Southern Exposure, page 6
“Don’t let some man ruin your life like I did,” her mother had warned her repeatedly. After a while Anna noticed that the man “ruining” her mother’s life had been gone for years. But the warning went unheeded. By the time Anna realized what it really meant, it was too late, a suave older man had seduced her virginity out from under her while she wasn’t looking. But she kept silent about her mistake, swallowed her sixteen-year-old’s lesson in misplaced trust. Clearly men did not want to be friends. Men wanted to get inside. And for a while Anna gave them what they wanted.
Then Anna met Stoney McFarland their senior year in college. As usual, she was running into the lecture hall late the first day of class, without the required textbook, grabbing the last seat by the door in a literature seminar. After class began, she found herself studying the student seated beside her. In cutoffs, a T-shirt, and leather sandals, he was broad-shouldered with thick chestnut hair that hung down the back of his neck. His face, small and angular, had the hollowed-out look of a starving poet or constant doper, and his eyes were hazel, at once both ironic and gentle. His chin was short and stubby, like someone forgot to finish his face, but he had the build of a solid athlete, the easy grace that comes to those whose bodies always obey.
At the end of class he nodded shyly and headed for the door. No “hello,” no “I’m so-and-so from so-and-so and my major is …” Just gone. Anna promptly forgot him. Until later that same afternoon when, coming down the hill from Tydings Hall, she spied him stretched out on an Indian blanket under a willow oak on the mall. Reading The Rainbow. That, she couldn’t let pass; after all, she was writing her senior English thesis on Lawrence.
“Hey,” she called, approaching the nameless classmate. “Do you know the Anglo-Saxon root of the word ‘fuck’? I need to know for my thesis, for my argument about Constance Chatterley.”
Stoney blanched white. Few women he knew—no matter how bold—used that word. They might do it but they didn’t talk about it. Not in Maryland.
“Well,” she asked, “do you?”
He laughed out loud. “Who are you?”
By that evening, sitting on the grass, they’d exchanged views on Lawrence and Henry Miller and Hesse and Salinger, on Faulkner and race and growing-up-Southern, on Steichen and Van Gogh and Vietnam (he had a pretty safe number) and Kent State and Woodstock, the Crusades and social Darwinism, the water pipe and how hashish could turn your own dorm into unrecognizable territory, existentialism and Crosby, Stills and Nash, and … aren’t you hungry? Hours later, still talking, they lay across the bed in his rented room and he kissed her. Simple, quiet, the natural conclusion to the afternoon. Then his eyes twinkled and he said, “Want to fool around or would you rather have a beer?”
What the hell kind of question was that? Anna, nonplussed, realized no one had ever asked her before: they just did it and she went along or she fought it. She voted for the beer, put him to the test. He got up and got two long-neck bottles out of a mini-refrigerator on the other side of the room. She knew what would happen now. He’d gulp his beer. He might pout. Finally he’d tell her what she “really wanted” to do. Then he’d be all over her. She tensed and waited. They talked some more. He finished his beer and got up and got another, smiling at her. He got her another beer, asked her what she wanted to do with her life. And they talked all night long.
Many years later a good friend would say to Anna, “My God, Stoney really listens. When you talk to him he’s right there with you. He looks at you like your words are as valuable as gold. Do you have any idea how lucky you are?”
The next morning Anna was still in his room. Their seminar textbook, Chief Modern Poets of Britain and America, lay open on the floor; they’d been reading Yeats aloud to each other when they fell asleep. When they woke up, they reached for each other by unspoken mutual consent. Their love was slow and sensual. It was also the first time Anna ever cried aloud with pleasure.
Anna looked up abruptly as everyone in the church stood up. The minister had begun his summation. He was now standing on one side of the draped casket, his right hand above it. “Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy,” he intoned, “to take upon Himself the soul of our sister: we therefore commit her body to His keeping.” He began to make the sign of the cross and then stopped, his hand frozen in midair as he stared at the rear of the church.
