Artifacts (34 page)
“How’s it feel to be a rich woman, Faye?” Joe said. He was lying on his back studying the summer stars and he looked like a man who owned everything he could see.
“I don’t feel richer, exactly. I feel like I already had everything I could ever want, but now I get to keep it.”
“Can I stay?”
Faye let the question hang in the air, because she didn’t understand it. Finally, she said, “What?”
“When I came to Joyeuse, you said I could stay a while. How long is that?”
It seemed like a long time since she’d lived alone on the island, with only its ghosts for company. The old house loomed over them, silver-white under the moon. The dim light hid most of the storm’s damage and some of the ravages of time. She had the money to make her home beautiful and livable again, as she had always dreamed of doing. It would feel like an empty shell if Joe left.
“You can stay, Joe. You can stay.”
They watched the moon slide past the million stars studding the dark sky over Joyeuse and they didn’t talk any more. That was the best thing about Joe. He knew how to let things be.
It was late when Faye crawled into bed, but she left her lantern burning. She was nearly finished reading Cally’s story and nothing short of a hurricane would stop her from finishing now, tonight.
***
Excerpt from oral history of Cally Stanton, recorded 1935
I saved my favorite story till last. I always laugh when I remember the day the Yankees came to liberate the slaves on Joyeuse. They were naturally more gape-jawed when they found us already free.
Mister Courtney always said I was a charming liar. Well, I did him proud that day. I knew it wouldn’t be safe to let anybody, not the Yankees or anybody, know that we didn’t have a master any more. The laws weren’t good back then and the courts were even worse. Somebody was liable to come take the land—my land—and make my workers farm it for just about nothing.
So I told them the master and his wife had gone to Tallahassee that very day to pledge their allegiance to the Yankee flag. Then I showed them young Courtney, my baby, and made sure they knew that my job was to take care of the master’s heir. I forgot to mention that young Courtney was a girl and not entitled to own anything in her own name. I also forgot to mention that she wasn’t white, so she wasn’t entitled to anything in this life at all.
I practiced that lie on the Yankees, then I told it to the people who wrote up the deed. By the time Courtney was bigger and people noticed she was a girl, nobody gave the deed much thought again until just last year when they used my old lies as an excuse to take part of her inheritance away. Courtney fought them. She fought them hard, because the women in our family are tough. We could chew the heads off a barrel of nails if we had to. We lost that land, but we’ll get it back.
And we’ll always have Joyeuse. Men come and go. They go to war and die. They get diseases and die. They meet other women and leave, then you wish they would die. But home is forever.
Mark my words: Take care of your home. Keep its roof fixed, and the taxes paid, and never mortgage it. Then you’ll always have a place to go.
And let me tell you another thing. Don’t ever hide anything so well that you can’t ever find it again. When the Federals came, I sunk my chatelaine and all the table silver in a cow pond because I was damned if I’d see the Yankees get it. I have shed many tears over my treasures ever since then, because I never found them. Sometimes I send my little great-granddaughter out to dig for the precious wedding ring that Courtney gave me. I think I’ll send her out there now. It’s always good to keep little folks busy.
Faye was on fire to dig in a brand-new piece of ground. The hurricane had left more sand on her shore than it took away, closing the mouth of the inlet where she moored her boat and reducing an area that had been inundated all her life to a low, marshy spot.
As soon as she read the last entry of Cally’s memoirs, she knew: that swampy pit was the pond, the spot where she hid the family valuables when the Yankees came.
Sifting through the muck, Faye uncovered a tiny golden thimble crafted with a minuscule eyelet that was obviously designed to attach it to something. She documented its location in her waterproof field book and dug with renewed purpose.
She couldn’t wait to show it to Joe.
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