The Color of Dust

by Claire Rooney

  Mr. Dumfries took a hand off the steering wheel to rub at his chin. His face was an odd mix of emotions, most of which clashed. Under his hand, Carrie thought that he looked sadly amused and maybe a little angry with a dash of regret thrown in. No doubt, there were parts to the story that he wasn’t going to tell her, but she could tell he was thinking about them.

  “I have to say that your grandmother’s funeral was just about the saddest thing that I ever did see.” Mr. Dumfries put his hand back on the wheel. “She was interred in a cemetery one county over. I was there as her legal representative to make sure her wishes were, for the most part, carried out, and also the three Murray boys were there because they dug the grave. But that was all. She specifically said that she didn’t want the Reverend or anybody saying prayers over her or any kind of ceremony performed on her behalf.” He tapped at the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “So, there wasn’t any of that, just the practicalities of backhoes, shovels and dirt.”

  Carrie frowned. Her father’s funeral hadn’t been much more than that. A priest, his latest drinking buddy and her. “Didn’t she have any friends?”

  Mr. Dumfries wrapped his hand tight around the wheel again. “She wasn’t that kind of person.”

  “What kind of a person doesn’t have friends?” Carrie spoke without thinking. Her words brought a blush to her cheeks. She didn’t have any friends anymore after Megan had taken them all with her. What kind of person was she?

  Mr. Dumfries shrugged one shoulder. “Your grandmother didn’t seem to need anybody or even want anybody around. In her latter years, the nurses were the only people allowed inside the house. She was always solitary to some degree, but as she got older, it got worse and worse. In the end, I hear she was right hard to get along with.”

  “What about my grandfather? Whatever happened to him?”

  “He died about five years after your mother was born, in 1940, I believe. They called it stomach ulcers, but it was probably cancer. A lot of people thought it was a broken heart.”

  “Can you really die of a broken heart?” Carrie hadn’t died. She only felt like she was dying, and that’s not the same thing at all.

  “Well, now, I suppose anything’s possible. It was generally supposed that your grandfather had good cause to die of a broken heart, but no one’s quite sure what the whole story was. It was common knowledge that he loved your grandmother something fierce. It was also common knowledge that she didn’t see him in quite the same way. He didn’t like going anywhere without her, and she seemed to wish he would just go away.”

  “And no one knew what that was all about?”

  “Everyone had a theory. The popular one had to do with her father arranging her marriage to Mr. Burgess. People say that she was such a proud woman she never got over not having her own free choice in the matter. I’m not sure about that, myself. Back in her day arranged marriages for women of her station were the rule and not the exception.”

  “What’s your theory?”

  Mr. Dumfries tilted his head and looked puzzled, as if no one had ever asked him that question before. “I don’t have one, really. There’s just not enough evidence to support a conclusion. I can accept that she didn’t love her husband as much as he loved her, but that doesn’t explain your mother’s part in it all.”

  “Why? What did my mother do?”

  “Not a damn thing, and that was the shame of it. She was a pretty little gal without a mean bone in her body. It was only that she was. As I’ve said, she came very late in their lives, and the rumor among the house staff was that she was begotten rather harshly. Without your grandmother’s consent, as they say.” Mr. Dumfries shook his head slowly, his drooping jowls jiggling slightly. “I don’t know how much truth there is in that. My father was a foreman in your family’s cotton mill before it closed, and he worked closely with Dr. Burgess before he died. He respected him very highly.”

  Carrie looked out the window at the passing trees. They seemed thick and dark in spite of the bright June sun. “Sometimes good men do bad things,” Carrie said again, softly, almost to herself.

  Mr. Dumfries nodded his head over the steering wheel. “Yes. Sometimes they do. Whatever the case, there’s no denying that something was really wrong with that family. Your grandmother seemed to resent her daughter even more than she did her husband. Still, you just couldn’t help but feel sorry for them all.”

