The Stone Flower Garden Read online

  “That’ll be great, Pa.” Eli hiked himself back onto the barstool carefully. His knees felt drunk, but it suddenly dawned on him that he was tall enough for his feet to reach the bar’s marble footrest almost as easily as Pa’s did. Almost six feet tall. Almost a man. He adjusted his aviator glasses and could swear the world looked different—better every day. If Pa could be this happy and earn a promotion to foreman despite not being able to read, then what other endless possibilities existed?

  Eli thought of Darl, who made him feel capable of moving mountains. I’ll get into college on my own, he thought excitedly. I don’t need a Hardigree scholarship. That way I won’t have to come back here and work for the marble company to pay Swan back. He’d come back for Darl when she was old enough, because he’d have money by then, he’d be a college graduate—and rich, no doubt. He’d take his family away from here, and he’d take Darl. They’d see the world, and the world would see them.

  Neddler’s old wooden door swung inward, clattering a chain on its latch. Heads swiveled as a newcomer entered the windowless bar. A shaft of cooling autumn sunshine pierced the room’s dim and smoky interior. Eli squinted at a startling female silhouette against the open doorway. Long legs in tight jeans, feet in high-heeled boots with thick soles, a bulge of tightly bloused breast against the sunshine, a pile of hair tangled on her shoulders. The silhouette stepped inside, and a man near that end of the bar rushed to shut the door.

  The jukebox was between songs, and silence ruled as all conversation stopped dead. Men halted with their cues posed over the pool tables, their mouths open and their eyes riveted to her. Everything about her said sex in letters as bright as the neon bar signs. In their low light she almost passed for a woman under thirty, but her blue eyes were as predatory as an old hawk. She brushed a dark brunette curl away from her face and searched the bar as if she could pierce any man there with a killing look. Eli felt a tingle of alarm and intrigue down his spine and through his groin. His face warmed. Who was this strangely familiar lady?

  Creighton Neddler, the aged, white-haired owner and bartender, jerked to life. “Miss Hardigree,” he said loudly, looking around as if to make certain he broadcast the name to every stonecutter in the room. “We’re, uh, we’re glad to have you. Can I pour you a beer?”

  She didn’t bother to answer, but instead kept studying the men. Eli’s breath stuck in his throat. Hardigree. This was Darl’s Great-Aunt Clara? That made her somewhere near Swan’s age, old enough to be somebody’s grandmother. He darted a glance at Pa, whose face said anything to do with a Hardigree female of any age in this bar couldn’t be good for men who depended on Swan’s paycheck.

  Pa set his mug of beer aside and stood. He had to look after his crew. His drawling voice, deep, uneducated, but firm, echoed through the small bar. “Ma’am, I’m the new foreman at Hardigree Marble. My name’s Jasper Wade. What can we do for you? Are you lookin’ for somebody?”

  Her gaze settled on him like a pulse of electricity. A quick flick of her eyes encompassed Eli but then returned to Pa, narrowing and widening. She tilted her head and looked at him from other angles, and to Eli’s amazement, her expression shifted between anger and a kind of pain. With a snap of her head she walked to Eli and his father, stopping close enough to touch Pa.

  Which she suddenly did.

  Eli almost choked as she lifted her hand and stroked her fingertips along his father’s jaw. Pa’s shoulders went rigid, and he jerked his head away. She thrust her hand higher and caressed his cheek. Eli struggled not to shout, Get away from him!

  Pa couldn’t shove her away—couldn’t lay violent hands on any woman, because Pa didn’t manhandle females, not for any reason. Yet Pa couldn’t take a step back, because how would that look to the men? Everyone was staring. “Ma’am,” Pa said in a strained tone, “I’d appreciate if you’d take your hand off me. I’m a married man, and I’ll have to move your hand away for you if you keep on.”

  She lowered her hand but studied him, her head thrown back and her chest rising hard on each breath. Bitterness entered her eyes, and she smiled. “You do look just like him. It has to be true. Your daddy was Anthony Wade, wasn’t he?”

  After a stunned moment, Pa said warily, “Yes, ma’am.”

  A low sound exploded from her lips. “From Wichitaw, Tennessee.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “The Payson Marble Quarry. That’s where he worked in Wichitaw, before he came here.”

