The Truth According to Us Page 7

  “Lionel Barrymore,” said Minerva.

  “Rasputin was a monk who turned his burning eyes on the czarina until the poor woman was hypnotized and handed over the crown jewels. Emeralds and rubies trickled through his fingers like water,” said Jottie, wafting her hands through the air to show trickling. Father said that if Jottie sat on her hands, she wouldn’t be able to talk atall. “The czarina ground up pearls to put in her bathwater, and the poor people trudged through the snow in little felt shoes. I don’t blame them for turning Communist. I don’t blame them a bit.”

  “Yes’m, but…”

  “But what?”

  “You sound like you think they’re all right. The Reds.”

  “I just say they might have their reasons,” Jottie said. “People usually do.”

  “Everybody else hates them.”

  Her eyes glinted. “Whatever gave you the idea we were like everybody else?”

  She was practically admitting she didn’t hate the Reds. Geraldine would blow a gasket if she found out. I sighed. “I wish we were like everybody else. I get real tired of lying.”

  Jottie’s coffee cup froze midway to her mouth.

  I’d hurt her feelings. “That wasn’t what I meant,” I said quick. “That came out wrong.” I took a big bite of hash to show I was sorry.

  Layla peered uncertainly down a dark corridor. “Pardon me?” she called. Nothing happened. She walked along the scarred linoleum until she reached an open door. “Excuse me?” she said. “Is this the library?”

  A man with a white face looked up from his desk. He was rabbity and soft. “No, ma’am,” he began.

  “A dame!”

  Layla looked up, startled, and noticed a jail cell tucked away in the corner of the room. From within, a florid prisoner eyed her avidly. “Dale! Help the lady!”

  The rabbity man turned around and glared at his captive. Then he swiveled back. “The library’s upstairs, ma’am. Third floor.”

  Layla smiled. “That’s an unusual combination—jail and library.”

  “They didn’t mean for it,” the prisoner said eagerly. “It was courthouse and jail once, but they built a new one for the courthouse.”

  “Hushup, Winslow,” said Dale. “Third floor, ma’am.”

  “The judges didn’t like to see what they done,” Winslow went on. “It ate at them. Now they can lock a man away and never look on him.”

  “Thank you,” said Layla to Dale. She turned to go and nearly collided with a policeman packed firmly into his dark uniform. He had an old-fashioned walrus mustache.

  “Look, Hank! A lady!” bellowed Winslow.

  Layla laughed as she looked up at the newcomer. “I guess you don’t get many lady prisoners,” she said.

  The policeman bowed slightly. “No, ma’am. Not what you’d call ladies.”

  Winslow was delighted. “Aw, you got such nice manners, Hank! Looka-you, bowing! See that, Dale? That’s what you shoulda done.” His yells followed Layla down the dark corridor. “You come back and visit, lady! Bring me a book from the library! I can read!”

  The library was dim and quiet and, except for some children deep in the thrall of their books, empty. Layla took an appreciative sniff as she stepped through the door: dust and paper and glue. She walked on her toes to the desk.

  “You can put your feet down,” said the librarian, glancing at her over gold-rimmed glasses.

  “I was trying to be quiet,” murmured Layla.

  “I wouldn’t worry about that,” said the librarian crisply. “Winslow keeps us from being too persnickety about quiet.”

  “Is he—intoxicated?” asked Layla.

  The librarian smiled. “No. If he were intoxicated, you’d know it. You’re the one from the WPA, aren’t you?”

  Layla laughed self-consciously. “How’d you guess?”

  “I’ve never seen you before.”

  Layla laughed again. “I forget, I’m in a small town.”

  “It’s not so small, but I’ve lived here thirty-nine years and I know everyone in it.” There was a pause. “I’m Caroline Betts.”

  “Layla Beck.” They shook hands over the desk. Caroline Betts’s handshake was, like her composure, firm and cool, and Layla was beset by the sudden certainty that the woman before her would have been the best possible author of The History of Macedonia. It was obvious; her competence was so solid and complete it could have taken a chair. “Mrs. Betts—” began Layla.

  “Miss Betts.”

  “Miss Betts, I wonder if you can help me find a general history of Macedonia, so I can get some background—”

  “Aren’t you writing it? A history of Macedonia?”

