“Why did you not get Katie to check on it for you?” Nathan asked. “Or me, for that matter.”
“Because there may be something in there, about your family, that would drive that wedge even further between the two of you. It's only natural for families to take sides, and you two are no different. Wait until we know the strength of your marriage, and the rest is up to Katie.”
“Buck Hennessy will want to go in with us,” Jerod said. “You know how he can be. We can't allow it because of his handicap and his bad heart.”
“He may raise a ruckus. If you tell him he can't do something, he'll kill himself trying to prove you wrong. I have to look out for him. He's like a father, brother and friend. He gave me my first job, encouraged me, and gave me a scolding when I needed it. He saved my life a couple of times as well. I love the man. Let me handle him.”
“Now that all is settled, we have a funeral to attend,” Nathan said. “Let's go, shall we?”
Already waiting at the McCann family cemetery were Annie, Katie and the boys, Nathan's parents Travis and Sarah, Mr. Clancy, Snake Eye, Buck, and Granny Minna who seemed at peace. Somewhere in her brain, was the picture of Cyrus as she had known him in the Civil War days—but most of that time had been erased from her memory. It was indeed a good thing.
The preacher from Morgans Bluff Full Gospel Church read from the bible, as he had little personal history to recite for a man already dead before he was born. Crow, Jesse, and Nathan lowered the casket into the open grave, and Thomas shoveled the soil over his father's remains. To finalize the ceremony, Jerod stood before the grave in full Shaman regalia and extended his arms to the sky. “Great One, we offer up the spirit of Cyrus McCann to his final resting place, as you see fit. May his lost and restless spirit rest in peace for eternity.”
Buck hollered “Amen!”, and no one batted an eye.
Travis Bonney came over to Jesse and Annie in an effort to clear the air and bury the past: “I've thought that, under the circumstances, I might have Grandfather Jonathan exhumed and placed on our own grounds. He doesn't really belong here and never did.”
“It makes little difference to my family,” Jesse replied. “After all, this cemetery is on land now owned by Nathan. I understand he had been fond of the man.”
“My grandfather could be loyal and loving to his own flesh and blood, but there was a twist deep inside that could turn without notice—usually happened when he didn’t get his way. Some men have to control everything around them, and it was easy to control a little toddler such as Nate. Had he lived longer, I assure you he and my boy would have butted heads. Nate is strong willed too, but I don't believe he has the same obsession for total power over others.”
“We're counting on that,” Jesse said. “Let us be cordial for the sake of Nathan and Kathryn. A bitter history is buried here today.”
So ended a funeral without mourners, except for one: Thomas Monet, who had been cheated of a life with his father. It was as if everyone else was there as honor guard for a man's crossing over. Afterward, they walked among the headstones and placed flowers on all the graves, even Lucinda's. Buck knelt and laid gardenias on Charlotte and Baby Hennessy’s stone angel. Watching the touching gesture, Katie was suddenly reminded of that inexplicable fragrance she had encountered more than once. “She wore 'Gardenia' perfume, didn't she?”
Buck wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “It was her favorite. I picked cotton 'til my fingers bled, just to buy her a little bottle of it. They had to special order it at the Mercantile.”
They turned from the grave-sites at the sound of Jerod Morgan's powerful voice: “I'll ask everyone to leave now, except for Jesse. He and I have a sacred duty to perform inside the house. When we have finished, my granddaughter and her husband will be able to live in their home, if they so choose. Two families are joined in their union, and both are connected to this ground beneath our feet, and the house behind us.”
The purification rites were ready to begin.
Jesse would never forget that he and Buck argued that day. The old logger would not leave, and Jesse had to actually pull him toward the Lizzy, while Buck flailed about kicking his leg and letting loose a stream of obscenities. As Jesse watched him drive away, a thought came to him. I am the steward of my family, and this man is, in the truest sense, my family. I will protect him.
Meanwhile, Nathan paid Crow a visit in the carriage house and found him in a foul mood. “That half blood Shaman has no rights poking around in that house performing black magic. Jonathan wouldn’t like it, and I don't like it.”
