Fireworks Over Toccoa (10 page)

She added some bay leaves and fresh garden carrots to the stock and it smelled wonderful. Lily knew that her mother would take great issue with her boiling a good roaster this way. She had listened to Honey’s recipes for fowl ad nauseam, but this was the one fail-safe way Lily knew. And at the end of the day, even if it was prosaic and “common,” this was in fact the way that Lily preferred her chicken.

The black plastic handle on the white Lux minute timer, a gift from the Chattanooga cousins, clicked to the zero and the tinny bell instantly began to ring.

Lily removed the chicken from the pot and the casserole dish from the oven. When they were cool, she wrapped slices of chicken and corn soufflé casserole in wax paper and put them into one of the Keener’s heavy paper sacks. She dropped in the fresh bread. Then she removed several Cokes from the coldest part of the refrigerator and put them in the sack to keep everything cool.

Looking at the clock, Lily grabbed the sack, turned off the radio, and bolted out the kitchen door. She’d put much more effort into the cooking than she had planned and she was running late.

As she headed for the Packard parked in the side driveway, the telephone began to ring inside the house, but already in the car with the ignition started, Lily did not hear it. She drove off, and the phone continued to ring and ring.

By the creek on the edge of the field, shirt removed, Jake splashed cool water on his face and cleaned up. From where he was standing, he could see the tops of several hundred mortar pipes protruding from the ground in neat lines. They looked like the helmets of infantrymen, dug into trenches, prepared for battle. Jake stuck his head right into the rippling brook and shook off the image of war, the shock of the cool water soothing and therapeutic.

During the morning he’d made very good progress, and the break was a welcome relief. His muscles were sore, but he undeniably liked this feeling—his body telling him that he’d done a good day’s work. During his time overseas he developed a keen appreciation for his body and an understanding of its workings. It had taken him up impossibly steep hills during long, hard fights where exhaustion meant death. Of all the pounds of equipment he carried in war, his own machine was the one that saved him time and time again. Skin taut across flesh, musculature visibly outlined, he moved fluidly, sinuously, his body honed from both calculated labor and the natural instincts born of survival. Grace belying strength.

Drying his chest with a small towel, Jake recognized that he had lost some weight. He made a mental note to try to eat more, as his mother was always pleading with him to do. He loved his mother so and he smiled, thinking about her.

They kicked the door open at 1:27 in the morning. The splintering wood of the door frame was loud, but his mother’s screams were louder. She spoke no English and the uniformed men spoke no Italian. They wore brown suits, brown ties, brown overcoats. Soggy fedoras. Side holsters with .45-caliber automatics. They flashed their badges in cursory fashion and attempted to locate and identify the man for whom they had come as quickly and professionally as possible. But of course the screaming made this difficult on all counts.

“Ernesto Russo? Ernesto Russo?”

The men read from a document dripping with freezing rain.
RESIDENT ALIEN
was printed in big red block lettering.

The men grabbed him as he walked into the foyer, unshaven, dazed, tying his bathrobe. More screaming. Pleading in Italian. She grabbed a picture frame off the wall. Thrusting it at them. A letter of thanks signed by Herbert Hoover. But they pushed her aside and they took him away as fast as they could, his slippers filling with sleet as they marched him to the brown car and shoved him into the back.

Jake plunged his head in the creek again, shutting down memories once more. He yanked it out and shook his head, sending water flying from his hair. Then he removed a small black comb from a pocket in his jeans and pulled it through his wet hair. He put on a clean shirt and began to walk back into the field.

As Jake approached his truck, he saw Lily walking toward him, the sun behind her, looking even more fresh and beautiful than she had that morning.

Lily waved at him.

He waved back.

The sun climbed over the top of Lily’s house and began its descent into the western horizon. The high-backed rockers, swaying ever so slightly in the afternoon Currahee breeze, cast the beginnings of their shadows along the front porch.

Inside the empty house, the phone rang.

The tall, broad-shouldered man stood in the open aircraft hangar and held a telephone receiver to his ear.

“Come on, pick up.”

Frustrated that no one was answering, he ran a hand through his fine blond hair.

The cord of the heavy phone ran back into a communications office where two British officers administered the overseas calls. Through the heavy glass window of the office, they watched the man attentively. Indeed, they had been given clear orders to take good care of him.

But the man did not look happy. He glanced repeatedly outside the hangar where a Douglas C-54 transport plane gunned its four engines, ready for a quick takeoff.

