“Excuse me,” I said.
Daniel craned his neck to look at me.
“What are you doing here?”
Still not friendly.
“I’m looking for someone.”
He stood up and looked me over. “Where are you from anyway?”
“No place you ever heard of.” I would have staked my life on it.
“Try me.”
I did. I was right. He’d never heard of Hope.
“Where’s that?” he asked.
Before I could answer, the front door opened and a woman came out, her dark skin looking even darker against her bright-yellow dress and the crisp white apron over it. Her mouth was open, as if she had been about to say something until she noticed a stranger in her yard. She looked inquiringly at Daniel. He shrugged.
“Well, good morning,” the woman said in a lilting voice, like a song. When she stepped out of the shade of the porch, I saw gray hairs peeking out from under the colorful cloth wrapped around her head. “Daniel, where are your manners? Aren’t you going to introduce me?”
“This is the girl I told you about, the one who was asking all those questions about TJ.”
The woman peered at me again but didn’t say anything.
“She says she’s looking for someone,” Daniel said.
The woman looked surprised. “You know folks here in Freemount?”
“Not exactly. But I was hoping to find a Mrs. Jefferson.”
“I’m Mrs. Jefferson. Lila Jefferson.”
“Thomas Jefferson’s mother?”
She nodded. Tiny lines appeared over the bridge of her nose.
“Why are you looking for me?” she asked. “You aren’t one of those students I’ve been hearing about on the news, are you, come to stir things up?”
“No, ma’am. But I was hoping to talk to you about Mr. Jefferson.”
“Mr. Jefferson? My husband?”
“About Thomas.”
“What about him?” Daniel demanded. He’d abandoned his weeding and gone to stand beside Mrs. Jefferson.
“There’s no call for that tone of voice, Daniel,” Mrs. Jefferson said. She smoothed her apron. “What’s your name, honey?”
I told her.
“Well, Cady Andrews, come in and have some lemonade.”
The house was modestly furnished. Nothing was new, but everything was well kept. The dining-room table gleamed, little lace doilies sat on the arms of the sofa and matching armchairs—both a faded floral pattern—and the wood floor, although not shiny, was dirt- and dust-free. I followed Mrs. Jefferson through to the kitchen at the back of the house. Its three spotless windows were open, but the kitchen was hot despite the gentle breeze from outside. Mrs. Jefferson waved me into a chair, pulled a pitcher of lemonade out of an old refrigerator and poured me some. I had to hold myself back from gulping the whole glassful right down.
Mrs. Jefferson sat at the table with me.
“Now,” she said, “what do you want to know?”
“And why?” The second voice came from the kitchen doorway. It was Daniel. He eyed me with suspicion. “Why are you so interested in TJ?”
“You be polite, Daniel Jefferson,” Mrs. Jefferson said. So Daniel was a Jefferson too. Maybe a grandson. Mrs. Jefferson turned back to me. “Never mind Daniel. He takes after all the men in this family—headstrong and impatient. I’ve been trying to teach him some manners, but so far it hasn’t taken.” She looked pointedly at the boy, who regarded her with a cool expression, his arms crossed over his chest.
“You don’t even know who she is,” he protested. “She has no business prying into our family.”
Mrs. Jefferson ignored him.
“Now then, honey. You were saying?”
“I was hoping you could tell me about Mr. Jefferson and what happened when he came back from the war.”
“Why?” Daniel glowered at me. “Why do you want to know that?”
Mrs. Jefferson got to her feet. Her hands rested on her ample hips, and she glowered at the boy. “You have two choices, Daniel. You can either listen quietly to what this young lady has to say, or you can get back to your chores. If you stay, I don’t want to hear another word from you. Do you understand me?”
Daniel turned angry eyes on her. She glared back at him. He bowed his head slightly, just enough to signal defeat.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. Jefferson resumed her seat.