In the doorway, framed from behind by the morning sun and looking almost celestial, stood the largest black woman Anna had ever seen. Maum Chrish was dressed in a multicolored caftan with a white scarf, an agouéssan, draped over her right shoulder and knotted at the opposite hip. Everyone in the church turned to stare at her. Slowly she walked down the aisle, regal, oblivious, staring straight ahead at the casket. On both sides of her, people gawked. When she reached the coffin, the Lutheran minister’s hand was still poised above it. Maum Chrish reached inside the pocket of her caftan and drew out an iron asson, a small dagger containing stones and shaped like a cross with tiny arms and downturned hands at both east and west. She rapped it on the metal top of the coffin three times.
“Stop her,” someone called out. “That’s voodoo blasphemy!”
Two pallbearers stepped forward. Maum Chrish pivoted and strode toward the rear door of the church, where two ushers stood ready to intercept her. Abruptly she hesitated, looked around in terror, then scrambled toward an open window. She jumped up, her skirts flying over bare feet, and climbed through the window and disappeared.
For a moment no one breathed a word; everyone just sat where they were, shaken by the odd turn of events. Finally the flustered minister nodded at the pallbearers. After their exit with the coffin the church emptied quickly, but most people lingered outside to watch as the hearse, bearing Sarah Roth’s body to Charleston, moved out of sight.
“What happened in there?” Anna asked. She and Stoney stood on the church steps. “Who was that woman?”
Stoney shook his head. “She lives out in the swamps. People call her Maum Chrish.”
“Maum Chrish? What was she doing here?” When Anna realized Stoney was only half listening, she asked, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Only that was the worst funeral I’ve ever been to.”
“You’ve been to one that’s fun?”
“You know what I mean. He talked so much about how Sarah died. The one thing everyone wants to forget. What about how she lived?” Stoney started down the church steps. “I wish to hell they’d find who did this.”
At the bottom of the steps a tall silver-haired man stepped out of the group around him and put his hand out to Stoney. Stoney took it and nodded. “Heyward. Heard anything about the investigation?”
Heyward Rutherford shook his head no. He was taller than Stoney but narrower in the shoulders, with a lean, patrician bearing everyone in Essex considered one of God’s great incongruities. In truth, the man was a first-class thief and so it must have been his incomparable good looks, his affable manner, that made us continue to elect him president of the Essex Town Council. He sold real estate and had made most of his money during the Depression, when he was very young. Then, “land-poor” families had gladly exchanged a few prime acres for shoes and gasoline and a side of beef. Now Heyward built nearly every new house in Essex and gobbled up failing businesses like a starving PacMan. Still, people liked him: he emanated distinguished respectability. We also knew he was full of himself. Everyone laughed about the way Heyward talked; he rarely uttered a sentence in which the word “great” didn’t appear at least once. It was a great morning, it was a great town, things were going great in Essex, we would be going great guns come summer, the rain was downright great, he had had a great life, he had surrounded himself with great friends, he was a great judge of character. When he turned sixty, he wrote his autobiography which he published at his own expense, and he presented an autographed copy to everyone in town at the annual Fourth of July barbeque. We had a terrific time with that book for about a year—contests sprang up all over Essex to see who could find the most “greats” in it.
Characteristically, Heyward never answered Stoney’s question about the murder investigation but turned to greet Harriet Setzler, who was coming down the church steps. “Mrs. Setzler, I’m so sorry about Sarah. I know what great old friends you two were.”
Harriet brushed aside Heyward’s condolences; she had never liked the man. He had always treated her like she was fifty years older than he, instead of just ten or fifteen. After Heyward walked on down the steps, Harriet said under her breath to Stoney, “Bet he’s not sorry at all. He’s been trying to get Sarah’s store for years.”
“What does he want with the store?”
Harriet snorted disapproval. “Wants to tear it down and put a car wash and a laundromat there. Wants more money for himself is what it is. I ask you, what do we need with a car wash?” Harriet gazed down the stairs and watched Heyward approach Sarah’s cousin. “She’s not cold yet and he’s trying to get the store away from that boy. I guess he’ll finally succeed now.”
The old lady turned back to Stoney, giving Anna a slight nod that exempted her from rudeness. “Marian says I should get dead bolts put on all my doors. I declare, I never thought I’d see the day. I was wondering if you’d have time to put them up for me.”
