Burying the Honeysuckle Girls (27 page)

“What men?” the security guard asked. “When?”

She shrugged. “Different men. Different years.”

“Come again?”

Dove’s face had taken on a vacant look, and I could see she’d left us. She’d left the field, the purple night, and the construction site. She’d gone somewhere far away.

“Back in the 1920s there was a passageway.” Her voice had gone soft. “That led out from the east wing.”

I shivered. Here it was: the promise of a door about to be unlocked and opened.

“An underground tunnel connected the main building and another set of barracks behind it. They put the dangerous patients out there, and some of the nurses and orderlies used the tunnel to travel back and forth between the buildings. They didn’t like to use it, unless it was storming. They thought it was haunted. Halfway down the passageway, there was a small chute, with a trapdoor that opened to the outside. They used to shovel in coal that way, long ago, to be delivered to the furnaces in both buildings. If you knew how, you could wriggle up the chute and get out of the trapdoor.”

She began to drift toward the magnolia. Its leaves shone in the rising moon. I looked at Jay, and Red Fleece and Northcut exchanged glances. We followed her all the way to the tree. She stopped and looked up at it.

“They chained the trapdoor, but it was nothing but a piece of rotted wood. They didn’t feed us much back then, and I was a small thing. I could push the door up and slip through the crack with no problem. No one ever saw me.”

She turned to me. Her face had broken open, and her eyes were on fire. Her hands pressed against her heart.

“I was born here,” she said. “At Prichard. Ruth Lurie was my name. My mother was Anna. They said she threw herself off a fire tower on top of Brood Mountain because she was pregnant with her brother’s child. Her family put her in Pritchard, and the doctors kept her chained to a bed. Because she was a runner.”

I felt tears rising in my eyes.

“When I got to be about six or seven, I used to sneak out at night. I’d go down to the tunnel, slip out the coal door, walk in the moonlight. That’s when I first saw them—the men burying the patients. They were the severely disabled ones they’d raped and beaten. The violent ones, the failed medical experiments. The ones who’d frozen to death because they’d hosed them down and left them too long in the cold.

“They brought them in from the outside too. Bodies. White and black. I saw policemen, more than once, unload them. Wrapped in quilts and blankets.

“The day my mother turned thirty, I woke up early; it was still dark. During the night, while I was asleep, she’d knocked out the glass from the transom above the door. Used one of the restraints they left behind to hang herself. They buried her in this field.” Her voice cracked. “I left her there and snuck down to the tunnel. I slipped out the trapdoor and ran. Across the field. Through the woods. I ran all night. I was twelve.”

Twelve. A child, all alone in a world of terror and confusion.

I wanted to tell Dove to stop talking, to tell her she didn’t have to reveal any more, not in front of these people. This was her story and hers alone, and no one had any right to know it. But my throat was burning, and the words wouldn’t form.

Dove gazed out into the night. “I kept running, all the way to California. I knew if they found me they’d put me back. I never wanted to go back. I couldn’t go back to the place where my mother . . .”

She faltered, and Jay moved to us. I could feel the warmth of his body near mine.

“Several years later, Charles wanted to come out this way. I was scared. I didn’t want to come, but I also felt like there was something waiting for me here, back in Alabama.”

Dove smiled at me. Squeezed my hand.

“Your great-grandmother, Jinn. I met her at the revival. She said they were going to send her to Pritchard. I couldn’t bear it for her. I just couldn’t bear it . . .”

She stopped.

“You saw what her father did to her,” I said. “And you knew where they would bury her, didn’t you? You knew where they buried women like her.”

Her gaze didn’t waver. “I had a good idea. Yes.”

“She’s here,” I breathed. “Jinn’s buried here.”

Dove looked behind her, at the spots she’d indicated. “And Trix too, I’m fairly certain.” She turned to us. Her face looked so much older now, shadowed by lines and folds. “I moved back here after my husband passed. I knew Jinn had to be here. I knew I had to tell Collie. It was my responsibility. I was terrified of being here, but I felt like I had to watch over the place, to see who else disappeared.”

Her hand gripped mine tighter.

“I thought if I told them,” Dove said, “told Collie and Trix, they could make it right, and I could leave this place forever—finally be rid of it. But I was wrong, and they paid for my cowardice. I wasn’t going to see the same thing done to you. I was not going to betray you the way I’d betrayed your mother and your grandmother.”

I nodded, unable to speak.

“Forgive me, Althea. Please forgive me.”

I went to her and gathered her into my arms. I held her and we were both crying, then Jay joined us. The three of us stood there, locked together.

“You people heard the guard,” Northcut barked. “You need to clear on out of here.”

Dove, Jay, and I separated.

I turned to Northcut. “You knew Walter Wooten. My uncle. Didn’t you?”

He said nothing.

“Tell me something, Mr. Northcut, did you ever see Walter Wooten discharge a .22-caliber rifle in the perpetration of a crime?” I stepped closer to him. He was trembling now. With fear or anger or both. “A murder, maybe? You ever help Walter Wooten kill anyone, Mr. Northcut? Bury them in the middle of the night, in this very field?”

His eyes hardened. “I never did nothing. It was your family that did all that. All your kind—they were trash. Nothing but trash.”

“A few were,” I said. “But not all of them. Not all of them.”

