Strange Folk, page 16
Preferring to stay in motion, Lee went to the nurse’s station to see if she could speak to someone about the doctor’s status. A woman with brilliant red hair and aging skin looked up and answered, “What’s your name, honey?”
“Lee—uh—Ford.” She’d started using her maiden name again, but it still sounded weird.
“For Redbud Ford?”
“Um, no. For Belva. Buck.”
“Okay, got it. The doctor is in surgery right now, but he should be done in a few hours. He’ll come see her then.” Lee processed this and attempted to smother the rising panic. They would be waiting for a while before anyone told them a goddamn thing.
“Is Redbud Ford here?”
“You family?”
“Yes. I’m her daughter.”
“Well then, yes. She’s just down the hall.”
“What happened to her?”
“She walked out into traffic at that new intersection near the Walmart. Most of the cars stopped, but one wasn’t paying attention and nicked her side. She’s lucky to be alive.”
Lee asked for the room number and made her way down the hall. She found Redbud sleeping in a hospital bed, looking dead to the world. She sat quietly in a chair and peeked over to the other side of the room where a person lay covered head to toe in a blanket. She wondered what they looked like.
“He’s been covered this whole time. I still don’t know what’s under there.” Her mother’s eyes remained closed.
“What happened to you?”
“Oh, honey, it was crazy.” She finally looked at Lee. “I was trying to cross the street, and I thought the sign said walk, but it musta been broke, because then all the cars went, and I got trapped in the intersection. I swear I’m gonna sue the county. They’re lucky it was old broke-down me that no one cares about. What if it’d been a child—”
“Mama. I’m going to leave if you aren’t honest with me.”
“But I’m telling the truth! That traffic light almost killed me!”
“All right. Hope you feel better.” Lee got up to leave, but Redbud’s spotted arm darted out from the blanket and gripped Lee’s wrist.
“Fine! Shit. You always were a tough old bitch.”
Lee waited. She had heard so many lies over the years. Each story encrusted with its own specific details. A disability check lost in the mail, probably in a dirty puddle somewhere after the storm they just had. A broken refrigerator with wires chewed through by rebellious adolescent raccoons. She was always in a constant state of needing money, and by money, the drugs that the money would buy her. When Lee finally changed her number, she’d done it out of self-preservation.
“I’ve been trying to get clean for you and the kids. I just needed something to hold me over until I could get into detox. But TJ wasn’t around. One of his boys told me he fucking died and wouldn’t float me. Then I was all fucked up and starting to feel real bad, so I walked out in front of those cars.” She avoided making eye contact with Lee.
“Worst case, I’d die, and it would be a fucking relief. And best case, I’d wind up here with my little button.” Redbud held up a plastic device with a button connected to a morphine drip and pressed it with a dramatic flourish. She lay back on the bed and closed her eyes for a moment, nestling into the crinkle of paper pillowcases.
“Mama. What were you doing with Meredith at the Ryders’? Did you go back to the work?”
“No. I gave her a little moonshine to make her think she was learning. I figured she’d eventually get tired of it and move on to something else. I was protecting her, like I protected you from it.”
Lee narrowed her eyes at this rewriting of history. She hadn’t protected her from anything. “You gave my fifteen-year-old moonshine?”
“It was only a little bit. Just enough so she’d get the effects.”
Lee swallowed her anger. She knew better than to argue with her mother’s twisted logic. She took a pad of paper and a pen from a side table and drew the black flower symbol. She held it up in front of her face. “What is this? I know it’s on the moonshine bottles, but what else? I know it’s bigger than that.”
Redbud squinted at the paper. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s all it is. TJ called it branding. Like he needed anything fancy to sell that shit.”
Maybe she was right. Maybe it meant nothing at all, and Lee was chasing a backwoods conspiracy that wasn’t real. But then who killed TJ and Mr. Hall? What was she missing?
Redbud propped herself up on her elbows and looked at Lee hopefully. “Did you bring the children with you? Can I see them? I still haven’t met your boy.”
“No.”
“Just for a minute, huh? I’ll be good. I promise.”
“Mama.”
For a moment, Lee imagined her mother running through the trees, strong and beguiling, followed by a shrieking Meredith and Cliff. She would never have been conventional, but she would have inspired them.
Lee studied the real version of her mother in the hospital bed, frail and eroded, but somehow still alive. Beneath the ruin, she could still see the old her. A streak of her beautiful, powerful mother glinted in the hospital fluorescents. Maybe Redbud didn’t deserve her guilt. But Lee couldn’t deny that she cared for her any longer.
“Let me help you. I know people from college who are therapists now. I bet they can get you into a nice rehab somewhere. Let’s do it for real this time. You don’t have to do it on your own.”
Her mother’s face twisted into a scowl. “I don’t need your fucking help,” she hissed. “You can’t just disappear and never call me or ask me how I’m doing and then come here and tell me how to live my fucking life. You don’t know shit about me or my life. You didn’t care when I was so broke I nearly froze to death. You didn’t care when I was arrested and all I needed was just one person to say I was half decent. You changed your phone number like I was some stalker and not the woman who gave you life.” Her hair was nearly standing on end.