“Be glad to,” Stoney murmured.
Marian Davis came through the church door then, stared at the window Maum Chrish had used, then headed toward Stoney and Anna and Harriet. They all talked for a few minutes about Sarah, about how she had always taken in stray animals. Marian told a long story about a bulldog Sarah had once found that was so ugly everyone suggested she not save this one. People on Aiken Avenue made her so mad about the pup that Sarah not only saved it but raised it and showed it at the annual dog show in Savannah where it won honorable mention for deportment. For the rest of that year the dog wore his blue ribbon taped to his collar, for all the neighbors to see.
Everyone laughed but in a moment they all fell silent again. “I don’t guess anything’ll ever be the same again,” Harriet said finally. No one disagreed and soon she and Marian headed toward the parking lot.
Stoney watched them leave. Leonard Hansen stopped and said something to them which seemed to irritate both women. Leonard had grown up in Essex and, like both Stoney and Marian, had returned after a long absence. Unlike Stoney, Leonard had had a bad reputation in Essex; as a child he’d been a bully, continually in minor trouble of one sort or another. Everyone said the Marines had really changed him. He had come back to Essex a year ago when his father died and left him the long-abandoned family house. Leonard was still in Essex reportedly because he couldn’t even get Heyward Rutherford to buy the place. People who passed it said Leonard was fixing it up in the hope of attracting a buyer. Meanwhile, he was working at the new Nissan factory outside Ashboro.
Anna followed Stoney’s eyes to Leonard Hansen. “Why don’t you like him?”
Her husband grinned sheepishly. “It’s stupid. He beat the crap out of me once.” He took Anna’s hand. “Let’s go home.”
They waved to Jim Leland and one or two others as they left; then they passed down the wide tree-lined boulevard that led into town from the north. Along this street sat the largest homes in Essex, seven mammoth Victorian clapboards originally inhabited by well-off Essexians in the 1920s. Some were restored, while others still sported peeling, decade-old paint. Two of them loomed disconcertedly over a brick rancher that had grown up between them upon the demise of one of their own. Passing the large green yards, Stoney breathed in the dogwood and azalea blossoms, a smell he associated with certain Easter mornings of his youth. An old family photograph appeared in his memory—he and his parents and his grandmother standing in front of her favorite white azalea in the bright spring sunshine. He was wearing his first suit and his mother was smiling and his father looked relaxed, both of them happy in a way they never seemed in Washington.
Unconsciously Stoney had stepped up his pace and left Anna behind. When she called out he turned around. “Sorry.” He waited until she caught up. “I just can’t stop thinking about Sarah,” he said suddenly, finally vocalizing his feelings. “You’re not supposed to have to be on guard here. But in just one night—everything’s changed. Someone crept into town and killed Sarah and robbed all of us of our peace of mind.”
“How can you be sure it wasn’t someone who lives here?”
Anna regretted the question as soon as it was out. Stoney didn’t answer but began to walk faster. She gazed at him as she quickened her own step. Even though he continually lamented his height (being two inches shy of the six feet he coveted), her husband was strong and solid, still had an athlete’s broad chest and shoulders. He looked physically powerful, yet this was a power seldom manifested in aggression. Stoney always endeavored to keep himself under control; when stressed, he would run five or six miles and come home sweating and smiling. One of the few times she had seen him lose his temper had been soon after they were married, when they were bicycling through Old Towne Alexandria one afternoon and an impatient Mercedes had failed to yield and had run Anna down, causing her to crash-land on the median. Stoney had jumped off his bike and hurled a huge rock at the expensive car, then chased it down the street.
Right now he didn’t look like the same man who’d thrown that rock. Right now he was hunched over like someone who’d just taken a bullet, his body compensating for what he felt by leaning forward abnormally. Anna surveyed his long thin nose and the slight cleft in his chin. His body was his barometer and it bothered her to see him looking like this. Nowadays his hair didn’t extend to his shoulders but it was still lanky and sun-bronzed, a wild mass touching the edge of his oxford-cloth collar. Normally he still reminded her of a college boy but in the past few days he’d looked much older.
