A Tangled Mercy

by Joy Jordan-Lake

  Emily dug her nails into Dinah’s arm and with her free hand covered her mouth again.

  It occurred to her now—far too late—that if they were caught, she and Nina would be roundly scolded. Jackson Pinckney would rant and curse. But Dinah, so heavy with child, would be beaten senseless again. Or hanged with the rest.

  The girls held to each other—and held their breath.

  But Hamilton turned then. Marched himself back toward the prisoner.

  There were the marsh and the pink fingers of sunrise and the welcoming reach of the long-armed live oak—Low Country beauty so deep and so wide that it hurt, a real physical pain that wrenched clear through the chest. And then that rope, the dark vertical slash to one side of the oak—like the canvas of the little scene had been torn.

  In the brightening gray, the rope swayed. Then stilled. Nothing but a vertical line and a gaping O at its end.

  Like a howl, Emily thought. A howl about to begin.

  Hamilton reached to help steady the horse. “You’ll also be disposing of the body? We can’t have a martyr’s grave on our hands. I won’t have the thing where it can be found.”

  “Potter’s Field,” Belknap returned, “is where it’s got to be done. Not far from here, and no marked graves. Plenty of unknowns dropped in the dirt. Reckon he’ll be safe enough there.”

  Hamilton shook his head, and he furrowed the flat plain of his forehead. “His soul, I trust, will be anything but safe.”

  Vesey looked toward the sky as they slipped the noose, scraggled hemp twisted into a spiral, over his head. He was still staring up at the sky, as if he were watching for billowing curtains to part on some opening act. He climbed onto the back of the colt.

  Emily’s heart hammered out time while the seconds ticked by.

  The rumors about Vesey and his band of lieutenants had spread all over town, seeped into the slave quarters of her very own home. She’d heard their whispers, swelling and growing, a rising tide.

  Divine justice would punish the slaveholders, the whispers said, just like those sloppily printed abolitionist pamphlets had been shrieking for years.

  God’s own hand would reach down through the sky to save the rebels of this revolt.

  And Vesey himself, a man who could not be killed.

  Not on that tree.

  Not today.

  Not ever.

  Chapter 36

  2015

  Gabe could make out far down the road the big, still form of a truck just off the shoulder. His daddy’s headlights stabbed at the dark and made it back up.

  They pulled to the side of the road, and Gabe’s daddy, Dan, arms over his chest, and him chuckling, took the scene’s measure. “Mm-hmm.”

  Gabe scrambled out and took the same stance, arms over chest, beside him. “Mm-hmm,” he said, too.

  Because there in the headlights were Uncle Scudder and Kate, standing up there like they were protecting each other on the hood of the truck. And no marsh foxes skulking around, no cougars or gators or a single good reason Gabe could make out.

  They slid down, all embarrassed.

  Uncle Scudder started explaining to Kate something, talking real fast, like folks do when they got to cover for something. “Dan keeps this bad boy of a redneck truck for the delivery end of the artisan biz.”

  The men, including Gabe, secured the winch. He and the three grown-ups squeezed into the long vinyl front seat of the truck, which took up nearly a whole lane of the road, hardly straining as it towed the smaller pickup behind.

  Gabe’s daddy had that look he got when he was pushing down hard on a grin that didn’t want to be staying boxed up. “How exactly again did you two end up picking that particular spot for a dance?”

  “Stopped for the view,” Scudder said. “Truck wouldn’t start back up. Had to pass the time. Somehow.”

  “Believe I mentioned that truck of yours needing some work.”

  Gabe leaned forward. “Believe he did, Uncle Scuds. Heard for my ownself.”

  “Whose side are you on, big guy? Wasn’t like I stranded Kate out there on purpose.”

  Earnestly, Gabe leaned his head close to Kate’s. “Uncle Scudder didn’t do it on purpose, I swear. He’d not risk his truck just to strand you in a swamp.”

  Everyone laughed, Uncle Scudder going red to his hairline.

  “Thank you,” Kate said. “That’s helpful to know.”

