Sweet Jiminy

by Kristin Gore

  “I gotta go, J,” Bo interrupted. “It’s okay, it’s all okay.”

  He smiled to cover the ache he felt, then moved past her, close enough to smell her coconut hair. He held his breath until he was in the clear.

  Chapter 14

  Walton hadn’t intended to abuse his ongoing privileges at the hospital to sneak into Travis Brayer’s room. Still, there he found himself, sitting bedside, scribbling in his notebook and looking at his old friend.

  As he watched Travis sleep, Walton thought back to the night when he’d been brought the bodies of Edward and Jiminy, and Henry had implored him to treat them with the dignity he’d show any others. Any others who were white, he’d meant.

  “There’s no difference,” Henry said.

  “Of course there’s a difference,” Walton argued. “And you know the boys won’t like it if I do this. Edward and Jiminy are gone, their people will bury them, that’s it.”

  “No,” Henry said fiercely. “This matters.”

  “I know you were close,” Walton said, putting his hand on Henry’s shoulder. “I know he was almost like a brother to you—”

  “Do you?” Henry interrupted. “Do you really have any idea how close we were?”

  Walton looked away, at anywhere but into Henry’s furious, anguished face.

  “And Jiminy—” Henry exclaimed, his voice cracking.

  This was the moment Walton had decided to agree, to help, to do no further harm. He’d set about cleaning and dressing Edward’s and Jiminy’s wounds, keeping his head bent, aware that Henry was watching silently, tears pouring down his face.

  Walton hadn’t quite finished when Lyn came into the room, but he’d at least made them presentable—if it’s even possible to make the bodies of loved ones presentable to people who only want them to be alive.

  Considering how Lyn behaved, Walton was relieved that he hadn’t let her see her husband and daughter when they’d been in any worse shape. Henry had been right: this mattered. There was no difference.

  He watched Lyn’s excruciating reaction, and how Henry moved instinctively for her, as much to comfort himself as to offer support. She wanted none of him, that much she made clear. Her rejection was absolute. And unthinkable under any other circumstances. When she’d left the room, Henry collapsed against the wall, wracked with shuddering sobs.

  Walton hadn’t known what to do. He waited for Henry to collect himself, which took an uncomfortably long time. Then Edward’s brother came to retrieve the bodies, and Henry helped move them out to the car. Henry never said goodbye to Walton that night; he simply came over and wordlessly took Walton’s hand in his.

  Less than a year later, at the age of thirty-two, Henry was dead. Walton had seen his body as well, and it had also been too late. He’d been asked to perform an autopsy to help discover what had killed a man so young and seemingly healthy. He found the giant blockage in the main artery close to the heart, wrote “massive pulmonary embolism” in the chart, and sewed up the incision he’d made, with a sense of wonder and loss. Literally seeing the insides of men changed a person’s perspective. Walton thought about this as he stitched up the body. He thought of many things. Of whether this blockage had started as a tiny speck the night Henry had sobbed and raged and been rejected by Lyn. Of whether there was any way to see this death as a blessing. Of what would happen to Willa now; and to their daughter, Margaret, the little girl he’d delivered; and to Lyn, who had emotionally shut herself down even though she technically remained among the living. But most of all, he thought about how much Henry felt like Edward to the touch.

  Walton remembered this now, as he stared at Travis Brayer’s sleeping form. He resisted an urge to reach out his hand to feel Travis’s skin. To get a sense of the shape of his muscles and bones, beneath what everyone saw on the surface. He wanted to do this, and he wanted Travis to wake up.

  Suddenly, stridently, the phone on the bedside table rang. Startled, Walton picked it up.

  “Trav?” a familiar voice asked from the other end.

  “No, he’s sleeping,” Walton replied.

  “Walton? Is that you?”

  Walton recognized Roy Tomlins’s voice.

  “Hey, Roy,” he replied. “I’m glad you called.”

  “What’s going on there?”

  “Just sitting here with Trav, scribbling down everything I remember about June of ’66,” Walton replied.

  Roy stayed silent.

