A man’s voice carried through the radio static, spouting news. Alfred’s hand froze on the knob. The Klan had lynched another black man in Alabama. Busted up a new juke-joint speakeasy in Louisiana. Tarred and feathered a Catholic priest in Dallas, Texas.
Omar, easily excited, grabbed his rifle, cocked it, and stood from Ellsworth’s chair.
“What’s going on?” Alfred said.
Ellsworth held his hand out. “Whoa, Omar. Where you going?”
“Gon’ get me some dat white-cloak Klan. Smoke’m outta dose hidey-holes and bump ’em off fo’ dat big sleep.”
“Well, would you hand me my leg first?” Omar wasn’t going anywhere. Not a day went by that he didn’t threaten to smoke somebody out of their hidey holes. He’d brought back rage from the trenches and didn’t always know where to put it.
He’d been a handsome man once.
Omar adjusted his mask and walked toward the piano bench, puffing his pipe like a freshly stoked chimney. He handed Ellsworth his leg. “Why dem not put no knee in der?”
Ellsworth attached the leg to his left thigh and put his weight on it. He patted Omar on the shoulder. “Go sit, Omar. And put the rifle down.”
Omar straightened his fedora and did as suggested. A minute later he and Alfred were playing with the radio again, searching the static.
Ellsworth tightened the leather straps on the prosthesis and bit his lip at the familiar pain. There was a mirror above the piano, above Eliza’s picture. His jawline was prickly with dark stubble. He had to go relieve himself anyway, so he shaved while he was in the water closet. He’d had the same shirt on for days, so he changed and combed his hair. Eliza had always liked it parted to the side, so he did that, too, while his childhood pals entertained themselves in the other room.
Anna Belle laundered Ellsworth’s clothes once a week. After the war, since Ellsworth refused to go up steps, she’d gone to his bedroom and retrieved a suitcase of clothes, which he now kept next to the bathroom door to live out of. It took him several minutes, but he managed to change his trousers and sock while leaning against the sink.
“Some got that special spark.”
He tried to ignore Calvin’s dream voice. Had Calvin lived, he’d more than likely be in the living room with the other two, tinkering and bumping gums, adding a layer of levity to the scene.
Fully dressed, Ellsworth stood in the kitchen and listened to his stomach rumble. He’d angered Anna Belle last night. He should have gone out into the woods to look for the boy like everyone else. Maybe then he’d have some breakfast in his belly. Guilt was probably why he’d had that dream of Calvin bleeding at the piano. He could drink Old Sam to help quell the hunger, but that wasn’t a viable long-term solution.
“It’ll all make sense soon enough.”
Usually the nightmares of Calvin quickly drifted, but this one hadn’t, and he knew what he had to do.
In the other room, Alfred and Omar were going through their daily bellyaching and government bashing. Most blacks like Omar had viewed the war as an opportunity to show their patriotism, their chance to become equal citizens united to fight a common foe, one nation undivided. And early on they’d felt like they belonged. But things had soon changed, as early as their camp training, with immediate pushback from white soldiers and politicians across the South. There had been lynchings, unlawful court-martials, dead soldiers put in unmarked graves—and this was all before they’d left the States. And now that Omar had returned, having given his face for his country, the nation was as divided as ever. Ellsworth didn’t blame him for being touchy about it.
He reached into his cabinet for a bottle of Old Sam he’d stashed and downed a quick swallow on his way into the living room. He placed the bottle on the window ledge between his two pals. “Drink up.”
“Whey you come up wit’ dat stash Old Sam, Ellsworth?”
“None of your business,” Ellsworth said. “Just stay here. I’ll be back in a little bit.”
Omar puffed his pipe. “Whey you off to anyway?”
“To see if I can’t get me some breakfast.”
Alfred said, “Linda May said Anna Belle’s furious at you.”
“I reckon she is.” Ellsworth opened the front door.
Alfred said, “Have a look at the trees, Ellsworth.”
“What of’m?” Ellsworth peered out the door, saw mostly glare from the sun, but reckoned they were referring to the blooms he and Anna Belle had noticed yesterday.