  Eli was speechless. What was going on? When he sidled around Pa and looked at his face, he saw grim bewilderment that matched his own. “Ma’am, my daddy died when I was a boy. A good thirty years ago. I don’t know what you’re gettin’ at. Are you sayin’ you knew him?”

  She laughed. “Knew him? Oh, I knew him—before you were born. I knew him when he was the talk of the town around here. No man could cut stone the way Anthony Wade did.” She emphasized that with her head tilted. The words sounded nasty.

  The color rose in Pa’s face. “Ma’am, my daddy never lived in North Carolina, and he never worked for Hardigree Marble.”

  “How would you know? It was before you were born, I said. Hell, yes, he lived here.” She paused. Her voice rose. “My mother brought him here. He built Marble Hall for her. He built all the Esta Houses in town. He built the Stone Cottage and the Stone Flower Garden.” She smiled like a cold, tight cat. “He did whatever she told him to do—and he built this town.”

  Eli could barely breathe. His Grandpa Wade, the cripple and alcoholic, had done all that? They were living in a cottage of stone he’d cut and set with his own hands? He’d carved the fabulous statuary in the Stone Flower Garden, and designed the marble that made up every fine house in the whole town? Why had he kept all that glory a secret? Pa looked stunned. Around him, the men gawked in electric silence. “Ma’am,” Pa said finally, “I believe I’d know if my own daddy had ever done something that grand. I believe he’d have told my mother all about it. I think you got the wrong man.”

  She stepped closer. She smelled of perfume and cool night air. Her eyes gleamed. She touched Pa’s face, again, pressing a fingernail into the flesh of his cheek. He stepped back from her. Her eyes flashed. “He didn’t want anyone to know,” she said in a low voice, “Because he was a kept man. He was my mother’s whore.”

  Pa looked as if she’d slapped him. He turned slowly and gripped Eli by the shoulder. “We’re leavin’, son. Right now.” Then, to Clara Hardigree, “I don’t believe a word you say, but if you were a man I’d kill you.”

  I’d kill you. The violent threat didn’t even phase her, but it made Eli gag. Pa gave him a firm push and they moved past her toward the door. The hair stood up on Eli’s nape. All of Pa’s fellow stonecutters, men who called him Boss Wade now, as an honor—were watching this godawful humiliation.

  “I’ll tell you another thing,” Clara Hardigree called out as they reached the door, loud enough for all to hear. “I know how your daddy came to be crippled. A dozen of his own men—stonecutters—threw him out of town and nearly beat him to death. You want to know why?”

  The whole world was exploding. Eli braced his feet apart as he watched the blood drain from Pa’s face. Clara Hardigree smiled. “Because he wasn’t just a whore. He was a nigger lover, too. You might want to be nice to Matilda Dove’s little girl.” Clara paused, savoring the coup de grace. “She’s his granddaughter.”

  I slipped back to Matilda’s house around dusk, and Karen shrieked with disgust over my adventure without her. When she saw my despair she quickly backed down, and we locked ourselves in her bedroom. We spent the rest of the afternoon endlessly discussing my encounter with Clara, and what Clara’s strange behavior might mean.

  Matilda returned at dinnertime, looking tired and distracted after doing errands for Swan. We ate a silent meal of tuna sandwiches and vegetable soup. I wanted to confess about Clara, but the words
stuck in my throat. Matilda put on a long blue house robe then sat in the living room with a delicate glass of undiluted bourbon in her hand. I had never seen her drink, before.

  “All right, here’s the news,” she said to us finally. “Clara has gone out on the town, and no one knows where. She promised Swan she wouldn’t leave Marble Hall, but she did. If for any reason she should stop by this house, I expect the two of you to scat upstairs and not to so much as poke your nose out of the bedroom door while I talk to her.”

  “Because she’s a bad person?” Karen asked quaintly, and shot a knowing look at me.

  “Yes.” Matilda gave us a flat look. “She’s cruel and irresponsible, and her reputation in this town is very poor. Now, that’s all I can say. Swan does the best she can with the situation, and we have to help her as best we can.”

  “Maybe she won’t come back; maybe she’s gone home to Chicago,” I said.

  Matilda looked at me. “No, Darl. Evil never retreats that easily.”

  She was out there, doing something terrible, because of me.

