What the Dead Want (15 page)

D
OWN IN THE BASEMENT
H
AWK HAD GATH
ERED THEIR
mother's primary-source research from within three weeks before and after the fire and laid it out on the table. Interviews with witnesses, photographs, and journal entries. He'd organized all of it.

“The main thing,” he said, “is the increase in lynching photographs in the area during the time.”

“
Lynching
photographs?” Gretchen said. “Like crime scene photographs?”

Hope shook her head. “No, cousin,” she said. “Like souvenirs. People used to collect them, send them to their friends as postcards, even hang them up in their homes.”
Just hearing the words made Gretchen feel like she was going to throw up.

Hawk set the photographs out one after another on the table. They were devastating. Gretchen's stomach sank and her heart raced, and she felt like she really would lose her fancy meal. She was filled with revulsion and hatred for the people who did this and, she realized, the people who photographed it.

Picture after picture of brown-skinned men hanging from tree branches. She started to cry.

Hawk looked into her eyes and nodded. Seeing the murdered men was sad and horrifying. Seeing the people in the crowd enjoying themselves or acting like nothing was happening was appalling.

She thought of her own mother showing her the “spiritualist” pictures—how she was fixated on finding the ghosts hidden in the frame. How superficial and ridiculous it seemed compared to the work Esther did or Sarah, researching real people being tortured and murdered, and the history of such brutality.

She felt the anger rising in her, steeling her. She took the photos one by one and looked more closely. From somewhere within she could feel Esther's keen eye upon them. Some were taken on this land—it was clear. You could even see the steeple of the church in the background—like
she'd seen in other photographs of the era. In some pictures the dead and tortured bodies were surrounded by crowds of people, almost like it was a festival; people were sitting out on blankets, eating, smiling in the foreground. The last picture was of men hanging side by side, their faces and bodies badly beaten.

“This one,” Hope said. “It was taken days before the fire. Then these four. This tree is still there, she said. Out by the road between our properties.”

Tears ran down Gretchen's face as she looked at the picture. “Someone was meticulously documenting this.”

“Like the Nazis did,” Simon said, “keeping a record of all the things they did because they thought it was right, they were proud of it.”

“Mmhm,” Hope said. “And millions killed too. The death toll from the Atlantic slave trade was ten million.”

Gretchen had settled herself in a corner with a pile of papers from the house and was frantically going over them, looking for anything about lynchings on the land.

Hope handed Simon a box. “Any letters, put in this pile,” she said. “Looks like these are all journals; anything from 1862 to 1865 set aside. You find anything at all from George and James, hand it over quick. We know what Fidelia was doing, but apart from Axton Cotton
correspondence we got very little from the men.”

Simon set to work, taking letters out of envelopes, leafing through journals for dates.

“Getting this information doesn't change anything,” Gretchen said again. “Our mothers were trying to fix it by archiving—by making sure there were photographs of every person who died, no matter how gruesome.”

“But they'd been collecting these for a long time,” Hawk said. “And honestly the spirits have only gotten stronger. It's almost like the more pictures, the more accidents in the town.”

“It sure seems like it,” Gretchen said, “given the pictures I took in the house over the last two days. I have rolls of them—plus shots on the Leica.”

She handed the digital camera to Hawk, who was compiling all the photographs. “Scroll through and see if it picked anything up that's paranormal.”

“I found something,” Hope shouted. She was holding up a letter addressed to George Axton from a man named Graham E. Rice, dated the year of the fire.

She unfolded the brittle and yellowed paper and they stood beside her to read.

Esteemed Brother in struggle,

Your progress has been as impressive as your stealth.

Axton parish has drawn them all out, but a question remains: Why take them one by one when we could fix the problem with one happy accident?

Surely there is an upcoming cause for celebration where they might be gathered and at ease.

In answer to your query, I have looked into the matter of the Moore family for you. And it is as you suspect. They are cousins to the Greens. No one could blame you for unwittingly darkening the race, but if discovered it will indeed prevent you from ever becoming an officer, despite your ample contributions to protecting and purifying the white race. You've made a mistake in need of correction.

Yours,

Graham E. Rice

“Happy accident,” Gretchen whispered, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of her.

“Lynching was too slow for them,” Hawk said bitterly.

“This is the man who started the fire?” Simon asked. “Who is George?”

“My great-great-great-great-grandfather,” Gretchen said. “Who was a cotton trader, and apparently a white supremacist.”

She had gone over to the pile of Esther's fire photographs and was sifting through them, looking for any
familiar image, the church, a photograph taken on the anniversary that might have a spirit image of the fire . . . but found nothing.

Hawk and Simon were hurriedly sorting photographs by era—setting aside all the ones from within a year of the fire.

Gretchen was growing more frantic and frustrated and wanted a drink. They barely had any more information than they'd had hours ago and time was running out. When she looked up to see the clock, the lights flickered. Then something on the first floor banged, shattered, and crashed with a thundering reverberation above their heads.

1863

Valerie and I took the girls swimming at the lake. A whole day outing, just the four of us without the baby.

It was incredible to see them running and jumping. Swinging from low tree branches into the water. We waded in with them, happy that they are both becoming powerful swimmers, scolding them for splashing us, but secretly admiring their joy and confidence.

The two are so close I feel sometimes they have their own language. They finish each other's sentences.

