Things Too Huge to Fix by Saying Sorry (6 page)

Worm Dung was the spawn of Avadelle's youngest child, her son, one of the town's doctors. I couldn't blame Naomi Manchester, Avadelle's daughter, one of the booksellers who worked for Square Books, for his existence. The car slowed to a stop in the parking lot next to Bondurant Hall, and Mom waited for me to give her a kiss. I did, then grabbed the backpack with Grandma's papers in it and got out of the car. Mom started to put the car in gear, then stopped and kept looking at me. “I always hoped Avadelle and Ruth might patch things up before your grandmother passed. It's hard to think about best friends never speaking to each other again.”

My hand froze on the edge of the door, and my mind danced across Grandma's tear-streaked face.

I wrote it down . . .

Grandma and Avadelle
had
been good friends, maybe best friends, just like Indri and me (not thinking about Worm Dung, not not not). Then they stopped speaking. That's what everyone said about the Magnolia Feud—and all anyone knew, even Dad. He told me Avadelle and Grandma had dinner on Wednesday evenings at six o'clock, every week when he was a younger kid. Then, a month or so after Avadelle's first novel came out, the dinners stopped. Something about that world-famous book seemed to have punched their friendship dead in the nose. Journalists had been analyzing the book for decades, trying to guess what secrets were hidden in those pages, what started an argument so bad it never ended.

Grandma wouldn't talk about it, and Dad said he didn't have the guts to ask Avadelle anything about anything, then or now. Thirty years in the military, three wars, and Dad was more scared of that old woman than bullets or drill sergeants.

I wrote it down.
Grandma might have been talking about her spat with Avadelle, right? About whatever happened between them to cause the feud.

I kept the smile on my face so Mom wouldn't worry, and knew, finally, that even if my grandmother wasn't really gone, I should read the rest of what she wrote to me, to help her pass in peace.

Oh God.

What if I had to face down the Wicked Witch of Ole Miss? What if I found out something I needed to talk about with her? And Worm Dung . . . never mind.

“Have a good day, Mom.” There. That sounded all cheerful, right?

Mom grinned. “You and Indri don't get up to too much mischief, okay?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“And promise you'll walk straight home if I run late?”

“Promise,” I said, figuring a swing by the Grove to feed squirrels and a trip to grab ice cream would still be sort of straight home, with a few small detours thrown in. “I have my phone.” I tapped my pocket. “I'll call you or Ms. Wilson if there's trouble.”

I burst through the front doors of Bondurant Hall. Indri had seen me coming. She was standing just outside of class, her brown eyes wide and her mouth open.

“Did you see a ghost?” she asked immediately, clutching her Stephen King book to her chest. Stephen King wasn't exactly considered “appropriate reading” for our age group, but Creative Arts parents had to sign a waiver that short of X-rated material, we could read anything we chose. Indri and I loved ghost stories and not-totally-gross horror, and science fiction and fantasy, too. Ghosts the most, though. Bonus that we had been assigned to read some for this week.

“No,” I said. Then, “Yes.” Then, “Kind of? Worm Dung and Avadelle were walking down University Avenue. Mom thinks Avadelle might be coming here to talk to our camp.”

Indri's eyes got even wider. I had seen pictures of the lemurs Indri's mom had named her for, and right now, with
her long black hair swept back and her black and white shirt and black jeans, and that shocked expression on her face, Indri really looked like one of those lemurs. If I told her that, she'd beat me in the head with her Stephen King book, so I kept my mouth shut.

She eased the book down from her chest and came over to me. In a low voice, she said, “We staying, or we bolting?”

Best. Friend. Ever.

I slid my fingers up and down the strap of my backpack. “Staying for now,” I said. “But keep the bolting option open.”

“Roger that,” she told me. Military-speak. That, plus the black motif of her clothing, let me know that her dad was weighing heavy on her mind today. I would have asked her about it, but Indri didn't like to talk about her dad. My backpack seemed to pull at my shoulder, reminding me of what lay hidden inside, and the fact that we might
have
to talk about Avadelle Richardson and her stupid, moronic grandson, for my grandmother's sake.

