The Elementals (6 page)

In the night, the house settled. Creaks sounded in the hallways like errant footsteps, windows popped in their frames, china rattled in the cupboards, and pictures suddenly slipped awry on the walls. As the two men drank their port, Dauphin talked and Luker listened. Luker knew very well that Dauphin had no male friends, only business associates; and those who toadied for his friendship were after his money or the benefits of his position. Luker was fond of Dauphin, and knew it would help the man if he only sat still and let him talk. Poor Dauphin had no one to whom he might unburden himself; for though he trusted and loved both Leigh and Big Barbara, Dauphin’s diffidence could never stand against their crushing volubility.

By half past two Dauphin had spun out his little store of grief for that terrible day—though Luker was certain it would be renewed fully on the next, and for many days after that. Luker had shifted their conversation onto less distressing topics: the progress of Lawton McCray’s congressional campaign, the probable infestation of sand flies at Beldame, and Luker’s recent photographic assignment in Costa Rica. Soon he would be able to suggest that they go to bed: Luker was already curled in a corner of the sofa and playing stupidly with his empty, sticky glass.

“More?” said Dauphin, standing with his own glass out-raised.

“Take it away,” said Luker. Dauphin carried both glasses into the darkened kitchen and Luker closed his eyes against his brother-in-law’s return—he hoped Dauphin would see that he was ready for sleep.

“What’s this?” said Dauphin in a tone of voice that made Luker open his eyes quickly. Dauphin stood by the long table holding up the stack of India’s graph paper and turning it toward the light.

“It’s what India was drawing this afternoon, just before you got back from Pensacola. It was strange, she—”

“Why was she drawing
this
?” said Dauphin, with obvious—if inexplicable—pain.

“I don’t know,” said Luker, bewildered. “She was drawing it while—”

“While what?”

“While Leigh was telling us a story.”

“What story?”

“A story that Odessa told her,” said Luker evasively. Dauphin nodded, understanding. “And she said that she didn’t draw it, she said it was the pencil that drew it. And the odd thing is that it’s not India’s style at all. She never does anything this finished. I actually saw her—she was drawing on the pad and the pencil was going ninety to nothing, but she didn’t even look down at it. I thought she was just making scribbles. If I didn’t know India, I’d say she was lying, that somebody else did the drawing and she just made scribbles on another page . . .”

Dauphin leafed quickly through the other sheets. “All the other pages are blank.”

“I know. She did the drawing, but I really don’t think she knew what she was doing. I mean, those dolls—”

“Those aren’t dolls,” said Dauphin with something like harshness.

“They
look
like dolls, not even Irish babies are that ugly, I’ve—”

“Listen,” said Dauphin, “why don’t you go get ready for bed? Take this with you”—he handed the sketch to Luker—“and I’ll be in your room in about five minutes.”

That much later, Luker was sitting on the edge of the bed with India’s sketch at his side. He studied the drawing of the saturnine fat woman holding the two dolls—that Dauphin said were not dolls—in the massive palms of her outstretched hands.

Still in the suit that he had worn at the funeral, and with the black tourniquet still around his arm, Dauphin entered the room. From his breast pocket, he drew a small photograph mounted on stiff cardboard and handed it to Luker.

It was a
carte de visite
, which Luker, who was knowledgeable of the history of photography, instinctively dated as Civil War or perhaps a year or so later. He studied the back, with the photographer’s logo and claims, before he allowed the meaning of the image to break in on him.

The picture, faded but still clear, was of a great fat woman with a crimped fringe of hair, wearing a hooped dress widely bordered in black along the skirt and sleeves. She was seated in a chair that was invisible beneath her great bulk. In her outstretched hands she held two little heaps of misshapen flesh that were not, after all, dolls.

“It’s my great-great-grandmother,” said Dauphin. “The babies were twins, and they were stillborn. She had the picture taken before they were buried. They were both boys, and their names were Darnley and Dauphin.”

“Why would she want to have a picture taken of stillborn children?” asked Luker.

“Ever since they started taking pictures, the Savages have had photographs taken of their corpses. I’ve got a whole box of ’em in there. These babies were buried in the cemetery, and I guess if they rated tombstones, they rated a picture.”

