The Healing, page 19
She started toward the shore only to have the deep mud of the creek suck a shoe right off her foot. As she felt around for the lost brogan, she heard the pitiful whine of a child. Granada looked up to see that now it was Little Lord who held Daniel Webster’s stick, furiously pounding the ground around his feet. And then the scream again. Little Lord dropped the stick and the wailing monkey jumped into his arms.
“Hurry up, Granada!” he shouted, red-faced, cradling the monkey in his arms. “Daniel Webster’s been bit. You got to save him.”
His words seemed to turn the water into molasses and the mud to quicksand. How could she tell Little Lord she didn’t know the first thing about snakebites? That she had never healed anybody of anything?
Granada slogged up on the shore, her dress heavy and clinging to her legs. She began to tremble, not sure if it was from the chill breeze off the water or the expression of frightened expectation on Little Lord’s face. In his eyes was such a look of awful wanting Granada decided that if she didn’t know what to do, she would have to make it up. She began like she had seen Polly begin, by taking charge.
“Let’s find a place to lay him down,” she said, trying to control the quiver in her voice.
Granada led Little Lord to an open place under a locust tree. She knelt and raked up a soft mound of leaf mold. “Now put his head down here like it was a pillow and I’ll take a good look at him.”
As Little Lord began to lower Daniel Webster to the ground, Granada tried to think of what Polly would do. She decided to begin by looking into his eyes and then whispering into his ear.
But the monkey never made it to his bed. Shaking violently, he lurched from Little Lord’s embrace onto the ground, where he staggered drunkenly on all fours.
Daniel Webster’s left leg was impossibly swollen. Halfway down from his knee was the double-fang mark, red and raw.
“Do something, Granada!” the boy cried.
Granada could no longer look at him. “Polly ain’t learned me nothing, Little Lord,” she confessed, her voice small. She threw a hand to her face, not wanting Little Lord to see. “Ain’t nothing I know to do.”
Daniel Webster was stumbling erratically, veering from side to side for a short distance. Then he would stop, weave a few moments on his feet, and begin again.
Granada knew what the monkey was doing. He was trying to make his way into the deepest woods, like animals do when they are ready to die. She had never thought of Daniel Webster as an animal before. He had always been so humanlike. Unlike her, he even had a last name and ate at the master’s table. He was allowed to touch the mistress anytime he wanted. But now he was dragging himself off to die like the poor beast he was.
Granada turned to Little Lord, wondering how badly he hated her now. Though his face was wet with tears, his fists were clenched and his jaw locked. She had the sense he was readying himself to do something required of a man.
Granada watched as he reached into his pocket and retrieved his grandfather’s derringer. He held it in his little-boy palm, gazing at it for a moment like he was disappointed to have found it. Then he gripped the gun firmly, his finger on the trigger.
Several yards away Daniel Webster moved slowly, pulling himself along by his arms. His legs dragged uselessly behind him.
Without speaking, Little Lord walked toward the dying pet, his steps weighty.
“Little Lord!” Granada gasped.
He stood over the animal, his arm stiff by his side, the gun pointing at the ground. Daniel Webster moved forward a few inches, and Little Lord took another step. Finally Little Lord reached down to stroke the monkey’s head. Daniel Webster turned his eyes toward the boy to see who had touched him, and, as if knowing what was about to happen, raised his eyebrows in expectation, a forgiving grin on his face.
Little Lord raised the silver barrel to the suffering animal’s head. The boy’s sobs were so intense they lodged in Granada’s own chest, but she kept her eyes open for him. She would bear the memory for Little Lord.
When he pulled the trigger on the old derringer, the dead dry click echoed through the woods. The gun’s age or perhaps the creek water had saved Daniel Webster from a quick, easy death. The boy flung the pistol into the bramble and then stood there with his arms useless at his sides, lost and alone.
“Little Lord,” Granada said.
The boy’s frail body seemed to collapse in on itself. His shoulders caved and his back slumped.
