New Mercies (32 page)

By midafternoon, everything worth saving, except for the statue, had been removed from the house. As I stood in the yard with Pickett, watching the workmen start off, Mr. Sam drove up. He pulled over to let the caravan of trucks pass, then got out of his car and observed that they looked like “Confederates fleeing the accursed Yankees.”

“When will you stop fighting that war?” I asked.

“When you surrender.” As he walked toward the big house, he called over his shoulder, “I believe you are in retreat—cornered up north, eating beans.”

I followed him into the big house, where he peered into the empty rooms on the first floor. “Bondurants have lived here for near a hundred years,” he said, mopping his eyes with a handkerchief, wiping away either sweat or tears. He passed the statue of Amalia, removed his hat, and bowed low. Then he gazed up at the marble face and said, “Miss Amalia, it has been a pleasure to serve you, a pleasure.” He stood up but kept his hat in his hand. “I
remember standing in this very spot when I was a boy, watching Miss Amalia come down these selfsame stairs in a yellow satin dress and yellow satin slippers with the toes covered in gold. The house was lit up by candles. Natchezians called Avoca ‘the house of a thousand candles.’ Miss Amalia glowed in that candlelight like a flame, and folks stopped talking to stare at her. The next season, every woman in Natchez ordered a yellow satin gown of her dressmaker. They looked like honeybees. Miss Amalia was the only woman who could ever wear that color.” He glanced at me and added, “I believe yellow would be becoming to you.”

Yellow made me look like a banana, but I smiled at the compliment and asked Mr. Sam if he wanted to go through the rooms on the second floor again. “The workmen have been going up and down all day, so we should be safe on the steps.”

“I have not the slightest doubt.” He led the way to the upper floor, pausing when he reached the hall to say, “You have taken hold here.”

I did not understand, and he explained. “That is to say, you have come to belong to Avoca.”

“Not belong,” I said, taken aback, “but I like it. Of course I do.”

“You should have seen it when Miss Amalia was in her time of blossoming. But she’s gone now. Yes, she’s gone.” He raised his head and looked me in the eye. “Aunty said Ezra showed you the billiard house. Would you stay?”

“I don’t know.”

“If you don’t, they would be left lonesome.”

The sun beat down through the broken roof onto my face, and my shoulders ached from lifting boxes. I was tempted to
hurry Mr. Sam, but I knew I might not find him in such a reflective mood again. “It makes me uncomfortable that others know my family’s secrets when I don’t.”

“Do you have need of knowing them?”

“I do.”

“What if you don’t like what you find out? What if the weight of it puts a grief on you?” Mr. Satterfield looked troubled. “Had you thought you might be better off not knowing the Bondurant secrets?”

“I think you have opened a door.”

“No, Miss Nora, not even a window.”

“Perhaps a peephole.”

Instead of sparring with me, Mr. Sam sat down on the top step and waited while I seated myself below him and wiped my damp face on my dirty skirt.

“You already know the half of it, that Miss Amalia was your father’s mother. That’s not worth denying.”

“And it’s not worth denying that Bayard Lott was my grandfather. You know that every bit as much as Ezra and Aunt Polly do.”

“Oh, servants.” He gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “No need to pry on that score. There are burdens no descendant should carry. You needn’t ask me his name, because I’m not going to say it. That’s a thing past telling.”

“It doesn’t matter. I already know it. But I still don’t know why Bayard Lott killed Miss Amalia. I believe you could tell me something about it. I would like to know before I go home.”

Mr. Sam stood up. “The light’s fading, and I should like to see the rooms downstairs for the last time.”

I did not stand, however, and good manners forced Mr. Sam to wait for me. “Bayard Lott was primed for more than fifty years,” he said. “Ezra won’t tell you the truth of what lit the fuse, but Aunt Polly might could do so. Nothing ever happened on Avoca that she didn’t know about.”

He reached his hand for me, and I got up, and together we descended to the first floor, where Mr. Sam stopped and bowed again to Amalia’s statue. “Good-bye, my dear girl.”

Aunt Polly hadn’t confided in me before, of course, but armed with the knowledge that if anyone knew the reason for Amalia’s death, it was she, I decided to try one more time. After Mr. Sam drove off, I went to the quarters.

Aunt Polly was sitting a little distance away, under the shade of a live oak. Bent over a quilting frame, she was sewing in the dappled light. The frame was propped on the backs of chairs turned outward, and I sat down on one. “Mr. Satterfield’s shipping Miss Amalia’s quilts to Denver for me.”

