Blanche on the Lam: A Blanche White Mystery (11 page)

She pictured herself holding his smelly socks under his nose until he understood that she had some rights, too. But he'd probably pass out first! she laughed to herself. She knew she might be exaggerating Everett's arrogance, but she wasn't exaggerating the way he'd smirked in her face then teased her about her name, or the ignorant way he shouted when he talked to Mumsfield, as though trying to penetrate an extra-thick skull with his voice. He also wasn't too tolerant of people who crossed him, if his angry comment about Emmeline was any evidence. Still, he hadn't exactly jumped with both feet into the sheriff's chest. It all added up to a contradiction. “Just like everybody else,” she mumbled to herself.

She put Everett's room in order and shut his door firmly behind her. She moved down the hall, past the main staircase. She was unconsciously humming the usual flat tune of her own composition. She knocked at the door to the left of Emmeline's room—a guest room draped in sheets. As she closed the door and stepped back into the hall, she noticed that Emmeline's door was not completely shut. She heard Emmeline's voice hit a high, complaining note, followed by a measured mumble from Grace. Blanche stood still and listened.

“Get out, you two-faced bitch,” Emmeline screeched at the top of her lungs. Blanche jumped back, then took a few steps closer to Emmeline's door.

“I remember what they used to say about you! I'm watching you, don't you think I'm not, you sly cow!” Emmeline's voice was high and wild. Blanche couldn't make out Grace's reply.

When Grace came out of the room, Blanche had moved away and was dusting the small table near the top of the main stairs. At first, Grace seemed not to notice Blanche. She leaned against Emmeline's door and closed her eyes for a few seconds. When she opened them, they were moist. Her lips were a hard pink line. Big red spots, like clown makeup, dotted both her cheeks. She pushed herself away from the door and walked toward Blanche.

“Please don't disturb my aunt just now, Blanche,” she said at last. “She's...resting. And the room next to hers is just a guest room, so you needn't bother with it, either,” she added.

Blanche watched Grace as she went down the stairs. She heard the front door close. She slipped back into Mumsfield's room and looked out the window. Grace was walking slowly toward the duck pond, her head thrown slightly back and her arms folded across her chest.

I should have done the old lady's room first, Blanche chided herself. Might've had a ringside seat for the shouting match. More likely it would have been postponed. Blanche stared at Emmeline's door for a few moments, bristling with the desire to knock and trying to conquer her natural inclination to defy the voice of authority. It was one of the reasons she had not lasted in the waitressing, telephone sales, clerking, and typing jobs she'd tried over the years. She always returned to domestic work. For all the
châtelaine
fantasies of some of the women for whom she worked, she was really her own boss, and her clients knew it. She was the expert. She ordered her employers' lives, not the other way around. She told them when they had to be out of the way, when she would work, and when she wouldn't. Or at least that's the way it was most of the time. Now she sighed in frustration and turned away from Emmeline's door.

She didn't bother to knock on the door on the right, next to Everett's room. It had to be Grace's room. She went in, and as if in reward for her decision to do as she was told, for a change, the room she entered was fascinating.

The white four-poster bed was hung with pale cotton drapes lined in white with tiny blue polka dots. The same cotton covered the seats of the two delicate-looking chairs and the table by the bed. It seemed a wonderfully calm place to hide, and Blanche congratulated Grace on being smart enough to provide it for herself. Yet, there was something about the room that made her uneasy. She looked around at the small items. These were the
things most likely to tell her something about the person who occupied the room. Among these people, the furniture and pictures might have been chosen by a decorator.

What she noticed was that the old-fashioned silver-backed comb, brush, and hand-mirror set on top of the bureau looked exactly the same distance, one from the other. The top of the pen on the small desk across from the bed was lined up with the top of the leather writing paper case and the address book beside it. The clock on the bedside table was exactly the same distance from the water carafe as it was from the lamp. There was no radio, no television, not even a telephone to break the room's silence.

It seemed the wrong room for Grace. It was Everett, with his casually elegant clothes, fresh manicure, and well-shined shoes, from whom she'd have expected neatness. She'd once worked for a man who designed men's clothes and was himself known for his wardrobe and style. She'd picked up enough from him to know how much planning and study went into looking perfectly casual. But it was Grace, with the tail of her blouse peeking out from the top of her skirt and the edge of her slip from the bottom, who lived in this monument to unchanging order.

But despite the room's orderliness, its look of calm, the hair on Blanche's arms was stiff with electricity. The air felt nervous, jumpy. She walked around the room picking up the small clock, the hand mirror. She flicked the feather duster about as she went. The address book, with its floral-print cover, was also blue and white,
GRACE CARTER HANCOCK
was embossed at the top of the palest of blue stationery in the leather writing case. She was careful to replace each item in exactly the spot where she'd found it. She was aware of the time it took to get the items lined up properly and wondered if Grace was able to get them right the first time or if she, too, had to fiddle with them.

“Grace,” she whispered, and the sound was full of questions about who this woman was. This was not the room of the Grace who knocked over her water glass and was nervous as a vampire
at dawn. The Grace who kept this room like a shrine to herself was not the woman Everett hovered over maternally, or the one to whom Mumsfield made patient “Yes, Cousin” replies.

What is it about the people in this house and their rooms? Blanche asked herself. Except for Mumsfield, their rooms said one thing about who they were, and the way they looked and behaved said something else. Which was the true Everett—the well-groomed, caring, and gentle husband, or the arrogant slob who threw his funky socks on the dresser and was ready to attack the sheriff? And what about Emmeline? Was she just another drunk, or the sweet old lady Mumsfield talked about? Which Grace was real?

