The sweet smell of lilacs swept down Breed’s Hill like a mother’s warm hand, settling on the small spacious houses of Breedstown, their picketed yards, and manicured gardens, warming the hearts of their residents with the comfort of their heritage. These descendents staked out their claims generations ago, after the Breed plantation had been shut down by law. Some were relatives of the employees of the plantation, others acquaintances of the Breeds and their kin. Whatever the case, they were all connected to the land, and its history, and they reveled in that connection.
The last remnant of the Breed’s plantation, its decaying mansion, sat on the prominent hill overseeing the community. Like an elderly relative, it watched, with its tall rectangular eyes reflecting its glare upon the town during the day, and staring in hollow judgment through wind-swept shadows at night. Upon closer look, one could see how the southern elements had stolen much of the mansion’s youthful charm. Its window sills cracked like crow’s feet. Larger veins of exposed wood ran the length of its exterior walls. It’s roof had come away in patches exposing darker-colored earlier layers. Its joints and joists had swollen in places, warping parts of its frame.
But the Breed’s house had maintained a pride despite its age. Out of respect for its landmark status, it was unsullied by the cold metallic crutches of modernization. The only pipes in the house ran to an underground septic tank, put in by the local government. Candlelight replaced the sun at night. Hearthfire produced the only heat. A nearby well served as an adequate source for water. And the Breed mansion dressed itself sharply to appear ever dignified. Its crisp curtains were hung just right. Its beds were made. Every corner of square footage was meticulously dusted. And the lilacs on the mound surrounding the mansion were well tended.
Under the mansion’s watchful gaze, the people of Breedstown made sure to act appropriately. They treated each other with respect, exchanged pleasantries when there was nothing better to say, complimented each other’s dress, children, and homes, and kept their complaints focused on the weather and politics. Like many southern towns, all appeared well in Breedstown. But unlike its residents’ deliberate pleasant smiles, one could not see the heart, mind, or soul of the mansion and people. The Breed family had hidden those long before. In fact, they had buried them. They now lay under the mound by the mansion. Under the lilacs.
Betty and Carl Hope never planned on digging up any trouble when they moved to Breedstown. In fact, they had every intention of blending in. Colored by the enthusiasm of a new job and a new child, they felt they could leave their city apartment and city ways for the more spacious country. They did it for Jimmy.
“His two-year-old legs are too big for a nine-by-nine room,” Betty complained.
“It seems like things just keep getting rougher out here,” Carl agreed. “The city makes people immoral. I don’t want to raise Jimmy in that kind of environment.”
So they figured Breedstown was an area of similar minds and morals; if not a refuge for disaffected city folks, then a Mecca for unrushed, family-oriented, God-fearing neighbors. Carl cashed in his small business and got a job near Breedstown in a cooling and heating equipment repair shop. The sale of the business gave them enough money to buy a small house from the state in a probate deal. And they sold enough of their belongings to allow them to squeeze into their station wagon, for one final ten-hour drive to the town from which they never expected to return. Even Jimmy was pleased. Chubby and long-limbed, he jumped around in the back seat like a spider, and called out everything he saw through lips made purple from constant use. “Car. Van. Truck. Cow. Fence. Houses.”
Road worn but cheerful, they pulled into Breedstown with naive enthusiasm, and were initially awarded for their confidence. Breedstowners had the polite habit of assuming that any passing car or approaching pedestrian was a member of the town. A couple walking their dog waved slow greetings to their approaching car, as did a man standing outside a hardware store, and a woman on a porch outside her house. Carl, and Betty returned the gesture and encouraged Jimmy to do the same.
“People. Doggy. Man. Woman. Bike.”
But a boy on a bike, who stopped to wave as the car approached, sat close enough to the Hope’s car to get a good look at the people to whom he was waving. When he saw the unfamiliarity of their faces, their dark black skin, corse hair, and wide features, his hand fell to his side and he stared, until the car turned out of sight. As the Hopes slowed to check the house numbers along the streets in their new neighborhood, Carl and Betty noticed a similar reaction from people in their yards and the street.
“I guess we’re a bit of a curiosity, Bet,” Carl said with a weak smile.
“More than a curiosity.”
“What do you mean?”
“That first boy, his legs and hands, they were trembling. I’ve seen that before.”
“You think he’s scared of us?”
“I think he’s scared of someone who isn’t going to like us.”
“Home,” Jimmy called. And he was right. There was their new house, an old fixer-upper, dark maroon and ochre, with unhinged trim, a broken window, an unkept garden with an old knotty tree, and a fallen fence. It stuck out like them. How did Jimmy know?
It seemed as if Jimmy and Carl adjusted immediately. At Jimmy’s precious age, he was neither concerned nor conscious of the issues surrounding their move. As long as there were toys to play with and space to run around, Jimmy was happy. The first thing Betty unpacked was Jimmy’s bag of favorite toys. She dumped them in the living room before filling in much of the rest of the floorspace with boxes from the car. Even in the cramped area, the house had more room than their apartment. Jimmy ran back and forth through all the rooms in the house his arms dangling in the air by his sides as if he had been turned free on a wide open field. When confronted by boxes he simply dodged around them as if they were part of an obstacle course. When resting between sprints, he began to climb a large pile of boxes near the front door.
“Jimmy!” Betty scolded.
It was similarly easy for Carl. He was running like Jimmy, back and forth from his new job. He spent little time in Breedstown, leaving the house by 6am, before the sun even rose, and getting home by 8pm, after the summer sun had gone down and most people had shut their doors to their evening meals and bedtime rituals. By the time he finished his, he climbed into bed, exhausted.