  Mr. Dumfries slowed the car almost to a stop. He turned onto a narrow gravel road half hidden by brush. Overgrown shrubbery reached out with thin-fingered branches to scratch at the sides of the car. Tree limbs hung low overhead while large potholes threatened to bounce them out of their seats. Carrie grabbed for the dash. She held her breath and prayed that the house wasn’t as messed up as the driveway. If it was, it would be too big of a job for her to tackle alone. She hoped it wouldn’t be. In spite of herself, she was getting interested in this family, in her family, even though they were all dead. Carrie frowned. That sounded weird, even to her.

  They swung around a sharp bend in the drive. The road widened out suddenly as the gravel turned to cobblestone. From between the trees, she caught a glimpse of white. One more turn and the trees ended. Carrie froze in her seat, her hands still clutching at the dash.

  “Holy shit.”

  Mr. Dumfries smiled softly and shook his head. “You should’ve seen it in its heyday, how it looked when I was just a boy, all bright white with lights shining in every window. It was a marvelous thing.”

  It was still a marvelous thing. The house rose up before them, the very picture of a southern plantation house with the obligatory six columns supporting a large gabled roof that hung over a massive front porch. A porch that looked like it was made for warm summer days full of sitting and rocking, mint juleps and gossip. A more delicate veranda with wrought iron railings ringed the second story, and every window she could see was floor to ceiling with rounded sunburst tops. A stained glass rose window decorated the middle of the large main gable.

  It was absolutely marvelous, but as they drove closer, Carrie could see how time sat heavily on the house. The windows were dim and dark. The paint, if it had once been bright white, was now dirty and dull where it wasn’t peeling and cracking off the brick. Most of the shutters hung askew. Ancient azalea bushes grew tall and scraggly beside the porch, and all around the house, the grass really was knee high to an elephant. Carrie listened to it brush the undercarriage of the car as they drove slowly over the cobbles.

  They pulled into a circular drive that wound around a decaying central fountain where sad cupids tipped empty urns into bone-dry basins. Mr. Dumfries stopped the car near the wide steps leading up to the porch. He shifted the gear into park and sat back in his seat, his hands resting in his lap.

  “It’s huge.” Carrie leaned forward to look out the windshield. The house was more than huge. It was imposing. She was almost afraid to get out of the car. “When you said ‘old house’ I thought you meant a three bedroom ranch with a sagging roof. I didn’t think you meant anything like this.” She waved her hand at the porch.

  Mr. Dumfries opened his door but didn’t make any move to get out of his seat. He stared across the drive, at the overgrown field in front of him, his eyes distant and thoughtful. “In this part of the country when we say ‘old’ we mean at least a hundred years or more. This house is old even as old houses go. It has a deep history if not a glorious one.” He glanced briefly at Carrie and then out at the field again. “It sits on the river, you see. Well, you can’t see it from here but you can from the second floor. It’s just over and down the rise there.” He waved his hand toward the horizon. “The central square of the house was built before the Civil War and both sides, North and South, used it as a supply depot. That’s probably why neither side burned it down.” Mr. Dumfries shifted his stare over toward the river, his fingers scratching absently at a drooping jowl. “There’s an interesting story I’ve heard told. Just before the battle over Richmond, a Yankee g
unboat fired on the house. The cannonball hit one of the columns and left a hole in it. Years later, the bees made a hive in there and then every time someone was stung, they blamed it on ‘those damn Yankees’. You can still see the patch way up high on the second column from the right if you look closely.”

  Carrie looked at Mr. Dumfries. He was rambling and still hadn’t made a move to get out. Mr. Dumfries, Carrie realized, was nervous. It was clear that there was much more to his story than he was saying. There was always more to any story than what could be told, but usually the teller left out the parts that didn’t matter to the hearer. She wasn’t sure that was what Mr. Dumfries was doing. She wasn’t sure what he was doing.

