"I don't know," I told him. "Mama was his sister. And from what I gather there weren't any friendship between him and Pap." Nothing had been directly told to me yet, but all one had to do was look and listen to get a feel for things.
"I heard my folks tellin' Amber and Francine to hush up with such rumors, and that there weren't any truth to them," said George. "So if they say Uncle Marcus didn't shoot him, then that's what I’m gonna believe, too." Did it really matter? I wondered.
When we went back home Uncle Marcus was sitting on the porch. He looked like he had been waiting for us with his pocketknife out and George's old chicken stick, the one he duplicated Pickett's charge with, being whittled upon again by his skillful hands. He looked like he was carving chain links into the wood. I imagined that given enough time, he would have turned out something uniquely artistic. It was absolutely the only thing about him that reminded me of Pap in years to come. They both had that way with wood. He saw us coming up and asked if I'd join him on the porch. "Why don't you go get washed up, George. I want to have a talk with Sol for a bit."
"Yessir," said George, and he disappeared into the house.
"Your Uncle Colby told me 'bout what some folks said today there in town, 'bout how I might have shot your daddy," he said. "You hear any of that?"
"Yessir," I told him, "Francine and Amber told me about it, but I don't reckon I believe it."
He stopped whittling, "Well, I want to tell you, Sol, as your uncle and as one man to another, I didn't shoot your daddy." He took a breath and organized his thoughts, "Truth is I might have after I heard about Sarah and the state she was in." He seemed to catch himself saying more than he meant to, "About how she’d been wrapped in the same kind of chicken wire y’all had at home, and how she’d been sunk down like she was. And the sheriff told me he suspects the same thing might have happened with Annie, I mean your Mama, but the rains probably carried her off." He looked out over the fields and watched some cows not too far off munching away, "Your daddy and I never got along, you see. Even when we was younger, we didn't think much of each other." He looked at me and realized I didn't need the history lesson. "But after I talked to your Uncle Colby and the sheriff I went back to my room at Miss Thomas' house. She was out talkin' with Dr. Wilkins and the preacher, and when I went into my room, there was your daddy." He looked at me with his intense eyes. I hadn't heard this part of things. All I'd been told is Pap had been found shot in town, but nobody told me where or by whom, and I didn't think to ask. Unbeknownst to me Uncle Marcus made a decision at that moment. "Your Pap was there, already passed on. I don't know why he was in my room, or even how he knew where to look. Might be he thought of shooting me, might be he wanted to talk, I can't say. But I opened the door and found him in there, dead by his own hand." I suppose his hand went back to carving the stick out of lack of anything else to do with it, "It's been an unfair lot that you've been given, Sol, but I wanted you to know I didn't shoot your daddy."
"I believe you," I told him. I knew he didn't have to say any of this to me, and since he did I trusted in his words. George was right, he wasn't the type to lie about doing such a thing or not.
"I know you’ve been living here all your life, and that your Aunt and Uncle want to see you stay," he said. "—but I'd be real pleased if you would come with me and at least try it out for a while. I ain't been there for you, nor your sister and Mama, neither, and I'd like the chance to try and make amends in some way."
It was then that I saw the guilt he had been carrying since his arrival in town, but it didn't make sense to me. Pap was the one who had done the wronging, and in my opinion, whether or not Uncle Marcus had been around wouldn't have made a difference. I was obvious he thought different, though. "Ain't nothing to make amends for, Uncle Marcus," I told him. "Pap’s what done it all."
He kind of nodded appreciatively, but he still seemed to think different. "Still, I think it'd do you some good to get away for a bit. I'm heading out tomorrow, and if you're willing I'd like you to come, maybe for just a visit at first. You don't have to stay with me if you don't like it there in Galveston, I'll bring you right back if you don't, but what say you come and try it out for a while?"
Galveston, I thought to myself. I could go fishing in the ocean and meet the grandmother and aunts and cousins I'd never met. And as much as I'd miss George, Aunt Emma, Uncle Colby, and even Francine and Amber, it suddenly felt like the right thing to do. "Okay," I said, "It might be good not have everything staring me in the face here for a while."
