Penumbra (19 page)

I
can’t sit here all afternoon,” Jonah said. Across the table, Lucille confronted him with narrowed eyes and a slash of a mouth. “You’ll stay if I tell you to.”

Jonah thought about the years that had passed, the moments shared between them. Lucille’s behavior was partly his fault, because he’d allowed her to get by with her pouts and petty tyranny. He’d done it because it was one of the few things he could give her that no one else would, dominion. Up until this moment, he’d believed his love for Lucille had cost him little. He’d loved her for so long, putting her needs above all others. Now, though, Jade was at stake.

“I’ve already told you, someone was peeping in on Jade. I need to get over there and think up a way to keep her safe.” He said it patiently. Sometimes Lucille was like a small child. She was so invested in what she wanted that she had to be forced to comprehend what others were saying.

“Jade’s with Ruth. You said so yourself. If you go over there, I’ll be alone. What if he comes here, looking for me?”

That Lucille was middle-aged and past the bloom of beauty was on the tip of his tongue, but years of caring stopped him. “You’ll be safe. Call Lucas to come and sit with you awhile.”

“You make me sound like some kind of invalid.”

“Because you act like one.” He spoke with kindness, though he knew the words would cut.

“I’ve never known you to be so cruel,” she said, blinking back the tears.

“Because I don’t have time to nurse your tender feelings today,” Jonah said. “My daughter—” He paused, looking deep into her eyes.
“Your
daughter is in danger. I’m going to protect her. If you’d quit throwing yourself in front of me leaving, I wouldn’t have to point out the painful truth to you.”

She rose up straight in her chair. “I don’t throw myself in front of any man. How dare you say that?”

“Because it’s true,” Jonah said. “You want what you want, and everyone else be damned. Mostly I don’t mind giving in to you, but not when Jade may be in danger. You’ll be just fine here. I’ll come back when I can.” He rose, thinking to touch her shoulder, show her that he cared but other obligations called him away.

“Don’t walk out that door.”

He sighed. “Lucille, don’t make this a choice between you and my daughter.” In her eyes he saw that she intended to do just that. “You’ll lose,” he said, trying to soften it with a smile.

“Get out!” She rose, and for a moment he saw the beautiful and spoiled young girl she’d once been. “Don’t you stand there and smile at me. I won’t be patronized. Not by my nigger yard man.”

Physical blows could not have stunned him more. In their long years together, he’d never acted as more than hired help and she’d never treated him as less than a man. He tasted dust. “I guess we both spoke the truth today, Miss Lucille.” It was the first time he’d used her title when they were in private. “We’ve both said cutting things, and I see they’re true. They hurt, but I think we both needed to hear them.” He walked across the kitchen to the screen door, letting it bang behind him. He heard her footsteps coming after him.

“Jonah, wait.” She caught up with him and clung to his arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

Jonah felt only anger and a coldness in his chest that froze the words in his throat. He tried to shake her off, but she clung to him.

“Jonah, please. I’m sorry. I’m scared and worried.” She spun him so that he faced her. “Don’t look at me like that, like you hate me. I’m sorry.” Tears ran down her face, streaking the makeup she’d so carefully reapplied after getting home from the hospital. “My daughter’s been nearly killed, and Suzanna is missing. She’s dead. I know she’s dead, and I can’t change it. I’m distraught. I didn’t mean what I said.”

“Yes, you did,” he said.

“I didn’t.” She touched his face. “I didn’t mean it.”

“Ruth was right,” Jonah said. “About everything.”

“No, she isn’t. Ruth thinks I don’t have a soul. She thinks I’m a pit of evil. That’s not true. I’m selfish and self-centered, but I’m not evil.” She collapsed against him. “I’m not. Truly, I’m not.”

His arms went around her and he held her, remembering all the times he’d held her before. In tears and in laughter. In passion and fear.

“I have to go, Miss Lucille.”

She straightened, holding herself erect. “Yes, go and take care of Jade.” She gave a weak smile. “I’ll be fine.”

Jonah nodded. “You will. Now I’m going to take care of my loved ones, my family. I have a lot to make up to Ruth.”

“I’m your family, too, Jonah.” The smile wavered, but she struggled to keep it in place.

“No, Miss Lucille, you’re not my family.”

“I am, too.”

He liked that the petulance was back in her voice. She was a strong woman, and he’d never given her credit for that. He turned to leave. “Jade is your daughter.”

