The Mirk and Midnight Hour (5 page)

I pulled myself together enough to reassure her. “Don’t you worry about that. I’ll be in charge of Cousin Seeley, and there’s no way we’ll let you turn into those
Sluders
’ handmaiden. They’ll have to shift their own weight.”

Laney gave a low chuckle. “The way you said Sluders made it sound like you were calling them a dirty name.”

My lips curved into a reluctant smile. “What will I do with a little boy, though? I’ll have no idea how to handle him.”

“Do the things we used to do with Rush. Let him run wild in the woods. Any child would love that. If we help each other,” Laney said, rising, “it won’t be nearly as bad as we fear.”

After she left, I began sipping the sweet, pale gold honey milk.

Eventually I rose and lit a candle. From under my pillow I drew a fat volume covered with crimson cloth—my journal. To it I took every extra agonizing or extra beautiful thought or occurrence, writing them out until the intensity ebbed. If any of my descendants were to read it, they would think me a creature of great extremes of emotion, because that was when I wrote.

I dipped my pen in the inkstand on my rickety bedside table and
wrote and wrote and wrote. After I had exhausted myself, I pried up the loose floorboard and stashed my journal with the soldier’s items; if the Sluders really were coming to live here, I must be extra careful with my privacy.

I closed my eyes and tried to forget about my father’s news. I tried to forget about the expression in the VanZeldt’s eyes as he had looked at me, and the fact that he must be out there somewhere still, half naked and dripping wet.

Maybe I can’t go to the wedding tomorrow because I have diphtheria
.

Scratchy throat, aching head, sneezing constantly—could be, but probably no such luck. It was most likely just a nasty, oozing, forever-lasting cold.

I was sitting on Rush’s bed, rubbing my forehead, when Sunny poked her nose in the doorway.

“Oh. This is where you got to,” she said in her sweet, tinkling voice, which immediately brought on my stomach-clenching reaction. “We wondered.”

Years ago, back when we were small together at Miss Reed’s little school, Johnny Croft had described Sunny’s nose as being arrowhead-shaped. He had been an observant child. It still stabbed out sharp as ever.

She flicked her eyes over Rush’s playthings spread out on the bed, waiting to be packed away—the lead horses and soldiers that had carried out so many adventures for Laney and Rush and me. She made a face and said, “Is that all you’re going to do this afternoon?
I’d help, of course, except I won’t handle dead people’s things. Why on earth did your brother still have toys around? Wasn’t he our age?”

Of course she knew he was my twin. I didn’t try to explain that Rush was loyal to his old friends and would never have gotten rid of these belongings. “He left them under his bed,” was all I said.

She raised her eyebrows and withdrew. I sneezed and finished packing up.

Rush’s bedroom felt bare and empty of his possessions, but the bed was comfortable, everything was clean, and it was good enough for an eight-year-old boy. Except … I snatched off the bright, beautiful Eye of Heaven quilt. It was what Rush always used to wrap himself in when he came down to breakfast, even when it was ninety degrees out. I draped it tightly around me and sank to the floor. Dust motes floated about in the light streaming from the windows. I exhaled a long breath to send the close ones frantically dancing, and closed my eyes.

Rush, Laney, and I have done a terrible thing. We found a great horned owl caught in a trap. He was such a glorious creature, we couldn’t bear to turn him loose just yet. Rush declared his name to be Judge Solomon. We fed him bits of chicken, and Rush tied the owl’s leg to the end of a rope attached to a pole in the barn. During the night, Solomon struggled so to escape that in the morning we found him hanging, strangled by the rope
.

The burden of our grief and guilt is immense. We paint a crate with the most beautiful designs we can conceive. It is autumn and we line Solomon’s coffin with crimson sweet gum leaves. Each of us, in penance, lays a precious possession beside him. Laney gives a stone, naturally heart-shaped and polished smooth by the river, I provide a single, cherished Venetian bead, and Rush sets in one of his beloved lead soldiers. We strew more leaves on and around Solomon so that only his noble face shows. We find a lovely, sunny spot in a meadow and dig a deep hole. Before lowering the coffin, we hold a moving funeral
.

