The Lost Saints of Tennessee

by Amy Franklin-Willis

  Carter’s wide, messy handwriting fills the pages. A heart is drawn in the middle of one with the words Carter loves Jackie inside. My hand grips the paper tighter. I knew Carter loved Jackie, but it had never entered my mind that he might be in love with her. What other women had he really known, though? I sit on a kitchen chair as sadness steals over me, the ten years between Carter’s death and the present slipping away.

  Rosie comes up behind me, startling me. “What are you reading?”

  I pile the papers back in and shut the lid. “Just some of my old stuff. Why don’t you take a break? I can get the rest of this.”

  She stares me down for a second, smelling a rat. My sisters always want me to talk, particularly when it comes to Carter. I have never done so and don’t intend to start now.

  “Let me get this straight.” Her hands are on her hips indicating that this may take a while. “You don’t want to talk about Carter. You already said you don’t want to talk about what’s going on with Honora. What the hell do you want to talk about?”

  I shrug.

  “Fine,” she says, slamming a box down on the counter. Before heading out the door, she tosses a can of Budweiser from the fridge and says I look like I might need it. Her car door slams with an expensive thunk.

  “Rosie,” I call out the screen door, “don’t be mad, okay?”

  The words hit her and she rolls her eyes.

  “I’ll be over at Daisy’s when you’re done. Going to head back to Nashville tomorrow, so have dinner with us tonight?”

  She does not refer to Nashville as home. Clayton is still home for all of us, though, technically, only Violet still lives here. With Mother gone, I wonder if this will change.

  I settle myself on the old sleeper sofa in the living room, pop the top on the beer, and take a long drink. The box sits beside me. I finish the beer and then one more before opening the box again, telling myself I don’t want to risk spilling anything on its contents.

  A paper clip holds yellowed newspaper together. On top is the engagement announcement from the Mabry Review for Jackie and me. The next is from the First Baptist newsletter about my going off to the University of Virginia. Carter had circled my name and written my brother next to it. He’d never shown me any of these.

  It takes the rest of the afternoon to read through all of them, the light waning until the bedroom lamp is required. There are torn-out sections from Captain Marvel comic books, an article from the Tolliver paper on a local boy who made it to the NBA, and a torn-out page from The Adventures of Huckle­berry Finn, when Jim and Huck begin their adventure on the raft. The passage is about how they fished and talked, took swims to stay awake, and drifted down the river looking up at the night sky.

  “Nothing ever happened to us at all—that night, nor the next, nor the next.”

  And nothing ever happened to us at all . . . How I wish that were true.

  I place the papers carefully back in the box and put a rubber band around it so nothing will fall out.

  After loading up the rental car, I step back inside once more. I stand there, letting the years come back—playing blackjack at the kitchen table; Carter’s voice carrying through the rooms as he butchered “Blueberry Hill” in the shower; watching him sleep on the sofa the first night we moved in, one arm thrown across his eyes, the tension finally eased from his face.

  The crunch of tires over gravel comes from the side driveway. Jackie walks through the front door, dressed in tight jeans and a sweatshirt with World’s Greatest Mom written across the backdrop of a rainbow. The girls and I picked it out at the Corinth Walmart two years ago as a Mother’s Day present.

  “You’re leaving us.” It is an accusation.

  She walks through the empty rooms.

  “It’s not a home, Jackie. Not anymore.”

  She sits on the sofa, resting her head back against the wall. I watch her close her eyes for moment. “You made it a home for Carter.”

  I’m not sure why she is here tonight. We each take a beer from the refrigerator. After opening hers, she takes a long drink.

  “Honora got her period this morning,” she says.

  Our child will not become the third generation of Cooper girls to get knocked up in high school.

  “She got lucky,” I say.

  “She deserves a little luck, don’t you think?” She fingers an old throw pillow she must have bought years ago. “Honora will go with you. But only until the summer. She’s not happy about it. She doesn’t want to leave her friends here, but she under­stands, at least a little, that she could be better off in Virginia right now.”