Night was falling and the fog rolled in off the Channel. Soon all of South Britain would be socked in. If the C-54 didn’t get off the ground immediately, air traffic control would most certainly delay the flight until tomorrow, no matter how much weight this man’s company could throw around.

“Where are you, Lils?” he said into the phone.

One of the British officers took an incoming call in the communications office. The officer nodded repeatedly, put down the phone, and stepped out, approaching the man.

“Sir, the tower says you have to go now.”

“Five more minutes.”

“Sir, the other passengers are waiting.”

Another man, wearing the U.S. Army uniform of a lieutenant colonel, jogged into the hangar.

“Paul, the pilot says if we don’t leave right now we’ll miss our flight window. If you want to get home early we have to go. Come on, you can call her when we land in Macon.”

The fair-haired man, slender and a bit drawn, as though he’d aged more than he should have over the last few years, nodded to his friend and handed the receiver to one of the British officers, who terminated the call.

“You know what, maybe I’ll just show up on the front doorstep and surprise her.”

“Excellent idea, pal,” the lieutenant colonel said, clapping Paul on the back. “Women love surprises.”

The men ran for the plane.

This is absolutely incredible,” said Jake. “I think this may be the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.”

Lily and Jake walked through the dense, lush forest, wayfarers stumbling into some paradise. They followed an overgrown path through the woodland, shaded and fecund and undisturbed. Luxuriant ferns, leaves fat and thick, grew waist high. A rich carpet of pine needles covered the earth underfoot. Just ahead lay the burbling bend of a creek, its rocks soft with lichen and moss.

“Everything on the other side of the creek all the way down to Highway One-twenty-three is part of Holly Hills,” said Lily.

“So basically your family owns a small country.”

“See that clearing way out there? Next to Bartam’s Field? After the War Between the States, my grandfather had those meadows planted with long staple Creole cotton. Acres and acres of it. The best mills all over the South bought from Holly Hills.”

“What happened?”

“Sea Island.”

“That’s good cotton.”

“And cheaper.” Jake carried the sack Lily had packed as they continued on into the woods. The farther in they went, the denser it became. “My father went to law school, the land went untended, and my parents dug a swimming pool and contented themselves with barbeques in the backyard. But I, on the other hand, came out here quite a lot.”

A big grin grew on Lily’s face and Jake could see the mischief in her. He liked it.

They talked playfully, effortlessly, the conversation bouncing in a seamless montage of childhood anecdotes and favorite foods and hopes and dreams and wishes.

Lily said that she always loved coming out here because the woods transported her to the magical far-off places she’d read about in Thoreau and John Muir. Her favorite was to imagine she was in the spellbound forest from
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. “I’m a great dreamer and armchair traveler,” Lily confessed. “In truth, I’ve actually only been out of Georgia once.”

“To where?”

“Chattanooga. I visited the Ruby Falls caves when I was ten. They were amazing, filled with these huge stalactites and flowstone formations, millions of years old. It’s nature’s art. But my dream, as silly and trite as it sounds, is to visit Paris someday. I want to see the art in the Louvre more than anything.”

“The greatest art I saw in Paris wasn’t in the Louvre,” Jake replied. “It was on the sidewalk outside. Literally right on the sidewalk. In chalk. I don’t know the woman’s name, but I watched her work all day and into much of the night. Patrons came and went from the cafés, watching her sketch, but she didn’t even notice. She just concentrated wholly and entirely on her work. She drew a complex portrait of a ship at sea, completely from memory. The details were perfect. It was magnificent.”

Once again, Lily could hear that unique passion in Jake Russo’s voice, see it in his eyes.

“It rained late that night in Paris,” he continued, and then paused, remembering. “My dream is to create something equally inspired someday.”

When they got to the creek, Jake took Lily’s hands and helped her across the slick rocks. In truth, this was an easy task for her—because of her frequent trips here she could nearly navigate the rocks blindfolded—but she took his hand nonetheless. And at once, his touch sent sudden and unexpected warmth through her. How could something as simple and sweet as holding hands be so erotic? Even remembering the moment on the truck, with his hand on her knee, sent a new rush, involuntary and feverish, through her body.

The creek’s spattering flow dampened their clothing. Lily felt her dress, a light cornflower blue floral print, clinging to her body. This was the sort of thing that was supposed to make a proper Toccoa girl wary and self-conscious, but Lily didn’t care.

After crossing the creek, Jake let her hand go, but the sensation of his touch remained like a spell. What was happening? Yesterday morning her life was perfect. She knew exactly what she wanted, husband and house on the hill. And she had it. She had it all. But that had changed. In a flash, in a few clicks of the minute timer, all her desires had changed and she wanted something else. But how could she be with this beautiful, passionate dark-haired man and keep the rest of the world intact? She couldn’t, and she knew that. The world beyond these magical woods, the real world, had rules, and she had signed up for them.

