The Line

ONE

“All right, you handsome devils, if y’all are here for this evening’s Liar’s Tour of Savannah, then you are at the right place,” I said, surveying the group of men who had found their way to the Waving Girl statue. Four middle-aged corporate types, young enough not to have gone completely soft from life behind a desk, old enough that moving them around too quickly in the Savannah heat would be a little risky.

“Now the bad news is that it is hot,” I said while slipping off my backpack and fishing out four Liar’s Tour souvenir plastic cups. A trickle of sweat rolled down my back as I handed them out. Anyone who truly thought ladies didn’t sweat never spent the summer in Georgia. “The good news is that it is legal in Savannah’s historic district to imbibe on the streets as long as you are over twenty-one.” I hesitated before the last member of my pack, who had a full head of silver hair. “You are twenty-one, aren’t you?” I smiled and winked at him.

“At least twice over,” his buddy said and laughed. I handed the cup over.

I pulled a large thermos of gin and tonic from my backpack. “Sorry, the ice cubes may have watered this down a bit, but we’ll hit River Street next and you can pick your own poison.” I looked around to make sure the coast was clear before filling their cups. My twenty-first birthday was still a couple of weeks away, and I didn’t have a license to serve liquor. I’d never had any problems before, but I didn’t want to press my luck by snubbing the law right under an officer’s nose. I dropped the empty thermos back into my bag and swung it over my shoulder. Its weight pulled the front of my shirt tighter, and I noticed that the men were appreciating the view. As long as they didn’t touch, they could look for a bit. I counted down to myself: Five-four-three-two-one. Enough. I waved a finger in front of my face to direct their gaze upward.

“I am very pleased to meet you all. My name is Mercy Taylor, and I am a native Savannahian. I’m going to take you fine upstanding gentlemen around town, get you a little buzzed, and tell you some black and wicked lies about the people of my dear home. Now you might ask why I would make up lies about a city with so many interesting true stories to tell.” I looked directly at the roundest one and paused. “Go on, ask…”

He smiled. “Well, why would you?”

“Let me tell you why. First of all, most of the ‘truths’ ”—I stretched out the word to the point of irony—“you are going to hear about Savannah have been so embellished as to be unrecognizable to those who lived through the circumstances. And frankly, by the time I turned twelve, I was already sick to death of hearing the same old stories over and over again. One fine summer day I was complaining to my dear Uncle Oliver about this fact, so he filled up a traveler cup very much like the ones you hold in your hands and let me lead him around, paying me a dollar for every colorful lie I could come up with on the spot.” I paused again and gave them a very serious look. “Now, when it comes time to tip your guide, please do remember that Oliver is family, and that my cost of living has greatly increased since I was twelve.”

The guys laughed, and I smiled. “But honestly, I think the real reason I do it is ’cause my Aunt Iris volunteers for the historical society, and it pisses her off to no end when she hears one of my tales being repeated as gospel. Take, for example, my story about this fine lady here.” I motioned to the statue of Florence Martus. “Florence here was known as Savannah’s Waving Girl. What everyone else in town is going to tell you is that young Florence got her heart broken by some sailor, who left promising to return and marry her. Between 1887 and 1931, she came out to meet every single ship pulling into Savannah, hoping that her man might be on board. Tragic story of an innocent girl done wrong, right?”

“Sounds like it,” one of my group chimed in. He was a pleasant looking guy with glasses and thinning hair.

“Okay,” I snorted, “you expect me to believe that any woman is going to come out and wave at ships for forty-four years just because she was waiting on some man? You boys sure know how to flatter yourselves.” I rolled my eyes, and my fellows all laughed on cue.

“So what was really going on here, I found myself asking, and I came to the following conclusion: Florence Martus, Savannah’s own Waving Girl, was involved in the transport of contraband goods, and all this waving she was doing was actually her way of signaling information to the smugglers. Think about it. A code based upon what color apron she was waving and different signaling patterns would be complex enough to tell them everything they needed to know about where, when, and with whom they should be transacting their business. This woman was the center of one of the world’s greatest and longest-lasting black market rings, importing everything from slaves to opium, you name it. Heck, during Prohibition half the rum in this country was welcomed into port by our Florence. Broken heart? Maybe. Fat bank account, for sure.” I pointed at the dog by her side. “I bet even her collie there wore diamonds at home.

“Now if you will all bid adieu to Miss Florence and follow me, we will head up River Street, where I am going to introduce you to some of the deadliest frozen concoctions you will ever taste.” I turned and began to lead the way to where King Cotton had abdicated in favor of the tourist bars and restaurants that now fueled the city’s economy.

