True Fires (3 page)

7

Goddamn son of a bitch!
Lila Hightower stands in the grove yard, hands on her hips, back to the others, and wills Kyle DeLuth off the property.
How
dare
you, how dare
you,
of all people, try to
pull your shenanigans on
me
! As if I didn’t know what a raggedyass fool you were from the first day you came here, licking at Louis’s
heels like some overgrown stray in search of our table scraps. The old
man spent years trying to teach you some manners
—“Kyle, you’re a goddamn bull in the butler’s pantry!” he’d say. “Gotta learn to apply the oil, boy. Guy like you needs to apply the old oil profusely!”

But, in the end . . .
She squints as his car stops at the far-off end of the drive, then wheels left onto Old Dixie.
In the end,
Kyle had no manners at all. But he sure had the Judge’s mannerisms—
his arched brow, his ingratiating grin—down pat. It was uncanny.
And Louis’s . . . When Kyle hooked both thumbs into his belt, hoisted
it up to straighten his pants’ creases and shot his cu fs in just the way
that Louis always did . . .
Lila presses her eyes, presses back the memory of Louis shooting his cuffs. Louis, who had more grace in his little finger than Kiss Ass has in his whole hulking body. Louis, who was her life’s touchstone. Whose death changed everything.

Behind her, shuffling feet, a nervous cough, remind her she’s not alone. She drops her hand, opens her eyes, notes that the autumn moon, a pale disk, hangs weakly between two storm clouds.
The moon,
Lila thinks,
sheds no light, has no heat of
its own. Just like Kyle, it can only reflect a more powerful sun.

Wearily, she feels the weight, the needy pull of the ragtag assembly rimming the grove yard, and turns to face them.

The Negroes, like a company of soldiers given the command “at ease,” relax, lift dark expectant eyes in her direction. Franklin Dare, protective arms around each of his children, stands aside. And the children . . . The girl’s eyes are downcast, chin dropped, shoulders wilted. A tear slides silently down one cheek. The boy looks on, his face a mix of anguish and exasperation that feels somehow familiar.

How many times, as a child herself, had she and Louis suffered humiliation at the Judge’s hand?
But, in our case,
she thinks,
Louis was the one who took it to heart,
dissolving into tears, which only further infuriated their father. She’d been the defiant one, walking the tightrope between her father’s temper and her brother’s heartache, threading the needle between outrage over the aggressor and concern for the aggrieved.

Lila takes a deep breath.
Hooah.
The humid hot air leaves her lungs craving something cleaner, fresher.
It’s near impossible
to breathe ’round here,
she thinks.
Wonder if that’s the reason the
whole damned place seems brain-damaged?

The Negroes patiently clutch their box tickets, waiting to be paid. With a hollow look, Franklin Dare yields the lead. She sighs.

“All right, everybody. The big, bad Sheriff’s gone. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Nate, take the men into the barn, get started on the Pickers’ Log. Franklin and I’ll be there in a minute to settle up.”

Relieved, the men make their way into the cool, cavernous grove barn. Through the wide door, there’s the scent of fresh-picked fruit.

Turning to Franklin, she asks, “Isn’t Ed Cantrell the principal of Lake Esther Elementary?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Franklin says. Beside him, the boy nods solemnly.

Memories of pudgy Eddie from grade school, shy, smart, never quite in with the in crowd, but never quite out either, fly through her mind. She pictures him in high school—he’d become Ed by then—his scarlet-and-white band uniform straining at the side seams as the horn section marched past the cheerleaders on the football field; his stubby fingers surprisingly delicate on the shiny valves of his trumpet. Son of a teacher and a traveling salesman, he’d been a nice boy. She hoped he’d become a fair man.

“We grew up together,” Lila tells Franklin. “I’ll go to the school with you in the morning. We’ll get this straightened out, get these kids back in school where they belong. Okay?”

Franklin’s face floods with gratitude. The boy eyes her warily.

“Okay with you?” she asks the boy directly.

“Y-yes, ma’am,” he stammers. His ears flush bright red.

“And you, sweet girl?” Lila bends low, from the waist, places a soft hand on the girl’s shoulder.
Poor thing.
Frightened eyes, the color of deep creek water, glimmer between dark, tear-clumped lashes, search Lila’s face. “That Sheriff has no idea what he’s talking about,” Lila tells her. “You have a beautiful nose.”

8

It’s late—the clock beside Betty Whitworth’s bed shows nearly midnight—when, finally, the rain comes.
Took its time getting
here,
Betty thinks, as she listens to it run off the roof and splat in the rain barrel. She shifts, rearranges the hot-water bottle under her aching hip. The pain will be less in the morning, now that the storm has broke. But tomorrow she’ll have to check the ceiling under the third-floor roost. If the shingle glue hasn’t held, if the pin leak’s gotten worse, she’ll have to beg somebody—Daniel maybe—to climb up there and apply some more.

If only Clay was here . . .
It’s the hymn of her days, and most of her nights.
If only Clay was here . . .
to climb up on the roof, to rewire the chandelier, to paint the stairwell, to enforce the rules, to collect the rents. The list of ways clever Clay could make her life easier was endless.

