All Things Bright and Strange

by James Markert

  Anna Belle tightened her grip around Raphael’s chest. Tears dripped from her eyes. “Why’d you do it, Ellsworth?”

  “Let him go and we’ll discuss.”

  “He told me to go down and bring back the boy. He said it’s a test. A test. The men that came for him years ago are back. It’s a test, Ellsworth. He put our pieces on the board.”

  “It’s a test you’re gonna fail, Anna Belle. Let’s talk this through, me and you. Let’s take that walk now.”

  “I think Calvin loved Eliza and you knew it. That’s why you shot him. He loved your dead wife, and you shot him because of it. All the men in town looked at her special. He loved Eliza more than he loved me, Ellsworth.”

  “That’s not true, Anna Belle.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He told me. He loved you until that final breath. The chapel’s putting thoughts in your head. The voices in there aren’t real.”

  “You lie.”

  Uriel crawled like a wounded soldier toward Gabriel, who squatted to pull him closer.

  “I can help him,” said Raphael.

  “Stop talking.” Anna Belle squeezed Raphael. A spot of blood turned into a trickle on the boy’s caramel-colored neck.

  “You’re cutting him, Anna Belle. Let him go, and we’ll talk things through.”

  Tears came harder, and she choked on a sob. “The Klan’s up there. Like that night.” She shook her head. “I can’t be there with them. I’ve had nightmares ever since they hung Sheriff Pomeroy from the tree. I still hear the screams, Ellsworth.”

  “Anna Belle, drop the knife. Come back home.”

  She tightened her hold on Raphael again. “I don’t know who I am anymore. I cut Eliza’s picture into pieces, but I tried to tape it back together. I tried. It’s a test. It makes me feel good, Ellsworth. Makes me forget. I cook food to forget—not for you, but for me.”

  Gabriel took a step forward, so heavy the floorboards creaked.

  “Tell that big ugly broad to stay back.”

  Ellsworth held out his hand, and Gabriel stopped against his forearm.

  “Drop the knife, Anna Belle. I’ll do anything. I’ll go up there myself. Meet Mr. Eddington face-to-face again.”

  This gave her pause. “He’d like that.” Her eyes flashed. “He used to go into the woods every night. For hours he’d stay in that chapel. But then he stopped. And do you know why?”

  Ellsworth inched closer. Keep her talking. “Why, Anna Belle?”

  “Because now the chapel comes to him.” She grinned. “The chapel’s inside of him. He felt it the first day he came to visit that house. Except he’s the king on that chessboard.”

  Without Anna Belle noticing, Raphael had raised his free arm to her face and lovingly touched her cheek. She flinched, fought his hand, but then settled her cheek into his touch. Her jaw trembled, her lips wet with tears.

  She locked eyes with Ellsworth. “I want to go to the chapel.”

  “You can go to the chapel. Just drop the knife.”

  She dropped the knife and embraced Raphael, pressing him against her chest, kissing his head, telling him over and over again that she was sorry. “It was a test, and I failed.”

  Raphael squirmed from her embrace to help Uriel on the floor. He removed the knife, knelt beside Uriel, and placed his hands on the wound.

  Anna Belle shuffled across the kitchen. “I’m ready to go now. Go back into the woods.”

  Ellsworth whispered something to Gabriel. She nodded, then circled around the kitchen table so that she was behind Anna Belle.

  “Sometimes he doesn’t want the chapel in him.”

  Ellsworth offered Anna Belle his hand. “Who?”

  “Lou. He hurts like the rest of us. Except Lou isn’t his real name. It’s Lucius. And I’m a bad soldier.”

  Just as Anna Belle was about to grab Ellsworth’s hand, Gabriel clutched her from behind, securing her arms in a sturdy bear hug. Anna Belle screamed as Gabriel carried her from the kitchen. “Let me down. Where are you taking me?”

  “The safest place for you, Anna Belle.” Ellsworth glanced at Gabriel. “My deputy here is going to lock you up for the night. Just long enough to—”

  Anna Belle sprayed spit in his face.

  He followed them out to the veranda and then to the street, where some of the people returning from the woods stopped to watch the scene. Gabriel now had Anna Belle over her shoulder, oblivious to the fists pounding against her back.

