“I hate to be the one to tell you, but that’s what we heard. We’re on our way there—y’all wanna go?” Pete said.
Lila and Dovey both looked up at John.
He hesitated but finally nodded and said, “Pete, help me cover the broken window downstairs, and we’ll all go.”
John and Lila followed Pete and Dovey to the churchyard. They walked to the edge of the crowd, which was quiet and subdued—reverent even. The rain had stopped, but the grass was soaked.
Lila slowly surveyed the scene and took account of what was gone—the church where her parents had met at a social; the aisle she had walked down, first to marry her husband and then a second awful time to bury him; the baptistery where her precious son had professed his faith and his choice of a path to follow; the fellowship hall, scene of a million church dinners and homecomings and wedding receptions. John put his hand to her back and steadied her as she swayed a little at the thought of what had just happened.
“Daddy?” Dovey said, taking his hand. She had been walking around the churchyard with Pete, but Lila could understand why she would want her father now. “Will you help us? Will you help us build it back?”
Lila knew how much Dovey was asking. For John, who was so very private, the idea of working shoulder to shoulder with the people of the church—most of whom had never seen him before and were bound to be curious—had to be his idea of hell on earth. He was a man of faith but not of fellowship—not on this scale, anyway.
John looked around at all the church people, some of whom were already casting glances in his direction, then put his arms around his heartbroken daughter. “Whatever you want, my girl.”
Lila finally caught a glimpse of the ring. “John, look!” she exclaimed. She gave Pete a big hug and then reached out to Dovey. “Come here, sweetheart, and let me see it on you.”
“What’s going on over there?” Geneva called, bringing a horde of church ladies with her.
———
As the women swarmed his daughter, John took a few steps back, and Pete walked over to offer his hand to his future father-in-law. John shook it and smiled. “Guess I better get down the road and check on everybody.”
“Can I come with you, in case you need some help?” Pete asked.
“Might be a good idea,” John said, looking at the damage in the direction of the hollow.
Pete handed his keys to Dovey and kissed her on the cheek before climbing into John’s truck. John and Lila settled for a distant wave before he had to go.
Car doors slammed and engines cranked as, one by one, church members left the scene of their shared loss. Walking among them was one who didn’t belong, someone who was there not out of love and sorrow but out of curiosity. And something he heard on those church grounds had stopped him in his tracks. It was a voice—the voice of a tall, dark man standing with that loser McLean and his backwoods trash of a girlfriend. They were too busy whining over this old church—which didn’t even have a pipe organ, by the way—to notice him standing in the background. But he had heard that voice—one he recognized from a night in the woods when he had tried to chase a ghost that didn’t exist with friends he no longer had.
“Where you reckon everybody is?” Pete asked, standing on John’s front porch and looking around. There were no signs of life in the hollow. Once they turned onto Hollow Road, they had found so many trees down that they had to cut their way through with two chainsaws John kept in his truck. They had stopped by Aunt Babe’s on the way in. A single piece of tin had blown off her roof, but the house was standing, and she wasn’t in it. Cyrus wasn’t in the yard either. They could only hope that whatever house she had fled to somehow made it through. All the Picketts’ houses looked undamaged, but the barn would need some repair.
“There’s a cave where we go if the weather’s bad enough,” John said, pulling off the note Delphine had tacked to his front door. He looked worried.
“That big Indian cave?” Pete asked.
John nodded, pointing in the direction of a wide swath of mangled trees. The tornado had apparently hopped over the houses that the Picketts vacated and headed straight for the spot where they had taken shelter.
John oiled and gassed both of his chainsaws and handed one of them and a pair of gloves to Pete. Then the two of them set out for the cave. It wasn’t far from the cluster of houses, but the damage to the woods was so great that their progress was slow. Soon it would be getting dark.
“Why are we stopping?” Pete asked.
John pointed to a pile of debris in front of them. “That’s the cave. But even I wouldn’t have recognized it without that chunk of limestone on top of it.”
Pete looked up to see sort of a warped, upside-down triangle of limestone right on top of the cave. It was peeking up, like an arrow marking the spot, over all the tree limbs mounded up in front of the cave’s mouth. They put on their gloves and started to crank the saws.
“Remember what I showed you, now,” John said. “Be careful how you cut so it doesn’t kick back on you—you can get hurt real quick with one of these things.”
“Yes, sir.”
They got the saws going and started cutting their way in. When they could finally make out the mouth, John motioned for Pete to shut off his saw. “Y’all in there?” he called into the last layer of tree limbs blocking the entrance.
“Help!” Ruby screamed. “They’s a dead body in here! Get me out! Get me out!” Then her voice got muffled and Pete heard Miss Paul’s voice.
“Son?”
“Mama, what’s going on in there?”
“Ruby is overwrought. We are fine. We are safe.”
“But she said—”
“I have everyone away from the cave mouth, so take your time, and mind you be careful with that saw.”
Pete and John cranked their saws again and carefully cleared away a tangle of limbs and the trunk of one small tree that had fallen across the mouth of the cave. At last they could see all the Picketts standing against the back wall of the cave, which was lit with three big kerosene lamps.
