Healing Grace (30 page)

“Oh, you saw Harry and you’re…you’re jealous?” She was incredulous. But the incredulity wore off as quickly as it came on. “Etienne,” she screeched. “Oscar—I know who he is!”

“What?” Etienne barked.

“All this lovemaking must be making me scatterbrained,” she teased, but then went on, “If I hadn’t seen Harry, I wouldn’t have remembered. The man Archie went to work for—Oscar—must be Harry’s father. His name is Oscar… Oscar Anders. And I know exactly where he lives.”

“Home”

I see from my window, a hawk,

its wings spread wide, soar free,

It is searching, searching, in the light,

The seeds I plant begin to grow,

the fields change, to green, to life,

They are searching, searching, and in my mind,

Turmoil and despair overshadow this pretty canvas,

In these walls, these ceilings, these floors, I live,

This place is made of mortar, wood and stone,

This dwelling is what I call home.

I see in this photograph, an eagle,

his wings surround and hold me,

He is searching, searching, in the night,

The seeds inside begin to grow,

in my soul, my heart, to life,

They are searching, searching, and in my mind,

Harmony and peace overshadow this bitter anguish,

In your face, your eyes, your smile, I revive,

This place is made of skin, blood and bone,

Only in your arms will I find my home.

On the first day of June in the year 1881, three of the six men from the Klan who had been sent to prison walked through the prison gate to freedom. The boy was one of them. Of the men left behind, two would remain incarcerated for six more years. The oldest among them, William Hughes, would probably die in prison. He’d been sixty at the time his forty-year sentence began.

The colonel was waiting, as promised, and he’d brought enough horses for them all. Anxious to get to their homes, the other men thanked the colonel and rode off, but the boy and the colonel weren’t in a hurry. They were going to Pulaski because the colonel’s farm was near there. The colonel said it would be easier for the boy to start over in a town where no one knew him. He’d also said he would give the boy money and help him find work and a place to live.

Side by side they sauntered along the rutted country paths. The boy tried to pay attention to the blue sky overhead, the smells of spring, the freshly turned soil, the grazing livestock, and all the other earthly wonders he’d been deprived of for so long, but he couldn’t appreciate them.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be free. He did want to be, but he was scared, too. It was as if a part of him—the better part of him—had disappeared, and he didn’t know what kind of life he could have without it. He couldn’t tell jokes anymore. He didn’t know any. He wasn’t strong and confident like he’d been. He was frail and vulnerable, and just so very tired.

The colonel kept sparing him curious glances, most of which were accompanied by worried smiles, and these only made the boy feel worse. The colonel’s occasional commentary, intended to reassure and encourage, didn’t help, either. But the colonel’s behavior was no surprise.

In the nine years of the boy’s incarceration, the colonel was the only person from the outside world who’d come to see him. He’d visited twice a year, on their birthdays. The boy’s birthday was in November, and the colonel’s in April.

The visits were always the same. A guard led the boy into a secure room where the colonel waited. The boy sat across the table and the colonel asked how he was. The boy said he was fine, and then everything got silent while the colonel stared at him. The boy had a hard time returning the colonel’s stare. He had a hard time looking at the colonel at all.

Eventually the colonel would smile and say, “Would you like to hear the latest gossip?” These stories ranged from political issues to new businesses opening, to who was getting married and who was having fancy balls. At each visit, the colonel spoke of Luther Emerson, and Luther’s son, Trent and daughter-in-law, Emily. Almost every other year, it seemed, there was news of a new Emerson baby.

The boy wasn’t sure why the colonel talked about the Emersons so much. Neither of them were especially close. Sometimes the boy would interrupt and say he didn’t care, but the colonel talked about the Emersons anyway. The boy supposed this was because the colonel saw right through his lie. The truth was the boy looked forward to hearing about the Emersons, but then sometimes, after he was back in his cell, he got angry.

Luther Emerson, who was as guilty as the rest of the imprisoned Klansmen, was free to enjoy his life and plethora of grandbabies. Sometimes the boy wished he was Trent Emerson, and that Luther had been his father, but this was nothing new. He’d had this wish for as long as he could remember.

When he was young, Luther Emerson used to come to the farm where the boy lived. Luther had words with the boy’s father. Rarely did the boy hear what they quarreled about, but once he did. Once he heard, and saw, everything.

