Читать книгу The Bernice L. McFadden Collection - Bernice L. McFadden - Страница 28
ОглавлениеWhen Charlotte Custer knocked on the front door in the fall of 1929, Hemmingway despised her immediately.
“Afternoon, ma’am.”
It was the parasol Charlotte held over her head. Hemmingway hated parasols and so instantly hated any woman who carried one.
“Is Mr. Payne at home?”
A hazel-eyed, blond-haired, prissy little snake. She wore a bonnet and laced gloves that climbed all the way to her elbows.
“No, ma’am. Who may I say was calling?” Hemmingway asked the question and broke the cardinal rule of the South when she brazenly looked directly into the white woman’s eyes.
“You may say that Charlotte Custer came to call on him.”
Charlotte Custer? What ole type of stupid name was that? Hemmingway wondered as she raised her hand to her mouth and coughed a laugh into her palm.
“When do you expect him to return?”
Hemmingway could feel the smirk still resting on her lips, so she kept her hand positioned over her mouth. “Thursday, ma’am.”
Charlotte Custer frowned. “Oh dear,” she murmured before extracting an embroidered kerchief from her sleeve and used it to swab her forehead. “That’s three days away, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh dear,” she moaned again. “Well, that is that then. I will return in three days.”
Hemmingway watched her walk down the steps to the waiting carriage.
In three days Charlotte Custer returned, without the parasol. This did nothing to endear her to Hemmingway.
Hemmingway showed Charlotte into the drawing room, invited her to sit, and then went to fetch Cole.
“I don’t trust her,” Hemmingway hissed from the doorway.
Cole was working on his bottle art. But unlike other enthusiasts of the craft, he did not construct miniature boats in his bottles—he constructed Native American teepees.
“Indian houses?” Hemmingway had questioned the first time Cole showed her his work.
“Well, yes and no,” Cole responded. “They’re called teepees.”
A year after the flood, Cole had begun to talk about taking a trip out west.
“For what?” Hemmingway had asked.
“Just to see.”
“What’s to see?”
“Well, the Pacific Ocean for one.”
“Ain’t you had your fill of water?”
The only time Cole had ever stepped foot outside of Mississippi was to visit Melinda’s cousins in the neighboring state of Louisiana, and he hadn’t even wanted to make that trip. But since the flood—since he had cheated death and survived to tell the tale—Cole had started to wonder about the world beyond Mississippi. When his wondering transformed into yearning, he went out and purchased a black 1928 Ford Model A and announced to Hemmingway that he was going to drive it all the way to the California coast.
Hemmingway had simply shrugged her shoulders and said, “Okay, have fun.”
Cole was gone for two and a half months. When he returned, he was freckled, brown as lightly toasted bread, and filled with stories of Indians.
Hemmingway had listened, and yawned as Cole droned on and on about their customs, traditions, and the brutality they’d suffered under the white man’s occupancy.
“Yeah, well,” Hemmingway reminded him on various occasions, “black folk still suffering.”
Cole dedicated one of the empty rooms to his craft. Bottles of all sizes and shapes lined the baseboard like glass soldiers. Boxes containing sheets of canvas, oil paints, brushes, needles, and odd-shaped tools were strewn haphazardly around the room.
He now owned volumes of books on the American Indian. Books paged through so often, the spines had split and the pages were creased and wrinkled.
Cole’s most prized Indian collectible was a framed sepia-colored photograph of Geronimo. He had paid a pretty penny for the original print, which was taken in 1913 by the renowned photographer Adolph Muhr. Cole referred to Geronimo as “the greatest Indian chief ever known.”
Hemmingway didn’t think the man looked great at all, he just looked like an old man dressed in a shabby suit.
Cole looked up from his tedious task, pushed his wirerimmed frames up onto his forehead, and said, “You don’t trust who?”
Hemmingway sighed and stepped into the room. “That woman downstairs, the one I told you about.”
Cole smirked. “What’s her name again?”
“Charlotte Custer.”
“Did she say what she wants?”
Hemmingway shook her head.
“Oh, okay then.” He rose from the chair, unzipped his pants, and shoved his shirttails inside his waistband. “Bring us some lemonade,” he said as he brushed past her. “But no cookies, I don’t want her to feel like she can dawdle.”
Upon entering the parlor, Cole extended his hand and said, “Miss Custer?”
Charlotte nodded.
“Cole Payne. Sorry to keep you waiting. How can I help you?” He took a seat across from her.
“Mr. Payne,” Charlotte began in a syrupy-sweet voice, “it is so nice to finally meet you.”
Her words melted into babble in Cole’s ears. His mind was upstairs, hovering over his latest masterpiece. So reluctant was he to be there in that room with that woman, whose name had already faded from his mind, that he didn’t even notice how incredibly beautiful she was.
To say he had sworn off women would not be a fair statement. But a man does not easily recover from the loss of a wife and a lover all in one day. His heart was still healing, the scab tender enough to remind him that love, and the loss of it, was painful.
Hemmingway entered the room carrying a pitcher of lemonade and two glasses.
“Oh, thank you so much,” Charlotte said.
Hemmingway shot Cole a piercing look before exiting the room.
Charlotte reached for her glass, raised it to her lips, and took two small sips. She made a face, then set the glass down.
“Something wrong, Ms. Custer?”
“It’s just a little tart for my taste.”
“Tart?”
No one could accuse Hemmingway of making tart lemonade. If an allegation could be leveled, it would be that she made it too sweet. Cole raised his glass to his mouth, took a large gulp, and gagged.
