High Hearts (7 page)

For a terrible moment he thought he would cry. He couldn’t give way. She needed him to bolster her. “I’ll be home as soon as I can, if I have to walk every step of the way. I love you, Geneva.”

She held him and sobbed.

He never felt more rotten or more loved in his life.

Golden bubbles popped in the cast-iron pot. Boyd, Ernie June’s fourteen-year-old daughter, called to her mother.

“Corn’s boiling.”

Ernie leaned over her daughter’s ear and whispered low so Tincia, her other helper, would not hear. “Keep stirring, slow down the boil, no big bubbles. And I want you to stir in a handful of sugar and a pinch of cinnamon.” She grabbed the expensive, refined sugar and threw it in. Boyd plucked some cinnamon between her fingers and added it to the delicious smelling concoction. Being a political creature, Ernie June then spoke louder for Tincia’s understanding. “Girl, don’t never want to hear you talkin’ ’bout cups and measurements. That don’t make a good cook. That make a chemist.”

Corn pudding, favored by Sumner, would grace the table tonight. She’d heard the news, the men were leaving tomorrow. Well, Ernie would play her part. Boyd carefully stirred the pudding, and Ernie returned to her two other ovens. One was a huge hearth. She stepped down into it. On either side of the hearth were long bread ovens cut into the stone. With an efficient crew, Ernie could keep the bread ovens humming enough to feed over one hundred guests on special occasions, such as Geneva’s wedding. The floor of the hearth Ernie kept in hot ashes. One of her secrets was burying vegetables in the hot ash and then hours later retrieving them. A small, new iron stove also functioned. Ernie thought this wood-burning stove good for coffee, but to her way of thinking, no great cook would dream of roasting meats in such an oven. The griddle was an improvement over the old method, yes, she would admit that, but meats needed an open fire, the flavor controlled by the wood chips and spices
mixed into the fire. Ernie passed these practices on to Boyd as though administering holy sacraments. Boyd, plump already, displayed her mother’s appetite for culinary distinguishment.

Ambition coursed through Ernie June. As cook of an important estate, she too had power, but not enough. One obstacle blocked Ernie’s ascension: Sin-Sin. As long as Sin-Sin lived, Ernie couldn’t get around her, she could only hold firmly to her number-two spot. Sin-Sin owned Lutie as much as Lutie owned Sin-Sin. The fact that Sin-Sin bore a child that died drew the two even closer together. Hearing the little girl’s pitiful whimpers as she tossed on her straw pallet was the only time Ernie felt pity for Sin-Sin. When the child finally left this earth, relieved of its terrible suffering, Sin-Sin smeared white ash on her face, made pots, and refused to cry. For one week she kept to her cabin, firing her kiln like a woman on fire herself. Ernie June lost no time in taking over Sin-Sin’s duties. Sheer ugliness drove Sin-Sin back to life. She washed her face, walked in the back door of the house, and took over. Sin-Sin’s husband died of the same suffering some seven years before the little girl. It was a tiredness, an evil in the blood. Ernie wished Sin-Sin would get it. But Ernie would outmaneuver Sin-Sin in the long run. She knew that, because she had two children and Sin-Sin had none. Boyd would inherit both her mother’s cooking ability and position. Braxton, her oldest son at twenty-two, marked sums when he wasn’t at the stables. Henley perceived the young man was good with numbers and taught him to keep books.

With both her children in the house or stable and not in the fields, Ernie expanded slowly. She’d worked too hard to hang back. She ate the same food the master did and so did her children. She never stood in line on Saturdays for the rations: four pounds of wheat flour, one pound of sugar, one pound of coffee, a peck of corn meal, four or five pounds of pork, a quart of blackstrap molasses, tobacco, and all the potatoes and vegetables one could grow in his own garden. Ernie June would never, ever bend over a patch behind her cottage. That was for field niggers. If the master ate quail, so did Ernie June. Not one carrot passed through the kitchen but what Ernie June did not decide its fate. She was consulted each time a pig, sheep, or cow was slaughtered.

Yet her greatest power, her left-handed authority, came when she distributed riches from her kitchen to the other
servants. Ernie June was courted hotly by every black soul, save Sin-Sin and Di-Peachy, on that property, all four thousand acres of it. Sin-Sin knew what Ernie did, but she couldn’t cross her on this. Sin-Sin had sense enough to turn a blind eye. However, after such distributions, Sin-Sin would wear Lutie’s keys around her waist to remind everyone that she, Sin-Sin, held ultimate power. Ernie hated the jingle of those keys. Like a sixth sense she knew when Sin-Sin was wearing them instead of Lutie. Lutie’s gait, light and skipping, rang down the hall. Sin-Sin walked like Napoleon. Someday, someday before she died, Ernie would wear those keys on her belt. And when the mistress designated her, no one, no one would meddle with Ernie June.

