Strange Folk, page 20
Lee strained to remember as she retraced their steps into Belva’s bedroom. She’d already searched every inch of the room, including a wooden trunk that continued to pulse with significance in her mind but had only contained a pile of itchy afghans.
She opened it again and shook each blanket out to make sure the book wasn’t hiding in the folds. As she gazed at the bottom of the trunk, part of it came back to her. A flash of Belva joking that Leroy had taught her one useful thing: how to hide booze from the po-lice.
She ran her palm over the smooth wood of the bottom and noticed a slight hole in the perimeter where the wood didn’t quite meet at the seam. She put her pinkie finger into the hole, hooked it, and pulled up. It didn’t move. She pulled harder and more desperately until it finally released. She pried the entire piece up to reveal a false bottom compartment like a moonshine hollow in a Ford Coupe.
But it was empty, with only dust collecting in a perfect square around where a book used to sit. Lee swore loudly and threw the wood against the wall.
Without cleaning up the room, she walked back out into the hallway and found herself face-to-face with the door to Meredith and Cliff’s room. She imagined them behind it, sleeping or ignoring her, and for a moment she enjoyed the feeling of them being safe in such a small, confined space. She opened the door, and the warmth dropped out of her.
The cots stood empty, with Cliff’s blanket lying flat and tucked around the edges. Meredith’s blanket was balled up and half hanging onto the floor. Lee lay down on her bed and pulled the blanket up to her chest. She leaned her head to the side and inhaled the cotton of the pillowcase. It still had the mothball-and-butter smell of Belva’s house, but there was a bit of Meredith poking through: a mix of cheap shampoo and the cornflake scent she’d had since she was a toddler.
Lee instinctively reached her arm over the side of the cot and felt underneath for the book Meredith had been reading. She felt a stack of smaller books perched on top of something large and smooth and too heavy to pick up with one hand. Lee knelt down in front of the cot and pried the heavy object from underneath the pile. It was Belva’s black book.
They had kept this secret from her, and no one was there to absorb her disapproval.
With her chest aching, she picked up the book, turned on the golden light of the lamp, and began to read.
TWENTY-FOUR
Well I’ll be damned.” Lee heard Luann suck on a cigarette through the phone.
“I know.”
“I had no idea it went that far. I knew something bad happened at Billy’s cabin that night… but I didn’t know this.”
“I’ve been working on piecing the spell back together. Do you remember any of the words from that night?”
Luann exhaled hard through the phone. “Damn. I wish I could, honey, but that was thirty years ago. All I remember was being at Billy’s and this weird kind of feeling but that’s it. I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. Mama’s coming to stay with me. I don’t want her to relapse. Who knows how that would affect whatever has Meredith.”
“You can put her in our room. I’m gonna keep staying with my friend so I can be closer to Belva.”
“Thanks. I think I’ve got the jar mix right, at least. Once I figure out the words, we should be ready. We’ll need some people to join.”
“You’ll need a lot of people. As many as we can convince to do it. It’s gonna be tough.”
“What about Belva’s ladies? They’ll come, right?”
“I don’t know, darlin’. You ain’t Belva, and people are spooked after the murders. Beverly only ever came so she could be in people’s business. I don’t think you can count on her. Maybe Linda. But everyone knows Belva is in the hospital, and not one of them has called me to see how she is.”
“What about all the people Belva has helped over the years?”
Luann sucked her teeth. “It ain’t that easy. When she’s treating their shingles, she’s a saint. But when folks need someone to blame for something they don’t understand, she becomes a witch.”
Lee hoped this wasn’t entirely true. She couldn’t do this on her own. “God, I wish she was here. I miss her.”
“Me, too.”
“How is she doing?”
“I can still feel her there, but she’s weak. She doesn’t do well when she spends this much time away from the land. It’s why we never go anywhere. She just gets irritated and mean and who wants to deal with that?”
Imagining a pissed-off Belva just brought the loss more into focus. The wave threatened to overtake her once more. “What if we never get to talk again? What if this is it?” She regretted saying it out loud, like she was calling it into being.
“I have a hard time believing this is how it all ends.”
Lee could hear the bone-deep exhaustion in Luann’s voice. “How are you doing?”
“Oh. I’m fine. You don’t worry about us. Just find your girl.”
“Okay. Can I count on you to come, when it’s ready?”
“I’ll be there. And I’ll see who else I can corral. I’ve got some favors I can call in.”
Lee hung up and checked her phone to see if Kimmie had texted back from her latest number. All of Lee’s voicemails and texts explaining what really happened to TJ had gone unanswered.
There was nothing from Kimmie, but there were three voicemails from Cooper and one from his lawyer. She listened to the first from Cooper. His PI had dug up rumors that Lee was involved in a string of occult murders. His delivery was smug, and she deleted it and the next two without listening. The one from his lawyer was curt. They were calling an emergency custody hearing regarding the safety of Radcliff Carnell, and she was required to be in court at nine a.m. Monday morning. It took her a moment to remember what day it was; everything had been a blur since Meredith was taken. It was Sunday.