If only Clay was here . . .
a visit from the Sheriff wouldn’t reduce her to a babbling idiot, a brush-off by Franklin Dare in answer to her questions about the Sheriff’s business with the children would’ve spawned a more forceful demand for the facts. Maybe she can bribe some information out of little ’Becca tomorrow. That poor child has a sweet tooth for Cora’s thumbprint cookies.

If only Clay was here . . . Stop it! You’re turning into a crazy old
loon just like Mama. Remember how she was in the end, roaming the
halls in her old gray robe and slippers, wild white hair spilling out of
her hairnet, calling out, in that voice like a dull needle on a scratched
record: “Henry, are you there, dear? Henry?”

What was it that had doomed her to live—a motherless child, a childless mother—in this godforsaken, falling-apart place?
Will I wind up like Mama, wandering the halls calling out
like some crazy old loon? Was it this crazy old house that cursed us
both?

Built in the boom year of 1898 (the same year Betty was born), Charmwood was one of several homes her family owned: four floors, twenty-four rooms, an acre of impossible-to-maintain plantings surrounded by a half-mile of ridiculously expensive ironwork fencing that had long since rusted into ruin in the Florida air. Back then, when Papa was in commodities in Pittsburgh, the house was open only eight weeks out of the year. Oh, the parties they’d had then, in the winters, when the other wealthy families were in town, the chances she’d had to make a better match than smiling Cash Whitworth. Why had she picked him, of all people? Let him sweet-talk her into staying here year ’round? Let him borrow all that money from Papa to canal the swampland, develop home sites on Lake Esther’s mosquito side? Oh, they’d had fun in the early days, before Clay was born. But when the bust came to Florida in 1926, Clay was no more than five, Cash lit out like a Canada goose, without so much as a squawk good-bye. Papa had been there for her then, to make everything okay. But, three years later, on Black Thursday ’29, her poor papa had died, having failed to survive a twelve-story “fall” from his office window, and Mama went out of her mind. When all was said and done, this rich-man’s folly of a house was all they had left of Daddy’s fortune.
Which was more than
most, so quit your complainin’!

If only Clay was here . . . Well, he’s not, now, is he? They’re
all gone, now, aren’t they? Cash, Papa. Mama. Clay. It’s just you
and me, Charmwood. You with your leaky old roof and me with my
creaky old hip. And sixteen mouths to feed first thing in the morning.

Betty Whitworth rolls over on her back. In the small room off the kitchen, the one once inhabited only eight weeks out of the year by her family’s cook, the only room in the house unadorned with extravagant wallpaper, carved oak cornices, or intricate, parquet wood flooring, Betty listens to the water rushing down the old rain gutter and wipes its wetness off her cheeks.

The scouts return to confirm the whispered wisdom of the Old Ones. The days of warmth and
widely available food supplies are in decline.
The time the colony calls The Quickening is at
hand.

Outside the rim, those who gather food follow
urgent orders. They move faster, go farther, and
feed themselves extra in order to carry larger
loads on the longer journeys home.

Inside the walls, the guards commence their
careful checking and chinking against the coming chill. Those assigned to store and stockpile
prepare their reply to The Quickening’s central
question, “Will there be enough?”

Within her chambers, She Who Decides
awaits their report. All others (except the children, of course) prepare to stay or go upon Her
command.

Does She, in Her wisdom, also await the potential intervention of He Who Provides? No
one knows. Nor will they ask. Nor will they
suggest or protest, so long as the children, their
treasures, are safe.

9

“May! Got any Bufferin in your file drawer?”

Principal Ed Cantrell sits, elbows on his desk, bald head in his hands, feeling the warning signs of a really bad one coming on, spiderlike, across the whole right side of his face. If he doesn’t get some relief quick, he knows, it’ll wrap his entire skull in a web of pain, and he’ll have to lie down on the little cot in the nurse’s closet usually reserved for sick kids and humiliated, menstruating sixth-grade girls in need of their mothers.

“May!” he yells.

“Here.” Miss May White appears in front of him with two Bufferin and a white cone-shaped paper cup of water. As he grabs them, he sees with a groan the stack of message slips she’s slapped on his desk.

“How many now?”

“Seven so far.” She purses her thin lips.

“Plus twelve at the house last night.” Cantrell jerks his chin to help the Bufferin and the water slide down his throat, then crumples the cup and hurls it into his trash can. “Goddamn K. A. DeLuth!”

“Born troublemaker, that one,” May agrees.

“Did you hear me tell him he could snatch those two kids right outta class? Stir up this hornet’s nest with every hothead in town? Hand out my home phone number like it was goddamn Halloween candy?”

“Of course not!”

Cantrell closes his right eye and he rubs his right temple. Squinting with his left eye at the message stack, he asks, “Any school-board members?”

“Only three,” she tells him, pursing lips again.

“Goddamnit, May!” he explodes.

May White opens her mouth to reply, then snaps it shut at the sound of the front door opening onto the office lobby. Cantrell waves a weary hand at her. May turns and hurries out of his office, into her area behind the counter.