“Dem trees all bloom same time,” said Omar.
“Very strange,” Alfred said, more focused on the radio than the conversation.
Ellsworth said, “Just don’t shoot each other while I’m gone.”
Omar held the bottle of Old Sam by the throat and raised it as if toasting Ellsworth’s departure.
Ellsworth nodded and then closed the door. Just before it clicked shut, he saw Omar reach for his mask. Omar hadn’t been toasting anything. He’d been waiting for Ellsworth to leave so that he could remove his mask and partake in the bourbon without showing his disfigured face except to Alfred.
He knew his face wouldn’t bother Alfred Dennison one bit.
Sunlight blinded Ellsworth on the veranda.
It had been a while since he’d felt that southern warmth on his skin, and it brought back memories of cicadas and palmetto trees, of sticky summer nights on the rocking chairs with Eliza, sipping tea or pulpy lemonade as the sun sank behind the woods.
Ellsworth stopped at the road. Sweat erupted across his brow. He suddenly felt fidgety, paranoid, like he was in the middle of no-man’s-land and surrounded by hidden machine-gun nests. He looked around suspiciously, but all he saw was wind tugging the tree moss.
“There’s whispers in the wind.” Gabriel had once said that to him when they were twelve and sitting together on a log, pitching rocks toward the tree line. Some in town, she being one of them, claimed the different wind pitches were voices coming from the woods—ghosts even. Ellsworth had never believed in such things, but he didn’t belittle those who did. He figured most of the rumors about the woods were overblown, but he knew there was something strange out there. Something had turned Timmy Tankersly’s hair white.
Gabriel hadn’t really been that worried about the whispers back then anyway. She brought them up to change the subject, having just asked him what it had felt like when Anna Belle planted that kiss on him in the ocean. Gabriel had inched closer to him, he’d noticed, probably with secret girl motives of her own. But when he’d said the kiss didn’t feel like much of anything—implying he wasn’t hunting for another and would rather be pitching a baseball—she’d scooted back away from him with an embarrassed face. She’d probably been fixing to plant one on him like Anna Belle had done, and his indifferent tone had deterred her. She’d always been so boyish and Anna Belle so beautiful. She’d probably figured what was the point.
And now Gabriel had been the one to find that Raphael boy in the woods. Never once in her life had she shown a smidgen of jealousy toward Anna Belle, even when she married Calvin and Ellsworth married Eliza and every childhood friend in town except her seemed to be marrying someone. Maybe he’d invite Gabriel over for some Old Sam and they could sit on a log facing the woods like they used to. Maybe they’d even talk about what had happened in that slave house when they were nine.
Enough stalling.
Ellsworth homed in on Anna Belle’s house and willed himself across the road. But even as he stepped forward, out of habit, he found himself scanning the trees and neighboring buildings for Krauts. The absurdity of it all stopped him in his tracks again. He was more likely to see a giraffe in the woods than German soldiers. Had he finally come to that realization now that he’d begun to get out and about? He’d seen enough paranoia from Alfred and Omar. Enough was enough. Getting run over by a car was a more likely threat, so he broke from his reverie and urged himself onward.
At one point the road had been gravel, but now it was hard-packed and rutted by car
tires, dusty gray, and in bad need of a good rain soak to keep it down. He found the flat parts with his cane and labored across. Even with his eyes glued to the road, he couldn’t help but notice the array of color all around him.
Eliza had once asked him to imagine what it would look like if all the trees and flowers of Bellhaven bloomed at once. Ellsworth had said it wasn’t possible, so what was the point? Eliza, undeterred by his lack of imagination, had said it would be magical, “as if a paint palette overturned and scattered across the land.”
That’s what it looked like now.
Ellsworth blinked, but it didn’t change things. He reached the other side of the road and stopped to look around again. The colors gave him cold chills.