Although Betty wasn’t tired, she would slip into bed with him, just to share the time.
“Carl?” she asked. But he was through.
“How you doing?” She knew he was asleep, but she asked anyway in the hopes that he might ask her the same. She wouldn’t ask him when he got home from work, or as they ate dinner, or played with Jimmy, or watched television, or put Jimmy to sleep. Carl had enough on his mind. Instead, Betty brought her concerns to Carl just as he nodded off to sleep every night. She had started the habit in the apartment. Her mom had told her, “Last words are first dreams.” And she had read a book that said that dreams are the mind’s way of cleaning house, of making bad thoughts and worries go away. So every night she asked, “How are you doing?”
“I’m a little worried,” she admitted, before finding a comfortable position in bed, an arm and leg draped over Carl. She waited for sleep.
Adjusting to Breedstown was not so easy for Betty. She spent all her free time unpacking. One by one, the boxes disappeared as she loaded items onto shelves and into closets. There was more than enough room for everything. But still, the process was slow. Jimmy took most of her time. He didn’t need much attention; he could keep himself busy. But he was such an energetic kid, Betty always had to keep an eye on him to make sure he didn’t hurt himself somewhere. Betty had spent a lot of time making the apartment Jimmy-safe. But she didn’t know the new house well enough. There could be some unseen nail sticking out of the wall, some loose floorboard, something to trip on or fall off. So she followed him around waiting for moments when he would settle down in one place for a while. And she’d start to work on whatever boxes were in the room, until Jimmy decided to move again. Betty didn’t mind keeping after him. In fact, she was appreciative that Jimmy seemed content to spend the first days in the house. She was inclined to do so herself.
Nevertheless, Betty couldn’t stay holed up in the house for long. Eventually Betty’s supplies ran low. First it was the sugar, then the coffee. When the diapers ran out, she dressed up Jimmy in his most rugged pair of overalls, a thick t-shirt, and running shoes. She checked her hair before walking him out the front door, past the shade of their knotty tree, into the blinding white southern sun and the streets of Breedstown. She kepta firm hold on Jimmy’s hand, as her eyes adjusted.
But once past the front gate of their rickety fence, Jimmy squirmed free and was off at an awkward gallop shrieking his way along the sidewalk.
“Jimmy! You come here!” Betty called after him, gathering up her skirt to run after. Betty cursed herself for not wearing more comfortable shoes, and promised herself she’d buy a new bra when given the chance. She couldn’t worry about either as she gave it her all to close the gap between her and her boy. But a lesson she had taught Jimmy in the city soon came to her assistance. As instructed, Jimmy came to an abrupt halt at the intersection, and turned to face his mother with an awkward smile. He held out his hand, waiting to be taken across. He looked so adorable the anger dropped out of Betty as she let down her skirt and relaxed to walk towards him.
“Good boy,” Betty told him. “Just like I taught you.”
She took Jimmy’s hand and checked the intersection as Jimmy hopped in place, waiting for his mother to take him across. To one side, Betty caught a curtain in the front window of a light blue house fall back into place. At a neighboring house, a door closed so slowly that only a trained eye could see it latch into place. To the other side a man skulked in the shadows of his porch tilting back in his chair, hiding under the brim of his hat. Jimmy pulled Betty across the street. Once on the other side, he squirmed free again and was off. This time, Betty didn’t chase. The block wasn’t too long. She just kept one eye on him, and another on the houses around her.
The streets were just as empty of cars as the yards and houses seemed to be of people. Except for the man she had seen on the porch, and the movement of curtains and doors, there was no sign of the occupants of any of the houses. Someone’s tending those gardens, Betty thought to herself. Betty and Jimmy passed several blocks this way. So when she saw an elderly couple walking towards them on the sidewalk at the end of the block, she smiled in anticipation of seeing another person, and prepared to be cordial. As usual, Jimmy ran off ahead, bouncing down the sidewalk with his arms flailing up and around. While the couple kept a stately pace, moving their legs in time as if marching to some processional beat, perhaps the beat of old age or some slow southern tempo. When Jimmy ran into the elderly pair, he had every intention of dodging past them to reach the intersection at the end of the block. But the couples arms interlocked so that they formed a fence blocking Jimmy from getting past. The couple stopped and looked on as Jimmy moved to the right, the left, then between their legs, looking for a gap wide enough to squeeze through. There was none. The old lady’s wide flower-print skirt hugged the tight three-piece suit of the old man’s spindly legs.
Betty kept her smile as she approached with a “Good morning.”
The woman didn’t respond. Standing still, with her white gloved hand hanging firmly through the loop in her husband’s arm, she kept her glossy eyes focused on the sidewalk ahead. Her puckered mouth was drawn tight as if by a string, the cherry-red lipstick building in its folds.
The man spoke for her with a lazy drawl, looking and speaking down to Jimmy with half-shut eyes.
“Hasn’t your momma taught you to step out of the way of good white folks when they walking down the sidewalk.”
Betty lost her smile and grabbed Jimmy by the strap of his overall and pulled him towards her.
“His momma taught him never to go out in the street or walk on people’s property!” Betty answered.
The man looked up at her, keeping his eyes half-shut, perhaps to keep out the sun.
‘The street’s a safer place for him than this sidewalk,” he warned.
