The Swan House (33 page)

“Excellent! Just what I was hoping we'd find!” Rachel said triumphantly.

It turned out that most of the papers were actually letters of thanks written by admirers of Mama's talent. Many of them were still in their envelopes, so we arranged them by the date on the envelope. Then Rachel started taking them out, one by one, and reading them to me. That was nice, hearing so many people complimenting Mama's work.

And then she came to a letter that turned out to be a nugget of gold, a real treasure—a letter written from Henry Becker to Mama, dated March 1952.

Dear Mrs. Middleton,

The painting is beautiful. I will treasure it forever. You should have seen my wife's expression when I told her that I knew the artist. I do hope you'll be able to visit sometime and see where we've hung it.

I am mighty thankful that you seemed so happy and healthy on your last visit to Resthaven. Keep painting.

Yours truly,
Henry Becker

We squealed together. Henry Becker! The man in the sketch was Henry Becker!

“We've got to get to Resthaven and talk to that man!” declared Rachel. “He'll know all about the missing paintings.”

“Think of it! Mama sold Henry Becker one of her paintings! Or maybe they traded paintings. Maybe somewhere in this house is stashed a painting by Henry.”

“I still think he was the yardman.”

“The yardman with a talent for painting!” I said melodramatically. “Maybe a secret talent. That's it, Rachel. He's a yardman by day and an artist by night!”

“Impossible. Artists need light to paint by.”

“It's not impossible. It's the best explanation. You read it in the papers and in the Raven Dare. One of the artists whose paintings was to be displayed was Henry Becker.”

“True.” She was chewing on the end of a paintbrush. “But it doesn't really make sense.” She shrugged. “Well, the sooner we talk to the man, the quicker this whole mystery will be solved.” She got up and went over to the easel. “Hey, are you doing this?”

I lunged at the painting and said, “It's nothing. Don't say a word. It's just my way of getting things out of my system.” I couldn't bear to have Rachel make even one tiny, joking comment about my very first painting or about what I had found to be my calling. It was too fragile and new and important to me.

“Cool it, Swan. Anyway, I like it.”

“I've barely begun. It's just my first try. It's not—”

“It shows one thing, Swan.” I didn't dare ask her what, but she volunteered the information. “It shows you've got a lot of your mom's talent, that's what.”

If Rachel hadn't already been my best friend, those last words would have clinched her fate forever. I felt like grabbing her and hugging her till she screamed or giggled. But even Rachel couldn't know how much painting meant to me, so I just said, “Wow. You really think so?” and we headed downstairs to get a bowl of chocolate ice cream.

With the new information about Henry Becker on my mind, I was champing at the bit to talk to Carl on Saturday.

“You got any more information about us playing for that fancy Christmas dance, Mary Swan?” he asked me before I had a chance to speak my mind.

“Well, yeah. Mrs. Appleby said it was possible when I said you played jazz and all the fifties dancing tunes. She'd like to schedule a tryout for your band. Would that be okay?”

“Yep. Okay by me. I'll check it out with the boys.” He was heading over toward Cassandra and Jessie, so I planted myself in the way and said quickly, “Carl, could you do me a big favor? It's about the Raven Dare, and it is super important to me and to Rachel, and I don't know anyone else who can help, but we thought you'd be perfect because you can drive, and after all you are my second assistant, so it's okay for you to know everything.”

As I expected, he stopped and looked down at me with his fore- head in wrinkles. “Slow down, Mary Swan. Way down, girl.”

I directed him outside and began to explain. “There's a place in the mountains where my mom spent a lot of time. And a man who works there is one of the other artists whose painting disappeared. So if we could go there and talk to the man, well, I'm sure he'd clear up a lot of questions. But we need you to drive us.”

He shrugged. “I can drive, Mary Swan, sure 'nuff. But I don't have a car.”

I thought about the big Cadillac that sat in our garage all the time, except when Ella Mae took it out to drive me to Grant Park. “That's no problem. I've got a car. Got the Cadillac over there.” I squinted in the bright November sun and pointed to the car, half hidden behind the church in the side alley where Ella Mae always parked it. “Daddy lets Ella Mae use it whenever she needs to.”