There was something in the way she said the words that made him turn to examine her face. She was a liar and a conniver, a woman capable of drama to get her way. “Yes, she’s as much my daughter as if I’d sired her myself.”

Lucille swallowed. “You did. She’s your daughter. Yours and mine. I never slept with that New Orleans man.”

Jonah couldn’t feel his legs. He wanted to leave, to run away from her as fast as he could. “Mine?” He believed her, for it was his deepest fear come to life. He’d bought so easily into her lie about the light-skinned Negro jazz man from New Orleans because that was what was best for him to believe. His cowardice was legion, and he saw the sum total of it.

“Ours,” she said, triumphant and completely unaware of his reaction. “I lied about Slidin’ Jim. I made it up, and I made you believe it. I told the lie so well that Mama believed it and so did you. If Mama had known the baby was yours, she would have had you lynched. I lied to save your life.”

The urge to circle her neck with his hands was so great that Jonah, finally in command of his legs, ran down the porch. He heard her calling after him but he didn’t look back. His feet hit the dirt of the yard, chickens squawking and scattering as he leaped forward. He ran as hard as he could, away from the thoughts that stabbed him like flying arrows, images of Lucille in the back of the car as he drove her to Mobile for an abortion, of her crying and saying she’d rather die than have the baby she carried. Jade, his daughter. Lucille had caught him in her web of deceit and desperation, almost making him a party to an abortion that would have killed his own daughter, and he had let her. She’d lied and withheld the truth, finally bringing it out when she thought it would serve her own purposes. Ruth had been right. Always.

He ran toward the highway and the black clouds of a gathering storm. Sweat stung his eyes and bitterness filled his mouth. He hurled himself down the road, so that he wouldn’t go back to Lucille Longier’s house and kill her with his bare hands.

“Don’t go into town,” Ruth said, holding onto Jade’s arm. They sat at Ruth’s kitchen table, the rooster salt and pepper shakers, the sugar bowl, the hot sauce cruet, all neatly centered. Nothing was out of place. “Doesn’t matter that they wear a badge. Those white men don’t care what happens to one of us.” Behind Ruth, a large electric clock ticked the minutes away. It was only a little past two, Jade noticed, but the day was growing steadily darker. Storm clouds had gathered to the west, and now they were rolling across the sky. It was going to be bad weather.

The sun slipped out from behind a cloud, and a shaft of sunlight illuminated Ruth’s kitchen. Jade saw the harsh lines in her mother’s face and felt the unexpected pressure of tears. She was going to hurt her mother in a way that could never be repaired. Ruth had always believed that a war raged in Jade, a war of colors. Ruth’s loving care and nurturing had been designed to help Jade make the right choice, the Negro choice. And now Jade had taken up with a white man. Ruth would suffer greatly, because of her worry for Jade, and her failure to save Jade.

“Frank’s not like that,” she said. She would try to gently convince Ruth. “He’s different.”

“He’s white,” Ruth said. “He can’t help it, but he is.” Ruth’s hold on Jade had unexpected strength. “Stay here and let your daddy handle it.”

The idea of Jonah confronting a crazed white man, possibly one of the men who’d beaten Marlena and killed a man, was enough to force Jade out of her chair and her mother’s grip. Her arm bore four distinct fingerprints that would later become bruises. “I don’t want Daddy in that kind of danger. This is Frank’s job. He knows how to handle it.”

“Don’t do this.”

Jade had underestimated her mother. She knew. Somehow, Ruth knew, and this moment was where she’d chosen to draw the battle line. “I love you, Mama, but I have to do what I think is right.”

“This is only going to bring suffering, to all of us.”

Jade had no idea how much her mother had discerned, but she knew she had to get away. She looked around her mother’s kitchen, seeing the china teacups that her mother had bought, one at a time, from Houston Mercantile. She cherished them, using them every day with care. The kitchen was immaculate, and the smell of a freshly baked pound cake still lingered. Ruth could work all day at Lucille Longier’s and still come home to cook the finest meal a person could sit down to. She was a marvel, and Jade loved her unconditionally. But she knew that she could not always be the woman who lived to please Ruth or Jonah.

“I’m sorry, Mama.” She picked up her keys from the counter and walked out the door. Her daddy had gone to tell Miss Lucille about the car accident. The fender of the Buick had been dented slightly, hardly discernable. Jonah had taken the car back, and he would be home soon, Jade hoped, to take care of Ruth.