“Come on,” Betty said to Jimmy as she led him into the street and around the couple. The couple resumed their pace. They never turned back. Betty kept her eyes on them and everywhere else as she led Jimmy the rest of the way, refusing to give his hand any freedom. She wiped her brow free of sweat. She was sweating more now than she had been from chasing Jimmy.
Betty got a similar response as she entered into the center of town. Some people on the sidewalk stopped in her way. She passed around them without a word. Others moved into stores as she approached. Others stared from the side. Even cars, for a car passed by now and then, slowed to watch almost to the point of stopping. Whispers seemed to surround Betty and her son. They tapered off as she approached and began again when she passed. Betty couldn’t follow them all with her eyes. Fortunately, Jimmy pulled her along.
She neared a general store, but decided to continue past it rather than attempt to push through the large man that blocked it’s door. In fact, she continued walking past the two commercial blocks in the center of town, until the cars and people thinned again, and she could stop and return her eyes to Jimmy.
“How are you doing?” she asked him.
“Fine.”
She took a long breath and remembered Jimmy’s diapers and turned around. This time, she kept her eyes focused on the street signs, looking for the nearest general store. “Breedstown Supplies, Since 1861” was the first that caught her eye. It was a smallish store, with few people near it. Unlike the rest of the town, it had been poorly maintained. The large sign was weathered gray and split towards one edge. The door and exterior were constructed of oversized irregular planks of wood, not the modern streamlined factory pieces that fit into each other to form perfect corners. The store’s sole window was a small square puzzle fit with diamond pane pieces. It’s edges were stained with chips of previous paint. It seemed dark inside, and safe. Betty snuck Jimmy in.
The inside of the store was not as dark as Betty had expected. An overhead skylight lit everything from above, and a few well-placed lamps softened its harsh shadows. The interior of the store was built entirely of the same large wood of the exterior, only much of the inside wood was unfinished and worn to a glossy smoothness. Shelves lined every wall up to the ceiling, and four rows of head-high shelves filled the center of the store. Each shelf was packed tight with an eclectic array of goods, organized by type: dry food, canned food, kitchen utensils, cleaners, etc. Betty was relieved to see that the inside of the store was empty of customers. She closed the front door behind her.
To the far left of the store was a long counter that ran along the wall and ended with a small swinging door. An ancient cash register sat atop it, unattended. Behind the counter was a door in the back wall of the store. Inside, someone moved in reaction to the soft click of the door handle. A young woman in her early twenties stepped out of the back room straightening her dark blue knee-length skirt and pulling at her white flower-printed t-shirt. Her ponytail hair wagged as she looked up to see Betty and Jimmy. Her heavy-mascara eyes widened and her pink lips frowned in surprise, and stayed frozen that way as she anxiously checked the store to make sure no one else was present. She cleared her throat as if to speak, but watched Betty without a word.
Betty kept hold of Jimmy and disappeared into an aisle.
“Now you stay close and don’t touch anything,” Betty said, as if she might give him chance.
Betty gave a quick scan of items as she made her way down the closest aisle. When she came out its other side, she stood closer to the counter and the woman who was now prepared to speak.
“You best hurry up in here, ma’am,” the woman squeaked.
“I just need some diapers, sugar and coffee too, if you got it.”
“Sure,” the young woman smiled. She began to point Betty in the right direction.
Betty stayed put.
“That’s the first smile I’ve gotten,” she commented.
The young woman appeared nervous again, and paused as her mouth moved before the words were ready. “People ‘round here can be a little...,” she managed before her words trailed off.
“What’s got into people around here?” Betty asked directly.
“Ghost of the Breeds hanging over ‘em,” she explained, as if she talked about others, not including herself among them.
“Who are the Breeds?” Betty asked.
“You don’t know?” The woman asked incredulously.
“No.”
The woman slowed one last time, as if she struggled to hold the words back. But as her mouth cracked open again, they began to flow unrestricted, flooding Betty’s ears. The woman leaned over the counter to the side of the cash register.
“They’re the people that made this town. Town’s named after ‘em. Started a plantation way back. Used to own all this land. Slaves worked it. Had more slaves than they had white people. Until slavery got stopped and they lost most of their money, and had to sell a lot of land.”
Betty stepped forward, holding Jimmy so firmly with both hands that he didn’t even bother to squirm. “So what does this have to do with me?”
“There aren’t any black people in Breedstown. Never have been.”
“What happened to the slaves?”
“Word is, when old master Breed heard they were gonna be freed, he called ‘em together to give ‘em a big thank you dinner, to send ‘em off with style. Gave ‘em a feast of white people’s food. Put poison in the food. Men, women, and children too. Poisoned ‘em all rather than set ‘em free.”
Betty put her hands over Jimmy’s ears. “My God,” she gasped.
The young woman smirked at the reaction. She eagerly continued.
“You seen the old Breed mansion on the hill? You can’t miss it. You can see it from anywhere in town. Anyway, there’s a mound that goes all the way around it. Word is, that’s where the slaves ended up. The old widow plants lilacs on ‘em.”
“Old widow?”
“She’s the last of the Breed line. All the rest’s dead and gone. Camille Breed. She lives alone in the Breed mansion. Well, I don’t know if you’d call it alone, with the lilacs and all. She’s real old now. Comes in here to get her food, this being the oldest store in town. I just work here.”
“Was she married to the old master?”
“No, no! She’s not that old! She was married to master’s grandson, Vincent. Vincent Breed. But he’s a chip off the old block. Just like his grandfather. Sold off most of the land to keep the mansion going, but wouldn’t let the old South die. Hated what nigger lov...sorry. Hated what other people did to his granddaddy. You was either with him or against him. Took it out on everybody that was against him, including his boy.”
