American Heroes Series - 03 - Purgatory (5 page)

Monty jabbed a fat finger at him.
“State Police Commissioner isn’t such a big deal,” he told him, his manner
filled with pure green jealousy. “You told the entire state assembly that you
were going to rid the state of corrupt police when you took office, but we all
know that was just a bunch of bullshit. When I’m governor, I’m going to bust
you down to patrolman. You’re not so great.”

Nash just shook his head at him.
“Goodbye, Monty.”

Monty started to yell at him but
Nash was out the door, shutting the panel to block out the man’s bad humored
threats. He was thinking ahead to the paperwork he had waiting for him back at
the office and the three o’clock meeting with Human Resources on Sexual
Harassment training for parish deputies. But he was thinking more about a
luscious blond he left back at what used to be his old family homestead.  He
had a mountain of work to do but found he couldn’t think of anything other than
her.

By the time he hit his car down
in the parking lot, his plans for the afternoon had drastically changed.

CHAPTER THREE

“Ms. Biffy, Ms. Tulip and Ms.
Leon have sent me to tell yo’ to come and visit them today.”

Elliot was standing at her front
door, listening to a very old African-American man.  He wasn’t making much
sense but he seemed very sincere in his requests, although demands were more
like it.

 He was dressed in old black
pants, a dirty white shirt, and held his frayed straw hat in his gnarled hands.
From the weathered lines on his face, he must have been as old as the hills. He
seemed polite enough but Elliot really couldn’t figure out who he was or why he
had come other than a few politely, and perhaps urgently, uttered sentences.

“Ms. Biffy, Ms. Tulip and Ms.
Leon?” she repeated. 

“Yes’m.”

“Who are they?”

“The
ladies
, ma’am.”

“What ladies?”

He pointed off down the gravel
road. “The ladies from The Bottoms, ma’am. They want yo’ to come to the house.”

Elliot’s features screwed up with
confusion. “They want me to…?”She stopped, shaking her head at the man. “Wait a
minute; let’s start over.  You said your name was Mickey?”

“Yes’m.”

“And these women sent you to
bring me to them?”

Old Mickey clutched his hat.
“Yes’m. Ms. Biffy saw yo’ movin’ in with her lookin’ glass and she sent me to
fetch yo’.”

By this time, Alec was standing
behind his mother, listening to the old man. His young face showed the same
confusion as his mother’s. Elliot looked at her equally perplexed son for a
moment before turning her attention back to the old man.

“Let me get this straight,” she
said patiently. “
Mizz
Biffy saw us moving in and she wants me to come
over and visit her?”

She said the woman’s name just
the way he did, with a drawn out ‘mizz’. In fact, she had heard Louise use the
same term when referring to the former owner of Purgatory, so it was coming to
Elliot’s attention that perhaps women were formally addressed that way around
here. It would take some getting used to, the legacy of decorum that was
evidently used in the South.  

Old Mickey nodded fervently to
her question. “Yes’m, she does. She says to come before supper.”

Elliot glanced up at the sky; it
was fast approaching sun down and with the moving truck having come and gone a
few hours earlier, she had a ton of unpacking to do. She wasn’t going anywhere.
With a forced smile, she focused on the old man.

“Mickey, I would love to come and
visit Ms. Biffy, Ms. Tulip and Ms. Leon, but I… well, I’m just not presentable
right now,” she watched the fallen expression on the man’s face. “Will you
please tell the ladies that I am very honored by their invitation and would be
very happy to visit them after I’ve settled in?”

Old Mickey was working his hat
pretty seriously with nervous fingers. “I don’t think they’ll be none too happy
‘bout it.”

Elliot shrugged. “I’m sorry, but
I just can’t visit today. Tell them I will visit next week.”

Old Mickey nodded but it was
clear that he was unhappy and perhaps even fearful. Alec took the steps from
the porch, ending up in the gravel.  He focused in on the very old gentleman.

“How old are you, old dude?” he
asked.

The old man visibly cowered from
the tall, blond young man. “I… I ‘spect I was born when Mr. Wilson was
president, suh.”

“What?” Elliot came off the
porch, fixed on the old man. “He was president back in the ‘teens.”

“Yes’m.”

“Then you’re in your nineties.”

The old man looked thoughtful a
moment. “Yes’m, I am. I’m not sho, but I ‘spect I’m ninety-six or so. I stopped
countin’ when Reagan was president.”

Elliot looked at Alec, shocked,
before turning back to the old man.  Alec was the first one to speak.

“Old dude, you look amazing,” he
chuckled. “I hope I’m still running around when I’m ninety-six.”

The old man sensed that he had
somehow met with some approval and smiled timidly.

“I best be gettin’ back,” he told
them, beginning to shuffle off down the driveway. “Ms. Biffy, she’ll be waitin’
on me. She don’t like me bein’ late.”

Alec started to follow him, very
curious about the extremely old man. “Do you work for her?”

Mickey was still walking as he
nodded. “I work for her mama, Ms. Leon. I worked for her husband.”

Elliot found herself following
Alec as he followed the old man down the drive.

“Is her husband still alive?”
Elliot asked.

Mickey shook his head. “No,
ma’am. He died quite some time ago. Ms. Leon is one hundred and three years old
and she lives with her daughters, Ms. Biffy and Ms. Tulip. We all live at The
Bottoms.”

“Where is The Bottoms?” Alec
wanted to know.

Old Mickey came to a halt,
pointing off to the east. “Down there a spell,” he said. “I have to go now.”

Alec’s brow furrowed. “There
aren’t any houses around here for at least a mile,” he said. “Did you walk all
the way here?”

Old Mickey nodded. “’T’aint far.”

Alec furrow deepened. “Don’t you
have a car?”

