Burying the Honeysuckle Girls (17 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Birmingham, Alabama

I lay spread-eagled on top of the hotel bed and let the shards of morning sun split my head. Awful didn’t begin to describe how I felt, caught somewhere between hungover and the flu. I walked through the previous day in my head: leaving the school, driving back to my hotel. A string of catnaps punctuated by bouts of violent heaving into the toilet.

I hadn’t been this sick since rehab. But this wasn’t like withdrawal, it was different. Deeper in my gut, something immensely unsettled. It had to have been something I ate or a virus. A parasite I’d picked up at the Crimson Terrace.

I reached for my phone and squinted at the screen. Saturday. I had two missed calls and two voice mails. The first was from Terri, my newly discovered second cousin, inviting me to brunch at her parents’ house Sunday. Her sister Traci would be there.

I should go. It was possible Traci would have more information about my mom or Collie. Something more about the mysterious days between their confinement at Pritchard and their actual deaths. Or any clue about the ever-elusive woman who’d met with Collie and my mom. But I didn’t know if I’d be able to drag myself out of this room, much less focus on what they had to say. All I could feel was the horrible, endless twisting inside.

The second message was from Jay.

“Althea.” His voice sounded tentative, nervous. I closed my eyes, braced myself. “I know you’re mad, but you have to know, I’m concerned about you. Everyone’s concerned about you.”

I hit “Delete.”

He was right. I was mad. I’d trusted him with my darkest secrets, only to find out he’d been communicating with Wynn. He couldn’t be trusted. I didn’t want to hear a word he had to say.

I bet everyone was concerned about me.
They should be.
I was mad as hell. Jay had no idea how angry I was. The last thing I needed was his and Wynn’s concern. In fact, I needed it like I needed a fifth of vodka. And a handful of pills.

At the thought of alcohol, my stomach slithered and turned, and I felt saliva rise up in my mouth. In a panic, I leapt off the bed. Raced to the bathroom, sank to my knees, and vomited again.

Chapter Twenty-Six

October 1937

Sybil Valley, Alabama

Charles Jarrod’s baritone, confident and slightly off-key, rang out over the rest of the voices under the tent. Jinn held Collie’s hand—she could feel the little girl’s fingers tighten around hers in excitement—as they filed in behind Howell and Walter.

Jinn could feel the press of the strangers—they probably numbered over a hundred—from as far away as Georgia and Tennessee, and they filled the tent with the scents of unfamiliar laundry soap and tobacco hastily spit out in the shadows. Charles Jarrod,
the
Charles Jarrod, had come to Sybil Valley. Everyone sang with the evangelist:

Breathe on me, breath of God,

Fill me with life anew,

That I may love what Thou dost love,

And do what Thou wouldst do.

Jinn laid a hand on Collie’s head as Howell led them to the right side of the tent to sit on the benches the men had hammered together just that afternoon. They slipped in, first Collie and Jinn, then Walter. Howell took the end seat, planting his elbows on his knees. Jinn looked around for her father but couldn’t see him.

Jarrod led the third verse of the hymn, waving his arms at the congregation like a band conductor. Jinn craned her neck, looking for Jarrod’s wife, Dove, the one everybody’d been talking about. The story went that Jarrod had seen her laid out, flat on the floor, at a revival out in California and that she was so beautiful, he’d fallen right in love with her. Jinn couldn’t wait to get a glimpse. Unfortunately, the tent was packed with so many people, she doubted she’d be able to spot her in the throng.

Tom was the one who’d told her about Dove. Two days ago, while Howell was still in Huntsville and the men had met to raise the tent out behind the church, Jinn and Tom had ended up standing together under the shade of the massive oak in the yard.

“They say she’s outlaw Dell Davidson’s half sister,” Tom had said to her. By then, the other men had gathered around the tree too, gulped a few glasses of lemonade and trooped back to work. Tom was still there; he sipped a good bit slower. Jinn stood a couple of feet from him, her arms folded over her chest.

“Of course, she and Brother Jarrod don’t talk publicly about that,” Tom went on. “I expect they don’t want to attract the wrong crowd.” He shot her a quick grin but it quickly faded. This was how he looked at her now, like she held the fate of both their lives in her hands. She pretended not to notice but she flushed anyway.

“But those are his best customers,” she said. “The ones who’ve done something they want to undo.”

He didn’t smile, just looked at her until she felt the flush move from her face down to other parts of her body. He stuffed the rest of the cookie in his mouth and finished off the lemonade.

