Four and Twenty Blackbirds (14 page)

IV

I have a savings account that was supposed to be a college fund. Dave started it for me out of my "share" of earnings from his photographs, and it is more than sufficient for me to shun employment for a few years yet, so long as I stay living at home and don't feel the need for a Porsche. I cleaned out half of that account and transferred the rest to my checking. It was a lot of money to have at my immediate disposal, but I didn't know how much dough I was going to need for this road trip and I was determined not to come up short.

Even though it was after midnight, I hit the road. I probably should have waited, but I'm not very patient under the best of circumstances, and it seemed best to leave while I still had all that psychological momentum built up. Besides, Macon's only three or four hours south of here, provided the roadwork stays at a minimum. The state of Georgia is forever widening, repaving, and generally altering I-75 to facilitate the downward flux of northern tourists to their Sunshine State destination.

Welcome to Georgia: billboard space for Florida—not to mention a most miserable part of the world to be driving through in the middle of the night. There's nothing at all to keep you awake on either side of Atlanta, and I was wishing with each passing mile that I'd put off my quest until a more reasonable hour. Tatie wasn't going anywhere, if indeed she hadn't left years before. Lulu had shut up when I said I'd look in a phone book, so I might expect to find Tatie still in the area. If the phone book idea was a wild goose chase, my aunt would have been the first to tell me.

This trip could have waited a few hours more, but it was too late now.

My head nodded with fatigue made more potent by the rhythmic white noise behind the music on the radio, and my eyes ached with each pair of headlights that sailed by. But Macon wasn't far. I could make it. Atlanta was more than halfway, and its towering lights were growing dim out my back window. Less than an hour south from here I'd get within Macon's city limits and find a hotel. Everything would be fine.

Something dusty, something charred sage and rosemary filled my sinuses and made my sleepy eyeballs itch. At first I wondered if there was something wrong with my car's AC, but I figured out the scent's true source before I even heard the voice.

This is madness.

I didn't jump. I was too tired to be startled, or at least too tired to act on it. I raised my gaze to the rearview mirror and met a familiar pair of eyes, though not the ones I might have expected. The voice came not from Mae, who fancied herself my mother, but from one of her sisters—I knew not which.

Once, a long time ago, Lulu had said that I should ask my questions of the ghosts, so there on the southbound side of I-75, I did. "What's madness? Me doing this?"

All of it. Time, over and over changing nothing—repeating the same lives again and again, each time expecting things will come out different. They never do. It's like riding a horse in a big circle, just out front of a boneyard. You keep thinking you've gone past all those angry dead folks, but then you come up on 'em again, right where you left them, and they're still just as mad as hell to see you.

"All I'm doing is taking a trip to go ask an old woman some questions."

'Sthat all? I guess I'm crazy too, then. See, I look at you, all grown up and a woman now, and I think this time—yes, this time it has to be different. I look at you and I can't imagine how you could be the same person, there on the inside. Malachi sees it—or maybe he doesn't. I think he knows it so sure he doesn't have to see it anymore. That's faith for you, right there. It's faith when you hear the Lord talk so loud that you can't hear regular people and regular reason anymore.

An' I wish you had faith a little more. I wish your auntie's words could hold you, but I know they can't, and I know mine can't either because I know better than anyone who you really are. Your aunt said Tatie knew, and she's right—all us old folks, nearly dead but not quiet yet, we all know. And I know you'll not be stopped by us. But your auntie's right. You're not even asking the right questions. The things you think you want to know don't matter for nothing. The old woman will answer you, and she'll speak true because you're asking her nothing of value. Not yet.

Mae can call you her baby if she likes, but you and I both know you're
no sweet innocent. Mae is blinded by who you are, but I'm not, and I want to see things different this time. But damned if you don't make it hard on us, going off into the lion's den like this. Damned if you don't make us wonder. Damned if you don't make us doubt what we know.

Damned if you do.

"But I—I'm not Avery, am I?" I took a second to glance in the mirror then but she was gone, vanished as surely as if she'd never been there. "That's not fair," I grumbled aloud, whapping my hands on the steering wheel. "You oughta at least stick around long enough for me to respond."

Right at the height of my indignation, I suddenly realized that my car was no longer on the road.

