Brother Mabry reared back in the chair. “What’s this?”
“I want to begin tomorrow,” Priscilla said again. “Tomorrow at noon. The same time of day as when I was healed the first time.”
Clive smiled and waved the paper menu, calling forth the waiter. “Knowing the urgency, I arranged for barrels of the water to be shipped to the inn for you. You can soak in the water in your private bath . . . you know, until you are stronger from the travel. Let’s order, shall we?”
Priscilla leaned forward and the cuff of her silk dress dipped into the empty plate. “Bath? At the inn?”
“Absolutely,” Clive said. “It will be an exact replication of that spring. I’m sure Brother Mabry can bless it and so forth and so on.”
Brother Mabry reached over and rubbed her arm. “Mr. Gillespie has a point, sweetness. Your body needs to adjust to the climate, not to mention the long trip. The spring will be there when you’re rested.”
The waiter pulled a pad from his back pocket and walked toward Clive Gillespie. He sidestepped Dimitri, who was barking orders at the kitchen door near where Reverend Simpson, Myer Simpson, and Neva Clarkson sat.
Saturday was the day that most citizens in the surrounding areas would come to Apalachicola to make purchases of products that were not available in the small commissaries, such as the one Ella Wallace ran. But Brother Mabry, the famed evangelist whose picture had appeared in the papers and the newsreels that played at the theater, had made the normal downtown crowd swell threefold. Dimitri had hired two off-duty policemen to stand outside just to keep the curious from placing their hands on the restaurant windows and peering in.
Myer Simpson had even purchased a new red hat with a white egret feather rising from the back. “A circus over a mortal human being. I can’t imagine making such a fuss.” Myer glanced over at the table where Brother Mabry and Priscilla sat. Then she gasped and picked up the paper menu and held it to the side of her face as if to block them from seeing her. In a stage whisper she said, “Don’t look now, but when you get a chance, I want you to look at his wife’s shoes. That preacher’s wife is wearing leather shoes.
Leather,
mind you. With all the rationing going on with the war, leather shoes are running fifteen dollars a pair. I know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen them priced in the catalogues. What preacher’s wife can afford leather shoes in this day and age?”
Reverend Simpson was hunched over a plate of oysters. He picked up a half shell and tossed it back in his mouth the same way he might if he were taking a dose of medicine. “Well, certainly not the preacher’s wife sitting at my table.”
Myer Simpson looked at Neva Clarkson and rolled her eyes. Then she reached over and wiped away crumbs from a saltine cracker that had collected in the reverend’s beard.
“Well, one thing about it,” Neva said and dabbed a napkin at her lips. “All the racket over this preacher’s visit will silence the talk about the man who appeared at Ella Wallace’s doorstep.”
Myer Simpson shook her head, and the feather waved back and forth. “Not for long. Nothing will stop the questions there as far as I’m concerned. I tell you . . . the reverend won’t pay me any mind, but I tell you it is queer that this man shows up out of the blue. It’s as if that man at Ella’s walked right out from the fog.”
“People come and people go,” Reverend Simpson said and slurped down another oyster. “It’s a port city.”
“And when I tried to ask Narsissa about him the other day when I was leaving the store, she was just as rude as can be. You know she’s always been an uppity thing to have no standing. Why, she practically gruffed at me, didn’t she, Reverend?”
The reverend half nodded and jabbed his fork into a piece of fish on Myer Simpson’s plate. He didn’t seem to notice when Myer motioned with her pinky finger toward the spot in his gray beard where a sliver of an oyster lay.
Myer Simpson rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to Neva. “Now, am I crazy, Neva? Tell me it’s not queer.”
Neva looked down at the morsels of cheese grits and hush puppies left on her plate. “Ella certainly has her burdens. I just wish she didn’t have to use those boys the way she’s doing.”
“What about that?” Myer Simpson rested her index finger on her chin. “The very notion . . . well, desperation will make you do desperate things. Neva, I’m just glad you didn’t get strung along with that Harlan Wallace. I know you were sick at heart over him marrying Ella back in your growing-up days, but look at everything now. Well, just think . . . it could be you out there working like a pulpwood roughneck.”
