Burnt Mountain Read Online Free PDF Page A

hills and down over little bridges, arched over
     with magnificent old hardwoods that have been fed and pruned almost since their birth. Deep emerald lawns sweep far back to
     large houses set like jewels into perfect flowering shrubbery and vibrant borders. More huge trees mass gracefully beside
     and behind them, spilling not a leaf anywhere and hiding, but hinting at, magnificent gardens and pools and who-knows-what-else…
     statuary, fountains, gazebos, guesthouses… all pristine and camera ready. There is nothing raw or raucous or ragged in the
     Northwest.
    My father parked on the circular drive before the big gray stone house and carefully decanted my gaping mother.
    “Everybody’s out back,” he said. “Let’s cut through the house.”
    “Everybody?” squeaked my mother.
    “Well, some friends of mine and I think Mom and Dad’s, too,” he said. “Everybody wants to meet you.”
    “How nice,” Crystal said. It came out in a sheeplike bleat.
    He took her hand and led her up the curved marble steps. The carved mahogany doors were closed but opened silently as he turned
     the knob. It flitted foolishly through Crystal’s head that she would never leave these doors unlocked if they were hers. She
     looked up and saw an ivy-covered turret with deep shuttered windows on either side of the house, decided then and there she
     would sleep in one of the rooms one day, and followed Finch into the cool dimness.
    She could scarcely see but got the impression of a vast drawing room with dark, gleaming furniture; a silvery-greenpapered dining room with the largest oval table she had ever seen, shining like a skating pond, and two great cabinets holding
     intricate crystal and china in patterns that reminded her vaguely of the Renaissance; an enormous kitchen, all blinding white
     and as clean as an operating theater. The entire house had an indefinable smell, one she had never smelled but would never
     forget: rich, deep wood polish, the museum-like scent of old and very good fabric, a diffuse sweetness like the breath of
     flowers, and something else… money?
    “Hi, Corella,” Finch said to the smiling black woman at the stove, who wore the only honest-to-God maid’s uniform Crystal
     had ever seen, complete with little frilled cap.
    “This is Crystal; you be sweet to her. She’s special,” Finch said.
    “She sho’ is,” Corella said. “Tell that by lookin’ at her. You mama ‘n’ them are out by the pool.”
    Crystal put out her hand and the black woman took it slowly, looking down at their joined hands, then back up with a wide
     smile.
    “It’s nice to meet you,” Crystal trilled, realizing by Corella’s look and Finch’s small pause that one apparently did not
     shake hands with the help in Buckhead.
    They stepped out onto a large, cool back porch carpeted with a faded Kilim and set about with flowered, deep-cushioned wicker
     sofas and chairs. Great bouquets of garden flowers and foliage—zinnias, asters, sunflowers, chrysanthemums, eucalyptus stems,
     feathery grasses—sat on the low glass tables. Small, shapely potted trees gave the porch the appearance of being nestled into
     an intimate forest. A ceilingfan turned lazily. Beyond the porch, down another flight of steps, lay the garden… and the pool, and the fountains, and the
     statuary and gazebo, and the guesthouse. It was the largest garden Crystal had ever seen outside
House Beautiful.
The sounds of splashing water and tinkling ice and low, amused conversation floated up to her. When it stopped, she knew
     that they had seen her.
    There were perhaps ten of them: a striking woman sitting under an umbrella who looked nothing like Finch but was nevertheless
     undoubtedly his mother; a squat, dark man with a thick mat of wet hair over almost every inch of him, with a face like Julius
     Caesar’s and wet bathing trunks, who had Finch’s dark hair and profile and was, of course, his father; another couple of adults,
     deeply tanned and in