When she turned onto the highway toward Drexel, she peered out the windshield at the storm. It was going to be a humdinger. Lightning forked to the west. The storm front had a black edge to it, likely tornadoes. She turned her lights on and pressed a little harder on the gas. She didn’t see the oncoming vehicle until it was only a few yards in front of her. The grayish truck merged into the color of the sky and the asphalt, and it was running without lights. The vehicle startled her, and when she caught a glimpse of the driver, she veered to the edge of the road. Dantzler Archey was driving like a bat out of hell, and he had some blond in the passenger seat beside him. Jade could only imagine what kind of woman would go out with Dantzler Archey. Jade pressed harder on the gas and sped to the courthouse, where she hoped to find Frank.

T
he tension of the building storm charged the air, and the first rumble of thunder made Frank look up from the riverbank. He was in the water, walking upstream, searching for the point of exit Hubbard had to have taken. Before, he hadn’t been all that concerned about the whereabouts of the salesman, thinking Hubbard would eventually turn up. He’d not wanted to focus attention on him, for Marlena’s sake. Now, though, his thinking had begun to change. Suzanna was dead. He accepted that. He would not find the little girl and bring her home for a joyful reunion with her mother. The child had gone on to a different plane, a place where she waited for justice. Now he’d begun to view Hubbard as something more than a coward. He’d begun to see him as a player in the abduction. Hubbard had watched his lover brutalized and made no effort to help her.

Frank was deep in the woods, farther north along the Chickasawhay than he’d been when he found Marlena. He’d come alone, pondering the words of the Hattiesburg doctor and the possible complications of a disease that could leave a strong, virile man disabled in the dirt.

A sumac plant that looked as if it had been stepped on caught his eye, and he stopped. Beside it was the cloven print of a deer hoof. Hubbard hadn’t passed that way, but he had to be somewhere in the woods. He’d never come to collect his car, and as of Saturday, he hadn’t shown up on his route of small grocery stores. He’d lost the job he valued so highly.

Until Sunday morning, Frank had assumed that Hubbard was alive. The death of Sam Levert had shown the attackers were capable of murder. Hubbard hadn’t tried to help Marlena, but had that saved him or had it only delayed his death? Other questions troubled Frank. Why would the men who attacked Marlena and took Suzanna allow Hubbard to live? Frank circled the issue but returned to one conclusion—Hubbard was part and parcel to the abduction. But would a man allow the woman he loved to be so brutalized without lifting a finger to help her? Had he truly loved Marlena? Frank didn’t doubt that she’d loved him, but she wouldn’t be the first woman taken in by a fancy man.

He went through the series of events of the attack and abduction. Suzanna had been taken sometime Thursday afternoon. He’d found Marlena just before sunset. They’d begun a search the next day. On Friday morning, he’d followed the trail of a fast runner through the woods and into a slough that wound through the woods and eventually fed into the river. He’d assumed this was Hubbard’s trail and that Hubbard was traveling without the girl. He still thought he was right about that. Once the trail had gone into the slough, he hadn’t pursued it. Now he was determined to follow it through, and he had to do it before the storm cut loose a torrent of rain and washed all traces away. Hubbard had to have gone into the river, and somewhere, he had to have gotten out.

Frank came to a place on the bank where the side was crumbled away. He studied the sand and clay composite and found evidence of footsteps. Hubbard had exited here. Frank climbed out of the water and onto the bank, careful where he put his feet.

The trail was scant, the evidence a broken twig or a heel print in the soft mud that led to the north. He followed and came upon a clear set of prints. The distance between the left and right foot showed Hubbard was running. It was highly possible someone was on his tail, but Frank could find no evidence of pursuers.

Hubbard had run away without attempting to help his lover. Frank realized he should have focused on this matter before now. But the concept of a lover had left him emotionless, until Jade. He’d forgotten what it meant to love someone, to put them before all else.

Jade had awakened something primitive in him. He would dismember anyone who harmed her. Their sexual union had sealed a pact for him. He would protect her, or die trying. Surely Hubbard had felt something for his lover, some shred of desire to defend her against brutality. So why hadn’t he? This was the question that would lead to the truth. In finding the answer, Frank knew he would find the person responsible for Marlena’s suffering and Suzanna’s death. Hubbard would tell him the answer, if he was alive.

