Strange Folk, page 8
Meredith knew sneaking out to watch the ritual was a risk, but it didn’t feel like a choice. She was being pulled into the woods by an invisible force.
She threw on a fleece and sneakers and walked quietly out into the living room. Her mom was passed out in front of the TV with her hand still wrapped around a beige mug. Her breathing was slow and heavy, and she had that dead look that used to scare Cliff when they were little. Cliff would come to Meredith’s room with his fists pressed against his chest and ask her to help him check if Mom was still alive. They’d stand a few feet from her bed and watch her throat and chest for movement, too scared to touch her. Their mother only liked to be touched on her terms, and she didn’t like to be surprised. She would always wake with a gasp, startled by them looming over her.
Meredith slipped out the back door, stepping carefully at first, and then with more abandon as her eyes adjusted and she saw the path into the woods before her illuminated by moonlight. She followed the glow and its smoke until she could see a fire with people gathered around it. She crouched behind a log at a distance so that she wouldn’t be spotted, but she could still feel the vibrations of their voices and the crack of the logs.
It sounded like Luann was speaking, and she watched as she took something out of a bag and buried it in a small hole in the ground. The magic had been a figment to her until now, but here it was, happening in the real world.
A sound came from behind her, but when she wheeled around, there was nothing there.
She watched as Belva held up a taut piece of string, and Mom’s cousin Kimmie approached with a pair of scissors and cut it. Belva tied a knot in the string, raised it up to the sky, and then flung it into the fire. She began to chant unintelligible words, and the women began to hum. The buzz of it seemed to penetrate the soil; Meredith could feel it tingling under her feet.
It was similar to the night energy that coursed through her, but this was stronger and fuller. It had definition and character where before it had felt amorphous. It was too intense to be pleasurable, but Meredith was drawn to it nonetheless. It was better than feeling good. It felt like the power of the land Belva had described.
Meredith lay down on the ground and felt the power surging along every inch of her. She allowed it to enter her fully.
It felt like the earth itself was telling her a secret, and she lay there for a long time, not listening or thinking or speaking, only feeling.
And then she was no longer in her body—only floating through some inky expanse.
EIGHT
LEE
Kimmie lay face down and spread-eagled across the porch sofa in the early-morning light. Her white Kmart sneakers were caked in mud and her arms were covered in rows of long thin scrapes pearled with dried blood. Lee kicked the bottom of the couch to try to rouse her, but she didn’t stir. A few more kicks did nothing.
As she bent over to shake her shoulder, a stream of water came from behind Lee and soaked the back of Kimmie’s head. Kimmie shot up and crouched in a fighting position, staring behind Lee at Belva holding a plastic pitcher.
“What the fuck?”
Belva ignored her and said to Lee, “It ain’t pretty, but it’s the only way with her. She sleeps like the dead,” then walked back into the house.
Kimmie shook her head like a dog and rubbed the water from her eyes, the remnants of mascara bleeding down her face and mixing with the dirt in a marble pattern. She collapsed back on the couch and pulled out a plastic baggie filled with dry brown tobacco and a few squares of white paper and began to roll a thin, frayed cigarette.
“How was the gathering last night?” Lee asked.
“Hell of a time.”
“Do you think it worked?”
Kimmie smiled. “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t much care. Felt good either way.” She placed a small filter at the end and started to roll. “Saw you getting close with Otis at the party. He’s a real piece. Some of the girls were so pissed. I love that shit.”
Lee had a hazy memory of women watching them at the bonfire.
“Has he ever dated any of them?”
“Naw. He doesn’t go for the local poon. He likes the imports. Like you.” She raised an eyebrow at Lee.
“I grew up here. I’m not exactly foreign.”
“Sure you are, hon. Look at you. Listen to you. You weren’t from here even when you were.”
This was how Lee had long wanted to be perceived, but a need to defend her territory rose up in her like bile. The truth was, Lee hadn’t wanted to leave, not at first.
It started out as her mother’s wish for her after her father died. They woke up that next morning in Lee’s bed, and Mama whispered, “I had a vision of your future. It came to me in a dream.” She’d pushed herself up to sitting and forced Lee to look her in her bloodshot eyes. “You’re gonna be the brightest, most promising student this town has ever seen, and you’re gonna blow all of the colleges away, and when you graduate, you’re gonna leave this town and start a new life somewhere else. You promise? To do everything you can to get out?”
Lee was already an exceptional student at nine, so it didn’t seem out of the question that she could maybe get into college one day. But she’d never thought about leaving and never coming back. She loved her strange, wild mother; and her equally strange, wild grandmother; and her cousins; and the woods that continually offered something new. She liked Craw Valley, but it seemed important to Mama, so she promised she would.
A few years passed, and her mother didn’t get better, but she tried to keep it together. Then she started complaining about her wrists, and she went to the doctor for the pain. He gave her pills so that she could go back to work at the deli counter, but after a while she started calling in sick a few days a week. Eventually they fired her, and she went on disability. During the day, she stayed in her room with the TV on and the door shut. At night, she often went out and didn’t return until late or the next day.
Her mother had sunk into some deeper, more wretched place, and Lee would have crawled into it with her, if Mama had let her. But she had shut her out.
