When the Reckoning Comes, page 15
Jesse’s car slowed. The woods outside the window seemed like the same expanse of woods she’d seen when they’d left. It looked like they’d gone nowhere. “Where are we?” she asked.
“I have spare boots in the back. Grab those and put them on,” he said after he’d parked the car and got out. “We got a little bit of walking to do.”
Mira did what was asked, slipping off her shoes and reaching in the back for the boots. They were several sizes too large but she tied them up anyway, and when she was finished she got out and walked with Jesse down the path. It didn’t take long before the path merged with a large graveled trail that paralleled a water canal. Still, it didn’t register to Mira what it was and where they were until a couple appeared with matching kayaks floating along the canal, heading in the direction of the swamps.
“I can’t believe I grew up in Kipsen and never knew about this place.” They were on the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp, close to two hundred square miles of swampland. Jesse’s boots made sense now. She had to be careful where she walked. She moved slowly, each step deliberate, and listened. There were bears to watch out for, as well as snakes hiding in the thicket. Mosquitoes and thorns ready to pierce the skin. Terrors lurked in what she couldn’t see.
“I didn’t either. I learned about its history a few months after I first moved back. I mentioned it to Celine and we used to come whenever we both could get time off. It became our place for a bit. Someplace we could go. The canal isn’t that far and it’ll take you to Lake Drummond, the heart of the Great Dismal Swamp. We rented a kayak to see it once. The water was like black tea—clear and dark. We paddled out to the lake and when we got there the sun had begun to set and an orange glow shined over the water. It was so quiet and still. That’s what I remember about it. It felt like we were entering another world.”
“I wouldn’t think she’d even care, not the Celine I talked to last night,” Mira said. “She seems too wrapped up in the security of her new life to want to risk any threat to it.”
“Huh, yeah,” Jesse said, and Mira worried he thought she meant him being the threat and not the act of the two of them sneaking off into the woods. Mira was about to clarify but Jesse continued. “It might have been the stories of how they all sort of disappeared. I’d told her about how slaves escaped and created maroon colonies in the swampland. Remember, Celine was always wanting to leave Kipsen? She liked the idea of disappearing like them. They built communities by living on these small plots of high ground. Not much land at all. Twenty acres at most. They built cabins using wooden posts. Grew rice and grain that they sometimes traded. They just made do, but they lived. Managed to start a new life for themselves. That appealed to her. The idea of having some sort of control over your life. They didn’t actually have control though. They were still slaves outside of what they’d created, but they came to this swampland and found their own autonomy. They created their own rules, their own lives, found their own freedom. I think she liked the idea of escaping. Disappearing and starting over as somebody else.”
“Maybe that’s what Celine wanted to do. Escape, but from what? She has more now than either of us ever will.”
It was a whisper of contempt Mira had let slip in her moment of honesty, but Jesse noticed. He raised his eyebrows in the expectation she’d say more, but she felt it unnecessary to spell it out for him. They’d both seen the expense taken for the wedding, money that could have changed either of their lives, now wasted. Celine wanted to start over, but didn’t everyone want to start over in some way? People with less than Celine still suffered through, and what exactly did she want to leave? Celine had gotten everything she’d ever wanted, that’s what she’d told Mira, so what made her want to go?
Jesse said they needed to go farther on the trail. Mira went on ahead, picking up her pace as she ventured deeper, but she didn’t know where to go or where they should be looking. Soon the thicket grew dense enough that she was forced to stop, afraid she’d get lost and end up alone. She turned around and saw Jesse was right behind her. “Okay, what are we doing? We can’t search the entire swamp for her.”
“No, we can’t.”
Mira expected him to tell her his plan, but he kept on the trail. It eventually curved to the left, separating from the canal. This was where Jesse stopped, leaving the trail and going toward the water.
“What are you doing?”
“Celine?” he called, low at first, and then louder. He did this for a few minutes with Mira watching.
“Celine’s not here,” Mira said when he’d stopped for a minute. “We’re alone.”