“Little Lord,” she said again, her voice breaking.
This time he heard. He ran to her and threw his arms around the girl, nearly unbalancing her. He continued to clutch her in a ferocious embrace, sobbing violently into her chest.
They remained locked in each other’s arms for a long while, until Daniel Webster had dragged himself from sight and his cries died out in the deep Delta woods. In the leftover glow of the setting sun, as they fiercely held on to one another, Granada thought back to the day Mistress Amanda had gripped her hand so tightly, and recalled how at that moment she understood, in the deepest parts of her, the place where she belonged. She felt that way now.
• • •
The children sat shivering under the locust tree as a light breeze from the creek carried the lush scent of wild blooms. They were wet and hungry. Little Lord’s hunting pouch was empty of all the food stolen from Aunt Sylvie’s kitchen, and they had not even been able to build a fire to warm their clothes or to keep the wild animals away.
In the distance they heard the scream of a panther, and they moved even closer. Granada could tell that Little Lord was thinking of Daniel Webster somewhere out there alone. Soon, she imagined, there would be wolf packs prowling through the woods. She had often heard their howls from the plantation. Once during broad daylight she had seen a bear snatch up a squealing hog and tuck it up under his arm and carry it off like a sack of feed. Maybe the bears would not be hungry for children tonight, not with all the spring berries.
She sighed wearily. “Little Lord, I ain’t getting back in that boat, even if we can find it. I’ll take the roving beasts of the woods over them tree snakes and rumbling gators.”
Little Lord said it didn’t matter really. He was so turned around he didn’t know the way anymore. He’d got them good and lost. Walking was as good as paddling, which was as good as sitting, he reckoned. He was farther away from his mother than ever.
Dark was coming fast to the forest, and the air already vibrated with the shrilling of night insects. In the dimming light, they walked deeper into the woods, hand in hand, looking for a place to sleep. They found a giant oak with thick mounds of moss spread between its sprawling roots and, without speaking, settled together onto a soft green bed. Neither resisted the sleep that beckoned.
Granada’s dreaming seemed to take up where it had left off that morning. She was standing again at the entrance to the forest tunnel. Polly was there, but she was no longer shoving the girl and Granada felt no fear. The voices calling her into the darkness were not as menacing. Tonight they were chanting, and Granada recognized the words as the same Polly had sung outside the hospital cabin. It was the song Polly’s mother had taught her. As she had that night, Granada was both lifted and drawn by the words.
After a time, the words blended into a single sound and Granada knew it was her name they were calling, but one she had never heard before. She strained to make it out, but the voices grew faint.
Granada woke and from where she lay she could see the night sky through a break in the bowering branches. For a moment she thought she might still be in the dream.
Again she tried to recall the name the voices had intoned, but could not. She remembered only the beautiful music. No longer tired, her mind hummed and her heart ached with a knowing she could not name. The dreaming had aroused within her a far-flung sadness that would not form itself into pictures or words. She found herself wanting to wake Little Lord and tell him about the dream, but what would she say?
She raised herself on her elbow and studied the boy. He was lying on his side facing away from her. A small square of pale moonlight framed him, and she could detect the soft rising and falling of his shoulder.
Granada had never once seen the mistress embrace Little Lord, but she had often watched the child of a field worker or yard servant as he slept serenely in his mother’s arms, the two, mother and child, forming one. What it must be like to hold and be held so tightly, to belong so completely to another, that one could never be hurt or lost.
The hollow place below her throat filled with the distant longing once more, a vague memory of touch and caress.
She conformed her shape to his, like a spoon, and carefully draped her arm over his chest. As she drifted off to sleep, she could feel his heart beat secretly into her palm, as if she had been entrusted with the most fragile of things.
• • •
The next morning Granada was startled awake by a sharp poke at her back. Looking up into the gray-lit sky she saw a dark, scowling face peering down at her. Granada didn’t move at once, her mind not willing to accept what she saw. But there was no denying it, there she was, as big as life, standing bright against the early dimness. For a moment she forgot to be ashamed of her closeness to the boy.