Neva pushed her plate to the side of the table and looked out the window at the townspeople who walked by, all of them craning their necks toward Brother Mabry. “What is it you say, Reverend? About the Lord being gracious in all His ways.”
“Amen,” Myer Simpson said and then shoved her plate away from Reverend Simpson’s reach. “Now, Neva, what was it you were about to tell us about Ella using her boys?”
Neva fanned her hands in the air. “Oh, nothing. I just wish Ella would not have taken Keaton and Samuel out of school to help her cut the timber. Especially Keaton. He loves school as well as any student I have.”
Myer Simpson made a clucking sound and shook her head again. “I tell you the truth, it’s plumb pitiful. Her in that fix she’s in and ruining her boys’ morals with having that man live with her.”
“Now hold on,” Reverend Simpson said with a cracker in hand.
“They tell me Clive Gillespie offered her a fair price for the place,” Myer said. The feather on her hat waved as she shook her head.
“Huh. I doubt it was a fair price if Clive Gillespie offered it,” Reverend Simpson said as spit and cracker crumbs flew out of his mouth. “The only thing fair about him is his skin.”
“What in the world is that girl thinking?” Myer said, ignoring her husband. “Oh, me. What a mess. And if Clive hadn’t been out there gambling, he would have never lost all that property down by the river to Harlan in the first place.”
“Now Mrs. Simpson,” the reverend said.
“Don’t you
Mrs.
me,” Myer said. “Clive Gillespie is just as crooked as Harlan Wallace. The only difference is that he’s dressed in better clothes. I’ve thought a number of times that he turned out the way he did because his mother left him before he could speak.”
Reverend Simpson licked his lips, managing to strike the bit of oyster that clung to his beard with the tip of his tongue. “The things that occupy your mind.” The reverend laughed, but no one followed, and he soon coughed into his napkin.
“Why, Miss Emmitt’s wash girl used to work for the Gillespies. She said that the Gillespie woman never paid a bit of mind to that boy. She didn’t even want to hold him after he was born.” Myer Simpson leaned down until the roll of fat that clung to her midriff balanced on the edge of the table and whispered, “Miss Emmitt said that Clive, with no mother to count for, started calling the colored wash girl
Mama
. You can’t tell me that such maternal desertion doesn’t lead to problems in the head.”
“I think it’s probably more a problem of the heart,” Reverend Simpson said.
“I wonder what became of her? Mrs. Gillespie, I mean. Where did she go?” Neva asked, glancing over at the table where Clive and the celebrated visitors sat.
“She was from South Carolina, if I recall,” Reverend Simpson said, massaging his beard and removing another sliver of oyster meat.
“Georgia,” Myer Simpson corrected with a cluck of her tongue. “She was from a big wheel family in Savannah. Spoiled rotten, they tell me. She took the first boat out of here after the Jones boy shot that man in the head in her husband’s bank.”
“Mercy,” Neva said. “I’d forgotten all about that.”
“Mm-hmm.” Myer Simpson poked her tongue against the corner of her cheek until the side of her face poked out like a bump. “The Jones boy claimed the man had stolen his cattle. And come to find out he did. They settled it right then and there. No charges were filed. The Jones boy walked away scot-free. But the Gillespie woman was never the same after that day. Bad nerves, they tell me. Well, nerves or no nerves, you don’t desert your family. You certainly don’t break your biblical oath to your husband and just leave town.”
The young waiter appeared and refilled Myer Simpson’s glass. She pushed back against the chair as tea splattered to the table. “I declare. Pay attention.” The waiter mumbled apologies and darted back toward Clive Gillespie’s table.
Reverend Simpson looked directly at Neva. “I always said that she should teach history in your school. She can remember trivial details better than anyone I’ve ever known.”
Neva picked up her handbag from the table and placed it in her lap. “Well, there you have it. Ancient history. I guess Ella and I were jinxed from the start. Harlan at first wanted to marry me, and Clive wanted to marry Ella. Either way, we both lost.”
“You didn’t lose, my dear,” Reverend Simpson said. “Let’s not forget that there is something to be said for never marrying.”
