Strange Folk, page 7
After a while, he pulled her toward his chest, and they just stood there for a moment breathing together, their skin searing from the flames. He looked down at her, and she held his gaze.
“I need to be… closer.” He brought his forehead to hers, both damp with the anticipation of it. This need to be skin to skin.
There was something tender about his voice, tinged with just a bit of fear. Lee was surprised she felt no fear herself; it had been so long since she wanted to touch or be touched, but she could feel her body reaching for him. She knew why they called desire thirst. She felt the pulse of wanting in her tongue.
She nodded, and he led her away from the fire toward the trees. The air cooled and darkened the farther they went, but the heat still radiated from each of their bodies. Lee felt like a warm jewel, a ruby held in a palm until it’s hot to the touch. She thought she could see an emerald hue emanating from him, standing out from the dark blues and purples and blacks.
At some point, she had begun to lead him, and she stopped at a tree deep enough to give them privacy, but not so far away that they’d lost sight of the flames in the distance. Her eyes had adjusted by now, and she could see the charcoal of his features as he brought his face to hers and pushed her gently back against the bark.
She ran her fingers through the silk of his hair and gave consciousness up to her senses. His nose against her cheek, then her mouth inside his, his arms cradled around her back. It was more than flesh meeting flesh. It was their two selves meeting in each point of contact, a bone-deep pleasure billowing from each touch.
When he got on his knees, pulled down her clothes, and slid his tongue down the slit of her, she could feel herself spreading and dislocating, her mind meeting his mouth in each movement.
Suddenly, the beam of a flashlight swept through the trees, and a woman’s voice came from behind them. They instinctively pulled apart, and Lee frantically pulled her jeans back over her hips.
The woman was calling for someone, but Lee couldn’t make out the name. As the light swept through again, Lee saw that there were other pairs of bodies in the woods around them, blooming in the combination of moonlight and fire glow like an ancient pleasure garden.
She saw a flash of a young girl about Meredith’s age, naked to the waist and clutched against a man in a purple blazer with his pants unbuckled and his silver temples glinting in the glare.
In the next sweep of light, the figures were gone. The tree bare.
Lee smelled white ash, wood burned to powder. An owl appeared and perched in the tree above them. It swiveled its head toward her without moving its body and stared into her eyes with its unfeeling ink.
SIX
When Lee opened her eyes, everything was blue.
She was a hard gray stone, numb to the touch.
Rain clinked against the roof of the car, its smell mixing with the wool of the seats and the smoked denim of her jacket. The clearing outside the window had turned to a wasteland of old pickup trucks with a pile of wet ash at the center.
Otis was hunched in the driver’s seat, breathing rhythmically. The minor imperfections of his face were clear and on display in the somber, cloud-diffused light. She nudged him gently and told him she needed to get back to her kids. He nodded without a word and cleared his throat as he put the car in gear, pulled out of the mud, and curved toward the gravel road.
The night before, she’d been desperate to be with her children after seeing Mr. Hall with the girl, and she’d asked Otis if he could take her home without telling him what she’d seen. They took off in his pickup, but when they got to the old livestock gate, it was padlocked shut. Otis remembered this was the only rule for these parties, established years ago after a girl left drunk one night and drove right off the mountain.
Now it was morning and the gate was open. As they pulled out, Otis silently focused on the road, and Lee sat brooding with one elbow on the door, unraveling everything she knew about Mr. Hall. Reinterpreting every intimate moment, every eloquent line. She thought of how an artist could become a predator. How the silken qualities of a creative mind could slip between the lines.
She thought of Crystal. A girl with frothy blonde hair and a legendary chest who had been in her English class sophomore year. She’d been famous for mauling another girl at lunch the year prior. At first, Lee was baffled by her presence in Mr. Hall’s class, but then she read one of her essays in a peer-review exercise. Crystal wrote with a forceful truth that disarmed the reader, shedding all pretense and cutting straight to the marrow. It was the kind of writing that made Lee question the verbose style she’d adopted from the authors she read.
She thought of Mr. Hall scolding Crystal for always wearing a puffy jacket in his class, even at the parched end of spring when the flowers were starting to wilt and brown in their beds. He always insisted she take it off, to show some decorum. Lee had felt herself aligned with him—punish her, teach her what it means to be a dignified person. But now it was cast in a different light. He’d wanted her to bare herself to him.
As the world shifted and offered this new lens, it was clear that he treated the girls differently, placing them into categories like characters in novels. There were girls who were smart, stubborn, and bound for greatness, who needed to be nurtured and preserved and made into devotees. That was Lee. And then there were girls that were meant to be ravaged, embodiments of fresh, ripe sexuality, existing only for this purpose. Like Crystal, or the young woman she saw in the woods.
Otis slowly drove up Belva’s driveway, careful not to displace the gravel. His ease should have been calming, but she was anxious to leave the car and take refuge in the cabin. Her hand was already on the handle as he came to a stop.
“Thank you for taking me home.” She saw that his face was guarded, his usual stoicism forced to mask something. She put her hand on his in a hasty attempt at tenderness. None of this was his fault. She hadn’t explained the urgency last night, and he hadn’t pressed her. He had done everything right.
