Sweet Mercy Read online

  “I found out . . .” I paused and squeezed my hands together in front of me, “there are stills all over the place around here. People are making moonshine and selling it down the river.”

  Mother and Daddy were quiet for a long moment. Finally Daddy said, “Well, that comes as no surprise, does it?”

  “What do you mean?” I cried, my voice climbing a notch. “Did you know about it before we came here?”

  “I think we just assumed . . .” Daddy shrugged. His face relaxed as he leaned back in the chair. “People are making their own liquor all over the country. They have been for years. Even more so since Prohibition started, you know.”

  “But I didn’t think . . .” I squeezed my hands till my knuckles hurt.

  “What, darling?”

  “I thought it would be different here.”

  “Why would things be any different here?”

  “Well, because . . . because . . .” How to explain? I thought it would be different because I wanted it to be different. I didn’t want to be afraid, like I had been in St. Paul.

  Mother must have seen the fear in my eyes. “Nothing bad is going to happen here at the lodge, Eve,” she said gently.

  I looked at her and nodded my reluctant agreement. Surely Mother was right. Surely here we wouldn’t see someone mowed down on the sidewalk in front of us, like the man who haunted my dreams. So there were moonshiners moving their goods on the river, but at least there weren’t hordes of gangsters killing each other, or robbing banks, or kidnapping the wealthy for exorbitant ransoms.

  “Daddy?” I said.

  “Yes, Eve?”

  “Why can’t people just obey the law? Why can’t they just be good?”

  Daddy thought a moment. “Because there’s something deep inside that won’t let them, darling.”

  I shook my head. “But we’re good. We don’t break the law. It’s not that hard.”

  “Well . . .” Daddy paused. He rubbed the side of his face with an open palm. “If you’re talking just about Prohibition, then no, it’s not that hard for you and me to keep the law. We’re not tempted by liquor like some are. That doesn’t mean, though, we won’t meet temptation in some other way. There’s not a man since Adam who hasn’t had his share of troubles.”

  I sighed; I didn’t want Daddy to get started on Original Sin. If we were all so bad, why did I find it so easy to be good?

  “Well, I guess I’ll go to bed,” I said. I gave Mother and Daddy each a kiss and wished them sweet dreams. Then I went to my own room, cradling my sense of self-righteousness like a rare and beautiful gift.

  After lunch the next day, a couple of Rolls-Royces eased over the graveled drive and came to rest in the far corner of the parking lot. I stopped sweeping the porch and watched slack-jawed as the driver of one of them jumped out and hurried to open the back passenger door. He stood erect as a soldier, eyes away from the lithe figure emerging from the car. The young woman wore a white dress, sleek and clingy, with a fur collar and a filmy waist-length cape. Her bleached blond hair was a ripple of tight marcelled waves that hung just to her jawline. As she lifted a broad-brimmed hat to her head, the gemstone jewelry on her fingers and wrists sparkled and shimmered in the sun.

  The driver hurried around to the other side of the car and held open the door for the woman’s companion. He was a large fellow wearing a dark double-breasted suit and black-and-white wingtip shoes. A pink carnation was tucked into the buttonhole of his jacket, and a gold watch chain stretched across his ample waist. As he lifted his fedora and dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief, his bejeweled hand sparkled too like the woman’s. He poked the handkerchief—surely it was silk—back into his breast pocket and then held out his arm to the white vision of loveliness that was walking around the car to meet him. They sauntered together toward the lodge as the driver turned back to the car to retrieve their luggage.

  Two men from the other Rolls-Royce, well dressed, though not quite so flamboyant, followed behind, each carrying a suitcase.

  What, I wondered, were these people doing here?

  The lodge was a nice place to visit, so far as that goes, and many of our guests were well off, but surely this man and his wife were used to the kind of luxury that most of us only dreamed of. They belonged in New York, Chicago, London, Paris. Why would they vacation on a tiny provincial island in the middle of an unremarkable river?

