The Bernice L. McFadden Collection. Bernice L. McFadden
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years Cole would grieve and torture himself for three things he had no control over: his love-struck heart, the flood, and Doll’s death.
Hemmingway had her cross to bear as well. She had watched Doll die. Had in fact had a hand in her death. At the funeral she looked calmly into her mother’s dead, bloated face, and afterward she stood watching as the gravediggers covered the coffin with dirt. Even so, she was not confident that Doll was really dead, and she would live the rest of her days glancing over her shoulder expecting to see Doll: teeth bared, clutching a butcher knife, charging toward her. Or worse yet—Doll smiling, face lit up with her arms fanned out in anticipation of a hug.
***
It took three months of repair before the house on Candle Street was made livable again. Workers attacked the water-damaged walls with hammers, picks, and chisels, chopping away plaster and wooden laths until they reached the joists and studs. Those they dissembled, removed, and replaced with new ones. Rock laths were nailed onto the studs and three layers of gypsum plaster were smoothed on and left to dry.
The oak floors, staircase, and the veranda were all removed and replaced. New furniture, icebox, and stove were purchased and installed.
By Independence Day, that house on Candle Street looked brand new beneath the burst of the brilliant red, white, and blue fireworks.
Hemmingway became his new maid, not for any reason other than the simple fact that she was an orphan and he, a widower—so all they had were each other.
For a while she lived in the room that Caress had once occupied. Well, Caress still owned that space, and occasionally made her presence known by throwing her ghostly weight against the walls and rattling the frosted light fixtures.
It didn’t bother Hemmingway in the least. She had spent the first half of her life battling the dark spirit that was her mother, and so if Caress were trying to unnerve her, she would have to step up her efforts.
Sometimes she would go to the bridge and stare across at what once was. Birds and squirrels had taken up residence in the two remaining homes on Nigger Row. In three more years, March winds would level the houses and tall grass would grow up and around the rubble.
Widower and orphan led a quiet life. Hemmingway kept the house spotless, his clothes clean, and his belly full.
One Sunday she recreated Doll’s johnnycakes. When she placed the plate before him, Cole began to weep and the rain of tears drenched the cakes, turning them back into lumps of sweet, sticky dough.
When Charlotte Custer knocked on the front door in the fall of 1929, Hemmingway despised her immediately.
“Afternoon, ma’am.”
It was the parasol Charlotte held over her head. Hemmingway hated parasols and so instantly hated any woman who carried one.
“Is Mr. Payne at home?”
A hazel-eyed, blond-haired, prissy little snake. She wore a bonnet and laced gloves that climbed all the way to her elbows.
“No, ma’am. Who may I say was calling?” Hemmingway asked the question and broke the cardinal rule of the South when she brazenly looked directly into the white woman’s eyes.
“You may say that Charlotte Custer came to call on him.”
Charlotte Custer? What ole type of stupid name was that? Hemmingway wondered as she raised her hand to her mouth and coughed a laugh into her palm.
“When do you expect him to return?”
Hemmingway could feel the smirk still resting on her lips, so she kept her hand positioned over her mouth. “Thursday, ma’am.”
Charlotte Custer frowned. “Oh dear,” she murmured before extracting an embroidered kerchief from her sleeve and used it to swab her forehead. “That’s three days away, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh dear,” she moaned again. “Well, that is that then. I will return in three days.”
Hemmingway watched her walk down the steps to the waiting carriage.
In three days Charlotte Custer returned, without the parasol. This did nothing to endear her to Hemmingway.
Hemmingway showed Charlotte into the drawing room, invited her to sit, and then went to fetch Cole.
“I don’t trust her,” Hemmingway hissed from the doorway.
Cole was working on his bottle art. But unlike other enthusiasts of the craft, he did not construct miniature boats in his bottles—he constructed Native American teepees.
“Indian houses?” Hemmingway had questioned the first time Cole showed her his work.
“Well, yes and no,” Cole responded. “They’re called teepees.”
A year after the flood, Cole had begun to talk about taking a trip out west.
“For what?” Hemmingway had asked.
“Just to see.”
“What’s to see?”
“Well, the Pacific Ocean for one.”
“Ain’t you had your fill of water?”
The only time Cole had ever stepped foot outside of Mississippi was to visit Melinda’s cousins in the neighboring state of Louisiana, and he hadn’t even wanted to make that trip. But since the flood—since he had cheated death and survived to tell the tale—Cole had started to wonder about the world beyond Mississippi. When his wondering transformed into yearning, he went out and purchased a black 1928 Ford Model A and announced to Hemmingway that he was going to drive it all the way to the California coast.
Hemmingway had simply shrugged her shoulders and said, “Okay, have fun.”
Cole was gone for two and a half months. When he returned, he was freckled, brown as lightly toasted bread, and filled with stories of Indians.
Hemmingway had listened, and yawned as Cole droned on and on about their customs, traditions, and the brutality they’d suffered under the white man’s occupancy.
“Yeah, well,” Hemmingway reminded him on various occasions, “black folk still suffering.”
Cole dedicated one of the empty rooms to his craft. Bottles of all sizes and shapes lined the baseboard like glass soldiers. Boxes containing sheets of canvas, oil paints, brushes, needles, and odd-shaped tools were strewn haphazardly around the room.
He now owned volumes of books on the American Indian. Books paged through so often, the spines had split and the pages were creased and wrinkled.
Cole’s most prized Indian collectible was a framed sepia-colored photograph of Geronimo. He had paid a pretty penny for the original print, which was taken in 1913 by the renowned photographer Adolph Muhr. Cole referred to Geronimo as “the greatest Indian chief ever known.”
Hemmingway didn’t think the man looked great at all, he just looked like an old man dressed in a shabby suit.
Cole looked up from his tedious task, pushed his wirerimmed frames up onto his forehead, and said, “You don’t trust who?”
Hemmingway sighed and stepped into the room. “That woman downstairs, the one I told you about.”
Cole smirked. “What’s her name again?”
“Charlotte Custer.”
“Did she say what she wants?”
Hemmingway shook her head.
“Oh, okay then.” He rose from the chair, unzipped his pants, and shoved his shirttails inside his waistband. “Bring us some lemonade,” he