The Lost Saints of Tennessee (17 page)

“I love this time of the year. The sun still warms you but doesn't make you break out in a sweat and the air smells like apples and leaves.”

Without thinking, I turn to her and lean in, unsure of what to do next but certain of the desire to be closer to her. I want to taste the sweetness of her mouth. The wind blows a dark curl across her face and I reach up to grasp it, tucking it behind her ear. I hear the soft intake of breath when my hand makes contact with her skin.

Her eyes fly open. She looks ready to run. “Zeke.”

There is a warning in the word but the sound of my
name in her mouth does me in.

The warmth of her breath against my cheek is hot and moist. Strangely hot and moist.

We are not alone.

Darcy has sidled up and put her large nostrils inches
from my face.

Elle giggles, a relaxed and girlish sound. “See, I told you she was a jealous one.” She steps away from the railing, putting distance between us.

We both pretend I had not been trying to kiss her. It is not my style to bear down on a woman with a kiss. I was raised to ask a girl first.

“What's your schedule like tomorrow?” She will not look at me, focusing instead on brushing dirt off the tops of her pants.

“I don't imagine I have much of a schedule.”

“A man of leisure these days. I forgot. How about another lesson after lunch? I've got a couple in the morning over at my place.”

“Why don't I meet you there?” I want to see her in her own surroundings.

She says no, it's better for me to keep riding Diamond. “See you tomorrow then.”

“At least let me walk you home.”

“Why do all Southern men think women are helpless?”

Her tone rings with a surprising bitterness. Most likely her ex is responsible for putting it there.

“See you tomorrow,” I say.

Elle turns and gives me a wave, causing a lift in my chest that can only be described as dangerous.

Twenty-Nine

Letters to Home
1960

September 2, 1960

Lacey Farms

Bailey, Virginia

Dear Carter,

I made it to Virginia. Remember I showed you on the map where I'd be going to school? Right in the middle of Virginia? The train ride took fifteen hours. I wish you'd been with me. It went through the Appalachian Mountains, and those mountains stretching up toward the sky, touching the clouds—it was one of the prettiest things I've ever seen.

You caught anything worth eating lately? Remember to get some of those worms from up in the catalpa tree. The bluegills can't resist those.

Cousin Georgia and her husband's family have the biggest house and farm I've ever seen. Georgia and Osborne live on just one floor of the main house. Her in-laws live on the second and third floors. My room's on the back of the house, overlooking the apple orchard. I'm going to box up some of the apples once they get ripe and send them back to you and Rosie.

Things sure are different here. Every night I have to wear a tie to dinner. Cousin Georgia and Osborne and I eat with his mom and dad in the formal dining room
(
formal
means fancy). They have candles lit and these special dinner plates from England. We eat a lot of food I've never had before, like parsnips (they taste a little like carrots but not really) and aspic, which is pretty disgusting stuff—you don't even want to know what's in it. And they mainly talk about their real-estate business during dinner—which property needs work, which property needs to be sold, which property they should develop next. I don't say much.

Compared to our house, Lacey Farms is pretty quiet. They have lots of animals, but they live down in the barn, and there aren't any kids running around crazy like at our house. Cousin Georgia and Osborne couldn't have kids, so it's just them and his parents, who are really old—they must be fifty. After dinner Georgia plays the piano. She asked me what kind of music I like. I told her rock and roll and she and Osborne laughed. She plays classical music, which is nice to listen to while I'm studying or reading. I don't know how to tell you what it sounds like except it's kind of like church music.

Classes started yesterday at the university. White columns seem to hold up every building. The library looks like a church. You walk up the steps, pass columns so wide I can't reach my arms around them, and inside it's quiet enough to hear the scratch of someone's pencil against paper. There are so many books, Carter. I want to live there and go floor by floor, row by row, and read every book in the place.

Speaking of reading, are you reading at night like you promised? I left
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
at home for you. You like that story better than Tom Sawyer. I know it's hard to read without me there, but you can. I know you can.

Guess I'll say good-bye for now. Remember I'm coming home at summertime, okay? That's only nine months away.

Love from your brother,

Zeke

September 15, 1960

Lacey Farms

Bailey, Virginia

Dear Jackie,

See, I told you I'd write and here I am. It seems so long since I've seen you but it's only been five weeks. Virginia is beautiful. I wish you were here and we could go and see everything together. Next week Cousin Georgia's taking me to see Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home. I know you'd like to see it, too. Sure you don't want to come out to Virginia? There's a good girls' school nearby. I've met a couple of girls from there and they say it's a real nice school.

