Southern Gods (23 page)

Gregor slumped, sitting down on the atrium’s banquet bench. He sighed and passed a hand over his eyes, rubbing fiercely as if to dislodge the alcohol and grief.

He looked up and saw Sarah peering into the atrium from the dining room. His eyes softened, and he motioned her to join him.

“Hey, Sar-baby.” She sat by him and he patted her knee, squeezing a little. “It’s… it’s a bad deal here, isn’t it?”

Sarah nodded, her eyes raw. They thought the same way. “
Geeg
, I… I wish she wouldn’t… be like that. Sometimes I hate her.”

Gregor took her hand in his. It was warm and scaly with calluses. “That makes two of us. But she’s hurting too. She might not show it, but she is.”

Sarah turned her head to look at him, surprised. He pulled his flask from his pocket again and twisted off the cap. In the low light of the atrium, she could see engraved upon the silver of his flask the stylized face of Bacchus, grinning and strewn with grapes.

Gregor looked at her, squinting. “How old are you now, Sar-baby?”

“Twenty last month.” She jabbed his belly with a finger. “You gave me an orchid and the frilly pink dress.”

“Oh.” He looked lost. Tilting the flask to his mouth, he said, “You like it?”

“It died.”

“The dress died?”

“The orchid. I’m not good with plants.”

He nodded. “Me neither. But the dress, Sar. You like it?”

She smiled. “I love it.” It had been two sizes too big and childish in its cut. Maybe some freakishly large eleven year old could wear it, but Sarah never would.

“Good.” He tweaked her knee again then rested his head in one large paw, the other loosely gripping the flask.

“Here you’ve lost your father,” he muttered, “and all I can think about is myself.” He turned to Sarah and squeezed her hand, looking into her eyes. “Your father and I were the closest of all our family. But Papa had another family before James and me. Did you know that? That we’re… we’re Papa’s second try?”

Sarah shook her head, puzzled. “How is that possible? I mean… Paw-paw never mentioned ever having—”

“Another family? No, Papa wouldn’t. He was like James. Here.”

He handed her the flask. It felt warm and smooth in her hands.

“You’re old enough to try whiskey, if you haven’t already. It’s gonna sting and taste awful.
Ein Geschmack der Hölle, ein Geschmack des Himmels
.”

She lifted the flask to her lips and drank. It tasted like a field of corn on fire. She coughed. But her stomach grew warm and her eyes stopped hurting.

Gregor took back the flask. His eyes looked sad and a little frightened.

“His first wife was named Graine Masters Rheinhart. They had two sons together. One named Karl and the other named Wilhelm. Papa had gone to Little Rock, to tend to business there, when he used to keep an office.” He stopped, eyes focusing on the far wall. “When he came home he found everyone dead. Blood everywhere, trailing all over the Big House.”

He held her hand up and looked at it, tracing the tendons and veins.

“I’ve questioned the servants myself about what they found. Graine was at the piano, struck through the heart. She hemorrhaged out in less than a minute. Before she knew what even happened. In the kitchen, a serving woman was near decapitated. And on the table, Karl Rheinhart—your uncle—was split open like someone breasting a duck. The doctor who collected the body—there wasn’t any coroner or medical examiner back in the 1800s—his report says that Karl’s heart was missing. And on the floor was Papa’s sword. The one issued him in the Civil War. Funny thing about that sword, it wasn’t a saber, like you see in all the paintings.”

He drew up his flask again and shook it. Sarah heard the high pitched slosh of the liquor in the silver container.

“Here. I don’t need it anymore.” He handed it to her. She took another swallow.

“What was it?”

“What?”

“The sword.”

He scratched the back of his hand and then let his hands fall limply on his knees.

“A gladius. Jefferson Davis was a fiend for the glory of Rome, the goddamned prat. Anyway, for the first few months of the war, he had foundries in Atlanta pumping out these flat, short Roman gladii. Larger than the largest dagger, but not as long as a saber. These were made for chopping and stabbing. Clunky and heavier than shit. First thing the Rebs threw away on any extended march. It’s stored away in the library somewhere.”

