Wildwood Whispers

by Willa Reece

  “Something bad happened. At the apiary Sadie Hall keeps. Bees died. And it was my fault.” The confession I hadn’t been able to give to Granny poured out to Lu. The bee balm quivered in my arms. “Last night, I think I learned what I need to do to make amends. To… apologize to the bees.”

  She would tell me I was crazy. She would take back the plant and walk away. She didn’t. Lu reacted the same way Sarah would have reacted. She waited for me to tell her what I needed to do. Her ready acceptance made me nervous. This was connection. More intimate than the bees because Lu was a person. A person I liked. Someone I was drawn to in the same way I’d been drawn to Sarah. If I accepted that we shared thoughts and ideas, inspirations and aspirations, then I’d have to accept the risks as well. Of losing her. Of letting her down.

  “It’s coincidence. You couldn’t have known I was reading about bergamot last night. You couldn’t have known about the bees.” I stilled the plant in my hands and dared any breeze to blow.

  “One way or another, there’s no harm in planting some bee balm. This is the place, isn’t it? That’s why you were standing here looking at that sad, sorry grass,” Lu said. There was laughter in her eyes. She was so calm and easy in the face of the wildwood bringing her a friend like me. I wanted to warn her away. There and then. Put an end to any idea of us being linked together. But she waited so expectantly and the compulsion to apologize to the bees was stronger than my usual flight response. We were here with a plant that would improve the park. Plain and simple. I was suddenly certain it was what I wanted to do. Needed to do. Before rational thought stopped me.

  “I don’t have a shovel,” I said. If we were being compelled by some kind of remedy book spell I’d inadvertently unleashed, it wasn’t a very practical force. The ground beneath our feet was rocky and hard when we left the sidewalk to find a place to plant the flower. We wouldn’t be able to turn the soil with our hands.

  “He’ll have one,” Lu said. She paused as a familiar Jeep pulled up to the sidewalk. “Maybe I’m not the only one who was thinking about you last night.” More laughter and this time it flashed in her eyes like leftover electricity from the storm.

  Jacob Walker got out of his Jeep and stood on the curb. If he had pulled a trowel from his back pocket, I wouldn’t have been surprised. But he looked as clueless as I had been moments before when I’d felt like I was seeing the barren park for the first time. It was Lu who shouted a hello and asked him if he had a shovel we could use.

  He did more than let us use his shovel. He dug the hole. No one walked by. This part of town was quiet at this time of day. I thought I saw a curtain sway in the mayor’s house, but if it did it fell back into place without a sound. Once the hole was dug, Lu helped me pull the bergamot plant from its temporary container, but then I stepped away with the plant in my hands. I had killed the bees. I was the one who needed to place the bee balm into the ground. I’d been working with Granny long enough to know how to arrange the roots and cover them loosely with a soft layer of dirt. My fingers were pale against the brown soil. I burrowed them into the earth for several seconds. I emptied my mind of everything except goodwill toward the bees and regret for any part I’d played in their deaths.

  And gratitude.

  That emotion was a surprise. But I’d been glad we’d driven the Sect man away from Sadie and the apiary. No sense in pretending otherwise. I was grateful for the bees’ sacrifice. There was no humming in my ears. I didn’t feel anything but the dirt between my fingers. I had no idea if what we were doing mattered at all. But the gratitude felt like as much of a revelation as the illuminated words had felt the night before. Less dramatic, but no less impactful.

  “I have some water in the Jeep,” Walker said. He left to retrieve it and Lu reached down to help me up. I dusted my hands off on my jeans, trying to ignore the looks Lu was cutting between me and the biologist in the distance.

  “Seems to show up often when you’re around,” she noted. I glanced away because I was not going to watch him coming back to us with the bottle of water even if his easy strides could have been considered watchable.

  “It’s a small town,” I said. “Besides, you showed up too.”

  “But my arrival didn’t make you all hushed and hesitant like a deer in the headlights,” Lu noted.

