Come morning, Ginny awoke with a strange compulsion to plant something in the empty patch under the sad cypress because now a silly little poem was stuck in her head:
Plant a tree.
If it grows, my heart is free;
My soul it soars.
Plant a tree.
If it dies, my heart it breaks;
There trouble lies.
~~~
1959…
Herman sat in his porch swing watching Ebony. She wasn’t sitting on the top step as usual; today she stood by the banister, staring down at his flower beds, and even in her cheery yellow bodice and her matching full skirt, she was stiff-lipped and angry.
“He won’t ever hear what I’m saying,” she fumed, rigid with vexation. “So there ain’t nothing else for me to do!”
The more she talked about the high words she’d had with the Pastor about her schooling at supper the night before, the more helplessness spread in Herman’s chest. Ebony’s mother had died of cancer about five years back, leaving no other woman to give guidance and, to Herman, it always seemed a shame that a girl with Ebony’s high spirit was being raised by a boiled down man like the Pastor, with no brothers or sisters to dilute him. Wasn’t surprising that she would look for friends to help her find herself and her voice, friends she had to keep secret from her father and the other people in town. As far as most knew, the Pastor’s girl had life more comfortable than most black folks and no reason to be dissatisfied, but Herman knew she wanted—no, needed--more. He had figured that going off to D.C. would give her that but, listening to her now, he realized it wouldn’t.
She turned and looked at him. “What do you think?”
He dropped his eyes away and asked evenly, “Have you tried explaining everything to the Pastor, Ebony? Everything, not just some?”
Ebony made an impatient sound, stamping her white shoes like a child instead of the near-grown-up she was.
“That’d just make it worse. You know he’d just start preachin’ about me goin’ to Hell. Shoot, old as I am, he’d probably lock me in my room and tell me it was for the sake of my immortal soul.”
She was probably right. Pastor Johnson didn’t go in for the Gentle-Jesus kind of faith. He preferred The Wrath of God and the Fiery Storms of Hell, probably because that got more wanna-be-repentant sinners into his pews. Herman didn’t go often himself. ‘Zeke always said that God’s hearing worked just fine so He didn’t need all the hallelujah-yelling. He heard whatever a man said, however or wherever he said it, and Herman felt more comfortable talking to Him on his own land. Pastor Johnson would definitely put a stop to Ebony’s visits if he ever heard that kind of thinking. Sounded like Ebony planned on putting a stop to them herself.
“I’m gonna do it one way or ‘nother, Herman.”
She pinned him steadily with those eyes he normally liked almost as much as her voice.
“Folks’ll be shaken up,” he told her, thinking mostly about what he wanted, not her.
Ebony laughed humorlessly. “You mean that they’ll talk, and the Pastor will be even more madder’n hell.” Her shoulders slumped for the first time and Herman saw the chocolate of her eyes start to melt as they watered up. “God, I wish Momma was here,” she said softly.
For a second Herman panicked, wondering what he would do if she started to cry. There was something about a woman’s tears. It wasn’t the force of them that flattened a man, but where they hit him—somewhere spongy inside that couldn’t be toughened the same way his muscles toughened from hard work and his stomach from strong drink.
“Please, Herman. You’re the only one who won’t tell. You’re the only one who understands how I feel, what with you feelin’ the ‘zact same powerful passion for your books and your poems. I can’t let the Pastor keep me from my dream, don’t you see? I just can’t!” Her tears stayed glistening on her eyes, worse than if they’d fallen.
Herman felt something inside him give, because his strongest passion was one she would never think to mention.
“What do you want me to do, Ebony?”
For the first time since she showed up that afternoon, Ebony smiled. She came and dropped down onto the porch swing beside him, making Herman’s heart jump and his insides stir at the exciting, unfamiliar contact.
“Just two little things,” she said and he caught her heady wild-rose scent and wondered just how much trouble those two little things were going to cause.
