“Yarny—I keep dreaming about a bronze Cadillac SUV with a fat copperhead in the driver’s seat. It went up the road to Turtleville. The snake has new hair plugs. He drives with your hands. He wants to bite you. Watch your back. I can kill him if you want me to.”
“Hiya Yarnspinner—Night Owl says it’s okay to just think about blowing shit up to get the anger out of my brain. You agree?”
“Yarny Sista—Gutsy has a problemo. Gutsy is horny. Gutsy doesn’t fuck the men-soldiers in her unit. Band of sister-brothers. Get it? Ditto for Miss Dragon. Gutsy and Dragon warn you—keep Larry Pretty Boy Dishwasher out of our woods. We did our recon on him: He’s over eighteen so that means LEGAL. Tell him to ix-nay on his stupid-ass ‘science’ in the woods. We’re not ‘rockycockers’ but you let us get our hands on him and we’ll sure rocky his cock.”
The phone seemed to squirm along the waistband of my skirt. Interesting, what years of operating in the thin altitudes of sleep deprivation and cat naps did to a person’s perceptions. Throw in a little extra stress and I felt more porous than usual; colors became brilliant and tactile; the sensual flow of the messages came and went through my skin.
I’d become too obvious, staring into the eyes of others, especially the women staying at the shelter at Rainbow Goddess, or really anyone I knew to be in emotional danger. I’d see a desperate glow in the darkness behind their pupils; they needed answers to questions they didn’t know how to ask.
And I’d be overwhelmed with information.
Later, I’d find a way to say something.
You mentioned that you feel guilty for coming here to the women’s shelter, because your husband’s never hit you, and he only calls you names when he’s been drinking. But I’ve been wondering . . . you listed two pre-teen sons of his from his previous marriage. One’s eight and one’s eleven. Boys can play rough. Are they respectful to you?”
“Why, sure. Look, I didn’t come here to talk about anybody but me and him. I don’t think I should talk to you. People say you’re psychic. That’s of the Devil.”
“My father was a Methodist minister. I was christened in his church.” I pulled out the cross he’d worn.
She pursed her lips. Then, “Awright. Buck gave me a roof over my head and I vowed to be a good mother and wife, and he pays the bills. I just . . . I just . . . ”
“You have my word that what you tell me about the boys won’t get them in any trouble. Have there been problems with his sons that your husband didn’t manage the way you would have liked? This is about him, not about the children.”
“You swear? You’ve gotta way about you. My granny called it the mustering. It was an old superstition up in these high places. That some folks could bewitch people into telling their secrets and their sins. Whether they wanted to or not.”
“I swear.”
Her jaw hardened. She nodded. And nodded again, then fought and lost to angry, shamed emotion.
“Buck’s boys shove me and punch me and grab me,” she whispered, with a quick shift of her eyes. “Down there and—she indicated her chest—here. They call me names worse than any he ever does. Say I’m not their mama, I’m their daddy’s whore, and that makes me their whore, too.”
“Did you tell him about their behavior?”
“I told him the first few times. He whupped them and hollered at them to keep their hands off his property. That’s how he put it—his property. After that they quit touching me. But they hated me for tellin’ on them. So every chance they got—and I was there alone with them, a lot—they’d say awful things to me, and bring over friends who’d do the same. Tear up my flower beds and tape dirty pictures inside my purse. Text me photos of their ‘parts’, you know, on my phone.”
“Your husband wouldn’t tell them to stop?”
“He said that was just boys being boys. That I wasn’t much of a woman if I couldn’t handle them.” Her control shattered. Tears spilled. “If y’all could teach me how to do it right, I can go back. I came here to get some lessons. I heard she’s ol’ bull dyke who used to be a marine, that one that owns this place, Alberta? She can teach me how to tame those boys, can’t she? I got no other place to go, and no good way to support myself. I have to go back. So just help me get some lessons in being a good mother to tough sons. I’ll work hard at it.”