“This was where we used to come. This spot. Here.”
Jesse circled. He peered in the brush, searching, as if any moment he half expected Celine to appear out of her hiding place, but no matter how hard he looked there was no one to find. Mira wondered what other secrets they’d both kept from her.
“I still don’t get why now, out of anywhere else, you’d think she’d be here,” she said.
“I just know.”
“Okay, but, Jesse—how? How do you know?”
“When I moved back, we became friends again.” He paused. “This canal goes all the way to the swamp, but in the other direction, down that way, it connects to the river. The one by the Woodsman property.”
“Okay, and?”
“Celine liked this spot. We took a wrong turn kayaking once and ended up going in the other direction, connecting to the river that led us to the property. We didn’t realize it at the time, thought we were still on the nature reserve land, and left our kayaks on the riverbank to stretch our legs. Celine started walking off ahead of me and I picked up the pace, to catch up to her, but deep in the woods we got separated. I called and called for her, and when I found her again she was in shock. She wouldn’t stop shaking. She told me she saw a group of black men, each of them carrying hatchets in one arm and in the other—they carried decapitated heads.”
Jesse looked out into the trees, appearing unsettled. He lowered his voice to tell Mira the rest of it.
“She said the men didn’t notice her at first. They ran right by, moving in another direction. She froze, watching, and they’d almost passed by without her being noticed, but then one of them turned and looked right at her. She bolted, running until she found me. After she told me the story we both ran out of the woods, found our kayaks, and got out of there.”
The familiarity of Jesse’s story was not lost on her. Did Jesse realize it? Had he noticed the echo from what had happened to the two of them?
“Once Celine found out we’d been on the Woodsman property she wanted to come out here all the time. I think part of her was always a little jealous over that day you and I had gone without her. I took her because I was happy to have someone else interested in the Woodsmans, even if she didn’t know the whole story. It’s been lonely not being able to share with anyone about what happened for all these years, and I could tell she was lonely too. We never saw anything like Celine had that first day again. Then Celine met Phillip and we stopped coming as much. When Alden Jones began building his park the only way to get on and off the property besides the main entrance was the river. If she wanted to get off the plantation without being seen, if she wanted to disappear, this would have been the only way to do it.”
“Well, she’s not here. There’s no sign of her having been anywhere near this place.”
Jesse climbed back onto the path. Mira sensed there was so much more Jesse wasn’t telling her. She hoped if she waited long enough he’d finally tell her, but he continued to stare in the direction of the swamp water, as if somewhere lurking underneath its stillness was an answer he needed to know.
“Maybe we’ve gotten this whole thing wrong. We’ve spent most of the day looking for Celine but maybe she doesn’t want to be found.” Mira was tired, dirty, and wanted to go back to the cottage so she could take a shower and crawl into bed. Following Jesse had taken her nowhere. They weren’t any closer to finding Celine.
A few yards away a couple appeared from the trail. Mira and Jesse were quiet as the couple passed them by, nodding as they hiked along the path in the direction of the entrance. Mira watched them as they disappeared. “Jesse, it’s what makes the most sense. Maybe she didn’t want to marry Phillip after all. Not sure I can blame her, to be honest, and she left because she was too afraid of facing everyone about it. Maybe that’s all this is. All those people back at the plantation, they’re not concerned at all about Celine and where she could be. Maybe they have the right idea. Maybe she’s just gone.”
“I’d really hoped we’d find her, Mira. Like she’d be waiting to tell us this whole thing was a huge prank on everyone. Or at least we’d see some signs she’d left, deciding not to go through with it after all. I wanted to believe she was different. That she wasn’t the type of person who’d truly want to have a wedding at a place like the Woodsman Plantation. Otherwise it means she hates us.”
Mira balked at Jesse’s conviction. Celine couldn’t have hated her. Mira thought about all the times as children when Celine had stood up for her, had been her friend when others wouldn’t. We could be sisters, Celine used to say, giggling as they sat on Mira’s bed, Celine reaching over to give her a hug, to pull Mira close. Hate? She would have never done that for someone she hated. No, hate was too strong a word.
