The Waking Bell

by Jackie Weger

  Brother Frazier had come. I had been the one to send for him.

  He sat beside Goldie and held Otis’s hand. To all observers, he seemed to be nothing more than a concerned preacher. I saw something different. A man grieving for the person he loved.

  After two days, Matt made me come home. I only agreed because I needed a bath and sleep.

  Sadness consumed me. I walked around in a daze. Nothing made sense.

  I had thought that marrying Matt would protect me from the outside world, but it wasn’t the outside world that could hurt me. My family ruled my heart.

  Perhaps, I was mourning my mother as well. I had thought more and more about her. What she had done for me had destroyed her. I don’t think she ever got over killing Holden Reeves. I pictured her in my head. She must have loved Holden very much.

  She believed that he loved her as well. I suspected he hadn’t. I had come to the conclusion that he had married her as a cruel joke to his father. His actions spoke to the fact that he cared only for himself.

  But she had. Momma had loved him.

  Yet, she loved me more.

  Her every action spoke to the fact of how much she loved me, even her marrying Otis. Knowing what I know now, I realized how much she’d sacrificed. I imagined every time she looked at me, she saw Holden. She tried to drink away the memory.

  In the early morning light, I walked down to the pink room and crawled onto the window cushion. There wasn’t much more to do before we could move into it as a couple.

  Staring out the window, I wondered what Momma would have thought about me marrying Matt. I was lost in my thoughts when I heard a sound behind me.

  It was Matt.

  “I’m going to work at the Pride today. Dickie is coming with me and then, Dave is going to take Dickie over to the McKenzie’s for the day,” he said. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m just planning to go back to Maryville.”

  He gave me a kiss and was gone. I watched him leave with my brother.

  I was alone in the house, except for Mrs. Holbrook. Mrs. Pritchard had left to go visit her brother the day before.

  For a long time, I did nothing but stare out the window and think. Somewhere in my thoughts, the brooch reappeared. I had meant to retrieve it and throw it away long ago, but I had always feared it being discovered as I tried to dispense with it.

  I pressed against the latch, and it sprung back as it had before. With the daylight coming in brightly, I looked into the compartment. The brooch sparkled back at me as if winking. Reaching inside, I took it out, along with a notebook it sat on top of in the hidden compartment.

  Instantly, I realized it was a journal. Opening the cover, I recognized the name—Moria. I wondered if this was what Coy had been searching for.

  For a moment, I hesitated, wondering if I had any right to read Moria’s most private thoughts. My hand trembled as I turned the page. I had a sudden realization that I was frightened of what I might read. Frightened it would change my marriage forever.

  Yet my curiosity won out over my fear. I huddled in the corner of the nook and read.

  Moria had written August 16, 1943:

  My pulse is pounding, my throat so tight that I can hardly swallow. I’m lost, so lost. The fire of need has destroyed me. I wanted only to be happy if only for an hour, but I was a slave to my desire.

  We went to Twin Oaks to be alone. It wasn’t the first time, but there was the thrill of the revival being so close that added to my excitement. In the distance, I heard the horses neigh and the rise and fall of distant music. Matt had wanted me to attend the revival, but I hated this backward place. I wanted nothing more than the excitement of Alexandria and Washington, the shopping expeditions to New York and Charleston.

  There was nothing here. A post office. A feed store where you can order out of the Sears catalog. One-pump gas station, only they never have any gas. At the drug store, you have to leave your prescriptions and once a week they were sent over to Crossville to be filled.

  My distraction here in Oak Flatt, the only thing that kept me sane, was Dodie. The hard part was that she realized it. She could be cruel at times and tease me so, but I didn’t live until I met her. The day has been etched into my heart. Now, I question whether it was my salvation or end.

  We met at Bryn Mawr. At first, it had been merely acquaintances, but when my younger sister died in a car accident, Dodie had stopped by her room to express her condolences. I can’t remember speaking hardly a dozen words to her until then. Afterward, she became my best friend.

