Final Rights (19 page)

THIRTY-TWO

1962

Leland
left the workshop and headed for the house. Ellie would have lunch ready soon
and his hunger had been building steadily as he worked all morning without a
break. The chickens were fed, the garden patch tilled and ready for planting,
and he’d made steady progress on the dining room table and chairs commissioned
by the University president.

He noticed two broken plant pots on the
floor as he entered the kitchen.

“Ellie?” He heard scuffling coming from the
bedroom and Clayton screaming: “Give it to me! Where is it?”

Ellie’s voice seemed odd—strong and
determined, yet terrified. “It’s for the girl. You’ll never get it. I swear
you’ll never get it.”

“What’s going on? Ellie! Clayton!” Leland
yelled as he headed through the living room where furniture lay helter-skelter
like a small tornado had just roared through.

He heard Clayton bellowing “I want it, Maw .
. .” followed by a thud, a whimper and some whispered words from Ellie. Then
Clayton stumbled out of the bedroom. His face contorted with rage, eyes ablaze,
he paused in the middle of the room as if lost, head jerking from side to side,
body twitching, scanning the room as if looking for something or trying to get
his bearings. He froze when he saw Leland, and they stared at each other for a
split second.

“I kilt her, Paw,” he said before bolting
out the front door and disappearing.

Leland stood anchored to his spot.
He killed her? What is he talking about?

“Ellie! Where are you?” he called again,
anxiety building, making it hard to speak at all. Fear propelled him to the
bedroom where he found Ellie lying on the floor clutching her chest and
gasping. He cradled her in his arms.

“Ellie. I’ve got to call for help.”

“Too late . . . I’m goin’.”

Leland began weeping, recognizing the truth
in Ellie’s words. She had only moments to live.

“I always bothered you about your hobbies,
Leland. I’m sorry for that.”
 

“Don’t you worry about that, old woman,”
Leland said as he rocked her gently.

“Thank you for making
that special place for me and the girl.” Her words came in gasps as she
struggled for breath.

“You’re not gonna die, Ellie,” he lied.

“I’m goin’, Leland. Give Cally her things .
. . promise me you will.”

“What things?”

“From the mantel . . .”

“Ellie . . .”

“Clayton wanted them . . . drugs . . .
they’re hers . . . promise me.” Ellie’s words were barely audible.

Leland held her close and spoke in a hushed
tone. “I’ll see to it, Ellie.”

Ellie took her last
breath lying in her husband’s arms, the husband she had chosen so long ago, the
one who had stood by her through everything good and bad and whose loving face
she now smiled into as her body went limp and she closed her eyes for the final
time.

Incapacitated by grief, Leland sat holding
and rocking Ellie until his sobbing finally subsided. He lifted her to the bed
and gently laid her down, then went back to the living room, picked up the
phone and dialed a familiar number. It rang three times before someone
answered.

“Price residence.” The voiced seemed to be
coming from a long distance.

“Mr. Price, please. Leland Howard calling.”

“Mr. Price is occupied. May I take a
message?”

“Please tell him I’m very sorry to
inconvenience him, but this is an emergency and I need him to come to my house
immediately.” Leland took care to manage the tone of his voice, to enunciate
each word clearly, but the urgency he felt must have come through.

“Just a moment, please. I’ll get him.”
Leland’s thoughts bounced and tangled while he waited. Shortly thereafter
Richard Price’s voice brought him back to the moment.

“What is it, Leland?”

“Ellie’s dead. I need help, if you can,
Richard. I can’t seem to . . .”

“I’ll be right there.”

Leland walked slowly back to Ellie, lay down
beside her and wrapped her in his arms for the last time. Breathing in her
scent provided him a strange comfort in sharp contrast to the turmoil
surrounding him.

Leland became aware of Richard Price
standing quietly in the doorway of the bedroom several minutes later. The
disarray left no doubt there had been a brutal fight. Splashes of blood covered
the rug beside the bed. Glass from the shattered vanity mirror lay strewn about
along with Ellie’s hairbrush and combs, magazines from the night stand and
items from the top of the dresser, which stood askew.

“Leland?” Richard called quietly.

No response. Just an almost imperceptible
shudder and the sound of soft weeping.

“Leland? I’m so sorry. What happened here?”

“She’s gone.” Whispered, as if he could not
bear to speak the words aloud.

“Leland, we have to call the police. Shall I
do that?”

“Tell them not to hurry. I don’t want them
to hurry.”

Richard Price left the room. Time passed.
Not enough time. Not enough time to grieve, to allow oneself to believe the
unbelievable. The police arrived. The ambulance. Someone took Leland gently by
the shoulders and moved him off the bed and into the living room.

