The Lost Choice (8 page)

Dorry smiled up at her husband from the couch. “I'll have coffee too, Mark,” she said and thought his eyebrows might merge with his hairline—he appeared to be that surprised. But meekly, he mumbled a “yes, ma'am” and went through the door Mae Mae had indicated.

Dorry watched as the old woman eased herself into the same rocking chair she had seen in the newspaper. Next to the rocking chair was the source of brutal heat, an old gas heater. Oblivious to the temperature inside the house, which Dorry judged to be almost eighty degrees, a plain white sweater was draped across her shoulders.

Dorry was surprised—almost to the point of shock— that a woman as old as Mae Mae didn't appear to be as decrepit as she'd imagined. Her face was wrinkled, but not to an extreme, and her posture, though somewhat stooped, seemed excellent. Even the skin on her hands was devoid of the age spots afflicting Dorry's own mother, who was still in her sixties, and Mae Mae's hair, though bone white, was thick and healthy. It was braided and rolled into a bun on the back of her head. Dorry had also noted that her movements were slow, but not those of a person tormented by arthritis or rheumatism.

Directly behind her was the bookcase, including the object that had prompted the trip. Dorry had spotted it the minute she walked into the room. The relic was propped on a tiny framing easel and—something the newspaper photograph had not revealed—was attached to a stiff leather cord. “You have a nice place, Mae Mae,” Dorry began.“How long have you lived here?”

“This Christmas, it'll be forty-one years,” she answered. “My husband built this old house with his brother. Jus' the two of 'em. It was a pretty place. Jerold passed on not long after that . . . seventy years old . . . still a young man. Lord, I loved that Jerold.”

“Do you have children?”

“No, baby. We never did. Mae Mae got no family a'tall. All Jerold's people . . . an'my side too—they gone. But the folks in Fordyce see after Mae Mae. This house paint—my pretty porch—tha's all the sweetness of this town. They's a little white boy even come cut Mae Mae's grass.”

Mark entered with a cup of coffee in each hand and presented one to the old lady, then to Dorry, and accepted their thanks.

“Mrs. Bounds,” Dorry began.

“Mae Mae,” the old woman said.

“Mae Mae . . .” Dorry was suddenly nervous again. “When we saw your picture in the paper,we were curious about that . . . thing.” She pointed to the object on the bookshelf.

Mae Mae twisted in her chair and, with a questioning glance, picked up the item her guest had indicated.“This?” she asked, holding it up for them to see.

For the next few minutes, Mae Mae sat quietly as the Chandlers told her the story of the relic their son had found. They showed her pictures of Michael and their home. Finally,Dorry removed their object from her purse. She unwrapped it from a handkerchief and saw Mae Mae's eyebrows raise as Dorry placed it in her hands.

Neither Mark nor Dorry had gotten a close look at the item from Mae Mae's shelf. Mark was hesitant to be too pushy. Years of training and experience as a detective had convinced him that it was a mistake to move too quickly. It often caused a person to close up, even become frightened— though he wasn't sure anyone could frighten
this
woman.

He put his arm around Dorry's shoulder and eased her back as Mae Mae examined the two pieces.
Easy . . . slow down,
he directed his thoughts to his wife.“Mae Mae? Can I get you some more coffee?” Mark said as he purposefully stood. “I know Dorry could use some.” He shot Dorry a look that said,
be careful
, and walked to the kitchen after both women gave him their cups.

The silence from the living room was deafening as Mark poured the coffee. Returning with the now filled cups, Mark smiled at Dorry, sitting stiffly on the couch. She was watching the old woman's every move. Mae Mae had a habit of rolling her dentures around in her mouth when she was deep in thought. Mark had noted the tendency earlier, but now, the plates were clicking audibly. Her concentration appeared to be absolute as she turned the pieces first one way, then another. “What do you think, Mae Mae?” Mark said softly as he sat back down.

She jerked her head up as if she had forgotten they were there. “Sho look like another food stone,” she said and reached toward Dorry to pass the objects to her.“See what you reckon, baby.”

