Darling by Brad Hodson Page B

man’s trash…”
    She shook her head. “It’s not just that. It’s the history behind them.” She splashed a bit of water into Mike’s face and giggled.
    Dennis held his breath. If ever there was a recipe for a historic Mike freak-out moment…
    Mike laughed and wiped it off.
    Dennis smiled. Man, has she gotten to him. “What history?”
    “Oh, no one’s told you the story?” Her eyes grew wide and sparkled. She leaned forward. “Honey, this place is chock full of history. Back in, oh…I guess this had to be around 1922, when this was the Sanatorium—”
    “Sanatorium?” Mike asked.
    “Just a fancy word for ‘tuberculosis hospital,’ sweetie. Anyway, there was this doctor by the name of Whaley. More than a doctor, really. He married into money and sat on the Board. Back in those days the doctors would live at the hospital for weeks at a time, on account of how far out it was and all. So, getting lonely and needing to satisfy those needs a man often needs to satisfy—” She nudged Mike and he blushed. “ he set his eyes on a nurse, beautiful young octoroon girl named Calliope.”
    “What’s an octoroon?” Mike asked.
    She grinned. “I feel like a schoolmarm. Octoroon was a polite way of saying mixed in those days. Lot of the nurses came from a hospital in New Orleans and Calliope was one of them. Half-white, half-black, probably some Indian in there, too. She was a stunning creature, beautiful in every regard. Graceful and bright, too. They say her smile could light up an entire building. But what really attracted Whaley to her was her intellect. It was so rare for a woman to have a good education in those days, especially a non-white woman. But at some point in her short life she had learned to read and write and had taken an interest in poetry and the classics.
    “Her and Whaley used to sit around on the porch and talk about Greek mythology or philosophy or what have you and his lust gave way to love. He finally convinced her to go to bed with him and they became, for all intents and purposes, husband and wife during Whaley’s long stays here.
    “Now Calliope lived in one of the bunk houses out behind the hospital, about where them old ratty stores are today, I guess. So when Whaley would go back down to town to spend time with his family, she was stuck up here on the hill. That didn’t sit too well and they started fighting. Nothing too big, I reckon—their love was too strong for that—but enough to put a strain on them. She wanted him all to herself, you see, but for him to leave his wife would have been unheard of in those days. His money, his career, his status—POOF!
    “But Calliope was a proud Catholic girl and didn’t like living in sin. So when she became pregnant she didn’t know what to do. She went to Whaley for help and he convinced her…well…”
    “To have an abortion,” Dennis said.
    Margot nodded. “He did it himself, somewhere up on the third floor. Poor girl bled to death during it.”
    Dennis and Mike shared a look.
    Margot didn’t seem to notice. “Whaley never forgave himself. He spent more and more time up here, slept in her old room in the bunkhouses, stopped eating. Just wasted away without her. His wife took the children and moved back to New York. They didn’t divorce—people didn’t do that back then—but the marriage was over. He still had access to the money, though, and hired an artist to come up here, a Creole fella from New Orleans, Calliope’s cousin as some stories say, and a renowned sculptor. Other stories say he was also a Voodoo priest, but who knows? What all the stories do agree on is that Whaley had him sculpt each and every one of them statues as a monument to the passion he and Calliope shared.”
    Dennis realized he had drifted closer during the story and pushed back a foot or two. “That’s why they represent Greek mythology, huh?”
    “Mmm-hmm. Those statues over there?” She pointed to the hedges that hid benches and the