Curses and Other Buried Things, page 22
“When’d you become a poet?” I laugh.
“Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve been taking writing courses at the community college.”
“Missouri!” I sit up with a gasp.
“It ain’t worth any fuss.” Missouri yanks me into a hug, rocking side to side until our giggles wane. She motions to Godwin. “Remember. You can regret doing nothing too.”
He goes to his truck and wiggles off his shirt, replacing it with a plaid button-up.
I’m worried he already regrets me.
After supper, I make a delivery to the Green Frog. Keziah Douglas dines at a table, sawing a catfish fillet with a butter knife. She glowers as I carry a box of eggs to the bar.
With banana pudding, Lucinda bribes me into small talk. I scarf down a polite amount, then make a Southern goodbye to the restaurant’s exit.
Keziah stirs cream into pitch-black coffee.
I’m not sure what comes over me, but I steer a course to her table. “What did Mama do to you? My grandparents won’t tell me.”
“Susan cursed my family,” Keziah says, matter-of-fact. She adjusts her oxygen tube, her veiny hands shaking as she lifts a mug to her lips.
“Why?”
“It was her revenge, I’m certain. Everyone knew she was lying, but she wouldn’t let it go. She wanted me to pay. I didn’t believe her, so she made sure nobody would believe me.”
“Lying about what?”
Keziah considers my face with something like pain on hers. “Your nose—you didn’t get it from Susan. And your eyes are lighter than hers.”
She wears Martha’s hummingbird brooch.
“You don’t curse me, do you?” Keziah whispers.
“I hardly know you.”
“Say I’m not cursed.” When I don’t respond, Keziah slams her mug onto the table. “You’re just like her, aren’t you? You’ll curse everyone in this town.”
The feeling of déjà vu washes through me. For a moment, I’m back in a dream, standing across from Keziah’s ancestor. We’ve had this conversation before.
I will myself backward, but I remain glued to the floor with my knees locked. There’s something important here, maybe a conclusion to draw or a parallel to notice.
“Why do you hate me?” I can’t think straight. My mind is a merry-go-round spinning me from Suzanna to Mama to a gut feeling.
Cursed people curse other people. I’m cursed like Mama and the women before her. Suzanna cursed August. I don’t want to curse Godwin.
What if cursing is inevitable? What if destruction is the only legacy I can leave?
“Tell me!” I shout, drawing attention from patrons. “What did Mama do?”
Keziah regards me with venom in her gaze. She signals for me to lean close, then cups her mouth and says with absolute conviction, “My family is dead because of Susan Prather.”
1861
The happy years were few and far between.
Following their union, August and Suzanna cleared land for planting. They inhabited the cabin August had built, spending their days in the fields, their nights with each other.
Suzanna abandoned the swamp and committed herself to farming. Her brother ran the commissary in her stead. Over time, with August to love her, she grew less fearful of the curse. It seemed to have forgotten her, or perhaps it was sated when she took the name Godwin.
Despite her newfound peace, Suzanna refused to venture into town. The Douglases had suffered misfortune and believed their hardships the result of Suzanna’s hex.
August slept with a revolver under his pillow.
Two years into marriage, Suzanna buried her firstborn, then her second. She wished for more children and received miscarriages. Before long, five wooden crosses sat under a hickory.
Suzanna worried the curse had remembered.
A wildfire swept across the county, burning the Douglas homestead before reaching Godwin land. It swallowed August and Suzanna’s cabin and killed their livestock.
Great with child, the couple took up residence in the commissary, intending to run the store until they could rebuild their home.
August claimed tribulations were inevitable and denied belief in the curse. His lack of consternation did not ease Suzanna’s concern. Night after night, she paced the commissary, rubbing her swollen belly and muttering prayers to the dark.
Not two weeks later, a rattlesnake sprang from knapweed and bit August. His leg distended and blackened. Suzanna wanted to amputate, but August told her it was too late.
