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He nodded, but then looked down.
"Worse. Emily locked her in a closet when the time come," he said. It looked like he had tears in his eyes.
"What? You mean while she was giving birth?" I asked. He nodded.
"Left in there for hours and when she finally opened the door . . . well, instinct takes over, I suppose. Charlotte had bit the umbilical cord in two and tied it herself. She was covered with blood.
"Emily let her put the baby in the nursery, but a few days later, I seen her slip out of the house with the baby in a basket. I followed her and watched her put the baby in a field near the 'Douglases' house and after she left, I went to Carlton Douglas and his wife and told them someone left a baby on their property.
"They were happy to take him in. They named him Homer and brought him up as best they could. Emily was pretty mean toward him and always chased him off the property."
"But Charlotte must have realized who he was, right?" I asked.
"If she did, she never said nothin'."
"You never told her?" Gavin asked.
Luther stared at us a moment and then shook his head.
"I thought it would have been too cruel, too painful for her. Instead, after Emily finally went to hell, I brought Homer into our lives more and more until you see he's here all the time."
"Charlotte must see the birthmark, if I spotted it," I said.
"Oh, I think she knows who Homer really is. She don't say it outright, but then, she don't have to." "Does Homer know?" Gavin asked.
"Not in so many words. He's the same as her . . . he feels things, knows things faster thrower his feelings than he knows them through words. He's part of nature here, as at home in these fields with these animals and with these trees and hills as anything that lives here.
"Well," he said, turning back to his truck engine, "that's the story. You wanted to know it, so you do. I wouldn't be proud of the tooth family history. As far as I can tell, even the ancestors were a hard, mean people. They was the kind of plantation owners who treated their slaves badly, the men raping and beatin' them and the women working the women slaves to death. The west field's full of slave dead. There are no markers, but I know where the graves are. My daddy showed me. If a slave got real sick, he told me, they'd throw him in the grave before he passed on."
"Oh, how horrible," I said, grimacing.
"Still want to own up to the Booth side?" he asked.
"I don't want to disown Charlotte," I said. He nodded.
"Yeah, I guess that's true enough." He wiped his neck with a
rag. "Hotter than a henhouse in heat tonight, ain't it?"
Gavin laughed.
"We got a swimmin' hole over the hill toward Howdy Fred's there," he said, pointing. "You just follow the gravel path and bear left when you reach the big oak tree. It's got a little dock with a rowboat. Water comes from an underground spring so it's refreshing."
He smiled.
"Charlotte and I, we used to sneak off there once in a while."
"Sounds great," Gavin said.
"Yeah, the plantation can't be blamed for the people who owned it, I suppose. Though it must've felt the burden," he added and nodded. "It must have felt the burden."
There was a long silence as the three of us grew deep in thought a moment.
"We better see what Jefferson's up to, Gavin," I said finally.
"Okay."
"Luther?" He looked up. "Thanks for trusting us with the story."
