Beautiful Darkness tcc-2

by Garcia, Kami

  "Come on in." Aunt Grace waved me in. "Mercy, give him some a them blue stickers." She was fanning herself with an old church program, most likely from one of their respective husbands' funerals. Since the Sisters never let anyone actually keep one at the service, they had plenty of them lying around the house.

  "I'd get 'em for you myself, but I hafta be careful on account a my accident. I've got complications." It was the only thing she talked about since the county fair. Half the town knew she had fainted, but to hear Aunt Grace tell it, she had suffered a near-fatal complication that would keep Thelma, Aunt Prue, and Aunt Mercy scurrying to do her bidding until the end of her days.

  "No, no. Ethan's color's red, I told ya. Give him the red ones." Aunt Prue was scribbling madly on a yellow legal pad.

  Aunt Mercy handed me a sheet of stickers with red dots on them. "Now Ethan, go 'round the livin' room and put one a these stickers underneath a the things you want. Go on now." She stared at me expectantly, as if she would be offended if I didn't slap one of them on her forehead.

  "What are you talking about, Aunt Mercy?"

  Aunt Grace pulled a framed photo of an old guy in a Confederate uniform off the wall. "This here's Gen'ral Robert Charles Tyler, last Rebel gen'ral killed in the War Between the States. Give me one a them stickers. This here'll be worth somethin'."

  I had no idea what they were into and was afraid to ask. "We have to get going. Did you forget it was All Souls?"

  Aunt Prue frowned. " 'Course we didn't forget. That's why we're gettin' our affairs in order."

  "That's what the stickers are for. Everyone's got a color. Thelma's yella, you're red, your daddy's blue." Aunt Mercy paused, as if she had lost her train of thought.

  Aunt Prue silenced her with a look. She didn't like being interrupted. "You put those little stickers on the bottom a the things you want. That way when we die, Thelma'll know exactly who gets what."

  "It was on account a All Souls that we got ta thinkin' about it." Aunt Grace smiled proudly.

  "I don't want anything, and none of you are dying." I dropped the sheet of stickers on the table.

  "Ethan, Wade'll be here next month, and he's jus' as greedy as a fox in a henhouse. You need ta do your choosin' first." Wade was my Uncle Landis' illegitimate son, another person in my family who would never make it onto the Wate Family Tree.

  There was really no point in arguing with the Sisters when they got like this. So I spent the next half hour putting little red stickers underneath unmatched dining room chairs and Civil War memorabilia, but I still had time to kill while I waited for the Sisters to pick out their hats for All Souls. Choosing the right hat was serious business, and most of the ladies in town had already been down to Charleston to do their shopping weeks ago. To see them walking up the hill, wearing everything from peacock feathers to freshly cut roses on their heads, you would think the ladies of Gatlin were going to a garden party instead of a graveyard.

  The place was a mess. Aunt Prue must have made Thelma drag down every box from the attic, full of old clothes, quilts, and photo albums. I flipped through the pages of the album on top. Old pictures were taped onto the brown pages: Aunt Prue and her husbands, Aunt Mercy standing in front of her old house on Dove Street, my house, Wate's Landing, back when my granddad was a kid. I turned the last page, and another house stared back at me.

  Ravenwood Manor.

  But not the Ravenwood I knew. This was a Ravenwood fit for the Historical Society Registry. Cypress trees lined the walk leading up to the crisp white veranda. Every pillar, every shutter was freshly painted. There were no traces of the strangling overgrowth, the crooked stairs of Macon's Ravenwood. Underneath the photo, there was an inscription, carefully added in delicate handwriting.

  Ravenwood Manor, 1865

  I was staring at Abraham's Ravenwood.

  "Whatcha got there?" Aunt Mercy shuffled in wearing the biggest, pinkest flamingo of a hat I'd ever seen. There was some kind of weird netting on the front, like a veil, topped with a very unrealistic bird perched in a pink nest. When she moved the slightest bit, the whole thing kind of flapped, as if it could fly right off her head. No, this wouldn't give Savannah and the cheer squad any ammo.

  I tried not to look at the flapping bird. "It's an old photo album. It was sitting on the top of this box." I handed the album to her.

  "Prudence Jane, bring me my spectacles!"

