A Long Time Gone

by Karen White

  I stood, relaxing only as I recognized Angelo Berlini. But my smile fell as he came nearer, and I saw that the man approaching me wasn’t the Angelo I’d come to know. He was dressed only in shirtsleeves and a vest, his trademark fedora discarded along with his jacket and tie. His usually neatly combed hair fell over his forehead, and when he stopped in front of me, his black eyes burned. Perspiration dotted his upper lip despite the cooler temperature, and I noticed that the corded muscles of his exposed forearms were covered in dark hair. He looked dangerous, and I quickly stepped between him and the baby carriage.

  “Good morning, Angelo. I’m sorry, but John’s not here. . . .”

  He shook his head impatiently. “I didn’t come here to see John. I needed to speak with you.”

  My mouth had suddenly grown dry and I had to try two times to speak. “Would you like to come inside for a glass of tea or lemonade—”

  He cut me off. “There’s no time. I’ve been driving all night. And I have to go back to New Orleans right away so nobody knows I’ve gone. What I have to tell you can’t be said over a phone. There are ears everywhere.”

  I placed my hand on the handle of the baby carriage. “Angelo, you’re scaring me.”

  “Good. Because I can’t seem to scare your husband enough to make him listen. That’s why I needed to speak with you. Did John tell you that he’s stopped working for me?”

  I sucked in a lungful of cool air. I wanted to deny it, to tell him that we had no secrets in our marriage and that John told me everything. But I was a terrible liar, my face always giving me away.

  “I didn’t think so,” he said softly. “He’s made some people very upset, the kind of people you don’t want to anger. I’m doing what I can, but I might not be able to help him now. You need to leave this place just for a little while, until things settle down.”

  I glanced over at Bootsie, who was showing her dimples to Angelo, reaching toward him to get him to lift her into his arms. “How much time do we have?”

  “Not much. John said he has family in Missouri. I’ve already started working on arrangements to get you safely there, and I’ll transfer some funds so you’ll have something to live on at first. You just need to promise me that you’ll start preparing to leave now. But you can’t tell anyone. Do you understand? Not your aunt and uncle or even Sarah Beth. You will put them in danger if they know anything.”

  I picked up Bootsie, holding her close, needing to feel her safe against me.

  He continued. “I know how much you love you husband and your daughter, and how you want to keep them safe. So do as I say and everything will be fine.”

  “But what should I tell John?”

  “Nothing. Yet. Don’t tell him I’ve been here—not until you hear back from me with the arrangements.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t lie to my husband.”

  “Even if it’s to save his life? And your life? And the life of your baby?”

  I clenched my eyes, wishing I could tell him no, but I knew he was right.

  He softened his voice. “You and I both know it’s best if he doesn’t have time to think about all of this. Your husband is a very stubborn man, Adelaide, and you’re the only one I know who can get through to him.”

  “He asked me before if I would move to Missouri, and I said no. He stayed because of me.”

  Angelo reached up and touched Bootsie’s cheek, making her smile. “You were thinking of your daughter, and didn’t understand the dangers. But now you do, and you know it will be temporary. Prohibition will be defeated, if not in the next election, then the one after that. None of this will matter anymore, and you and your family will come back.”

  Bootsie leaned toward Angelo and he lifted her from my arms, closing his eyes for a moment and breathing in her sweet baby scent, his smile erasing years from his face.

  “Why are you doing this, Angelo? If you had to sneak away to warn us, then you could be putting yourself in danger. Why would you risk it?”

  His black eyes softened as he regarded me. “Because you are one of the truly good people in this ugly world that tries its hardest to erase all good. But your love for family and home shines light into even the darkest corners. Like my sister before life beat her down and stomped her out. That’s why.”

  Before I even knew what I was doing, I leaned forward and kissed him on his cheek. “I don’t know if I agree, but thank you.”

  He looked down at Bootsie, who was trying to chew on her baby ring that had just begun to fit her. Angelo took her little hand in his, and gently tugged off her ring. “I’m going to take this with me. I probably won’t be able to come back, so I’ll send somebody I trust as a messenger with instructions. He’ll show you this ring so you’ll know the message is from me.”

  I nodded. “All right.” I gave him a halfhearted smile.

  We both looked up at a sudden rustling from the tree above us. Oily black crows sat four in a row on three limbs, their large round eyes staring at nothing. “Twelve crows,” I said. “The old nursery rhyme only goes up to ten.”

  He looked at me with a confused expression.

  “It’s an old nursery rhyme that Mathilda sings to Bootsie.” I hummed the tune at first, to help me remember the words, then began to recite them.

  One for sorrow,

  two for mirth,

  three for a wedding,

  four for a birth,

  five for silver,

  six for gold,

  seven for a secret never to be told,

  eight for heaven,

  nine for hell,

  And ten for the devil’s own self.

  “Not very cheerful for a nursery rhyme,” he said.

  “No, it’s not. But none of them are. Even ‘Ring around the Rosy’ is about the plague.”

  He looked down at his hand, rolling Bootsie’s ring between his large fingers. “I have to go now. Remember, don’t tell anybody I was here, or that you’re getting ready to leave. Wait until you hear from me. Wait until my messenger shows you this ring.” He paused, his eyes looking steadily into mine. “If John is in imminent danger I will let you know, so be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice.”