  I didn’t know how to deal with the instant attraction I’d felt for the biologist or the continuing awareness between us. That Lu noticed my discomfort wasn’t a surprise, but it did make me even more determined to hide it.

  When Walker reached us and stretched out his hand toward me to offer a large water bottle still three-quarters full, I forced myself to take it from him without hesitation. As I did, I noticed a small tattoo on the underside of his wrist I hadn’t seen before. It was a tiny tree. Not so unusual for a biologist, I guess.

  “Thanks,” I said. And I meant it, discomfort or not. I unscrewed the cap and poured the water around the plant. Water. Bergamot. Offering. “Come and get it.”

  There were no bees in sight, but it was done. My chest was no longer constricted. I breathed a sigh of release.

  “Well. If that’s it, I need to get back to the shop,” Lu said. She shoved her hands in her pocket, acting like she was no longer certain why she’d come to find me at the park with a plant she’d been compelled to dig up at midnight.

  “I was headed out when I saw you. I guess I’ll get back to work as well,” Walker said.

  I thanked them both again, but we were all suddenly awkward and out of place. Like three adults who had found themselves throwing a penny in a wishing well in broad daylight. They left me there, alone, staring at the bee balm as if it held answers for me in the network of fine veins sketched across each green leaf.

  Walker hadn’t said why he had stopped or why he had decided to help us. Like Lu had said, he showed up too often for coincidence to explain it. She’d been teasing about him thinking about me before, but I wondered if he had been gripped by the same compulsions that had hit Lu and I last night. Something was nibbling at my perceptions. I was drawn to Lu. I was drawn to Walker. I’d blamed it on chemistry with the biologist, but now I wasn’t so sure that completely explained it.

  Connection. Community.

  I’d grown up with Sarah. We’d been together for years, but it was hard to imagine her abilities rubbing off on me. Sarah was special. People sensed it the second they met her. Like she was dancing to music no one else could hear.

  But, in Morgan’s Gap, I found myself straining my ears, listening for the tune Sarah used to know.

  Lu and Walker had been gone awhile when an itch between my shoulder blades made me look around. The curtains in the mayor’s house were still. There were no cars on the street. No people on the sidewalk. But a strange awareness prickled along my skin. I squinted at the edges of distant buildings and trees, but I saw no movement. The sun glared on the glass of the windows, near and far, so I couldn’t tell if anyone was looking at me. I hadn’t seen any Sect women following me that morning, but it had taken only a couple instances of their creeping to make me feel like I was being watched all the time.

  If I was being watched, what would someone think about us planting a lone bergamot in the rocky earth of a practically abandoned park? There were some folks in Morgan’s Gap who wouldn’t find us coming together to complete a bee-apology ritual strange at all. But there were others, like Reverend Moon, who would probably find our actions offensive.

  The whole town around me seemed deserted. No matter how I strained to detect any hint of a watcher, I didn’t see a scurry of skirts anywhere that would have betrayed a spy’s rush to report what she’d seen.

  Ten

  As the end of June approached, I was able to match many names with faces. My deliveries had been Granny’s way of introducing me to the town and the town to me. Most of the time now I was comfortable with our usual customers and I made my way to Becky’s beauty salon, Lu’s music shop, and even Joyce’s perfect picket fence with no problem.
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  Occasionally, if I took a shortcut between streets or if I visited the flourishing bee balm too late in the evening, the sunny, bustling atmosphere would dissipate. Sleepy secrets rose up in those times. I would stop and peer and all too often a homespun figure would be lurking in the distance, roughening the shadows.

  I could never be certain they were following me. They were always too far away to identify as the man in the sedan or the woman in the woods near the dandelion field. But I knew they were Sect and the Sect as a whole didn’t smile my way.

  The constant watch frayed my nerves, but I refused to let it wear me down.

