Strange Folk, page 18
“She’s missing? Oh god…” Redbud paled to an even lighter shade and fell back against the wall.
“Where is she?” Lee shouted.
Redbud’s pained expression turned to a scowl. “Why don’t you ask Belva where she is, huh? Since y’all are so close now.”
“Belva is in the hospital. She had a stroke.”
Redbud closed her eyes and pressed her lips together. “Oh, Mama,” she said in a soft voice.
“Cliff saw someone take Meredith in the corn maze at the pumpkin patch. We don’t have a description—he only saw a tall shadow.”
Redbud opened her eyes and looked at Lee with newly heightened awareness. Her features became more defined, as if she was finally coming into focus.
“Two men have died. Joseph Hall and TJ Ryder, which you know about. People think Belva did it. And now Meredith is missing—” Lee started shaking again but willed herself to keep going. “And I think it has something to do with this, but I don’t know how.” Lee pulled the drawing of the black flower symbol from her back pocket and held it up to her again. “What does this mean? And before you start lying, there’s one about three feet tall burned into your living room wall.”
“Oh, baby, it ain’t what you think.”
“And what do I think?”
“This flower got very little to do with those bodies and Meredith.” She paused. “Did you know you can’t use the power of the land when you’re under the influence? You gotta have a clear head. Ready to receive.”
Lee wanted to choke her. “Can you just tell me what it means? Be honest and direct for once in your fucking life?”
Redbud sighed. “The flower is just a little thing I made up. After I stopped doing the work, I got kinda homesick for it. I missed the gatherings and being with people and doing something that felt special.” She looked down. “I also found out if you drank some of that moonshine, you wouldn’t feel so sick between fixes. It let you have a little breather, and when I was drinking it, it almost felt like I could connect with the land again. So I started having a bunch of people over like TJ and other people in town who were into the booze, or we’d go over to TJ’s, and we’d make a little fire like at Belva’s, and we’d get all fucked up and play witch. The brand was my idea. Thought it would make it more real for them. Didn’t hurt that much when you were flying so high. But it sure as shit hurt when you came down. Or at least that’s what it looked like.” She paused. “There was no way in hell I was letting them burn something into my skin.”
“Is this what I saw the other night? You made Meredith a part of this group?” Lee processed this. “Did you brand her?”
“How dare you ask me that. Of course not.” Redbud huffed. “I didn’t let anyone mess with her. I already told you, I was protecting her.”
“But did this group kill Mr. Hall and TJ? Do they have Meredith?”
“No, honey, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. TJ got a little carried away with it, started using that silly flower everywhere like some kinda logo. But it’s nothing but a bunch of addicts and weirdos who like to get together and pretend to be witches. Your Mr. Hall loved it. He thought he was in Macbeth or some shit.”
Even as Lee wanted to ask more questions, she needed to keep her on track. “So if they don’t have Meredith, where is she? Who took her?”
Redbud was silent for a moment. “I ain’t been sober in a long time, and I thought maybe my gifts had dried up.” She dropped her cigarette butt into a jar of water on the floor. “They can change as you get older. You lose the ability to pull the energy from the land, but you can still guide it if a youngin is there to pull it.” She coughed into her fist. “I might have held on to my gifts for longer if I’d taken better care of myself. But I can still do one thing.” She pushed her sleeves up her arms. “Do you remember when we used to pass memories back and forth when you were little?”
It sounded vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t be sure. “Sort of.”
Redbud stretched her hand out toward Lee. “Gimme your arm.”
Lee obeyed without thinking and reached out to feel her touch. Redbud took her wrist and turned it over to expose the tender, veined inside. She pressed her thumb to its center.
Lee watched as Redbud’s intent face began to pulse with Lee’s own heartbeat, and then the walls and the floor were beating, the room dissolving around her with each pulse until she lost all sense of self.
TWENTY-TWO
REDBUD
Redbud pierced the flesh of the left boot with a nail, driving it raggedly through the thick toe and then richly through the sole. When the nail hit wood, she wrapped both palms around the handle of the hammer and put all her dread into it, securing the boot firmly to the floor. She repeated the same process with the right.
Opaline watched from above where she lay across the bed with a book propped against the pillow. Redbud replaced the tattered bed skirt and hid the boots from view.
“Are you gonna lay around like that all day?”
Her daughter stretched out further and allowed her head, then her limbs, then her whole body to curl off the edge of the bed onto the floor, collapsing in a heap.
“Graceful.” Redbud waited for signs of life. “I have a late shift tonight. I want you to call me when Daddy gets home. Luann says they end at five today.”
Opaline stayed motionless on the floor.
“I am asking you a question, which requires acknowledgment and some kinda response.”
Opaline flipped on her back and held her middle. “Request acknowledged. Response affirmative.”
Redbud smiled to herself. “I made some chicken and dumplings for tonight.”
“Acknowledged and appreciated.”
“I aims to please.”
Opaline still lay there, holding her stomach.
“Are you feeling okay?”
“It feels like snakes are wrestling inside my belly.” She clutched her stomach tighter and groaned.
“You need some chamomile syrup?”
