SUMMER IN THE SOUTHCathy Holton1931Woodburn, Tennessee The body was lying on a table in the basement of The Purdy Funeral Home. The town was too small to have need of a morgue. The few accidental deaths or homicides that occurred within the town limits were brought here or to McClendon'’s. Josephine stood just within the doorway, steeling herself for what she must do. The heat in the room was stifling. The worst summer heat in ninety years the newspaper said, but not a drought. It rained nearly every day so the land was like a swamp, a jungle. Strange insects dropped from the vine-strangled trees and bizarre fungi bloomed on the walls of the houses like exotic flowers. A summer like no other. The body was covered by a sheet. Two naked light bulbs hung from long chords above the table. Across the room Sheriff Gillespie stood talking in a low voice to two deputies. They were chuckling and jostling one another like men at a barbecue, but when they saw her they rose quietly and dipped their heads and left the room. The Sheriff took off his hat and walked over to her, his gun creaking in its holster.“ "Good evening Miss Woodburn.”"“ "Good evening Sheriff Gillespie.”"“ "I'’m sorry to have to ask you to do this but Mrs. Woodburn seemed..." He hesitated. “"Well she seemed not herself, and you were the next of kin. Procedural matters and all that.”"“ "Yes, yes of course."” She moved closer to the body before he could take her arm. He followed behind, creaking softly.“ "It'’s not a pretty sight,”" he said gruffly. His demeanor changed, becoming business-like and brisk as he lifted a corner of the sheet to expose the face. Josephine had a sudden sensation of falling from a very great distance. She swayed on her feet. The sheriff put his hand out as if to steady her, but she ignored it. “ "That swelling is usual in cases where the body’'s been in the water for awhile. And those bruises and lacerations to the face." He hesitated here and she was aware again of the change in his demeanor. It occurred to her that he was trying to impress her. “ "Well, that could have been caused by rocks or debris in the river.”" Maitland had moved up on the other side of her. She had not heard him come in. His youthful face was pale and she could see his hands were trembling, his cuff links blinking under the lights. He glanced at the face and then quickly averted his eyes and Josephine saw in that glance all she needed to know. She felt a quick stab of guilt and despair. She had sent the letter that brought him here, to this. She turned and laid her gloved hand on the Sheriff’s arm. “ "I'’m not sure what to do. I'’m not sure what to say. You'’ll have to guide me, Sheriff Gillespie.” " He blinked and cleared his throat. He looked down at her hand. "“Is this the body of Charles Woodburn?"” he said in a stern, officious voice.“ "Yes,"” she said and he dropped the cloth, easing back into his former affable self. She let her hand rest on his arm a few seconds longer than was necessary and then withdrew it. There was a faint scent of whiskey and unwashed linen in the room, and underneath it all a sweet, fetid odor. She had not noticed it before, or if she had, it had not registered consciously. The shock of seeing him had driven everything else from her mind, the dreadful swollen face, once beautiful, so monstrous now. The inner man finally revealed.“ "We found a bottle of whiskey in his pocket and surmise he fell into the river near your place, intoxicated, and drifted downstream past the Haskell Bridge.”" She said nothing. The Sheriff continued. “"That would explain the lacerations. There are many rocks and the current is swift."” She stood staring down at the swollen shapeless thing that had been Charlie Woodburn. So much tragedy in life. So much cruelty. Beside her, Maitland stirred. He said, “"Will there be anything else, Sheriff?”" She heard the quaver in his voice. She thought, Some things can never be forgotten. Some things can never be forgiven. "“No, that’'s all. There'’ll be an inquest but we'’ll keep as much of it out of the papers as we can in deference to the family.”" "“Thank you,"” she said. Maitland took her arm and without another word, the two of them turned and walked out. 1998The Traveler When Ava was small, Clotilde told her stories of ghosts and ruined castles and lonely moonlit roads. Most children would have been afraid of such tales but Ava welcomed the shivers of fear and trembling possibility they sent up her narrow spine. She preferred gnomes and lonely changelings because they seemed more familiar to her than the beautiful princesses and handsome princes that wove themselves in and out of Clotilde’'s rambling tales.