The Storycatcher (12 page)

“I listened to Charles talking to God. I know everything, Amanda. He confessed.” There was a thick silence. “Much more than circumstances.”

“That’s dangerous. I’d be willing to bet he’s done way more than you know.” Nada kind of laughed, but it was her mean laugh. “You be stronger than I thought, Mrs. Dobbins. But he might be meaner with something held over his head.”

“He won’t hurt me. We just have to watch Faith and Shelly, even you.”

The last thing I wanted was that woman putting her attention on me.

Nada padded across the kitchen in her soft house shoes. “Shelly will be watched, Faith too.”

I could stay out of Pastor’s way.

“It’s coming, Amanda,” Mrs. Dobbins whispered.

“What be coming, ma’am?”

“The bad. It’s been in the air since the storm four years ago. It will come walking in our yard any day.”

Now, I was used to Nada talking like this, but not Mrs. Dobbins.

“Yep. I’m afraid you be right.”

“I might have lost my mind if I hadn’t come here tonight to talk, Amanda. I feel better knowing you’re watching them too. And I wanted you to know I understand.”

“I be watching every move that man makes, and Mrs. Dobbins, I’m glad you understand, ’cause I’d do it all again. Now, we can break breath anytime you see fit.” Nada was asking her to come back and talk. Lord help. And what did she do that Mrs. Dobbins understands?

Mrs. Dobbins scooted her chair back. They had finished. She cut a look into my bedroom, so I closed my eyes, even though she couldn’t see nothing but a shadow in a bed. I had me a passel of questions. But one thing I knew for sure. Nada had a big old secret that she shared
with Mrs. Dobbins. And whatever it was, it had Mrs. Dobbins all stirred up.

THE FIRST DAY I WENT
to work in Miss Tuggle’s garden we gathered rosemary, just like she promised. When Faith thought nobody was paying attention, she sneaked into the cabin and snitched hair out of Mrs. Tuggle’s hairbrush. When I got home, I added my fifth bottle to my bottle tree. They was right pretty: a fine blue, a red, a yellow, and two deep brown. One for every time Faith did something crazy. When the wind blew hard like it did on most days that early summer, the bottles clinked together and made music.

I followed Faith to Miss Tuggle’s each and every time she went. Gardening sure wasn’t my favorite, but the books handed off to me was treasures. By the end of two weeks, I had read me a bunch of books. And my writing was getting better. Once Faith caught me writing on my tablet Miss Tuggle gave me. I held my breath because I figured that was the end. She would go tell her daddy. But instead, she took the pencil away from me and corrected my spelling. If I hadn’t known way better, I would have thought I was liking Faith too. Of course, that was pure craziness, because I sure couldn’t like some girl who took to roaming Daniels Cemetery like she lived there.

One morning Faith took out to steal words on the gravestones, and I had some free time. My problem was that free time wasn’t free if Nada saw me, so I had to find me my own place to go, kind of like Faith. As much as it pained me, I headed through the woods to Ella Creek, to the lost cemetery. I sat beside Daddy’s grave and read him my newest book. Not a soul bothered me, and I figured all that other stuff was just a haint trying to keep me from starting a bottle tree.

That was the day change whistled up the mountain, ’cept I didn’t even notice ’cause I was out in the afternoon sun hanging the clothes on the line in the side yard near the cabin. My mind was on my own
sweet business caught up in a good case of thinking. Chores were good for that. The air was just as hot as any summer day could be.

“You be one stupid girl if you think you’re going to catch me in some old bottle tree. It be a right fine tree to look at, though.” Stupid Armetta stood behind me, wearing the same old fancy yellow dress she had worn the last time I seen her. It was the kind of dress a white girl might pass on to her colored help. I figured Armetta must have been buried in it.

“Nada says a bottle tree is just the thing for unwanted haints.” I pulled the sheet over the line.

“A stupid ghost, maybe. Your mama didn’t tell you it can’t work on spirits that have a good reason to be here? I ain’t one bit confused. I was born right here and never left. You read what I sent you after?”