  Chapter Six

  Even in the worst of their hard times Eli had never seen Pa the way he saw him after they came home from Neddler’s. “It’ll be all right, Jasper,” Mama begged. She sat on the floor at Pa’s feet, looking up at him with tearful supplication, hugging him around his knees.

  Pa hunched over in the big easy chair Mama had ordered from Sears as his birthday present that summer. He held his head in his hands. An oak fire crackled inside the ornate marble hearth, sending shadows above the lamps and onto a shelf filled with Mama’s dime-store ceramic collection. The living room of the Stone Cottage was warm and friendly, the way Mama always made it, but nothing helped.

  Eli’s eyes kept going to Grandpa Wade’s tiny photograph. Bell clung to him with her arms around his waist and her tear-streaked face pressed against his stomach. Pa wasn’t crying, but Eli heard pure agony in his voice. “I’m done for. If what that woman said’s true, the Wade name is gonna be nothing but a bad joke around here from now on.”

  Mama held him. “It’s a lie, Jasper. Clara Hardigree’s just crazy and mean. People whisper she’s never been anything but trouble. Even Miss Swan can’t bear her and can’t bear to have other people see what she’s like. That’s why Miss Matilda told me not to come to work while Clara was here.”

  Pa looked at her with patient despair in his rugged face. “Annie Gwen, don’t you understand? Miss Swan and Miss Matilda were just tryin’ to keep her from findin’ out your name. Wade. They were tryin’ to hide us.”

  Mama gasped. They sat in silence, their heads bowed together. Neither of them were eloquent people, and both depended on actions, not words, to express their hearts. Eli watched in misery as Pa stroked a hand over her pale brown hair and down her thin back. “I’ve never been a smart man, not able to read and all, but I’ve tried so hard to make you proud of me. I’m sorry.”

  Mama clutched his hand. “I am proud of you. What your daddy did forty years ago’s got nothing to do with you. And if having colored kin oughta make you ashamed, then just about every white person in the world’s got something to hide, too.”

  Pa cupped her chin in his hand and looked down at her fiercely. “You know my mama raised me to treat colored folks fair, and hell, Matilda and Karen are just one shade shy of white, but Annie Gwen—there are men at the quarry who hate coloreds and hate anything to do with ’em. I’m the foreman of those men, now. All they’re gonna see when they look at me from now on is a man who’s got colored kin in this town.”

  She shook her head wildly. “You listen to me. This is as fair a place as we’ve ever lived. Miss Swan don’t tolerate petty nonsense. Even a few hateful knotheads at the quarry can’t change her mind on you being the new foreman.”

  Pa wrapped his arms around her and hunched over her. “Everything we got in this place is our right by work and sweat and tears. We earned it. I swear to you and I swear to God—I’m not leavin’ here without a fight.”

  Eli lay in the dark in his twin bed across the room from Bell, listening to the low murmur of his parents still talking late that night. Everything felt restless and miserable—Eli hadn’t taken off his jeans and sweatshirt, just as Bell, sleeping fitfully, still wore all her clothes. He heard Mama and Pa step into the hall, and the sound of the truck keys jingling. “I’m just gonna go back and ask Creighton Neddler what the men said amongst themselves after I left,” Pa told her in a low voice.

  Eli sat up, straining to hear his mother’s soft, anxious reply. “Please let this wait ’til mornin’.”

  “I can’t. It’s killin’ me. I’ll be back home soon. Don’t worry.”

  Killing. For the second time that day Pa had talked of the word. Eli slid from bed, opened a nearby window, and climbed out. By the time Pa cranked the truck’s engine Eli was already hidden quietly in the truck’s bed with one hand on the inside latch of the camper top.

  He wouldn’t let Pa fight alone. The odds were moving against him.

  Eli shivered in the truck’s cold bed, peering furtively out the cracked window of the camper top. Neddler’s Place was a scrap-marble bunker with a tin roof and boarded-up windows with beer signs on them, not a pretty place in the daytime and even rougher after midnight. It sat by itself off a narrow back road halfway up Doe Ridge, one of the wild mountains that ringed Burnt Stand. The parking lot was only dimly lit by a streetlamp nailed high up the side of an electrical pole. Cold mountain air curled over the ridge and raked the empty tree limps.