Lily took in a deep breath of the fragrant forest air, sighing as she released it—she loved these woods so.

“Do you hear that?” Jake said, stopping for a moment. “That rushing sound.”

The playful grin again came over Lily’s face and she stopped, too. “It’s the legend.”

“What legend?”

“The legend of Toccoa.” She stood very close to him as he listened. “The Cherokee lived all through this area before the settlers came. Stephens County was the heart of their nation. As the story goes, Toccoa was an Indian princess, the most beautiful in the tribe—‘Toccoa’ is the Cherokee word for ‘beautiful.’ One summer afternoon, she was out alone in the forest and she met a young warrior from an enemy tribe named Wild Waters with long black hair, deep dark eyes, who spoke as sweetly as the scent of Cherokee roses. Naturally, they fell in love.”

“Naturally,” said Jake, enjoying this.

“But Toccoa’s father had already betrothed her to a man in their tribe and he refused to let her see Wild Waters of the enemy nation.”

“Why do fathers always do this sort of thing in old legends?”

“Good question. Mothers make much better antagonists.”

Jake laughed. “So how does the story end?”

“Not well for Toccoa. There’s a secret meeting planned between her and Wild Waters at the top of the falls, but there’s some unseen moss and a very slippery boulder, and he jumps over after her, and, well—”

“Sounds like a cautionary tale.”

“Oh yes, the ministers around here love telling it, but I think the ending is sweet.”

“Which is?”

“That if you listen closely, with all your heart, you can hear Toccoa and her love’s laughter in the creek.”

Jake smiled at her, then tilted his head a little, listening. “I think I hear it.”

“Yes. Me, too. I always think I can when I come out here. Of course, Toccoa Falls are just about a mile up the creek and some would say that’s really what we’re hearing.”

“No, that’s laughter. Definitely laughter.”

“Early settlers reported seeing an Indian princess in the forest. The Cherokee said it was Toccoa, who had become one of the Nunnehi, one of the invisible people.”

“The Nunnehi?” Jake said, asking for more.

“A spirit.” Lily paused, a bit more serious now. Jake could tell that this was in fact something that was important to her, probably something she’d had in her head since she was a child. “Sometimes I think I see her, too.”

Jake nodded, understanding. Then he looked around, taking in the beauty of this place. Lily just watched him, enjoying the sight of Jake, who seemed to have relaxed since coming out here. He seemed brighter, airier. She watched as he closed his eyes, moved his head back, and took in the sounds and smells of the forest. Lily loved being able to take him here, give him this, and she wondered if this was how he felt about seeing her enjoy his cooking.

It was a lovely spot for a picnic, Lily thought. They could sit right there by the creek. But watching Jake take in the splendor and truly appreciate it in a way that no one else in her life, even Paul, ever had or really ever could prompted her to make a decision.

“Come on,” she said to Jake, motioning. “I want to show you something.”

Continuing their conversation, a constantly flowing stream of easy, fun, and sometimes intimate talk, the kind shared by close friends, they walked on, the growth thicker and shadier, flowering quince and mountain laurel forming rivulets of color all around them. Every few minutes they would slow to savor the natural enchantment of the wood.

If only there were some magic that would allow her to turn back time, Lily secretly thought, to have met Jake before her marriage to Paul, before the war. Maybe on some level, that was why she took him here, to this place, where there were no signs of modern life, no cues from the real world. This path that she now walked was just as it was a hundred years ago. Just as it was throughout her childhood. It had always felt to her like a walk into the past. And now, more than ever, it seemed like a walk into a time when no fork in life’s path had yet been encountered.

Suddenly she took his arm and stopped him. “There.”

“What?”

“Do you see it?”

“I see kudzu. Lots and lots of kudzu.”

“Look closer. It’s right in front of you.” She was enjoying this.

Jake stood in the small clearing and looked around. Kudzu was everywhere. During the early 1930s, the U.S. Soil Conservation Service had strongly encouraged southern farmers to plant the Asian vine in order to reduce erosion, a real problem with Georgia’s infamous red clayous soil. But a bigger problem turned out to be that kudzu encountered no hard freeze in the South to keep it in check the way it did in its native Japan, so the plant quickly grew out of control. It crawled down from the rise above them, heading for the sustenance of the creek and engulfing everything in its path. The deciduous vine snaked up the great timeless pines. Like thick netting it covered whole coppices of young hardwoods. Thickets of sweet gum and wild dogwood were swathed entirely in its ponderous green leaves.

