The Lost Saints of Tennessee (26 page)

Epilogue

1986

The winter was mild. No ice storms or severe snow, as if last year's tornado earned Bailey a break. Spring unfolded and before I had a chance to pause over the sight of the cherry blossoms exploding in what Honora called pink puffball glory, summer arrived.

The plan had been to take Honora back to Mabry when Bailey's school year ended. But somehow, Honora had settled in Bailey. She and Osbourne could be found most mornings walking through the tidy rows of the peach orchard. Georgia was expanding Honora's cooking skills with lessons on meal preparation, something my mother hadn't yet had the chance to do with her granddaughter. At the high school, Honora sang in the performance choir and even joined the home economics club, though she swore it was only because members got extra class credit for baking projects.

“Doesn't sound like our girl,” Jackie had said when I told her about Honora's extracurricular activities.

When I suggested that we offer Honora the choice of spending her senior year in Bailey or back in Tennessee, I expected Jackie to tell me to go to hell.

“Fine,” Jackie said, her voice hollowed out across the phone lines. “Whatever she wants.”

In May Jackie had filed for divorce from Curtis. I did not press for details, hoping my name had never entered the conversation.

“Why don't you and Lou come to Bailey for the summer?” I said.

“What about your new girlfriend?”

“I'm offering you the guesthouse, Jackie. Not me
.
You need a chance to catch your breath.”

So instead of losing Honora, Lacey Farms welcomed Louisa and Jackie. The girls shared Honora's room in the main house and Jackie moved into the small guesthouse.

As evening drops down on the farm, the girls and I meet up on the back porch. Sometimes Osbourne joins us, if he's having a good day. The good still outnumber the bad for now. Through the guesthouse's front window, we can glimpse Jackie bent over a book. She enrolled in a couple of business classes at Piedmont Virginia Community College with an eye to opening her own dress shop someday. She talks about moving back to Mabry or even to Charlottesville. It is an odd arrangement to have my ex-wife living on the property. The moments when Elle, Jackie, and I cross paths remain awkward. But mostly, I'm grateful for the days spent in the presence of my daughters.

To his credit, Curtis still keeps in touch with my youngest, though his letters arrive less frequently. The new divorce confused Lou. She didn't understand how her mother could have made the same mistake twice.

She is becoming an accomplished rider, thanks to Elle, and in August Lou will compete in her first horse show. Some days I worry she feels closer to Elle than to her parents. When I mentioned this to Jackie, she said Elle was teaching our daughter things we couldn't and that was okay.

The anger my ex-wife used to wield in my direction has been displaced by a quiet loneliness. There are moments when I find myself about to invite her out for a walk or to a movie. But I don't.

My girls and I watch as the lightning bugs pop out one by one. Elle's slight form moves in the stables as she puts the horses down for the night; Honora and Louisa are in charge of morning care. We count out loud how many times it takes Elle to get Carter, the chestnut yearling Cousin Georgia bought in June, out of the ring and into his stall. Elle still likes to split time each week between Lacey Farms and her place.

Last month she and I had tacked up the horses for a ride and I waved her off helping me up in the saddle. With a faith that had no grounding in ability or past experience, I placed one foot in the stirrup and hopped up with everything I had, throwing my opposite leg over Diamond's broad back in one graceless but effective motion for the first time ever.

Elle blinked twice. “I believe there's hope for you yet.”

“Marry me then,” I said.

“The only thing you've proved is you can get up on a horse by yourself. Give me a while longer to see what else you can do.”

And so I am.

* * *

The nightly closing ceremonies are always the same. Honora, Louisa, and I push the swing with our feet, the squeak of the motion now so familiar I refuse to use WD-40 on the chain.

I point up toward the sky and say, “You two see those stars up there? You, my girls, are just as bright as the brightest one. Don't let anybody ever tell you different.”

Then they dig their elbows into my ribs and say “Come
on,
Dad.”

But they believe it.