So when Lee started high school, her mother’s dream for her became Lee’s dream. To one day leave this all behind and start a new life. It was the only way she would survive.
Kimmie put the finished cigarette between her teeth, and Lee followed her inside.
Belva was in the kitchen cutting biscuits out of dough with a water glass while Luann fried bacon in the cast iron. Lee could smell last night’s woodsmoke still clinging to their hair. They both hummed the same unknowable tune, and their arms moved with the same rhythm. They were a few feet apart from one another, but Lee had the sense that they were touching.
This was an intimacy she’d never seen in her parents’ marriage, or her own. She wondered what that felt like, a love allowed to grow and deepen away from the rest of the world, molded into the precise, unique shapes of their desires and needs.
From what she gleaned, they didn’t get together until Luann’s husband died suddenly years earlier. She wondered if it started before then, or if it blossomed out of this new, free chapter in Luann’s life. Belva never had a true partner when Lee was small, but her house was always full of people who needed her help. Lee was glad Belva now had someone who cared for her as much as she cared for them.
Kimmie lit her cigarette with the front-left burner and puffed the cherry to life. Belva waved her arms and told Kimmie to take it outside.
Lee had smelled cigarettes over the years, brief, husky whiffs outside bars and on the beach when she and Cooper went to Europe before they had kids. But it was never the smoke of her childhood, this smoke that lingered in the kitchen now.
It conjured a specter of her mother standing in the same kitchen, holding a cigarette and making them laugh while Belva taught Lee how to make biscuits. It was hard to believe that the three of them had once spent time together so carelessly, like people who belonged together. The image felt distant, like she was watching other people through a window.
Belva announced breakfast was ready, and Lee went to get the children up. They were going to be late for school.
Lee opened the door to their room to find all the windows open, as they’d been the night the bat got in, and a chill swept through her. She was suddenly aware of an unease collecting in her periphery that she’d failed to register until now. It was the same feeling she’d gotten when Cliff broke his arm. She’d been at the grocery store alone, when a sickness filled her without warning. She’d raced home to find Cliff clutching his arm in the backyard while Cooper watched a documentary on full volume in his office. Cliff had been sitting on the windowsill and fallen two stories.
In the bed closest to the door, she could see the outline of Cliff and his tuft of hair poking out of the blanket. She pushed it down gently to expose his head and put a finger under his nose to feel for the slight wind of his breathing.
Across the room, the comforter was violently arranged around Meredith. She crept closer and pulled it back to find only empty space.
* * *
Lee, Cliff, Luann, and Belva strode through the crush of leaves, calling out Meredith’s name. Lee wasn’t sure how long they’d been looking, but they’d gone deep enough where it looked the same in every direction. The trees appeared fake and flattened like wallpaper. She was still in that breathless moment after receiving traumatic news, when nothing feels real.
One time, Lee, Kimmie, and Dreama had gotten lost in these woods.
In their trio, Kimmie was the wild one, Dreama was the practical one, and Lee fell somewhere in the middle. That day, Lee and Kimmie ran headlong into the woods with Dreama trailing behind, eating blackberries off bushes and laughing at the shapes the trees made in the distance. But then one particular tree looked like a body with its back snapped and its middle bursting forth. The woods seemed to grow darker, and they became aware of the trees surrounding them without distinction, like people in a lifeboat who’ve just realized they are in the middle of the ocean.
They wandered for a bit, Dreama weeping, Lee squeezing out a few tears for dramatic effect, and Kimmie berating them for being babies, before encountering the thin creek that ran through the neighboring cow farm. Sweet salvation! This would lead them home.
That was the closest she, Kimmie, and Dreama would ever be as they walked home along the creek bed and talked quietly about food in the evening light.
Dreama’s mom, Ruby Jo, died in the same bridge collapse that killed Lee’s dad a few months later, and afterward, Dreama didn’t come around anymore. In her will, Ruby Jo left Dreama and her brother, Earl, in the care of a fellow church member, out of fear that Belva and Redbud’s devilish ways would corrupt her children without her around. Ruby Jo had been sliding into religious fanaticism for years at that point, having donated the sale of her house to a new radical church and moving herself, Dreama, and Earl into a room at the Red Roof Inn by the highway. At school after her death, Dreama avoided Lee like the plague and muttered to herself whenever they crossed paths. They both ate lunch alone, each in a different corner of the cafeteria. Lee hiding behind a book, and Dreama hiding behind the long hair her mother never let her cut in the name of the Lord.
A few crisp gunshots punctured the air around them, and Lee gasped.
“Don’t worry,” Belva said. “That’s a few miles off. Probably the Lawsons hunting turkeys. Nothing to worry about.”
Cliff clutched Lee’s arm. “I think this was in my dream last night. I remember the gunshot, and then Belva saying something about turkeys.”
Belva crouched down to his level and looked into his eyes. “What else do you remember?”
He gazed up at the treetops for a moment and then scanned around the woods. “There was a big rock that sort of looked like a rabbit—with the ears.” He put two hands on top of his head, and Luann grunted.