The poison was already in his bloodstream.
August grabbed a shovel and went behind the commissary to a patch of solid ground. He dug a hole six feet deep as necrosis swallowed his foot.
Suzanna wailed at him to stop.
Digging his own grave was bad luck.
August knew if he died, Suzanna would attempt to bury him. He didn’t want her to endanger their baby. She was full term, expecting to go into labor at any moment.
He dug his own grave and waited for the venom to stop his heart. By some miracle, he did not die. The grave remained unoccupied.
Suzanna gave birth to a daughter who lived all of three days. They laid the babe to rest on their fifth wedding anniversary.
Trappers brought news of war and secession, drawing August into lengthy conversations. Suzanna wondered if the fighting would reach the Okefenokee.
Already she sensed violence in the air.
No good would befall her and August. Of this, Suzanna was certain. She held the curse liable for their miseries and blamed herself for August’s pain.
Her grief unbearable, Suzanna isolated in the wilderness. She retreated into the depths of her own mind, withdrawing to a place so far removed, not even August could reach her.
In this solitude, she dissolved into madness, consumed with superstition. Martha’s prophecy tormented her. If true, August would die because of the curse.
The thought of losing him made Suzanna ill with terror. She wept hysterically and screamed into the swamp. Her love for him was the only part of herself she still recognized.
One hot summer night, August found her at Hangman’s Oak, crouched in a puddle of skirt. She gazed up at the vacant boughs as though in a trance.
“Come home, Suzanna.”
“Our home is ash because of me,” she whispered. Around her, fireflies blinked over wire grass, swirling at the sound of her voice.
“I am your home.” August dropped to his knees and forced Suzanna to look at him. “Why do you behave as though I’m already lost to you?”
Suzanna drew a sharp breath. She touched his face, the creases around his eyes, the blond hair growing from his cheeks.
“This obsession of yours must stop. We ain’t cursed.” August had wearied of her silence. He’d endeavored to lift her spirits and regain her closeness, yet she refused to confide in him.
“Everything has been taken from us. Our children are dead—”
“You’re not to blame, Suzanna.”
“I’ve brought hell upon us. You should resent me.” She rose and staggered from the oak. Its branches snapped and writhed, reaching toward a leaden sky.
August jolted to his feet, glancing from the tree to Suzanna. “Awful things happen to everybody. Our troubles ain’t divine punishments.”
Wind came from nowhere and danced with the grass.
Bats swarmed from the oak, squealing as they soared into the gloom.
“The curse is inside your head, don’t you see?” August gathered Suzanna in his arms, cradling her against his chest. “Let go of the superstition. Come home.”
August reminded her of their blissful days when they’d lived in harmony, content with their work and each other. He remembered their blessings.
She ruminated on their losses, so possessed by them she had no memory of joy.
“You stink of liquor.” Suzanna broke from August’s embrace, overwhelmed with dread. He’d taken to the bottle after the death of their sixth child, whiskey in the evening, moonshine at night. He wasn’t a drunk, but Suzanna believed his taste for spirits would incite God’s wrath.
She lowered to her knees, then her elbows. She clawed at the dirt, panting as her mind raced to a possible future in which August was dead and she was alone.
“Why do you shut me out? I’m your husband!” August yelled.
Hangman’s Oak crackled like bones popping into place.
“Talk to me.” August waited, but Suzanna only whimpered into the earth. He dried his eyes and straightened his coat. “I reckon I am lost to you.”
He entered a stretch of prairie, fading to mist and shadows.
Suzanna wept for him.
Not a month later, August went to Fort Pulaski as a bugler, claiming the time apart would do him and Suzanna well. He saw no reason to stay at the commissary.
Suzanna remained married to the swamp and her own desolation.
Chapter 26
Susana Prather
October, Present Day
Papa watches TV in the living room.
He reclines in his lounge chair with a plate of peach cobbler.