“Inside, ladies,” called Ms. Yarbrough, the Creative Arts Camp director, like she could sense the escape plans zipping through my brain. She was only five feet tall, but her voice gave her a few extra inches of authority. When I didn't move, Indri laced her arm through mine, and I leaned in to her, holding my breath.

“Campus ghost stories,” Ms. Yarbrough called out as she clapped her tiny hands together. “Gather round, gather round!
We have a guest speaker, and she's in my office, getting ready now.”

I sagged against Indri, and she sagged right back against me.

Safe.

Whoever the speaker was, it wasn't Avadelle. Avadelle Richardson wouldn't be caught dead talking about anything paranormal. I could breathe again. And—ghost stories!

“Let's go,” I said to Indri, but she had already started for the classroom door, pulling me along with her.

Excerpt from
Night on Fire
(1969), by Avadelle Richardson, page 111

Funny how fast years can go. One minute I was ten and fighting with Mama about school, and the next, it was 1960, and I was thirty-one years old and widowed and back in Oxford with a boy of my own, taking care of Mama and still listening to Aunt Jessie's loud mouth.

“That's about the whitest White girl I ever did see,” Aunt Jessie told me as she stuffed papers into envelopes at the Mt. Zion Church office. She nodded her big head toward a straw-haired kid hanging with the registration trainers.

“Hush your mouth.” I gave her plump elbow a pinch. “That child came down here to do the right thing.”

Aunt Jessie grunted. “She came down here to die. She just don't know it yet.” She wiggled her fingers at all the students from up North, who had crowded into the front of the sanctuary. “None of them really understands Mississippi, or what they gettin' into, CiCi. It bothers my conscience.”

I ignored my aunt's opinions and kept my eyes on the girl. After a few minutes, she just looked scared. My own conscience nudged me. I stood, then closed the few steps between myself and the girl, and I stuck out my hand. “CiCi Robinson,” I said. “I teach school over in Holly Springs.”

“Leslie Marks,” the girl said as we shook. “I just graduated from Ohio State University. I moved down here to help.”

You're White
was about all I could think, but I couldn't for the life of me understand why I was thinking that, because I wasn't prejudiced, at least I didn't think I was, but I couldn't seem to help myself. “Come on, then,” I told her. “Work on these mailers with us.”

A
CHILL RIPPLED THROUGH THE
silent classroom, and I shivered. Air conditioner. Had to be. But . . .

No sunlight crept around the heavy drapes pulled over the windows, and a rolled blanket across the bottom of the door blocked any glow from the hallway. The air smelled like dust and perfume and turpentine from soaking paintbrushes. Indri
and I sat cross-legged on our floor mats, gripping each other's hands as Naomi Manchester from Square Books shined a flashlight under her chin. She had brown eyes and dark, arched eyebrows. In the spooky light, her M-shaped mouth looked huge, and her teeth seemed way, way too white.

“The year was 1862, and Mississippi writhed in the grip of the Civil War.” Her quiet words sat in the air around her, and I imagined cannon smoke, the flash of rifle fire, and men shouting and running for their lives. I held my breath. I was pretty sure Indri was holding hers, too.

“Eighty miles northeast of where we're sitting, twenty-four thousand Americans lay dying on the battlefields of Shiloh, Tennessee.” Ms. Manchester's dark hair glittered in the yellow beam of the flashlight. She had it pulled into a bun, and her cheeks flushed as she shifted her gaze from me to Indri to the next person in the listening circle. “Confederate troops limped back to Corinth, Mississippi, then fled farther south, to this campus.”

I glanced to my left and right. This building was old. Had the soldiers come here? Was I sitting in the exact spot where some guy bled to death, or had his brains run right out on the floor? Another fit of shivers made my teeth chatter.

“Why did the North and the South fight like that anyway?” Sheila behind me asked before Ms. Manchester could start talking again.

“Duh,” said Bobby, who was sitting on my left. “Over slavery. Everybody knows that.”

