"I have to go," Jonas said. "Maybe I can get home before somebody calls Audrey."
They shook hands all around. Mack urged Jonas to be careful and to drive carefully and he hurried away.
"I want to see Beau," Ruth said.
"It was Ollie Smith," Mack said.
"I want to see Beau."
Mack and his son straightened the chairs in the meeting room, made sure no trash was left behind, turned out the lights and locked the doors. Ruth was in the car waiting for them. "Why don't you call him tomorrow, Ruthie, instead of upsetting your Pa by going over there now."
She didn't respond, and he knew he had little choice but to take her to her father's house. He again wished that Mackie wouldn't hear the discussion or the reason for it, but again, it was too late to do anything about that.
Big Si opened the door almost immediately, as if he'd been expecting them, and his first words hinted at some uneasiness within him. "What's done happened?"
"Where's Beau, Pa?"
"Upstairs 'sleep. What's done happened?"
"Was he home last night?"
"Oh Lord have mercy! I knew somethin' wasn't right." Ruth put her arm around his waist and led him to the sofa in the living room, sat him down, and waited for him to continue. "He went out and when he got back it was late and he was soaking wet and it didn't rain last night. I asked him how come he was wet and you know what he said? 'Cause he was hungry. I told him I'd fix him some food but he had to take off them wet clothes first. So, you know what he did? He stood in the middle of the kitchen and took off ev'ry stitch he had on, socks and shoes, too, rolled it up in a ball, and took it outside to the firepit. You hear me? He was butt nekkid, it was the middle of the night, and he took them things out to the firepit. Then he come back in here and set at the table, ready to eat. I told him to go put some clothes on and I'd get the food ready. He ate six eggs, a whole pot of grits, and half a loaf of bread. The boy hadn't ate that much food all together since he been back from that work camp." Pa took a deep breath; so many words all at once had exhausted him. He leaned heavily against Ruth. "What's done happened?" he asked again.
"That police officer, the one who arrested Beau, he's dead. Somebody killed him."
"They think it was Beau?"
"They think it was a man named Ollie Smith."
"Why you think it ain't Ollie Smith?" Pa asked, barbed wire in his voice.
Ruth stood up and began to pace. Her father, her husband and her eldest son watched her every step. They knew her so well—too well—she sometimes thought. "Something the man told you, Mack, doesn't make sense, and for now, it doesn't matter. White people very often don't make sense and that can work to our benefit: A white man is dead, they have a Colored man—Ollie Smith—to blame for it. But here's what doesn't make sense: Why would Smith cut the tires on his own car if he'd just killed a white man?"
Mack began to pace with his wife. "Maybe all the police are as stupid as Edwards and nobody will think what you just thought, Ruth."
"Will they even care?" Mackie asked. "Will it even matter to them that they've got the wrong Colored man as long they have a Colored man to blame?"
Nobody who loved Mackie wanted to know that he'd already come to such a horrible realization, yet they all were relieved that he had. The sooner the better. It was this kind of knowledge and awareness that would keep him alive.
"Pa," Ruth said, "I think we need to find another place for Beau to live."
Big Si nodded. "I been thinkin' that same thing for a while now. Some place where there ain't so many people. 'Specially white ones. But where?"
"I have an idea," Ruth said. "I need to look into it some more. I'll let you know.
***
– Carrie's Crossing –
Jonas
"You can't call your pa, Audrey," Jonas said.
"But if Junior is dead, pa needs to know."
"I still don't understand why he doesn't know. Seems to me telling his wife would be the last thing they'd want to do—under the circumstances." Jonas knew well how men's minds worked, knew it would be easier for one man to tell another some version of a sordid truth than to tell a woman any aspect of it, especially if that woman was the man's wife.
"That's exactly why they wouldn't tell him first. You know how he acts—yelling and screaming and cussing."
"I also don't understand why you didn't tell me that he didn't live with his wife."
"I told you, Jonas. I was ashamed. My brother goes with whores and then brings diseases home to his wife. I didn't want to tell you anything like that. You already don't like my family, and I didn't want to give you another reason."
He tightened his hold on her. "You are not your family, Audrey."
"How is that? Why is that? Do you know? Do you understand?"