  Mr. Dumfries swung the car door open a little wider and put one foot gingerly on the ground. “This was such a beautiful place, once upon a time.” His voice lost its rumble and took on a wistful timbre. “You can’t see much of the land now through all the weeds, but there were formal gardens here once, box hedges and bright flower beds.” He waved a hand back toward the trees. “There are still some outbuildings standing that date back to the original structure. There are the remains of the old cook house, a horse barn, a tobacco barn, a smoke house, ice house and such, but I don’t imagine they’re in very good shape after all this time. Shame about that.” Mr. Dumfries turned and put his other foot on the ground but then stopped.

  Carrie saw that she would have to be the brave one. The house scared her a bit, but it was only its size that made her nervous and not its history. She opened her door and stood. She took the box from her bag, opened it and took out the key. Dead grass and last year’s leaves crunched underfoot as she walked around to Mr. Dumfries’s side of the car.

  She held up the key. “Shall we go and see if this fits the front door, or is there a better way in?”

  Mr. Dumfries stood slowly and shut the car door behind him. He drew himself up as straight as his old back would allow. “It is one of the provisions of the will that the heir would go in first by the front door. I don’t know what sense that makes or even if that key will work, but I think we should follow the provisions to the best of our ability.” He tugged on the hem of his jacket settling it more firmly on his shoulders.

  Carrie looked at the key in her hand. It felt heavier than it should have, like it was made of lead instead of brass. She closed her fingers around it. “Was my grandmother crazy?”

  “No.” Mr. Dumfries shook his head quickly, fast enough to make his cheeks quiver. “No. She wasn’t crazy. Eccentric is more the term. She had both feet on the ground, but…” His eyes went distant again.

  “But what?”

  “It’s hard to explain. I was only in my teens when I had anything to do with her. She was a grown woman with cares and concerns a teenage boy wouldn’t know anything about. But it seemed to me like she could only take so much of the world. She’d be moving right along and then something would come over her and she would retreat deep inside the house or out to one of the back gardens. Near the end of her life, she never left her room, not because she couldn’t, according to the nurses, but because she didn’t want to. She wouldn’t see anyone or let anyone see her. It was almost as if she wanted to fade away and be forgotten.” Mr. Dumfries glanced over his shoulder toward the river and then back again to the house. “Sad to say that’s pretty much what happened.”

  They walked slowly together toward the front porch. They passed the fountain and Carrie peered inside. The smaller basins were dry, but the main basin held a small pond of stagnant green water. A startled frog hopped off the broken wing of one of the cupids and plopped into the water with a splash. The water rippled and the smell of algae and old rotting things wafted into the air. The dead flowers around the fountain rustled in the light breeze.

  She turned and saw Mr. Dumfries waiting for her on the porch. Carrie crossed the drive and climbed the steps slowly, conscious of the dirt and debris her feet were stirring. She thought about how things tended to lay where they’d fallen.

  Dirt and twigs, leaves and people. Broken wings. She wondered how her relatives ended up here in this specific place, what kind of people they had been, what had become of them and how she ended up being the only one left. She didn’t much like the thought of being the only one left.

  Mr. Dumfries stood by the front door. “If you would so kindly do the honors.” He waved a hand at the doorknob but looked dubiously at the door. “Whenever you’re ready, Miss Bowden.”

  “I’m ready.” Carrie fit the key into the lock. It went in easily enough, but it wouldn’t turn. She jiggled the key and twisted the handle at the same time. Something gave with a snap. The handle turned and the door swung open. She was expecting a rusty, creaking noise from the hinges, but the door swung open silently. Carrie squinted her eyes and peered into the dim interior.

  Everything inside was quiet and still.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Carrie stepped through the door and into the foyer. Behind her, the sun seemed to fade as the dimness fell across her shoulders. She blinked and waited for her eyes to adjust. They didn’t adjust. It wasn’t her eyes. She stared all around her. The foyer was two stories tall with a pair of great curving staircases that started on opposite sides of the entranceway, bowed outward and upward and met in the middle as the landing for the second floor. It was a very grand staircase, or would have been if it had not been covered in a thick layer of dust, draped by broken banners of lacy spider webs. Carrie walked to the middle of the foyer and turned around in a circle. Her eyes darted back and forth not quite making sense of everything she saw through dust so thick it almost looked like snow. The air tickled her nose and she sneezed.