Ms. Manchester looked around the room as she answered. “There were many, many reasons for the Civil War, but disagreement over the moral soundness of slavery was a big one.”

“Why did they have to kill each other, though?” Sheila said. “Couldn't the people who had slaves just release them and apologize?”

“I think there are things too huge and awful to fix by just saying
sorry
,” Indri said. “Like kidnapping people and making them into slaves, and torturing them for three hundred years just because they were Black instead of White.”

“Be niiice,” I whispered to Indri.

“That
was
nice,” she shot back.

“Indri has the gist of it,” Ms. Manchester said. “The problems between northern states and southern states had grown so deep and gone on so long that they couldn't be sorted out by talking—or at least that's what everyone believed. So the war began. Then, in May 1861, Company A of the 11th Mississippi Infantry Regiment in the Confederate Army was formed, leaving only four students at Ole Miss.” Ms. Manchester held up four fingers, wiggling one at a time. “Four. That's all. The college closed, but was soon forced to open its doors again as a hospital for the wounded and dying. They came on horseback, carried by friends, carried by wagons. Two by two and three by three they came, dozens, and dozens more, and then hundreds. The Lyceum filled to capacity, so the wounded spilled into other buildings, like this one.

I choke-gripped Indri's fingers until she yanked her hand away and smacked me on the shoulder.

Ms. Manchester's eyes traveled slowly around the circle. There were twelve of us, and she looked each of us in the face as she spoke. “Nurses and townsfolk did what they could, but most war wounds don't heal. Moans echoed through these walls. Men suffered, and men died. Bodies lay stacked in the fields outside. Back then, nobody burned the dead. They put them in the ground.”

She lifted her arm and pointed one finger over our heads, like she could see the exact spot where the bodies got planted. “Hole after hole, prayer after prayer, those men were buried right over there, behind our football stadium. A hundred. Then two hundred. And it wasn't over, no, not even close. Before the year was out, General Grant himself pitched a tent in Oxford's town square, a few feet from Square Books where I work now. There were more battles, and more wounded, and Union dead joined Confederate dead until the cemetery held the remains of more than seven hundred soldiers.”

Indri glanced at me, eyes bigger than a Madagascar lemur.

“Souls of the dead killed in battle, now they're restless at best,” Ms. Manchester said. “Townsfolk brave enough to walk by the graves at night told tales of whispering and moaning and distant screaming. Some said they heard cannon fire and rifle shots. And then in 1900, workers sent to cut grass and weeds moved the markers. Once the cemetery had been cleaned,
nobody knew where to put the gravestones, and seven hundred soldiers lost their names.”

Well, that about sealed it. That graveyard would so totally be haunted. Judging by the way Indri squeezed my fingers, she thought the same thing.

“How would you feel if you died for your country, got buried in strange ground—and then somebody went and lost your marker so your people couldn't even pay their respects?” Ms. Manchester looked at each of us again, and she nodded at the frowns on our faces. “That's right. Angry. And sad.” She leaned into her flashlight, turning her cheeks almost translucent. “And
restless.
”

She paused. The air conditioner rattled in the background. My own breathing sounded too loud, so I held the air in my lungs until the darkness around Ms. Manchester seemed to pulse.

“All that remains is a single monument, put up later to list as many names as we could find.” She shook her head. “But I don't think that monument appeased the offended dead. I heard tell once of a student, we'll call him John Smith. Brave John, he took it on himself to show his fraternity brothers that Ole Miss's cemetery ghost stories were nothing but tall tales. So he dragged his sleeping bag out to that monument, to spend the night.”

Stupid. Why were people in scary stories always so dumb? I'd have glued my feet to the floor before I went to a graveyard in the middle of the night—for any reason, much less
to prove there weren't any ghosts. People who tried to show ghosts didn't exist always got eaten by something fanged and nasty. The second anybody in a spooky story laughed at ghosts, you
knew
blood was gonna flow.

My teeth ground together as I waited for the worst to happen.