The American beautyberries in front of Beverly Adams’s house typically showed berries in the fall and early winter. But now Beverly was out on her sidewalk looking at them in full color—tiny morsels of white and bright magenta. All across Bellhaven, the dogwoods had flowered overnight with petals of pink, yellow, and cottony-white. The crabapple trees behind the jailhouse bloomed pink, and beneath them grew the perennial purple cornflowers. Every cherry tree was in full bloom, as were the magnolia trees, with white blooms the size of dinner plates. Dozens of town folk stood outside staring. The redbud trees bloomed a brilliant purple. Crape myrtles frothed violet, red, pink, and even yellow. In gardens up and down the street, on bushes and shrubs outlining porches, there was color everywhere—camellias, roses, and azaleas; hibiscus, lilies, and daffodils; climbing coral honeysuckle and Carolina jessamine.
He wasn’t the only one to notice. One man stood in the middle of the road sketching. The Pentecostals prayed in a cluster in Bannerman’s front yard. Gus Cheevers had paused in painting his fence to stare.
Ellsworth looked to the sky. Cardinal birds circled atop the colorful trees and live oaks, whistling—even more birds than the day before. Old Man Tanner’s house looked quiet. Ellsworth wished he could unsee what he’d witnessed last night, the old man walking backward around his house, but the trampled footprints were still in the grass as a reminder.
How many laps did the old man take?
Ellsworth stepped up to Anna Belle’s covered porch and knocked. Three quick raps. A minute later the door opened. There she stood in the threshold, her face made up pretty, her hair gathered up in a mass of curls he wanted to run his hands through.
He should pinch himself for even giving the thought life.
“What do you want?” she asked.
What he wanted was his breakfast, but instead he said, “Reckon it’s a fine day for a walk, Anna Belle.”
She folded both arms. “What are you on about, Ellsworth? I’m no easy mark.”
He held up his hands. “Honestly, Anna Belle. Just thought it was a nice day for that walk you wanted yesterday.”
“That was yesterday, Ellsworth, when I still thought you might have a heart inside that chest.” She took in the sunlight and did her best to hide a smile. “But I reckon it wouldn’t be a bad day for a stroll. Come in first. I’ve got a plate of food for you.”
Ellsworth smiled. He didn’t think there was ever a woman who could read his mind like Eliza, but sometimes with Anna Belle he wondered. “Have you seen the trees?”
“’Course I have. Blooming even more than yesterday. Raphael and I have been on the back porch all morning.”
“What do you think’s causing it?”
“Does it matter?”
“I’d like to think it does, but I reckon not.”
“The moment you pause to think of the why, it’ll be gone and you missed it.”
He didn’t think that made much sense, but he followed her into the house. The front room smelled like flowers. Air moved through open windows, carrying thick foody smells from the kitchen. Only now did he realize how musty and sterile his own house had grown. Dust covered and stale from being occupied daily by three war vets.
Anna Belle was too stubborn to allow all that gloom into her life. Her house was brightly lit, full of vibrant colors. Not that she didn’t grieve Calvin as much as he did.
She just did it differently somehow.
“How’s the boy?” he asked. She looked over her shoulder at him, glared. “I mean, Raphael. Isn’t that his name?”
“It is.” She folded her arms. “We found him lost in the woods, no thanks to you.”
He didn’t have an answer to that—not one she’d want to hear, anyway. He didn’t tell the boy to run off. “But I didn’t know he was able to get about. Thought he was bedridden.”
“He’s always been able to get about, Ellsworth. You’ve seen him and me on our walks. He’s just been afraid to talk after what he saw. The town’s taken to him like fish to water, which is why most everyone gathered to find him.”
Ellsworth followed her toward the kitchen, smelled something delicious. “Well, what happened then? Last night?”
“He got about. Sneaked out of the house and wandered into the woods. Gabriel found him a quarter mile deep, well past the yellow trees, sitting against a tree trunk shaped like a violin.”
“Didn’t you warn the boy about the woods?”
“Of course, Ellsworth. You think me irresponsible?” She sighed, fixed a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Odd thing was, we found him smiling.”
“Smiling?”
“Oh, I forgot. You don’t know what that is anymore.”
Ellsworth forced one, but it only left his face tired.
“Nice try.” She entered the kitchen. Ellsworth followed like a lost mutt. “I don’t know why he was smiling. All I know is that he looked at peace. Finally.”
