by Lisa Howorth
On the landing she stopped to look outside at the night. The windows were smeary; for some reason William had to put his cruddy hands on any window he looked out of, as if he had eyes on his palms. She’d call the Window King tomorrow about doing all the windows; spring needed to be seen. Where was the screen? She hoped William hadn’t been on the roof again; maybe Eliza had been laying out on warm days already, soaking up ultraviolet rays that would activate Uncle Junior’s melanoma that lurked in her DNA. Mary Byrd cranked open the big casement window to get a fix of night air and see the moon more clearly. It was a silver crescent against a deep blue, nearly black, sky. It looked like one of William’s nail clippings that had fallen on his navy flannel comforter. William’s Braves jacket hung on the newel post and Mary Byrd put it on, wanting to step out onto the roof.
The night air was colder than she’d thought, or she’d gotten too warm in William’s stuffy little lair. She was glad for the jacket; it smelled of William, and, oddly, of her lavender. Charles had gotten it big for him to grow into. Shoving her hands into the pockets, she felt a familiar shape she couldn’t for a split second identify. Goddamn it—a lighter. That little asshole, she thought. But maybe it was Evagreen’s. She might be the one smoking on the roof. Or Eliza? Either smoking, or trying to frame William for fooling around with a lighter. Oh, whatever. Some things will never be known, all right. She let the aggravation fall away. Playing with fire seemed such an innocent transgression now, an old-school crime from her own childhood, although a dangerous one right up there with crossing without looking both ways. She couldn’t even remember saying those things to Eliza and William, who hardly walked anywhere and were way more interested in Game Boys than fires, but surely she had. She wondered what had happened to poor Eliot Nelson, just another boy, really. She could have asked Stith, but he wouldn’t have been right to tell her; it wasn’t her business.
A huge limb lay on the roof. Charles could deal with it whenever. Teever couldn’t because of his foot. She wondered where he was spending the night. He wouldn’t stay with them and had wanted her to drop him near the cemetery, for some reason. She had refused and had taken him to the JFC, where he could get a ride somewhere. He was going straight to the doctor in the morning, if she could find him. She sat down on the old tin with her legs up against her chest, not caring if she got roof crud on her tweed skirt. Off in the woods beyond their yard an owl hooted—hoohoohoo hoo hoo—and she was glad to hear it. Teever said the owls and foxes were all gone because of the new condos. She hoped she might hear a mourning dove, her favorite bird call, or actually the only one other than owls she recognized. In Richmond, their sad song was a summer sound, but they didn’t all migrate in Mississippi and sometimes she did hear one on a winter evening, like a lonely Indian flute off low in the trees. It was too early for the night birds—what were they? Whippoorwills? Her mom would know; she’d call her in the morning. They were so weird, singing in the dead of night. It was nice to hear them if you were up late, nursing a baby or something, but if you were having trouble sleeping you wanted to kill them.
A foot or two away lay the screen, and in the old, rusted gutter were some butts—Salems, and a couple Camel Lights. One of the Salems was only partly smoked, so she picked it up and lit it, surprised that the damp nub lit. She’d actually always like menthols. It tasted great. Gazing down at the backyard, Mary Byrd realized Charles must have hauled most of the big downed limbs out to the street; the yard looked pretty okay from what she could see. They’d lost a cedar; its torn flesh showed edible pink in the porch light. There’d probably been ten million chain saws going all over town since the storm. Her perennial bed, a mess of dead stalks she should have cleaned out forever ago, lay almost directly below her and was palely illuminated, brown from the hard freeze. Mr. Yeti, the wild boy, was waiting in the bed, hoping someone would appear at the back door with one last late-night snack before he retreated to the woods. Or wherever he spent his nights. Around the raggedy yellow cat, in front of the dead leaves and stalks, Mary Byrd could just make out the strappy narcissus and the blue-green tips of the daffodils barely emerging. Cold and bleak as it was now, spring was only a few weeks off. It could be a hard season for her; its memories had always made her blue and anxious.
The big quince bushes at the back of the yard would soon be an almost imagined mist of palest salmon. Every year after she cleared away all the Christmas crap, she’d cut quince branches and bring them inside to force. The bright little flowers seemed to buck everyone up as a reminder that the gaudy excesses of December were past, and the dreariness of January and February would soon be, too. She used to force paperwhites, but Eliza, who had inherited a hot bird-dog nose like her mother’s and grandmother’s, complained that they smelled like cat shit. She was right, Mary Byrd had to admit.
Then before much longer she could have cut flowers in the house again, and the bittersweet, fragrant spring would unfold. She loved the way certain flowers bloomed in tandem. Mann said it was as if God were an old queen, the pairings all spring were so perfectly matched: the Scrambled Egg daffodils and spunky spiderwort, the leggy spirea and forsythia that looked so good in Evelyn’s old bronze urn, then iris and azalea. She loved the old flags—Lucy had given her some rhizomes from her grandmother’s Louisiana garden—and the George Taber azaleas with their sweet fragrance like cotton candy. Then came the assault of the spicy chinaberry—now she’d have her own—and cummy privet, their killer, sexy perfumes making up for their pale, uninteresting blossoms. The best duo of all, the one that for Mary Byrd signaled the best of spring and summer, was the gold-and-cream honeysuckle and the flat, deep pink Choctaw roses. If she could beat the damn deer to them, she’d cut armloads of roses and honeysuckle for the house, and the scent of the honeysuckle was sometimes so strong in the night that it would wake her up and fill her with a confusion of happiness, sadness, and longing. Who knew for what. The rest of the summer would be too hot for anything but zinnias, and even those had to be tended to make it. After August, she could always count on periwinkle ageratum and watermelon-colored spider lilies, a sassy antidote to the dry Septembers.