Lee tensed and filled with adrenaline in response to her mother’s rising energy, like when she was a kid. “You are the one who told me to leave and never come back, and you are the one who made life here so hard that I’d never want to.” Lee took a deep breath. “But for some reason I can’t fathom, I still want to help you. Let me help you.”
“You don’t wanna help me. You wanna ship me off to get rid of your own guilt. These ‘therapists’ you talk about are professional drug dealers paid by the drug companies and the government to keep me poor and stupid so they can do God knows what when no one is looking. These therapists are crazier than I ever been.” Redbud threw herself back down on the bed and turned her head away from Lee.
Lee’s glimpse of her old mother vanished, and now she only saw the woman who had made her life hell. She’d fallen into the trap once again, and she scolded herself for being so stupid.
And yet, despite everything, Lee still couldn’t be mad at her in the way she wanted. She knew her mother was a deeply sick person.
And there was nothing she could do about it.
“Nice talk, Mama.” Lee got up and wrenched her arm away when her mother grabbed for it again. “Stay away from my kids.” She kept her head down and refused to make eye contact as she left the room.
In the hallway, she imagined her mother’s outstretched arms still hanging there, mouth gaping, fingers grasping for anything to fill her.
EIGHTEEN
The stars were out when Lee knocked on Otis’s front door.
She stood there for a few minutes, but no one answered. Low music was coming from the back, and she walked around the side of the house to a large wooden shed with an open front.
Otis was bent over a slab of wood with a large sander gripped in his hands, and his body moved back and forth over it as a thrashing metal played low. His hair was slicked back and his white T-shirt was translucent with sweat. She stood there, watching the ropes and bulges of his arms flex with each stroke.
He looked up, startled. Lee entered the shed and took a pair of goggles neatly hooked on the wall and a piece of sandpaper from the pile on the table. She moved around the slab to what looked like a chair leg and started to delicately sand it.
Once Meredith and Cliff had entered school, Lee had returned to woodworking. It never grew beyond making pieces for the house and neighbors, but it gave her a small escape from her life with Cooper. Moving her body over the wood provided a distraction, and a release, from all that she kept carefully contained.
Otis turned off the music, and they both worked in silence for a while, except for the rhythmic scraping of them wearing down the wood grain by grain.
Finally, she set the paper down and pulled the goggles from her head.
“Belva had a stroke.” She gritted her teeth, attempting to hold it together.
Otis took off his own goggles and disarmed himself of his sander. He came around the wood and pulled her toward him gently. Her inner resolve collapsed at his touch, and she finally let herself become undone.
“For years, I acted like she was already dead. I let my family think she was so we wouldn’t have to come here. Now she’s actually dying, and I’m pissed because I love her, but also because I need her. It’s so selfish.”
Belva was the only person who could help her figure out what was happening, and now she was all but lost to them. But Lee’s hopelessness extended beyond a grappling with her relationship with Belva or the mystery behind the murders. Her understanding of herself and the life she’d built had entirely unraveled, and there was nothing that could help her make sense of it or weave it back together. The reality of it came in a wave, like a tide of polluted water washing over her, and the tears finally came.
He held her against him and let her cry into his shirt until she felt empty and bruised. When she quieted, he asked if she wanted some water, and she followed him inside.
She’d never been inside his house before, and it smelled like his scalp and the folds of his shirts. The kitchen was clean with dishes drying on a towel next to the sink. He took a glass out of a cabinet that contained a jar of the moonshine. Her heart leapt at the sight of it, and she noticed him watching her.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea for tonight.”
“I agree.” She had taken a few sips from her own jar before she got out of her car. She knew she needed to stop, but this didn’t feel like the right night to do it.
The small space of the kitchen brought them closer together, sealing them in. Lee wanted to be against his body again, but as she moved toward him, he took a step back.
“Let’s go for a walk.”
They went out the back door and walked by the strawberry field, still warm and dry from the day’s sun. Summer had ended months ago, but they were somehow still on the vine, soft and darkly ripe. Lee remembered Belva saying the strawberries had bloomed out of season.
She pulled one from a plant and put it in her mouth. The sugars were on the very cusp of fermentation, the last curve of life before plunging off the side.
They walked into a large thicket of trees, tamer than Belva’s woods, with well-treaded paths. The moon was just bright enough and the neighbors just close enough that they could see in front of them.
“Did you hear about TJ?”
A shadow passed over his features. “Yes.”
“I’m so sorry. I know you were friends.”
Lee could barely see his expression, but she sensed a shift in mood, the air sparking.
“What?”
“They’re saying Belva killed him. And that you might’ve been involved.”
“Who’s they?”
“My friends. Family. Anyone I’ve talked to in the last twelve hours.”
“And what about you? What do you think?”
“I’m more interested in what you think.”
“So you actually think we killed someone?”
He took a deep breath and looked into the trees. “I get the feeling there are things happening that I’m not aware of or don’t understand. First, we see Mr. Hall and a girl in the woods. Two days later, he’s found dead. On Belva’s land. Then, you ask me about TJ. A few days later, he’s also found dead.”
