Gathering of Waters (12 page)

Floating bodies. Bodies in trees, trapped in houses. Bodies attached to hands thrust like flagpoles from mountains of mud.

Even the undertaker, who had made a career of dealing with the dead and their survivors, became overwhelmed with grief and broke down in tears.

For the ones who could be coffined, there were funerals. August, Doll, and Paris were laid to rest alongside one another.

The missing and unaccounted for were memorialized. Melinda Payne and her faithful servant Caress fell under that category.

For years Cole would grieve and torture himself for three things he had no control over: his love-struck heart, the flood, and Doll’s death.

Hemmingway had her cross to bear as well. She had watched Doll die. Had in fact had a hand in her death. At the funeral she looked calmly into her mother’s dead, bloated face, and afterward she stood watching as the gravediggers covered the coffin with dirt. Even so, she was not confident that Doll was
really
dead, and she would live the rest of her days glancing over her shoulder expecting to see Doll: teeth bared, clutching a butcher knife, charging toward her. Or worse yet—Doll smiling, face lit up with her arms fanned out in anticipation of a hug.

***

It took three months of repair before the house on Candle Street was made livable again. Workers attacked the water-damaged walls with hammers, picks, and chisels, chopping away plaster and wooden laths until they reached the joists and studs. Those they dissembled, removed, and replaced with new ones. Rock laths were nailed onto the studs and three layers of gypsum plaster were smoothed on and left to dry.

The oak floors, staircase, and the veranda were all removed and replaced. New furniture, icebox, and stove were purchased and installed.

By Independence Day, that house on Candle Street looked brand new beneath the burst of the brilliant red, white, and blue fireworks.

Hemmingway became his new maid, not for any reason other than the simple fact that she was an orphan and he, a widower—so all they had were each other.

For a while she lived in the room that Caress had once occupied. Well, Caress still owned that space, and occasionally made her presence known by throwing her ghostly weight against the walls and rattling the frosted light fixtures.

It didn’t bother Hemmingway in the least. She had spent the first half of her life battling the dark spirit that was her mother, and so if Caress were trying to unnerve her, she would have to step up her efforts.

Sometimes she would go to the bridge and stare across at what once was. Birds and squirrels had taken up residence in the two remaining homes on Nigger Row. In three more years, March winds would level the houses and tall grass would grow up and around the rubble.

Widower and orphan led a quiet life. Hemmingway kept the house spotless, his clothes clean, and his belly full.

One Sunday she recreated Doll’s johnnycakes. When she placed the plate before him, Cole began to weep and the rain of tears drenched the cakes, turning them back into lumps of sweet, sticky dough.

Chapter Nineteen

W
hen Charlotte Custer knocked on the front door in the fall of 1929, Hemmingway despised her immediately.

“Afternoon, ma’am.”

It was the parasol Charlotte held over her head. Hemmingway hated parasols and so instantly hated any woman who carried one.

“Is Mr. Payne at home?”

A hazel-eyed, blond-haired, prissy little snake. She wore a bonnet and laced gloves that climbed all the way to her elbows.

“No, ma’am. Who may I say was calling?” Hemmingway asked the question and broke the cardinal rule of the South when she brazenly looked directly into the white woman’s eyes.

“You may say that Charlotte Custer came to call on him.”

Charlotte Custer? What ole type of stupid name was that? Hemmingway wondered as she raised her hand to her mouth and coughed a laugh into her palm.

“When do you expect him to return?”

Hemmingway could feel the smirk still resting on her lips, so she kept her hand positioned over her mouth. “Thursday, ma’am.”

Charlotte Custer frowned. “Oh dear,” she murmured before extracting an embroidered kerchief from her sleeve and used it to swab her forehead. “That’s three days away, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh dear,” she moaned again. “Well, that is that then. I will return in three days.”

Hemmingway watched her walk down the steps to the waiting carriage.

In three days Charlotte Custer returned, without the parasol. This did nothing to endear her to Hemmingway.

Hemmingway showed Charlotte into the drawing room, invited her to sit, and then went to fetch Cole.

“I don’t trust her,” Hemmingway hissed from the doorway.