"I've wrecked," I gasped, lifting my forehead. It stung where the steering wheel had carved a deep dent in the flesh. I'd fallen asleep, and the wheel made a crummy pillow, but I thanked God for it anyway. In my dream state I'd wandered off the interstate and found myself puttering at a snail's crawl through heavy grass, my foot off the gas but the little Nugget engine still demanding to move forward.

I'd not wrecked, I'd fallen asleep and wandered off the road.

I'd been terribly lucky.

I sat up straight and peered over the wheel like a short retiree. Inch by inch I guided my car back onto the road and pointed it straight at the nearest exit. Adrenaline from the close call kept me alert, but even that shock of near-calamity wouldn't hold for long. It was 3:00
A.M.
and I needed sleep badly, regardless of how close to my destination I'd come.

No more silly risks.

The city was near enough that I was not hard-pressed to find a major hotel chain. I left a credit card with an honest receptionist at the front desk (by exhausted accident, not by request), and tucked myself into a room last decorated sometime in the early 1980s. I hung a Do Not Disturb sign on the doorknob and fell asleep before I had time to think too hard about my gently petulant passenger. I decided to come to the conclusion that I'd dreamed her, and any message she delivered sprang from my own unconscious concerns.

Leave it to me to take the easy way out.

I slept until the next morning, though when I checked the big red numbers on the clock beside my head, it was two hours into the afternoon. I didn't much care. I took my time with a shower and getting dressed, then gathered my things and threw them into the car. Up at the main desk they returned my wayward credit card, which was good of them—I hadn't even noticed it was missing. I folded my receipt and shoved it in my back pocket as I reached for the glass doors to leave.

Something stopped me—a collection of words at the far corner of my vision, hiding behind a clear door in a small red metal booth. It was just a short phrase, a headline and a grainy photograph that captured my attention. "Police Widen Search for Twice-Escaped Convict." And beneath the bold black banner was posted an old mug shot of my maniac cousin.

I turned away from the exit and fed enough change into the slot to buy one of the newspapers with Malachi's face on it. I didn't read the article right away; I waited until I was safely alone in my car. Even then I didn't really read the story, I only skimmed it to confirm what the headline had led me to guess. He'd gotten loose, diving out of a second-story window at the courthouse during his arraignment. The police had an idea that he was headed home to Macon. And why not? Who had ever defended him but Tatie? I wondered after his parents. Had I seen them before? Had they been at his trial when I was small?

No, all I remembered so far as his family went was the wicked old Eliza, glaring at me as her nephew was led away. If his mom and dad had been there, they'd been reserved enough that I couldn'trecall seeing them. But his religious fervor must have been imparted to him by someone. His parents were the most likely suspects. For some reason, Tatie didn't strike me as the religious type.

I set the paper on the passenger seat and started my car. What I'd learned changed nothing. All it meant was that there would likely be police watching the Dufresne household, which was fine by me. I wasn't breaking in, I was visiting; and if they wanted to make sure Malachi didn't get inside, I was fine with that too. So much the better. It wasn't as if he was chasing me down, for he couldn't possibly know I was on my way to Eliza's. In a way, I had the drop on him, a turnaround which left me smug.

I was less than twenty miles from Macon, and it took me less than twenty minutes to get there. I picked an exit with an abundance of fast-food places, settling on a sandwich shop where the polyester-clad employees provided me with a phone book. I found four listings for Dufresne: Eliza M., John, James-Henry and Esther, and an S. F., otherwise unspecified.

Eliza M. Her address was listed as 3112 Chiswick Lane, and her phone number was printed alongside the entry. I copied the information onto the back of a sturdy napkin and put it in my pocket with the credit card receipt. Should I call first? No. Better to land on her doorstep. Combine surprise and audacity, and see what sort of reaction it got.

I asked around the restaurant, but no one knew how to point me towards Chiswick until an older gentleman looked at the zip code. "That's a ways off from here, if it's where I'm thinking. South of town a few miles and then a few more into the middle of nowhere." He gave me directions to where he believed the road was that turned out to be rough directions indeed.