  I clutched the broom handle and, feeling very much like Cinderella, watched this man, his wife, and his entire entourage—including the suitcase-laden driver—climb the porch steps and enter the front hall. Not one of them so much as glanced at me in passing. I was an insentient part of the scenery, no different from the rocking chairs that lined the porch.

  Resting the broom against the railing, I moved to the door and stood just inside the threshold. Uncle Cy was coming around the front desk with his hand extended. “Mr. Sluder! Delighted to see you again.” He shook the man’s hand vigorously, then turned to the woman and actually offered a small bow. “Mrs. Sluder. I trust your stay with us will be comfortable.”

  He turned abruptly to the young fellow behind the counter. “Charlie,” he snapped, “help Mr. Sluder and his party with their luggage, will you?”

  “Yes, sir!” came the quick response. Charlie was someone I’d been introduced to but didn’t know well, a college student who helped cover the front desk for Uncle Cy part-time.

  “I’m assuming you have Mrs. Sluder and me in our preferred room, Cyrus?” the man asked stiffly.

  “Oh yes, indeed,” Uncle Cy answered. “The suite, of course. It’s ready and waiting for you.”

  “That’s fine.” Mr. Sluder patted his wife’s hand. “Come along, dear.”

  “But, George,” his wife said, “you haven’t asked about refreshments.”

  “Ah yes. Cyrus, send up some fresh fruit in about thirty minutes, will you?”

  “Of course, Mr. Sluder.”

  I watched our newest guests ascend the stairs like the King and Queen of England. Once they disappeared, I moved across the hall and leaned my arms on the front desk. “Who in the world is that man, Uncle Cy?” I asked.

  “George Sluder and his wife, Ada. They’re regulars here.”

  “They are?”

  Uncle Cy nodded disinterestedly and turned aside to the mail slots. He picked up a pile of letters and started sorting them into the proper cubbyholes.

  “Well,” I said, “doesn’t he have to sign the guest register like everyone else?”

  “He can sign later.”

  “I bet he’s got enough money to do whatever he wants, huh? How’d he get to be so rich, anyway?”

  Uncle Cy paused and turned back to me. “You ask too many questions, Eve. Don’t you have something you’re supposed to be doing?”

  “I was sweeping the porch before His Highness arrived.”

  “Then I suggest you get back to it. And Eve, rule number one around here: We don’t ask questions about the guests.”

  I narrowed my eyes at Uncle Cy, but he’d already gone back to sorting the mail. Reluctantly, I finished sweeping the porch then wandered to the kitchen to see if I could do anything for Annie.

  “I believe you can, child,” she said when I found her. She was wiping a frying pan with a dish towel while she stared out the side window. “I’m going to make up a plate of lunch for that young man out there. You can carry it out to him.”

  When she stepped away from the window, I took over her spot to see who she meant. A stranger sat on the low stone wall separating the drive from the side yard. He wore tattered overalls, a button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a pair of weathered boots. I looked quizzically at Annie. “I don’t recognize him,” I said. “Is he one of the maintenance men?”

  Annie shook her head. She lifted her apron to her brow to wipe away the shiny beads of sweat. The faded red kerchief tied around her hair was moist with perspiration. In spite of the heat, her brown eyes danced merrily while she reached for a pl
ate, as though she relished the task at hand. “I haven’t seen him before neither,” she explained, “but I’m sure he’s one of the men from the camp down the river. They got a way of knowing where they can find a hot meal and a cold drink.”

  “There’s a camp by the river?”

  “That’s right. Been one there for a while now.”

  “You mean, like a shantytown?”

  “That’s what it is, child. A shantytown. The railroad runs right by here, you know. That’s where the men come from, the rails. Looking for work. Far too little of that, these days.” She shook her head again and clicked her tongue as she ladled a thick helping of beef stew onto the plate. She added a piece of bread and butter and handed the plate to me, along with a glass of iced tea. “Tell him just to leave the dishes on the wall when he’s finished. Morris knows to bring them in.”

  “You mean, other men come by here to get a plate of food?”

