Night Bird Calling

by Cathy Gohlke

  “Can I help you find something?” Ida Mae asked pointedly, without looking up from her books.

  The man all but dropped the sweet potatoes he’d been fingering into their barrel on the far side of the store—as if they were hot, as if he’d been caught stealing, which Celia wondered if he might be considering. “I’m just looking, ma’am.” His shoulders rose and fell in what Celia took for a sigh. He’s hungry. Celia knew the look and weight of hungry and this man didn’t look like he could heft a sack of potatoes, let alone beat a girl to a pulp.

  “Those sweet potatoes run forty-five cents for fifteen pounds. We carry only the best.”

  “Would you—would you sell me two?” he stammered.

  “Two pecks?”

  “No, ma’am.” He blushed furiously. “Two sweet potatoes . . . maybe three.”

  Ida Mae’s jaw dropped. She closed it. “Bring them over here and I’ll find a paper sack.”

  “No need, ma’am. I can slip them in my pockets.”

  “I send my groceries out in paper sacks and boxes.” Ida Mae snapped open the sack. “I suppose you’re used to slipping things into pockets?”

  Joe Earl nearly busted a gut. Celia thought that raw, but Ida Mae didn’t shush him.

  “I’m looking for work, ma’am. I work real hard—do anything. I’d be glad to sweep up in here for you, rake those leaves out near the road, give your store a new coat of paint—anything you want, anything at all. No need to pay me money. I’ll work for food—whatever you give me.”

  “You’re not from around here.” Ida Mae ignored his plea.

  “No, ma’am. My wife and I are passing through, on our way to Tennessee to work with family. We’ve just got to work our way there before the snow flies. We’ve come up a little short.”

  “You mean broke, don’t you? Do you have money to pay for those potatoes or not?”

  The man pulled a nickel from his pocket, a nickel Celia imagined had been worn thin with worry, and placed it on the counter.

  “I know about hard times, young man. You don’t have to tell me. No, I don’t have work for you, and if I did, I’d give it to one of our own, not some Ya—some stranger.” Ida Mae’s eyes pummeled the man with a disgust Celia knew she reserved for strangers and Yankees and foreigners, the same she’d lavished on Dr. Vishnevsky when he first came to town. “You’re wasting your breath asking anywhere in No Creek. Now, do you want to buy those potatoes or not?”

  The man had kept his eyes on the three potatoes in his hand all along, but the color of his face had deepened from a cold rose to a deep-red flush, clear around the back of his neck. He pulled his nickel off the counter, the one he’d held his hand over throughout Ida Mae’s long-winded speech. “No, ma’am. I don’t believe I’ll spend my money here.” He looked up at her. “I believe I’ve earned them listening to your meanness.”

  Before Ida Mae could open her mouth to respond, the man had pocketed the potatoes and was out the door, leaving it standing wide with the November wind howling in her face.

  Joe Earl whooped, “Whoeee!” glad for the climax of the show, and slapped his hand across his knee.

  “Of all the nerve!” Ida Mae huffed, near speechless. She whooshed through the door, grabbed a porch broom, and brandished it round and round toward the man’s head. “Thief! Thief! Get out of here, you confounded Yankee, and don’t you come back!” She slammed the door, the bell jingling off its hook. “If there was any law within five miles, I’d call and set the dogs on him.”

  “Best let him go, Ida Mae.” Joe still laughed and coughed, pretending he hadn’t done the first. “That boy’ll be three counties over fore you get the sheriff’s feet off his desk.”

  Ida Mae huffed again.

  Celia still sat on the pickle barrel, juice dripping down her hand from squeezing the pickle so hard while the conflicts swirled round her head. She licked her arm, scooted off the barrel, and peeked out the front window. No sign of the man. She’d like to have seen him again. She’d never known anybody to get the better of Ida Mae and live to tell it. Drifter though he might be, she hoped he’d get away, free and clear.

  Still, she was a little surprised when, on her way home to Garden’s Gate, she saw the very man and the back of a woman slip into the church. The man hadn’t lied about having a wife. Maybe, she thought, they’d been to see Reverend Willard. Maybe he let them stay in the church. Then she remembered that Joe Earl had said Reverend Willard had gone to Winston-Salem for two days. Joe Earl was doing his best to stay easy on the drink till the reverend got back to walk him sober if things got out of hand.

