In the Dreaming Hour

by Kathryn Le Veque

  Her mother was throwing out some of the food from Mamaw’s wake and her father was at the kitchen table, reading something on his tablet. Lucy stood in the doorway and shook her head.

  “Every time I come here, you two are in the kitchen,” she teased. “This house has about ten other rooms. Don’t you like any of them?”

  Bill looked up at her over his glasses. “You’re one to talk,” he said. “You don’t even stay here for more than five minutes at a time.”

  Lucy laughed, coming into the kitchen and heading over to the table where her dad was sitting. “That’s because I’ve been busy,” she said. “Actually, I need to talk to you about that, Dad. I’ve got something I need to share with you.”

  Bill still had the tablet in his hands but he was looking at her. “What’s up? Christ, is this about Clyde?”

  Lucy shook her head, chuckling. “It is not about Clyde,” she said. “It’s about Mamaw. I have something I need to tell you.”

  Bill laid the tablet down on the table. “Lay it on me.”

  He was being very relaxed about it, having no idea she was about to change his life. Lucy felt sorry for him and she tried to cushion the news as best she could.

  “Okay, here goes,” she said. “At Mamaw’s funeral, Aunt Vivien told me something. Mom, can you come over here and sit down? I want you to hear this. Anyway, Aunt Vivian told me that Mamaw had left a note for me and that I wasn’t to share it with my daddy. I wasn’t to let anyone know. So, for what it’s worth, I’m disobeying Mamaw to tell you this, but it’s important. You need to know.”

  Bill still wasn’t sensing the seriousness of what she was about to say. “What is it?”

  Lucy cleared her throat softly, feeling her nerves. “You remember when I was up in her bedroom when we came back from the funeral?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was looking for the note she left me.”

  A light went on in Bill’s eyes. “Oh,” he said, drawing out the word. “Now I get it. I thought it was kind of strange that you were hanging around in there.”

  Lucy nodded. “I know,” she said. Then, she laid the journal down on the table, making sure her parents got a look at it. “Mamaw gave me the key to a secret drawer in her chifforobe and this was in it. It’s her diary from when she was a teenager, from about nineteen hundred and thirty-one until nineteen hundred and thirty-three. It’s just a couple of years’ worth of entries, but they were really insightful into her as a young woman. It’s really sweet.”

  Both Bill and Mary were looking over the journal with great curiosity. “I’ve never seen this,” Bill said, reaching out to pull it over to him. “I didn’t even know she….”

  Lucy put her hand on it, preventing him from getting a better look at it. When he looked at her curiously, she shook her head and pulled it back against her.

  “Not yet,” she said. “This journal isn’t what I need to tell you about. You know I haven’t really been around for the past couple of days and there’s a reason for that. Something that Mamaw asked me to do for her. You see, there was a letter in this journal she left for me, a letter that she didn’t want me to show you, Dad. But I’m going to show it to you because it’s something you need to read. In the letter, Mamaw asked me to track someone down for her. That’s what I’ve been doing the past couple of days. That’s why I went to see Aunt Dell. And remember I mentioned Stephen Latling? I didn’t run into him in town – I tracked him down. He and his family are part of this, too. So I’m just going to let you read the letter. I think that will tell you exactly what I’ve been up to.”

  With that, she opened up the journal and pulled out the now-familiar white envelope. Carefully, she pulled out the letter, keeping the scrap with the poem still inside the envelope, and opened up the letter for her father. She placed it in Bill’s hands.

  Both Bill and Mary peered at the letter with great curiosity and began to read. As Lucy sat there and watched, she could see her father’s cheeks turning shades of pale to pink and to a reddish color. Although he didn’t say anything, his emotions were running the gamut and showing all over his face.

  Mary was less subtle about it – her hand flew to her mouth about a minute after she began reading and the more she read, the more she gasped. Her eyes widened. By the time she got to the end, she had the same reaction that Lucy had and that Priscilla Latling had after reading it – there were tears in her eyes. She began to sniffle and wipe them away, finally turning her back on the letter and going to find a tissue.