  “All the time.” She smiled then, her perfect teeth a sudden flash of white against her russet-colored skin. “They know we’ll give it to them. Your uncle’s generous that way. Anyone comes looking for food don’t go away hungry.”

  “Really? Uncle Cy says you should feed these people?”

  “’Course he does. Mr. Marryat not going to let anyone starve. No sir, not Mr. Marryat. He’s different that way.”

  “What do you mean, Annie?”

  “I mean, he pays no mind whether a man is white or Negro, young or old. If that man needs help, Mr. Marryat helps him. Everyone here in Mercy knows that. He’s a good man, your uncle.”

  A small thrill of pride moved up my spine. “I know he is, Annie,” I said. After all, he had taken me and Mother and Daddy in, even when he hadn’t seen us in years.

  Annie smiled at me again as she nodded toward the door. “Now get on out there ’fore the stew gets cold and the tea gets warm.”

  I pushed open the kitchen’s screen door with my foot and stepped outside. I made my way to the man on the wall and handed the food to him shyly, without a word. In that moment, the difference between him and George Sluder weighed on me heavily. Such wealth in the world, and such hardship. It didn’t seem quite right.

  He took the plate of food with a nod. “Thank you kindly, miss,” he said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  He balanced the glass on the wall and started scooping up the stew with the bread.

  “I forgot to bring you a fork,” I said.

  “Don’t need one.”

  “You sure?”

  He nodded, swallowed. “By the time you got back, I’d be done.”

  I studied him quietly while he ate. He was a young man, somewhere just past twenty, I guessed. Though he appeared to have shaved that morning, he was badly in need of a barber. His fair hair hung over his forehead in a tangle of curls and, in the back, crept like stray tendrils over his frayed collar. Other than that, he had pleasant features and clear gray-blue eyes that seemed to sparkle and dance while he ate. He was obviously enjoying the stew and was glad to have it.

  “Is it true you live in a shantytown?” I asked, my curiosity trumping common courtesy.

  “It’s true,” he said, not even pausing as he shoveled the stew into his mouth.

  “Where is it?”

  “Up that way.” He indicated the direction with a nod of his head. “Past the mill.”

  “Oh.” I looked up the river, though the mill was too far away to be seen from the lodge. “My uncle owns that mill,” I said.

  “Yeah? Busy place. You must be rich.”

  I shook my head. “We’re not rich. We’re just regular folk.”

  “You work here?” Now he nodded toward the lodge.

  “No. Well, yeah.”

  He rolled his eyes up from the plate and looked squarely at me. “Well, which is it? You work here or don’t you?”

  “Yes, I work here but I don’t get paid. I live here. My uncle owns the lodge.”

  “Same uncle as owns the mill?”

  “No, a different one. They’re brothers.”

  “Guess you got this town sewn up, huh?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He tore a hunk off the bread and chewed while he studied me. Then he shrugged. “What’s your name?”

  “Eve Marryat. What’s yours?”

  “Everyone just calls me Link.”

  “Link?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You got a last name, Link?”

  “Sure. I got a last name like everybody else.”

  “Can I know what it is?”

  He didn’t answer. He wiped up the last of the stew with the bread, ate it, and licked his fingers. Leaving the plate and the still-full glass of tea on the wall, he hopped off and stood in front of me. He was so tall I had to put my head back to look up at his face. He picked up the tea and downed it in one long swig. He was wiping his mouth on his sleeve when Morris Tweed drove by in the pickup truck he used for hauling goods from the railroad station.

  Link gazed at the truck then looked back at me. I thought he was finally going to tell me his surname, but he must have forgotten I’d asked. “Listen,” he said. “You don’t happen to have any alky in any of those rooms, do you?”

  “Alky?”

  “You know.” He stuck his thumb to his mouth and tilted his head back as though he were drinking from a bottle. Then he winked.

  I took a step backward. Alcohol again! Bad enough to have it floating down the river, but to have someone come around the lodge looking for it—that was even worse. “Of course we don’t have alcohol here,” I said sternly. “That stuff’s illegal.”