“Mind the cobblestones,” I warned as we approached the old ballast-lined roadway. “They’ve been the death of more than a few people, and not just from tripping over them. Back in Savannah’s dueling days the men who were too poor for pistols used these stones as weapons. Many an argument were ended by a well-aimed shot-put or slingshot.”

The River Street regulars—the shopkeepers, the homeless, and the waiters—waved when they saw me and called out my name as we passed. I hadn’t been lying to the guys when I’d told them I was a native. My family had been in Savannah since shortly after the Civil War. We were a part of its weft and weave, even if we weren’t to be counted among its founding families.

I led the group to the frozen drink bar and waited outside, mentally plotting out our route and spinning through my standard list of lies. I would lead the guys counterclockwise through the city, stopping upstairs at Factors Walk where I’d point out the ironwork from the old Wetter mansion. Then I’d share my malicious theory that the missing body of Alberta Wetter’s relative, Mrs. Haig, had been served to the family as their Christmas Eve dinner by a kitchen slave whom Mrs. Haig had mistreated. Next, I’d take them down Bull Street, not only because it was the oldest street in Georgia, but also because it was a fittingly named path for the Liar’s Tour. We’d work our way over and stop at the Juliette Gordon Low house, where I’d talk about how the CIA once used Girl Scout cookies to test the effects of LSD on a wide population. Outbreak of UFO sightings, anybody?

I’d spin a few tall tales along the way about anything that caught the guys’ attention, until we had made our way over to Colonial Park Cemetery. There, I would relate how the Nobel Jones family came to change their name to De Renne. Of course my story didn’t play out well on any conventional timeline, but making the apocryphal Rene Rondolier, historic Savannah’s answer to Boo Radley, the progenitor of the surviving branch of the Jones line made for great storytelling. Forbidden love, two murdered children, trumped up charges. It was the kind of tall tale people wanted to believe, even when I kept repeating with every other breath that I was lying through my teeth. It had also very nearly sent Aunt Iris into a fit of apoplexy, so I tried to use it only a few times a year. I’d pick out a few stones on Colonial’s back wall to talk about and then I’d drop the group off at the Pirate’s House, where they could have dinner or carry on with their drinking, whichever they chose.

I put on my best smile to welcome the guys as they spilled out of the bar and back onto the street. “Room for one more?” a newcomer asked. It was Tucker Perry, a middle-aged lawyer and real-estate developer. His blond curls were carefully coiffed to appear carelessly tousled, and they framed soulless pale blue eyes. He glowed with a golfer’s tan and the easy insincerity of a man who has always believed he’s at the top of the food chain. “I’ve been wanting to come with you for quite a while, and there’s no time like the present.”

“We’re already under way, maybe some other time,” I said, using my best poker face to hide my distaste for the man.

“Oh come on now, Mercy.” He smiled, narrowing his eyes in a way I am sure he thought was seductive. “Let me tag along, I promise I won’t be any trouble.” The guys shifted a little, waiting for a cue from me. I held my ground, and Tucker took it as a challenge. “Has she told you any of the spooky stuff yet?” he questioned the others. “I’m not talking the ghost stuff. You know our girl Mercy here is a witch, right? She and her whole family.”

Everyone knew the Taylors, and ever since our arrival, Savannah’s tribal knowledge has allowed that we were witches, even though most of the tribe didn’t really understand what the word “witch” meant. My family had always had enough money to ensure a welcome into polite society, but in most situations, that welcome never extended beyond the most superficial of levels. Truth was, we’d always been held at a respectful arm’s length, sensed to be useful but dangerous—kind of like a nuclear power plant. People liked to benefit from our presence, but they didn’t want to think about us too often or in too much detail.

But while my family tree was electric with power, I had none of it. As fate would have it, I was the first total dud in a line of witches that could be traced back at least six hundred years. Although no one other than my Aunt Iris’s husband would ever say so openly, my family viewed my lack of power as an unfortunate if not entirely debilitating birth defect. Well, maybe that’s too strong. Maybe they saw it as being on par with my ginger coloring—not ideal, but nothing to be ashamed of.

“Mr. Perry, if I had any magic powers, I assure you that I would use them to make you disappear,” I said, provoking a laugh from my group.

Perry didn’t like being refused, and he liked being laughed at even less. “No seriously, Mercy. Tell them,” he said. Then, turning toward the men, “Trust me, her aunt Ellen and I have shared some very unusual pillow talk.”