Ruby shot out of there. “I’m a-callin’ the sheriff!” she screamed as her husband ran after her.
“Glad to see you, brother,” Adam said.
“Everybody okay?” John asked. His sisters looked serene, like his mother, but his sister-in-law Aleene was clearly shaken. John’s brother Noah had his arms around her.
“We didn’t think till it was too late that you’re the one always brings the chainsaws,” Noah said with a wry grin. “Sure glad to see you. You too, Pete.”
“Anything left?” Adam asked.
“Houses are fine,” John said. “Barn lost part of the roof. Looks like most of the damage was right here. Don’t think it went toward the cotton, but I didn’t get down there yet.”
“We’d best go see to the fields,” Adam said.
The Picketts gathered their supplies and their chicken coops and made their way out of the cave, leaving Pete and John alone with Miss Paul. Pete was dying to know what on earth Ruby was screaming about, but he knew better than to ask. You didn’t ask Miss Paul for information. You waited for her to decide you ought to have it.
“Should Pete stay?” Miss Paul asked.
“Dovey wears his ring now, Mama,” John said.
Miss Paul gave Pete an approving nod. “Well and good,” she said. “Sit down, the both of you.”
The three of them sat down in the folding chairs nearby. “How long before the sheriff gets here?” Miss Paul asked.
“Ruby ain’t callin’ nobody right now,” John said. “All the lines are down. What’s this all about?”
“A skeleton in the back room,” Miss Paul said. “Not an animal.”
Pete was about to explode with questions. Mercifully, John took pity on him and explained, “Cave’s got a back room a lot smaller and tighter than this one. We don’t go in there unless the wind starts throwing things in here—or pulling us out. Probably been in there maybe three times my whole
life. Last time was . . .”
Miss Paul finished for her son. “The fall your father died,” she told Pete. “That was the last time we had need of the cave at all. Our root cellars have been sufficient for all storms since.”
She watched Pete as he put two and two together. “If nobody’s been in here since before Daddy died, then that skeleton could be . . .”
“Yes,” Miss Paul said. “I divine the back room holds Babe’s grandson. Your Isaac.”
Pete could barely breathe as Miss Paul went on. “I’ve not yet divined how this meanness came about, since no one outside knows of our cave.”
“’Scuse me for contradictin’ you, Miss Paul, but that’s not true.” Pete’s mouth was moving and words were coming out, but he wasn’t looking at Miss Paul. He was walking slowly toward the small back room. “Fellow from Auburn mapped all the Indian caves in Alabama,” he said absently with each step. “They’re in a book in the school library—history teacher makes all of us check it out and map the caves around Glory.”
“Who would allow such a thing?” Miss Paul looked mortified, as if Pete had just told her the history teacher required his students to peek in her windows and report her activities. “To meddle so, to trespass—”
“I need to see him, Miss Paul,” Pete said quietly.
“Carry the light.” The old woman motioned toward a kerosene lamp.
“You sure, Pete?” John asked him.
Pete nodded as he picked up the lamp and stepped into the back room of the cave. He didn’t see it at first, there in the pitch-black coolness, but then the lamp cast a glow on something white against the back wall, stretched out like a body at the funeral home. Standing over it, Pete thought it looked like whoever put these bones here had done it with care—like maybe they even stopped to say a few words.
Light from the lamp glinted off something silvery down in the skeleton, about where a person’s belt would be. It was a buckle, rusted and half covered with dirt. And even though he couldn’t see it, Pete was sure that somewhere underneath all that dirt and rust was a cloverleaf. You can call me Lucky, the buckle cried out in the darkness.
Pete felt a strong hand grip his shoulder as he fell to his knees and buried his face in his hands.
Paul poured her son’s coffee and sat down across her kitchen table from him.
He had given Pete the keys to his truck and sent him to check on the women and to let Ned Ballard know what they had found in the cave. That was for the good. They would have time alone.
“You have secrets, John,” she said.
He nodded.
“I divine it—you mean to leave.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He told her about the trips to Birmingham and about the store.
“But, son, to be so indebted—to a Ballard?”
“She doesn’t see it as a debt, Mama. She sees it as sharing something . . . maybe . . . sharing a life.”
Paul sat back in her chair, gaping in shock at her son. How had she missed this? How had she seen no signs? “So that is how it will be.”
“I hope.”
“She is not our kind, John. She has many possessions. What would become of you if you should put your trust in a Ballard only to have her desert you when you cannot keep her in finery?”
“I guess I’ll have to take that chance,” he said.
“Well then.” They were quiet as Paul thought it over. “Did I fail you in some way, son?”
“No, never.”
“But it’s not enough for you, is it—this haven of family. It never has been.”
“I’m sorry.”
Paul no longer saw through a glass darkly. Always she had told herself that John, the son so dear to her heart, was different from her other children because Hinkey had allowed the boy his friendship with Jack McLean. Now she could see, plain as day, that it was the other way around. John had been drawn to Jack McLean because he was so different from all her other children. Her beloved Hinkey had known this, had seen what she was afraid to see.