  Celia hesitated near the cemetery. Should she tell somebody? The man was a thief, after all. There wasn’t anything in the church worth stealing—nothing you could sell for food or drink. The church meant out of the cold, but there’d be no heat—not till Olney Tate brought a load of firewood for the stove early Sunday morning. Celia gritted her teeth and walked on. Maybe it was something she’d just forget. Only she couldn’t.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  “I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S GOT INTO CELIA. She’s walking around in some other world, ever since she came home from her job helping out at the general store this afternoon.” Gladys slapped a damp tea towel across the faucet to dry.

  “Do you think she’s heard something about Ruby Lynne? Something she’s not telling us for fear of worrying us?” I couldn’t stop thinking of Ruby Lynne.

  “I don’t know. She worries over everything these days—about the Klan coming back, about her father coming home, about the Germans invading by air and sea. The paper’s full of talk about Mr. Roosevelt rattling his saber at the Japanese and telling them to leave those poor people in China alone, and about those blue and red war games in our own backyard, getting our boys ready to fight. They’ve gone and mined the Yadkin River bridge. Is that real? It worries me, but I know all that talk scares children half to death.”

  It sounded to me as if Gladys was the one scared half to death—which was unlike her.

  “Chester asked me the other day if their school bus would explode if it drove over a minefield. Celia doesn’t ask those things, but sometimes she wakes up screaming from nightmares. Next morning she doesn’t remember or doesn’t say. That girl carries way too much worry on eleven-year-old shoulders.” Gladys rubbed her temples, then hung her apron on the hook behind the kitchen door and went upstairs to check on Celia.

  I worried about the children some, too, but I worried constantly about Ruby Lynne. Celia had told me she’d heard nothing, seen nothing of her lately. She’d said that Troy, Rhoan’s brother, stopped in at the store to pick up mail and groceries. That had always been Ruby Lynne’s job. Does that mean she’s not well enough to go?

  Not even Olney or Marshall had seen Ruby Lynne about the Wishon place, and they passed it every day on their way into No Creek. I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d gone somewhere. I would’ve loved it if Ruby Lynne really could get out of No Creek, if she could finish school and go to college, become the teacher she’d dreamed. But I feared that wasn’t reality, and then I feared what was.

  Over supper that night Celia poked peas around her plate.

  “You eat those peas, Celia,” her mother admonished. “Food doesn’t grow on trees and you’re lucky to have them. Remember those starving children in China.”

  Celia looked up, concerned. “I am lucky, and I don’t even like peas. I don’t need them.”

  Gladys set her fork down. “What a thing to say!”

  “I mean, there are people in this world—really hungry people—who’d love to have peas, and they aren’t all in China. I wish I could give them mine.”

  Gladys shook her head as if to dismiss Celia’s new finagle to get out of eating peas. But I wondered. I’d come to realize that Celia usually worked a deeper thought behind the first one.

  “Do you know somebody who’s hungry, Celia?”

  She looked up at me as if I’d caught her in a lie, then as if I’d struck gold. “Yes.
I met him today.”

  “Who’d you meet today?” her mother demanded.

  “A man at the store—a stranger from somewhere up north, Ida Mae said. Called him a confounded Yankee. Said it like she was sucking lemons. He stole some sweet potatoes.”

  “Stole! Ida Mae must have been mad as a wet hen!” Gladys huffed. “All that going on and you working down there. I don’t like it. Maybe you shouldn’t—”

  “He wanted to work for those potatoes—for food, any food. Ida Mae said she’d never give him any work, even if she had it—that nobody in No Creek would.” Celia frowned at her plate, then looked up, her brow creased. “Ida Mae was real mean to him, Mama. And Joe Earl just laughed.”

  Gladys smoothed her napkin across her lap. “Ida Mae’s not known for kindness to strangers.”

  “She’s got a mean streak,” Chester agreed as if he were talking weather. “That’s a fact.”

  “That’s not polite, Chester,” Gladys corrected him.

