"Eden" Excerpt

Set in Eden, a fictional mountain town in Western North Carolina, IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN, chronicles the 20-year love affair between Pearl Elizabeth Whitchard and John Patrick Hoagland as fate brings them together, and fate, inevitably, tears them apart.

As we join the story, Pearl and John are about to meet each other for the first time…

CHAPTER II

Outside, the snow had been falling for several hours and the wind was blowing cold. Inside, the records of Hoagy Carmichael, Johnny Mercer and Dorothy Fields played on an old hand-wound Victrola record player. Everyone was talking, laughing and drinking cider. Because it was a costume party, they didn’t reveal their true identities. Tonight they hid behind masks, obscured by the cloudy haze of cigarette smoke that was rapidly descending upon them. The theme of the party was great figures in American literature, and everyone who attended came dressed as his favorite author from the vast canon of American letters. It was Halloween and the first of what would become an annual event at the Whitchard Funeral Parlor was in full swing.

From the top of the stairs, Pearl listened as the laughter was carried up to her on the wafts of smoke that had blanketed the entire first floor. And though she had not been invited to the party—this party was for the boys—she was hardly about to let a technicality like that stand in her way. Peeling back the door that led to her father’s cedar-lined closet, she dug through an old chest of clothes in search of a disguise of her own.

The dress was wrapped in a clear cellophane bag, and when Pearl peeled back the tape that had been used to seal the cellophane, the smell of the crushed mothballs filled her nostrils. It was a putrid, fetid stench and reminded Pearl of the smell of embalming fluid, which despite a lifetime spent around death and the dying, was still a smell to which she had never grown accustomed.

The effort to preserve the dress’s splendor had been successful. The green and yellow floral print was as pristine as the day it had first been worn. Pearl removed the dress and stretched it across the bed with the hope that the cold mountain air coming through the cracked window would wash the smell away.

And suddenly Pearl realized the floral print wasn’t the myriad of flowers she had originally thought it was. The ‘flowers’ were actually all one flower—a rose—hundreds of tiny green and yellow roses arranged in a manner resembling an intricate floral jigsaw puzzle.

“A rose is a rose is a rose—” she said, knowing now the literary persona she would become.

Turning her attention back to the trunk, Pearl mined the contents for a pair of shoes and hat that would complete the ensemble. In relatively short order, she found exactly what she was looking for— a pair of tan leather closed-toe heels and a large floppy hat under which she could tuck her strawberry blond hair, for strawberry blond hair was not in keeping with her newfound literary character.

Because the dress had belonged to her mother, it hung loose on her slight, trim frame. The dress was a little large in the bosom and hips, but these things did not daunt her. Pearl stuffed the areas that needed filling out with a few pairs of socks from the top drawer of her father’s dressing bureau. She completed the disguise by wrapping one of her father’s silk ascot scarves around her neck, bringing the ends together with a diamond-studded tie clip. After tucking the last few remnants of her hair under the hat, she descended the stairwell and ingratiated herself into the party undetected. Her anonymity did not last long—

“Hi, I don’t believe we’ve met,” the boy said, extending a large, powerful hand. Pearl was so taken by the boy’s deep, receding brown eyes, she didn’t even notice the hand was there.

Mistaking the uncomfortable silence for a lack of recognition, the boy began to quote from his first book—

“‘A destiny that leads the English to the Dutch is strange enough; but one that leads from Epson into Pennsylvania, and thence into the hills that shut in Altamont.’”

He waited for her to say his name.

“‘Over the proud coral cry of the cock,’” she said, picking up where he had left off. “‘And the soft stone smile of an angel is touched by that dark miracle of change which makes new magic in a dusty world.’”

A relaxed smile overcame them. But before they could say another word, the famous Mississippian wearing a starched ivory white suit placed his hand on Pearl’s shoulder.

“Well, it would appear cunning truly is the art of concealing our own defects,” the boy said in a slow, Southern drawl as he noted Pearl’s attempt to conceal her true identity.

“I thought you were supposed to be Mark Twain?”

“I am Mark Twain,” the boy said feigning surprise as he twirled his chalk-colored mustache and arched a matching pair of bushy white eyebrows.

“Then learn his quotes, Bill.”

“She’s right, you know. ‘Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering the weaknesses of others’— it’s William Hazlitt.”

“I had a feeling the two of you would get along,” Bill said, abandoning his character completely.

“Hoag meet Pearl. Pearl, this is Hoag. Pearl’s my sister. She’s also read everything Thomas Wolfe ever wrote in case you haven’t figured it out yet.”

“Your sister?”