  She invited me home to Oak Flatt. There I met Matthew. I thought I loved him. Perhaps it was more I loved the way he loved me. He made me feel like a queen and promised me the world. He gave me anything I desired.

  Dodie said he lost his senses over me. She seethed when we became engaged. I didn’t understand why, not then. I had always wanted to marry. I wanted the wedding. Matt gave me all of it. The wedding of my dreams in Savannah. So beautiful.

  I discovered it wasn’t what I had expected. Mother had never told me what a man expects from his wife.

  The day after our wedding, I ran from him to Dodie, who was staying in my old bedroom. I snuck into the house. I didn’t want anyone to see me in the state I was in. No one but Dodie. I fell into her arms and cried.

  I asked her what she knew of sex. She told me that all she knew was that everybody is doing it except her. I told her not to joke. She told me that I would know more about it than she would. I told her it wasn’t like I thought it would be.

  She sat there with her legs folded cross-legged, so that her crotch was exposed, the fair soft pubic hairs peeping out from her pink panties. I looked away, but my eyes kept straying there.

  I remember my exact words to her. “It’s crude what a man does to a woman. Matthew’s thing gets hard. He pushes it into me, over and over again. Then, it was like he forgot all about me. I put myself into another world, a world with you in it.”

  She held me, stroking my hair. I gripped her arm, begging her. “I keep telling myself what I feel is bad. But you’re not bad, so how can this feel bad?”

  Somewhere in my misery, Dodie pulled off my dress and slip. I did the same with her nightgown. I relive that sensation of my fingers trembling over Dodie’s breasts and how this strange feeling saturated me. We became lovers.

  Dodie talked me into returning to Matt. We needed a shield to hide our love, but I despaired when I wasn’t with her. My heart sang when Matt joined the CRAF. I don’t know why I suggested it other than I couldn’t bear another minute with him. But once more, he tried to make me happy by becoming a war hero.

  I closed my mind to the guilt I felt at the sensual pleasure I derived from sex with Dodie. To the world, I wore a mask, welcoming my crippled husband back from the war. No one knew how I cringed at the sight of him limping around.

  Tonight, I write this to disclose my sins. I don’t know how I became this person. I meant no harm to anyone. I just wanted to be happy.

  I stopped reading. There was a tear stain where the ink had smeared. My heart raced at the confession. Moria did have a lover—Dodie. There was more. I had to read the rest.

  Tonight, Dodie pressed her palms flat against the car, better to brace herself and arch her back so that her breasts were delineated in the moonlight. The tip of her cigarette glowed brightly for a second. She got the response she wanted.

  I reached for her. She laughed, a throaty musical sound.

  “You’re spoiled, Moria.”

  Dodie quashed her cigarette on the ground. I saw the hunger in her eyes. I am certain she knew the power she holds over me. She had nothing on beneath her skirt and blouse.

  “Too hot.” She smiled.

  I remember thinking that it was too hot. I wanted the pleasure she could give me, and demand in return from me.

  Dodie lit another one of those nasty things. I hated that she smoked. Matt smokes as well. I hated that about him, too. I hated anyth
ing connected to my husband.

  Matt was a chicken plucker; that’s what I married. A rich one, but he could have been so much more. When Matthew got out of the hospital, they called him to Washington. I thought he was going to get an appointment, a government post of some sort. But not him. The army wanted food, wanted Matthew to produce it, wanted Matthew to modernize the company his grandfather had begun.

  He wanted to stay here. It was his choice. He could have lived anywhere, but he had to be here. I’m suffocating in this old town with a cripple. Dodie would get angry if I called Matt a cripple, but it bothered me. I can’t bear for him to touch me. It was worse than ever—he asked me for a divorce again. He believes I have a lover.

  I steadfastly said no. I never told Dodie that Matt wanted to cut ties from me, but I’m deathly afraid that my secret will become known. I can’t let my family discover that I wasn’t the person they thought I was. It would kill them.