  Relief sweeps through me.

  “I’m losing both of you,” Jackie says.

  I sit next to her, our bodies only inches apart. “You’ll bring Louisa to come see us. It’s only for a few months, okay? And it’s not Mars. Only Virginia.”

  Jackie jerks herself off the couch, heading straight for the door. I go after her, putting my hand against the door so she can’t open it.

  “Jackie.” My voice is low, shaky. “Please.”

  Anger turns the color of her eyes a cool blue. “You’re lying. You don’t plan to be in Bailey for a few months. You want to live there. Can’t you see how much Louisa needs you, too? How much she loves you in spite of everything? Everything.”

  The room presses in on me, making the images come—one after the other, the click-click-click of a camera. The sky wide and blue overhead. The touch of warm October sun on my face. Swim with me, Zeke, Carter says.

  Jackie’s right fist connects with my shoulder, knocking me off balance. “You son of a bitch. Don’t you go off into that shut-down world of yours where nobody can go.”

  She comes at me with both hands now, hitting wherever she can. “I swear, Ezekiel, if you don’t talk to me, I’ll kill you.” Her breath is hot against my face. She is crying.

  I hold Jackie’s arms against her body. I tell her to stop and I’ll talk. Tell her whatever she wants. She goes still.

  “Promise?”

  We back away from each other, both of us breathing heavily.

  “You were thinking about your brother, weren’t you? You always get that look on your face when you remember him. Tell me what happened the day Carter died.”

  It’s a challenge thrown up between us, an old one at that.

  “I’ve told you a hundred times before.”

  “Not the whole story. Ever.”

  “Yes.”

  This is not true. The version I have told everyone from Jackie to my family to the police was part of what happened. But the whole truth of that day has been locked up, playing on a constant loop of memory. Ten years is a long time to keep silent. Inside it feels like a thousand.

  All that’s left is the telling. And when the story’s out, what will remain? Could it possibly be less than what I have now?

  “Zeke. You’re doing it again.”

  I begin before I can think. “We were supposed to be fixing the roof before the winter rains came. You’d taken the girls into Mabry to go shopping. As soon as you left, I turned to Carter and said, ‘Let’s go fishing.’ The sun was out. Not a cloud in the whole sky. By nine thirty, our lines were launched. I’d never seen Chickasaw Lake look prettier—the water shining so clear you could see straight through to the rocks on the red mud bottom.”

  Jackie sinks to the floor against the wall, her eyes holding mine.

  “We caught five bass before lunch. Took a break to eat bologna and cheese sandwiches. Almost finished a six-pack. We leaned back to rest. The sun warming our faces. That’s when Carter asked me to sing our song, Mother’s lullaby for us. Something in his tone felt funny.”

  Moist tracks run down Jackie’s face. She loved him, too. My throat begins to close up.

  “I cracked open an e
ye and looked over at him. The scars had healed over, leaving thick lines down his forehead, right eye, and cheek. And while Carter hated the way they made him look—scary, like a monster, he said—I was thankful, in part, for them. They reminded me every day of why I was there, watching over him.”

  The living room has gone dark and neither of us moves to turn on a light. The small electric heater kicks on, humming near the sofa. Its warmth doesn’t reach me.

  “What was the lullaby, Zeke? What did he want to hear?”

  “You don’t remember it?”

  She shakes her head.

  “When Carter asked me to sing it that day, I said no at first. But I knew he only wanted to hear it when he was feeling sad or afraid or even just tired. I figured what the hell? The beer buzz and the fishing put me in a good mood. So I sang it—‘Good night, my sons, the day is done, wait only for angels to carry your dreams.’ I forgot the last line. And then it drifted back up through my memory and it was like I could see the words hanging in the air before me—‘Let sleep begin, so we may meet again.’