“Wait a minute. Are you okay?”
“Yes, of course. I’m just tired from last night. Need to sleep.” She got out of the car before he could say anything else.
Inside, Luann was cleaning her gun on the kitchen table, and the smell of the oil made Lee want to vomit. She was suddenly painfully aware of her body. The throb in her head, the hollow in her stomach. She wanted to say something about gun safety, but the words escaped her. Lee asked Luann where everyone was, and she told her Belva was setting up at the antique mall and the children were playing in the woods. This filled her with fresh panic, and she went out to look for them.
The rain had turned into a faint drizzle, and tiny water droplets pearled in her hair. The leaves underfoot were an amber mash and the woods were awash in that prehistoric smell—fog, ferns, and mud emitting their fragrances without intervention.
She found Meredith and Cliff hunched over something in a ravine filled with enormous moss-covered stones. At the sound of her footsteps, they looked up toward her. Meredith held something small and furred against her chest as Cliff stroked its head with his finger.
“Can we keep it?”
Lee saw that it was a black barn kitten. “You’ll have to ask Belva. You can bring it up to the house for now.” Lee took the kitten from Meredith and brought it to her chest. She hadn’t felt this ache since she’d moved in with Cooper, and he’d forced her to give up her cat. This was how she’d ended up with so many animals when she was younger.
At first it had driven Mama crazy, and she would make her release them into the woods. But as Mama disconnected from Lee and the rest of the world, she stopped coming into Lee’s room or noticing much of anything she did unless it caused her direct, concrete trouble.
In her loneliness, Lee collected a legion of animals in her room, where she left the window open to let them come and go. There were barn kittens and baby mice and tiny raccoons and little possum. They always grew up and eventually left her, but she was okay with that. Sometimes she’d see them in the woods months or years after, and they’d make eye contact, and an understanding would pass between them. It was the type of memory that she questioned now, skeptical of its plausibility. Yet, she could still remember the feeling of falling asleep at night with quivering fur against her cheek.
When they got to the house, she told Cliff to go inside, and she and Meredith sat on the porch with the kitten between them on the swing.
“How are things going? I feel like I haven’t talked to you in forever.”
Meredith let the kitten sink its tiny fangs into her palm. “Fine.”
“Yeah?” Lee wondered if she was in one of her moods. She told herself to give her space. She didn’t need to know everything that was happening inside her at all times.
“Yeah, I don’t know. I guess I like it here.”
Lee had expected her daughter to hate this place as much as she had when she was her age; she’d braced herself for the misery. But this attitude was harder for Lee to grapple with—she didn’t want Meredith to like it here. She wanted her to stay separate and rarified. Her mean, brilliant teenager who wouldn’t settle for less. She’d come to believe that Meredith would finally get it right. She would have the shimmering, successful life. Lee was just a bridge. But this. She didn’t know how to handle this.
“That’s… great. I want you to be happy.” Lee paused. “I’m going to ask you something, and it’s important that you’re honest. I promise that nothing you tell me will get you in trouble.”
Meredith furrowed her brow. “Okay…”
“Has Mr. Hall said or done anything… inappropriate to you since we got here? I know it’s only been a week, but I have to ask.”
“What? No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes! What is going on?”
“I think… something happened with another girl. I just need to know for sure that nothing has happened with you.”
“I mean, I get a weird vibe from him. Like he’s trying to be my friend. Which is fine. Teachers are people, too. But… I don’t know.”
Lee knew what she meant, but she’d welcomed it when she was younger. She’d been so hungry for kinship. “All right, thank you for being honest. Keep this between us for now, okay?”
Meredith nodded.
In the shower, Lee rubbed body wash into her legs and swore she could see new veins spidering up her calves since last night. Her nose and eyes were scarlet in the bathroom mirror, and she tried to bleach them with foundation and a few drops of wild rose water from the bathroom cabinet. She huddled inside of herself, searching for some comfort. But all she could find was sickness.
* * *
Peeper’s Antique Mall shared a parking lot with a small strip center church, and a giant white cross, easily the tallest thing for miles, stood out in front.
The mall was a large, low-ceilinged warehouse partitioned into small cubicles that people rented out to hawk their wares. There were booths filled with rusted rifles and faded NASCAR memorabilia, poorly painted portraits of strangers long dead, sparkling costume jewelry and hand-painted live laugh love signs. Some were neatly arranged, and others looked like a glorified yard sale with the cat hair still stuck to the items.
Lee followed a stream of people moving toward the back of the store where the air was colder and the booths creepier. She passed one with nothing but wide-eyed, catatonic dolls with their hair matted against their heads and their dresses pulled up over their legs, and another with hundreds of ceramic hands reaching up to the heavens. It was the type of stuff that showed up with high price tags in urban boutiques but only went for a few dollars at Peeper’s.
