The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree (29 page)

But not for long.

It was not quite midnight, according to the clock on her bedside table, when she heard it. The
clank-clank-clank
of a spade against stone—muffled, as if whoever was digging was trying to be quiet. She lay there for a moment, pretending that she wasn’t hearing it. But then there was a hesitant rap on her door.

“Bessie?” asked a voice. “Are you awake? It’s Leticia.”

“And Maxine,” said another voice.

Bessie got out of bed and opened the door. Leticia was wearing a red plaid flannel dressing gown, belted around her thick middle. Maxine’s dressing gown was the same style, but flowered blue and purple. Maxine’s hair was twisted up in rags. Leticia’s long gray hair was braided into a single braid, over her shoulder.

“Somebody’s digging,” Leticia said in a low voice. “In our garden.”

“We heard him from our window,” Maxine added. The two of them shared the largest room at the far end of the hall.

“Not in
our
garden,” amended Miss Rogers, coming out of her room. “In the Dahlias’ garden, next door.” She was wearing a silky gray gown and her hair was down around her shoulders. Bessie thought she looked ten years younger.

Another door opened and Mrs. Sedalius joined them, her roly-poly self engulfed in a voluminous gold wrapper. “It’s not a him; it’s a her!” Mrs. Sedalius squeaked excitedly. “It’s the ghost! I saw her. Just now! Out my window!”

“We thought you went to bed and covered up your head,” Maxine said. She flicked on the hallway ceiling light, and Bessie reached over quickly and flicked it off.

“No lights,” she warned. “Whoever that is out there, we don’t want him to know we’re awake. Or her,” she added.

“What ghost?” Leticia asked with interest. “The Cartwright ghost again?”

“The one looking for her buried baby,” Mrs. Sedalius said mournfully. “Buried in a little wood box.”

“Or the Cartwright family treasure,” Bessie replied, remembering the story Dahlia had told her once. “It was buried.”

“Or her shoes,” Maxine said. “I heard that the ghost lost her shoes. That’s what she’s looking for.”

“With a shovel?” Leticia asked. “Why does she need a shovel to look for her shoes?”

There was the sound of a chair scraping, and Roseanne, her brown face almost gray with fright, came into the hall, clutching her flannel nightgown to her. “I heard y‘all talkin’ ‘bout that ghost,” she said tearfully. “Is that po’ Miz Cornelia out there agin, diggin’ for that sweet lit’le chile?” She shivered.

“It’s all right, Roseanne,” Maxine said in a comforting tone, and put an arm around her. “Whatever it is, it’s out there, not in here. You’re safe.”

Roseanne whimpered.

“This is all nonsense, you know,” Bessie said firmly. “There are no such things as ghosts.”

“That is not necessarily true,” Miss Rogers put in, in her dry, precise tone. “Ghosts are a phenomenon of the imagination. To the person who believes that there is such a thing, it is a fact, not a fancy. However, in this case, it was the Cartwright family silver that was buried, not a baby.”

“It wa’n’t no silver, it was a baby!” Roseanne cried. Despite Maxine’s steadying arm, she was trembling.
“Her
baby! The one Miz Cornelia birthed while Miz Dahlia was down there in Mobile.”

“Oh, really?” Bessie asked, interested. “I’ve never heard that. What Mrs. Blackstone told me was that she was sent to Mobile because her mother had consumption.”

“It’s a tale ain’t often told,” Roseanne retorted, “an’ maybe the white folks don’ know it. But it’s true. My grandma tol’ me, an’ she was there. Miz Cartwright birthed that baby while her husband was off to the War. Miz Dahlia was sent away so she wouldn’t know nothin’ ’bout it.” She shook her head. “She knew all the same, though. She knew.”

“Ah,” Bessie said, remembering that Dahlia had never liked to talk about what happened during the war years. She always said it was too painful. Bessie had assumed that it was the pain of the armed conflict the old lady was referring to, but of course pain came in all shapes and sizes.

Maxine released Roseanne and regarded her curiously. “If Colonel Cartwright was off killing Yankees with General Lee, who was the father of the baby?” She paused. “Or shouldn’t I ask?”

Roseanne pressed her lips together.

“Come on, Roseanne,” Leticia coaxed. “You brought it up. You have to tell the rest of it. Who was he?”