“Yes, and if you can stand her for more than five minutes, you will quickly realize that she can’t stand to be sidelined. Unless she’s watching you play ball. Isn’t that right, Pearl Elizabeth?” Bill said, emphasizing the second half of her name.

Pearl pursed her lips tightly. The fact that her brother had used her father’s private term of endearment for her wasn’t the thing that stuck in her craw, however. Like everyone else in Eden, Pearl had become quite enamored with the boy who had led the Eden Eagles to their first undefeated season in recent memory. Indeed, Pearl had been watching John Hoagland. Up to now, however, her admiration of him had been surreptitious. Now, it seemed, her secret was laid bare. And the person from whom she had been keeping it was standing right there in front of her. Pearl loved her brother, but Bill always knew just how to get under her skin. And damn it, if he hadn’t done it again.

But before Pearl had a chance to respond, a boy dressed in a hunting jacket with matching khaki trousers who had been carrying on all night about how he had just returned from the green hills of Africa, tapped Bill on the shoulder and whisked him off into another room.

“So you’re a fan of Thomas Wolfe,” John said, tugging self-consciously at his thin necktie.

“Obsessed really.”

“That’s the only way,” John replied, a hint of innuendo in his voice.

“Yes, it is,” Pearl said knowingly.

John laughed comfortably, and the curl of his smile caused the deep brown pools of his eyes to sparkle and come to life. And in that moment, something inside Pearl—a buried life, perhaps—was awakened for the first time.


CHAPTER III

Two weeks had passed since the party. It was as if John Hoagland had never existed. The fact that Bill was so coy whenever Pearl asked about John’s whereabouts incensed her beyond reprieve. She figured her brother was trying to protect her. But protect her from what? Hell, she thought, What’s Bill think— I can’t look out for myself? I’ve been looking out for myself for eighteen years. Been looking out for Bill, too. No boy’s going to change that. All those summer days out on the lake in the Beetle Cat; the countless afternoons in the basement of the funeral parlor playing hide and seek in the coffins; that day we peered down on Dyas Bertrand’s mangled body and vowed never to tell another living soul what we’d seen. An entire life connected by secrets and pacts and things we’ve only told each other. And now, after all that, there’s something he isn’t telling me?

“I want to know—”

“Know what?” Bill replied.

“I want to know why you never bring John around. All your other friends— you bring them. But never John. I want to know why, and I demand that you tell me.” A long, drawn out silence teetered like a seesaw between them. Finally, Bill reached into his back pocket and produced a letter.

“Came today,” Bill said. “Said he wanted to write you a letter. Don’t know why, really. Would have been much easier for him just to have told you.”

“Told me— told me what?” Bill stared at his sister sheepishly. “Told me what, Bill?”

“Just read the letter, Pearl.”

Pearl snatched the letter out of Bill’s hand, and in a single, fluid motion pulled the contents from its protective sheath.

It turns out, it was never John’s intention to come to the party that night. The letter laid it all out. The reason Pearl had not seen John around town was that John Hoagland was not from Eden. He lived with his brother, Jack, and father, Gorman Hoagland, in Bourrie, a small town a few miles down the road. As the letter explained, John had met Bill back in April when Bill had stopped in to buy nails for the coffins. The two boys began to talk. Bill told John about the Eden School for Boys that was to open that fall and asked John if he would be attending. John said he knew of the school, but he had not broached the subject with his father. Two hundred dollars a year was a significant amount of money for the owner of a small grain and feed shop.

When Bill told his father about this conversation, William Whitchard immediately arranged to pay John’s way just as he paid the way of any boy whose lack of financial assets might stand in the way of his aspirations. But the day Gorman Hoagland received the letter informing him that his son had been accepted at Eden, he tore the letter up right in front of John. According to Gorman Hoagland an education would serve no purpose in furthering his son’s ability to measure grain and cut twine.

“We have a business to run, son,” he replied sternly. “There’s no time for such folly. I don’t care who pays for it.”

Rather than obey his father’s decree as he had all his life, John decided he would simply leave— leave Bourrie, leave his father, leave the store he was to run someday, leave it all. But when John learned about the costume party, he couldn’t resist. He wanted a glimpse of the direction his life might have taken had his father not been the boorish man he was. So John pretended to be the author whose work he admired most and he came. The following morning, John planned to do what Thomas Wolfe had done. He would leave his hometown in search of something—anything—as long as it was not Bourrie.

