The sun would drop behind the woods in a few hours. Anna Belle usually brought dinner well before sunset. Ellsworth opened the door and started down the single step to the veranda with his prosthetic leg first, but then stopped, realizing he hadn’t navigated a step since he’d lost his leg. The house had a second floor with three bedrooms, including his and Eliza’s, but he’d yet to go up since her funeral.
He put his good leg first and used it to guide the other one down. He inched his way out onto the porch, where the air was cooler than it looked from inside. His heart beat rapidly. His forehead broke out into a cold sweat. With every slow step across the veranda, he felt more exposed, more ashamed of how far he’d fallen. He should have pulled the trigger. Should have ignored the arrival of that redbird. Should have ignored what Eliza would have said the bird signified. Then he wouldn’t have to deal with Alfred’s daily breakdown in his living room. Wouldn’t have to deal with any of it.
He gripped the wooden handrail. One at a time, slowly, good leg and then prosthesis. He made it to the sidewalk and stood beside the newspaper. He’d yet to think of a fluid way to pick up things—it wasn’t easy to bend or squat with one leg straight.
He knew better, but he still couldn’t shake the feeling that the Krauts were out there watching him. Just like in his nightmares, with spikes on their helmets and shadows for eyes. He surveyed the cluster of buildings inside the town square, then the houses on either side of the road leading to and from it. He was being watched—not by a Kraut, but by Sheriff Lecroy, who hiked his belt into his overhung belly and waved from the jailhouse parking lot. Bellhaven, despite the small size, was a county seat. The multipurpose town hall, before the fire, had also acted as the courthouse, but now those matters had been pushed into the squatty jailhouse.
Ellsworth tipped an imaginary hat. The sheriff, albeit a smidge lazy, was a good enough guy, but lately he’d gone overboard with Prohibition and begun to confiscate alcohol. Thought himself mighty when he poured it out right in front of the sinners.
Step foot in my shed, I’ll put a bullet in that fat belly.
The sheriff smiled, probably happy Ellsworth had finally emerged from his house. Beverly Adams stopped sweeping her porch steps to stare at Ellsworth. Dooby Klinsmatter nodded as he steered his horse wagon around the square, and Ellsworth jerked a nod back. Ten houses down the road, Ellsworth’s childhood friend Gabriel Fanderbink, the local blacksmith, stood in her front yard. She put her hands on her head and then waved like she was swatting a swarm of bees.
Ellsworth waved back, although without her enthusiasm.
The town still looked to him for stability. Didn’t matter to them what he’d done in the tense moments after Eliza’s death. If anything, his actions had solidified the notion that he, not Mayor Bellhaven or Sheriff Lecroy, was the bedrock of the town.
Word would soon spread now that he’d finally ventured out of his house.
Out here, the town hall didn’t look quite as dilapidated. Might even be salvageable had he been motivated toward the betterment of things. How many gatherings did we have inside those walls? Back when the candles burned long and entry cost only a smile and a hug. The town had ignored the times and welcomed all skin colors and means of worship, all unified against whatever lurked in the Bellhaven woods—all those warnings and horrifying half-truths their parents had told them as children to keep them from wandering too far.
Anna Belle was convinced Ellsworth could give Bellhaven life again, a sense of normalcy lacking since the tragedy. Since the night the music died.
Ellsworth didn’t know about that.
There he is. That black boy, Raphael, stood at Anna Belle’s window, waving.
Ellsworth pretended not to see him. Instead he used his cane to maneuver the rolled newspaper upright. When he raised the cane, the newspaper flew into the grass.
Two houses down from Anna Belle’s, Old Man Tanner laughed from his front yard. Instead of coming over to help, Old Man Tanner pointed at Ellsworth’s folly and laughed himself into a coughing fit, his face red as a tomato. Breeze off, old man. The sentiments of most the town. Two weeks ago, Mr. Kilkelly’s prize hound had barked all night until suddenly he’d stopped. The next morning the dog was found in a burlap sack with his mouth tied shut, the sack hanging from the gnarled limb of a live oak. The dog was so terrified he didn’t bark for weeks. Everyone knew it was Old Man Tanner who’d done it.