Ernie untied her neckerchief and wiped her brow. It was eighty degrees in the kitchen and forty-two outside.

Sin-Sin majestically strolled through the door to the main rooms. “Ernie June, this is a sad supper for the family. Let’s keep our feelin’s to ourselves tonight.”

Pure D hate shot through Ernie. That conniving bitch, coming into her kitchen, telling her that this is a sad night, as if she’s a dandelion, but too dumb to know it, and then ordering her how to act. “You tends to your business, Sin-Sin; I tends to mine.”

Sin-Sin glared at her and then walked out. Boyd giggled and Tincia laughed. Ernie swelled. She had her troops, by God. Just who would stand beside Sin-Sin when the time came?

Sin-Sin, her ginger cake skin shining and bright, informed Lutie and the others that dinner would soon be ready, and they might want to refresh themselves. Geneva and Nash came through the front door as Lutie, Henley, and Sumner retired to their rooms.

“In time for the fixin’s.” Sin-Sin smiled.

“Thanks, Auntie.” Geneva dutifully pecked her on the cheek. Sin-Sin noted how pale the girl looked. Nash looked peaked himself. Poor babies, she thought, they can’t stay together long enough to warm hands.

Conversation stumbled along. Sumner babbled. Henley said little. Nash and Geneva jollied Lutie, who appeared stricken throughout the meal. When the table was cleared, Henley called for the brandy. His toast was simple: “May we
serve our nation, our state, and our house with honor.” Lutie gulped the fiery brandy, which brought tears to her eyes.

“Ready for the evening lesson, Mother?” Sumner asked.

“I read it before dinner. More Judges. More Gideon. More battles. I’d as soon forget it.”

“Well, then, why don’t we go into the peach room and enjoy ourselves?” Henley suggested.

The peach room, small with a black marble fireplace, was Henley’s favorite room. The walls, covered with peach moire silk, glowed in firelight. It lifted his spirits. Sin-Sin sat in the corner on a hassock, and Di-Peachy threw cherry wood on the fire. Ernie June, enthroned in the kitchen, was not part of these gatherings. She fumed, but brought in a devil’s food cake with thick, vanilla icing on it.

“Daddy, tell us about the Harkaway Hunt.” Geneva wanted entertainment even as she unconsciously wanted confirmation of what she had seen on the meadows.

Lutie, never one to back off from telling a story complete with embellishments, started, “They ride at dusk, the hour between the dog and the wolf.”

Henley took over. “So they say. The Harkaways settled in Albemarle County at the time of the Monacans. Now you know the Monacans were a fierce Indian tribe that simply disappeared from these parts. Not a trace of them was ever found, not even on the other side of the Blue Ridge. But before they vanished, the original Harkaway, a man called Randolph, violated the chief’s daughter, a daughter the chief dearly loved. The child was so distraught that she killed herself, and the chief laid a curse on the Harkaways. He said their line would be extinct within three generations. Each male of the line would die a violent death at the hands of a woman, and the clan would ride forever, never to rest and never to capture their quarry.”

“Henley,” Lutie interrupted, “remember when we went to the Indian dances at the burial grounds in 1840? I think those must have been the descendants of the original Monacans.”

“They come through here, big as life, and ast the Coles iffin they could dance.” Sin-Sin contributed to the story. That dance caused a sensation in the county, and now everyone alive in 1840 claimed to have witnessed it.

“But what about the ghosts?” Geneva pressed.

“They ride. I know they ride.” Lutie spoke quietly. “I saw them the night your brother died, and I don’t care what anyone thinks or says about me in this county. I saw them.”

Henley added, sounding as judicial as possible, “Many people have seen them or heard them. I’ve never seen them as has your mother, but I’ve heard the dogs.” He tapped his pipe on the inside of the fireplace. “Of course, one could say I heard any pack of dogs but these gave a mystic tongue, like an old bell.”

“And the chief’s curse came true. Randolph was murdered in his bed in 1746. His wife said she was visiting a friend but everyone knew she did it. Randolph dallied in the Tidewater.” Lutie’s voice fell when she mentioned this.

