In another group, a young man who looked not much older than my sixteen-year-old daughter approached me, carrying paper, pencil, and a book of poetry. He had thick, stylish hair and a handsome face marred by a cut across his cheek and a fresh bruise to his eye. A cast ran the length of his arm down to his elbow. He stood hesitant in front of the table, darting his eyes around the room to everyone but me.
“May I help you?” I asked, concerned he was frightened of my color. Wondering if I should repeat what I’d told new groups when they’d arrived.
The man’s cheeks rosied, and his lips tucked in and disappeared behind a woeful face as he clutched the book to his chest.
“I’m Cussy Lovett. What’s your name?” I coaxed gently.
“They call me Daniel, ma’am.”
“Would you like help reading or writing a letter, Daniel? Please, sit down.” I pushed the Yeats collection to the side.
He slid into a chair and scooted it close to mine, the spirit of fresh shaving cream lifting between us. Daniel looked all around again, then leaned in and whispered in the smallest of voices, leaving me straining for his words, “I need a little help.” He raised his cast. “I’m schooled, but I want to write a letter back home to Lodiburg.” He crowded even closer and, in a hushed, frightened voice, said, “Send a poem to someone I love.” Daniel blushed and slid a fresh sheet of notepaper over to me. Heopened the book to an envelope he’d used as a bookmark and placed a finger on the poem “On Marriage,” by Kahlil Gibran. “This one right here, ma’am.”
I picked up my pencil and began writing as he recited low:
“To my one and only love: ‘Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.’”
When the young man paused, choking on his words, I noticed his shoulders quake.
His words made me ache for my own love somewhere inside this very prison. I pressed down on my lips and looked away, my eyes landing on the poetry book I would share with Jackson.
Daniel bowed his head and apologized for the interruption before whispering the next passages.
“‘And stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.’”
Then the young man closed his blurred eyes along with the book and murmured, “Wait for me. I need you, Arthur. Write back—”
I raised the pencil and did my best to swallow the surprise.
“I—I didn’t mean, I—” The tips of his ears reddened. Daniel looked over his slumped shoulders and then moved in closer to the lip of the table. “Sorry, ma’am, I—” He swallowed.
I never know’d a man in love with another one. The preacher man would have marked a stain on these folks and driven them out. And the only book I’d read that dared to broach such wasNightwood.
But suddenly, I realized Daniel’s plight weren’t much different from mine. Only the man’s peculiarity and his public-proclaimed stain were hidden, unlike mine.
I noted his fresh bruises and cast, knowing he’d probably been punished long enough for loving who he couldn’t. Saddened for the young man, I gazed down at my shadow-soaked hands washed in indigo blue.
Forever, me and my kin had suffered our own peculiarity—anaffliction, ol’ preacher man had declared, and sought to rid me of it. I shuddered remembering all the others him and his congregation had tried to cast the devils out of in the ’30s: the seven-year-old Melungeon girl who suffered fits, a young albino boy with pink eyes, and the triplet babies he’d insisted were spawned by Satan’s seeds. Those who were unchurched and others with odd markings that didn’t have a name. The one young woman who’d been violently raped by a circuit peddler, who’d brutally battered her face and tore off an ear, scarring her for life. And when she visited the granny woman for a tonic to rid herself of his evil root, the preacher and his flock publicly marked her, damned her to eternal hell, driving the woman deeper into the dark hills.
Over the years, many had been drowned during Frazier’s frenzied baptismals in the cold waters of Troublesome Creek.
Daniel’s face knotted with pain and anguish. He lowered his head to the table, scrubbed his damp eyes with a hard palm, and said, quietly, “Didn’t mean for it to slip out like that. But sometimes the hurt’s so bad, I can’t hold it all inside.”
I scanned the room, then looked over my shoulder. Some of the men practiced their letters on the blackboard; others looked at magazines and books and lingered over by bookshelves while the guards bent their heads in friendly conversation.
Beside me, Yeats sat waiting for Jackson. I leaned down closer to Daniel and confided, “I know’d how hard it is wanting to love someone others declare you can’t.” Then, to ease his discomfort: “It’s a fine letter, Daniel. How would you like it signed?”
Hesitant, he searched my face.
I didn’t know a lick about Daniel’s matters of the heart, but I know’d mine, and I lifted what I hoped was a kind smile.
“Ma’am—” He rubbed knuckles over his mouth, struggling with words.
Lowering my head to the letter, I averted any indication of prying eyes, waited, and, when seconds had passed, gently coughed.
“Ma’am, uh”—he wiped his brow—“we love each other.”
I nodded, dipped my chin, and hovered my pencil over the page, waiting for his closing salutation.