A black-and-white cowboy film plays on the television. John Wayne delivers an iconic line, and Papa’s mustache twitches, followed by a gravelly laugh.
I toss my keys onto a side table, barely able to will my legs into motion. My eyes are dry, and I hurt all over, either from poor sleep or the three-hour FFA meeting I had to attend.
Papa glances at me as he drinks from a kitsch mug. He must sense my fatigue because he smiles and pats his knee. “Hey there, sugar lump. How was your day?”
“Uneventful.” I collapse onto his lap as I have my whole life. He braces me against his shoulder, and I swipe my finger across his plate. Nanny would smack my hand. Not Papa.
He passes me his fork.
My eyelids drooping, I shovel buttery peaches into my mouth while John Wayne shoots at a band of outlaws. Papa half watches me, half watches the TV. He slugs the rest of his coffee, then props his socked feet on the ottoman and cracks his toes.
“I ran into Keziah Douglas at the Green Frog yesterday,” I say.
Papa finishes off the cobbler. “Is that so?”
“She told me her family is dead because of Mama.” I lock eyes with Papa, and words get lodged in my throat like ice cubes swallowed sideways.
He veers his attention to the TV. “Pain needs someone to blame, Susana.”
“Why does she think Mama cursed her?”
“There ain’t nothing supernatural about what happened.” Papa’s heart pounds against my shoulder. “The curse makes an easy scapegoat is all.”
I sit up and pivot to face him. “What about the stories? My whole life, I’ve been told Mama lost her mind and was taken by the swamp—”
“Your nanny says that, not me.” Papa sets his jaw. He massages his neck, which is red with rosacea, then emits a drawn-out sigh. “Mental illness runs in my family.”
“Do you worry about me?” I’m not sure I want to know the answer. His mama, sister, and daughter went insane and died grisly deaths. Deep down, he must believe I’m fated for the same.
“Blood gets diluted over time,” he says.
I tense with adrenaline and desperation and something hungry. I should wash off my makeup and show him what the curse is doing to me. If he realized I’m running out of time, maybe he’d stop talking in riddles and finally tell me the truth.
“Does my daddy know I exist?” I ask.
Papa ups the TV’s volume to end our conversation.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I fight the urge to shake him. Carrying the hex—knowing it’s in my blood—makes me want to scream.
It’s been three months since my eighteenth birthday.
Suzannah Owens lost her mind at month four.
Susie Prather died in a car wreck at month three.
Mama vanished into the swamp at month five.
“Talk keeps the past alive.” Papa nudges me off his lap and rises from the chair. He gathers the dishes, then lumbers to the kitchen, leaving me with John Wayne and a warm seat.
Nanny and Papa’s secrets will be what kill me.
Shaking, I drift to my room and lock its door. I sink onto my bed, rock back and forth, and scream into a pillow to ease my frustration.
The past lives on even after mouths go silent.
It’s a beep inside this house like a failing smoke detector. No matter how much I search, I can’t find it.
A beep inside this house. A beep inside me.
My skin numbs with a velvety sensation, beginning at my face and inching down my torso. I need to sleep, but I also need the water to give me relief.
I lie on my side, pressing my cheek against a lattice quilt.
Suzanna Yawn Godwin Owens watches from her picture frame. After last night, I think I understand why the curse backfired on her. She hexed the people of Kettle Creek in an act of revenge. They’d allowed superstition to drive them to hatred and murder.
Not only did they believe lies about themselves, but they planted lies in others.
Though Suzanna intended to teach them a lesson, she was convinced the past had doomed her, and thus the curse affected her. She’d accepted Martha’s lies. She must’ve given the curse power to take hold of her. Like Godwin said, believe something long enough and it’s bound to come true.
“I’m not cursed,” I whisper, but the words are only syllables against fabric. I don’t know the truth of what I am or how to say otherwise. “Please let me go.”
Shimmers flicker near the window like hatches drifting up from stagnant water and sparking in the sunlight. They have gossamer wings, or maybe they don’t.
