Authors: Lisa Wingate
Dandelion Summer (35 page)
I nodded, but I was thinking,
Six people?
He’d said
six
. But there were seven. The maid died, too. She didn’t count because she wasn’t white? “And the maid.” I couldn’t help it. I said it out loud. I didn’t know why I cared about something that happened that long ago, but I did.
Six people?
He’d said
six
. But there were seven. The maid died, too. She didn’t count because she wasn’t white? “And the maid.” I couldn’t help it. I said it out loud. I didn’t know why I cared about something that happened that long ago, but I did.
Mr. Nelson clicked his tongue against his teeth, like he was sorry for the maid, too, he guessed. “Yeah, I imagine she’s buried outside the cemetery somewhere. That’s usually how it was done back in those days. The colored families either had to lay theirs to rest in a patch out back of the fence, or go over to the colored graveyard on Hakey Creek. Those were different times, I guess you’d say. Folks only mixed in certain ways. Colored folks’d come over, keep care of the yards, or tend the houses or the kids; maybe live in a maid’s room at one of the big houses, but other than that, they lived over on their side of town, and we lived on ours. Colored kids went to one school; we went to another. They went to the colored movie house; we went to ours. Sundays, we went to our church; they went to theirs. Guess we were all talkin’ to the same God, though.”
Mr. Nelson shook his head, looking out the window of his shop like he was seeing the town how it was before. “Back then, I had a little friend, Gordy. His daddy worked the stockroom and ran deliveries around town for my daddy. Many a summer Gordy and I spent fishing the banks of Rye Creek, or hiking off through the woods, or sittin’ straddle on an old tree branch and riding it like it was a horse and we were Roy Rogers. Gordy always had to be the Indian, but he didn’t mind, I guess. His mama kept house at our place. She packed us the best lunches—fried chicken and corn bread, and homemade biscuits and jelly she’d wrap up in a little bit of butcher paper from my daddy’s store. I didn’t have a mama, so them lunches felt mighty special to me.
“I remember one time when we were about twelve or thirteen, some of the boys from town saw us walking down under the bridge. They chased ol’ Gordy off, and called me
Sambo
for having him as a friend, and slapped me around pretty good. After that, my pap said probably Gordy and I’d better not run together anymore. It was about time for Gordy to go to work, anyhow. A lot of the black kids quit school and went to work young, back then.” He scratched his head and smiled, his eyes a little sad behind his thick glasses. “Gordy Finn. He died in Vietnam when he was twenty-one years old. Buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Looked up his name on the wall when I visited the memorial once.” He pointed to a pencil rubbing of Gordy’s name hanging in a frame behind the cash register. “Funny thing, he was probably the first one in his family to have his name carved into a granite marker.”
Sambo
for having him as a friend, and slapped me around pretty good. After that, my pap said probably Gordy and I’d better not run together anymore. It was about time for Gordy to go to work, anyhow. A lot of the black kids quit school and went to work young, back then.” He scratched his head and smiled, his eyes a little sad behind his thick glasses. “Gordy Finn. He died in Vietnam when he was twenty-one years old. Buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Looked up his name on the wall when I visited the memorial once.” He pointed to a pencil rubbing of Gordy’s name hanging in a frame behind the cash register. “Funny thing, he was probably the first one in his family to have his name carved into a granite marker.”
A lump came up in my throat, and I swallowed hard. I didn’t know what I should say, really, or how I ought to feel. In my mind, I could see Gordy—barefoot in overalls with the bottoms rolled up, walking down the creek with his friend, a fishing pole and a sack lunch over his shoulder. It was weird to think that his history was my history in some way. I never thought much about my daddy’s side of the family. Maybe I had people who were buried out back of some cemetery somewhere. Maybe I had a grandpa or an uncle who died in World War II or Vietnam. Unless I found those women from my mama’s photographs, I’d never know.
J. Norm’s mind wasn’t where mine was, of course. He only glanced at the rubbing of Gordy’s name, like it didn’t really matter. “Were there any other family members—of the VanDraans’, I mean? Anyone who might still be in the area?”
Tipping his head to one side, Mr. Nelson pushed his glasses higher on his nose, like he was trying to get a better look at J. Norm. “No, sir. Not that I know of. Mr. VanDraan did marry again, built the big white house up on the hill, west of town, but his second wife died before they had any children. Drowned in the river out behind the house. Can’t remember all the details, but he married a third time after that, and when that wife passed unexpectedly, there was speculation around town, of course, and her family had some political pull in the county. They vowed to do away with VanDraan, either by legal means or some other. VanDraan up and sold everything then, and left Groveland. That was when my daddy bought the store, but you can still see VanDraan’s name on the header stone of the building, and in the tile there by the door. My mama used to keep a rug over it. She never quite forgave my daddy for doing business with VanDraan. My mama was a good Christian woman and involved in the temperance movement, and everybody knew VanDraan had made a lot of his money running liquor off ships in Galveston harbor.” Laughing, he shook his head. “My daddy was a good man, but he wasn’t above taking a little nip. He appreciated a good smooth Southern whiskey.”
