“Heeyah, get on there, mule.” She heard the reins slap and the cart jerked forward. It lurched and bounced as Samuel turned it around and started back the other way.
Carrie knew the oak tree Samuel was talking about. The colored folk called it The Oak and sang sad songs about it. It was a beautiful old tree that stood in the middle of a meadow between her house and the river, almost in her own backyard, with large spreading limbs, full of birds in the spring and squirrels in the fall. But no one ever picnicked under it or sat under its leaves to enjoy the shade. The white folk called it Corbin’s Oak after the first man they ever hung there. The well-to-do white folk never mentioned it at all.
It was hot under the tarp, and Carrie wished she had thought to take the jacket off. She jolted around against the rough planks of the wagon bed as she heard Samuel cry out, “Make way! Make way! I’m late to see the Colonel. Have mercy, please, sir, and pray that he don’t take it out of my hide or my pay. Thank you kindly, sir. Bless you, ma’am.” Carrie felt the wagon roll onto the deck of the boat and then sway slightly back and forth as it made its way across the river. Sooner than she would have expected, they bumped against the south bank. The wagon rolled off and started bouncing along the road again as Samuel goaded the mules into going faster than they wanted to with a “Heeyah” and a “Get on up there, you ol’ cuss.”
Exhaustion spread through all her limbs, dulling her aches and pains. The jolt and sway of the wagon became almost soothing in its rhythms. Carrie was half in a daze when the wagon stopped.
She felt a tap on the top of her head and the tarp pulled away.
Samuel looked at her from his seat. “This is your stop, Miss Celia. You got to run as fast as you can ’cross that field, straight through that line of trees and you’ll be there faster than I will. I got to go ’round the far way on account of the wagon.”
Carrie clambered over the side of the wagon. Her feet hit the road and her knees gave out from under her. She fell to the ground with pains shooting through her legs, stabbing into her body. She clutched at her ribs, gasping. Strong hands lifted her and gently leaned her against the wagon. She caught a hold of the sides, breathing deeply, trying desperately to push her pain aside. Slowly, she straightened herself up. Samuel stood beside her with his eyes cast down. The white men of the town would hang him from the highest branch for touching her even once, much less twice. He knew it. They both knew it.
“Samuel, don’t come to the oak. It won’t be safe for you.”
“I got to back you, Miss Celia.”
“They won’t listen to you. Go to the house. Get my father.”
Samuel gave her a look with eyes full of pity. “You think he don’t know already?”
Carrie’s legs wobbled. “What are saying, Sam?”
“Your young Robert’s the only one who raised an objection, but he can’t help you ’cause he can’t get out of bed on account of his head.”
“Oh, dear God.” Carrie bent over. A wave of nausea rose up through her. Everything she had done was wrong. Every action she took, every turn she made only made things worse. She pressed the heels of her hands hard against her eyes to keep the dark panic from unfolding. No. It was too late. It had already bloomed and what lay at its center was despair, oily and black, darker than night. It bubbled up into her throat in a soft, low moan. She felt a heavy hand on her shoulder shaking her.
“There ain’t no time for regrets, Miss Celia. You need to go now. Run. Run fast and I’ll be there as soon as I can get there.”
Samuel was touching her again. For the third time. She looked into his face and drank in his courage. It had to be his courage that helped her stand upright, because she didn’t have any more of her own. She pushed away from the wagon and Samuel’s hand dropped from her shoulder. “God bless you, Samuel.”
He tipped his hat to her. “He does, Miss Celia. He does. Now go.” Carrie turned and ran across the field, leaping the furrows of earth in graceless bounds. One footfall at a time, in a limping, loping stride, the earth pounding up through her feet, filling her body with hurt. It took her longer to reach the trees than she thought it would. Either the trees were farther away than they looked or she was running slower than she thought she was, but she still ran. She ran even as her breath rubbed her throat raw, the catch in her ribs became a stabbing lance, her feet went beyond pain and dulled into a throbbing mess of numbness.