“ "Tell me a story,”" Ava would say, climbing sleepily onto Clotilde'’s lap and Clotilde’'s girlish face would go still and then brighten as the words came to her. They owned few books in those days, not because they were poor but because Clotilde liked to travel light. She preferred rented rooms furnished with the cast-offs of other people’'s dismal lives to possessions of her own. “ "I'’m a traveler!"” she always said, and when Ava was older and asked her morosely, “"But why?”" Clotilde'’s face, still girlish, softened for a moment. “"Because when you leave one place and move to another, you get to start over. You get to become whoever you want to be.”" To help in this metamorphosis Clotilde sometimes changed her name. Over the years she was Dharma and Abrielle and even (ironically) Magdalena. But it was the name Clotilde that she most often used.“ "Clotilde was the Queen of Sardinia!”" she exclaimed, grinning sheepishly at whatever man was currently in her life. “"Besides, the name means famous in battle.”" Clotilde saw no more harm in changing her name than she did in moving every six months. “"What’'s in a name?”" she liked to say. Ava, who had been born Summer Rayne Dabrowski, inevitably responded, “"Everything.”" Sometime around the time she was in third grade, not long after they moved to Cincinnati and just before they moved to Cleveland, Ava had jettisoned Summer Rayne in favor of Margaret, after the name penciled into her well-worn copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Margaret Anne Govan. And later, not long before she started high school, she had abandoned Margaret in favor of Ava, still foolishly believing, like Clotilde, that she could leave her girlhood behind just by changing her name.“ "Tell me a story,”" she would say when she was still small enough to believe in Clotilde’'s stories. “"Tell me a story about my father.”" And she would snuggle down in her narrow bed and wait for Clotilde to begin, wait for the words to form behind the smooth mask of Clotilde'’s girlish face, and come tumbling out of her sly rosebud mouth.“ "Once upon a time there was a handsome Prince of the Underworld, and he fell in love with a beautiful princess. But she was betrothed to someone else, and when her father found out that she had been tarrying with the Prince of the Underworld he had the two of them locked up in a tower behind a pair of huge paneled doors. “ 'You cannot live apart,”' cried the angry king. “'Let’'s see how you shall live together, day after day, night after night, with only each other for company!”' And although the two were given water, slid through a panel in the massive doors, they were denied food. '“Live on your love for each other!”' roared the cruel king.“ 'Give us bread!'” they wailed, shut up in their tower tomb. “'We are hungry!”' Their pitiful cries went on for days and weeks, becoming ever weaker and more pitiful as the days went on. Finally they stopped. When the villagers crept close there were no sounds but the growls and slurps of voracious eating, the sharp clatters of teeth against bone, the sound of flesh being torn and devoured.”" It was one of Ava’'s favorite stories. Years later she would remember it and, closing her eyes, she would see the youthful images of her parents entombed behind paneled doors, waiting like tragic ghosts for her to come and free them. When Will Fraser called and suggested she spend the summer in Woodburn, Tennessee, Ava thought the idea preposterous. What little she knew about the South had come from bad cinema and the stories of Flannery O’Connor, and it had always amazed her that someone as cultured as Will could have come from the land of monster truck rallies and cornbread festivals. It wasn’'t the first time he had invited her. They had gone to college together at Bard and had kept in touch over the past seven or eight years through emails and phone calls and the occasional visit. He’'d come to Chicago several times on business and had looked her up. Each time he had asked her to spend some time in Tennessee, she'’d laughed. She had made the mistake of telling him she wanted to be a novelist - he had a manner that invited confidences - and he insisted that his sleepy little hometown would be the perfect place for her to write her first novel. He didn'’t seem to understand that, unlike him, she had to work for a living. She had school loans to pay and a job in a prestigious Chicago ad agency it had taken her some time and effort to land. But this time when he called, things were different. Her life was undergoing a series of cataclysmic upheavals. In less than six months her estranged mother had died of a brain aneurysm, her career had stalled, her affair with her boss, Jacob, had wound down to its dreary, inevitable conclusion, and most disturbing of all, she had received a condolence letter out of the blue from a man purporting to be her father. Coming one on top of the other, these events had left her shaken, confused, and understandably depressed. Sunk in a dense fog, she hadn’'t had the strength to pretend things were fine when Will called. “ "Are you all right?”" he asked her.