“What did you do?”
“Nothing!” she screamed. “What’s the difference, anyway? Look at me.” She was aware of her mother and brother entering the room.
“Why would he do this to you?” her mother asked, her voice full of tears.
“Because I live.” She could taste blood in her mouth, as thick and black as used oil. “I have to quit him. I can’t live a life like this. I won’t.”
“Hush now,” Thomas said, rubbing her hand. “The Lord takes care of all things. Divorce ain’t the answer to everything. You have to work through this. You can’t just give up on your marriage.”
“I’ll be giving up if I stay with him. One of these days he’ll kill me.”
“What you all need is to get back in church,” Thomas said. After a few minutes, he got up slowly, quietly, and went outside. She hoped that he was going to kill Denzel. That was what she wanted. She tried to rise up off the couch to go with him.
“Lay down now. You will leave him, no matter what your daddy says,” her mother whispered. “You get out of there as fast as you can. There ain’t no changing a man like that. I’ve seen it before.”
When Alma awoke the next morning, her mother was still there with her, rubbing her back in a perfect circle. Her father was sitting across the room, propped up in his chair and staring out the window. He had not slept, but from his expression, she knew that he had not changed his mind, either.
“Daddy, I’m leaving him,” she said weakly. “I don’t care if it makes your singing group look bad or nothing else. Why in God’s name would you want me to stay with him?”
He said nothing.
WHEN SHE WAS SURE Evangeline had passed out, she felt around in her purse until she found her Jean Ritchie tape and pushed it in. Jean had not even gotten out the first verse before Evangeline put her face up between the seats again and muttered, “Alma. Pull over.”
“You ain’t getting sick, are you?” Alma asked, turning down the volume again.
“Yeah,” Evangeline said, her mouth already filling up. “I sure am.”
Alma pulled to the side of the road and held Evangeline’s hair back while her sister vomited. Evangeline sat right down on the shoulder of the road and told Alma to leave her alone for a minute. Alma stood at the open door and looked up at the black mountain towering beside the road. The cliffs stood dark and solemn and made the silence more noticeable. There was no sound except the redundant bell signaling that the door had been left open. The stars were spread out as if spilled, and the moon was a smudged spot of gray on the black sky. The tears that had lingered in her eyes began to spill, although she didn’t have a clue as to where they might have come from. After what she had been through in the past two months, she couldn’t see how she even had any tears left, but they fell fast and straight down.
7
EASTER AWOKE TO WHISPERING—low, cool whispers like the wind off a falling leaf. When she opened her eyes, there was no one, nothing. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, and in that space of time, she felt a slight breeze in the room, like the barely noticeable wind of someone’s leaving. An image came to her mind: a woman quickly, gracefully leaving the room, clad in a dress made of silver winter air.
She had expected to wake up to someone there with her. Anneth, perhaps. She had been troubled by dreams of her sister all night long—dreams in which Anneth did not laugh, did not throw her head back, did not show her beautiful, straight teeth and red lips. They had been dreams of Anneth coming to her as she would have looked if she had lived to be very old. Her beauty had faded, changed into a different kind of loveliness, the kind that only very old women possess: the shadow of a lost hourglass figure, a widening of the hips, a silvering of the hair. In the dreams, Anneth had tried to speak, but her mouth had been clotted with dirt, and it had trembled out to fall on the floor. The dirt had looked as dark and rich as chocolate, good enough to eat.
Easter often lay in bed feeling that someone was standing over her. But this morning it had been different: short, lisped whispers, like the comforting voice of seduction. The feeling of dread was all around her. Something was going to happen. She knew that as soon as she felt someone leave the room—the quiet, straight vacuum of air following someone out. She felt the dread seep into her body, moving slow as kudzu.
She looked at the clock and realized that she had never slept this late on a Sunday morning. It was well past eight o’clock, and as soon as she saw this, it seemed that the room was filled with morning, although it had been light for well over an hour. Beams of sunshine came in like thick planks of whitened lumber, slanting through the window and onto the floor. She heard the sounds of the new day: birds in the tree next to her bedroom window, roosters crowing far up in the holler, cars starting. She threw back her warm bedcovers and climbed out of the bed quickly, ashamed. Her grandmother had been a firm believer in not wasting any part of daylight, and she had ingrained this habit into Easter.
She sat back down on the bed, as if someone had pushed her back. She fell into the soft mattress heavily with the springs screeching under her. Her knees felt weak and her palms broke out in a cold sweat, the way her hands did when she was traveling a long distance in a car. She started to call out for her husband, El, who was most likely already up and drinking his coffee on the front porch, but then she didn’t.
She sat there for a long moment, her head swimming from rising and sitting so quickly. She tried to remember the whispers and was frustrated that she couldn’t. It was the most annoying thing, just like trying to remember a dream. She put her face into her damp hands and scolded herself silently. Maybe she wasn’t really a seer at all—maybe she was merely overimaginative. Or crazy. She sometimes wondered if she didn’t make herself believe that she was cursed to see what others could not. Doomed to hear whispers when nobody was there.
