Sophie and the Rising Sun (25 page)

Because that’s what I wanted very much to believe.

But I didn’t get a chance to feel better for very long. Because things weren’t through happening yet. Things that would almost break my heart.

Late that afternoon, somebody or other came up on the porch, and Eulalie went out and talked with them. I couldn’t hear what they said, just low voices. I thought it was the sheriff. Probably just checking on all of us. Making sure we had everything we needed.

Eulalie didn’t come back into my room until she brought my supper tray to me—a nice cup of tea and homemade soup and a plate of cookies. But the minute I saw her face, I knew that something was very, very wrong.

“What’s the matter?” I asked her—because she was all red-eyed and puffy-faced. Looked even worse than she had when the doctor took Mr. Oto away from her and brought him to live in my gardener’s cottage.

She looked at me for so long that I thought she’d never speak, and my mind was just racing around, trying to figure out what it was she had to tell me. Mr. Oto? Had someone found him? Alive? Or...

“Sophie’s gone,” she whispered, and her voice almost broke, what with just trying to get the words out. Why, that was the last thing I would have thought of.

“Gone?” I croaked. “Gone where?”

“Just gone,” Eulalie repeated. “In the storm.”

“What do you mean—gone?” Because on the one hand, it didn’t make a bit of sense, whatever it was she was saying. Or trying to say. And on the other hand, I felt like someone had just kicked me right in the stomach

“Her house is empty. No one can find her. She’s gone.”

Sophie!

I didn’t even realize the doctor had come in the door behind Eulalie. And I also didn’t realize that that horrible moaning I could hear was
me
. Not until I saw the doctor rolling up my sleeve and Eulalie holding my arm still, so he could slip the needle full of blessed oblivion into my vein.

I don’t know how long I slept—if slept is the right word. And awakening wasn’t like any awakening I’d ever done. Occasionally, I could see the dresser in my room or Eulalie’s anxious face. Sometimes it was daylight and sometimes it was dark. Without rhyme or reason.

But at some point—I don’t know when—I fluttered to wakefulness during the night and I saw Big Sally’s face very close to mine.

“Big Sally?” Again, my voice was little more than a faint croak.

“You hush up that hollering you been doing! I told you not to worry! And you didn’t listen to me! You’re not to worry about either one of them. And I
told
you to call me
Queen
Sally! Didn’t I tell you that?”

“What do you know about Sophie?” I tried to yell. “And who in the hell is
Queen
Sally?”

But then I remembered how she had been hit awfully hard in the head. Still, if she knew anything, she had to tell me. She just had to. And she had to be specific.

But she wouldn’t say anything else. Just glared at me. And then her face disappeared. Later, I thought that maybe I had dreamed it, gotten my hopes up for nothing. Because of my being sick and because of all that medicine Big Sally was taking. And her getting hit in the head so hard.

So I was never sure. Never.

Oh, the sheriff formed up search parties, and they all looked and looked for the longest kind of time. But they never found a thing. Not Sophie. Not Mr. Oto.

And finally, in the long run, perhaps Sophie’s mama was right. Because nothing lasts.

Not even grief. Not even pain. And not even
not knowing
.

Because time heals up everything. Sooner or later.

It helped that I always held
onto a lot of hope about what happened to Sophie. Thought that poor old Ruth had been right after all. Maybe Sophie just finally up and ran off at last, like we all thought she’d do when she was young and right pretty.

And yes, I certainly did keep my part of the bargain with Ruth. The very first Sunday my ankle was healed, I went to church. Took Big Sally—Queen Sally—with me, just like I’d planned on doing all along. And when we walked in together and sat down together, I wish you could have seen Ruth’s face—guess she couldn’t understand that Sally and I had become very, very good friends. But most of the other folks got used to it, eventually, and the two of us went to church together—at Ruth’s church—every single Sunday for many, many years.

That was a new thing for me to do, go to church. But that terrible little hurricane changed a lot of things for all of us. Probably the most of all for Mr. Oto and Sophie.

So that when it was over, there was a lot more gone than just the four houses all from the far end of town. Sophie was gone, too. And Mr. Oto. And a lot of things I used to worry about that weren’t worth a hill of beans anyway.

Sally’s mama’s old house was just fine, like most of the older houses. They all stood the blow. But part of the roof was blown away on my sunroom, that’s all. And the funny thing was, that fragile little birdhouse hanging from the crepe myrtle tree beside my porch was still there when the storm was over. Can you imagine?

Tree limbs blew down all over the place, but that little birdhouse was still there. The limbs crushed most of the flowers in the garden. Knocked down all but one of the little pink dogwoods Mr. Oto planted for me. Later on, I got to where I liked it that way. It looked real pretty like that.

