Summer 1957
T
HINGS
began to change in Bayou
Cymbaline. Much as a wild plant changes to a cure, or a stone changes from a buried thing to a found thing; much as hate, guilt, sorrow, and vengeance become vessels of forgiveness. That is how the change happened, incrementally and from within.
Mr. Silvey excused himself from his sister’s supper table in her house in Baton Rouge; a bit of indigestion, he said. He went to his room, and who should be there but Mrs. Silvey, sitting on his bed just as he remembered her. His heart gave a fluttering movement then, and his lungs filled with merry exaltation.
“Forrest,” she said, “do you know how I’ve missed you?”
His brother-in-law found him later that night, keeled over on the bed with no pulse and no breathing, his arms opened wide in a joyful embrace.
Vida van Demming’s confession had indeed reached Mr. Harold Hopkins in Port Arthur, Texas, who washed his hands and straightened his tie before opening her letter. He read it once and read it again and then promptly put it in the sink, where he set it afire and watched it burn to ash before turning on the water and letting the blackened remains of a painful admission run down his kitchen drain.
Vida answered her doorbell on a Sunday afternoon to find him standing before her wearing his very best suit, a boutonniere in his lapel, and some brand-new wingtip shoes. He made the trip from Port Arthur every weekend after that. Sometimes they looked for a roller coaster to ride, and sometimes they read the paper together over coffee and buttered toast.
Adelaide Roman learned the hard way that God cannot be manipulated. After that last Meeting of the Righteous and for the rest of her natural life she could speak in nothing but tongues, not one of which could be understood by another living soul. She couldn’t even write in anything but gibberish after that day, and she’d lost the ability to read in any language whatsoever. Never again would she make fun of people who were different. Never again would she gossip. Never again would she refuse to serve a black woman who wanted nothing more than to purchase a stamp. She had, as Bonaventure said, been healed.
Adelaide was put out to pasture by the United States Post Office. They were sorry, they said, but a postal worker needed to be able to read. You understand, don’t you, Mrs. Roman? At which she seethed. It wasn’t that Adelaide needed the money; it was the loss of the power to bring down ruin. That’s what she would miss.
One week into her gibberish life, she sought a private audience with Brother Harley John. It wasn’t the first time, or even the three hundredth, that she was wearing black satin lingerie beneath her churchgoing clothes. Brother Eacomb looked at her as if she were scum from the throat of the devil.
“Get thee behind me, Satan!” was all he said before pushing her out the door.
The Forthright Gospelers shunned her altogether upon the recommendation of Reverend Eacomb. (It would not do to have her ask for healing in front of a crowd of believers.)
Adelaide consulted with specialists: neurologists, and ear, nose, and throat doctors; she even went to see a hypnotist. None of them did any good. The neurologist suggested she see a psychiatrist, but Adelaide refused. Bonaventure suggested she learn to sign. Adelaide refused that too.
Between Dancy, Letice, and Trinidad, someone checked on her every day. The only one she let through the door was Dancy. Adelaide would open the door to Letice but immediately wave her away, and she would not even answer the door to Trinidad, and so missed another chance at redemption week after week after week.
Adelaide didn’t have much to do. She took to rummaging through the house and found a pair of binoculars Theo had kept in a drawer. She used them to spy on her neighbors, but couldn’t even tell her African violet about the private things she saw. The frustration took over everything, and Adelaide became bitterly angry. After several months of self-imposed isolation she was found by Dancy, slumped over at the kitchen table, dead of a heart attack, just like Theo.
Trinidad Prefontaine kept that smooth and speckled stone on the altar in her front room.
When the light from the stone had gone that day, she’d put the prism relic of baby’s blood and the note that had been written by Dancy into her apron pocket. The next morning she took them back to Christopher Street and placed them both inside the box that Bonaventure had returned to that niche in the chapel wall. She stayed in the chapel for a moment more and said a prayer of deep thanksgiving.
After that day, Trinidad began to look back at her past in search of her personal prophets. There was good Sister Sulpice, who’d given her the Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon with which to bless endeavors; and of course there was Trinidad’s first prophet, Mam Judith, with her silks and her tea kettle, who’d spoken in that snake-hissy whisper of Purpose and of Knowing.
Those look-backs became a regular habit and always brought new Knowing. For instance, it came to Trinidad that her mother had been raped and left with a child she had not known how to love. She knew that Calypso had been hurt beyond repair and didn’t know how to fix herself, and Trinidad forgave. She withdrew enough money from her savings to purchase a stone for her mother’s grave. The artisan had done as she requested, engraving Calypso’s name as Mrs. Fontenaise, which happened to incorporate that bit of punctuation that kept it from being a superstitious thirteen characters long. In addition to marking the grave, the monument bestowed the respectable title the living Calypso had never attained. Trinidad also placed a small bunch of chickweed on her mother’s grave, in order that Calypso might soothe that bite of a poisonous thing and walk without soreness to the Promised Land.
Now, one might suppose that the itching would return and cause Trinidad to move on. It did not. Though she remained in the employ of the Arrow family, she continued to live in her house on the Neff Switch road, harvesting simples and turning them into cures. It was, she felt, her permanent Purpose.
Romantic love came into Trinidad’s life, taking her by surprise. Her Knowing had not foretold that love, for it had come from inside a mystery.
Personnel records at the Rouge provided Detective Tate with the names and last known addresses of four possibilities. They all had lived in Melvindale. Pairing information gathered from the Department of Veterans Affairs with his belief that the John Doe had been an army man allowed Tate to eliminate two of the possibilities because they had been in the navy and so would have carried a different uniform button. The remaining two were army guys, and the similarities between them were striking. Both had volunteered to serve; both had been born in the New Orleans area; neither had listed any living relatives when they joined the military.