She wondered if it could all stem from when she was just a child and had stood in the cornfield, listening to the pluck of a dulcimer far up on the mountain.
She had never heard such a sweet sound. She dropped her hoe and began running up the row of corn. The plants were thick and tall and green. Their sharp leaves sliced at her face, but she didn’t feel the paper cuts they left on her cheeks. She ran through the corn, intent on running all the way up the mountain until she saw who was playing that music. She wanted to see whose magic fingers could make such a beautiful noise.
She almost ran right into the man. He was tall and slender, with black hair and coal-black eyes. Black birds flew off in a noisy frenzy. The dulcimer’s song intensified. He had a face that was toughened by sun, work, and age. She could hear his footfalls in the tender soil, could hear the swish of air as he pushed the corn leaves out of his face. His lips moved, and she felt that she was meant to know what he was saying, but she could not decipher it.
She tore through the cornfield. She was not able to call out. All she could make move were her legs, and when she finally found her grandmother, bent over the hoe, she ran into her long brown skirts and held tightly onto her leg. Her grandmother pulled away, dropped to her knees, and put her hands on both sides of Easter’s face.
“Didn’t you see the man? Didn’t you hear that dulcimer?” Easter asked in a pleading voice. It seemed that her grandmother’s face was made out of the earth she put the hoe into. Her eyes, blue as prized marbles, were always watery, but Easter finally realized her grandmother was about to cry.
“It’s a sign,” the old woman said, and it seemed that her voice was full of dirt, too. “Don’t fret. It’s something God has gived you.”
A week later her grandfather had died, killed in the little mine that he had burrowed out behind their house to haul his own coal. Easter had watched as they carried him out, his body crumbled and broken, looking just like a cornhusk doll.
A superstitious old woman had told Easter she had the sight, and she had believed it from then on. Maybe that was the reason she had carried this curse with her all of her life.
She ti
red of waiting for anything to happen and left her bedroom to get herself some coffee. El had left her a half pot, and she poured a cup and stepped out onto the back porch to get a breath of morning. As soon as she stepped out, she saw the box lying on the top step. She recognized the box; she could remember the day it had been delivered to their grandmother. It had originally carried a huge family Bible, but Anneth had claimed it as a child and put all of her mementos within it. Easter hadn’t seen the box in ages, probably since she was a teenager, and could not understand where it had come from. She stood quickly and walked around the corner of the house, imagining that she might see someone leaving her yard. There was no one to be seen.
Only Marguerite would have had something of Anneth’s, and only she would have left it in such a mysterious way.
She sat down on the top step beside the box and lifted the lid. She leafed through its contents. These were her sister’s possessions—the things she had really cherished, although they were strange sorts of things to keep. Old napkins and matchbooks, a whole pack of unopened cigarettes. Carnival pictures, beads, newspaper clippings. There was a small Gideons Bible, which fell open to a marked verse. There were sketches that Anneth had drawn, postcards, catalog receipts.
At the bottom, Easter found two envelopes. One was addressed to her, and the other was to Clay. She ripped the first envelope open.
Dear Easter,
I know if anything ever happens to me, you’ll find this old box. I want Clay to have it. I’ve wrote him a long letter to try and explain everything to him, but what he don’t understand, I know you’ll be able to answer. Don’t keep no secrets from him. I don’t know how to tell him who I am, but maybe you will be able to. I love you, sister.
Yours,
Anneth
El appeared in the doorway, coffee cup in hand. “Easter? What in the world you doing? I figured you was getting ready for church.”
“I ain’t going to church this morning,” she said.
“What’s that box?”
“It’s something of Anneth’s. I’ve just found it.” She closed her eyes and put the letter against her lips. The paper was so soft and white that it looked as if the letter had been written this very morning. She expected it to smell like Anneth, but it carried only the tangy scent of old ink.
“What do you mean, you hain’t going to church? You’ve got to lead the singing.”
“I’m not going, I said. Just go on without me.” She shoved everything back into the box and closed the lid gently. “I just want to stay home. I believe I’ll cook a big meal and tell ever-body to come up and eat.”
“All right, then,” El said.
When he left, she could see him walking all the way up the road, up to where the church sat, at the mouth of the holler. Sometimes she wondered if she went to church simply to try to purge herself of past mistakes. Some people made her out to be a saint, but she had done plenty of wrong in her life. She trembled all over, looking at that church, sitting on the hillside just like a solemn judge.
ALMA WAS LEAVING her attorney’s office on Main Street when she heard someone playing “Sweet Old World” by Lucinda Williams in a car waiting at the stoplight.
She let the office door close quietly behind her and looked out into the street. It was Clay Sizemore. Evangeline had been kidding her about him ever since she had danced with him at the Hilltop, but she had put him out of her mind. There was no use even thinking about a man right now. Sometimes she wondered if she’d ever want to be with a man again.
She couldn’t help watching him, though. She liked the way he sang along to the song, his arm stretched out across the back of the seat while he waited for the light to change. He moved around a bit while he sang, not caring who saw him. His face was covered with coal dust. He nodded his head and tapped one thumb against the steering wheel to the beat of the music.