The old man stared at Ellsworth’s house like it was plagued. Probably blamed Eliza for bringing death to Bellhaven. For bringing that strange boy in and hiding him. He pointed an arthritic finger at Ellsworth and mumbled something.
“Go dangle,” Ellsworth said to himself. He’d never seen a man age like Tanner. Looked to be eighty at least, like he’d aged twenty years in the past two. Nobody in town could agree on how long the old man had been living in Bellhaven, but the most common answer was “sometime around the big earthquake.”
Tanner went into the woods every day around the same time—after lunch—with a shovel and saw or limb cutters, and he returned a couple of hours later. A man that old had no business venturing into the woods alone, and certainly not past the yellow-painted trees. For years, Tanner had kept the outskirts of the woods behind his property cleared of deadfall, brush, and weedy saplings. Maybe he’d decided to tempt fate and clean out some of the woods beyond the yellow trees. Ellsworth thought it likely that the rumors they’d heard as children were just not true, so there wasn’t much fate to be tempted. But then again, they’d all seen just enough to be leery.
Old Man Tanner pulled what looked to be an ice pick from his trouser pocket. He pointed it at Ellsworth, made a stab motion, and then headed inside.
Ellsworth shook off a shiver.
He used the cane on the newspaper again, and this time it stayed on until he raised it to his free hand. He tucked it under his armpit and turned back toward the porch.
Anna Belle can breeze off too.
High on the hillside overlooking the town stood the old Bellhaven plantation house.
In the 1800s the small plantation had thrived, its cotton fields worked by slaves who occupied wooden quarters on the edge of the woods. Many of them had fled after emancipation, some saying they feared the woods more than they feared their former owners. The rest had stayed on as hired hands and eventually raised families in town.
Once a sprawling, bustling organism, the property had long stood out on the hill as a blighted eyesore. The yellow paint on the three-story brick colonial was flaking badly. On the north side of the house, edging the avenue of oaks, the cotton field lay scorched from too many summer suns—scab blackened and overgrown with weeds. It had been decades since cotton had grown full on the plantation, five years since any cotton had grown there at all. The boll weevils had killed what was left in the summer of ’15.
The mayor, Loomy Bellhaven, was the only Bellhaven left in town, a distant relative whose name held enough sway to win him an uncoveted office but not enough to inherit the house on the hill. He’d twice battled for it in court but lost. Instead it had gone to a great-great-great-grandson of the plantation’s founder, Limus Bellhaven. This heir, a distant relative to the mayor, had allowed the house to fall into disrepair while he wasted away from cancer in a third-floor bedroom overlooking the woods. Two consecutive owners had stayed a short time, then hurried off in the night.
Every time the house went up for sale, Mayor Bellhaven had made offers the banks had no trouble refusing. Being Mayor of Bellhaven didn’t pay much, and Loomy didn’t have old money. What little money he did have, he usually lost betting on bangtails at the racetrack.
The plantation house had again been on the market for months. But now the For Sale sign was gone and some migrant workers were clearing out weeds from the suddenly vibrant flower beds. Loomy sat in the shadows of the town hall, on the portion of the wraparound veranda still accessible behind the rubble. From his window, Ellsworth could see him sipping from a flask and wallowing as he
watched the migrants clean up the property he’d dreamed would be his.
Ellsworth would respect the mayor more had he not dodged the war with a hinky excuse like color blindness. He didn’t dislike Mayor Bellhaven; he just thought the town could do better. The man always seemed to walk around on a pedestal made of cracked glass, giving that forced impression that he was on top of the world when deep down he knew he was sinking beneath the cruel weight of it.
Ellsworth settled back into his chair, still leg-weary from the short jaunt to the sidewalk a couple hours ago. He hadn’t walked that far since the army doc fitted him for the prosthesis and forced him to use it. “Lucky you didn’t have both legs blown off,” the doc had said. “Miracle you’re alive at all, considering what happened to the rest of the men with you.”
Alfred was still on the floor with his back to the wall, no longer crying but on the verge. At least he’d holstered his gun. He was prone to sit there all day and looked like he was planning to do just that.
