Liar's Bench (15 page)

Bobby looked at them in disgust, then withdrew his hand as if it had been scalded.

We moved on to a cracked, lopsided fieldstone that poked up amidst a cluster of tall fescue. We bent to inspect it. Bobby dusted off the headstone with the tail of his shirt, and we both squinted to make out the rough etchings. What looked like
DENNALEE CROW,
or maybe
PENNALEE
, was chiseled in the stone and, underneath it,
DIED
1860. There were no other markings.

Bobby's face lit up. “See that, Mudas? Dennalee Crow? Could be my kin.” He rubbed his palm harder across the stone, tiny bits of pebble spraying into the thick clump of leaves and weeds.

I plopped down on the grass. “Hold on, I'll try and make you a rag,” I said. Sitting cross-legged, I snatched up the wide bottom of my jeans and tugged until I made a tiny rip.

Bobby leaned over me and in a swift and easy movement, grabbed the hem, tearing off a generous strip—a near-perfect rag. He raised it and tossed me a grin. “Thanks.”

I stretched out my legs, studying the bottom of my jeans—my favorite jeans, now ruined. “I'm gonna have a lot of explaining to do when Mama sees this. She just bought these last month.” The words tumbled out before I could stop them. I looked up at Bobby, stricken that there was no more Mama—no one to answer to, no more explaining anything to anyone. Period.

Bobby stiffened. “I'm sorry, Mudas. I had no idea she bought these jeans for you. Here.” He handed me the rag.

I raised it to my face, blocking the sorrow. “I can't paste it back on now. It's okay, you keep it. I'll turn them into cutoffs.” I shoved it back into his hand. A burst of wind swooped across my neck, parting, twisting hairs. Then, just as quick, somewhere in the dark cranny of my mind, an image flitted out. Frannie, Mama, and a hangman's noose cinched tight.

Bobby sat beside me, knotting the rag, staring off. His mind, I knew, was working to fix the problem—me.

I shrugged off the grisly mental snapshots and crawled over his legs to examine the stone. “ ‘Dennalee Crow.' Wonder who she was.”

He pondered a moment. “Gramps said Frannie was one of six kids. The youngest, I think. Two brothers and three sisters.” He edged closer to get a better look at the words.

“Ah, my mama was a fourth sister, too.” A reaching sunflower, I thought. I walked over to a different stone and lightly pressed down the grass, exposing mostly rubble. “This one's too busted to read.”

“Bummer. But here's another,” Bobby announced, growing excited. “Says here, ‘Amos Crow, died 1925.' Come see.”

“Amos . . . the name sounds familiar. I think Grammy Essie told me about him once.... Oh, that's right: It's Frannie's son! Yeah, I remember now. Amos built Liar's Bench.” I ogled the half-chipped stone.

Amazed, Bobby shook his head. “Wow! I never knew that.”

“I wonder if Frannie's here. . . .” We both jumped up and began checking the other headstones for her name, as if she were some kind of local celebrity. Which, I guess, she was.

Behind me, I heard a loud thump as Bobby stumbled over a grave marker, falling hard on the ground. A whoosh of what sounded like mud-suck oozed up. About a foot away, a gravestone lay flat. Reaching over, I placed my hand over his and shook hard. I felt my heartbeat in the tips of my fingers. “Bobby? Bobby, are you okay?”

Bobby moaned and lifted his head slightly off the ground. He slowly shoved himself up to a sitting stance, one leg extended, the other crooked upward. He rested an elbow on his knee. “You okay?” he mumbled, rubbing his head.

“Who, me? I'm worried about
you,
Bobby. You hit the ground hard.”

“I'm fine, I'm fine,” he said.

“Christ, Bobby, you could've killed yourself.... You scared me to death!”

The second I said it, our eyes locked and we collapsed in a fit of nervous laughter.

“Death?” Bobby chuckled. “In my own family cemetery! No hearse needed.”

“Pretty convenient!” I giggled. We lay back on the cool earth and laughed ourselves silly. Laughed and laughed 'til it wasn't even funny anymore.

When we quieted, Bobby crooked his head toward me and stretched out a hand. I took it and let myself fall into his gaze. For a long minute I was dizzy with a wanting. A hawk soared above and shrilled its warning, anchoring me.

Spooked, we both laughed weakly. “C'mon.” I tugged at his hand. “I think we better leave. You were right. We need to get to Jingles, before McGee gets to us. There's nothing here.”

“Told 'ya so,” he said playfully, and, together, we sat up, taking one last look around the lonely graveyard.

“Wait.” He pointed to a headstone lying flat on the ground.

“That's what you tripped over. Jeez, the weeds are so thick an' tall, it's hard to see where you're stepping in parts.”

“No, look at it,” he said quietly. I turned to Bobby, surprised to see that his eyes were full of turmoil. I leaned toward the stone to get a closer look and saw that it had landed faceup:
F
RANNIE
C
ROW
—D
IED
1860,
read the moss-darkened etching.

“Oh, wow.”

“It's Frannie. My gramma Frannie,” he said, surprise and sorrow coating his voice.

I rested my hand lightly on Bobby's arm. “We should try and set it upright before we go, okay?” He nodded. I crawled toward the grave marker but stopped as my flesh scraped against something sharp. Yelping, I grabbed my knee. Tracks of blood dripped down, spreading crimson onto my jeans. A foot away, glints of sunshine bounced off glass.

Bobby came running to my side and examined my knee through the freshly ripped hole in my jeans. Once he wiped away the mess, we could see that the cut wasn't deep, just bloody. “Not really our lucky day, huh?”

