A Misty Mourning (15 page)

They all looked at each other briefly. “What do you mean?” Maribelle asked.

“My great-grandmother Bridie owned this boardinghouse before Clarissa,” I said. “She left it to your mother in
her
will. Clarissa was just giving it back. That's it. No conspiracy. Now, why don't you guys grow up? You don't even know how she died.”

I turned to leave and then went back to the table and grabbed
a chicken leg to go. It took a lot more than a confrontation to curb my appetite. “Or do you? You all seem to act as though you know it was foul play. And how would you guys know that if you weren't the ones who did it?”

With that I turned and marched toward the doorway of the dining room with my chicken leg in hand. I was feeling mighty brave and pious and so I turned for yet another one last word. “Craig, I want my bra back.”

I
shut the door softly behind me, as Gert was fast asleep and snoring. I could never understand why her own snoring didn't wake her up. I can remember as a small child having to turn the television up because my grandmother's snoring in the other room drowned out
Starsky & Hutch.

Rain began pelting against my window and I instantly recognized it as a gentle rain, without lightning or thunder to accompany it. There was no breeze to speak of and so this would be perfect sleeping weather.

If only I could sleep.

I locked the door behind me and then went and opened the window about two inches, so that I could not only hear the rhythmic patter of the rain better, but also smell its wonderful clean aroma. How is it that the smell of the wet earth, which equals mud, smells clean? Isn't that an oxymoron or something?

I turned the lamp on in my room and noted that the clock said seven-thirty. Gert was asleep early tonight. I laid the photocopies on the bed, took off my shoes, and climbed on top of the bedspread. Thus I prepared myself to read the rest of the newspaper articles and eat my chicken leg, whose grease had somehow managed to get
smeared all over the photocopies. I swear I thought I'd been extra careful not to touch anything with chicken leg.

The baby rolled back and forth in my stomach as I read quietly to myself. When I'd finished eating the chicken leg, I tossed the bone into the trashcan between my bed and Gert's.

Somewhere around nine-thirty I found the article that I'd been looking for. It read:

 

TWO MINERS MISSING

September 8, 1917, Panther Run, WV—Doyle Phillips and Thomas MacLean were last seen on the August 31, a little over a week ago. Phillips, who worked the tipple, and Mac-Lean, who worked in demolition, both for the Panther Run Coal Company, were not strangers to the townfolk here. Phillips came from Boggs and MacLean was from Blue Springs, and both were well-known and vocal about their stand on the UMWA. One reason the authorities are concerned is because both men were wanted for questioning in the murder of Aldrich Gainsborough this past June. It is suspected that both men left the state to escape questioning, but none of their families or friends have heard from them, either, leaving authorities to wonder if some ill fate has befallen the two local mineworkers.

By the way Aunt Millicent had said that many a miner had been swallowed up by the mines, I had assumed the two missing miners had been lost in a cave-in, although that wasn't the impression I had received from everybody else. Providing, of course, that everybody I had asked about the missing miners was thinking of the same missing miners.

How likely was it that people of the twenty-first century would still be talking about two miners that had gone missing eighty-two years ago?

It would be fairly likely, I thought, if there was a conspiracy or secret that went along with the disappearance or some sort of theory that had gone unproven. There is nothing like a subject without closure to keep the gossip mill turning for centuries, eventually becoming legend. The supposed ghost of Victory LeBreau, back home in southeast Missouri, was a good example of that.

Wanna keep a secret, tell Bridie Mac.

I hadn't expected that to jump out at me from the recesses of my mind, but it did.

Why was it that the woman at Denny's, when we mentioned the boardinghouse, immediately brought up the two missing miners? She wondered if anybody would ever know what happened to the men. Was the boardinghouse connected to the disappearance of the miners? Or the owner of the boardinghouse?
Tell Bridie Mac.

Who would tell Bridie MacClanahan?

Clarissa Hart.

Who would tell Bridie MacClanahan what?

