Southern Exposure, page 2
“Damn, he’s doing it to her!”
On the opposite side of the clearing, two boys not yet twelve crouched low, in blue jeans and polo shirts and nylon jackets, flashlights poking out of the back pockets of their Levi’s. Little Magellans exploring new territory.
“Damn,” the larger boy breathed again. He peeked out from behind the tree that hid him, stared hard at the naked couple a hundred feet away, then turned to his companion. “It’s true, they do do it out here. He’s doing it to a black girl.” He stopped, then repeated, “A black girl.”
The smaller of the voyeurs timidly looked on. Weren’t they freezing? He tried not to notice the spooky trees, the sounds he kept hearing in the water. Snakes? The couple rolled over and now the black girl was astride her companion. How did they do that without breaking it? He noticed her pretty cocoa breasts, but mostly he kept wondering if the swamps really were haunted. And whether his mother would get up in the night and discover he’d sneaked out.
“Lookit them knockers,” the larger boy giggled. Then he clapped his hand over his mouth and bent down lower, where his erection was less noticeable. He punched his cohort. “Wish I could get my hands on a set like that. Don’t you?”
Seth Von Hocke couldn’t have cared less. He only hoped to get out of the swamps before something awful happened. Maybe that old lady out here really was a witch.…
“Damn, damn, damn, lookit ’em go! I bet—”
A twig snapped. A great black giant stepped behind the two boys. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed the lovers. She turned her fiery eyes on the boys and they scattered.
In Essex we’ve told so many stories about that night that almost everyone knows pretty much what happened, even down to what most of us were doing before we went to bed. In a small town you live in each other’s pockets whether you want to or not; you grow so omniscient about your neighbors’ lives even their thoughts aren’t sacred. We’re not exactly like that anymore. If what happened then happened now, it’s unlikely any of us would know the whole story.
When the phone rang that night in Stoney McFarland’s house, he didn’t even hear it at first. He was dreaming about an old World War II movie his father had taken him to see when he was nine and he kept hearing air raid sirens. Over and over again. Surely everyone knew by now to take cover. He stirred, flicked open his eyes. The luminous dial of the clock radio blinked “1:33.” Suddenly he jumped. The shrill jangle of his dream was on the nightstand.
He picked up the telephone receiver but the voice on the other end spoke first. “Hello? Hello?”
Stoney recognized the crackle. “Mrs. Setzler?”
Some people said she was the oldest lady in town. If not, she was undoubtedly the most controversial. Harriet Youmans Setzler was the reigning Dowager Queen of Essex, the only woman ever to sit on the Essex Town Council—a milestone likely to remain forever intact. For during her tenure as councilwoman, Harriet Setzler wrote a town ordinance, as yet unchallenged, limiting subsequent membership to men only. She liked to make her mark without competition.
“I know it’s late, Stoney,” she explained, “but I couldn’t think of anyone else to call. I tried Jim Leland, he’s not answering. Only policeman we have and he takes his phone off the hook, might as well not have one.”
Stoney refocused on the clock, wondered what on earth Harriet Setzler wanted this time of night. “What’s wrong, Mrs. Setzler?”
“What is it?” Anna mumbled from her side of the bed. Stoney’s parents always called immediately when a distant relative was ill. “What time is it?”
“I need you to come over here,” Harriet Setzler commanded. “I woke up a while ago and heard something over at Sarah’s. A noise, something. Maybe I dreamed it but I can’t put it out of my mind. I’d sure rest easier if somebody checked on her. I’d go myself—but you’re ’bout as close as I am.”
The McFarlands lived five blocks from Sarah Roth’s house; Harriet Setzler lived across the street. But in her eyes Stoney McFarland was still a boy who earned money every summer mowing lawns and running errands. So, when he and Anna moved to Essex, into the old neighborhood with more than its share of “widow-ladies,” he soon became their resident ladder-climber, heavy-lifter, and checker-outer.
“Mrs. Setzler, did you call Sarah?”
A pause. “No answer.” Then, “Course Sarah’s snoring could drown out a hurricane. I spent two nights over there when she was sick last year and I couldn’t even hear the trains go by. She is an old lady, you know.”