  “Remember that month?” Walton continued. “We were all upset about the marches. Folks wanted to drive over to Jackson and shoot that Meredith boy. I remember you showing off which shotgun you’d use.”

  “I don’t recollect that, Walton. Tell Trav it’s me calling.”

  “And we were outraged that Jiminy Waters had dared to enter that state leadership essay contest, remember? How’d we even find out that she submitted something? She mailed it I guess. Did you open her letter, Roy? Did she drop it off herself at the post office, or did Edward?”

  “Put Trav on the phone, Walton.”

  “I told you, he’s asleep. But I’ll be sure to give him the message.”

  Walton hung up the phone just as Travis started to stir. Walton wondered how much he’d heard or understood, if any at all. He thought about how easy it would be to turn off the machine that was keeping him alive. He knew exactly which switches to flip.

  “Can you hear me, Travis?” Walton asked.

  Travis nodded, a shaved-head little-boy nod.

  “Good,” Walton replied. “Because we have a lot to discuss.”

  Chapter 15

  The drive to Bo’s great-uncle’s house was more painful alone in the daylight. Weeks ago, with Jiminy next to him in the darkness, everything about it had seemed surprising and fun. The woman by his side, the roughness of the hill road, the shock of the nocturnal animals they’d spotlighted along the way. Now it just seemed dusty and lonely and way too bright. Bo wished he hadn’t agreed to visit. He wished he’d said no, that it wasn’t a good time. But he’d been caught off guard and agreed instead, and now he was pulling up to his uncle Fred’s cabin under much more depressing circumstances.

  Fred was scattering chicken feed on the dirt outside the coop. At first glance, it seemed that creatures ran wild on Fred’s property, but in reality there was some control to the chaos. He had a system he’d worked out that he described as being “in cahoots with the critters,” and it was true that among them he seemed to be part of a happy, raucous commune. As Bo approached, he looked up and grinned a toothless grin.

  “Right on time for some lemony-lime,” he said.

  Bo wasn’t sure what he meant until he saw the iced jug on the table in the front yard. Fred liked to invent different cold drinks in the summer, using whatever he could gather fresh from his garden or the nearby woods. This wasn’t the climate for lemons or limes, but Bo thought he saw some mint leaves and apple chunks floating in the punch.

  He took a cautious sip from the glass jar Fred offered him.

  “Whew,” Bo said, wiping his lip and setting the jar back on the table.

  He’d been right about the mint. He couldn’t be sure about the apples, because whatever fruit they’d once been, they were now just little sponges for whiskey.

  “Lemony-lime moonshine mint punch,” Fred proclaimed proudly.

  “That’s something,” Bo answered.

  Fred was a man of many projects, which Bo found intriguing. He was well into his eighties, and he lived a solitary, reclusive life. He could’ve just faded away from sense and sensibility the way he’d shied from other people, but he’d instead managed to stay engaged and alert. In addition to being a little kooky, Fred was filled with an energy that Bo admired.

  “Where’s Lily-Lou?” Fred asked.

  By which he meant Jiminy. He’d started calling her that when they were all together weeks ago. He’d said there was only one Jiminy he’d ever known, and so this other Jiminy must be Lily-Lou. Wanting to know all she could about t
he other Jiminy, the newly christened Lily-Lou had gracefully played along.

  “I’m not too sure,” Bo answered, wondering if his uncle could leave it at that.

  “You’ve lost Lily-Lou?” Fred gasped. “You don’t know where to find her?”

  Nope, Bo guessed that he couldn’t just leave it at that.

  “We’re not spending as much time together anymore.”

  Fred nodded.

  “Trouble with the Knights,” he said.

  He didn’t ask it. He just said it. Bo didn’t know what he meant, but he tried to go along to get along.

  “With the days, too,” Bo replied. “It’s for the best. She shouldn’t have to deal with any trouble while she figures herself out, and I’m gonna be leaving town again soon anyway.”

  “You still lookin’ out for Jiminy?” Fred asked. “And Edward, too? They’re a pair forever and ever now, till reincarnation do them part.”

  He was talking about the first Jiminy. The second one was still Lily-Lou.