All throughout the night, John knew he would be leaving the following morning. What John did not known was that he would meet Pearl. Their animated conversation had lasted long after the party ended. They talked for hours, finding in each other a kindred spirit for which they had no idea they had even been searching. But as the dark cloak of night gave way to dawn, they donned their disguises and parted ways. But just as John had not counted on meeting Pearl, he had not counted on his father’s failing health catching up with him. And when John awoke the following morning, he learned his father had suffered a stroke. And just like that John’s plans to slip free of the shackling bonds that connected him to his father were dashed.

“But I don’t understand,” Pearl said, looking up from the letter. “This explains what John was doing at the party, but it doesn’t explain where he’s been the last two weeks.”

“Read the second page, Pearl.”

Pearl pealed back the flap of the envelope and pulled out a second piece of parchment. The letter went on to explain that when John learned of his father’s illness he had tried to buoy his spirits by telling him he had met someone. And for a brief moment, Pearl, I swear I thought I’d gotten through to him In that instant, it was like he was human. But it only lasted a moment, and then he became the cold and callous man I have known all my life. And while I feel things for you I have never felt for anyone outside my family, Jack and father are all I have. And for whatever reason, father does not want me to see you, or anyone else from the party for that matter. I know not why, but he doesn’t. I need to respect a dying man’s wish, Pearl. And this is why I have not come to see you.

“You should have told me, Bill,” Pearl said, tucking the letter back into the envelope. “I wouldn’t have traded this letter for anything in the world— but you should have told me.”

Because his father would not permit her to see her, over the next few weeks John wrote letters to Pearl nearly every day. In them, John wrote extensive about the man who prohibited him for setting foot in the Eden. Much in the same way Pearl had built her world around her father, the first eighteen years of John’s life had revolved around Gorman Hoagland. Gorman’s relationship with his son was, however, nothing like Pearl’s relationship with William. Gorman and John were like two magnets drawn together. But when the two men tried to have any real moment of intimacy, their personalities pushed them apart. In one particularly poignant letter, John explained to Pearl his decision to leave Bourrie had been just as much about his trying to escape the orbit of his father as it was to discover a world that lay beyond his father’s control. But it was a letter John hand-delivered to Pearl on 6 February 1937 that made John realize that, in the end, we control nothing.

According to John, his father died peacefully. ‘Without a splinter of pain’ was the way he had phrased it when he told Pearl of his father’s passing. Even in death, Pearl thought to herself, John was capable of poise and grace. Without a splinter of pain— as always his phrasing was perfect.

Gorman Hoagland left behind very few physical possessions. There was the Hoagland Grain & Feed Store, the store’s inventory, ill-stocked at best, and an old Model T which Gorman had foolishly accepted as settlement on an unpaid debt. Despite his financial insolvency, however, Gorman Hoagland left behind the greatest gift he could have bestowed upon his sons: Gorman Hoagland left John and Jack alone. He would never lay another hand on them, never exchange another cross word with them, never again would he hurt or humiliate them.

But what John thought to be a blessing was actually a curse. John’s brother, Jack, was able to make peace with their father’s passing. John, however, was never able to shake the presence of a man he thought death had banished from his life. All the questions he wanted to ask, all the answers he needed to hear—all the unresolved things in his life—these things were now encased in a pine box buried deep beneath the earth. His father slept in eternal darkness; but John was forever awake, destined to search for the answers to the questions he only wished he had asked. And as the years passed, John was haunted by Gorman’s ghost, beseeched by unresolved anger and rage. But instead of dealing his anger, he would turn it against everyone that ever loved him.


* * * * *

The morning of Gorman Hoagland’s death, William Whitchard asked Pearl if she would extend an invitation to John and his brother, Jack, to join them for dinner. Judging from the startled look on her face, Pearl was completely surprised by her father’s request. She had assumed her surreptitious relationship with John was a tightly-guarded secret known only by her, John and Bill. And while Bill had initially held back that first letter from her, he was now just as much in on that secret as the two budding lovers themselves. So Pearl simply had no idea how her father could have possibly known about John.

“You may think it odd I asked you to invite the Hoagland boys over for supper,” William said as he retrieved a glass pitcher from the kitchen cabinet.

“What makes you think I have even given it a second thought,” Pearl said dismissively.

“Pearl Elizabeth,” William said knowingly. “I know you better than anyone else, and I know you have been trying to figure out my intention all day long. You see, a few nights ago I came across a box containing some—”

“Letters,” Pearl blurted out. Of course, the letters.

“Yes,” William said, hesitating briefly. “I assume they are letters John wrote you while his father was dying,” William continued as he removed a stack of plates from the cabinet. “Now I know what you’re going to say: that your letters are your business and indeed they are. So you need not worry— I didn’t read them.”