She reached the trees and ran into them, not slowing down.
Branches whipped at her face, briars pulled at her coat. She shrugged the jacket off and threw it from her and she ran, around trees, over logs, through bushes and brambles. Nothing slowed her pace until she burst into the clearing.
She skidded wildly over the grass and came to a stop.
Her breathing was hoarse and harsh, her chest heaving, but her muscles froze. The clearing was empty of men and horses.
It was silent of the voices she expected to hear. The tree stood in the center of the small meadow with slanted sunlight shining through its boughs, its limbs swaying gently, leaves fluttering lightly. The only sound she heard was the cooing of doves, the rasp of her breath and the creak of the rope as Lilly’s body swayed back and forth.
Carrie stumbled forward, legs moving in an awkward, wooden shuffle. She stared at the bare and bleeding feet swaying gently in front of her and she reached up to still them. They were cold. She cupped the feet in her hands. They were ice-cold.
Carrie tried to say Lilly’s name, but her tongue wouldn’t move.
Small choking sounds trickled up from her throat. She held the feet and rubbed them as if she could warm them again with her touch, but the cold from the feet seeped into her hands, crept up her arms. She pressed her face against them, held them to her cheek. Kissed them.
Cold pierced through her brain and stabbed down her spine.
She tried to scream, but the sound was too big and stopped up her throat. Her blood turned to ice and froze inside her heart. Her head spun as the darkness bloomed. The world tilted, jittered and skipped. She swayed, stumbled and fell.
The earth pressed hard against her swollen cheek, the grass tickled, a small pebble scratched. The rope still creaked…and creaked…and creaked. She curled into a ball and pressed her hands tight over her ears, breathing in shallow, gasping breaths until her heart froze solid and stopped its beating.
The world unraveled.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
A warm hand touched her frozen shoulder.
“Carrie? Wake up, baby. Please wake up.”
Someone was shaking her, patting at her cheek. It hurt.
Everything hurt. Her arms. Her legs. Her feet. Her soul. Carrie rolled onto her back and opened her eyes. She looked up at Gillian who was bending over her. A swollen moon hung sullen in the night sky just over the top of Gillian’s shoulder. Carrie lifted her head and looked around. She was in a wide meadow, the house visible just over the rise of the next hill. A badly hacked stump of an old tree sat in the middle of the field. Carrie sat up and something cold touched her chest. She wrapped her hands around the locket. The braid of hair inside it. It was Lilly’s hair, the vibrant red faded and brittle with time.
The darkness in her mind shred into ribbons of light. Carrie started to cry. Gillian wrapped her arms around her and held her close as Carrie cried for Lilly and for Celia, for Robert and the Colonel, for all their dying dreams and for Samuel, who never had the chance to have any.
Gillian held and rocked her, whispered soft words into her hair. Her hands, solid and warm, pressed tight against Carrie’s back. When the sobs subsided, she stroked Carrie’s face and brushed the dirt out of her hair. She touched Carrie’s bruised and swollen cheek.
“You’re hurt.”
Carrie took her hand away. Her cheek did still hurt, along with her ribs and her feet, but the pains were fading like the morning after a bad dream. She didn’t want them to fade. They were all she had left. She looked at Gillian. Her hair wasn’t red, and for the briefes
t moment, Carrie hated her for that. But it wasn’t supposed to be red and this was Gillian who was beautiful to her in a way that made her heart ache. And her heart did ache.
“Gillian.” Carrie said her name slowly, savoring the feel of it on her tongue. “Gillian.” It was a sweet-tasting name. “What are you doing here?”
Gillian cocked her head to the side. “I might ask you the same.”
“I…” Carrie stopped because she couldn’t think of words to explain it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to right now. “I asked first.”
Gillian sat back on her heels and looked at her with slightly narrowed eyes. Then she nodded her head. “I went home and as I was sitting on the couch watching TV, it occurred to me that watching TV wasn’t really what I wanted to be doing. So, I drove back here to ask if I could borrow a book.”
“A book?”