  “Well, yes, but just for background,” floundered Layla. “I’d like to read what’s been written on the subject—”

  Miss Betts’s amused laughter was not especially soothing, Layla thought. “Nothing’s been written, Miss Beck! You are our first historian!”

  “But—” Layla’s forehead folded into anxious furrows. “I don’t know anything about the history of Macedonia. The town council has given me a list of topics that must be included in my book, but how am I to research them? How am I to write about them?” Notwithstanding Layla’s efforts, the last sentence ended considerably higher than it began.

  There was a slight pause. “You ask,” said Miss Betts.

  “Pardon?”

  “You’re not supposed to know. You’re supposed to ask.”

  It was as though she had risen to the surface of dark water. She took a breath.

  Miss Betts smiled. “Feel better?”

  “Yes, thanks,” said Layla, grateful that a heart beat under Miss Betts’s pristine blouse. “Who should I ask?”

  “Whom,” said Miss Betts. “Me.”

  Layla’s eyes circled the dusty library. “But…I don’t want to be a bother—”

  Miss Betts lifted her eyebrows. “You say the town council has given you a list?”

  “Yes, a letter,” said Layla, flustered. “From a Mr. Davies. But I didn’t bring it with me.” She glanced at her white purse, wishing that it conveyed a sense of purpose or resolve or anything besides a frivolous concern with prettiness. “I can get it, though.”

  Miss Betts’s eyes followed hers to the purse. “Tomorrow,” she said. “Bring Mr. Davies’s letter here tomorrow morning, and we will begin our work on the history of Macedonia.” She nodded kindly at Layla. “I shall quite look forward to it.”

  8

  After lunch it was my turn to do the dishes, and I’d promised Geraldine I’d come back to her house after that. I was going to show her where there were some buckeyes already. A storm of buckeyes could bring Sonny Deal’s army to its knees. I hurried through the dishes, but not as much as Bird hurried through the drying.

  “You can just dry those coffee cups,” I began to scold, when there was a knocking, hard and fast, on the back screen. A voice called, “Jottie? You there?” It was Mrs. Fox from down the street.

  We heard the worry in her voice. “She’s here, Mrs. Fox,” I said. “Come in, and I’ll get her for you.”

  She stepped into the kitchen. “Run and get her, honey. Vause Hamilton is at it again.”

  Before I could turn and run, another, softer voice came at the door. “Miss Josephine? It’s Sallie here, from Mrs. Lacey.” Sallie was Mrs. Lacey’s Negro maid.

  “Oh, Sallie, I’m just getting her,” said Mrs. Fox.

  I ran, calling, “Jottie! Come quick!”

  She was settling down into her chair for her rest, but she jumped right up and bustled after me into the kitchen. She didn’t need but one look at who was there to ask, “Vause Hamilton?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Sallie. “Mrs. Lacey says if you please, can you come?”

  “Of course,” Jottie said. She was already halfway to the door. We followed as she sped along the path and then the sidewalk. Around the corner, on Kanawha Street, the sidewalk petered out right at Mr. Vause Hamilton’s house. Mr. Hamilton was old, an
d he’d been rich a long time ago, but he wasn’t now. Now he was sort of crazy. Jottie said he’d lost his mind from grief when his son died. His son was named Vause, too, and he’d died young, and ever since then, when Mr. Hamilton remembered him, he got upset and burned a rubber boot in his front yard. Once or twice a year he did it, and it smelled just terrible. Jottie said he wanted to make his neighbors feel as miserable as he did, and I guess he succeeded. They came running to get Jottie because she was the only one who could stop him.

  I could see black smoke billowing over Mr. Hamilton’s spirea bushes as we hurried along, and I sure hoped Sallie had given Mrs. Lacey a handkerchief to put over her nose, because Mrs. Lacey lived just behind him and she was real old and that smoke might kill her. I pinched my nose shut and watched from the edge of the yard with Mrs. Fox and Sallie and Bird, but Jottie went on ahead, out to the lawn, where old Mr. Hamilton stood, looking at the fire. Back when I was a little girl, he’d been a tall man, but now he was bent. His white shirt stretched tight over his shoulders as he hunched over the flames, and tears ran down his cheeks. He reached out to grab Jottie’s hand. “My boy is dead,” he croaked. “Vause, his name was.”

