Five more years passed before she asked for the divorce. We fought a lot. Jackie said she should’ve listened to her mother when she said she’d spend the rest of her life in Clayton if she married me. When I said I thought she liked living where we grew up, Jackie screamed that there had to be something more, there just had to be. I guess Curtis Baxter was something more. He’s got more stuff, that’s for sure. Jackie will get a brand-new car every year, whatever she wants off Curtis’s Ford lot. Ford trucks have been my chosen vehicle my whole life, but when this one gives out, I’m switching to a Chevy. No way am I putting money in Curtis’s pocket.
Despite the divorce, I’m pretty sure Jackie still loves me. It’s just different now—all twisted and knotted up. The four times we made love after the divorce it was like two strangers meeting up in a hotel room instead of two people who’d been sleeping together since they were sixteen.
The image of Elle Chambers lifting her face to the sun replays itself in my mind. I am intrigued enough to want to learn her quirks and the feel of her body, not necessarily in that order. Tomorrow I will ask Cousin Georgia about her. For now, Georgia and Osborne have their own talking to do.
Daisy calls after dinner. My sisters have called me more in the past month than in the past year. She is in the middle of cooking dinner for her three boys and her husband. The sound of balls hitting the floor and meat frying in the background comes through the phone.
“Vi found out about Leroy being on the way to go screw Momma when the drunk bastard killed Cassie, and she asked Momma about it and Momma just keeled over. Right there on the front porch. Had to get stitches on her head from hitting the door handle as she went down. That along with the lung cancer has done Momma in.”
The oldest boy, Sean, yells in the background and Daisy tells him to shut up; she is on the phone. No one has talked about Leroy Cooper in a long time.
“How did Vi find out about Leroy?”
A pause.
“Dais? Who told her?”
“I did. All right? It was me. She was going on and on about how horrible it was that Momma got lung cancer at such a young age and how she’d never done anything, really, to deserve this, and I couldn’t take it, Zeke.”
“God, Daisy.” I drop my head in my hands. Why couldn’t she keep her mouth shut? “Vi didn’t need to hear that. That’s history. It’s done.”
A door slams shut. “Dave’s home, Zeke. I’ve got to finish dinner. Call me later, okay?”
The insistent pull of Clayton grabs at me, trying to get its claws in me. But I’m only just beginning at Lacey Farms again.
My sisters and my mother are going to do whatever craziness comes next whether I’m around or not. That’s clear. I’m not going anywhere.
I’m not.
Thirty-One
December 1960
The wind blew hard through the Corinth station platform and I turned up the collar of my new corduroy jacket, a gift from Cousin Georgia. During the fifteen-hour trip from Charlottesville, I had envisioned the scene of my homecoming over and over again—how I’d step off the train and Jackie would run into my arms, the soft feel of her body against my own. On this cold night four days before Christmas, a station filled with strangers looked out at me. Hoping Jackie was only running late, I bought a cup of coffee and sat on a bench near the front entrance, where she’d be sure to see me. Fifteen minutes passed. Then thirty. When the hands of the black clock in the waiting area read seven thirty, I knew she wasn’t coming.
There was nothing to do except call home. My father said he’d be right over. I asked him not to tell Mother where he was going so some surprise could still be pulled off. This part I had imagined, as well. The conquering son returns home from college—smarter, more debonair, and laden with gifts. Thanks to Georgia’s and Osborne’s generosity, I had a suitcase full of presents. The one I most wanted to give was the new basketball for Carter. Each member of the UVA team had signed it.
Something made me call Jackie’s house, just to see if she was home. She answered on the first ring.
“Jackie?”
“Is that you, Zeke?”
Why would she be home if she knew I was coming to the train station?
“You didn’t come.”
“What do you mean? Where are you?”
If Jackie was pretending to be surprised about my arrival, she was doing a good job. I had, in fact, never received a letter from her, not the whole time I was away. Doubt crept into my mind. She was seeing someone else now. Of course.
“Where are you, Zeke? Are you home?”
“Why didn’t you write back?” The call for the eight o’clock train to Memphis came over the loudspeaker. “Say that again, please,” I asked. “I couldn’t hear.”
She let out a long breath. “Ezekiel, I haven’t heard anything from you since you left. No letters. Nothing.”
“Not one letter?”
“Why would I lie about that?” An angry tone crept into her voice. “Did you get any letters from me?”
“No.”
“Of course you didn’t. I would’ve written you right back. I don’t know what happened. It’s probably got something to do with my mother. She’s still pretty mad at you over the baby and everything. She gets the mail every afternoon when I’m at work.”
Her mother would later deny meddling. But when she died unexpectedly in 1980, Jackie found the letters. Mrs. Chatham had kept them hidden in a shoe box buried in a back bedroom closet for more than twenty years.
My father’s easy lope crossed the station’s front entrance. The amount of gray in his hair now surpassed the amount of dark brown. He was not a tall man, but he carried himself tall, straight backed. I caught his eye with a wave.