Dorry took the pieces, but before she gave them the barest glimpse, Mark asked the obvious question for both of them.“What did you call it, Mae Mae? A ‘food stone'?” “Tha's right. It look just like my granddaddy's food stone.” Dorry examined the two objects, which, as far as she could tell, were almost identical. The only difference she could discern was a degree of variation on the edges—one side was rounded, curled over as if one had folded a piece of bread—and a slight alteration in the script. And, of course, there was the attached leather cord. Dorry could see that in the corner of the object, a small opening—a natural one, she assumed—had been bored completely through to the other side, creating a tiny tunnel through which the cord ran.

“Did you get this from your grandfather?” Mark continued gently.

“No,” Mae Mae said taking a sip of her coffee. “I got it after my Uncle Gee passed on. It was left to him by my granddaddy. He had it 'round his neck when they brought him over from Africa.”Dorry started to ask a question, but Mark nudged her, urging silence in hopes that the old woman would continue to talk. She did.

“My daddy was called James. He was from Missouri and died with the smallpox when I was a baby girl. Not a lot of paper on black folk back then, but he was 'posed to been twenty-one or two when he passed. What with Daddy gone, Uncle Gee took that place in my life. He stood up for me when I married Jerold. Uncle Gee was there for me till he passed on hisself in nineteen hundred and forty-three.” Mae Mae paused, remembering. She nodded to herself and squinted as if examining the image in her mind's eye. As Mark and Dorry waited, she finished her coffee and then, seemingly struck by a recollection, Mae Mae leaned forward and motioned for the object.

Taking it from Dorry, she draped the cord over her wrist and held it up to the light. “I ain't nevah changed this string,” she said.“Tha's the same strip of leather my Uncle Gee wore. Might be the same one my granddaddy wore. Uncle Gee sho kep it roun' his neck like his daddy.” Earlier, noticing the hole where the cord passed through the object, Dorry had recalled Dylan's assertation that the object
he
had inspected was hollow.

“The story I know from my mama is . . .when the slave catchers brought my granddaddy to America, he had it on 'im. And for some reason, they never took it! Took ever' thing else, but left a rock hangin' on the man's neck. Sold 'im in Baton Rouge. Stood 'im on the auction block naked as a jaybird. Took the man's clothes—but didn' touch that rock. Ever.”

“Uncle Gee tol' me that his daddy—my granddaddy— had it on till the day he got killed. Killed in a loggin' accident in Missouri. 'Course, some find it hard to say ‘accident' 'bout somebody what didn' volunteer for hauling logs in the first place.” Mae Mae stared hard at Mark, gauging how he would react to her last statement. Seeing nothing but sympathy in his eyes, she went on.

“Now, Uncle Gee and his mama, they lived on another place. The white man what owned them was a good man. When my granddaddy—tha's Uncle Gee's daddy—died, the white man, he got ahold of this thing”—she indicated the item in Mark's hand—“and sometime . . .when he was two or three years old, the white man put it 'round the neck of that little child, Uncle Gee. When Gee growed up a bit, the man told him that he figured this thing to be special. Said it was only for Uncle Gee. The man said it was a gift from a daddy to his boy.”

Dorry took the object from Mark and compared the two again.“Mae Mae, did your Uncle Gee call this a food stone?”

“Yes, he did,” she said. “He said it was his inspiration.”

Mark scooted to the edge of the couch and leaned forward a bit.“Why do you suppose he called it that—a food stone?”

“'Cause tha's what it was.” She turned to Dorry. “This boy ain't been listening to my story.”They all chuckled at Mae Mae's pretended exasperation. Then, to Mark, she continued, “Ever'body knew it was a food stone. It's just somethin' ever'body knew. Or at least
used
to know. Now I'm talkin' 'bout my people, you hear?

“That plantation my granddaddy worked, it was 'posed to been some fine place. When he got killed, the whole thing just fell apart. Crops didn't yield. Weeds took over. White folk said it was on account of the weather, but Mama said the slaves knew it was cause they lost the food stone.” “What happened when your uncle got it?”

“Jus' what you thinkin' happened,” she said smugly.“The plantation Gee was on bloomed like the Garden of Eden. All the black folk on that place was so excited that the food stone had come to one of their own . . . on account of they knew what it meant. The white man, he didn't put no stock in it, but the black folk knew they'd be eatin' from the excess, and they was happy! Tha's the story my mama always told anyhow. And from that day, anybody with the stone, they got a green thumb like you ain't never seen.”

