Strange Folk, page 13
She could sense the coal, the natural gas, the zinc, the marble, nestled like treasure deep within the clay and stone.
She could feel the trees and their individual natures. They were not all calm and stoic. One tree longed to bend toward the tree next to it and merge limbs for eternity. She could feel its bark straining, moving so gradually the average human couldn’t detect it. But through the roots, its yearning and stretching filled her with a delicious sadness that brought tears to her eyes.
She could feel her roots entwining with those of Belva’s garden plants and beyond, swaying and asleep in the night breeze, dreaming of the sun. She could sense the fungi huddled in their dark corners, radiating mystery.
And then there was a rustling and a scrape in her perception. A chorus of them. The birds and the squirrels and the possums and the raccoons and the foxes and the deer and the bears and all the little hands and hooves and claws scraping against the earth. The sheer number of them and all the life they contained nearly overwhelmed her. She tried to direct her focus toward something more manageable.
She turned her head to watch a doe and three fawns emerge from the trees to her right and move toward the clearing. Their glossy fur was cream and almond in the bonfire light, and they had the most mesmerizing eyes. She had the feeling she could speak to them if she liked, and they would understand her.
As they came closer, hair sprouted from their heads, their faces flattened, and their backs arched up and straight, transforming them into people.
But not just any people.
There was Redbud’s black hair, and Tiffany Wang’s sneer, and the curves of the girl Lee had seen with Mr. Hall at the bonfire. And behind them in her oversized sweatshirt was Meredith.
Lee tried to discern if this was hallucination or reality, but there was no dividing line between the liquor and her own faculties. The entire world was a smear of sickening rainbow.
She became aware of a tiny rumble. She heard the scrape of wings against insect bodies, the burrowing of beetles, the slide of a centipede through the leaves. The ground roiled around her, and she felt the tiny creatures slowly moving up her sides to cover her body. She tried to stand up and shake them off, but the roots held her to the ground. She was lashed to the earth like a sacrifice. As she struggled to get free, panic rising inside of her, she felt the roots pulling her deeper until she was submerged in the soil and its churning insects. It was taking her, finally. The land was pulling her under.
Her mother’s voice whistled through the darkness.
“Opaline. Listen, goddammit. Follow my voice. Follow my voice, baby.”
Lee reached toward the voice, and then something was pulling her up to the surface and bringing her back into the light. Relief washed through her. She relaxed, allowing the roots to release their grip and slink up and back into her skin. She felt she could move again, and sat up. Meredith and Redbud were crouched over her with Kimmie looking guilty next to them. Tiffany and the girl stood farther away, watching her.
“Mom, are you okay?” Meredith asked.
Lee tried to shrug it off. “Yes. I’m fine.” She ignored her mother’s presence and attempted to arrange her face into something she hoped resembled stern. “What are you doing here?”
There was no shame or apology in Meredith’s face when she spoke. She was radiant with discovery. “Mamaw led us on a midnight hike to search for spirits. I saw the ghost of a crow.”
Redbud smirked at Lee.
Mamaw? “What is happening? Am I in a dream?”
“No, honey, you’re just drunk off your ass.”
Shame filled Lee, and she thought she might vomit. She turned away from them and hunched over in the grass, attempting to right herself. Meredith tried to touch her, but Lee held up a hand. It felt like her eyes were being squeezed into ovals.
Lee pulled Kimmie down and whispered, “What the fuck did you give me?”
“Shit, I’m sorry. I thought you’d have a good time, like maybe you needed it. It always makes me feel more connected.”
Lee could still feel the land pulsing beneath her, reminding her of a time when she felt connected to the life held within it. You were never alone with this link. You could still feel lonely, but there was always something to reach out and touch, and it would touch you back.
The land had been silent since her return, but now she could feel its touch…
Lee searched for the urgent thought she’d had just a minute ago. It was right there…
“Who is that girl? The one with Meredith and Tiffany.”
