Man in the Blue Moon (14 page)

“Mr. Gillespie, I fail to see how it can take so long for a path to be cleared. The spot I recall was hardly a jungle.” The day after the fire, Priscilla Mabry stood on the porch of the inn where she and Brother Mabry were staying, covered her mouth with a handkerchief with one hand, and shaded her eyes with the other.

Clive Gillespie looked up from the bottom step, directly into the morning sun. He had not made it to the front door before Priscilla came out to admonish him. Even so, there was a smile on his face.

Mrs. Mercile, the manager, a stout woman who wore black shoes with thick straps and drooping stockings, pranced out of the house behind Priscilla. “I put that springwater in her bath like you said to. I put that special water in her bath, but she won’t believe me.” Mrs. Mercile raised her hands in the air just as if she’d been testifying at church.

When the springwater had been depleted from the barrels he had arranged for Priscilla’s baths, Clive Gillespie paid Mrs. Mercile another five dollars a week to go out into the night and fill jugs with water from the pump in the courtyard. And yet somehow Priscilla could tell the difference. “I’m so double-jointed from this impure mixture. It’s a miracle I can stand at all,” Priscilla had complained to Brother Mabry, who in turn voiced his frustrations to Clive.

“We didn’t travel all this way to sit on a front porch and entertain every member of the clergy within three counties who shows up here uninvited,” Brother Mabry said in a voice so loud that it could be heard inside the house next door. “Either get her to the spring or get us transportation back home and be done with the whole concept.”

The concept was the very vision that excited Clive Gillespie to the point of needing powder remedies from the pharmacy to control his insomnia. He lay awake at night, staring at the light from the moon that seeped in from his window and illuminated the molding of his bedroom ceiling that had been handcrafted to resemble lilies. He counted in his mind the number of steamboats that would soon pour into the city and the rows of trunks from tourists that would line the deck. After he had secured Ella Wallace’s property and signed the official papers securing his partnership in the inn and spa for spiritual and medicinal well-being, he would take possession of the oyster plant and then the land closest to the end of the dock, where eventually he would build a state-of-the-art warehouse. Lot by lot, foreclosure would give him the necessary means to eventually surpass the limited aspirations of his father. In a recurring dream, he stood at his father’s grave and tossed twenty-dollar bills to the ground as easy as wilted moss collecting on the marble slab.

Clive motioned with his chin for Mrs. Mercile to step aside on the porch. Pushing his derby hat back to reveal his waxed hairline, Clive smiled with eyes closed. “I believe the path has been cleared now, Mrs. Mabry. Just in time to get you and your double joints straightened out.”

“Praise the Lord,” Mrs. Mercile said.

“But it is Sunday, after all.” Clive lowered his head and looked up at Priscilla the same way he did whenever he tried to convince business owners to refinance. “Surely we can wait just one more day. I expected that on the Lord’s Day you’d want to be in a house of worship, Mrs. Mabry.”

She held the handkerchief with her initials embroidered in pink and waved it like a flag. “What better place to have a Sunday service than at the site of one of God’s miracles? Why, I would have been good as dead by now if it hadn’t been for that spring.”

Since the dirt road leading to Dead Lakes was rutted and muddy from the night’s rains, Clive hired his lawn boy to drive a four-horse wagon, rented from the funeral parlor, to the site of the spring. He gave Mrs. Mercile three dollars for use of her rose-printed love seat, on which Priscilla lounged in the back of the black wagon. Two women of color wearing white uniforms from their days as nannies sat on the edges of the wagon closest to Priscilla, waving heart-shaped wicker fans. “Mercy,” Priscilla called out every time the wagon wheels hit washed-out places in the road.

After the fifth moan, even Brother Mabry stopped paying Priscilla any attention. His big frame sprawled across the seat behind the driver. Sweat stains darkened the back of his crimson velvet jacket. He waited until the wagon had passed the city limits before removing the coat. His baby blue shirt, dripping wet from the August sun, molded against his fat. Licking the end of a pencil, he scratched down words on the tablet he clutched in his palm. “What say you, Mr. Gillespie?” Brother Mabry roared. “Eden Everlasting.”

Clive Gillespie craned his neck from the front seat and nudged the lawn boy to move his leg so he could have more room. “Beg your pardon?”

