Sarah remembered when she was a little girl and her grandfather, Gregor, and her father closeted themselves in here, surrounded by books, pipes filling the room with smoke redolent of cherry and brimstone. Her mother would bring her in once the sun set, and she kissed each man in turn, their whiskers tickling her nose, the musky smell of the books mixing with their pipes and the Scotch they drank in leaded tumblers. Gregor, brightly dressed in greens contrasting with his red hair, his pot-belly popping over his belt, forked beard jutting wildly, would exclaim over her. He would touch her cheek, or her hair—which had been at least as flaxen as Franny’s—and then grab her in a big bear hug and twirl her around until she felt dizzy, laughing while her father watched, unspeaking. Daddy would often turn back to his book then, while Gregor spoke to her with soft questions and smiles, asking about her days, what she had learned at school. And then he’d cocoon her in his arms, lift her up, and carry her to bed. As her eyelids drooped and breath came heavy, he’d sing, sometimes in French, sometimes in German, sometimes in English, a big silhouette sitting comfortably by her in the dark.
Don’t say a word. Mockingbird. Don’t sing. Diamond ring. Don’t shine. Silver mine. Her Gregor, her Ungle Geeg.
As she grew older, she’d listen at the doors before going in, eavesdropping on their conversations; but she never understood. Gregor had a keen interest in books and spices and language while her father always seemed to want to find something or someone. Her grandfather just seemed lost.
I wish Gregor was here now, to kiss me with his whiskers and take me upstairs and tuck me in.
She sighed and walked over to the dry bar, a small waist-high cabinet inset into the vast wall of books. Inside she found a row of crystal decanters, each bearing a wrought silver tag. Scotch. Bourbon. Port. Brandy. And, alone, a name-brand bottle. Wellings Fine, A Spanish Fortified Wine read the label. It sat on a tray with a delicate stemmed glass, rimed with gold. Sarah took the tray and went back toward the kitchen, through the dining room to the great stair.
She walked up the grand staircase, moving down the gallery overlooking the first floor atrium, the fine Persian rugs lining the wooden floors and muffling her footsteps. Sarah had forgotten the beauty of her old home, the delicate fleur di lis and intricate trellis work adorning the wood of the upper gallery, the crystal facets of the now-dark chandelier hanging parallel with her as she looked down over the front atrium, the rich paintings of the old scions and merchantmen of the Rheinhart clan. Her ancestors.
At her mother’s door, she stopped, breathing deeply, the silence of the house surrounding her, calming her. She knocked twice, softly, and entered.
The room smelled foul, like alcohol and urine.
It was dark, the curtain drawn, and as she moved forward, her foot caught on something that went clattering.
“Unn. Alice? That you? What time is it?” The voice was scratchy and hoarse, but still her mother.
Sarah realized she was holding her breath and exhaled. “No, Momma. It’s not Alice. It’s me.”
Silence. Then an indrawn breath. “Sarah? My Sarah? It’s been so long. I don’t know if I even remember what you look like.”
Sarah placed the tray on the bed and went to draw the curtains. For a moment, just before she pulled them apart, Sarah had the most bizarre feeling. A phantom of her lonely mind maybe, but she was certain that instead of her mother, there was a grinning, slavering wolf panting there in the dark, grinning at her. Sarah grabbed the curtains, the small of her back itching, and pulled them aside, flooding the room with light.
It wasn’t as bad as she had imagined, but the lupus had taken its toll on her mother. Elizabeth Werner Rheinhart’s face had darkened into a leather mask, the flesh of her cheeks, her nose and chin and lips a dark, mottled red. Elizabeth’s eyes were crimson as well, throughout what would have normally been the white part of the eye. Her body was wasted, thin. But the only truly frightening thing about her mother, was, as always, her gaze, the intense scrutiny that stripped Sarah to bone, seeing through her, judging.
“Oh, baby, it’s okay. The doctor said this is just passing. Just a passing phase. I’m gonna get over this. Did you bring up my afternoon sip?”
“Yes, Momma. Here it is.” Sarah poured the glass full of amber liquid and placed it in her mother’s white hand.