SIX

T
he next day, Blanche looked up from washing lettuce for lunch to see Everett and another man walking along the edge of the pinewoods surrounding the house. At first she didn't recognize the other man. She'd never before seen him without his boots, badge, and uniform, although she should have recognized those thin legs and the sad, droopy set of his belly. He looked even smaller without his gear, like any regular sawed-off, red-faced cracker, come hat in hand to curry favor from the gentry. Only the sheriff kept his hat on. If he'd been anyone else, she'd have cheered him on in his defiance of the class rules. Even without Stillwell's reputation and her present troubles, she didn't have much use for law enforcement people of any kind or color.

She still remembered the police beatings of people in the sixties, and the murders of young black and Puerto Rican males by cops in Harlem—at least one for every spring she'd lived in New York—as though they were deer in season. She'd watched the cops break down the apartment door of her neighbor Mrs. Castillo, beat the woman's husband unmercifully, and totally ransack their apartment, only to realize they had the wrong building. The policemen hadn't even apologized for the mess. In Blanche's mind, Southern law enforcement people were even worse: the descendants of the paddyrollers and overseers who'd made their living grinding her kind into fertilizer in the cotton fields of slavery.

As the two men walked, Everett sliced the air with his hands in a way that reminded Blanche of someone hacking through thick undergrowth with a machete.

“You in there, Miz City?” Nate called through the other kitchen window overlooking the backyard.

“Why's Stillwell hanging round here so much?” Blanche asked him, after their exchange of “How are you?” and “I'm fine,” and after Blanche had poured him a glass of lemonade.

Nate eased himself onto a chair and watched Blanche over the rim of the glass with old onyx eyes. She sat in the chair across from him and poured herself a glass as well.

“Miz Grace used to spend her summers here, you know.” Nate's eyes got the faraway look that goes with old memories. “Played right out there in that duck pond, she did. Paddling and splashing and shrieking at the top of her lungs. Wild as a polecat, she was.”

Something in Nate's tone told her he had something particular to say. Nate rattled the ice in his glass. “Fact is, Miz Grace is kinda special to me, ya see.” Uh oh. Blanche held her breath and hoped he wasn't about to destroy her growing respect for him with some Mr. Mammy bullshit.

“Back in 1959, when Miz Grace was about twelve years ole, things was real bad round here, real bad, even worse than they is today.” Nate took a long swallow from his lemonade and took his time setting the glass back on the table. “White folks was bein' put off they land, and stores and shops was goin' bust, so you know how hard it was for us.

“Course, our bein' worse off didn't stop the gov'ment and all these low-life rednecks round here from blamin' us, like they always do. There was more Klan rallies going on round here, more talk 'bout protectin' the flower of Southern womanhood from thievin' black men, than you could shake a stick at! Naturally, all us colored kept to ourselves and kept as quiet as possible. Seems to me even the children played in a whisper.”

Blanche heard Nate's voice as though it were coming from a distance, even though he sat just across the table from her. It was as though he'd slipped behind a thick glass wall where he was
untouched by his own words and the thoughts that went with them. He sat perfectly still while he spoke.

“One night, round this time of year, a white woman's body was found in a ditch by the road down by Merkston's gas station. No identification. Nobody from round here. But somebody, I never did hear who, said they saw a black man in a beat-up pickup truck speedin' down the road near where that woman was found.

“Them Klan boys went round all the plantations and other places where colored live. Caught a couple fellas out in the street after dark. Chased one of 'em into the woods. They didn't catch him, but he ain't never been back round these parts since. The young boy they caught, they beat unmerciful. Only God knows why they didn't string him up. They might as well have. Boy wasn't fit for much after that. Broke his back. Put out one a his eyes. Hardly left him enough privates to make water.” Nate shook his head mournfully from side to side.

“Well, it just so happen that round that time, I had me a ole piece of pickup truck. Them Klan boys spotted it in front of my place, tore my house up, and made somebody or another tell them where I was. Then they come here lookin' for me. I was out in front, seein' to them weeds in the flower bed when they drove up. They all jump out the truck wearin' them damn-fool outfits, callin' me out by name, and acting like the rabid dogs they is. They grabbed me and was draggin' me to they truck when Miz Grace come out the front door lookin' for me. Her dog, Lady, was 'bout to whelp and the child was 'spectin me to help with the birthin'.

“Miz Grace come runnin' over to those boys holdin' me. Now, you know what crackers is like round gentry, and these boys was just gettin' started, so they wasn't drunked up enough to step out they place. They stopped draggin' me off when the child come runnin', but they didn't let me go. 'This here your nigger, Miss?' one of 'em ask her.

“ 'Yes,' she told him, 'and you let him go right now! He has to stay here to see to my dog!' Just like that she said it, bold as brass. By this time, Miz Em heard the commotion and come to the door. 'What's going on here?' she wanted to know. That's when they let go a my arms, 'cause they had to take off them dummy caps and show some respect to their better. 'We lookin' for a nigger what run over a white woman with a beat-up pickup truck, ma'am.'

“ 'Well, this one's truck isn't working just now, but he is. For me. Nate, come see to the child's dog.' She beckoned for me to come in the house, right through the front door. She didn't take her eyes off them Klan boys till they was in the truck and headed down the drive.”

By the time he got to this point in his story, Nate seemed to have slipped out from behind his protective wall. There was amusement, and something else she couldn't read, on his face when he turned to look directly at her for the first time since he'd begun speaking. “Minute I see Miz Grace agin, I tole her. I say, 'Miz Grace, I'm in your debt. I really is. Why, if you hadn't needed me to midwife your dog, I'd probably be dead today!' ”

They looked at each other for a long moment, then broke into peals of laughter tinged with deep sorrow at his debt, which they both knew he did not take lightly, despite the circumstances under which it had been incurred. When they'd finally settled down, Nate began speaking again, almost as though he needed to tell a different tale in order to clear his mind of the one he'd just told.