“Why, Lila Hightower, as I live and breathe!”

Damnit,
Cantrell thinks, hoping the Bufferin kicks in soon.

“Hey, Miss May, how you doin’?” he hears Lila reply.

“Fair to middlin’, rain this time of year kicks up my arthritis pretty bad. How’s your mamma?”

“Took to her bed right after the funeral. Got Sissy waitin’ on her hand and foot.”

“Poor dear. What’s the doctor say?”

“Oh, you know Mamma and her nerves. She’ll get up when she’s good and ready.”

“I’ve been meanin’ to give her a call, catch her up on all the news.”

“Gossip, y’mean? She might like that. Mornings are better than afternoons. Now, Miss May . . .”—Cantrell hears the fat pause, knows what’s coming—“I’m here to see Ed and
he
should know
”—these words are spoken loudly for Cantrell’s benefit—“I won’t take no for an answer.”

“Why, Lila, of course Ed’s door’s open to you. And to, uh, Mr. Dare, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” a man’s voice says.

Damnit to hell,
Cantrell thinks, rising, using a flat palm to push against the pain exploding like a land mine behind his eyeballs.

Suddenly, the phone on May White’s desk rings. “ ’Scuse me, Lila. Lake Esther Elementary, one moment please.” As Cantrell reaches his doorway to invite them in, May covers the bottom part of the receiver with a gnarled, blue-veined hand and smiles at the two big-eyed children trailing their father, who’s trailing Lila Hightower, through the half door into her area. “You two like peppermint candy? Have a seat, and I’ll get you some while the adults talk.”

Lila Hightower lets Cantrell close the door and take his seat before she lights into him.
She’s a striking woman still,
Cantrell thinks, as the fifteen-years-ago memory of her—the queen of their Homecoming Court dressed in fire-engine red with lipstick to match, looking for all the world like Scarlett O’Hara arriving at Miz Melly’s birthday party—flashes through his mind.
She’s thinner now,
he notes, dressed in a crisp white shirt, open at the neck and tucked into man-tailored black pants.
More Katharine Hepburn than Vivien Leigh.

“Ed, since when does Kyle DeLuth get to think he runs the school system on top of everything else around here?”

Cantrell feels himself take the bait. “He doesn’t run it, the school board does!”

“And what, might I ask, do you do?”

Hooked, goddamnit.
“Lila, Mr. Dare, I apologize. Yesterday, the Sheriff just strolled in here, grinning like a Cheshire cat, and made off with two of our students, without my knowledge or permission. Apparently, after he spoke with you two, he made the rounds—V.F.W., the Elks Club, the Masonic Temple—informing everyone in town that I’ve been somehow derelict in my duty.”

“But, Ed, Franklin’s got the kids’ birth certificates right here, same ones he showed Miss May when he enrolled them. Says plain as day they’re white.”

“And here, right here”—Franklin Dare holds up another document—“is my marriage certificate. Says here both me and my wife are white, too!”

Cantrell shakes his pain-racked head. “I know it. But, as I’ve been informed by the four school-board members who called my home last night, and will, no doubt, hear again from the three others who called here this morning,”—he points to the stack of message slips on his desk—“Florida State law bars children who are one-eighth or more Negro from attending a white school. I’m afraid, Mr. Dare, the school board will be asking you to prove that all four grandparents and all eight great-grandparents are white, too.”

Dare stiffens. Anger raises a sharp ridge between his brows. Lila lays a calming hand on the small man’s forearm.

“Ed, this is ridiculous. You know as well as I do that this is nothing more than Kyle DeLuth’s grandstanding.”

“Be that as it may, Lila. Kyle’s kicked up a ruckus and, at this point, there’s not much any of us can do about it.”

“But these children should be in school!”

“And—so long as Mr. Dare can provide adequate documentation to the school board—they will be.”

“My granpap was part Croatan Indian,” Dare insists, “and ’tain’t no shame in that for me and mine.”

“Croatan, y’say?” Cantrell repeats, dimly recognizing the word.

“How well you remember your history, Ed?” Lila asks. “Sir Walter Raleigh, the lost colony of Roanoke Island? The word ‘Croatan’ carved in the tree?”

“Virginia Dare,” Cantrell says softly. “You’re descended from Virginia Dare?”

“Her brother, Anana is Dare.”

“Well, you’re right, Mr. Dare. There’s no shame in that at all.”

“So these children can return to their classrooms?” Lila leans forward, pressing him.

“Well, no, not exactly.” As Cantrell leans back, his chair complains over the weight shift. “I’m afraid they’ll have to wait until Mr. Dare here can make his case before the school board, next Wednesday night.”

“And what are they supposed to do till then?” Lila demands.

“Take a break?” Cantrell smiles, hoping to lighten things up a bit. “Never met a kid yet who minded that.”

“Well, I mind,” Lila shoots back. “I mind this whole thing. And the Kick Ass snake in the grass that caused it.”

“Oh, Lila,”—Cantrell gently shakes his aching head—“the time for minding Kyle DeLuth is long past. You got your daddy to thank for that.”