by Cathy Gohlke
Mercy kept her smile but cocked her head, taking in my satchel. “Of course. You want to come in? Or prefer to sit out here?”
“I’d love to come in.” If I was going to make any inroads, I needed to show that I was as comfortable entering her home as I hoped she was entering mine.
Fatback sizzling, the strong smell of greens simmering, and the tantalizing aroma of corn bread baking met my nostrils the moment I stepped inside. The front room ran spare but was made cozy by a fireplace, a threadbare sofa, two wooden rockers, and a large oval floor rug—a colorful rag rug that must have taken Mercy weeks to braid and sew. A sampler embroidered with Scripture and flowers hung over the mantel, and a low fire burned in the grate to ward off the mid-September chill. Pressure pushed against the backs of my eyes. This was a real home, a cozy, welcoming home.
“You all right, Miss Lilliana?” Mercy laid her hand on my arm, concerned.
I shook my head to clear the pressure and smiled, taking her hand. “I’m fine. It’s just . . . your home is so lovely and welcoming. A respite.”
She smiled in return. “Well, it’s not Garden’s Gate, but it’s ours.”
“Yes, yes, it is. Thank you for allowing me to come in, Mrs. Tate.”
She looked surprised at that, then tentatively offered, “You call me Mercy. Can I get you a cup of tea?”
“Thank you—Mercy. I would love that. I’m chilled clear through from my walk.”
“Fall’s comin’ on early this year, that’s certain. I’ll be just a minute. You sit and warm yourself.”
By the time Mercy returned with a tray of tea and molasses cookies, I was sitting in one of her rockers, staring into the fire, more relaxed than I could remember.
Two sips of tea and two bites of her soft and scrumptious cookies put me in seventh heaven. “These are wonderful, Mercy. Thank you.”
“I think you must be getting your appetite back at last, Miss Lilliana. I’m right glad.” She smiled softly.
I felt myself blush and wondered if I was eating food they truly needed. “You are so very kind, Mercy. And please stop calling me ‘Miss.’ I’m just Lilliana.”
Mercy shifted in her seat and I realized I’d made her uncomfortable. I was sorry, but such a title suited Aunt Hyacinth. It didn’t suit me.
“I appreciate that, Miss Lilliana. You’re very kind, but I don’t believe that would be a good idea.”
I swallowed, knowing she was right, hating that I even knew. “I should explain my visit.”
Mercy nodded, waiting.
“I’m so sorry over what happened about Marshall with Rhoan Wishon.”
“That’s not your fault. Not your doing. Rhoan Wishon’s who he is, who he’s always been.”
“I understand that now, but it’s not who I am, and I’m ashamed that I was intimidated by him. I know Ruby Lynne can’t teach Marshall.”
“It’s too risky for either of them. Rhoan would beat his daughter to a pulp and do worse to Marshall. You can’t ask them to continue, no ma’am.” Mercy was firm, and I admired her—protecting her own as well as Ruby Lynne.
“No, of course not. But I can teach Marshall. I can work with him.”
Mercy shook her head. “You’d never be able to convince the likes of Rhoan Wishon or Ida Mae that you weren’t settin’ up a courtin’ school. I’m sorry, Miss Lilliana, but it won’t do. It just won’t do.”
“I understand that, too, though I’m sorrier than I can say that it’s so. But if you’d allow it, I could come here—tutor Marshall, and your children, if you want, in your home.” It was a bold offer and the shock on Mercy’s face told me so. “Nobody can fault us for that, can they?” I stopped talking, fearful I’d said too much, though my mouth wanted to run on.
Mercy knotted and unknotted her hands. “I don’t know. I never know what those—those people will come up with, what they won’t take to.”
“Nobody besides us need know—ever. I could give Marshall a lesson, then leave the book with him so he could practice before our next one. I won’t tell a soul.”
Mercy compressed her lips, but her eyes spoke desire. I wondered if she knew how to read.
“Did Olney ever tell you why Marshall came to us?”
“No, he didn’t, and I didn’t ask. He’s Olney’s sister’s son, isn’t he?”
