by Ann Hite
Could Hobbs rest? I really doubted it.
That night after Lonnie was asleep, I lit a lantern and went to the hollow tree. Now was the time to close what had been between us.
There wasn’t a star shining. The air was crisp and the wind still. “Hobbs?” My voice echoed off the forest. Only the river answered. “I came out here to tell you to leave Lonnie and me alone. It’s over. I’m better. I can see what you did to Nellie. I know you killed Jack’s mother. Jack says you killed another man. I think you had something to do with Jack’s girlfriend dying so long ago. Remember, I’m smart. I know you. I don’t blame you for my pain, because I didn’t listen. You told me once you were bad.”
A cold wind popped a branch in the tree.
“I’m a grown woman now. I know you took advantage of me that day I met you. Can you hear me?” I listened. “Well, that’s all I have to say. I’m starting a new life. I think I might really like your stepbrother.”
Again the cold wind whipped the tops of the trees.
“I know you don’t like it, but honestly it doesn’t matter what you think. She killed you, Hobbs, because you beat her so bad. I bet you didn’t see that one coming. That little girl you picked over me, the one you had no intentions of ever leaving, killed you. She was smarter than me. Just leave Lonnie alone. Let him have the life you never had. I’m going now.” I walked toward the house but turned back for one last look. There stood the shadow. “I brought you back to Asheville. My spell brought you back. Bet you didn’t know that either. You probably never would have come back looking for me if not for that hoodoo spell.” I walked back to the house without looking at the tree again. Let him stand out there for eternity. I was finally finished.
Forty-six
From that day forward I found it easy to care for Jack. He was plain and would always lead a quiet life, but my idea of excitement had changed. We ate supper together most nights, and he put Lonnie to bed with a story. We’d sit and talk for the longest. I told him all about me, everything, even the hoodoo part. He never laughed when I pulled out my book and bottles.
“You’ll have to compete with Amanda if you keep practicing.”
“Isn’t she Pastor Dobbins’s maid?”
Jack grinned. “Yep.”
Hoodoo had served its purpose and now I was finished. A person had no real control over the powers of magic.
Jack told me about how he was tied to the mountain out of love and respect; how it would always be his home; how he thought he would live out his life in a quiet way.
Lonnie told Jack one night that he heard music in his head all the time. So Jack brought him a guitar. My little boy picked it up and began strumming it like he’d been playing it his whole life. After that he carried his guitar, nearly as big as him, around with him everywhere. I loved Jack for giving him something of his own, a way to make him feel special. Things were good with the three of us. It was fine with me if life stayed just like it was forever. But sometimes I caught Jack studying my face. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
Then one day Jack came into the kitchen, took off his hat, and looked at the floor as if there was a piece of lead on his shoulders. “Could you have a seat, Rose?”
I had let my guard down and begun to enjoy my days. That was the stupidest thing I could have done. My throat closed. I sat in one of the kitchen chairs.
“I got to talk to you.”
“What’s happened?” I stilled my voice. “You’re scaring me, Jack.”
He looked startled. “Oh, I didn’t mean … Well, you see, Rose, I was thinking and …”
My head roared. He was going to ask me to leave. How had I relaxed into him?
“Well, would you think about being my wife?” He even squatted down on one knee in front of me. “We’ve been spending so much time together and I think you feel the same way I do. I don’t know if it’s love but I like being with you. Lonnie could take my last name too, if that’s okay.”
He wanted me to marry him. Jack Allen wanted me to marry him.
He pulled something out of his pocket. “Here, this was Mama’s. If it’s big, I’m sorry. She wasn’t a little woman. Maybe we can take it down to Asheville and have it made smaller.”
Did I love him? I knew what I felt wasn’t like my feelings for Hobbs, but that wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe my love for Jack was quiet, steady, calm like him.
“Will you marry me, Rose?”
I looked into his green eyes and lost my mind. “Yes, Jack, I will.”
He kissed me for the first time; finally I had my fairy-tale ending.