“Not even a peek?” Pearl replied with a hint of suspicion.

“No, my sweet, I mentioned the letters only because I wanted you to know that I had seen them.”

Indeed, William Whitchard had not read John’s letters. The truth was he had only seen them; but for William their mere existence was enough.

William knew his daughter was in love with John Hoagland. Those letters—dozens and dozens, an entire box filled with letters—stood as a testament to that. And William knew the kind of love that had come to his daughter only comes once in a lifetime, and when it does, you must snap it up like a child snaps up fireflies at sunset. If only William could let his daughter capture that love before it flew off into the night then he knew he had done his job. And so, when the topic of Gorman Hoagland’s funeral arose that evening over dinner, William Whitchard was insistent. Naturally, he would oversee all the arrangements. But it was Pearl who performed perhaps the most important task that cold winter day they put Gorman Hoagland in the ground.

“You need to do this,” she said, holding John’s hand tightly as the hard, brittle earth was turned back and the casket lowered in the ground. “You need to say something.”

John adjusted the collar of his overcoat, pulling it tightly around his neck. He then reached into the pocket of his wool overcoat and retrieved a book. The corners were dog-eared and frayed. But the pages were still unspoiled, and the words spoke to him as they always had: O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again. And as John read from the book that had inspired him to leave Bourrie in the first place, he couldn’t help but think those words had been written for him and him alone.


CHAPTER IV

It has been said that spring is eternal, and that a love planted in spring, that most fertile of seasons, has the best chance of blossoming and becoming timeless. Such was the case with John and Pearl. By April, the long, cold winter had come to an end. The people left their houses, the flowers began to bloom, and the ice that blanketed Lake Jordan could be heard cracking in the distance like an old man adjusting his bones after a long winter’s slumber. The warmth of the sun turned the snow to water, the water turned to streams, and the streams tumbled to the sea like a thousand veins, nourishing the earth and bringing life back to the mountain.

It was in those warm spring months that Pearl and John’s love was born; that which had brought them together after the death of John’s father in the dark, discontented winter of 1937 had, by the spring, inescapably linked them to one another.

One of their favorite pastimes was to find a rock down by the old rock quarry, sit on that rock, and watch the sun set. They imagined that the fiery orange and red ball was about to ignite and explode, and told stories about what would happen if it did.

Pearl liked to keep her hair pulled back behind her head, tying it off with a string or piece of fabric. John loved nothing more than to untie the knot and watch her radiant, strawberry blond hair tumble down across the rock. It framed her face perfectly, spreading out like long, ruby tentacles spun from the red clay of the earth itself. And sometimes, if the sun was just right, the strands would sparkle and glisten, and the warm breeze would catch those loose strands and they would brush up against John’s face, caressing him like a thousand fingers.

Sometimes John would take his shirt off, and place it under their heads so they could lean back and watch the day turn to night. Then once the slow burning sun slithered over the horizon they would take long walks through the forest lining the lake’s perimeter, ambling aimlessly under the towering trees that sprouted out of the dark, rich earth and ascended toward heaven. Sometimes they would talk for hours; other times they said nothing at all. But even then, even in those long, furtive moments of silence that passed between them, their silence spoke volumes, for silence is the true language of love.

When they weren’t sitting on their favorite rock down by Lake Jordan, John and Pearl spent their days in the library on the first floor of the Whitchard funeral parlor reading. In recent weeks, Pearl had noticed John looking at a picture in a small silver frame on the mantle above the fireplace. The first few times, Pearl did not acknowledge John’s stealthy glances. She was certain John recognized one of the people in the picture. He was a young, and judging from the broad smile stretched across his face, very happy William Whitchard. Pearl knew, however, it was the identity of the woman standing next to her father that John was trying to discern.

“She’s my mother,” Pearl said without looking up. “The woman in the picture— she’s my mother.”

John knew Pearl’s mother had died many years ago, but John knew better than to pry. He figured Pearl would tell him about her mother when she was ready. And when Pearl got off the sofa, and walked over to the mantle, John realized that time had come.

Pearl handed the silver frame to John. John took the picture from Pearl and examined it closely.

“They seem to be very much in love.”

“They were.”

“What is that they’re standing in front of? It looks like a seminary?” John said, noting an open Bible embossed in the stone arch under which William and his bride were standing.

“There was a time when father considered going into the ministry. ‘Everyone likes the convenience of one-stop shopping,’ he used to joke when people would ask him about it. That’s where the picture was taken,” Pearl said, wiping the dust off the arched entrance of the building through which William Whitchard would never pass.

“So what happened? To your mother, I mean?””