She wondered at the consequences of pretending none of these people existed, at least until she got her daughter back. Once that happened, she could face everything else. But there wasn’t space inside of her right then.
* * *
Reading Belva’s black book was one of the most intimate things Lee had ever done, like taking a step inside Belva’s internal landscape and walking around. It was comforting to imagine a younger Belva writing in the book, muscled and glowing with health like a girl on a butter box.
Lee remembered that many of the early spells were ones passed down through the family. Belva learned them from her grandmother Pallie, who learned them from hers, and so on. They were simple, ancient remedies for universal problems. Lee imagined generations of people suffering from the same pain and conjuring remedies from the land to ease it. This legacy felt like the missing piece of something she’d been subconsciously searching for, though whether she could access it was still unclear.
As she flipped through the pages, new spells cropped up—ones that Belva invented herself. Mixed in with these spells were diary entries and observations about the weather and the nature around her. Lee could see the evolution of a new spell through the diary entries that served as inspiration, then the need arising, and the formation of it through notes about plants and ideas for wording. Finally, there was the spell itself, which Belva liked to enshrine on its own page. The spoken words of a spell took many forms—they could be like poems, or stories, or sometimes they were merely Bible verses. Belva’s spells were more intricate and imaginative than the older ones, and sometimes they used more modern materials like Dr Pepper and pantyhose that she had lying around. This was a cornerstone of the work—you could make magic with whatever you had, no matter how meager.
I want to cut Hank’s whore out of my life. I want to cut Hank’s whore out of my life.
Redbud had said it over and over in the ritual in her memory. But that was all she could remember of the spell. The rest was just marshmallow noise drowned out by the hum. Judging from Belva’s spells, Lee believed Redbud had told her love story with Hank, and she had a feeling that it was partly this potent expression of heartbreak that had formed the shadow. The creature was an extension of Redbud, carrying out her most painful, shame-filled desires and feeding off the suffering that it created.
Lee would put out a little plate of pain for it, like a slab of ground chicken parts for a barn cat.
Lee heard her mother slam something against the counter and swear loudly in the kitchen. She’d showed up a few hours ago and hadn’t stopped fidgeting since she got there. Lee walked out to find her hunched over the cutting board with her finger in her mouth. She’d been resistant at first to the notion of staying at the cabin, but she’d settled in quickly. She’d been born here, right in the garden like Kimmie’s baby, and she’d been raised within its walls.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to make lunch but these damn knives are duller than a bag of hammers.”
Redbud had gone through the worst of the detox, but the effects lingered in the dark circles under her eyes, her bloodless face, her petulant mood. Lee remembered her withdrawal stages well; she’d tried to get clean a few times when Lee was in high school.
Lee led Redbud into the bathroom and ran her shaking finger under the cold water. She dried it and applied a few dabs from a jar marked “for cuts” she found in the cabinet and wrapped a small bandage around it. Time melted as she once again became the teenager who took care of her mother. There was more comfort than anger in it this time.
Redbud avoided Lee’s eyes as she patched her up. “I used to cut Billy’s hair in here, and then he would do my makeup. He liked experimenting with the colors and using the brushes. He said it was like painting.”
“Sounds like you remember more than you think, Mama.”
Redbud acted like she hadn’t heard her. She was lost in a past life.
“There’s something I need your help with. I need to know more about you and Daddy. The important emotional moments, from beginning to end, that capture the arc of your story. I need it for the spell.”
Redbud’s expression went from dreamy to bitter, and she pulled her finger out of Lee’s hand. “I’ve done a lot to forget about those things.”
“But Ma—”
“Look, you know I want to help. But I’ve told you. I don’t got it.”
“What if you show me your memories? It might be easier that way.”
“I can’t show you anything that ain’t there.” She left the bathroom, and Lee followed her out.
“Meredith’s life is at stake here. Every moment that goes by is another one that she’s in danger. I need you to help me for once in your goddamn life.”
“Don’t you think I would if I could? It kills me that Meredith is out there somewhere, and I had something to do with it. I’d do anything to bring her back.” Redbud searched around her purse and pulled a pack of cigarettes from it.
Lee took a deep breath. “What if we go somewhere you used to spend time together? Does that ever trigger memories? Like just now with the bathroom and Billy?”
“It won’t work. I got too many bad memories from those places now. That’s what I remember.” Redbud went into Belva and Luann’s room and shut the door behind her.
Lee took stock of what she had: Mama’s story of how they first met in high school and a handful of early memories from before things started to break down.
Lee’s parents were the first people to show her the woods and the magic of wandering through them without a plan. Her father would help her find rocks that looked like rough jewels, and her mother would show her things like how to drink the nectar from a honeysuckle bud.
When the sun dipped below the tree line, Redbud would gather her hair up in a fat scrunchie and put a Fleetwood Mac record on. Lee would sit on the kitchen counter, and Redbud would throw something together from the fridge with a sway in her hips. She never had a lot to work with, and she wasn’t the best cook, but she was resourceful. Macaroni and cheese laid between slices of bread like tuna salad. Pancakes dotted with the vegetables from Belva’s garden. Daddy would swoop in from work and swivel his hips to the final track before disappearing to the bar, or a friend’s. After Lee was asleep, Redbud would do her work, and Lee only ever caught glimpses of it. A flicker of candlelight. A whiff of burnt hair. This was how she remembered it, at least. She didn’t have a sibling to tell her she was wrong. She was young enough that she didn’t notice whatever stood in the periphery, waiting to pull them under.
