How Sweet the Sound Read online

  “Nice of y’all to wait for me,” he said.

  “I’m so sorry, hon—”

  Ernestine, our family’s Haitian nanny and house help for the past thirty-five years, interrupted. “Don’t you give your mama a hard time now. We can’t ever be sure of when you’ll show your face around here. You surely know that.”

  “All I surely know is that I’d appreciate a tall glass of bourbon.” He sneered. Never was one to put up with correction from anyone.

  Ernestine, who sat on my right, started to get up, but the lengths of her flowing, Caribbean-style dress caught on the leg of the chair.

  “It’s okay, Ernestine. You sit. I’ll get it,” said Mama, glowering at Cole.

  “On the rocks.”

  I watched as Ernestine’s rough, ebony hands adjusted the napkin on her lap. She’d worked for our family ever since Daddy was a boy, raising him, raising Comfort, and half raising me. Whenever Mama worked, Daddy brought me here with him, and even now after school, Ernestine minded me. Up until I grew too big to sit on her lap, she’d held me with her dark brown arms. Eyes rich and sweet like chocolate chips, she listened to my every dream and fear. On rainy days, she brought out her squeezebox and handed me the frottoir, and we made music and danced up a storm under the protection of the giant, pillared front porch, singing and laughing like crazy at the lightning, and drowning out the pounding of the thunder. She taught me how to braid friendship bracelets, lines of color knit together in a tight string of love. She taught me the Bible and how to pray on my knees. She was my best—and close to my only—friend.

  “So.” Princella sat back down, straightening her napkin on her lap. “How long will you be staying?”

  Cole pulled out the empty seat next to her and winked. “Long enough to get good and full of your cookin’, Mama.”

  Princella’s whole face looked brighter. Meanwhile, the rest of us ate our meal in silence. Those of us close to Cole knew to keep our mouths shut when he came around. The whole town had worshipped him ever since he’d grown old enough to hold his head up with a football helmet attached. Kenny Stabler picked him for an understudy in youth leagues. He led Bay Spring High School to the highest-ranked season finish ever, second only to a big school out of Birmingham in the state championship. Got himself a full ride to Alabama Southern with the promise afterward of coaching for them. But when he was home … Well, he was unpredictable.

  “Now? Do you think?” Solly whispered to Comfort.

  Comfort blushed and nodded as she grabbed his hand under the table.

  Solly set down his fork and cleared his throat. “I have an announcement to make. Comfort and I do. Vaughn?”

  Vaughn gave him a crooked grin and nodded.

  “Last night, I asked Vaughn’s permission for Comfort’s hand in marriage.”

  “And he has my approval.” Vaughn beamed.

  “And after proposing properly to Comfort”—he kissed her on the temple—“she agreed to be my wife.”

  Together, Solly and Comfort brought their linked hands up onto the table, and sure enough, a small diamond on her ring finger caught the light from the dining room chandelier.

  I squealed, and Mama, eyes welling, about crawled over the table to hug Comfort.

  “Oh, Comfort, I’m so happy for y’all!” she said.

  Princella gave a thin smile and set her spoon down a bit harder than she should have. “Well, then. Congratulations. But I do hope the ceremony will be … private.”

  “What do you mean, Mama?” Comfort’s face faded from pink to the color of the mashed potatoes.

  “She means,” Cole said, wiping his mouth with the pressed linen napkin, “we don’t need to invite the whole town to see a whore get married.”

  Mama’s fingers tightened around her fork and knife.

  Solly’s and Daddy’s jaws clenched.

  Comfort’s chair squeaked as she pushed back from the table. “Excuse me—I—”

  “Wait.” Vaughn’s voice cracked across the table like a gunshot. Then, softly, he spoke to Comfort. “Please, darlin’. Please wait.” Then he scowled down the table at Princella. “Enough.”

  “What on earth do you mean?” she replied.

  “We will let them celebrate, and we will support whatever and however they choose to do so.”

  “Of course. I don’t want to draw the whole town’s attention to it. That’s all.”