He gave me a smile like he knew just what I meant, "I'm glad, Sol. Tomorrow I'll buy you a good horse that you can keep for yourself, so you'll have one to ride for your very own, and we'll load them up with us and catch the train up to Houston and see the city. Then we'll head down to Galveston." He looked at me like he was about to tell me a secret, "It really is a pretty place, Sol. And the ocean is so big it looks like it goes on to the edge of the world. That's how your Aunt Candace describes it, anyway." And for the first time I saw him smile.
George took it kind of hard when I told him. "You ain't staying?" he asked. "But why not? Why don't you just go visit for a while but come back?"
"I might," I told him, "I'm just going to go and see it is all. Uncle Marcus says he lives right near the ocean and that there's fish ten times as big as us there."
"Naw, ten times?" he asked. "You'd have to have a hell of a cane pole for one of them," he joked.
I laughed, too. "Seems like I could just jump in myself and wriggle around and be my own bait."
"Don't go gettin' eaten by some sea monster," he warned.
"I won't," I promised. "And don't you go trying on anymore rooster hats while I'm gone, neither." We both laughed at that one.
"Lucifer the Leghorn," he said.
"Meanest chicken ever," I finished for him.
The next day we all prepared to say our goodbyes. Uncle Colby and Aunt Emma rode me into town on the wagon with George, Francine, and Amber. Uncle Marcus had gotten up early to go into town and find a horse and riding gear. He met us a little while later at Miss Thomas' house with a beautiful brown horse that couldn’t have been more than two or three years old. "What's his name?" I asked Uncle Marcus.
"He's your horse, Sol. You can call him what you want," he said.
He had a lot of spirit, the young horse, and I worried that I might not be able to stay on him. He was tied up next to Geronimo and his hoofs were dancing this way and that with frustration from being tethered to the pole like he was. His feet danced around trying to back away, much to Geronimo's aggravation, who had enough slack in his reins to get at the soft grass by the base of the fence post, but kept getting bumped by the young horse next to him. "Quickstep," I decided. "I'll call him Quickstep because he fidgets like that."
"That's a good name," said Miss Thomas.
"Get on ‘em and try him out," suggested Uncle Marcus.
I gave Miss Thomas and Aunt Emma a last hug, wished George and the girls the best, and was helped on Quickstep by Uncle Colby. I thought for sure he'd throw me right off, but instead he actually calmed down a little bit. I guess he knew that a rider meant he was about to be let off that stupid fence post. I rode him around a bit for everyone before Uncle Marcus and I caught the train, and he seemed to enjoy the attention.
During the trip to Houston and then on to Galveston we talked about various things and I learned a good bit more about the world on the way. He showed me the automobiles there in Houston and explained how they worked with the burning gases and all. I saw a telephone for the first time and we listened in as various people chatted about their lives, and at night I saw the electric lights for the first time. We still didn't have any in Varner Creek and that was something to see the night suddenly pushed back by artificial light from bulbs that sat on street lamps. Uncle Marcus told me how they used to use gas from oyster shells and coal to light up the city, but how the first electric street lamps were turned on May 31, 1884. I realized just how
far behind the times Varner Creek really was.
And when we reached Galveston, instead of going straight home, we rode Geronimo and Quickstep down to the sea. A cool breeze was coming in from the south and Uncle Marcus told me about the great storm that hit the island Sept 8, 1900, killing somewhere from six to ten thousand people. They never got an official count since so many got swept away in the storm surge. It was kind of a scary thing to tell a new resident, but he assured me the new city was taking precautions against such things for the future. He told me that's why he'd moved here, along with so many others. They were rebuilding Galveston and it would be the finest city in the state of Texas. They were building a giant wall to keep the sea from washing the people away again, and they were even going to raise the city itself. It all seemed like a fantasy place to me as I sat atop Quickstep looking out, nothing but water as far as the eye could go. I wondered what amazing things hid beneath the waves so far out into the world. Off to my left, right where the land seemed to meet the water on the horizon, the sun was dipping to its rest. The sky was lit up a brilliant parade of yellows, oranges, and purples just like home, but now it was painted over a canvas of silver sea.