  “Yes,” Jottie said. “Vause is dead.”

  He lifted his head. “He was born on this day. June the fifteenth. In the new century.”

  I saw Jottie flinch, but she said calmly, “That’s right. Today is Vause’s birthday.”

  He lifted his head and recognized her. “You. You knew my Vause.”

  “Yes. I did.”

  He peered at her. “He liked you. Better than all the other girls.”

  Jottie didn’t say anything.

  “But he died,” the old man moaned. “He died in a terrible battle.”

  “Mr. Hamilton, you’ve got to stop burning this boot,” Jottie said firmly. “You let me put this fire out, all right? Fouling the air and making people sick—that’s no way to remember Vause.”

  “He’s dead,” repeated Mr. Hamilton, as though she hadn’t heard.

  “I know it. I know he’s dead. But let me put this fire out. It smells bad.” Jottie bent at the knees and picked up a handful of dirt, which she tossed on the fire. It didn’t make much of a dent in the smoke, but Mr. Hamilton didn’t object. He just watched her.

  Sallie sidled forward with a little spade. Jottie nodded at her and took Mr. Hamilton’s hand.

  “Now, let’s us sit down and you tell me what’s bothering you,” she said, leading him away toward his porch. Slowly, they climbed the stairs and she helped him into his chair. Then she sat down next to him and bent her head toward his.

  “She’s a saint,” sighed Mrs. Fox. She looked down at me, kind of sharp. “Your aunt is a saint.”

  “Yes’m,” I said. “I think I’ll go help Sallie.”

  —

  When Minerva and Mae woke from their naps, they were sorry they’d missed it.

  “Mrs. Fox says Jottie is a saint,” I reported.

  “All she did was tell him to stop burning that boot,” said Bird. “Doesn’t take a saint to do that.”

  “You hushup,” said Mae. She snapped on the radio, just, I thought, to snap something.

  Minerva sighed. “Poor Jottie,” she said under her breath.

  I pounced on it. “Why? Why poor Jottie?”

  Minerva and Mae looked at each other and shook their heads identically. “Poor Jottie has to smell Mr. Hamilton’s nasty old boot,” said Mae.

  “Who killed him?” asked Bird.

  “What?” Minerva said, kind of startled.

  “The boy Vause. Mr. Hamilton said he’d died in a terrible battle,” Bird said. “Did someone beat him up?”

  “No, of course not.” Mae frowned. “And he wasn’t a little boy, either. He was—how old, Minnie?”

  “Twenty or twenty-one,” said Minerva. She looked sad.

  “Oh. He was a grown-up,” said Bird, disgusted. “Why does everyone call him a boy when he wasn’t one?” She lost interest and wandered away into the kitchen.

  I stayed put. I’d been hearing Vause Hamilton’s name for years, but I hadn’t paid attention until now. He was just Mr. Hamilton’s dead son. “Where was the battle?” I asked.

  Minerva and Mae exchanged glances. “He didn’t die in a battle,” Mae said.

  I waited, but she didn’t say anything more. “How did he die, then?”

  Mae looked at Minerva again and lifted her eyebrows into a question. Minerva lifted her eyebrows back and shrugged. “He died in a fire.”

  Mae twitched at the words. Her eyes were on the dogwood tree in our front yard, but she twitched just as plain.

  “What?” I asked.

  “What what?” Minerva asked back.

  I didn’t know, but there was something they weren’t telling me. “Why was it so terrible?”

  Mae turned on me. “Don’t you think it’s terrible when a young man dies?”

  The Andrews Sisters came on, singing one of their stupid songs. I persevered. “Yes, but—lots of people—well—I don’t know.”

  Minerva took pity on me. “He was a friend of your father’s,” she said. “And of Jottie’s, too.”

  “Oh,” I said. I couldn’t think what to ask. “Did you like him?”

  “Like him?” Minerva repeated. She glanced at Mae. “Well. He was kind to us when we were children.”

  Mae smiled suddenly. “Remember when he came back from the war? How he took off his hat and bowed?”

  Minerva laughed. “Because he didn’t recognize us.”