Kimmie looked over at the group. “Oh, that’s my niece Missy. Her mama lit out of town a few years ago and left her with us.”
“Why don’t I recognize her from school?”
“She don’t go much. I try to make her, but TJ lets her do whatever she wants.”
It took a beat, but the realization had weight and color once it strained through her altered consciousness. TJ must have seen Mr. Hall with Missy that night. The world dipped. He killed him. He’s the murderer.
Lee watched through blurred lenses as the milling bodies organized themselves into a circle around the fire and passed a jar of the liquor around. They gulped hungrily from the jar, and afterwards, the desperation faded from their faces.
Redbud took a place at what seemed like the head of it. She stood with her eyes closed and palms facing out by her sides. She was all dull, unreflecting surfaces in the firelight, and her hair clung lifelessly to her skull. When she opened her eyes, they were thickly dusted, like pollen on an old truck hood.
Meredith took a spot next to Redbud and mimicked her motions. In their doubled images, Lee could see the resemblance between them. There was the dark hair and their tall, sturdy bodies, but it was more than that. Meredith had her chaos, her defiance. Redbud was her mangled twin.
Lee pulled herself up to a wobbling stand. “Get the fuck away from her.” She walked up to them and wrenched Meredith away. “Are you okay? Did she make you drink the moonshine?”
“What the fuck, Mom. I’m fine.” Meredith fought Lee’s grip, but she just gripped harder, feeling the bones of Meredith’s arm under her fingers.
“We are leaving.”
Redbud glowered at Lee. “You got no right to keep her from me. She’s my flesh and blood.”
“I have every right. She’s my daughter. You are a stranger. I’m protecting her like a mother should. You wouldn’t know about that.”
Hurt wrinkled Redbud’s face, but it was quickly replaced by rage. “You’re putting her in danger and you don’t even know it. I’m the one protecting her.”
Lee knew this look in her mother’s eyes. The paranoia hovering like mist above a chasm. The only way to save yourself was to turn back. Otherwise you’d fall toward the center of a deep, hopeless nothing with her.
Lee turned to leave the way they came and stumbled a bit, still unsteady on her feet from the flower’s effects. The husked voice came from behind her.
“Look at you. You ain’t no better mother than I am. You act like you so much better than me, but you ain’t no different.”
Lee felt the acid in her throat, and the sickness spread through her. The world dipped again.
Lee went to leave with a new urgency, but this time TJ and a few of his men blocked their path. She noticed he was wearing a dark purple blazer. Had he been wearing that before, or was Lee still hallucinating? She cursed herself for putting them in this position. She needed to be clearheaded to get them out of this.
“Where you going, Opaline?”
“I need to get Meredith home.” She moved to go around him, and he stepped with her.
“Stay a little longer. The fun is just getting started.”
New panic was breaking through the moonshine haze. She imagined running at him and using her speed and weight to throw him off so Meredith could get away. She saw Kimmie off to the side and gestured toward her. “Help me.”
Kimmie hesitated, and Lee saw that she was on her own. Her mind cleared. She had to get Meredith out of here. Her body steeled itself as she turned to TJ.
“You know, it’s only a matter of time before they figure it out.”
“Figure what out?”
“Who killed Joseph Hall.”
His smirk dropped, and he crossed the grass so that their faces were very close to one another. When he spoke, it felt like he was breathing into her mouth. “I remember how smart you were. Big fucking genius who don’t give two fucks about anyone. This”—he gestured between them with his dirty nails—“is not very smart.”
Lee stood her ground, not moving a muscle. TJ eventually relaxed, and a dangerous smile curled his mouth. “You just like your grandma. Always putting her nose where it don’t belong.”
When she moved to leave once more, he didn’t get in her way. Meredith no longer struggled as Lee walked toward the trees with her arm still in her grip. She forced herself to keep looking ahead.