He’d been in the barn loft, peeking through a knothole in the wall. Right there in the front yard, Luther punched his daddy in the face. The boy’s mother ran from the porch, out to where Daddy lay sprawled on the ground, and she pleaded with Luther not to hurt Daddy again. Luther didn’t say anything to the boy’s mother. He just stood there, towering over Daddy, with his fist raised.

Before he walked away, he bellowed, “So help me God, if you lay one more finger on that boy, I’ll kill you myself. I don’t give a damn if I go to Hell for it.”

On one of the colonel’s visits to the prison, the colonel told the boy his mother had died. The sympathy in the colonel’s expression irritated the boy. He didn’t care about his mother and he told the colonel that. She’d never cared about him, so why should he give a damn about her? She’d begged Luther not to hurt his daddy, but she’d never once tried to stop his daddy from hurting him.

This was when the colonel shared something shocking Luther had told him. Luther said the boy’s mother couldn’t stand seeing his father hurting him. Numerous times she’d tried to send the boy away, but somehow his father always found out. Again and again he beat her for it, but she didn’t quit. The reason Luther Emerson came to their farm was because the boy’s mother had pleaded for his help.

The colonel said all these things, and the boy shrugged. It still didn’t matter to him. What he remembered was that after he and his mother went to live at the farm, his mother stopped telling him she loved him. At the farm, she barely spoke to him at all. Before that, when he was very little, she’d been different.

She used to hug him and kiss him. She held him on her lap and told him stories, and she lay beside him when he fell asleep. The boy didn’t tell the colonel these things, and he didn’t tell the colonel about the bottles of salve that mysteriously appeared on his dresser at the farm.

The boy had another memory of his mother, but he didn’t tell the colonel this one, either. They hadn’t lived at the farm very long. In the middle of the night, she came to his room and woke him. She put her finger to her lips and told him to be quiet. In the dark, she helped him get dressed, then took his hand and together they went down the creaky steps.

They walked and walked. They walked for so long the boy couldn’t feel his legs anymore. Just as the sun began to rise, they left the road and went into a hayfield. His mother said the hay was tall enough to hide them and they could rest for a while. The boy remembered lying in that field. All he’d been able to see was tall, green grass and blue sky, and he’d thought the world was neat like that.

He remembered being jarred awake, lifted like a sack of potatoes and dropped into the bed of a wagon. He didn’t realize who had picked him up until he saw Daddy climb up onto the driver’s bench. As they drove off, Daddy said to his mother, “If you ever sneak away like that again, I will hunt you down. No matter where you are, I will find you. And when I find you, make no mistake, I won’t kill
you
. I will kill
him
. You remember that!”

Long after the colonel left the prison that day—the day he told the boy his mother was dead—the boy lay on his cot, but he couldn’t sleep. All he could think about was his mother. Silently his tears fell, but he never told the colonel he cried for her.

Something else happened in the prison that he didn’t tell the colonel about. During the war, the colonel had told the boy other people believed what he and the colonel did together was sordid and disgusting. This was why it had to be kept secret. No matter what other people believed, the boy thought what he and the colonel did was special, even beautiful. He still thought that. What he and the colonel did was not about control or subjugation. It wasn’t about humiliation and ridicule, or pain and punishment. It was about companionship and closeness. It was about finding a place and time upon which nothing from the outside world could intrude. It was about the need for, and comfort of human connection.

When the men in prison used the boy, it was what people believed—sordid and disgusting. The same way it was sordid and disgusting the way the boy had used those girls from town. The boy wasn’t sure how the colonel found out what was happening in the prison, but he also knew the colonel visited other prisoners. Anyone of them could have told him. Though the colonel never mentioned it specifically, the boy knew he was aware. He could tell because of the disappointment reflected in the colonel’s eyes.

In the last year of the boy’s sentence, the colonel spoke of his divorce. He didn’t say much other than that his wife was better off and she’d already found someone new to love—a nice man who could love her in return. The colonel said he was happy for her. The colonel’s children were adults, with families of their own by then, and the colonel said very little about them.

Due to the travel distance to Pulaski, the colonel suggested they stop at an inn along the way. The place, when they came upon it, was an isolated building along a stretch of country road, but it looked to be in good repair. The colonel said he stayed there every time he traveled to and from the prison. He said the rooms were comfortable and the fare at the adjoining pub was pretty good.