How's the dress shop? There are a lot of little shops like Abigail's in Charlottesville in a place called the Corner. I pass by it going to class and think about you every time there's a salesgirl in the window putting an outfit on a mannequin.

I miss you. You thought I'd get all the way out in Virginia and forget about you, but I think about you all the time. I have the picture of you from the junior social, with the gardenia in your hair, on my nightstand. Do you miss me? Are you still sad about the baby? I think about the baby sometimes. How it would've been born by now and you'd both be at Lacey Farms with me. I get a little sad then.

You'd like Cousin Georgia. She's real sweet. I've told her a lot about you.

Classes are tough. I'm taking biology, Greek and Roman
mythology, American history (since before the Revolution), algebra, and basketball. My favorite professor is Dr. Fitzpatrick. He teaches the ancient myth class. He's from Scotland, and it's hard to understand him when he speaks fast, which he does all the time because he gets so worked up about what we're reading. This week we discussed the
Iliad,
and when this basketball player said it was the most boring, longest poem he'd ever read, I thought Dr. Fitz might punch him, he got so riled.

There are a lot of rich kids. When people find out I live with the Laceys, they think I'm rich, too. Makes you laugh, doesn't it? I've made friends with a guy named Frank Chancellor. He's from Richmond. He knew all about the Laceys. His daddy works for one of Osborne's brothers. Frank said I was lucky to come from a family like the Laceys. I told him I was lucky to come from a family where five kids slept in one room in a house that didn't have indoor plumbing until 1957.

He laughed and said, “No shit?” And I said, “Only in the outhouse.” We have biology class and play basketball together. I'm not good enough to be on the team, but there's a group of us that play intramural. Frank lives on campus in one of the dorms. I have one night class, biology lab, on Tuesday
nights, and I sleep on Frank's floor those nights. It's kind of
nice to stay where all the other students are.

Will you come visit me soon? Homecoming is next
month and I would love to take you to the dance. Think about it, will you? Promise?

Love,

Zeke.

October 12, 1960

Library

University of Virginia

Charlottesville, Virginia

Dear Carter,

Hey brother of mine. Why haven't you written back? Too busy to write a few lines about what you've been doing? You're going to be in trouble when I come home in June.

Cousin Georgia took me to the Appalachian Trail last weekend. I wish you could've seen it, Carter. The trees and the colors—dark fiery red to pumpkin orange to gold spread over the mountains like quilts. It reminded me of how Lavice Valley looks when we climb up the steps of the Tipton Trail tower.

Daddy taking you fishing much? I know he's gone mostly, but you ask him nicely next time he's home for a bit and he'll take you.

Sometimes I miss home so much. Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful for Cousin Georgia and Osborne and all they've done for me. But I don't fit quite right here. Everybody's so different. I'm keeping up with the schoolwork and have made a friend or two.

Should be studying for my biology midterm, so I'd better get to it. Miss you, buddy.

Love your brother,

Zeke

November 1, 1960

Lacey Farms

Bailey, Virginia

Dear Jackie,

I sure am sorry you couldn't come up for homecoming weekend. Train tickets cost a lot, I know. I guess I was just dreaming. We won the football game—27:21
. Frank and I went. He's gone to military school since he
was six and says the university is like being set free. Frank has a girlfriend over at Raintree Academy. Her name is Brenda and she's real sweet. I showed her your picture and she said you were pretty. Frank took her to the homecoming dance, and she had a friend named Shelly who really wanted to go, so I took her. We had a good time but she's not nearly as good a dancer as you.

I have a big favor to ask. Carter hasn't written me since I've been gone. Could you check on him? I know he's fine but it's strange not hearing one word from him. I promise to bring you the best darned peaches in the state of Virginia as a thank-you next June. (That's a joke, unless you want me to.)

It's strange being away from Carter. Our whole lives, from the very beginning, we've been together. Here, almost no one knows I have a twin brother. And sometimes it's nice. I get to just be Zeke. Not Ezekiel, Carter's brother. The other day I figured out that I hate pork rinds. Can't stand them. But I've eaten them all these years because Carter likes them. When you're a twin, you feel like everything you do is connected to this other person. That you really can't exist without him. Truth is, you can.