Ellsworth sat at Anna Belle’s kitchen table. Biscuit and gravy day. After a minute of fiddling at the stove, she placed a steaming plate in front of him and ten seconds later a cold glass of milk. He watched the curve of her hips when she turned. He told himself to stop, but he liked her blue dress. Her Tuesday dress.
She turned suddenly and caught him staring. “Eat up before it gets cold.”
He ate the first few forkfuls like he hadn’t eaten in days. “Does he talk yet?”
“No, not yet. But I believe he will.”
Ellsworth ate more, then gulped some milk. “Did you see Old Man Tanner last night, walking around his house?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“I think the poor man is off the tracks.”
“Should we do anything about it?”
“I didn’t think you did anything about anything anymore, Ellsworth.”
“Made it across the road, didn’t I?”
“Even Alfred was out looking last night, and he’s blind as a bat.”
Ellsworth returned to his food. No use beating a dead horse. “You knew the boy—”
“Raphael.”
“Raphael. Right. You knew he was there that night, didn’t you? Hiding in the town hall basement with his mother?”
Anna Belle nodded. “Eliza took me down there the night before. Introduced me in the dark. I could barely see more than the whites of his eyes, but he smiled then like he’s smiling now. Sensed something in him right away. Something special.”
“Special like what?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Just brought about a warmth. Made me smile.”
“And his mother?”
“Looked frightened. They nodded their hellos. Eliza hurried me back upstairs.”
“Why did Eliza bring them here anyway? She never told me.”
“Didn’t tell me either. She only asked me if I’d look after him if something were to happen.”
Ellsworth finished off another biscuit. “So he looked at peace?”
“Yes, he did.” She studied him. “And he still does. What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing doesn’t make your eyes twitch.” She sat down across the table from him. “You’re not so dead to the world that you can disguise your emotion. Especially where Eliza’s concerned.”
He
put his fork down. “In the weeks before that night, Eliza was just much calmer. At peace, like you said. That’s what I’d think in my head—that she was at peace.” He looked Anna Belle in the eyes for the first time since entering her house. “Did you notice that with her?”
“I did.”
“Did you notice anything else, Anna Belle?”
“Like what?”
“Don’t be coy. You know what I’m getting at. Her appearance?”
Anna Belle’s eyes grew wet. She bit her lip, nodded. “She looked older, Ellsworth. For the life of me, I remember it. She looked noticeably older—every day, it seemed.”
Ellsworth sighed, nodded. He wasn’t the only person to notice it then. He dug back into his biscuits and gravy, fighting back tears. “Did she . . . did she mention anything about our son?”
Anna Belle wiped her eyes. “Said she talked to him.”
Ellsworth tightened his jaw. He didn’t mind that he wasn’t the only person Eliza had confided in. Anna Belle had been her closest friend, after all. But talk of their dead son—that was personal. And that talk could have led to gossip that his wife was hearing voices and losing her mind. Ellsworth finished his milk and wiped his mouth. “You didn’t tell anyone, did you?”
“Anyone what?”
“That Eliza thought she’d talked to our son?”
“No, of course not, Ellsworth.” She reached across and touched his hand. He let it linger there for a beat and then slid his out from under it.
“Where’s the boy?” he asked.
She shook her head in defeat. “In his room.” And then looked up with a jolt. “Do you want to see him?”
“No.”
It was quiet for a moment. Then Anna Belle said, “Maybe we can take Mr. Tanner somewhere. To a hospital or something.”
“An asylum?”
“Something of the sort, yes.”
Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Probably just the boy. The boy with the stupid name. Hopefully he wouldn’t come into the kitchen.
Ellsworth finished his food and wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin. The footsteps were in the living room now. Ellsworth figured he’d sneak out the kitchen door so he wouldn’t have to meet the boy. If he played it right, he’d get himself out of that walk too. Maybe Anna Belle would forget he’d even suggested it. Now that he was full, he wasn’t in the mood. He wanted to get back out to those blooming trees and see if he could make sense of things.
All Things Bright and Strange Page 5