“See you, Jinny.” He wiped his hands on his jeans and jogged back to the half-raised tent. Her eyes followed him, and she thought of his mouth, the pressure of it on hers, as they stood together in the nook under his stairs. She watched him shoulder a mallet. Arc it around to smash a metal peg. The muscles in his arms twisted out from his rolled cuffs, moving under his skin. She thought of sliding her fingers under the cuff, up the length of his forearms, until she reached the knob of his shoulder. Moving them across the hollow and rise of his chest.

Now, in the charged night air, the crowds filled the tent and the Wooten family settled on their bench. From her seat, Jinn spotted Dove Jarrod. The woman sat in the front row, back straight as an arrow. She was wearing a fine, ivory silk dress with a pink camellia pinned to the collar. She was young—a girl, really, but her hair was redder than any hair Jinn had ever seen, bobbed, waved, and held back with a dainty gold-and-ivory barrette. Dove’s eyes were fastened on her husband, her hands folded demurely in her lap. Jinn craned her neck to get a better view, but all she could see was red lips and the curve of her jaw. And that hair. It glowed like a sunset.

Jinn felt Howell’s eyes on her and forced her gaze away from Mrs. Jarrod. She told herself to concentrate. To open her heart to the Lord. He would speak to her, even though she’d strayed from the path. He would give her a sign that Walter would be safe.

“God Almighty has put the state of Alabama on my wife’s heart,” Jarrod was thundering. “For months and months now, in the watches of the night, she’s been plagued with terrible visions . . .”

The entire tent drew in their breath. Jinn saw Dove’s back straighten, then Jarrod glance at her and continue.

“. . . visions too terrible to describe, but such that she implored me to travel here, all the way from California, to give you the Word of the Lord.”

Everybody out in California, Jarrod said, was being filled with the Holy Spirit. Just like in the Bible days when the apostles were filled on the day of Pentecost. Every day, out there, they were witnessing the fact that God was as real and scientific as electricity. It was like you were the wire, and the Spirit was the current that would go right through you and into whoever you laid hands on. Sometimes He’d send healing. Sometimes visions or prophecies. However it happened, the important thing was to be obedient and do as He led.

Jinn thought of the Holy Spirit out in California. She pictured it flying over cars, palm trees, and castles, swooping up the faces of cliffs. She imagined it gliding down to her house—maybe they’d have gotten a bungalow on the beach—curling around the cornices, misting the windows with its breath as it spied on her and Tom. Her stomach dropped.

By the end of the message, when Jarrod gave the invitation, nearly half the tent surged to the stage, all of them dropping to their knees, sobbing and carrying on. The pianist started up playing again, and Jinn slid to the edge of the bench.

Jarrod picked his way through the people, laying his hands on their heads. Sometimes he’d kneel and speak to one of them, a few quiet words no one could hear. By now, Jinn had Collie’s hand and was trying to catch Howell’s eye. She would tell him she needed to take Collie home, that the girl wasn’t feeling well. But her husband seemed to be lost in his own world. He was hunched over his knees, hands clasped, staring at the ground. Jinn jiggled her leg nervously. Thought of Tom down at the schoolhouse, waiting.

Dove had shifted now, in the cleared-out rows ahead of Jinn. Her arm rested along the back of the bench; her gaze roved over the crowd. The girl looked right at her, and Jinn just about stopped breathing. Her eyes were large and unflinching. And when they settled on Jinn, something seemed to awaken in them.

Then Dove’s gaze moved left. Past Collie, sleeping against Jinn’s side, past Walter, fiddling with his pocketknife, finally landing on Howell. As she looked at him, she lifted one delicate, red eyebrow.

Faster than you could say jackrabbit, Jinn heard a yelp and watched her burly, blond husband leap straight up from his spot on the bench and clamber over the benches that lay between him and the stage. She jolted upright, jarring Collie awake. Walter sat up too.

“What’s he doing?” Walter whispered.

Howell flung himself facedown on the hay and lay there—one hand reaching up as if he was the beggar sitting at the temple gates waiting for Jesus Himself to pass.

“Where’d Daddy go?” Collie asked, scrambling up to stand on the bench and rubbing her eyes. Jinn yanked her back down.

“He’s gone for prayer and healing,” she said.

“He’s sick?” Collie said.

