Authors: Lisa Howorth
The truly bad things about him, though, Mary Byrd hated knowing. He not only had slaves but was part owner of a slave ship. He bought political favors. He lost his temper and sometimes resorted to yelling like a maniac or cruelly punishing people; Evagreen would not have fared well in Byrd’s household. He suffered remorse and guilt, though, about these things, and at the end of each day’s entry, he’d usually write, “
I recommended myself to God
.” But just as often, no doubt completely exhausted by his responsibilities and busting his ass all day, he’d regret that he’d “
neglected to say his prayers
.” Then, he’d always close with that same upbeat entreaty, “
I had good health, good thoughts, and good humor, Thank God Almighty
.” She loved Byrd anyway because he wasn’t exemplary but struggled to be, even knowing that perfection was never going to happen. Was he so much worse than Thomas Jefferson? Historians—about whom Mary Byrd often wondered, because, despite seeming to have boring little faculty lives, they made careers out of examining the lives of guys like Byrd who lived large—had kicked around the question of what would inspire a man to keep such an obsessive, personal diary every day of his life, but she totally got it.
Duh.
It was a way, like praying or keeping an expense account, to try to impose some order on a scary, random, calamitous universe where the overseer was a vengeful, Old Testament God. By keeping his diaries Byrd had used every way he could think of to make sense of things. Diaries were great until other people read them. She was certain that Byrd had never intended for other people to read his. Why else would he have written them in a secret language? Too bad
she
hadn’t done that back in 1966.
Giving the portrait the lightest kiss, just touching the glass with the tip of her tongue, Mary Byrd went upstairs to bed, hoping that wherever he was, the Black Swan wouldn’t hold it against her for peeping.
As the cold night wore on, things grew quieter on McCrady Hill Road. Cars that had parked at both houses, first the Kimbros’, then the Bons’, on opposite ends of the street, gradually went off into the night, one by one. The two little brick houses, almost identical, remained brightly lit, glowing yellow like lanterns, a blue flame inside: TV screens in the front rooms. There were so few streetlights in this part of town, and all the other houses had gone dark hours earlier, so that from a distance, the two homes might have looked afire in the blackness.
Inside Evagreen and L. Q.’s house it was hot and still. The phone had stopped ringing, and the ladies had put up all the food that needed putting up, and covered and arranged the breads and cakes and pies for whoever gathered the next day. People were shocked and confused as to what to do. It was Roderick Kimbro who was dead, not Angela Bon, but having a child who was a
murderer
and in jail in Memphis might be worse for a parent to bear than death. They all knew one another and both families attended West St. Peter M.B. Church. Everybody was making
two
pans of macaroni and cheese and praying two sets of prayers.
Evagreen and L. Q. had gone to bed after Evagreen finally consented to eat something: a skinny slice of Haseltine pound cake and a glass of buttermilk, into which Ken had mixed a teaspoon of Benadryl. Normally, Evagreen’s sharp tongue enabled her to deconstruct any recipe after sampling just one bite and to name off every single ingredient in it, but she drank her buttermilk in two swallows without seeming to taste it. Ken gently wiped her lips, and L. Q. firmly led her to bed. Ken stayed up, sitting in the La-Z-Boy and writing on a yellow legal pad. Early in the morning—although it was nearly morning already—he’d go to Memphis and see Angie and get her a good lawyer and begin sorting this thing out. He had some ideas. He had some hope.
His baby sister. After all the tragic, senseless things he’d seen in New Orleans, and then in the Air Force, he still couldn’t believe this. Angie had been the cutest, fattest baby and the prettiest, skinniest little girl. Ken had been gone, pretty much, by the time she was a teenager, but he’d remembered how proud he’d been of her. Cheerleader, homecoming court, working weekends at the bakery, principal’s list. Sassy, too, but in a sweet way. Same thing with Rod: smart, great basketball player, good to his folks, nice guy. Didn’t seem like a player. Everyone but Ken had been so glad when they’d married after graduation and headed to college. Not too far away, both going to Memphis State; Rod playing ball on his scholarship and Angie going for Communications. They had seemed so happy, but Ken had hoped she’d go off somewhere to school, see more of the world, get to know herself. He didn’t care for Memphis much. What happened to people there? There was nothing up there but crossfire, crack, and barbecue, as far as he could see.