We married on Christmas Eve at the foot of the waterfall. A light snow fell. I wore a white lace dress the women of the mountain made for me. Mama even came up to the wedding. She brought the judge to perform the ceremony. I was the happiest woman in the world.
I never told Jack what the last paragraph of Nellie’s diary said. What was the point? The sheriff had closed the case. No one was looking for her. For all I knew she was dead somewhere. But there were times way later I wished I had told Jack the whole story, that I wished he had hunted Nellie until he found her and brought her back to the sheriff. Had she paid for her actions, my life would have been a happily-ever-after.
That spring the government urged us to plant victory gardens. America was at war with Japan and Germany. Jack insisted on enlisting in the army. I won’t lie, I was scared. He didn’t have to be a hero for the country. He kept our little family safe. We needed him. How could he leave? But for him it was about being an honorable man with a sense of responsibility. And wasn’t that why I married him?
I turned a larger plot of ground out front. The thought of digging up the rest of Hobbs’s bones somewhere went through my mind, but I only laughed at myself. And then the hoe hit a hard object. I knelt down and saw the sun reflect off of something. It couldn’t be a bone. A canning jar completely intact was half out of the ground. Goose bumps formed on my arms. I brushed the dirt away. Inside was more money than I’d ever seen. Hobbs’s treasure.
“Jack! Jack!”
He came running from the barn and stopped. “What’s wrong?”
I held up the jar.
His eyes lit up. “Lordy be, the treasure.”
“What do we do with it?” The money could make a lot of difference to the people on the mountain.
“I think we got to spread our good fortune around.” He was thinking the same as I was.
I laughed and looked at the woods. A man stood there. He wore a cap and round spectacles. He watched me with a steady stare.
“I think we should go buy you a new dress.”
I looked at him. “A new dress sounds nice.”
Jack smiled. “You’ll be okay while I’m gone to war.”
I buried my face in his chest. “I want you to be okay.”
“I will. I’ll come home. I promise.”
The man vanished. I wish I could say I gave him a lot of thought, but the truth was I was praying that Jack wouldn’t die. I prayed that he wouldn’t even have to go.
Years later I would think of that man staring at me, but by then it would be too late. Not that I could have changed anything that happened. Some things are out of our hands.
Part Five
Iona Harbor
Forty-seven
My mama told me the same bedtime story each night all through my childhood. She told it with such detail I was sure Hobbs and Nellie Pritchard were real people. I wished they were part of my boring family’s history. But they were just characters in a tale spun to keep me in line, to show me the correct path to take in life. They were my moral compass.
Like all mamas, mine had her ways that drove me nearly crazy. And like all daughters, I fought every suggestion she gave me. I wanted to stand on my own two feet without her as a crutch. I was afraid if I stayed too close and became too comfortable, I would evaporate. This made for a testy relationship, to say the least. It would take me years before I came to understand that every thought t
hat came out of my head had rolled downhill from something she tried to instill in me. For better or worse.
Daddy was the pastor of the First Episcopal Church of Darien just like Grandpa was before him. How boring was that? We were a regular happy family without any secrets to speak of. We lived in a big house by the marshes, and beyond that was the ocean. Growing up I never thought much about having the smell of salt in my hair all the time or much less a gator scooting across our backyard, waving his tail side to side. Darien, Georgia, was home.
Mama was everything a pastor’s wife was supposed to be. She even wrote little articles for the newspaper. People liked reading her work because it was like a big soft feather pillow.
I can’t say how many women would ask, “Don’t you want to be just like your mama when you grow up?”
God help me, but that was the last thing I wanted.