“Certainly. But in the meantime, I saw on your records that you worked for Dixon’s Heritage Seed business for five years. You handled all their mailing lists and their mail orders.”
“I don’t remember telling anybody that, or putting it on paper.”
“You know how to set up spreadsheets and databases. You can design websites.”
“Yeah. Got a knack for that stuff.”
“Do you know that Rainbow Goddess is mostly self-supporting? The work done by the women who stay here pays for their program and helps pay for the future. The berry harvest, the goat and cow cheese, and now the yarn and fleece business—it’s important. I’ve been hoping to find someone who could organize all the yarns and the roving, the fleece, everything, and set up an online store for us.”
“You’re saying I can stay here and pay my way by doing that work?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t care what it pays. I’ll find a place to live . . . I’ll sleep in the woods . . . ”
“No, you’ll have room and board here. That’s part of the deal. We can’t pay much, but you get a place to live, and safety, and friendship, and help.”
She smothered tears behind her hands. “I don’t want to believe what Mr. Monzell and his people say about you. You’re not trying to lure me into witchcraft or being a lesbian, are you? Like you did with his third wife?”
“No, I promise.” I held out a hand.
“I accept. But I’m not touching you. No offense, alright?”
“No offense.”
This was my life. To be needed, pitied, and feared, except by a few people who knew about me and understood who and what I was.
The mice played the xylophone again.
This time, a text message came through.
Nighthawk’s dad died. Bring some Jesus, quick.
“WE’LL SET UP IN the old bakery,” Tal said when we met in Free Wheeler. “The Knights feel comfortable there. Lots of good spiritual energy. The ghosts of pies and cakes and bread. The people who lived in Free Wheeler loved the bakery shop. It was a gathering place. You can feel that serenity.”
Puffing along beside her with a heavy backpack riding my shoulders, I caught enough breath to ask, “Why did you hide your truck inside the Lube and Fuel?”
The Lube and Fuel was our nickname for the village’s tiny gas station, designed like an English cottage with a peaked roof and window boxes for flowers. Currently it sat at the end of Main Street, with tree stumps protruding between the cracked paving stones, its windows and garage bay shuttered and barred.
It was hard to imagine hand-built bicycles skimming along the paths in the 1930s and 40s. Mountain Flyers and Star Riders and Spinning Roses had been built and assembled at The Hub, a grand two-story brick building that occupied one entire side of the village’s paver-stoned main street. Over its tall double doors, a granite arch was engraved:
Enter the Hub of Imagination
The World of Clapper Motion Machines
Inside those doors was a large marble foyer inlaid with a huge mural of colorful marble chips. The shops of Free Wheeler, the Ten Sister Mountains, blue skies and white clouds; happy adults and children rode bicycles as onlookers waved. A tall, smiling man and red-haired woman waved from the Hub’s doorway. Sam and Rose.
To own a Claptraddle bicycle was to claim a part of Appalachian artisan history; to own a piece of the ancient mountains themselves, and their peoples’ pride, and their tragic memories: the inlaid chestnut wood from ghost trees long extinct
from the blight; the ornamental chips of mountain sapphire, ruby garnet, and even specks of gold . . . the metals refined from mines dug by immigrant settlers, mines with bloody and dark histories of greed and politics and power, not the least of which had been the MacBrides versus the Wakefields.
Now it was all ghosts and memories.
So quiet.
But not quiet at all.
Tal paused to steady the stack of boxes and plastic tubs on her hand cart. My skin prickled at the tension in her face. “Sour, rotting, moldy. That’s what I smelled during Carl’s funeral. Everybody called him Bubba, because that was the nickname Delta gave him when they were kids. Her older brother. Her bubba. But the funeral program called him Carl. He was a sweet man. He and Cleo were married thirty years, but she didn’t shed a tear during the service. She’s not a crier. I got ‘flattened soufflé’ from her. She’s a lost soul. Except for holding onto Kern. He was there for her.”