  “Of course,” Bo said. “Though it’s really Jiminy—I mean, it’s really Lily-Lou who’s gotten obsessed with them. She’s gone and gotten someone to come make a real investigation, to really dig into it. They’re creating quite a stir.”

  “I knew it, I knew it,” Fred said, clapping his hands to his knees. “When they want some ammudence, tell ’em to come see Fred.”

  Bo thought about it for a moment but couldn’t decipher the word.

  “Ammudence?”

  “Ammudence!” Fred repeated. “When they need some fire that’ll really stick, proof and power all in one!”

  Ammunition. And evidence?

  “What do you have?” Bo asked.

  And why hadn’t Fred mentioned it weeks ago when they’d first visited him? Perhaps their questions had awakened old memories that he’d needed a little time alone with before feeling ready to act.

  Bo had been horrified to learn what had happened to Edward and Jiminy, but he’d never personally known them. He knew his great-aunt Lyn as well as she let anyone know her, and he sympathized deeply with her, but overall, he felt removed from the long-ago events that had shattered her. And, in truth, he didn’t want to be saddled with all the baggage from them. He wanted to move forward into his own future, away from this place where the burdens of past generations, though unknown and invisible, somehow still retained the power to hold the next generation down.

  But Jiminy’s obsession with his family’s past had shamed Bo into further investigation. For better or for worse, he’d been drafted.

  “You wanna see some ammudence?” Fred asked him. “Follow me.”

  In the yard, two peacocks strutted among the chickens. Worried that he might accidentally squash a chick, Bo stepped carefully as he followed Fred to a falling-down barn nestled against the hillside behind the house.

  “Thisaway,” Fred said, ducking under a listing beam to enter the barn.

  Inside, Fred walked toward a stall at the far end. He struggled to move a bale of hay blocking its entrance, and Bo hurried to help him, happy that his youth was good for something. Fred squeezed into the opening they’d made and pointed into the shadows of the stall. It took a moment for Bo’s eyes to make out what looked like a heap of something covered in dusty canvas.

  Bo swatted a fly and stepped into the stall to get a better view as Fred lifted the tarp away. It seemed to be the rusted-up, burned-out front of a car, complete with charred seats and steering wheel. Bo looked at Fred, understanding dawning on him.

  “Their car?” Bo asked. “The car they were driving that night?”

  Fred nodded.

  “It didn’t burn all the way up. I got it in the middle of the night and’ve had it since. Maybe now’s its time to shine.”

  Bo nodded, suddenly unable to speak. Seeing these charred remains before him made what had transpired real in a way that nothing else had. He no longer just felt sorry for Lyn, or horror in general. He felt as if this had somehow happened to him.

  “Maybe it’s the perfect ammudence,” Fred said.

  “So it looks like a trial is really going to happen,” Jiminy said quietly. “With the Brayer connection and the governor’s race, there’s a lot of pressure to see if there’s anything to all this. It could happen really quickly.”

  Lyn nodded, keeping her thoughts to herself. “Quickly” was an extremely relative term.

  Jiminy had found her on Willa’s side porch steps, eating her lunch in the shade. She’d just sat down and started talking, not bothering to ask if Lyn wanted company.

  “The car could play a key role,” she continued. “The FBI’s ordered DNA testing.”

  Lyn didn’t want to think about that. She knew it could be helpful, but she didn’t want to revisit the specter of the people she’d loved most in the world being part of violence that had spilled and snagged and crushed and torn, leaving little pieces of them behind. She set her plate on the ground, willfully surrendering it to the ants.

  “Are you okay?” Jiminy asked.

  Lyn stared at her, noting that her face was darker from time spent in the sun, and that there was something more certain about her features. Willa and Henry’s granddaughter seemed to be settling into her body, slowly and steadily.

  “I mean, I’m sorry if you didn’t want any of this,” Jiminy continued. “I should have been more sensitive about that.”

  Lyn recognized that in addition to the physical changes, Jiminy was nowhere near as hesitant as she’d been when she’d first arrived. And despite her intrusiveness, or maybe because of it, Lyn appreciated her.

  “This needed to happen,” Lyn said simply.

