“What you call them colors?”
“I named this design ‘Autumn Harvest.’ ”
“Hmmph.”
Little is known of the man who’d been hired in August to look after the plantation’s day-to-day. Born in McComb to a large family of field workers and raised on various plantations across the Pine Belt, the thirty-two-year-old was considered ruthless, authoritative, trustworthy, and discreet in his duties as one of the youngest overseers in Mississippi history. He was said to have lost the use of his eye when as a toddler he stood behind a molly in estrus. He was also said to have cost seven men the give in their kneecaps for speaking poorly of his appearance. The rumor mill has ground the rest of his biography into fictitious pulp. Some say he fought in the Spanish-American War as a “Weary Walker” under the command of Colonel Leonard Wood. Others say he died of tuberculosis at one of the few racially tolerant sanatoriums in New Mexico. Even the man’s name, Noah Johnson, is thought by many to be an invention.
It was dusk by the time Charles and Noah were done with their work. They shook hands studying their feet. Noah went back to the house for his evening talk with the boss, and Charles guided his wagon along a trail that led to the post road. He parked in a wildflower thicket hidden from sight. Over the next two and a half hours, day giving into night, light giving into dark, Charles sat by himself on a seed bag in the wagon bed. He dealt solitaire with a Bicycle deck. He drew hangman doodles with a carpenter’s pencil. At a quarter past nine, he lit a coal-oil lantern with his last match, put wheel chocks under the chassis, found a worn path in the brush, and made his way towards the servant quarters. The Marchetti family should have been done with dinner.
Mary Thorne lived in a shotgun house on the brink of a foggy slough. In the front yard, a copse of bottle trees, whose purpose, according to West African tradition, was to ward evil spirits, caught the moonlight. The glass of the bottles cast green and brown flickers on the ground whilst chiming a soft melody all throughout the deep woods. In the backyard, an army of chorus frogs sang for mates within the vicinity, each note of their call euphonized by the creak of longleaf pine. Charles knocked on the door.
“Welcome home, soldier.” Mary Thorne stood in the entry with one hand resting on her hip. “Beginning to think you wouldn’t make it tonight.”
“I didn’t know how long you’d be serving dinner.”
“They finished early.”
“Lucky you.” Charles made passage through the doorway. “Lucky me.”
We have always felt this man behaved in a manner inappropriate for the father of our husband. Charles Dodds promised fidelity to one woman and broke it with another. Charles Dodds gave his love neither singly nor solely. Charles Dodds allowed his passions to run parallel to an unworthy multitude. We have always felt our husband could have never been the son of such a man. All our worries were for naught.
Despite the low pay of most house servants, Mary Thorne’s home held all kinds of finery and frills. A swatch of Persian carpet hung from bent nails above the mantle. A hand-crank Victor collected dust in the corner. A flagon of Georgia moonshine wept condensation on the counter. Charles took two Ball jars from the shelf and poured a stiff round of drinks, the signature peach whirling in the grain alcohol.
“Sweets to the sweet,” Charles said, handing Mary Thorne her drink. They were each stung by 180-proof. “Have you been missing me terrible?”
“Hardly gave it notice.”
Charles killed what was left in his glass. He breached the gap between himself and Mary Thorne. She tasted of fruit. Charles lowered his suspenders that were given as an anniversary present and removed her pinafore that was blotchy from the evening meal. He spooled her stockings down to mid-thigh and let his fingers materialize at her undergarment. She felt of silk. At the same moment, as his lips explored the plumage on her neck’s nape and as her tongue traced filigrees along his shoulder blade, the silhouette of a man holding a lamp approached Mary Thorne’s house from the direction of the Marchetti family’s mansion. Charles noticed it first. He said, “Who do there?”
“Who do where?” Mary Thorne followed his gaze to the window. “Oh Lord. It’s Frankie.”
“Frankie?”
“You’ve got to get. Right now.”
Even before Charles could muster a response, Mary Thorne had returned her intimates to their rightful place and was shoving him towards the window on the far side of the house. Charles raised the window to its full height, climbed through it, and closed the window behind him just in time to see Mary Thorne welcome the arrival of Franklin Marchetti.
Outside was oppressive. It was as hot and dark as pitch. The heels of Charles’s boots slowly descended into the muddy bank of the slough, his socks soaking in the black water that come January would turn black ice. He peered through the window. The subsequent episode available by sight but not by sound, Charles would tell his second wife in later years, reminded him of the rarity shows that cost a penny at the Rankin County Fair. We can see it even now. Franklin stumbled slapdash about the shotgun house—so named because a shotgun can be fired from one end to the other without hitting a wall—in the arrogant, resentful manner of a third-son drunkard. He looked under the four-poster canopy bed with a torn mosquito net. He peered behind the oriental dressing screen catawampus to the corner. All the while, Mary Thorne followed him around the room, attempting to assuage whatever had him in arms. She patted his shoulders. She rubbed his elbows. At last, after looking askance into the rafters, after opening all the cabinets, after staring blank at the empty closet, Franklin grew calm. Mary Thorne took his face in her hands and put her wet lips full on his mouth. They held each other. They pressed their foreheads together. They spoke to each other. Mary Thorne did not notice Franklin notice the two drinks on the table. His hands formed a daisy chain around her throat, the petals of his thumbs interlaced with the stems of his fingers. Who knew such strength lay dormant in wrists that could only wear watches built extra-small by a specialty jeweler in St. Louis? The only reaction Franklin gave after what he had done, body of a woman limp on the floor, mark of her nails red on his face, was the dark spot that crept down the leg of his trousers. A puddle rose at his feet, drip by drip.
At the window, Charles fell straight to his knees, shut his eyes, set his jaw, and was overcome with conniption. We do not pity him. His wife was the last thing on his mind, but she should have been the first. Across the county, some twenty miles and four hours away, Julia Dodds put her children to bed and laid wait for her husband. She busied herself with work. On the potbelly stove bought from a corrupt railroad operator boiled an herbal stew, part witch hazel, part alum, part dandelion root, used by midwives to ease the pain of childbirth. Julia beat the substance until it was black as India ink. Everywhere along the floor, most particular beneath the ladder-back chairs of the dinner table, sat a mess of cedar leaves and shagbark. Julia swept hither and yon with a corn broom. She was emptying the cuspidor and checking the chamber pot when she heard someone stomp across the rickety boards of the porch and rap at the pinewood door of her home.
“What you knocking for, Charlie?” There was no answer. “Don’t be playing no games with me.”
“I’m looking for the missus of the wicker maker.” The voice was a man’s voice, but it was not Charlie’s voice. “Are you the missus of the wicker maker?”
Although she did not know his name at the time, Julia opened the door to the indistinct sight of Noah Johnson. He stepped closer. The skin of his face was as gauzy, brown, and mottled as a used tea bag. His wasted frame hung loose in his clothes. The structure of one of his eyes reminded Julia of ripples from a rock thrown