When she looked at pictures of them in the album Lee found in Belva’s storage room, she realized how young they were; her mother was only sixteen when she had her. He was eighteen. Their skin was so luminous that it washed out the pictures, the light blinding the viewer. Daddy had the kind of face that was so beautiful you couldn’t help but stare at it. Even when it was glazed from drinking or contorted with anger, you kept gawking to behold the tragedy of his features. You couldn’t look away.
Mama wasn’t beautiful in that easy way. She had a beauty that couldn’t be caught in a static image. It wasn’t her mouth that you admired, but the way it spread after telling her own joke. The sweep of her arms when she was commanding a room. The narrowing of her olive eyes when she was about to take someone down.
It didn’t feel like very much, but there was genuine emotion and love in these memories. She hoped it would be enough joy to show the loss. She had plenty of memories of the falling apart.
Scarcity was a part of the tradition. You made do with what you had.
TWENTY-FIVE
That evening, Lee went looking for more people to join the ritual.
Dreama’s new restaurant looked like a hipster Cracker Barrel. The deep front porch was outfitted with rocking chairs and mid-century modern side tables, and “Ruby Jo’s Homeplace” blazed in neon above the entrance in slick hot pink. Inside, the open, high-ceilinged room had a rustic wood-burning fireplace, and the walls were filled with illuminated canning jars and quilts in brightly colored modern geometric designs.
A pretty young woman wearing a low-cut prairie dress with puff sleeves stood behind a wooden table at the front affixed with iPads on stands.
“I’m here for the church fundraiser.” Lee showed her the ticket confirmation on her phone.
“Amazing. I’ll take you to our private gathering place.”
They snaked their way through the dining room to a separate room in the back where a blue banner with WELCOME ALTITUDES hung. The fundraiser invitation said they were rebranding the church, and research showed that people responded to a name that spoke to the way church could help you maximize yourself and ascend as opposed to the idea of worship.
A bar station and a buffet were set up along the wall to the right, and people were talking in clusters with drinks in their hands. A small chalkboard propped up next to the bartender advertised a “moonshine mojito” and a “crawdad tempura.”
She looked around the room, attempting to seem inviting and pleasant. Instead, she was met with furtive stares. The partygoers whispered to one another and instinctively inched farther away from where she stood. A few eyed the exit. Lee’s plan had been to mingle and recruit a few new friends to join a gathering in the middle of the night on a piece of land where a body had been found. But now she saw the fantasy of it. She’d been living outside of reality since Meredith was taken.
She downshifted to Plan B and searched for Dreama in the clusters. Her clones huddled in the corner whispering, but Lee didn’t see her among them. Lee felt a hand on her arm, and it was Belva’s friend Beverly looking mournfully up at her.
“I was so sorry to hear about Belva and your daughter, honey.”
“Thanks. I’m surprised to see you here. I thought you were in favor of keeping the old church.”
“I am, I am. But I had to see this place for myself. My restaurant hasn’t been doing very well. Everyone wants to come here now. I have to admit it’s pretty, though I don’t care much for the food.” She dipped a spoon into a purple syrup covering what looked like steak and pulled it up, allowing it to drip back down on the plate. “Have you heard Dreama and her husband are gonna franchise—”
Lee cut her off. “Have you heard from Luann? We’re having a gathering, and we need all the help we can get. It’s to find my daughter—”
“I heard from her. Honey, you know I want to help, but my husband won’t let me. I got called in to the police station last time. Can’t risk it.”
“You know that’s all bullshit. I need you. What if your daughter went missing?”
“I’m so sorry.” Beverly took a few steps away from Lee and set her plate down on one of the high-top tables. “I gotta get going. Give Belva and Luann my love.”
As Lee watched her walk away, Dreama came out of a door toward the back of the room carrying a signed football helmet. She put it on a table and leaned down to write on a piece of paper. Lee came up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder.
“Dreama.”
She whirled around with a smile plastered to her face that fell as she registered Lee. “Honey, what are you doing here? I didn’t expect you to come after everything that’s happened…”
“I need to talk to you. It’s important.”
“What’s going on? Did they find her?”
“No. But I know how we can get her back.”
“So there was a break in the case?”
“No, not with the police. We’re going to perform a spell, and I need as many people as I can get. I was hoping you could come and bring your friends. I don’t know many people here.”
Dreama gave her a pitying look. “Oh, honey. I can’t imagine how hard this has been. I’d lose my mind too if something happened to my kids.”
“I’m serious. This is going to work. I can feel it.”
Dreama glanced around and ushered Lee over to an empty corner of the room. She lowered her voice. “I want to help you, I really do, but I can’t do this. Do you know how many years it’s taken for people to forget who I used to be? I’ve made a whole new life without any of that stuff in it.”