  The bomb Rabbi Blumenthal detonated outside the jailhouse had left one cell functional. It would hold Anna Belle just fine.

  “Liar,” Anna Belle hissed. “Let me down. One more time into the woods. Let me go.”

  Gabriel was unfazed by the hysterics. “You did say she could go,” she said to Ellsworth.

  “It’s for her own good.”

  “Okay by me. She called me an ugly broad. But I’d rather be called ugly than a liar.”

  Ellsworth struck up his first cigarette in days. “Lying is the least of my sins.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Ellsworth left Anna Belle alone in the jailhouse cell and promised to return.

  She was screaming at him when he left, thrashing her shoulder into the bars, begging for one last trip into the woods, one more time with Calvin. And with the back of the jailhouse now open to the elements, her voice carried. Shouts of “murderer” and “liar” followed Ellsworth across the street. Some of the new town-hall arrivals watched in the parking lot. He told them to go back inside, and they obeyed without question.

  Back at Ellsworth’s house, Omar and his men remained on guard. Raphael was waiting at the door. “Uriel, he’ll live. He’s sitting up in the kitchen. Gabriel is bandaging his back.” The boy continued as he climbed down the veranda steps and started on toward the road.

  “Where you going?” asked Ellsworth.

  Raphael nodded toward the jailhouse. “To calm her down.”

  Anna Belle’s voice had continued, though hoarse from screaming, but it silenced a minute after Raphael entered the jailhouse.

  “Dem boy is good,” Omar said, packing fresh tobacco into his pipe. At the end of the veranda, Omar’s man was writing in his diary again, jotting notes in the moon glow. “Get dem sleep, Ellsworth. Big days comin’.”

  Ellsworth knew he needed sleep, but with all the goings-on he doubted it would readily come. Instead he told Omar he’d be back. He walked to the street, surveyed both ends, and then headed south toward the churches, turning right before he reached Brother Bannerman’s house, where the clothes basket Rabbi Blumenthal burned was now a heap of ash. He ducked under the clothesline and cut through Ned Gleeson’s backyard, where Ned’s work shed lay in charred ruins. Something winked yellow in the moonlight—a partially charred birdhouse. Ellsworth pulled it from the heap, blew ash from the rooftop. It was mostly intact—red roof, yellow walls, blue door, and green-framed windows on three sides—the kind that was big enough to be a bird feeder as well. Even the rope Ned had fastened to the roof was still connected, and it was by this that Ellsworth held it as he continued on through Berny Martino’s backyard toward the Bellhaven Cemetery.

  Hundreds of gravestones packed the graveyard tightly, knee high at the most, and decorated with so many bird droppings one might think they’d been carved from marble. Ellsworth found Eliza’s easily enough—on the north end of the lot, wedged between the wrought iron fence and little Erik’s gravestone, which was no wider than a foot and shorter than the tall grass that surrounded it. Ellsworth bent over and pulled the weeds, wiped the stone clean.

  “Eliza, I know it’s been too long since I visited, but you’ve been on my mind daily, no matter.” He sat on her headstone and breathed in the cool evening air as hundreds of birds cast shadows against the clouds. “Give me the strength to do what needs to be done in the coming days.”

  The last time he’d visited her grave was the day before he enlisted. But instead of a birdhouse he’d held a baseball and glove, and he’d mad
e a promise to her then that he’d come home and make a name for himself on the ball field. He would play every game like his life depended on it. Make every pitch like it was his last. Leave every city with the fans begging him to stay.

  “I wanted to make you proud, Eliza.” He stood from the stone and hung the birdhouse on the iron fence. Arms folded, he watched it for a moment. He started to leave, but then a cardinal bird dropped from the flock circling above and landed atop the fence, the tiny talons doing a dance to stay balanced. It pecked through the birdhouse window at food that wasn’t there and then looked at Ellsworth like he was at fault.

  “I’ll bring seed next time.” He stared at the bird. The bird stared right back. Ellsworth wiped his eyes and chuckled, wondering if it was the same bird he’d seen at his window the day he nearly shot himself. He’d like to think it was. It was a female. The feathers looked the same. “Is that you?” he said aloud.

