Chapter 40

No one called Marian for two months, to let things cool down. By then, Hilda Mae was both married and pregnant, and Bernadette was pregnant again. Now the bet had to be settled by who gave birth first. Nathan wrote a letter each month, like he usually did, but didn’t say anything about his sisters in it.

During those two months, the mirror image of the original house was started. One end would be for Hilda Mae and Moses to live in, and the other end was for Johnnie Sue and her two blood brothers. Bernadette began research to see if the land they now owned could be used to grow some cash crop, such as strawberries, or whether it should be planted in fruit trees as a working orchard that might begin producing in four or five years. Loans had been used, to some extent, in the building of the farm, to preserve the cash reserves in the bank, and to establish credit.

In October of that year, Flossie informed Nathan that, if she got pregnant in the next month or two, the baby would be born during the summer, when she was on break from teaching. Nathan was always ready to make love with the woman who had stolen his heart, and worked hard to fill her with life.

The men all had to work on New Year’s Eve, 1965, so the “family” celebration was rescheduled for Valentine’s day of that year. It was still cold, but the men put together a charcoal grill outside, and brought piles of hamburgers, steaks and hot dogs inside, where the women had prepared all the other fixings. Nathan’s camera used two rolls of film to document the happy gathering.

They had a real cookout in May, when the weather warmed up. There was a new member of the family at this gathering, in the form of Jeremiah Thorpe, who was born in February. Johnnie Sue simply told the doctor that she didn’t know who the father was, enduring his chiding look. That frown got deeper when the baby’s head crowned, and it became obvious that it was a mixed race baby. Johnnie Sue ignored all the stares, and cuddled her little boy, counting his toes and examining him like all new mothers did. When she got him home, Luthor held him like he was his own.

At the Spring party, more pictures were taken and, when they got back, Bernadette decided it was time to send her mother more pictures. Both she and Hilda Mae knew that Marian often pulled out the two pictures she had, and stared at them for long minutes. Now, they could provide her with more.

On a sunny day in April, 1965, Banker Harvey Wilson entered the post office in Catfish Hollow with a bundle of mail. Normally, an employee would have delivered it, but the man normally assigned that task was home sick. Harvey was in the same acid mood he’d been in for months. He had fallen back into his old habit of arranging things so that he could foreclose on property, and then sell it. Because he demanded collateral far in excess of what would cover the loan, he could let it go for less, ensuring a quick sale, and his books looked good. People in town shot him dark looks, but he didn’t care.

“Mr. Wilson,” called out the postal clerk as he was about to leave. “Got a package here for your wife, sent to General Delivery. You want to take it to her?”

Harvey stalked over to the counter and took the flat package. He glanced at the return address, and his blood went cold. It was from Nathan, the son he was trying to figure out how to formally disown. There was no lawyer in Catfish Hollow, and he hadn’t had time to contact one elsewhere.

He took the package out on the sidewalk, and tore it open, despite the fact that it was addressed only to his wife. Peering inside, he saw photographs, and a letter. He pulled the letter out first, and glanced at it. His eyes widened as his suspicions were confirmed.

“We’re all fine,” the letter read. “Bernie and Hildy are happy and working on an orchard on the property we bought. The extra house just got finished, and Johnnie Sue and Luthor are moving into that one, along with Hildy. The pictures will show you the rest. We miss you and wish you could be here to see it all.” It was signed, simply, “Nathan”

Harvey upended the package, and photographs spilled into his hands. He heart was already thumping in his chest, and the first photograph made his eyes bulge. It was of his son, standing behind the nigger whore teacher, his arms around her, and his hands resting on a belly that was rounder than it should be. In her arms was a mulatto baby. All three were grinning.

“That fucking bitch!” Harvey gasped. “She stole my boy!”

With shaking hands, he fumbled to another picture. This one had Bernadette in it, standing sideways. The camera had caught a man Harvey recognized as the Waggoner boy, handing a decidedly nigger baby to his daughter. Bernadette’s belly was at least seven months swollen.

Harvey felt pain in his left arm, and his lungs struggled for air as he dropped that picture to reveal Hilda Mae, also standing sideways, her belly even more grotesquely swollen a she leaned forward to kiss a nigger in a Police uniform who looked shockingly like the Finshaw boy. Behind them, and to one side was the Thorpe girl, who Harvey had lusted over a number of times before she went off to college. She had a breast bared, and a mulatto baby was fastened to the tip of that breast. Her mouth was open as if she were talking to someone who was hidden behind Hilda Mae in the picture.