  There was some banging around in the hall, and Aunt Prue appeared in the doorway in an equally large and disturbing hat. This one was black, with a wraparound veil that made Aunt Prue look like the mother of a mob boss at his funeral. "If you wore them 'round your neck, like I told ya ..."

  Either Aunt Mercy had her hearing aid turned down or she was ignoring Aunt Prue. "Look what Ethan found." The book was still open to the same page. The Ravenwood of the past stared back at us.

  "Lord 'ave mercy, look at that. The Devil's workshop if I ever saw it." The Sisters, and most of the old folks in Gatlin, were convinced Abraham Ravenwood made some kind of deal with the Devil to save Ravenwood Plantation from General Sherman's burning campaign of 1865, which had left every other plantation along the river in ashes. If the Sisters only knew how close it was to the truth.

  "Ain't the only evil Abraham Ravenwood done." Aunt Prue backed away from the book.

  "What do you mean?" Ninety percent of what the Sisters said was nonsense, but the other ten percent was worth hearing. The Sisters were the ones who had told me about my mysterious ancestor, Ethan Carter Wate, who died during the Civil War. Maybe they knew something about Abraham Ravenwood.

  Aunt Prue shook her head. "No good can come from talkin' 'bout him."

  But Aunt Mercy could never resist an opportunity to defy her older sister. "Our granddaddy used ta say Abraham Ravenwood played on the wrong side a right and wrong -- tempted fate. He was in league with the Devil all right, practicin' witchcraft, communin' with evil spirits."

  "Mercy! You stop all that talk!"

  "Stop what? Speakin' the truth?"

  "Don't you drag the truth inta this house!" Aunt Prue was flustered.

  Aunt Mercy looked me straight in the eye. "But the Devil turned on him after Abraham had done his biddin', and when the Devil was done with him, Abraham wasn't even a man anymore. He was somethin' else."

  As far as the Sisters were concerned, every evil deed, deception, or criminal act was the work of the Devil, and I wasn't going to try to convince them otherwise. Because after what I'd seen Abraham Ravenwood do, I knew he was more than evil. I also knew it had nothing to do with the Devil.

  "Now you're tellin' tales, Mercy Lynne, and you best quit before the Good Lord strikes you down here in this house, on All Souls, a all days. And I don't want ta get hit by a stray bolt." Aunt Prue whacked Aunt Mercy's chair with her cane.

  "You don't think this boy knows 'bout the strange goin's on in Gatlin?" Aunt Grace appeared in the doorway in her own nightmarishly lavender hat. Before I was born, someone made the mistake of telling Aunt Grace lavender was her color, and nearly everything she wore had been disproving it ever since. "No use in tryin' ta put the milk back in the jug after it's spilt."

  Aunt Prue banged her cane on the floor. They were speaking in riddles, like Amma, which meant they knew something. Maybe they didn't know there were Casters wandering around in the Tunnels below their house, but they knew something.

  "Some messes can be cleaned up easier than others. I don't want any part a this one." Aunt Prue pushed past Aunt Grace as she left the room. "This ain't a day ta be speakin' ill a the dead."

  Aunt Grace shuffled over toward us. I took her elbow and guided her to the couch. Aunt Mercy waited for the tapping of Aunt Prue's cane to echo down the hall. "Is she gone? I don't have my hearin' aid turned up."

  Aunt Grace nodded. "I think so."

  The two of them leaned in as if they were about to give me launch codes for nuclear missiles. "If I tell ya somethin', you promise not ta tell your daddy? 'Cause if you do, we're bound t
a end up in the Home for sure." She was referring to the Summerville Assisted Seniors House -- the seventh circle of hell, as far as the Sisters were concerned.

  Aunt Grace nodded in agreement.

  "What is it? I won't say anything to my dad. I promise."

  "Prudence Jane's wrong." Aunt Mercy dropped her voice to a whisper. "Abraham Ravenwood's still around, sure as I'm sittin' here today."

  I wanted to say they were crazy. Two ancient, senile old ladies claiming to see a man, or what most people thought was a man, no one had seen for a hundred years. "What do you mean, still around?"