Nathan grabbed Crow by the arm. “When will you get it through your head that Jonathan is dead. I've met the conditions of the will—details of which no one needs to know. This place is mine! Now give me your key to the attic and to the house. You can't come in, until they're finished with their silly little ceremony. Did you take care of the situation in the attic?”
“Yes, she's out in time, but she didn't go easy. She's in one of the old cabins for the time being, until we can convince her to go elsewhere. But she wants back in the house. She says its her house and always will be. I'll bet the McCann kid ran his mouth. He was hiding up there the other day and may have seen or heard her.”
“I hope you're wrong about that! Listen to me. I want a permanent resolution to this problem, before I bring my wife here to live. I'm not giving Katie up over your screw-up. I never want her to know.”
Everyone else was on their way and glad of it. They rushed away in coupes, touring cars and wagons, stirring up plumes of dust behind them. Annie gathered the boys and Katie, and was ready to leave, when Tobi begged her to let him ride home with his daddy. Annie thought for a moment, wondering whether to trust him just this once. “Only on one condition,” she said. “Stay inside the truck and out of the way, until they've finished. Promise not to go in the house. I know Grandpa Jerod and Daddy would protect you, but they can't have the distraction. Why do you feel such an urgent need to do this?”
“Just man time, Mama,” he lied.
Annie sighed. “I will trust you this one time, but stay inside the truck.”
She left, secure in the knowledge that if he disobeyed, his father and grandfather would be there for him. She had to let go, because her son was already out of her control at an early age. He had been on his own track since birth.
Tobi knew what he had to do, and he said it to himself to bolster his resolve. Something's in the attic. I've got to warn Daddy and Grandpa...even if I get in trouble for being where I shouldn't have been. When he could no longer see anyone down the road, he got out of the truck and began walking toward the house.
Jesse and Jerod were inside and ready to do battle with the unknown. They opened the windows, and Jerod set two clay pots in the middle of the front room. He filled them with sage, and set the sage aflame. When the leaves burned down to a smolder, they fanned the smoke, carrying the pots from room to room. Then, a frigid blast of air filled the house, gathering into a misty fog that floated above the floor. With a great Swoosh! it flew out through the windows, leaving behind a crackling of electrical current and the scent of gardenias.
“What in the world was that?” Jesse asked.
“What outside this world...to be exact,” Jerod answered.
Then they heard a rustling sound above them. They looked up to see a woman standing and watching them from the top of the stairs. As they started up the stairs, she flashed across the hallway and disappeared. They checked each bedroom and found nothing.
Jerod pointed to the attic. “There's something up there. Someone's been living up there.”
“And I suppose this is one of those 'restless spirits' you talk about?”
“No. You witnessed that phenomenon downstairs. I'm talking about a real flesh and blood person.”
Jesse grabbed a kerosene lantern form the hallway, flung the attic door open, and peered around the interior. At the back of the space was an iron bedstead and mattress, a table piled wi
th reading material, feminine clothing hanging in the corner, and a chamber pot. The light from the lantern cast their shadows on the wall. Then there were three. Jesse swung the light toward the shadow to reveal an elderly woman dressed in a well worn ivory bridal gown from the last century. If the more modern clothing in the attic belonged to this woman, it seemed strange that she would choose such a garment. On her face was a look of cold, quiet defiance. “Get out of my house,” she said.
“Who are you? Lucinda? No that can't be. My Lord. We thought you were...”
“Dead?”
“This is insanity. Jonathan Bonney went so far as to erect your headstone. Why?”
“He knew I wanted to bring it all out and be done with it. He couldn't have that. I never wanted to live with murder hanging over my head. He mistakenly thought the truth would come from Louis or Phoebe...sooner than it has. He thought my apparent death spared me from prosecution and spared him from implication. I never wanted to deal with people in this county any way. I had no friends. No family. All I had was him. I finally agreed to remain quietly dead on one condition—that, after Jonathan's death, I be allowed to stay in the house until Nathan married. Jonathan just knew I'd be dead long before that happened, and so did I! Just to be sure, he made it part of his will when he left the place to Nathan. Now I'm very old but very much alive. What is Nathan to do about me? What an inconvenience I am.”