They asked him questions, silly irrelevant
ones, like “When did this happen?” and “What do you remember?” and “How did you
discover her?” They didn’t ask the most important question, the one he had been
asking himself since he’d walked into the bedroom and found Ellie dying. They
didn’t ask, “How are you going to survive without her?”

He answered the ones he
could and asked some of his own.

“Sometime around lunch.
What time is it now?” and “I came in from the workshop” and “Clayton looked at
me and said ‘I kilt her, Paw,’ then ran out the door. Where is Clayton?” and
“Is Ellie dead? I think Ellie is dead.”

He watched them wheel
the stretcher out the door and knew the answer. No matter how ardently he
wished otherwise, that fact would remain unchanged.

Finally everyone left
except for his friend. Richard brought him a cup of tea. “Are you hungry?” he
asked.

“Not now. Not anymore.”

“Let’s get some of your things together,
Leland. You can stay with us until we figure this all out. Claire and I will be
happy to have you.”

Claire?
Leland found it difficult to pull his
thoughts together.
Claire?
Richard’s wife. He still has his wife.
“I should stay here.”

“Why, Leland?”

I
sn’t
it obvious?
Yet nothing was
obvious to Leland. He had no reason to stay, but the thought of leaving, sent
his mind reeling. “Can I stay here?”

“You’d be all alone, Leland. It’s not good
to be alone at a time like this.”

“What time is it?”

“Let’s get some things together for you,
Leland.”

A knock at the door interrupted them.
Richard Price answered, and Leland heard him speaking in hushed whispers with
the visitor. Then he returned, crying.

“What?” Leland asked,
anxiety and hope rushing to the surface of his emotional quagmire. Maybe Ellie
didn’t die. They came to say she made it through after all.

“Leland, I don’t know how to say this . . .”

“Is Ellie alive?”

“No, Leland . . . no. It’s Clayton. They
found him over in the park . . .”

“Is he coming home?”

“Leland, I’m so very sorry. Clayton hanged
himself.”

The two men sat together until the sun faded
from the sky, Leland sinking deeper and deeper into a chasm of anguish from
which he would never fully emerge, his friend sitting quietly at his side,
praying fervently for guidance on how to prevent that inevitable outcome of so
much tragedy.

THIRTY-THREE

1927

Ellie
Howard thought the task of finding a suitable husband on short notice would be
the most difficult challenge of her life, and it had been, up until she found
herself firmly stuck in the roles of wife, daughter-in-law-in-residence and
mother. Mary Alice, though gentle at heart, could be fierce when overseeing
Ellie’s induction into the Howard homestead—the small, cramped cabin on the
edge of downtown Asheville. Mary Alice insisted things be done just so, and the
old mountain ways of the Howard clan differed greatly from the city life of
Ellie’s childhood where her mother had shouldered the main responsibility of
caring for the family with dutiful efficiency, freeing her children to pursue their
own interests.

Mary Alice would have no part of the likes
of Bisquick or Steero bouillon cubes or Minute Tapioca, modern conveniences
Ellie thought essential. So at her mother-in-law’s hands, Ellie learned to cook
from scratch. Mary Alice considered canned goods from the corner store wasteful
and inferior. She preferred to tend the huge family garden from early spring to
late fall and preserve ample food to carry them through the year in her own
kitchen, laboring over her beloved wood stove. Ellie reluctantly apprenticed in
the garden. She became skilled at baking in the wood-fired oven. She collected
the eggs, tended the chickens, even learned to wring their necks and prepare
them for Sunday dinner, a task she found thoroughly disgusting.

Mary Alice also oversaw Ellie’s mothering
once the baby arrived. Ellie scrubbed dirty cloth diapers in the metal tub out
back and hung them on the clothesline to dry in the sun. Mary Alice forbade the
use the popular evaporated milk formulas so Ellie breastfed, and though her
mother-in-law chided her for being shy, Ellie refused to feed the baby sitting
in full view of anyone who happened to be in the cabin. Instead, she sat
face-to-the-corner wedged between the masterfully crafted cradle and the end of
the small bed she shared with her husband, a hand-woven shawl draped over her
head and shoulders for privacy.

The months passed slowly, and Ellie felt
herself slipping dangerously close to deep despair, an intolerable condition
for a young woman who had lived most of her life buoyed by her optimism.
Refusing to relinquish all hope, Ellie began forging a new path for herself in
steps so small she sometimes barely noticed them—a path based on her desires
rather than her circumstances.