J. Norm and me looked at the tile in the doorway, reading the name VanDraan. I couldn’t tell from looking at J. Norm whether he recognized it or not. It seemed like he was trying to figure that out himself. “I suppose he would be mentioned in books about the area—this VanDraan?” he asked finally.
“Oh, sure.” Mr. Nelson started down the counter, motioning for J. Norm to follow. “We’ve got a few here for sale. Mostly stuff written by folks from around the Piney Woods.” He moved to a bookshelf on the back wall, and J. Norm met up with him there. I was listening, but I took a minute to check out the ice-cream case. That stuff looked good, and come to think of it, the big breakfast at Ward House was wearing off.
I debated ice-cream flavors while Mr. Nelson showed J. Norm some books from the area. After a minute, J. Norm said, “I’ll take one of each.”
My eyes got wide, and so did Mr. Nelson’s. There were at least eight different kinds of books on that shelf. A couple of them were big hardbacks with lots of pictures. I knew those weren’t cheap. Altogether, J. Norm had probably ordered over two hundred dollars’ worth of books. The day my mama ever dropped a hundred dollars on books would be the day pigs grew wings.
“Sounds like my granddaughter and I have some reading to do,” J. Norm told Mr. Nelson when they were walking back to the cash register. I liked it that he said
my granddaughter
, even though he didn’t have to right then.
my granddaughter
, even though he didn’t have to right then.
“Guess we do, Grandpa.” I don’t know why I answered that way, because Mr. Nelson was already convinced, as far as I could tell. I guess it just felt good.
When Mr. Nelson was ringing up our books and two ice-cream cones, J. Norm asked him if he had the book we’d been hunting all day. The one by Mrs. Mercy White. Mr. Nelson threw his head back and whistled. “Hoo-eee! Where’d you hear about that book? If I carried that thing in here, I’d be out of business in a week. That book ruffled more feathers than a stray dog in a chicken yard. The lady who wrote that hadn’t lived here in years. Her daddy was the sheriff, but he eventually got crosswise of the wrong people and got himself run out of town. Guess Mercy had been waiting her whole life to grind some axes, but she sure shook up the town when she put that stuff in print. The poor fella who published that book, Leland Lowenstein, eventually had so many lawsuits and threats put against him that he just shut up his little printing company and moved out of the county. Bought the newspaper down in Littlewood. That’s been, oh . . . fifteen, maybe twenty years ago now. Since then, interested parties have pretty much gathered up every copy and performed proper burials, so to speak.”
After that, we walked out of the store lugging J. Norm’s haul of books and eating double-dippers. They were dripping fast, so we sat on the bench across the street for a minute, taking in the warm spring day.
While we were working our way down to the cones, I picked one of the books out of the sack—one of the big hardbacks with lots of pictures and some town history here and there. “You know,” I told J. Norm in between bites of ice cream, “they probably have all of these at Ward House.” I recognized some of the titles. “We could’ve just looked at them there and saved the money.”
J. Norm was leaning back in the sun, enjoying his mint chocolate chip. “I felt the need for my own copies. If our trip doesn’t pan out today, I can take them home to Dallas with me and keep looking at them. Something might ring a bell.”
It bothered me that he was talking about giving up. I wasn’t ready. Even though all I had with me was a couple pairs of jeans, two T-shirts, underwear, a toothbrush, and the envelope of money I’d been stashing under my bed, this trip was like a promise. A promise to figure out the mystery. I didn’t want to quit until the promise was kept, and besides that, I wasn’t going back to Dallas. I didn’t know yet what my plan was, but I wasn’t going back.
I read the name carved in stone on the building across the street. VANDRAAN, in big, block letters, kind of oozy and black around the edges where rainwater had drained down. “That name doesn’t ring a bell—VanDraan?” I flipped to the back of the book, to the “V”s in the index.
Norman shook his head. “It’s odd. There are only bits and pieces in my memory. Like random factors of an equation, nothing more. Not enough to solve it.”
The name was in the index. VanDraan, Luther. I popped the rest of my ice-cream cone into my mouth—not very ladylike, because my cheeks bulged, but I needed both hands. Swiping off on my jeans, I split the book down the middle and started turning toward page 136.
Page 132 . . . some train.
Page 133 . . . a herd of cows and cowboys at the stockyards.
Page 134 . . . a picture of an old petition from back in 1911.
