Sweet Mercy (22 page)

C
assandra took the girls back to the lodge for their afternoon nap while Daddy and Warren traipsed off to the Eatery for a snack and something to drink. Daddy invited me to go but I wanted to be alone.

Once everybody left I realized I was still clutching Cassandra's
True Detective
magazine. Thumbing through it, I settled on an article about the smuggling of rum from Jamaica. Fifteen minutes later, my jaw came unhinged and my wide eyes gazed unseeing out over the river.

Tossing the magazine aside, I headed for the lodge in search of Jones.

I stopped by my room first to change out of my bathing suit and into my usual cotton dress. I didn't want to confront Jones without being properly attired.

He was in the apartment, not at the radio table but at the desk on the opposite wall. The windows were thrown wide open against the heat. Two oscillating fans blew air at each
other from opposite ends of the room, rustling several piles of paper on the desk that would have gone sailing had they not been held down by paperweights. Jones was bent over an open checkbook; I could hear the tip of his pen scratching its way across the paper.

“Jones?”

He looked up, magnified eyes blinking. “Oh. Hello, Eve.”

“You busy?”

“Just working my way through a pile of invoices. Trying to get caught up before Cyrus gets home tonight.”

“He'll be here tonight for sure?”

“According to his latest telegram, yes.”

I shivered as I thought about Uncle Cy traveling home with Aunt Cora's body. I couldn't begin to imagine what Jones must be feeling.

“Um, Jones?”

He grunted. He tore off a finished check and slid it into an envelope.

“Can I ask you something?”

He licked the envelope and sealed it. “I guess so.”

“You don't have to tell me, but I was just wondering.”

My pulse escalated and I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. I took a deep breath to calm myself.

Jones looked annoyed. “Well, I can't tell you anything if you don't ask your question,” he said.

“Um.” I took a few steps closer. He didn't invite me to sit down. I would have declined anyway. His pen was scratching out another check. “It's about the radios,” I said.

He nodded. He picked up another bill and studied it. The pen moved in rapid strokes as he scribbled something on the invoice.

I took another tentative step toward the desk. “You were receiving information. I mean, from Cincinnati. Weren't you?”

The scratching stopped. The pen slowly dropped to the desk. Jones turned to face me. “What do you mean, Eve?”

With another deep breath, I admonished myself not to back down now. “Those bedtime stories you listened to. They were coded messages, weren't they, telling you when you could expect the next shipment of liquor to come in on the train.”

The red eyes narrowed behind the lenses. “Why do you think that?”

I swallowed. I felt the spittle slide down my throat, leaving my mouth dry. “I read about that kind of thing in a magazine just now.” My voice had weakened but I compensated by lifting my head higher.

“You did, huh?”

I nodded.

“What magazine was that?”

Because I didn't want to admit to the name, it came out in a whisper. “
True Detective
.”

He laughed. One swift cutting laugh. “And you believe what you read in a rag like that?” He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. “Anyway,” he added, “what difference does it make?”

“It doesn't make any difference. Not really. I just want to know.”

“Uh-huh.” He slid his glasses back on and pulled another statement from the pile.

A bead of sweat slunk down my back. “If you don't tell me otherwise, Jones, I'm going to believe you were helping
Uncle Cy with the bootlegging, that you didn't just know about it but you were telling Uncle Cy when the liquor was coming in on the train.”

Blood rose to his pale cheeks, turning his skin eerily red. When he spoke he didn't look at me. “It doesn't matter what you think, does it, Eve? Another few days and we'll never see each other again.”

“I know that, Jones, so I just want to know why. Uncle Cy never treated you like a son. He never even treated you like a real member of the family. Why did you help him?”

“I didn't help him!” Jones yelled. I gasped as he banged the desk with an open palm, pushed back the chair, and stood abruptly. He walked to the window and looked out. The view was of the gas station, where even now the illegal liquor sat in its hiding place, awaiting customers.

“Then why did you do it, Jones?” I asked quietly.

He leaned his head back and took a deep breath. “I did it for her. For my mother.”

I didn't respond. I waited. After a moment, he turned from the window and looked at me. “I did it for my mother,” he said again, “because we needed the money to try to save her.”

