by Carol Coffey
“Jonathan!” Brendan called as his friend wandered around the open-plan area, touching things as he went and shaking his head slowly. He looked up.“Come and sit down.”
When the group were all seated, Nella placed a hot pot of coffee that she had made earlier on the table and poured a cup for each of the visitors. They watched as she lovingly placed Cassie’s hands around the steaming cup to ensure her lifelong friend knew exactly where the hot liquid was situated on the table in front of her.
“Where do you live, Cassie?” Brendan asked.
“We built a house about a hundredfeet from this one, behind those very trees out front. It gets more light there anyway and, when I came back here, I didn’t want to live in this house with all those memories.”
Brendan listened to how different her accent was from her brother’s. Although Cassie Thomas spoke very slowly, she did not have the same drawl as Jonathan. Vowels seemed to roll off her tongue with velvety smoothness and her consonants were spoken crisply, each syllable accentuated by her soft, silky voice. He wondered if Jonathan felt self-conscious about hissouthern accent and how he might explain this to his sister.
“You went away?”Brendan asked.He glanced at Jonathan who sat staring at his sister as though she was a mirage, a dream that he might at any point wake from and find that she had disappeared.
“What happened to Daddy?” Jonathan asked, unable to wait any longer.
Cassie Thomas looked sadly in the direction of her brother who was seated beside her. “I need to tell you everything that went before that, so you’ll understand, Jonathan,” she said.
“Can you still see shadows?” Jonathan asked.
Cassie smiled.“Yes, if it’s bright enough. What do you look like?”
She held out her hand and he took it. He placed her long narrow fingers over his face and she moved them across his visage and towards his hairline. Nella stopped her noisy whisking and put her bowl down. She came to where Jonathan was sitting and looked him up and down like he was a prize bull.
“He’s the living image of your daddy, Cass. He still has that mop of beautiful white hair and those big blue eyes. Face as pale as the moon though, Lord help us. Looks like a ghost. We’ll have to see to that. He’s real tall and skinny and, Lord, dressed in old-fashioned clothes like he bought them in a charity shop. Another thing to see to, as if I didn’t have enough for doing. And, goodness,” she began to laugh, “he’s still got that scar where I sewed his head myself hoping his daddy wouldn’t find out about the tree that hit him!”
Cassie laughed.
“I remember that.You sewed it?” Jonathan asked.
“I got a needle and thread from my mama’s basket. I didn’t know anything about boiling the needle or anything. I got Cassie to hold onto you while I sewed it quick as I could. Boy, did you yell! You’d think I was killing you with the way you screamed. Melibea came looking to see what the fuss was about and all hell broke loose. Your daddy was furious with me. My own daddy, he smacked my backsidehard for that, said it could have cost him his job at the orchard.” She was shaking her head and laughing at the memory. “Course, your daddy took you to town and had the doctor sew it up properly. It got infected. You had to take antibiotics. Guess that was my fault.”
Jonathan laughed. “I knew that was real. I knew that tree falling on me was real!” He glanced at Eileen and she smiled at him. There were tears in her eyes, tears of happiness for him. Then he turned back to Cassie. “What happened to Daddy?” he asked again.
Cassie sighed and put her cup down on the table in front of her.
“I better start by telling all of you about the morning Jonathan disappeared when I was six years old.”
Pilar suddenly interrupted.
“Jonathan, are you sure you are ready for this?” she asked. She knew from herpsychiatric training that such sudden information could be too much for someone as fragile as Jonathan to cope with.
Jonathan looked warmly at the woman who had cared so much for him. Not only in that awful psychiatric hospital but at the shelter.
“I’m fine, Pilar,” he said. “I need to know.”
Cassie took a deep breath.