Her mother downed it quickly, and said, “Ah,” and settled deeper into the cushions of the bed. “One more.” Elizabeth nodded at the bottle.
As Sarah refilled the glass, she asked, “How are you… um… how are you feeling?”
Elizabeth took the glass and looked at Sarah, face inscrutable from the mask of lupus. “How the hell you think I feel, you ninny? Like hammered shit.”
The older woman blinked owlishly, shook her head, then said, “I’m sorry, baby. I’ve always been such an old crab-apple to you. And now… now that I’m sick, I haven’t gotten any better.”
Sarah looked down at her mother’s hands, resting on the comforter.
Elizabeth shook her head, sighed, and said softly, “It’s bad, honey. I can feel my heart twitching in my chest, and it’s hard to breathe sometimes. My joints have all swollen to the size of grapefruits, and it’s a bitch to walk, even to my vanity. But I’ve got my peafowl, and I’ve got Alice, who’s a savior, though she don’t know it and I’m not gonna tell her.” Elizabeth downed the second glass of port and put the glass on the tray.
She looked around the room as if checking for visitors. “And I’ve been seeing things,” she whispered. “Bloody footprints all through the house. Sometimes I hear someone banging on the piano. At first—”
She held out her hand for another glass. Sarah refilled it and handed it to Elizabeth.
“At first I just thought it was Fisk or Lenora, but Alice assures me that they’re prohibited from going into the parlor. I told her I’d terminate her employment if I ever found them in there.”
“Momma! You didn’t.”
“Hell, yes, I did, Sarah. They have to know some limits.” She sipped. “Sometimes I hear whisperings, coming from the library. But when I go in, they stop.”
Sarah slowly shook her head.
“Momma, you’re just tired is all. And in pain.”
“No, you ninny. There’s something going on.” She gave a weak smile, showing yellow teeth. “Sorry.”
Sarah reached out and touched her mother on the cheek, the dark part.
“Don’t cry, baby. I’m gonna be all right.”
Sarah reached up and discovered her own cheek wet with tears.
“Baby, it’s gonna be okay,” her mother said. “We’ll figure it out, now that you’re here. Maybe it’s just my imagination.”
Sarah bowed her head like a child. She pressed her cheek to her mother’s breast, found bone where she had once found soft flesh, and wept. Her mother shushed her and brushed her hair. “Sssh, baby. It’s gonna be okay, we’re gonna be all right. Everything’s gonna be all right now that we’re together.”
Sarah cried into her mother’s breast, hoping with all her heart it was true.
Chapter 4
The morning after the Meerchamp collection, Ingram called Ruth Freeman on the kitchen phone. She sounded happy, eager even, to see him as soon as possible. She gave him directions to their bungalow on Bellevue, off Poplar. An infant squealed in the background.
Maggie, bustling about in the kitchen, smiled at Ingram. He placed the phone’s receiver on the cradle.
“You been busy, I see. Hope you found your room to your liking. Must’ve come in late; I didn’t hear you come in last night.”
Ingram smiled back, resting his haunches on the counter near the phone.
“I got in pretty late. Usual. Had a job to do, and it took a while to get paid.”
“Well, long as you got paid. That’s all that matters, don’t it?” Maggie’s smile grew larger, and she gave Ingram a wink as she wiped an invisible speck from the center isle of the kitchen. “Coffee?”
“That’d be g
reat, Maggie. Oh, that reminds me. Here’s next week’s money for… well… for our arrangement.” Ingram withdrew his wallet and gave Maggie a five dollar bill. “I got a job that’s gonna take me out of town.”
“That’s good you got more work. Where you going?”
“Believe it or not, to Arkansas. Drove through there once on the way to California. Can’t remember it much.”
“Well, there’s not much to remember about Arkansas, if you’re lucky.”
“No, I guess not.”
Maggie stopped wiping the counter, opened a cabinet, and removed a coffee cup. “Milk and sugar?” She lifted her head. Ingram nodded. She continued, “I’m from Arkansas, Bull. Can you believe that? Born and raised there.”
“Really?”