“She like that.” Aunt Polly took half a dozen stitches on her needle; then, with her free hand steadying the quilt from underneath, she pushed the needle through the fabric. “This a string quilt, mostly tore-up clothes. Miss Amalia make the toppen part.”

My grandmother Bullock had made string quilts, sewing together tiny strips of leftover fabric, but in Amalia’s quilt top, the strips formed stars. The fabrics were yellow calicos, handwoven butternut, indigo-dyed homespun, and double pinks, but the predominant color was red.

“Thread you a needle,” Aunt Polly said. “I show you to quilt. It bring me peace. It bring you peace, too.”

I shook my head.

Nonetheless, Aunt Polly set down her needle on the quilt top and cut a length of thread. She took a second needle from a piece of folded cloth and, holding it to her good eye, threaded it, then laid it at the edge of the quilt in front of me and picked up her own needle. “Watch me. You starts when you want to.” I made no move toward the needle, and she resumed her stitching. “Ezra take you to town in the car, so he don’t have to follow you through the brush no more.”

I jerked up my head. “That was Ezra following me yesterday?”

“He afraid some of those mens go after you when you got Miss Amalia’s gatherin’s. He think you don’t want him to look after you, so he stay to the trees, not drive the car.”

After telling her that Mr. Sam would transfer the title of the REO to Ezra, I stopped, embarrassed. “I don’t know your last name.”

“Oh, it Bondurant, like you.”

“I suppose that makes sense. After all, the captain was Ezra’s father.”

Aunt Polly’s head jerked up. “What you say?”

Had I offended her? But she had told me that herself. “Forgive me, Aunt Polly. I didn’t know it was a secret.”

“That ain’t no secret. That ain’t even no truth. Bless God, what Miss Amalia say to that!” Aunt Polly laughed, shaking her head back and forth. “Ezra’s daddy the marster but one. The captain buys me when I pregnant for Ezra. My other marster in my way back yonder time a dog that mistreat me terrible, gave me
bread and water and lashes for no reason. He just mean. Slavery do that to white men. He hurt me fearful, and I pray for a new marster. God is awful kind to me when I need Him, and He give me the captain. The captain never laid no hands on me.”

She poked her needle in and out of the quilt with fingers as frail as curled leaves. “I sure do have sharp luck when the captain buys me. The more I see, the more I got to give thanks for. Miss Amalia passes, and we gets you.”

“Then Ezra’s not Miss Amalia’s half brother.”

Aunt Polly laughed again. “After freedom come and we gets to pick us a name, Miss Amalia herself say me and Ezra ought to be Bondurants. She never like the name Ezra ’cause Mr. Frederick pick it for Ezra when he born. Miss Amalia call Ezra ‘Bon.’ ”

I stilled Aunt Polly’s hand with my own, and she looked up, waiting. “Mr. Sam says you can tell me why Bayard Lott killed Miss Amalia. Please.”

Aunt Polly did not look away, just narrowed her eyes, focusing on my face. “Ezra say you don’t want to know.”

“And you say?”

“I say maybe you got the right of knowing it.”

“Mr. Lott saw something through the telescope, didn’t he?”

Aunt Polly looked down at her needle, but her hand remained still. “Maybe so he did.”

A piece of Spanish moss hanging like smoke from the branch above us suddenly swung down over the quilt. I broke it off and threw it onto the ground. “He saw something that made him mad enough to kill Miss Amalia.”

“She always keep that shutter on the window by Shadowland closed, but maybe he see through it with the spyglass.”

“And saw what?”

Aunt Polly put down her needle and ran her hand over the quilt, her eyes cast down. “Maybe he seen Ezra in the bed with Miss Amalia.” Her hand was still, and I sucked in my breath.

What had I expected? That he’d seen goats grazing on Shadowland’s lawn? Amalia and Maggie plotting together? No, of course not. But I had not expected that. For a moment, I did not breathe as I let that revelation sink in. Then I let out my breath in a whoosh. “And so he killed her. And then he killed himself.” It was not a question, but a statement.

“No.” Aunt Polly waited, slowly raising her head until she looked at me. “He just kill Miss Amalia.”

I narrowed my eyes at her, confused.

Aunt Polly’s hand moved slowly on the quilt, making its way toward the needle. She touched it but did not pick it up. “Ezra kill Mr. Bayard.”

I sat very still, waiting.