“I’m not sure what you want to know,” she said. “Thomas signed up as soon as he could. He had this notion, Lord knows where he got it from, that he’d be fighting side by side with regular soldiers, white soldiers. But that isn’t what happened. He was disappointed, let me tell you. Bitterly disappointed. But he was assigned to a unit, the 761st Tank Battalion, and he was proud of that once he got through the training and was sent overseas.”
“He hated the training.” Daniel was still hovering in the kitchen doorway.
“I warned you, young man,” Mrs. Jefferson said.
“What didn’t he like about it?” I asked.
“It does no good to dwell on the past.” Mrs. Jefferson turned to Daniel. “And you weren’t even born yet, so anything you have to say is pure speculation on your part.”
“No it isn’t. I read every single letter he wrote. I read them over and over.”
“If you don’t mind, Mrs. Jefferson, I’d like to hear what Daniel has to say.”
Mrs. Jefferson sighed and shook her head. She waved him over and sat back to listen.
“They trained in Louisiana, for one thing,” he said. “Bad as it is here—”
“Those days are past, Daniel.” Mrs. Jefferson’s tone was firm.
Daniel didn’t argue with her, but I sensed his disagreement so strongly that he seemed to vibrate with it.
“You ever been down south?” he asked me. I shook my head.
“Neither have you,” Mrs. Jefferson said mildly.
“I can read, can’t I? I hear what they say on TV. TJ signed up thinking he’d be a soldier just like anyone else. But that didn’t happen. Whites got trained and deployed and sent overseas in a couple of months. TJ had to spend two years training. Two years! And that wasn’t the worst of it. Those crackers from some of the other army bases down there made trouble. One time they beat up a bunch of guys from TJ’s unit. They even killed a man. But do you think anyone was arrested for that? No way! TJ said there was a quick investigation, and then the white unit that started the trouble got shipped out. You read the letter, Ma.”
Ma? I looked from him to Mrs. Jefferson. Daniel must have noticed.
“TJ was my brother,” he said.
“I remarried some time after Thomas’s father, my first husband, died,” Mrs. Jefferson said.
Daniel snorted. “Died? That’s the way you talk about him? He died?”
Mrs. Jefferson shot him a warning glance.
“Do you want to stay or do you want to go, Daniel?” Her voice shook with anger. She and Daniel stared at each other until Daniel muttered a grudging, “Sorry, Ma.”
“It’s true that the training wasn’t what Thomas expected,” Mrs. Jefferson said. “But once he got overseas, things were different. Thomas distinguished himself. His unit was so good that General Patton himself asked to have it transferred to his command. He said the 761st was one of the best tank units he’d ever had the privilege to command. Those were General Patton’s own words.”
“You must have been proud of Thomas,” I said.
Mrs. Jefferson smiled fondly, a faraway look in her eyes. “I was, and I am. Nothing will ever change that.”
“He should have got a medal,” Daniel said. “He should have got a bunch of them. But none of them did. The army kept all the medals for the white soldiers.”
“Now, Daniel,” Mrs. Jefferson cautioned.
I felt a pang in my heart when I looked across the table at her. I imagined her pride at her son in his crisp new uniform. I could almost see her waiting for the postman to pass by
the chipped and dented mailbox at the end of her front walk. I pictured her sitting where she was right now, reading her son’s letters for a second or even third time. I imagined his return after the war like a little scene in my head: Mrs. Jefferson coming out onto her porch at the sound of a car engine and seeing her son standing there. Mrs. Jefferson running to him, arms outflung, smile wide, and catching him in her lean, strong arms. Catching her son and hugging him almost to death, so pleased was she to have him back and all in one piece. At least, I assumed he was all in one piece. No one had mentioned anything different.
“I bet you gave him a real homecoming,” I said.
“I sure did. I cooked his favorite foods. I baked three pies. It took Thomas and Patrice all of two days to finish them.”
“Patrice?” Was that the Frenchman Mr. Standish and the others had told me about, the murder victim?
“Thomas brought a friend home with him.”
“From France,” I said.
