop by later with a couple of secobarbitals to help you sleep.”
“I don’t want pills.”
Wilson cursed himself for his own stupidity. Ruby had developed a taste for barbiturates, even before she’d taken off. They’d been trying to wean her off of them, when she up and disappeared
. “I’ll drop a couple off anyway. Take ’em, don’t take them, but you need to rest.”
“I should have never let him take her,” Ovid said. McAvoy knew whom he was talking about, of course—the man he blamed for Ruby’s drug use, the one who’d later stolen her away from Conroy. “I should have known the son of a bitch was trouble and turned him over to Frank and Bayard.” It was a well-known secret that Bayard Bloom and Frank Mason acted as the Judge’s enforcers and, McAvoy reflected, executioners. This was no world of innocents, though, so he’d waste no tears for the missing. It had been this pair of ruffians the Judge had tasked with going to California to retrieve Ruby. McAvoy cursed their success in the job.
“I should have killed him myself,” Ovid said. “If I’d known she’d run off with him like she did . . .” He struggled to catch his breath. “I mean, damn it, Wilson. All his talk of movie stars and his pretty ways. I thought the boy was one of those introverts. It never occurred to me that she wouldn’t be safe with him. I’d’ve had his balls for cufflinks if I’d known the truth. How did they get their hands on drugs anyway? Must’ve been through the coloreds.”
McAvoy understood why the Judge was mystified. After all, the Judge controlled all trafficking in the three surrounding counties, outside of a few daring fools who had begun to make inroads in the area with goods obtained from sources in Memphis. He didn’t like the direction in which Ovid’s thoughts seemed to be headed. It’d be just like the Judge to order a few disciplinary strikes against the entire community, just to send a message to the few who’d misbehaved, so he presented his godson a different and more distant scapegoat. “I understand the boy frequented jazz clubs in Biloxi. Those musicians are walking apothecaries.” He patted the Judge’s arm. “But you need to calm yourself. It won’t do you any good to think about it now.”
“He’s the one who put that motion picture nonsense in her head, you know . . . That they could go out to Hollywood and become movie stars, the both of them.”