And now she was dead, her body riding in a casket halfway across the country, heading home for burial. “I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm not judging you, Jones. I understand why you'd do it. I really do.”

He feigned a smile. “Thank you, but I doubt it. You can't possibly understand. My mother loved me. She was the only person who ever did. She and my father. Now they're both dead.”

I felt something terrible in my chest, an actual constriction
of my heart because I knew what Jones said was true. To everyone other than his own parents he was the red-eyed devil, the freak, the boy to be hushed up and hidden away.

I fumbled for something to say. I made several false starts, but Jones cut me off by asking, “When are you leaving?”

“You mean, to go back to Minnesota?”

He nodded.

“Saturday.”

“Good.” He walked back to the desk and sat down. “You know, you can tell the police about my involvement, but it won't matter. Not anymore.”

“I have no intention of telling anyone anything. You know that. That's why we're leaving. So Daddy and I don't have to live a lie.”

He looked at the wall and I looked at his profile. His head bobbed slightly; he appeared deep in thought. Finally he said, “Go on home and forget you ever came here. Just forget about this place, Eve. That's the best thing you can do.”

A silence settled between us, weighted with sadness. As I had so many times before, as I had when his mother died, I wanted to throw my arms around Jones and comfort him.

Hesitantly I said, “I mean it when I say there's one good thing I'll never forget about this place, and that's you, Jones.”

Slowly he turned his gaze to me. We looked at each other for what seemed a very long time. His face relaxed, and though his eyes were sorrowful, one corner of his mouth turned up in the smallest of smiles. “You take care of yourself, Cousin Eve.”

I breathed deeply and nodded. “You too, Jones O'Brannigan.”

I moved to the desk and put my hand over his. He looked at it, then circled his fingers around my own and squeezed
gently. He hung his head, as though against some inner pain. For a moment I thought he might kiss my knuckles or press my fingers to his cheek. But he didn't. He pulled his hand from my clasp and picked up his pen. I dropped my hand to my side and left the room.

H
is mother's funeral called for one of Jones's rare excursions from the lodge. On the morning of the service, he slipped into a gray linen suit, slicked his white hair down with Murray's pomade, and ventured forth to endure the stares of those who had come to pay his mother their last respects.

At his request I sat beside him in the church, lost in the tangle of candles, holy water, incense, and a volley of Latin that left my head reeling. Jones appeared unmoved; the only indication that he was aware of anything at all was a nervous twitching of his right thumb.

I heaved a sigh of relief when the choir started singing something about paradise and the casket was carried out of the church. There was still the burial to get through, but at least we were making progress. At the grave site, I stood beside a still stony-faced Jones. I longed to comfort him, but his rigid husk seemed impenetrable. The few tears that sprang to my eyes weren't for the aunt I'd never known but for her hapless son and the open-ended question of what
would become of him. The world was not a kind place for someone like Jones.

I tried to pay attention as the priest intoned a few prayers and sang words of Scripture. The coffin was lowered into the earth and sprinkled with holy water while we silently recited The Lord's Prayer. Finally the priest uttered the parting words in English, something I could at last understand: “May her soul and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.”

Jones rode home from the cemetery with Uncle Cy and promptly disappeared. He completely sidestepped the food-laden reception in the dining room that the ladies of Mercy had spent days preparing. It was not his way to mingle, nor, I realized, would the townsfolk have wanted him to. Awkward enough to be at a funeral without having to express one's sympathy to a boy they had never once spoken to before. On top of that, they would not have been able to look him in the eye without flinching.

No sympathy was wasted, though, as the citizens of Mercy heaped it in great piles upon Uncle Cy. Though he was genuinely grieving, my uncle's hangdog look annoyed me. I didn't think he deserved the comfort and condolences of the crowd that had gathered at the lodge. For one swift moment, as I was reaching for a glass of fruit punch, I felt the urge to stand in the center of the room and holler, “Cyrus Marryat is a bootlegger! His stash of liquor is in the cellar right beneath this room!” I nearly laughed out loud just imagining the wave of horror that would follow my announcement, knocking the expressions of grief right off this throng of sweaty faces,
replacing it with wide-eyed shock and contempt. What an instant change in atmosphere, if only these people knew the truth.