Down front, Howell wept. Jinn stole another glance at Dove, who was watching him with narrowed eyes. From the masses of writhing people, Charles Jarrod materialized. He squatted beside Howell and laid one hand on the weeping man’s shoulder. Howell quieted, as Charles bent to whisper in his ear. After a bit, Howell turned his head and whispered back.

Charles pulled Howell to his feet. Little bits of hay and clumps of dirt clung to his shirt and pants, and his tie was flipped over his shoulder. Jarrod laid a hand on his shoulder, leaned into his ear, and spoke again. Howell pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his face, nodding periodically. Then the evangelist addressed the crowd.

“This man has confessed his sin and bent his knee to Jesus!” he boomed across the tent. “Will all God’s people say amen?”

People from all over the tent angled their faces toward Jarrod and Howell. Jinn’s heart skittered.

“Amen,” they said.

“Will all God’s people vow to stand beside this man as he walks in the newness of God’s forgiveness? As he vows to love his wife, as Christ loves the church, and from here on out?”

“Amen,” the people said with gusto.

A prickle of dread ran down Jinn’s back. Howell must’ve told the man about the times he’d given her a thrashing, knocked her to the floor or against the wall of their cabin. But now he aimed to treat her better. He pledged it before God and everyone he knew.

“God will make this man right. The Lord God Almighty! Glory to Him!” Charles Jarrod clapped Howell on the shoulder. Howell flinched ever so slightly, turned, and found Jinn’s eyes.

His cheeks were flushed, creased by his shirtsleeves, and there were traces of tears and dirt on his face. She could see, even in the dim light of the tent, beneath the film of embarrassment that lay over his features, an expression she’d never seen in her husband’s eyes. It was resolve.

A quiet dread crept into her heart. She didn’t know why, exactly. She shouldn’t be afraid; she should be glad. She should be thanking the Lord right now with a grateful heart. Hadn’t she just seen the man repent? Hadn’t she just witnessed him go up front and bow his knee? God had done something tonight, under the white tent. He’d made Howell right.

She couldn’t go off with Tom now. Not after what God had done. Not after He’d worked a miracle and set her husband right. If she left Howell now that he’d repented, she’d be worse than backslid. She’d be damned.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Birmingham, Alabama

Clouds scudded across the sky, darkening the afternoon sun so much it looked near twilight. I parked on the Wootens’ road. To my left, the bluff dropped away; to my right, the Wooten house loomed. A “For Sale” sign squeaked in the wind, and I noticed that, unlike during the open house two days ago, all the shades were drawn.

Terri and Traci were inside waiting for me; we were going to have dinner and talk. But the house looked unusually dark. An odd feeling struck me, some faint premonition I should turn back.

It had to be the remnants of the stomach bug. Shaking the thing had seemed next to impossible—an uneasy feeling still rumbled in my gut even after lying motionless in the hotel bed all day. I gritted my teeth, hauled myself out of the car, and started across the street.

Halfway up the front walk, from some shadowed part of the yard, Rowe Oliver materialized before me. He had a baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes, and his chin jutted at me. He didn’t look like the doughy mass I remembered from the hotel room. He looked like an ox. A really pissed-off ox. I tensed to run.

Before I could spring away, he grabbed my arm, right above the elbow, and squeezed hard, pivoting me around and pushing me forward. Away from the house and my cousins and safety.

“Rowe . . .” I said. He shoved me again, hard. My mind began ticking wildly through options. Talk to him, appease him, promise him . . . anything. Scream, run, kick him in the balls. But I couldn’t do any of those.

I was frozen in fear.

He prodded me, one finger stuck in the small of my back, as we crossed the street. I looked left and right—but there was no one. The neighborhood was deserted. Just past Jay’s car we came to the strip of grass that bordered the crest of the bluff. The lights of the city below were starting to blink on in the late dusk. Smog hung low between the hills.

I gave him a pleading look. “Rowe, I know you’re mad. You should be. What I did to you was shitty. But I swear to you, on my mother’s”—
life
, I almost said, then stopped myself—“on my mother’s grave, I’d never say a word to
anyone
. You’ve got to believe me. I’ll never tell a soul what you did.”

He reached for me, and I sidestepped him, but it was too late. My vision was telescoping, the edges of things feathering to black. I felt like I was going back—back to the Olivers’ dank basement, back to the smell of mildew. The feel of the scratchy old sofa.

Back to knowing I should get up and walk out, but staying anyway.