“I thought you said Camille was the last of the Breeds.”
“The boy didn’t make it.”
“What happened?”
“No one knows for sure. Got sick or something. Maybe ‘cause his daddy used to beat him awful. Boy didn’t have enough hate in him to keep the Breed line going, I guess. Vincent had a way of spreading hate. Dedicated his life to stopping people, like you, to keeping black people out of Breedstown, to stopping desegregation, to stopping everything that had to do with black people. Wasn’t too successful, I guess, but he at least kept Breedstown clean, um...you know what I mean. With Camille’s help, of course.”
“How did Camille help?”
“Camille’d call the tea parties.”
“Tea parties?”
“Well, they weren’t really tea parties. Wait, yes they were. Well, whenever Vincent had anything to say, Camille would send out these tea party invitations to all the women in the town. But everyone really knew what they meant. They meant that Vincent had something planned to deal with the black people, either people moving through Breedstown, trying to stay in Breedstown, or even people in the surrounding areas. He was always trying to send a message to everyone, in Breedstown or not. Anyway, everyone came to the tea parties, men, women, and children. And Camille’d serve tea. But then Vincent’d start to speak. And he’d get everyone riled up. I’m too young to’ve seen it, but I heard a lot about it. I heard he had such a power over people. He’d start talking about the South and history and people’s heritage. And people’d be whoopin’ and hollerin’ and gettin’ so agitated they’d come away shakin’. I heard Camille couldn’t even keep her tea cup still when Vincent used to speak. And soon enough, everyone was putting down their cups for guns and things and they’d do whatever Vincent said.”
Betty stood silently, through the woman’s pause.
“From what I heard, there should be lilacs growing on a lot of places ‘round here; not just that mound at the mansion.”
The woman raised her eyebrows, giving time for Betty to speak. Betty held Jimmy closer.
The woman continued, changing her tone to one of concern. “But Vincent’s long gone now. Hasn’t been a tea party since. Now you’re here and I think Breedstown’s finally changing,” she feigned optimism.
But just as quickly, the woman’s demeanor shifted back to its original hushed nervousness. Staring at the window, the woman rushed to the end of the counter and swung open its small door.
“You’d better come back here,” she said as she watched a shadow moving near the window.
Betty reacted immediately, directing Jimmy behind the counter and into the back room, just as the front door snapped open and the shadow entered.
“Mornin’ Dora,” a man’s nasal-voice sounded near the counter.
“Jim,” Dora answered.
“Need some ice from out back. Motor oil. Things.”
“I’ll get the ice. Go ahead and get the rest,” Dora suggested.
Dora came back into the room, where Betty sat at a chair beside the ice machine. A fashion magazine and half-empty coffee sat on the small table under which sat Jimmy. Betty’s hand held his mouth firmly. Dora smiled uncomfortably as she pulled a bag of ice out of the freezer to Betty’s left.
Jim and Dora met back at the counter.
“Hear ‘bout them niggers moved in this week.”
“Yah,” Dora mumbled.
“Wonder how long they’ll last. If Vincent was here they’d already be gone. But Mrs. Breed will do something.”
“Think so?”
“You bet. They’re a damn insult to her, Vincent’s memory, and the Breed name.”
“If somethin’s gonna happen, will you tell me?”
“You’ll hear about it. Everyone will. Well, here you go.”
“Thanks.”
The cash register bell rang and Dora shuffled the change.
“Be seein’ you.”
“Bye.”
Betty could hear Jim’s heavy footsteps passing through the front door. Dora closed the door behind him.
“Ma’am?” Dora called.
Betty led Jimmy out.
“Sorry,” Dora offered. Her pink mouth curled with genuine concern.
Betty could only nod. She was sweating again. “I’d better hurry up in here,” Betty commented.
“Sure,” Dora agreed. “What was it? Diapers? Coffee?”
“Just diapers would be fine.”
Dora went to a far shelf and reached down to get two packages.
Betty waited with her cash as Dora filled a grocery bag.
When Betty turned Jimmy to leave after paying, Dora added, “I’m Dora.”
“Betty. And Jimmy.”
“Bye Jimmy. Bye Betty.”
“Bye,” Jimmy responded.
Betty led Jimmy out of the store and past the eyes on the streets. She kept her own eyes ahead of her the whole way. She didn’t give Jimmy any room to move.
That night, when Carl’s breathing slowed and deepened, Betty leaned over him and asked, “How are you doing, Carl?”
He didn’t answer.
The following morning, Betty sent Carl off to work without any discussion of the day before. She was comforted by the approaching weekend. Two more days of work and she’d have him home. Then perhaps they’d talk. He was bound to ask her then about her week, her experiences, her feelings. She could pass two more days, she told herself. After Carl left, she closed up the house and kept herself in doors and worked and cared for Jimmy as she had done before. But there wasn’t any pressing work to do and Jimmy wasn’t as interested in playing in a house with little furniture and few boxes to jump around and climb. He stayed entertained when Betty followed him around the house or played with his toys. But when he was left to preoccupy himself, he began to fuss and cry, until he was picked up and held.
As she rocked Jimmy in her arms, Betty was fondly reminded of a younger Jimmy, a baby that needed her constant attention. But she couldn’t hold a two-year-old for two days straight. So she gave up on the house and focused on Jimmy. She sat with him and doled out toys from his bag of favorites, switching them around to keep his attention.