New Orleans had plenty of crime when he was at Tulane law school, but that’s not all it had. A beautiful, funky, historic city—it was
worth
its problems: too many poor folks and the kind of trouble they had. He’d worked with many of them as part of his legal training. He and Irmgard and their kids weren’t even noticed down there when they went back on vacations. Ken wished Angie had gone to Loyola, a good school that wanted her, but no, she had to follow Rod and Rod had to follow the money. It was hard to imagine that drugs had been a part of his—or their—problem. Hell, now he was going to be fooling with their mess, the same kind of messes he’d had to deal with in New Orleans: Ninth Ward crack hos and crackhead trash, and now with pot and pills and meth heads in the military. How had this happened in his own family?
Ken could only imagine what his poor mother was going through. And his dad, although his dad’s expectations for Angie had been, if not lower, at least not verbalized so relentlessly as Evagreen’s. Having seen some of the things he’d seen, many of which were unknown to Evagreen and the others in the family, he
thought
he’d learned not to let anything take him completely by surprise. Evil was a way stronger force than good in this world. Ken knew it. Give the devil a wink or a smile, next thing you know you’d be dancing cheek to cheek.
Whatever Angie’d done, he was going to work for the best possible outcome. He hoped not to have to ask Charles Thornton for help. His Auntee Rosie and his mother had worked for the Thorntons forever, and they’d helped the Bons many times. In his legal work, he had no problem getting help from white people, but here it all felt a little too down-on-the-plantation. Ken knew his mother had “issues” with Miss Mary Byrd, maybe unjustified, but issues all the same, and she might resent the Thorntons’ involvement. But if he had to ask them for help, he would. Whatever it took. He’d ask whoever he needed to to help Angie. And he had an idea about who that whoever might be.
In their small, neat box of a bedroom, Evagreen and L. Q. lay side by side in the dark. L. Q. held Evagreen’s hand between them on the thick, velvet-like duvet cover that Evagreen had just bought the week before. She’d been sprucing things up—“freshening,” as
Veranda
called it—and she’d redone the room in rich burgundy, hunter green, and gold. The window treatment matched the wine duvet cover and the cushion, shot through with gold threads, on the white wicker chair in the corner. L. Q. squeezed her limp hand every so often, and finally said, “We don’t know why these things happen, Evvie, but they can happen to anyone, even nice folks. Part of God’s plan, we have to believe.”
“You think that, you a jackass,” Evagreen said very quietly.
“Evvie, Evvie,” L. Q. said. “We can’t know what the Lord has in mind. You know that. We got to keep our faith.”
“Why.”
L. Q. rose up on one elbow and stroked Evagreen’s cheek with his hand. He tried to turn her face to look into her eyes, but she stiffened her neck and refused to turn to him.
“Because that all we got, girl.
That is all we got
. You turn loose your faith, you be adrift on a ocean without a paddle, any kind of flotation devices, and sharks
will
be circlin’. Sure as I know my name.”
“Don’t talk at me with that mess
no more
,” Evagreen said flatly. “You can shut up with it right now.” She closed her eyes. From the front room they heard faint TV noise and the sound of Ken in the kitchen. “And don’t y’all be slippin’ nothin’ in my food again.”
L. Q. sighed. “We’ll see Angie tomorrow. Hope we’ll be able to talk to her.” He took a deep breath. “I hope. But for sure Ken will see her, Evvie. You know how smart Ken is and you know he gone do everything he possibly can do. That’s another thing you can have faith in.”
“I don’t know can I see her.” Evagreen pressed her eyes and her lips tightly together.
“Course you can. She
need
you. You still her mama, no matter what she done.
Course
you can see her,” L. Q. said sternly.
Evagreen’s chest swelled and she opened her mouth wide to expel a long, lowing sound out of the back of her throat. L. Q. scooped under her shoulders with one hand and with the other gathered his crushed, empty wife into his arms. She continued crying, her skinny frame heaving violently against him, with almost soundless sobs now, in spite of how tightly L. Q. held her.
“My poor girl,” he said. “My poor, poor girls.”
Charles had come in sometime during the night and did not wake Mary Byrd up. Or so he thought. She was actually always semi-awake. Who could sleep with children and animals in the house? He was still asleep when she got up to set all the day’s work into motion, banging on the ceiling with the broom to wake William and Eliza, then going upstairs and thwacking them with William’s Styrofoam boffers to get them to dress, eat something, remember their lunches, and pile into the car for the ride to school. Alarms didn’t work with them because of the OFF button.