Aunt Polly put the point of the needle into the fabric and looked at me. “Ezra already gone upstairs, and that where he’s at when he hear the shot. Ezra have the captain’s gun up there to kill rats, ’cause Miss Amalia, she hate rats. Ezra grab it and runs to Miss Amalia, but she laying there dead in the bed. Mr. Bayard next to her. When he see Ezra, he cusses fire to Ezra’s heart and raise his gun. So Ezra shoot him. Ezra don’t think till it too late that Mr. Bayard’s gun don’t have but one bullet to it and he ain’t got time to get him another. Those two get killed with two guns, but nobody didn’t know it.”

The sheriff had told me only that he’d checked Bayard’s gun for fingerprints. He’d just assumed that both bullets had come
from the same gun. “What did Ezra do with the captain’s gun?”

“He throw it in the river.”

“That’s what I would have done.” I nodded my approval. “Was Ezra the reason Miss Amalia didn’t marry Bayard Lott?”

“Ezra or no, she never marry with him!” Aunt Polly spat the words. “Mr. Bayard go to New York and tell her she his, that he want her since their creepin’ days. When she say, ‘See the door,’ he have his way with her. You know what I talkin’?”

I did.

“Ezra, he comfort her, just like he always done. They love each other since they both little chips.”

“Miss Amalia teach him to read, to sign his name with that fancy
B
. Miss Amalia embroider that
B
on her quilts. Ezra right proud of that letter.”
B
for Bon, not Bayard, I thought.

“If he loved Miss Amalia, why did he marry Sukey Pea?”

“He a man. He got his needs.” Aunt Polly grinned. “It make bloody footprints on Miss Amalia’s heart, and she act grievous. But after Sukey Pea leave, Ezra and Miss Amalia stop talking with their tongues and start talking with their hearts.” She nodded as she said, “You got to give heart-room to love, not hate.”

Aunt Polly resumed her quilting. In a few minutes, she laughed, “There ain’t no colors in heaven.” She took a few more stitches. “The Lord give us love like a new mercy every and each morning. He got all kind of love to give us. Maybe it ain’t what you want, but the Lord got His reasons. God don’t want us to be left lonesome on this green earth. Any love’s a gift of God.” She set down her needle and put her hand on my arm. “Honey baby, maybe the Lord give you this place as your new mercy, to stop the hurting.”

A breeze stirred the tree, and dried leaves floated down onto
the quilt. I picked them up one by one so that they wouldn’t crumble on the strips of cloth, then dropped them onto the ground, thinking about Aunt Polly’s words. Was Avoca a mercy? I didn’t know yet. But sitting there in the drowsing sun, I realized that in some way, David had loved me, and I knew I had loved him, and that was enough. The rest of it—the hate and the guilt—I could let go.

Aunt Polly murmured, “Amen” as she sewed on in the light that filtered through the oak leaves and the Spanish moss. After a time, I picked up the second needle and began to weave it in and out of the quilt.

T
HE OLD HOUSE LOOKED LIKE
a dying thing in the earlywinter gloom, and, indeed, in the little more than a year since I had first seen it, I had watched Avoca enter its death throes. A wild storm that lashed the house with wind and rain had sent the roof crashing through the second floor of Avoca. It landed on the spot where Amalia’s bed had stood. Tramps built a blaze in the marble fireplace, and it roared up the clogged chimney and sent smoke billowing through the rooms. I had moved Amalia’s statue from the Great Hall to the garden of the billiard house, and, true to the captain’s threat, when the support that held the statue in place fell, the floor of the Great Hall sagged like a clothesline. Goats now wandered in and out of the house, and birds built nests in the empty rooms.

“It’s like a great feudal estate,” Caroline said, rolling down the window of the REO for a better look. I had just picked her
up at the station on her first visit to Natchez. “And creepy. I’m perfectly furious to see it.”

“You’ll ruin your clothes. We’ll explore it tomorrow—the first floor, at any rate. There’s no way to get to the second, because the staircase fell down.”

“Are there ghosts?”

“There are always ghosts in Natchez.”

“One of them must be your crazy old grandmother.” Caroline added quickly, “Oh, I know, I won’t say a thing about her indiscretion.”

“It seems to be an open secret in Natchez.” Although Mother knew nothing of what I’d discovered about Father, I had confided to Caroline that Amalia was not my aunt, but my grandmother, and that my father had been illegitimate. She had dismissed the revelation with a wave of her hand. “So what? My father’s a bastard, too, although not in the technical sense.”