“That boy won’t sleep right unless he can touch the puppet,” she said. “It’s real to him.”
“Freddy has Down syndrome?”
“He don’t know what he’s got, what he don’t got. Of everything, Freddy got the best.”
“Excuse me?”
“He’s got the run of the place in here. That’s the rule. He’s allowed outside.”
“I saw him outside last week. With security.”
“Freddy gets what he wants. He just asks. That’s what’s supposed to happen; people get what they want.”
“Heaven.”
She looked away.
“He’s a Kincannon child, isn’t he?” I asked. “Freddy?”
She stared the ancient eyes at me, like weighing my soul for a journey.
“He Miz Kincannon’s third boy, born between Racine and Nelson.”
I looked at Miss Gracie, let my eyes ask the question.
“He got born,” she said. “Not long after, he died. Leastwise, that’s what most people got told.”
She pushed me to the next doorway. I saw a gray-skinned, goggle-eyed apparition with a head like a pumpkin. The bars of the bed had been wrapped with foam to protect the head. The mattress was thick, like it was puffed with air. The man’s eyes turned to mine and I took an impression of inestimable sadness.
“Who is that, Miss Gracie?”
“Mister Johnny.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“He come out with the water on his brain and some other ’flictions.”
“Hydrocephaly.”
“He ain’t much work. Miz Kincannon always gets the best medical things, just got new beds to fight the sores. We had a problem with sores for years. It’s fixed now.”
“How old is Mister Johnny?”
“Thirty-nine.”
We passed another door. Inside, curled in a tight ball, was a man with mocha skin. I noted his mouth had been repaired, a cleft palate, I assumed. Stunted fingers jutted from flipperlike hands. The floor was padded, soft. There were toys in the corner, simple ones, a ball, inflatable blocks, an elementary jigsaw puzzle.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“Tyler.”
“He looks young.”
“Tyler’s just turned twenty-two.”
Tyler’s eyes opened and he made wet sounds that seemed to express happiness. His nose was running. Miss Gracie stepped into the room and pulled a tissue from a box at bedside, gently wiped his nose. She stroked his dark hair and cooed in his ear for several minutes and his eyes softened back into sleep. I saw her fingers brush his arm before she turned back in my direction.
We rolled onward for a few feet and stopped. She turned her face away, shame in her voice. “They ain’t nothing I can do to help you. It will come back to hurt others. I can’t do it. I thought you should know.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
She took the bedrails and wheeled me onward.
“How many people are here, Miss Gracie?”
“Five lives here. Four, I mean, with Lucas gone.”
“Freddy, Johnny, Tyler…three. That leaves one.”
The ancient eyes studied me again. “We’ll get there soon enough.”
I went fishing for information. “I met Lucas briefly. I hear he’s very bright. Is that true?”
She walked slow and her stockings hissed with every step. It put a soft rhythm behind her words as we moved through the halls of the building.
“You could see the smart pour off Lucas like heat. He was real different that way. The Kincannons, well, most of them are good-looking people.”
“But not real bright?”
“Ain’t much in them but vanilla pudding. Not dumb, but not smart, neither. Except for Miz Maylene, but her smarts are for jerkin’ people the way she needs. The boys know about making money, but ever’body knows money pulls money, so it’s no big deal. They all got a meanness they try and hide ’cept when no one’s looking. But a person always ends up what they are.”
“They come here? The brothers?”
“Mister Buck comes the most. He lives across the way. Miz Kincannon lives near, too. Mister Buck only comes ever’ now and then. I think Miz Kincannon makes him.”
Buck lives across the way. I was in one of the houses on the sprawling Kincannon estate. At least I now knew that much.
We came to an elevator. She inserted a key and pressed a button. I heard the whirr of a descending elevator. Miss Gracie waited with her arms crossed, watching the closed door. The years fell away in the subdued light, and I saw what a beautiful woman she must have been in her youth, the Egyptian features time had highlighted, not diminished.
The door hissed open. We ascended to the next floor, a soft bing announcing our arrival. I was rolled into a ballroom-size open space, a surprise, given the classic external architecture of the house.
The space was masculine, with slatwood floors, heavy wood and leather furnishings, oak wainscoting rising half the distance to fourteen-foot-high ceilings. The windows were large, with flowing scarlet drapes. There were plush carpets and brass lamps. There was a massive stone fireplace at the far end of the room. The air was cool and comfortable and smelled of bay rum and wood polish. The lights were dim, but the space seemed suffused with its own internal illumination.
The area facing the elevator was an office setting. A massive burled-wood desk centered an oriental carpet of red and gold. A green banker’s lamp cast a soft glow across the desk.
Behind the imposing desk, in a high-backed chair, sat a white-haired old man. He was small, lean, and compact, with shoulders unbent by time. His face was pink and calm and neatly shaven, his eyebrows full, his hair unshorn for years, flowing like a snowy mane. He wore a red velvet robe. Beneath the desk I saw blue pajama pants, leather slippers over bare feet.
The old gentleman was writing in a tablet with a fountain pen. His hands seemed delicate, the nails manicured. He worked with diligence, writing a few words, pursing his lips over what he’d written, continuing. He seemed oblivious to our presence.
“What you working on, Mister Buck?” Miss Gracie asked.
The old man looked up. It took several seconds for our presence to register.
“The answer to everything,” he said, his voice dry and faint. He returned to his work.
“May we see?”
His hands shook when he wasn’t writing. He licked his lips and hoisted the page for us to view. Meaningless scribbles. He giggled, a strand of drool falling from the side of his mouth. Miss Gracie made comforting childlike noises in his direction, returned me to the elevator. The doors hissed shut.
“Buck Kincannon Senior, right?” I said. “He looks healthy. Glowing.”
“Mister Buck wear a diaper. He sleep fifteen hours a day. Half the time, I spoon food in him. Car’s all shiny, but the motor’s burned up.”
The whole second floor was a sham, a theatrical set to give Daddy Kincannon a sense of place after all his years in business. The elevator door opened on the first floor.
“Why did you show me Mister Buck?” I asked.
A long pause. “He wanders, like Freddy. If you see him moving around, it’s best you know he ain’t tryin’ to hurt you. You understand?”
I found her tone discordant, almost imploring. I said, “I understand.” But I didn’t.
Miss Gracie wheeled me down the hall, again passing the occupied rooms.
“Lucas is kept in the red room?” I asked. “The padded room?”
