Man in the Blue Moon (21 page)

“Eden . . . Camelot . . . whatever you want to claim is on my place, the reality is I’ve paid the note, and that land belongs to me.”

Clive flicked the long ash of his cigar and cleaned his front teeth with his tongue. “Precious, you’re half right.”

“If you call me ‘precious’ one more time, I’m going to jump across that desk and finish cleaning your teeth with the tip of that cigar.”

He pointed the cigar at her, grinned, and shook his head. “I always said you were a live wire. I guess people see that now. Now,
Mrs. Wallace
. You know, there was a great deal of . . . shall we say spirits consumed the night that your husband and I tossed around cards for that piece of land. Spirits . . .” Clive chuckled. “Excuse the pun, but we were tight to say the least. And when the cards were all laid out and the victor decided, we fumbled around with some piece of paper that the steamboat captain gave us. . . . Captain Seavy, you remember him?”

“And the fumble turned out to be mine.” Ella turned and opened the door. An auburn-haired boy waited in the lobby for his father to complete a transaction. The boy watched as a green balloon secured at his wrist bobbed in the air. His giggles echoed in the high ceilings of the building.

“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. We’ll let the court decide.”

When Ella turned to face Clive, he was sitting down at the desk, flipping through a ledger. “Court?” She stepped back toward him, but he didn’t look up.

“You don’t think I’m about to give up Eden itself over something as trivial as a drunken poker match. Of course I’ll take you to court. Property lines are such complicated matters.” As if nursing an injury, he rubbed the top of the ink pen against his acne-scarred chin. He winked at her. “I’ll ride you in court until you go from being the filly that you think you are to the old nag that everybody knows you to be.”

A garbled voice came out of the phone receiver. Clive stood to attention. The pages on the calendar continued to sway with the motion of the fan, and cigar smoke rose and twisted toward the ceiling painted with gold flowers. Just as Clive announced his name into the receiver, Ella walked to the side of his desk. With a raised eyebrow and drooping shoulders, Clive cupped his hand tighter over the phone receiver and looked up at Ella with a semblance of caution and confusion. She yanked the ledger toward her, and a stack of folders scattered across the desk and tumbled to the floor. The muddled voice called out once more through the phone, and Clive didn’t bother to respond. Ripping her receipt from the ledger, Ella stomped over the folders, folded the receipt in half, and never looked back as she left his office.

Only the boy took time to notice Ella walking across the bank lobby. Outside, exposed in the sunlight, she felt her knees buckle and saw dots that made her walk with an unsteady gait. She made it to the corner where the hardware store sat before nausea overtook her. Darting into an alley that smelled of rotten meat and urine, Ella fanned her hand across the fish scales on her necklace.

Next to a pallet stacked with empty paint cans and broken glass, she leaned against a rusty barrel that had been turned into a trash can. Looking inside, she saw the crumpled words printed by the newspaperman. The paper was layered with grease and bits of crushed eggshells. Ella read as much as she could about miracles and false prophets before finally vomiting on the picture of Brother Mabry.

The oxen stood in their pen, staring at the people who congregated in front of Ella’s property. Strands of hay fell from their mouths as they watched their masters further barricade themselves against the packs of people who chanted, screamed, and pleaded for miracles found by a dip in the spring or a touch of the man who slept in the barn.

The crudely painted No Trespassing signs that Samuel and Keaton had placed on the clearing of land that held the spring didn’t do any good. The placards painted by Ella’s own hand were eventually knocked aside and stained with muddy shoe prints. People walked, crawled, and if necessary were carried to the spring in hope of cures. Wagons lined the edge of the road like a stalled funeral procession for a celebrated figure. Cars unable to reach the final destination on tires meant for better roads ended up in ruts, their owners taking a plunge in the water before hiring the nearby farmers who waited in their wagons and took advantage of the ignorance by charging top dollar to pull the vehicles to safe passage.