I rise onto my elbow.
The creatures flutter to the ceiling and multiply into a swarm, blinking from gold to orange to black. Their wings expand into jagged spans.
Dust rains from their vibrating bodies.
Careful not to disturb them, I lower my feet to the floor and stand, the creatures whirring in response. They soar around me, organized like swallows or minnows.
An onyx coil twitches in the room’s corner. Hissing, it straightens into a serpent and slithers under my dresser, whipping toward me with fangs bared.
I don’t have time to squeal. I stumble backward and trip, hitting the rug with a bruising thud. I grab a muck boot from under my bed and hurl it at the snake.
The shoe bounces to a stop near the wall.
All the creatures have vanished.
1862
Obediah Owens made a name for himself.
Since childhood, he had aspired to become someone of importance. He wanted to tell a story about a kid born into poverty who grew into a man of means. That was the American dream, he thought. That he could go from a litter of youngins raised within a shack a stone’s throw from a sawmill to becoming a person history would remember.
The narrative obsessed him. He lived each day for the chapter it would add to his tall tale. Over the years he built a reputation for his swamping and brawling. The folks of Kettle Creek revered him, spoke his name around campfires.
He acquired his wealth as a farmer. By age twenty-two, he was well-fixed, owning more cattle than anyone in town. At age twenty-four, he became the county’s first justice of the peace.
In other parts of the nation, the title would give him authority to perform marriages and handle minor civil matters. Here, it appointed him the law.
Obediah lived alone on four hundred acres that bordered the Okefenokee. He kept his boat in a run and cut logs to use as a footpath over the swamp.
He did not marry despite Elizabeth Ruger’s interest.
A woman had already bewitched him, body and soul. He was cursed with a love for her that would not die. No matter how often he visited her and went hunting with her husband, he could not belong to her any less.
To ease his restlessness, Obediah spent much of his time on horseback. He patrolled Trail Ridge and stagecoach roads, traveled from Waresboro to the St. Mary’s River to the Florida state line. With need for a postal worker, he tasked himself with retrieving letters from Trader’s Hill for the settlers of Kettle Creek.
Folks regarded Obediah as their sheriff and newsman, especially after he noticed seagulls flying west. The birds so far inland could only mean one thing: a storm was coming.
Obediah spread the ominous news, and his instincts proved correct.
A hurricane swept the coast and flooded the swamp.
One might gauge Obediah’s popularity by the well incident. He talked of an abandoned well near Spanish Creek, said it had the best sweet water around. His praise resulted in hundreds of settlers driving their buggies to sample the water.
If not farming or policing, Obediah could be found with his cane pole, fishing near the Yawn homestead. He called on Mr. Yawn, John, and Louisa at least once a month.
Such was the story he lived until war broke out.
The legend of Obediah Owens took a turn on April 12, 1861, when shots were fired on Fort Sumter. Obediah soon became a private in the 24th Battalion, Georgia Cavalry.
His myth was greater than a list of roles. To understand him, one needed to consider the woman he’d always love, for she was both his commentary and footnotes.
Everything he was somehow connected to her.
Obediah did not stay gone for long periods of time, maintaining that his responsibilities in Kettle Creek required his utmost attention. Something did lure his loyalty, but it wasn’t his cattle or letters or law. He wanted to remain close to Suzanna.
He burned for her. His spirit was bound to hers. He sensed her in the wire grass and channels and dead of night. Such were delusions, he reminded himself.
What a terrible sin to love another man’s wife.
August Godwin was shot November 7, 1862. He returned home with a bullet in his stomach, another lodged beneath his collarbone.
Soldiers rode into town with August laid up in a wagon. They boated him to the commissary and left him to expire. Suzanna called for doctors, created salves from lichens.
The swamp iced over the morning August died.
Folks were distressed by the phenomenon, for the water had never frozen in whole. They said the witch was responsible. She must’ve hexed the land with her devilish magic.
“Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve been taking writing courses at the community college.”
“Missouri!” I sit up with a gasp.
“It ain’t worth any fuss.” Missouri yanks me into a hug, rocking side to side until our giggles wane. She motions to Godwin. “Remember. You can regret doing nothing too.”
He goes to his truck and wiggles off his shirt, replacing it with a plaid button-up.
I’m worried he already regrets me.
After supper, I make a delivery to the Green Frog. Keziah Douglas dines at a table, sawing a catfish fillet with a butter knife. She glowers as I carry a box of eggs to the bar.
With banana pudding, Lucinda bribes me into small talk. I scarf down a polite amount, then make a Southern goodbye to the restaurant’s exit.
Keziah stirs cream into pitch-black coffee.
I’m not sure what comes over me, but I steer a course to her table. “What did Mama do to you? My grandparents won’t tell me.”
“Susan cursed my family,” Keziah says, matter-of-fact. She adjusts her oxygen tube, her veiny hands shaking as she lifts a mug to her lips.
“Why?”
“It was her revenge, I’m certain. Everyone knew she was lying, but she wouldn’t let it go. She wanted me to pay. I didn’t believe her, so she made sure nobody would believe me.”
“Lying about what?”
Keziah considers my face with something like pain on hers. “Your nose—you didn’t get it from Susan. And your eyes are lighter than hers.”
She wears Martha’s hummingbird brooch.
“You don’t curse me, do you?” Keziah whispers.
“I hardly know you.”
“Say I’m not cursed.” When I don’t respond, Keziah slams her mug onto the table. “You’re just like her, aren’t you? You’ll curse everyone in this town.”
The feeling of déjà vu washes through me. For a moment, I’m back in a dream, standing across from Keziah’s ancestor. We’ve had this conversation before.
I will myself backward, but I remain glued to the floor with my knees locked. There’s something important here, maybe a conclusion to draw or a parallel to notice.
“Why do you hate me?” I can’t think straight. My mind is a merry-go-round spinning me from Suzanna to Mama to a gut feeling.
Cursed people curse other people. I’m cursed like Mama and the women before her. Suzanna cursed August. I don’t want to curse Godwin.
What if cursing is inevitable? What if destruction is the only legacy I can leave?
“Tell me!” I shout, drawing attention from patrons. “What did Mama do?”
Keziah regards me with venom in her gaze. She signals for me to lean close, then cups her mouth and says with absolute conviction, “My family is dead because of Susan Prather.”
1861
The happy years were few and far between.
Following their union, August and Suzanna cleared land for planting. They inhabited the cabin August had built, spending their days in the fields, their nights with each other.
Suzanna abandoned the swamp and committed herself to farming. Her brother ran the commissary in her stead. Over time, with August to love her, she grew less fearful of the curse. It seemed to have forgotten her, or perhaps it was sated when she took the name Godwin.
Despite her newfound peace, Suzanna refused to venture into town. The Douglases had suffered misfortune and believed their hardships the result of Suzanna’s hex.
August slept with a revolver under his pillow.
Two years into marriage, Suzanna buried her firstborn, then her second. She wished for more children and received miscarriages. Before long, five wooden crosses sat under a hickory.
Suzanna worried the curse had remembered.
A wildfire swept across the county, burning the Douglas homestead before reaching Godwin land. It swallowed August and Suzanna’s cabin and killed their livestock.
Great with child, the couple took up residence in the commissary, intending to run the store until they could rebuild their home.
August claimed tribulations were inevitable and denied belief in the curse. His lack of consternation did not ease Suzanna’s concern. Night after night, she paced the commissary, rubbing her swollen belly and muttering prayers to the dark.
Not two weeks later, a rattlesnake sprang from knapweed and bit August. His leg distended and blackened. Suzanna wanted to amputate, but August told her it was too late.
The poison was already in his bloodstream.