He started to reply, his eyes blazing with disgust, when we heard the piercing wail of a siren in the distance. His mouth clapped shut and his hand wobbled on the head of his cane as he turned to search for his nephew. That’s when I realized we’d done it. Dove and I had stopped them.

It was over.

Jay’s hand found mine, and I laced my fingers through his. I wrapped my other arm around Dove’s waist, and together the three of us walked in the direction of the flashing red and blue lights.

Epilogue

I am my mother’s daughter.

The honeysuckle girl is real.

The gold dust and the red raven were reminders

That she had a gift for me.

When the state got the proper clearances to excavate the site, we were there—Jay, Beth, Dove, and I, huddled together against the late-November wind. We watched as they unearthed the first skull.

“Sweet Jesus,” the workman said, and we all bent over the freshly excavated hole. After using a backhoe for the initial digging, the crew had been using picks and shovels and brushes to carefully turn up the ground. He was standing at the deepest point, at least six feet down, a shovel in his hand. He looked up at us.

“There’s a lot of bones down here.” He shook his head. “It’s like I just hit a whole cemetery.”

He had. They identified dozens of remains—Jinn’s and Collie’s among them. Both had bullets in their skulls, fired from a .22 rifle. They found my mother too, on the opposite side of the field, closer to the road. There was no bullet with her bones, but I knew what Walter had done to her just the same.

They found others. Missing men from Birmingham, including Lindy’s brother Dante. Lost men, women, and children who’d become too difficult for their families or society to handle. Pritchard, supposed refuge for the tormented, had become their tomb.

I found Walter’s rifle at Dad’s house, hidden in the back of a closet. Wynn must’ve found it in Jay’s car after all. I wondered why he hadn’t just taken it down to the dock and thrown it in the river, where the mud would have held it forever. He must’ve wanted to keep it—a gruesome memento of our twisted legacy. I didn’t want it, though. I didn’t want to ever see it again. I drove up to Tuscaloosa and handed it over to the officer who was working the Pritchard case.

After the excavation, Dove sold her house and planned to move back to California, where she’d lived with her husband Charles Jarrod so long ago. The thought of her going out there alone tore at me, and I begged her to move in with Jay and me. She refused.

She’d only been out there a month when I got the call that she’d died peacefully, in her sleep.

Ruth Trix Cheramie was born in the middle of June. She was perfect and beautiful, with a full head of fiery-red hair and the sweetest upturned eyes I’d ever seen.

I hold her at night, whenever I can get Jay to relinquish her. I sing to her and tell her stories about her grandmother and all the women who went before her. I tell her about gold dust and red ravens and special gifts that some women have. Gifts of touching and knowing. Healing. I tell her the stories like I believe them. I don’t know, maybe I do.

One day, when she’s older, I’ll show my daughter a trick I learned once, as a little girl in a magical clearing ringed with magnolia. I’ll show her how to draw out the stamen from between the petals of a honeysuckle bloom and taste the tiny drop of sweetness that comes from the flower.

Acknowledgments

There are many people to whom I owe a huge debt of gratitude.

My spectacular agent, Amy Cloughley, a deep well of patience, good humor, and editing prowess, who championed this book from start to finish.

My incredible editor, Kelli Martin, and the Lake Union team: Danielle Marshall, Shannon O’Neill, Meredith Jacobson, Gabriella Dumpit, Christy Caldwell, Tyler Stoops, and all the others. Thank you all for making this book shine.

Chris Negron, my first, most dedicated and tireless beta reader. Hats off for slogging through a million different versions of this book and always, with gentleness and tact, pressing me to make it better. The Atlanta Writers Club, and the extraordinary Atlanta Writers Conference and Roswell Critique Group, the latter two organized and run with infectious wit by George Weinstein. Team Erratica: Chris Negron, Becky Albertalli, and Manda Pullen. Chips and salsa on the outdoor patio with y’all make good news even more special and bad news easier to bear.

My early readers: Rick Carpenter, Katy Shelton, Kevin Whitehead, Ashley Taylor, Gloria Schulz, Amanda Silva, Karen Hardy, Shelby James, Laura Watson, Randy Watson, and Shannon Holden. Thank you for the input, suggestions, and edits.

My junior-high English teacher, Sandi Flowers, the first person who ever said that something I wrote was good . . . and then read it out loud to the whole class. You made me believe I could be a writer.

Anne and Henry Drake, who instilled in me their own fierce love for books and story. Henry Drake, Kathleen Drake, Katy Shelton, John Shelton, Danner Drake, and Jennifer Drake, each encouraging, each inspirational, each gifted historians, humanitarians, businesspeople, writers, and craftsmen in their own rights. Nancy and Richard Carpenter, Karen and Jim Brim, Lee, Ashley, Brandon, Amy, and Daniel Taylor. Thanks to all of you for cheering me along the way.

Rick—words cannot express how much I appreciate you every day. Noah, Alex, and Everett—the only thing more fun than writing this book is being your mom.

About the Author

Photo © 2015 Christina DeVictor

Emily Carpenter, a former actor, producer, screenwriter, and behind-the-scenes soap opera assistant, graduated with a bachelor of arts degree from Auburn University. Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, she now lives in Georgia with her family.
Burying the Honeysuckle Girls
is her first novel. Visit Emily online at
www.emilycarpenterauthor.com
.