Myer Simpson slowly turned her head toward the reverend. Her mouth twisted to the side, causing her face to seem even sharper.
“Well, just look at the apostle Paul. He never married,” the reverend said.
“Poor Ella,” Myer Simpson said. She looked up to the ceiling as if she might be at a loss for words and then she sighed. “Bless her heart. I always said Ella was petted too much by that hedonistic aunt of hers . . . all those art lessons and talk about painting in Europe.” Myer Simpson giggled and rolled her eyes. “Now look at her. And what if she would have married Clive Gillespie? She wouldn’t have been much better off. He practically drove that bank his daddy built into the ground.”
The reverend tossed an empty oyster shell onto the platter that sat on the table. “Now I will give you that much. Clive Gillespie ruined everything his father worked for. The father was decent, from all accounts.”
“Remember, right before his father died, Mr. Gillespie had to sell the family home place over in Baldwin County just to keep the bank from going under?” Neva asked.
“Just plain sorry. . . . I don’t care how much money they had at one time. He is just plain sorry,” Myer said.
“Who knows why certain humans are decent and others like Clive are . . . well . . .” Reverend Simpson rolled his shoulders into a shrug. “It’s one of the mysteries that I chalk up to God.”
Neva closed her eyes and leaned closer to the reverend. “Something is bothering me, Reverend Simpson. My cousin—the one I visited in Pensacola—well, she said I should come right out and ask you about it.”
“What?” Reverend and Myer Simpson asked at the same time.
Neva licked her lips and opened her eyes. “Reverend, have you ever heard of the sort of healing that the man staying at Ella’s place is reported to have performed?”
Myer Simpson clutched her chest with one hand and gripped Reverend Simpson’s arm with the other. Her knobbed and curved arthritic fingers seemed like claws.
“You mean Mrs. Pomeroy didn’t tell you?” Neva asked.
“Ever since she left the church to go associate with that Pentecostal bunch, I don’t pay that woman any mind,” Myer Simpson said.
“Mrs. Simpson,” the Reverend said in a long sigh. “No, Neva, we’ve not heard about any healings.”
Neva bit her lip and rubbed the corner of her napkin.
The reverend and Myer Simpson both leaned closer until the tip of Myer Simpson’s feather touched Neva’s hairline.
“Now, I don’t know all the facts, but the children at school were talking about Ella’s youngest son. He was sick—desperately sick, as you well know—then . . .”
“Then he was well,” Myer Simpson added. “I saw him outdoors playing ball.”
“Yes, and then all of the sudden he comes to school perfectly fine. After I heard him telling the students on the playground about this visitor who healed him I—”
“Healed?” Reverend Simpson repeated.
“Macon said—and again, this is from a child, but it has bothered me enough to bring it up—Macon said that the man . . . this man they call Lanier . . . well, he put his mouth on Macon’s and then he healed him.”
Myer Simpson jerked backward against the chair, and her hat became askew.
“Good heavens,” the reverend said.
“Now I’m talking behind a boy who is six,” Neva said with a cautionary wave of her hand.
“Breathed on him?” the reverend asked.
“Kissed him on the mouth,” Myer Simpson said twice.
“No,” Neva said with her hand raised higher. “Now, he never said the word
kissed
. The boy said he felt that he was drowning and that this man cleared his lungs. All I know is that the day I took his lessons over to him, the poor little thing had blisters all over his lips and even in his mouth. Then he shows up at school perfectly fine.”
The waiter, a mere boy himself with the beginning of a mustache, approached and cleared the plates from their table. Against a background of lunchtime chatter and clanking silverware, the three of them sat in silence, each looking in different directions. Neva leaned back and sighed. “Please don’t repeat what I’ve told you. Again, he’s just a child. You know how children are.”
“None to worry, dear.” The reverend patted Neva’s hand.
“Why, of course not. You can’t take children at face value. I wouldn’t dare say a word,” Myer Simpson said and adjusted her new hat.