  “Well, neither is she, Mama. She’s mean and she was wrong!” Celia crumpled her napkin and threw it to the table. “I was ashamed of Ida Mae, and I was ashamed of all that I have. I can sweep up that store for a pickle or a candy, and I don’t even need it. I’m not hungry and I’m not cold. I hurt for that man. You should have seen him. His coat wasn’t near warm enough, and his shoes looked like they’d barely hold together . . . they won’t hold together come snow.”

  “I’m glad you have a tender heart, Celia, but we don’t know them, and we can’t help everybody. Remember how Jesus said we have the poor always with us? Maybe that’s what Ida Mae meant.”

  “I don’t think that’s what she meant, Mama. Besides, Ida Mae owns that store. She could help.”

  “She has to pay for the things she sells. She doesn’t get them for free.”

  “She could still help a little. It wouldn’t hurt her.”

  “Maybe we can help,” I offered. “Do you know where he went?”

  Celia hesitated, and I couldn’t tell if she was conjuring a lie or simply not certain. “Not exactly, ma’am. He run off . . . but they might be nearby. He said his wife and him are workin’ their way to Tennessee to be with family.”

  “Did you see his wife?”

  “She wasn’t with him at the store.”

  “Probably doesn’t exist,” Gladys sighed. “He might have made that up to get sympathy.”

  “No, Mama. He didn’t. I’m sure he didn’t.”

  “Let it be, Celia. I don’t want you bringing home strangers or strays. Not one. You understand me?”

  “You didn’t see him, Mama. You didn’t see him like I did.”

  I thought that a most profound statement. I doubted many people saw things as Celia did.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON Celia straightened her stack of books and pulled her skirt over her knees before she got off the school bus, hoping to look a little older, and marched into the general store and post office. The bell over the door jingled.

  Ida Mae, near breathless, was running down a list with her second-oldest daughter, Pearl. “Now you’ve got to get the mail ready to go out in sacks—usually just one, but with Christmas coming, you never know. Have those bags over to the door by noon for Joe Earl to pick up. Even if he’s late, don’t you take the mail to the platform. There’s no point with nobody to wait with it—train won’t stop with nobody there—and you need to mind the store at all times. Joe Earl will tote it up to the depot in Roaring River—I already talked with him.

  “If the snow flies fast and furious and Joe can’t get here, give him grace. Don’t go running him down. No point trying to call—he’s got no phone. He’ll get here when he can. The train comes at 2:17 and he doesn’t generally start drinking till four.”

  “Yes, Mama.” Pearl pushed her glasses back up on her nose. “I’ll try to remember all this, but it sure is a lot.”

  Ida Mae shook her head, exasperated, but her eyes lit when she saw Celia. “Celia can run errands for you if you need her to. You’ll do that, won’t you, Celia? While I’m away up north?”

  The wheels turned in Celia’s head. “I reckon I could.”

  “Wonderful!”

  “How much?”

  “Why, whenever Pearl needs you. I can’t tell ahead how often that—”

  “No, I mean how much you gonna pay me?”

  “Pay you?”

  “You’re gonna pay Pearl, aren’t you? You pay me peppermints and pickles to sweep up. Runnin’ errands is more.”

  “Well . . .”

  “How about groceries?”

  “Groceries? Are you running short at Garden’s Gate?” Ida Mae looked as if she didn’t believe that, but what a juicy tidbit of gossip.

  “Well, Reverend Willard and the Earls and who knows who all will be comin’ for Thanksgiving dinner since you won’t be here to cook for them. We could probably use a little extra.”

  “Does your mama know about this? Lilliana?”

  “How could they? You just asked me. Fair is fair.”

  “All right, then. Keep a tally and we’ll work it out.”

  “Yes, ma’am! And about the Christmas play at church . . .”

  “I guess there won’t be one this year.”

  “No Christmas play? That ain’t right! It’s the best part of Christmas Eve!”

  “I know, darlin’, and I’m sorry. But I can’t be sure when I’ll get back the way things are up there. And there’s nobody else to—”

  “I’ll do it!” The words were out of Celia’s mouth in a rush. Success with the groceries had gone to her head. Besides, there was nothing in this world she loved more than the Christmas play, unless it was reading and imagining, and she could imagine just how she’d run the Christmas play.