“I think we should continue on with our tour,” I said, ignoring Tucker’s comment. “Maybe another time, Mr. Perry.”

“Oh, I do hope so, Miss Taylor,” he said, reaching out to touch me. I stepped back quickly, and my guys stepped in between us, forming a protective wall. Over their shoulders I could see Perry lifting his hands in surrender, an oily smile on his face. He turned and started walking south on River Street, but then stopped and called back to me.

“Mercy, remind Ellen that I will be picking her up tonight for Tillandsia. As soon as you and Maisie turn twenty-one, you’ll both be very welcome. I’d love to be your sponsor. After all, it was your mama who brought me into the fold.” Tucker’s mention of my mother made my stomach turn. It was bad enough to know my aunt was involved with him. I certainly didn’t want to consider the possibility that my mother had once had a connection to him. The thought was enough to make me lose my game face, and my guys noticed it.

“Are you okay?” the tall one asked. He probably had a daughter my age, I realized. “Do we need to worry about him for you?”

“Why no, not at all,” I said and managed a not-too-fake sounding laugh. I was getting too good at this lying game. “You just witnessed a bit of our local color.”

“What was this Tillandsia thing he was talking about?” the round one asked.

The Tillandsia Club was a dinosaur, a throwback to the days when Savannah society was still comprised of iron magnates and wannabe railroad barons. Its ranks have included senators, congressmen, governors, bankers, judges, and other such white collar thieves. Social democratization had passed Tillandsia by entirely. Even today, the only way in was to be sponsored by a member in good standing. The members of the club wanted to be able to get their good times on without word of their behavior getting out and tarnishing their public image. Tillandsia was one of the few groups to which my family’s wealth had opened the door, and since Ellen could drink a man twice her size under the table, it seemed like a natural fit for her.

“Tillandsia is the genus of Spanish moss,” I said, gesturing widely at a cluster of trees that were visible from where we stood on River Street. “It’s also the name of my aunt’s gardening club.” I lied about the club if not the classification of the plant, knowing that it would help move the guys off the subject. “Onward and upward, gentlemen!”

Our route would take us over some large cobblestones and up some uneven steps, and I knew it would be best to get the guys past these hurdles before their drinks kicked in. I hustled them over to the trees between the Old Savannah Cotton Exchange and Bay Street, releasing any thoughts of Tucker Perry as I breathed in the dappled golden light, letting Savannah possess me. One of the ghost tours passed by, and the guide raised his hand to me in greeting as he carried on talking about Moon River Brewing and the ghosts that bump around on the building’s upper floors. The only hauntings I ever mentioned on my tour were the ones I knew to be false, particularly if they could be twisted into stories that were funnier than they were creepy. After all, I advertised as the Liar’s Tour.

Truth was, there was magic in Savannah, magic that was beyond that of the Taylors. Sometimes I wondered if my family had come here in an attempt to tame this raw energy or maybe even harness it and make it their own. Savannah had the power to hold people long after their final sell-by date had been carved into marble. You didn’t need to be a witch, or even a psychic, to see spirits in Savannah—you just had to pay attention.

I let the tour proceed on automatic. The guys were happy just to be outside in the warm evening air, momentarily free from the pressures of work and family, with a more than adequate, but still legal, blood alcohol content. My stories flowed without interruption until Drayton Street, when one of the guys asked, “So this cemetery we’re going to, is it the one from that Garden at Midnight movie?”

“No, that is Bonaventure,” I said, moving swiftly past the thought that my own mama was buried in Bonaventure. Death and life, death in life. The two weren’t just joined at the hip in Savannah, they were downright symbiotic. Witches, even powerful ones like my mama had been, aren’t immortal. Their lives are just as fragile as anyone else’s. “We are going to visit Colonial. Bonaventure is still an active cemetery,” I said. “There haven’t been any burials in Colonial since the 1850s. Everyone who loved anyone who’s buried there has long since passed themselves.”

I forced a smile onto my face and began my tale about Rene Rondolier, arriving beneath the Daughters of the American Revolution eagle just as I got to part about the illicit love affair between the giant and the Savannah belle. Sunset was still over an hour away, but the keepers of Colonial kept to a fixed calendar regardless of the sun’s opinion. “The gates are going to be locked soon, so let’s duck in real fast and head toward the back wall,” I said and began to guide them toward the tombstone-lined wall. I was still talking when I realized that the guys had fallen back; their attention had shifted from me to some fracas that was going on near the center of the cemetery.