“Listen, my dad’s here. I don’t understand what’s happened. Will you be home tomorrow morning?”
“I figured you’d be coming home, what with everything that’s happened. But part of me wished you wouldn’t, too. Call me at the shop tomorrow. I’ll be there ten to six.”
Before I could ask her what she meant, she hung up. An arm clasped my shoulder from behind.
“Son.” There was real comfort in the word. At least this made sense.
He shook my hand and said I looked good, real good—taller and smarter. I laughed. More tired, maybe, I said. We walked out together, my shoulders now several inches past his.
“University life agrees with you?” The old Ford took several starts before it finally caught.
“It’s different. Real different. But I like it.”
He ruffled the hair spilling over my shirt collar. There had been no time for the barber shop before coming home.
“We’ll have to get this cut tomorrow morning, won’t we?” The idea seemed to please him. “You hungry?”
I nodded. Georgia had packed fried chicken and rolls and a piece of pie but I’d eaten it all long before the train rolled into Corinth.
“We’ll stop at Calloway’s on the outside of town. Bet those Virginians can’t make decent barbecue.”
“They can make the best ham in the world, though,” I said.
The dark streets of Corinth passed by on the way to Highway 45. My breath formed small circles against the window. The heat in the truck didn’t work, probably never worked.
“First snow fell on the Blue Ridge right before I left,” I said. “The mountains look pretty dusted up in white. When’s the last time it snowed in Clayton?”
He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “Must have been about ten years ago when that ice storm hit Memphis and shut the whole city down for a week. We didn’t get the ice but we got the snow. You and your brother about killed yourselves sledding down Big Hill on your mother’s baking sheets.”
I remembered. Carter and I nearly ran smack into a station wagon. Turned out it was
Tommy Jackson’s mom. She nearly had a heart attack watching the two of us slide closer and closer to the front bumper. When she swerved to miss us, the car ended up skidding into the ditch. We tried to keep our faces straight while we pushed out the car, Mrs. Jackson yelling the whole time what fools we were.
At the restaurant we both ordered pulled-pork sandwiches, French fries, and RC Colas. We sat on the side with mostly white customers. Run by a black family, Calloway’s was the only restaurant for three counties where whites and blacks got served at the same counter. Business was always hopping because everybody knew James Calloway made the best barbeque. Rumor had it that even some of the Klan patronized the place.
I was halfway through my sandwich when my father said there were things we needed to talk about. Questions tumbled through my mind—Was someone sick? Mother? Did he need me to come home and work to earn money for the family?
“It’s your brother. He won’t be waiting for you at home tonight.” The bright light of the restaurant exposed dark circles beneath his eyes. He picked up the sandwich, then put it down without taking a bite, fingering the red and white checked paper lining the basket. My throat went dry.
“He’s living at the state hospital in Tolliver now. The Smith brothers attacked your brother one Saturday when he and Rosie were over seeing a movie at the Downtown. They beat him up pretty bad and ended up hurting Carter’s brain even more.”
He stopped, looked down at his hands, the fingers tightly clasped. “He’s not the same, Zeke. Won’t hardly talk to anybody. His face didn’t heal quite right, so he looks different, too.”
Chairs scraped the sawdust-covered floor as they were pulled away from the tables. Voices rose and fell around us. Potatoes sizzled in the deep fryer. My stomach churned. I gripped the sides of the table, trying to hold on, trying not to let my father’s words sink in.
“When?” It was the only word I could breathe out.
“About a week after you left for Virginia.”
I counted off the months. Four. My brother lying in a hospital for four months.
“Why didn’t somebody tell me?”
He fell silent. It took a minute but one by one the pieces fell into place in my brain. Mother. She knew that if they told me, I would come back, leaving UVA. And Dad went along with it, as he had with many things over the years. He did not fight for my brother. For me.
He reached for my hand across the table. I wrenched it away. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Why isn’t he home, Dad? Why isn’t Carter home where he belongs?”
My entire life I had been impressed by this man’s strength—physical and otherwise. I’d seen him lift the front end of the truck off the ground with his bare hands. When he realized there was no promise in raising cotton, he sold every piece of farm equipment he had and worked for free to learn pipe fitting, despite loving the feel of being outside under the sun, hands in the earth. I recalled seeing him cry only once before, the morning after his brother put a shotgun to his head. Now, he covered his face with his hands.
The mistake had been trusting Mother to know best. He assumed she understood what was better for their children. In the end, that she birthed us and did most of the raising complicated her own judgment.
“I love Carter. You’ve got to know that,” he said.
I pushed away from the table, knocking my glass to the floor. The dark liquid disappeared into the sawdust.
“Take me to the hospital.”
The brother I knew was nowhere to be found in that hospital room. At least twenty-five pounds had been shed from his large frame. A scar eight inches long ran down his face. The right eye was swollen half-shut and its iris was clouded over. A sling cradled his left arm. I lowered myself onto the bed, careful not to jostle him.
“Who’s there?” he said, waking up. When our eyes met, he turned his face away, his expression going still.