Jade stood at the locked door of the sheriff’s office and felt a disappointment she knew could be her undoing. In her life, she’d avoided disappointment. That had been the lesson of Ruth, and it was one she’d learned in diapers.

“Don’t expect more of someone than they can give,” Ruth had admonished her. To the point that Jade expected nothing of anyone, except herself, for whom the bar was set very high indeed. As a result of Ruth’s tutelage, Jade was never surprised at the shallowness or callousness of the women who came into the beauty shop. She didn’t mind if they called her by her given name in the shop and told her stories of their children and grandchildren, then refused to allow her to sit beside them in a restaurant. She expected nothing from them except payment for her services.

Mr. Lavallette was good to her, but it wasn’t expected treatment. She would have worked as honestly for him had he not been so kind. Because she didn’t expect him to be good, it was just one of the bonuses of life.

Ruth had prepared her well to live a solitary and self-sufficient life, but she hadn’t prepared Jade for someone like Frank. Jade had never expected a man to bring her such joy, to love her with generosity and tenderness. Ruth’s lessons had not touched on such bounty. In the lesson of disappointment, men were at the top of Ruth’s list, and her advice had been never to expect anything good to come from a man. That went double for white men.

In learning to avoid disappointment, Jade had been taught not to dream. Frank had broken that stricture. He had burst it wide apart, and Jade found herself caught in rippling fantasy after fantasy. Most of them involved the big bed in the upstairs bedroom, or her cozy quilt-covered bed in the heart-of-pine bedroom. But there were other fantasies that played through her mind, bringing a smile to her lips. Now that her imagination had been set free, Jade luxuriated in the rich and pleasurable turnings of her mind.

On the drive to town, she’d imagined Frank sitting at his desk. She told him about the man who’d peeped in her bathroom window, the dampness of his breath against the glass as he’d stared at her. Outraged, Frank rushed to her home where he found footprints in the dirt beneath her window. He took fingerprints from the flowers that had been left on her porch, and with some effort, he found the man who’d peeped at her. She’d seen Frank dragging the man into the courthouse in handcuffs. In the daydream she wove, everything was so simple. Frank was a man of action, a hero.

The reality was he wasn’t where he said he would be. She was alone, just like before. And the disappointment was bitter, because she’d never before allowed herself to believe in another person, except her father.

She walked out of the courthouse and down the stairs. Her car was parked along the curb, and she took her time going to it, uncertain what to do next. Huey would be up at the church, she knew that. She didn’t want to go there and disturb the luncheon that was held every third Sunday. She wondered what Ruth had cooked for Lucille to take to the dinner. She leaned against her car. The next step to take hadn’t been revealed to her yet.

Storm clouds were massing to the west, a bad storm, and she didn’t know where to go. For the first time in her life, she didn’t want to go home. The isolation was dangerous, her home no longer safe, and she felt the sharp pain of that violation.

This was not Frank’s fault. Part of her wanted to blame him, to find an excuse to kill the things she was feeling, to avoid the disappointment that was part of believing in another person. Frank had not abandoned her. Chances were he was out looking for Suzanna, which was exactly where he should be. She could wait for him in the courthouse. He would like that, to find her there when he came back in. But she wouldn’t do that. There were matters to confront, for both of them. Frank’s touch had told her many things. This was not a simple matter of sex or the thrill of crossing the color line for Frank. He didn’t see her as black or white. In that, he was a dangerous man, because he’d given her the gift, for one moment, of not seeing herself as colored. Such thinking was dangerous, for both of them.

The hood of the car was hot beneath her thin dress, and she suddenly thought of Frank’s hands. At one point in their lovemaking, he’d grasped her buttocks and lifted her. His hands had been hot on her skin. She slid off the car and got behind the wheel. Nat King Cole’s voice came out of the radio tuned to the Memphis station. “Unforgettable” was one of her favorite songs, romantic, filled with tenderness and the joy of loving. Frank was unforgettable. For better or worse, her life had been changed by him. He might disappoint her, but he had also given her the gift of dreaming. He’d awakened something inside her that had been asleep for all of her life. She was strong enough to suffer disappointment if she could feel alive, and she suddenly realized that her mother was not. Ruth, whose back was unbent by forty years of toiling in another woman’s home, was not truly strong. The simple disappointments of life would snap her, and in trying to protect Jade, Ruth had also cheated her.

