Brother Mabry dramatically brought the newspaper to his eye level. He dipped his head and peered out at the audience over the top of the headline “Miracle Signs and Wonders in Dead Lakes.” While Brother Mabry read the story about a drifter appearing at Ella Wallace’s farm and healing her son, a mule, and a colored girl in that order, the woman in the second row could no longer jostle her baby enough to keep him from crying. The mother slipped out into the aisle, pulled the blanket over the top of the baby’s head, and walked on tiptoes to the back of the tent. She passed Gil, the freckle-faced newspaperman who was now on Clive’s payroll.
The Adam’s apple on Gil’s neck bobbed as Brother Mabry read his article. The crowd was dangling on every word he had written. When he saw Clive leaning against a tent pole smiling at him, Gil flinched.
Brother Mabry had been enamored with this young newspaperman with the enthusiasm and freckles of a teenage boy. Deciding to give the local paper an off-the-record scoop of the exact location of Eden, Brother Mabry had sat on the side porch of the Franklin Inn and grown flush as the young newspaperman pointed out discrepancies in deeds from the courthouse archives claiming exactly who owned Eden. One stamped paper with the seal of Franklin County declared Clive Gillespie as the owner, and the other, dated several weeks later with the witness’s signature torn away, named Harlan Wallace.
Smoking Cuban cigars in the privacy of Clive’s home, Brother Mabry was assured that the discrepancy would soon be a footnote. Clive slid the folded newspaper that contained the cash across the coffee table and the newspaperman yanked it up. “For good faith,” Clive told him. “We’ll need someone to be our publicity man when this thing takes off. I’ll even blot that little loan you took out for a new press from the books.” All had been forgiven.
The revival audience murmured about the story in the paper. Their voices swept across the tent like swarms of bees. Brother Mabry stomped his size-fifteen shoe on the stage. The plywood buckled, and flames in the lanterns that hung on the poles wavered. “Don’t be like Eve. Don’t be taken in by the serpent who deceives. Hear me now: guard your hearts and minds. The devil strikes the hardest where the Lord is working. And make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen, He is working here. The footprints of God are on your very soil.”
By Monday people from all points in the county had walked through the doors of Ella’s store, searching high and low. While they pretended to look for cans of peaches or bottles of aspirin, it was the man with the healing powers they came to inspect.
Leaving Narsissa to manage the store, Ella rode in the wagon and fiddled with the purple beaded purse that secured her future.
In Apalachicola, the side of the revival tent flapped against the midday breeze. A crumpled flyer advertising Brother Mabry’s weeklong crusade rode the wind that was kicked up by a steamroller heading down Main Street. The black machine, resembling a small train, was operated by a colored man wearing overalls and an ancient straw hat. He stood atop the roller, shoveling out oyster shells that were crushed and ground into the street bed. Gray smoke from the machine veiled the driver. As Ella and her sons passed by on the wagon, the driver glanced up and nodded. He would be the only one that day who didn’t stare at them.
A man dressed in a checkered hat that was turned sideways honked as Samuel, Keaton, and Macon crossed the street. The door of his two-door Bearcat car rattled as he passed. Ella stood across the way on the block where the bank stood. She shaded her eyes with her hand and watched as the boys purchased their tickets. Keaton glanced at the poster that hung on the theater wall advertising Charlie Chaplin’s new film,
A Dog’s Life
. Samuel moved past him and swung the door to the theater open. Just before he turned to follow, Keaton glanced back at Ella. She waved in an animated way that might be more appropriate for a cartoon and motioned for him to go on inside the movie house. A gust of wind rolled in from the bay and lifted the ends of her black hair until the strands fanned across her face, but she could see her son perfectly. Keaton had worried about her long enough, she decided. Today she was determined to let her sons just be boys.
The pawnshop was located two blocks away from the Dixie Theatre. The stenciled letters on the store window were peeling away and a cat sat on the window ledge. A cowbell on the front door called out as Ella entered. She pulled back two dented kettles that hung low from the ceiling with penciled price tags. “Mr. Sawyer . . . Mr. Sawyer?”
A short, bald man with gray eyebrows as thick as caterpillars rose from behind a glass counter that was covered in dust. He groaned and leaned on the side of the counter. When he lifted his elbow from the glass, an imprint remained. “Uh, huh . . . look what the cat drug in.”
“You never lacked for words, did you, Mr. Sawyer?” Ella held her purse in one hand and then the other. She tried to smile, but Mr. Sawyer was too busy examining a watch face clutched in his hand to register her awkward gesture.
“Looky,” he said and held the watch up. “A man from Nashville who owns one of the boats hired me to fix this jim-dandy for him. Said he would give me a pretty penny if I could get it in working order. Plans to trade it when he goes to New Orleans.”
“How nice,” Ella said and massaged the clasp of her purse.
“What can we do for you?” Mr. Sawyer asked, returning his focus back to the watch.