Sheriff Bissell finally took pity on Ella and placed a deputy at the store and another by her front door. Ronnie, the deputy whom Ella favored, kept watch while sitting on a swing with an unloaded shotgun propped between his knees. Torchlights that the pilgrims carried colored the night from the edge of Ella’s store down to the edge of the land where the spring had bubbled up since the beginning of time. After three days, the store had sold more than it had in three months. Narsissa began telling the people that each night Lanier would walk through the store touching all of the goods. She told them what they wanted to hear and, satisfied, they would return home and lay the items on the sick.

“Umm . . . umm . . . umm.” Myer Simpson clucked her tongue. “I want you to look at this foolishness,” Myer said to Neva Clarkson as they made their way through the crowd gathered at the store entrance.

Inside, Myer pushed back against a bent-over woman who carried a sack of flour like it was a baby. “Brother Mabry said that in the last days people will follow false prophets and there will be plagues. Now what did I tell you about those military boys dying from the flu? Huh? What did I say? I said it was a plague,” Myer Simpson said while holding her wicker basket that carried more sugar than the government allowed during times of war. She clucked her tongue again just before a man with two handfuls of cloth that was rumored to have been touched by Lanier pressed up against her asking, “How much you want for these rags that the fella blessed?”

Neva Clarkson was jostled against a shelf of kerosene bottles, and Myer rode a wave of customers away from her, farther toward the back of the store. A girl wearing a leg brace and carrying one of Lanier’s wooden dolls walked toward the checkout register. Neva slipped past her and out through the back door that led to the loading dock. Outside she made a path toward the home of the woman she had once shared a room with at school.

“Afternoon, Miss Clarkson,” Ronnie the deputy said. He scratched the day-old stubble on his chin and looked at the front door of Ella’s house before looking back at the teacher.

Neva nodded. “Ronnie.” She paused and folded her arms before taking a step up the porch.

“You here for a healing?” Ronnie laughed, and the folds of his stomach vibrated against the shirt patched with the seal of Franklin County. “I haven’t seen the likes of this since they quit having the horse races in town.”

“I was hoping to see Ella,” Neva said.

Ronnie rubbed his chin again and looked out toward the road. Conversations drifted to the porch with the buzz of a beehive.

“I, uhh . . . I need to speak with her about the boys coming back to school next month. I told the superintendent I’d figure out a way to keep this circus away from the children. They don’t need to disrupt their lessons.”

“It’s a circus, all right,” Ronnie said before giving her passage.

“Public service is never dull, is it?” Neva nervously laughed.

When Neva was on the same level of the porch as him, Ronnie flicked his front tooth with his tongue. “Yeah, it’s something working for Uncle Sam like you and me do. Or maybe I ought to say working for Uncle Clive?”

Neva looked twice at Ronnie before knocking on the door.

Inside, Neva sat on the floral-printed love seat the same way she did when she delivered Macon his lessons whenever he was sick. Ella fidgeted with her hair before flipping it behind her neck and adjusting her seat so that she would not have to look out upon the people who camped on the road.

“The stress of all this . . .” Neva’s words trailed off as she leaned sideways, peering toward the hallway. She wrinkled her brow and pointed toward the back bedrooms.

“They’re out at the store, helping Narsissa. Macon is out back with Lanier.”

“Oh,” Neva said and shifted her weight on the sofa. “There was such a crowd in the store . . . well, I must have missed them.”

“No worries. One of the deputies is in there with them,” Ella said in a clipped tone.

Neva crossed her legs, uncrossed them, and finally settled on tucking her feet under the edge of the sofa. She looked up at the fireplace the same way she would if there was a script printed on the brick. “Well, how is this affecting . . . How are the boys?”

Ella attempted to make a case for the sanity of her boys and then decided to let them make the case for themselves. “They’re doing about as good as I am. Holding their own.” Ella folded her hands in her lap, rubbed her nail over the callused spot, and then locked her fingers into a ball. She never realized that she was rocking back and forth. “Keaton said the other day this reminded him of the pressure Jesus must have had on Him with all the people begging for healings.”