But the South wouldn’t leave her and Jimmy alone. Even with her doors and windows closed and the curtains drawn, the heat began to filter in uninvited. It slipped into the spaces below the front door, between the gaps in the window frames and insulation strips, and down the shaft of the chimney. It snuck in as small beams of light, creating pockets of steam that spread out through the house. And it gathered in the air and thickened with humidity into an intolerable boil that started Jimmy crying regardless of toys and attention, and made carrying him and running with him intolerable. Betty imagined they’d stew unless they could get out to someplace cooler.
Or at least, get out to a phone, so she could call Carl. Their phone had yet to be installed. Ironically, Carl worked for a cooling equipment repair shop, but had neglected to install an air conditioner in the house. She had her reason to call.
So Betty dressed Jimmy in shorts, a light t-shirt, and a baseball cap, and herself in a white skirt, t-shirt, and sun bonnet and prepared to wade through the heat. There would be no running through it. They’d have to swim through it, taking slow breaths for fear of taking in too much water. And she’d float Jimmy in the stroller, under the safety of its canopy shade, and the comfort of a steady rolling breeze.
But she soon found out, as she got onto the street, that her plan for Jimmy left her in the deep. It as simply too hot. She had to tilt her head up to keep the sweat from running into her mouth and eyes; fortunately, even at the tilt, her bonnet was sympathetically large enough to keep the sun off her neck and face. But the heat compensated by rising all around her. She might have pushed quickly, but a wavering dizziness developed whenever she exceeded a walking pace. Also, her skirt grabbed at her legs every time they finished a swing back or forth.
There was an emptiness to the steaming streets. Neither cars, nor people braved the sticky tar or dry-cleaning bills. Only desperate black women, stuck with children, in new houses, in unwelcoming neighborhoods, short on conveniences. Not a shade or curtain moved along Betty’s path. Even the businesses in the town center had closed their doors, leaving behind only the grumbles of overworked air conditioners, the sweat of their labors dripping along the sidewalks like snail tracks. But the stores themselves were no less empty than they had been the day before. Betty glanced in through the glass front of a diner to catch the leering faces of the waitress and her customers seated at a counter. Their bodies and faces were twisted by the inconsistencies in the glass so that a rather large man’s belly seemed to poke out on one side, as if he had eaten somebody who now fought for escape; a young man’s wiry arms and legs slithered around the counter; and the painted face of a middle-aged woman drooped into a clown’s frown. The three people at the counter had left their lunch to turn full around to watch Betty. Actually, had their purpose been to watch, they would have glanced courteously and looked away, perhaps glancing again after some conversation. No, their glares remained fixed in rudeness, hoping to communicate rather than record. Betty got the message. There were five empty stools at the counter and four empty tables, but no room for Betty and Jimmy.
So Betty pushed on, and just a few doors down discovered the opportunity for which she had hoped. She glanced into a barbershop window at four empty chairs, a full magazine rack, and a wall of mirrors reflecting an abandoned store, its lights and air conditioner left running on the slim chance that someone might be willing to have an electric razor applied to their clumpy, sticky, wet summer hair. When she opened the door, Betty gasped like a diver breaking the surface, as the frigid air rushed past her. She held the door open and swung Jimmy around to pull him in after her.
Once inside, she closed her eyes to better feel her skin tingling at the coldness, then prickling. Jimmy’s breath slowed and relaxed. She smiled at no one.
“We don’t cut that kind of hair here,” someone responded.
Betty let out a sound that was a mix of a stifled scream and an “Ooh!” Following the voice, she noticed a man, camouflaged in a corner, where no mirror had been directed, wearing the colors of the store, red on white, so that he matched the chairs lining the walls across from the hair cutting stations. He held a magazine in his hand upside down, most likely pulled from his waking face. That face, hair unshaven and unkept, sneered itself into shape.
“We just wanted to get in from the heat,” Betty tried.
The man returned the now-familiar rude stare, then turned his head up to one side and gave an exaggerated sniff around him. He stood up.
“I smell lilacs.”
Betty grasped for the door and pushed Jimmy outside again, rattling him around as she turned back onto the sidewalk and rushed by the remaining stores, refusing to check them. At the “Breedstown Supplies” sign, she slammed open the door, flung Jimmy’s cart in, and slammed the door behind her.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry,” Betty apologized to the empty store.
“Dora?” she called.
No one was there. Without the whine of an air conditioner box outside, perhaps people had assumed the store would be uncomfortable. But the wooden room was cool. Betty had to wait for her eyes to adjust to the dim skylight before she could be sure. But the store’s silence confirmed what her eyes couldn’t see. She had found her cool place.
Betty checked the door to make sure the barber hadn’t followed. Finding the streets empty again, she checked Jimmy. He was fine. She pulled a toy from the back of the stroller just to make sure. He took to it right away.
“You alright?”
“Yah.”
“Momma’s gonna get some ice. You want some ice?”
“Popsicle?”
“Ice’ll have to do.”
“Okay.”
Betty pulled at the stickiest parts of her dress as she stepped through the counter door and followed the counter into the back room to the ice machine she had seen earlier. She stood before it and lifted its front lid, releasing a waft of frigid air that hardened her for a second before she forced herself to move into it, breath it in, put her wet sleeves against it, as she reached along its sides snapping off large pieces of frost. She rubbed them into her hands, neck and forehead. Her cooler sweat dripped down with the water into the ice chest. When she was sufficiently chilled, she snapped off a few more pieces for Jimmy, closed the chest, and left the room.