  Dodie crushed the cigarette and moved closer to me. I felt my blood warm the nearer she was to me. My thighs began to tingle. The flesh of my nipples hardened when she reached over and began unbuttoning my blouse.

  I told her we shouldn’t, but she shrugged me off. It is what I always said.

  “You like this?”

  “I do,” I told her, but I had something for her. I stopped her for a moment.

  I reached into my skirt pocket and pulled out my special gift to her, a diamond-sapphire peacock brooch. Dodie loved peacocks. I had spent so much time getting it made for her. I wanted her to have it.

  She had always envied my jewelry, having none like mine. I wanted to make her happy.

  Her reaction was what I’d hoped. She was thrilled. It sparkled in the moonlight.

  We both were topless in the open field, giggling like schoolgirls, tumbling around. She lifted my breast to her mouth.

  It was then we heard a sudden squeal, drawn out for an instant then abruptly silenced. Dodie moved back from my body and grabbed her blouse. I reached for mine.

  “God! What was that? I thought you said we were alone up here,” I yelled at her.

  She quieted me. We listened intently for a long moment as our eyes scoured the mountainside. She reached back to grab the flashlight she had brought. She turned it on the edge of the woods.

  It caught two eyes staring at us. I could hear what sounded like a child crying.

  Dodie sprang at the noise. I froze, staring straight ahead into the woods. I listened to the sound. I couldn’t make out the words, but it was pleading, followed by a scream. Then, silence.

  Fear seized me. Something bad had happened. I felt it in my soul. I was afraid, more afraid than I had ever been in my life, but I was drawn to it.

  My heart thundered as I eased over to the woods. It was horrific…Dodie held the flashlight at a small body…motionless. I screamed when I bent over the boy. He wasn’t breathing.

  Dodie started rambling, saying how no one could know about us. All I could see or hear was that the boy was dead.

  The boy was dead…

  I dropped the journal. I couldn’t pick it up, only stare at it. Tears welled up. I knew without a shadow of a doubt Moria was talking about Alfie. In time, I realized I had to read the rest. I picked it back up.

  I have this need to tell someone, even if it’s only writing it down. I’m going to go crazy if I don’t. Dodie warned me not to put any of this in my journal. Someone could read it and then where would we be. I understand her reasoning, and I will throw this away or burn it afterward. But I have to try to relieve this guilt in some way. It is a weight against my chest.

  I panicked. Dodie panicked. But she should never have made me go with her to dump the body down a ravine twenty miles away along an old mountain road. For that matter, she shouldn’t have let me see the tiny body.

  His eyes were opened and stared directly at me when I shone the flashlight at him. They told he was void of all life. I wished they had been closed. Then I could have told myself that he was asleep. He was so young, so little, so innocent. I don’t think I can live with the knowledge that his death is my fault.

  Dodie told me not to worry. The boy will never be found. All I can think about is that his poor mother will never know what happened to him.

  But I will, and it will haunt me for the rest of my life.

  For so long, I have done what I have wanted without a thought for another. Strange how one can justify their actions when they want to do something they know is wrong. It’s not like I haven’t known what I have been doing is wrong.

  But if I’m being honest with myself, it has also been exciting. I let passion drive me. I lived for those stolen moments together with Dodie. It killed my soul that we could never acknowledge that love.

  Dodie is so angry with me. She fears I will confess. She told me that I will regret it if I do. She says I’m too impulsive and reminded me that everything she did was to save me.

  She swore to me that it was an accident, and for a moment, I think I believed her, I wanted to believe her like I wanted to believe that my actions hadn’t hurt anyone. Perhaps they had Matt, but we were trapped in a marriage that never should have been.

  Dodie kept telling me that I shouldn’t feel guilty about our love. That Matt had numerous lovers. Men were like that, but something told me that Dodie was wrong about my husband.