  The bird didn’t answer. Of course the bird didn’t answer. It flew off into the trees and lost itself in the shadows. Ellsworth thought about taking the birdhouse with him but then decided he’d leave it there on the fence. Maybe tomorrow he’d come back with some seed. He wrote himself a mental note and then paused, realizing what Eliza would have been doing had that bird arrived so timely, so personally. Like Omar’s man on the veranda, she would have recorded it in her diary.

  Her diary.

  Eliza’s diary.

  Ellsworth turned from the cemetery, picked up pace through Berny Martino’s backyard, and then jog-hobbled the rest of the way home.

  Omar still stood guard on the porch. “Ellsworth, dem slow down. What da—”

  Ellsworth flung the front door open and hurried inside. Upstairs in his bedroom he found the little book where she’d always kept it, in the drawer of her nightstand. She’d sit on the veranda rocker and take notes on the colorful blooms, chart their yearly patterns and seasonal tendencies. And the birds—sometimes he’d steal a glance and find her sketching them. She’d take that diary when she traveled the trains—wherever she went.

  Sometimes, curious, he’d been tempted to sneak it out of its drawer while she was out in the garden or napping. He’d even made it as far as smelling the leather cover and cracking the spine. But each time he’d put it back and close the drawer in a cold sweat. He’d respected her too much not to trust her.

  Then she’d died, and he’d refused to go into their room. Later he’d been too hobbled from the war to climb stairs. And in all that had happened, he’d completely forgotten about her diary.

  The musty smell brought about tears. A thin network of cracks etched the leather spine. The pages were stiff, crinkled. He blew away dust and started at the beginning. “October 14, 1906.” She started it when she was thirteen years old. On that day Eliza had written briefly about the sunny weather and a clear blue Arkansas sky.

  He turned the pages carefully. Most entries were brief, some only a few words—

  January 5, 1907: Hello, it’s me again.

  But mostly she’d written about the weather, flowers, pictures in the clouds, descriptions of sunrises and sunsets, imaginary friends she’d invite over for tea. She’d go weeks, sometimes months, without entries, and then she’d be back again, scribbling that next entry as if in a hurry to capture her days. Her mood changes were evident even in her writing, sometimes shifting in the same entry from excitement to melancholy, bliss to depression.

  Why do I feel alone even in a crowd?

  She wrote often about her mother, recording memories. Being read to at night, falling asleep in her mother’s arms, taking walks hand in hand, riding the train together. Riding the trains. Here Ellsworth paused, allowed those familiar three words to gather in his mind, before looking back down to her writings. Then finally came the memories of watching her mother being carried away in the swift river current—memories that had turned to nightmares, nightmares she’d documented dozens of times in her diary.

  February 9, 1907: The girl mother saved—her name is Clare.

  That was it. So short, to the point. So . . . random. Ellsworth turned more pages, skimmed, stopped on various dates.

  March 10, 1907: Very strange, but I woke up this morning and shouted out a name. Benjamin! And I don’t know why. I know no Benjamin. Yet I shouted it out like he was one of my own.

  February 3, 1908: I awoke this morning to find dots of blood on my undergarments. I hope I’m not dying. I wish my mother were alive to explain such things.

  The next month the blood came again. She wrote:

  March 5, 1908: Something is killing me slowly from the inside out. Perhaps it has something to do with the changing of the moon? I must clean up before father gets home!

  The story of her young life continued to unfold as he turned the pages. He had known her so well, and yet there was so much he had never known.

  July 6, 1908: A young boy at the market smiled at me today. He was licking a lollipop. He understands me. Does he bleed down there? Is he slowly dying too?

  August 6, 1908: I met a friend today. Her name is Patricia. She explained my monthly blood. So if I’m dying, then all women are dying. I suppose it also means I’m now a woman!

  Years passed before the next entry, her entries nearly as random and sporadic as her thoughts had sometimes been when she was alive.

  September 11, 1911: I heard a familiar woman’s voice in my head this morning. Again. Was it my imagination? I don’t think so. I’ve been hearing her for too long for it not to be real. I can tell no one, not even Patricia. But I believe I may know who it is. I can only hope.