Tart was kind—the mixture was downright sour!
“Sorry,” Cole murmured, and glanced at the doorway. “I can have her make another batch if you like.”
Charlotte shook her hand. “No, don’t worry. I can’t stay.” She stood up. “I just wanted to meet the man who had so much interest in my family. Now I have met him.”
The smile she offered was as big and bright as the sun, it lit up her face in a way Cole could not ignore.
“Your f-family?” he stammered stupidly. “I’m confused, Miss … uhm …”
Charlotte continued to smile. “I knew you weren’t listening.” She wagged a delicate finger at him. “I could see it in your eyes.”
Cole gave her a sheepish look.
“Well,” Charlotte sighed, and eased back down into the chair, “a friend of a friend passed one of your letters onto me …”
“Letters?”
“Yes.” Charlotte opened the clam-shaped purse that dangled from her wrist, pulled out an envelope, and handed it to him.
Cole studied the script; it was his.
Mr. T. Farmer
Sherman Publishing House
89 Park Avenue
New York City, NY
The letter was dated December 1928. He quickly scanned the paragraphs before looking back up at Charlotte. “I don’t understand.”
The woman, still smiling, shifted a bit in her seat. “Is that not a letter written by your own hand, Mr. Payne?”
“Yes.”
“In the letter you refer to Mr. Farmer’s book, Forever, Monahseetah, do you not?”
“I do.”
“You wanted to know if Mr. Farmer had located the children of Monahseetah and General Custer. Is that correct?’
Cole nodded.
“I am the granddaughter.”
Cole blinked. “The granddaughter of whom?”
Charlotte’s smile turned bland. Even Hemming-way, who was eavesdropping in the hall, bristled with frustration.
“Of General Custer and Monahseetah,” Charlotte replied pointedly.
It took another moment for Cole to comprehend what the woman sitting across from him had just said.
“You?”
Charlotte bobbed her head.
His obsession with Native American culture had led him to the book entitled Forever, Monahseetah, written by Theodore Farmer, which chronicled the love affair between Monahseetah and the famed Civil War and Indian War hero, General George Armstrong Custer.
In the book, the author claimed to have located and interviewed the aged Monahseetah on a Cheyenne reservation in Oklahoma. Farmer wrote that Monahseetah had been quite candid with him about her relationship with the general and the children she had borne him— a boy in January of 1869, and in December of that same year, a girl.
The boy, called Yellow Bird, had Monahseetah’s brown complexion and dark eyes, but not her ink-colored hair. His locks were light brown streaked with blond. Unfortunately, he did not live to adulthood.
Of the girl, Farmer wrote, “The one whose existence had been disputed for decades was born on the thirteenth of December in 1869. She was named Namid, which means Star Dancer in the Cheyenne language. Namid favored her father, as she had inherited his blond hair and fair skin.”
As Namid grew older, her appearance became the source of ridicule from the other children in the community. They called her ghost-face and pale-face and refused to play with her.
It broke Monahseetah’s heart to have her daughter be ostracized by her own people. So, when Namid turned eight, Monahseetah took her off the reservation and left her with an order of nuns who ran an orphanage.
“She was such a beautiful white child, I knew someone would adopt her,” Monahseetah told Farmer.
When Farmer asked, “Did you ever see her again?” Monahseetah’s eyes welled with tears and her lips trembled. “Yes, every night in my dreams I see her and she is still just eight years old and very lovely to look at.”
Cole had written the letter to Farmer hoping that he could reveal the exact location of the reservation, as he wanted to visit it himself and perhaps speak to Monahseetah. But Farmer never responded and Cole had not sent a second inquiry. Now here was this woman, claiming to be the granddaughter.
“So you are the child of Namid?”
Again, Charlotte bobbed her head. “My mother was adopted and raised by a family in Louisiana. When she was sixteen, she married a man named Jean Batiste. He is my father.” She paused. “Was my father. He died from cancer to his brain in 1926. My mother followed him to heaven last year.”
“Batiste? But you said your surname is Custer.”
Charlotte folded her delicate hands in her lap. “Yes, I had it legally changed to Custer.”
“Why?’
“To honor the memory of my grandfather.”
“Your father must not have been very happy with that.”
“I did so after his death.” Her eyes turned sad. “Although, I will admit that he and I did not have the best relationship.”
Cole leaned forward. “And your grandmother, Monahseetah?”
“Dead as well.”
Cole leaned back. His face shadowed with disappointment. He raised his right hand and wrapped his fingers around his chin. “But how did you get the letter?”
“My mother told me everything about her life before she was sent to the orphanage. When the book was published, she bought a copy and we read it together. I sent a letter of introduction to the author, and a week later he came to Oklahoma to visit me and my mother. He was a very kind man.”
Charlotte reached down and ran her finger along the rim of the glass.
“He said he wanted to write a story about my mother and me. We of course agreed. He went back to New York and we never heard from him again. I learned later that he had contracted pneumonia and died.”
She moved her hand back into her lap.
“When the publisher received your letter, he sent it to me. It was my intention to write to you. For the life of me I don’t know why I didn’t.” She laughed. “I’ve carried your letter with me for almost a year.”
Cole smiled.
“Since I was here in Mississippi visiting friends, I thought I would call on you personally, to tell you how much your words meant to me.” Charlotte rose again. “I’ve taken up too much of your time—”
“No, no. Please don’t go. Would you like to stay for dinner?”
Charlotte grinned. “I would love to.”