  The truck eased into the next curve, the headlights silhouetting the wide skirts of cypresses wading in water. Its engine growled into the silence. Gabe’s daddy looked to be letting the engine noise give him time to size out what he’d say—and what he’d keep tied in the mouth. When he finally talked, it came out careful. “Kate, you’ve got lots on your mind.”

  Gabe could tell that himself.

  She nodded. “Maybe it’s just the difference between reading about events, even seeing physical evidence of what happened, like your slave badge—but then sometimes you stand in a certain place, and the past, the reality of it, just smacks you in the head.” She patted Gabe’s leg. “I’m not doing a very good job putting it into words.”

  Kate could be peculiar that way, her carting that big stack of books and the computer she kept slid in that backpack of hers, but her sometimes not knowing what a lap child knows about life—how it’s struck through with good and with hurt. How the good and the hurt of last year and all the years past didn’t go away ever, not really: they’re just what you got to build on top of.

  Daniel looked at Kate, and Gabe could tell he was ready to trust her. “You asked about our last name. Said you thought it was amazing we were connected with Emanuel Church and maybe descended from Tom Russell. Sounded like you wanted to know more about our family, Gabe’s and Scudder’s and mine.”

  Crammed tight in the seat, Kate had to lean forward to look at them all at once. “Hold on. Gabe’s and yours . . . and Scudder’s?”

  “A little history—recent history—might help. Scudder grew up at my house. My two boys, the judge always said.”

  Scudder looked straight ahead. “My home life wasn’t the best. Dan’s momma could always tell when my daddy’d come home in a bad way and been swinging at me.”

  Gabe lowered his voice. “It’s how come Uncle Scudder’s got the scar on his cheek like all the bad guys in books. Only it turns out it’s a chick magnet, that scar.”

  Daniel nodded like this was serious stuff. “Must pull on the female heartstrings or something—damned if I know. Don’t fall for it, Kate.”

  “Ignore them.” Scudder turned his half grin on Kate. “Dan’s momma’d make biscuits—little pieces of ham all through them—and gravy to die for. The more beat up I turned up on their doorstep, the more biscuits she’d make—piled up to my chin some mornings. Best things you ever put in your mouth.”

  Kate let herself study the scar, and she touched a finger to the tip that ended close to his mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

  Gabe’s head swung toward his daddy. “Chick magnet,” he whispered.

  Laughing again, they slid back into silence, thick as the hot summer night. Gabe could feel things there in the quiet he didn’t know how to name. But he knew they made him miss his own momma.

  “That’s sad,” Kate said after a time. “About your growing-up years.”

  Scudder shook his head. “The Russells taught me how to be family. My old man taught me”—he and Daniel exchanged glances—“how not to give up. Comes in handy when you’re writing songs and nobody’s buying. Or when you’re restoring old wood and parts of the floorboards have rotted clear through.”

  The road rolled under them, the hot night air beating into the cab—and its quiet.

  Kate was still leaning forward. And Gabe could tell from the wide of her eyes she had something urgent to say. But “Floorboards” was all that came out right at first.

  They all stared at her funny, but it was Scudder who asked the question: “Are we supposed to know what you’re thinking?”

  “Ro
se Pinckney’s ancestor’s journal. The missing part of it. I assumed underfoot—when Gabe figured that out—referred to a hiding spot in her garden somewhere because of all the quotes about flowers. But what if underfoot meant under the floorboards? Scudder, is there a way we could pry some up in what used to be Emily’s bedroom?”

  Gabe plopped his chin onto his fists, both elbows propped on his knees. “Rose Pinckney. She the buckruh—”

  His daddy shook his head. “Leave the Gullah for now.”

  “She’s the lady who keeps real good candy in her house. Right there for the eating.”

  “You didn’t go asking her, did you?”

  Gabe raised both hands in protest, palms out. “Not a lick of an ask. It was her doing the asking. Her handing me a lollipop and asking wouldn’t I take it please. Her being your customer, I figured you’d say it was fine.”

  His daddy’s jaw squared. He punched the accelerator too hard, and all four of them jerked backward, then up. “Let me guess: By any chance, did she take the stick from you when you were finished—not tell you to throw it away, but took it from you?”

