House on Diablo Road: Resurrection Day (The McCann Family Saga Book 3) (8 page)

“
People seem to either vanish or go into hiding out there in the sticks—another one of those things nobody talks about?”

Clancy ignored the question. “Guess we’ll see what happens when Nathan Bonney takes control of that house. He's turned thirty now, and he's ready to settle down.”

Jesse recalled Katie’s glowing face the night Nate brought her home from the library. “That might be quicker than you think,” he said.

Clancy shook his head. “Lord protect the bride who comes to live in that house. Every servant who went to work there, even in later years has been scared off.”

“
By what or by whom?”

“
No one wants to say exactly—afraid of being ridiculed or jinxed, I guess. Folks have their own peculiar superstitions, mixed with fear of being ostracized. Crow knows and will tell you in a heartbeat. He’s not scared of the Devil himself.”

Jesse nodded, but his mind was still on the man his daughter was in love with and the house where they would live as man and wife. He was torn between his own sense of logic and half-baked stories.

“
Would Nathan want to actually
live
in that place?”

“
Oh yeah...if he has a wife to help him with it. He's always wanted it. He’s foolhardy like his great grandpa. I’m telling you Jesse, there’s something unnatural about the pull of that house. If you don’t believe me, ask Granny Minna. She used to go there as midwife when the workers' babies came and even stayed overnight in the main house. You know those old full-bloods are tuned in to the spirit world.”

“
I don’t know if Granny will ever be able to say. The stroke took away her ability to communicate to a large degree.”

Jesse felt something akin to electric current in the tips of his fingers and his toes. His mind shifted to his family in that instant. Both of his biological children possessed a fair amount of Annie and Minna’s Caddoan blood.
Were they also tuned into dark forces and what would protect them? He
felt a sudden impulse to get home. He thanked Clancy, shook hands and rushed through the front of the bookstore. The bell jangled wildly as a sharp wind blew the door shut. Startled by the noise, Clancy raced into the alley and trudged up the back staircase, glancing over his shoulder as he climbed. With worrisome thoughts rattling around in his skull, he rejoined the revelry in that room that no one talked about—where secrets were made and secrets were kept.

“
I feel a storm brewing on the horizon,” he muttered, and then he realized no one was listening. Illegal elixirs had taken control.

The Morgans Bluff Founders Day parade kicked off right on time. The mayor rode in a old fashioned horse and buggy while tipping a worse for wear top hat. Behind him, pulled by a team of mules, rolled a antiquated pulp wood wagon, upon whose sides were painted the words
Morgan-McCann Mill
s. Next came the band from the temperance marches of years gone by, most of whose members had been replaced by youth from Morgan’s Bluff High School. Behind them, waving from a float festooned with flowers, was “Miss Founders Day”—rosy cheeked and bright-eyed and cut with the same Americana cookie cutter as her predecessors .

Every local dignitary and organization was represented; when it ended, everyone rode down to the Neches River for a picnic. There they spread their patchwork quilts in front of the bandstand and listened to local bluegrass musicians. The women compared recipes for pickles, and the men threw horseshoes and told tales grown taller every year.

Dapper in white linen slacks, blue and white striped jacket, and straw boater, Nathan Bonney strode up to the bandstand podium. He looked as if he had just stepped down from a 1920s Arrow shirt billboard. When he began to speak, all chatter stopped, and the townsfolk looked up to him with rapt attention—especially Katie.

Nate’s accent held little of the local backwoods brogue but more the soft lilt of the old southern gentry: “Fellow citizens, we've come today to honor those fearless leaders who trekked from Tennessee to the great Texas forest country, behind their brave leader Davy Crockett. They came to carve homesteads out of the wilderness and build a booming timber empire. A giant among these men was Reese Morgan, grandfather of our own Annie Morgan McCann. We also honor the railroad men who opened up the state, and along side them, my great grandfather who brought his own heritage of cattle ranching to the eastern side of Texas. I am proud to say Jonathan Bonney was instrumental in bringing economic stability to the county, and…”

Before Nate could finish, Buck emitted a loud “Humph” and pushed himself up with his cane: “You forgot one person, Nathan Bonney. You forgot a man who brought cotton to this county, helped poor folks in need, took in mistreated slaves, freed them and gave them paid jobs and dignity. That man was Cyrus McCann, uncle to Jesse here and once a respected member of this community.”

At Buck’s declaration, Nate temporarily lost his composure as well as his place in his scripted speech. From the back of the crowd, a man in overalls shouted “Sit down, Hennessy! I heard Cyrus McCann was a deserter! We owe him no honor!”

Buck turned to face the heckler: “Mind your tongue Archie McMurray, or I’ll mind it for you!”

Jesse took a firm grip on the old logger’s arm and sat him down. “Let it be, Buck. Lets see how Nathan handles it.”

True to form, the young man quickly retrieved his control. “You were right to speak up, Mr. Hennessy. We should not leave out a humanitarian who contributed much to this county. I apologize to the McCann family. Let bygones be bygones, and let the celebration continue.” With that, he tossed the last page of his script in a nearby trash can.

The Victrola was brought out, and “Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me” played three times in a row, while women coaxed the men to take a fox trot around the makeshift dance floor in front of the bandstand. After the last dance, Nathan took Katie’s hand and pulled her from the crowd to share his place front and center:

“
Attention all!” he began. “Most of you know Katie, and many of you know we’ve been keeping company for several months now. During that time I’ve come to see my future with her.”