  Cole sniggered, and Solly woulda come across the table at him had his arms not been around a trembling Comfort.

  Daddy pounded his fist onto the table, ice rattled in the glasses, and our plates jumped. “She’s your daughter. My sister. We will all support them, with or without you two.” He pointed a finger at Cole. “And as for you, the only reason anyone thinks poorly of Comfort is because of you and the heinous things you’ve said about her over the years. Things I’m not gonna let you get away with anymore.”

  “Whatever, John Boy.”

  Princella’s chair squeaked across the floor next. Cole laughed and threw the rest of his bourbon down his throat. The ticktock of the grandfather clock grew loud in my ears.

  Ou konnen ki sa ou genyen, men ou pa konnen ki sa ki ap vini an.

  “You know what you’ve got, but you don’t know what’s coming.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Anniston

  “What is that banging at this time of night? Anniston? You okay?” Mama hollered from her bedroom across the hall.

  The noise had already jolted me awake. Sounded like someone ramming a post against the front door, they banged so hard. I stumbled out of bed, one of Daddy’s old Tulane T-shirts hanging down to my knees, and met Mama in the hall. Her pretty brown hair fell in tousled pieces around her face. Daddy, dressed only in his boxer shorts, rounded the corner to the front room and flipped on the porch light. Molly, my white retriever, barked like crazy, scratching at the threshold as Daddy turned the lock and opened the door.

  “Rey? Who is it?” Mama pulled her thick, pink bathrobe tighter around her slender self.

  “Dear God, it’s Comfort. And she’s hurt. Oralee, call an ambulance.” Daddy yanked the door open, and Comfort stood on our front doorstep, shivering. Her face was swollen, her dress torn at the shoulder and splattered with blood.

  “Tell the operator to send an ambulance,” Mama instructed me. Then she ran to Comfort, who fell into her and Daddy’s arms.

  I made the call from the phone in the kitchen, and the operator’s flat and solid voice steadied my shaking hands as I held the phone against my ear and asked her to please send help.

  Back in the living room, Mama led Comfort to the couch and looked over her wounds. “Grab a couple towels and a washcloth from the bathroom, would you please, Anni?”

  “Who did this to you?” Daddy and Mama were both kneeling in front of her when I came back from the bathroom and placed a damp washcloth into Comfort’s limp hand. Her eyes, hollow and unseeing, fixed on an empty space on the wall above the television. She wrapped her thin arms around herself and slowly rocked back and forth, humming a tune that sounded familiar but that I could not place. I sat next to her and used another damp cloth to try to wash clumps of dried blood from her hair, its golden waves reaching nearly down to her waist. Right now, Comfort didn’t look anything like the former homecoming queen and newly engaged woman she was.

  Mama brushed a wad of matted hair away from Comfort’s face. “You’re safe now, sweetie. Can you tell us who hurt you?”

  Sirens screamed in the distance. The sound of crashing metal jarred our attention back to the front door as my uncle Cole ripped open the storm door. He exploded into the room, bringing freezing cold air and the strong stench of alcohol in with him. His Alabama Southern football jersey fell half out of the waist of his jeans, and the knee of one of his pant legs was torn open. His face glowed purple with fury as he leaned over Mama and Dad
dy, and stuck his finger in Comfort’s face.

  “Think you can run away from me, you piece of filth?”

  Daddy jumped up, his frame thick and strong from working the pecan orchards dusk to dawn—pruning the trees, fighting off critters and disease, planting and moving new trees and saplings. He put his hand on Cole’s shoulder, squeezed hard, and got up real close to his face. “You better back off right now, brother. Can’t you see she’s hurt?”

  “I see plenty. And you’re the one who’d better back off.” Cole shoved Daddy’s arm off him.

  I let out a yelp when Cole lifted the gun he held at his side and pointed it at Daddy’s chest. Comfort did, too, and got up and ran to Mama and Daddy’s bedroom, Mama following after her and grabbing me along the way.

  “Did you do this to her? Did you?” Daddy yelled. “And get that gun outta my face.”