Sarah shifted on the bench. The spirits from the flask had warmed her but she found herself getting more discomfited with the story.

“They found the sword on the kitchen floor covered in blood. Bloody bare footprints all over the house leading from there—” He pointed to the kitchen. “And coming to right here.” Gregor jabbed his finger at the front door. “And Wilhelm was missing.”

“Wilhelm?”

“The other brother.
My
brother, who I’ll never know.” He shook his head. “They didn’t find his body. The hand prints on the sword and the footprints on the floor were small. A boy’s.”

Confused, Sarah asked, “What does that mean? I don’t understand.”

“Wilhelm Rheinhart, by all accounts, was dying of tuberculosis. He couldn’t even get out of bed without coughing up a lungful of blood. However, it looks like he got out of his death-bed, murdered his mother and brother and a serving woman, removed his brother’s heart, and walked out of the house, never to be heard from again.”

“Jesus. That’s horrible.”

“Yes. Horrible. And now James is gone. I always tried to be the best brother I could be to him. I never wanted to be like… like Wilhelm.” He barked a short, bitter laugh. “Or Karl for that matter.”

Sarah patted his hand, not knowing what else to do. She smiled at him.

“You were a good brother, Geeg. Of course you were. Daddy loved you.”

He bowed his head, and Sarah saw tears streaming down his face, disappearing in his beard. He balled his fists, and Sarah remembered her father doing the same thing, in frustration at the wheelchair. Gregor sniffed—a snort really—and wiped his face with his sleeve in that awkward, halting way men had of dealing with tears.

“We tried to find him. James and I. We tried to find Wilhelm. Of course this was forty years later, but we searched. We had field-hands hunting through all of the woods with poles, jabbing at the ground, looking for a boy’s remains. We searched the town records of every burg in Arkansas, looking for the tubercular deaths of children, or orphans. He couldn’t have lived much longer. We found nothing; or the leads we did find turned out to be worthless. Wilhelm Rheinhart disappeared.” He held his hand and flared his fingers, like holding a feather to the wind and letting go.

“He probably died in the woods and no one found his body before it rotted or was eaten by animals,” Sarah offered.

Gregor nodded, eyes red. “There was always that possibility. But how did the boy get the strength to slaughter three people? Why did he do it? Where did he go? Sar-baby… I couldn’t just let it lie. Wilhelm is—or was—
my brother
! I needed to know what happened to him. So we searched until we both were accepted and went to Heidelberg, to the University. And we forgot about Wilhelm.”

He raised the flask again, bringing it to his lips. Finding it empty, he shook the flask as if pouring the contents on the floor, then smiled ruefully.

“Ah. It’s probably better I’m not stinking drunk.”

He stood uneasily, and staggered a few steps away.

“You’re pretty drunk. Let me help you, Geeg.”

“No, I’m fine.” He shooed her away. Frowning, he said, “We had forgotten all about our half brother during the years in Heidelberg, until I got my hands on an old book of German lore. We were crazy for the stuff then; James and I dreamt of being the new Brothers Grimm, or at least Aarne and Thompson. This particular tome was written in the sixteenth century by a syphilitic goliard slowly going crazy.”

He wiped his lips and looked around. “I need something to drink.”

“I can get you some… I don’t know, port, I think. Mama has a bottle somewhere.”

“No, I need water and coffee. And a shower.”

“Yes. You’re right,” Sarah said, then paused. “But what about the book?”