She unfastened a padlock on the bakery’s back door. The heavy wood creaked as she opened it. Tal pulled a propane lamp from her cart, lit it, and hung the glow from a low rafter over a long marble counter. I stacked a dozen thickly crocheted lap throws on the counter—the Knights needed all the coverings they could get, since—so far as we could guess—they lived in a primitive camp in a hollow or under a rock overhang. I gazed at gracious old walls tiled in pale colors. A tile floor in a checkerboard pattern. Empty shelves made of beautiful, hand-carved wood. The forlorn spots where ovens and sinks had stood. With the windows all boarded, it felt like a dark chamber lost in time. I closed my eyes.
I loved the tea cakes, Opal whispered. They had molasses on top.
This was the first indication that Opal had a local history, a past I could trace. She disappeared in the ether before I could ask.
I finally caught my breath enough to say, “The bad smell. What does that mean? At the service. Why did you hide the truck? Just tell me. I’m getting better. I can handle it.”
Tal turned from setting a tub on the counter. “The bad essence came from Kern. I felt him watching me. I think he suspects that his brother is hiding in these woods. I’m worried he’ll find an excuse to search. We can’t let him discover the Knights. Most of them have open arrest warrants. Drug charges in some cases. In others, what you could call ‘unfortunate meltdowns’ due to PTSD.”
“I can’t tell if Kern wants to hurt his brother or just bring him home to Cleo, like a gift.”
“I take it that Gus hasn’t told you the story about him and Kern fighting, when they were kids.”
My ears pricked. Invisible antenna lifted from the top of my head. “Not yet.”
“Ask him some time.” She paused. “Kern definitely wants to hurt Trey.”
I told myself maybe she was just on edge. A lot was going on in the world and in the MacBride family. Gabs and Jay had finally reunited over the holidays, but in the process, he’d gotten shot in the chest by his own aunt. “Wakefields put the func in dysfunction. They’re a wee bit malevolent,” as Doug Firth put it. “It’s a wonder Jay grew up without horns and a forked tail.”
I began unzipping my backpack. “I know Kern and Trey had issues as kids. I can feel it every time I’m near Trey. Shame and anger. And fear.”
Tal put a finger to her lips. “Night Hawk, not Trey. Let’s stick with the code names. You never know who’s listening.”
Standing in a 1930’s village that had been deserted for nearly eighty years, in the middle of a wild Appalachian forest full of steep hollows and granite ridges, I would have said she was being paranoid. Except she was a kitchen witch, and I was a yarn witch, and when she said that with all the intuition she possessed, every fiber in every woolen article of clothing on my body stood on end.
“You smell like ripe bananas,” Tal said. “And raw cocoa. Stay calm.”
“I feel like a yarn porcupine.”
“We can handle Kern. I don’t really think he’ll track me here. This is private property.” She put a fist of power to her sweatered chest. MacBride land.”
We set up food along the counter, along with paper plates and plastic utensils. It was a cold feast of fried chicken, ham, potato salad, cole slaw, mounds of biscuits and rolls. The iconic Southern funeral repast. Tal unpacked a small army of bottled beers. She sighed. “Even if they’re warm beers, they’re still beers. Besides, the Knights are not picky.”
I picked up one bottle and studied it. “This is fine. This kind of ale is meant to be served at room temperature. The hops really pop at room temp.” I glanced up into Tal’s puckish expression.
“You and my bro have had a lot of discussions about beer?”
“And needlecraft,” I said primly.
Tal checked her phone. “It’s time. Are you ready?”
I took a shaky breath. “I’m not a minister.”
“To them, you are.”
TREY MCKELLAN limped out of the forest with a haggard expression on his face. I didn’t need my gift to deduce that grief and guilt tormented him. He looked much older than 28. When he pulled a heavy sock cap off his head, his roughly clipped hair showed a feather of silver among the dark strands. He nodded to us. “Thank you for doing this. It’s not for me. It’s for him.”
