Night Swimming (7 page)

Otis’s Place wasn’t much to look at. It was a small weather-beaten house with a weather-beaten sign that boasted clean rooms, but it was good enough. Charlotte just wanted a roof, a bath, and a bed. She laid her head on the pillow at around eight and fell fast asleep. At about midnight she woke up. She could hear music coming from the porch. Banjo, guitar, mouth harp, fiddle, mandolin. It sounded so perfectly perfect, she couldn’t help but open her window as wide as it would go and lean out to hear some more. Every chord, every note, cried a river. It reached right down into the soil of the land they were playing on. Charlotte was sure that if they played long enough, the flowers would be teased right out of the earth.

“You sing it, Mazy. You sing it loud, Miss Mazy Watts,” the banjo player yelped. And then Mazy Watts began to sing. One song after another, so absolutely beautiful, Charlotte wondered if she had sold her soul to be able to sing like that. She’d heard such stories about a man who, one hot summer night, sold his soul to the devil to be able to sing the blues. A summer night as hot as this one. Charlotte closed her eyes and inhaled every sweet scent, every sweet sound surrounding her. She’d never heard anything like it, and she simply couldn’t contain herself. She was suddenly clapping and singing from her window like a big-bellied warbler.

“You sing it, girl,” the fiddle player yelled up to Charlotte.

And she did, calling to Jesus and polishing those pearly gates with her hands that were waving wildly in the warm midnight air.

“Praise Jesus!” someone cried.

And they did: Mazy Watts, Charlotte, and a chorus of others who slowly gathered to the porch that night and sang until the sun came up. Maybe thirty people showed, maybe more, from who knows where, to sing, to praise, to give thanks, to ask for forgiveness, to ask for salvation, to lament, to exalt, to grieve, to accept, to weep, to live, to die, to sing the gospel. It was as if church were open all night under the stars. And for a moment, Charlotte felt okay. Okay about her life and okay about the prospect of dying. Somehow, she thought, dying is what we have to do to complete the circle. The music was telling her so. It had been so many years since Charlotte had experienced the sensation of being held in someone’s arms. But tonight, between the music and the moon and the unaccountable black magic of the Southern air, she was embraced in the spirit of everything that was good in this world. And she felt free.

Every part of Charlotte felt free by the grace of the great gospel gods: her arms, her legs, her hips, her feet, but especially, most especially, her soul.

The following afternoon, she woke to the harsh clarity of late light spilling off the walls while the sun sluggishly climbed down the backside of another day. However, one thing was clear, clearest of all, and that was she did not want to die. The music had made the dying seem okay last night, caught in its current and carried to the “shores of milk and honey,” but today was today, and she wanted to live and hear a lifetime of it now. However, time was short, and with only a year she had no time to ruminate about how much time she did not have left. So she hurried off in search of Mazy to say goodbye. There she was, raking the flattened grass in front of her porch as if bent on giving a straight road back its curves.

“Good-by, Mazy Watts,” Charlotte said, pulling her close, nearly suffocating the poor woman in her full, generous bosom. “I have to tell you, Mazy, I’ve never heard a voice like yours in all my life.”

“And you, too, sister Charlotte, you got yourself your own beautiful voice.”

“Thank you, Mazy Watts. Thank you. One night in Mississippi. I saw more in one night than I ever thought I could, because of you.”

“What’d you see, Charlotte?” Mazy asked as they walked toward Charlotte’s car.

“I saw...I saw...” Charlotte was trying to put her finger on the feeling. And then it struck her. “...a glimpse of paradise, a passing glimpse, but a glimpse nonetheless.”

“Ahhhh,” Mazy said, “that can happen in the delta.”

“You take care, Mazy,” Charlotte said. She wanted to say that she’d be back one day, and that they would meet again, that perhaps if all was right with the world they’d have another incredible evening like the one last night. But Charlotte knew she wouldn’t be back. She knew that life was taking her to other places now. And besides, she knew there could never be another night like that.

“Bye, Miss Charlotte,” Mazy said.

“Bye, Miss Mazy.” And Charlotte drove off, looking in her rearview mirror at the closest thing to an angel she’d ever seen.