“What is that, anyway?” I asked, nodding toward the half-exposed glass sparkling in the mud. “Looks like a jar or something.”

Pulling out his pocketknife, Bobby cut into the earth, trying to pry loose what appeared to be a Mason jar buried just below the surface. His knife plunged deeper into the muck and, with a hard flick to the soil, uprooted the old fruit jar. Tossing aside his knife, he clawed the earth around the object, forming a pocket between the dirt and the glass, finally lifting it out. Bobby grinned wide, sweat dampening his forehead.

“Beware of flying fishes, Bobby!” flew out before I could think.

“Huh?”

I swallowed Mama's old adage and pointed to the Mason jar.

He inspected the jar, which appeared to be whole, lightly tracing his finger across the tip of the clamp. “Sharp. You must have cut yourself on that clamp.” He raised the large Mason jar to me.

I hesitated, then grasped the jar, turning it over and back again (carefully avoiding the clasp), marveling at what was sealed inside: a small package wrapped in yellowed-brown leather. Like a message in a bottle. I brushed away the copper dirt coating the surface and ran my fingers across the smooth, clear finish. The jar was thick and heavy, probably about a half gallon in size, if I remembered correctly from my canning lessons with Grammy Essie years before. It was sealed tight by a glass lid with a rusted thumbscrew clamp that was crusted, caked with earth. Avoiding the sharp point, I tried to lift the clamp, but it wouldn't budge. I handed the jar back to Bobby. “Maybe you can do better.”

He used his knife to scrape off the corrosion and dirt that had glued the jar shut, working carefully around the mouth of the lid. Then he gently pried the knife into the sliver of space between the lip and glass stopper. At last, the clamp flung back, banging against the glass. The force popped the lid right off, showering us both in tiny specks of confetti glass and pieces of gray wax.

I gasped and quickly shook them off my arms and clothing, lest they burn or, worse, had someone's remains mixed in. Undeterred, Bobby poked his fingers inside the wide mouth of the jar, pulled them back out, sniffed, and then massaged the oily glow between his fingertips. Leaning over his shoulders, I took a whiff and wiggled my fingers into the jar's mouth, pulling out the leather package. Carefully, I unwrapped the layers of soft leather. Beneath those, an aged handkerchief. When I'd finished, I held a thin dark navy book of sorts, hand-tooled in gold letters :
E.A.A
.
Could it be the Rooster Run ledger? My hands shook.

“Go on, open it!”

“Yes,” I whispered. I swiped my dirty hands over my jeans and, ever so carefully, opened the small journal, gently separating the cotton rag pages. It looked to be a diary of sorts. No numbers, no names, no clues to Mama's death, and nothing to incriminate McGee. “Just an old journal,” I said, trying to tamp my disappointment. I leaned my head against Bobby's chest and began to flip through the old pages. What was I thinking? That I'd just walk into a slave graveyard and find my answers here? I'd been foolish, naïve. As I came to the end of the first entry,
Evelyn Amaris Anderson,
in petite faded script, sat at the bottom of the page. “Whoa—look, Bobby! It's the Hark Hill lady, Anderson.”

Bobby winced in recognition.

I tilted the journal toward a stream of sunlight to get a better look, and continued to flip through the pages. Chills scuttled up my spine when I saw the date on the book's final entry. “Bobby, look—the date here—it was written on my birthday—Mama's death day . . .” I reached my hand into the rippled shadows for his. Church mouse quiet, we put our heads together and began to read.

Bobby and I reached the end of the page at the same time, our eyes meeting, widened by the revelation. The journal felt heavy in my hands.
“Signed, Evelyn Amaris Anderson,”
I read, releasing a burst of air.

“Evelyn Amaris Anderson,” Bobby repeated, mulling over the name. He pressed his palms to his thighs, jumped to his feet, and growled. “Bastards,” he spat, not hiding his contempt. His eyes drifted to Frannie's headstone. He squatted down and tried to place it upright, secure in the plug of muck it had been ripped up from, but it kept tipping listlessly to the left. Pulling himself up, he spun around and gave a violent kick to the ground, scattering the leaves and dirt.

“Hey,” I said, rising slowly, wincing from my wounds as I stood. “This here bastard just exonerated your grammy.” I patted the mistress's diary. “To think, Frannie Crow left this world cradled in bigotry and lies. And now, a hundred years later, she can finally have her justice.” I studied Bobby's face, rigid from anger and pain. “Let's go,” I said gently. “We need to make sure Ginny Meade records this. This book can right your family history.”

“Yeah, okay. Let's get out of here.” Absorbed in the diary, he began to walk slowly toward the gate, rereading the mistress's words—a century overdue.

Kneeling over Frannie's grave, I righted her stone, pushing it down into the earth so that it stood strong and straight. At least now her name would be displayed for anyone else who happened upon this forgotten graveyard. She deserved that, at least. Lingering, I reached inside my pocket and pulled out the scrap of paper with Mama's name on it. The one that would forever brand her a whore. No one could ever know about it, and I couldn't bear to have the awful thing burning a hole in my pocket for another second longer. Neatly, I folded the receipt into quarters and plugged it deep into the hole the Mason jar had left behind. “Mama,” I whispered, “I'm burying your secret.” I covered it with grave dirt and tamped down the soil with the heel of my palm. “Dear God,” I murmured, “bless Frannie and all her kin. Don't let them be forgotten. And, please, make sure Frannie watches over Mama's secret.”