An elderly but still sturdy woman with skin as dark as coffee was trundling along in a line as straight as the few remaining monuments would allow toward the gate we had entered moments before. I recognized her instantly. Known as Mother Jilo, she was a worker of Hoodoo, Savannah’s response to New Orleans’s Voodoo. The main difference between the two was that Hoodoo had at some point become decoupled from the African gods, leaving behind only the practice of sympathetic magic, a conjuring method that uses like to affect like. “Sympathetic” had always struck me as a rather warm and fuzzy term for a brand of magic that was most often used to seduce away otherwise faithful spouses and bring about the death of enemies. Over time, Hoodoo had even taken on a decidedly Protestant flavor, coming to be known as “root magic,” meaning that its power was rooted in the Bible itself. Those who practiced it, or at least practiced it well, were known as “root doctors.”

Jilo was the undisputed queen of Savannah’s root doctors, the large brim of her yellow sun hat shading cruel and mercenary eyes, her folding chair serving as the throne from where she ruled her empire. Only a local fool or an outsider ignorant of Savannah’s ways would ever mistake Jilo as anything other than the powerful tyrant that she was.

A much younger woman followed in Jilo’s wake, scurrying to catch up to her. When she got in front of Jilo, she collapsed onto her hands and knees. “Mother! I beg of you! I want to take it back,” she half moaned, half screamed as she reached out, trying to catch the older woman by the ankle.

Even in the failing light, my eyes were dazzled by the colors of Jilo’s ensemble—a large daffodil yellow sun hat and a violently purple dress that probably once fit her but now hung loosely from her bones. Her outfit was jarring against the vibrant green of the folded lawn chair she was half carrying, half using as a cane and the small red cooler she was clutching in her other hand. I shuddered as I considered the likely contents of the cooler.

“What do you think is going on there?” one of my guys asked as I approached them.

“I think that is something we best stay out of,” I responded.

Jilo managed to avoid the woman’s frantic grasp, stopping to swat at her with the chair. “Jilo done told you it too late to take back.”

“But I was wrong,” the woman cried, ducking her head beneath her raised arms. “He never cheated on me.”

“Well that between you and yo’ man.” Jilo wheezed and took another lumbering step toward the gate of the cemetery.

“But he’s going to die, Mother!” The desperation in the woman’s voice was heartbreaking The tall, paternal member of my group stepped in front of me, placing himself as a protective barrier between me and the unpleasant goings-on. Lord knows, growing up in Savannah, I’d seen much worse skirmishes than this little drama. I poked my head out around him.

“That right, he is,” Jilo responded, her voice as cold as ice water. “That what you done paid Jilo for.” The old woman straightened her back and coughed repeatedly, then bent and spat on the ground.

“But I was wrong! I’m sorry.” The woman fell facedown into the turf, sobbing.

“That ain’t Jilo’s fault. Now, if you want Jilo’s help getting a new man, you let her know. That she can help you with, but yo’ old man, he as good as gone, and the quicker you get used to it, the better.” Jilo continued on her way as though nothing untoward had happened, passing beneath the eagle as we silently watched her.

“That was really quite extraordinary,” the tall guy said in an undertone. “This ‘mother’ arranges murders for hire?”

“Isn’t that a police station on the other side of the wall there? Should we maybe go report this?” my round fellow asked. Beads of sweat had popped up on top of his bald head.

“That would be a waste of time,” I responded. “The police know exactly what she’s up to.”

“And they don’t do anything about it?”

“Honestly, there isn’t much they could do. You see, Mother Jilo isn’t any kind of hit man, she’s a magic worker.”

“A witch?” the tall one asked, laughing. The sobbing woman had pulled herself up off the ground and was weaving toward the exit as falteringly as a drunk.

“No, definitely not a witch,” I said, “but as close as you can get to one without being the genuine article. She works spells for revenge, for money, for love …” I was suddenly struck with an idea that I wasn’t comfortable entertaining. It was the kind of idea that could lead me down a path I knew better than to tread.

“For gullible people, like that poor soul,” the quietest member of my crew chimed in.

For a few moments the guys stood around, staring wordlessly at me. “Ah, I get it,” the round one blurted out with a snort. “You’re still lying to us aren’t you?”

I laughed along with him. “You got me,” I lied. “I don’t have the slightest idea what any of that was about.” I heard the bells from St. John’s begin to ring the hour. It was 8 P.M., and I knew the city workers would show up at any moment to lock Colonial up for the night. “Come on, y’all,” I said, moving toward the gate. “I am going to introduce you to the ghost of Billy Bones.”