“Yes.” Mercy nodded. “Marshall’s father was beaten and hung by his thumbs in the woods for three days down Georgia way. On the third day they tied bags of stones around his arms and legs, rowed him out to the middle of a lake, and threw him in, still alive. They forced Marshall and his mother to watch him drown.”
“What?” I heard her words, but my mind couldn’t grasp the horror.
“Leticia, Olney’s sister, sent her son here to save his life. She feared the same thing might happen to her boy.”
“But why? Why . . . ?”
“Why does the sun shine? Why does the rain fall? Why does fall turn to deep winter? It’s always been this way for our people. Every time one of our own steps out for betterment, that ax comes down. Some questions there’s no use askin’.” She shook her head, the weight of sorrow so heavy she looked away, into the fire. “Leticia said her husband wanted to pay off the man he worked for so they could move on, that he’d saved for two years to pay off what he owed in credit with the store for shoes and food. So many times they did without their meal in a day to save that bit of money.
“But the man didn’t want Jody’s money. He wanted his cheap labor—near slave labor. So he accused Jody of stealin’ that money, and he worked up some of his friends with liquor . . . though I reckon it didn’t take much.” She looked at me now. “You come from a different world. What you want to step in our cow patch for?”
“Because I can read and I know what it means. I want that for Marshall. He’s so bright, Mercy. Your children are bright. They deserve better and reading can help them. It’s just a beginning, but still, it is a beginning. I don’t want to risk you or Olney or cause you trouble. I’ll only do it with your and Olney’s blessing.”
Mercy wet her lips, considering. “Olney won’t take it for free. He’ll want to pay.”
“I don’t want money.”
“That’s not what I said.”
I stopped, understanding. “Could we trade? Marshall could cut me firewood for his lessons?”
The corners of Mercy’s mouth turned up a little. “That might do. Yes, that might do. Let me talk with Olney.”
I smiled in return. My facial muscles were beginning to ache and I realized I hadn’t done much smiling of late. “In the meantime—” I pulled the primer and tablet and two pencils from my satchel—“I’ll leave these. I know Marshall was working on them with Ruby Lynne. He can practice what he learned, reading and writing, and we’ll go from wherever he is in the book. Perhaps he can teach your children what he knows, too. That will be good for them and it will reinforce everything Marshall learns.”
Mercy looked as if I’d handed her a plate of Belgian chocolates. “What you’re offerin’ no firewood can repay. It’s not just the book . . .”
“No, it’s the beginning of a path out of here. A path out of No Creek to a better, fairer world . . . I hope.”
“Is there such a thing?”
A way of escape? A new life, leaving behind fear and the abuse of the old one? Oh, I hope so. I clasped Mercy’s hands and whispered, “God bless you, Mercy Tate,” and meant it.
Chapter Thirty-Two
THE CALENDAR TURNED TO OCTOBER, and Celia’s mama made plans without ever asking Celia’s opinion.
Each night they listened to Miss Lill’s radio—Dick Tracy and The Lone Ranger—before tuning in the news. Reports from the outside world sometimes confounded Celia, but Miss Lill explained all she could. The latest was that children in Moscow were working to enforce air raid precautions—children! In occupied areas children, even young ones, gathered intelligence and secretly carried messages. Older children fought Germans alongside their mothers and partisans.
&n
bsp; In comparison, Celia knew that her life in No Creek was safe, tame, and boring. Still, she’d sooner deliver secret messages to cutthroat partisans in the woods than do what her mama had in mind.
To compensate for all that lay ahead, Celia packed the new Nancy Drew mystery Miss Lill had ordered for the library. Her mama insisted she pack clean socks and underwear for overnight.
Celia wasn’t sure why she and Chester needed to scrub from head to toe and wear their Sunday best to visit their daddy in jail. After all, he’d be wearin’ jailbird clothes, Celia was certain, and she doubted, after Miss Lill told her the plight of Jean Valjean in Les Misérables, that any warden insisted on baths more than once a week. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to see her daddy, but her mama said he longed to see her and Chester, and that it was important so they wouldn’t forget him.
Except for the photograph her mama kept on her nightstand, Celia would have forgotten what he looked like, what he smelled like, even the color of his eyes. It wasn’t as though he’d been gone a short time for a family visit; it was as though he was long gone and Celia, for most intents and purposes, had written him out of her life.
