Widow's Tears

by Susan Wittig Albert

  But Rachel, who mourned not only for her husband and children but for the house in which they had all lived so happily together, had a different idea for a memorial. She went to look at the land Augustus had bought the week before he died, fifteen hundred acres in Fayette County, some hundred miles inland from the coast and safely (she thought) out of the reach of hurricanes and tropical storms. It pleased her as well as any, although, to tell the truth, no place on earth could have pleased her unless her husband and children were with her. She built a house on the land, as nearly as possible like the house Augustus had built in Galveston. She lacked access to the plans and (at that time) even photographs, so she drew the house from the remembered images that were carved in her heart by grief. The builder did his best to correct her worst errors, but he could only go as far as Rachel would allow—and she would not allow him to go very far, because she had the courage of her convictions and was very sure that she had it right. The result, understandably, was not quite the house that the original had been. It was, as Ruby Wilcox would later notice, a visibly crooked house.

  But since Rachel did not often view her house from a distance (she mostly stayed indoors), it pleased her, and she went about furnishing it to resemble the house in Galveston—as it was on September 7, 1900, the day before the hurricane changed her life forever. She became obsessed with this effort, and as time went on, her imagination filled the house as it had been filled before that awful day, with the sounds of Colleen’s kitchen, Matthew’s flute and bouncing ball, the haunting melodies of Ida’s harp, the twins’ noisy play, and the comforting scent of Augustus’ pipe tobacco. She lost herself in the pleasure of these haunted imaginings. She lost herself, too, in the accumulation of as many photographs, newspaper clippings, and accounts of the storm as she could find, thinking that she would make herself sit down and write about the experience that had robbed her of every happiness. But each time she tried, grief rose up and seized her pen, and finally she put it down and gave up the attempt.

  Of course, there were other things that had to be done to attend to the practicalities of life in the country. Rachel built a small but comfortable cottage nearby and hired a young man and his wife—Will and Ellie Daily—to serve as caretaker and cook-housekeeper, positions they held for many years. When a young woman named Hazel Penland appeared on the scene, Rachel took her on as her personal companion, with the idea that Hazel, a bright if uneducated and exceptionally shy young lady, might be able to serve as her secretary and do the writing that she could not. She hired an attorney in La Grange, Wilberforce Bissonet Hoover, Sr., to oversee her financial and legal affairs. Mr. Hoover outlived her by several years, and his son, Wilberforce Bissonet Hoover, Jr., continued to act on behalf of the estate.

  If Hazel, the Dailys, and the Hoovers (Senior and Junior) thought Rachel a little mad, they did not speak of it, for they, like her doctors, felt an affectionate compassion toward her. She was, after all, a very nice person who’d had the misfortune to survive an unspeakable tragedy and was condemned to live out the rest of her life with a loss that was larger than life itself. In the end, she gave up—almost—the idea of writing her story and settled for simply living in her grief, contained as it was in the house she had built to remind herself of her life before the hurricane destroyed everything.

  When Rachel died, she left the house to Hazel, who was by that time no longer young. Hazel lived quite companionably with its ghosts until her death, when the house went to Ruth, and then to Claire. And that is when…

  And that is when Rachel discovered that she might at last have found someone who could tell her story.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It is said that the cypress tree (Cupressus sp.) became the symbol of death because, if it is cut severely, it will not grow again. Cypress wood contains a natural chemical preservative that resists decay; hence, it was used by the Greeks and Romans to make coffins, and by the Egyptians for wooden mummy cases, to protect the dead. Cypress branches were carried by mourners to protect both the living and the dead, and the idea of protection was extended symbolically: cypress trees were planted near graves to protect the immortal souls of the dead from the power of evil. The bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) that is native to Texas and the southeastern United States is distantly related.

  In the language of flowers, cypress represents death and protection from evil.

  China Bayles

  “Herbs and Flowers That Tell a Story”

  Pecan Springs Enterprise

  “Fire!”