Eventually, I did start calling Big Sally
Queen
Sally, just like she wanted—like she insisted on—and she was surely a different person, so I guess she deserved a different name. Why, for the rest of her life, she was the sweetest, best-natured lady you would ever hope to meet. A little confused, sometimes, because she never did fully recover from that blow on her head.

I asked her to move in with me. Not as a servant, but as a friend, and she did. She’s still with me, and we’ve sure had some good times together—besides going to church. We play cards and sit on the porch in the afternoons, and we take care of each other, too.

The only thing we’ve never really shared is whatever the whole
story was about Mr. Oto and Sophie—not in so many words. And I don’t even know if Queen Sally ever really knew what happened. Or whether she made it all up. Or whether I dreamed it.

Now that she’s getting on in years, she falls asleep in her chair almost every afternoon, and she says things in her sleep—mostly, “You should have seen their eyes!”

That’s a comfort to me, it is. But of course, we never know how it’s going to be for us when we get older.

Or maybe it’s even like she said—that she is a lot better at keeping secrets than I was.

Because I want with all my heart to believe that Sophie went off with Mr. Oto and that they are together still, so that’s finally what I have come to accept as the truth. Completely.

But I never did know for sure.

So I tell the story of Sophie and Mr. Oto to anybody who’ll listen—makes it seem to me like they’re still here. And sometimes—when I’ve just told their story again and have them especially on my mind—I catch Queen Sally watching me. Just like an old hawk, I tell you! Why, she’ll study me hard for a long time and then nod her head, just once. She’s got that big old secret in her and won’t ever let it out—not in words, that is. But I like it when she nods at me like that. And once in a long while, I think about Sophie and Mr. Oto so much that I can almost see them. Sophie just a little girl in a white dress, skipping along so happy-like. And Mr. Oto? Well, sometimes I see his face the way it always looked when something especially beautiful bloomed under his gentle care.

Then I can see them together. Sophie all grown—soft and pretty and with a lovely glow about her. And him bowing deeply to her, cherishing her with all his heart, and nurturing her into the beautiful flower she was always meant to be.

Oh! How lovely!

(Continue reading for an excerpt from Augusta’s next book and more information about Augusta)

MUSIC FROM BEYOND THE MOON

COMING IN 2012

Excerpt

Moonlight filtered through the Spanish moss that hung from the rain-soaked limbs of ancient water oaks and decorated the side of the old house in random, ghostly shades of silver. Where the paint had long ago peeled away, specks of weathered wood showed through, and the screen door to the long back porch hung slightly off-center, as if balancing against the tilt of the house on its concrete block foundation

At the base of a silvery-trunked Cypress tree off to the side of the house, a child, a small boy—barely a toddler—sat with his knees drawn up under his chin, his eyes wide, watching for anything that might come at him from out of the damp darkness.

The woman had put him at the base of the tree, pressing down on his shoulders and shaking him slightly. “You stay right there. You hear me? Don’t you move a single inch! And yes, I know the ground is wet. But you just do as I say.”

She lifted her hands from his shoulders and taking a biscuit from a paper sack she had carried inside of her blouse, she pressed the biscuit into his hand and then walked away from him toward the house, reluctance slowing her steps. He watched as the pale triangle of her skirt disappeared behind the house.

“You stay right there, you hear me?” she repeated over her shoulder, but in a softer voice, almost a voice that said “goodbye,” but without the words. “You be a sweet boy, honey.” Her golden-honey-toned words melted away into the darkness beyond the palm fronds and the tall grasses.

While his eyes clung to the swinging skirt as it moved away, a noise in the palmetto bushes startled him, making him want to cry out for the departing figure. But he knew the storm was gone, the rain and wind had stopped, and she had said for him to be quiet, so he made not a sound, not even when, from among the dripping palmetto fronds, he saw deeply tanned hands—big hands!—separating the fronds, followed by a face—but not the face of any monster he had ever dreamed in his short, non-verbal life. This face had eyes that were soft but black and almost lifeless—the watchful eyes of a hungry alligator? And a hooked nose above a stern mouth. In the wet, black hair, a single, white egret feather. No doubt whatsoever in his childish mind: he knew this creature, a beautiful, magical creature from the stories he had heard. He wanted to cry out to the face, but the cry caught in his throat, and he remained silent.

Instead, the boy listened as the woman’s departing footsteps ceased and her knuckles rapped loudly on the screen door of the house; at the same time, the creature-face disappeared, moving backwards silently and finally dissolving into the poisonous black-green of the undergrowth. From nearby came the low, throaty growl of a panther, but not a growl to threaten—more of a sound coming from deep in the massive chest to comfort and to say, “I am here, and I will not leave you.”