“I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say hate.”
“Why not?” Jesse responded, raising his eyebrows. “How isn’t it? Think about all the people who died. They were exploited. Punished. We went to the graveyard and you thought one of the graves was of your ancestor. Imagine what was done to her. We don’t even know the full story, but think about what we do know and what was done to them. To ignore that—”
“I asked her about it. Last night. She said she hadn’t owned slaves. She’d had nothing to do with the place’s past and so it wasn’t the same.”
“She may not have had anything to do with the past but what about now? She didn’t care about the hurt her actions could cause. For me it’s the same. It’s like the difference between drowning someone and not caring if someone drowns nearby. In both scenarios the person ends up dead. Celine may not have known all about the Woodsman history but she knew what happened to me, to us, and yet none of it mattered. She didn’t care about what it might mean to us. Look, Mira, I get it. It’s easier with the others, you expect their hate, their disregard for your existence, but Celine? We all were friends. We grew up together. For her to be this way, to have this wedding like this—it’s worse, I think, because it means she never saw who we were to begin with. How could she ever have seen us? You’re trying to tell yourself it’s not the same because it’s hard to reconcile with the truth. I don’t know how to live with it either.”
XVII.
JESSE SAID HE needed to show her something else before he brought her back to the plantation and that he would have to drive her to his house. “One last thing,” he’d convinced her when they’d gotten to the car. Mira wanted to know why he couldn’t just tell her what it was and he said she needed to see to understand.
Jesse lived on the top floor of a house, which had been converted into an apartment. The owner, a retired woman who mostly kept to herself, lived below. His hand grazed her back as he guided her to the entrance.
“It’s not much, I know,” he said, apologizing after he’d led her up the narrow staircase.
“It’s all right.” Mira observed the surroundings. The apartment was small and mostly empty of furniture. Wood-paneled walls were reminiscent of a seventies-era aesthetic. The shag carpet came out in some of the corners and she could see bits of floorboard underneath. A well-worn sofa sagged in the living room. Bookcases lined the walls, all filled with black authors, a lot of whom she recognized but some she didn’t. An oak table sat in the breakfast nook. In the kitchen an efficiency burner stove was next to a utility sink, which, he said, was the reason he rented the place. Down a narrow hall Mira saw his bed, unmade, with a sheet balled up near the headboard.
“You’re taking photos again.” Mira noticed the collection of images plastered on one of the living room walls. Photographs covered over the white paint, lining almost every inch of the wall. Mira had to go slow to view them all, wanting to see all of what he’d done.
Jesse had progressed to mixed media. His work involved juxtaposing slave narratives taken from the Works Progress Administration, or the WPA, with contemporary portraiture, specifically photos of Kipsen’s black residents, contrasting his images with the written quotes from the once-lost stories. The WPA slave narratives were oral histories from ex-slaves conducted by the Federal Writers’ Project, a unit of the Works Progress Administration, both of which were New Deal initiatives to help provide jobs for the unemployed during the Great Depression. Few of these accounts were tape-recorded; instead they were written reconstructions from the WPA interviewers who’d relied on their own memories and field notes. Because of this, the narratives reflected the bias of the interviewers, often depicting the slaves as content and docile, as well as the plantations they had lived on as idyllic. In the 1970s, thousands of other slave narratives were discovered, which depicted the harsh and cruel treatment by the slave owners. It turned out that the state FWP officials chose to bury these narratives rather than forward them on to the Library of Congress.
Jesse’s face lit up when he told her this, and in hearing him talk about his work she saw the boy from her childhood, with his camera and photo books, now grown up. “I have some of the audio recordings of the narratives too,” he said. “The ones that have been digitized and are available online, but I don’t like listening to them. I wish I could hear the actual tapes because the voices sound like ghosts of the original audio. I’m reminded that I’m listening to a hollow reproduction, a shell of the original.”