She shook her head. “From Canada. He was French-speaking, but he was from Canada. He spoke English too.”
Canada? Something caught in my throat. I could barely breathe. Thomas Jefferson’s friend was a Canadian. Was that why I was here? Was that where the newspaper picture was leading me—to a Canadian, like myself? To my—I hardly dared think it—father?
I shook the thought from my head. Suppose—just for a second, suppose—that it was true, that this murdered Canadian was my father. So what? He was dead, wasn’t he? Killed by a friend, by someone he trusted, someone who was going to be his business partner—and over what? Over some stupid thing someone else said? According to what the old men had told me, Mr. Jefferson had confessed to killing the Canadian because he expected his friend to stick up for him and he didn’t. But there could be any number of reasons for that, couldn’t there, for someone not sticking up for someone else? LaSalle was new in town. He didn’t have the history to understand what was going on. Or maybe Mr. Jefferson had behaved badly. Maybe he had a raging temper. The way he’d been treated when he returned home wasn’t fair, but Mrs. Hazelton always said that no matter how unfair a situation, you had to act in a civilized manner. Maybe Mr. Jefferson hadn’t done that. Maybe his temper or his pride had got the better of him.
Or maybe LaSalle hadn’t stuck up for Jefferson for other reasons. Maybe he had seemed like a good guy, but he turned out not to be the kind of guy who would stand up to a stranger in a strange town. You never know about people. You never know what they’re going to do. Just because a man had been a soldier, that didn’t mean he was brave. Sometimes you didn’t realize that until it hit you over the head. Like when the person you were sure would tell his mother to go jump in the lake rather than let her dictate who he could and could not see ends up breaking your heart instead. Some people get angry when that happens. Some people cry.
“What was he like?” I asked Mrs. Jefferson. “Mr. LaSalle, I mean.”
“Patrice was a nice man,” she said. “He was different from most of the people in these parts. He stayed in this very house the whole time he was here. I know for a fact that some people in town said something to him about it, but it didn’t bother him one bit.”
“What do you mean, they said something to him?” I asked.
“They warned him,” Daniel said.
His mother shot him another look. “You were no more than a baby. How do you know what anyone said to anyone else?”
“I live here, don’t I?” Daniel looked defiantly back at her. “I’ve heard about what happened. Everyone’s heard. And everyone says that TJ’s friend”—he spat out the word—“would be alive if he’d listened to what people told him. If you ask me, TJ would be alive too.”
My pulse quickened. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” Mrs. Jefferson said hurriedly. “Nothing that makes any sense anyway.” Her eyes narrowed, and she regarded me closely. “Why are you asking all these questions? What does any of this have to do with you?”
“I’m writing a story about it.” I started telling her what I had told almost everyone else—but stopped before I had gone far. She had invited me into her home. She had answered my questions. It didn’t seem right to lie to her. I started again. “A woman—the headmistress at my school…” I know. Mrs. Hazelton wasn’t a headmistress and the Home wasn’t a school, but I didn’t feel comfortable telling anyone everything, not until I knew what everything was. “She gave me this.” I pulled the clipping from my pocket and gave it to Mrs. Jefferson. She looked at it. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“They said he tried to escape from prison. They said they had no choice, they had to shoot him.”
“In the back,” Daniel said.
“This woman—my headmistress—told me that it’s possible if I found out all about this picture, it might mean something to me.”
Mrs. Jefferson looked up. “What could any of this possibly mean to you?”
“I don’t know. But I sure would like to find out. I came all the way down here to see if I could.”
Mrs. Jefferson peered into my eyes. I don’t know exactly what she saw, but it was enough to start her talking again.
“You asked me about Patrice. I liked him. He was a good man.”
Daniel grunted and shook his head in disgust. He wheeled around and left the kitchen. The screen door clattered shut behind him. Mrs. Jefferson didn’t comment.