Acknowledgments

Before embarking on this book, I thought the African proverb “it takes a village” only applied to raising children. I now know it also aptly describes how a book is brought forth into the world.

I offer my mother all of my gratitude for raising me with such love and instilling a passion for reading and for
­libraries. She hunted everywhere for kid's books with girl characters who
did
things. As a grandmother she's continued this tradition and spent countless hours watching over my own daughters so I could write. To my father I owe the genesis of this story. I was raised on the tall tales of his own Huck Finn–like boyhood. Dad, thanks for never being too tired to tell the chimney story one more time.

Though Clayton is a fictional Tennessee town, the book serves as a love letter to the place my father grew up and to the happiness I found there during my own childhood. It also pays
homage to the memory of my paternal grandmother, ­Lavice May Paudert, who made the best corn bread in the world, smoked cigarettes in the bathroom so she wouldn't set a bad
example for her grandkids, and made strangers feel like family and family feel beloved.

With thanks to my writing family—Santa Barbara Writers Conference (SBWC) founders Mary and Barnaby Conrad and faculty, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and my local coffee/cocktail klatch writers group. Without the generous support of scholarships to attend both SBWC and Squaw, I imagine I'd still be working on this story in some dark coffee shop.

To the saints among us who read early drafts of the manu­script and whose input made the book immeasurably better—Vicki Dobbs Beck, Ronetta Fagan, Madeleine Kahn, Carmen Madden, Christina Meldrum, and Shannon Pace. And three cheers to Sandra Sommer, Alissa Fencsik, and Nancy Cunningham for helping me figure out how the story should begin.

I owe an extraordinary debt to Elizabeth George and the Elizabeth George Foundation. They gave me a writer's two ultimate luxuries—time and money—in the form of an emerging writer grant. This support allowed me to scale back my full-time work for a year and revise the book.

Thanks to the doyennes of the Pleasanton Library for the use of the study rooms.

To the incomparable Dorothy Allison—thank you for believing in this story before I did; thank you for being such a generous teacher. To Jane Hamilton—you gave me encouragement in the midst of a massive rewrite and inspired me to keep going. To Catherine Ryan Hyde—thank you for telling me I wasn't crazy to quit my day job for a year to write the draft of this book. Your wisdom and example of how to build a writing career have provided steadfast guidance.

Writing nirvana was found at the Vermont Studio Center, which provided a two-week residency that gave me a place to write and allowed the story to grow.

Thank you to Dr. Larry Dobbs for helping me understand Carter's mental and physical issues; thank you to Dan Smulow for consulting with me on how the Smith brothers attack on Carter would have been handled under 1960 Tennessee law; thank you to my fellow Mills College alumna Dr. Anne Reed, DVM, for her assistance with the technical aspects of Tucker's physical condition after Zeke's exit attempt.

I was blessed to find a champion for
Lost Saints
in the form of my agent, Amy Rennert. Amy and her associate, Robyn Russell, gave me invaluable editorial advice on the manuscript. And thanks to her enthusiasm and perseverance, Amy found
Lost Saints
its perfect home at Grove/Atlantic.

At Grove, where the number of dogs lumbering around the office almost seems to equal the number of employees, I have found Elisabeth Schmitz to be the kind of editor writers dream about. Elisabeth's love of the story and its characters allowed her editorial guidance to strengthen the book in ways I couldn't have imagined. Associate editor Jessica Monahan was a constant comfort—she kept things moving forward, never tired of a first timer's questions, and gave the manuscript the benefit of her insightful edits.

Many thanks to friend and book publicist extraordinaire Leslie Rossman, who loves books as much as anyone I know.

The final thank you goes out to my family. My wife, Wendy, was the first reader of
Lost Saints
and her belief in it and in me never faltered, despite mounting evidence that it should. Thank you Wendy for being an exemplary human being and for sharing a life with me.

My daughters have been unceasingly supportive of my writing dreams, even with the hours and weekends away from them it has required. Girls—you are the beginning, middle, and end of my world.