Jade thought of her half-sister, living in a twilight world of pretense, afraid to show a spark of life to those who claimed to love her. She decided to go there, to sit with Marlena. She could do nothing for herself, nothing for Ruth, who’d made her choices so long ago. Maybe she could help relieve Marlena’s fear. She set off across town, the breeze from the open car window cooling her with a sweet and gentle touch.

The hospital was quiet on a Sunday afternoon, the parking lot almost empty. Visiting hours were not until four, and the impending storm would keep many people at home. Jade wasn’t worried about visiting rules; Lucas had arranged it so she could see Marlena whenever she chose. It had not been meant as a kindness to Jade, but a convenience for Lucas, who had no intention of visiting Marlena, much less sitting with her. A lump of coldness settled in Jade’s heart when she wondered how much Lucas really knew about Marlena’s relationship with the potato chip salesman. After the night with Frank, Jade understood how Marlena could risk so much for a man’s touch.

Before Frank, she hadn’t allowed herself to understand. She’d wanted to believe Marlena foolish and willful and reckless. Now she knew, she was none of those things, but simply a woman desperate for a man’s caring touch.

Lucas was not a man to show his feelings, or to value the feelings of others. He hadn’t been to the hospital a single time to see his wife. Not once. A lot of things could explain Lucas’s absence. Selfishness was what Jade hoped it was.

Her thoughts absorbed her as she walked down the tiled corridor of the hospital. The sight of Junior Clements coming out of Marlena’s room abruptly halted her, and she barely suppressed a gasp. Junior’s eyes were hungry, filled with something that swirled in the gray depths.

“Has she told you anything?” he asked.

Jade’s heart thudded. “She’s in a coma,” she lied, swallowing the taste of iron that threatened to make her gag. Junior frightened her.

“I heard she could identify the men who hurt her?”

“Where did you hear such a thing?” Jade asked, indignation forced into her voice.

“Does it matter?” Junior’s eyes were shrewd.

“I don’t know. Does it?” she countered.

“I got myself a reliable source. Someone who’s been sitting up here and knows what she’s talking about.”

The only other person who had sat with Marlena was Dotty Strickland. “Some people lie when it would be easier to tell the truth,” Jade said. “Keep that in mind, Mr. Clements.”

He stepped closer, and she arched an eyebrow, waiting for him to speak. She could feel the thud of her heart in her ears, but she lifted the other eyebrow and waited.

“Are you getting uppity with me?” he asked. There was a hint of excitement in his voice.

“I wouldn’t think of it,” she answered, but she didn’t drop her gaze.

“Marlena hasn’t spoken except once, on Friday. The doctor thinks she probably won’t ever wake up.” She was acting on instinct, protecting Marlena from Junior’s interest in her. “The nurse said Frank was here.”

Jade shrugged. “He was. I told him Marlena wasn’t going to wake up. Since a sheriff’s deputy has already been here, I don’t understand your business in Marlena’s room.”

“Could be old Lucas offers a reward to the person who finds his daughter. I’m right certain he will, as a matter of fact. I’d like to get that money, and if anyone knows who took the young’un, it should be Mrs. Bramlett.”

“Except she’s in a coma,” Jade said.

“For certain?”

Jade focused only on the lie. “It would be a miracle if she regained consciousness. Go and ask her doctor if you don’t believe me.”

Junior nodded, one hand rubbing the back of the other where blood oozed from his skin. When he saw her gaze on his hands, he stopped, putting both in his pockets.

His right knuckles were swollen, the rough skin a light purple beneath the flaking. “How did you hurt your hand?” she asked.

“The stretcher up at the funeral home rolled into a door.” He smiled. “Do you want to kiss it and make it better?”

Jade almost gagged. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. Maybe the nurse will take a look at it.”

His eyes narrowed and his mouth flattened. “You think you’re too good to doctor my hand?”

“I’m a beautician, not a nurse,” Jade said.

“You’re full of sass. But I like a woman with a little spunk.” He leaned closer so that his breath puffed on her cheek. “It sure is pretty out there where you live.”

Jade felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her. He was telling her he’d been at her home. He was toying with her, wanting to frighten her. She lifted her gaze calmly. “Yes, it is pretty. My granddaddy bought that land a long time ago. There’s an old cemetery behind the house. Sometimes, at night, just before I go to sleep, I hear the dead waking up.” She saw the doubt in his eyes. “They tell me stories,” she said softly. “I don’t always want to hear, but when they want to talk, there’s nothing to do but listen.”