Not much was said of Grace Elizabeth Whitchard. The facts surrounding her death, however, were well known to those who lived in Eden. But because John was from Bourrie, he was not familiar with the story and so Pearl told John about her mother and how the ‘Red Mask of Death’ had snuffed out her life at the tender age of thirty-three.

“Tuberculosis. Back then, Eden was a haven for those who contracted the disease. I’m told some of the best facilities in the country were here. Most of the people recovered.”
Pearl stopped short. Obviously, Grace Whitchard had not.

“The first few months of her illness, father had tried to take care of her himself,” Pearl said.

“It must have been very hard on him.”

“As the town’s undertaker, father had been surrounded by death and illness his entire life. He always says, ‘Death is the thing that makes me strong.’”

“But he was losing her and he knew it,” John said, completing the thought.

“The loss of a wife is perhaps the hardest thing of all, I imagine.”

“But your father has never mentioned her. In fact, I have never heard anyone mention your mother.”

“I guess the reason no one ever talks about her is they want Bill and me to remember her the way father did before the disease— sweet and innocent and without anguish or agony.”
John allowed Pearl a moment to steal her own furtive glance at the silver picture frame. He then kissed Pearl gently on the cheek, and returned to the leather sofa.

Instead of returning to the sofa, Pearl went to the window and stared blankly into the cemetery that buttressed against the backyard of the Whitchard funeral parlor. The granite markers rose out of the ground like an endless row of rotten teeth— crooked, chipped, and covered in moss. Those endless rows of markers were not, however, the object of Pearl’s intense, penetrating gaze.

“Do you ever have dreams?”

“Of course, who doesn’t have dreams?” John said, his nose buried deep in the book he was reading.

“Freud says dreams are the link to our subconscious thoughts— that in them we work out the things we can’t figure out when we are awake.”

“Yes, I’m aware of the theory.”

“Well, do you believe it?”

“Let me hear your dream,” John said, placing the book on the table.

“When Bill and I were kids we explored every inch of this town. Father always told us, ‘Eden and everything in it is ripe for exploration.’ But there was one place we were always forbidden to go. It was the one place in Eden we were told to stay away from.”

An eerie calm had come over Pearl, and John, who was now at the window, realized that Pearl was staring at a shed embedded in a distant grassy knoll a hundred yards from where they were standing.

“And this dream— it involves that shed?”

Pearl nodded her head, acknowledging that, yes, the shed played a big part in her dream. It was a dream about death; a dream about the woman no one in Eden dared talk about; a dream about her mother—

“In the dream, Bill and I pry apart the wooden fence separating the backyard of the parlor from the cemetery. We step through the small opening in the fence, and walk past the granite statues toward the one place father has expressly forbidden us to go. We know we’re not supposed to go in that shed, but it’s as if there’s something in there we just have to see. We open the door. It takes a few seconds for our eyes to adjust to the darkness. And there it is— just staring us straight in the face. At first we think it’s nothing more than a pair of cast iron shackles hanging from the wall. Then we realize something is in those shackles—”

“What is it?”

“A skeleton— the skeleton in the shed is my mother.”

And John wasn’t sure which frightened him more— what had happened in that shed or what would happen if he took his eyes off it for even a second.

“How long have you been having this dream?”

“Ever since your father’s funeral.”

“Do you remember her? Do you remember her at all?”

“No, not really. All I remember was the day father accepted the inevitable and decided mother needed to be put in a facility. I was there— Bill, too. I wish I could tell you more, but he’s only told the story once.”

“You don’t need to tell me anything else. As far as I’m concerned you don’t need to ever mention her again— that is unless, of course, you want to.”

“Thank you, John. Other than Bill, you are the only person I’ve ever talked with about her.”

Pearl reached out and touched the silver urn containing her mother’s ashes. She gently ran her fingers across the name—GRACE ELIZABETH WHITCHARD—etched in the urn.

“But the thing that’s so weird— there’s nothing in that shed but an old piece of granite father brought back from Europe after the War.”

“I thought your father forbid you from going in the shed.”

“Just because he told us not to go, doesn’t mean we didn’t.” And with that, the gloom lifted and a mischievous smile flashed across Pearl’s face. It was a smile with which John had grown accustomed, a smile he had come to love.

“Well, I can assure you if anything as sinister as you have imagined really did happen, surely you would know. Trust me, Pearl, no one could keep a secret like that.”

A secret? It had never even occurred to her. Suddenly, a chill shot down her spine. The idea that her mother’s true fate was shrouded in secrecy rather than that which she had been led to believe all these years was more horrifying than any nightmare Pearl could have ever imagined.

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