“I woke early that morning when Melibea took Jonathan away. I heard her walking around the landing outside my room. My daddy always said I’d hear a pin drop. He said he didn’t need a gander around here when he had me. I walked out onto the landing and she was there. I could smell her perfume. It was lavender. I remember she used to make it herself from some that was growing in a small patch at the back of the garden. I couldn’t see any light so I knew it was still way before dawn and I wondered where she could be going at that hour. She told me she was only going downstairs to the bathroom and that I should go back to bed so I did, but a few moments later I heard her talking to Jonathan so I got back up. She told me they were going to watch the sunrise but I told her it was at least an hour ’til dawn, that’s how dark it was. She used to sometimes take me with her but this time she said, ‘Cassie, you’ll slow me down so you go on now.’ Course, she said it in Spanish. She hardly spoke any English. Daddy liked the fact that we spoke both languages fluently.”
Cassie quietened and her face clouded over. She ran her fingers gently up and down her brother’s hand.
“I always felt guilty that I didn’t stop her, that I didn’t yell for Daddy but I thought she was really going to that clearing. I didn’t know that she would never be coming back or that it would be the last time I would see you. I carried that guilt around with me for years.”
“You weren’t to know,” Jonathan replied.
Cassie shook her head and continued.
“I went back to bed and the next sound I heard was Daddy shouting down the telephone to my grandfather. He kept saying ‘She’s gone, William! She’s gone and she’s taken Jonathan with her!’ Granddaddy arrived at the house with lots of other men. Mama’s younger sister Prudence and her fiancé Jan arrived later on. We rarely saw Prudence but I remember they had a brand-new car that sounded so smooth as it came up the driveway. Anyway, they all sat in Daddy’s tiny study talking. Nella’s mama arrived over and took me to her house. I guess Daddy asked her to take me away from all theupset – and, with Melibea gone, he didn’t have anyone to care for me. The next day I went back to the house with Nella to get some clean clothes and I remember Daddy arguing with Granddaddy in this very room. I didn’t know what it was about until years later but Daddy kept shouting that granddad shouldn’t have hung up. He was crying and, though Daddy was a soft man, I had never heard him cry before. After that, I was sent to stay with Nella’s family until whatever was going on passed over.”
Brendan nodded as the story began to fit in with what his father had told him. He could imagine the sort of man William Chapman was. Unyielding, stubborn and arrogant, which whenmatched with Rafael’s Martinez’ mean-heartedness was a recipe for disaster.
“I didn’t come back to the house for weeks. I knew it was something to do with Jonathan and at night Nella’s family prayed for him so I knew something bad had happened. Then one day, Daddy sent for me. When I got home, he was sitting at the kitchen table with Jonathan’s little yellow jacket in his hand. Granddaddy was sitting by the fire, sobbing into his whiskey. Daddy grabbed me and held me so tight that he hurt me. I knew Jonathan was dead because Daddy was always real careful about suddenly touching me and giving me a fright. He always gently touched my shoulders and then drew me to him slowly. You remembered that, didn’t you, Jonathan, when you saw me on the porch? You did exactly what Daddy used to do.”
“Yes, I did,” he said.
She blew out and shook her head.“Daddy told me it was a road accident. Guess that’s the story Granddad and his campaign people came up with to save face. He said there’d be no funeral but that we’d put a stone up there on the clearing for you. I didn’t know the truth until I came back here. I was eighteen then.”
“Where did you go in the meantime?” Eileen asked quietly from her seat at
the far end of the table.
“I’ll get to that,” she said softly. “But, first, Jonathan needs to know that Daddy fell to pieces when he knew he was lost to us. He began to spend his days writing in his study all day and drinking all night. That’s when he wrote the book Lost. It made him famous which wasn’t something he was looking for. It also made him rich and money was never something Daddy had much interest in. I guess that’s why Momma’s family never really took to him. He liked a simple life and, as far as I remember, Momma did too. It was ironic how things turned out for him with all that money and fame. All he really wanted was for you to return to us but he thought you were dead so he wrote that book as a tribute to you, to tell you how much you had meant to him. It was written in the style of a letter from a father to his son and it was really very sad to listen to when Nella read it to me. He even ended the book with the writer finding his little boy and bringing him home. It doesn’t really bear any resemblance to what really happened here, but I guess he was trying to do something. He felt completely powerless so he channelled all his energy into writing.”