  Gabe was saucer-eyed. “How’d you divinate that?”

  “I think,” Scudder offered, “we know now that Miz Rose thinks she has her DNA sample for the modern-day Russell line. Despite the Russells telling her no.”

  Kate’s mouth was hanging wide open by now. And it wasn’t her best expression for looks, really, Gabe thought—like a bass just snagged on a hook.

  “Wait.” Kate looked from one to the other of them. “That’s what her genetic genealogy test was supposed to explore? Her ancestors’ connections with the modern-day Russells? Not the modern-day Pinckneys?”

  Gabe’s daddy frowned. “As I understand it, it was whether or not her ancestors who owned slaves back in Tom Russell’s day were biologically related somehow to our family that calls itself Russell but may or may not be descended from him.”

  The truck took a turn wide, with the pickup trailing behind swinging out so far it nearly took out a guardrail. But Gabe’s daddy didn’t seem to care.

  Kate addressed Daniel, his face all shadowed shut in the dark of the truck but the lines of his shoulders big and wide as ever. “Dan, you know I’ve been trying to find more evidence for research my mother did on Tom Russell—about what happened to him in the end. And what happened to the woman he loved, Dinah. Is there any verbal history in your family that Tom Russell survived the hangings?”

  “Only old family stories that say somebody left Charleston somehow in the midst of the chaos—after the revolt got informed on. Only later came back. After the war. If there’s any connection to him.”

  “But if they were hunting Tom Russell, and probably caught him, and if the father of Dinah’s baby was not Tom Russell but Jackson Pinckney, like I’m afraid it could be”—she twisted her hair into a knot as she concentrated—“and like Rose Pinckney must think it is, then how did the family go on?”

  “We,” Daniel said, and Gabe watched him grip the wheel hard, “would like to know the same thing.”

  Kate bit her lip like she was thinking so hard it might hurt. And she spoke slow. “So Rose wants to know if she’s related through Jackson Pinckney and Dinah to”—she looked from Gabe to his daddy and back—“you two and the judge. And you all didn’t want to be part of her testing, so she pulled the clever lollipop caper. Meanwhile, all the present-day Russells would love to know if you’re related all the way back to Tom in more than just name.”

  She rubbed the side of her head with two fingers. “And then there’s my momma. Knee deep in the whole thing—and my father calling it ‘a history that can only hurt you.’ And I’ve still no idea why.”

  Even there in the dark, Gabe could see how the moss dripped long and moved side to side, like a circle of ghosts watching them close, and there was his daddy, nodding to Kate.

  Gabe never heard the adults agree to it exactly, but something must have been said, because the truck was suddenly shooting not down the ramp into town but out over the water on the Ravenel Bridge, and Gabe knew what that meant.

  Sure enough, with their coconut shrimp and beer and Coke, they sat on the beach at the Isle of Palms and talked and talked, Gabe wondering why his daddy didn’t say it was way past bedtime but happy it had got so forgotten.

  Kate put her knees to her chest and her chin on her knees, just like Gabe, and the two of them sat watching the waves.

  “I used to come here with my momma,” she said. “Used to make me feel safe, being here. Collecting seashells. Or just sitting.” She tilted her head to one side. “What about you?”

  Gabe’s eyes were heavy, and he leaned against her, but his daddy couldn’t see him too sleepy, or they’d have to go home. “Mother E,” he whispered. “It was her favorite place. Still feel close to my momma there.”

  Gabe felt his eyes sliding down, and that was okay, the froth of the waves at the tips of his toes and the moon over the sea oats. The last thing he heard before sleep was Kate’s voice, low and easy and soft as the waves: “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy. Fish are jumpin’, and the cotton is high . . .”

  Chapter 37

  1822

  Belknap rolled the sleeves of his shirt, focusing there on the cuffs, and did not look up at the prisoner. “Denmark Vesey, you’re gonna stand the hell up when I give you the sign. I’m assuming you done said your prayers.”