Harriet Setzler, at eighty-seven, frequently made it clear that she herself was exempt from the customary ravages of old age. She was also the only charter member of the Essex Lutheran Church who boycotted the monthly Senior Citizen suppers.
“I’ll walk over in a second,” Stoney said. “I’m sure Sarah’s fine, don’t worry.” He hung up the phone.
By now Anna’s eyes were wide open. “What’s going on?”
“It’s nothing.” Stoney climbed out of bed and pulled on the khakis draped over a nearby chair. “Mrs. Setzler thinks she heard something at Sarah Roth’s house, wants somebody to check on her. Leland can’t be reached, of course.”
“She wants you to come over there at this time of night?” Anna peered at the clock radio, then turned back to Stoney. “Those old ladies think you’re their errand boy.”
Stoney slipped on a rugby shirt, then went to the closet for his shoes and a jacket. “I know. Mrs. Setzler probably just had a nightmare.” He tied his shoelaces, crossed back to the bed, and sat down beside his wife. “Go back to sleep.”
She reached out and hugged him. “Stoney, let’s don’t argue about Essex anymore.” He held her and then she leaned back. “Why do you love me anyway?”
He grinned. “Because you’re shorter than I am.”
“Get outta here.” Anna snuggled back down into her pillow. “You be careful.”
Her husband stood up. “Now what could happen to me in a hick town like this?” He winked and headed for the door. “I’ll be back before my side of the bed gets cold.”
Downstairs, in the kitchen, Silas snapped to attention when the light came on. Stoney knelt beside the dog’s bed and scratched under the retriever’s neck. Silas was a big, goofy dog with serious dark brown eyes whose iris was the same spun-gold as his fur. Anna had given Stoney the pup on their first wedding anniversary in Essex and he was just the sort of dog Stoney had always wanted but couldn’t keep in a city apartment. Silas agreeably rolled over onto his back to have his belly scratched, then he jumped up and stretched and shook off sleep. When he saw Stoney reach for the leash hanging by the back door, he shot across the kitchen floor, his tail sweeping wide arcs behind him. Stoney clipped the leash to his collar. “Let’s go for a walk, kid.” On the back porch Stoney flipped on the outside lights and locked the door behind him. Some people in Essex still didn’t lock their doors at night, but the McFarlands couldn’t shake the city-bred habit. (The one night they tried, they both lay awake until three in the morning, then got up together and locked every door in the entire house.) Essexians were quite proud of the town’s lack of crime: natives were quick to point out that there’d never been any real trouble, not a single murder anyone could remember or even any serious racial unrest. Robberies and vandalism and domestic squabbles, the triple terrors of many small communities, were few and far between. Stoney breathed in the night air. It was still chilly and sometime since midnight a light rain had fallen; the street and the old concrete sidewalks bordering it glistened under the occasional streetlight. On both sides of the road stood the traditional Old Essex house: a one-story bungalow with a pitched roof, always painted white in his youth but now leaning toward pastels with contrasting trim. His grandmother had owned such a house which, in the hands of a subsequent owner, had burned to the ground when Stoney was in high school. Here and there the rectangular shape of the houses rose to two stories or turned squatty and square and featured a bit of gingerbread trim on wide front porches that always sported a swing or wooden rockers.
“Heel, Silas,” Stoney called sharply. He had let go of the leash and now the fluffy blond dog was half a block ahead of him. With a resigned air, Silas stopped and waited for his companion, checking the tree limbs above him for squirrels. When Stoney caught up, the dog trotted alongside him for another block and then they turned left and crossed the street, heading toward Aiken Avenue.
Stoney gazed idly at the sleeping houses on his right. In appearance Essex had changed very little since he was a boy. Pictures of this part of town had looked much the same in the 1930s, the 1950s, and the 1970s. Only the condition of the photograph dated the scene. Despite the fact that the town had spread out and now even had a “development” of brick ranchers, there was still no best place to live. When Stoney was young, blacks lived on the outskirts of Essex in all directions with whites in the center. Now three black families owned homes in the center of town and the subdivision was fully integrated. On paper anyway. For change was slow and social interaction still minimal.