“I don’t remember this part of the story.” Geneva caressed her husband’s strong hand.

“Well, dear, you weren’t a married woman then.”

“And Casimer, the son, fought valiantly in the Revolutionary War. He was on General Washington’s staff. They say Casimer was the handsomest man west of Richmond’s boundaries, big and powerful with the chest of a bull. He was the one I saw. It couldn’t have been anyone else,” Lutie stated matter-of-factly.

“Why is that, Miss Lutie?” Di-Peachy’s upper lip twitched slightly.

“Had his shirt open. Rode right up to me. He looked like a piece of Italian sculpture.” Lutie enjoyed this part of the memory. “He said, and kindly, too, ‘Death is the tribute we owe nature.’ ”

“He was shot through the head by a woman dressed in black,” Henley continued. “His son, Lawrence, lived to about 1797 when he was killed in a duel over a lady of questionable virtue. But legend has it that she fired at him from behind a tree and hers was the killing bullet. So the chief’s curse held true. Lawrence left no heirs, male or female, and the line died with him. I never met him, but my father remembered him. Said he was a passionate huntsman of both foxes and women.”

“And they hunt with black and tans, a pack started before the Revolutionary War with hounds from the west of Ireland.” Nash held Geneva’s hand.

Sumner said, “I still think it’s a good story for a cold night.”

“Jennifer Fitzgerald doesn’t believe in the Harkaways,” said Geneva.

“Well, anyone who’d marry Big Fitz can be forgiven. She doesn’t have a brain. She has a cerebral tentacle.” Lutie smiled in delicious malice.

The little group gossiped, indulging in mild backbiting and telling of other tales. No one wanted to leave, but Geneva and Nash, desperate for their last night together, finally broke the spell. Lutie kissed her son-in-law and wished him luck. As they walked to the door, Nash sought out Di-Peachy. “Di-Peachy, please look after my wife for me while I’m gone.”

“I will.” Di-Peachy’s almond-shaped eyes glistened. She wasn’t sorry to see Nash go, although she felt sorry for Geneva. It seemed to Di-Peachy that every emotion she had was quickly pulled in the opposite direction by another conflicting emotion.

Lutie lingered by the fire after her daughter left. Time was when recalling the Harkaway Hunt frightened her, but as the years receded, the strange power of that moment would both haunt and illuminate her. What manner of magical events or creatures lurked between our version of reality and the creation of Almighty God, she wondered. Perhaps unicorns, centaurs, and griffins existed side by side with us just like the Harkaways and a tremendous jarring of our ordered existence would open our eyes and we would see them for an instant. Perhaps this war would shake the earth like a mighty earthquake. Who knew what creatures will emerge from the fissures?

“Lutie, I’m going to bed now.” Henley placed his pipe in his pocket.

“I’ll join you, if you like.”

“Yes. I’d like that.”

And so Lutie slept beside her husband, a thing she rarely did now since she reserved these nights, in her heart, for Emil. But Henley needed her, and God only knew when she would see him again. She turned under the covers and wrapped her arm around his sagging but still massive shoulders.

In another bed, down the tree-lined drive to the Chatfield estate, Nash and Geneva surrendered themselves to the night’s sacraments. They made love with as much hysteria as passion, neither one sleeping and each one feeling the first glimmer of dawn as a knife to the heart.

Snow covered the mountains which looked like big, sugared gumdrops. Nash felt even more desolate when he saw them. Bumba knocked softly on the door.

“I’m awake, Bumba.”

“Fine.” Bumba discreetly left.

Unfurling her heavy robe, Geneva walked to the window. “This is eternal winter. Maybe we’ll get snowed in and you won’t be able to set foot outside the house. I don’t want to be apart from you.” She grabbed him. She was strong and squeezed the breath out of him.

“I’ve got to get ready.”

Reluctantly she released him, and he padded down the hall to his dressing room. She flung herself into her own modest dressing room. Ice clogged her water pitcher. She cracked it with a nutcracker hammer. The cold water slapped her awake. She brushed her teeth, washed her private parts, and hurriedly toweled dry. The cold weather was heartless. She walked quickly through her closet, deciding to put on a velvet dress of deep burnt orange. Nash liked her in fancy clothes, and it would keep her warm. She wanted his parting memory of her to be lovely. She combed her thick auburn hair, set it on top of her head, and raced down to the kitchen where Nash was already drinking his coffee. He stood when she entered the room.