  Cole turned toward the bedroom, close behind us. Mama tried to step between him and Comfort, but she couldn’t stop him. He was one of the biggest men in this corner of the state.

  Those sirens were taking forever.

  Cole grabbed Comfort’s already-swollen arm and threw her on the bed. “You want it again, sis? Do you?”

  “Stop it! Stop it, Cole!” Mama shrieked.

  Now, I’d heard a shotgun fire before—even shot one myself when Daddy took me out to hunt wild turkey and other game allowed to roam the orchards. But I’d never heard one in the confined space of a bedroom. The blast deafened me, the sudden force of it causing me to brace myself against the wall. I clamored to the safety of Mama and Daddy’s closet nearby. The door hung open, as if in awe of the scene playing out in slow motion before us.

  Cole grabbed the side of his chest and fell backward, away from the bed, letting go of Comfort but still hanging on to his gun, which he raised and pointed at Daddy, who stood in the bedroom doorway, aiming his shotgun at Cole’s head.

  Daddy dropped the shotgun and fell to the floor the near instant the bullet fired out of Cole’s gun, and the sparkle of life in his eyes left him, floating like stars into the sky from his eyes. I learned then that blood truly is thicker than water, especially when it’s full of pain thick as molasses, pushing through fragile veins, puddling onto the floor like an oil stain in the center of an empty Piggly Wiggly parking lot.

  “We’re gonna need backup, Wes. And the coroner.”

  A paramedic named Joe, who worked with Mama at the Bay Spring Memorial Hospital Emergency Department, talked out of the corner of his mouth into his walkie-talkie. Another paramedic pulled sheets over Cole and Daddy. A third tended to Comfort in the bedroom. No one noticed me leaning against the closet door, watching as the two puddles of blood spread into the gray carpet like the pain overwhelming my heart.

  “Anniston? Anni?” I hadn’t seen Mama come back into the room. She crouched before me, and I collapsed into her arms and sobbed. The smell of her freshly showered hair and skin did little to ease the sting of gun smoke still burning my nose. She pressed my face into the crook of her shoulder, shielding my eyes from the sight of Daddy and Cole’s covered bodies, as we followed Comfort—now on a stretcher—and the other paramedics out of the house. Cold snaps weren’t unusual in late November, and our breaths formed fragile plumes as we exhaled.

  By the time we reached the hospital, Princella and Vaughn were already waiting there. Vaughn, dressed in his trademark overalls and collared flannel shirt, tried to keep his arm around a fidgeting Princella. His cheeks looked hollowed out, making his red, swollen eyes too big for his face. Too frightened.

  Princella pushed him away.

  “What have you done to my son?” Princella wailed at Comfort, who, from the ambulance stretcher, stared past her with hollow eyes.

  “Ma’am, please let us through,” Joe, the paramedic, pleaded.

  “Sons, Princella. You have—” Mama caught herself, tears pouring down her cheeks. “Had two of them. They’re both gone.”

  More police cars squealed into the parking lot.

  A cold, misty rain swirled around us as the doors to the emergency room slammed open, and I felt caught, like I was in one of those glass snow globes, shook up with no place to go. Evil trickled down soft all around us, landing in a blanket that would cover up the sins of the fathers until spring came along, shaking us up all over again.

  Chak venn afekte kè a.

  “Every vein affects the heart.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Anniston

  Spanish moss hung from the great arms of the oak tree like a curtain, waiting patient but sure to close upon the innocent parts of my life. The lacy billows hung thick from years of soaking in ocean air, and they hid the cloudless sky above. Mama nudged me with her elbow to pay attention and to face the scene before me where two caskets waited to drop simultaneously into cold black holes dug out of burned, red Alabama clay.

  Preacher Beckett from the Bay Spring Presbyterian Church wore his black Sunday preaching robe. He tugged at the tongue of his white collar, which peeked out at the center of his neck. In the days since Daddy and Cole died, a hot wind had blown in from the Gulf of Mexico, which caused a stream of sweat to trickle down the side of Preacher Beckett’s smooth-shaven face.