He shook his head. It was a question he couldn't answer, despite the fact that he'd asked it of himself a million times: Why wasn't he like Zeb? How had he escaped being like Zeb? And it wasn't just his pa's hatred of Colored people that Jonas was relieved to have not inherited; it also was the man's inherent laziness, his fondness for alcohol, and the petty, vindictive streak that had earned him the general dislike of most of his peers. "I don't guess it matters. What matters is that you're you and I'm me."
"Suppose JJ is like them? Or the new baby?" She started to cry again, and he soothed and quieted her, then held her as she tried to stand. "I should call pa. I should."
"Then you'll have to tell him how you know which means you'll have to tell him how I know—tell him where I was and what I was doing there."
Still sniffling, she slumped against him…and the phone rang. He ran to answer it.
"Thatcher residence," he said, though he knew who was calling.
"Let me talk to my daughter."
"She's resting, Horace. Can I give her a message?"
"You can get her to the damn telephone is what you can do."
"And you can talk to me like you've got some sense or I'm hanging up."
Audrey was standing beside him now, reaching for the telephone.
"I need to talk to my daughter, Jonas. Her brother is dead."
Jonas gave her the telephone and left the room, went upstairs to look in on JJ, and as he watched the little boy sleep, he pictured Ernestine Smith, the woman who, in less than a week from now, would have bathed this little boy and put his night clothes on him and brought him down to his mama and his papa for a story and good night hugs and kisses. He had said that Audrey was the one looking forward to having household help again but in truth, he was the one. He heard Audrey behind him.
"You know we have to go over there."
"What did he say?"
"That some niggers had killed his son. I asked what happened, where it happened, who did the police think did it. He wouldn't answer; he said it didn't matter. All that mattered, he said, was that Junior was dead and that somebody would pay."
"You think he knows the truth? You think they told him what really happened?"
Audrey was quiet for a long moment, whether thinking about his question or the answer she'd give, Jonas didn't know. She seemed to be looking at something in the distance, then she turned her gaze directly on him. "I think he knows who his son was and what he was and how he was. I think if pa can keep his focus on somebody else, on some Colored man, then that poor man better make his peace with his Maker because Horace Edwards will see him sent to the electric chair."
***
– The Mountains of North Carolina –
Ruthie
The sun sliding down behind the peaks of the Appalachian Mountains leaving snail trails of gold and pink and orange was one of the most beautiful things Ruthie had ever seen. Or maybe those were the Great Smokey Mountains. She didn't care and it didn't matter. It was beautiful and peaceful and, for Beau, safe. It also was cold. Back home in Belle City, in the last week of October, nights were chilly. Leaves were beginning to turn on the trees. Up here the transformation was complete, and when the
chill breeze blew, the leaves fell, covering the forest floor with a carpet of red, orange and gold. The forest floor would drift white with snow in the winter, the prints of various critters left as proof of their existence.
"You like this place all right then, Beau?" she asked him as he appeared out of the shadows and dropped down beside her.
"That's the third time you asked me that, Baby Sister, and my answer is the same: This is a good place, a very good place, and I'm glad you found it for me."
"Good because I don't want you to feel..."
"I know you're just takin' care of me, Ruthie. You just like Ma that way—she always would know what was good for somebody before they knew it for their selves."
The tears rose and fell before she could stop them. Beau put his arms around her and pulled her close, and they sat like that for a while. She told him how much she would miss him, told him much she had always relied and depended on him, how he'd never let her or any member of their family down.
"Yeah, I did. I let ev'rybody down when I...did what I did. I thought I was doin' the right thing. I still think so, but I see, though, how what I did could cause y'all trouble, so I'm glad to be livin' up here in these mountains, outta the way."
She wept again. "Oh, Beau. That's not why we wanted you away from Belle City."
"Why then?" he asked, surprised.
"Because...here's what I believe: Killing Tom Jenks and that policeman killed a part of you, too, because what you did made you like them, and that's not who you are. You're nothing like those men. You're the kind of man who gets mad at evil and at people who hurt other people, and you want to make it right. But Beau: There's always going to be people hurting Colored people and you can't make it right. Seems like not even God can make them different, so you'll surely kill yourself trying, and I don't want you to be dead on the inside. That War almost killed your spirit and your mind. Ma and Pa brought you back to us. Then, that chain gang took you away again, and Pa brought you back again. Next time—"
"Won't be a next time, Baby Sister, 'cause I live up here on a mountain." He picked her up as he'd done when she was a girl and swung her around as he'd done then, and they both laughed like children, which brought Pa and Mack to see what was going on.