Stubbing out the butt, Mary Byrd opened Mississippi Trees. There was enough light from the landing for her to read. She looked up “Chinaberry, Melia azedarach L.” Under “Habitat,” she read that the trees came originally from the Himalayas. That was cool. As for “Timber Value,” the wood had been used for auto bodies, musical instruments, matches, tool handles, and cabinetry, and the seeds had been used for rosaries. Rosaries? She remembered the little seed-pearl rosary that Nonna had given her when she was a little girl; she wished she still had it. Chinaberry extract had been used long ago to cure roundworms and had anti-viral and anticancer properties. She was sure that William Byrd hadn’t mentioned chinaberries in his diaries, but maybe they hadn’t yet been brought to the colonies in the early eighteenth century. Wondering if Evagreen knew all these things about her little gift, Mary Byrd read on to “Propagation.” Chinaberries could be grown by seed or cuttings, were tolerant of drought but not shade, and grew rapidly. Perfect. Mary Byrd read down to where in bold-faced red letters it said:
WARNING: Classified by the Exotic Pest Plant Council as a Category 1 species that invades and disrupts natural plant communities in all states. Considered as an invasive pest. All parts of the Chinaberry are poisonous. Eating as few as 6 berries can result in death. Songbirds that eat too many seeds have been known to become paralyzed.
She stared at the warning for a minute, thinking. Then, she said out loud, “ Evagreen! Really?” Mary Byrd grinned like the Cheshire Cat in the cold, clear night. She’d give the Chinaberry prime real estate, and would plant them where the cedar had stood.
She sat a few minutes more, looking out over the town and toward the university on its hill. Closer, she could see the rude, overkill light of the Chevron and the colored neons of the Sonic. All the electricity seemed to be back on again, but many of the silhouetted trees looked ragged and torn, wi
th large limbs dangling like badly broken arms. It was late, and a Wednesday, so there weren’t a lot of headlights, or houses lit up. Students and working people had gone to bed, resting up for the morning’s eight-o’clock classes and bank openings and sidewalk sweepings and all the regular weekday business of the little—not so little anymore—town. Mary Byrd liked to think about everyone sleeping, stacked up in beds in every house on every street, in every town in Mississippi, in every state across the country. Everyone checking out horizontally for a few hours’ respite from the exhausting, battering, busy business of living.
Something small but desperate suddenly screamed and abruptly went silent. Goddamn it—probably the owl, or Irene or Iggy with a rabbit. Old Mr. Yeti looked toward the sound but was unmoved; he’d given up the hunting life for his regularly delivered meals at the back door. The darling homeboy kitties killed for sport, the Tonton Macoutes of the backyard.
Out there, she knew, at this moment, maybe even in this town, things were happening to children; they were crying, alone, scared, in pain or enduring silently, rendered not-children by one thing or another. She knew that a husband was probably beating a wife, or a wife was thinking of killing a husband, and if it didn’t happen tonight, it would some other night. Everyone had reasons, secret or unconscious, or plotted and deliberate. The world was a crazy, round place. There weren’t any neat, even lines to make things clear, or corners to hide in. It was precious and horrible, swollen and wobbly with craziness, whirling along in spite of death, and everybody just had to hang on for dear life, hoping the ride wouldn’t be too centrifugal, or too bumpy, or more than one could stand. It was exactly like Mr. Natural used to say in Zap: “The whole universe is insane.” It had been a week of dreadful revelation, as if she had been in Revelation. Mary Byrd was tired and wanted to check out horizontally herself. Stepping back through the window, she hung the Braves jacket back on the post, but did not replace the lighter.
Downstairs, she put back the tree book and made her rounds, putting dishes in the dishwasher, turning off the five hundred lights that had been left on, herding Puppy Sal and the Pounder into the kitchen for the night. She passed William Byrd’s portrait and the little hieroglyphic diary page on the wall, and stopped before it.
Was life better then or is it better now? she wondered. So much had been simpler then, at least for white people, but they had worked their asses off, even if they did have slaves, their terrible non-secret. All the sickness, too. Byrd’s baby son Parke had died of something as simple as a fever when he was only ten months old. My wife had several fits of tears for our son but kept within the bounds of submission. Jesus. But life had to go on. Byrd, so much like Charles: straightforward, a control freak in a mostly good way, taking care of bidnes. She thought to honor Byrd, there in the darkened hall. She danced, doing a couple jiggy steps and a pirouette that she thought might resemble an eighteenth-century minuet or a contra dance. She curtsied to him. Then, to honor Stevie, she went all interpretive, bending and contorting, throwing her chin to the ceiling, and drawing her fists to her heart in anguish, and then she Monster Mashed and Monkeyed. For herself and her youth on Cherry Glen Lane, she Swam and Ponied, and for her children she did a little Cabbage Patch and a Bus Driver that would have horrified them. All solo, partnerless dances, she realized. Charles was a good dancer, but he preferred to dance solo, sixties style, too. Did they even remember how to dance with a partner? Did they even want to?
