Beauty From Ashes (41 page)

Outside their cabin door, she stopped to listen. June was there all right and he was singing. Singing his favorite Sea Island slave song, his rich, dark baritone voice rolling out the rhythm so that Eve, even with patches of snow still on the northern ground of Marietta, could almost see the light and shadows again the way they fell only over St. Simons Island—could see them plain as day because June was singing.

“My God is a rock in a weary land weary land in a weary land My God is a rock in a weary land Shelter in a time of storm. Ah know He is a rock in a weary land in a weary land

Ah know He is a rock in a weary 549

land Shelter in a time of storm.”

She’d heard June and the other St. Simons Negroes sing that old song with the African rhythm a hundred times, but each time the depth of June’s own faith somehow set him apart—even from Eve. Once more his voice held her just outside their door in the shivery cold—she’d run out without a cloak as though they all still lived down on the warm coast—waiting, feeling around inside her own heart for a faith to match his. Lord knew she needed that kind of faith today after the way she had hollered at poor, torn-up Miss Anne.

June could help. Eve could count the times on one hand when the big, muscular, dark-skinned man had failed to think of something to soothe her, to straighten her out when she’d run to him with her troubles or what Miss Anne called her smart-alecky nature.

When June stopped singing with ever so many verses left in the song, Eve went inside and straight into his open arms to settle in his lap.

“You singin’ better all de time, June, but

I’se sure gittin’ cold out dere eavesdroppin’. ‘Sides dat, I needs a kiss.”

After he kissed her, she snuggled almost as deeply into his good, low chuckle as into his big arms. “You s’posed to be choppin’ wood,” Eve whispered, stroking his clean-shaven cheek.

“You s’pose to be takin’ keer ob Miss Anne,” he said, a grin still on his open face.

“Hush,” she ordered and jumped up from his lap.

“What you mean, hush?”

“You swears you not be born wif a caul ober yo’ face. What you doin’ readin’ Eve’s mind?” Hands on her hips, standing above him, she said flatly, “I done be takin’ care ob Miss Anne an’ dat’s de trouble! June, I done make `trouble in a weary land` for Miss Anne an’ for me.”

“You steppin’ in God’s shoes agin, Evie?”

“Don’t you accuse me of dat!”

“I didn’t accuse. Jus’ axed. You a woman of faith almos’ as strong as your beauty, Eve, but you does try to walk in God’s shoes wif Miss Anne an’ dat ain’t right. It not

only be wrong, you can’t do it. Ain’t 551 nobody kin make dat work. God’s shoes don’ fit nobody but God Hisself. What you done say to Miss Anne now?”

“I didn’t say nothin’. I jus ax a question. I seen you meet up wif her grandson, Fraser Demere, when he done come on dat train from Savannah wif John Couper an’ you shook his han’ an’ smile an’ let the boy know he was welcome here in Mar’etta wif us.”

“Well, ain’t he? He be our sweet Annie’s son. De boy she die to bring into de worl’. What you talkin’ ‘bout, Eve?”

“I ax Miss Anne had she even hugged de boy.”

“What she say?”

“It not what she say. It what she stood there thinkin’ in her bitter mind an’ heart.”

“You call our good lady—bitter, Evie? I’d be ‘shamed.”

“She be bitter. You knows I kin hear her mind goin’ almos’ as plain as I hear her mouth. She ain’t give dat po’ boy one hug an’ he done be here almost two whole days!” Standing, both fists clenched in agony and pity,

Eve whispered, “June, I gotta fix Miss Anne’s heart some way. She still hate Mausa Paul Demere. She ain’t never like dat man, an’ I see now she push her way through the pain ob losin’ sweet Annie by leanin’ on her hate for the man Annie love wif all her pure heart. I gotta fix it, June! Some way I gotta fix Miss Anne’s black bitter, ‘cause one day I gonna lose you an’ Miss Anne she be all I got lef’.was

There was nothing new about June’s long silences. Eve had known them from the beginning of their love for each other. From the long-ago day of their marriage when, in the parlor at old Cannon’s Point, they had jumped over a broom, Eve dressed like a queen in a dress Miss Anne had given her. He was silent now.

“You tryin’ to git in God’s shoes, June? Sometimes God be so silent, Eve could scratch Him!”

There was nothing new about June’s good chuckle when almost any other person on the earth would have flared in fury at what she had just said.