"Well, this is home, at least for as long as you like," said Uncle Marcus. And as long as I liked turned out to be a long time indeed. Of course I eventually went back to Varner Creek, but it was many years later when I retired. Roots are like that, sometimes they just lead you back again. But I stayed with Uncle Marcus and Aunt Mary Jo there in Galveston for many years, though. They raised me as one of their own and saw to it that I had a good start in life by the time I was a man. The city did exactly what Uncle Marcus had told me they were going to do on that first day, raised itself and built the wall, a seventeen-foot monstrosity strong enough to hold back the ocean itself.
I met Helen there when I was twenty-eight, got married, had children, and lived. I saw ghosts regular, though, after Sarah. That was something she had passed to me and it never left. The great storm from 1900 left many a wondering soul about. It always scared me during those years I was growing up, and my Aunt Mary Jo was terribly worried I’d been traumatized for life and might never be normal. I gave up on trying to explain to her or anybody else about the things I saw. If they didn’t think I was trying to get attention for myself, then they thought something was wrong with me, and neither of those was doing me any good, so I let it be. I never understood just what caused it, either. I thought Sarah had been able to find me because she’d gone looking for me, and I found her the same way, so I never understood why it was that I all of a sudden was seeing other spirits. I guess like Sarah had explained, once some of the layers of that onion had been peeled away, every now and then the opaque lens between the alive and dead became momentarily transparent. Maybe sometimes the souls on the other side were reaching over towards ours and because of my being in that place for a bit with Sarah I was able to see them, or maybe I was accidentally finding my own way back to where they dwell, seeing what happened in another time. I couldn’t control it, and while I often felt emotions I knew weren’t my own being thrown out like projectiles from the dead, I never had that connection like I did with Sarah, as though we were talking in our own special way.
Chapter 14
Now I was on the other side of things with the souls I had seen in life. I was one of the dead. I wondered what it was that finished me? A stroke, an aneurysm, or maybe something else broke down. At eighty-seven, I guess it could have been anything. Miss Rita would be surprised in the morning when she came to check on me, I thought.
Sarah was standing next to me by the creek where we’d found her body. “Where are we?” I asked her. “Are we really back in Varner Creek?”
“No, we’re gone from the place where living people are,” she says. “We are where we want to be. It’s where we go, I guess.”
“Is this heaven?”
She shrugs her shoulders lightheartedly, “Maybe. I think it’s different for everyone when they’re here.”
“Everyone?” I ask. I started thinking of everyone I lost in life. My Helen, where was she? Uncle Marcus, Aunt Mary Jo, Aunt Emma, Mama, Pap, even George had gone before me. Were they all here, too? If we were in heaven, wasn’t there a hell? Weren’t they different places?
“Well, the ones that find their way," she says.
“Did Mama come here with you, too?” We never did hear anything about what happened to her. We just assumed the creek had carried her to an unknown grave.
She looks down at the creek, and an unnaturally beautiful fish green as an emerald jumps from the water and splashes back down. “Yes and no,” she tells me.
I paused thinking on this before asking, “What does that mean?”
“Mama’s hidin’,” she tells me. “But she’s done it so long she’s lost herself. Daddy’s lost, too, but for different reasons than Mama.”
“I don’t understand,” I tell her. I sensed layers in her words, things beyond me for the moment.
“They’re still in the black place, the one you passed through.” She smiles at me, “I knew you would, but not everyone does. I didn’t at first. I knew I was supposed to, but I was scared and stayed waiting for you to come get me.”
I thought about that black ocean I’d been in before the light appeared. It was quiet and peaceful, but I’d imagine if it’d gone on like that, I would have started to get lonely.
“A lot of people are in the dark place,” Sarah tells me. “It’s where I was when you found me, and part of you has been there since.”