"I see you already made yourself at home," Pa said, overwhelmed at the sight of his eldest and youngest engaged in a moment of pure joy.
"This is a good place y'all found, Pa. Good people up here, too. Fellas'll be 'round in the mornin' to help me and Mack dig and pour the foundation, and we think to be able to get it framed in and the roof on before the real bad weather sets in."
"I can help too," Pa said, and Beau and Mack both agreed that he certainly could, though neither voiced the thought that it would be over their dead bodies. Ruthie had extracted that promise from them as a condition for her agreeing to Pa moving up here with Beau—as if she could have prevented it. He was her parent, not the other way around, and Beau was her big brother and Mack was her husband. That the three of them conspired to have her believe that she was having her way with them both infuriated and enchanted her. She adored the three of them and had almost perfected the smile she now pasted on when she said how excited and happy she was for Beau and how glad she was that Pa would be living with him. It was breaking her heart. Pa was almost sixty-five years old and had a bad heart. There was no doctor up here…
"I'm getting hungry," Mack said, then to Ruthie, "Do you still remember how to cook outside?"
"Of course I do. You don't forget the things you love."
They laughed, the three of them, making various comments about how far removed Ruthie now was from the life she was born into. "That's why, after we cook and eat, you're gonna ride down the mountain and spend the night with the professor and his wife in their house, 'stead of out here under the stars," Beau said.
She laughed with them, acknowledging the truth of their words, though for reasons vastly different from what they were imagining. She had no more fear of the forest now than she did as a girl. What she needed from Professor Burgess was more reassurance that Pa and Beau would be safe, though she was secretly pleased that she wouldn't have to make do without indoor toilet facilities and electric lights.
"That's Indian land," Arthur Burgess told her when they first met. That was almost two months ago in Belle City. She and Mack accepted his invitation to visit the following weekend. She loved the land, but many of the Indians she'd met looked enough like white people to cause her to question the professor, himself a white native North Carolinian but a student of the history of the Indians of the state. He'd taken one look at Beau and proclaimed he'd have no trouble being accepted in Hendersonville, and Pa would be accepted because he was with Beau. "For that matter, you could live up here too, without any difficulty. Don't worry."
He had helped them find the land, and when it became clear that Beau could afford to buy and build anything he wanted, the locals became downright expansive. He could hire as many men as he could afford to pay, and these were men who knew how to build houses for mountain living. He would have as much seasoned wood as his soon-to-be-built shed could hold. Two dozen men were waiting for them when their two trucks pulled into the clearing an hour earlier. They inspected the wood, the nails, the window sashes, the door, the roof shingles, the cement, and the tools—hammers, chisels, trowels, saws, mitre boxes—and found everything acceptable. They would, they said, return at dawn, ready to work.
Mack had, a month ago, made sketches of the mountain house, and Beau had given his approval—with one request: That Mack make it bigger. He didn't want a house just large enough for Pa and himself. He wanted a house large enough to accommodate his entire family, he said, for he wanted and expected that they would be regular visitors. He had looked pointedly from Mack to Ruthie and said, "'Specially you and the chil'ren. I'm gon' have me a measurement wall and I'm gon' mark off how they grow, so you can't keep 'em away from me for too long." So, instead of a cabin in the mountains of North Carolina, Beau would have a house.
In the remaining daylight, Mack and Beau began staking the ground while Ruthie and Pa began digging the firepit and lining it with rocks, then piling in the kindling and the wood chunks that would burn hot, fully cooking the chickens and potatoes that would be their supper tonight and breakfast in the morning.