I didn't find the house until it was almost dark, and when I dragged my car alongside it, I almost wished I'd missed it. The place was enormous and horrible—a bleak, Gothic Tara. Giant trees older than Georgia's statehood crowded in against the pale wooden walls, thick and menacing guardians who would have actively discouraged visitors if only they could. Not to be outdone, the glass at every black-shuttered window was mottled, wavy, and warped as testament to the house's age and resilience; and along the wide exterior kudzu clung tight from the bushes to the storm drains and up all three chimneys, pretending to be ivy. It cast a black lace shadow against the few windows where a light was on.

A frail, stooped figure passed across one broken square of light and disappeared back into the recesses of the antebellum labyrinth.

Eliza was home.

Two shiny, dark-colored cars were parked as inconspicuously as unmarked police cars can park. Their bulk lurked partially hidden by the big troll trees, but their hoods and bumpers poked out from either side of the monstrous trunks. It wouldn't do me any good to sneak up—they'd seen me long before I'd seen them. Besides, I hadn't done anything wrong—at least, I hadn't done anything
illegal
. Why should I feel forced to sneak anywhere?

Feigning confidence, I zipped the Death Nugget around the circular driveway and stopped it in front of the door, ignoring the cop cars with conscious effort. I slammed my car door closed, making a show of the noise. See? I'm not trying to sneak or skulk. See? Just minding my own business, paying a visit to an elderly relative. Innocent as can be.

I rang the doorbell.

From the other side I heard footsteps too heavy to be hers. Two great, resounding clacks echoed as the bolts were drawn back and the door swung inward. A large man greeted me. He was too old to be middle-aged but wasn't yet a senior citizen, and he was tall enough to be staring down at the top of my head, but not so wide that he could be called fat. I lifted my eyes from his chest and planted them squarely on his somber face.

"Can I help you, madam?"

"Yes sir, you can. You can tell Eliza her niece is here to see her."

One of his bushy, salt-and-pepper eyebrows lifted as he scanned me from curly head to black-booted foot. "I think perhaps you are mistaken."

I pressed my fingertips to my chest in faux astonishment. "What? Tatie didn't tell you she had a nigger in the family woodpile? I assure you that we are in fact near and dear relations, and I think she might be interested in talking to me."

The doorman hesitated, but he did not withdraw. He recovered his composure and said, with carefully measured dignity, "Ms. Dufresne is not receiving visitors at this time. Perhaps if you were to leave a message and return, she might give you an audience at a later date. Since you are family, you no doubt know about the unpleasantness with her nephew—your cousin, I suppose. She's quite elderly, you understand, and she's not taken the news well."

It was all I could do not to laugh in his face, but he seemed perfectly nice, and being rude wasn't likely to get me half so far as manners might. "Malachi? Of course I know. I'm the reason he was in jail to begin with." I let that sink in before following it up with the rest. "
I'm
the kid he tried to kill fifteen years ago. And a couple of nights ago, too, come to think of it."

His right eyebrow joined the left one, high up in the creases of his forehead. "You're Eden?"

I propped a hand on my hip and smiled with my lips pressed together.
"C'est moi."

"And . . . and you want to talk to Ms. Dufresne?"

"I sure do. Last time I saw her, she made it pretty clear she had some things to say to me; I just thought I'd give her the opportunity."

He faltered, dropping his hand down the door until it fell to rest atop the knob. With his other hand, he rubbed at the wrinkle on his forehead that now threatened to swallow both brows whole. "But I don't think . . . I don't think they're . . . very nice things."

I laughed, but not too loud or hard. "You know her well, then. You've worked for her a long time?"

He permitted himself a smile, slowly catching up to my nervous good humor. "Many years. Though not as many as it sometimes seems." His arm pulled the door open and he stepped aside. "Do come in. I'll tell Ms. Dufresne you're here."

"I would very much appreciate that," I said, swooping past him and into a marvelous hallway with a lengthy Turkish carpet spread over the wooden floors. The doorman led me into the parlor—there was actually a parlor—and asked me to wait while he went up to announce my arrival. I complied, sitting on a high, velvet-padded chair at the fully stocked wet bar that gleamed brass and mahogany.

I expected the man to return and say something like, "The lady will see you now," but instead old Tatie came shuffling down the stairs alone. She was small and unfathomably old, but she held herself upright and stiff as an arrow, and she was quick on her feet. Her fingers grazed the rail for effect and not for support.