  September 19, 1911: Patricia and I watched the clouds today, and I saw a sewing machine.

  October 17, 1911: Father is forcing us to move to Atlanta today. I hate him.

  There was another big gap before the next diary entry, which was one of the longer ones.

  December 9, 1913: I’m twenty today. Father forgot my birthday, and here I sit eating a muffin alone at the kitchen table while he drinks at the tavern. I have no friends here. I wonder what Patricia is doing back home, if she’s found a man to marry. There’s a mouse in this kitchen. I think he likes our crackers. I must apologize to myself for going so long without an entry. It shall not happen again. But the voice in my head grows stronger. Perhaps she is my only friend here, and it’s time for me to start listening to her. I don’t think she’s in my imagination any more. She’s real and has been since I was five years old. I believe now that she’s the voice of my mother. And so I now call her Martha.

  Ellsworth’s tears began anew. He turned the page, jumping another year.

  January 11, 1914: There’s a peculiar story in the newspaper today about a boy from Arkansas named Benjamin Stithe, nearly seven years old, who is apparently able to do complex mathematics. I feel myself drawn to him. Benjamin. They call him a prodigy. Is this the Benjamin I called out to seven years ago on the day of his birth?

  April 29, 1914: Mother Martha’s voice is like a goodnight kiss. She told me of a little girl named Lilly, who lives down the road, and said that I should watch over her.

  The next pages chronicled the story of Lilly, with months-long gaps between the entries.

  June 23, 1914: Lilly still has no idea that I watch over her daily. Even at age seven she has the voice of an angel. Her father drinks, though, and can get rather disagreeable with both Lilly and her mother. Sometimes they fight. I believe he hits them.

  August 5, 1914: I took Lilly to my house this evening. Her father became violent and stormed from the house, probably to the tavern where my father slowly kills himself. Lilly’s mother chased him, and he swatted her to the road, where she cried and pleaded for him not to go. I think he should never return. I heard Lilly crying, so I tapped on her bedroom window, and she opened it with a smile. She asked if I was an angel and I said no, but she sings like one. She asked if she could come over. She said she’s seen me before and has always wanted to talk to me. I held her that night, and we cried together. I hugged al
l the bad stuff out of her mind, and she sang us both to sleep. Her mother returned to the house but didn’t give any indication that she’d found her daughter missing. I’ll walk Lilly back home in the morning, although she begs me not to.

  Ellsworth turned another page, found another time gap.

  December 26, 1914: It’s been three weeks, and Lilly’s father has yet to return. This is probably for the best. Both mother and daughter are in much better spirits now. I hear them both singing at night.

  The next dozen pages included entries about the weather, about Lilly’s voice, and about how the child was growing like a weed and seemingly happy.

  January 1, 1915: I wonder if I am ever to marry like all the other women my age. Men tell me my eyes are beautiful, azure like a clear summer sky. Yet none of them ask for my hand.

  Ellsworth scanned more pages, turning faster. He’d skipped too much, so he turned back to find entries he’d missed.

  April 11, 1910: I saw a vision last night—a black infant in a cradle. A boy, I believe, and he was surrounded by the most brilliant emerald glow. I’m unsure how I know it, but I must watch over this boy, although I have no inkling where he is.

  The next day she wrote about sunflowers. That was what fascinated him—the mix of the ordinary and the mystical. Reading it brought her spirit back to him more vividly than he had felt it since she died.

  July 7, 1912: Father stays all night at the tavern and comes home smelling of sin.

  August 10, 1912: Mother used to call me her little angel. That much I remember. I miss my mother, but at least now I am beginning to understand my purpose. Sometimes, in my dreams, mother doesn’t have a face.

  Ellsworth swallowed hard but turned another page, hands trembling.

  July 4, 1913: Father didn’t come home last night. That’s three nights in a row. Strange that I don’t really miss him.

  November 17, 1913: The black boy has a name. It’s Raphael. Yesterday he healed a bird by holding it in his hands. I watched him from behind a tree. But he never knew I was there. He never knows. Neither did Lilly or any of the others. Lilly is growing into a beautiful young woman.