  “Because we were all grown up. He asked Felix to introduce him. There on the porch.” Mae’s face shone, thinking of it. “In his uniform.”

  “He was the nicest thing,” said Minerva dreamily. “Just the nicest thing in the world.”

  They stared off into nothing.

  “We thought,” said Mae. She gave the radio a disgusted look. I couldn’t tell if it was the Andrews Sisters or something else.

  I tried to look like part of the wall so they would keep talking, but they only nodded at each other and mused in silence. After practically forever, I cleared my throat a little bit. “So he wasn’t nice after all?” I asked in the most soothing way I could.

  Their faces were empty. “No,” said Minerva finally. “Turns out he wasn’t.”

  “What did he do?”

  Minerva sighed. “Oh, honey.” She looked at Mae again, and Mae inclined her head just a little. “Turn that off, will you?” Mae twitched the radio off, and Minerva turned to face me. “Vause Hamilton died in a fire at American Everlasting in 1920.” The words shot from her mouth like she wanted to get them gone. “He broke into Daddy’s office and stole money from the safe and then tried to burn down the factory to hide what he’d done.”

  “And then he couldn’t get out,” Mae added. “He got trapped and he smothered on the smoke. They found him there in the ashes, the day after, with two thousand dollars in a sack.”

  I looked from one aunt to the other, flummoxed. Vause Hamilton had robbed my grandfather and set his factory on fire? He sounded bad. He sounded terrible. But my aunts looked sad, not mad. “Why—”

  They looked up together, eyes wary.

  “Why’d he do it?”

  “Money,” Minerva said. “He was running away, to California, and I guess he needed money. Though why he couldn’t work for it like everyone else, I don’t know.”

  “Did he steal from anyone else or just us?” I asked.

  “Just us,” said Mae. “Just Daddy.”

  I pressed ahead. It was like trying to slide around a door as it was closing. “Why does Jottie help Mr. Hamilton, when his boy was so bad?”

  “Because she’s a saint,” said Mae.

  “Because Vause was a friend of hers,” said Minerva at the same second.

  I remembered something. “Mr. Hamilton said Vause liked Jottie. Better than the other girls, he said.”

  Mae sucked air quick through her teeth. “The old hound!” she snarled. “It’
s a wonder God didn’t strike him dead where he stood!”

  Well! “Why? What’d he do?” I asked alertly.

  “He made Jottie and Vause miserable, is what he did! The nerve of that man!” Mae fumed, but Minerva caught her eye, and she stopped and took a breath. “Listen, Willa, it’s all over and done now, and don’t you go bringing it up with Jottie.”

  “Or your father,” added Minerva.

  “But why?” I begged, hearing a whine in my voice. I couldn’t help it—grown-ups were downright infuriating. The least they could do was say why they wouldn’t tell me what I wanted to know. “They already know about it, don’t they? How bad he was?”

  “Well. They don’t want to talk about it,” Minerva said. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

  “Least said, soonest mended,” said Mae, real prim.

  That wasn’t fair atall, and I got mad. “You don’t think that!” I exclaimed. “Nobody thinks that!”

  Their faces closed up like fists. Silently, Mae reached out and turned the radio on again. I wasn’t going to get anything now, I realized.

  Maybe later.

  Jottie slipped wearily into her room and lowered herself onto the bed. Her eyes stung from the smoke. They were red, too, she knew. Just a little rest, she thought. She opened one eye to look at the clock. Three. She had time for a little rest.

  “Hey, Josie.”

  Her heart thudded once and she stilled it. If she didn’t move, if she kept quiet, she could have him back for a minute, maybe two. She let her breath out, slow and even.

  “Vause?” She scanned the rain-heavy garden.

  “Here.” He stepped out from the shadow of the barn into the watery sun.

  The apparition made her breathless. “What’re you doing out here so early?” she managed to say.

  He grinned crookedly. “Early for some. Late for others.”

  “You’ve been up all night?” she asked, instantly jealous of whatever, whomever he’d been with. “What were you doing?”

  “Felix and I took an unexpected trip,” he said, and winked at her. That meant they’d hopped the train. “And were unavoidably delayed on our return.” That meant they’d had to walk part of the way back. He shook the rain from his shining hair and added, “You’re looking pretty this morning, Josie.”