  Two urgencies drove me as Ruby’s shrill scream sliced the dark. One was to put out that licking, hungry tongue of flame before the fuel-fed fire could kindle the wooden floor of a room that was crammed to the ceiling with old books, in a wood-frame house that was over a century old. The other was to stave off the attack of the hulking figure staggering toward us across the room, a sharp-pointed spear raised over his head, poised to strike at Ruby.

  Not that I thought all this out logically, of course. I acted by instinct, stamping swiftly on the darting flicker of flame, shoving Ruby out of the assailant’s way, and aiming a clumsy diving tackle at the creature’s knees.

  And missed, of course. It was dark and he—the thing—wasn’t where he’d been when Claire dropped the lamp. I ended up cracking my head against the half-open door and seeing a burst of colorful stars cascading like a dying Roman candle through the blackness. Ruby ended up, from the sound of it, falling against the table that held our plates and cups. I heard her sharp “Ow!” and the noisy cascade of dishes to the floor. At least she was out of the way, although as I scrambled stupidly to my feet, I couldn’t see where she was, or where Claire was.

  Or where he was. The dark was absolute. Where was the lightning when we needed it?

  But if I couldn’t see our attacker, he couldn’t see us, although I could hear him stumbling violently around the room, as he knocked things over, whacked the furniture with his wickedly pointed spear, and mumbled, moaned, groaned—terrifying nonhuman noises, the brutish sounds of an animal in agony. And then I heard him topple, full length, the heavy, floor-shaking thud of a falling body.

  The thud was followed by a moment’s silence, then another noise, the thump of a piece of furniture—one of the wingback chairs?—going over, and a half-muffled “Damn!”

  The damn came from Claire, I thought, blundering panic-stricken around the room, trying to keep away from the guy’s swinging spear as it slashed through the air. But if he was already down and out—

  “Claire, Ruby stop,” I said loudly. “Just stop where you are. Let’s figure out what’s going on.”

  Ruby was muttering something under her breath, almost like a prayer.

  “Ssshh, Ruby,” I said urgently. “Listen for him.” I could hear a gurgling wheeze and the scrabbling of fingernails on the floor. Was he trying to get up? Where was he? Mentally, I mapped the room, trying to come up with a weapon I could use to bash the man’s head and keep him down on the floor until—

  Until what? Our cell phones weren’t working, the cars were out of commission, and there was no hope of any reinforcements until Claire’s caretaker and his wife got back the next day. We’d have to tie the guy up, which meant that we had to keep him flat on the floor until we could find some rope. But we couldn’t go groping around this place in the dark. We needed light.

  Ruby was still muttering. I couldn’t make out what she was saying until I heard the whispered words, “Please, Rachel.” In the stillness, I heard an answering whisper. It sounded like a long, sibilant yesssss.

  Then something entirely unexpected happened. I felt a faint hum in the floor beneath my feet and a distinct vibration in the air, as if molecules were bumping together. The table lamps in the room began to come on, first with an uncertain, flickering glimmer, and then with the kind of brief, dazzling, blue-white brilliance that comes when you get a power surge somewhere on the line. A bulb exploded with a loud PING! and then the lamps in the room settled down to a f
ull, steady glow. The shadows ebbed into the darkened corners and died. Ah, light!

  “Thank you,” I heard Ruby say. I was too busy looking around for our assailant to ask her who she was thanking, but I could guess.

  Blinking in the unaccustomed bright light, I saw the man halfway across the room, flat on his face on the floor, unmoving. His head was turned to one side, his face mostly hidden by his dark hood. His right arm was folded awkwardly under him. His left arm was stretched out to one side, his hand clasping the spear. But it wasn’t a spear. It was the twisted rod of a wrought-iron fence, with a sharp-pointed finial on the business end. The mistake had been an easy one for me to make, given the surprise of his appearance in the doorway in the guttering light of Claire’s oil lamp. And if he’d aimed to use it as a spear, what was the difference?