He moseyed over to the blue Cadillac and leaned on the shiny hood, running his hand over it admiringly. “Nice car you got, Mary Swan. You're sixteen, aren't ya? Can't you drive?”

“Oh no. Not far. Daddy only lets me drive around the neighborhood.”

“And your daddy won't mind some colored fella he's never met taking his big fancy Cadillac and driving it way up into the mountains?”

“Well, I didn't think we'd have to tell him.”

“You're telling me that your daddy won't notice you and your car being gone for a whole day?”

“Not if he has other stuff planned—like golf. I can figure all that out if you'll just drive.”

“Sounds like you're gonna tell him a heap o' lies.”

“Oh, come on, Carl. This is important. Please don't start preaching to me about lying.”

He didn't outright agree. In fact, he seemed annoyed with me. But he didn't say no. What he said was “When do you plan on taking this trip?”

“As soon as possible. As soon as Rachel and I can work out the details.”

“Rachel gonna be comin' too?”

“Of course. She's my first assistant.”

He shook his head, really looking annoyed now. “Mary Swan, don't you think this country, this Southern state here, has enough troubles with civil rights without you askin' me, a big black boy, to drive you and Rachel, two fine, young, rich white girls, two hours away from here in a stolen car? Are you out of your mind?”

I shot him a cross look and pouted a little. Rachel said that when I wanted to pout, I had the best bottom lip in Buckhead. And I stuck it out then for Carl to see.

That made him laugh and show his teeth, and then he punched me playfully in the arm. “Don't you go getting saucy on me, girl. I don't need you causing me no trouble.” He leaned back so that his elbows were braced on the Cadillac's hood, and then stretched his long torso out in front. I could see his hard muscles under his plaid shirt. “Well, maybe it'll work. Let me think on it a bit.”

I grabbed one of his big forearms and said, “Thanks! Thanks so much. I'll work it all out. I promise! If you'll be at the bus stop at the corner of West Paces Ferry and Andrews by nine o'clock next Saturday morning, we'll be there with the car.”

“Hold on a minute, girl. I didn't say yes. I said I'd think on it a bit.”

I grinned up at him. “By the end of the week I'm sure it'll mean yes, so I might as well tell you the plans now.”

“Mary Swan Middleton, you are too much. Go on, girl.”

Then my big mouth and insatiable curiosity got the best of me once again, and I found myself asking Carl the same thing I'd asked Cassandra earlier in the fall. With both of us leaning on the Cadillac's hood and the nippy November wind blowing my hair, I asked, “Are you a Christian, Carl? I mean the kind that Miss Abigail would call a real Christian? Did you ask God to live in your heart and then get baptized?”

He scowled at me again. “You sure are one for jumping to different subjects, girl.”

I grinned up at him. “Don't stall. Just answer my question.”

“Well, then, the answer is, yep, I did. I did become a Christian.”

“And so what's different for you? Has God done anything . . .” I waved my arms in the air. “I don't know, anything spectacular in your life since then?” I was fishing for proof that Miss Abigail's thoughts about her almost-adopted son were true.

He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and punched me playfully again. “Why are you askin' those questions, Mary Swan?”

“Why do you think? 'Cause I wanna know.”

“Did Miss Abigail ever tell you 'bout me and my family before she found us?”

I swallowed hard. “Yes. Yes, she did.”

“Well, then, you know what kinda life I lived growing up. Lived in roach-infested shacks with no running water. Mama had a different man in the place 'bout every month, and sometimes they fought like hell. Never knew if we'd have food or not. And my aunt was jus' as pitiful as my mama. They couldn't help it. Their mama was an alcoholic who left them when they was real little. So they were raised by their grandmama. And then she died when they were about nine and ten. They were completely alone in the world. So they jus' started begging to live, and selling their bodies, and then they got pregnant all those times, Mary Swan, and so none of us children knows who our daddy is. 'Cept for Puddin'. And her daddy was the one who killed Mama.”

“Carl, you don't have to talk about it if you don't want. I'm sorry I asked.”

“I'm telling you all that so as you can see what is different now. Just hold on and let me finish my story, will ya?” And he gave a soft smile.