I popped a pillowcase in the wind. “No, and I ain’t going to read the silly thing.”

“You be one stupid, stupid girl. Sight might be your gift, but you sure don’t use your own eyes.”

“I use them, all right, but I ain’t helping you.”

Armetta laughed. “It ain’t me you be helping, girl. It’s you. Can’t you see how he looks at you? Don’t tell me you’re that dumb.”

“Hush up. How do I know you’re not some haint bent on hurting Pastor?”

Again she laughed, but this time it was pure mean. “I am bent on hurting him before he hurts you and that crazy daughter of his. Didn’t you listen to that little girl spirit from Darien, Georgia, up in the cemetery? She told you part of her story.”

“How do I know any of it is true?” I said.

Armetta stood there for a minute before she spoke again. “I lived in that cemetery.”

“The lost one?”

“Well, Prissy, I sure ain’t talking about Daniels Cemetery over there. My cemetery be way older than that one hooked to the church.”

A cold thought walked through my mind. “You ain’t here to look
out for me. You be lying. Why you here?” I hung a pretty pink tea towel in the sun. “Faith be conjuring you?”

“She’s a sad excuse for a conjurer, but she’s smarter than you. At least she knows what I know and she has her a plan.” Armetta shook her head. “Still ain’t figured on how she came up with it, but she’s got her one. You ain’t doing nothing to stop Pastor. You be pretending he’s nice.” She studied me. “You’re scared of me. That’s why you made a bottle tree. The old girl who can see haints is scared. I be here all the time, all along. Don’t you know that by now? I’m stuck with him. I follow him. Never can get far from him.”

“Pastor?”

She looked at me like I was crazy. “Well, I sure ain’t talking about Abraham Lincoln.”

“Did you know him before you passed?”

“Who, President Lincoln?” She laughed again. Then her look turned hard. “That ain’t none of your business, girlie.”

“Just leave me alone,” I told her.

“Can’t. Trouble be walking right in the door, and you ain’t even paid it no mind.” Armetta looked out toward the woods. “This be nothing like your everyday haints. You best watch. Look at what is around you. And take care of those dear to you. Stay out of them woods where the lost cemetery be. They haunted with the worst kind of spirits and they ain’t always dead, girlie.”

“I ain’t listening to you.” I threw another sheet over the line. “You just trying to scare me.”

“You be one dumb girl thinking you all alone up in that cemetery. That be where they’re buried.”

“Who?” I tried to act like her answer wasn’t no skin off my back.

“Not who. What. The stories. They all be there.” And she was gone.

DEATH KNOCKED ON THE DOOR
of the main house around evening time. A death that was felt deeply but had settled and slipped to the
back of folks’ minds. See, the mountain took this death so personal it closed its heart. Now the door to the truth began to crack open, the air turned hotter and was hard to breathe. Nada walked around our kitchen gathering the makings for a spell. I went to sit on the porch to cool off some. There stood Arleen Brown on the back porch of the main house. Lordy, after four years, she showed up to get her answer—not from God, but Pastor. Why in the world would she hunt him out? He didn’t have no good answers. His struggles with God sure wasn’t going to hand Arleen any peace.

She never moved. When Pastor walked out the door and straight through her, he didn’t even flinch. That’s when a cold chill walked up my spine, and for some reason I heard Armetta’s warning from earlier that day. Arleen wasn’t looking for him. It was something more, something bigger, but what, I wasn’t sure. She stood with complete stillness while we both watched the sky turn orange and pink as the sun dipped into the tops of the trees. Me, standing on the front porch of our cabin, and her, right there on the back porch of the main house.

“Shelly, what you doing out there on the porch so long?” Nada stood in the door.

Wasn’t no use trying to fool her, because Nada could most of the time smell them untruths out. “I see Arleen Brown standing on Pastor’s back porch. She showed up a little while ago.”

Nada sucked the air. “Lord, why now, after all this time?”

“Don’t know.”

