The Storycatcher (4 page)

I closed my eyes, managed to nod, and tucked the Bible under my arm.

“I love you, girl.” Aunt Hattie nudged me out the door.

“They both be dead?” I asked, because for the life of me I couldn’t see what happened in my mind, only Miss Mary Beth Clark’s face stayed with me.

“Both.”

I climbed in the truck with Douglas.

“Let the island heal you!” she yelled.

Those kind of hurts never heal.

WHEN DOUGLAS LET ME OFF
at the dock, he held out a soft gray cloth. “I thought you’d like to have this.”

It was Roger’s old cap. “He gave you
Sweet Jesse.
Left it in writing. She be yours free and clear.”

I glanced over at
Sweet Jesse,
rocking at the dock with the other boats. “What am I going to do with a shrimp boat?”

“Fish.” He shrugged.

I got out of the truck.

“The whole town, even the deputy, say they real sorry for Roger’s death.”

“It don’t bring him back.” I watched the boat.

“No, ma’am, it sure don’t.” He nodded. “Can you drive her?”

“I reckon I can.” I’d watched Roger too many times. I could take
Sweet Jesse
back to Sapelo with my eyes closed. I walked off toward the boat.

“Hey.”

I turned around.

“I think if you did kill them two—and I sure hope you did—you be the bravest woman in these parts. Roger would be proud of you.”

I walked down the dock without looking back. Roger didn’t believe in killing for any reason.

THE SALT OF THE OCEAN
mixed with the salt of the marshes was one of those smells I couldn’t get enough of. I watched Sapelo get closer. My island was there, telling me to come home, calling me. I felt Roger standing over my shoulder, and the feeling sunk in that I might never go to Darien again. I was a Saltwater Geechee that loved a man without knowing until the story went way wrong. I learned something hard and cold.

The high tide spilled into the canals and onto the banks. That’s when I seen him, Biali, the father of the slaves. The African slave that taught others to survive and live a good life on Sapelo. He dropped to his knees and prayed his prayers of freedom, of strength, of life. I watched him until he became part of the grasses and left me alone to take
Sweet Jesse
into dock.

N
ADA BIRTHED ME RIGHT THERE
on Black Mountain. A Christmas baby born with a caul. Nada called it a face veil. Either way, the thing was supposed to give me power through a special gift. That’s what Nada told me, and she was the smartest woman I ever knew. So, I watched for my gift like a girl at her own birthday party. It wasn’t until I was ten years old that I understood there wasn’t bows and wrapping paper involved.

I lost my big brother Will the last week of August that year. Just after Arleen Brown was buried in the cemetery, he up and left without a good reason or even a word. I cooked and cleaned just like Nada. It was expected. Will had turned nineteen, a grown man. That whole month he had brooded around, having words with Nada more than once. It was like all of a sudden he just couldn’t find his footing on Black Mountain, like he was headed off that mountain.

There was a secret hanging in the air at our cabin, and I figured it
had something to do with the way Faith—that was Pastor and Mrs. Dobbins’s prissy daughter—followed Will everywhere. Stupid old girl caused more problems than she was worth. I’d seen her and Will with their heads together, hushing every time I came near, shooing me away. Faith loved Will. A colored boy could die for anything a white girl said—didn’t matter one bit if it was true or not—but especially if that white girl’s father was Pastor Dobbins. Faith had turned into a beauty, or so everyone on the mountain said. But seeing how she was the pastor’s daughter, what was they going to say? I thought she was downright ugly ’cause pretty is as pretty do. And that girl didn’t do one thing pretty.

The morning the folks were supposed to view Arleen, I slipped over to the church for a peek in the window. It was the last place in the world Nada would have me be. The most mournful music floated out the windows. That old piano made a sound that stopped me right there in my tracks. Sweet and all tangled with some unspoken words, begging. And who was sitting there playing? Pastor. Lord have mercy, one look at him and I forgot just how mean and hateful he was. He was so lost in sadness. His fingers was long, pretty, like one of them paper-thin plates Mrs. Dobbins was always making me wash.
In that music was the man a woman would want to marry, the softness, the person who could mourn a young dead girl. Everyone had a decent side.

That whole afternoon Will didn’t show his face, Nada festered like something had crawled up under her skin and was burning her from the inside while she worked in the kitchen of the main house. “This mountain be turned sour over this here death,” she mumbled under her breath.

“What did you say, Amanda?” Mrs. Dobbins was hovering over the silver, touching each and every fork, spoon, and knife so I had to polish the dern stuff again.

“Nothing, ma’am,” Nada lied. Lying to white folks was just necessary. A colored couldn’t always guess what actions they might take next.

So, it didn’t surprise me none when Nada went to our cabin before
I finished washing all them dern dishes we’d messed up. There was a turkey cooking in our oven. Lord, the food that would be placed on that dining room table would be enough to feed the whole mountain and still leave some. A lot of to-do over some old white girl that looked like she might break in half. Shoot, when Arleen looked at a person, it was like she wasn’t really seeing them but something way off.

The sun was gone, and all that was left was the grayness that spread from the sky to the ground. The water was almost too hot to scrub the mixing bowls, but I tolerated the burn just to be finished and out of the house. A flicker in my side view made me look out the back door. A black shadow passed by the glass. One of the tin measuring cups on the counter clattered to the floor.

“Shelly, why are you still here?” Pastor stood in the hall door. Nothing about him seemed like that music he was making earlier.

“Washing dishes, sir. We made us a right big mess getting that dinner ready for tomorrow.”