Turning right onto Aiken Avenue, the oldest residential street in town, Stoney again noted a sign of progress, the attractive frame home of Marian Davis. A vivacious black woman a little older than Stoney, Marian Davis taught English at the high school. And lived on the street where blacks had once only come and gone as servants. The first time Stoney had ever seen Marian had been on this same street, this time of night, over twenty years ago. Originally named Alma, before Harriet Setzler took her in and changed her name to Marian, she was then a skinny kid who cooked and cleaned for Harriet just as her mother once had.
Late that summer’s night, when Stoney couldn’t sleep, he had slipped out of his grandmother’s house for a walk. It was exciting being out at night, alone. Something he could never do in Washington. Then he heard a commotion in front of the Setzler house, a house he normally avoided, given its owner’s reputation for keeping baseballs that landed in her yard. Lights and voices, the sound of a girl crying, the harsh syllables of a baritone. Harriet Setzler standing on her front porch looking meaner than a copperhead, clutching her bathrobe to her like she actually thought somebody might want to look at her. Below her, on the sidewalk, the sheriff from Ashton County, a heavy-set man in his sixties, seemed annoyed.
“Sorry to bother you, Miz Setzler. I picked this here colored girl up off the highway. Near the swamps.” He pushed the girl at arm’s length, keeping a hand on the back of her collar. “She shore does stink, drunker ’n sin, I don’t know where they git it. This’n ’bout got herself kilt, she was weaving all over the road, I near-bout hit her.”
The girl, obviously unsteady, grabbed the sheriff’s arm, swayed, then moaned, “Oh please doan carry me to the jailhouse. Take me to Miz Setzler.”
The large man shook his head. “Damn fool don’t know where she’s at.” He looked up at Harriet Setzler, who was staring at Marian with pursed lips. “She wouldn’t tell me where she lives, just kept bawling for me to bring her here.”
Hiding in the bushes, Stoney held his breath. He felt sorry for Marian, that she had nowhere else to go. Everybody knew how hard Harriet Setzler was on colored people. She also hated drinking: getting “liquored-up” in her book was the one sure ticket to hell. People said it was on account of how one of her boys took to the bottle real bad, they said she never forgave him.
Harriet Setzler glowered at the trembling girl. “Marian, I’m ashamed of you. Acting like this. No better’n white trash. Come on in here right now.”
The sheriff, who didn’t live in Essex, stared at the white woman. “You gonna take this girl in your house? Like this?”
Imperious, Harriet marched down her steps and took Marian’s arm, daring the sheriff to object. “She lives here.” She led the girl back up onto the porch. The Ashton sheriff stared, his mouth ajar; everyone in the county knew of Harriet Setzler’s legendary racism. But as the two women disappeared inside the door, Stoney saw a pudgy white arm cradle the girl’s thin shoulders as naturally as if it belonged there.
Many years later Marian the college graduate had come home to teach, and she now lived just down the street from the woman she’d once worked for. Stoney stared ahead of him. Sarah Roth’s house was two doors down. He reached out and patted Silas, then quickened his pace. Soon he’d be crawling back into bed. Harriet Setzler was probably just imagining things. Maybe a dog woke her up, squirrels or something. Stoney smiled. Anna said he was babysitting the old ladies in Essex. Maybe he was. They had done as much for him once.
Sarah Roth’s house was a two-story frame structure with a gabled roof. She was the last survivor of one of the oldest families in Essex, the only Jewish family ever to live there. Of the original five settlers of the town, a Samuel Rothenbarger had come to Essex to open a dry goods store. That store, in a post-1865 building, still stood in the middle of the town’s business district and passed as its only facsimile of a department store. It had remained in the family through each generation and had been known to many Essexians as simply “Roth’s.” When her husband was killed in a train accident (they lost their only child in World War II), Sarah took over the store. She was the first woman to run a business in Essex and the strength of her personality left its mark. Now, despite her retirement, the store was known as “Sarah’s.”