Luker turned the photograph over, studied the back again without knowing what he thought. “India must have seen this . . .” he said at last, lying full length upon the bed and holding up the
carte de visite
at arm’s length, directly above his face. He turned it so that reflected light obscured the image.

Dauphin took the photograph back. “No, she couldn’t have. The old family pictures are kept locked in the file cabinet in my study. I had to use my key to get it out.”

“Somebody must have described it to her,” Luker persisted.

“Nobody knows about that picture, nobody except Odessa and me. I hadn’t seen it for years. I just remembered it because it used to give me nightmares. When I was little, Darnley and I used to take out all the pictures of the dead Savages and look at ’em, and this was the one that scared me the most. This was my great-great-grandmother, and she was the first one to live in the house at Beldame. And this picture and the picture that India drew are just alike.”

“No they’re not,” said Luker. “The dresses are different. The dress in the photograph is obviously earlier than the one India drew. The photograph is about
1865
, India’s picture is about ten years later.”

“How can you tell?”

Luker shrugged. “I know something about American costume, that’s all, and it’s obvious. And if India were just copying the picture, then she’d copy the dress that was in the photograph. She wouldn’t think up another dress that came along about ten years later—India, I’m sorry to say, knows nothing of the history of fashion.”

“But what does that mean—that the dresses are different?” asked Dauphin, perplexed.

“I have no idea,” replied Luker, “I don’t understand any of it.”

Luker kept India’s drawing and promised Dauphin that he would next day question her more carefully about it—what its meaning could be, neither of them had any idea. Luker expressed the hope that it was only the port that had befuddled them, and that morning would solve the mystery in some simple and satisfactory manner.

Dauphin took the photograph back to his study and placed it in the box that contained photographs of the corpses of all the Savages who had died in the past hundred and thirty years. His mother’s would be added in a week’s time, for the photographer had visited the Church of St. Jude Thaddeus an hour before the funeral. He turned the key in the lock of this box, hid that key in another drawer of the file cabinet, then locked both the file cabinet and the door of the study. He walked slowly and thoughtfully through the darkened hallways of the house and back onto the glassed-in porch. He turned out the light, but then, in the darkness and his slight inebriation, he knocked his head against the parrot’s cage.

“Oh,” he whispered, “sorry, Nails, you all right?” He smiled, remembering in what affection his mother had held the shrill bird—despite its disappointing speechlessness. He raised the cover to peer inside.

The parrot flapped its iridescent, blood-red wings and stuck its beak between the bars. Its flat black eye reflected light that was not in the room. For the first time in its eight-year life, the parrot spoke. In cold imitation of Luker McCray’s voice, the parrot cried: “
Savage mothers eat their children up
!
”

Chapter
4

While the next morning was frittered away in preparations for the journey to Beldame, the unsettling coincidence of the century-old photograph and India’s unconscious drawing was forgotten. Daylight had not brought a solution, but it had accorded indifference.

Having arrived in Alabama only the day before, Luker and India had never really unpacked, so it was no difficulty for them to prepare for this secondary journey. And Odessa had little to carry: she brought her wicker suitcase with her to the Small House when Leigh picked her up. But Dauphin had unavoidable early morning calls and these precipitated further errands; and Leigh and Big Barbara had to scuttle among their friends for a time, saying good-byes, returning borrowed items, and begging that certain small but consequential matters be accomplished in their possibly protracted absence. It seemed impossible to Leigh that Marian Savage had been alive not four days before. At times, in this round of visits, she was brought up short, remembering that she must assume a face of grief, and respond that
yes
, they really did need to get away from it all for a while, and where better to go than Beldame, a place so remote you might as well be at the end of the world?

India roused Luker at nine, went to the kitchen and prepared him coffee—she didn’t trust the maids for this—then took it to his room and roused him again. “Oh, God,” he whispered, “thanks.” He sipped it, set it aside, rose and stumbled naked around the room for a few minutes.

“If you want the bathroom,” said India from where she sat in a deep chair with her coffee carefully balanced on the narrow arm, “it’s there.” She pointed.