I wrapped my arms around my torso because I’d started to shake. “Veni, Creator Spiritus,” I said, under my breath.

He wheezed out a sigh. “Jeez, Althea, c’mon.” He took a step forward.

I stepped back. “Mentes tuorum visita.”

“Don’t.” He beckoned me to him. “Cut it out.”

I took another step back. Spoke louder. “Imple superna gratia, quae tu creasti pectora!”

He darted at me and, with a lightning-fast jab, pushed me over the edge of the hill. Tumbling down, I pitched headlong down the embankment. My hands instinctively scrabbled out, and after sliding several yards, I snagged the branch of a spindly tree. My body swung around, and my shoulder socket popped, sending shock waves down my arm. I hung on and hauled myself upright, trying to plant my feet to keep from sliding further. Panting, I peered back up the hill.

Rowe wasn’t far behind me, slipping down the same track I’d cut. When he reached me, he grabbed a fistful of my shirt, spun me around, and slammed me to the ground. My head burst with a sharp, hot pain. A shower of white spots dotted my vision.

I screamed. I screamed the way I should have all those years ago, loud and long and full-throated, with every bit of resistance I had in me. I screamed and screamed until he clamped one hand over my mouth, pressed my head hard into the dirt and grass. Flashes of light exploded inside my head.

I arched against his hand.
Air. I need air.

Even though I was kicking, Rowe managed to grab me, digging his thumb into my hipbone. I cried out in pain, but the sound was barely audible.

“Stop,” he hissed. “Stop it.”

I looked into his face. He was pale, but his eyes shone like two bright orbs. I thought of Walter’s rifle and wished I had it. I imagined pointing it between those eyes and pulling the trigger. Exploding Rowe’s skull into a thousand pieces.

“Dammit, Althea,” he said. “Would you just hold still for a second?”

He jerked back, releasing his grip on my face. I sucked in a lungful of air. And another.

“Don’t,” I gasped. “Please, don’t hurt me.”

“Shut up, will you? Jesus Christ!” He took a breath. “I’m here because I need to tell you something before he . . . I remembered something.”

I gulped back the rest of my diatribe, stunned into silence. I felt something crawl down my neck and into my shirt—ants, probably—but I didn’t move. He’d scooted a couple of feet from me and was breathing heavily.

I sat up. “Rowe—”

He held up one hand. “Just . . . don’t say anything. Not yet. I—” His head jerked up, eyes scanning the top of the bluff. He looked back at me. “I remembered something from that night. Something Trix said to me about the woman at Bienville Square.”

I scrambled upright. “What?”

“The woman Trix met with was from the mountains up in Alabama. She knew your great-grandmother. Trix’s grandmother.”

“Jinn,” I breathed.

“Trix told me her name. It was like a bird or something. A bird name, like . . .” He looked skyward. “Like Wren or Robin or something. I can’t remember.”

I stared at him. “You can’t remember.”

“I know you hate me,” he went on. “And you should. You should hate my fucking guts, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try to make it up to you.” He inhaled. “I’m sorry, okay? And I can at least try to do something to make up for what I did—”

And then his gaze flipped back up to the edge of the bluff above us, and I saw him go white. I turned my head, following his gaze. Wynn stood at the edge of the drop-off, legs apart, the jacket of his gray suit blown open and his perfectly knotted light-blue tie flapping in the wind. Storm clouds swirled behind him, a debonair Titan.

“I’m sorry, Althea. I really am. I had to do this. He said if I didn’t—”

“Althea!” Wynn called down. “What the hell are you doing? Did he hurt you?” I looked back at Rowe. His face was contorted in fear.

I rolled over and struggled to my feet, and Rowe pushed me up the hill toward my brother. Finally at the top, I stood before Wynn. His eyes swept over me once, a cursory look of annoyance, then past me.

Wynn stared at Rowe. “You’re pathetic. I don’t know what I was thinking. I said subdue her, you donkey, not push her off a cliff.” His gaze flicked over me. “Are you hurt?”

I blinked at Rowe. “You work for him?” I turned to Wynn. “First Jay, now him?”

“He said he wanted to talk to you,” Rowe said to me. He turned to Wynn. “That’s what you’re going to do, right? Talk?”

“Yes, Rowe. We’re going to talk.” He smiled at me. “And Rowe,” he said in a deliberate voice—the same voice he’d used when he called me a ding-dong and teased me about the gators. “Pay attention. This is how you subdue someone.”