“Sit,” Tal ordered gently. She pointed to an old wooden stool from the bakery. He lowered his lanky body atop it awkwardly, extending the bad leg to one side. His baggy camo pants couldn’t hide the clumsy prosthesis that formed his leg from the mid-thigh down. He always rejected our offers to supply him with a better model.
I felt the watchful eyes of the Knights, somewhere in the fringe of forest and evergreen rhododendron. They were experts at vanishing in plain sight. They stood guard.
I stepped into place a few feet from Trey, while pulling a soft gray scarf from beneath my shawls. I held it out. “This was one of the first things I made, after I learned to knit and crochet. Just a few months after I came to the farm to live. I gave it to your dad. He gave it back to me right after Christmas. Told me to save it for you. Put it away, and take care of it. His blood pressure was causing problems. He was worried about it. He never wanted to be disabled by a stroke. I learned that he’d made the same agreement with other people around the Cove. ‘When Trey comes home, this is for him.’ Photos, your old baseball mitt, things like that.”
Trey’s face contorted. He looked away, his throat working.
I laid the scarf on his knees then stepped back. “He understood your pain. Don’t ever doubt that. I touch this scarf and I feel a father’s love and understanding. He felt that he failed you.”
Trey turned stark eyes back to me, shocked.
“Failed you,” I repeated. “Failed to protect you from Kern. He always knew that Kern bullied you. He kept quiet because your mother doted on Kern.”
The winter forest hovered over those words. Bare limbs of old trees bent closer, listening. Wild creatures woke from their sleep to taste the air of sorrow.
“He didn’t realize how much he misunderstood until after you were gone. How badly Kern had treated you. How much it had hurt to be lesser in Cleo’s eyes. Those are not words he said to me. These are beliefs I feel from the connection I made with him.” I gestured to the scarf. “He was kind, and brave, and he loved your mother dearly. He wanted to love Kern because Kern meant so much to her. I can’t explain her devotion for Kern to you; there are some things I can’t see. People store their regrets in deep places. But I know he loved you, and he would be proud that you’ve become a leader to a group of people who’ve been hurt and cast off.” I took a deep breath. “He wants you to forgive him.”
Trey scrubbed a hand over his wet eyes. “I want to believe what you’re saying.”
“I do understand how you feel. My father died of a heart attack in my hospital room, after the rapes. He felt he’d failed to protect me. That his God had lied to
him and . . . and had dishonored my father’s service to Him. And yet . . . I watched him die, and decided it was all my fault. I will never stop feeling guilty for being a victim. For causing my father’s deadly grief and his loss of faith. But you didn’t kill your dad. You didn’t choose the life that isolated you from your mom and drove you away. He knew that.”
Trey struggled to control his tears.
Fucking crybaby.
The words sprang in my mind like paint dripping off a brush. One of the many taunts Kern had thrown at him when they were kids.
Tal made a book opening gesture at me.
The Bible. Make a detour from Trey’s deeply personal pain.
I cleared my throat. “‘Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.’”
Tal twirled a finger. Speed it up. I stood there in bald-faced sacrilegious intent. I edited God’s word for a short take. ‘“. . . Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.’ John 14—”
Tal made a Cut motion.
I began cherry-picking from the Bible. Dad could have preached an entire memorial service from each bit I chose. “‘God will strengthen you and help you . . .’” Isaiah. Next up, the Psalms. “‘Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; He lifts his voice, the earth melts . . . He says BE STILL, AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD . . .’”
Tal pressed down with her hands. Don’t shout like that. Trey glanced at her, frowning, then back at me.
I was beginning to sweat despite the forty degree air. “‘The peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your heart and your mind . . .’” Philippians, I added silently. “‘For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers . . . will separate us from the love of God.’ Romans, 8: . . . shit.” I halted, mortified. “I am so sorry for that language.”
Trey was now rubbing his chin and hiding his mouth a little.
Guffaws came from the forest.
“Romans ate shit,” someone whispered loudly.
More guffaws.
Trey bent his head into his palm, laughing.