“Polly! How you find us?” Granada asked, scrambling to her feet and waking Little Lord.
“Weren’t hard. Monkey whispered in my ear.” Then Polly laughed scornfully. She pointed her snake stick toward the rising sun. “The house is just over thataway. Took y’all all day to get out of spitting distance.”
They had been going around in circles! Granada didn’t know whether to feel shamed or relieved, but when the hunger suddenly gripped her belly, relief won out.
Little Lord was lying on the ground, gazing up at Polly like she had stepped out of one of his fairy tales. His dirty, sunburned face was still streaked with tears, and again Granada felt a consuming tenderness for him.
“What you staring at, boy?” Polly fussed, and then studied him for a moment. “Looks like you done lost your best friend.”
Granada was about to tell her that he didn’t need reminding of what he had lost, when she heard a familiar screech followed by a burst of excited chattering.
Limping around a clump of sweet gums came Daniel Webster, bandaged and frail but alive, hurrying the best he could toward Little Lord’s extended arms.
CHAPTER 28
Out on the porch off the kitchen, Gran Gran was in her chair gathering the last warmth of a setting sun, her rocking as unbroken and deliberate as her thoughts.
Below her on the steps sat Violet, her attention silently and unyieldingly focused on the rough track that led into Shinetown. While the girl watched the hill, the old lady watched the girl. They now spent a good piece of each day this way.
Violet still never let Gran Gran out of reaching distance, but never touched her, those anxious eyes forever darting about into the dark corners of the house. The girl wore the scarf constantly, even to bed, but she refused to go near the suitcases, acting like they might bite. Gran Gran couldn’t blame her. She was afraid of them as well.
The old lady noticed Violet seemed most at peace outside on the porch, so Gran Gran sat with her, even on cooler days, taking the opportunity to spend long moments considering the girl as the two kept their separate vigils.
If there was talking, Gran Gran still did it all. She hadn’t heard herself go on this much since she was a chattering little girl in the kitchen. Gran Gran smiled. Violet was the only one who had never told her to shut up!
This girl was surely starving for words. Couldn’t seem to get enough. The more words Gran Gran spoke, the more the muscles in the girl’s face relaxed.
And yet, even now on the porch, Gran Gran could detect the nearly imperceptible tick of the child’s head, left to right to left, steady, like the pendulum of a clock. The old woman couldn’t say for sure, but she wouldn’t be surprised if Violet was keeping the same time she brought with her the very first night. Perhaps that rhythm is the last living piece she holds of her mother.
“I can’t swear to it,” Gran Gran said, as casually as she could, “but it could be you’re expecting somebody to come down off that hill.”
Violet remained silent and facing away, but the ropes in her neck tightened. Gran Gran didn’t need the sight to tell her what desperate hope Violet was holding out for.
Gran Gran judged it close to suppertime now. A trickle of white-uniformed maids were making their return trek from the top of the hill, where their white ladies dropped them off each day after working in the big houses up in Delphi. “All them people living in a place called Shinetown,” Gran Gran said, “you might think they would know something about who the woman was. But I expect just because you live on Oak Street don’t make you no expert on acorns. Of course back in my day, Violet, everybody knew about Polly Shine.”
The girl turned back to Gran Gran with upraised brows.
“There was a time when you called that name, Polly Shine, and folks thought you were speaking of God. Now some of what they said about Polly weren’t true. But she did do some mighty fine things. She didn’t fly to heaven in a fiery chariot or bring the sun to a dead stop in the sky. But still, folks today ought to know what she did for them. She is sure a big part of who they are.”
CHAPTER 29
Polly’s reputation rose up and spread like winter floodwater after she came back with the master’s lost boy and the snakebit monkey.
When Master Ben returned from New Orleans, he gathered all the house and yard servants together for a special ceremony on the gallery and gave Polly a ten-dollar gold piece for saving Little Lord. The master was more certain of his purchase than ever before.