What this town needs is a gathering like the old days. Cram inside the town hall, share stories, and talk the day away. Sip sour mash on the veranda while the evening breeze from the salt marshes spins the tree moss. If Loomy Bellhaven wants to be the high pillow he portrays, he’ll get the town hall fixed. Plain and simple.
Ellsworth snapped open the newspaper and read. Klan continued to grow. No surprise there. But race issues weren’t a Southern thing anymore. Lots of blacks were migrating up north, looking for opportunity, and sometimes they found it. Up in Harlem, a new movement was starting to spawn some interesting art and ideas. But gangs of whites who blamed the blacks for taking their jobs and housing had attacked them in the streets. Sometimes they fought back. Race riots were breaking out all over the country.
Ellsworth turned the page.
More tension between labor and bosses—another article about the fallout from the United Mine Workers coal strike that had finally ended in December. And Prohibition agents had busted whiskey barrels in the streets; the drys were claiming victory.
Maybe Alfred was on to something. The government can just go dangle. They were to blame for much of the unrest. Prohibition was leading to more crime, the organized sort where gangsters murdered to prove points.
Ellsworth took two heavy pulls from his medicinal whiskey and read about a religious stage play in New York City called The Wayfarer that was attracting full audiences, with themes of despair and hope and redemption. Looked like something Eliza would have drug him to.
He thought about killing himself again.
After dinner.
Anna Belle finally exited her house and crossed the street with a basket of food covered with a white cloth to keep the steam in. Ellsworth folded the newspaper and placed it on the window ledge. “Here she comes,” he told Alfred, who was snoring now.
Anna Belle carried the basket with two hands, proud of her achievement. Ellsworth just hoped she’d made corn bread. Or some of her hoppin’ John with ham hunks and onions. And then she stopped suddenly before the porch. She spotted him in the window, grinned, and turned away from the house, the food still in her hands.
“Where you going?” Ellsworth leaned forward in his chair, knocked on the window.
Anna Belle walked past where she’d dumped the morning newspaper and acted as if she was heading back home with the food. But then she stopped at the road, contemplating.
But what was there to contemplate? The food was all but in his mouth.
Anna Belle opened Ellsworth’s mailbox and slid the basket of food inside it. She smiled at him, closed the small mailbox door, and returned to her house.
At least now he didn’t have to hear her gloat.
But I’m starving like I don’t know what.
He leaned back in his chair, slapped the window ledge with an open palm.
Alfred’s eyes popped open. He pulled his gun and fired.
Ellsworth lunged, fell out of his chair. He crawled across the floor, lowered Alfred’s arm, and secured the gun.
“Did I get him, Ellsworth? Huh? Did I?”
Breathing heavily, Ellsworth eyed the fresh bullet hole in the wall, which was less than a foot from the hole Alfred had put in the wall two weeks ago.
He patted Alfred’s arm.
“Yeah, pal. Don’t worry. You got’m.”
CHAPTER 4
No one heard the gunshot.
Not even Bellhaven’s postman, Berny Martino, who’d been sliding mail into Beverly Adams’s box when the bullet hit Ellsworth’s living room wall. Berny didn’t react much to anything anymore. After delivering eleven death telegrams during the war and comforting each new widow at their doorstep, his will to smile had been siphoned.
By the time Ellsworth pulled himself up and helped Alfred back into a chair, Berny was opening Ellsworth’s mailbox and finding it full of food. Ellsworth knocked on the window to get Berny’s attention, but Berny never looked up. He did stick his nose in there for a whiff of what Anna Belle had fixed. But instead of bringing the food to Ellsworth’s door, he crammed Ellsworth’s mail inside, closed it up, and went on down the road.
Ellsworth stood flabbergasted. Berny knew he was crippled. He could have at least knocked on his door to make sure everything was okay.
What’s Anna Belle trying to prove anyway?
Alfred got to his feet, made sure his revolver was secured in his belt, and felt for his cane.
“Where you going?”
“Home.” Alfred was sullen, gloomy, his energy sucked into a deep void Ellsworth knew too much about, the same void that would later churn out horror disguised as nightmares and leave both of them sleepless and suicidal.