Neva brushed her hand in the air. “Oh, Ella, I don’t think I’d go around saying that.”

Ella stopped rocking. “Well, naturally he didn’t mean it. He was just . . . you know . . . oh, what does it matter? They’ll think what they think anyway.”

“That’s exactly why it matters a great deal.” Neva sat on the edge of the sofa and leaned closer to Ella. Noise from the crowd out on the road competed with the sound of Ronnie humming out on the porch. “Ella, I feel absolutely awful. I have been worried sick about you ever since . . .”

Ella stood up, and the peacock feathers in the vase on the fireplace mantel swayed. “I am threadbare from caring what people think, so please don’t worry about my good name because—”

“I’m worried because I’ve done something awful.” Neva balled her fists tighter and looked at every corner in the room except for the spot where Ella stood. “I’ve run my mouth and put you in jeopardy.”

Ella’s face became flushed and then crimson. All she could think was that on the evening of their return from the sale of the lumber, Neva must have passed along the road in front of the house. She must have seen Lanier give Ella the paint kit he had bought her. She must have witnessed their embrace just beyond the barn door. Ella steadied herself against the fireplace mantel, jostling the feathers with her arm.

Listening to Neva confess how she had shared news of Macon’s healing with Reverend and Myer Simpson, Ella saw a frailty in Neva that she had forgotten. Neva kept cupping the material of her skirt until her hem crept higher.

“I wish a thousand wishes that I could take back my words that day at lunch with Reverend and Myer,” Neva said. “I wish I could just run off sometimes. Start my own school where I don’t have to kowtow to the likes of Clive Gillespie. And when I think about what he did to that poor Ruby . . . I should have spoken up.”

“It wouldn’t have done any good. He’s above the law, evidently. Did you know Clive is now saying that he’ll sue me over this property? Now, tell me one single lawyer who isn’t locked in his grip.”

Neva moved to the edge of the seat. Her brow softened, and her eyes lit up with excitement. “My cousin practices law in Pensacola. He’s a suffragist. Pro-woman. I can get you an appointment. I can help.”

Neva’s enthusiasm was not contagious. Ella smiled and nodded. Hope seemed as far removed as her ability to make sense out of this new world.

The women sat there looking at each other, casting their own thoughts in the comfortable silence of established friendship and shared histories. A child’s squeal from the crowd outside caused Neva to jump and look away toward the window.

“If I’d known I’d go through all of this I might not have broken it off with Clive way back when,” Ella said. “I could have married him, slipped him some rat poisoning in his coffee each morning, and watched him die a slow, agonizing death. Widows still get sympathy, you know.”

When Ella laughed, Neva shook her head and laughed too, the same way they had as girls at Miss Wayne’s school. “You always had the most outlandish dreams.” Neva’s words dissolved into a nervous cough. Noise from the crowd outside grew stronger.

Neva rolled her head up to the ceiling and sighed long and hard. Sunlight from the windows illuminated the dust that scattered about the room. Neva’s shoulders released, and for the first time her back was actually reclining against the sofa on which she sat. “Do you remember back in school how upset you became when Miss Wayne lectured about those Salem witch trials? You couldn’t even sleep in your own bed, you were so tormented by those dreams. You came into my room and slept on the floor every night until we moved on to the next lesson. Miss Wayne said it was the artist in you that kept those images in your mind. Those poor people hanging the way they did.” Neva wrapped her arms around herself. “Now I’m the one who can’t sleep. Ella, you need to know something. The board of elders have pressed Reverend Simpson to hold a town hall meeting. Some sort of gibberish about the man you have here and the need to protect our children.”

“I can’t believe . . . I mean, Neva, who do they think they are?”

As Neva laid out the details of the hearing that would take place in the house meant for worship, Ella didn’t bother to hide her shaking hands behind her back. She walked in circles around the footstool stitched with her aunt’s monogram. Neva’s final question caused her to finally sink and sit still. “Is that man really who he claims to be?”