One of his cats cried from the top of a rafter. Ella jumped when the cat landed on the cherrywood table closest to her. The cat stretched down on his front paws, seeming to bow at the painted figurines that lined the table.
“Well, I decided to take your offer.”
Mr. Sawyer stopped shining the watch and turned his head in amusement. “Oh. Busby couldn’t beat my price, could he? You ought to know not to let amateurs handle your business.”
Ella stepped forward and laid her purse on the counter. Dust scattered and attached to the bag’s purple beads. “No, that’s not the case. I never discussed your price with Mr. Busby.”
For the first time, Mr. Sawyer stopped looking at the watch and turned his full attention toward Ella. “Is that a fact?”
Pulling the sapphire-blue ring circled with tiny diamonds from the inside of her purse, Ella didn’t hesitate in handing it to Mr. Sawyer. There was no need to inspect the ring that Harlan had placed on Ella’s hand when he promised to love and keep her in front of the justice of the peace. Mr. Sawyer already knew its value, and so did Ella. He had given her two estimates, and this time she was demanding the higher offer. Even though the value of the ring would never have been the saving grace in paying off the loan, it would now help clear her name. Combined with Narsissa’s money and the proceeds from the cypress she managed to get to market, selling the ring would leave Ella with three dollars and ten cents and a marriage that belonged to a woman she no longer knew. “Mr. Busby refused to take it when I offered it to him on consignment,” Ella said. “He said it was the last thing to remain of me.”
“You don’t say. Never knew him to be that much of a poet,” Mr. Sawyer said, squinting his left eye and examining Ella the same way he had examined the ring months ago when she first came to get an appraisal.
“Mr. Busby feared I’d have regrets.”
“Huh,” the old man said with a gargled sound. “He fears your husband will come back and there’ll be a higher price to pay.” Mr. Sawyer held up the ring between two fingers with shredded cuticles. Leaning over the counter, he looked back and forth at the sapphire in the ring and at Ella’s eyes. “Well, I’ll be . . . this stone matches your eyes. I reckon that’s how come your husband picked it for you.”
The smell of Mr. Sawyer’s soured words caused Ella to blink and recoil. She looked at the cat that was licking his paw next to a clock adorned with two gold angels. Then, thinking she might seem vulnerable, she looked directly into the clouded gray eyes of Mr. Sawyer. “You can make the check out to Gillespie Savings and Loan, please.”
Mr. Sawyer opened up his ledger and dipped his old-fashioned quill into a bottle of ink to write Ella a check. The cat jumped down and sauntered away with his back raised. Ella looked at the ring, which didn’t sparkle in the cramped confines of Mr. Sawyer’s place. She tried not to think about the evening that seemed like a lifetime ago when Harlan gave her the ring that even her aunt admitted was beautiful. The first few weeks after Harlan vanished, Ella had lain in bed staring at her ceiling that was painted robin’s-egg blue. She’d stretched out across the spot where Harlan had once slept, painting scenes in her mind of her husband returning with a bounty from the marathon poker tournaments he took part in during his travels.
The cat’s meow sounded more like a hiss, and Ella turned as if someone had just called her name from the door of Mr. Sawyer’s shop. Her aunt had been wrong. There was no such thing as an heirloom too valuable to part ways with. When the cat reached up and slapped his paw at the hem of Ella’s dress, she kicked him hard enough to make him cry out and hide underneath the table covered with items that were at one time valuable to those who walked through Mr. Sawyer’s door.
Before entering the bank two blocks away from where she sold her wedding ring, Ella rearranged the clasp of the necklace that Narsissa had made for her from gar fish scales. She fought the temptation to repaint the past into a magical, sentimental memory and instead rubbed the edge of one of the scales, reciting in her mind Narsissa’s promise that wearing the necklace would give her power.
The redheaded teller who worked below a large, iron-faced clock that hung on the wall did a double take when Ella came inside the lobby. He walked from around the teller booth. The collar of his otherwise-pressed shirt stood out from his neck in disobedience. “Miss . . . Mrs. Wallace.”
Ella could see the silhouette of Clive Gillespie through the frosted glass of his office door. He appeared to be talking on a phone. “I am here to see Clive.” For good measure, Ella smiled.
“He’s tied up at the moment. May I help you with something?” The young man folded his hands in a manner that reminded Ella of a funeral parlor owner.
“I’ll wait.”
“It’s going to be a while. He’s being connected to long distance.”
“How long could that possibly take?” Ella copied the teller’s stance.
“It is all the way to
Atlanta
. . . . It takes the operator as long as fifteen minutes just to connect him.”
Nerves boiled under the surface of skin too old to be a girl’s and too young to be an elder’s. The calm way Ella had scripted the presentation of the check crumbled with anger. “Has he been connected to the call yet?”
Without unclasping his hands, the teller halfway turned and glanced at the big clock behind him. “Well, seeing that he just picked up the receiver before you walked in, I’d say it will be some time, so why don’t you—”
The leaves of the potted palm in the lobby shook as Ella brushed up against the plant and circled around the teller. “Well, then, in that case I have time to stick my head in and say hello. I won’t be long.”