Jonathan nodded sadly and looked at the floor.
Pilar watched his reactions carefully, ready to stop Cassie if she felt Jonathan was unable to hear any more. She looked intently into his face. He smiled to reassure her but inside, inside his heart was beating so fast he was surprised the tiny Hispanic woman couldn’t hear it.
Brendan leant forward and patted his friend’s knee.
“What happened next, the morning your daddy sent for you?” he asked.
“Well, when Daddy finally let go of his grip on me, he looked at Granddaddy who was sitting in the corner of this room by the fire, weeping into his handkerchief.Something about him crying made daddy snap. He just completely lost control. He ran over to Granddaddy and began to shout. He told him it was too late for crying. He said it was his fault, blamed him for Jonathan’s death – which I couldn’t understand at the time. He must have got a hold ofGranddaddy up because I heard some men shouting for him to let go. I could hear furniture smashing and chairs falling and then Daddy pushing open the screen door and a loud thud on the porch. There was shouting, mostly from Granddaddy’s campaign people. Those men seemed to go everywhere with him. I heard Daddy say ‘Don’t you ever come back here!’ so I knew then that he had thrown Granddaddy out onto the dirt. He never did come back here, never set foot inside this house again.”
“What happened then?” Brendan asked.
Cassie took a deep breath and shook her head. Nella, who had finished preparing the breakfast, came to the table and placed hot plates of scrambled eggs and bacon in front of everyone. She walked back to the tiny kitchen area and brought another pot of coffee back, placed it squarely on the table and sat on the other side of Cassie.
“Pennsylvania didn’t have anti-miscegenation laws like several other states that still prohibited whites from marrying blacks or Hispanics or Native Americans. Even so, Granddaddy had plans to get elected to Washington and he didn’t want any family members of his breaking the laws of other states.”
Nella huffed in disgust. “Who did he think he was?” she said.
Cassie smiled in the direction of her acerbic friend. “I think my daddy knew that there was no way he could marry Melibea. He wanted to keep the peace with Momma’s family. He was a good man but he was weak so even if he’d known she was expecting his baby, he wouldn’t have gone against Granddaddy. It wasn’t until after she was pulled from the river that Granddaddy told him that an autopsy found she was pregnant. They rowed about it. Granddaddy told him he had let the family down and had sullied the memory of his daughter. I don’t know why Melibea hadn’t told Daddy she was pregnant and now we’ll never know. The only reason Daddy got to know what happened to her and to Jonathan was the fact that Jonathan’s coat was found on her body and, even then, Granddaddy paid off his cronies to keep her identity secret so it wouldn’t affect his campaign.”
Cassie sighed and leant towards her brother.
“This will be real hard for you, Jonathan, but you have to understand that Daddy was under an awful lot of stress.”
Pilar tensed up and wrapped her hands so tightly around her coffee cup that she thought it would smash in her hands. Eileen could feel perspiration bead on her forehead. She longed to go to Jonathan and hold him while he heard what she assumed was going to be the worst part of Cassie’s story.
Brendan looked at the ground and tensed. Apart from Nella, he was the only other person in the room who knew exactly what Cassie Thomas was going to say next.
“A couple of years before Jonathan was taken, the Supreme Court ruled that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional. Slowly, other states followed with only the southern states still condemning the practice although they couldn’t actually stop intermarriage. Attitudes were gradually changing. The year after Jonathan disappeared, a very rich and influential neighbour here married a Native American woman. Granddaddy was invited to the ceremony and, because this neighbour held a lot of power, he kept his views to himself and went to the wedding. Daddy heard about it and he . . . he was drinking heavily. He had finished the book and didn’t even care about the success he’d had. He had nothing to do all day except brood, even left his beloved orchard to Nella’s father’s care. Didn’t come out to work, didn’t do anything except sit in the tiny room behind us and stare at your photograph, Jonathan.”
Cassie Thomas’s lip trembled but she held back the tears in her deep brown eyes.