August grabbed a shovel and went behind the commissary to a patch of solid ground. He dug a hole six feet deep as necrosis swallowed his foot.
Suzanna wailed at him to stop.
Digging his own grave was bad luck.
August knew if he died, Suzanna would attempt to bury him. He didn’t want her to endanger their baby. She was full term, expecting to go into labor at any moment.
He dug his own grave and waited for the venom to stop his heart. By some miracle, he did not die. The grave remained unoccupied.
Suzanna gave birth to a daughter who lived all of three days. They laid the babe to rest on their fifth wedding anniversary.
Trappers brought news of war and secession, drawing August into lengthy conversations. Suzanna wondered if the fighting would reach the Okefenokee.
Already she sensed violence in the air.
No good would befall her and August. Of this, Suzanna was certain. She held the curse liable for their miseries and blamed herself for August’s pain.
Her grief unbearable, Suzanna isolated in the wilderness. She retreated into the depths of her own mind, withdrawing to a place so far removed, not even August could reach her.
In this solitude, she dissolved into madness, consumed with superstition. Martha’s prophecy tormented her. If true, August would die because of the curse.
The thought of losing him made Suzanna ill with terror. She wept hysterically and screamed into the swamp. Her love for him was the only part of herself she still recognized.
One hot summer night, August found her at Hangman’s Oak, crouched in a puddle of skirt. She gazed up at the vacant boughs as though in a trance.
“Come home, Suzanna.”
“Our home is ash because of me,” she whispered. Around her, fireflies blinked over wire grass, swirling at the sound of her voice.
“I am your home.” August dropped to his knees and forced Suzanna to look at him. “Why do you behave as though I’m already lost to you?”
Suzanna drew a sharp breath. She touched his face, the creases around his eyes, the blond hair growing from his cheeks.
“This obsession of yours must stop. We ain’t cursed.” August had wearied of her silence. He’d endeavored to lift her spirits and regain her closeness, yet she refused to confide in him.
“Everything has been taken from us. Our children are dead—”
“You’re not to blame, Suzanna.”
“I’ve brought hell upon us. You should resent me.” She rose and staggered from the oak. Its branches snapped and writhed, reaching toward a leaden sky.
August jolted to his feet, glancing from the tree to Suzanna. “Awful things happen to everybody. Our troubles ain’t divine punishments.”
Wind came from nowhere and danced with the grass.
Bats swarmed from the oak, squealing as they soared into the gloom.
“The curse is inside your head, don’t you see?” August gathered Suzanna in his arms, cradling her against his chest. “Let go of the superstition. Come home.”
August reminded her of their blissful days when they’d lived in harmony, content with their work and each other. He remembered their blessings.
She ruminated on their losses, so possessed by them she had no memory of joy.
“You stink of liquor.” Suzanna broke from August’s embrace, overwhelmed with dread. He’d taken to the bottle after the death of their sixth child, whiskey in the evening, moonshine at night. He wasn’t a drunk, but Suzanna believed his taste for spirits would incite God’s wrath.
She lowered to her knees, then her elbows. She clawed at the dirt, panting as her mind raced to a possible future in which August was dead and she was alone.
“Why do you shut me out? I’m your husband!” August yelled.
Hangman’s Oak crackled like bones popping into place.
“Talk to me.” August waited, but Suzanna only whimpered into the earth. He dried his eyes and straightened his coat. “I reckon I am lost to you.”
He entered a stretch of prairie, fading to mist and shadows.
Suzanna wept for him.
Not a month later, August went to Fort Pulaski as a bugler, claiming the time apart would do him and Suzanna well. He saw no reason to stay at the commissary.
Suzanna remained married to the swamp and her own desolation.
Chapter 26
Susana Prather
October, Present Day
Papa watches TV in the living room.
He reclines in his lounge chair with a plate of peach cobbler.
A black-and-white cowboy film plays on the television. John Wayne delivers an iconic line, and Papa’s mustache twitches, followed by a gravelly laugh.
