Burying the Honeysuckle Girls (23 page)

Chapter Thirty-Six

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Sybil Valley, Alabama

The next morning, over coffee and English muffins, I told Jay I wanted to go back to Jean Tippett’s. He sat back in his chair.

“Don’t say it,” I said. “Not one word about pregnancy hormones, okay? I realize I’m all over the map. But what you said by the creek? You were right. We have to talk to her.”

But when we pulled up to Jean’s house for the second time in twelve hours, my stomach flipped. She was waiting for us on the front porch. She looked to be in her seventies, nearly as wide as she was tall, with deep-brown eyes set in a sun-weathered face. She didn’t seem the least bit surprised to see us climbing out of our car; she just waited with folded hands and a placid expression. I wondered who’d called her—Brother Bob or William Stocker or the lady who owned the bed-and-breakfast.
Word must travel as fast as electricity up here in Sybil Valley.

“I’m Jean,” she said when we reached the front gate. “You must be Althea and Jay.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, surprised my voice worked.

She motioned for us to follow her into the house.

As we passed the tiny living room, Jay rested his hand on my back and heat emanated out from it, all over my body. I was glad he was here. Glad he would hear Jean’s story with me. In the kitchen, we found a small table covered with a gingham tablecloth and set with mugs.

Jean motioned for us to sit and began to pour coffee.

“I’m glad you came back,” she said. “I was hoping you would. William called and gave me all kinds of hell for not answering my door.”

I nodded even though I had no idea how Stocker had known we’d come here, or that Jean hadn’t answered her door.

“I apologize for that. I was . . .” She pushed the sugar and cream toward us. “I think I was just hoping if I ignored you, the whole situation would just go away.”

“The whole situation?”

“Well, Dove, you know. And Jinn. All that.”

I felt Jay’s hand steady me.

“We don’t know much,” he said. I was grateful. My throat seemed to have constricted to a pinhole. “We’ve only been able to find out scraps of information about what happened to the women in Althea’s family. And all of it seems to point to Dove Jarrod.”

She nodded, then let out a long, quavering sigh. “Yes. You’re right. Dove is responsible for many things.”

I leaned forward. “Do you know their story? Dove and Jinn’s?”

“I do.”

“Will you tell me?”

She held my gaze. “I will. But first I have to return this.”

She slid the barrette, Dove’s barrette, across the table toward me.

“It was a gift from President Roosevelt, you know,” she said. “Brother Charles and Dove visited the White House, in ’35 or ’36, I think. The president was a thoughtful man. I don’t guess he had any idea Dove wasn’t her real name.” She clasped her hands on the table. “It was kind of you to leave it. But it belongs to you. It’s come a long way, and you should keep it.”

I couldn’t tell if my heart was thumping from fear or expectation or a combination of both, but I didn’t care anymore. I had come too far to care.

“Please,” I said. “Tell me. Tell me everything.”

She pushed back her chair, rose, and walked out of the room. When she returned, she was holding a bound scrapbook. She laid it on the table in front of me, and I opened it. Sepia-toned photographs, dozens of them, and newspaper clippings spilled out of the yellowed pages.

“Dove gave this to me,” she began in a quiet voice. “She said she couldn’t bear to look at it anymore. Couldn’t even stand to have it in her house.”

I opened the book. Saw the picture of a handsome, barrel-chested man dressed in a white suit and bow tie.

Jean nodded at the picture. “Charles Jarrod was quite famous in his day. One of the original Pentecostals. They traveled around the country, gathering crowds of sinners to listen to them preach. Sounded like a bunch of hollering and carrying on to me, but people liked that kind of thing back then. They enjoyed being fussed at. Made them feel better about all the sin they’d done. He used to call the people ‘whiskey-soaked and Sabbath-breaking.’ Tell them he was going to drive them right back into the arms of God.”

I flipped the pages. The man in the white suit stood on stage after stage, before masses of people. Then there were the shots of people kneeling before him or sprawled out on the ground, his hands on their heads. Children in wheelchairs, women on crutches. Men, in overalls and suits, their faces wet with tears.

“A faith healer,” I said.

“People called them evangelists, tent revivalists. But yes, healing was part of his ministry. So was Dove.”

I felt a trickle of sweat under my arms. “You knew her?”

Jean smiled, a brief, bright flash that made her look like a young girl. “She came looking for me one day, when I was thirty. The same way she came looking for your grandmother and your mother. She found me and told me her story. My story.”

“I’m nearly thirty. Why hasn’t she found me?”

Her eyes dimmed again. “Things went wrong with the others. I expect Dove thought she would be putting you in danger if she contacted you.” She paused. “What happened to Jinn, to Collie, and then to your mama? It was Dove who set all that business in motion. She didn’t mean to, and she was sorry for it—Lord, I can’t tell you how sorry—but she was the cause of it all.”