When Luker emerged, India had laid out his clothes. “Are we going to see your father today?” she asked. India preferred not to distinguish the man either by his Christian name or the sickening, loaded appellation of
grandfather
.

“Yes,” said Luker. “Do you mind
very
much?”

“Even if I did, we’d still have to go, wouldn’t we?”

“I suppose I could tell him that you were vomiting blood or something and you could stay out in the car.”

“It’s all right,” said India, “I’ll go in and speak to him, if you promise that we’re not going to have to stay very long.”

“Of course not,” said Luker, buttoning his jeans.

“If he gets elected to Congress, would Big Barbara move to Washington? She’d be a lot nearer us then.”

“I don’t know,” said Luker, “that depends. Do you want her to be nearer us?” Luker unbuttoned his jeans in order to tuck in his shirt.

“Yes,” said India, “I’m actually very fond of Big Barbara.”

“Well,” said Luker, “little girls are
supposed
to be fond of their grandmothers.”

India looked away sourly. “Depends on what?” she asked.

“It depends on how Big Barbara is getting along. It depends on how she and Lawton are getting along together.”

“Big Barbara is an alkie, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” replied Luker. “And unfortunately, there’s no methadone for alkies.”

A few minutes later Big Barbara called to tell them that Lawton had gone out to the farm early that morning. If they did not catch him there in the next couple of hours they would have to wait until the middle of the afternoon, when he had returned from his lunchtime speech to the Mothers of the Rainbow Girls. The careful plans of the previous night were then scrapped, and India and Luker—not wishing to postpone the onerous visit—took off toward the farm. Odessa, having packed the trunk with numerous boxes of food for Beldame, rode with them. They went in the Fairlane that Dauphin had bought a year or so back solely for the use of houseguests or acquaintances who, for one reason or another, found themselves temporarily without transportation.

The Alabama panhandle, which consists only of Mobile and Baldwin counties, is shaped rather like a heavily abscessed tooth. Mobile Bay represents the large element of decay that separates the halves, and at their northern extremities the counties are further divided by a complex system of meandering rivers and marsh.

The McCrays’ land was situated along the Fish River about twenty miles from Mobile, but on the other side of Mobile Bay in Baldwin County. It was rich loamy flat acreage, excellent for cattle and fruit trees and just about any sort of cash crop one cared to plant. In addition to his agricultural activities, which were entirely supervised by a family of farmers named Dwight whom he had long ago bought out of bankruptcy, Lawton McCray had a fertilizer supply business situated in the nearby and scarcely discernible town of Belforest. Despite recent steep increases in the price of phosphorus, the fertilizer business had continued to make the McCrays a great deal of money.

The concern was set in a cleared space about a hundred yards square near the tracks of the railroad that no longer stopped at Belforest. There were three large storage sheds, a couple of old barns converted to the same purpose, and a paved area on which rested a number of trucks and trailers and spreading equipment. Set to one side was the office, a small, low concrete-block building with aquamarine walls and grimy windows. A barking dog of ignoble breed was tied to a sagging porch support. Luker would have driven right past the place and gone on to the farm, had he not recognized his father’s pink Continental drawn up before the office. When Luker lowered his window, they heard Lawton McCray’s vituperative voice inside the air-conditioned office, arguing with the impoverished distant relative who ran the operation so profitably for him. As soon as Luker got out of the Fairlane his father spied him through the dirt-streaked window. Lawton McCray came out to greet his son. He was a large man with beautiful white hair, but enough extra flesh—in the form of pendulous cheeks, a large nose, and several chins—to make up another face altogether. His clothes were expensive, fit him ill, and might have done with a cleaning. He and Luker hugged perfunctorily, then Lawton surged around the Fairlane and rapped sharply on the window through which his only grandchild peered up at him mistrustfully. India hesitantly lowered the window, and stiffened when Lawton McCray plunged his head and shoulders through to kiss her.

“How you, India?” the man bellowed. His mouth widened and his eyes narrowed to a fearful extent. India didn’t know whether she liked him less as a relative or a politician.

“Very well, thank you,” she replied.