“
What have y’all got there?
”

It is Sunny Sluder. Her mother has come to pay her respects to my mother, although they are not friends. It is only because it is rumored that Mama has not long for this world that people come calling
.

We do not answer Sunny, only stare at her solemnly. She peers into the open crate—

And giggles
.

A burst of shrill laughter from downstairs jerked me back to the present.

“Oh, Rush, how could you have left me alone with these Sluders?” I whispered.

During the last couple weeks, they had popped in constantly. The first time was to “welcome” me into the family. After that it was to move in their possessions, mostly tasteless gewgaws, billowing mounds of clothing, and lots of canvases—some blank but some splashed with garish, clashing colors, which Miss Elsa called her “art.” According to her, she was a slave to it.

I couldn’t understand why my father wanted to marry her, although she was handsome enough for an older woman. She resembled Sunny—in a faded, softened, slightly shriveled way. She had the same sleek chestnut hair (although Sunny kept hers in ringlets, partly her own and partly pinned-in false tresses), the same arched eyebrows and jewel-green, slanted eyes, the same full, pouty lips, the same long neck and fashionable figure—tiny waist with swelling bosom and hips. However, where the daughter’s eyes snapped and
sparkled, the mother’s dreamed. Where Sunny had a high color and moved with an exhausting vivaciousness, Miss Elsa was pale and drifted about with chilly grace. While the impression Sunny gave was of being sharp, snippy, and pretty, there was a remoteness about Miss Elsa. A sweetness as well, so perhaps that had been the attraction for my father.

“Vi-let!” Sunny hollered. “Come see these!”

Reluctantly I went down to the sitting room, where Miss Elsa drooped languidly on the sofa. Standing before her, Sunny dangled a pair of brilliantly striped cambric pantalets between her fingers and made them do a ridiculous dance ending with a kick. “Aren’t they delicious? They were in the attic among the old things Papa William said we might make over for the wedding.”

“Those belonged to my mother,” I said. “They were in style when Pa was courting her.”

“Obviously,” Sunny said. “So countrified and old-fashioned. Like you, young lady, calling your father Pa.”

“True,” Miss Elsa said. “Just as my mother would have done. I had meant to speak to you about it, my dear. Mr. Dancey has asked me to help him if he slips and uses rustic language, and he wants me to give you little hints now and then.…” Her soft voice trailed off, as it so often did.

I bit my lip. What was so bad about being countrified when we lived out in the country? And sometimes it was nice to be old-fashioned.

I wanted to be happy for my father, but how could I be? I had muddled over this thing—this awful marriage—ever since he had told me his plans. I fretted over it as I untangled snarls from my
fine, flyaway hair. I had wept about it as I lay curled up in bed. I had brooded over it as I made candles and milked cows and swept floors. It was no use; Pa was going to do this, and nothing I could do would stop it.

“Fine day for a wedding,” Michael said as he helped me into the buggy the next morning. I could only nod miserably.

The weather mocked my mood. It was church-bell-ringing, bird-singing, blossomy April. Inside the chapel, the ladies had twined the columns with vines and festooned the pews with ivory ribbons and lilies.

Most of white Chicataw waited downstairs, while Laney, Michael, and other colored folks sat up in the balcony. It was the way we did things. I avoided Laney’s eyes.

That morning, in front of my greenish looking glass, I had thought I appeared all right, wearing a black silk that had once belonged to my mother. My hair was in ringlets twisted from rag curlers, which, combined with my cold and my dread of the wedding, had prevented sleep all night. All the curl would fall out shortly, but I had to try. Now, with Sunny perched in the pew beside me, I felt dowdy.