“You saw Mr. Hall that night?”
“Yeah, of course. It was hard to miss him.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“It seemed like you didn’t want to talk about it.”
Lee was quiet for a beat. Coming here was a mistake. “I didn’t kill anyone. And Belva didn’t either.”
“Then what’s going on?”
“I honestly don’t have an answer.”
For a moment, the only sounds were their breathing and the hiss of the woods around them.
“Did you put a spell on him… or curse him?” Otis finally asked.
“Did you know TJ was dealing?” She deflected.
“He’s always done that. He used to sell weed in high school. I don’t mess around with that stuff.”
“How could you be friends with him, then?”
He stopped and looked at her, and in the moonlight, she watched an anger move through him, his face barely recognizable.
“What if that was the only way TJ knew how to support his family? He is not the one who got everyone hooked on painkillers. That was doctors and drug companies. TJ is not the enemy.”
“But—”
“It’s not up to me to pass judgment on others around here. I appreciate what Belva has done for my father, but she doesn’t get to decide who is right and wrong in this town. I understand when people say they’re tired of that.”
“Wait—”
“That always bothered me about you in high school. You acted like we were all hillbilly idiots, as if you had the right to decide what had value. You thought because I was quiet and read books that somehow I was better, that it meant I might be worth something. And you still threw me away.”
“Otis, I’m sorry, you have it wrong…” Lee tasted the falseness of the words. There was truth in what he was saying; Meredith had screamed this at her.
“You act like this place isn’t good enough to live in, that you can’t wait to leave.”
Lee found her voice. “Just because I want better for my children doesn’t make me a bad person. That’s what we should all be striving for.”
He grunted in frustration. “Look, it’s not really about that.” He ran a hand through his hair. “You still haven’t answered my question. Did y’all put a curse on TJ?”
Lee wanted to trust him, but this was bigger than the two of them. It seemed like any explanation she gave would make him even more suspicious that she and Belva were behind it. She couldn’t put her family at risk.
When Lee didn’t answer, he said, “TJ was one of my best friends. And now he’s dead, and it seems like you were involved. I’m giving you a chance to set the record straight but you won’t be honest with me.”
He waited for her to defend herself, but she remained silent.
“I thought you’d changed. But it’s still hard to get close to you. I’m not sure if you see me as a person sometimes. If you did, you’d have come here tonight knowing I’d be upset about TJ. But instead you came here seeking comfort for yourself.” He paused, then said, “I’m sorry to hear about your grandma. I can see that you need someone right now. But it can’t be me.”
This thing between them had been unexpected. She hadn’t taken the time or space to contemplate it, and so it had never quite taken shape. But now, whatever it had been was disintegrating and turning to ash on the wind.
She wanted to touch him one more time, to feel her self meeting his in their skin. Perhaps she could still find him there. But as she reached for his hand, he took a step back from her.
They didn’t speak after that.
NINETEEN
MEREDITH
A crash startled Meredith awake. She rolled over and checked her phone.
3:45 a.m.
Across the room, Cliff stirred but remained asleep. Meredith groaned and heaved herself out of bed. Lights blazed in the hallway, and she had to shield her eyes. Another crash came, and she staggered zombielike to the back of the house.
Garbage bags lined the entryway leading to Billy’s old bedroom that was now used for storage. She opened the door and was confronted by a wall of boxes. She entered a small opening to the right and crept along the narrow pathway, following the sound of her mother swearing. Stacks of newspapers, heaps of pots, and piles of baby clothes loomed on either side. An old porcelain clown leered at her with one eye as she passed.
She found her mother hunched over a shattered lamp in the corner.
“Mom?”
She spun around and put a hand to her chest. “God, you scared me.” Her eyes were bloodshot and her hair was messy in a way Meredith had never seen before. Mom was annoyingly meticulous about her appearance.
“Have you been up all night?”
“I don’t know. What time is it? I think I lost my phone.” She put her hands on her hips and surveyed the room. “But look at this! Doesn’t it already look so much better?”
Meredith looked around. The room was still a nightmare. “Maybe you should take a break.”
Her mother had barely slept in the four days since Belva was taken to the hospital.
Back in California, when her mother was upset, she would always throw herself into a project, like building a wooden table for the back patio or redoing the guest bathroom with thousands of hand-stamped gold feathers. But this was on another level. Meredith was still angry at her mother, but her concern was stronger.
“I’m so close, though. I don’t want to stop now. I’m in the zone.” Mom pulled a stack of old school lunch trays from somewhere and showed them to Meredith. “Aren’t these cool? We could use these.” She looked rabid beneath the room’s bare bulb, and her breath had the cheap perfume scent of the moonshine Redbud had given Meredith.
“Yeah, sure.” Meredith picked up a photo album balanced on a tower of paint cans and opened it. Two teenagers with milky skin and feathered hair held a baby between them and looked at the camera with proud half smiles. “Is this you with Redbud and your dad?”