When they were finally enshrouded in darkness and Lee could look back, there was no one. They were alone. She started to shiver, and her body slackened. She went to her knees and tried to catch her breath. Meredith pulled her up and let her lean her weight on her as they made their way back to the cabin. Lee worried they’d get lost without Kimmie to guide them down the unfamiliar trail, but as they went along, she realized that Meredith knew the way. This was not the first time she spent time with those people.
When Lee glimpsed Meredith’s face in a slash of moonlight, she saw her again. It was Redbud staring back.
FOURTEEN
I know who killed Mr. Hall.”
Lee and Belva sat hunched in old metal chairs against the shed, out of earshot of the house. She had woken her up as soon as they returned.
Lee told her about going to the Ryder property, discovering who Missy was, and finding Meredith there with Redbud.
“Why the hell would you go up there?” Belva asked.
Lee told her what she’d been up to, and Belva paused for a long time, ruminating. She pulled out a pipe from her jacket pocket and began to puff thoughtfully. The smoke curled around Lee and cleared her head.
“I had a feeling you’d gotten hooked on that stuff,” Belva said.
“I’m not hooked. I just like the taste and the feel of it. I haven’t even drank that much.”
“I can tell you’re half gone right now. You can barely focus on me.”
Lee’s vision was still a bit blurred, but she thought she was holding it together. She knew it was time to confront the drinking. How could she not after tonight? But she would deal with it herself, when things calmed down. “That’s not the issue here. Why would TJ dump the body in your woods?”
Belva’s complexion grayed, and Lee caught another glimpse of her fragility. “I bet he wanted me to get blamed for it. All the old shit’s coming back to bite me in the ass.”
“What do you mean?”
Belva began to tell Lee the real story of her first love.
Leroy Ryder.
In those first years after her love charm worked its magic, their love was easy, and he respected her work. But after he was laid off at the plant, he began to resent it and the ecstasy it provided. She’d tried to include him in the gatherings before, but he failed to feel the power of the land. Just as she healed everyone else around her, she wanted to find a cure for his melancholy.
She knew of a flower that grew in the clearing where she performed her rituals. It was the darkest green, so dark that it appeared black to most. She’d never seen it anywhere else, nor could she ever identify it using her numerous botany books. Her grandmother believed it grew out of the ashes of their words and intentions, that their work seeded and fertilized the blooms. If anything could offer transcendence in digestible form, it would be this.
Belva began to experiment—dried and powdered, steeped and brewed. Eventually, she distilled it into a liquor. The first time he drank it, they spent all night dancing and talking around the fire. He could experience the power of the land without actually wielding it, like a simulation that allowed him a little window into her sacred realm. They were able to connect on a level she hadn’t thought possible.
But then he asked for more, and more. She told him it was only meant for certain occasions and in small quantities, but she found him stealing from her stash early in the morning when he thought she was asleep. He became defensive, then resentful. He started working for his family, running moonshine deliveries through the mountains. Prohibition had been over for decades, but people still liked the cheap, powerful burn and getting one over on the law. When the batch she’d made ran out and she refused to make more, he stole a pillowcase of the flowers and brought it to his family’s property to make their own.
The drinking became constant, and he started to beat Belva and terrorize Redbud, Ruby Jo, and Billy, swooning between euphoria, depression, and paranoia. When she tried to help him, he’d fight her like she was a demon. She wrote recipes and brewed concoctions, but their effects were no match for his sickness. She felt responsible, so she hung on for a while, but eventually it got too dangerous for the kids. That was when she marched over to the courthouse and filed for divorce. She didn’t ask for anything, and he didn’t put up much of a fight. He was rarely coherent enough for sustained objections.
A few days after it was finalized, Leroy was found face down in a creek. His car with the false bottom was overturned next to him, with broken bottles scattered around it. It’s said that the families who lived downriver from the crash and relied on the fish hallucinated for days afterwards.