  Today, I had a special delivery of rheumatism ointment for a friend of May’s. Next week was the Fourth of July and many people had driven to Rivers Crossing, the larger town down in the valley, for fireworks. Morgan’s Gap was nearly deserted as I walked to May’s house. I passed the firehouse swathed in patriotic bunting and a couple of families out for evening strolls with young children who were content to wave sparklers in the gloaming. A humane society volunteer I often saw around town waved from across the street as she tried to tug a dog almost as big as she was after her three young sons before they disappeared around the corner. She was always with a different dog, usually named after country music stars. Plus she’d named her children rhyming names which made remembering who was who tricky even if they’d ever stood still. I was relieved they were on the opposite side of the street so I was off the hook.

  But once the harried mother and her boys disappeared, the sidewalks were empty. The street was quiet. I couldn’t help checking the edges of buildings and trees for Sect kerchiefs and skirts, for wide-brimmed hats and homespun fabric.

  I saw no one following me, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

  Lu’s grandmother lived in a shotgun bungalow that Lu had renovated when it was no longer possible for May to live in the old family farmhouse outside of town. A cousin with two children and one on the way had been happy to move to the farmhouse so it wouldn’t be abandoned. May’s friend, Charles, had lived with her for twenty years and he’d moved to town with her. They were an iconic couple, beloved by everyone, in spite of May’s unconventional decision not to remarry no matter how often Charles proposed.

  I loved visiting the bungalow. The craftsman-style porch had two rocking chairs that sat like thrones on either side of the often-open front door and extra ladder-back chairs stacked in the corners for company. Charles had filled the yard with the birdhouses he built, so there was always a chorus of songbirds flitting in and out, raising their broods, squabbling over seeds and otherwise filling the place with a flutter of wings.

  “Well, now, I am glad to see you,” Charles said from the open door of the garage that sat beside the house. The garage was older than the man who used it for his woodworking supplies. I thought maybe it had been a carriage house at one time. The two broad doors had upper and lower halves as if they could have been opened for a horse’s head to poke out before cars became the norm. Charles had a cobbler’s bench he sat on to put his birdhouses together. He was on one end of it now. A half-constructed house was on the other. I was always fascinated by the intricate houses he built, each one a replica of a house or a shop in town.

  “Don’t get up,” I scolded as the man with obviously stiff joints tried to rise. “I’ll come to you.”

  “Move it or lose it,” Charles replied, standing. But I knew he stood because I was a woman and that’s what a gentleman of his age did to be polite. As always, he was dressed in one of what he called his “walking suits”: a steamed and pressed blazer and pants paired with a starched white shirt. There was only one dry cleaner in town and Charles was probably their best customer. He was also at the barber shop across from the hardware store every other Friday at ten on the dot when the Black barber from Rivers Crossing came to Morgan’s Gap for his clientele. Charles’s perfectly clipped hair was all salt, no pepper, showing off the barber’s expertise in sharp edges around his face. He smiled at me because he knew what I was thinking. Mischievous man. No wonder May loved him. Everyone in town, including a newcomer like me, was on his side in the Great Marry Me Conspiracy.

  I hadn’t needed the bike or basket today. I’d carried the bottle of ointment in hand. May had called Granny asking for a stronger batch and I had been the one to stir it up this morning because Granny was feeling tired.

  “This has a very medicinal scent, but it should help,” I said. Charles took the bottle I offered. “Can May help you reach your shoulder blades?” I asked.

  “No. But Jacob can help me with that,” Charles said.

  As if he’d been conjured by name, Jacob Walker came down the staircase at the back of the garage. He was dressed for hiking with his usual backpack slung across one shoulder. The sun had already disappeared over the horizon. The sky was darkening by the second. How often did he go on night hikes? And were ginseng poachers dangerous? A twinge tightened my jaw, but Walker’s safety really wasn’t my concern, was it?

  “The least I can do because they refuse to charge me for the bed upstairs,” Walker said.

  Just then, May and Lu came out on the porch and saved me from any awkwardness caused by my concern and Walker’s sudden appearance where I least expected him. Never mind that I should be getting used to his sudden appearances by now. And to my reaction to him.