  I have decided to go to Matt. He loved me once. He won’t let anything bad happen to me and will protect me. Even though the truth will hurt him. He will tell me what the right thing to do is. It is the kind of man he is. I wish there were another way, but I don’t see it.

  First, though, I have to see Dodie to let her know what I’ve decided. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise. We fought bitterly last night. I don’t want her mad at me. I love her. I will always love her.

  I promised to pick her up at her grandmother’s. I suppose we will talk at Lizard Fork trail like we usually do when we don’t want anyone to hear us. I suspect she will try to talk me into running off and never looking back. If she does, I don’t know if I will say no. Perhaps, it would be for the best…

  There was nothing more. I read and reread the entries of a confused woman. Then I looked back into the hidden compartment. There were two more journals. I glanced through them. They were filled with romantic encounters.

  I placed them back into the compartment, the brooch forgotten. I had other things on my mind.

  Chapter 21

  A storm brewed over the mountains. The wind howled like a wolf at the moon. From the kitchen table, I heard thunder rumble and saw lightning flash in the distance. Soon, I expected the heavens would open.

  In the dark, the clock ticked and ticked, marking time. I sat quietly with a view of both doors. I expected it wouldn’t be much longer.

  I had made the call when I arrived at Goldie’s. Mrs. Holbrook answered.

  “Can you tell Matt when he gets home that I’m at Goldie’s? I will call him in the morning. Otis is resting comfortably. We’re excited. The doctor believes he will make a full recovery. He should regain the ability to speak and be able to tell us what happened.”

  That had been over four hours ago. It was well past midnight.

  Sitting there, I contemplated many thoughts. I wondered if this was what a soldier felt like waiting for a battle to ensue, knowing it’s coming, knowing what you’re about to face. Yet, also with the realization that it is inevitable.

  My life had been one of observation. I had lived in the shadows with few noticing I was there. For those who had, they must have thought me meek and timid, but they had not seen within me what drove me—love for my family.

  For me, love was the most powerful driving force. It held strength.

  Family was family. Throughout history, it came with an unwritten code, one passed from generation to generation. I had come to the awareness that there is an innate need within us to become a part of something more than ourselves.

  Matt had told me that he felt that strength in me. He had nee
ded it. He had needed me as I needed him. He had become my family.

  When I was done with Moria’s journals, I felt that I knew her as a person. She had all the creature comforts this world could offer, but I discovered a shocking reality. In the end, she wasn’t much different than I was. Her one desire was to be loved.

  I was growing tired. My confidence in the plan began to falter. Perhaps I had been wrong. I wasn’t. The back door began to rattle. A minute later, she walked into the kitchen.

  For a moment, she didn’t seem to notice me sitting at the table. She was dressed all in black. I marveled at her courage to brazenly walk into Goldie’s home.

  I simply said, “Dodie.”

  Startled, she turned and frowned. She studied me, puzzled and perhaps, anxious, though she didn’t show it in her demeanor. She glanced down the hall, then back at me.

  Dodie looked sharply at me. At last, she was beginning to understand. I could tell from her expression. There was something calculating in her eyes.

  “Otis isn’t here.” Her words seemed to echo in the small area. There was no need to affirm her statement.

  I gestured for her to sit with me at the table. “We have time.”

  She released her grip on what she held in her pocket, what I imagined was a gun, and did as I requested. With her other hand, she took out a cigarette. A moment later, she lit it and leaned back as if this were a casual social affair.

  “How did you know?”

  There was no point of keeping the truth from her. “I found Moria’s journal. The rest fell into place.”

  She laughed. “My simple-minded cousin figured out something. How ironic!”

  I ignored her snide remark. My attention wouldn’t be diverted.

  “I have only one question,” I said stiffly. “Why?”

  She said nothing for a few minutes. She sat there and smoked, one puff after another. She finished and extinguished it in the ashtray on the table. She licked her bottom lip. I thought for a moment she was going to take out her lipstick to touch up herself.