“Yessir. Now, a lotta folk think Arkansas is the most backward state known to mankind, and that’d be true, if it wasn’t for Mississippi.” Maggie leaned her head back and laughed at her own joke. Her teeth shone white against the darkness of her skin. Ingram frowned. “I came here to look after an aunty and never left. But I want you to look after yourself over there. It’s a whole different place. People think different, act different. There’s deep places in the earth over there, places that man knows only a little, deep tracks of forest that no white nor black man has walked on still since the Indians held the land. Someone who doesn’t know their way can get lost real easy.”
“Deep places in the—”
She waved her hand dismissively. “You get into any trouble, I want you to try and find Gethsemane, that’s the town I come from. My daughter, Alice, she still lives there and can help you if you need it. I’ll send her a letter and tell her you might be through that way.”
“Maggie, I’m only going to be over there about a week, at most. No need to do any of that, I’ll just—”
“Bull, I’m trying to tell you something. Over there, in Arkansas, things don’t go the same way they go everywhere else. Things take longer, things go wrong. Roads are bad, bridges go out. It’s backward, Bull. But it’s got its strong points too.”
“Like what?”
“Well, it’s a garden, really. The soil is rich and red like blood, or brown like chocolate, least where I come from. Things take root and grow real easy, game gets fat off the land, and sometimes, it seems like all a man or woman has to do is stretch out her hand, God’s bounty is there for the taking. I guess I ain’t making much sense, but it’s important you watch yourself. People think that place is just a bunch of hicks, and yes, that’s what they are, but they’re more than that too. Just stick to the villages and towns, stay away from the little places away from the main roads and cities. Stay in the lighted areas.”
Ingram grinned. “You’d think I was going into Transylvania or something from the way you talk, Maggie.”
Maggie handed Bull his coffee, and said, “There’s worse things than getting bit on the neck. Come on, I’ll help you get packed. I did some of your laundry last night while you was out carousing, should be dry by now.”
***
Early and Ruth Freeman kept a tidy little cottage on Bellevue Avenue, nestled in a copse of oak and birch trees.
Ingram pulled the coupe into the drive. A small, tawny woman came out on the house’s front porch at the sound of Ingram’s car. She was slight, high breasted, and modestly dressed in a maroon skirt and white blouse.
As he walked toward the house from the coupe, she began to appear older, lines of worry and stress stenciling their way into her skin. Her eyes were puffy and red. She wrung her hands as he approached.
“Mr. Ingram?”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s me.”
“Tell me it’s true, you’re gonna find my Early.”
Ingram took off his hat and stopped. “Well, I’m gonna do my best. That’s why Mr. Phelps sent me over here. Maybe we should go inside and talk about it.”
Inside, Ruth poured Ingram a glass of sweet tea, two ice cubes. Yellow flowers decorated the sides of the glass. An infant babbled in another room. Ruth glanced toward the back bedroom, and said, “Supposed to be nap time, but the little tiger doesn’t know what’s good for him.”
Ingram sipped his tea. “Mm. That’s good tea, ma’am.”
She twisted a dishrag in her hands. “Please tell me what you’re gonna do to find my Early. Please.” Her eyes welled with tears.
Ingram had no true experience with weeping women. The only time he’d seen his mother cry was on his seventeenth birthday, when he’d boarded the train that took him to Tuscaloosa and basic training. He’d been packing his duffel bag and his mother appeared at his bedroom door, apron white in the light from the window. She embraced him, grabbing him fiercely like she’d had when he was a little boy, when it was easier to wrap her arms around him. She stood back, her hands on his biceps, and looked up at him, staring hard into his face. “You’ll be careful, won’t you?” Tears came to her eyes, and she wiped them with her apron. By ’45 when the war was over, she’d died of cancer, and he still lived when, over and over in the Pacific, he thought the opposite would surely be true.
Ingram said, “I’m gonna try and pick up his trail in Brinkley, ma’am. Maybe he just got sick and holed up in a hotel until it passed over.”
Ruth shook her head. “For ten days? No. But maybe he’s been tossed in jail. Early drinks sometimes to sickness. Or maybe he’s shacked up with some woman… and you know… that’s fine if he is. At this point I’d rather him be doing that than… well—”
She didn’t want to be a widow just yet, and he couldn’t blame her.