Cole was working on his bottle art. But unlike other enthusiasts of the craft, he did not construct miniature boats in his bottles—he constructed Native American teepees.

“Indian houses?” Hemmingway had questioned the first time Cole showed her his work.

“Well, yes and no,” Cole responded. “They’re called teepees.”

A year after the flood, Cole had begun to talk about taking a trip out west.

“For what?” Hemmingway had asked.

“Just to see.”

“What’s to see?”

“Well, the Pacific Ocean for one.”

“Ain’t you had your fill of water?”

The only time Cole had ever stepped foot outside of Mississippi was to visit Melinda’s cousins in the neighboring state of Louisiana, and he hadn’t even wanted to make that trip. But since the flood—since he had cheated death and survived to tell the tale—Cole had started to wonder about the world beyond Mississippi. When his wondering transformed into yearning, he went out and purchased a black 1928 Ford Model A and announced to Hemmingway that he was going to drive it all the way to the California coast.

Hemmingway had simply shrugged her shoulders and said, “Okay, have fun.”

Cole was gone for two and a half months. When he returned, he was freckled, brown as lightly toasted bread, and filled with stories of Indians.

Hemmingway had listened, and yawned as Cole droned on and on about their customs, traditions, and the brutality they’d suffered under the white man’s occupancy.

“Yeah, well,” Hemmingway reminded him on various occasions, “black folk still suffering.”

Cole dedicated one of the empty rooms to his craft. Bottles of all sizes and shapes lined the baseboard like glass soldiers. Boxes containing sheets of canvas, oil paints, brushes, needles, and odd-shaped tools were strewn haphazardly around the room.

He now owned volumes of books on the American Indian. Books paged through so often, the spines had split and the pages were creased and wrinkled.

Cole’s most prized Indian collectible was a framed sepia-colored photograph of Geronimo. He had paid a pretty penny for the original print, which was taken in 1913 by the renowned photographer Adolph Muhr. Cole referred to Geronimo as “the greatest Indian chief ever known.”

Hemmingway didn’t think the man looked great at all, he just looked like an old man dressed in a shabby suit.

Cole looked up from his tedious task, pushed his wirerimmed frames up onto his forehead, and said, “You don’t trust who?”

Hemmingway sighed and stepped into the room. “That woman downstairs, the one I told you about.”

Cole smirked. “What’s her name again?”

“Charlotte Custer.”

“Did she say what she wants?”

Hemmingway shook her head.

“Oh, okay then.” He rose from the chair, unzipped his pants, and shoved his shirttails inside his waistband. “Bring us some lemonade,” he said as he brushed past her. “But no cookies, I don’t want her to feel like she can dawdle.”

Upon entering the parlor, Cole extended his hand and said, “Miss Custer?”

Charlotte nodded.

“Cole Payne. Sorry to keep you waiting. How can I help you?” He took a seat across from her.

“Mr. Payne,” Charlotte began in a syrupy-sweet voice, “it is so nice to finally meet you.”

Her words melted into babble in Cole’s ears. His mind was upstairs, hovering over his latest masterpiece. So reluctant was he to be there in that room with that woman, whose name had already faded from his mind, that he didn’t even notice how incredibly beautiful she was.

To say he had sworn off women would not be a fair statement. But a man does not easily recover from the loss of a wife and a lover all in one day. His heart was still healing, the scab tender enough to remind him that love, and the loss of it, was painful.

Hemmingway entered the room carrying a pitcher of lemonade and two glasses.

“Oh, thank you so much,” Charlotte said.

Hemmingway shot Cole a piercing look before exiting the room.

Charlotte reached for her glass, raised it to her lips, and took two small sips. She made a face, then set the glass down.

“Something wrong, Ms. Custer?”

“It’s just a little tart for my taste.”

“Tart?”

No one could accuse Hemmingway of making tart lemonade. If an allegation could be leveled, it would be that she made it too sweet. Cole raised his glass to his mouth, took a large gulp, and gagged.

Tart was kind—the mixture was downright sour!

“Sorry,” Cole murmured, and glanced at the doorway. “I can have her make another batch if you like.”

Charlotte shook her hand. “No, don’t worry. I can’t stay.” She stood up. “I just wanted to meet the man who had so much interest in my family. Now I have met him.”