What happened to the miners, maybe?

Nah, Couldn't be. I stifled a yawn and realized that I had to use the bathroom. I was not looking forward to this, because I'd have to leave the room and either take the key with me or leave the room unlocked. I was not leaving the room unlocked. Not after the bizarre things that had been happening here and the way people had been behaving toward me. If anything happened to Gert, I'd never forgive myself.

I went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and was quite relieved to return and find Gert safe and sound. I changed into my pajamas. I've never been able to figure out why all of the maternity pajamas have those little slits for breast-feeding in them. It's not like you breast-feed while you're pregnant. It can be a tad distressing to feel a breeze and realize that you're hanging half out of the slits in your pajama top. So to prevent such a horrible thing. I take a safety pin and pin them shut.

I sat back down on the bed and fingered the greasy photocopies
once more. The miners had been wanted for questioning in the murder of Aldrich Gainsborough. I thumbed through the pile until I found the earlier article in which Gainsborough had just come to town and wasn't sure how long he would stay. How had I missed an article on his murder?

I found it about halfway through the stack. I assumed I just skipped over it because I wasn't looking for anything on him, just on the miners, who now had names: Phillips and MacLean.

The article read:

 

SPOKESMAN FOR THE COAL COMPANY LYNCHED

June 29, 1917, Panther Run, West Virginia—Authorities are calling what happened in this sleepy little coal town nestled into the ancient mountains of central West Virginia an atrocity. A barbaric display of what man is capable of.

Late Tuesday night after leaving the Panther Run Boardinghouse where he was staying, Aldrich Gainsborough went to town to mingle and partake of the spirits with the locals. The details of the night are sketchy, but sometime around midnight he was seen leaving Rowse's. He was feeling good, but not drunk, witnesses say.

The next time he was seen was four o'clock Wednesday morning, hanging from a tree in the front yard of the Panther Run Boardinghouse. His neck was broken, the soles of his feet were burned, and there was quite a long list of other marks of torture.

Authorities believe that the boardinghouse and its occupants were never in danger, and are compiling a list of suspects.

At this point, given the tension between miners, who want to be unionized, and the Panther Run Coal Company, which is against unionizing, the list of suspects could include several hundred.

Impressive. The local townspeople had mentioned to me the fact that there were two miners missing when the subject of Clarissa or the boardinghouse came up. But nobody, I mean
nobody,
had mentioned that there was a man
lynched in the damn front yard!

What the heck was wrong with these people?

My eyes were droopy. I knew that even if I settled in to sleep, either my back or bladder would wake me up two hours later anyway, but I still had to sleep. I put the photocopies in between my mattress and box springs. Don't ask me why, just paranoid. I crawled back into bed but my mind would not wind down right away.

I thought about the boardinghouse. Aldrich Gainsborough. Bridie MacClanahan. Clarissa Hart. Two missing miners. The boardinghouse. I wondered if the only connection between Gainsborough and the boardinghouse was the fact that this was where he stayed on his visits or was there more to it? Were Phillips and MacLean residents here, as well, or did they live in town in the shacks owned by the company, with their own families? Was there any way for me to find out?

There were so many questions bouncing off the inside of my head I didn't think I would ever go to sleep. The next thing I remember was waking up at midnight to go the bathroom.

I
t was a good night. I only had to get up once at midnight, so that meant that I got a six-hour chunk of sleep. Unheard of for me this far into a pregnancy. I awoke to chirping birds and the sound of the river rushing by outside, since my window was still up. For a second, I thought I was at home in my blue gingham bedroom in New Kassel. But I knew better. There were no children below making noise.

The breeze billowed the clouds just barely, and I was amazed to realize that it was a little on the cool side. I love cool mornings. They make me just want to snuggle back in the sheets and sleep all day. Or snuggle next to a warm body.

It was my first fully awake thought of the day, and so, of course, it had to be about Rudy.