There was a pause, a split-second beat where I could hear the wind rustling the branches of the trees above me, then I felt a bright-hot explosion on the underside of my jaw. My head snapped back, my legs folded underneath me, and the world went black.

I woke up in a dark room that reeked of sour beer and urine. I was lying down, and Wynn had spread a blanket over me. He sat beside me, stroking my hair. My stomach heaved in revulsion. I wanted to tell him to get away from me, but I couldn’t muster the energy to speak.

I looked around. The room was inky dark, lit only by a flashlight balanced on a seat, its beam aimed up at the ceiling. I could make out words, graffiti on the walls.
Tanya is a fucktard. I love Ryan. Sigmas suck balls.
Two large windows stretched from the ceiling to the floor, all their glass smashed out. Rowe was nowhere in sight.

Wynn and I were alone, inside one of the rooms at Old Pritchard.

It looked like a pack of crazed hobos had held a rave inside the place. And it reeked. I wanted to cover my nose, but I wasn’t sure I could lift my arms. My foggy brain clicked through all these facts, but I couldn’t make sense of any of them. Why in the world had he brought me here? I looked up at him, barely able to lift my eyelids.

“Feel better?” he murmured. “I gave you something for the pain. The pills, in your purse. That’s our Althea, always prepared.”

I managed to touch my cheek. A shock wave of pain radiated through me.

“Rowe hit you,” he said.

“He—”

I lost track of my protest as the fog rolled through my brain. My purse lay on top of an old metal chair behind him. I squinted up at him. The glare of the flashlight shadowed the planes of his face, but the sockets of his eyes were two dark pools. Canyons of black. I couldn’t make out the expression inside them. Or maybe he had no expression.

“Was this Mom’s room?” I heard myself ask.

“Mom was never here,” came the answer from somewhere that seemed very far away.

“Somebody . . .” I was slurring. I felt like I was someplace else—somewhere high on a shelf. Safely out of reach. “Was it Collie?”

“Oh, kiddo.” He sighed. “Who knows?”

“They killed themselves,” I said vaguely. “Or somebody killed them. I don’t know . . .”

I heard another sigh from out of the black void.

“But how?” I asked. “How . . .”

“Kiddo.” He pushed up on my chin, so that my lips pressed together and my teeth clacked. “Listen. What’s important is that you and I are together. We’re family, you and me. Whatever happened to Mom and Collie doesn’t matter. It’s about the two of us now.”

He was right. My mother was dead, my father was dying. In the end it was just Wynn and me. He’d sent Rowe to find me so we could be reunited. I knew somewhere in the back of my fragmented brain it was because he wanted to lock me up. But right now, with my jaw throbbing and the awful roiling in my stomach, I didn’t care.

He was stroking my hair again, and I closed my eyes. My mother used to stroke my hair. It always made me feel so safe. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Wynn was my brother, he was older than me, smarter. Maybe I should just do what he said. Let him take care of me. Drift off to sleep.

“You never told me what happened.” The sound of his voice surprised me. I’d forgotten the fingers in my hair were attached to a person. And then the fingers stopped. “With Mom,” he said. “The night she died . . .”

I thought of my mother in her gold dress. The way the yellow moonlight lit up the clearing. “I can’t—”

“Try.” His voice was so measured. So calm. “I deserve to know.”

I am five years old, lying in my white-eyelet canopy bed. Wynn, nine, is asleep down the hall, but my eyes won’t stay closed.

The next thing I know, my mother is standing beside me. She’s still wearing the gold dress from the party, and as she bends over me, she shimmers. As I breathe in her Mama smell—honeysuckle and hand lotion and something else that’s sharp and bitter—she whispers, “Little Bit. Thea. Wake up.”

I get up, put on my blue sweater, and together we tiptoe out of the house. It’s so exciting, like we’re playing a midnight game of hide-and-seek. I wonder where Folly is. He wouldn’t usually miss a walk in the woods. Mama must have locked him in the laundry room.

We cross the cool, spongy grass to the edge of the woods, then slip into the thicket of pines and oaks, following the straw path. We hold hands, and as we pick our way down the path, Mama does our special thing. Three squeezes—I love you.

Finally we come to the clearing. I’ve never been here at night. Never seen the grassy circle in the dark. It seems almost magical. I have a secret playhouse under the spreading branches of an ancient magnolia tree, a place Wynn doesn’t even know about, and I wonder if my mother’s found it. If she’s mad and going to make me take it apart.