Life as Fillmore Percy’s daughter was humiliating at best. She was the girl mothers didn’t want their daughters to sit with at lunch or bring home for overnights. Life at Garden’s Gate with Miss Lill was not only a high step from where they’d lived before, but a genuine leap up the community ladder. Celia had no desire to return to the way things had been.
But on her last visit, her mama had applied for and received special permission for the children to see their daddy. “It’s a next step in his rehabilitation and an opportunity to begin to reestablish our family bonds. It’s been over a year since either of you’ve seen him. It’s time.”
Celia wondered if her daddy had changed at all. Reformed was her new word. She wasn’t counting on her daddy being reformed.
“Lilliana, there’s cold chicken in the icebox and tomato aspic. There’s a slice of apple pie and a little cheese in—”
“Gladys, I won’t starve before you get back, and truth to tell, I do know how to cook. Not like you, granted, but I do, and I won’t mind having a go in the kitchen. If I don’t soon, I’m bound to forget how.”
“I very much doubt that, but I know what you mean. It’s good to keep your hand in. We’ll be back tomorrow night. I believe we can just catch the last train.”
“Just you take care of one another. Take my flashlight. I’ll leave the porch light on tomorrow night, and I’ll be glad to see you back, safe and sound.” Miss Lill ruffled Chester’s head of thick dark-brown hair and smiled at Celia. “Enjoy the train ride, Celia, and don’t keep your nose in that book the whole time. The leaves are glorious now. You’ll want to watch out the window.”
“I will!” piped Chester, not to be outdone by Celia. But Celia ignored him.
They were nearly out the front door when Celia heard her mama turn and whisper to Miss Lill, “Are you sure you feel safe here, all alone?”
“I’ll be fine. Stop fussing. There’s been no trouble since Ruby Lynne stopped teaching Marshall.”
“But we’ve been a house full. I don’t like you stayin’ in this big ole house all alone.”
“Aunt Hyacinth did it for years and years.”
“She wasn’t young and good-looking. She taught every hooligan in No Creek when they were boys, so they respected her, and she didn’t go about stirring up trouble. You just have a knack for it.”
Miss Lill smiled good-naturedly, if a little nervously. “I’ll be fine. I always am.”
Celia knew that was a lie.
Chapter Thirty-Three
DUSK SETTLED OVER THE MOUNTAIN and seeped its way into Garden’s Gate. It was my first night entirely alone in Aunt Hyacinth’s house, and I wondered how she’d done it all those years. Every scrape of a tree limb against the house sent a shiver up my spine. Every creak in the floorboards unnerved me, and the ancient house just settling down for the night became something more. I pulled all the curtains and draperies tight, shutting out the world.
I wandered from room to room, turning up lamps and making noise. I wound Aunt Hyacinth’s Victrola and played three of her Caruso records, once singing along at the top of my lungs. It only made me lonely for my aunt and Mama.
By eight thirty I decided I didn’t want to sit up in an empty parlor—even if it was now rimmed in children’s books and dotted with small chairs. I’d started reading Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel the night before—a book Aunt Hyacinth had told me to order, but an author that Gerald and my father had forbidden. That made it all the more appealing and planted the hope of a good bedtime read tucked beneath the covers, though I’d found it hard to get into.
I’d just turned down the desk lamp when I heard voices—muffled but not distant. Suddenly all the electric lights went dark. My breath caught, and I peeked between the drapery panels across the picture window, just an inch or two, and saw a light—a dozen burning lights or more, dancing through the front gate. Something dark and tall rose in the middle of the front garden. There was shouting, hammering; then the thing burst into sudden flame—a blazing cross surrounded by a dozen or more burning torches, casting garish, writhing shadows over white hoods and robes.
Every hair on my neck, my arms and legs shot to attention, but before I could fully grasp all I was seeing, a pointed white hood bearing a torch jumped onto the front porch and pressed against the window, filling the space, inches from my face. Eyes glared at me from slits in the hood and a robed arm rose as if to fight. I screamed, heard the crash of the window’s plate glass, smelled the stench of kerosene, and felt the strike of something hard and heavy against my head, then nothing.