I swallowed. My throat felt coated in sandpaper.

“When Dove was younger,” she went on. “She had the notion that she could make things right. But we can’t always fix the past. She learned that.”

I closed the book, pushed it to the side.

“The thirties were a difficult time,” Jean said. “People were broken after the war, split on Prohibition, and devastated by the Depression. They were looking for answers to their problems. And who better to provide those answers than God? So, like I said, Charles Jarrod offered them God. They ate it up, every last bit of the show. And it was some show—speaking in tongues, healings. All kinds of miracles. The people up here in the mountains were used to old-time preachers who told them they needed to be baptized with water. Well, Charles Jarrod preached the baptism of the Spirit, you know. The baptism of fire.

“There were people who reported miracles in Jarrod’s services. People claimed to see feathers fall from the air, supposedly from angel wings. Or oil dripping from people’s skin. A few said they saw gold dust on their hands. They called it the anointing of the Lord.”

A chill moved down my spine.

“If you asked me,” she said. “I’d have to say there was at least one miracle—one real miracle—that occurred in Sybil Valley.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

October 1937

Sybil Valley, Alabama

After they left the Tippetts’, Jinn took Dove to the meadow where the honeysuckle grew. Howell had probably already been here, searching for her. Or maybe he hadn’t bothered. Maybe he’d gone directly up to Tom Stocker’s house. The not knowing didn’t feel so scary now. In fact, there in the meadow, with Dove, Jinn felt her heart lift.

The hollow was wild and tangled and silver in the moonlight. Jinn could hear the rush of the branch just beyond the stand of poplars. It sounded just like the murmurs of a crowd under a tent.

“I had a hunch you had secrets,” Dove said.

“I don’t,” Jinn said, then thought of Tom Stocker and the calf in the woods behind the school. Pritchard. “Well, not really. Everybody knows about this place. I pick so much honeysuckle out here, they say you can smell it on my hands.” She offered her palms, and Dove sniffed.

“Well, how about that?” Dove said. Grinned slyly. “You know, I have a secret too.” She smoothed her hair. “It’s called Clairol Titian Red. Underneath this, it’s the color of mouse shit.”

Jinn laughed. “That’s your secret?”

“Oh, that’s just the beginning.” She raised one brow. “I got more. I got secrets as big as the Hindenburg. But I don’t talk. A girl can’t just give out her secrets, willy-nilly.”

Jinn marveled at the girl. She didn’t seem to be afraid of anything, not gallivanting around in the dark, busting into people’s houses, or saying whatever she pleased to whomever she pleased. Talk about setting the world on fire. This girl was Myrna Loy times one hundred.

“Let’s go for a swim,” Dove said and scampered off to the water’s edge. The dark enveloped her, and for an instant, Jinn lost sight of the white dress. She ran to catch up. Just upstream the water cascaded into a waterfall. When Dove saw it, she crowed with glee, peeled off her dress and sat down in her slip, letting the water splash over her shoulders. Jinn watched her from the bank.

“Come on in!” Dove shouted. Jinn skipped across the rocks, and when she reached Dove, the younger woman reached up out of the water and caught her hand. She pulled her onto a scarred altar of a rock, right in the middle of the creek. They settled there, Jinn wringing out the hem of her dress and Dove lazing back on her elbows.

“I wish I had a place like this to hide. You’d never smoke me out of this place. No sir.” She glanced at Jinn’s half-soaked dress. “Look at us, what a couple of crazy girls we are. What do you think the evangelist would say?”

Jinn shrugged.

Dove jumped up and pulled the straps of her slip over her pale shoulders. It puddled around her feet. “Mrs. Jarrod,” she drawled in a deep voice. “I do declare. Your underdrawers are showing.”

Off came the bra.

“Mrs. Jarrod! Why your
brassiere
! It’s fallen right off your bosoms!”

Jinn giggled as Dove shimmied her underpants down her hips. “Woman! Don’t you know the Lord Jesus Christ sees
everything
? What must He be thinking?”

She tossed her clothes toward the far bank. She winked at Jinn. “Why, I don’t know, Brother Jarrod . . . That He did a damn fine job on this?” She twitched her pearly bottom.

Jinn had never in her whole life seen another woman naked, let alone one as beautiful as Dove Jarrod. Something inside her surged with rebellion. It made her feel strong. It made her want to howl into the dark, go wild and strip down to nothing herself.

There was a splash, and Jinn turned back. Dove surfaced from the water with a shriek. “Goddamn it! That’s colder than Buffalo in January!”

Jinn didn’t know exactly what made her do it, but she stood then and peeled off her dress. The slip and underwear too. The night air caressed her skin, the curves of her shoulders, breasts, and belly. Down around her hips and between her thighs. Soft as velvet. She liked it out here—in the dark, beside the water. She liked how free she felt with Dove.