God, he was good-looking. And she had always believed that you could tell a lot about a person by looking at the albums they had. She had been wrong about this only once: part of the reason she had decided to marry Denzel was the simple fact that he liked Bill Monroe when everybody else was listening to Bruce Springsteen.
She wished the light would change so Clay would go on. Her car was sitting down the street, and if she moved past the lawyer’s door, Clay would catch sight of her. If she kept standing there, he would eventually notice her, too. She was suddenly glad that she was dressed up. She held her purse before her with both hands and began to feel around for her keys, even though they were lying right on top of her billfold. There was no use even thinking about somebody like Clay, no matter how nice-looking he was, or how confident he had been when he strolled across the dance floor to ask her to dance, or what kind of music he liked.
Still, she looked up at him again. When she did, he caught her eye.
He lifted a hand to wave and smiled widely. She nodded and started to walk on toward her car, hoping he would go on, but he wheeled into the empty space along the sidewalk. A little sign stood there that read NO PARKING ANYTIME.
“Hidy, Alma,” he said, after turning down his radio. “You remember me?”
She put her purse strap on her shoulder and studied his face for a moment without a change of expression. After a moment of stalling, she said, “Why yeah, you’re Clay.”
“I’ve been hoping to see you ever since we danced up at the Hilltop.”
She ran her car keys through her fingers, and their clinking seemed very loud despite the traffic that was sailing by.
“I’ve tried calling up Evangeline’s, to get up with you. You all don’t never stay home,” he said. She noticed his eyes were outlined with coal dust. They were green as unripe acorns, and the whites of them were bright against his black face. “What’ve you been up to?”
“Not a thing,” she said. “You doing all right?”
“Be a lot better if I could get you to go out with me sometime,” Clay said. He stared her in the eye. She silently bet herself that he was an expert at asking girls out on dates. He had probably had half the girls in Crow County.
“I don’t guess so, Clay,” she said. She should have told him that she was still married, that she had only just now started the divorce procedure. She should have told him that Denzel would go wild if he even saw her talking to a man. But she couldn’t make those words come out of her mouth.
“Aw, come on, now,” he said. He smiled, showing teeth that were very straight and white. “We don’t have to go honky-tonking. Go out to eat? Or to a movie over in London?”
“I better not, Clay.” She couldn’t make herself say no, plain and simple. She wanted to tell him good-bye and walk on to her car, but instead she said, “That’s my favorite song you was playing.”
“Yeah, that’s a great one. I love all Lucinda’s songs.” He reached for a box of cigarettes that lay on the dashboard, but apparently thought better of it and didn’t pick them up. “Let me come get you Saturday evening. We’ll just go riding around or something.”
A little breeze kicked down the street and lifted her hair. The air was cold and smelled of autumn. She stood there, leaning down so she could look into the truck.
“It’s good of you to ask, but I can’t,” she said. She looked up the street, trying to get away from his eyes. The breeze blew her hair into her face and she brushed it away. She kept her fingers behind her ear so the locks wouldn’t blow out again. “I better get going.”
“Well, you can think about it,” Clay said. “Be nice to just ride around and listen to good music all night, wouldn’t it?”
She smiled at that and walked away. She was aware of him watching her through his rearview mirror as she slid into her car and started it up. He sat there until she had pulled out onto the street and driven by him.
8
AUTUMN SETTLED ITSELF down over the land like a colorful skirt. Dusk came earlier and touched the leaves with sharp breath. The hills were filled with the smoke from smoldering patches of forest fires. When the
season finally overtook the mountains, so complete in its work that the trees were nearly black in their nakedness, Clay and Alma met again.
During the first full moon of October, the Heritage Festival invaded Black Banks. A large carnival came in on rumbling rigs and campers, converting Main Street and its tributaries into rows of tall neon rides, concession stands, and barker games. The people of Crow County set up booths of their own, offering everything from chicken dumpling plates to peanut butter fudge. High school clubs manned hot dog stands and dunking booths, the ROTC handed out army stickers and told wild, beautiful lies to sophomore boys outfitted in Eastland shoes and thin mustaches.
Cherokees came up from the reservation to display their pottery and shirts bearing the seal of their nation. Festival chasers offered booths of junk and impulse buys. Large Pentecostal women hung their best quilts on high clotheslines, and the Mennonites sold hand-dyed fabrics and breads.
Music was the main draw of the festival, and the chamber of commerce enlisted local musicians to stroll through the crowd playing their instruments of choice. Nashville hopefuls sat on street corners and picked, the open guitar cases at their feet lined with a few quarters that they had supplied themselves. Stages were set up all over town.
The main stage—which was actually the long, wide porch of the courthouse—was now being dominated by Evangeline and her band, the Revolvers. That was where Clay went as soon as he and Cake got to the festival. He figured he’d be able to find Alma there. He had been thinking about her ever since he had seen her on Main Street. He had tried to call her several times but was always greeted by Evangeline’s answering machine, which announced: “You know what to do. Leave a message.” He had done just that but had never received a reply. Every time he had called, he had pictured Alma standing right beside the phone, probably rolling her eyes when she heard his voice.