“Eh? Oh. One of the tales told a story about a dying girl, sick with the plague. As she lies on her death bed, surrounded by her dying family, she’s approached by an elf. Not the nice, girly elves that ladies like to believe traipse around the English countryside. We’re talking about an Old World spirit, a
vaettir
, a creature of blood and stone and hate. She begs him to heal her, and her family. He refuses. She pleads, tearing her hair. He refuses. Finally, throwing herself at his feet, she makes one last request for healing. He tells her he can heal her, but
only
her. She cries, of course, because she loves her parents and her sister. But as a payment, he demands her sister’s heart. She refuses, horrified. He tells the girl she will die anyway, so why not? She refuses, once again, hoping against hope that her sister will recover. But the girl’s sister is listening from her bed and offers up her heart to save the girl. The elf laughs and cuts out the sister’s heart. Holding the still-warm thing in front of the girl, he says that she must eat it, take the strength of it into herself, if she wants to be cured. The girl refuses, and the elf disappears with the heart. The girl dies of grief, alongside the body of her sister.”

“How sad. Surely people didn’t tell these stories, did they? They’re… they’re hideous.”

“They ate them up like hotcakes. Loved them.” He walked back toward the kitchen, at first unsteady but getting more sure-footed as he went.

“But what does this have to do with Wilhelm?”

“You won’t believe me.”

“Uh…”

He stopped, turned to her. “In our studies, James and I found this story repeated in every culture known to man. Sometimes the heart gets eaten, sometimes it doesn’t. The further we looked into it, we found more books, ones that take this myth seriously, books that tell of making bargains with… with… things you’d rather not know about.”

Confused and not a little frightened by Gregor’s tone and the strange look on his face, Sarah asked, “But what about Wilhelm?”

He cleared his throat, hocking up phlegm. He looked around helplessly for somewhere to spit. He stood there for a little while, as if making up his mind about telling her. Then he swallowed, and Sarah, despite herself, shuddered.

He said, “You should know this, because when I’m gone… well… you’ll be the last Rheinhart. The last with any of my blood, at least, except for Wilhelm, if he’s still out there. So remember and don’t think of me as a lunatic.”

She smiled and turned her head coyly, as if she was five again, begging for candy. “I’ve always thought of you as a lunatic, Geeg. Whatever you tell me won’t change that.”

He laughed, the sound a big rumble like casks of ale being rolled across a hardwood floor.

“Okay. I warned you, Sar-baby. I think something came to Wilhelm on
his
deathbed.” He waved his hands at the old timbers of the Big House. “I think something old—something very old—walked out of the swamps, or the river, or the woods and tempted Wilhelm with life in exchange for his family’s death. Unlike the story, he accepted. I think Wilhelm ate his brother’s heart. Now I’ve got to get ready to put
my
brother in the earth.”

He turned and walked into the kitchen.

Sarah
remembered
.

These memories, unbidden and frightening, had remained deep underneath the still pool of her experience, only to come to the surface now. It had been seven years since that conversation. And now, seven years later, she was as scared and confused as she was then and surprised at the memories, memories she’d put into the ground with her father’s body.

Once James Ware Rheinhart was in the ground, Gregor took his share of the farm and money, sold everything he could, and moved to Munich for further study. At fifty, Gregor started a new life. For the first time in his life—old or new—he married, a woman named Brigitte who baked him cakes and made him stop drinking, everything except wine. He lost weight and shaved his beard and rolled his own cigarettes. He wrote Sarah regularly, long discursive letters slipping into and out of German and French that—quite honestly—Sarah had not paid much attention to. She’d been heavily pregnant with Franny, and Jim had already begun to drink himself into insensibility every night. Letters from Gregor seemed unreal and arcane. And he had left. Sarah tried as hard as she could to ignore the fact that Gregor—her Gregor, her Geeg—had left her to deal with life without him.

She sent Gregor a letter telling him of Franny’s birth, but he never responded. She discovered he had been walking in the fields by the Neckar River when the stroke hit him, dropping him in his tracks. He was the same age as his brother when James had died. Gregor lived on, though, as an invalid, without movement or voice. His wife hired a translator and sent Sarah a telegram saying Gregor was comfortable, sitting in the sun every day, and was able to take soup and drink wine, if she helped him. He couldn’t write, his body was too damaged by the stroke for that.

Sarah rubbed her eyes, sitting cramped at the desk, and pushed
Opusculis Noctis
away from her.