Harvey’s vision tightened, until his baby daughter, with her spun-gold hair, was all he could see at the end of a long tunnel. Her belly looked ready to split open. Somehow he knew the thing stretching her precious belly so much was ... black.

That picture seemed to fall to the ground of its own volition, exposing another one of Nathan and the nigger whore. They were in the same embrace, his hands on her pregnant belly, but this time that mulatto half-breed was reaching his arms up, toward Nathan. The last thing Harvey Wilson saw, before his heart literally burst, was his son’s pale smiling face, cheek to cheek with the slim black one Harvey hated more than anything else in the world.

People came to help, but it was too late. Harvey was dead when he hit the sidewalk. The doctor was called, but his examination took less than a minute. He stood and shook his head as the crowed edged back from the dead body.

No one had anything to cover the body with, or they’d have just left it there until the hearse could get there from Madison. The constable arrived, and got the doctor’s report. Then he picked up the photographs, and glanced at them.

“He was just standing there, looking at those pictures and talking to nobody,” said Jasper Reynolds, “when he just dropped like a bag of cement!”

Others began to edge closer, to see what the man had been looking at when he died, but the constable held them against his chest. He picked up the rest, and the letter, stuffing them all back into the large brown envelope they had come in. Things were bad enough. Now was not the time for folks to get upset.

Once he had everything picked up, he drafted four men to carry the body back to the bank, and told another to wait and direct the men from the funeral home there when they arrived. He stopped in his tiny office, to examine the photographs and letter more closely. He was beginning to understand why the man had savaged that teacher woman, and it was clear what had killed him. He frowned, thinking, as he usually did, how this might affect the town. The town was foremost in his thinking. He’d been around long enough to know that there were some with dark skin who were worth a whole sight more than some with lighter skin, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that things kept going along like they should. It was enough that they mixed in that new school. He didn’t need anybody to know they mixed like this when they left that school. He had known that the Wilson children had left town, and he knew how the last one, the blonde in the pictures, had gone, hiding in the back of a pickup. He hadn’t done anything. They were all of age, and kids ran away from home all the time.

No, these pictures must not be seen by those in town.

Marian opened the door to find the constable, hat in hand, looking downcast and uncomfortable.

“Yes?” she said, worried already. What had Harvey done now?

The constable’s eyes widened as he took in the faded bruises around her eyes. He couldn’t keep his eyes from straying to her arms, where there were more bruises, old now, and fading as well. His eyes went naturally to her breasts, which were still fine under the dress. He wondered if there were teeth marks there, too, like the ones he had seen the man leave before. His eyes rose to find her staring at him. She knew where he had been looking.

Never a man to mince words, he said “I’m sorry for looking, Ma’am, but I saw the bruises.”

Marian held herself upright, by force of habit. “They’re healing nicely, thank you.”

“I’m afraid I’ve got some unhappy news,” he said. He held out the envelope.

Marian looked at it, and felt dread immediately. She winced as she drew a deep breath. Her ribs still hurt. “This has been opened,” she said.

“Your husband opened it. Apparently, whatever is inside there made him so unhappy that he seems to have had a heart attack. There wasn’t much anyone could do, I’m afraid.”

Marian, the consummate Southern matriarch, stiffened her knees as they began to give way. “Will you come in please?” she said stiffly.

“Just for a moment, Ma’am,” said the constable. He had more information to impart. Then he’d leave the woman to her misery ... if there was going to be any misery.

While she upended the package onto the table, spilling the pictures out, he told her where the body was, and that the funeral home had already been called. Unless she had other plans, they would take care of everything. She would need to contact them within the next few days to make any final decisions. He wrote the phone number on a pad he took from his pocket, with a stub of pencil he took from another pocket.

“Who else saw these pictures?” she asked, her voice steady.

“No one, Ma’am. I scooped them all up and put them back in the envelope. Didn’t figure it was anybody else’s business.”

“Thank you,” she said, her voice dull. “I have no manners,” she said, lifting her head. “May I offer you a cool drink?”

“Thank you, no, Ma’am,” he said, standing. “I hate to say this, Ma’am, but it would probably be a pretty good idea if your children didn’t come back for the funeral. At least not if you’re going to plant him here, and they’d bring all their ... family.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” said Marian. “I don’t expect them to ever set foot in this town again.”