“Please, Roseanne,” Bessie said. “This could be important. It’s a bit of local history that people don’t know.” Everyone always said that the colored help knew more about their white folks’ families than the white folks’ friends and relations. And if this story about Cornelia Cartwright were true, she could understand why Dahlia didn’t like to talk about the ghost.

“Yes, Roseanne,” Mrs. Sedalius said. “You have to tell us.”

There was a long silence. “Well, I reckon they’s all dead now, even Miz Dahlia, so they ain’t no point in keepin’ it hid,” Roseanne said finally. “Baby’s daddy was the colonel’s plantation manager.” Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. “Name of Adam. He had a white daddy, colored mama. Was a slave, ’til Mr. Lincoln set him free. Handsomest man ever was in this world, they say. Won Miz Cornelia’s heart.”

“Oh, my goodness gracious!” Miss Rogers recoiled in horror. “How
could
she?”

Maxine looked at Miss Rogers and shook her head. “I guess you don’t know about love,” she said quietly.

“Forbidden love,” said Leticia with a longing sigh. “What a sad, sad story.”

“Which is why we’ve never heard it, I reckon,” Bessie said drily. “Because it was forbidden.”

“Meaning ... ?” Maxine asked.

“Meaning that the Cartwright friends and family—if they knew it—would never permit it to be talked about,” Bessie said. And of course, the fact that the relationship (if it had existed) was secret made it likely that all sorts of fictional embellishments would be added to the story. As an amateur historian, she had encountered many such tales and knew that they were usually 20 percent fact, 80 percent fancy. There was a ghost, so there had to be a sad story. There was a sad story, so it had to be forbidden love.

“How did the baby die?” Leticia asked.

Roseanne shrugged. “Babies jes’ die. Happens ever’day.”

“And then
she
died?” Leticia persisted. “Cornelia Cartwright, I mean.”

Roseanne nodded wordlessly.

“How?” Maxine demanded.

“Consumption,” Bessie said. That was what Dahlia had told her.

Roseanne didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then: “Kilt herself, whut my mama tol’ me. She dead an’ buried by the time Miz Dahlia come back from Mobile. Everybody was tol’ it was consumption, but it wa’n’t.”

“What happened to Adam?” Leticia asked. “Mrs. Cartwright’s lover?”

Roseanne’s face became stern. “Whut y’all think?”

“He went north with the Union soldiers,” Miss Rogers said.

“He died of grief,” Leticia hazarded.

“He was ... he was strung up,” Maxine guessed, in a low voice.

“In the cucumber tree,” Roseanne said starkly. “The one at the back of Miz Dahlia’s garden. The col‘nel, he come home after the war an’ done it hisself, one dark night.”

They all fell silent. Bessie wasn’t sure she believed what Roseanne was telling them. But she shivered, thinking of the many times she and Mrs. Blackstone had stood beneath that very same tree, looking up into its branches, laden with beautiful blossoms—too beautiful to be the site of so much ugliness. Did Dahlia know the story? Could it be true?

Well, of course it could, and Bessie knew it. If Colonel Cartwright had gotten wind of illicit goings-on between his plantation manager and his wife, he would have ordered the man hanged without a second thought and felt perfectly justified in doing so. The fact that his wife was already dead might even have given him some secret satisfaction: she had paid for her terrible crime with her life. And of course, he would have gone to great lengths to keep his daughter from finding out what he had done. But you couldn’t keep a secret from the servants.

“And the baby is buried out there somewhere?” Maxine asked.

“In a little wood box,” Mrs. Sedalius said with relish. “That’s what the ghost is looking for. The baby’s coffin.”

“Under the cucumber tree,” Roseanne said unexpectedly.

“Really?” Leticia and Maxine asked, in wide-eyed unison.

Bessie made up her mind. “I’ve had enough of this,” she said. The story was interesting—more than that, it was fascinating. But it had nothing whatever to do with whoever was digging out there in the garden. “I’m going out there and get rid of that trespasser, for once and all.”

“Oh, no!” Roseanne wailed desperately. “Oh, Miz Bessie, you gots to leave that po’ lady be! She lookin’ for her
chile!”

Without a word, Bessie went back into her room. She put on her shoes, then went to the closet and found what she wanted. While she was there, putting on her shoes, she heard it again—the
clank-clank
of a shovel. She went back out into the hall.