Finally, Lily leaned into him a little and pointed him to a huge mass of the vine, twenty feet high, thirty feet across, just down the path, directly in front of them. “Look, right there, right behind the clearing.”

As he rose out of the top of the kudzu mass, Jake saw something that was decidedly man-made. “Is that a chimney?”

“Look closer.”

“Whoa. It’s a house.”

“You might be a little generous with that term, but yes.”

Jake walked right down to the kudzu-covered structure, as fascinated about this as Lily was about the firework she saw in the field. On closer examination, under the climbing broad-leaved vines Jake saw the shape of a shack, numerous panes of numerous windows, and the frame of a door. As he looked closer, he could see that the vines had been torn away from the windows and door, not in the last few days, but clearly someone had loosely tended to this place over the years.

“It was a sharecropper’s cabin,” Lily explained. “Come on.”

Next to the overgrown path leading to the front of the door, Lily picked up a three-foot length of stick. It was worn and smooth, a tool created years ago. Jake watched, intrigued, as she used it to swipe some new kudzu shoots away from the front windows. Then she used the stick to clear and lift away shoots that had grown over the front door. She slowly turned the doorknob. Thick flakes of rust fell off. She eased the door open, snapping some rogue shoots that had succeeded in slipping through the door frame and were trying to explore the inside of the cabin.

Jake set the sack down and joined her, and watched with attentive amusement how excited she was to be here, and how entirely unfazed she was by the fresh spiderwebs on the door-jamb, which she brushed aside as she went inside.

The inside of the cabin was cool and clean. Startlingly so. But several of the windows were missing glass panes, and these openings, along with large gaps in the cabin’s wood planking, created good ventilation. The kudzu mesh provided a natural screen. Jake had expected staleness and dust in the cabin, but instead it smelled of soft plants and living things. A few luna moth cocoons, vibrant and green, hung from a beam. To stand in the middle of the space was to feel the essence of the forest, a concentrate of its vigor and timelessness, as though the kudzu provided some sort of cover from temporal ravages.

Lily poked the stick through some of the open panes and used it to clear the lingering kudzu away from the windows, allowing even more light, gauzy columns of it, into the cabin. It was dream light, hued amber and celadon.

Jake looked around. The inside of the cabin was a single rectangular room, about three hundred square feet. Planks of wood covered most of the floor, though some areas of the red hard-packed dirt below lay exposed. One wall was anchored by a large river-stone fireplace. Another wall was lined with brick shelving. There was a small alcove with a few more shelves that looked like it might have been a pantry at one time. In a corner, there were some old camping supplies, a couple of Dietz kerosene barn lanterns, blankets, tarpaulins.

Jake examined a large shallow iron pan. “This is mining gear.”

“The Georgia Gold Belt ran all along here, just north of the forest all the way to the Alabama border, not a good thing for the Cherokee, who were all forced to relocate west when it was discovered.”

Lily produced an old tattered sheet of folded browned paper from one of the shelves and handed it to Jake. “Look,” she said to him.

He opened it with great care. “It’s an old map,” he said with interest.

“Yes, of gold veins running under Auraria, a small town just a couple counties over.”

Jake looked off for a moment, reflecting on the map and its meaning. “I wonder what happened to the people who lived here.”

“Me, too. I’ve thought about it often.”

“Think they got gold fever and went to Auraria?”

“My father and I stopped there once.”

“What’s it like?”

“Ghost town.”

They both considered that for a moment, the image of a barren town washing over them.

“Wonder if they got there before all the gold was gone,” Jake mused.

“I don’t know, but there’s something about walking down the empty streets of Auraria, wind knocking rotted shutters on the broken saloon, iron jail bars standing rusted in a heap of charred lumber…I always felt they should have stayed here in the woods.”

Jake smiled at Lily as she stood in the middle of the cabin, seeing that she felt safe in this place.

Carefully refolding the map, he put it back and examined the shelving. Along with a few curious items, including a small collection of old ruined-looking oil paints, a small canister of wood glue, and a fairly clean Raggedy Ann doll, smile plastered on its face, there were a couple dozen Civil War–era bullets, presumably found nearby. Jake guessed them to be .44 and .50 calibers. Next to them were several tarnished brass buttons from an officer’s uniform. Jake examined one, running his finger over the raised words
SOUTH CAROLINA
, which surrounded a little palmetto, the state tree.