  “You’re eleven years old. You can’t run the play. You have no idea the amount of planning and costuming and then coordination with Reverend Willard’s sermon I have to do. And that’s just the beginning. There’s the roles to assign and the script to prepare—rehearsals and working out with parents what to bring. Directing is not the fait accompli you see on Christmas Eve. There’s a ton of work goes into that.”

  “I don’t know what fait accompli is, but I been an angel in it every year since I could walk. Mama even said that the year I was born, I was the baby Jesus. Let me try, Ida Mae. If worse comes to worse, I’ll just have some kids read the Christmas story from the Bible. We got to have that. Even Reverend Willard would want that much.” Though Celia had no intention of limiting her production to a stage reading.

  “May as well let her, Mama,” Pearl whispered. “There’s nobody else and I can’t take on more than the store and post office.”

  “Well, I don’t know. I really should consult with Reverend Willard.”

  “He won’t be back till tomorrow and you’re goin’ out to Asheville tonight.”

  “Oh, dear. No, I just don’t think—”

  “I’ll get Miss Lill—Miss Lilliana—to help me. And Mama.”

  “Your mama’s up to her eyeballs and Lilliana Swope doesn’t even come to church,” Ida Mae huffed. “I don’t see that she—oh, land sakes! I nearly forgot. A letter came for her. I had to sign for it as I knew I couldn’t wait till she came in with me leaving tonight. You give it to Mrs. Swope, Celia. Place it directly in her hand, you hear me? And don’t get it all wrinkled.”

  Celia took the letter and carefully, under Ida Mae’s watchful eye, laid it inside her schoolbook. “Yes, ma’am, soon as I get home.” But one look at the return address and Celia knew she wouldn’t. Rupert Jennings, Attorney-at-Law, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This can’t be good for Miss Lill. She’s doing so much better, it would be a shame to darken her days just before Thanksgiving. It can wait that long, surely. Celia straightened. “I meant I’d ask Miss Lill if I need help—you know, with costumes or something.”

  “Well . . .” Ida Mae stood, frowning, one hand on her hip. “Celia, you’ll have to clear this with Reverend Willard.
If he says no or seems hesitant at all, then you must nix this in the bud. You understand me? I think it’s a terrible idea, but I can’t think of anyone responsible who’d take it on such short notice. I know it won’t be quality, but I guess we’ll leave it to the reverend to decide if he wants to risk it.

  “Pearl, you must make sure and certain you explain fully to Reverend Willard why I cannot be here. If I do return in time, I’ll take it over, Celia, and undo whatever damage I possibly can.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Don’t worry. You have enough concern over your sister and her daughter’s baby. I hope your sister gets over her broken leg and that the baby comes easy.” Those hopes were sincere, but no equal to Celia’s desire to keep Ida Mae out of No Creek till the New Year.

  •••

  Celia swept the store with extra vigor that afternoon and dusted every shelf under Ida Mae’s watchful eye. Instead of peppermint or pickles as payment, she asked for a beet, which amused Ida Mae no end. But beets, Celia knew from Granny Chree, strengthened the blood.

  On her way home from the store, Celia stopped by the church. Dusk and shadows gathered among the tombstones. No lights shone. The churchyard always seemed creepy that time of day. The cemetery sat between Garden’s Gate and the church by the roadside, but the grounds in the back of the church sat largely empty except for a garden shed tucked way back against the woods. Celia reckoned that if enough locals died, even that part of the churchyard would fill up.

  She stomped up the steps, pretty certain stomping shoes would scare off any ghosts that might be lurking and alert anybody who might be hiding in the church. Lifting the latch, Celia cast a glance over her shoulder, making sure no one passed by, and slipped through the door.

  It took a minute or two for her eyes to adjust to the dimness. Everything looked the same as it had when folks had walked out after church on Sunday. Pews still sat there, and the reverend’s pulpit. There wasn’t much else, besides the little front table where Communion bread and juice were laid month by month and where the Bible lay open for anybody who wandered in to read.