  I nodded. “I will.”

  “Good-bye, Adelaide. I hope we see each other again soon in happier circumstances.”

  “Me, too,” I said, hugging Bootsie closer to me. “And thank you.”

  I watched him walk away toward the side of the house and the front drive. I almost called after him to ask him why he’d given Sarah Beth the emerald earrings instead of his fiancée, but I kept hearing Sarah Beth’s words: Don’t ask questions you don’t want to hear the answers to.

  I watched him until he rounded the corner of the house out of sight. A fluttering of wings forced my gaze upward as seven of the birds flew down from the tree and into the sodden yard, looking for the worms flooded out of their homes by the constant rains. The sky had gone suddenly dark, heavy rain clouds erasing the sun.

  I tossed my book into the baby carriage and, while carrying Bootsie, began to run toward the house, rolling the carriage behind me. The first fat drops of rain began to fall as I made it to the back porch, only noticing the figure watching me from the doorway when I’d reached the bottom step.

  It was my cousin, Willie, and I wanted to ask him what he was doing home in the middle of a workday, but didn’t. There was something in his expression that stopped me, that made me feel as if people were walking over my grave. We stood staring at each other for a long moment as the rain began to pelt the soft earth and the metal roof of the porch. And before I could ask him to bring up the carriage, he’d walked back into the kitchen, letting the screen door slam in my face.

  APRIL 14, 1927

  I waited for almost two weeks to hear back from Angelo. Two weeks of nearly sleepless nights and tense meals. Even Bootsie gre
w restless, and I wondered if mothers could ever hide their emotions from their children. I told no one about Angelo’s visit, not even my husband. It seemed we were both good at keeping secrets from each other. John was too distracted to notice that Bootsie’s ring was missing, but Mathilda did, and asked me about it. I told her that it was still too big and I’d put it away until Bootsie had grown a little more. But I recalled Mathilda watching Angelo and me when I gave him the ring, and suspected she knew I was lying. I rarely saw Willie, and when I did he barely spoke to me and never mentioned Angelo at all.

  John went to the jewelry shop each day, the tension between us making our kisses brittle. The only thing that made me allow John to leave my side was Angelo’s promise that he would let me know if my husband was in imminent danger. We seemed to all be dancing on a precipice of our own making, unaware of the hazards if we missed a step.

  I began to fill two suitcases with clothing and other necessities—mine, Bootsie’s, and John’s—not taking enough to be noticed, but enough that would sustain us after a sudden departure. I found Mathilda in the nursery once, opening all the dresser drawers and searching for a particular bonnet. I told her that Bootsie had lost it during an outing. But from the look on Mathilda’s face it was obvious that my skills at lying had not improved with use. For once I was happy for John’s distraction, knowing that was the only reason he didn’t notice my mood or question why his supply of socks had dwindled.

  We all watched the rain continue to fall, the sweet gums and loblolly pines all leaning over like old men burdened by life. The farmers kept one eye on their crops still growing on their highest ground and not yet underwater, and another eye trained on the levees, where the mighty Mississippi flicked its muddy tongue, threatening to find a way through.

  On Thursday morning, nearly two weeks to the day since I’d seen Angelo, I was sitting at the dining table, having breakfast with John, with Aunt Louise in the kitchen making more eggs. Uncle Joe had ridden out to see what was left of his crops after a heavy night of rain, and Willie had just come in for a cup of coffee before heading out to the bank. It was unusual for him to be there that late in the morning, as he usually preferred to have his breakfast and coffee with Mr. Heathman downtown.

  Uncle Joe had left the morning paper folded up and unread on the server, having left before sunup with no time to read it. Willie flopped down into Uncle Joe’s chair and opened the newspaper to the front page and kept it there, slowly sipping his coffee, his eyes scanning the page.

  “Well, lookee here,” he said. “Isn’t that a friend of yours, John?”

  He slid the paper over so John could look at it. John’s face paled, coffee sloshing out of his cup as he set it down hard.

  “What is it?” I asked, putting down my fork.

  He didn’t respond, didn’t even seem to have heard me.

  I glanced at Willie, hoping he’d be able to provide more information, but froze. He was smiling: a smug, self-satisfied smile that stilled the blood in my veins.

  “What is it, John?” I asked again, louder this time.

  He looked up at me, his eyes empty, his face even paler. “Angelo Berlini. He was found dead last night. In the pond at the Ellis plantation.”

  I sat back in my chair, my hand pressed against my heart to keep it from beating out of my chest. “Drowned?” I asked, feeling sick to my stomach, and wondering why Angelo would have been in Indian Mound, and why he hadn’t contacted me.

  “Appears so.” John’s eyes met Willie’s across the table. His voice was thick when he spoke again. “It says here that he must have been there fishing and slipped in.”

  The thought of Angelo Berlini in his fedora and expensive suit fishing in the pond at the Ellis plantation was almost laughable. “But . . .”

  John looked at me and gave me a quick shake of his head. I fell silent.