  Jiminy took this in, and nodded slowly. After a moment, she reached into her bag.

  “I’d like to show you something,” she said.

  She’d made some copies of her grandfather’s photos. Carlos had reprimanded her for her preoccupation with her family’s personal connection to the case they were investigating, but what if that link held some valuable key? What if, in the end, it was the whole point?

  Jiminy handed Lyn a copy of the photo of her that had been taken over forty years before. Lyn held it lightly, examining her younger self.

  “Do you remember when that was taken?” Jiminy asked. “It seems like some kind of occasion.”

  Lyn gazed a bit longer, then shrugged.

  “Your grandpa was always taking photos,” she replied. “I was bound to be in one eventually.”

  Jiminy handed her a copy of the photograph of her grandfather.

  “What about this one?” she asked. “I thought it was a self-portrait, but I found out they didn’t have timers back then. Do you know who might’ve taken it?”

  Lyn glanced at it, then shook her head.

  “No idea.” she replied.

  Jiminy nodded.

  “Well, I couldn’t stop looking at it when I saw it,” she said. “He looks so sad, and so old for thirty-two. I couldn’t stop staring at his eyes.”

  The hazel eyes that she’d inherited. Her grandfather had worn glasses, and the sunlight was glinting off their edges in the photo, winking at the camera.

  “There just seemed like there was more of a story there,” Jiminy continued. “So I took it to the photo zone at HushMart and got a little help, and sure enough, there was something.”

  Jiminy handed another photograph to Lyn. In this one, the eyes filled the entire sheet, and their magnified proportions revealed that the reflection in Henry’s glasses that had initially seemed like clouds or trees was actually a person, sitting opposite, holding a camera. Henry’s gigantic eyes were mirrors that showed a young Lyn snapping his photo.

  “Does that help you remember?” Jiminy asked.

  Lyn met Jiminy’s gaze.

  “I think it’s time we took a ride together,” Lyn said.

  A short time later, Jiminy was standing, hushed, holding her hand to her mouth. She closed her eyes reverently, then opened them again to gaze at the etched gravestones. O
ne read “Edward Waters—beloved husband.” The other simply said “Sweet Jiminy.”

  Lyn was standing beside her, swaying ever so slightly, like a sturdy tree in a strong breeze.

  “This is a church,” Jiminy said reverently. “You’re a church.”

  Indeed, as often happened when Lyn communed with her lost ones, she felt filled with something holy.

  “Listen to what I tell you,” she replied. “Because I’ll only say it once.”

  Jiminy nodded. She felt like she might be falling into some sort of trance.

  “Your grandfather had more than one daughter.”

  It was almost as though Lyn was telling her a bedtime story.

  “He had your mother with Willa,” she continued. “But before that, he had another daughter. With me.”

  Jiminy remained completely still. She didn’t even breathe.

  “My Jiminy was your mother’s half sister, your grandpa’s first daughter, born five years before he even met your grandma.”

  Now Jiminy blinked rapidly as her brain whirled into action. She didn’t feel as shocked as she thought she should. It was almost as though she’d known all along. She couldn’t have, she realized, yet still, that was the feeling. She needed to hear more.

  “Does my grandma know?” she asked quietly.

  Lyn sighed.

  “We’ve never discussed it, and Henry never told her far as I know,” she replied. “But I think she figured it out.”

  Jiminy nodded.

  “It was an accident . . . a mistake,” Lyn said.

  She closed her eyes a moment, then took a long, slow breath.

  “I was in St. Louis, preparing to leave my sister and my folks and move down here to marry Edward,” she continued. “Edward and I fell for each other quick and didn’t see a point in waiting. I knew we belonged together within a minute of seeing him. Edward used to say it took him a minute and a half, but that I was always a step or two ahead of him.”

  Jiminy smiled. She liked romantic stories about other people’s courtships. They were her favorite kind of fairy tale.

  “By this point, Edward was living on Henry’s farm and they’d started their carpentry business. One of the Brayer cousins bought a place in St. Louis and wanted a replica of the dining room table and chairs at Brayer Plantation, so he hired Henry to take the measurements and start the job.”