  Ruby stumbled around the fallen chairs and stood beside the man on the floor. “What is it?” she asked fearfully, looking down at the sprawled form. A puddle of blood seeped from under one cheek. “Is it…is he dead?” The bloody fingers holding the spear twitched and splayed, and Ruby stepped back, eyes widening. “No, he’s not!” she whispered. “He’s alive!”

  Claire was bending over the figure, putting out a trembling hand toward the unmoving shoulder, then drawing back. “I think…” Her voice quavered. “I think it’s…” But she couldn’t bring herself to touch the body.

  I skirted the broken glass and spreading patch of lamp oil and went to kneel beside the man. A warning kindled inside me, but I steeled myself against it and, with difficulty, rolled him over onto his right side, then his back.

  Then wished fervently that I hadn’t. It wasn’t a man. It was a woman, her dark hair rain-soaked and bloody from a cut across her forehead. Someone—or something—had sliced the skin from the left half of her face from cheekbone to the point of her jaw, opening a gaping, meat-cleaver slit down the left side of her neck, exposing her collarbone. The right side of her face was deeply abraded and raw, like freshly ground meat, and her right eye was…

  I swallowed. The right eye was probably gone. Welling blood pooled in the socket. It looked as though her right arm might be broken, and her sweatshirt was sodden and bloody. Her jeans were soaked as well, as if she’d been swimming, and the denim of the right leg was ripped open from thigh to ankle. She wore only one sneaker, on her left foot. The right foot was shoeless and turned outward at an impossible angle. It occurred to me then that she might have picked up the iron fence piece to use it as a support, like a walking cane.

  Beside me, Claire gasped when she saw the woman’s face. “Kitty!” she cried. “It’s…this is Kitty Rawlings!”

  “Kitty?” Ruby whispered. “Kitty?”

  “Who?” I asked. A neighbor, maybe? A friend?

  “My caretaker’s wife,” Claire said. “She and Sam left this afternoon to drive to Houston. I guess the weather must have been so bad that they decided they’d better drive back home. But where…where’s Sam?” She bent lower and raised her voice. “Kitty? Can you hear me? Where’s Sam?”

  At the question, the woman’s left eyelid fluttered. “Sam…” she muttered thickly. “Truck. In the…” She tried again, whispering. “In the creek.”

  “In the creek?” Claire cried, aghast. “You mean, your truck went into the water?”

  Ruby put a hand on my shoulder, squeezing hard with her fingers. I looked up. She was staring down at Kitty, her eyes wide and oddly blank. “Crooked man,” she whispered. “Crooked cat.” She paused, then said it again. “Crooked cat.”

  I frowned at her. “What? What are you saying?” It sounded like the words she and Claire had seen written on the menu board in the kitchen.

  “Crooked sixpence,” she muttered. “Crooked sixpence!”

  Kitty raised her one good hand and clamped bloody fingers on my wrist in a surprisingly tight grip. “Help…him,” Kitty wheezed. She coughed. “Help…Sam.” Her one good eye rolled up until only the white was visible, and her hand dropped. She was gone again, at least for the moment.

  I thought of the steep hill, the road I had driven down—skidded down, more accurately. The road was slippery then, hours ago, and the low concrete bridge at the foot of the hill had already been covered by eight inches of fast-moving water. It could be eight feet deep at the bridge by this time—and still rising, depending on how much rain had fallen in the creek’s watershed. It was entirely possible that the bridge itself was gone. Even concrete bridges don’t always stand up to our Texas flash floods.

  I got to my feet. I don’t mind telling you that I was scared. My palms were suddenly clammy and my knees were shaking. I am by nature a cautious person (translation: I don’t have an ounce of bravado in my makeup kit) and I understand all too well the dangers involved in swift-water rescue. We had no equipment and not even a prayer of getting any professional help, and it was utterly foolhardy for me to even think about attempting anything.

  But this woman’s husband was out there somewhere, maybe in the water and out of reach of anybody’s help—but maybe on the bank or somewhere else reachable. Somebody had to make an effort to find out what the situation was. And now that the electricity was back on—courtesy of Ruby’s ghost, perhaps?—I wondered about the flashlights. Were they working, too?