Page 135 . . . a bunch of soldiers marching through the town in World War I.
Page 136 fell open, and there were pictures. Five of them. The bank building, the store, a big white house with three stories and an iron fence around it. Under that, there was a picture of three black ladies working in the kitchen, dressed in maids’ uniforms.
In the last photo on the page, underneath the maids’ picture, I found what I was looking for. The VanDraans.
Chapter 19
J. Norman Alvord
Gazing at the pictures was a waking dream. Could it be that after all this time, I was coming face-to-face with the ghosts that had haunted me, the past I’d always felt but never recognized until the day my near death had unlocked some long-closed door?
I knew these pictures. I knew the house. I knew the people. The women in the kitchen, I could hear them laughing, and I knew that sometimes they would sing as they worked—hymns, blues songs by W. C. Handy or Mamie Smith. One of the women pictured was Cecile. She was young, even younger than I might have thought her in my dream. In the photo, she was lowering a rack of mason jars into a boiling pot. They were canning. I knew how the kitchen would smell—like steam and vinegar, paraffin and seared vegetables. From the corner, a baby in a high chair looked on, chubby cheeked, with pale skin and downy curls. The fluff of hair was red. Red, like mine. I knew this despite the lack of color in the photo. I knew the children in the next photo also. The girls, twins, their flyaway waves of hair gathered into bows, and the boy, a stout-legged toddler, red hair also, blue eyes, a little button of a nose that made him look as if he’d grow to be a rascal, given half a chance.
My finger traced the photo, trembled upward from the children’s faces to the woman standing to their left. A beautiful woman. She was wearing a stylish floral-print dress, a fashionable belt cinched tightly at her waist. Her hair had been pinned up under a wide-brimmed hat, as if she were attired for an occasion. Some holiday, Easter perhaps. She’d turned her face slightly away from the camera, so that the shadow of the hat brim made her no more than a ghost in the picture. A ghost with murky features and eyes that said nothing. In the right of the frame sat a man in a chair, his posture straight and stern, the baby poised on his knee. A hand rested on his shoulder, a boy’s hand. My hand. My gaze traveled upward, and I looked into my own eyes.
Epiphany touched the photo, pointed as if to make certain I’d seen. “J. Norm, that’s you.” She breathed the words with obvious surprise, as if she hadn’t believed until now that all of this was real.
“Yes, it is.” There was no doubt. I’d seen enough of my own childhood pictures to know myself, and so had Epiphany. The mother who raised me had photographed me within an inch of my life, but there had always been a gap in those photos. There were pictures of me as a baby, even pictures of me in her arms.
He looked more like you when he was young
, acquaintances would say to my mother when they came to visit our home.
He looked more like you when he was young
, acquaintances would say to my mother when they came to visit our home.
Mother would only laugh and reply,
Norman takes resemblance from my father. My father had red hair and a cleft in his chin, God rest him.
Norman takes resemblance from my father. My father had red hair and a cleft in his chin, God rest him.
Did those friends on our street in Dallas ever look, really look at those baby pictures, and wonder?
I traced a finger along the names in the caption beneath the photo.
The VanDraan family
, it read.
Front, Luther VanDraan, wife Fern. Children, left to right, Erin, Emma, Johnny, Paul (infant), and Luther William VanDraan Jr. (called Willie), shortly before a fire destroyed VanDraan House, taking the lives of the five children, as well as Fern VanDraan, and an African-American housekeeper, Cecile Bell.
The VanDraan family
, it read.
Front, Luther VanDraan, wife Fern. Children, left to right, Erin, Emma, Johnny, Paul (infant), and Luther William VanDraan Jr. (called Willie), shortly before a fire destroyed VanDraan House, taking the lives of the five children, as well as Fern VanDraan, and an African-American housekeeper, Cecile Bell.
Cecile Bell.
She had a last name now, and I had a name, too: Luther William VanDraan, called Willie. The name became a part of me as I looked into the eyes of the boy. The boy who had not perished in that fire, but somehow, through an unknown set of circumstances, had been transported to another life. This was the secret my mother had been hiding all these years. The reason she was afraid to send me to school or allow me beyond the perimeter of our yard when I was small. She was waiting. Waiting for me to grow, to change, to fully become someone else, all traces of my past gone from my memory and from the rest of the world.
She had a last name now, and I had a name, too: Luther William VanDraan, called Willie. The name became a part of me as I looked into the eyes of the boy. The boy who had not perished in that fire, but somehow, through an unknown set of circumstances, had been transported to another life. This was the secret my mother had been hiding all these years. The reason she was afraid to send me to school or allow me beyond the perimeter of our yard when I was small. She was waiting. Waiting for me to grow, to change, to fully become someone else, all traces of my past gone from my memory and from the rest of the world.
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