Drawing a deep breath, Jinn jumped in the water, windmilling her arms and squealing at the icy shock.

They swam as the night deepened and settled around them, the stars seeming to drop slowly until they were just above the treetops. Jinn found herself telling Dove about almost everything: the ladies from Chattanooga, the wine. Howell and the money, her mother and father. She even told Dove about Tom Stocker and the poor, dead calf. The only subject she left out was Pritchard. When her throat finally ran dry, they climbed out and collapsed, side by side, on the flat rock beside the waterfall.

“You ever been to Hollywood?” Jinn asked Dove.

“Been there and back.”

“Did you have a screen test?”

Dove stretched. “I could have. This one man, a real big-shot producer, he said he wanted to screen test me in his office. But I never went. He wasn’t on the up-and-up.”

“What do you mean?”

“There wasn’t no movie.”

“How did you know?”

“Oh, you know,” Dove said. “Well,
I
knew, anyhow.”

“Because of your gift?”

Dove burst into laughter. “Lord, girl, you’re a stitch, aren’t you? You planning a trip to Hollywood?”

“Maybe,” Jinn said.

“With your Tom?”

And then, in a flash, Jinn knew why she was there in the meadow with Dove Jarrod. The Holy Spirit had led her there. He’d made Howell confess at the tent; He’d gotten him to tell Jinn he was planning to send her to Pritchard. He’d even made Jinn late to meet Tom, so Tom would go home, but it had all been for a reason.

It had all been for Dove.

The Spirit had led her to Dove, a woman with a gift. A woman who wasn’t afraid of anything.

“They’re going to send me to Pritchard,” Jinn said, all at once. “The sanitarium down in Tuscaloosa. They’re sending me tomorrow.”

Dove’s eyes sharpened, and she propped up on one elbow. “Why would they send you there?” Her voice was quiet.

“Because of the wine . . . and Tom.”

Dove looked down then, intently studied her fingers as they laced and unlaced through each other. “Pritchard,” she said, almost to herself.

Jinn spoke. “Have you been there?”

“Oh, goodness, no.” But Jinn thought certainly there was more than that, because she’d suddenly shrunken, her boisterous sound and color melting away in the dark.

She grabbed Dove’s hand, held it tight, and Dove flicked a look at her. It was so dark Jinn couldn’t read the expression in the woman’s eyes. “Won’t you please tell Brother Charles what they’re planning? Ask him if he wouldn’t talk to Howell for me?”

She pulled her hand away. “Charles wouldn’t want me to come between a man and his wife. It’s not my place. I’m sure you’ll be right as rain. They have doctors at those places. Lots of room to roam—”

“How can you say that?” Jinn interrupted. “It’s the loony bin.” She sat back. “You, of all people. I thought you’d understand.”

“There’s nothing I can do.”

“But you can!” Jinn’s voice rose to a screech. “You said you’d vouch for me.”

“Jinn, hush.” Dove glanced around. “You have to hush.”

“I can’t go there.”

“You will, if that’s what they want. But don’t be afraid because you’ll have the Lord. You can do anything, with His help.”

Jinn stared at her. “What?”

“With the anointing of the Lord,” Dove said. “You can do anything. It’s everything. For the healing of the nations. For visions of the past and prophecies of the future.”

It sounded like a line from one of Brother Jarrod’s advertising bills. Disappointment rose like a suffocating fog in Jinn’s chest. A fog that threatened to cut off her breath, choke her to death.

“You’re talking about all that with Vonnie Tippett?” she said.

Dove moved toward the edge of the rock and began playing with a spray of water from the fall, fluttering her fingers in and out, in and out. She watched the smooth sheet part like a curtain under her hand. “Yes. That was the anointing. It’s a funny thing. Gives me feelings about people. I see something in my head. Or someone who needs prayer. And, well, you were there. I find them and . . . ring-a-ding-ding.” She looked back at Jinn. “It’s a gift. A very good thing for a girl to have. A handy thing no matter what situation she finds herself in.”

“I don’t need a gift,” Jinn said. Her heart was really thundering away now. She swallowed, trying to slow it. “I need someone to talk to my husband.”

Dove went back to her fluttering.

Jinn moved closer, wrung her hands. “He’d listen to Brother Charles, after what happened at the meeting tonight. You could ask him if he’d go up and pay Howell a visit. Talk to him. Brother Charles listens to you. I know he does. I saw it.”

Dove shook her head.

“Dove.”

Dove turned her face as stony as the rock they sat on. “I’m sorry, Jinn, I can’t. I truly can’t. It’s not my place to tell your husband how to handle his family. This is the way it is—no one can stop him from sending you to Pritchard if that’s what he’s bound and determined to do. No one but God himself.”