  Hamilton tried placing one hand on the colt’s jittering muzzle, but the colt jerked away. He snapped the lead so hard the bay’s eyes rolled back to white, and then Hamilton answered for Vesey: “As God will have no mercy on his soul, we needn’t pretend to have any.”

  Vesey rose slowly to a standing position on the back of the horse, his gaze sweeping over the circle of men at the foot of the oak.

  Nobody moved. Not the three girls hidden behind the brick wall. Not any of the circle of men. Not Vesey or the colt or even so much as a gull over the marsh.

  Emily wanted to scream. Or to rush at the men to stop. Or to run away.

  Frozen with horror, she stayed where she was. Completely and utterly silent.

  Then Hamilton raised a riding crop high and brought it down, slicing the flank of the colt, who reared.

  Vesey’s bare feet thrashed for a hold on the colt’s back—and then slipped, stopping just short of the ground. His eyes fixed on the sky.

  The rope was pulled taut, and it swung now—without help from the breeze off the marsh. Vesey’s own body spoiled the clean, straight line of the rope, his head flopped at a right angle to where the skin kept its hold on his neck.

  His eyes stayed open and staring.

  His arms and legs jerked and twitched, and twitched and jerked, then fell limp, like a stringed puppet left there to dangle by a bored child.

  The eyes bulging out now from the black swell of face. The body still swinging.

  Emily Pinckney curled to one side and heaved.

  Above her, as she tasted the sourness of a stomach turned on itself, she heard the screech and the flap of turkey buzzards already beginning to circle and dip, come for the banquet of barely dead flesh.

  Bent like this, eyes squeezed tightly shut, Emily Pinckney could still see the scene—like the image had been burned into her eyelids: the sharp angle of neck, the feet twitching, just missing the ground, and the eyes that stayed open and staring.

  No, her father had said, it won’t all be finished.

  Chapter 38

  2015

  Dropped off at her motel just after midnight, and walked to the door by Daniel and Scudder both—Gabe curled up and sweetly snoring in the second row of the truck’s access cab—Kate flopped down, exhausted, and fell asleep fully clothed on top of the paisley bedspread, which was still covered in research notes. By dawn, she’d risen and, still in last night’s little black dress and heels with sand still clinging to them, snuck into the back of St. Mary’s and limped forward to receive the host.

  The splash of waves she’d heard
for hours last night and the priest’s rhythmic tenor at Mass flowed together now in her head: Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison.

  After a shower but still bleary-eyed, she’d come to Meeting Street to see if Rose Pinckney might be curious enough about Kate’s latest theory to allow the floorboards in Emily’s room to be crowbarred up one by one. Even now, Kate could hear Scudder prying up another board, old nails giving way with a clatter in the next room.

  Pausing in leaving her voice mail, Kate gulped down the last dregs of her coffee, then said into the phone, “Sorry this message is so long and possibly only vaguely coherent, but maybe I should end with the quote ‘The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.’ Dr. Ammons, you—and Harry Truman—were right. I feel like I’ve only just begun to understand their story, all the people behind the revolt. And the stories behind the story.”

  From the next room came the complaint of old wood being roused from a long rest in one place.

  Then Rose Pinckney’s protest followed: “If Katherine is wrong in her guess, I shall not be happy with the state of these boards.”

  And Scudder’s voice, low, unperturbed, answered: “I got to admit I thought it was crazy, too, Miz Rose, ’til I got to thinking about the part of the floor where the nails change from hand cut to molded. And places the width of the boards doesn’t match exactly—like some got replaced at some point.”

  Kate returned to finishing her message. “I mentioned I have a number of new research leads. And there is this journal owned privately, and the part of it that’s been missing, we think we might be close to tracking down if”—more banging from the next room, more groaning of wood, more of Rose’s protests—“all goes well. Oh, and if you do come down here for your own research at Morris Island, we could use a historian here—a real one. I’ll e-mail you soon.”

  Kate touched a hand to her eyes, puffy and circled from a night with so little sleep. She staggered back into Emily Pinckney’s former bedroom and had stationed herself between Scudder and Rose when another floorboard popped loose, revealing nothing.