Authors: Thomas Cater
“Give me a second,” Violet said, “I’ll call mother and
tell her I’m going to leave the children with her.”
We returned to the chairs smiling and grateful for the
fire and brandy and waited while she prepared their two munchkins for travel.
It took less than 20 minutes to clothe the kids, drop
them off at grandma’s house and drive to Amy Taylor’s home, a small wood-frame
house sitting on the edge of a weedy lot behind an abandoned elementary school.
“It used to be the ‘colored’ school,” Violet said.
“Now it’s used for storage. Once there were about two dozen black families
living in town, but the Great Depression drove them away. Now there are only
two or three.”
Chapter Six
We gathered on the front porch and Virgil knocked.
Barely a minute passed before a man in his late forties
appeared at
the
door and invited us in. Amy Taylor’s grandson clenched a briar pipe between his
teeth, sported a thick, neatly trimmed mustache and wore a knitted cardigan
sweater. We shook hands and filed around our host and into the living room.
Amy was in reclining in a hospital bed. Living
arrangements had been modified for her comfort. Photos of past and present
generations crowded tabletops and dressers. There were pictures of young black
women with small babies, and older black women with grown children. There were
black soldiers, sailors, pilots, hardened veterans, innocents, scholars and professionals.
The branches of the family tree were abundantly fruitful.
She extended both her sagging arms to Violet in a
greeting. Virgil and I grinned, nodded painfully and tried to make small talk
with Rodney, the pipe-smoking grandson. Once chairs were in the proper place,
Rodney turned the lamplight on and the TV off.
“Do you know how long it’s been since we talked?” Violet
asked.
The old woman nodded and her eyes moistened.
“Do you remember Virgil, my husband?”
He took her hand as if he were picking up a sparrow.
“And this is Mr. Case. He is the gentleman who wants
to know about the Ryder house.”
The skin on her hand was soft and smooth, but she had
a firm healthy grip. I tried to convey in a handshake my own flawed
fallibility.
“I want to understand what’s going on out there, Mrs.
Taylor, and I think I need your help.”
She nodded and withdrew her hand. The understanding
that seemed to fill her eyes was encouraging.
“I hope your memory is better than mine,” I said. “If
someone asked me about events that happened a few years ago, I wouldn’t know
where to begin.”
She smiled, secure in the visions and memories of the
past surrounding her.
“Can you tell me about the Ryders?” I asked.
“I know all about ‘em,” she said. “I lived with ‘em
for 15 years.”
I leaned back in the chair relieved. Her voice was
strong and her words were slow but clear, the sign of a sound mind.
“Do you mind talking about them, now that they’re
gone?” I asked.
Her smile was playful, implying that some things
understood were better left unsaid. She shook her head and her jowls waddled.
“What you want to know, Frank?” she asked.
The use of my unmentioned middle name caught me off
guard. Everyone stared, waiting to see how I would respond.
“Tell me about Elinore,” I said.
Her eyes closed and a smile softened her face.
“What can I tell you that you don’t already know?” she
said, and then her expression changed. Her eyes filled with tears and I thought
she was going to cry.
“That poor baby was locked up all those years. It’s no
wonder she went crazy. If it hadn’t been for you, Frank…” and then she was
silent.
The room also filled with silence. Even the grandson
removed the pipe from his mouth so his teeth would not knock against the wood.
He acted as if he were hearing this account for the first time.
“Please go on,” I said.
The old woman’s lower lip trembled. “He said she had
‘organic weaknesses’ and couldn’t go anywhere. But when he went away, the mice
would play,” she said, and chuckled until tears spilled from her eyes. Her
expression changed again. “Then he sent her up to the attic,” she said.
The hair on the back of my neck was starting to stand
on end, but the others were too engrossed in Amy’s story and their own stunned
surprise to notice.
“We know she was nearly blind, but what kind of
organic weaknesses was ‘he’ talking about?” I asked.
“She wasn’t always that way,” Amy said. “She could see
some things well. She could see frogs and lizards in the grass and on the trees
thirty feet away. She had those big funny pop-eyes that stared at you hard. There
were a lot of people scared to look that baby in the eyes.”
“Were you scared of her, Amy?” I asked.
“She was my friend,” Amy said. “We grew up together. Still,
I tried not to look in her eyes, ‘cept maybe once or twice. The poor thing was
blind as a mole before too long. Her pappy made me learn to read and write so’s
I could be her eyes.”
“Were pop eyes her organic weakness, Amy,” I asked. If
it wasn't for her age, I might have suspected cataracts could have caused the
problem. Science knew next to nothing about the ‘milky white rain’ of the eyes,
until recently.
The old woman grinned and laughed. I was expecting to
hear her describe some anatomical ambiguities involving things as radical as
the shape of her skull.
“She liked to talk about her powers,” Amy said. Breath
did not come easily to her lungs. “She said she could speak in tongues, call
down lightning and thunder, makes dogs howl and people do her bidding.”
I glanced at Virgil. He quickly averted his eyes. Violet
was hanging on every word, as was the old woman’s grandson.
“Did you ever hear her speak in tongues?” I asked.
“Of course, often; she could go on for hours.”
“Did she fancy herself a witch?” I asked, knowing that
Svengalis and spiritualists were the fashion in those days.
Amy shrugged. “Not really. She said she could make
people living or dead also do her bidding.”
“Did you ever see anyone do her bidding?” I asked.
“She had a powerful influence over her pappy,” Amy
said, “and all the young men seemed to like her, even though he wouldn’t let
them come within a mile.”
She covered her mouth with a hand and laughed
silently. “But we had our ways, didn’t we, Frank?”