From the Recorded Memories of Ruth Thatcher McGinnis
We celebrated Christmas that year in North Carolina. Everybody went—Big Mack and Clara and their other sons and their families; Belle and her children and her Ma and Catherine, Mack and me and the children. It was one of the best times of my life. We had all brought something for the house—pots and pans, dishes, knives and forks, bedsheets and towels and blankets—everybody brought blankets and we needed every one of them. We brought rugs for the floors and curtains for the windows, and kerosene lanterns—they had gotten hot and cold water, but they didn't have electricity yet—and of course, we brought food. From the moment we arrived until we left, somebody was cooking and somebody was eating. Pa kept wishing he had a radio; he missed his music, but I was glad because I didn't want Beau hearing the news about the war in Europe. That was the frightening, ugly side to that wonderful Christmas holiday that nobody would talk about but which was on everybody's mind: Nobody believed that the U.S. could stay out of the war. It was a strange and difficult time. The decade of the 1930s had begun in a terrible depression, and was ending on the brink of war. But for that one week, we refused to allow ourselves to think horrible thoughts, and war wasn't the only horrible thought or the only secret we were harboring. Tobias was dead from a drug overdose. He died just after Thanksgiving. That was the last time any of us saw him—he came to dinner at Big Mack and Clara's and passed out in the bathroom with a needle in his arm. Nobody said anything to or about him after that, but we still couldn't tell Pa that he was dead. Beau either, for that matter. They thought he hadn't come because of what happened Thanksgiving, and they read Belle's strangeness as that—but that was only a
part of what was on Belle's mind. With Toby's death, she became the biggest numbers writer in Belle City and we all were worried, but she said she paid the police enough protection money that they'd leave her alone. Plus, she said, the cops didn't bother her as much since that Edwards was killed over in Fourth Ward: Seems the chief of police was keeping a closer eye on his officers. But that was only part of the reason for our worry—we feared for the children, which seemed not to concern Belle at all. It bothered Sadie, though, so much that she wouldn't work for Belle anymore, so she went to work in our house, and from that time until she died, she rented Pa's house. She didn't want her children exposed to gambling and drugs and what she called "loose folks." A truly funny sight, one I'll never forget, was Pa's face when he heard relatives of his referred to as "loose folks."
From the Journal of Jonas Farley Thatcher Mar. 18, 1940
Only one thing could make me stop thinking and worrying about war coming and that was Alice Corrinne Thatcher. My baby daughter, born on my 35th birthday. Poor Audrey is so worn out I don't think she even heard the doctor tell her it was a girl. She was in labor for the better part of a whole day. She had a real rough time and as sorry as I am about that, I'm glad that my baby girl shares a birthday with me. I'm also glad I'm not a woman. Whoever in the world ever thought they are the weaker sex? I couldn't take 22 seconds of labor, never mind 22 hrs. And to think women have been doing this since the beginning of time, and will do so until the end of time. And do it more than once. They say that women love their children more than men and maybe that is why, because of what they have to suffer to bear a child into this world. And I know I didn't suffer, but I don't believe anybody can love this little girl more than I do. Or love JJ any more than I do. He is so happy and excited. He's about to drive Ernestine and Ruby crazy, jumping up and down and calling her name. Alice Corrinne! He hollers as loud as he can. She's named after her two grandmas, Audrey's ma, Alice, and my ma, Corrinne. When I called Horace to tell him, he wanted to know why we hadn't named the baby after HIS ma. Lord I wish I didn't ever have to talk to that man again. It's only that it would make Audrey unhappy that I don't cut all ties with him. But Audrey or no Audrey, I'll throttle him if he asks me one more time to invest in his war business. He truly does not understand when I tell him money is not the most important thing to me. He keeps telling me how much he's going to make—how much money I can make if I invest with him. In the first place, I don't think he stands to make that much, but even if I'm wrong, I don't want to make any more money if it means being at work more and at home less. I will be so happy when Alice and Audrey can come home. JJ will too. We've got a little crib set up for her in our room. Ernestine and Ruby decorated Alice's room so it will be ready for her when she's old enough to sleep in her own room. It's next door to JJ's room and he has said that he will guard her. Ernestine and Ruby are a blessing. I don't know how we got on without them. Yes, they are good cooks and housekeepers and they look after JJ like he was a son to them, but they are also very, very nice people. They eat dinner at the table with us—Ruby's Samuel too—and they tell us about their family. Their children are all grown up and that's why they don't mind being live-in help. I'm glad we have them. And Audrey made me promise not to tell anybody that we eat supper with the help.
Belle City Page 37