  "I saw him with my own eyes, last year. Behind the church, a all places!" Aunt Mercy fanned herself with her handkerchief, as if she might faint from the thought of it. "After church on Tuesdays, we wait for Thelma out in front, on account a she has ta teach Bible study down the way at First Methodist. Anyhow, I let Harlon James out from inside my pocketbook so he could stretch his little legs -- you know Prudence Jane makes me carry him. But soon as I set him down, he ran 'round the back a the church."

  "You know that dog can't mind ta save his life." Aunt Grace shook her head.

  Aunt Mercy glanced at the door before continuing. "Well, I had ta follow him because you know how Prudence Jane is 'bout that dog. So I went 'round back and jus' when I turned the corner ta holler for Harlon James, I saw it. Abraham Ravenwood's ghost. Out in the cemet'ry behind the church. Those progressives at the Round Church in Charleston got one thing right." Folks in Charleston said the Round Church was built that way so the Devil couldn't hide in the corners. I never pointed out the obvious, that the Devil usually had no problem marching right down the middle aisle, as far as some of our local congregations were concerned.

  "I saw him, too," Aunt Grace whispered. "And I know it was him, 'cause his picture's on the wall down at the Historical Society, where I play rummy with the girls. Right up there in the Founders Circle, on account a the Ravenwoods bein' the first ones in Gatlin. Abraham Ravenwood, plain as day."

  Aunt Mercy shushed her sister. With Aunt Prue out of the room, it was her turn to call the shots. "It was him, all right. He was out there with Silas Ravenwood's boy. Not Macon -- the other one, Phinehas." I remembered the name from the Ravenwood Family Tree. Hunting Phinehas Ravenwood.

  "You mean Hunting?"

  "Nobody called that boy by his given name. They all called him Phinehas. It's from the Bible. You know what it means?" She paused dramatically. "Serpent's tongue."

  For a second, I held my breath.

  "There was no mistakin' that man's ghost. As the Good Lord as my witness, we cleared outta there faster than a cat with its tail on fire. Now, Lord knows I couldn't move like that these days. Not since my complications ..."

  The Sisters were crazy, but their brand was usually based in crazy history. There was no way of knowing what version of the truth they were telling, but it was usually a version. Any version of this story was dangerous. I couldn't figure it out, but if I had learned anything this year, it was that sooner or later I was going to have to.

  Lucille meowed, scratching at the screen door. Guess she'd heard enough. Harlon James growled from under the couch. For the first time, I wondered what the two of them had seen, hanging around this house for so long.

  But not every dog was Boo Radley. Sometimes a dog was just a dog. Sometimes a cat was just a cat. Still, I opened the screen door and stuck a red sticker on Lucille's head.

  6.17

  Keeping

  If there was one reliable source of information around here, it was the folks in Gatlin. On a day like today, you didn't have to look too hard to see most everyone from the town in the same half mile. The cemetery was packed by the time we got there, late as usual thanks to the Sisters. Lucille wouldn't get in the Cadillac, then we had to stop at Gardens of Eden because Aunt Prue wanted to get flowers for all her late husbands, only none of the flowers looked good enough, and when we were finally back in the car, Aunt Mercy wouldn't let me drive over twenty miles an hour. I had been dreading today for months. Now it was here.

  I trudged up the sloping gravel path of His Garden of Perpetual Peace, pushing Aunt Mercy's wheelchair. Thelma was behind me, with Aunt Prue on one arm and Aunt Grace on the other. Lucille was trailing after them, picking her way through the pebbles, careful to keep her distance. Aunt Mercy's patent-leather purse swung on the handle of her wheelchair, jabbing me in the gut every second step. I was already sweating, thinking about that wheelchair getting caught in the thick summer grass. There was a strong possibility Link and I would be doing the fireman's carry.

  We made it up the rise in time to see Emily preening in her new white halter dress. Every girl got a new dress for All Souls. There were no flip-flops or tank tops, only your scrubbed Sunday best. It was like an extended family reunion, only ten times over because pretty much the whole town, and for the most part the whole county, was in one way or another related to you, your neighbor, or your neighbor's neighbor.

  Emily was giggling and hanging all over Emory. "Did you bring any beer?"

  Emory opened his jacket, revealing a silver flask. "Better than that."