“Nathan thought he could have it all, I guess,” Jesse said. “He thought he could bring my daughter in here as his wife, and she would go along with the big hoax. Then he saw the error of his ways.”
“He must have underestimated your daughter. So then he panicked and had the caretaker forcibly lock me away the day before his wedding—after I refused to be shipped back East. Cyrus built this house for me, and it is mine, and it will be until the day I die.”
“Well, you for sure can't take the house with you,” Jerod said.
In the garish glow of the lantern, her eyes darkened and her mouth curled into a smirk. “Don't be so sure,” she replied.
***
Worried and irritated, Buck Hennessy chugged over Deadman's bridge, cursing to himself. Just as he got past the bridge, he threw on the brakes and came to a screeching stop. In the misty twilight, he saw an indistinguishable form in the middle of the road. Buck shouted a profanity.
“Don’t swear, Colin.”
“Charlotte?”
A nebulous form, wavering and transparent, blocked his way. It morphed into the image of his beloved. He was not afraid.
“My sweet angel, don’t leave me behind this time. Take me with you.” Buck tried to open the door and go to her but tumbled out onto the road instead. He floundered on hands and knees, until at last, he pulled himself up to lean on the hood.
In the glow of headlights, he could see her face clearly. “See what a fool I am, Charlotte? I forgot for a moment that I am a one-legged cripple. You never had to see me like this. I'm a broken man, a very old man.”
“You will always be young, and handsome, and whole.”
“Is that the promise of Heaven?”
“It's more the fulfillment of love.”
“Tell me, sweet Charlotte. Was it your restless spirit inside the house?”
“Sometimes it was I, but I'm on my journey now. Tonight true and powerful Native blood came into the house and cleared my path. I think I can finally find my way. ”
“Please take me with you,” he repeated.
“Not quite yet. You have one thing left to do. Go now. Go back to Diablo Road. Tobias McCann will need you.” It was her last words before she disappeared.
Buck pulled himself along from the hood to the door and dragged himself up with the steering wheel. He prayed one minute and cussed the next, but he did what she asked—one last time. He turned that old Lizzy around. When he pulled up to the drive, his tired old heart hammered at what he saw. Tobi was struggling to free himself from Elias Crow. The boy was screaming and kicking, as if his life depended on it.
“I warned you about running your mouth,” Crow shouted. “You just had to tell about the little secret in the attic, didn't you? You just had to draw them to it.”
'I did not...but I’m gonna!”
Buck fumbled for his cane and piled out to rush toward the melee with great hopping steps. He swung his cane around with full force, until it came to land in Crow's midsection, before he himself lost balance and toppled to the ground. Crow let go of Tobi and was on Buck, pinning him down, while fumbling for the knife in his back pocket.
“Leave him alone!” Tobi screamed and threw himself on Crow’s back, pounding his small fists into the assailant's back, with as much effect as a gnat attack on a grizzly.
“Run to the truck, Tobi. Run now!” Buck hollered.
The boy had never been good at following orders. “No, I'm going to get Daddy!”
Just as Crow jumped up and raised Buck's cane toward Tobi's head, a huge she-wolf leaped from the haze. She sprang to Crow's throat with fangs coming to rest one half inch from his jugular. The big gray wolf shook him like a worn out dust rag. It was Elias Crow's turn to scream for help.
Jesse heard and was there in a heartbeat. He shooed Tobi to the truck and did not need to tell the boy twice.
“Tahsha! Enough! I have him,” Jesse shouted.
The Great Animal Spirit Guide obeyed.
“It's been a long time, but Granny never doubted that you'd return.”