Biology is my hardest class. I got a C– on the midterm. I don't think I'm going to be a bio major. Dr. Fitzpatrick is still my favorite professor. He gave us an extracredit assignment of writing an epic poem about our own life. I gave it a try and Dr. Fitzpatrick gave me an A. He said my writing showed “great promise.” What do you think about that? I wrote Momma about it and she said that was just fine but not to forget I was meant for greater things than writing.

She wants me to be a doctor or a lawyer. And you want to know the truth? I don't want to be anything close to a doctor or a lawyer. My mind doesn't work that way. I don't know what I want to be but I think a writer doesn't sound too bad. Cousin Georgia said it's a fine profession. Osborne said being a farmer is a shade better but, all in all, I could do worse.

I hope you're doing okay. I miss you every day. Write me. I miss holding you. I love you, Jackie.

Love,

Zeke

November 30, 1960

Lacey Farms

Bailey, Virginia

Dear Mother,

I had my first Thanksgiving away from home last week. Laceys from all over descended on the farm. Folks started arriving on Wednesday afternoon. I swear that Cousin Georgia, Sallie (she helps cook sometimes), and Alice (Sallie's sister) cleaned and cooked for two weeks straight before the actual holiday. Every room was aired out, since most of the relatives stayed over Wednesday and Thursday night, some even Friday and Saturday.

On Thanksgiving morning, Georgia, Osborne, his parents, and I went to church at St. Timothy's. It was the “Blessing of the Hounds” service—you remember how there are a bunch of rich folks here who ride around on their horses trying to catch a little old fox? Every Thanksgiving morning all of the foxhunters, their horses, and their dogs gather outside the church to be “blessed.”

When we got there, the bagpipers in their plaid skirts were just starting. The fog wrapped around the gravestones in the cemetery. The sound of those lonely pipes and the quiet of everyone—five hundred people came but no one said a word—was like nothing you've ever heard. I felt filled up somehow.

All the foxhunters were dressed in scarlet coats and shiny black boots with their dogs sitting at their sides. And the horses! These great big beasts—their coats gleaming in the sun, stamping and snuffling, itching to get on with things and start the hunt.

Osborne told me the Blessing of the Hounds comes from St. Hubert, patron saint of hunters, who lived in eighth-century France. The prayers said are to protect the hunters and offer thanksgiving for the harvest. A little different from Thanksgiving service at First Baptist, isn't it? When Georgia and I had a minute to ourselves, she said the folks who go to St. Timothy's are the descendents of the first English people to settle this area and they take their traditions a little too seriously for her liking. When one of the horses took a poop right in the middle of the service—you could see the steam coming off it in the cold air—Georgia rolled her eyes and whispered, “Good grief.”

I hope you and the family spent a good holiday together. I sure missed being with everybody. Did Daddy let Carter help carve the turkey this year? I did it last year, so this year was Carter's turn. I didn't help carve the turkey here. That's old Mr. Lacey's job. Thirty-five people came for Thanksgiving dinner. And all of them relatives. I always thought five kids around a table was a lot but the Laceys beat us.

Cousin Georgia says she misses seeing the Parker family. She told me the last time she saw most of the Parkers was at her wedding and that was a good fifteen years ago. She says the Laceys are pretty much the only family she has now, with her parents dead and her sister living all the way out in Wyoming.

We're getting ready for final exams. The only class I'm a little worried about is biology. My friend Frank and I have a whole study plan worked out—we'll meet every day for an hour and a half until exam day to go over the material. Dr. Fitzpatrick told me I should write for the school newspaper, so I'm going to check that out for next semester. You write about campus life, sports, stuff like that. He said it would be good experience for me. I know you don't think much about me writing but I know I can do it and still keep up with my studies. Don't worry. I know you already have your graduation dress picked out.

Would you please tell Carter to write me a letter? The lazy guy hasn't written me one word since I've been here. What have you got him doing that he's too busy to write his brother?

Love to everyone,

Ezekiel

December 7, 1960

University of Virginia Library

Charlottesville, Virginia

Dear Jackie,

You're never going to believe this. Cousin Georgia
knocked on my door last night and asked if she could speak with me. She's never done that before, so I got worried I'd done something wrong like eaten steak with the salad fork again or left my muddy shoes by the front door. But that wasn't it at all.

She came in and sat on my bed and said she and Osborne had been talking about what to give me as a Christmas present. They'd been thinking really hard about what I needed most, and they thought about books for school and clothes and things like that, but then she said they both looked at each other and they knew—what I needed most was to go home and be with my family. So they're giving me a round-trip train ticket and some spending money for the trip and a little extra to buy presents for the family.