“Right. A book. I thought, maybe, I could read it to you. You know, out loud. And maybe I could spend the night if we stayed up too late.” Gillian reached out a hand toward Carrie’s cheek, but she dropped it before her fingers touched. “When I got here, the front door was open and the lights were on in the library, but you weren’t in the house. I walked all around outside the house calling for you. I came around the corner of the west wing and saw you running across the north field like a frightened jackrabbit. So, I ran after you.” Gillian looked at the old tree stump and frowned.
“I saw…well, I don’t know what I saw. Shadows or something moving around the stump. For a second, I thought it was a tree. Then you ran into the clearing. I saw you reach up into the air and then you collapsed.”
Carrie took Gillian’s hand and placed it on her bruised cheek.
It hurt less than it had a minute ago, but it still hurt. Carrie was grateful for that. “Do you love me, Gillian?”
Gillian slid her hand into Carrie’s hair, leaned forward and kissed her mouth. “I think it’s too soon to know for sure.”
“Okay.” Carrie nodded. “But do you think you could someday? Maybe someday soon?”
Gillian looked at Carrie with a quizzical half smile. “You’re a very strange woman, Carrie Jane, but yes, I think I could.”
“And you won’t let anyone stop you or tell you it’s wrong?”
Gillian thought about that. “Well, I won’t be able to stop people from telling me it’s wrong, but I won’t let anyone keep me from loving those that I love.”
“Will you tell me you love me when you’re sure that you do?” Carrie’s eyes welled. “Out loud, I mean? In words?”
Gillian smoothed Carrie’s hair back and tucked the strands behind her ear. “I will look you straight in the eyes and say, ‘Carrie, I love you.’”
Carrie tugged at her ear. “I didn’t quite catch that last part.
How are you going to say it?”
Gillian grinned at her. “I’ll let you know when the time comes. You’ll have to be satisfied with that.” Gillian’s smiled dimmed.
“Carrie, I want you to tell me what’s going on here. Why were you running across the field in the dark and why did you fall down like that and how did you get that bruise on your face?”
Carrie touched her cheek. The pain was still there. Her other pains had faded almost to nothing, but the bruise remained. She touched the locket. That remained too.
“It was a dream, I think. Maybe. It was about Celia, my grandmother, and a girl named Lilly that she loved.”
Gillian raised an eyebrow. “Lilly, like the flowers on the ring and on the music box?”
“Yes. Lilly, as in short for Lillian.”
“Lillian. What an odd coincidence.”
“If it is one.” Carrie looked closely at Gillian. “I’m not sure I believe in coincidences anymore. The poem, I think Celia wrote that for Lilly. And the letter, I think Lilly wrote that just before…” Carrie’s throat closed and she choked on the words.
She shook her head and wiped at her eyes. “Lilly died. I think Celia was never happy with Robert, with my grandfather, because she always loved Lilly. The trunk, in the attic, those were Lilly’s things. The little grave marker in the cemetery is where Lilly is buried.”
“What about the ring with the flowers? Was that Lilly’s?”
“No. That was what Robert gave Celia on their engagement day, only it was a plain band then. I think Celia had the flowers etched on it after she and Robert married. So she wouldn’t forget.” Carrie touched the locket and pressed it against her skin. “She never did.”
“That would explain a lot of things if it were not just a dream.”
Carrie looked over at the old tree stump. A fresh wave of pain rolled over her heart. “I don’t think it was just a dream. I don’t know what it all was, but I do know there’s still something that I need to put right.”
“Then by all means you should go put it right.”
Gillian stood and helped Carrie to her feet. A phantom twinge of pain shot through her heels and she looked down. Her legs were in blue jeans and her feet were in sneakers. She took a step and the twinge was less, then another and her feet felt fine.
Gillian reached for Carrie, and Carrie slipped her hand in hers.
They walked over the rise and up the hill to the house.