  Link laughed. “So it is,” he said. “Not that that ever stops anybody.”

  “Well, it stops us.”

  “Does it?” He sat back down on the wall, as though he were expecting dessert. He shrugged. “Now, don’t get your feathers all in a ruffle. Just thought I’d ask.”

  “This is a respectable place.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “If you’re looking for liquor, you can go look somewhere else.”

  “I wasn’t looking for liquor when I came here. I was looking for a good meal and I found one. Give my compliments to the chef, will you? And don’t go off in a huff.”

  I’d started to walk away but I turned back. “You’re nothing but a bum, aren’t you?”

  He smiled. “I’m a bum and a good one, at that.”

  “Why don’t you get a job instead of going around looking for handouts?”

  “Plenty of men looking for jobs, little lady. In case you haven’t noticed, they’re kind of hard to come by these days.”

  “But you could be out asking around, instead of sitting here doing nothing,” I argued.

  At that, he glanced one way and then the other, as though looking for an opportunity right there on the grounds of the lodge. To my dismay, he found one. “Tell you what,” he said. “Looks like your hired man there is carrying crates down to the cellar. How about if I give him a hand? No charge, of course. Would that make you happy?”

  I looked over to where Morris was lifting crates out of the truck and loading them onto a dolly. “Well,” I replied, “I’m sure Morris would be happy for the help, but frankly, I don’t care what you do.”

  He hopped off the wall and began scissoring across the driveway in great strides. About halfway there he turned back to me, bowed, and tipped an imaginary hat. “And a lovely day to you too, little lady,” he said with a laugh. And then he ran off to help Morris.

  Chapter 10

  A couple of evenings later, Uncle Cy held a fish fry on the island for our extended family and a number of his friends from town. Uncle Luther was there with his wife, Suellen, and their sons Earl, Jason, and Denny. The mayor of Mercy, Granville Drake, came with his wife and children, as did several members of the town council. Reverend Ralph Kilkenny of Grace Presbyterian Church showed up and invited us to services on Sunday, an invitation Mother and Daddy accepted gratefully.


  Mother mingled with Aunt Suellen and the other ladies while Daddy spent most of the evening in quiet conversation with Mercy’s Chief of Police, a ruddy-faced bear of a man named Neal Macnish. He and Daddy had been friends all the way through school but had lost touch when Daddy left Mercy back in 1902. The intervening years had left them with a lot of catching up to do.

  As for me, I wasn’t feeling very sociable. Uncle Cy said he’d invited the sheriff of Warren County, Jerry Wiant, which meant Marcus should have been there, but he wasn’t. For whatever reason, the sheriff and his family weren’t able to attend. I was trying to come to terms with the idea that there would be no more dances with Marcus. I hadn’t heard from him since Saturday, and here it was Wednesday. The passing of the days told me he wasn’t interested in coming back.

  After eating, I stood barefoot along the river’s edge, my toes in the water. I looked up and down the river for bootleggers, but the only boats out on the water were our own rowboats and canoes. Down the shore from where I stood, my teenaged cousins competed to see who could spit a watermelon seed the farthest into the Little Miami. I was thinking about getting another helping of watermelon myself when Uncle Cy sauntered over and joined me.

  “Having a good time, Eve?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “Want me to introduce you to some of the young ladies?”

  I looked over my shoulder at the crowded picnic tables and felt my stomach turn. “Not right now, Uncle Cy. But maybe later.”

  He nodded, pulled a cigar out of his shirt pocket, and lighted it. I rarely saw him smoke; most of the time he was simply too busy. He inhaled deeply, let it out. “You and your family doing all right? I mean, you feel like you’re settling in all right?”

  I smiled. “Oh yes. I love being here, Uncle Cy. I really do. I have so many good memories of the island from my childhood.”

  He took another pull on his cigar. Even the scent of tobacco brought back warm memories of earlier times. “I’m glad you do, darling,” he said.

  “I think it’s a shame we didn’t come here for so many years.”

  Another nod. “I do too. Wish you’d gotten back sooner.”