“ "I'’ve been better,”" she said truthfully. On his last trip to Chicago, she hadn'’t seen him. He had called and left a message saying he was in town, but she had planned a rendezvous with Jacob that night and so she pretended she hadn'’t gotten the message in time, calling Will later to apologize. She felt guilty about standing him up, and yet the truth was they had only known each other for a short time in college. He was two years ahead of her in school and was friends with her first love, Michael. In those days Will was a tall, dark-haired boy, very well mannered but shy, with a slight Southern accent. “ "Another trust fund baby,”" Michael had called him dismissively, and it was true. There were plenty of those at Bard although Will didn’t seem like Old Money. He shopped at the thrift stores like the rest of them and drove an old battered Volvo station wagon. The truth was, Ava hadn'’t really paid much attention to him; she had been so caught up in her tumultuous love affair with Michael, and Will had simply been a quiet backdrop to all of that. A silent witness. Once she and Michael had quarreled in a bar several miles from campus and Michael, in a fury, abruptly left, taking the car and leaving her stranded at two o'’clock in the morning in an unfamiliar part of town. Will, who had been watching from the bar (he had grown accustomed to their violent arguments and no longer intervened), insisted on driving her home. She was dismayed to find herself crying, and raged against Michael on the ride home while Will listened quietly. He insisted on seeing her up the rickety stairs of her Victorian apartment building to her front door.“ "Would you like me to wait?"” he asked.“ "No. Thank you.”" She knew Michael would return later and there would be another row and she didn'’t want Will to see it. She was embarrassed suddenly that he had already seen so much of their dysfunctional relationship.“ "All right. Good night.”" He touched her briefly on the arm and a faint creep of color appeared along his brow. Ava realized then that he had a crush on her. "“Good night,"” she said. She never told Michael how she had gotten home and he never asked, but a few weeks later he mentioned, rather casually, that Will Fraser was engaged to a girl he had gone to boarding school with. After that, there was a wariness between Will and Ava whenever they met, something that Ava noted at first with a mild tinge of regret, and later, didn’'t notice at all. By the time Will and Michael graduated a year later, the two had drifted apart and Ava rarely saw him. She saw Will briefly at graduation. He was standing on the lawn among a small knot of friends and family. He had grown very thin and pale, and when she remarked on this to Michael, he smiled unpleasantly and said it had something to do with the fiancée. A broken engagement or something like that.“ "Women,”" Michael said, shaking his head. "“You'’re all more trouble than you'’re worth. God knows why we put up with you.”"“ "You'’ve got spinach in your teeth,”" Ava lied, and while he hurried off to check, she strolled over to congratulate Will. He smiled when he saw her and introduced her to his family. His parents had died in a car accident when he was a child, and he'’d been raised by two great aunts, Fanny and Josephine. They smiled politely at Ava. They were both elegantly dressed, with pale skin and clear gray eyes. Very attractive, both of them, although they must have been in their late sixties. The smaller one, Fanny, smiled shyly and took Ava’'s arm. "“So you'’re Ava,”" she said. She wore a silk dress belted tightly around her narrow waist and a short little jacket. Josephine, the taller one, let her eyes flicker coolly over Ava. "“Goodness, Fanny, don'’t crush her so.”" She was dressed in a gray suit that matched her eyes and she seemed rather reserved, like Will, only in him this reserve came across as shyness and in her it seemed cold and distant. “"You'’ll have to excuse my sister,”" she said to Ava. Sistuh. "“As you can see, she’'s never met a stranger.”"It was an odd thing to say and yet spoken in that beautiful accent it sounded like music.“ "What lovely hair you have,”" Fanny said. Ava smiled. "“Thank you."” It was her best feature and she was rather proud of it. She had left it down today and it fell in red gold waves around her shoulders.“ "Aren'’t you chilly?”" Josephine asked, noting her sleeveless dress. Ava laughed. “"After Chicago, this is nothing,”" she said.“ "So you'’re from Chicago?"”“ "Pretty much.”"