The smile she offered was as big and bright as the sun, it lit up her face in a way Cole could not ignore.

“Your f-family?” he stammered stupidly. “I’m confused, Miss … uhm …”

Charlotte continued to smile. “I knew you weren’t listening.” She wagged a delicate finger at him. “I could see it in your eyes.”

Cole gave her a sheepish look.

“Well,” Charlotte sighed, and eased back down into the chair, “a friend of a friend passed one of your letters onto me …”

“Letters?”

“Yes.” Charlotte opened the clam-shaped purse that dangled from her wrist, pulled out an envelope, and handed it to him.

Cole studied the script; it was his.

Mr. T. Farmer

Sherman Publishing House

89 Park Avenue

New York City, NY

The letter was dated December 1928. He quickly scanned the paragraphs before looking back up at Charlotte. “I don’t understand.”

The woman, still smiling, shifted a bit in her seat. “Is that not a letter written by your own hand, Mr. Payne?”

“Yes.”

“In the letter you refer to Mr. Farmer’s book,
Forever,
Monahseetah
, do you not?”

“I do.”

“You wanted to know if Mr. Farmer had located the children of Monahseetah and General Custer. Is that correct?’

Cole nodded.

“I am the granddaughter.”

Cole blinked. “The granddaughter of whom?”

Charlotte’s smile turned bland. Even Hemming-way, who was eavesdropping in the hall, bristled with frustration.

“Of General Custer and Monahseetah,” Charlotte replied pointedly.

It took another moment for Cole to comprehend what the woman sitting across from him had just said.

“You?”

Charlotte bobbed her head.

His obsession with Native American culture had led him to the book entitled
Forever, Monahseetah
, written by Theodore Farmer, which chronicled the love affair between Monahseetah and the famed Civil War and Indian War hero, General George Armstrong Custer.

In the book, the author claimed to have located and interviewed the aged Monahseetah on a Cheyenne reservation in Oklahoma. Farmer wrote that Monahseetah had been quite candid with him about her relationship with the general and the children she had borne him— a boy in January of 1869, and in December of that same year, a girl.

The boy, called Yellow Bird, had Monahseetah’s brown complexion and dark eyes, but not her ink-colored hair. His locks were light brown streaked with blond. Unfortunately, he did not live to adulthood.

Of the girl, Farmer wrote, “
The one whose existence had
been disputed for decades was born on the thirteenth of December
in 1869. She was named Namid, which means Star Dancer in the
Cheyenne language. Namid favored her father, as she had inherited
his blond hair and fair skin
.”

As Namid grew older, her appearance became the source of ridicule from the other children in the community. They called her ghost-face and pale-face and refused to play with her.

It broke Monahseetah’s heart to have her daughter be ostracized by her own people. So, when Namid turned eight, Monahseetah took her off the reservation and left her with an order of nuns who ran an orphanage.

“She was such a beautiful white child, I knew someone would adopt her,” Monahseetah told Farmer.

When Farmer asked, “Did you ever see her again?” Monahseetah’s eyes welled with tears and her lips trembled. “Yes, every night in my dreams I see her and she is still just eight years old and very lovely to look at.”

Cole had written the letter to Farmer hoping that he could reveal the exact location of the reservation, as he wanted to visit it himself and perhaps speak to Monahseetah. But Farmer never responded and Cole had not sent a second inquiry. Now here was this woman, claiming to be the granddaughter.

“So you are the child of Namid?”

Again, Charlotte bobbed her head. “My mother was adopted and raised by a family in Louisiana. When she was sixteen, she married a man named Jean Batiste. He is my father.” She paused. “
Was
my father. He died from cancer to his brain in 1926. My mother followed him to heaven last year.”

“Batiste? But you said your surname is Custer.”

Charlotte folded her delicate hands in her lap. “Yes, I had it legally changed to Custer.”

“Why?’

“To honor the memory of my grandfather.”

“Your father must not have been very happy with that.”

“I did so after his death.” Her eyes turned sad. “Although, I will admit that he and I did not have the best relationship.”

Cole leaned forward. “And your grandmother, Monahseetah?”