  Kitty was back again. “The truck,” she moaned. “The truck…washed off the bridge…downstream. Don’t know how I got out. Crawled all the…” She began to cough, bloody spittle on her lips. Internal injuries, maybe. A punctured lung? Her face was pallid, her lips blue.

  “Flashlights,” I said tersely. “Now that Rachel’s turned the power back on, maybe we’ve got operational batteries again.” You’d better believe I felt dumb saying that, but what other explanation was there? “Where do you keep the flashlights? And maybe some rope? It’s probably too late, but—”

  Ruby’s lapse into nursery rhymes seemed to have ended. “I’ll stay with Kitty,” she offered. “Claire knows her way around this place better than I do.”

  Claire was already halfway to the door. “Come on, China,” she said over her shoulder.

  Ten minutes later, clad in ponchos and armed with working flashlights and a coil of clothesline, we were out in the rain. I paused long enough to check my cell phone and—hooray!—discover that it was operating again. I had no idea whether the Fayette County’s sheriff’s office was set up to receive 911 text messages, but I could try to get a message through to McQuaid, who had the address of Claire’s place.

  I was even more fumble-fingered than usual, but I managed to send a text message that I hoped would prompt him to immediately call Star Flight in Austin and try to get a helicopter medic team out here for Kitty. Star Flight responds to emergency service requests in counties across Central Texas—I was hoping that Fayette County was one of them. But McQuaid would know what to do. He had worked with Star Flight when he was acting police chief of Pecan Springs, before Sheila Dawson got the job, and one of his buddies was a Star Flight crew member. The helicopter wouldn’t be able to fly in the storm, but we’d be on the list when the weather cleared. And knowing McQuaid, I was sure he’d be in touch with the Fayette County emergency services, too.

  We went out the back door, around the house, and down the slope, Claire leading the way. The rain was still coming down in buckets. The path was ankle deep in water and it was a struggle to keep my footing. My sneakers were immediately soaked and the hood of my poncho kept blowing off. I finally gave up trying to keep my hair dry and concentrated on the task in front of me: getting down to the creek safely. I could already hear it roaring, out of its banks, and my heart sank. If this storm had dumped as much rain across the region as it had here, we might have to wait quite a while for Star Flight. On a night like this, their helicopter fleet and their emergency teams would likely be called out for several swift-water rescues. We might be at the bottom of a long list.

  At the foot of the path, Claire turned and pointed. “The bridge is downstream about a hundred yards.” She had to yell to
make herself heard above the rush of the water. She turned the beam of her flashlight onto the raging creek. “I’ve never seen the water this high. Most of the time, it’s only a couple of feet deep right here, and so clear that you can see the bottom. This…this is incredible.”

  It was. The creek was a churning torrent, a muddy maelstrom of rushing water that tumbled tree branches and rocks and chunks of debris in a foaming flood. Our flashlights weren’t a lot of help, but I could see enough to convince me that if Kitty’s husband was caught in that gushing, rushing water, he was a dead man.

  We picked our way downstream, moving cautiously among the scrub willows, roughleaf dogwood, and buttonbush that grew along the bank. We had to stay well above the water, because stream banks are often deeply undercut by floods, and the last thing either of us wanted was to feel the ground under our feet give way and pitch us into that roaring water. Lightning played along the low ridge behind the house and thunder banged like a chorus of kettledrums. Ahead of us, a cottonwood tree had dropped a couple of thick limbs, and we had to clamber over and through the obstruction. A hundred yards to the bridge? It was beginning to seem like ten miles.

  But at last we reached it—or reached the spot where the bridge was supposed to be. At that point, the creek was maybe thirty yards wide, and our flashlights could scarcely illuminate the other side. But dimly, through the sheeting rain, I could see where the road came down the hill. And on this side of the creek, I could see where it curved around behind the house. The bridge itself was under six or seven feet of rushing water. I shone my light downstream, searching the muddy water for the truck. Where was it? If it had gone off the road here, at the bridge, it couldn’t be far.