If there is one thing that has given this life of domestic servitude meaning, it is seeing the girls play together and knowing that they will have better lives than Valerie and I have lived.

Knowing that one day they will be women that can make their own decisions; can go to school; can leave this place, maybe even this country; can become women who stand up for one another.

The thing I am most proud of is their strength of will. I will die before I ever see someone take it from them.

H
OPE WAS THE FIRST ONE UP THE STAIRS.
W
HEN THE
rest reached the top they could see that a heavy tree branch had smashed through the living room window and was now lying amid shattered glass on the couch and floor. Outside the air was cooling off and the sky was dark.

“We're running out of time,” Hawk said, looking through the shattered pane into the fields.

The force of the branch had also knocked pictures from the walls, shattering their frames.

Just then the wind picked up and blew through the empty pane. The light bulb in the ceiling lamp popped and burst, and then the lamp came crashing down as if the
cord had been cut, hitting Gretchen on the back, just missing her head. She fell to the ground, gasping and wincing in pain.

On the ground next to her were pictures that had come loose from the shattered frames. Blood was trickling down her face.

First the bite, then the gouge out of her shoulder, then the stings, the scratch on her face. And now this. If certain people were marked for death on this anniversary, Gretchen thought, it was beginning to look like she was one of them.

She crouched there shivering, Simon at her side putting pressure on the wound. Though her vision was blurred she was certain she saw something new among the wreckage. A beautiful bucolic landscape shot, the forest and church steeple visible in the distance. She reached out for it and then held it.

“I didn't notice this before,” she said; she felt dizzy, and steeled herself against losing consciousness.

“It's a photograph my mother got from the Chautauqua County Historical Society,” Hawk said. “They had a sale of all their damaged or duplicated photos.”

Gretchen stared at it, transfixed. The land was so lovely; even though the photograph was black-and-white, it gave off a lush sense of everything being untouched; no
roads, the tall forest, the plain white steeple and the high grass and wildflowers.

“Let me help you up,” Simon said. But she pushed him away. Turned the photograph over in her hands. On the back there was a square brittle piece of cardboard that seemed to be stuck or glued there.

Gretchen gently peeled the square back from the photo, careful not to damage it. Fortunately it was only the edges that were adhered, and the center seemed untouched. And the humidity had made it easier to peel them apart. She turned it over, then peered at a horrible scene.

It was like something Esther had taken in Vietnam.

Hope squinted at the photograph, and then crouched down beside her.

In the center of the frame were two little girls maybe six years old wearing matching white dresses, looking up at a man dressed in a dark suit. He was holding a bottle of liquor over their heads—in the other hand a lit candle—which had already set light to one of the girls' hair and dress, flames partly engulfing her.

“It's Rebecca,” Gretchen whispered.

“And Celia,” Hope said, staring transfixed at the photograph, her eyes bright with tears. “They were used to start the fire. He burned them first.”

Beneath the picture in looping cursive handwriting
were the words
First Communion
.

Behind this picture were two more, which came apart in brittle pieces. One in which the girls were being doused in alcohol, their faces looking simply confused. One in which both girls' mouths were open in a horrified scream, and another where they were entirely engulfed in flame—their hands outstretched, reaching for help that would never come.

1864

He was changing. I knew once Adam was born. He would stay late with the hunting club, come back smelling of liquor and campfires. He thought I didn't suspect. Like I didn't know when a cross had been burned. Under James's influence he'd denounced the ways of his friends. But with James off fighting he'd begun going to meetings again, new meetings he said. Just for business. Why, the whole town's there, it's not so bad. How could he keep doing business if he wasn't in the club? Why should we be ashamed of our race? he'd asked. And then I knew he was too far gone. There was a new group, up from the South, like the White Christian Patriots, called the Ku Klux Klan. I knew he was going to their meetings. I knew he had turned.

I'd heard them talking, his friends from the “hunt club,”—people saying there was so much to be gained from “cleansing the town.” It made me sick. Then there was the lynching all but advertised in the newspaper—the war was coming to an end but a new kind of war felt like it was beginning. Three times in a row in the past months, people we were bringing to safety were captured on the road, hung, killed—strung up in the trees—and that had never happened before. Someone was telling those cowards where we'd be, what route we'd take.

He was like two different people. Our church had always been like an island in a sea of brutality. But just a week before, drunk after a “meeting,” he'd said the most horrible thing: Can't
you keep that little goddamn black ragamuffin away from our daughter? and I said to him: I married the wrong brother.

He'd slapped me so hard. He said, Oh, don't worry, Fidelia, the Lord works in mysterious ways, you'll all be as free as the breeze soon.

I have decided to leave. I am taking Celia and Adam and we are getting away from this place. George's rages and his hatred are too much. My secret savings are barely enough for us to leave, but I have no choice. His irrationality and cruelty grow every day. Right after Celia's Communion—then we will go, I swear it. I should never have stayed so long here, I should never have married at all.

I have only one hope now. And it's that Celia and Rebecca will somehow have a good life. A better life, even if they don't grow up together—that they will remember their friendship. That they will always remain as brave and loving as they are now, and not be poisoned by the hate of generations. And my hope for Adam is that he is young enough that he won't remember this place. That he has some of the courage and temperance of his sister, that there is some small part of his uncle's strength and kindness coursing through his veins, and that he does not grow up to be like his father.