But Jimmy was no longer alone. He sat silently in the stroller, staring up at the figure of an old lady that now stood in the store’s doorway, silhouetted against the bright outside, but no less visible in the dark store. It was as if the figure repelled the darkness, and brought the brightness of the outside into the store with her. She wore a bleach white dress with seams trimmed in lace. The bleached brightness and wispy lace made the dress appear translucent, ghostly, making the brown-and-green garden grass stains near the knees appear as if they shown through from behind the dress. Their dullness suggested that washings and bleach had attempted to cleanse them. But some things can’t be washed away, no matter how much bleach is used, without tearing at the dress itself, as one tattered cuff and the frayed lace trim at the shoulder suggested.
Betty had never seen anyone that looked so old. The woman stared at Jimmy with a face of stone. Its expression had been carved long ago, but the angry fingers of its sculptor were still dug into its folds. They pulled the skin of her face away from the bones in clumps that sagged down at the cheeks and chin. They left caverns around the eyes, where its orbs seemed stuck like smudged white marbles. They made a cliff below her nose, eroded into cracks that converged to form her thin lips. They pulled at the nose that hooked downward as if it had been broken. They pulled at the center of her furrowed brow, tying it into a tight knot of disapproval. Only her dull eyes complicated the rigid austerity of her expression, suggesting that there was something that could not be expressed among the hardened lines of her immobile face.
Only when those dull eyes turned upward to Betty, did Betty get a sense of the fire that raged within the woman’s petrified shell. Upon seeing Betty, the woman’s eyes locked in place as if the muscles that held them pulled taught. They reddened and moistened under the strain of some internal heat bubbling up against the mantel of her skin. Betty had seen the look before, in the Daguerreotypes of western settlers and Armageddon preachers. Betty could feel their heat. Betty’s own eyes winced away as the ice slipped from her hands and scattered across the floor in escape.
When Betty looked back again, the woman had focused her attention on Jimmy. The woman’s eyes had widened all the more. And now she stretched forth a trembling hand, as she stepped on unsure legs, reaching for Jimmy as if she planned to mete out some judgment on the little boy. The skin pulled away from her twisted hand further exposing its clawlike nails, clotted with earth.
Jimmy’s shriek called Betty to action. She ran forward with arms at full extension, grabbing the handle of the stroller, and swinging Jimmy away.
Just then, Dora stepped through the door, immediately losing her saleswoman’s smile and standing speechless, looking from the woman to Betty to Jimmy and back again.
“Mrs...Mrs. Breed,” Dora chose as she stepped towards the old woman and directed her away to the counter. “I’m so sorry. I’ll have your order right away. Please excuse the inconvenience. I’m...I’m sorry for the wait and, um, any trouble,” she stammered.
Dora went right to the cash register and began to busy herself, flipping through papers in the bottom drawer.
“You’re not welcome here, ma’am,” she called to Betty, without looking over. “I hope you understand.”
Betty welcomed the cue and pulled Jimmy from the stroller and held him before freeing one hand to direct the stroller out of the store back into the summer heat.
The nearest cool spot in Betty’s field of vision was a patch of shade next to a closed seamstress’shop across the street. Betty waded to it and put Jimmy back down. She listened at Dora’s store for conversation, but could hear nothing. Soon enough, Camille Breed stepped out on hobbled legs, holding a small bag of groceries with two hands. She turned up the street towards Betty’s house, but cut to the other side, towards a street that diverged off to the left, to a slow upgrade that led to a far away hill and mansion. As Mrs. Breed walked down the streets, doors opened along the row of businesses. All along the avenue, people piled into the heat, watching the slow path of their elderly matron with reverent silence. Only when their lady approached the mansion did they end their ritual and file back away.
Betty had used the opportunity to file herself away onto a back street, unnoticed. But she had not succeeded in escaping all eyes. As Dora had mentioned, Betty could see the mansion atop its hill from anywhere in town. Even when Betty avoided watching it, it seemed the mansion’s eyes watched her the whole way home, following her, tracing her path, noting her address when Betty turned in at her broken picket fence. Betty realized there were no cool places left.
So, Betty and Jimmy braved the day’s remaining heat until the sun tired and the humidity rested on the ground and trees as a soft drizzle. When Carl came home, Betty was in the kitchen covering dinner in cellophane and moving it to the refrigerator as Jimmy played on the floor with spoons.
“Bet? Bet, you home?”
“In the kitchen.”
“Hey you guys!” Carl came in enthusiastically, going straight for Jimmy and snatching him up.
“Daddy,” Jimmy stated.
“You seem happy,” Betty noted.
“I like the new job. It’s a lot of time now, but it’s not as draining. And it’s going to get easier. Whew, it’s hot in the house. You gonna open some windows?”
“It was a hot day today.”
“Sure was,” Carl agreed.
“Jimmy could have used an air conditioner.”
“Oh God!” Carl exclaimed, slapping his palm against his forehead. “I can’t believe...I’m sorry. I’ll come out tomorrow, take an early long lunch, get one in here by about eleven-thirty? Think you can make it ‘til then?”
“I think so.”
“How about some of that dinner? I’m starving.”
Betty reversed herself and began emptying the fridge, while Carl moved Jimmy out into the living room where she could hear them playing. In the kitchen, Betty stopped, just inside the fridge, its cool air slowing her down, reminding her of the events of the day. The sounds of Jimmy laughing and playing, and the comforting presence of her husband were such a contrast to the seriousness and loneliness of the day.
“Carl?” she said.
“Yah honey?” He had heard her.
“How are you doing?”