“Now hold on. Mrs. Wallace . . . hold on there. This is long distance.”
When Ella made it to the office door, the teller made one last attempt to stop her. His smile had been transformed into pursed lips. Ella slipped her hand around his waist and turned the brass door handle. “I’ll be out the door in no time.”
Clive was standing behind his desk, holding a cigar in one hand and the black phone receiver in the other.
For the past six weeks Ella had tried to picture what Clive Gillespie’s face would look like when she brought the money and laid it on his desk. Sometimes she conjured up the image while swinging an axe in the woods or maybe while pulling out the ticks that had managed to slip under her work hat and into her scalp. During those times his mouth would appear as a mocking grin. When she washed her hands with kerosene to strip the pine tar from her skin, his mouth was usually pictured open, fully displaying his shock. At night as she sat on the edge of her bed, spreading salve across the blisters that broke and bled, his mouth was always twisted in anger. But when reality arrived, she saw nothing on Clive’s face to indicate emotion, and that scared her the most.
“I told her you were . . .” The teller raised his hand in protest.
“Ella,” Clive said, putting the phone receiver down on his desk. He drew on the cigar, and smoke rolled from the corner of his mouth as he said, “This is an important call. I’m holding for long distance to Atlanta.”
“So I hear,” she said and opened her purse. She extended the envelope with the endorsed checks, and when he ignored the offer, she settled for placing it on his desk. “It’s there for you right down to the penny.” Ella turned slightly and nodded at the teller, who was still standing at the door. “Young man, you’re the witness to all this. It’s paid in full.”
When Clive waved him away with the cigar, the teller followed orders and closed the door behind him.
Clive placed the smoldering cigar on the side of an amber-colored ashtray. He stepped from the side of the desk. The pages of a big calendar with an illustration of a lush pasture fluttered with the rotation of the overhead fan.
Placing her hand underneath a corner of the desk, Ella willed herself not to move. The smell of Clive’s hair tonic was stronger than the scent of the cigar. Smoke rose and twirled behind him. When he stepped close enough for her to count the number of acne scars on his face, she held the small purse up to her waist. He turned his head, smiled, and reached his hand out like he might brush the side of her hair but stopped. “You might want to keep watch over your time in the sun. You’re beginning to acquire something of a red neck.”
Ella felt her face grow flush and her heart race. “I’ll want a receipt, naturally.”
When he laughed, Ella smelled the coffee and tobacco that lingered on his breath.
“Receipts and deeds. Now, precious, all that legality between such old friends?” He winked and reached out like he might stroke her neck with the back of his hand.
Ella stepped farther away, pressing herself against the side of the spooled-back chair meant for guests. “A receipt,” she repeated.
He went back behind the desk and took another draw on the cigar. With a defeated groan that seemed to mock her, Clive opened a drawer and pulled out a large ledger bound with layers of gold strings. He slowly opened the book and began writing the receipt. “Receipts? Between such longtime friends?”
“You know, my sons are over at the picture show right now. Clive, I think you missed your calling. You’d make a wonderful dramatist.”
“Well, let me get to it, then. It seems there’s a matter with the deed that I have to bring to your attention.” Clive picked up the phone, listened into the receiver, and then set it back on his desk. He squinted until the acne scars on his face all pinched together. “Pardon me. I’m still waiting for the connection.”
“What is it now? What deed are you even talking about?”
“You can verify what I’m saying at the courthouse, but there appears to be a matter of confusion over the deed to that parcel of land that your husband swindled . . . well, some might say stole from me.”
“The only confusion I have is why you’re so bent on doing me in.”
“No need to become disagreeable. This has nothing to do with you, precious.” Clive laughed again. “Harlan taught you well. You have a poker face if ever I’ve seen one.”
“Look, Clive . . .” Ella raised her hands in frustration but not surrender.
“You really don’t know. I can tell.”
Ella licked her lips and looked away at the square blocks with red numbers on the calendar. If only she could go back in time.
“While you’ve been running around chopping down trees with your boyfriend, there’s been a windstorm of excitement. It turns out your little place is smack-dab in the Garden of Eden.” Clive laughed the same way he had months earlier when the broker who represented Brother Mabry had first contacted him with the proposition to bring Apalachicola world acclaim.
Ella folded her arms and tucked her purse where Clive couldn’t see it. She reached for the door handle. “And I took you for just being crooked . . . not crazy.”
“Listen. I don’t give a second thought to your timber or your little store. That spring where your Indian gal frolics around, and probably where a whole generation of Injuns is buried, is right where Brother Mabry—yes,
the
Brother Mabry—where Brother Mabry believes that the Garden of Eden once sat.” Clive shrugged and rolled his eyes. “Who’s to say? Is he sane? I don’t much care. But one way or another there will be a slew of people flocking to this place. They’ll bathe in that spring. . . . They’ll pray. . . . They’ll spend.”