Jesse said he wanted to publish a book of his collected pieces and he was working toward that. Mira listened as he talked about another project idea. He wanted to work with the Lost Friends ads. The ads were written by former slaves who were looking for their relatives after the Civil War.
“They’re fascinating to read. Relatives were forced to contain a whole life into the span of a few sentences, all in the hope another person reading would be able to recognize that life as once their own.”
Mira looked intently at each of the photographs, at the town she once knew. She saw her old neighborhood but in a different light. Elders sat on the porch fanning themselves in the shade. A pair of children played a clapping game on a front lawn, the photo capturing them with their hands midair. A cluster of kids played hopscotch. Another, double Dutch. He’d found people leaving church service. Wide-brimmed hats blocked the Sunday sun. Women were boldly dressed as they smiled toward the camera. He’d gone to the community pool during their slowest hours, which were also the times black families would frequent, and seeing those photos—the mothers sunning, baring their soft bodies for the world to see, and their sons and daughters splashing in the water, jumping off the diving board, eating slushies that stained their teeth red, all their happiness on full display—it made her insides twist up into something fierce. Jesse was able to look at their town and see it in a way Mira hadn’t.
“If I ever get out of Kipsen, this is what I want to do. Photograph more towns like ours. Document people living day to day and show the beauty of their lives. We got poverty, but there’s joy too.”
As she passed over the photographs, the focus shifted to images of the Woodsman property. A few were taken from the road, the sort of distant shot popularized on keepsake postcards that made the place look sweeping and grand. In one, Mira recognized the same house exterior but the photo depicted what looked like a large-scale game of pick-up sticks, except with piles of fractured wood and metal bars.
“There was an accident,” Jesse said, answering the question for her. “The scaffolding collapsed and a couple of workers died. I saw it happen.”
“When was this?”
“A year ago, maybe.”
“How were you able to get so close?”
Jesse laughed. “I have a good camera. Besides,” he said. “I don’t think anyone cared enough to notice me even if they had seen.”
Jesse had a few of his earlier photos up too, the ones he’d taken when they were young. These were, in some ways, what had started it all, and she’d never gotten to see what he’d wanted so badly to capture through his lens. She saw a photograph of a vulture, its wings spread wide. He’d taken a picture of the broken chandelier, the glass glittering like a hundred fractured diamonds sprinkled across the ground. He’d taken photos of the architecture of the Woodsman house, both inside and out. She saw the white ballroom but with its faded paint a dull, dusty white and not the brilliant gleam it was now. She saw each of the rooms, empty and derelict, and she thought of how much had changed.
She got to one photograph and lingered. The light from the window made some dust particles glow, but there was something else, something by the wall near the window. “What is this?”
“You tell me what you see.”
Mira couldn’t be sure. The way of the light, the camera, she couldn’t be sure. She looked closer, reached out to touch it, but hesitated. It looked like a little black girl standing there, wearing a plain slip dress. She was barefoot. She looked young, a child, considering her stature and size in the photograph. Her face was blurry.
“You do see it, don’t you?” Jesse pushed.
“Is that a girl? Who is that? When was this taken?”
Jesse leaned against the edge of his couch, taking in the rush of Mira’s questions. “I took that photo the day we snuck onto the Woodsman property. You were outside and I was roaming through the house taking photos of each room. I got to one room and I—I don’t know. The air changed. It got colder, but I shrugged it off. I was walking around, not paying attention, and I tripped, stepping on something on the floor. I looked up and I saw the dust moving through the air and I wanted to take a photo of it. I held my camera up in the air, trying to focus, and that’s when I heard you scream. I must have clicked without noticing, taking the photo. I never knew I did, what with everything that happened—I stopped taking photos after. I never developed the roll. I put it all away and tried to forget. I left my camera and everything when I moved to Louisiana. It was years later when I found this stuff again. I was going through the house, trying to clean up everything after my uncle died, and I found all my old things. I found the camera and the film, decided what the hell, and tried to develop it, and that’s when I saw this photo, all the ones I took that day, but what could I do?”