But of course I held my tongue. I chose a glass of punch, looked around the room, listened to snippets of stilted conversation, and moved in a haze of heat and fatigue from one end of the dining room to the other. As I passed by a second punch bowl at the back of the room, I witnessed a scene that brought me up short. Two tidy, well-dressed men were chatting amiably when one reached into his jacket's inner pocket, pulled out a thin silver flask, poured a dollop into his glass of punch and another into the glass of his companion. That done, the flask was then returned to the unseen pocket in one swift and uninterrupted motion while seemingly no one noticed or, if they did, no one cared. It was just as though the two men had lighted cigarettes or bitten into wedges of tomato sandwiches rather than indulging in something illegal.

Only then did I realize, in a sudden bolt of clarity, that any number of the men and women gathered at the lodge were the very people who drove through Fludd's Service Station, carrying away something in their cars other than a few gallons of gasoline. Who, after all, would Calvin Fludd be servicing but the fine people of Mercy and the neighboring towns? Not all of them, of course, but surely some. And maybe many. Rather than the outrage I had imagined just moments before, any announcement on my part about liquor in the cellar would probably produce a riotous stampede in that direction.

I swayed slightly and felt a ripple of nausea roll across my stomach. The air in the lodge was stifling; I couldn't breathe.
The intrepid ceiling fans turning overhead were no match for the soaring temperatures and the close proximity of so many bodies. I had to get out. I elbowed my way through the dining room and hurried to the porch.

I had barely stepped into the open air when Cassandra was beside me. “What are you doing out here, Eve?” she asked, pinching my elbow playfully. She was fanning herself with a funeral parlor fan she'd picked up at the service.

“It's too hot inside.”

“It sure is, and I've had quite enough of all this. What do you say we go down to the island and put our toes in the river?”

I looked at her and smiled. “Let's go.”

She tossed aside the fan, I set down my glass of punch, and together we hurried down the steps and across the bridge to the island. The place was deserted; Uncle Cy had closed it off to guests for the day. We giggled like children as we rushed along the path to the beach, where we kicked off our shoes and stepped barefoot into the river.

Cassandra tilted her face toward the sky and smiled. “It's just delicious!” she cried, wiggling her toes in the water. “I couldn't wait to get away from the crowd. I thought I would die of the heat and the long faces and all the kowtowing to Uncle Cy. ‘Oh, she was such a dear woman,' and ‘Oh, what a loss to the town.' I bet not one of them ever gave Cora the time of day when she was alive.”

I sniffed out a laugh and said, “I don't know, Cassandra. Maybe they liked her, some of them. After all, we never came to visit while Cora was here, so we don't know what went on.”

“No, but I know people. They all want something. Even when they do nice things for you and act as though you're
all they care about in the world, the bottom line is what's in it for them. I . . .” She stopped herself and took a deep breath. “Well, never mind, Eve. You haven't seen the things I've seen, and that's good. You won't end up so cynical.”

I picked up a small rock and tossed it into the water. With one hand shading my eyes, I looked up and down the river. “I think I understand what you mean. At least a little bit. I've seen a few things myself.”

Cassandra laughed. She didn't believe me. That was all right. “You're lucky to be young and innocent,” she said, “and . . . I don't know . . . pure, I guess.”

“Pure?”

“Yes. You know, you haven't run off to speakeasies and gotten drunk and been with the boys the way I used to. You haven't made a mess of things. You've always been a good person, Eve.”

I dropped my hand to my side and shook my head. “I used to think I was,” I said quietly.

“What?”

“I said, I used to think I was a good person. Once.”

She laughed again, splashed the water with her feet. “You're so funny. What have you done that's so awful? Kiss Marcus?”

I smiled wistfully. If only I were as innocent as that! Maybe I would never join the dash for illegal liquor, but neither would I reveal the hiding place. What was the difference? One transgression was the same as another. I picked up another stone, threw it more forcefully, watched the water ripple away from where it landed. I wanted to steer the conversation away from me, to talk about other things.

“Aren't you happy, Cassandra?” I asked. “I mean, with Warren and the girls?”