The roads leaving town were long and flat. She passed general stores that were hammered up with old tin signs, signs that looked as if they’d been hanging there since 1920:
Coca-Cola, Lake Celery, Cold Barq’s Root Beer, White Flyer Laundry Soap, Wood-Coal,
and
Ice.

But the thing that struck her the most were the kingdoms of cotton stretching out before her like a field of clouds—white froth spilling over the open fields like cold beer or soda that had been poured too high over the lip of its glass. It fell everywhere along the roads and looked like swatches of Battenberg lace. There were cotton fields in front of Charlotte, in back of her, cotton growing out of old riverbeds and across abandoned plantations. If Mississippi was known to have ghosts, then they were all right here, blowing down Highway 61.

And then, suddenly, in the middle of nowhere, breaking like a brown god out of the ground, stood a strong, solid oak tree. But this was no ordinary oak tree. The cotton had blown right up into its branches, and it looked as if a hundred hankerchiefs were waving Charlotte good-bye as only proper southern ladies can. She got out to look at the tree. It had to be a hundred degrees, maybe more, and yet this big old oak, which looked as if its bark were blistering from the heat, hung full of snow under the southern sun.

Charlotte felt certain that this place held a magnetism all its own. It was where time slowed down, where afternoons slouched toward evening, and evenings seemed suspended in the opium shades of sleep.

Maybe because it was so hot here, or maybe it was something else. Charlotte pondered the notion of time slowing to a crawl, of air so still, the wind dare not exhale a single sigh. So still you could hear the breath of a butterfly a mile down the road. Charlotte only had a year left to live, but if she stayed in Mississippi, maybe, just maybe, she could live forever.

CHAPTER 10

T
HE RIVER HAD BEEN DREDGED
, and the Gorham police stood nearby as Charlotte’s car was lifted out of the water, the driver’s door swinging open on its rusted hinges. The entire front had been crushed like a tin can. It dangled from the crane, a final tribute to its sad ending.

Having recovered the gray Toyota a day after the “incident,” they spent the following week looking for Charlotte’s body. The search had been going on for almost two weeks. It was odd that she hadn’t been found in the car or close to it. Thus, the commitment to finding her was ever-increasing, and Gorham could not close the chapter until they did. Without a body, there was talk of foul play, and a separate, growing suspicion that perhaps Charlotte had something to do with the missing money. Those who knew her best ridiculed the idea:

“Charlotte? Our Charlotte? Charlotte Clapp?”

“No. Never.”

The police asked everyone who knew her to come forward and tell them anything Charlotte might have said to them the day she disappeared.

It was MaryAnn Barzini who volunteered the entire contents of the conversation she’d had with Charlotte the afternoon of her going-away party.

Chief Makley had held his position for over twenty years in Gorham. He was a somewhat portly man with unsuspicious eyes and a kind smile. It seemed as if he had stepped out of
Father Knows Best
and directly into the modern world. But while his demeanor was somewhat unobtrusive, he did have a nose for police work. His dad had been a cop and had instilled in him the ethic of “always get your man.” So while tough investigating tactics seemed out of character,
cop
was in his blood.

“Well,” MaryAnn began with a dramatic flourish, relishing her fifteen minutes of fame, “we talked about how she was all excited with regards to visiting Florida and about how she was going to visit Disney World. I, of course, told her about SeaWorld. I went there with Tom for my second anniversary, and I think she was completely taken with my description.”

“Go on,” Chief Makley said. MaryAnn was obviously taken by her own descriptions.

“Well,” she continued, “then she said she was heading to Louisiana...to visit relatives down there.”

“Relatives?” asked Hobbs, Makley’s second in command. Looking through his Coke-bottle glasses, he was barely able to discern MaryAnn, let alone evidence.

Hobbs was somewhat clownish, and some townsfolk wondered if he had taken the job because he got to wear the uniform. But having grown up in Gorham, he knew everyone and was well liked, although never taken too seriously. Charlotte and MaryAnn used to laugh that Hobbs was Billy Bob Thornton to Makley’s Brian Dennehey.

“So tell us about these relatives,” Makley continued. “You sure it was Louisiana?”

“Yes, in or near New Orleans, I believe she said. I found that odd since she had never mentioned to me any family living in Louisiana. I mean, it seems like something I would have known. And Charlotte being such a dyed-in the-wool Yankee, too, it was just so strange she had family from the South. Maybe she was embarrassed. I would be.”