“Ma’am,” Ingram began again, as gently as he knew how, “I came over here to see if you could tell me anything about his last phone call, what he might’ve said or mentioned.”
She sniffed and wiped her eyes. “Well, he didn’t say much, just told me he loved me and for me to kiss little Billy for him. He said he’d stayed in England and Stuttgart and laughed, saying all he needed now was to stay in Paris and London. Oh. He did say one more thing, said he had heard about a blues man Mr. Phelps might be interested in and was gonna try to see the man play at a roadhouse, but he didn’t say where.”
“Did he mention the blues man’s name? Was it Ramblin’ John Hastur?”
Ruth paused, looking uncertain. “Could’ve been. I’m sorry, Mr. Ingram, I can’t remember. Right about then little Billy started crying.”
“That’s okay. So let me get this straight.” He cleared his throat. “Early had been to England and Stuttgart the day or night before his call. That’s good to know.” Ingram grabbed his hat off the kitchen table and moved back toward the door. “I’ll do my best to find him, ma’am. Shouldn’t be no problem.”
Ruth began crying then for real, not just sniffles and welling tears. A flush came to her face, her eyes hitched up in pain, and she moaned. A soft blubbery sound. Tears poured down her cheeks, her mouth pulled down at the corners into a grimace.
“Please find him. He’s all we got,” she wailed, and she threw herself against Ingram’s chest.
Ingram felt her body pressed against his, her breasts pushing into his stomach, and wondered if she’d already begun planning for her husband’s demise.
On the way out of town, Ingram stopped, filled his tank, and bought a map of Arkansas. As he paid, the clerk at the counter said, “Going hunting?”
“Maybe. Why’d you ask?”
“Only couple of things to go to Arkansas for. One’s hunting and t’other’s fishing. That’s all.”
“Well, then, I guess I’m going hunting.”
The man behind the counter handed Ingram his map. “Good luck.”
Flipping the brim of his hat, Ingram said, “Thanks. Looks like I’ll need it.”
***
Ingram drove west on Highway 70 into Arkansas. Crossing the Mississippi, its turgid brown waters taking their swift, inevitable course south past Helena, past Greenville, even further south into the Louisiana swamps and tributaries, the French parishes, Ingram felt connected to s
omething larger than himself. The slats of the wooden trestle-bridge rattled and clattered as he drove the coupe over them, his window down, the smoke from his cigarette whisking out into the freshening afternoon air, the slanting rays of the afternoon sun dappling the highway. The trees stood dark at the roadside in the afternoon light, but Ingram made out oak and cypress, bone-white birch, each one slowly passing. Particles of cottonwood hung suspended in the air, rising and falling, flashing by Ingram’s open window. He smoked and drove west in the gathering gloom of the dying afternoon, the greens becoming black.
The deep forest and swamps lining the Mississippi broke and leveled into flatter landscape. Fields and farmhouses slowly drew by his windows. The tires of the coupe thumped on the brown concrete slabs of the highway, each section’s tar seam thudding and rocking the coupe on its shocks. Outside his window furrowed fields rolled past, the rows of beans and cotton passing like spokes of an enormous wheel, its hub far off past the horizon, the rim meeting the road.
He passed through small towns, buildings clustered around a railroad or a granary. Not much traffic on the highway, very few people in the fields barring an occasional lone tractor turning over the earth, a combine trundling across a dusty plot, a battered and beaten truck rolling down a gravel road, throwing dust against the sky. The country seemed nearly abandoned, as if all the people had been spirited away and left their homes and fields to turn to dust.
Ingram flipped on the radio and scanned the AM band, rolling the knob slowly from left to right and then back, searching for signals. Hisses and pops, signal squelches, then the infrequent clear reception of broadcast filled the car and whisked out the window like Ingram’s cigarette smoke. Each station crackled like a procession of avaricious ghosts; pastors fervently preaching, adverts and jingles hawking soap and dishwashing detergents, plaintive country music, the drone of news.
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