What the Dead Want(48)

“I found something,” Hope shouted. She was holding up a letter addressed to George Axton from a man named Graham E. Rice, dated the year of the fire.

She unfolded the brittle and yellowed paper and they stood beside her to read.

Esteemed Brother in struggle,

Your progress has been as impressive as your stealth.

Axton parish has drawn them all out, but a question remains: Why take them one by one when we could fix the problem with one happy accident?

Surely there is an upcoming cause for celebration where they might be gathered and at ease.

In answer to your query, I have looked into the matter of the Moore family for you. And it is as you suspect. They are cousins to the Greens. No one could blame you for unwittingly darkening the race, but if discovered it will indeed prevent you from ever becoming an officer, despite your ample contributions to protecting and purifying the white race. You’ve made a mistake in need of correction.

Yours,

Graham E. Rice

“Happy accident,” Gretchen whispered, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of her.

“Lynching was too slow for them,” Hawk said bitterly.

“This is the man who started the fire?” Simon asked. “Who is George?”

“My great-great-great-great-grandfather,” Gretchen said. “Who was a cotton trader, and apparently a white supremacist.”

She had gone over to the pile of Esther’s fire photographs and was sifting through them, looking for any familiar image, the church, a photograph taken on the anniversary that might have a spirit image of the fire . . . but found nothing.

Hawk and Simon were hurriedly sorting photographs by era—setting aside all the ones from within a year of the fire.

Gretchen was growing more frantic and frustrated and wanted a drink. They barely had any more information than they’d had hours ago and time was running out. When she looked up to see the clock, the lights flickered. Then something on the first floor banged, shattered, and crashed with a thundering reverberation above their heads.



1863

Valerie and I took the girls swimming at the lake. A whole day outing, just the four of us without the baby.

It was incredible to see them running and jumping. Swinging from low tree branches into the water. We waded in with them, happy that they are both becoming powerful swimmers, scolding them for splashing us, but secretly admiring their joy and confidence.

The two are so close I feel sometimes they have their own language. They finish each other’s sentences.

If there is one thing that has given this life of domestic servitude meaning, it is seeing the girls play together and knowing that they will have better lives than Valerie and I have lived.

Knowing that one day they will be women that can make their own decisions; can go to school; can leave this place, maybe even this country; can become women who stand up for one another.

The thing I am most proud of is their strength of will. I will die before I ever see someone take it from them.





TWENTY-FIVE


HOPE WAS THE FIRST ONE UP THE STAIRS. WHEN THE rest reached the top they could see that a heavy tree branch had smashed through the living room window and was now lying amid shattered glass on the couch and floor. Outside the air was cooling off and the sky was dark.

“We’re running out of time,” Hawk said, looking through the shattered pane into the fields.

The force of the branch had also knocked pictures from the walls, shattering their frames.

Just then the wind picked up and blew through the empty pane. The light bulb in the ceiling lamp popped and burst, and then the lamp came crashing down as if the cord had been cut, hitting Gretchen on the back, just missing her head. She fell to the ground, gasping and wincing in pain.

On the ground next to her were pictures that had come loose from the shattered frames. Blood was trickling down her face.

First the bite, then the gouge out of her shoulder, then the stings, the scratch on her face. And now this. If certain people were marked for death on this anniversary, Gretchen thought, it was beginning to look like she was one of them.

She crouched there shivering, Simon at her side putting pressure on the wound. Though her vision was blurred she was certain she saw something new among the wreckage. A beautiful bucolic landscape shot, the forest and church steeple visible in the distance. She reached out for it and then held it.

“I didn’t notice this before,” she said; she felt dizzy, and steeled herself against losing consciousness.

“It’s a photograph my mother got from the Chautauqua County Historical Society,” Hawk said. “They had a sale of all their damaged or duplicated photos.”

Gretchen stared at it, transfixed. The land was so lovely; even though the photograph was black-and-white, it gave off a lush sense of everything being untouched; no roads, the tall forest, the plain white steeple and the high grass and wildflowers.



“Let me help you up,” Simon said. But she pushed him away. Turned the photograph over in her hands. On the back there was a square brittle piece of cardboard that seemed to be stuck or glued there.

Gretchen gently peeled the square back from the photo, careful not to damage it. Fortunately it was only the edges that were adhered, and the center seemed untouched. And the humidity had made it easier to peel them apart. She turned it over, then peered at a horrible scene.