“Good.”
“How are people treating you around here?”
Carl didn’t answer at first.
“Reception’s been kinda cool. Boss has been nice. Can’t complain too much.” He let the silence return, until he stood in the doorway with Jimmy in his arms. He placed Jimmy amongst his spoons and came over to Betty and put his hands on her shoulders.
“Bet, we knew the move would be hard.” He kissed her softly and held her. “We’ll all get used to each other.” The skin of Carl’s cheek, pressed against hers, had remained cool from the night air. For a moment, just a moment, she had found her cool place.
The following morning was tolerable. Carl arrived on time with the air conditioner, installed it, ate a quick lunch and was gone. They had little time to speak to each other. But the cool air that Carl left behind was a pleasant enough companion. Jimmy seemed content playing in its company. Between feedings, he kept himself busy all day, without Betty having to run him around and pass him toys. In fact, Betty had time to relax and reflect. Both drew her outside. With little to look at inside her sparsely decorated house, she felt compelled to peek past her closed curtains, to stare at the trees, flowers, houses and hillside. Her eyes locked on the nearest things in motion, the birds that flitted from tree to tree in long glorious loops and twists. All against the swathes of yellow, pink, blue, red and green of flowerbeds and wildflowers. It was beautiful here. She was not too different from her neighbors, she thought, peeking through the curtains in the hopes of finding something worth following. And like her neighbors, she kept watch for visitors or passers-by. She watched for them, just as they had watched for her. But no one braved the day’s heat as she had. Between times with Jimmy, Betty passed her day this way, moving from room to room to vary the view. In her bedroom, Betty found the window from which she could see Breed’s Hill. Its mansion looked like a small box she could reach out and grab, and its windows like fingerholes. Betty could imagine what the town, and her house, must have looked like from up there. When she strained her eyes to focus as best she could, she thought she could make out a hint of white in an upstairs window. It didn’t move. All day. Nor did Betty.
Betty didn’t tire of the surroundings, especially as the day dimmed and the fireflies flashed their beacons in the evening mist. The sun said goodbye so gloriously, tossing gold, orange, red, and purple banners, that she laughed and applauded, softly so as not to disturb Jimmy.
Carl should be home soon, she told herself, leaving her bedroom window, watching the darkness from the front window. Carl should be home soon, she told herself, watching peoples’ house lights flicker off one by one. Carl should be home soon, she told herself, after feeding Jimmy a late meal and hoping he’d keep himself busy just a little longer, so dad could kiss him goodnight. Carl should be home soon, she told herself as she started to worry.
A truck snuck up. Lights off. It wasn’t Carl. It stopped in front of the neighbors property to the side of the house. They were coming. Four figures hopped out of the back and crouched their way to the front of Betty’s house. They stopped and watched for her. But only her eye showed, unnoticed. They stepped past the gate into the yard. They were small figures, kids, maybe high school age. The two largest seemed to be directing the others. They went to the knotty tree, and the tallest boy began to climb. “Hurry up,” she could here the other oldest whisper.
They’re just kids, Betty told herself, just kids.
Nevertheless, as the youngest two passed pieces of knotted rope up to the climber, Betty began to question her assumptions of innocence. The climber took the ropes and looped them around the lowest branch, wrapping them into the simplest knots, and adjusting them so that the nooses at their ends hung down at just the right heights.
The kids welcomed their climber with supportive arms as he came down. They snuck off, piling back into the truck. The driver turned on his lights this time as they drove past, surveying their work one last time. The headlights, flashing off the knotty tree, exposed the smug glance of the adult driver, and purer faces of the children in the back. Pure like mirrors, they reflected the hatred of their parents. These were Frankenstein’s monsters created by the negligent science of their fathers and mothers. Kids are always drawn into the conflicts of adults. They become their greatest perpetrators and greatest victims.
The nooses were testimony to that. There were three. One large, one medium, and one small as a fist, hung lowest to catch a small body.
“Oh Jimmy,” Betty sobbed, “what have we dragged you into.”
Betty dropped the curtain and stumbled to Jimmy’s playpen. She snatched him up violently and dragged him to the bed. She pulled him in there with her and squeezed him to her belly, as if to push him inside her, where she could protect him. Jimmy struggled and screamed, but she held onto him, trapping his arms and legs with her own. One, three, five minutes of adult patience was too much for the ranting boy, whose own struggling tired him, until he eventually feel asleep in her arms.
When she heard the front door opening, she was prepared for whoever it was. Nothing would move her away from Jimmy, no words, no threats, no actions.
When the figure approached quickly and stood in the doorway to the bedroom, panting desperately, she knew it was Carl. But she could no longer move.
Even though Carl held the three nooses in his left hand shaking them furiously, screaming “What is this!?!,” she couldn’t move.
Jimmy woke, but Betty still held him firm. He began to cry again. But she couldn’t move.
Carl had to pry Betty’s arms away from Jimmy to set him free. He pulled Jimmy up into one arm and bounced him. The crying continued. She couldn’t move. Even when Carl noticed her lack of response and asked, “How you doing, Bet?”
And came by her side, “How you doing, Bet?”
And patted her hair, “How you doing, Bet?”
She couldn’t move.
“Three nooses,” she managed to answer his first question.
“And this,” Carl said, holding a piece of paper near her face, so she could just make out a few words: “in memory of Vincent.”
“I found this under the front door,” Carl explained.