She stomped towards me, her mouth set in a straight line and her fierce blue eyes exposing no hint of senility. She did not politely stop at the edge of my 2.5 feet of personal space but pushed her way in farther, until she was right under my chin—close enough that I could count the liver spots and upper lip hairs. I did not back up, but folded my arms between us and let her look at me. Her nostrils flared slightly and she took a step away, turning towards the bar.

"You're old enough to drink, aren't you?" she asked, glancing toward the bar.

"You know I am."

"Well, I
suppose
you are. What'll you have?"

I think she was trying to convey that she never thought about me. I didn't buy it, but I let it slide. "Surprise me."

Eliza did not look over her shoulder but called out to the doorman, who had crept in a few moments behind her. "Harry, make us a couple of gin and tonics."

"Yes, ma'am."

I hated gin and tonic, but I didn't say so. Eliza glowered at me—offended, curious, and maybe just a touch amused. She plopped her little self into a green velour wing-backed chair and gestured at the one facing her. I leaned back into it, crossing my legs across the shins as though I were wearing a skirt, and not at my thighs, like a man would. Eliza noticed. She noticed pretty much everything, I was willing to bet. She dragged her eyes up and down my posture as if she was calculating a score for my presentation.

By the time we'd settled, Harry had provided the drinks and quietly retreated. A door closed somewhere down the hall, declaring that we were alone. The distant, soft click was Eliza's cue.

"So what do you think?" she demanded.

"Of what?"

"Me. This place. You came here to have a look, didn't you? You jealous and greedy mixed kids always did envy this house. You're all just sitting around, waiting for me to kick the bucket so you can go to court and try to get it."

"I wouldn't take this house if you gave it to me, and I don't need your money. I came here to see
you
." I figured I'd tell the truth until I had a better handle on what I needed to lie about.

Of course, she'd known that much already—I could tell by the way her eyes gleamed. "And now you have. Am I as charming as you remember?"

"As charming as I remember, and then some. I do remember you taller, but then, last time I saw you, I was a lot shorter. Honestly, though, you don't look any different." I was still being truthful. She hadn't aged a day, although that wasn't the compliment she took it to be, considering I'd thought she looked like a mummy when I was eight.

Eliza knew cheap flattery when she heard it, but she let slip a wry half smile to match the one I must have flashed. "You think you're pretty slick, don't you, girl?"

"Oh yes. Terribly slick." I sipped at the alcohol and tried not to grimace. It tasted like piney kitchen cleaner. "But I'm not trying to snow you, Tatie. I came here for information, not for money or to provoke you." I choked down another small mouthful.

Eliza did not appear relieved to hear this. She did not relax at all, but instead clutched her crystal glass tight and held it to her mouth. She swallowed the liquor full and deep, the way I treat wine. I watched the gulp slide down the wattle of her throat and disappear past her collarbones. She was positively skeletal, as nearly a ghost as I'd ever seen a living human being. If she stood in front of a good stiff light, I could have watched her insides tick through her parchment skin.

"You can't threaten me," she said firmly, trying to convince me that her frailty only extended so far.

I dipped my jaw enough to indicate shock at the very idea. "I wouldn't
dream
of it. I only want answers, and no one on my side of the family is very forthcoming. You're the only person who might could help me, so I've come to you."

"Hmm." She downed a little more of her drink and swirled the remaining contents of the glass with a winding of her wrist. "What sorts of answers?"

"For starters, I want to know who A is."

She jumped, almost sloshing the clear beverage free of the clinking ice and over her fingers. "What are you talking about? What A? What is it you
think
you know?"

Her reaction startled me as much as my question startled her. "I was just wondering—the A who wrote to my mother when she was in Pine Breeze. I think he must have been my father."

Eliza's shiny snake eyes glistened, but she settled back into her chair and set the glass on a small table to her left. She had misunderstood me, and she was relieved to realize it. I couldn't help but wonder what she
thought
I'd meant. "Oh. So you want to know about Arthur."

I leaned forward. "That's what the A was for?"

"Oh yes." She nodded hard enough to make her loose skin flap, and her voice was more earnest than honest. "And you're very correct—he was your father, if your mother was to be believed.
He
believed her, that much was certain. How'd you learn of him?"