~~~
1999…
Ginny tucked the soil report she’d printed into her back pocket, rose from the porch swing, and walked down the steps. Normally the abundant flowers lining the gravel path delighted her, but now they, and the magnolia in full bloom, made her frown.
She headed into the woods.
Her sneakers moved through the now-familiar undergrowth, the early morning dew soaking into her stained jeans and sneakers. She approached the cypress and the naked dirt patch, seeing what remained of what she’d planted and tended for the last two full weeks. Her laurel and blackberry shoots hadn’t just died; they’d dried, as if all the moisture had been sucked from them by a heated breath. Despite her attentions and the morning dew everywhere else, this patch still stayed arid and dusty, defiant and barren.
The report in her back pocket said that there was nothing different about the two soil samples—one from each grave—that she had sent to her lab colleagues back in Birmingham. So why was nothing thriving in this particular spot?
It almost came as no surprise when the air stilled this time. A wizened raccoon crouching between the tall blades of grass stopped, sniffed the air, and scurried off.
“Barren ground...I will not rest ‘til truth is told.”
Ginny’s skin nonetheless tightened and her heart pounded beneath her ribs.
This time, once the strange friction in the air passed, she knew it had not been her imagination. The voice—the man’s voice—had indeed—somehow—come from the cypress.
Fighting every instinct, Ginny stayed put. Running was pointless, anyway. Odd things had been happening back at the cottage from the start. Notions popped into her head out of nowhere, never related to what she was doing, and always feeling like someone else’s thoughts transplanted into her mind: snippets of poetry, the view driving out of town, panting sounds and visions of running through the woods. The man in her dreams had grown more vivid, too, until she finally made out his features and knew for sure that he wasn’t Mike.
And now he was more agitated than ever.
~~~
1959…
Sitting side by side on the porch swing, her hands holding his so tightly for the first time, Herman listened as Ebony talked about her friends, but he already knew who they were.
He happened across them a couple months back, in the woods out by the abandoned water-tank, about three-quarters-of-a-mile east. He had stopped to relieve himself after the shimmying of his truck wouldn’t let him make it the rest of the way home. It wasn’t until he’d zipped back up his pants that he heard them. Instead of heading back to the truck, he’d circled his way around the tank.
They hadn’t seen him—a short, white girl with long hair and dancing hands, a white boy with a guitar and rhythm, and Ebony, head thrown back, singing her heart out. They finished one song, hugged each other, laughing, then settled into another. The boy started this time, without his guitar—“Tears on my Pillow” by Little Anthony. Herman had been hearing it on the radio and the kid’s version was good, smooth and even. The girl joined him, harmonizing, then Ebony’s voice dropped in to skim the top with a high velvety reach that raised Herman’s thick brows and just about stopped his breath with its sheer perfection. He had known there and then that he would never say anything that would cause trouble for them—for her. The Pastor would put a stop to her coming out for sure and Herman would wither for missing her visits, for missing the sounds of what must surely be Heaven’s harp.
Herman had eased back to his truck, sad, too, to di
scover why Ebony had been stopping out his way so regularly, borrowing books she never seemed to read and talking to him about poetry she wasn’t truly interested in. He was her decoy, but they’d become friends, too—real friends—and today she was asking him to help her. Didn’t matter that he didn’t want to.
He agreed to the first her two requests and waited for her second.
“Promise me that you won’t tell anybody ‘til I say you can,” she said, her gaze trapping his. “I’d die stuck in some classroom for hours or in some office typing ‘til my fingers go numb. Promise me, Herman.”
Herman nodded, filled with the power of her needing him. “I promise.”
Ebony’s smile was wide as she leaned in and kissed his cheek, and he felt shame when she pulled away because he wanted her to go on embracing him.
It was two mornings later that he was jerked awake by a loud banging. It took Herman a minute to realize it was coming from his front door.
He got up, reached for his trousers, and went to answer it. A cold fluttering spread in his gut when he did, because dawn was only just breaking but already there were four people on his porch.