Stoney mounted the wide wooden stairs of her house. A stained glass window Sarah’s husband had given her the year before his death was mounted in the oak front door. For years everyone had told her some kid’s softball was going to break it but she’d paid no heed. And it was still intact. Stoney knocked on the door softly. He hated to wake her, scare her like this just because Harriet Setzler couldn’t sleep.
No answer. Stoney glanced across the street at Harriet Setzler’s house and wondered if the old lady was watching him. He turned and knocked on Sarah’s door again and waited, motioning to Silas to lie down. The dog ignored Stoney and stood on the edge of the porch staring out at the street. When Sarah Roth still didn’t answer, Stoney hesitated. This is silly, he thought. He ambled to the edge of the porch. “What do you see, boy?” Silas looked up at Stoney with soulful eyes but didn’t move. Stoney gazed out at the street. Everything was perfectly still. He studied the knifelike shadows the live oaks left on the sidewalk, then shivered and went back to the door and knocked again.
Sarah Roth still didn’t answer. God, she must sleep soundly. What if she was sick, had a heart attack or something? Why didn’t he think of that before? He turned back to the wooden door and tried the lock. It didn’t budge. She probably didn’t use the front door, many Essexians didn’t.
Stoney scrambled around to the back of Sarah Roth’s house. He strode toward the back porch and jerked open the screen door. Looking down, he saw mud on the linoleum in front of the door. It had rained during the night but not until after he and Anna had gone to bed. Surely Sarah hadn’t been out this time of night.
Abruptly Stoney remembered Silas and turned around. The dog was sniffing the steps. “What is it, Silas?”
Head still down, the retriever growled, his body rigid.
“Stay, Silas.” To himself Stoney intoned silently, calm down. If she’s sick, you can take care of it, it’ll be all right. He crossed to the wooden door, yanked the rusty metal doorknob and pushed. “Mrs. Roth?” he called when the door opened. “It’s Stoney McFarland. You okay?”
The silence inside felt wider than an ocean.
“Mrs. Roth?”
Stoney stepped inside the kitchen; he felt like a prowler. He licked his lips. Where the hell was her bedroom? Quietly he made his way through the unfamiliar rooms. If she was okay and he woke her like this in the middle of the night, he’d probably give her a heart attack. He passed an old china cupboard with glass doors. He’d only been in this house a few times and he had no idea where the light switches were.
“Mrs. Roth?” he called loudly. “Mrs. Roth, it’s Stoney.”
God, could she sleep through anything? Stoney’s heart hammered in his chest and he lurched down the hallway, found the light switch and snapped it on. The glare blinded him momentarily, but even the light didn’t wake her.
He rushed into what looked like a breakfast room, then into a smaller room furnished like a den: a television, a treadle Singer sewing machine, a small desk piled high with papers. The living room would be at the front of the house; at her age she probably didn’t use the second floor, so that left two rooms, both with their doors closed. Stoney threw open the first. Double bed, starched white chintz curtains, cotton throw-rugs. No Sarah.
“Mrs. Roth?”
Stoney pivoted, burst into the other room. “Mrs. Roth, wake up. Are you—”
Everything stopped.
Years later he would remember it as he remembered the only hurricane he ever witnessed. He was eleven, visiting his grandmother one August, when a storm came inland and left thousands of decapitated trees in its wake. Through a crack in the plywood nailed over his grandmother’s windows, he had watched the malevolent wind reach out and viciously sever pine trees, leaving behind nothing but ragged stumps.
There was blood everywhere. On the walls, on the spindles of the headboard, on the sheets, even on the carpet. Like someone had taken a shower in it. What remained of Sarah Rothenbarger lay nude on the bloodied bed, her face nearly unrecognizable.
Stoney recoiled in horror. Then, suddenly, he saw none of it, no red gashes in the fleshy neck, no lifeless bluing lips. All he saw was an energetic middle-aged woman in a flowered dress, her hair the color of a ripe pumpkin in the strong sunlight; she was hanging wet clothes on a line strung between two live oaks while he maneuvered a push mower across her back yard.