Gently at first, she prodded Leland to build
her a home of her own, and though his progress was exceedingly slow and
frustrating, the house eventually emerged at the front of the lot facing
Cumberland Avenue. She began exerting her will in opposition to Mary Alice as
well, focusing on small areas where she expected the least resistance.

She loved Mary Alice and Arlen. They had
graciously and lovingly accepted her into their family and their home. They had
made room for her when they had precious little to spare. Still, she would not
be swallowed up by them. She would not allow that to happen. She needed her own
routines, her own rituals, and she intended to create them with her son and
husband. She had not wanted the child, had not planned for him, and his arrival
had set her on an unexpected and uncharted course. She resolved to restore
vestiges of her former life where she could, and she would start with the tree
in the park, the very spot where she had lost her way.

Ellie had passed that tree en route from one
place to another her whole life. She loved its ancient spreading branches heavy
with thick, green leaves in summer, rich with reds and oranges in the fall as
it prepared for another season of rest, barren and majestic against cloudy gray
skies in winter, and then again full of vibrant new life each spring. Since her
tryst with Harland Ellie had avoided going anywhere near the tree she loved.
Harland had stolen that from her, too, and she set herself the task of
reclaiming her territory.

One afternoon in late August, Clayton’s
first summer, Ellie carefully dressed him in the little sailor suit her parents
had given her when the baby was born. She encased his feet in the tiny white
leather shoes that would one day be bronzed and displayed on the mantel her
husband would build, put him in his buggy and headed to the park. Mary Alice
came around from the side of the cabin as she was leaving, a laundry basket
full of neatly folded, dried clothes balanced on her hip.

“Where you goin’, Ellie?”

“To the park, with my son.”

“There’s this ironin’ to be done, ya know.”

“I know. And I’ll do it when I get back.”

“Don’cha think ya should be tendin’ to ya
chores?”

“No. I think I should be taking my son to
the park to enjoy this lovely afternoon.”

“Ya got responsibilities, Ellie . . .”

“. . . and the most important one is my son,
Mother.” Ellie did not like calling Mary Alice Mother, but she used the
deferential moniker spoken in the most appeasing tone she could muster while
still setting the limits she intended.

Mary Alice tilted her head to the side,
shaded her eyes from the sun with her weathered hand and held Ellie’s steady
gaze. Ellie did not flinch. “Well then, don’t be takin’ too long. Woman’s work
is never done, ya know.”

“Never done, maybe, but a break from it
never hurt anyone.” Ellie nodded to Mary Alice, pleased with herself for
holding her ground. “I’ll be home soon, Mother.” And with that, Ellie took a
huge step toward her own liberation.

She set out at a fast clip and arrived at
the entrance to the park ready for her encounter, emboldened by her recent
success with Mary Alice. She paused only for a moment, took a deep breath,
straightened her spine and pushed the buggy ahead of her down the steps to the
base of the tree. She stood motionless, heart pounding, eyes closed, and willed
herself to remember the last time she had been there.

She had been a child, filled with unfettered
fantasies of a grand and adventurous life with a dashing young man. She had
been Ellie Vance then, and the world seemed to beckon her to greatness. As best
she could, she conjured up those old feelings of excitement, anticipation,
hopefulness, joy. But standing here now, shame beat down passion, guilt held
happiness at bay, outrage gave way to resignation.

Yet, sheltered by the tree, she felt a hint
of comfort. She took Clayton from the buggy, placed him on his back on the
blanket she had spread out, and sat down cross-legged beside him. She shook his
favorite rattle above his head, and he reached his tiny hand out and grasped
her thumb. He giggled and held tight, pulling her hand and the rattle toward
his perfect mouth. Ellie felt the rush of love for her beautiful child flood
her body, and she unexpectedly burst into tears.

“It all started here, baby,” she cooed.
Clayton squealed as the rattle tinkled. “You started here and that made it a
bad place for me for a while. But we are going to make it a good place again.
We’ll do that together, okay?”

She searched her child’s smiling face, his
shining brown eyes, and saw there only love, unquestioned trust and innocent
joy. She realized how easy life could be, how focusing on joyful things could
overpower darkness and regret, and she believed in that moment she could find
her way back. She knew she would at least try her best to do so. With her
child, she would create a good place where she could thrive and be happy again.

Ellie carved out time every few days to take
her sojourn to the park. As Clayton got older, the buggy was replaced by a
Radio Flyer wagon her friend Connie gave him for his first birthday. Sometimes
Clayton would toddle along beside her, or Ellie would carry him. Eventually he
graduated to a tricycle, then a two-wheeler. However they traveled, they always
ended up at the base of the huge tree where they spent their time telling each
other stories, reading from Clayton’s favorite books or sharing a picnic lunch.
Sometimes they would nap, the little boy wrapped safely in his mother’s arms.