  “Jacob helped Charles with Granny’s birdhouse too. He wanted to finish it in exchange for the ointment, but his shoulders have been bothering him and slowing him down,” Lu said.

  “As if Granny wouldn’t have been happy to wait another week or two for that house,” May said as she sat in a rocking chair. Lu came down the front stairs to join us and I cut my eyes from her to Walker to let it be known that I wasn’t happy about not being warned.

  “May offered Jacob the room for whenever he’s not out in the woods. There’s a bed and bath up there. Not much. But better than a cold mountain stream,” Lu explained. Her eyes were sparking. I tried to ignore the knowing quirk of her smile.

  “And while I like streams, cold or not, I am deeply appreciative of that soft bunk,” Walker added.

  Bunks, baths and sore muscle massages weren’t really topics I was comfortable with around the handsome biologist. But Lu’s eyes were twinkling and I refused to blush under her teasing. Not to mention Walker’s watchful glances. He seemed as surprised to see me as I was to see him and I realized that no one had informed him of the special order.

  “Can you get Granny’s birdhouse?” Charles asked Walker. He went to a shelf and brought back a birdhouse in the shape of Granny’s Queen Anne Victorian complete with a turret and toothy gingerbread trim.

  I couldn’t help it. I exclaimed and stepped forward to examine the house closely even though Walker hadn’t given it over to Charles. The gentlemanly artist had included every element from the tiny knob of the doorbell to a fat porcelain cat glued to the inside of the kitchen’s picture window.

  “All that’s missing is you,” Walker said softly. Jacob. They all called him Jacob. Suddenly, I realized I hadn’t let myself think of him that way, and yet, the more formal Walker had taken on a familiar intimacy in my mind. Our faces were closer together than they should be. I pulled back, but not before I was lost for several seconds trying to understand what was hidden in his eyes.

  After Walker left, Lu and I sat alone together in the dark on May’s porch. In the distance, an occasional bottle rocket would soar high and pop, lighting up the sky. The illegal firework no doubt thrilled the teenagers who had managed to acquire them.

  “You like him,” I said as we rocked forward and back in a rhythm we sensed even though we could no longer see. The lights were off in the house. Charles and May had gone to bed. The stars gleamed above us because even if the entire town had been lit from stem to stern it wouldn’t have given off enough light pollution to diminish the starlight. I had to admit I preferred the stars to the fireworks. Their soft twinkling had calmed the rush caused by seeing Jacob W
alker.

  “Just to be clear, I do not like like him,” Lu said. “There’s a harmonica player in Arkansas. Her name is Calliope Jane. On record album credits anyway. I’m her Charles. Have been asking her to move to the mountain for years. Pretty sure I’m wearing her down ’cause unlike May she has not been married before. I think I’m convincing her it could be good. That we could be good together.”

  In the dark, I could feel Lu’s ache. Her heart. Her soul. I could feel her love for Jane and how good they would be as a married couple on the mountain. My eyes burned a little. I’d like to see a Jane have a happy ending. It was too dark for anyone to see. Except I knew that Lu felt my emotion as I felt hers.

  “He’s been good to May and Charles since he came. He doesn’t sleep here often. He’s in the woods a lot. But you saw how that ointment relieved Charles’s pain. And Jacob insisted on helping him apply it before he left,” Lu said.

  “You trust him with May and Charles,” I said. It wasn’t a question. I could hear it in her voice. The ease. The comfort.

  “And I trust him with you,” Lu added. “Jane is my heart, but you’re in my bones. And I think Jacob could be there too. With time. Something whispering inside me says it’s all up to you. But whenever we’re all together those whispers are loud, Mel. It’s been the music for me forever. I’m not much on gardening or stirring up recipes. But May’s always said there’s magic in the music. If that’s so, then there’s magic in me.”

  “No doubt of that,” I said. I knew Lu was magic. I’d known as long as Sarah had known because Sarah’s knowledge was in me. “It’s Walker I’m not certain about.”