“I s’pose that’s for the best,” said the man, uncomfortable now. “If you need anything, I want you to ask. I’ll help if I can.”

“Thank you, sir,” said the woman. “Now, I’m sure you have other business that needs doing. I won’t keep you any longer.”

Marian stood, naked, in front of the full length mirror on the back of the bedroom door. Three days had passed, during which she had mourned. She had driven over to the funeral home in Madison and gone through the process of identifying his body, which had already been embalmed. She had stood there, looking at him lying there so peacefully. It didn’t look like her husband, to her. There was a cemetery in Madison, and there was room in it. It was cheaper not to have him taken back to Catfish Hollow, so she bought a plot there and returned the next day to see the coffin lowered into the ground.

Now she stared at herself, noting the bluish bruises left on her upper torso. She had bled from his rectal assault for two days, lying in bed, hoping she wouldn’t have to call the doctor. That had slowly resolved itself. Harvey had been solicitous toward her, but she hadn’t believed he really cared. The only thing he had left alone had been her breasts, which sagged slightly in the mirror. She was thirty-nine years old, and a widow. She looked critically at her form. There was a bit too much flesh on her thighs, and her waist was thicker than she wished. The bruises would fade and disappear. She tried to think of someone other than Harvey, looking at her like this, but couldn’t. She couldn’t even imagine Phillip, who was happily married somewhere, no doubt, being here to see her.

She shrugged on a robe just as she heard a knock at the front door. She ignored her indelicate appearance, and belted the robe around her, going to look through the glass in the front door, between the curtains. She recognized a woman from the bank, and opened the door.

“I hate to bother you,” said the woman, looking horribly uncomfortable. “The new bank manager opened Mr. Wil ... he opened the safe deposit box, and thought you might need these papers.” She thrust an accordion file towards Marian, who took it. The woman fled.

His will was in the packet, and two insurance policies, one for the house, and one for the car. There were also their marriage documents, and birth certificates, and there were two life insurance policies. She sat down and began sorting it all out.

On the fifteenth of May, 1965, Nathan and Johnnie Sue were standing in the bus station when Luthor stepped off the bus, looking around curiously. He had grown two inches, and Nathan almost didn’t recognize him. Johnnie Sue did, though, and she ran all the way across the station to throw herself in his arms.

She had almost finished kissing him when Nathan strolled up, grinning.

Luthor grinned when she was done, but then his face went sober as he looked at Nathan.

“Sorry about your Daddy,” he said.

“What?” asked Nathan. “What did he do now?”

Luthor looked stricken. “You didn’t know? Nobody told you?”

“Told me what, Luthor?” asked Nathan, frowning.

“Shit, shit, shit,” chanted Luthor, looking everywhere except at Nathan.

“What is it Luthor?” asked Johnnie Sue, her ebullience gone.

“He ... he had a heart attack ... right in front of the post office,” said Luthor softly. “Nobody told you?” He sounded incredulous.

“Heart attack,” said Nathan dully. “Where is he? Is he in a hospital somewhere?”

“He’s ... he’s ... ooooo shit, shit shit!” Luthor took a breath and straightened his shoulders. “He’s dead, Nathan.”

Nathan ignored the happy throng waiting for Luthor, and pushed past them, heading for the phone. Flossie recognized the anguish on his face and followed him. He was already dialing when she got to him.

“Mamma?” his voice broke. “Mamma, why didn’t you call?!“

Johnnie Sue, in her typical take-charge fashion, took Bernadette and Hilda Mae aside, pulling them toward the house, where she had seen Nathan go. Luthor could tell the men what was going on. She stopped them at the door of the room where Nathan’s voice could be heard on the phone, and broke the news to them. Their reaction was not what she expected. Their eyes got red and wet, but they didn’t break down, like she knew she would have if this news had been delivered to her.

Instead, Bernadette walked to Nathan and put her arms around him. Hilda Mae was right behind her. He tried to push them away, but they held on. Bernadette gripped the phone and took it away from him, surprised she could get it so easily.

“Mamma?” she said into the phone. “Are you all right?”

“Bernie?” came a wet sounding voice. “Is that you baby?”

“Mamma we’ll come right down there,” said Bernadette firmly.

“No!“ shouted her mother, so loudly that she had to take the phone away from her ear. “You’ll do no such thing. He’s already in the ground. You stay right where you are!”

“But Mamma, what about you?“ moaned Bernadette.

“I’m all right,” said Marian urgently into the phone. “You can’t come back here.”