  While Lucy’s mother sniffled over by the kitchen sink, Bill hadn’t really reacted at all other than the color of his cheeks. Lucy was glued to her father’s face as he finished the letter and, predictably, went to read it again. It seemed that anyone who read it had to do it a second time for maximum impact.

  The third time through, he finally handed the letter back over to Lucy. She watched him closely for a reaction.

  “You okay?” she asked gently, touching his hand.

  He nodded. But he didn’t look fine. “Oh… God,” he finally said. “All of those questions you were asking me about our family. Is this why?”

  Lucy nodded. “Exactly.”

  Bill stared at her a moment. “You asked me if I thought Laveau committed murder, too. Did you mean the murder in that letter?”

  “Yes.”

  Bill sighed heavily, his gaze drawn back to the letter. He didn’t speak for a moment, collecting his thoughts. “I… I can’t even pretend to be calm and cool about this,” he said. “I always knew my grandfather was a vile son-of-a-bitch, but this… this is confirmation of the worst he had to offer. Killing an innocent man? My God… that man’s evil knew no limits.”

  Lucy could see that he was hurting, much as she had been hurting when she first read the letter.

  “I know,” she said quietly. “As much as I’d like to see justice for that poor man, I’ve had to deal with one issue at a time and my primary issue is that of finding the baby. You wondered why I’ve been hanging around with the sheriff? It’s because I needed his help. He knows people and he knows this town. We’ve been all over town trying to find people who might have known about Mamaw’s baby.”

  Bill looked at her. “So he knows about this, too?”

  “He does. His great-grandfather was in on it from the start. So in a sense, he’s part of this as much as we are. He’s been a huge help.”

  Bill didn’t argue with her about letting someone outside of the family in on such a terrible secret; what she said made sense. The Meades were part of the Hembree web of evil back then. There was no disputing that, especially when Mamaw mentioned Terhune Meade by name in her letter.

  “Did you find anything?” he asked, his voice dull with sorrow.

  “We did,” Lucy said, hoping her father was prepared for her answer. “It wasn’t easy because it was a well-kept secret, but I wanted you to know that I’ve located the baby.”

  That drew a strong reaction from Bill. His eyes widened and he abruptly stood up, a hand flying to his face.

  “Oh, no,” he muttered. “Oh… God, did you really?”

  Lucy nodded, thinking that he didn’t sound too pleased about it, but given he’d just read a game-changing revelation from his own mother, she wasn’t too surprised.

  “Yes,” she said steadily. “You’ll notice that in the letter, Mamaw mentioned that Dr. Latling attended the birth so I went to his son, Stephen, and asked if I could see Dr. Latling’s birth records. As it turned out, I didn’t need to – their housekeeper heard my request and she is the daughter of the woman who tended Dr. Latling’s house back when he delivered Mamaw’s baby. It was Dr. Latling who took the baby out of Glory and kept it from Laveau. I don’t know how he did it, but he took the baby home with him and turned her over to his housekeeper, who then turned the baby over to her sister to raise. Her name is Ruby Ransom and she just retired from Delta State. She’s still alive and lives over in Cleveland.”

  Bill was standing in the middle
of the kitchen, a hand over his mouth and his gaze on the journal. He just stood there a moment, struggling with what he’d been told.

  “Hold on,” he said, raising a hand as if to put everything to a stop. “Ruby Ransom is her name?”

  Lucy nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Mamaw named the baby Ruby and they evidently kept the name.”

  Bill was shaking his head. “Wait..,” he mumbled. “Oh, God… just wait a minute. I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

  Lucy looked at her mother and the two of them passed sympathetic glances. “Dad, I know it’s hard, but….”