There were two beds in the room the colonel rented. The colonel put his satchel down and went to the washstand to wash his hands. The boy knew, or at least he thought he knew, what the colonel wanted from him. He sat on one of the beds and started to unbutton his shirt.

The colonel turned around. He was smiling. “Are you hungry?” he asked. “They make a decent shepherd’s pie at the pub downstairs.”

The boy had to scratch his throat so the colonel would think he’d opened his collar because it was too tight.

He wasn’t hungry, but knew he should eat something. At the colonel’s last visit, six weeks before the boy’s release, when he’d walked into the secure room, before the colonel even said hello, he’d exclaimed, “Oh my god!”

Covered as he’d been by his prison garb, the boy hadn’t thought the colonel would be able to tell how much weight he’d lost. He’d tried to shrug off the colonel’s concern, but the colonel was relentless. When the colonel asked how many days it had been since he’d eaten, the boy couldn’t answer. He couldn’t remember. Within hours of the colonel’s departure, two guards came to the boy’s cell, woke him and took him to the prison infirmary.

After that, the boy did try to eat more, and he did manage to gain weight before his release. At least he wasn’t as weak as he’d been at the colonel’s visit. At least he was able to mount the horse the colonel brought for him. At least he walked up the stairs and down the hallway at the inn without having to keep a steadying hand on the wall. At least he was able to get up from the bed without his legs giving out under him, like they had when he’d stood up in the secure room.

Much of what happened that April day was hazy in his head. He remembered the coldness of the floor seeping through his shirt, hearing the colonel yelling his name and seeing the colonel’s boots rushing around the table legs. He remembered grasping the rung of the chair, and trying to pull himself up, but not being able to. He remembered the colonel kneeling beside him, and how, for those few seconds, he tried to focus on the colonel’s face. Everything had been blurry, and it all happened too fast, but he remembered the guards grabbing the colonel and dragging him away. He remembered hearing the colonel shouting curses.

At the pub, the boy ordered shepherd’s pie, because the colonel ordered shepherd’s pie. He knew the colonel was watching, so he forced himself to eat every last crumb. And then because the colonel was still watching, the boy asked if he could have apple pie, too. The colonel’s indulgent smile made every painful cramp he would endure later, worth it.

Back in their room, the boy sat on the bed again, but this time he sat because his legs weren’t steady. His stomach felt like gallons of water had been pumped into it, and his belt, which lately he’d had to cinch tightly, was digging into his gut.

The colonel was just standing there, leaning against the door, silently staring. The only thing the boy wanted to do was curl up on the bed and let the misery overwhelm him. But he couldn’t. Not when the colonel was watching. For sixteen years he’d dreamed of the colonel’s quiet whisper, “Let me love you tonight.” But he wouldn’t hear it. Not tonight. Not ever again. Because of what the boy had done, what he’d become.

It took a moment to raise his head, to swallow away the thickness in his throat, to find his voice. At the same time he reached for his belt and yanked the clasp open. “You can fuck me now. I know you want to,” he said.

Instantly the colonel’s smile disappeared and anger flared in his eyes. “No,” he snapped.

Something inside the boy’s chest twisted. He kept his face turned away, but he knew when the colonel crossed the room, when he sat on the bed. The touch the boy felt on the side of his head, smoothing his hair back, wasn’t cruel or coarse. It was soft, tender, soothing. The boy closed his eyes. Sixteen years had passed since he’d felt the colonel touch him that way. Sixteen long, horrid years…

“All I want—all I’ve ever wanted—is for you to be happy,” the colonel said.

Abruptly the boy turned, caught the colonel up and kissed him on the mouth. The colonel’s initial shock was followed by a stiffening withdrawal.

“Stop it, love,” the colonel murmured. He caught the boy’s hands and drew them away.

Painful pressure grew in the boy’s throat. Like he’d been suddenly submerged in frigid waters, he couldn’t breathe. He tried to get up, but his limbs wouldn’t carry him. Instead they dragged him down, down into murky depths. He was suffocating, and all he could do to run away was curl up on the bed, cover his head, and make himself as small as possible.

The boy wanted to plunge a knife into his own gut. If only there had been one at hand, or a revolver… surely the colonel had a gun somewhere in his satchel? He wanted flames to sear his flesh, to shrivel his insides, to char his bones, but he would never completely turn to ash. In Hell, the agony would consume him for all of eternity, and he could scream, and scream, and scream…