N
eva Clarkson was an invisible apprehension that rode on Ella’s shoulders from the time she woke in the morning and felt the knots in her shoulders to the time the back of her sweat-soaked blouse stuck to her flesh out in the woods. Her onetime friend weighed on Ella as much as the axe she swung and the chains she dragged. No matter how many times she chastised herself for worrying with notions of Neva when she faced losing all that she owned, the burden would never leave her. Try as she might, Ella couldn’t toss aside the chastening look of her former friend. Neva’s judgment was as heavy as the rusted chain Ella lugged through a sandy path of palmetto bushes. She could feel it like metal digging into her collar, trying to pull her back. Ella imagined Neva’s disapproving comments being sung throughout Dead Lakes with all the townspeople joining in to share their shock and disdain. The voices buzzed in her ear the same as the mosquitoes.
“What has become of Ella Wallace?”
she pictured Neva asking each and every one of them.
“What would her aunt think about her now?”
The mule kicked his leg at the log closest to him, and the chains rattled in a rhythmic way that made Ella think of her aunt reading poetry to her on Sunday afternoons. She could still see in her mind’s eye the way her aunt’s long, thin fingers would fan out across the cover of the book as she held it. Dickinson was their favorite, and the lines bubbled to the surface of Ella’s memory.
“’Tis dogged does it,”
her aunt chimed. Gritting her teeth, Ella lifted the axe high above her head and swung it into the tree in front of her with a ferocity that left a cat-face-shaped scar on the bark of the tree.
The mule kicked faster, now with both hind legs, and the chains sounded as if they might break apart.
Samuel’s voice broke through the rhythm of Ella’s memory. “The mule’s got a lick on his leg,” he yelled. He was hunched over the animal examining the injured spot. Blood was beginning to spew from the mule’s ankle.
“Is it broke?” Keaton asked.
“I don’t think so, but it’s sure bleeding,” Samuel said.
They all dropped their equipment and fussed around the mule, examining the creature for further injuries. Only Narsissa looked straight ahead toward the swamp water.
By the time they had made it out of the woods and back to the stack of timber in front of the house, the mule’s leg was bleeding profusely. Worry had settled over Ella. If the mule was out of commission, the remainder of the timber would go uncut. The man from the lumberyard had included the uncut timber in the estimate for payment that she was to receive. Promises had been made. A gentleman’s agreement, the lumberman called it.
“How bad is it?” Ella stroked the mule’s mane while Samuel lifted his hind leg. The mule whinnied in a high, pierced shrill and darted to the side. Lanier moved to take a look, and Samuel stomped harder than the mule had.
“That’s right. Go ahead and take over. You seem to know everything.” Samuel marched off toward the barn and didn’t turn around when Ella called out to him.
“Let’s see what we got here.” Lanier lifted the mule’s leg.
Ruby was marching back and forth down the road, carrying her baton. Two men who had been sitting on the store porch were now walking toward them. “You got a hurt mule?” the one with the suspenders asked.
Mrs. Pomeroy came out of her home and called to Ella, “Is everything all right?”
All the while, blood poured from the animal. When the mule stepped to the right before walking unbalanced and falling to the ground, everyone stepped closer. “Is it dead?” Mrs. Pomeroy asked.
“Is it dead?” Ruby said in a mocking tone.
Lanier hovered over the leg while Keaton massaged the mule’s neck and whispered to him. Ella pulled off her gloves and massaged the callused places inside her left palm. The people moved closer to her, and she felt as if they were stealing the air away. She struggled to breathe while she looked at the mule and then back at the timber.
Wrapping his hands around the mule’s leg, Lanier gripped tighter when the animal tried to kick. Eventually the mule quieted and let Lanier take control of his injury.
Narsissa watched closely as Lanier bowed his head, the curls of his hair hiding much of his mouth. She couldn’t make out what he was mumbling but she could tell that he was moving his lips like he had done earlier with her. When Lanier let go of the mule’s leg, Narsissa stepped backward. The blood on the animal’s leg was gone, completely washed clean. Lanier and Keaton pulled the mule up by his bridle.
“Is it a permanent injury?” Ella asked.
“He’ll be all right directly,” Lanier answered. But there was no waiting for healing. The gash in the mule’s leg had disappeared as fast as the injury had occurred.