  Bill cut her off, almost sharply. “No, that’s not what I mean,” he said. “What I mean is… Jesus, I don’t even know where to begin with this, but about five years ago, a woman showed up at Glory. Your mother and I were visiting Mamaw at the time but I remember distinctly that Mamaw wasn’t feeling well. We’d just brought her back from Memphis where she’d had some bloodwork done, because that’s when she was first diagnosed with cancer, so she was in bed when this woman showed up at the door. This woman and I got to talking and she proceeded to tell me that she was a Hembree bastard and she’d come to see her roots. Well, that upset the hell out of me so I told her to go away and not come back.”

  Lucy was on her feet, eyes wide with surprise. “Did she tell you her name?”

  Bill nodded. Now, he was back to looking pale. “Ruby Ransom,” he could barely spit out the words. “I didn’t even make the connection until now, until you said her full name. I thought she meant she was Laveau’s bastard because, God only knew, I’ve heard rumor of more than one of those around here and I was angry that she’d shown up at the house. I didn’t want Mama finding out about her, so I never mentioned her, not ever. Now… now you’re telling me that she was my mother’s bastard?”

  Lucy was astonished to the bone, feeling a stab of sorrow through her heart that she couldn’t begin to comprehend. “Ruby Ransom is Mamaw’s missing baby,” she breathed. “Oh, my God, Dad… you chased her away?”

  Bill nodded, sickened. “I did,” he said. “I wasn’t nice about it, either. I didn’t want my mother shamed or upset by it, so I practically threw the woman out.”

  Lucy didn’t even know what to say. She sank back into the chair, looking at the note that was open and resting on the journal. Her eyes began to swim with tears, her heart torn up by the tragic reality of a terrible misunderstanding.

  “She was here,” she whispered, picking up the letter and looking at the writing on it. “She came back to where she was born.”

  Bill closed his eyes, overwhelmed with what had happened. “I didn’t know,” he said, his voice tight with emotion. “I had no idea who she really was. And it was me who sent her away when my mama had been looking for her all along. If only I had talked to her a little more and understood what she was telling me, but I didn’t. I told her to go away. Oh, God… what have I done….”

  He turned away, heading out into the house, wrought with sorrow he couldn’t reconcile. Mary ran after him and she could hear her parents whispering out in the hall, her father’s distraught voice and her mother’s soothing one. Lucy would have liked to have given them both time to regain their composure but there wasn’t time for that. Wearily, she stood up and went out into the corridor where they were standing.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to intrude, but there’s still more to this. Stephen Latling has invited Ruby over to dinner at his house tomorrow night and he wants us to come over and meet her. Dad, I had no idea what had happened with you and sending Ruby away. I’m going to go but I understand if you don’t want to.”

  Bill was clearly edgy and distressed. “I doubt she’s going to want to see me,” he said. “But you should go, Lucy. Mama mentioned some kind of locket in her letter, something she wanted the baby to have – do you have that?”

  “I do,” Lucy said. “I found it yesterday.”

  “Then you need to go and give it to her. It’s what Mama wanted.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Bill nodded, removing his glasses and rubbing wearily at his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “And make sure you tell her how sorry I am for sending her away. I just didn’t understand who she was or what she meant to my mother. Now I have to live with the fact that my mother had a chance to meet her lost baby while she was still alive but because of me, she died not knowing what happened to her.”

  With that, he turned and walked away, heading down the corridor towards the front of the house. Mary trailed after him, leaving Lucy standing in the dimness of the hall, with just the kitchen light piercing the darkness.

  Her heart was heavy as she watched her father walk away, knowing how horribly troubled he was by the situation. It was even more grief on top of having just lost his mother, but Lucy knew she’d done the right thing by telling him. It was just a burden Bill would have to come to grips with.

  For his sake, she prayed he would find peace with it.

  Wandering back into the kitchen where the letter and the journal still sat on the old Formica table, she pulled her cell phone out of her purse as well as Beau’s business card. She wasn’t particularly hungry and didn’t want to go out to dinner, and she didn’t want to return to the hotel that night. She wanted to stay close to her parents. When she explained everything to Beau, who picked up the phone on the second ring, he completely understood.