Thurgood Foley, bony, white-skinned and puffy-eyed, was still trying to button his shirt, the tail of it sticking through the fly of his unzipped trousers. On his head squarely sat the hat of his Sheriff’s office and on his face sat the expression of the bringer of bad news. Behind Foley, Pastor Jeremiah Johnson stood ramrod straight, his bald head shining piously even in the soft morning light, his cream Sunday suit as crisp as if he stood in the pulpit. His eyes burned into Herman’s soul. The other two people were Sister Bettina Matthias, whose ample personage chaired just about every committee at Pastor Johnson’s Baptist Church, and crazy old Oyster George, with his yellowed, age-and-weather-beaten face uneasy, as if he wanted to be at his usual place, shrimping down by the bay, a hell of a lot more than he wanted to be there.
Sheriff Foley finally gave up on his clothes and said, “Sorry to be wakin’ you up so early, Herman, but seems we got ourselves a little problem.”
~~~
1999…
Ginny watched the Homestead Registry clerk—Roger Littlejohn, the nameplate on his desk said—open the yellow folder on his otherwise cleared desk. He looked around thirty years old, though how much of that was actual years and how much was attributable to morbid obesity, Ginny couldn’t tell. He also looked like he got very little sun. His skin was anemic pale and smooth as a baby’s.
“Here’s that information you asked for, Ma’am. That land changed hands a few times in the last fifty years. Took me a while to get it all together, let me tell you.”
He sounded hard-pressed, though the otherwise un-staffed office was uncluttered, sported just the two desks, three empty visitor’s chairs, and one client—Ginny. Even the ceiling fan didn’t seem to want to put in much effort circulating the warm air.
Ginny smiled, polite but unapologetic, and took the document. She skimmed the first page, flipped over, and gasped. The second name on page two was ‘Herman Bagshaw’.
Roger Littlejohn watched her with a mixture of curiosity and resignation. “Take it there’s something else you’ll be needin’?”
She pointed to the name. “How would I be able to find more information about this man?”
“What kind of information?”
“Date of birth, parents, that kind of thing.”
Littlejohn stroked one of his three chins. “For that, you’ll have to go over to the Town Archives office, ma’am.”
“And where is that?”
He leaned his head back. “Hey, Pa! Customers!”
The door behind him opened and another, older man emerged. The family resemblance was clear in features and in scale.
Senior Littlejohn ambled over to the second desk, dwarfing it. He spread himself over the surprisingly sturdy chair and, with an air of protocol, announced, “Next, please!”
Junior looked past Ginny to the empty chairs. Seemingly satisfied that no other inquiries were pressing, he motioned her toward the ‘Archives Office’.
She took the eight steps, shook hands with Senior Littlejohn.
“So, little lady, what can we do for you today?” he asked expansively.
She repeated her request.
“Well now, don’t s’pose you mind tellin’ why you’re so interested?”
She couldn’t very well say she was being haunted, so she improvised.
“I’m a folk writer, working on stories around old landmarks and homes. I rented a house here in Homestead for the summer and it looks like it has an interesting history, so I thought I’d look into it.”
Senior nodded agreeably. “Which house are ya rentin’?”
“Paradise, right out at the edge of town. It used to belong to a man named Herman Bagshaw back in the fifties?”
Senior Littlejohn suddenly sat up straighter, his jowls spreading outward in a smile. “Well now, little lady, you did indeed stumble onto a good one there, boy, did’ja. There’s a story there, awright. Town library keeps all the old newspapers on microfiche going back over fifty years, so you can go on over and search much as ya like. But for the real story, you need to talk to somebody who was there. Or who knew somebody who was.”
Ginny’s excitement jumped. She reached into her bag for a pencil and paper. “Can you point me in any particular direction?”
“No need for that,” Senior said, waving away her notepad. “You’re already there.”
He sat back and interlaced his fingers across the expanse of his plaid-covered abdomen. “Well, now, I was just a boy when it happened, but Pa filled in the blanks for me well enough. He got the story from his second cousin on his daddy’s side, George Littlejohn, ‘shrimper lived out past where it all happened. Been ‘bout what now? Forty years? But there’re a few of us old farts alive that remember. Sad tale. Still, it was justice that got Bagshaw in the end.”