“Look-a there,” the man with the suspenders said. “That mule’s not giving on that leg one bit.”
“Was it that leg that was cut?” the other man asked.
“I don’t think it was so much a cut as it was a scrape,” Lanier answered.
Ella looked at Lanier and opened her mouth to speak but didn’t.
“Scrape? That poor animal was liable to bleed to death. There was blood everywhere,” Mrs. Pomeroy said, gripping the buttons on her blouse.
“Blood everywhere. Everywhere blood,” Ruby said.
“I don’t see no blood now,” one of the men said.
“What? What happened here?” Mrs. Pomeroy asked and then stepped backward, bumping into Ruby, who was marching in circles.
“For he’s a jolly good fellow,” Ruby began to sing.
“That mule was bleeding profusely,” Mrs. Pomeroy said.
“He was about to bleed out, looked like it to me,” the man with the suspenders said. The sun caught one of the brass buttons on the suspenders and it sparkled for a moment. The man looked at the mule and then back at Lanier.
“Now look at that mule, walking around like nothing was wrong,” the other man added.
Keaton and Samuel led the mule back to the barn. Lanier wanted to feed the animal and put him back in the stall just like he had every night since he’d been in Dead Lakes. He hoped that the crowd would move on and go back to normal conversations about the weather.
They’ll forget about this soon enough,
he kept telling himself.
“For he’s a jolly good fellow,” Ruby sang. “For he’s a jolly good fellow that nobody can deny.” Her singing echoed all the way down to the barn.
When the crickets called and the slivered moon first appeared that evening, Lanier came out of the barn carrying the tray that Narsissa had brought him for supper. She had piled the plate high with extra pieces of fried chicken legs.
As Lanier rounded the garden of sunflowers, he looked up and found Ella sitting on the porch steps of the house. She had a sketchbook on her lap and was bent over, intensely gripping a yellow piece of chalk. Sheets of papers drawn with sunflowers scattered the porch steps.
“I didn’t know we had an artist on the place.”
Ella jumped and folded the pad shut. She tossed it to the side and the yellow chalk rolled down the first porch step and lodged against the corner of the banister. “Let me get that for you.” Ella stood and took the supper tray from Lanier. Their hands brushed against each other.
Lanier felt the cool of the sweat on his back again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt your work.”
“Work? Hardly. Play, more or less.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Lanier leaned down like he might pick up one of the drawings. “Can I?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Sorry,” he said, stepping aside, brushing against the azalea bush. “I learned to like art back in Bainbridge when . . . well. How long have you been drawing?”
Ella set the tray down on a small wicker table next to the front door. “Since I was a girl. I’d never thought about it . . . about how long it’s been.”
A dragonfly paused in midflight in the space between them and then moved closer to the bush.
Ella rubbed the back of her neck and looked around the porch floor, searching for the chalk. Lanier picked the piece up and handed it to her. This time he purposely brushed his fingers against hers. “I like to whittle dolls,” he said. “I have done that since I was a kid too. Looks like we have something in common after all.”
The sun sank until it became an orange glow beyond the tops of the trees. Lightning bugs were called out in time for the first evening star.
“I’d like to paint again, but for now . . .” Ella shrugged and laughed. “Why am I feeling like such a schoolgirl right about now?”
“You tell me.” He studied her full lips and the white tips of her teeth. He liked the way she would lightly roll her tongue across her lips whenever she finished a sentence. Her blue eyes swam in tiredness, making them seem even more translucent.
Ella looked over Lanier’s shoulder at the road where Ruby had led a make-believe parade in Lanier’s honor. “Lanier, may I ask you a personal question?”
He laughed and looked up toward the sky that was now dotted with more stars. “After the way I showed up here, I figure I’m pretty much an open book now.”
Ella smiled and shook her head. “I’m being serious. I need to settle something in my mind. What happened today . . . what happened with Macon and then with Narsissa and the snake . . . well . . . do you consider yourself to be a Christian man?”
Lanier’s laugh turned into a sigh and he looked back up at the evening sky. He pictured the words handed down by Old Lady Cash raining down upon him.
