Cutler 04 - Midnight Whispers

"And the baby didn't have a birthmark that looks like a hoof on the back of his neck?" Luther opened a can of oil and began pouring it into the engine as if we weren't there. "We don't want to make any trouble. I just wanted to know the truth about this family. It's my family, too," I added.
    "Your ma, she was a Cutler, but she hadn't no Booth blood in her from what I understood to be the truth," Luther muttered.
    "But we inherited the Booths and their history too. Like it or not," I said.
    "It's best you don't know about this family," Luther said, pausing. "They was hard, cruel folk who married some religion with some superstition to come up with their mean ideas and ways. Charlotte, she was blessed with a softness and had sunshine in her face always. Them Booths, especially her father and that Emily, couldn't tolerate it and made her practically a prisoner in her own home. They worked her like a slave and never treated her like kinfolk.
    "After Mrs. Booth passed on, there was nothin' left to bring any kindness in that house. Why, they even whipped her from time to time. Emily did it just because she took to thinking there was a devilish spirit in Charlotte making her smile. She tried to whip the smile out of her, but Charlotte . ." He shook his head. "She didn't understand such cruelty and never gave in to it. You couldn't harden her heart. She forgave everyone everything all the time, even Emily." He spat and fixed his gaze on a memory as he continued.
    "She'd come out to me after a beating and I'd comfort her and she would tell me Emily couldn't help it. The devil was in her making her do it . . . stuff like that. I was planning on sending her to the devil myself only . . ."
    "Only what?"
    "That's how the devil gets you. He makes you commit a sin. Anyways . . . Charlotte and I . . . we got so we comforted each other. After my parents passed on, we was both alone. Especially at night. You understand?"
    Gavin and I exchanged knowing glances. "Yes, we do."
    "She got pregnant and as soon as Emily found out, she declared it was the devil's work and the baby would be an evil child. No one outside of the old man and Emily, and me, of course, knew that Charlotte was in a childbearing way. No one in town much saw her.
    "I remember the night she gave birth," he said, looking up at the old plantation house. "I remember her screaming. Emily was happy about that. She did everything she could to make things harder."
    "They kept her in the Bad Room?"
    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