I rolled over to see that Gert was not in her bed. This bothered me a little, so I did not allow myself the luxury of snuggling into the covers and thinking sappy thoughts about my husband several hundred miles away. I didn't even bother to put on my house slippers.

I did, however, put on my yellow and white checked robe and head out the door into the hallway to see if my grandmother was
in the bathroom or eating breakfast already. She usually got up early, and I talked myself out of getting too worked up by rationalizing that she had gone to bed at seven the night before. Anybody would be up at six in the morning if they went to bed at seven.

She was not in the bathroom, however, and so I descended down the long picture stairway to the floor below to find her. The house smelled of biscuits and gravy, and I knew that Susan Henry was already up and cooking for the household.

I walked into the kitchen, and Susan scowled lightly at me. I'm sure she was afraid that I was going to start snatching at her food. She was dressed in a flower-print cotton dress and a paisley apron. It clashed something fierce, but this woman's arms were twice the size of mine and I was not going to comment on her fashion faux pas. Besides, who was I, Miss Jeans and Tennis Shoes, to judge her wardrobe? Right?

“Good morning,” I said. “Can I have a glass of juice?”

“Your house. You can have whatever you want,” she said without looking up from the pile of dough she was kneading.

“I don't think, technically, this is my place just yet,” I said. “I'll have that glass of juice, though, all the same.”

I got myself a glass of orange juice and watched her silently working that dough. The ease with which she worked it made me think that this was something she had done her entire life. I couldn't exactly say how old she was, but I'd guess fiftyish. She was a bundle of contradictions. On one hand, her face was nearly wrinkle-free, but her hair held generous amounts of grey. Her body, however large, seemed to move with great ease, indicating somebody younger, but her style of dress was of somebody born in the late forties in the middle of nowhere and without access to fashion magazines or cable television. Either that or she just didn't care.

“What are you staring at?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said and wondered how she knew I was staring at her when her back was to me. “I was just curious if you'd seen my grandmother yet this morning?”

“Out in the dining room,” she said. “Inhaled a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of coffee.”

“Oh, thanks,” I said. “So, how long have you worked for Mrs. Hart?”

“Thirty-four years,” she said.

Well, I'd guessed her age about right. If she had been in her early twenties when she went to work for Clarissa that would make her around fifty-five. “Good Lordy,” I said. “That's a long time.”

“All I've ever known is cooking for the missus,” she said. “Nothing else.”

“Have you always lived here or do you have family?”

“You're a mighty nosy one,” she said and went about cutting out the biscuits with the biscuit cutter.

“Sorry,” I said and finished my juice. I put my glass in the sink and turned to leave for the dining room.

“No,” she said and slowly turned around. “I'm sorry. You've got a right to know everything. You're my new boss. My future is in your hands.”

“Oh, don't say that,” I said. “Look at me. You don't want your future in my hands. I can barely balance the checkbook. And I can't if my husband uses the ATM card. Throws me off completely.”

“Oh, but I think you're quite capable in many other ways,” she said.

“Capable of causing disasters wherever I go,” I said.

“You didn't cause the flash flood,” she said. “Happens all the time.”

“I wasn't referring to the flash flood,” I said and tied the tie on my robe just a little tighter, afraid that safety-pinned pajamas would become visible.

“You mean Mrs. Hart?” she asked. “She would have died no matter what: It was her time.”

“What if somebody murdered her?” I asked.

“Then it was still her time, wasn't it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sure.”

“To answer your question,” she said. “I have a daughter, she lived here growing up. She moved on with her life, though. Not that I blame her for leaving. The isolation is pretty tough. I see her about once a month. I never had no husband.”

“Oh,” I said. Why do I ask such personal questions if I'm not prepared to hear such personal answers? This was a serious character flaw of mine. “Did you like working for Mrs. Hart?”

There I went again.

“Yeah,” she said and turned around to take the first round of biscuits out of the oven. “Nice woman. She always seemed sad somehow. I heard things. Glimpses of stuff every now and then. But I never asked.”