  Mr. Dumfries came in behind her with his face set in a hard expression, distant and remote. He wasn’t looking at what was in front of him but at something far away. Something that hurt. He walked past her, over to a set of large doors framed by the staircases. His footsteps left tracks across the floor. A clear step with his good leg. A slight scuffing of his heel with the other. He paused in front of the doors, then reached out and swung them open. Dust swirled into the air in a whirling cloud of shimmering gray. He stood in front of the open doors staring into the room, his back stiff, his shoulders set. Slowly, he shook himself out of his reverie and turned around to face Carrie. “This room, Miss Bowden, was always the heart of this house.”

  Carrie walked over to the doors and Mr. Dumfries stepped aside. He waved her through with a courteous half bow and Carrie stepped into the room.

  It was a library, like nothing she’d ever seen before. The room was open the full two stories with a balcony one story above her head running along three of the four walls. Bookshelves lined the balcony, every shelf stuffed with dusty books. On the floor level, tucked into a corner, was a huge antique-looking desk. In another corner sat a thinly cushioned couch with fancy scrollwork curling over the backrest. Two round-backed chairs and a small tea table sat grouped around a large fireplace. The mantel over the fireplace was wide and broad with a huge old mirror hanging over it. The surface of the mirror was spotted and hazy with age.

  It rippled in places, reflecting the room in foggy distortions. Tall windows covered the back wall of the library. Sunlight came streaming through them with broad beams that fell in slanted square patches across the floor. But, in spite of the bright sun, Carrie couldn’t tell what color anything was supposed to be.

  Everything was a uniform gray, covered in dust and draped in layers of fine webs. She sneezed again and dug for a tissue.

  Mr. Dumfries stood in the middle of the room, his arms folded across his chest. “The stories were true then. She really did lock up this part of the house.” His mouth looked pinched.

  “What a waste.”

  Carrie rubbed her nose with a shred of Kleenex. “Did you think the stories might not be true?”

  He ran a finger along the edge of the tea table leaving a furrow in the dust and looked down at its tip. “I hoped they weren’t.” He blew, and a small puff
of gray swirled into the air. “I liked your mother. I hoped her life wasn’t as hard as it sounded like it might have been. But maybe it was.” He rubbed at the tip of his finger with his thumb. “A damn shame.”

  Carrie looked around her at the thick layers of gray, undisturbed except by little mouse feet. “If my grandmother locked up this part of the house, where did she sleep?”

  “According to the nurses, she stayed in a room in the east wing servant’s quarters.”

  Carrie sniffed and wiped at her nose again. “Can I see her room? Do you know which one it is?”

  “We can find it easy enough.” Mr. Dumfries gestured to the dust-shrouded furniture. “It won’t look like this.”

  “But will we get lost trying to find it?” Carrie smiled softly.

  She’d never been in a house this big. To her, a three-bedroom apartment was a luxurious amount of space. This seemed decadent, and she’d only seen a fraction of it.

  Mr. Dumfries smiled back at her with understanding. “The house is big, but it’s not really that complicated. It’s just basically a large central box, facing north toward the river, with two wings running south off each side.” He turned and faced the row of windows on the back wall and pointed to them. “This wall faces south, ergo all the windows. The two central windows aren’t really windows but they’re actually doors that lead out to a patio and the small garden in between the two wings.” He raised his right arm and held it out from his side. “The west wing has the family bedrooms on the second floor. Recreation rooms are on the first floor, a billiards room, an informal family room, a gentlemen’s smoking parlor and such.” He lowered his right arm and raised his left. “The east wing has the servant’s quarters on the first floor. The second floor has guest bedrooms. The kitchen, dining room and breakfast nook are all on the east side of the main box.”