“I took some. It’s not a big deal. I shall live to see another day.” She pantomimed putting on a brave face.
“My fearless little girl.” Redbud gazed out the window and saw that it was raining in the stark autumn sunshine. “Looks like the devil is beating his wife again.”
She threw her navy-blue apron with WADE’S embroidered on the front over her arm, dropped a buckeye nut in her pocket from the bowl by the door, and got into a maroon station wagon idling in the dirt in front of the house. She lit a cigarette for Beverly in the driver’s seat, and one for herself, and they took off with a manicured hand dangling out the window on each side.
* * *
At seven p.m., Redbud wiped the ham juice from her hands and picked up the wall telephone at the deli. Opaline answered on the second ring and told her he wasn’t there. Redbud fingered the buckeye in her pocket, running her thumb first over its smooth edges, then grinding it over the rough patch at the top.
Half an hour later, she arrived back at home. She called out with false joy as she came through the door, hoping to hear a deep, gravelly reply. Instead, she heard her daughter’s cries.
“Mama!”
Redbud ran to their only bathroom and threw open the door. Opaline was huddled in the bathtub with her legs up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her knees. A curl of red snaked from underneath her.
“Did you cut yourself?”
“No. Unless I cut my you-know-what.”
“Oh, honey.” Redbud’s heart snagged. She wasn’t ready for this yet. She got to her knees and kneeled next to the tub. “You’re okay. This is normal. It’s your time of the month.”
“This is normal?”
“It’s a part of your baby-making machinery. When you bleed, your body is telling you you’re not pregnant.”
Opaline’s grimace deepened. “Pregnant?”
“Not that you need to worry about being pregnant, but that’s what it means.”
“Okay…” Opaline thought about it for a minute. “So how do we get it to stop?”
“You can’t make it stop. It’s gotta flow until it’s done. It’ll be over in a few days or so.”
Redbud could see her daughter’s marvelous brain burning through all that this implied.
“Do I use a Band-Aid to keep it from bleeding into my pants?”
“God, no. Well, not exactly.” She opened the cabinet under the sink and took out a box. “These are pads. You pull off the paper on the back and stick it in your underwear like this.” She pulled one out and demonstrated using Opaline’s underwear from the floor.
Opaline watched with mild interest while her wheels still turned. “Is it gonna happen again?”
“I’m afraid so, baby. Every month.”
“Every month for the rest of my life?”
“No, it’ll stop in your fifties or somewhere around there.”
“So, for one week every month for the next forty years of my life, I have to walk around bleeding into a little diaper?”
“I’m afraid so. It’s not that bad once you get used to it.”
Opaline scoffed.
“It ain’t all bad. You’ll get your black book now.”
Her sullen expression brightened.
Redbud eyed the small, naked body of her daughter, still crouched in the bath gone cold. “Your tummy still hurting?”
“Yes.” But she didn’t seem to register it. Her eyes were distant and glowing, no doubt imagining what she would put in her black book.
“All right. Dry off and get into your jammies, and I’ll make you a black cohosh tea. It’ll fix you right up.”
* * *
At two a.m., Redbud awoke on the couch with a jelly jar of bourbon in her hand. A truck with no muffler rumbled outside the windows, illuminating the house. She turned on the lamp as Hank came through the door. She expected him to be drunk, but his eyes were clear. He smirked to himself as if recalling a fond memory.
A cloud of something sweet hovered around him—honey, lemon, peppermint—and just the smallest hint of salted blood. It reminded her of the mixture she put in the cornbread she made when the weather turned warm in April and all she wanted was for Hank to chase her around the house.
He went to the kitchen for a glass of water without a word or glance in her direction. She followed and wrapped her arms around his chest from behind in the dim light. He recoiled from her touch as if burned. When she forced him to look at her, his eyes were filled with an indifference reserved for strangers. He mumbled he was tired and walked out of the kitchen. She could hear him humming in the bathroom as he brushed his teeth.
Redbud took his truck keys from the counter and went out to the car. She opened the driver’s side and felt around under the seat. In between the carpet fuzz and the empty bottles, her fingers curled around something thin and smooth. She pulled it out and held it up to the dim bulb. A turkey bone.
Redbud snapped the bone in half and threw the pieces into the grass. On the passenger seat, shining in the overhead light, she found a long, curling auburn hair. Nothing like Redbud or Opaline’s coal-black locks. She plucked it from the fabric and walked it to the house where she put it in an old peanut butter jar and hid it in the laundry room.
She went to the bedroom, where Hank was already snoring peacefully and checked under the bed. The boots were still there, bolted to the floor. She tiptoed out to Opaline’s room and crawled in next to her. Redbud lay there for a long while and allowed the hollow calm inside her to fill with that sick, heartbroke dread. She stayed perfectly still, afraid it would seep out and into Opaline if she moved even a muscle.
* * *
The next morning, Redbud called Belva.
“Mama, I need Opaline to stay with you tonight.”
“That’s fine. What’s going on?”
“Hank and I need some time to ourselves.”
“That sounds ro-mantic.”
“Oh, you know Hank. He’s a goddamn dreamboat. Also, Opaline got her period.”