“No, Evie,” he said. “I ain’t in

God’s shoes, but has you look at my 553 white, wooly head lately?”

She tried to grin. “How I look at you an’ not look at yo’ white head? You so han’some, how I not look at you, June? You ‘bout to play some kind ob trick on me?”

“No trick. Dis white head mean, though, dat June, he done lib more’n fifteen year longer than Evie. Once June hab dark Ebo skin an’ dark Ebo hair. Now, June got only dark Ebo skin. An’ in dem years past, he done learn that Miss Anne, like a lotta other humans, gits hate tangled up wif hurt.”

“What you mean, ole man?”

“She don’ hate Mausa Paul Demere. He jus’ happen to be in the way when the biggest hurt ob all come to Miss Anne’s heart.”

“You tell me it hurt her more to lose sweet Annie den to lose Mausa John, her lover?”

June only shrugged and went on studying the way the blaze licked around the green oak logs in the roaring fire he’d built.

“Answer me!”

“I’m ponderin’, Evie. No. It don’ hurt her no more to lose sweet little Annie, but it hurt her as much I reckon. You an’ me cain’t neber know ‘bout losin’ a chile. You got to let Miss Anne sort it all out herself. It might could be she know so much pain when we bury Mausa John in de churchyard, she didn’ hab no room to mourn sweet Annie so soon afterward. One thing sure, her pain ober him be different from her pain ober sweet Annie, but she a good lady. Miss Anne, eben if you don’ believe it, she knows de Lord jis as good as you knows Him, Eve. Just as good as I knows Him.”

“Ain’t nobody knows Him good as you, June!”

The soft, velvety chuckle came again. “You sure does lak to try to walk in God’s shoes, Evie.”

Tears from nowhere began to stream down Eve’s cheeks. “Don’ leab me no time soon, husband! I—I ain’t ready to take the burden ob dis whole family on my shoulders yet wifout you.”

“I ain’t aimin’ to go nowhere, woman.” He laughed softly again, and his arms were already out when

Eve jumped into them. 555

“Den, you jus’ gotta stay wif us a long, long time, ole man. A long, long time!”

Alone in her corner bedroom on the morning of January 3 of the new year 1853, Anne stood again at her favorite front window, trying her best to come to a decision. Through all her years, making decisions had never been hard. She would be fifty-six on January 11, eight days from today. Much of her life had already been lived. What a time to turn wishy-washy, to feel afraid of doing the wrong thing, to be unable to see clearly, especially when what tormented her this morning centered on her dead daughter Annie’s only child, Fraser Demere—downstairs now with her own children, pretending, at least, to be having a good time singing with the others while Fanny played the pianoforte.

Pretending? The boy, Anne knew, was not at ease as he should have been, and it was her fault that he wasn’t. He’d evidently counted the days until his father could send him to Savannah to visit

his uncle, John Couper, and the two of them had made the surprise trip to Marietta during the holidays when John Couper could leave his work. Neither boy had dreamed that their surprise would bring her anything but joy. Anne herself had longed for over eleven years for the chance to see Fraser again. Well, she thought, the lad is here now, and I’m moping as though I lost his blessed mother only yesterday. She felt as though something living inside her had been covered over, buried along with Annie way back in 1841, and only now, with the arrival of the boy whose birth had taken Annie’s life, was torn open again.

During the precious few months in which Anne had kept and cared for the infant in the Lawrence cottage, she had grieved normally for her daughter. But the day young Paul Demere, John Fraser’s father, came to Lawrence and announced that he was taking the baby because he’d found a new wife, Jessie Sinclair, Anne felt that everything vital—even her painful grief over Annie—had been stopped dead. Eve declared that Anne couldn’t bring herself to make her grandson truly welcome, even now. Never mind that he was Annie’s own; he was also the son of the man

Annie married, the young, slender, 557 arrogant Paul Demere. Even though he was from a fine St. Simons family, Anne had never liked Paul. But did this give her license, after all these years, to be cool toward the youngster who was trying so hard to merit her attention?