“Get out.”
“Carter, I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
“Get out.” His voice grew louder. “Nurse. Nurse!” The words echoed out into the hallway.
A woman appeared at the door. “Now, Carter, what’s going on?” She put her hands on her wide hips.
I backed away from the bed. My brother kept his face turned away.
“Tell him to get out.”
There had been many times during childhood when my brother got mad at me. His temper could flare unexpectedly over little things like a lost marble or a questionable foul during a basketball game. The longest he had stayed mad was two weeks, after my scheme to put a radio antenna on the top of the roof went bad and nearly killed him when the chimney toppled off. It took a promise of as many MoonPies as he could eat and playing basketball whenever he asked to make him happy again. Standing in the corner of the room, a deep ache washed through me.
The nurse assessed me. “Who might this be? A nice visitor come to see you?”
“Get him out.”
The words sounded garbled, as if his mouth had been damaged, as well. The nurse shrugged and suggested I leave.
Outside the room, she put a hand on my arm. “He’s just starting to have better days. I wouldn’t push him.”
“I’m his brother.”
Her hand dropped away.
“Boy, where have you been?”
Thirty-Two
1985
During the next riding lesson, I trot around the ring for the first time, almost making it up to a canter.
“Not bad,” Elle says.
Diamond snorts loudly, offering his own praise.
Feeling full of myself, I invite Elle to dinner.
“With you?”
“Yeah,” I say, as surprised as she is. Elle thinks for a minute, holding on to Diamond’s bridle and patting the soft space between the horse’s eyes.
“Where?”
This is a level of detail I haven’t considered. I stall by dismounting from the horse.
“Where would you like?”
She leads Diamond back to his stall. “Michael’s. Best restaurant in town. Pick me up at seven o’clock tomorrow night. Don’t be late.”
How it went from me asking her out to her asking me out I don’t get. But I don’t care.
Cousin Georgia’s face lights up when I tell her about dinner. Michael’s is nice but not fancy, she says. Slacks, shirt with tie, no jacket. Given my lack of funds, I should ask my cousin if the place takes Visa, but I’m too embarrassed, so instead I fold my last fifty dollars into my wallet and pray that plastic will work. I wear the black pants I got for my father’s funeral and a white shirt with a blue tie that Cousin Georgia picks out from Osborne’s closet. The truck gets a bath with the hose by the stables. As I ease out of the driveway, Cousin Georgia says she doesn’t know who sparkles more—me or the truck. Tucker sits at her feet, watching me go with only mild interest. He has become Georgia’s shadow, an arrangement they both seem to enjoy.
Fall descended on Bailey earlier in the week, dropping the temperature down to the midsixties during the day, high forties at night. Driving over to Elle’s, the sky is a midnight blue backdrop against the dark green of the foothills. Her property is smaller than the Laceys’ but still rolls on for acres. A large barn and riding ring can be seen beyond the small, white house. When I ring the doorbell, Elle calls from inside to come on in. She pokes her head around the hallway corner, the collar of a pink bathrobe visible, and says she’ll be ready in five minutes.
I make a show of looking at my watch. “I thought you hated late.”
“Other people. I hate other people being late.”
I take a seat on the leather couch, not liking the slick feel of it beneath my hands. Four different horse magazines are strewn across the coffee table. I leaf through one, putting my feet up on the table before thinking better of it. Five minutes pass. The
n five more. It is now ten minutes past seven. I rest my head against the back of the couch, closing my eyes for just a second.
“Don’t fall asleep at the start of the evening, Zeke. It’s rude.”
Elle appears in the living room, dressed in pants the color of a well-oiled saddle and a light green blouse that matches her eyes. Red lipstick colors her mouth. The feeling of weariness falls off me. I stand up.
“You look great.”
She cocks her head. “Is that so?”
I nod, shoving my hands into my pants pockets to restrain their urge to touch her mouth, to feel the fullness of her lips beneath my fingers.
She reaches up to straighten my tie. There is only about a four-inch difference between our heights. Jackie is a good foot shorter than me and always had to stand on tiptoe to kiss standing up.
“You clean up nice, too.”
I’m not quite sure how it happens, who leans into whom first. But it does. We are kissing, her mouth opening beneath mine in the sweetest way. I put my hands around her waist and let them travel downward, running along the sides of her hips. She moves closer, the softness of her body pressing the length of mine. It has been a while, a very long while. After this goes on for a few minutes, I push away.
Elle’s eyes are large and open in a way I haven’t seen them before. “Are you hungry?” she asks.
I smile a little.
“For food?”
“I could wait.”
She nods. “Me, too.”
We both stand there, facing each other, unsure. Who moves first will be the one we blame afterward. If you hadn’t started, we would have gone to dinner, she or I will say. The two-step distance between us feels canyonlike. We are at the edge of an action we will not be able to take back or forget. It occurs to me that she, too, is weighing what will happen next, deciding if the inevitable complications are worth the risk.
The Lost Saints of Tennessee Page 18