“I really wish you wouldn’t,” Miss Rogers said faintly, seeing what she was carrying.

Roseanne whimpered.

“A shotgun?” Maxine asked, both eyebrows going up. “My gracious, Bessie.”

“My daddy’s favorite duck-hunting gun.” Bessie held it out for them to see. “Browning twelve-gauge pump. He taught me how to shoot it. I’ve bagged many a bird in my day. I’m out to bag a ghost.”

“You can’t kill a ghost,” Mrs. Sedalius said firmly.

“Who said anything about killing him?” Bessie retorted. “All I want to do is scare him. The gun is loaded with bird-shot, and I’m going to fire over his head.” She grunted. “Anyway, it’s not a ghost. It’s somebody dressed up like the Cartwright ghost.”

“Maybe it’s the escaped convict,” Miss Rogers ventured timidly.

Roseanne whimpered again.

“That’s it!” Leticia exclaimed, snapping her fingers. “The convict!”

This had not occurred to Bessie, and it gave her momentary pause. A convict might not scare easily. A convict might—

But then she shook her head. “I don’t think so. Why would an escaped convict dress up like the Cartwright ghost and dig in the Dahlias’ garden? Doesn’t make any sense.”

“Doesn’t make sense for
anybody
to be doing it,” Leticia pointed out, and Bessie had to agree.

“Okay.” She narrowed her eyes at the ladies. “You can go to the windows and watch. But keep out of sight, and don’t say a word. I’m going to sneak up on him. I’d like to be close enough to see his face.”

“Her,” amended Mrs. Sedalius, still clinging to her belief that this was a ghost. “She’s wearing that same dark cape she wore the other night.” She paused, considering. “I guess ghosts don’t have much choice in what they wear.”

“You’re going to look pretty silly out there yourself, Bessie,” Maxine remarked critically. “Pink ruffles on your curler cap, Ponds on your face, pink pajamas, and shoes. And that shotgun.”

“I don’t care how I look,” Bessie retorted. “And neither will that intruder, when I get through with him. Now, you stay here. And keep still.”

Carrying her shotgun cradled in the crook of her arm, she went down the back stairs, out through the kitchen, and onto the back porch, silently shutting the door behind her. The only streetlights in town were on the courthouse square, and they were turned off at ten o’clock every night to save on electricity and because nobody was on the streets at that hour. There was a moon, but its silver face was covered with a curtain of racing clouds, and the garden was bright, then shadowed, then black as pitch. On the other side of the street, Mrs. Hamer’s dog, General Lee, was barking fitfully, but that didn’t seem to bother whoever was digging, for Bessie could hear the intermittent metallic clanking of the shovel against stone.

She crept through the gap in the hedge and into the Dahlias’ back garden and down the path. She had come this way so often over the years that she knew the path without seeing it. She was breathing faster than usual, though, and in spite of her bravado in front of the others, she knew she was afraid. But she hadn’t lied when she’d said she knew how to handle the gun. She hadn’t fired it for a while, but it felt like an old friend.

She could see the figure in the dark cape, digging away under the cucumber tree, in the same place where she and Mildred and Ophelia had noticed the newly turned earth. The form was ghostlike, yes. But the sound of the shovel was very real, and Bessie crept closer, until she was within twenty yards of the figure. As she watched, he dropped the shovel, fell to his knees, and began digging in the dirt with his bare hands.

At that moment, the curtain of clouds parted and the moon came out, flooding the entire garden with its white brilliance, almost as bright as daylight. Whether by accident or because Bessie made some sort of small movement, the kneeling figure turned and saw her. With a menacing curse, he scrambled to his feet and half-turned in her direction, grabbing up the shovel and holding it in front of him like a weapon, as though he might be going to charge her.

Afterward, Bessie couldn’t describe exactly what happened next, or why. Was she afraid she was being attacked? Was she acting by instinct? All she could remember was jerking up her gun and firing—well over the man’s head, she was sure.

But he stumbled and fell forward and the curse became a loud, pained howl.

She gasped. Somehow, she didn’t know how, she must have hit him!

But not fatally, obviously. In the space of a breath, he was back on his feet, turning, hopping, lurching, running toward the woods at the bottom of the garden, his cape flying out like the wings of an injured bat.

Bessie had bagged her ghost.