In the library, Carrie went straight to the old desk and opened the bottom left drawer. She pulled out Robert’s letters and put them on the desktop. Underneath the letters was a Bible. Carrie took it out of the drawer. It was thick and heavy, its paper a brittle yellow, the binding cracked with age. She laid it on the desk and carefully opened it to the very back, to the pages of births and deaths written in so many different hands. She found the pages of marriages and the entry that said, Celia Covington Burgess, married to Robert Daniel Burgess. She took the fountain pen from the desk, dipped it into the inkwell and drew a line from Celia’s name into the margin.
She wrote, Lilly, beloved partner and companion.
EPILOGUE
“There you go, Ms. Bowden. Just like you ordered it.” The man wiped the dirt off his hands and onto his jeans. He took a small brush from his back pocket and dusted the dirt off the new grave marker. He stood straight and scratched an eyebrow with the back of his thumb. “None of us are quite sure why you want it, though. Even the old-timers aren’t sure who this Lilly person was, but there are a couple of betting pools going. Care to give me a hint to help me out with my Christmas shopping?”
“Not on your life, Roger,” Gillian answered before Carrie could say anything. “If you were a smart man, you’d have Evelyn’s new washer on layaway already.”
“I am a very smart man, Gills. I got the matching dryer, too.”
He tipped his cap at them. “Well, you ladies have a good day. Let us know if you want any of the other stones replaced. We’re always happy to help out for a not-so-sad occasion. I’ll see y’all this evening.”
Carrie watched him get into his truck and drive it carefully down the path. He turned into the driveway and out of their sight. Gillian reached for her hand and their fingers twined.
Carrie stared at the new stone. “It’s pretty. I think she would like it.” She regretted that there was no last name on it. Carrie felt like she knew it well, once upon a time, but she couldn’t remember what it was now no matter how hard she tried.
Gillian squeezed her fingers. “I’m glad they were able to get someone to do the flowers. It looks right like that.”
“Yeah, it does.” Carrie scuffed her toe in the grass. “The only thing missing is Celia.”
“Any luck with the rezoning?”
“No, but I haven’t given up yet.” Carrie looked at Gillian who was looking at her with a mix of amusement and concern.
She tugged on her hand. “Shall we go back to the house? They should be done with the floors by now and I think the caterers will be here soon.”
Gillian grinned and gave an excited little hop. “I can’t wait to try on my dress.”
Carrie laughed. “I can’t believe you actually want to wear it.
”
“You’ll have to help me get in it, you know.”
Carrie nodded. She knew. “I’ll have to help you get out of it, too.”
Gillian pulled her closer and slipped an arm around her waist. “I’m looking forward to that. Are you sure you don’t want to wear the one in the attic?”
Carrie’s smile dimmed as she looked at the new stone. A cold shiver shimmied up her spine. “Not in a hundred years,” she said.
“Not in a thousand.”
Music and laughter drifted in through the library doors. The overhead lights were dim as Carrie stood in front of the mirror.
The frame had been polished to a high shine, but the inside was still hazy and spotted. She looked at herself critically. The dress she had on was wrong in subtle ways, the neckline too low, the waist too high, her arms too bare and her gloves too long. Her hair was too short to do authentically, so she had only tied it back with a ribbon. There wasn’t anyone to dress it properly, anyway.
It was all wrong in a way that felt all right.
The party had been going on for hours. The parlor had been cleared and made into a ballroom where a quartet played, and Mr. Dumfries was busy spinning all the older ladies around the room in his rendition of a fox trot. He had brought a van full of people from the old folks home, people who remembered this house as it had been and tittered delightedly over how it was now. Amy-Lee and Chuck showed up together, and they hadn’t exchanged a cross word all night.
Gillian danced with her, a Virginia reel, not that she knew what she was doing, but she did what Gillian told her to do and it worked out fine with no broken toes. They danced a slow waltz, got a few scowls and frowns but mostly winks and nods and an “I knew it all along” look from Jo and her girlfriend. A huge smile came from Mr. Dumfries. It was overwhelming. Gillian had been shocked to her core.
The Color of Dust Page 24