He stared me down and then looked outside. “Have you been moving things around on the porch?”

“No, sir. Been right here most of the day.”

“I left my prayer book there on the porch rail.”

“I haven’t seen it, sir.” What in the world would I do with his prayer book?

Meanness was written all over his face. “Let me know if you do see it, and Shelly, if you’re lying, I’ll find out.”

“Yes, sir.”

By the time I got to the cabin, Nada was sound asleep. Will still hadn’t come home. Pastor had made him dig Arleen’s grave earlier. Lord help, Pastor might have met his match with Will, who looked real calm and sweet, but if a person made him mad, it wasn’t a pretty sight.

On my bed was a little green book I’d seen a hundred times. It wasn’t a funny joke. The dern thing was opened to a prayer called “Lost Sheep.”

When in need, one only has to look to the Shepherd, the caretaker,
the trusted one. Who will tell the truth. He will point you in the right direction and keep you close, safe.

Maybe Faith put the prayer book on my bed. She was known for slipping around. There was only one way not to get blamed for the mess.

I cut across the field through Daniels Cemetery and then scooted in the back door of the church. The room was dark except for the two gaslights on the wall near Arleen’s burying box. The thing wasn’t homemade like most burying boxes, but shiny as a pond of water on a clear, still day. Store-bought from Asheville and delivered by truck. All the fine church ladies had been chewing on this since the truck drove away, a dead girl in a shiny box while her whole family was so poor they struggled for food. And no one was sitting with the body. Somebody always sat with the body before a funeral. It was mountain tradition.

I ran to the pulpit and placed the book where Pastor kept one of his Bibles. Now I could get home and in bed. But no, oh no, that burying box drew me to it, pulled me like it had hands and arms. I ran my fingers over the smooth wood. The lid squeaked. Arleen looked like she was hurting with her mouth drawn up. Death caught her in the middle of a horrible pain. In the curve of her arm was a tiny blue baby boy. Smaller than one of Faith’s old baby dolls.

“This was a mean thing to do,” I whispered to the Jesus hanging on a little gold cross.

“It’s not his fault.” A girl’s voice spoke out of the shadows. “Don’t go blaming the wrong one.”

I dropped that lid. The sound echoed through the dark, causing the gas flames to jump. I ran out of that church without looking back. I never did tell a soul about hearing that voice, not Will or nobody.

THEY BURIED ARLEEN
and that baby of hers the next day while I set the dining room table in the main house. Each fork was put in the right place. That big old fancy dinner for people who loved plain and
simple seemed silly. The sky turned black like a storm was coming. The mountain was mourning Arleen Brown, a simple mountain girl. Her death brought a push of wind that started and never stopped. A whisper scooted through the air.
“My story ain’t been told.”

BY THE TIME THAT BIG
hailstorm found Black Mountain, Will had been gone almost three weeks. Me, I was wishing I could go to school like other kids, make some friends, learn to read better. But there weren’t no colored schools for miles. Nada ordered me to sit on the front porch of our cabin while she gathered clothes from the line. I’d been underfoot and no help that whole day. The pure white sheets from the main house snapped in the hot wind. Nada wrestled to free the clothes before the rain let loose, and it didn’t take a smart person to see the bottom would drop out any second. One long, angry black cloud stretched as far as I could see across the sky. The air turned thick and sticky, and the light became a yellow-green. On the edge of the woods stood a woman bent over hobbling along, wearing a dress of blue ticking that was long to the ground. “Get up from there, silly girl!” She pulled a cane out from behind her back and waved it. What had I gone and done now?

“Go in that there house!” The woman narrowed her eyes, and when I didn’t move, she bared her sharp witch’s teeth at me.

I jumped to my feet, thinking I might cut across the porch and head for Nada, but then I thought better of it. Just as I ducked in the cabin, a flash of purple light splintered the wooden boards where I had been. Lord be, I thought I’d never hear again. I thought I was dead. The noise shook the cabin under my feet, and a charred hole opened smelling of a crackling fire. I was sure the cabin would burn down to the ground with me in it.

“Shelly!” Nada screamed, and then she ran faster than I’d seen her run. She’d been right slow and quiet since Will left. Lordy, that woman who always bossed the world had lost her footing, worse than when Daddy was killed in a moonshine deal gone bad.

“Nada.”

She ran up the steps, stared at the hole, and came to me. Her look stayed on me for the longest, like she was counting all my fingers and toes. “I do believe you be the luckiest little girl I know.” Now, Nada didn’t cotton to Pastor’s god. She believed mostly in hoodoo, with a little Jesus nailed to the cross on the side. She wanted no part of a god that made a person rant and rave like Pastor was known to do when he was on a roll. But that afternoon she looked at the sky and said, “Thank you, Lord God, for my girl.”

Me, I believed in God and figured Pastor had just conjured him a bad spirit to listen to. He was always talking about souls being crushed for their sins and all. God didn’t crush souls. He loved them. Anyway, Pastor never knew a thing about Nada’s gifts. He wouldn’t have tolerated any magic in his house, but Mrs. Dobbins—now, she be a different story—liked the spells Nada conjured. They made a fine pair, Nada and Mrs. Dobbins. Nada always said hoodoo wasn’t about good or bad magic. It was about working out your own life, the story we live on this earth. That kind of story was powerful no matter if it involved money, health, or sweet, sweet love. Nada’s magic could bring bad on folks who were bad and good on those that walked the right path, but her spells couldn’t fix everything ’cause Will was gone, and nothing, nothing Nada tried brought him back.