We lived in the house that Daddy grew up in. Maw Maw lived with us and had been there since before I was born. I loved Maw Maw the best. I had to be careful not to let Grandma Harbor know this. She would have been heartbroken. Of course everything made her heartbroken since Grandpa died of a heart attack the year I was thirteen. I loved Maw Maw because she was the best ghost-story teller in the world, and she could even read tea leaves. She read them for me all the time. Iona, you’ll go through a rough patch but you’ll be a fine young woman. This was a lot more fun than Daddy’s God with His stern face, reminding me of all the trespasses I made. If Daddy had known I questioned God’s existence, he would have thrown a fit, and this man never threw fits. I couldn’t see where Mama believed any better than I did. Something deep inside told me my mama didn’t hold a candle to the Annie Harbor from the past. Every once in a while she’d slip up and start telling me a story from her life, catch herself—at the best part—and stop in midsentence, laughing it off as if she were giving me some important tip before I was ready. I hungered after those things she didn’t want me to learn. Maybe it was part of being a teenager and wishing for a more mysterious life that kept me hounding Mama for the truth. Maybe there were no secrets in our family, but I had a feeling the truths were ten times better than anything I could cook up myself.
I loved music from an early age. Where this love came from was beyond me. Mama didn’t listen to the radio. Daddy never sang anything but gospel. He was a straitlaced pastor, never breaking the rules. The only time I saw him angry was the day my two-week-old baby brother died. I was four. Grandma Harbor told me she thought he would lose his calling. He was so wild-eyed with grief she worried he might walk a straight line out of Darien and never look back. Instead, he took up the harmonica and played the most mournful songs. By the time Mama came out of the attic where she closed herself off for a week, he had thrown it away and was carrying his Bible again. That was the extent of the musical inclination in our house.
So I, Iona Harbor, became a treasure floating between Mama and Daddy. My parents loved me way more than they should—too much love smothers the daylights out of a girl—and the older I got the more they held on. Mama was worse than Daddy. She watched my every move.
Each girl has defining moments in her life. Mine was a little more defined than most teenagers’. The summer of 1955 started off like any other school break. All the days ran together. It was a Monday morning in late June and already it was hotter than a late August afternoon. I ran my fingers across an imaginary keyboard, eyes closed; music played in my mind, beautiful and sweet, taking me to a place where people applauded my effort. I hummed into the air, keying the magic notes on the old wooden table where my family ate each meal.
“Iona! Are you daydreaming again?”
My musical notes banged to a sudden stop, sour. “I’m thinking, Mama.” True to some degree.
“You think way too much. All those silly daydreams eating away at time you could be using for better things.” Mama cracked eggs into a cast-iron frying pan.
“I learned so much from Miss Stewart. I know if I had my own piano, I could prove to you how good I am.” I faced Mama eye to eye. At the age of fifteen years, three months, and twenty days, I was as tall as many of the boys my age. Tall like Uncle Charles, Daddy’s brother that died in World War II. Because Daddy had flat feet, he never went. So Uncle Charles became the hero of his family, or so Grandma Harbor believed. That must have been tough for Daddy.
“The only thing in your head is fluff, cotton candy fluff. It will bring you to no good, Iona. You have to trust me on this. I know.” Mama was so pretty and delicate it almost fooled me into listening to her. I would have given anything to have her looks, but I had her father’s height and bone structure. Jees, I hated that she couldn’t just love me without improving my every move. She handed me a basket. “Go gather some apples for a pie tonight while I cook breakfast. That’ll be nice. Don’t you think?” Mama had this little apple tree Daddy planted out back when they first met. It was a June apple tree with apples smaller and sweeter than the fall fruit. Mama said it made her think of home. Somewhere in the mountains. But neither Mama or Maw Maw gave an exact location.
“Why can’t you just leave me alone?” I screamed at the blue sky when I was well out of hearing range. Some girls my age were already pinned and planning their weddings after graduation. The apple tree reminded me of an old twisted woman. The fruit was pinkish red. People were a lot like apples, each shaped similar, but different at the same time, marked with distinguishing traits. One day I would prove to Mama how talented I was. She thought she could plan my whole life. I was leaving Darien for college, where I would study music. She wouldn’t stop me.