“Can you make it back okay?”
Alfred nodded.
A real friend would have walked him home. Would have taken him by the elbow and escorted him across the road and up to his porch. Maybe flicked on a few lights for him, because the sun was going down and it didn’t look like Linda May was back from Charleston yet.
Ellsworth chuckled at this, a blind man needing his lights turned on.
“What’s funny?”
Ellsworth said, “Nothing.” Which was true. Nothing was funny anymore. He didn’t like it when the sun went down. Didn’t like it much anymore when the sun came back up either, but at least the morning was the beginning of something. “What about your radio?”
“It’s not my radio,” said Alfred. “Made it for you. Thought maybe it could help.”
Ellsworth didn’t ask what it would help. Too much to pick from, but he assumed Alfred meant help you get out of the house. He thanked his pal on their way to the front door, and Alfred said, “Same time tomorrow.” Not a question but a statement. Ellsworth watched him shuffle across the road and disappear into the shadows on the far side of the jailhouse.
Tree moss swayed, silver tendrils turned pink by the setting sun. The woods were quiet except for the birds, the square spotted with so many colorful flower blooms it looked like one of those Impressionist paintings. Cantigny had looked like that just before the Kraut counterattack when Calvin was killed.
Peaceful before the sting.
Ellsworth closed the door and returned to his chair with a headache. Too much whiskey without food to soak it up, his dinner growing colder in the mailbox. But he just couldn’t convince himself to go out there again.
He closed his eyes and nodded off. But every time he got close to deep sleep, he’d hear bullets, screams, fearful breathing. His eyes would snap open. He’d drink more bourbon whiskey until weariness dragged him down and then doze off again. But then came the crunch of shovels in soil, the artillery whizzing over the trenches, the rivers of blood churning on like a talkie movie stuck on repeat.
His leg was on fire, his foot lost somewhere in the blast that should have killed him like it did the others. He opened his eyes and took a drink. The whiskey no longer burned. Went down like water. That was a problem, but not one to be dealt with pronto. So he took another swig and wondered if
there were any crackers in the kitchen, maybe some leftover corn bread muffins.
He found three oat cookies wrapped in brown paper next to the kitchen sink. Anna Belle must have left them the day before. They weren’t fresh, but a cookie was a cookie.
He took them back to the living room and sat on Eliza’s piano bench, facing the music stand where he kept the only picture he had of his late wife. Eliza leaned against a sprawling live oak with the Charleston harbor in the background, her curly auburn hair wind-tousled. The picture was sepia-toned, but he remembered her dress was red that day, her eyes blue like his own. Lucky the picture took as she’d laughed—her smile frozen for eternity.
Cookie crumbs gathered on the black and white keys. He blew at them and one got stuck in between. Didn’t matter. Nobody to play it anymore. He scooted to his side of the bench and imagined the curve of her hip kissing his own as her foot pressed the levers, her wrists at hard angles to the keyboard. She’d been an animated pianist. In the short time they’d been married, she’d made the walls of the town hall sing more times than he could count. She was always happiest when playing.
He pressed a few keys and stared at her picture. Wished she’d never gone back into that town hall after they cleared it. After he thought they’d cleared it. The Klan had come that night for a reason, and no one knew that reason was still hiding in the basement—the little boy and his mother. Eliza had sneaked them into town the night before for reasons that still eluded them. That was why, during the party, Eliza had insisted they play and sing louder so her stowaways could feel included too. That was just how her heart beat—for others, sometimes, more than her own.
Ellsworth wiped his wet eyes and finished off the second cookie. He would have gladly run into the burning town hall in her stead. It wasn’t something the town discussed aloud, but he’d already made a reputation for surviving things he had no business surviving—from the polio and cancer as a child to the train derailment that took his mother’s life but not his own as a young man. He never would have let Eliza go back in there, but he’d been too busy ushering the others out to see that she’d already run back into a building engulfed in flame, even as the town’s fire truck blared its siren and the firemen sprayed heavy water from the hose.
All Things Bright and Strange Page 3