The old man shook his head.
“Don’t need no car. I kin walk.”

“Dude!” Alec exclaimed, confused
that the man didn’t see the issue here. “You’re ninety-six years old. You
shouldn’t be walking.”

Mickey didn’t quite understand
the trouble. “’T’aint far,” he repeated. “Ms. Biffy will be ‘specting me.”

“What do you mean she’s expecting
you?”

“I have to git on home, young
buck. The ladies are awaitin’.”

Alec, the young man born and
raised in big-city California, and who counted several African-Americans as
close friends, was genuinely perplexed. The attitude of this old black man in
the rural South was foreign to him.

“You realize the Civil War is
over, right?” he asked, more out of concern than anything. “Slavery was over
one hundred and fifty years ago.”

Mickey wasn’t sure what he meant.
“I knows it, suh,” he kept walking. “My grandpappy was born a slave but then he
was freed.  I’m freed, too. I gots to go now ‘cuz the ladies is awaitin’ on
me.”

Alec didn’t know what to say. The
old man kept walking and he stopped following, turning to look at his mother
with a quizzical look. Elliot could see that her son was truly baffled by the
man’s attitude. The California boy who was raised not to see race or color just
got his first taste of class culture in the Old South.

“Come on,” she pulled the kid by
the arm, back towards the house. “We’ve got work to do.”

 Alec wasn’t sure what to say.
This new place was weird and foreign already and he wasn’t sure he liked it. He
let his mother drag him back into the house where boxes upon boxes of their
possessions waited to be unpacked.

In mostly silence, they continued
unpacking until the sun was nearly set and Alec went about trying to turn on
some lights.  They soon found out that there were only electrical plugs on the
lower floor, and even then, they were spotty. 

They took a few lamps around with
them, trying plugs in different rooms, and came to see that only two plugs in
the entire house worked. They put a big lamp with a 100 watt bulb in the first
of the double parlors and a second in the kitchen. 

But they needed more light so
Elliot dug through the boxes in the upstairs bedroom until she came across her
collection of candles. Most of them were decorative but a few of them had seen
service, so after hunting around for and finding her lighter, she lit up every
candle she had. Soon, the entire room was aglow with the haunting and warm
illumination of the candles. The scents of
Lemon Sage
or
Golden Myrhh
mixed with the smell of dust.

Alec soon joined her and began
taking candles to various rooms on the upper floor so they would at least have
light to move around by.

“I feel like I’m in the Dark
Ages,” he said as he moved into the big bedroom across the hall from his mother
that he had claimed. He started singing a bizarre monk chanting song as he
moved around with the candles, sending his mother into laughter.

Elliot followed him to put one in
his bathroom, a small box of a room that had a toilet, a small corner sink, and
a shower stall that was made out of copper. The poor kid could barely move
around in it.

“Remember that this house is used
to candlelight,” she reminded him. “It’s only seen electricity in the last
seventy years or so. I think it’s pretty cool that we’re seeing the house the
way it was meant to be seen.”

Alec made a face, hauling his
mattress up onto his bed frame. “Mom, I know you really like this old house
stuff, but I’ve got to tell you that it sucks.” He grunted as he tossed the
mattress down. “I want my satellite television and my Xbox Live. I don’t like
living like the pioneers.”

Elliot snorted at him. “You have your
smart phone and your iPad, at least, and satellite internet. At least you’re
not completely cut off.”

“This still sucks.”

She shook her head at him. “Don’t
worry,” she assured him. “We’ll have the contractor here on Monday and start
getting wired in. You’re not a total caveman yet.”

Alec tried to make a face at her
but ended up laughing instead.  Elliot returned to her bedroom and collected
more candles, carefully taking them down the hall to the winding staircase. She
put candles intermittently down the stairs and one near the foot of the stairs
to light up the dark central hall, then moved to the ballroom that was big and
dark with its forbidding shadows.

The floor to ceiling windows were
still covered with old newspaper, blocking out the moonlight. She stood there a
moment, envisioning the room as it must have been two hundred years ago when
pirates and beautiful women graced the floors. So little of the house had been
touched by modern hands that it was very easy to envision it as it once had
been. 

The kitchen already had a lamp so
she moved to the library in the front of the house, placing two candles in the
hearth to give the room some light. Just as she was moving into the dining
room, she heard a soft knock on the front door.

Curious, and with candle in hand,
she went to the front door and threw the bolt. Jerking open the sticky panel,
the first thing that hit her was the smell of barbeque. The rich flavor of
molasses and spice hit her like a smack to the nose. In the darkness, she could
see two big paper bags and the hands holding them. Lifting the candle, she was
met by a friendly, familiar face.

“Hi,” Nash said.

Elliot realized that she was
extremely pleased to see the man. “Hi yourself,” she grinned, nodding her head
towards the bags in his hands. “I have to tell you something.”

“What?”

“I’m going to rob you of the food
you’re carrying.”

He laughed softly. “I figured as
much,” he said. “It occurred to me that you have no stove, and probably no way
to cook anything, and even if you did, you probably don’t know where any of the
supermarkets are around here. So I thought I’d save you the trouble and bring
you and your son some dinner.”

Her smile broadened and she
opened up the door wide so he could come in.  “Is the state budget so bad that
the local sheriff has to moonlight as a delivery boy?”

He laughed again. “It’s not that
bad, at least not yet,” he looked around. “Do you have someplace where you want
to sit and eat this?”

“Absolutely,” she moved in to the
double parlors, lit by the screaming-white bright light, and began to pull
boxes off the buried coffee table. “I can’t thank you enough for doing this.
It’s really sweet of you.”

He set the bags down as she
cleared the table. “No problem at all,” he said. “I’m glad to do it.”