The first possibility was George Heckert, who’d lived on Maple Street in Melvindale. Tate went around to the address on record and introduced himself to the owners of the house as a private investigator who’d been hired to resolve a family situation. He promised compensation for a moment of their time. When he showed them the police photo of the John Doe, they said it was not George Heckert. They knew him well and had kept in touch after all these years; in fact, they’d had a letter from him just the other day. He’d moved to Louisville, Kentucky, a year or so ago, which meant he was not incarcerated in the asylum for the criminally insane. What Tate didn’t find out was that George Heckert had been the maker of the wagon with the plow blade handle, the one who couldn’t get a loan to save his family’s farm.
Tate went to the remaining address, a rooming house on Taylor, stated his name and his purpose, and made the offer of compensation. The owner took one look at the photograph and said he remembered the guy all right; he’d stiffed him on the rent, just took off without notice. The man consulted an old green ledger and matched a name to the photo. It was that of the last possibility. The Wanderer had been identified.
“It was strange,” the man said. “He’d never been any trouble, kept to himself. You know the type. A lot of those war wounded were like that.”
“Do you recall when he made his sudden departure?” Tate asked.
“It was winter. Let me see now—it would have been between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I think it was in 1949. Yeah, it was definitely in 1949. I remember all the talk at the time of hitting the half-century mark on New Year’s. And I remember all the trouble I had finding another tenant so close to the holidays. He had the basement apartment; it’s a tough one to rent out. Most people don’t like living in a Michigan basement. Too dark, they say, and too cold.”
Tate paid the man and tipped his hat. Upon returning home, he checked the name against bank records in Bayou Cymbaline. It was easy to establish a connection to the Molyneaux family. He reported his findings to the police, who undertook formal confirmation.
Finally, Tate set down his summation. When it was finished, he removed his glasses, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose. It was what he always did at the end. He thought back through every step of the investigation and all he had done to bear out his conclusion.
“It’s all there, Mrs. Arrow,” the detective said as he handed Letice the envelope. “Would you like me to tell you or would you prefer to open it in private?”
“In private, Mr. Tate,” she said, and then handed him final payment. When Coleman Tate had gone, Letice took the envelope into her chapel and stood still before the crucifix. The words fell all around her then like a kind and curing rain:
Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.
Right there and right then, Letice Arrow knew in absolute clarity that forgiveness is unconditional; it is complete in and of itself and always rises above the facts.
She went to the kitchen and put the kettle on. Then she sat down at the table, the envelope before her, and took a sip of tea. She had waited so long to finally know the man’s name, and now it did not matter. The envelope remained sealed that day and the next. But on the third day, Letice decided to open it.
She went into her library and slit the envelope in one swift motion and then pulled the paper out slowly. It was folded, and for a second or two she considered leaving it that way.
Her hands shook, and she’d suddenly gone cold.
There were just a few lines on that single sheet of paper. The case was no longer in progress but closed.
FINAL REPORT
IN THE MATTER OF WILLIAM EVEREST ARROW (DECEASED)
The man who murdered your son has been identified as one Tristan Duvais. Confirmation has been ascertained by legal authority. Details provided upon request.
Letice bent over double, her body wracked with pain. When the sobbing was through, she inhaled the present and exhaled the past. For the first time in forever she slept through the night and woke up knowing that Saint Bonaventure had been right. The mind can take in many things, but it cannot take in God.
Letice still owned the Molyneaux family home—she’d never been able to bring herself to put it up for sale. Once or twice a year she met with the caretaker to discuss maintenance issues of one sort or another, but that was the extent of her dealings. And then she got into the habit of driving out there on Sunday mornings after mass. She never did more than pull into the driveway before turning the car around and heading back home, but one day for reasons she couldn’t quite make out, she left the car and went to stand in the stables where she collected what remained of the long, long ago.
With every succeeding pilgrimage, she grew closer to personal peace.
She forgave her mother.
She forgave Tristan.
She resolved that God still loved her.
On what Letice calculated would have been her first baby’s birthday, she went to her chapel and removed the carved wooden box that held the relic, not knowing that it now held Dancy’s note to William too. Letice did not open the box but took it out to the Molyneaux home and buried it beneath the elm tree, near about the grave of the fragile little sparrow. When her task was done, she recited from Ecclesiastes:
There is a season for everything, a time for every occupation under heaven: A time for giving birth, a time for dying.
Then she went on to her next destination.
“Someone to see you,” the asylum guard said.
Tristan sat down to face his visitor, a flicker of memory passing over his ruined face, but only for an instant. Letice reached across the table and gently took his hand, telling him she was sorry. She visited him every week after that. They sat in the garden and watched the birds and finally were at peace. The visits ended when Letice Arrow died at the age of seventy-eight.
The Wanderer remained in the asylum the rest of his natural life. The memory of what he’d done left him for good. He wasn’t in pain and he no longer cried. Each time Eugenia Babbitt visited him, he would press her hand to his chest by way of saying goodbye.
On a day when Letice and Bonaventure were out, Dancy Arrow sent Trinidad to the store because she wanted to be alone. She entered her bedroom closet and took down the box that held William’s ruined clothes and the note. She did not know that the original note was missing—she opened the lid only enough to slip this new note in:
Dear William,
I wish it never happened. I will always remember our happiness. You will ever be in my heart. Rest well.
Love,
Dancy
Dancy removed the box from the closet and placed it on her bed. She took a bath and did her hair and took great pains with her makeup. After putting on a cotton summer dress in two shades of yellow, she slipped her feet into new espadrilles and dabbed drops of perfume behind each ear and at the pulse points on her wrists. She checked her appearance in the full-length mirror, inhaled deeply, and then blew the breath out as slowly as she could. She picked up the box and held it against her body, close to where her breath had grown thin as a wedding veil.