Neighboring plantation owners were less impressed. They had heard about Polly traipsing all over the county in the buggy, flaunting her passes to the patrollers, and they feared such license might be giving their own slaves dangerous ideas. But Master Ben placated them by offering his hospital to their sick stock for one day a month, at a negotiated fee.
As Polly’s fame spread, the debate between the men and women yard slaves heated up. Old Silas, more distressed than anyone at Polly’s ascent, whispered to whomever would listen that she was up to no good. She was a conjurer, a hoodoo witch, a false prophet, or maybe even Lucifer himself. Pomp told Granada she could settle it once and for all by snatching off Polly’s bedsheets at the stroke of midnight. If she was a witch, she would have scales on her feet.
Chester even made up a song about Polly:
Everybody say the woman is wise. Hoodoo!
She can make a body well before his eyes. Hoodoo!
But she got two hands in her bag of tricks,
One to lift the spell, the other to make you sick. Hoodoo!
But the women on the grounds argued that it did them proud to see one of their own getting so much respect. Whether she was evil or good, it made no difference.
“Same to me if she doing it by foul or by fair,” Charity, the weaver, said. “She’s one slave the white folks can’t own. Always one step ahead, she is.”
Lizzie, who hardly ever said two words on the same day, agreed. She was convinced Polly had set the mistress on fire. “And I don’t give a fig if it was Jesus or the devil who lit her torch. I just wished my poor Rubina could have seen that woman blaze up.”
Even Aunt Sylvie was heard to say behind Old Silas’s back, “Just because the devil brung her, don’t mean God didn’t send her. She saved my Granada and Little Lord from the wolves and raised a monkey from the dead. That got to count for something in heaven.”
Only one group of folks saw eye to eye on the question of Polly Shine. The field slaves—those laboring far away from the great house, working the cotton, clearing the swamps, building the levees, driving the mules, breeding new stock, always the first to be struck down by sickness and disease—had come to a common conclusion: Polly Shine had indeed been sent by God on a holy mission.
The first who had been carried from the swamps to the old woman’s hospital, doomed to die with the blacktongue, only to walk out whole after being touched by Polly Shine, were revered by their people. They called them the Blessed Ones.
Others came now late at night, after Granada and Polly had put out the lanterns and gone to bed. They walked the miles from the fields, under the cover of darkness. Granada saw how they looked at Polly with misty-eyed reverence and called her “Mother Polly,” like children calling to Jesus in their prayers.
The first to come were the mothers, carrying children who suffered from ailments they had hidden from the overseers, afraid their remedies would kill the child along with the disease. Not long after, the women began bringing their men and soon all sorts of folks were visiting the cabin, complaining of stomach pains or achy teeth or boils. Some came with pneumonia or the croup or bilious fever or a sprained back. Some hurt in places they could not point to.
Granada would feign sleep but watched through the slit between her lids as Polly rose up to light a lantern and put on her special head scarf before she walked through the cabin to the door. She turned no one away.
Whether the people who came were sick or not, Polly always gave them a remedy. But before prescribing anything, she asked all manner of questions about their loved ones and about their fears and their dreams. She listened intently, sometimes with her eyes closed and other times moving her gaze very carefully over their entire bodies, studying the color of their eyes and skin and fingernails. Pretty soon she had the person talking about a lot more than stomach pains. Other pains, too.
Pains in here, Granada thought, reaching her hand to her chest where weeks ago she had felt the penetrating burn of Polly’s palm. Soul-sick pains. Grudges they held. Losses they had known. Hopes that had died. Old wounds they had suffered.
They laid themselves bare and then Polly told them what to do. Sometimes she gave them a poultice or a tea to prepare back at their cabins. Sometimes she put dried roots in a pouch and told them to wear it around their necks. Sometimes they went to the big Bible together and Polly found words for them to repeat while they labored. And before they left, she whispered something into their ear and they nodded and smiled gratefully. They all seemed to leave feeling better than when they had come.