I toss my keys onto a side table, barely able to will my legs into motion. My eyes are dry, and I hurt all over, either from poor sleep or the three-hour FFA meeting I had to attend.
Papa glances at me as he drinks from a kitsch mug. He must sense my fatigue because he smiles and pats his knee. “Hey there, sugar lump. How was your day?”
“Uneventful.” I collapse onto his lap as I have my whole life. He braces me against his shoulder, and I swipe my finger across his plate. Nanny would smack my hand. Not Papa.
He passes me his fork.
My eyelids drooping, I shovel buttery peaches into my mouth while John Wayne shoots at a band of outlaws. Papa half watches me, half watches the TV. He slugs the rest of his coffee, then props his socked feet on the ottoman and cracks his toes.
“I ran into Keziah Douglas at the Green Frog yesterday,” I say.
Papa finishes off the cobbler. “Is that so?”
“She told me her family is dead because of Mama.” I lock eyes with Papa, and words get lodged in my throat like ice cubes swallowed sideways.
He veers his attention to the TV. “Pain needs someone to blame, Susana.”
“Why does she think Mama cursed her?”
“There ain’t nothing supernatural about what happened.” Papa’s heart pounds against my shoulder. “The curse makes an easy scapegoat is all.”
I sit up and pivot to face him. “What about the stories? My whole life, I’ve been told Mama lost her mind and was taken by the swamp—”
“Your nanny says that, not me.” Papa sets his jaw. He massages his neck, which is red with rosacea, then emits a drawn-out sigh. “Mental illness runs in my family.”
“Do you worry about me?” I’m not sure I want to know the answer. His mama, sister, and daughter went insane and died grisly deaths. Deep down, he must believe I’m fated for the same.
“Blood gets diluted over time,” he says.
I tense with adrenaline and desperation and something hungry. I should wash off my makeup and show him what the curse is doing to me. If he realized I’m running out of time, maybe he’d stop talking in riddles and finally tell me the truth.
“Does my daddy know I exist?” I ask.
Papa ups the TV’s volume to end our conversation.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I fight the urge to shake him. Carrying the hex—knowing it’s in my blood—makes me want to scream.
It’s been three months since my eighteenth birthday.
Suzannah Owens lost her mind at month four.
Susie Prather died in a car wreck at month three.
Mama vanished into the swamp at month five.
“Talk keeps the past alive.” Papa nudges me off his lap and rises from the chair. He gathers the dishes, then lumbers to the kitchen, leaving me with John Wayne and a warm seat.
Nanny and Papa’s secrets will be what kill me.
Shaking, I drift to my room and lock its door. I sink onto my bed, rock back and forth, and scream into a pillow to ease my frustration.
The past lives on even after mouths go silent.
It’s a beep inside this house like a failing smoke detector. No matter how much I search, I can’t find it.
A beep inside this house. A beep inside me.
My skin numbs with a velvety sensation, beginning at my face and inching down my torso. I need to sleep, but I also need the water to give me relief.
I lie on my side, pressing my cheek against a lattice quilt.
Suzanna Yawn Godwin Owens watches from her picture frame. After last night, I think I understand why the curse backfired on her. She hexed the people of Kettle Creek in an act of revenge. They’d allowed superstition to drive them to hatred and murder.
Not only did they believe lies about themselves, but they planted lies in others.
Though Suzanna intended to teach them a lesson, she was convinced the past had doomed her, and thus the curse affected her. She’d accepted Martha’s lies. She must’ve given the curse power to take hold of her. Like Godwin said, believe something long enough and it’s bound to come true.
“I’m not cursed,” I whisper, but the words are only syllables against fabric. I don’t know the truth of what I am or how to say otherwise. “Please let me go.”
Shimmers flicker near the window like hatches drifting up from stagnant water and sparking in the sunlight. They have gossamer wings, or maybe they don’t.