“So by the time I was twelve, I was a good pickpocket, and I could take a car apart in less than an hour, and I carried a knife and ran around with guys a lot bigger. Streetwise, I was, Mary Swan. Not scared of a thing 'cause I'd seen it all before. I wanted to grow up better. I wanted to read and learn, but didn't have no place to do those kinds of things.

“And I was filled with hate. I sure as heaven hated God. Mama would drag us to church once in a while to make her feel better, and I hated it. 'Cause those people sang so pretty and talked about a good God, but all I saw was poverty and lots of evil. And we were in a fix. When I saw Mama get killed, well, everything went out of me except the hate. And I told myself I'd save my family somehow.

“So you better believe that I wasn't an easy kid when Miss Abigail found us and took us in. My other sister died two weeks later from TB. We were a sorry lot. Miss Abigail fed us and cleaned us up and gave us clothes and we were a handful. But we felt like we were living in a palace, and we loved her in spite of ourselves. I didn't want to love her. I hated whites, and I didn't want any help. But she won me over. She won me over with her kindness and her firmness. She got me in school, and loads of times the principal called her and said I'd been found fighting with a knife. And she'd come down to school and give me a talking-to. And she dragged us to church and got us singing in the children's choir. When she realized I liked music, she got me in the band at school.”

He was getting misty-eyed. “And we heard about Jesus at church. But loads of people who went to church weren't any better than me. You know what got me most, Mary Swan? It was every morning, early, before the little ones were up, I'd come into the den and find Miss Abigail stretched out on the floor just pouring her heart out to someone. I thought she was crazy, talking to herself and crying like that, and at first it scared me real bad. I thought maybe we'd ended up with a crazy lady, crazier than my mom.

“But Miss Abigail started inviting me to come sit with her and read from the Bible, and I found out she was praying, talking out loud to Jesus. So I asked her questions. My brain was just spilling over with questions about everything. She'd listen too. But mostly she told about Jesus being her friend. She said she talked to Him every day, and He was taking care of her and all her problems and now He was taking care of us too. Talked about how I needed this friend who was also almighty God in my life, 'cause He'd show me the way even if it seemed awful hard, and He'd never leave me like all the other folks I'd known had done.

“I was a sponge, Mary Swan. I needed Jesus. And I was a rock. I didn't want to need anyone. But after a while, when you live with a lady who knows Jesus, and you see how He does indeed take care of her, well, it starts to rub off on you.

“But it wasn't just Miss Abigail. 'Cause we were all skinny and sick, and she didn't have enough hands to go around. But she said Jesus did. And all these other white ladies would come down, still do, for that matter, and just hold the little ones and love on 'em and help me with my homework, 'cause I was far behind. Hadn't been to much school. That was hard. Awful hard. 'Cause I loved Miss Abigail, but I didn't want to love any other whites. But after a while, I couldn't help it. They were the hands of Jesus.”

The hands of Jesus,
I thought to myself. Carl was sounding just like Miss Abigail.

“So when I was thirteen, I gave up and gave in. I'll never forget it. There was this guy at school who was always threatening me. We'd fought a time or two. So I told Jesus one night that I would ask Him to be my Savior if He would just show me what to do with Marvin. I told Jesus that I didn't see no way out, but Miss Abigail said there was always a way out, and if He'd show me a way out, I would believe in Him.

“And the next day at school, Marvin and three of his friends came up to me with their knives. Marvin said he'd meet me over by the cemetery after class, and we'd have this out once and for all. Well, I was so scared I couldn't move, but I said, ‘Ain't gonna fight no more, Marvin. I'll be going ta the church after school.' Well, he got a big hoot outta that, if you know what I mean, and you better believe he and his buddies were waiting for me after school.

“They followed me to church, and I was praying all the way like I never prayed before. And about halfway to church they jumped on me, and I thought for sure I was a goner. When outta nowhere two big black men came up and said, ‘Leave him alone!' They were big. I mean huge. Twice the size of me. And they had nothing in their hands but a big black book. And they held it up and said, ‘In the name of Jesus, if you ever try to touch Carl Matthews again, you'll have us to answer to.' And Marvin and his friends were shook up mighty bad and took off like scared rabbits. It was like those big men were ghosts—they came outta nowhere. Ain't never seen them before or since. And Miss Abigail says they were probably angels.”