“Well praise be. I knew it. I have everything ready. I dreamt about it two nights ago.”
“Why didn’t you warn me?”
“I called and left a message, but you never called me back.”
Redbud knew she was right. She’d been so preoccupied with Hank lately that she’d barely thought of anything else. “All right. We’ll come by before supper.”
Around three p.m., Redbud and Opaline arrived on foot at Belva’s cabin. They let themselves into the small hot kitchen smelling of burnt butter and the herbed dust thrown around by the old box fan in the corner. Redbud noticed a fresh black leather-bound book sitting on the counter.
Belva stepped out of the back with her apron on, and Opaline gave her a full-armed hug with an earnestness she reserved solely for Belva.
“Rascal.”
“Grandma Mama.”
“I hear you’ve undergone the first big change of life. Congratulations.”
“Thank you. I feel like I’m in a horror movie.”
Belva and Redbud laughed. “It ain’t all bad, honey.” She picked up the new black book and set it in front of her. “This is yours to write down all of your weird thoughts and ideas and recipes and anything else you want.” She opened it to the first page. “Go ahead and write your name in it.”
Redbud moved to leave the kitchen, but Belva caught her by the arm. “Aren’t you gonna stay for a bit? I thought we would show her together.” She smiled hopefully at her daughter.
Redbud wanted to be there for this, but she had too much to prepare for later. She couldn’t spare another moment. “I know, I’m sorry, Mama. I got stuff I need to do. We can show her tomorrow when you drop her off, okay?”
Belva nodded and patted her arm before turning her attention back to Opaline.
Redbud swallowed her guilt and left them to their work, taking a basket from the pile beside the door out to the garden.
She moved up and down its rows, plucking petals and berries with the swiftness of intention. With one eye trained on the house, she snapped a thorn from a dark tangle that looked dead until you got up close and saw that its decay was mere camouflage. The plant’s gray limbs were as lush as any of the verdant vines that surrounded it.
When she was done, she laid a cheesecloth over the top of the basket and went back inside to where Belva and Opaline had moved to the workshop. Redbud kissed the top of her daughter’s head and told her to have fun, but she was engrossed in reading an entry from Belva’s black book and she only nodded in response.
As Redbud left the property, she spotted a buzzard looming overhead, and she smiled to herself; her work would be successful tonight.
* * *
The old hunting cabin sat glowing in the trees with a pile of trucks and rusty sedans parked in front. They arrived in their various forms: Beverly in her nylon dress and dollar-store pearls, Luann still in her jeans from laying down highway asphalt, Billy in his Carhartt and flannel. Only Redbud, who greeted them as they came into the cabin, seemed to know how to truly dress for the occasion, with her midnight-blue sweater and lipstick the color of the blood that pulsed in her cheeks.
Belva and the other elders were absent from the small group. Only fresh faces shone in the moonlight as they stepped into the cabin.
Inside, the modest kitchen was covered in casserole trays and pitchers of tea. A pot of chicken and dumplings bubbled on the stove. The cabin, usually given to odors of sweat, cedar, and carcasses of hunts past, now yielded to the perfume and cigarette smoke and prepared food smell of the gathering.
Eventually the flurry of arrival began to subside, and Redbud led them out to the backyard, where a fire blazed. They dragged chairs out from the house and laid down blankets in the dirt while they murmured in low voices and gathered around the flames.
Once they were settled, Redbud pulled out a red suitcase, placed both hands on the bronze clasps, and released them. Inside the musty, satin-lined interior was a large glass canning jar filled with one auburn hair curled in a layer of gray powder and a black leather book. She pulled both out and set them on the ground in front of her. Then she took off her shoes and stood in a wide, powerful stance with her bare feet planted firmly on the ground.
When she looked up, all conversation ceased and all eyes turned to her.
“Welcome, y’all. I appreciate you coming out here tonight, and keeping it quiet. We are doing something a little special this time, and I wanted only my true-blues to join.”
She nodded at them and took a deep breath.
“My husband is a handsome man. He likes to drink. I know where that leads.”
There were murmurs of agreement.
“But lately, I have noticed a change. This is no one-night fling. He may think it’s love, but I can smell meddling from a mile off. Someone has put a love charm on my husband.”
Redbud scanned their faces, looking for an indication that she might be among them, but she only found devoted eyes.
“And I want him back.”
Redbud opened the black book to a page marked by a single black ribbon.
“I will not stand by while a woman draws from the power to break my family apart.”
Luann called out an “amen,” and Billy hollered a “hell yeah.”
“I do not know who this woman is, and I do not care to know. I only seek to banish her from our life.”
Redbud started to hum, and every person joined in harmony, growing louder.
She shook the jar vigorously and passed it to the next woman, who shook it hard and passed it to the next. She picked up the black book and read out the words written there. She allowed the intention of it to fill her completely; this keening need to find the diseased limb and cut it off at the root.
The wind picked up and clouds rolled in front of the moon, so that there was only the fire to guide them.
When the jar returned to her, she crouched over a small hole and laid the jar in it. Then she replaced the dirt and patted it down.