“Neva, you don’t mean to tell me that you actually believe . . .”

“I just wonder . . . I’m sorry—I just wonder if the man really is the person he claims to be.”

“He is an innocent man. He has a letter from the sheriff where he came from,” Ella said with the same conviction as Brother Mabry. “Neva, he has done nothing . . . nothing. The fact of the matter is he wants none of this . . . this spotlight. That’s why he won’t even see those people out there. Just imagine if he wasn’t a better man. He could make a mighty fine dollar off of them. . . . He could set up a tent like that preacher in town.” Ella stood up again. The burnt-orange carpet with stitching shaped like pears gathered and wrinkled as she walked back and forth across the parlor. “Listen, Neva. I can’t explain all this . . . can’t begin to. But that man showed up here when I was this side of a nervous breakdown . . . about to lose my son, my home. When everybody else offered pity, he pushed me. Because of him I still have a home. I might be fighting a never-ending battle with Clive, but because of that man, I’m fighting just the same. My boys need to see that. Neva, I need to see that.”

Nodding, Neva glanced around the room as if she were forgetting something. She held her hands out like she might hug Ella but then withdrew them behind her back. “You know, last year I had a precarious situation. One of those Sullivan boys, the oldest, came to school with a letter from his father. It was typed and very official. The letter said that he wanted the boy dismissed on days when I talked about creation and evolution. I’ll never forget it. The note said that I might come from a monkey but his boy certainly did not.”

“That bunch of Sullivans,” Ella said dismissively.

Neva looked down at the floor and with her shoe straightened the corner of the rug that was flipped upward. “Come to find out, the father didn’t write the letter after all. The boy did. I felt such a fool for never questioning it.”

At the door, Ella squeezed Neva’s wrist, a wrist so thick that it would have been better suited on a much larger woman. “I’ve seen enough bad men to know a good one. Don’t worry.” Ella spoke the words for herself as much as for Neva.

“It looks like rain,” Deputy Ronnie said as soon as the front door cracked open and Neva stepped out onto the porch. Ronnie looked out at the crowd and then up at the dark clouds that rolled in the eastern sky. The humid air seemed as thick as wool.

“It must be nearing three o’clock, then,” Neva said as she walked down the stairs and patted the perspiration on her brow.

“The rain will make them people scatter soon enough.” Ronnie’s laughter trailed Neva down to the driveway.

Neva waited behind the rope that until last week had harnessed Ella’s mule. The deputy with a hard look unclipped the rope that was stretched between two fence posts with the No Trespassing signs nailed to them. Neva thanked the officer, who didn’t seem to care one way or the other. She apologized to the stout woman who bumped into her. The woman was clutching a rosary and chanting. “Antichrist,” yelled an old man who smelled of body odor and fresh whiskey. He hurled his fist in the air, and Neva turned away, running into a gaunt-faced man who wore a baggy Army uniform. “Forgive me,” Neva said. The young man had an oversized glass eye that was iridescent blue and a fresh scar that zigzagged across his cheek and over his nose. When he sneezed, he tried to no avail to cover his mouth. A man wearing a leather driving cap backed into the soldier, and his arm jerked up in the air. A spray of spit slapped Neva’s face. Nudging against the crowd with her shoulders, Neva Clarkson pressed forward until she could make out the pineapple-shaped gate of Mrs. Pomeroy’s house on the other side of the road.

Out behind Narsissa’s cabin, a clap of thunder rang out, and Lanier called the game of marbles. “You win,” he said.

“One more game,” Macon said, scraping the marbles into a pile and drawing a fresh circle in the dirt.

The deputy with hips the size of a teenage girl’s chomped on a sliver of sugarcane and spat a chewed-up stalk at the side of the vegetable garden. The used-up portion of the stalk landed on the string that sectioned off a row of butter beans.