In the car William asked, “Why are we taking the Vulva?” He was too sleepy to snicker. Eliza disgustedly squinched away from him as far as she could get. She was now grossed out by their family nickname for the car, although she had been the one to name it when she was little and she first heard the word from her grandfather. Always in every way correct, especially anatomically, Dr. Big William corrected her when she had fallen on a toy and had come crying to him. “The
vagina
is the internal part; what you hurt is actually your
vulva
,” he’d said. “The outside part.” “Okay,” she had whimpered, “I broke my vulva, then.”
“We’re taking it because my car is almost out of gas,” Mary Byrd said. “And the backseat’s full of junk for the animal shelter and the Salvation Army.”
“Just like it always is,” said Eliza.
William said, “That’s not a real army.”
“
Duh
, William.” Eliza gave him a disgusted look. “
Gah.
”
He thrust a palm in her face, saying, “Talk to the hand!” Eliza swatted it away.
“Stop it!” Mary Byrd said. “You guys know about Evagreen’s family, right? About Angie?”
“Yeah,” said William. “What kind of gun did she have?”
“William! We don’t know exactly what’s happening but we need to help her if we can,” said Mary Byrd. “That includes keeping your rooms under control and stuff like that. Evagreen might not come for a while.”
“Mom, that helps
you,
” Eliza pointed out.
“You know what I mean. And there’s something else we have to talk about. I’ve got to go up to Richmond to talk to some people about Stevie. You know, my stepbrother who died.”
“Why?” they asked together.
“I’m not sure. They’ve reopened the case and they want to talk to me, Nick, James, and Nana again. I don’t really know what’s going on yet.”
Eliza huffed. “Too bad they didn’t catch the guy when it happened.”
“Exactly. But they didn’t, and it’s possible he could still be out there hurting people.”
“I wish I had a flame thrower,” said William.
That’s my boy
, Mary Byrd thought.
“Do they all of a sudden have a suspect?” Eliza asked.
“They say they do. Apparently some reporter has been poking around, trying to write about the case—you know how that cold-case stuff is getting to be the big thing now on TV. She can make money publishing a magazine article or a book, or selling the story to a TV show.”
“Do we get any?” William asked.
“Course not, dumb-head,” said Eliza.
“Anyway, it’s just something I’ve got to take care of. It’s the right thing to do. I’ll probably go tomorrow and I’ll be back right after.” She slowed to the curb. “Okay, beat it. Just beat it. Love you both. Have a smart day.” She watched them hustle into school as the way-too-loud bell from hell rang. William turned around for a last wave and a quick moonwalk.
But Mary Byrd wondered if that would happen—going tomorrow. She turned the radio up to hear the weather report. Freezing rain, possible snow, a winter storm moving through late tomorrow night or the day after, parts of Texas and Missouri were already in a mess, roads and airports closed, cars stranded, six killed already. Jesus.
What she really wished was that Liddie were still around. Mary Byrd did not get the clichéd jokes about mothers–in–law being bitches and haints. Ernie K-Doe had it wrong: Liddie was the
best
person she knew, mother-in-law or not. Mary Byrd loved her own shrimpy mother, Havnohart squirrel executions aside, but so much baggage came with the mother-daughter relationship, especially if mother and daughter were only eighteen years apart. And, of course, a mother
had
to love you no matter what, and a mother-in-law didn’t. Mary Byrd had certainly given Liddie plenty of reasons and opportunities to
not
like or accept her, a footloose hippie chick in black tights when Charles had first brought her around—not even a city girl, but suburban, who took forever to catch on to the gentle, byzantine manners of which Liddie and her regal, spinster sister, Evelyn, had been masters. Or mistresses. One did not express opinions, especially negative ones, directly, for instance. “Daddy” or “Grandmama” or “Uncle Semmes used to say
.
” Not that
Liddie
thought this thing or that thing was tacky, or just not done, but that’s what
they
had thought, and perhaps their point of view was worth considering. All unpleasantness was to be skirted carefully. Behavior or people that were disapproved of were “unattractive” or “unfortunate,” or were dismissed with a pause, a meaningful stare, and a firm “Have you
ever
?” She had an artist’s sensibility and painted her house a color she called “edible pink,” a dusty, pale hue that matched the old cedars on their place. Only partially reconstructed, she would tell her grandchildren, with gleeful restraint, how
her
grandmother had found a picture of Lincoln in her school book and ripped the page right out. Every July Fourth Liddie would subtly remind them that until 1945 and the end of World War Two, Mississippians did not celebrate the Fourth of July because, after all, Lee had retreated on July 4, 1863, from Gettysburg, where the University Greys had suffered one hundred percent casualties, and Vicksburg had fallen on the very same day.