  “Was anyone with him?” Willie asked, a smile behind his question. He took a sip of coffee to hide it.

  John just stared at him, not answering.

  I reached over and slid the paper toward me, seeing the photograph of a smiling Angelo in white tie at a party. Carmen stood beside him, decked in jewels, tall and elegant. My eyes slid over the article, reading what John had already said, then stopped. Mr. Berlini appears not to have been alone, as fresh tire tracks from vehicles other than his own were discovered nearby. An anonymous source stated that the area was well-known by illegal moonshiners, who might have seen something or even have been involved in Mr. Berlini’s death, but so far no one has stepped forward to corroborate that story. Mr. Berlini was a New Orleans businessman with ties to several area businesses. Repeated calls to his fiancée, Miss Carmen Bianca, daughter of Louisiana senatorial candidate Louis Bianca, have been unreturned as of this printing.

  My hands were shaking so badly that I had to put the newspaper down. How could Angelo be dead? I wasn’t naive enough to believe that it had been an accident. Had it been the same people Angelo had been trying to protect us against? Had they found out that he’d tried to warn us? I needed to speak with John, but I had to wait until we were alone.

  The door to the dining room swung open. “Look who’s just had a bath,” Mathilda said, holding a smiling and damp-haired Bootsie. Mathilda stopped in the threshold when she saw Willie, as surprised as I had been that he was there. I stood, eager to have my child in my arms, somehow the weight of her making all seem right in the world even when everything was off-kilter.

  “Thank you, Mathilda. I’ll take her. If you could go ahead and hang her laundry in the kitchen today—I’m afraid nothing’s going to get dried outside.”

  She nodded, but I saw her gaze settling on Angelo’s photograph in the paper, and then moving to the headline. I knew she could read, that she’d gone to the colored school until she was twelve, and I watched as her gaze moved upward and settled on Willie.

  We all turned at the sound of the front door opening, and then Uncle Joe was standing behind Mathilda, his hat dripping from his hands. He was drenched through his overcoat, and his shoes were darkened with water. He shivered with cold, and I could tell he was clenching his teeth together to keep them from chattering. I handed the baby back to Mathilda so I could pour him a cup of coffee.

  “Willie, John. I need you to go change your clothes and come with me. All able-bodied men are being asked to start sandbagging just in case there’s a crevasse in the levee. It won’t do no good, but this way we can all feel like we’re doing something. But I’m on the levee guard and I have to do what I’m told.”

  I gave my uncle his coffee and he nodded with appreciation. John stood, the newspaper forgotten for now. Willie rose more slowly, and I expected him to argue, but instead he left the room to go change, telling his father he’d be back shortly.

  Aunt Louise entered the dining room with a steaming plate of eggs meant for John, and began fussing at Uncle Joe for dripping on her rug. “Stop it, woman,” he said, but I could tell he was more distracted than annoyed. “Are those eggs for me?”

  With an apologetic glance at John, she set the plate in front of her husband, then helped him shuck his overcoat before he sat down. With his mouth full of eggs, he said, “I need you women to listen for the fire whistle. That means there’s a crevasse and you need to head toward high ground just like we talked about. Don’t wait. The water’s so high right now that if there’s a break, it’s going to rush through here like Niagara Falls. Depending on where the break is, we could have three hours or less than thirty minutes to evacuate.”

  I nodded, hugging Bootsie close to me, the possibility of a flood becoming a reality for me. I’d been so distracted by other concerns that the more imminent threat of the river bursting through the levees had completely passed me by.

  John turned to leave, and I followed him upstairs, waiting until the door was shut behind us. Without speaking, he took us in his arms, and the three of us stood there in
the middle of the room feeling one another’s warmth.

  “Angelo . . .”

  “I know,” he said, kissing my forehead, and then Bootsie’s.

  “Who would have killed him?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “John, we need to leave Indian Mound. Angelo came to see me, before. . . . He told me that we needed to leave right away, and that he would help make arrangements. . . .”

  John pulled back, his eyes questioning. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “No, I didn’t. But he told me that you’d quit, and that you were in danger and we needed to go away for a while. He was planning on getting us to Missouri. And he didn’t want me to tell you until the last minute, because you’re stubborn and would have fought it if you’d had time to consider it. Only, I never heard back from him.” I clenched my eyes shut. “What if he was killed because he tried to warn us?”

  “You can’t think that way, Adelaide. Angelo’s dead and we can’t bring him back.” He closed his eyes and exhaled deeply. “But he was right. I would have fought to stay. After I’d made the split with him, and even though I’d tried to get you to move to Missouri before, I don’t think even you could have persuaded me.” He moved to the window and looked out at the flooded fields and sodden yard. “As soon as I get back from sandbagging, we’ll make our plans to leave for Missouri. But just for a while, all right? Just for a while.”

  “I’m afraid, John.”

  He turned around and touched my watch. “I love you forever, remember? We’ll get through this, and when we’re old and gray with Bootsie’s children on our knees, we’ll look back and remember how strong we were together.”

  He hurriedly changed his clothes, then kissed Bootsie on her nose and cheeks before kissing me deeply. “I love my girls,” he said, his old smile on his face again.