She climbed the stairs once again, so tired, to their bedroom. There was Charles’s long sleeping form, snoring softly. After undressing and slipping on her nightgown, which smelled soothingly of herself, Mary Byrd eased into bed so as not to wake Charles, who probably had a zillion things to do the next day and needed his sleep. She didn’t; just the usual. She closed her eyes, resolving to have good health, good thoughts, and good humor, thanks be to God Almighty. Before falling quickly to sleep she thought, Ha.
Acknowledgments
The thing about teaching old dogs is true. This book was written in longhand on yellow legal pads, and only with the technical assistance of Katie Morrison, Megan Prescott, Elizabeth Dollarhide, my son, Beckett Howorth IV, Lee Durkee, Bernard Kuria at Safari Wine and Spirits/Copytime, and, especially, my daughter Claire Howorth has this book been made presentable to the twenty-first-century world. I thank them for their expertise and extreme patience.
For answering questions, I thank Les Standiford, Detective Joe Matthews, Ollie Carrothers, Andy Howorth, Padgett Powell, Dent May, Tim Junkin, Tucker Carrington, Dolph Overton, Ken Coghlan, Tom Rosser, Dr. T. Starkey, Doug Roberts, Davis Kilman and the Richmond Public Library, and WFS. A heartfelt apology goes out to FB.
I thank Laurie Stirratt, Diana and Gary Fisketjon, Joey Lauren Adams, Anne Rapp, Jim Dees, Claiborne Barksdale, Mike Nizza, Inge Feltrinelli, Janie Wells, Karl Ackerman, and Katie Blount for reading, listening, and laughs, and for keeping my spirits up. I’m grateful for the regular ass-kickings I received from Nicky Dawidoff, Kristina and Richard Ford, Doug Stumpf, and my mom, Claire Del Vecchio Johnston. Sarah Crichton and Alex Glass gave me invaluable attention. I thank Jon Massey and Jeff Dennis for their care and ’vigilance. My husband, Richard, and my daughter Bébé helped me and put up with negligence and smoke. Thanks to the Virginia Historical Society for permission to quote from and take liberties with The Secret Diary of William Byrd, and to the Mississippi Forestry Commission for Mississippi Trees. I hope the late Townes Van Zandt would have been okay with me swiping the title from a great song, and thanks to his son J. T. Van Zandt for his blessing.
I was given wonderful places to write by Darrell Crawford and David McConnell, Thomas Verich, and Debra Winger and Arliss Howard. The MacDowell Colony gave me not only time and space but the confidence to go forward with my writing.
During the writing of this book, we lost some important Mississippi writers who have inspired me in many ways: Larry Brown, Barry Hannah, Willie Morris, Lewis Nordan, and Josephine Haxton (Ellen Douglas). I miss them and am so grateful to have had their friendship. The late Dean Faulkner Wells, who published her fine memoir just before she died at seventy, showed me that it was never too late.
Thanks, of course, to everyone at Bloomsbury USA and UK, especially my editor, Nancy Miller, who kept the faith, and George Gibson, Lea Beresford, Laura Keefe, Nate Knaebel, Patti Ratchford, and Summer Smith; and all at ICM, particularly Dan Kirschen and my badass agent, Lisa Bankoff.
I thank my family—Johnstons, Neumanns, Valenzas, Del Vecchios, Woods, and Howorths—for their love and support. My late sister-in-law, Susan Barksdale Howorth, gave me an iPod (loaded by my nephew Stewart, who won’t let me live down the fact that I excitedly first put the iPod to my ear) for easy access to the music I needed. Special thanks goes to one of my bros in particular, Sam Johnston, without whose pursuit of the facts concerning the still unsolved murder of our brother, Steven Francis Johnston, I could not have written this book.
I hope I haven’t left anyone out. If I have, blame my sketchy memory and not my lack of gratitude. For you all, or at least most of you, my love’s bigger than a Cadillac.
—L.N.H.
A Note on the Author
Lisa Howorth was born in Washington, DC, where her family has lived in the area for four generations. She moved to Oxford, Mississippi, where she married her husband, Richard, and raised their three children. They opened Square Books (named by Publishers Weekly as the 2013 Book Store of the Year) in 1979.
www.squarebooks.com
@SquareBooks
Copyright © 2014 by Lisa Howorth
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Published by ABKCO Music, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents
are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Howorth, Lisa.
Flying shoes : a novel / Lisa Howorth.—First U.S. Edition.
eISBN: 978-1-62040-302-0
1. Women journalist—Fiction 2. Cold cases (Criminal
investigation)—Fiction 3. Sexually abused boys—
Fiction 4. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. I. Title.