Belva’s booth was at the very back in a wing that branched off from the rest of the store. It was entirely unadorned. Three large pieces of white pegboard surrounded her so that she was the thing on display: an older woman with peach hair sitting in front of a card table covered in a white handkerchief, a few tea candles burned to the metal, and a worn Bible. Next to her chair sat the type of red-and-white cooler famous for its ability to chill many beers at a time and a graying tacklebox. A folded screen stood in one corner like the kind women dressed behind in old movies.
Lee watched as a woman pretended to browse the wares in the booths nearby, and then furtively approached Belva, speaking low. Belva motioned for her to come behind the screen, and there was some brief murmuring before they came back out. Belva unfurled the tacklebox and plucked a string from its compartments of feathers, coins, flannel strips, stones, and animal teeth. The woman raised her shirt, and Belva tied it around her waist. Then Belva told her to visit a cemetery before sunrise, and the woman nodded solemnly.
Lee waited until the woman left and sat in the chair on the other side of the table.
“Ms. Buck, I feel like a corpse this morning. What do you advise?”
Belva raised an eyebrow. “You might try putting down the bottle one of these nights.”
Lee was ready for this. “That might help long term, but I’m looking for something more immediate. As in, right now.”
Belva sighed. “I’m not sure you deserve it, but I don’t like seeing you in pain.” She dipped into the cooler and pulled out a vial of a bright green liquid. Lee had only been joking, but she was drawn to the vial now, her mouth watering. She took it from Belva, uncapped it, and shot it back. The taste was of plants picked too young—sweet, raw, and nearly fizzing with life.
She waited for something to happen.
Nothing.
Belva watched her intently, and Lee wondered at her curiosity. She’d probably given this hangover remedy thousands of times.
And then Lee felt it. The smell of wet dust and the hum of the fluorescents and the staleness inside of her receded. In its place, the smell of dewy grass and the silent spill of sunshine and the feeling of a new day beginning spread through her.
Like a phoenix, she was resurrected.
Lee found a discarded chair in a corner and sat next to Belva as more patients came through. After an acne-ridden teen boy left with a bag of stones and some cream, Lee asked Belva why these people didn’t just go to the doctor. Belva explained that some in the community didn’t have health insurance. She was all they had until the big nonprofit medical vans rolled in at the end of the summer and parked up in the hills for the weekend to deliver free medical care to the mountain folk. People would wait in line for days to have their rotten teeth pulled and their diabetes checked.
And some just believed in her methods. She’d healed them before, and they kept coming back.
Lee eyed the booths around them, making sure no one was within earshot, and pulled the chair closer to Belva. She bowed her head and spoke in the same low voice as her abashed patrons.
“What do you know about Joseph Hall?”
Belva met her gaze. “Why do you ask?”
“I think I saw something last night. With a young girl.”
“Tell me more.”
Lee told her what she had seen, and Belva was quiet for a moment.
“Did you know the girl?”
“No, I didn’t recognize her. But there’s no way she was more than fifteen.”
Belva closed her eyes. “There were whispers a few years ago, but nothing happened. If he’s at it again, he has to be stopped.”
“I agree.”
“I’ll call my people when I get home and see if we can get enough for a gathering. Would you join us? We could really use you. Our numbers aren’t like they used to be. Just a bunch of grannies and Billy. Sometimes Kimmie. We need more youngins.”
Lee couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It was one thing to use the folk magic for healing, but it was another thing to think it could protect the community from a pedophile. “Look, this isn’t a joke. He needs to be held accountable. We have to report this to the police.”
“Look here, girl. I ain’t joking. Someone filed a complaint with the school a few years back. Got the police involved. He’s their best teacher. The only one who gives two shits. No one wants to see it. They got the girl to take it back. It went away. This is what the Bucks do. This is what they’ve always done.”
Lee opened her mouth to interject, but Belva cut her off. “Why didn’t you go to the po-lice first, huh? You didn’t have to come here and report to me.”
Lee wondered at that herself. There had been no internal deliberation; she had instinctively come. “I guess I wanted to know it was real. There’s a part of me that still doesn’t believe it happened.”
Belva studied her again. “So you’re saying you ain’t sure?”
“No… no. I’m certain it was him.”
“Well, all right, then. It’s settled. We’ll take care of him tonight.”
“I’m going to sit this one out—I wouldn’t be of any use to you anyway. I’ll tell the principal first thing tomorrow. He’ll know what to do.”
“You do what you need, darlin’.”
SEVEN
MEREDITH
Meredith woke to the sound of dogs howling and the strange energy surging through her with a strength she’d not yet experienced. She rolled out of bed and opened the small window in their room. Cliff shifted in his sleep. The faintest glow was coming from deeper in the woods, and she could smell smoke on the breeze.
Earlier that evening, she and Cliff listened from their bedroom as cars pulled up and voices receded into the trees. She told him she thought a ritual was happening that night, but she wasn’t sure. She’d already shared everything that Belva told her about their family, and Cliff was as excited by it as she was. She thought the things Cliff saw and felt that seemed strange to people were actually some magical sensitivity, and she wanted him to ask Belva about it. But Cliff was still too scared of Belva. She was an incredibly sturdy caregiver, but there was a steely quality that made you think twice before approaching her.