His eyes had been different too, so stark and troubled they seemed almost black, since the morning he returned from Sarah Roth’s house. He had called Anna sometime during that long night and she had gone downstairs, made coffee, and waited for him to come home. At dawn she could no longer keep her eyes open, so she went back upstairs and crawled into bed and fell asleep instantly. The next thing she knew, some hours later, he was in bed with her, silent and unspeaking. She reached for him, to hold him, to talk about what had happened, when she felt his fingers all over her, inside her, demanding arousal. She was startled, uncertain; they had not made love in weeks and she’d only expected, tonight, to be there for him emotionally. But he never opened his lips, except to take her breasts into his mouth. She wondered how someone could find a dead body and then come home and want to make love, but his passion was so urgent and insistent she didn’t question it. If anything, it was a powerful aphrodisiac. He could not seem to stop, he pulled her up off the bed in an act of penetration that was so deep and encompassing she almost lost consciousness. It was, ironically, the best sex they had had in years.
A week after Sarah Roth’s funeral, Stoney got a second call from Harriet Setzler in the middle of the night. This time he jumped for the telephone like a man hit by a live wire. He slammed the receiver down, scrambled out of bed, and threw on his clothes. Anna sat bolt upright. “Call Jim Leland. Stoney, please, I’m scared.”
“It’s probably nothing,” he said, trying to sound calm. “She just heard something outside her house.”
“You can’t keep doing this,” Anna argued. “You’ll be exhausted at work tomorrow. It’s Jim Leland’s job.”
Stoney was out the door before she finished. Of course it was nothing, he thought on his way down the hall. But when one of the old ladies called, he couldn’t not go. What if? Right now, however, he didn’t like leaving Anna alone at night. This was no goddamn way to live. He pounded down the staircase, heard Silas whining in the kitchen. “No, boy, not tonight,” he whispered as he sped by the expectant dog on the way out the back door.
In three minutes he was standing on Harriet Setzler’s front porch and he heard her unlock the door before he knocked. When it opened she was wearing a chenille bathrobe, her hair trapped in a spidery hairnet. “It was just like that night,” she cried, staccato. “About this time—I heard something—the same kind of sound—only tonight it was in my yard—back by the sleeping porch.”
Stoney had never seen Harriet Setzler so agitated. The tremulous voice was totally out of character, and it took him a moment to respond. Finally he said, “Don’t worry. It’s probably just a dog or something.”
“A dog can’t get in a locked gate.”
“You go back inside,” Stoney assured her. “I’ll look around.”
He walked back down the steps, paused beside the cyclone fence, and surveyed the yard. Harriet Setzler’s way with nature was the envy of everyone in Essex. Her entire front yard, which extended well over half a block, was a flower garden just now at the height of color: azaleas, tulips, daffodils, early roses. Some of the azaleas, which she didn’t prune back like everyone else, were ten feet tall. In a moment Stoney reached the side gate that led to the back yard. In the rear lay Harriet’s vegetable garden; she’d had the wooden fence built to deliberately bisect her property, so that from the street only the flowers were visible. An aesthetic separation that would later become symbolic to Stoney. He unlatched the gate and the hinge creaked. He followed the edge of the house until he was underneath the sleeping porch, its coated aluminum window covers closed above him in a row. To his right were rows of broccoli circles, strung-up lines for green beans, a large group of young tomato plants, and elevated in a huge cement trough so they were easy to pick, some of the best strawberries a kid ever swiped.
Stoney looked back at the house, beamed the flashlight he’d brought along at the ground, swung it back and forth in a wide arc. No sign of a dog or rabbit or anything. Maybe she’d heard a squirrel in a tree. Stoney walked around to the back of Harriet’s house, where the sleeping porch joined the rest of the structure. For a second he remembered when Harriet Setzler had kept chickens in her back yard; as a kid, he’d seen her wring their necks without batting an eye. He moved the flashlight over the ground again, closer to the house. Suddenly he stopped, stared. Then he knelt down in the dirt, aimed the flashlight at a specific spot. There it was. Part of a footprint. Clear as day. Right up beside the house, outside the sleeping porch where Harriet Setzler said she’d heard the noise. Only the one print, where someone had apparently stepped off the thick grass and onto bare dirt.