Forty-eight
Those long summer days I would walk the town that was set up in little squares like a small version of Savannah, located north of us. The hot wind wrapped me up in my thoughts, and I walked and walked. The sea birds would dip in and out of the Altamaha River. I would stop to watch the shrimp boats work their way to the dock with a day’s catch. This was the part I loved about Darien. There was no doubt the place was in my bones. One afternoon the music in my head turned real, spilling through the wind, mingling with the birdcalls. I followed the tune to Mrs. Walters’s house. It was well known for its ghost, who was a woman who killed herself. The house was painted the brightest blue and sat right in the curve of the river. Maw Maw thought it was the tackiest house in Darien and should be bulldozed down. The house was supposed to be empty. The owner, Mrs. Walters, had moved to Atlanta to live with her brother. Through one of the large windows, I saw a bare-chested man playing a baby grand piano. His dark hornrimmed glasses made him handsome in an intelligent sort of way. He had to be the new music teacher. Darien High School had prided itself on adding music to the school schedule in the coming fall. I, for one, was beside myself. Looking at this man pouring music across the marsh reminded me how far I had to go. I stood there eavesdropping in plain view. He kept playing in his own world, and I so envied that place. Finally I left and headed home.
Mama worked the dough for biscuits at her wooden chopping-block table Daddy built. Her biscuits had to be the best in Georgia.
I washed the potatoes. “Do you want me to peel all of these?”
“I can do it, honey.” Maw Maw’s hands were gnarled with arthritis.
“I’m okay, but thanks.”
“You sit and relax.” When Mama smiled at Maw Maw it was real, not fake like the smile she pasted on her face for church or Grandma Harbor. The two of them had some special silent language that drew them closer together. I couldn’t remember Mama ever being grouchy with Maw Maw like she was with Daddy and me. Mama wasn’t always trying to boss Maw Maw around like she did us.
“Why are we making so much food?” I had five pounds of potatoes.
“We have company coming.”
“Who?” Probably some boring church officer.
“Your father hasn’t seen fit to inform me who his guest might be.” Mama frowned as she cut out biscuits.
Daddy brought guests for supper like people brought home stray
animals.
My stomach fluttered for no reason and the air crackled with unexplained excitement like heat lightning chasing across the ocean sky at night.
“Your mama fusses, but she was just as bad when she was a young girl. I never knew who she might bring home. She loved helping people. After her daddy died not one chair at our table was empty. She spent three years working in a soup kitchen during the Depression. That was a hard place, wasn’t it, Annie?”
Wouldn’t you know it? Mama the perfect teenager.
“I don’t want to talk about that.” Mama gave Maw Maw the eye.
I tried to keep from making a sound, hoping they’d forgotten me.
“I don’t know why. I’d be proud of that work if it was me.” Maw Maw clicked her tongue.
Mama looked at me.
“Did you wear your white gloves, Mama?” I didn’t dare look back.
“Leave the rest of the potatoes and go upstairs and dress. I don’t want shorts at the dinner table tonight.”
I shrugged and left the pile of potatoes.
When Mama thought I was out of hearing, she puffed loud. “You’ve got to be careful of what you say. Iona doesn’t need those old memories to think about. You could slip.”
“I can’t help things went like they went.” Maw Maw’s voice was quiet but stern.
“I live with it every day of my life. I want better for Iona.”
Now there was a big secret wrapped tight in Mama’s warning. I couldn’t imagine it was anything too bad. She ran our family like a well-oiled machine. Daddy always shot me a smile when Mama wasn’t looking, like she wasn’t our boss at all, but I knew neither of us could stand up to her.
* * *
Daddy’s car pulled into the drive forty-five minutes later. I was hanging out my bedroom window, fiddling with my transistor radio—a Christmas present designed to make me forget my longed-for piano and lessons. By holding the radio north, I caught snatches of a melody from a station in Savannah. On a clear night I could pick up WQXI in Atlanta. Static rattled from the single speaker and then a whisper of Elvis came through. Daddy emerged from the car followed by … were my eyes fooling me? The music teacher. I switched off the radio and pulled myself back into my bedroom. Thank goodness he hadn’t seen me.