Sunny glowed in a frock of golden paisley-printed voile with coral silk fringe. She had pilfered it from my mother’s trunks and raised the waist to modernize it. I had loved that dress. My soon-to-be stepsister also wore white lace gloves, a pierced ivory fan tied by ribbons to her wrist, and dainty high-heeled slippers (although her feet were too large to be truly considered dainty). With so many of the guests in mourning, Sunny shone like a parrot among crows. Her satisfied expression showed she was happily aware of it.

My own face hurt from the effort of smiling.

The Reverend Mr. Stone, our minister, stood waiting to perform the ceremony. The Stones were the proprietors of the school I had attended from the time I was twelve until this past December. When it was announced that the academy would be closed for the duration of the war, so we might be with our families, most pupils had wept openly. Tiny Mrs. Stone, with her dashing clothes, ready smile, and kind ways, was adored by all the girls. She now slipped in to sit on my other side, her arms full of her latest darling redheaded baby swathed in a fluffy shawl. “Are you all right?” she whispered. I nodded. She reached down and squeezed my cold hand with her warm, reassuring one.

The organ commenced playing and my father and Miss Elsa moved up the aisle on a carpet of flower petals. Pa appeared distinguished in his new gray army uniform. Wraithlike Miss Elsa carried a bouquet of lilies and wore silver satin trimmed with a froth of misty lace.

I clutched a crumpled handkerchief and felt as alert as a soggy dishrag. Throughout the ceremony an irritation scratched at the back of my throat. It took all my concentration to keep from coughing, never to stop.

The groom slipped the pearl ring that had belonged to my grandmother onto the bride’s finger. He had assured me the ring would be mine someday, but this showed the worth of his promise.

Thankfully I got through the vows without making a coughing spectacle of myself. The moment my father and Miss Elsa headed down the aisle and out the archway, I scuttled to exit the back door.

I was bent over, hacking away, eyes streaming, when a deep voice
from behind said, “May I fetch you some lemonade right quick? It might would help.”

Without knowing who had made the offer, I could only nod blindly, intrigued by his beautiful voice. Cough smothered, eyes wiped, cheeks pinched for a little color, I waited to see who would step back around the corner of the building.

A shadow preceded my benefactor.

It was Pratt Wilcox.

He came striding over holding a cup and something wrapped in a napkin. Naturally. Pratt Wilcox, whose unfortunately repellent self I hadn’t laid eyes on for at least five years. Something about him had always seemed slimy, and it wasn’t just the fact that his hair hung lank and greasy. It might have been his lips, which reminded me of sliced liver, or the way he stood a little too close.…

Oh, well. He’d been nice to offer the lemonade. “Thank you,” I said, and took a long, welcome swallow.

“You’ve got a cold,” he remarked astutely.

“Yes. It’s the kind that lasts forever.”

“The kind where you feel as if your head will cave in when you blow your nose.”

That actually was rather funny and I laughed. “Exactly.” My gaze fell on the three stars adorning the collar of his uniform. “Why, Pratt Wilcox, you’re a colonel.”

“So you do remember my name. Didn’t know if you would since I’ve been gone so long. Went into business with my uncle in Memphis, and then the war, of course. And I am indeed a colonel, in command of the Fifty-Sixth Mississippi.”

“Impressive,” I said. “You’ve certainly risen quickly.”

He colored modestly, moved a little closer, and cleared his throat. “Well, you see, my main accomplishment was not dying at Fort Donelson. I was one of the few in the regiment to make it out, so the powers that be rewarded me with stars.” He shifted his booted feet uncomfortably. “Oh. I forgot about your brother being there. Sorry. A capital fellow.”

“Yes,” I said. “He was.”

We were silent for a moment, and I thought what a pathetic pair we were, having absolutely nothing to say. Poor Pratt. It wasn’t his fault (probably) that he put girls off. I would be kind. I gave him what I hoped was a kindly smile.

“Would you,” Pratt said, unfolding the napkin to display a dark, fruity slab, “care for this? You know young ladies are supposed to place a piece of wedding cake beneath their pillows to dream of their future husbands.”

I didn’t want it, but to help him out I said, “Yes, thank you.”