Ella reached out her hand. The tips of her fingers brushed against his forearm. “Now please don’t take offense. The reason I’m asking is . . . well, out there today, with people seeing you that way with the mule and all of these signs and symbols . . .”
“Signs and symbols?”
“Look, Narsissa has been scaring me to death with her talk. She thinks . . . I don’t know . . . that there is some black magic to all of this stopping blood business.”
“I guess she thought it was on account of signs and symbols that that snake let go of her leg, too.”
Ella pulled at the cuff of her shirt. “I shouldn’t have said that. . . . It’s just that with all of the people standing around today, I know there will be talk.”
“You know, after all my book learning, I’ve really only learned one thing I know to be a fact. What folks might think of me is none of my business.” Lanier turned back to the barn. “Thank you for supper. Have a good evening.” He raised his hand as much to say good-bye as to register his frustrations.
A sunflower leaf slapped across his shoulder as he called out, “I think the thing for me to do is to move on from here.” With each step toward the barn he felt the anger and heaviness of his time in Bainbridge boiling to the surface. The ugliness of his past, all of the things that he was running from, were finally catching up with him.
The quiet dawn was cut by the squeal of the whistle from the steamboat
John W. Callahan
as it made its way back upriver from Apalachicola and onward to the next port of call. The bronze star and eagle on the boat’s bow were darkened black from the smoke that billowed from the two tall pipes. As the boat made its way around the bend of Dead Lakes, only a speckled hound noticed. He ran down the riverbank, barking at the boat and swinging his head at the sound of the whistle. By the time the boat made the corner and grazed the tips of moss that hung from a low-hanging tree on the bank, the dog had gone back to sniffing for the smell of fresh ham and bacon that hung in the air. He trotted past the church and school and paused in front of Ella’s store.
Ella came out of her house carrying a tray, and when the dog trotted toward her, she carefully balanced the tray and tried to shoo the dog away all at the same time.
The same tray that Lanier had left on her porch last evening now held a plate of biscuits and ham. She stepped across the yard carefully, watching the coffee slosh around the edges of the cup. Lanier’s declaration from the evening before had echoed in her mind and tied up the muscles in her body, strangling the desire for rest. She needed Lanier Stillis to stay and help. She desired him to stay.
The kerosene lantern still burned at the barn entrance. Lanier sat on the feed crate. Wood shavings littered his boots. He glanced up at Ella and continued whittling. “Some folks pray before they start the day. I whittle. But I guess that’s not surprising with me being a heathen and all.” He stopped long enough to look up and offer Ella a sideways smile.
“I am sorry about how we left things yesterday evening.” She lifted up the tray of breakfast as if it might be a peace offering.
Lanier brushed the wood shavings from his pant legs and stood up. “I could smell the ham out here about as good as that hound that was following you.”
Ella waited for Lanier to move a bridle from the workbench and then set the tray down. When she moved past Lanier, he could smell her lavender scent and was reminded once again that beyond the checkered work shirt and denim jeans was a lady. When she turned toward him and offered the cup of coffee, he feared that she had caught him staring at her.
“Here’s to a snakeless and a cloudless day,” he said and offered a toast.
“You know, about what I said last evening . . .”
“Let’s not study all that again.”
Ella held up her hand. “No, I want to say something. Now, in all fairness to Narsissa, I said what I said because of people knowing about . . . well, about your special . . . abilities or gifts or whatever.”
“So I really am special after all?”
“The healing is what I’m getting at.”
“Oh.” Lanier sipped the coffee and playfully winked at Ella.
“Must everything be construed into a silly joke?”
“The way I figure it, better to joke than cry.”
“I’ve thought more about what you said last night. And I want to say that I’m glad you can afford to turn a blind eye to what others might think of you, but in my defense, I have a business to run. I don’t have the luxury of being so lackadaisical about perceptions.”
“Perceptions?”
“Yes. People around here know what you had for breakfast by lunchtime.”
He sipped the coffee and looked away. The mule kicked the side of the stall and without putting the cup of coffee down, Lanier grabbed a bale of hay with one hand and tossed it into the mule’s stall. “I know you’ve got a lot on your mind. You’ve managed better than most. What you’ve been through would have broken many a man.”