The decision grating on her frayed nerves this morning would normally have been easy. The Edward Denmeads, Louisa Fletcher’s friends and now Anne’s, had invited the whole family to Ivy Grove, their spacious Greek Revival home at the edge of town, where John Fraser could ride a fine Denmead horse to his heart’s content along the miles of bridal paths that wound about Ivy Grove’s eighteen hundred acres. With all her heart Anne liked the Denmeads, pioneer settlers in Marietta. Edward Denmead was one of the leading contractors for the Western and Atlantic Railroad. She’d have liked them if for no other reason than that their exquisite taste in the arts had made them genuine admirers of Louisa Fletcher’s superior singing voice. “It was the Denmeads, bless them,” Louisa would laugh, “who convinced Dix and me to visit Marietta. Just think,

Anne, without them, you and I might never have met each other, and what would we do without our friendship?”

Anne agreed. Louisa Fletcher, with more free time now that her Dix no longer managed the Howard House, was daily more important in Anne’s life and might well want to go with them to Ivy Grove.

“Then why am I having such a time deciding whether to drive out to the Denmeads with the children today?” she asked aloud into the empty room. “Why?”

Her light blue eyes brimming with tears, Anne turned abruptly from the window and, from habit, especially when she needed comfort, sank into her familiar little wooden rocker. Where on earth was Eve? Part of Anne needed her desperately. Another part, leaden with what surely seemed almost like fresh grief, felt relief that the servant was nowhere nearby. Eve’s very presence could force Anne to be truthful. Even with herself. And truthful was what she wasn’t sure she wanted to be this minute. Eve would force her to face the ugly guilt she felt because she had not been able to show affection for her grandson, John Fraser. And Eve just could be right.

“Am I guilty?” she whispered. “Eve’s

already accused me of it and she’s sometimes 559 right. No! I won’t have her right. Not this time. I have not been harboring bitterness toward Paul Demere for all the years my Annie has been dead. Christians don’t harbor bitterness! And most of what Eve knows about Christianity I’ve taught her. I won’t have her preaching at me. I hold no bitterness toward Paul Demere. I just—don’t like him. I never thought him good enough for Annie and that’s my privilege to this day. Paul Demere didn’t surprise me one whit by marrying another woman before my daughter’s tombstone had settled. He did exactly what anyone would expect a selfish, spoiled young man to do. Eve can’t be right this time. And why does it matter so much to me that she even thought such a dreadful thing about me? She and I are supposed to be friends. Even so, she’s still my servant. I still own her. She certainly doesn’t own me!”

A light, though insistent, knock at her bedroom door startled her.

“Go away, Eve! I don’t want you in here right now. Go away!”

The knock came again, still light, but also still insistent. It can’t be Eve, Anne thought. Most

of the time, she doesn’t even knock.

“Who’s there?”

“I’m here, Grandmama,” the boy’s voice called. “I have something to show you. Aunt Pete said it was all right to knock.”

The odd, dead weight of what felt like grief held her as though chained to the chair. “John Fraser?”

“Yes, ma’am. I have something to show you. It’s —it’s important to me to show you first. None of the others have seen it yet.”

As though she weighed three hundred stone or were a hundred years old, Anne pushed herself up out of the little rocker and went to open the door. “Good morning, John Fraser. Do come in,” she said, hearing the flatness in her own voice.

With Annie’s smile, showing “her” slightly crooked front tooth, Fraser said cheerfully, “Do you know you’re the only person who calls me John Fraser, Grandmama?”

“Well, no, I guess I didn’t know that. But you were named for your grandfather, Lieutenant John Fraser, my beloved husband. It has always pleased me very much that you were.”

“My mother gave me his name, Papa says.

He likes it, too, though, because Papa 561 liked Grandfather Fraser so much.”

“Yes,” Anne said. “My husband always seemed to be fond of your father.”

“I know he was. Papa’s told me lots of times that they always got along fine together.”

“Take that chair, John Fraser. You’ve grown so, my little rocker’s too small, I’m sure.”

His smile—Annie’s smile—came again as he sat down in the armed brocade chair across from her rocker. “I don’t think I’ll be a big man like my grandfather was, though. Papa says he was really tall and broad-shouldered. I’ll be more like Papa, I think. But I’m pretty strong like him too.”

“I’m sure you are,” Anne commented and thought critically, I am just commenting, not really conversing with this boy. God forgive me and help me.

“It must have been pretty hard for you losing Grandfather Fraser and then my mama in such a short time.”

His surprising identification with her two heartbreaks coming so close together startled her so that for an instant she could think of nothing to say.

Finally, she managed the inevitable question, “How do you know so much about me? I mean, how is it a boy your age has even thought of the short time between—my losses? My dreadful losses?”