“I know that rock. It’s over here.” She took off, and they followed her, breath scalding their throats. A few feet in, Lee spotted the small boulder and sprinted toward it.
Meredith was curled up behind the rock with her lips nearly blue. There was a smear of blood across the front of her pajama pants. Lee crouched down and put a hand to her forehead, feeling the warmth under the chilled skin. Relief flooded her.
Meredith’s eyes fluttered open, and as she took in the sky above her, she looked over at Lee in horror.
“Mom. I’m so sorry.”
“What happened? Are you okay? What is this?” She pointed to the blood.
Meredith looked down, and a different kind of horror crossed her face. “I… I have no idea.” She touched the stain with her fingertips, and they came away wet.
Lee took Meredith by the shoulders and pulled her up to a sitting position. “Meredith. Why are you out here? Tell me what happened.” Lee grasped for the right reaction but couldn’t find anything solid inside of her. The initial relief had been fleeting, and she’d become pure panic, the cold air whistling down her throat and straight through her, making her lightheaded and frantic.
Meredith’s eyes welled with tears, and she looked down at the ground as she spoke. “I wanted to see the magic.”
“What else? What else happened?”
“I… I don’t know! I don’t remember anything else. I must have fallen asleep.”
Belva crouched down on the other side of Meredith and placed her hands on her in different places. As she asked her questions, Lee noticed vines of dark flowers growing around the trees near them, fanning out on the ground and tangling like pumpkin vines.
Belva smiled slightly, and it brought Lee back into her body.
“My dear, I believe you’ve started your period.”
Meredith was caught between horror and joy, and she returned the same smile. “Oh my god. Wow. Okay.” She looked up hopefully at Belva. “Does this mean—”
Belva started to answer, but Lee cut her off. “We can talk at the house. We need to get her warm.”
Belva and Lee helped Meredith stand. As they moved to leave the woods, Meredith let out a gasp. Lee followed her eyes to a clearing partly obscured by thickets of those dark flowering vines.
At its center was the pale, naked body of Mr. Hall, splayed out like a star.
NINE
Belva sat on the sofa with her hand in Luann’s as the sheriff asked her questions. She looked out of her element, and for the first time since Lee returned, she noticed an unfamiliar fragility in her grandmother, a bewilderment in her face when Lee had only ever seen complete control.
As the officers came through the back door from the woods, Lee could see them peeking into Belva’s workshop and eyeing the jars of hair and animal bone. They’d been there since early that morning when Lee had called them. When Kimmie had heard the cops were coming, she’d disappeared into the woods so quickly that Lee didn’t have time to stop her.
Lee was the one who lead them to the body.
Mr. Hall’s face and body had grayed and hardened to stone. His eyes were closed, and his mouth was slightly open. His limbs were outstretched, as if he’d died in ecstasy, or as if they’d been arranged by someone else after his death. His pale, shriveled penis was visible through thinning hair, and part of it stuck to his inner thigh next to an odd mark. It looked as if something parasitic had burrowed into his leg, and she moved closer to get a better view. The shape was more complex than the circle of a ringworm. The raised pink ridges curved into the shape of a simple flower, like it had been burned into the flesh of his leg.
It was then that the officers asked her to back away so they could do their jobs. She watched as they entered the clearing with their black boots and trampled the dark flowers. They set up equipment, pulled things out of plastic bags, and took pictures with the flash on. Lee imagined the photos of the body: the woods around him flooded with artificial light, all of its magic bleached.
Meredith sat at the kitchen table, staring vacantly ahead. Lee had tried to comfort her, but she’d bristled at her touch and refused all the food and remedies Belva offered her while they waited for the police. They’d decided not to tell them about finding her in the woods. It had been Belva’s idea, and Lee hadn’t questioned it.
During Lee’s interview, she’d considered telling the officer about Mr. Hall and the girl the night of the bonfire. This is my chance. But she could tell the officer was suspicious of them, and she knew this could implicate them even more. She didn’t know what to do with the information now. There was no safe place to put it.
From the other room came the quiet voice of Cliff as he told Billy something she couldn’t make out. Billy had come to the cabin immediately after they found Mr. Hall and helped distract Cliff. Lee had kept both kids out of school and called in sick from her job.
Billy began to laugh deeply, and it rang strangely through the room and out over the driveway as they loaded the covered body into the ambulance. The sun was beginning to set, the woods a silhouette aflame, filling the living room with a harsh light.
“Did you know Joseph Hall?” asked the sheriff.
“Yes, of course. I know everybody.” Belva waved him away like this was all ridiculous, but Lee could see it was a hollow performance that obscured something else.
“Was there any reason he would be on your property?”
“No, sir. We weren’t close. I don’t think he’s ever been out here.”
“We found evidence of a fire in the clearing where the body was discovered. Can you tell me about that?”
“We use that clearing for social gatherings. I had a few friends over yesterday evening, and we built a fire. Just a bunch of old women jawing and singing a few songs.”
“Did you notice anything of note during your… gathering?”
“No, nothing at all.”
“Look, Belva. You know I got nothing against you. I think you’re a good woman, and I appreciate what you did for my son. But I know it wasn’t just some women gossiping around a fire. I want the truth.”