“The name of the retreat. Eden Everlasting. How does that translate?”

“Ohhh, me,” Priscilla moaned, and the women fanned faster.

The wagon hit another rough patch, and Clive gripped the edge of the wagon. “Eden,” Clive repeated with a reverence better suited for sacred prayer.

Brother Mabry coughed and looked back at Priscilla before addressing Clive. “I’ve only shared my findings with Priscilla. Hear me when I say it’s confidential.” Brother Mabry raised his eyebrows toward the lawn boy with the ripped straw hat that flapped with each bump in the road.

Clive reached over and squeezed the driver’s shoulder. “This boy is trustworthy. You have my word. Aren’t you, boy?”

The young man, who cut and raked Clive’s yard and cared for his family plot at the cemetery, never looked away from the road. He only popped the reins harder.

Sweat dewed the sides of Brother Mabry’s reddened face. “Hear what I say, now. If you study the book of Genesis, you will see several descriptions of the Garden of Eden that are specific. Very specific and very
strange
.” Brother Mabry said the words as if he might be singing them. “All these highbrowed divinity professors have for years and years speculated where that Garden might have been located. Some say the Near East, but I say hogwash. Hogwash! Believe what I’m telling you. God wanted a sign to tie the Scriptures back to America. America!” he shouted, and the horses shook their heads. Their bridles and bits made a jingling sound.

“America?” Clive asked.

“
America.
Hear me now. Look at all the ways God has blessed this great country of ours. Why, take this war, for instance. If America hadn’t stepped into this war when we did, there is no telling what sort of unbearable future those people overseas would face. President Wilson has his head on straight. America is the vehicle that the Lord is using to point the way. And hear me when I say that such was the case at the beginning of time too.” Brother Mabry held up his pad and shook it. “I tell you, God is calling His people back. All you have to do is look at the newspaper. Wars and plagues . . . it’s all accounted for in Scripture.” Brother Mabry shifted and the wagon seat creaked. “God has put a calling on me to give people hope. I’m sent to let people know that the Garden of Eden is not some fairy tale or some outlandish place that evaporated in a desert. No, sir. It’s right here before them.”

“Mercy,” Priscilla moaned. “I’m sure to burn to death from this sun. My parasol.” The colored woman with freckled cheeks quickly popped open a pink parasol with matching fringe and held it over Priscilla.

“I see,” Clive said. He lifted the derby and set the hat on his lap. Beads of perspiration dotted the nape of his neck like dew.

“Mr. Gillespie, you said you’re a churchgoing man. . . .”

“Oh yes,” Clive quickly said. “Baptized in the same church as my father.”

The lawn boy popped the reins again. The lead horse blew dust from his nostrils.

“Well then, you’ll recall from Sunday school that the Garden of Eden sat on a river that forked in four places.” Brother Mabry lowered his chin. Rolls of fat glistened.

“Four places, you say?”

“Hear what I’m telling you. It’s all in the book of Genesis. And do you happen to know the only place in the entire world where the river forks in four places?”

Clive looked down at the horses and then back at Brother Mabry. “Do you mean to say . . . ?”

“Search the Scriptures, and walk the globe. There’s not a Harvard Divinity School professor who can argue otherwise.”

Clive sat on the edge of the seat and turned completely around. When he had been contacted by Brother Mabry’s New York attorney, he had only been presented a business proposition that would rival any the area had ever seen. He had been promised currency, not religion. Clive’s arm was propped on the lawn boy’s shoulder. “The Apalachicola River?”

Brother Mabry closed the cover on his pad. “Tell me another river in the world that forks in four places.”

Licking at the sweat that tickled his lips, Clive practically cheered. “What a story! They’ll come from all over . . . all over the world, even.”

“Exactly,” Brother Mabry said.

The freckle-faced woman standing over Priscilla gripping the parasol held the gaze of the woman who waved the fan.

“I hope you don’t take offense,” Brother Mabry said in a softer tone. “I took the liberty of hiring a botanist to survey the area. A fellow by the name of Listerman who teaches at the university. He came out to the spot and took samples.”

“It’s a blessing,” Priscilla called out. “A blessing that my father found that Indian who led him to the spring.”