I rise onto my elbow.
The creatures flutter to the ceiling and multiply into a swarm, blinking from gold to orange to black. Their wings expand into jagged spans.
Dust rains from their vibrating bodies.
Careful not to disturb them, I lower my feet to the floor and stand, the creatures whirring in response. They soar around me, organized like swallows or minnows.
An onyx coil twitches in the room’s corner. Hissing, it straightens into a serpent and slithers under my dresser, whipping toward me with fangs bared.
I don’t have time to squeal. I stumble backward and trip, hitting the rug with a bruising thud. I grab a muck boot from under my bed and hurl it at the snake.
The shoe bounces to a stop near the wall.
All the creatures have vanished.
1862
Obediah Owens made a name for himself.
Since childhood, he had aspired to become someone of importance. He wanted to tell a story about a kid born into poverty who grew into a man of means. That was the American dream, he thought. That he could go from a litter of youngins raised within a shack a stone’s throw from a sawmill to becoming a person history would remember.
The narrative obsessed him. He lived each day for the chapter it would add to his tall tale. Over the years he built a reputation for his swamping and brawling. The folks of Kettle Creek revered him, spoke his name around campfires.
He acquired his wealth as a farmer. By age twenty-two, he was well-fixed, owning more cattle than anyone in town. At age twenty-four, he became the county’s first justice of the peace.
In other parts of the nation, the title would give him authority to perform marriages and handle minor civil matters. Here, it appointed him the law.
Obediah lived alone on four hundred acres that bordered the Okefenokee. He kept his boat in a run and cut logs to use as a footpath over the swamp.
He did not marry despite Elizabeth Ruger’s interest.
A woman had already bewitched him, body and soul. He was cursed with a love for her that would not die. No matter how often he visited her and went hunting with her husband, he could not belong to her any less.
To ease his restlessness, Obediah spent much of his time on horseback. He patrolled Trail Ridge and stagecoach roads, traveled from Waresboro to the St. Mary’s River to the Florida state line. With need for a postal worker, he tasked himself with retrieving letters from Trader’s Hill for the settlers of Kettle Creek.
Folks regarded Obediah as their sheriff and newsman, especially after he noticed seagulls flying west. The birds so far inland could only mean one thing: a storm was coming.
Obediah spread the ominous news, and his instincts proved correct.
A hurricane swept the coast and flooded the swamp.
One might gauge Obediah’s popularity by the well incident. He talked of an abandoned well near Spanish Creek, said it had the best sweet water around. His praise resulted in hundreds of settlers driving their buggies to sample the water.
If not farming or policing, Obediah could be found with his cane pole, fishing near the Yawn homestead. He called on Mr. Yawn, John, and Louisa at least once a month.
Such was the story he lived until war broke out.
The legend of Obediah Owens took a turn on April 12, 1861, when shots were fired on Fort Sumter. Obediah soon became a private in the 24th Battalion, Georgia Cavalry.
His myth was greater than a list of roles. To understand him, one needed to consider the woman he’d always love, for she was both his commentary and footnotes.
Everything he was somehow connected to her.
Obediah did not stay gone for long periods of time, maintaining that his responsibilities in Kettle Creek required his utmost attention. Something did lure his loyalty, but it wasn’t his cattle or letters or law. He wanted to remain close to Suzanna.
He burned for her. His spirit was bound to hers. He sensed her in the wire grass and channels and dead of night. Such were delusions, he reminded himself.
What a terrible sin to love another man’s wife.
August Godwin was shot November 7, 1862. He returned home with a bullet in his stomach, another lodged beneath his collarbone.
Soldiers rode into town with August laid up in a wagon. They boated him to the commissary and left him to expire. Suzanna called for doctors, created salves from lichens.
The swamp iced over the morning August died.
Folks were distressed by the phenomenon, for the water had never frozen in whole. They said the witch was responsible. She must’ve hexed the land with her devilish magic.