“He went to where the wedding was being held on the man’s property . . . with a shotgun. I’ve heard people around here say that he walked right into the huge marquee where Granddaddy was seated pride of place in his white linen suit with his ivory walking cane. Daddy walked up to him. He didn’t say a word, just stared at him for a moment and then he . . . he shot Granddaddy at close range. Almost emptied the whole round into him. People just stood there staring. No one tried to stop him.People later said you could have heard a pin drop and then he just walked away and walked all the way down to the creek at the bottom of our property here. Then . . .” she rubbed her brother’s hand, “then he . . . he shot himself. I’m sorry to have to tell you all this, Jonathan, but I think Daddy did it for you because he realised your death and Melibea’s for that matter had been for nothing.”
Jonathan sat open-mouthed on the chair beside his sister. His lips moved slightly.
“He loved me,” he said.
“He did . . . with all his heart. He couldn’t live on after you were gone. Not even for me. It was forty-two years ago now. We put his name on the stone he set up for you on the mountain.”
Cassie ran her hands up Jonathan’s arms and pulled him to her.
“He would have loved to have seen this day.”
“I never got to tell him, Cassie. I wanted to tell him I remembered him, that I never forgot. I wanted to say I waited for him, that I knew he was looking for me. I’m never going to get to say those things to him now.”
Jonathan began to sob into his sister’s hair. She gently moved him from her and felt his face, wiping his tears and shushing him as she must have done when they were children.
“I’m sure he knows, Jonathan. I’m sure he’s watching us here together and that he has peace knowing that you’ve finally come home to us.”
Brendan felt a lump in his throat as he watched his friend try to regain his composure. He could see the turmoil his friend’s mind was in and wanted to put his arms around him and protect him from the awful truth.
“What happened to you then, Cassie?” he asked, trying to take the focus off his friend.
She sighed.“Until the funeral was over, I slept at Nella’s house. Daddy wrote a will shortly before he died and he said if anything happened to him, I was to live with Nella’s parents right here. It was the only home I’d known.”
“But that didn’t happen?” Brendan asked.
Cassie shook her head.“Momma’s only sister, Prudence, drove back
over from New York with her fiancé. She said there was no way I was living with a black family and bringing further disgrace on their good family name. She packed up all my belongings and put them into her new car and then drove me away.”
Cassie’s eyes glazed over and she shook her head sadly.
“I thought she was taking me to live with her in New York and the whole way there in that open-topped car, I wondered how I’d get used to a noisy place like New York city. I remember Nella running after the car the whole way down to the main road. She yelled and yelled, shouting about how she’d come to New York and get me when I was of age.”
Cassie began to cry. Nella leant over and rubbed her friend’s hand.
“And I did, didn’t I?” she said.
“Yes, yes, you did.”
“Course she wasn’t taking me to her home. Her and her fiancé drove me to a place just outside Philadelphia which was an orphanage for girls. It was run by Catholics which I knew was a way of letting me know how little I meant to Momma’s family because Granddaddy hated Catholics. As a matter of fact, he hated anyone that wasn’t rich, white and Baptist. Also, I don’t think they wanted word getting out in their own community about how badly they had treated their own niece. I remember us driving into the gates of St Jude’s Hall. I could feel how tall and dark the building was because it blocked out the sun from my face. There was a cattle grid or something that made a rumbling sound as you drove into the gates. I never heard that sound again until I was eighteen years old.”
“They never came back for you?” asked Brendan.
Cassie shook her head. “No, but I heard about them from time to time. My aunt was quite a society lady. She married her fiancé once he graduated from medical school, bought a big house in New York and forgot that I ever existed. My first day at the orphanage, I remember the manager telling me that they couldn’t cater for blind girls and that they had no idea how to teach me. She told me that there was a private school for blind childrenonly a few short miles away. All that money my granddaddy had and the money my daddy had left me and my aunt wouldn’t spend a little of it by paying for a school where I could get an education. It wasn’t so bad though. I made friends there and I got by. They eventually got someoneto teach me Braille so I could read.”