“ "Ah,"” Josephine said in a tone that could have indicated surprise or disapproval or resignation. A faint bloom of color appeared in Will’'s face. He raised his head and looked around the crowded lawn. "“I wonder what’'s become of Uncle Maitland,"” he said, as if trying to change the subject. Somewhere south of Owensboro the landscape changed, became more rolling and green. Great clouds of yellow pollen hung in the air. The light in Chicago had a sharp, clear quality but here it came in at odd angles, filtered by tall trees and masses of greenery lining the roadway. They had thrown her a going away party at work, a Deliverance theme party complete with dueling banjos and white trash martinis. Colleen, drunk, had stood up and given a nice little speech, ending with the warning, “"And whatever you do, don’'t get off the expressway! For Christ’'s sake, stay on the expressway.”" Everyone at work thought of the South as a place of hillbillies and moonshine, and Ava had to admit (although only to herself) that she felt the same way. Perhaps this was why she forced herself to get off the expressway just north of Louisville, and buying a map, proceeded to drive bravely along curving picturesque county roads past small-frame farmhouses and tall-steepled churches and mobile homes with elaborately attached decks and discarded appliances rusting in the yards. Beside her, buckled safely into the passenger seat, Clotilde rested quietly in her enameled urn like a genie waiting for someone to come and rub her lamp. They passed a wide field and a weathered barn with See Rock City painted on its sagging roof. There was something insubstantial and aerie about the shimmering light and the varying shades of green, like a landscape from a dream or a long-forgotten fairy tale. “ "It’'s so green,”" Ava said to Clotilde. A hawk circled lazily above the tree line. Far off in the distance a rim of blue mountains rose into the hazy sky. She had told Will everything; about her mother, about Jacob, about her job that she detested. She unburdened herself to him like she once had about Michael, droning on and on while he listened quietly. It was the alcohol, she told herself later, that had made her so garrulous. That and the fact she wasn'’t sleeping well. “ "You can quit your job and move down here and write your novel,”" he said when she'’d finished, and she had laughed disparagingly. He continued in a placid voice as if trying to soothe a fussy child. "“No really. Woodburn is a sleepy little town. Nothing much ever happens around here. There are no distractions and you can stay with Josephine and Fanny. They live in an old house near the town square and you’'d have a suite of rooms to yourself, you wouldn'’t be disturbed. It’'s a large house. I tease them that they should turn it into a bed and breakfast one of these days.”" "“Do you live with them?”"“ "No, I live at Longford.”"“ "Where’'s that?”"“ "The family farm. Out from town. I’'d ask you to stay with me but I’'m renovating the house and it’'s pretty primitive right now.”"“ "Shouldn’'t you ask the aunts before you offer to move me in?”"“ "Actually, they were the ones who suggested it.”"“ "Really? Why?”" He cleared his throat. "“Well,”" he said, "“they remembered you from that day at Bard. The day I graduated. Your little friend Ava, Fanny calls you. The one with the lovely hair. I told them you were looking for a quiet place to write your first novel and they said, Oh, tell her to come down here. She can stay with us.”"“ "That’'s very generous of them.”"“ "You sound surprised.”"“ "It’'s just that I got the feeling the stern aunt, the tall one...”"“ "Josephine?”" "“Yes, Josephine. I got the feeling she didn’'t like me.”"“ "That’'s just her way. The Woodburns are Scottish and they have a tendency to be reserved.”" "“And you'’re a Woodburn?”"“ "On my mother’'s side. My grandmother Celia was Josephine and Fanny’'s sister.”" "“I can'’t quit my job,"” Ava said. "“I need to work to eat."” "“It'’s free room and board. Think of it as a writing retreat. One of those communes where artists spend the summer."” Despite her gloomy mood, Ava was flattered by his enthusiasm. He was kind and considerate, the sort of man she didn’'t usually fall for. Unfortunately, she and Clotilde had shared more than their hair color; they both had bad judgment when it came to men. Ava was determined to remedy this in the future. “ "I don'’t know.”"“ "What do you have to lose?”" he said. The road rose slightly, following a low ridge. A line of pink-blossomed trees with fringed leaves swayed in the breeze. On the other side of the highway, trailing vines mounded over distant pines and telephone poles and dangled from utility lines, creating a series of undulating green hills. The whole landscape was lush and alien; Ava had the feeling that a seed tossed haphazardly from the window of a speeding car would take root in the rich soil and blossom to monstrous proportions. What do I have to lose? she thought. Nothing. Everything. She turned her head and glanced at the ceramic urn in the seat beside her. “ "Isn'’t that right, Mother?"” she said.
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