  Tonight belonged to the Bondurants.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  ~ And Brings Me Thoughts of Thee ~

  It was a cold day in early nineteen hundred and thirty-four. With spring on the approach, the frozen ground was trying to warm itself in the weak sun, struggling to bring forth the dormant greenery deep inside of her.

  Even so, everything still looked winter-frozen beneath the fragile sun. There was no warmth to be had but the planting for the coming year had to begin, the cold earth tilled and turned so the seeds could be sewn.

  Glory still had about two hundred acres to tend, far less than the original plot of land but enough to grow good crops of cotton and sorghum. It was that earth that needed to be tended and Laveau and his men had gone to the work camp on the edge of town, a place where sharecroppers gathered who were looking for work, and selected about sixty men to help till the land. Since most of the men who worked the land at Glory were sharecroppers or drifters, there was nearly a new group of men every year to work the dark soil.

  On this day, Victory was sitting on the porch of Glory with her mother with a pot of coffee between them, watching the road in the distance as the old trucks began to bring the men to the plantation. It was chilly outside but the ladies were bundled up because being outside in the fresh air during the day was better than being inside in the stale air.

  Moreover, the sun was out and Caroline thought that Victory was looking a little pale. She’d been pale for the past five months, ever since she delivered her dead baby, and on the doctor’s orders, Caroline was doing everything she could to try and bring some color back into her daughter’s cheeks.

  Victory didn’t care much about color these days. In fact, she didn’t care much about anything. Laveau and his oppression had finally beaten her down. After the death of her baby, she didn’t have the strength to fight him anymore but she certainly had the strength to hate him. That hatred grew stronger by the day.

  “Look, Victory,” Caroline said pleasantly. “There’s Daddy and the men. Look at all of them! I talked to your daddy about extending our vegetable garden, so maybe we can use some of those men to do that.”

  Victory didn’t care about vegetable gardens. She sighed restlessly, watching her father in is 1933 Ford Model 40, its top down and his henchmen shoved all into the front, back, and rumble seat.

  “Has Daddy said when I can go back to school?” she asked her mother, completely off subject. “It’s almost spring. If I don’t go back soon, I’ll have missed more than a year of school.”

  Caroline picked up her cup of coffee. “He hasn’t sai
d anything about it,” she said. “I’ll ask him again.”

  “And what about Dell?” Victory asked. “I saw her come to the house yesterday but she didn’t come up and see me. Why not?”

  Caroline sipped at her coffee. “She brought something over from her mama,” she said. “She didn’t come to visit.”

  Victory looked at her mother. “You mean Daddy wouldn’t let her come to see me.”

  Caroline sighed faintly, feeling the mood between them grow sharp again. It was sharp so often these days. “Not yet, sugar,” she said softly. “Daddy wants to make sure you’re feeling better before you have any visitors.”

  Victory was hurt and furious, just as she’d been hurt and furious for months. She couldn’t even remember when she hadn’t been hurt and furious about her treatment, but she supposed that by now she should be used to it. She wasn’t. She was still hurt, still missing her friends and her life that was.

  She didn’t think of Lewis much anymore, although he lingered in her mind occasionally, like a dream from another time. Eventually, she’d forced herself to stop thinking about something that was never meant to be. And with that decision, it was as if the life had been sucked right out of her.

  Standing up from the lawn chair she’d been sitting on, she wandered to the edge of the porch, leaning against a big white column as her father pulled up in front of the house. The plantation office was off to the east, a white building several dozen yards from the house, and the trucks carrying the men headed in that direction. Victory could see the men, most of them colored, as the trucks came to a halt and the men began to climb out.

  Laveau parked his car right in front of the house and climbed out, lumbering towards the porch. His men bailed out after him, carrying shotguns and other weaponry like they were expecting a small war. Some followed her father but some headed over to the trucks carrying the men. Victory watched all of the activity as Laveau came up on the steps.

  “Got a good crop of men this time,” he said to his wife. “We should get that north field dug up in no time.”