“A blessing!” Brother Mabry roared, causing the horses to prance to the side. “I’ll have all the newspapermen from across the country come see for themselves. I’ll have that Listerman professor trained to speak. He’ll tell it to those newspapermen in a way they can’t negate. Before it’s through, William Randolph Hearst himself will be coming to see.”

“A blessing, yes, sir,” Clive said before turning around. He laughed and brushed his hands together as if it were a winter’s day. Then he leaned over and whispered instructions for the lawn boy to turn at the fork in the road.

“The long way?” the young man whispered back.

“Absolutely,” Clive said in a disguised cough. He clutched the side of the wagon as the boy turned at the fork in the road. The horses high-stepped in the direction of the fishing camp where Bonaparte lived—completely skirting Ella’s place.

A family of whitetail deer grazed up ahead on the side of the road. Brother Mabry leaned forward, shouting for Priscilla to muster the strength to rise and witness the sight. But the only image Clive could think about was the confirmation he had received. The note left underneath his door that morning danced across his mind.
DONE,
the note read in block letters resembling the efforts of a grade-school child. Clive lit his morning cigar, blew a ring of smoke toward the portrait of his father, and then held the amber tip to the paper. Other than the ashes of a note and charred virgin timber, there would be no official record of the man who wore brass-buckled suspenders.

At the site of the spring, Clive looked with cautious intrigue at the cleared timber off in the distance. Since the spring sat on the opposite corner of the property, past the swamp and cypress, Ella’s home appeared no larger than a matchbox off in the distance.

“You mustn’t jar me too much,” Priscilla warned as the women and the young man tried to lift her from the wagon. “Gingerly.”

“Gingerly,” Brother Mabry echoed, motioning with his straw hat for Clive to help.

Rushing to offer aid, Clive was careful not to let his hands brush too closely to Priscilla’s pale skin with raised blue veins or to the hands of the black workers he employed. “Yes, easy does it,” he said.

Locusts roared, weeds flapped, and tree limbs snapped under the feet of the young man carrying Priscilla like she might have been his gigantic child. “You got her, boy?” Clive kept asking as the group made their way down to the embankment covered in ferns and poison ivy. A black snake slithered beneath a blanket of dead palmetto bushes. One of the women of color made a gasp that sounded like a scream. Clive glared at her, and she placed her hand over her mouth. “Easy does it,” he said without looking away from the woman.

“Ohhh,” Priscilla moaned and then threw her head back until she appeared to be either dead or drunk in the arms of the young black man.

“Just a few more steps, dearest. You can do it. I know you can,” Brother Mabry yelled while sliding sideways and then rebounding by grabbing a scrub oak tree.

At the spring, the women laid out blankets that had been taken from the beds at the inn back in town. Then they tied string to trees surrounding the pool and placed white sheets over them. “See there,” Brother Mabry said. “You’ll have complete privacy.”

The young man adjusted his weight and in the process jostled Priscilla. “Ohhh,” she cried out again before demanding to be set down. He placed her on one of the blankets, and she stuck her foot up in the air. Without any direction, the freckle-faced woman went about taking the shoes and stockings from Priscilla’s feet.

As Priscilla soaked, Clive lit a cigar and listened to Brother Mabry once more make the case for this being God’s first place of creation. Brother Mabry swung his log-sized arms in the air and closed his eyes. Suddenly his nose crinkled and he opened one eye. “Cigar smoke doesn’t sit well with Priscilla’s constitution. She’s allergic.”

When Brother Mabry went to check on Priscilla’s progress, Clive backed away and stomped across a patch of blush-colored red root growing around saplings of pines. He looked out toward Ella’s house. Behind a massive oak, a palmetto bush fluttered, and a figure cast a shadow down the side of the tree.

Clive hadn’t made it fifteen feet away from the tree when Narsissa stepped out from behind it. He froze, and the side of his jaw flinched as he looked back at the spring. “What are you doing?”

“I was fixing to ask you the same thing,” Narsissa said.

“Well, it is Sunday. I have guests and thought that an outing to the . . . to the country would help their respiratory systems.” He bit the end of the cigar and then spat it to the ground. The tobacco came to rest against a log speckled with fuchsia-colored fungus.

“Ella don’t care for guests on her place unless she invites them.”