  Sweat rolled down the back of the black wool dress Princella had picked out for me. I rubbed the scratchy cloth between my fingers, still bothered about having no choice in what to wear this day.

  “A daughter wears black to her daddy’s funeral, Anniston.” Princella had scrolled through hanger after hanger of my favorite T-shirts until she found the dreaded black wool dress in the back of my closet earlier that morning.

  “Here.” She shoved the dress at me and dodged stacks of sealed-up moving boxes as she left me in the center of my bedroom. Pretty amazing how thirteen years of my life were packed away in a matter of days.

  Luckily, she hadn’t said anything about my shoes, so I stood in the middle of that cemetery, my Chuck Taylor All Stars the only splash of white in a sea of drab, gray townsfolk. The mayor of Bay Spring, Hiram Lawson, stood across from us, a reminder of our status in the community. He’d been so proud of the national attention given to the Harlan pecan orchards and their overwhelming sales, he’d commissioned the Harlan company logo painted on the local water tower. So no matter where I went in town—or in life, for that matter—things reminded me of my place in the world.

  Too bad Hiram Lawson didn’t know what I knew, that being a Harlan wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Sure, I sat in press-box seats at Alabama Southern football games, took cotillion lessons with sweaty-palmed boys, and got hairdos at the finest salon in Magnolia County as soon as my hair grew enough to fit around a curler. But none of that meant a lick considering the place we found ourselves in this day.

  Instead of the singing of a hymn or the soft strum of a guitar, the throaty hum of mowers circling the pecan trees accompanied the ceremony. Acres of rolling hills stretched as far as I could see, stiff rows of trees standing at attention, branches raised as if to salute the two dead men. The small graveyard where we stood was the dot on the exclamation point of land that generations of Harlans before us worked and tended, side by side and in peace. That is, until the events that led up to this day.

  I did not listen as the preacher spoke. Instead, I wondered how it came to pass that two brothers—one of them my daddy—were dead. I wondered which came first—the hate or the crime? I wondered if Cain always hated Abel, or if the hate that caused brother to kill brother happened in a flash of evil. Mostly, I wondered what I would do after the red clay covered my daddy and if any of us would ever recover.

  After the preacher said the twenty-third Psalm and closed his Bible, the caretaker lowered the caskets. Folks lined up to throw dirt or flowers on top. Princella and Vaughn sat on one side of the graves in a row of velvet-draped chairs, and Mama, Ernestine, and I sat in the front row across from them as we all waited for the crowds t
o pass. None of us said a word, and I was glad for the quiet. Glad the noise from the past week had disappeared, for this moment at least. Glad for Mama’s soft, white hand wrapped around my left one, and Ernestine’s ebony, calloused fingers holding tight to my right. Not a one of us let go, even as we walked from the cemetery to Aunt Comfort’s house next door to pick up the empty grocery basket on her front porch.

  Comfort had stayed home from the funeral, even though she lived right next to the cemetery. No one could blame her. Problem was, she hadn’t come out since the shooting, almost an entire week ago, and it didn’t look hopeful that she’d come out anytime soon. After the sirens stopped screaming and the detectives stopped coming around, she came home from the hospital and shut herself inside her cottage on the edge of the Harlan property, and she wouldn’t come out for nothing.

  We walked along the rocky wall separating the cemetery from Comfort’s yard, Solly following close behind. Spindly pecan seedlings poked up in places where the wall crumbled. Wisteria hung in mournful clumps from the pergola covering the back patio. Fiery mums stuffed the flower boxes under Comfort’s front windows, uncomfortably bright but well-intentioned gifts from church folks. Kudzu wrapped around the corners of the taupe stucco walls, purple shutters, and white porch railings, softening the edges like the pictures in my copy of A Child’s Garden of Verses. We took turns knocking on the door, and I picked up the empty basket as we waited for an answer. The more persistent our knocks, the more persistent the silence. Mama said it’s ’cause of what Cole did to her on top of the pain of him and Daddy killing each other. Even so, I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t come out at all.