“He insisted on helping with the dishes every night,” she continued. “He did yard work, too, and looked after Daniel if I had chores. It was like he was born to hold a baby in his arms. I’ve never seen a man take to a small child so fast. I didn’t have to explain anything to him.”
“Was he married?”
“Married?” Mrs. Jefferson smiled. “He was just a boy when he went overseas. Eighteen.”
“So he wasn’t married?”
“No.”
“Did he mention a girlfriend back home? Or a fiancée? Or someone special?”
“The only thing I remember for sure is that he said he wished he could meet a nice girl and settle down and have a family. He liked children. I could tell by the way he played with the baby—with Daniel—that he wanted children of his own.”
Eighteen was plenty old enough to be a father. That much I knew. I’d heard about it all my life: foolish girls who gave themselves over to callow boys and ended up with babies that filled orphanages all over the country. I’d been warned too. We’d all been warned, regularly, to mind our passions, to refuse to be fooled by all the things boys might say when their ardor (as Mrs. Hazelton called it) got the better of them. It’s up to you, girls, she said. You have the power to say no. And remember, if you say no and he gets angry, that tells you all you need to know about his character. A good boy—a gentleman—will always respect a lady’s wishes, and you, my dear girls, despite what anyone else might think, despite what you yourselves might think, are all ladies.
Which meant that it was possible—it was always possible—that Patrice LaSalle had left a baby behind in the belly or the arms of some girl when he went overseas. But if he had, it wasn’t me, because that child, if she existed, would have been born before the war. She’d be much older than I was.
Or maybe he met someone overseas.
Or someone here.
That last thought caught in my mind. Patrice LaSalle could have come here with Thomas Jefferson and met someone right here in Freemount or in Orrenstown. Maybe that had caused trouble between them. Maybe that’s why Mrs. Hazelton had saved that newspaper photo all this time. Maybe it was the clue. And maybe Thomas Jefferson had killed my father over a girl.
I drew in a deep breath.
“Did Mr. LaSalle date anyone when he was here?”
Mrs. Jefferson shook her head. “He and Thomas spent all their time making plans. They wanted to buy that garage out there. They had money saved up from their pay while they were overseas. Patrice was a good mechanic. They were sure they could make a go of it.”
“Didn’t Mr.
LaSalle want to go home? Didn’t he have family in Canada?”
“If he did, he was in no rush to see them,” Mrs. Jefferson said. “But I got the impression there was no one back there for him. I remember he said that he was raised by his grandparents. He talked about his grandfather—his granpear, he called him. The way he talked about that old man, I know he loved him. And he said something about the special meat pies his grandmother made at Christmas. He had some French name for them, but I can’t remember what it was.”
Tourtière. She meant tourtière. People in Quebec make them at Christmastime. I learned that in school.
“I believe his grandfather died while he was overseas. I know for a fact his grandmother passed away before that. He never mentioned any other family.”
Was it possible that Patrice LaSalle had been an orphan like me? If so, what had happened to his parents? How old was he when he went to live with his grandparents? At least he hadn’t ended up in an orphanage. However few in number, he had other family members—and a family history. His grandfather had probably told him about Patrice’s parents, and maybe about his great-grandparents too. His grandmother had probably done the same. He knew where he had come from. He’d never been stumped when someone asked him who his people were. He had a family tree and real roots. But those roots had nothing to do with mine, that much now seemed certain. He’d been a young man when he died—was murdered. There was no special girl in his life. No one to make a daughter with. Patrice LaSalle was a dead end. Anger and frustration roiled in my stomach. I’d been hoping that I was getting close, and now it looked like I was as far from the truth as I had ever been.
So what did the clipping mean? If my father wasn’t Thomas Jefferson or Patrice LaSalle, whom did that leave? Whoever had desecrated Mr. Jefferson’s grave? That would be some story. My father the Klansman.
I finished the last of my lemonade and thanked Mrs. Jefferson. I also apologized if I had stirred up sad memories. She smiled softly.
My Life Before Me Page 7