  Beside a couple of other pickup trucks and Neddler’s sedan, only one car waited on the shadowed lot—Clara’s blood-red Trans Am. She’d stayed at the backwoods bar all this time? Godawmighty, Eli thought. What kind of lady does that?

  He unlatched the camper top’s door, pushed it upwards, then climbed out over the truck’s tailgate and stepped quickly into the shadows outside the streetlamp. With a thick wooden slap, the bar’s front door popped open. Eli jumped.

  Pa strode angrily from the building with his fists shoved into the pockets of his green hunting jacket as if he wanted to keep himself from punching somebody. Old Mr. Neddler followed him, scrubbing both hands on a bartender’s apron. “I’m not throwin’ you out, Jasper, I’m just tellin’ you to leave the situation alone for now. I got enough trouble tonight with her inside my place. I’ve had to chase off most of my customers tonight just to make sure she don’t get half the quarry crew fired for trying to get in her panties. I guarantee you, Swan Samples would sure fire the ass of any man who touched her sister, even though it’d damned sure be Clara’s own fault.”

  Pa pivoted and faced the elderly barkeep. “It’s not right—somebody like her havin’ the power to hurt people with talk about the past. Hell—she can’t even prove it’s true.” He hesitated. “Did my daddy fuck Esta Hardigree?”

  The old man sagged. “The gossip was that he spent more time at the Stone Cottage laying the old lady than laying the stone.”

  Pa groaned. Listening in the darkness, Eli burned with embarrassment for Pa, for their family, and suddenly, as the thought struck him, for Darl. Her Great-Aunt Clara was rich white trash and her great-grandmother had been—what? He knew how much he loved Darl then, to think of her misery as much as his own.

  “Go on home,” Neddler urged Pa. “The men who want to think bad of your family name will do it anyhow, and the rest will know better. And maybe word won’t get to Miz Swan about any of this.”

  Pa nodded wearily then turned toward the truck. Suddenly Clara Hardigree stepped out of the bar’s doorway. One look could tell she’d been drinking the past few hours. Her walk was a looser sashay, almost a taunt as she crossed the parking lot. A cigarette trickled smoke from her right hand. She flicked the butt away with the skill of a truck-stop waitress. “If you’re leaving, I’m disappointed. You’re not living up to your daddy’s reputation.”


  Pa looked down at her with a muscle jumping in his cheek. “Keep away from me.”

  Neddler tried to block her path but she sidestepped him like a cat. In a flash she careened up to Pa and put both arms around his neck. She pressed her thighs against his and tilted her head back. Pa dragged her arms down so roughly she staggered back, stumbled over her own high-heeled clogs, and fell. Mr. Neddler reached for her but missed. She sprawled on her side and slapped at Mr. Neddler’s hand. Eli was petrified. Pa stood over her. “I told you I’d kill you if you were a man,” he said. “If you hurt my family I’ll kill you, regardless.”

  He turned and went to the truck, slung the driver’s door open and got inside. Eli leapt forward but couldn’t move fast enough. He watched from the shadows as his father unknowingly left him behind. Clara Hardigree climbed to her feet furiously. “Nobody talks to me that way.” She walked to the Trans Am, snatched the keys from her jeans’ pocket, slid inside the low, sleek car, and within seconds skinned rubber onto the road down Doe Mountain. Her taillights disappeared behind the truck’s.

  “Goddamn her,” Mr. Neddler muttered aloud, his voice carrying on the wind. “Maybe she’ll run off a mountainside and spare us all more trouble.”

  Eli backed into the darkness, quivering with worry and anger. He’d have a long walk home that night, but the walk didn’t scare him.

  Clara Hardigree following Pa down a dark road did.

  It was nearly dawn. I lay in bed beside Karen in an agony of indecision. I should call Grandmother and tell her about my conversation with Clara. I had provoked Clara to run off, to run wild. But I’d have to tell Swan about our Wade discussion, too, and I couldn’t risk that. The morality of the dilemma made me bundle myself in a tight, fetal ball next to the soundly sleeping Karen, pulled up so tight I could kiss my own kneecaps.

  I heard a rock hit a windowpane and crept out of bed. When I looked down into Matilda’s side yard I saw Eli looking up at me in the moonlight. I waved to him, then pulled a robe around my shoulders, tiptoed downstairs and out the back door. I ran to him in the moonlight. “What’s wrong? What are you doing?”