  “The singing put a smile on Carter’s face. He loved that song, really loved it. When I looked over at him, he just shook his head and said something like You’re all right, Zeke. But he wasn’t done making requests. He got all fired up about going for a swim. Remember how someone floated a small wooden platform in the middle of the lake? Carter wanted me to race him to it, and he stripped down to his boxer shorts before I could tell him no. When I wouldn’t budge, he came up behind me, ­needled me in the back with one of his scratchy toenails.”

  Jackie laughs. “All the stubbornness of your mother and you rolled into one man.”

  “Then I got mad. ‘Knock it off,’ I said, swatting his foot, ‘I’ll go in the water in a minute. Just give me a minute, for Christ’s sake.’ All he wanted was for me to go swimming with him, Jackie. That’s it. But I was too damn lazy. When I was sure he had gone into the water, I rolled over and closed my eyes. Twenty minutes must have passed, maybe thirty, when a woodpecker knocking in a pine tree woke me up. Three red-winged blackbirds circled the water in the middle of the lake. I said, ‘Carter, look at those blackbirds.’ No answer. I sat up. He was gone.”

  There is a welling inside me and I give in to it, letting the cries come, a soft reminder of the ones that echoed around the lake all those years ago.

  “I knew he wasn’t feeling right, but I didn’t do anything. He was a good swimmer, Jackie. How could he have drowned?”

  The warmth of Jackie’s arms comes around me. She whispers in my ear, shushing me, telling me it wasn’t my fault.

  “It was an accident. You couldn’t have saved him.”

  A brother should have, I think. It’s all I have been thinking for ten years.

  She raises my chin so our eyes meet. “He loved you so much. Everything’s gotten so messed up, hasn’t it?”

  The taste of salt comes strong on my tongue. Her lips are soft beneath mine. She pulls me to the couch, trails kisses down my neck, my chest, my stomach. I run my hands under her sweatshirt. The warm feel of her skin yielding beneath my fingers crowds out everything else.

  The loving is sweet and rough and fast and slow until we are both sweating and wasted and filled.

  The room is dark and cold. I pull a blanket over us. Jackie sleeps against my side, her face relaxed. I don’t care that Curtis will be wondering where his wife is.

  Forty

  1985

  When our plane takes off from Memphis, I watch the Mississippi River disappear out the window until it looks like a curving line meandering through a child’s model town. The sun is bright and shining, streaming through the clouds as we slice through them. The flight attendant comes to take our drink order. Honora asks for a rum and coke.

  “Honora.” It is a warning.

  “Jesus, Dad, I’m kidding.” She raises her voice. “Can’t take a joke anymore?”

  Heads turn our way and I smile back at them, rolling my eyes. Though I suspect Honora is secretly relieved not to have to face the asshole boyfriend, she is not going peaceably. This I can handle. I think.

  Cousin Georgia picks us up in Charlottesville. She is dressed in jeans with creases ironed in them and a pink turtleneck.

  “That must be Glinda the Good Georgia.”

  “Shut up, Honora, and be nice.”

  Georgia hugs me long and close. “What a couple of weeks it’s been for you,” she says. “And welcome, Honora. We’ve heard a lot about you.”

  My daughter shoots me a questioning look, as though she suspects that I spilled the ugly details of why she’s here. I didn’t. Only said she’d had a rough semester and needed a break from Mabry High.

  Georgia warns me on the drive how Osborne has gone downhill since I left two weeks ago. He doesn’t want to leave their room much anymore. Takes all his meals there. The worry weighs heavily in her voice. When I ask if she’s taken him to the doctor, she shrugs.

  “Won’t go. I can’t force him. He knows this disease is going to get him, and he doesn’t know what to do with himself until it does, so he’s scared.”

  After several failed attempts to engage Honora in conversation, Georgia gives up. Honora clamps headphones over her ears and glares out the window, the muffled, high-pitched squeals of an electric guitar filling the car.