Tears spilled down Jinn’s cheeks and into her mouth. She gulped them down, tasted their salty tang. That was the only thing you could do with tears, she thought. Swallow them.

So that was the end of it. Dove would not help her, and Jinn would be sent to Pritchard, away from all she knew and loved.

Jinn dropped her head and began to sob.

“Oh, Jinn,” Dove said.

Jinn thought of Collie and Walter, of Howell and her mother. Her little cabin. The white church. The mountain and valley she loved. Then an image of Tom.
Tom.
His broad shoulders and kind eyes. He’d never held her, not the way she wanted. They’d never lain together in a bed. Never . . . She would go to Pritchard, and all she’d known would be lost to her.

She covered her face with her hands, but she couldn’t stop the tears. She wanted to, but she couldn’t. If Dove didn’t help her, all of it was lost to her now.

She felt Dove move to her, take her hands. “I’m awfully sorry, Jinn. You’ll never know how sorry I am. You’ll just have to be very strong, that’s all. Stronger than you’ve ever been before.”

Jinn dug her fingers into Dove’s arm. Pulled the woman in close.

“Give it to me,” Jinn whispered fiercely, eye to eye with Dove. “I’m begging you.”

Dove recoiled. “What—”

“The anointing. The gift.”

“Oh, I can’t—”

Jinn held fast. “You have to. Please.” Her voice had risen again, precariously close to a shriek. “Give it to me. Please!”

And another thing. Her skin was prickling under Dove’s touch. Fairly crackling with electricity. That was proof, wasn’t it? That the gift was real? That she was feeling the fire Brother Charles talked about?

“I wish I could help you,” Dove said. “But, I don’t think it’s—”

“I’m thirty today,” Jinn said. “It’s my birthday.” She managed a smile. “Don’t you see? You can give me a gift right now—right this minute—a birthday gift that’ll make everything different from here on out. You can change everything.”

Dove’s eyes looked hooded and sad. After a long moment, she pulled the barrette out of her hair and clipped it into Jinn’s. “There you go. It’s for you.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” Jinn squeezed Dove’s hands again. And she thought, as her skin touched the other woman’s, that she felt the twinge again, the prickling of her skin—a sign something was happening. She looked into Dove’s eyes.

Dove looked down at their entwined fingers.

“Please.”

Dove sighed. Then, at last, she lifted one hand, laid it gently over Jinn’s eyes. Took a breath. “Do you receive the fire, Jinn Wooten?” she said. Her voice was subdued.

Jinn thought of Howell and the hymns, Vonnie and the creek. She thought of the calf strung up between two pines and the pressure of Tom Stocker’s fingers on the back of her head when he kissed her. Even after all the begging and pleading, the truth was, she didn’t know if the fire was real. She wanted it to be, that much she knew. She needed it to be.

“Jinn?” Dove said.

“Yes,” Jinn said. “I receive it.”

Jinn thought she felt a zap of something, a bolt of some kind of light surge through her. It didn’t come from the sky, like she expected. It bubbled up from somewhere inside her, as if it had been there all along—waiting, biding its time, before exploding and shooting up and out of her body.

Was this the fire?
Or was it the thick honeysuckle vines, finally constricting and choking her, driving her mad? She thought of her mother, lying in bed. She thought of the Lurie girl, who’d climbed to the top of the fire tower and, in full view of the town, stripped down to nothing and threatened to jump. This wasn’t a breakdown. Whatever this was shook her body and lit her up from the inside. This thing made her feel invincible.

“Jinn?” It was Dove, still beside her.

Jinn reached for her. “Don’t leave me.” She was crying still, and she felt suddenly heavy, like two huge hands had her by the shoulders, rattling her bones and teeth. But she wasn’t afraid anymore. She was ready for whatever lay before her.

She lifted her hands and pressed the tips of her fingers to her mouth. Her lips were open, they felt cold, and she could feel her breath coming out in staccato puffs.

Just then she heard a shout, from somewhere upstream, in the woods.

Howell.

She looked at Dove. Her face looked like an angel, the makeup washed away. She looked like something not of the mountain. Not even of earth.

“They can’t hurt me now, can they?” Jinn said.

Dove bit her lip. But she didn’t say a word.

Jinn waited for the men to come. She felt the fire roar through her, calming her, making her feel like she’d drunk a whole bottle of honeysuckle wine. Charles Jarrod appeared first. He’d taken off his suit coat and removed his tie, and his hair had sprung loose from its pomade. His white wingtips glowed in the grass.

“Have you seen my wife?” he called across the water to her.

Jinn looked behind her, but Dove had vanished. She turned back to Jarrod and tried to answer him but she couldn’t find her voice. Then Howell was there. And Walter, holding the .22 at his side.

“Jinn,” Howell called, and she went to him, plunging into the water, fighting the current. She scrabbled her way up the bank and stood before Howell.