Betty snapped to attention, grabbing the paper with both hands. In fancy calligraphy, it read, “You and your family are cordially invited to a TEA PARTY to be held at the Breed Mansion, in memory of Vincent.” The date was tomorrow night at eight pm. On the side of the invitation, scrawled in red ink was a message: “Betty, you better leave as soon as you can, Dora.”
Carl began, “What does this me...”
But Betty cut him off. Over a screaming Jimmy, she detailed all the events of the past days, explaining the history of the town, the meeting with Dora, the encounter with Camille Breed, the truck with the kids. As she continued, Betty could see the effect it was having on Carl. He reddened and boiled just as Camille Breed had. Betty took Jimmy from him, just long enough for Jimmy to escape from both of them, and run out of the room to safer areas of the house. Before Betty could finish, Carl left as well, rushing to the front window and keeping his eyes conspicuously searching.
“Carl,” Betty called, “we’ve got to...”
“I won’t...” Carl said to himself.
“We’ve got to think of Jimmy,” she warned.
“They can’t...” she heard him mutter. He wasn’t talking to her, she realized. He stayed by the window, keeping watch, repeating half phrases of reflective indignation, giving clues to his next day’s intentions.
“We aren’t...”
“This isn’t...”
“I’m gonna...”
Betty started to pack; but then went for Jimmy, and put him to bed. Afterwards, with Carl keeping watch, Betty went to bed herself, and managed to drift off. Whenever she stirred, she checked to see Carl still by the window, before going back to bed.
In the morning, she woke long enough to see him off.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, “It’s Saturday.”
And he was, within two hours, and stayed home with them that day, keeping watch as Betty tended to Jimmy and packed their things. He didn’t stop her, but he didn’t help either. They both knew she couldn’t finish by eight alone. But Betty tried. By four o’clock, when Betty carried her first box out to the car, she noticed the brand new shot gun sitting in the back seat, with a box of shells.
She dropped the box and ran into the house, but Carl was already coming out, past her.
“No Carl, no. Think of Jimmy. Nothing is more important than our baby. Please Carl, please. Don’t do this. Please.”
He pushed into the car, and slammed its door despite her. He bent the key starting the engine, and wrestled the car down the street towards Breed’s Hill, leaving her at the gate, sobbing.
Betty had no choice but to shut herself and Jimmy inside again, watching with her fearful eye as the fireflies flashed their warnings, as her world dimmed. After the mist sparkled in the final throes of sunlight, the house lights came on and their cars came home. They gathered inside, in every house. And almost on cue, they began to bring their lights outside. Flashlights outlined the procession of tall and small figures piling out in the streets from every house. They milled there in whispered camaraderie, until they turned en masse, and flowed down the street, joining the many streams of light that poured up towards Breed’s Hill like veins connecting the town to its fleshy heart, where their hateful sustenance flowed into its corridors and chambers.
Betty breathed shallowly at the hush of the empty town, staring out her bedroom at the flickering windows of the shadowy mansion.
As the hours passed, Betty could imagine the diabolical presentation being made by Camille Breed, in a voice cracked with age, summoning Vincent’s memory to invoke the town’s ire at a man and woman who dared hope to join them, and a baby boy who dared be born to them. She could picture the responses of the crowd, referring to the presence of their own children as evidence of some need to act drastically and with finality. And she could imagine Carl, somewhere up there, with his shot gun, amongst the lilacs.
When Jimmy went to bed unaware, Betty was able to commit herself to her post in the bedroom. Had she been standing at the front window, she might not have given her wearying legs rest. But the closeness of the bed allowed her to open the curtains and sit. She confidently afforded herself the small comfort, but gave disciplined denial to the luxury of lying back or bringing up her feet. Nevertheless, the meeting outlasted her. Betty’s head eventually lowered and she dozed sitting up.
A light tapping sound slowly eased her from her sleep. She startled herself awake, having realized time had passed. Upon quick glance, she saw the mansion’s lights still flickering, and relaxed a little. But when the tapping returned, it drew her attention away. She hurried out of the bedroom and went immediately to Jimmy. He slept comfortably. He was fine.
Betty went to the kitchen to check the kitchen clock: 3am.
When the tapping returned again, from the front room, at the front door, it startled her. Someone was knocking at the door, in light, soft raps. Four, and it stopped. It wasn’t Carl, she told herself, it couldn’t be Carl. Carl would have come in. It was someone else. Dora perhaps? No, Dora was up at the mansion with everyone else, Betty thought. Despite the soft taps, Betty prepared herself for the door to burst in. She grabbed a kitchen knife and waited and listened. The knocking didn’t return. After a few more minutes, she went to the window, and made a crack for her eye. No one was there. Eventually, she opened the door. Nobody.
Betty cursed her imagination and returned to her post, armed with the knife and a bit of rest. She sat impatiently as the hours continued to pass, until the sky lightened and the candleflames disappeared behind the light of the rising sun. Even in the light of the new day, Betty remained ready for the stream of townspeople to come pouring back down the hill towards her house. It didn’t happen.
The lock of the front door turned, and the door creaked open.
“Bet?” Carl called.
“Carl!” she responded, running out to him. “What happened? Are they coming?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I don’t know. I waited in a bush at the bottom of the hill. They all went up there. And they never came out, except some old lady, dressed in white. She just walked down the hill and into the town and never came back.”
“What happened to everyone else?”
“I don’t know.”
Betty pushed past Carl and stepped out into the front yard. She was greeted by the pungent sweet smell of lilacs, too close to be wafting down the hill in the still morning air. She searched the ground and, next to the door, found a bound bouquet of lilacs, freshly cut.