  Cousin Georgia clears her throat, and the small hands guiding the steering wheel clench and unclench. She begins talking. Talks all the way to the farm, barely taking a breath, holding up her hand when I try to respond.

  “Let me get this out, Ezekiel. I know you’ve got a lot on your mind right now, but Osborne and I have a proposal. When you came to stay with us all those years ago, you became like a son, and now, with you being back, it feels right for you to be at the farm. We’d like to have our lawyer adjust the estate plans from the farm being shared equally between our nephews and nieces to having you become the sole heir. You’d also get Oz’s share of the Lacey family properties. That’s not a lot of money up front, but depending on when they’re sold, it could go a long way toward keeping this place running. When we die, if the farming life doesn’t suit you, you could always sell the property, though it pains me to think of it not being in the hands of a Cooper or a Lacey. In return, I’d like you to help us manage the farm. We’d pay you a manager’s salary. Osborne can show you all the things you need to know on the financial and farming side, and I can teach you everything else. We could renovate the guesthouse for you or you could have your own floor in the main house.”

  Georgia finishes as the car comes to a stop in the driveway. She turns off the engine and settles back against the seat. The proposal stuns me. From the little I know about farm finances, a good year means you make enough to pay the property taxes and break even. Is that the life I want? My father failed at making a living off a farm. But he didn’t have the Lacey money behind him to cover the lean years. Cousin Georgia and Osborne have a beautiful if slightly decrepit house and a piece of land any man would be proud to stand on. The offer hangs between us, shimmering and golden.

  “Promise me you’ll think on it?” Georgia asks, patting my arm. “Don’t answer now.”

  Bailey High School sits three miles from Lacey Farms. The main brick building is a single story, easily half the size of Mabry High. I flinch when the school secretary cheerfully announces that they haven’t had a new girl in class for two years.

  My daughter wears jeans with one ripped knee and a black T-shirt with Duran Duran on it. As we stand outside the school office, she glances around the empty hallway.

  “So, your first class is English. The secretary said that’s the second door on the left down there.”

  Honora doesn’t move. Neither of us has ever been the new kid in school. She scuffs the toe of a purple high-top against the floor. Should I have made a clothing recommendation for this
day? Like a skirt or something? Will all the Bailey girls be wearing fancy dresses?

  A boy dressed in jeans and a pink polo shirt makes his way out of the office, openly staring at Honora. She glares back.

  “You catch bus number nine home, okay?” I say. “I’ll be waiting for you. Would you rather I pick you up? First day and all. Hey, what about I just pick you up?”

  “It’s okay. I’ll take the bus. See you later.”

  She heads to the classroom, her small form receding down the rows of silver lockers that seems to stretch on for miles. I catch up to her.

  “You’re going to be great.” I hug her, which is probably mortifying for a fifteen-year-old on school premises, but I do it anyway. “I love you.”

  Her expression doesn’t change. She slips into the classroom and is gone.

  The drive back down Tall Oaks Road to Elle’s house takes ten minutes. Elle and I spoke on the phone this morning and the conversation felt awkward, distant. Has my absence finished what we had barely begun? At the sound of the truck, she steps out on the front porch. She smiles and my hopes lift. I am on the steps kissing her before we say hello. Her hands find their way around my neck and mine settle on the curve of her waist. The warm taste of coffee is in her mouth. The kiss does not stop until she pulls back.

  “Hey,” she says.

  “Hey.”

  When I move to go inside the house, she suggests we stay on the porch. “I want to catch up talking first, okay?”

  “Right.” There are two chairs and we position them to face each other. Her eyes are a clear green this morning, with a shiny kind of happiness. I keep a hand on her knee while relaying the basic details of Mother’s death and Honora’s situation.

  “Was it hard for Jackie to let Honora come out here with you?” Elle asks. “She must miss her.”

  “We agreed it was the best thing.” My hand travels up Elle’s jeans, massaging the leg muscles as it goes.