•••
“She’s comin’ round. Quick, get a wet rag.” Olney Tate’s voice came from far away.
I heard footsteps pound, heard myself groan, felt a throbbing in my head, and lifted my hand to my forehead. I couldn’t open my eyes but knew my hand came away sticky. The smell of burning wood and hair and paper reeked.
“Just lie still, Miss Lilliana. Just you lie still,” Olney ordered. “I’m goin’ for help and I won’t be gone long.”
Don’t go. Don’t leave me, I wanted to say, but no words came out my mouth.
“Hush, now. Lie still, now. Fire’s out. Uncle Olney’s gone for help. He’ll be back directly. Just hang on. Please don’t die on me, Miss Lilliana. Please—oh, dear God! Don’t let her die!”
It was Marshall’s voice—Marshall weeping and shaking and stroking my arm. I wanted to tell him I was all right, that I’d be all right, but I couldn’t speak, couldn’t open my eyes, couldn’t move my arm. My leg felt pinned to the floor. I couldn’t will it to move into a natural position. I ached. Oh, how I ached! I tried to open my eyes, but the light pierced. I moaned. Everything went black once more.
With no sense of time or space, I felt myself floating, rising, falling on a sea of hands and arms. At last I lay still, quiet. My hands grasped the sheet of my bed. Cool hands bathed my face in cooler water. Still, my head pounded and my throat clawed, parched. “Water,” I mumbled.
“That’s it. That’s right, chile,” a voice crooned, lifting the back of my head, setting the rim of a cup against my lips. I drank, spluttered, and with help sank into the pillow again. I knew that voice from somewhere, sometime. Still, I could not open my eyes. Or perhaps I opened them but couldn’t see. Am I blind?
“Settle down, now. There’s nowhere you need to go, nowhere you need to be but here. You safe here. You safe and you gonna be safe.”
“Granny . . . Chree.” Had I said the words aloud?
“That’s right. That’s good, you know me. You know ole Granny. That’s a good sign. You gonna be all right.”
“Can’t see.” Panic tightened my chest. I was too young to go blind, too young to live out my days like Aunt Hyacinth had.
“That’s right. Not now. You caught a nasty cut across your forehead, missed your eye by a
horsehair. You all bandaged up now, but don’t you worry. You’ll see, by and by, baby, when those bandages come off. Just keep calm. Rest easy.”
Smoke—from my clothes or hands or the air I breathed—permeated my nostrils. The library! Aunt Hyacinth’s books!
I needed to know, but if Granny Chree said more, I didn’t remember it. I faded in and out of nothingness. From time to time my head was lifted and something wet and cool pressed against my mouth. I tried to drink. The effort was supreme, and I lay back, exhausted.
At one point I woke and knew it was day, only because my arms were warmed by the sun as it poured through my window. “Granny Chree? Are you there?”
“It’s me, Lilliana. Jesse.”
The voice of Reverend Willard startled me. What are you doing in my bedroom? Every muscle tensed. Every nerve stretched taut.
“Take it easy. Take it easy. Don’t move. Granny Chree just went to sleep a little and to get some more herbs for a fresh poultice from her cabin. She’ll be back.”
I tried to swallow, but my throat constricted. “Water.”
Gently his hand slid beneath my back and neck, lifting me. The cup pressed to my lips felt cold, the water healing, refreshing. Pain still stabbed at my head, but I didn’t hurt all over as I had earlier. Perhaps that was a good sign. “What . . . happened?”
“You don’t remember?” He sounded worried. “We hoped you could tell us.”
I lay still, forcing myself to concentrate on the in and out of my breath, conditioning my mind to accept his nearness and not cringe away, not fear. Gladys’s words came to me: “He’s a good man, a kind man, a man you can trust.” And then my own doubt: “Is there any such man?”
“Lilliana?” he whispered, and I realized he might think me asleep. He couldn’t see my eyes. I couldn’t see him. That felt safer. I lay for a long while and might have fallen asleep again. There was a moment I felt him near, either dreamed or felt him lift my fingers and press his lips against them. I stirred, wanting to shake off the dream, and his nearness was gone.