The Ryders naturally blamed Belva, the ex-wife who happened to be a bona fide witch, despite her pointing out that alcoholism and driving were often a lethal mix. But they were too afraid to actually retaliate. If she was capable of murder, what else could she do to them? What grew out of it was a cold rivalry. Over the years, she’d looked the other way on their drug business, and in return they’d let her go about her work without intervention.
Lee took Belva’s hand. “I’m sorry I went up there. I didn’t mean to cross a line. But if you’ve been living in peace, why’d they dump the body here?”
Belva inhaled deeply on the pipe and exhaled the fragrant smoke. “About eight months ago, Kimmie told me she was pregnant. She’d hid it from her family, but she was really starting to show. She wanted to give birth but didn’t want to keep it. She wanted it to have a nice life, away from her brother. It was a boy.”
Lee thought about the way Kimmie acted with total abandon, hurling her body into any situation as if it didn’t need protection. She had seen it as wildness, but now she saw it also as someone coping with loss.
“She wanted to stay with me until he was born, and for me to find a home that would take good care of him. I said yes, and she hid out with me, and I made sure she ate well and didn’t use or drink, and she made them think she ran off for a bit. I found a good family I’d treated out in Scarwell. I delivered Kimmie’s baby right here in the garden, and we handed him over.” Belva gazed at a spot a few feet away, where the grass was particularly thick.
“Kimmie returned home as if nothing happened, but I wondered if TJ’d somehow find out. We can be damn sure he has.”
Everything pointed to TJ, but Lee still didn’t have all the answers she needed to situate it in her mind.
“Do you think Kimmie was involved? Do you think she knew it was TJ?”
Belva sighed. “I’m sure she didn’t have a hand in it. I know she seems rough, but she’s gentle at her core. She mighta known after. If she kept quiet, it was only because she was scared to talk. We can trust her.”
Lee nodded. “Then what I can’t understand is why Mr. Hall had the black flower branded on his thigh.”
“Maybe they were marking their kill. Who knows what them animals get up to.”
“And why didn’t you tell me this story when I mentioned the flower after they found his body?”
“I was ashamed. Didn’t want you to think less of me.” She took a deep breath. “Leroy ain’t the only one who’s gotten hooked on the moonshine over the years. Your aunt Ruby Jo got into it when a local preacher started using it to give his followers visions of God. Ruby didn’t have the touch for the work, and I think she always felt left out. So she went looking for another way to feel something higher than herself.” She paused. “I really didn’t think it had anything to do with Mr. Hall’s death. I’m sorry for keeping it from you.”
“That’s okay. But I still think there’s something else there, with the black flower. It looked like Mama was performing a spell last night. You said there was magic tied up in it.”
“I know it’s hard to believe, but I ain’t always right, honey. I don’t know what you saw, but I guarantee you Redbud ain’t casting. She was just there to buy drugs.”
“How do you know? We should ask Meredith again. Maybe you can get her to talk.” Lee had already asked her about Redbud and TJ and what she had witnessed, and she’d refused to tell her anything.
“I know. And I warned you about Meredith. You kept her from it, and she found another way.”
Lee knew there was truth in this. “Fine. What are we going to do about TJ?”
“We take care of him.”
“How?”
“Opaline, I swear to God. When are you gonna start believing in the power of this land?”
Lee didn’t respond. She wanted to believe in it, and to feel its real power coursing through her. Not just some moonshine acid trip.
“We are gonna bind him from doing any more harm,” Belva continued.
“Are you sure that will work?”
Belva huffed. “If you and Meredith join, I think it will.”
“Not Meredith. I’ll do it, but not her.”
“You’re making a mistake. Who knows what Red’s been teaching her. At least let me show her the right way.”
“I’m not ready to make that call.”
“Opaline. You’re denying her the power of her birthright. The same thing happened with you, and look what happened.”
“Drop it. Please.”
Belva sighed. “You’re as stubborn as your mother. Well, all right. But do me a favor—don’t drink tonight. We need everyone sober.”