For one fleeting moment, Tahsha looked into Jesse's eyes, and then she disappeared into the fog, which dissipated to reveal a full moon and brilliant stars. Yet Jesse had no time to revel in the beauty of the night or the return of the lone wolf. Crow was stumbling up from the ground, howling with rage. Jesse wrestled him down and grasped his hands behind his back, while, to his great relief, Jerod came to his aid with a round of rope.
“Here, use this,” Jerod said. “Tie his hands, and tether him to that tree. He's lucky to be alive, though he doesn't deserve to be. Let me help you!”
The two men struggled with their captive and finally restrained him until the sheriff could arrive. Knowing that his son was now safe, Jesse quickly turned his attention to Buck. “He looks bad off,” he said to Jerod. “Help me get him in my truck and get him to the hospital.”
“Let me go, Jesse,” Buck said in a hoarse voice barely more than a whisper. “It's my heart. It's burned out. I won't make it to town any way.”
“You can't leave us Buck,” Jesse said. “We need you.”
With one last ounce of strength, Buck grabbed hold of Jesse's shirt, as if a part of him wanted desperately to stay. Yet his eyes were focused on the constellation of Perseus, the Hero, directly above him, and then his sight shifted to the brightest star in the sky. “Charlotte’s come for me. I see her at the gate holding my baby boy. I finally see his face. Those gates are opening for me, Jesse. Ain’t no Union soldiers barring my way. Don't grieve for me, you hear me, Jesse?”
Colin “Buck” Hennessy went to be with his other-world family that night. He was free of pain and heartache, free of memories of death and war, free of his limitations. Still, he would be there with his earthly family in a thousand ways. After all, he had always hoped to end up as a guardian angel—a two legged one, that is.
Even as grief wracked Jesse's body, he turned at the sound of an explosion. From the attic rose a mass of flames that lit up the sky, and he knew immediately what had happened. Lucinda had thrown the kerosene lamp and then the match. She had fulfilled her own prophesy. She said she could never leave the house, and as it tuned out, she was right.
Within less than an hour, the House on Diablo Road had become a pile of rubble from which emanated a mystifying, misty blue haze. All the energy within the house had been released—both the happy days before the Civil War and the misery that followed. Amidst the ashes they found Lucinda's remains. Now she would, in truth, fill that empty grave ready for her arrival. There was one other stunning find in the burned debris: an
intact bible, miraculously untouched by the flames, as if some unseen hand had shielded it. Imprinted on the cover was the name Cyrus McCann. Jesse smiled, as he remembered Buck's words: “Cyrus said the papers would be in the one book I 'd never think to open.”
Sure enough, in the middle of the bible, neatly folded, Jesse found Cyrus' last will and testament. He had left the house to Thomas, his only offspring. He made clear that he was ready to divorce Lucinda and set her free. But for the nonpayment of a tax and the rage of a scorned woman, what a different future there would have been.
21: A New Day
April, 1922
Grief has a way of working through stages. At first, there is the deep cut of desolation, and then there is an outrage that wants to assign blame. At last, there is acceptance. So it was with the McCann family, after Buck Hennessy's death. The thought of their old friend's joy at reuniting with his wife and child lifted their spirits; they came to accept death as a part of a master plan. They buried Buck in Cyrus McCann's cemetery, next to his loved ones. Upon that day, the mourners had been many, and the mourning had been real.
Winter had finally ended, and the fields were filled with wildflowers and the trees were that tint of pastel green before the heat of summer deepens their color. Along the fence-line, the honeysuckle infused the air with its fragrance, and the deer feasted on the tender new shoots of new grass. On such a balmy Saturday, the McCann family made good use of the sunshine an had brunch on the front porch.
Annie had spread a cloth over the wicker table, upon which she set a glass of bluebonnets, because her daughter loved them. Katie was still with them, even though Nathan was trying to reconcile and had even begun construction on a new house for her, there on the old plantation site. However grand and modern the house he built, it would never have the same effect upon him, as the one that Lucinda had burned to the ground. That was indeed a good thing.
House on Diablo Road: Resurrection Day (The McCann Family Saga Book 3) Page 14