“You said Uncle Gee wore this,” Mark said. “Did he have a green thumb when he grew up?”

For a moment,Mae Mae paused. With virtually no expression on her face, she stared at Mark, then said simply,“Yes.” “Do you . . . or did he . . .” Dorry tried to find the correct words. “Did anyone ever tell you this was script? Writing?”

“I ain't never talked to nobody about it. And Uncle Gee never said, if he knew. But I figured it was some kinda writin'—all them marks on the side.”

At that point, Dorry told her about the translation of the object that had been found in their backyard. She pointed out her observation that the etchings on her “food stone” were identical except for a small section. While Mae Mae retrieved a large magnifying glass from her bedroom, Dorry arranged the two objects side by side on the ottoman. For the rest of the morning, they talked and examined the pieces of the past that had brought them into each others' company. Dorry related Dylan's analysis to Mae Mae and the chemical conclusion of leaded bronze. She was astonished to learn, after all these years, that her “food stone” wasn't a stone at all.

Mark drew an exact copy of the script from the “food stone” on paper and went outside to fetch his cell phone from the rental car. He intended to track down Dylan and see about faxing the copy to him in hopes of having it quickly translated.

When he returned, Mark reported that he had indeed reached their friend at a restaurant in Los Angeles.

“Abby is out there too. He gave me the number of their hotel so we can fax this to them.”He brandished the page. “But they're at a convention and it'll be about three hours before she's out of her session so . . .” He shrugged.

“You wanna go to lunch?” Dorry said to Mae Mae.

“To a restaurant?” she asked.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Lord, jus' let me get my coat!” Mae Mae laughed.“Say, can we go to the bakery downtown?”

“Just show us the way!” Mark grinned.

On their way out the door, Mae Mae said, “Help me down the steps, boy,” to Mark and then exclaimed, “Look here at Mae Mae's garden. Uncle Gee wadn' the only one wif a green thumb!”As they walked around the side of the house, Mark and Dorry oohed and aahed while the proud old lady pointed out her obvious success with virtually everything she planted.

A few minutes later, they were almost to the car when Mae Mae suddenly stopped. Thinking something was wrong, Mark and Dorry stopped too.“Are you okay, Mae Mae?” Dorry asked.

“Oh, yes, baby girl,” she replied. “I am fine as I can be.” Then she cocked her head, popped her dentures forward and back one quick time, and said, “But I jus' had me a thought.” She grinned. “All the talkin' we been doin', and you ain't nevah asked me what Uncle Gee's
real
name was. The man was famous.”

And with that, she said, “Now, help Mae Mae in the car.”

SIX

MISSOURI—JANUARY 1865

MOSES HAD BEEN SITTING IN THE WAGON FOR well over an hour and was thankful there was no wind. It was cold enough without the wind, he thought. He could see clearly by the soft luminescence of the stars and a rising moon. He studied the breath as it rushed from his nostrils. It reminded him of fire from dragons in the books he read to the children at the farm. Eerily, he noticed, the vapor didn't rise or fall, but drifted in a flat line across the back of the dun mare in front of him. Moses had hitched her to his buckboard early that evening, but didn't leave home until after ten o'clock that night. It had taken him three hours or so to make it to this particular crossroad on the Kansas border.

He had worn two coats over several shirts and was too numb to remember how many pairs of pants he had put on. The boots weren't helping much, nor was the quilt he had wrapped around his head. He had been told,“No fire,” and he knew the reason, but was mad that he had not been told how long he'd have to wait. He was mad . . . and scared.

The wagon jerked. “Whoa. Whoa now,” he said soothingly as he turned to calm the stallion tied to the back corner. The big, black horse was a legend, instantly recognizable to anyone from Diamond Grove all the way to Springfield. He was a racer and had earned the man quite a sum of money the last few years. Even during the midst of the war, people came out to see him run. The stallion had never lost a race.

After four years of chaos, the horse was the only thing he and his wife had left of any tangible value. Oh, there was the land, of course, some working stock, and the house, but there was no cash. The horse was the only thing he had left—and that's just what they had demanded.