In those early years, the two of them were
inseparable, but Ellie made it a point to include Leland as well. Whenever he
had the time, Ellie encouraged Leland to join them in the park, and she paid
special attention to nurturing the relationship between her husband and son.
The family grew up under that tree as much as Clayton did, and no matter the
season, they sought the place out for a respite from their daily routines.
Other families did the same and over the years, the place slowly changed. At
Leland’s urging, the fathers hung a big rope swing from a strong lower branch.
He made a simple bench of red oak and placed it on the opposite side of the
thick tree trunk so parents could sit somewhere other than on the ground while
they watched their children play.
 

With each visit, every
little change, Ellie felt more secure, and eventually the new memories she so
intentionally forged eclipsed those of her brief moment with Harland. That
event from so long ago became submerged, leaving Ellie to mistakenly believe
she had finally freed herself from it and from Harland Freeman.

Like
all little boys, Clayton Samuel Howard knew what he wanted to be when he grew
up. He would be a fireman, or a cowboy, a lion-tamer in the circus, maybe even
a famous baseball player. From as far back as he could remember, his mother
encouraged him to dream big. She showered him with love and he clung tightly to
her. Many of his best childhood memories were of lying cradled against her as
she read to him under the huge tree in the park.
Winnie-the-Pooh
and
Curious George
were his favorites until he could read by
himself, and then he favored
My
Friend Flicka
and
Bonus Kid
.

The day Clayton turned on Jimmy Boykins
marked the death of a sweet little boy and the birth of a man who one day would
kill his own mother in a fit of drug-induced rage. It was not a simple path
from one existence to the other, nor was it an easy one. It started with the
thrilling sense of power he felt as he loomed over Jimmy Boykins, weapon raised
for another blow. Seeing his former nemesis cowering on the ground with a
bloody nose sent an adrenaline rush through Clayton, and he inhaled the resulting
sense of invincibility deep into every cell of his being. He wanted more, and
he determined in that moment to find it however he could.

Clayton first sought his
power by becoming the local bully. He swaggered. He boasted. He threatened and
demanded. The neighborhood kids had heard what he did to Jimmy Boykins and they
didn’t want any of the same, so they either steered clear of him or buddied up
with him. Clayton and his little gang roamed the neighborhood stirring up
trouble here and there—mostly minor offenses in the beginning—but as he gained
confidence, his behavior escalated and he ended up in trouble with the law on
more than one occasion. Each time, Ellie or Leland bailed him out. He always
offered apologies and promises to change his ways, and each time his parents
chose to believe him rather than see the truth that lay beneath his compliant
façade.

When bullying lost its luster, Clayton
turned to vandalism. When breaking windows and defacing property failed to
provide the rush he sought, he turned to drugs. Marijuana was easy enough to
get, but it proved too mellow for his taste. He tried LSD, alcohol,
amphetamines, even cocaine. Clayton would try anything once. By the time he
reached his twenties, he had lost control of his life and from then until the
end, he spiraled deeper and deeper into an abyss from which he would never
escape.

He had moments of
clarity when he realized what he had become, what he had given up in exchange
for so little. He remembered feeling love for others and being loved by them.
Flashes of the past would break through to the surface, usually when he was
coming down from a high or sobering up after a drinking binge. He remembered
whittling wood in the shop with his father, helping his mother bake or working
with her in the garden. He especially remembered the spot under the tree—the
“good place” his mother called it. He relived for a precious moment the peace
of nestling there in her arms as she read his favorite stories and the joy of
her pushing him high into the air on the rope swing his father had made for him
and the other kids. And when he remembered, he wept. Then he would go in search
of his next fix, whatever it might be, just so he could forget all the good
things he’d lost, just so he could feel invincible again even for a little
while.

The day he killed his mother he was in
search of oblivion, or at the very least, cessation of his immediate pain. The
clawing withdrawal from heroin drove him hard. His heart raced, he hadn’t slept
in at least two days, he was plagued with vomiting, cold sweats and muscle
cramps so intense he felt his bones might snap.

She’ll help me
. That thought raced through Clayton’s mind
as he barged into the house and demanded money. She had money, he knew that. Or
at least she had things he could exchange for drugs. The antique comb from his
great grandmother—she’d shown him that once, and her own mother’s diamond
engagement ring. He believed there were other valuables as well, and she always
had a little cash put away somewhere for emergencies. This was an emergency.
Surely she’d see that and she would help him. She loved him.