Nada held up her hand. “Some things are best left alone. Arleen Brown be one of them things.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I waited a minute for her to settle. “But Arleen’s here now. Maybe it’s because her mama is still mourning after her. I hear tell at the last ladies’ gathering that Mrs. Brown is worse now than when Arleen left the world.” I waited just a second. “And Nada, I remember how mad Will was when word came she died.”

Nada frowned. “I don’t want to know why that girl be waiting on Pastor. We best forget her.”

“Like how you forgot Faith taking your sewing basket?” There was some things a girl couldn’t put behind her. “And I don’t think Arleen be waiting on Pastor.”

Nada gave a little puff like maybe she’d been waiting on me to bring the stealing up one more time. “You still thinking on that basket?”

“It was my great-grandmother’s.”

“And who is that girl waiting on if she not be waiting on Pastor?”

I shrugged. “Just a feeling.”

Nada came close to me, so close I could see sweat on her upper lip. “Never trust nobody, Shelly. No matter how nice and caring they seem.”

“You mean white folks?”

“Anybody. Folks most of the time tell their own truths, but that don’t mean they be honest.” She looked out the door again.

“I can trust you, Nada.”

She looked at me a minute and then nodded.

That pause got under my skin. “The bottle tree didn’t work,” I blurted.

Nada took a sip of coffee. “Some spirits be too smart to be caught. They’ve come to finish what they started before they passed.”

“This one is stuck to Pastor. Says she has to be with him.”

Nada raised her eyebrows. “What’s her name?”

Part of me wanted to keep this to myself. “She’s mean and bossy.”

Nada watched me as her coffee steamed. “Will talked about a ghost he saw out near Ella Creek. Said she told him she lived in the lost cemetery. Told him she kept up with Pastor, knew his thoughts, his stories.” She shivered.

“Her name is Armetta.” I fiddled with a thread on the skirt of my dress.

“Don’t talk to her. She ain’t nothing but trouble.” Nada’s back went straight.

“I’ll try, Nada, but this girl’s not a spirit to be pushed aside. She be my age and colored. I don’t have to open my mouth. She keeps coming back.”

“She said something to Will. I know she did.” Lines of pain crossed Nada’s forehead. “You don’t bother with Arleen either. It can’t be good she’s back. A bad thing is headed our way.”

My throat closed. Nada sounded like Armetta. “Okay.” Wasn’t nothing I could do if them haints lined up to talk to me.

Nada looked out the door. “Is she still there?”

The porch was empty. “No, ma’am.”

Her shoulders relaxed. “Good. Them two ghosts are stirred up at the same time. We got to be careful. You remember what I said.”

“I don’t have a lot of say-so with this here sight, Nada.”

“Just leave them be.”

That was a lot easier said than done.

L
AVENDER PETALS FELL
all over the grass, fluttering down like snow-flakes onto the back porch stairs as I stepped down into the grass. The wisteria vines grew way up in the trees, and huge clusters of blooms hung here and there. They were blooming in June, two months late. The mountain had skipped spring altogether that year. A melody played through my mind. My dance began as a two-step, and then I caught the wind and twirled. My skirt whipped out around me. I threw my arms out to each side looking like a foolish child, but the moment to dance was too strong to resist. For just a second I was happy. Had I been a young girl, I would have expected a prince to enter at that very moment if I believed in such things, but I wasn’t—and didn’t. I was nineteen and too old for such fanciful ideas. I danced. The blossoms fell around me. A sleek black car topped the driveway. I froze where I was. No one off the mountain ever came to our house.

A man emerged from the car who looked so much like Daddy, only younger, I had to do a double take.

“I’m here to see Charles Dobbins.” He stepped closer. His fingers were long like a girl’s, like Daddy’s.

“He’s at the church.” I nodded my head in the direction.

“Why doesn’t that surprise me? I bet he’s preaching to the air, ranting and raving.” He smiled. “Some things never change.”

I had to smile.

He laughed. “You have to be Faith. Goodness, I haven’t seen you since you were just a baby.” He held out his hand. “Now you’re a woman.”

“Yes, I am Faith.” I didn’t touch his hand.