Simon sighed loudly. “Uh . . . yes? According to everything Hawk has told me, we’re going to need to be our best here. You all look like you’ve been trying to run a marathon wearing Manolo Blahniks. Not a good look.” He set out plates of pork buns, roasted duck with lentils, ginger scallion pancakes, chanterelles with Asian pear. “And there’s black sesame and red bean buns for dessert.”
Gretchen gave Simon another big hug. This was some of her favorite food, but after reading the things she’d been reading and thinking of people starved and running through the woods from their captors, she felt the full weight of her privileged life. She still enjoyed the food. She just didn’t think of it anymore as a given.
“Sit down,” he said. “Eat.” And this time when she looked into his eyes she could see that he was truly worried, and that he was doing what he did best when things got bad: trying to comfort and entertain.
When they had polished off everything, Simon wanted the full story. “Now that we are fed and thinking more clearly . . . what has been going on here?”
The three of them looked away. After a minute Hope and Gretchen told the story of their talk with Fidelia and Annie, and Gretchen channeling Esther, and the general creepiness of Shadow Grove. They told him about the anniversary and about the things they’d already read and found. About Hawk and Hope’s mother, Sarah, working together with Mona, about how they were related.
Simon looked at them, incredulous. “Is this some kind of joke?” he said. “Wait—is someone filming this? You guys are kidding, right?”
He looked from face to face. His eyes finally rested on Gretchen’s. “Okay,” he whispered. “How can I help?”
“There’s not a lot of time,” Hawk said. “Our refueling break is over. And I’ve got something to show you.”
They stood and cleared away the dishes and headed resolutely to the basement.
1861
Valerie and I are big as houses. And the midwife says the babies are due but two weeks apart.
Now how could that be? she asked me, winking. You and George really been married that long?
I smiled at her. This child is indeed an Axton, I told her. I place my hand on the Bible.
Instead of the parish being devastated by James’s death, it seems to have deepened the faith. George has done more work than ever to bring our Negro brothers and sisters into the fold. He sought out people who lived in the neighboring towns, seemed to know where everyone lived, went door to door and told them of James’s philosophy.
He has even seen to it that I don’t have to go away for school but has found a correspondence school. While my belly swells, I write essays and put them in the mail to my professors.
In two years I will be a certified schoolteacher. My greatest hope is that someday after that I can go on to college. Someday when the baby is bigger.
TWENTY-FOUR
DOWN IN THE BASEMENT HAWK HAD GATHERED THEIR mother’s primary-source research from within three weeks before and after the fire and laid it out on the table. Interviews with witnesses, photographs, and journal entries. He’d organized all of it.
“The main thing,” he said, “is the increase in lynching photographs in the area during the time.”
“Lynching photographs?” Gretchen said. “Like crime scene photographs?”
Hope shook her head. “No, cousin,” she said. “Like souvenirs. People used to collect them, send them to their friends as postcards, even hang them up in their homes.” Just hearing the words made Gretchen feel like she was going to throw up.
Hawk set the photographs out one after another on the table. They were devastating. Gretchen’s stomach sank and her heart raced, and she felt like she really would lose her fancy meal. She was filled with revulsion and hatred for the people who did this and, she realized, the people who photographed it.
Picture after picture of brown-skinned men hanging from tree branches. She started to cry.
Hawk looked into her eyes and nodded. Seeing the murdered men was sad and horrifying. Seeing the people in the crowd enjoying themselves or acting like nothing was happening was appalling.
She thought of her own mother showing her the “spiritualist” pictures—how she was fixated on finding the ghosts hidden in the frame. How superficial and ridiculous it seemed compared to the work Esther did or Sarah, researching real people being tortured and murdered, and the history of such brutality.
She felt the anger rising in her, steeling her. She took the photos one by one and looked more closely. From somewhere within she could feel Esther’s keen eye upon them. Some were taken on this land—it was clear. You could even see the steeple of the church in the background—like she’d seen in other photographs of the era. In some pictures the dead and tortured bodies were surrounded by crowds of people, almost like it was a festival; people were sitting out on blankets, eating, smiling in the foreground. The last picture was of men hanging side by side, their faces and bodies badly beaten.
“This one,” Hope said. “It was taken days before the fire. Then these four. This tree is still there, she said. Out by the road between our properties.”