Paul stared down at her worn and aged hands folded together on the table. She fingered the narrow gold band she still wore, missing her husband more at this moment than she had since the day he died. “You know you can always come home,” she said.
John reached across the table and wrapped his hands around his mother’s. “I’ll always be your son. You’ll always be my mother.”
By the time John returned home, Lila and Pete had dropped Dovey off. Father and daughter sat down together on the couch in their small front room.
John held up her left hand and looked at the ring. “Pretty big day, m’girl.”
Dovey smiled. “I reckon so.”
“You still gonna come by and see your ole daddy after you’re married?”
“Pity anybody that tries to stop me—and you are not old. Want me to bring you anything from the kitchen before I go to bed?”
“No, baby, I’m fine.”
Dovey hugged her father good night. “I’m really happy for you, Daddy,” she said with a big smile.
“What for?”
“Because,” she said as she kissed him on the cheek, “you smell like Chanel No. 5.”
Twenty-seven
MARCH 11, 1968
It was a miracle the bones had survived. Two days after the tornado, Ruby Pickett had badgered her husband into driving her to a pay phone in Childersburg to call the sheriff. Sheriff Harley Flowers was ecstatic. Nothing would please him more than to swoop in and solve a big murder case right about now. That would show old man Ballard, who had galled him no end by throwing money away on a private detective to find some colored boy gone missing for years. Harley knew he could’ve found that boy if he’d really wanted to. He just didn’t think it was worth his time or the county’s money. But what to do about those bones? No FBI, that was for sure. All they ever did was take over and take all the credit.
He sat down at his desk and dialed the number for the vet school at Auburn, where a befuddled department secretary transferred him to Dr. James Lishak, who specialized in large animal medicine.
“You’re telling me you have human remains?” an incredulous Dr. Lishak asked.
“That’s right—human as all get-out,” Harley said.
“But why did you call us? This is a police matter.”
“I am the police,” Harley said.
“Yes, I realize that, but what I meant was, you need to call the FBI. They have forensic specialists who—”
“No, no, no—no FBI. All they do is meddle and boss. I just need me some scientists to take a look at these here bones to see if they’s any clues on ’em. Want me to box ’em up and mail ’em to you? What’s your address?”
“No! Don’t mail them. Don’t touch them. Have you touched them already?”
“Naw, I ain’t touched ’em. Just found out about ’em a few minutes ago.”
“And you say they’re in a cave?” Dr. Lishak asked.
“That’s right.”
“So they’re not in a location where they’re likely to be disturbed?”
“Not unless them Picketts goes in there a-messin’ with ’em.”
“What are picketts?”
“Not what—who,” Harley said, wondering how on earth a man as slow-witted as this Lishak fellow ever got to be a college professor. “The Picketts live back in there near that cave. They the ones what found them bones.”
“I see,” Dr. Lishak said. “Sheriff, I’m glad you called us. Can you give me the exact location of the cave?”
Harley gave him directions.
“Here’s what I need you to do,” Dr. Lishak said. “Have one of your deputies cordon off the cave. Tell him not to go near the skeleton and to make sure no one disturbs the scene. I’ll have a team of scientists there to help you within two hours. Is that clear?”
“Yessir, Dr. Lishak, that there’s crystal clear. I’ll get a coupla m’deputies out there right now. And I thank you for your help.”
———
Dr. Lishak hung up the phone and called out to his department secretary, “Molly, would you please get me the number for the FBI in Birmingham?”
Twenty-eight
MARCH 12, 1968
Land alive, this old lady’s spooky.
Harley sat across from Miss Paul at her kitchen table. Her face was expressionless. He would need to rattle her, get her nervous—that’s how you got ’em talking.
“Do you have any idea what kind of trouble you’re in?” he said in his sternest voice.
“No,” Miss Paul said, staring him down.
“Well, you better believe—it’s some trouble!”
The old lady was silent.
He would have to try again. “What we got us here is a dead body hid on your property. I guess you know what that means.”
“I do not.”
“Well, what it means is—it means it looks bad.”
“And why is that?”
“Dead body on your land, looks like you done the killin’.”
“Your murderers usually hide the people they kill in their own storm shelters?”
“Well, naw, they usually—”
“Mr. Sheriff! Mr. Sheriff! Is that you?” A little firecracker came prissing into the kitchen, wearing gold sandals, tight red shorts, and a red-and-white-flowered halter top. She had that hair teased and that face painted up—whoo-ee, what you talkin’ about!
Harley stood up to greet her.
“I’m the one called you,” she said, smiling and smacking her gum. “I’m the one reported it.”
“Well, now, we sure do thank you, Miss—Miss—?”
“Oh, it’s Mrs.,” she said. “Mrs. Joseph Pickett.” She winked at Harley. “But you can call me Ruby.”
“Why are you here, Ruby?” the old woman asked.
“Just thought I’d come by and see if I could help,” Ruby said, taking a seat and crossing her legs.
“You are not needed,” the old lady said.
“Oh, now, she might be,” Harley said, watching Ruby’s scarlet toenails go up and down as she kicked her sandaled foot. Curvy one, that Ruby.
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