“Were you particularly close with Charlotte that she would have mentioned that?”

“We were close once . . . but we drifted apart. We still worked together, and we had plenty of conversations at the water cooler and such. We didn’t really socialize after my wedding. She was a bridesmaid.”

“She was a bridesmaid at your wedding, and you didn’t socialize with her?”

“Not really. I think she took it too much to heart when I went off and married Tom. Tom and Charlotte had been dating first, and I don’t think Charlotte ever got over that.”

“So, to your knowledge, no one has even contacted her relatives in Louisiana to tell them what’s happened?”

“No, not to my knowledge.”

“Well, Jesus H. Christ, somebody better.”

And with that, an all-out search began for Charlotte’s aunts, uncles, and cousins living somewhere in Louisiana. Makley picked up the phone and called New Orleans information. So far, none of the Clapps living either there or in the surrounding areas seemed to know her. It was all a big mystery at this point, the biggest Gorham had ever experienced. And where the river didn’t give up its secrets, Hobbs, Makley, and the good people of Gorham hoped the Big Easy would.

It was evident to Makley that before going anywhere, he needed to bring in the FBI. The possibility of Charlotte Clapp’s having robbed the bank seemed ever more likely. And if she had indeed robbed the bank, she had committed a federal crime.

He made the call to the feds to officially start the investigation. If she wasn’t in the river, then she was, in the eyes of the law, a suspected criminal. In only a matter of a minute, Charlotte went from missing person to alleged felon.

“There’s one other thing that continues to bother me, Hobbs,” Makley said when the two were alone. “The money. Where does the First Savings and Loan of Gorham get two million dollars? And the president of the bank doesn’t seem...I don’t know, very forthcoming. I asked him for records, and he keeps telling me he’s getting them together. I think we should have a chat, President Kelly and me. Don’t you think, Hobbs?”

“Well, when you put it that way, I’d say a chat is in order. Mind if I come? I just love mysteries, like the ones you see in the movies where the bad guy gets cornered and has no place to run. Then he grabs for his gun, but it’s too late—John Wayne has already done him in.”

“Well, when you put it that way, Hobbs, yes, I totally mind if you come.”

CHAPTER 11

T
HE GERMAINE DEVOE FUNERAL HOME
was located just off Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. Nothing less than sensory overload blasted Charlotte as she made her way over to the wake.

Wreaths shaped like horseshoes spread their luck around Blossom’s casket. She rested on a bed of forget-me-nots, while a garland of white gardenias crowned her head. Even in death Blossom looked as if she were coming into bloom.

Candles lit the room with a dusty, operatic softness. Charlotte half expected a phantom to step out from behind the cheerless purple curtain hanging heavy against the wall.

She stared at Blossom long and hard, as if she could will her awake. And then she did the oddest thing. Scrambling through her purse, she found the medallion she had discovered in her mother’s jewelry box and had carried with her since her mother’s death. She wanted to give Blossom something, a token to take with her into the next life, and she wanted Blossom to know it was something very special that meant a lot to her.

It didn’t matter that she didn’t know who the saint was or what the saint stood for. It was just a small silver-plated medallion with
Cadoc of Llancarfan
written on one side, dated
c 580,
and with a simple cross etched on the other.

Her mother had always prayed for Charlotte’s happiness, prayed that she would meet someone, prayed that she would have no regrets, and prayed that Charlotte would lose all that fat. That was where the medallion came in: Unbeknownst to Charlotte, Cadoc of Llancarfan was the saint of cramps, deafness, and glandular disorders. There were saints for everything you could imagine: headaches, gallstones, eye disease, hernias, even gout—but not for fat people. Glandular disorders was as close as Charlotte’s mother could come to obesity, so she prayed to Cadoc of Llancarfan.

Charlotte took the medal from her purse and slipped it into the pocket of Blossom’s blue suit. Blossom McBeal would now be protected from cramps, deafness, and glandular disorders for all of eternity.

Finally, kneeling down, Charlotte whispered something that only the dead could hear. And Charlotte knew with all certainty that Blossom heard it. She even thought she saw the hint of a smile cross her lips.