Read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil for Free Online Page B

Mulryne. When Mulryne’s daughter married Josiah Tattnall, the bride’s father commemorated the happy union of the two families by planting great avenues of trees forming the initials M and T intertwined. I’m told enough of the original trees survive that you can still trace the monogram, if you put your mind to it.” Miss Harty paused as we approached a vine-covered mound by the side of the path.
    “This is all that’s left of the plantation house,” she said. “It’s a piece of the foundation. The house burned sometime in the late seventeen-hundreds. It was a spectacular fire, by all accounts. A formal dinner party had been in progress, with liveried servants standing behind every chair. In the middle of dinner, the butler came up to the host and whispered that the roof had caught fire and that nothing could be done to stop it. The host rose calmly, clinked his glass, and invited his guests to pick up their dinner plates and follow him into the garden. The servants carried the table and chairs after them, and the dinner continued by thelight of the raging fire. The host made the best of it. He regaled his guests with amusing stories and jests while the flames consumed his house. Then, in turn, each guest rose and offered a toast to the host, the house, and the delicious repast. When the toasts were finished, the host threw his crystal glass against the trunk of an old oak tree, and each of the guests followed suit. Tradition has it that if you listen closely on quiet nights you can still hear the laughter and the shattering of crystal glasses. I like to think of this place as the scene of the Eternal Party. What better place, in Savannah, to rest in peace for all time—where the party goes on and on.”
    We resumed our walk and in a few moments came to a small family plot shaded by a large oak tree. Five graves and two small date palms lay inside a low curbstone. One of the graves, a full-length white marble slab, was littered with dried leaves and sand. Miss Harty brushed the debris away, and an inscription emerged: JOHN HERNDON MERCER (JOHNNY).
    “Did you know him?” I asked.
    “We all knew him,” she said, “and loved him. We always thought we recognized something of Johnny in each of his songs. They had a buoyancy and a freshness, and that’s the way he was. It was as if he’d never really left Savannah.” She brushed away more of the leaves and uncovered an epitaph: AND THE ANGELS SING.
    “For me,” she said, “Johnny was literally the boy next door. I lived at 222 East Gwinnett Street; he lived at 226. Johnny’s great-grandfather built a huge house on Monterey Square, but Johnny never lived in it. The man who lives there now has restored it superbly and made it into quite a showplace. Jim Williams. My society friends are wild about him. I’m not.”
    Miss Harty squared her shoulders and said no more about the Mercers or Jim Williams. We continued along the path toward the river, which was just now visible up ahead under the trees. “And now I have one more thing to show you,” she said.
    We walked to the crest of a low bluff overlooking a broad, slow-moving expanse of water, clearly the choicest spot in thismost tranquil of settings. Miss Harty led me into a small enclosure that had a gravestone and a granite bench. She sat down on the bench and gestured for me to sit next to her.
    “At last,” she said, “we can have our martinis.” She opened the wicker basket and poured the drinks into the silver goblets. “If you look at the gravestone,” she said, “you’ll see it’s a bit unusual.” It was a double gravestone bearing the names of Dr. William F. Aiken and his wife, Anna. “They were the parents of Conrad Aiken, the poet. Notice the dates.”
    Both Dr. and Mrs. Aiken had died on the same day: February 27, 1901.
    “This is what happened,” she said. “The Aikens were living on Oglethorpe Avenue in a big brick townhouse. Dr. Aiken had his offices on the ground floor, and the