  Eden, Charlotte, and Savannah were holding court near the Snow family plot, which enjoyed a prime location in the center of the rows of headstones. It was covered with bright plastic flowers and cherubs. There was even a little plastic fawn nibbling grass next to the tallest headstone. Decorating graves was another one of Gatlin's contests -- a way to prove that you and your family members, even the dead ones, were better than your neighbors and theirs. People went all out. Plastic wreaths wrapped in green nylon vines, shiny rabbits and squirrels, even birdbaths, so hot from the sun they could burn the skin right off your fingers. There was no overdoing it. The tackier, the better.

  My mom used to laugh about her favorites. "They're still lifes, works of art like the ones painted by the Dutch and Flemish masters, only these are made of plastic. The sentiment's the same." My mom could laugh at the worst of Gatlin's traditions and respect the best of them. Maybe that's how she survived around here.

  She was particularly partial to the glow-in-the-dark crosses that lit up at night. Some summer evenings, the two of us would lie on the hill in the cemetery and watch them light up at dusk, as if they were stars. Once I asked her why she liked to lie out there. "This is history, Ethan. The history of families, the people they loved, the ones they lost. Those crosses, those silly plastic flowers and animals, they were put there to remind us of someone who is missed. Which is a beautiful thing to see, and it's our job to see it." We never told my dad about those nights in the cemetery. It was one of those things we did alone.

  I would have to walk past most of Jackson High and step over a plastic rabbit or two to get to the Wate family plot on the outskirts of the lawn. That was the other thing about All Souls. There wasn't actually much remembering involved. In another hour, everyone over twenty-one would be standing around gossiping about the living, right after they finished gossiping about the dead, and everyone under thirty would be getting wasted behind the mausoleums. Everyone but me. I'd be too busy remembering.

  "Hey, man." Link jogged up alongside me and smiled at the Sisters. "Afternoon, ma'ams."

  "How are you today, Wesley? You're growin' like a weed, aren't ya?" Aunt Prue was huffing and sweating.

  "Yes, ma'am." Rosalie Watkins was standing behind Link, waving at Aunt Prue.

  "Ethan, why don't you go on with Wesley? I see Rosalie, and I need to ask her what kinda flour she uses in her hummingbird cake." Aunt Prue dug her cane into the grass, and Thelma helped Aunt Mercy out of her wheelchair.

  "You sure you'll be all right?"

  Aunt Prue scowled at me. " 'Course we'll be all right. We've been lookin' after ourselves since before you were born."

  "Since before your daddy was born," Aunt Grace corrected.

  "I almost forgot." Aunt Prue opened her pocketbook and fished something out. "Found that darned cat's tag." She looked down at Lucille disapprovingly.
"Not that it helped us any. Not like some people care about years a loyalty and all those walks on your very own clothesline. I reckon it doesn't buy you a drop a gratitude, when it comes ta some people." The cat wandered away without so much as a look back.

  I looked at the metal tag with Lucille's name etched into it, and slipped it in my pocket. "The ring is missing."

  "Best put it in your wallet, in case you have ta prove she doesn't have rabies. She's a biter. Thelma'll see 'bout fetchin' another one."

  "Thanks."

  The Sisters linked arms, and those three gargantuan hats knocked up against each other as they shuffled toward their friends. Even the Sisters had friends. My life sucked.

  "Shawn and Earl brought some beer and Jim Beam. Everyone's meetin' behind the Honeycutt crypt." At least I had Link.

  We both knew I wouldn't be getting drunk anywhere. In a few minutes, I would be standing over my dead mother's grave. I'd be thinking about the way she always laughed when I told her about Mr. Lee and his twisted version of U.S. History, or U.S. Hysteria, as she called it. How she and my dad danced to James Taylor in our kitchen in bare feet. How she knew exactly what to say when everything was going wrong, like when my ex-girlfriend would rather be with some kind of mutant Supernatural than with me.

  Link put his hand on my shoulder. "You okay?"

  "Yeah, I'm fine. Let's walk around." I would be standing over her grave today, but I wasn't ready. Not yet.

  L, where are --

  I caught myself and tried to pull my mind away. I don't know why I still reached for her. Habit, I guess. But instead of Lena's voice, I heard Savannah's. She stood in front of me, wearing way too much makeup but somehow still managing to look pretty. She was all glossy hair and gloppy eyelashes and tied-up little straps on her sundress that were probably only there to make a guy think about untying them. I mean, if you didn't know what a bitch she was, or didn't care.