“What do you mean ‘got him in the end’?”
“I mean, Ma’am, that Bagshaw got just what he deserved for killing that purdy little Johnson girl that morning.”
~~~
1959…
Herman squinted through the hazy dawn at the people on his porch—the pastor, Sister Betty, Oyster George and Sheriff Foley.
“What kinda problem you say you got, Sheriff?” he asked evenly.
“Seems the Pastor’s little girl, Miss Ebony, didn’t come home last night. Jeremiah thought she was just staying out, throwing a fit ‘cause he had to give her a good talking to a few days back. But this morning she’s still not home and that ain’t normal.”
“She ain’t here.”
“Didn’t say that she was, Herman,” Foley went on easily, but his eyes grew more alert, his stance straighter. “Mind if we come on in? Sure we can sort this out real quick.”
Herman stepped back, allowing them to enter his house. All the while the Pastor kept accusing eyes on him, Sister Betty never moved more than six inches from the preacher’s side, and ol’ George kept his head down, inspecting his cracked, moldy rubber boots.
Foley gave the room a casual but thorough looking-over before saying, “We been asking around town already this morning. Nobody remembers seeing Miss Ebony all yesterday. I understand from the Pastor that she calls ‘round here from time to time. Borrows your books and the like.”
“There they are!” Jeremiah suddenly erupted, pointing to the laden-down book shelf in the corner. “Therein lie the instruments of his temptation!”
Sister Matthias laid a soothing hand on the Pastor’s back, saying, “Shush, settle down now, Jeremiah,” while her other hand clasped his clenched fist to her ample bosom.
“When was the last time you saw Miss Ebony, Herman?” Sheriff Foley wanted to know.
“A while.”
The Sheriff stroked his stubbly chin. “Well now, Herman, here we got conflictin’ stories. George here says he saw your truck going north away from town early yesterday mornin’ when he was
heading down to the beach. Says he thought he mighta seen a woman, lagging, asleep like, in the passenger seat like she mighta been Miss Ebony.”
Herman pushed down the panic that wanted to rise.
“I couldn’t say I was sure, Herman,” George rushed to tell him, squinting through cloudy old-blue eyes and looking even sorrier than before. “My eyes ain’t what they used to be and it wasn’t full light out yet. But Sheriff here thought I should come along anyway.”
Herman wasn’t mad at him. George wasn’t one to make trouble for anybody, black or white. Lived outside town and kept to himself most of the time, a lot like Herman. Got to the bay at dawn, caught his shrimp, oysters, or crab, sold them to the restaurant in town then went back to his one room shack out past the water-tank until the next morning. Kind of like a hermit crab. Wasn’t George’s fault that one morning he crawled out of his shell and saw something he shouldn’t have.
“Mind telling us why you were heading out so early in the morning, Herman?” Foley asked.
“Had a delivery to get to Mobile. If George saw me, he woulda also seen that the back of the truck was piled with furniture.”
“Lies, I tell you, Sheriff! Lies!” Jeremiah bellowed, spittle collecting at the corner of his mouth. “This monsta has dragged my baby girl to her doom, mark my words! Masquerading his evil with works of learning!”
Sister Betty hauled Jeremiah’s trembling head even closer to her fulsome bosom. The look she sent Herman tried and convicted him of a horrible crime.
“You listen to me, Sheriff,” she voiced with authority. “Miss Ebony is a sweet innocent girl, raised with the Fear of God by the good Pastor here. She’s got the world of promise ahead of her. You better find this good man’s child and bring her back to him where she is happy and where she belongs.”
Foley looked set to lose his patience but he settled for asking, “Mind if I take a look around here, Herman? And out back, in your work shed?”
“Go on.”
The lawman moved in the direction of the bedroom. He stopped and looked back.
“And I’ll be needing to take a look at your truck. And your shotgun, as well.”