through Iris’s veins (and to a lesser extent his own). My great-uncle Harper, and this was the revelation, said that maybe skipping a generation was God’s way of balancing out the world.
What Harper Evan Burch didn’t say, but that everyone else in Boiling Springs knew, was that, in the case of the Burch family, God had already balanced out the world by destroying a whole generation. The “smiting” had taken place two weeks after Iris’s wedding to Walter Wendell. Her mother and father had escorted her father’s two spinster sisters back to the ladies’ hometown of Macon, North Carolina, where the Burch family’s streak of mean had earned these two women a new last name. There they were known as the “Burr Sisters.” There a fire swept through the family’s former plantation house and killed them all in their sleep. Iris and Baby Harper were left with the green-shuttered colonial in Boiling Springs, but the land in Macon, according to the sisters’ will, went to a local society of cat lovers, a member of which had traveled to Venice, Italy, and reported back that there were entire islands there set aside as cemeteries for their friends the noble felines. The charred remains of the house and the surrounding fifty-five acres became just that kind of island right there in Macon. After the will had gone through probate and the deed to the land was transferred, an allegation surfaced that the Burr Sisters hadn’t even liked cats. They just liked their niece and nephew less.
I never saw even a hint of my great-uncle’s early feelings toward DeAnne. When I was growing up, he spent a lot of time over at the blue and gray ranch house, though he avoided dinnertime whenever possible. My great-uncle would show up right as dessert was being served. DeAnne never had any pretensions that she could produce edible baked goods, so store-bought cakes and pies or wobbly cubes of Jell-O (“homemade”) were what we all looked forward to at the end of our meals.
Baby Harper usually brought with him a couple of shirts along with an envelope containing the buttons that had fallen off them. DeAnne would take out her sewing basket, and my great-uncle would sit down next to her on the couch, leaning his head in to hers as if he were the one guiding the needle up and down. DeAnne never seemed to mind. I thought there was real affection between them.
I asked him that August night if that was true.
He nodded and said, “Linda Vista, I fell in love with your momma the day she married Thomas.”
T HERE WAS A GHOST WHO HAUNTED N ORTH C AROLINA . H ER name was Virginia Dare, and there was no historical record of her after the ninth day of her life. Her father’s name was Ananias, and her mother’s was Eleanor. She was born on August 18, 1587, which was a Monday, and she was baptized that following Sunday. Because of that drop of water, whatever became of her body, her soul was welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven. This fact kept John White, her grandfather and the man who failed her, from drowning himself at high tide. Virginia—or should I call her by her last name, because from the first day of her life she had earned it—was born on Roanoke Island off the coast of what would be called North Carolina, where no English child’s umbilical cord had ever been cut and tied. Dare was brave and foolish and defiant to have survived the circumstances of her birth. It was undeniable that her arrival gave hope to the adults in the colony, a hope so pure and unreasonable that it lasted for only a couple of hours. Then her arrival reminded these adults that they were low on food and supplies and that their first winter in the New World was nearing. Dare reminded them that they could die. A small bundle of pink flesh triggered these emotions in them. The adults met and debated and decided that some among them would have to return to England for provisions and for additional men and women, who, and this part was left unsaid, would have a
What Harper Evan Burch didn’t say, but that everyone else in Boiling Springs knew, was that, in the case of the Burch family, God had already balanced out the world by destroying a whole generation. The “smiting” had taken place two weeks after Iris’s wedding to Walter Wendell. Her mother and father had escorted her father’s two spinster sisters back to the ladies’ hometown of Macon, North Carolina, where the Burch family’s streak of mean had earned these two women a new last name. There they were known as the “Burr Sisters.” There a fire swept through the family’s former plantation house and killed them all in their sleep. Iris and Baby Harper were left with the green-shuttered colonial in Boiling Springs, but the land in Macon, according to the sisters’ will, went to a local society of cat lovers, a member of which had traveled to Venice, Italy, and reported back that there were entire islands there set aside as cemeteries for their friends the noble felines. The charred remains of the house and the surrounding fifty-five acres became just that kind of island right there in Macon. After the will had gone through probate and the deed to the land was transferred, an allegation surfaced that the Burr Sisters hadn’t even liked cats. They just liked their niece and nephew less.
I never saw even a hint of my great-uncle’s early feelings toward DeAnne. When I was growing up, he spent a lot of time over at the blue and gray ranch house, though he avoided dinnertime whenever possible. My great-uncle would show up right as dessert was being served. DeAnne never had any pretensions that she could produce edible baked goods, so store-bought cakes and pies or wobbly cubes of Jell-O (“homemade”) were what we all looked forward to at the end of our meals.
Baby Harper usually brought with him a couple of shirts along with an envelope containing the buttons that had fallen off them. DeAnne would take out her sewing basket, and my great-uncle would sit down next to her on the couch, leaning his head in to hers as if he were the one guiding the needle up and down. DeAnne never seemed to mind. I thought there was real affection between them.
I asked him that August night if that was true.
He nodded and said, “Linda Vista, I fell in love with your momma the day she married Thomas.”
T HERE WAS A GHOST WHO HAUNTED N ORTH C AROLINA . H ER name was Virginia Dare, and there was no historical record of her after the ninth day of her life. Her father’s name was Ananias, and her mother’s was Eleanor. She was born on August 18, 1587, which was a Monday, and she was baptized that following Sunday. Because of that drop of water, whatever became of her body, her soul was welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven. This fact kept John White, her grandfather and the man who failed her, from drowning himself at high tide. Virginia—or should I call her by her last name, because from the first day of her life she had earned it—was born on Roanoke Island off the coast of what would be called North Carolina, where no English child’s umbilical cord had ever been cut and tied. Dare was brave and foolish and defiant to have survived the circumstances of her birth. It was undeniable that her arrival gave hope to the adults in the colony, a hope so pure and unreasonable that it lasted for only a couple of hours. Then her arrival reminded these adults that they were low on food and supplies and that their first winter in the New World was nearing. Dare reminded them that they could die. A small bundle of pink flesh triggered these emotions in them. The adults met and debated and decided that some among them would have to return to England for provisions and for additional men and women, who, and this part was left unsaid, would have a
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