She paused in her splashing and appeared deep in thought. Finally she said, “Having them is more than I deserve. So while things aren't perfect, yes, I guess I'm nearly as happy as a person can be. Still, it doesn't erase the past. I've been thinking a lot lately about the day I'll have to tell Effie that her daddy isn't her daddy. Not her real one, anyway.”

“Do you think you have to tell her?”

“It's only fair that she knows. Wouldn't you want to know?”

I shrugged. “I guess I would.”

“Yes.” She sighed heavily. “It will be a confession of sorts. ‘Look what your mommy did. Look at what a bad mommy you have. . . . '”

Her voice choked up and she looked away.

“She'll forgive you,” I said gently.

“Do you think so?”

“Yes.”

“Why should she?”

“Because she loves you.”

She turned to me, brushed away a tear, smiled. “You sound like Daddy.”

“Do I?”

“‘Love shall cover the multitude of sins.' Remember?”

“First Peter 4:8,” I said.

“Yes.”

“One of the Bible verses he made us memorize when we were kids.”

She nodded. “And I heard him say it a thousand times himself. Though I don't even really know what it means.”

I drew in a breath. I looked at the river, at the lodge, at Cassandra. “Maybe it's mercy,” I said.

Cassandra tilted her head. “Mercy?” she asked.

I nodded. Yes. What Reverend Kilkenny had been preaching about all summer.

Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.

“Well,” Cassandra said, “maybe so. I don't know much about that sort of thing. But I hope you're right about Effie. I hope she'll forgive me.”

“She will,” I said. “I'm sure of it.”

Cassandra smiled and, to my surprise, threw her arms around me and held me close. “I'm glad we've had a chance to . . . you know, talk about things. And become friends.”

“I hope you'll still think so in a few months, after we've lived with you and Warren for a while. You don't mind too much, do you?”

“That you'll be living with us? No, of course I don't mind. I don't understand it. I mean”—she let me go and threw open her arms over the river—“how Daddy could want to leave here to go back to St. Paul.” She shook her head. “I guess there's a lot about Daddy I've never understood, but don't worry about coming back with us. It'll be all right. We'll make it so.”

We stood in silence for a while, enjoying each other's company, enjoying the coolness of the water. I was comforted by the refreshing shivers that traveled up my legs and out my arms. It
was
delicious, and lovely, and serene. Standing here in the river with Cassandra was the first sweet moment of the day.

But only a short time later, Cassandra nodded over my shoulder and said, “Uh-oh. We've been found out.”

I looked back at the bridge and saw Link crossing over to the island. I gasped.

“Do you know him?” Cassandra asked.

“Yeah.”

“He kind of looks like a bum.”

“He is. He lives in the camp up the river.”

Her eyes widened. “Is he safe?”

I laughed. “Oh yeah, he's perfectly safe. He's actually a very nice person. I know him well enough to say that for certain.”

“Oh?” A smile spread slowly across my sister's face as Link came closer. Quietly, she said, “Well, Eve, he's rather handsome too, isn't he? For a bum, I mean.”

Before I could respond, Link was there. He didn't smile.

“Hello, Eve.”

“Hi, Link. Um, this is my sister, Cassandra.”

He nodded politely. “Nice to meet you.”

“Cassandra, this is Link.”

She smiled—rather playfully, I thought—and said, “I've heard such wonderful things about you. I'm glad to finally meet you.”

My jaw dropped. Link looked at me, his eyes flashing bewilderment. But he smiled at Cassandra and offered her another brief nod.

“Well, I'd love to stay and chat,” Cassandra went on, “but Warren's been watching the girls for the past couple hours, and it's about time I go give him a break. Maybe I'll see you again later, though, um . . . Link, is it?”

“Yes. Yes, maybe I'll see you.”

“But—” I started, to no avail. Cassandra blew me a kiss and moved away, and I was left alone with Link.

I didn't want him to think I'd been gushing about him to my sister, but I couldn't quite figure out how to explain. I fumbled for the right words, but as though he'd already
dismissed Cassandra's innuendoes, Link jumped in and said, “Listen, Eve, I have to tell you something. It's important.”