I thought about what exactly that meant. I remembered seeing Sarah in that eerie green light with darkness all around. “The dark place . . .” I begin to ask. “Is that why I saw ghosts after I found you, because I went to the dark place?”
Sarah nods. “They’re the ones in the dark place. That’s where Mama’s been hiding.”
“Why is Mama hiding?” I ask Sarah. “Doesn’t she want to leave the empty place?”
“She’s scared of what will happen if she leaves. Mama’s got a secret,” she told me. “And she doesn’t want anybody to know.” She looked into my eyes with her own blue pools.
“What secret?”
Sarah’s easy smile dwindles a bit and I can feel her happiness dampen as some troubling memory enters her mind. “It’s not Mama’s fault,” she tells me, and I sense the pity in her. “I’ll show you if you want, but it’s a sad place. I don’t go there anymore, but I’ll show you if you want.”
I nod, asking for something I don’t understand. As we hold hands the creek disappears. It doesn’t feel like us moving to another place, though, but rather the scenery around us changing just like before. Somehow Sarah is doing this.
And then we're both there, seventy-five years ago for me, and it might as well have been yesterday for Sarah, as she was the same age then as she is now, but just looks different in her new form. We're in the bedroom where Mama was dressing her for her birthday party, both of them are there as the Sarah next to me and I look on, but they are frozen in time. It's like we had traveled back in time.
"Are we really here?" I ask Sarah.
"No," she tells me, "We’re in a memory, a bad memory. It feels real, though. That’s why I don’t come here anymore.” Inside I feel myself being filled like an empty glass by thoughts and emotions coming from Sarah. The room around us becomes animated and voices ring out from the past. . .
Chapter 15
“Are you ready for your big day?” Mama asked.
“Yes! Yes!” said Sarah, excitedly.
Mama had sewn a number of easy slip-on dresses for Sarah to wear every day. They were feed-sack dresses so she could run and play without tearing them to shreds, and easy enough to slip on and off that Sarah could manage them by herself. Today’s dress was a yellow one that Sarah had been favoring lately. She was bouncing around the room in excitement. Mine and Sarah’s souls were in one corner watching things, and when her former self bounded towards us she danced right through us.<
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“Sarah, come on over here and let Mama dress you,” smiled Mama.
Sarah came over and said, “My princess d-dress,” demandingly.
“Well, we’d get you in it just as soon as you sit still. Now up go the arms.” And Sarah complied by lifting her arms into the air. Mama grabbed the dress and drew it off Sarah in one quick motion. Then she grabbed the pink dress and started to place it over Sarah’s still uplifted arms, but she paused when she noticed Sarah’s waist. She had gotten a pooch on her that Mama didn’t remember seeing. “Good Lord, girl, maybe I shouldn’t have made such a big cake for today,” she joked.
“Cake!” yelled Sarah, happily, knowing that was the sweet treat she got to eat when someone had a birthday.
Mama put the dress down for a moment and stared at Sarah’s little bulge. She had brought in her sewing kit just in case she needed to make a quick alteration, and she reached inside and grabbed the measuring tape. Just a few weeks ago she had used it to measure Sarah for the dress, and her midsection had been a uniform twenty-six from waist to bosom. Mama wrapped the tape around Sarah’s little bulge and read the measurement, thirty. Four inches in just over three weeks, that couldn’t be right, she thought. “Sarah, honey, you been sneaking snacks when Mama ain’t looking?” she asked.
Sarah just yelled “Cake!” again.
And Mama sat back on her haunches looking at the bubble in front of her. Then another thought crept into her, a more sinister one. But no, that couldn’t be right, she calmed herself. There hadn’t been an opportunity, she thought. Sarah never was left alone with the boys at church. Even when she wasn’t there around her, Sol was. But still, the thought nagged at her. Four inches in three weeks was awfully hard to explain away on sweets, especially since she hadn't noticed Sarah eating abnormally. She needed to know for sure. “Sarah, honey, you mind if Mama has a look at yah?”
The idea seemed like a fun game to Sarah, so she smiled and turned around for Mama like she was modeling a dress that she didn't have on.
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