Then as Katie stood speechless and red faced, Nathan got on one knee and held out a diamond ring to her. “Kathryn Hannah McCann, will you do me the honor of becoming Mrs. Nathan Bonney?”

Above them flew a little propeller crop duster that trailed a banner that read
Nathan loves Kathryn.
The crowd began to cheer, even before she could answer. Finally, she managed an almost inaudible “yes”.

Granny Minna almost came out of her wheelchair. She understood what had transpired between her great granddaughter and Bonney and shook her head vigorously and made sounds that no one understood.

“
Yes, I know, Granny!” said Annie, who apparently had lost her compass of shrewd observation. “You’re excited that our Katie has
finally
chosen a husband...a newspaper editor and one of means at that.” Had Annie not been so taken with her daughter’s new fiance, she would have interpreted the look in her grandmother’s eyes as dread mixed with fear.

Someone finally changed the Victrola to “Happy Days Are Here Again” and dedicated it to the newly engaged couple. They two waved politely and slipped away to a nearby peach orchard, where he drew her close to him and tilted her chin to search for any doubt that may have hidden in her eyes. “It’s all going to be different very soon,” he told her. “I imagine you sitting on the veranda, bouncing a baby who just happens to have your gray eyes and upturned nose and wild curls.”

“
Now Nate, don’t you talk about bouncing babies just yet,” she laughed. “Right now I need to check on the boys for Mama. They were playing horseshoes last I saw them. Will you come to me to the clearing? ”

“
To the clearing...to the ends of the earth...if you will only stay here in this orchard with me one minute longer.”

Before she could object, he tilted her face up to his and silenced her with a kiss. “Don’t be afraid. I will be the best husband you could ever ask for. I’ll love you, protect you, and I'll never let you go.”

A small voice in her head told her it was not she who would need convincing.

Oblivious to the goings-on at the fairgrounds and their sister’s engagement, Tobias and Calvin had thrown horseshoes until they had become bored—until a cotton tail rabbit popped out of its hole. Cal set out after it.

“
Leave it alone!” Tobi shouted. “Mama doesn’t want us hunting rabbits.”

“
I ain't aiming to kill it. I’m aiming to tame it.”

“
Ain't ain't no word neither.”

It seemed as if that rabbit was meant to cross the boys path that day, because that one innocent game of chase would be the next step in a discovery that would turn the town on its head.

The boys ran happily through the woods, unaware of how far they had gone. When the cotton tail ran into the deepest part of the thicket, the boys struggled through underbrush and trees and jumped logs in an effort to keep up. Both were laughing breathlessly at what had become a game. As time passed, they lost sight of the rabbit when it scurried into a hole and disappeared. The game had ended, and they found themselves lost in a densely wooded wilderness. “Which way do we go to get back?” a big-eyed Tobi asked.

“
I don’t know. I guess we got turned around somehow. Everything looks the same. We didn't come in a straight line. Now I don’t know which way we started from.”

They wandered first one way and then another, until Cal decided to go straight in one direction, in hopes of coming to a house or a road. Nearly an hour later, they came upon an old shack. The bushes had grown up over its windows and the porch was falling, and the rotting boards looked as if they had never been painted. Nevertheless, there was a water well out front, and they needed to quench their thirst. As they lifted the gourd filled with cold water, the screen door creaked opened, and an elderly woman appeared.

“
Help yourselves to all the water you want, and come on in and sit a spell,” she said. “Nobody's happened upon this old place for several years. Come in the kitchen. I got me some peach fried pies coming out of the skillet. Canned the fruit last summer. Beat the possums to ‘em.”

The woman opened the screen door, and the aroma of spiced fruit and fried pastry wafted out to fill their nostrils. Reacting to the gnawing hunger in their bellies, the boys hesitated only for a moment.

Inside was very little furniture, except for cane bottom chairs and an old fashioned settee whose springs had long since given up any pretense of support. There were no pictures on the wall, except for an old framed photograph of a group of plantation workers in front of a house Tobi immediately recognized. In the foreground, dozens of field hands posed with solemn faces in the style of early photography. In the back row was a young man who looked vaguely familiar. On the front row sat a dark skinned pretty girl in her late teens, holding a baby boy with curly black hair. In contrast to the others, his eyes seemed unusually pale. Seeing the boys’ curious expressions, the woman pointed at the mother and baby. “That’s me when I still had my looks. Me and my man worked for Mr. Cyrus McCann back then. There’s a very young Buck Hennessy on the back row. Do you know him? He pulled more cotton than any man I ever did see. He was a strong as a mule...and twice as stubborn. And Cyrus was once the biggest landowner and cotton farmer in East Texas and maybe even the South!”

Then she pointed to the baby in her lap. That little one grew up to give me grandchildren and great grandchildren, but they don’t come ‘round here no more. And my man stays off in that room back yonder. I get so lonesome for somebody to talk to, I’m half crazy.”

“
How do you get by, ma’am,” asked Tobi.

“
Well now. What a serious question coming from a little runt like yourself. I manage. I’ve lived off my little nest egg from the time my man worked at the rock quarry down in the Blue Hole. He worked out there for some fellas from Galveston up ‘till 1903, chipping limestone out from the sides, but they worked off cables to hold them away from the water. They roped that place off long time ago. Ain’t nobody allowed near it. Any how, they hauled that rock off to the railroad, and the railroad took boxcar after boxcar to Galveston Island to build a wall against the ocean. The Great Storm of 1900 destroyed everything down there. You boys wouldn’t know of it, since it was way before you were born.”