The reference was beginning to make me feel uneasy. “What
do you mean, ‘we had our ways?’” I asked, embarrassed.
“Being blind didn’t make that girl different from any
other woman. She had feelings and needs and enjoyed the company of a young man
now and then. Her pappy said, ‘no,’ but we had ways.”
“Amy, do you mean that Elinore had a…secret boyfriend?”
Violet asked, unable to restrain her curiosity.
“She had lots of ‘em,” the old woman said, “I used to
fix it so’s she could meet ‘em all the time. I wouldn’t let ‘em hurt her. I
just brought them together so she could do a little spoonin’.”
“Were they lovers or just friends?” I asked, indulging
my own curiosity.
Amy frowned. “Just friends; I wouldn’t let a man hurt
her, she was my baby.”
“How old were you, Amy?”
“I was just a child, in my teens.”
“How old was Elinore?”
A wrinkle troubled her brow. “She was old enough;
older than me, but I couldn’t tell.”
“Did you ever meet her mother?” I asked.
“Didn’t have one,” Amy said. “Never knew a mother’s
love. Her pappy said she died givin’ birth and the child was snatched from its
dead mama’s womb, which is why she had organic weaknesses.”
“What about Mr. Ryder?” I asked. “What kind of man was
he?”
“He was a hard man,” she said frowning. “He kept her
locked away for years, and when her eyes got bad, he gave her to me. I never heard
him say a kind word to nobody, not even his daughter. What kind of a man would
treat a child like that?”
The old woman was beginning to tire. I tried to be
brief.
“Was the wall around the house finished when you arrived?”
I asked.
“There has always been a wall around that house,
though I don’t know as you could rightly call it a wall,” she said. “The first
wall was just a bunch of old stones piled up a long time ago, in the
dreamtime.”
The dreamtime? I was getting confused and nervous. “Do
you know who put it up?” I asked.
She shook her head. Words were coming more slowly. “There
was a man who came to make it high and strong. I do not know his name, but once
he got started, he didn’t stop for fire nor famine. Miners’ houses burned down,
the water went bad, sheep and cattle died, and even the fruit on the vine and
the vegetables in the ground withered. It was the worst year in the history of
the county, at least for Elanville.”
I was wide-awake, but our elderly host was beginning
to nod and drowse. I wanted to continue, but courtesy demanded a short respite
no matter how anxious we all were to hear about the events that may have decimated
Elanville.
I begged the grandson for more questions and he
agreed; his own curiosity was aroused.
“How long were you with Elinore and when did you
leave?”
“A long time,” she said from behind closed eyes, “maybe
fifteen years. One day her pappy said, Amy, your services won’t be
needed
anymore.’
That’s all he said.”
“Was she all right then?” I blurted out. “Was she
showing signs of…insanity?”
The old face was tranquil in sleep for a moment then
she spoke in murmurs.
“She was puttin’ on weight, but seemed to be happy. He
let her wander through the flowers with her ‘magic glass,’ that’s all.”
“Amy, did she ever try to run away?” I asked
“Run away?” she replied. “Where’s a blind baby goin’
to run?”
We waited for more, which never came, and then she
began to snore. We were all relieved. Virgil covered a yawn with his hand and
stretched. Violet got to her feet. Rodney Taylor clamped the pipe between his
teeth and buttoned his sweater.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to her another
day,” I asked.
A man of few words and none to spare, Rodney Taylor
nodded as he led us to the door.
Chapter Seven
We reviewed the conversation on the way back to
grandma’s house. I was particularly interested in Elinore’s power to call down
lightning and thunder and to make people do her bidding. Virgil was curious
about the wall and the Elanville disaster, which seemed to have soured the land
and the water.
Pop-eyes, I concurred, was a sign of a thyroid condition.
Violet could not understand a relationship that allowed a man to lock up an
ailing child and not suffer some dreadful psychological remorse. Was he afraid
of her, or was he afraid of what she might say or do to others? We all wanted
to know more about the magic glass, but couldn’t reach any conclusions.
Mrs. Holmes was waiting with her grandchildren when we
returned. Short and chubby, her skin was as smooth as a baby’s bottom. Her
short, curly hair was the proper shade of blue-gray and she never stopped
smiling. She was sitting on a couch in front of the TV flanked by the two
little Stamper's; they were busy stuffing their mouths with an assortment of
snack foods.
“Did you talk to Amy?” She asked.
We nodded. Violet took the initiative to explain the
revelations that followed.
“Isn’t she delightful,” Mrs. Holmes said. It was more
a statement than a question. “I just love it when young people take an interest
in local history.”
“Mother, how well did you know Samuel Ryder?” Violet
asked without a pause.
Mrs. Holmes struggled with the hem of her dress, which
was riding up over her chubby knees. She shifted her bulk from one leg to the
other.
“If you were in business in this state in the early
1900s, you knew Samuel Ryder,” she said. “Your grandfather operated a saw mill.
Samuel bought railroad ties from us. He was also on the board of the C&O
Railroad. He was a very powerful man.”
“Then his death left Elinore wealthy?” I asked.
“Yes and no, Mr. Case. She had money, but it was the
kind you had to fight hard to keep. Since she was young and infirm, she was not
up to the task. She managed to keep a little, but her father’s associates duped
her out of most of it. There were rumors that she owned stocks and bonds, but
they were concealed somewhere in the house. Being blind, she didn’t know the
location. It took all she had to keep the house going and the taxes paid. She
ran out of money in the early fifties, made a little on coal, oil and gas
royalties, and rent on the company houses, but it wasn’t much.”