Zora and Me: The Summoner

by Victoria Bond

  “Jean’s tale drove Novelette’s fiancé wild with grief. The merchant ran to Novelette’s resting place and dug up his beloved’s grave. He unearthed an empty coffin. In a fury, he traveled to Callier’s plantation to demand Novelette’s release. Where the Callier manor once stood, he found only cinders, ashes.”

  The gleam of a good yarn that had lit Old Lady Bronson’s face began to fade. “For years afterward,” she said, “stories spread of the ghost of a burned Jacques Callier haunting the countryside, crying only one word: Novelette, Novelette, Novelette.”

  Old Lady Bronson closed the door on the world of her childhood and reentered the world of ours. The peek into her history granted Zora some new tools with which she might interpret our last encounter with Chester Cools.

  “Could Chester have spent his life here in Eatonville hiding from someone like this Callier?” Zora asked. “Mr. Cools barricaded himself in his house like he was trying to keep something or someone out.”

  “Oh, Zora.” Old Lady Bronson’s rich alto tried to soothe. “Chester wasn’t hiding,” she said. “He was sick, not stalked. He was hindered by the harness of his own mind.”

  Zora frowned deeply. She trusted Old Lady Bronson, but she also heeded her gut. “Are you sure?” Zora challenged. “He drew a gun on us. Why would he have done that if he hadn’t been trying to protect himself? Why?”

  “Maybe he was scared,” Old Lady Bronson answered, “of what demons his own mind conjured.” Zora didn’t look like she was buying it. Old Lady Bronson smiled wisely. “Or maybe he was simply scared of dying. It’s not unheard of, you know.”

  The next morning, I threaded my single braid with white ribbon on the porch swing. For Teddy’s delight and my pride, I gingerly touched my hair to make sure every strand was smooth. Surely Teddy would pick me up for the first day of school. Last year we had gotten in the habit of quizzing each other on our walks in preparation for geometry and geography exams. Other times, mostly when we held hands, we were silent. For this upcoming school year, my fingers were crossed that we had matured enough to hold hands and talk at the same time.

  From the perch of the porch swing, I watched a dark silhouette come sauntering down the sand dune, in between the cedars. The figure reached out to touch the bark, as if for luck, in a familiar gesture. I leaped from the swing. My Teddy’s early! I thought. As the figure grew nearer, my excitement turned to horror.

  The thing was, but it wasn’t. The curling edges of a gaping black splotch marked the boundary between bottomless nothing and everything else. Fear nailed my feet to the porch floor. I tried to cry out, but only swirls of smoke floated from my mouth. The darkness before me swallowed the smoke, then spat it back at me in the form of pure sound. I can only describe it as a medley of loss. Ivory gently strumming his guitar; the tap of Mr. Cools’s rifle on the windowpane; my father’s cheery whistle floating, untethered, in the shadowy distance. Then thunderous gongs exploded in my ear, a bell tolling just for me.

  I woke in a cold sweat, panting and clutching at my ears. Mama sat beside me, holding a large stirring spoon, a metal pot in her lap.

  “Thank goodness something finally woke you!” She set down the pot and spoon and hugged me. “You’ve been murmuring and shaking, Carrie. I couldn’t wake you! Her embrace tightened. “You’re safe now. You’re safe!”

  “I had a bad dream, Mama, a really bad dream.”

  “Oh, baby.” She rocked me. “It’s over . . . all over. Maybe you should stay home today. What do you think? I’ll stay home with you.”

  “It’s the first day of school, Mama. I have to go. I wanna go.” More than anything I wanted to get out of bed, throw off the nightmare, and get dressed.

  Mama pushed some of my sweat-dampened hair behind my ears. “I know that. What I’m wondering is if you’re up to it.”

  I sat taller on my cot. “I’m fine.”

  “You’ll need a good breakfast,” she said, relenting with a sorrowful half smile.

  “Thank you.”

  “You just take it easy, you hear?”

  “I will.”

  Mama left the room. I breathed deeply in an effort to steel myself. The first day of the last year of school I’d complete with Zora and Teddy was here, today. And I had to be ready for it. I changed out of my nightclothes into a camisole and slip. I brushed my hair and then gave myself one braid, run through with pale-pink ribbon. Nearly ready when Teddy arrived, I listened to his exchange with Mama from the bedroom as I put on my shift dress. The familiarity between my mother and my beau had a funny affect. Occasionally, the only way the two could be completely comfortable with each was to act overly formal. That always amused me.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Brown.” I could hear the nervous smile in his voice. “Those eggs I hear frying in the skillet?” he asked.

  “Expecting we would have a guest this morning, I made extra. Come right in. Have a seat.”

  “I’ll wait for Carrie, thank you, ma’am.”

  I came out of my room, and unable to call the hour unequivocally good on account of my nightmare, I settled on a plain “Morning.” Teddy gave me a shy and tentative little smile.

  Teddy pulled out my chair. I sat, recognizing how much more I preferred doing things with Teddy than him doing things for me. Mama placed three plates on the table and then an egg on each of those. Mama sat down, still wearing her apron, blessed the meal, then gave us permission to “dig in.” I picked up the small serving platter and passed the hot-water corn bread to Teddy.

  “Teddy,” Mama asked, “how is your mother doing, with both of your brothers married off now and gone?”

  “Mama said she always wished for daughters, ma’am. Now she has some, in my brothers’ wives. She loves them.”

  “And how’s your apprenticeship with Doc Brazzle?” Mama asked him.

  “It’s good. Doc Brazzle is an attentive physician, and it’s easy to learn from him. I daresay, though, that we both have something to learn from you.”

  “What about?” Mama asked incredulously.

  “About sewing, ma’am. I watched Doc Brazzle needle Maisie George’s forehead shut a day ago. The entire time, I was thinking it was too bad for Maisie that he couldn’t make stitches as neat and tidy as I know yours to be.”

  “Hems and collars sewn on cotton are quite different from making stitches in skin,” she said. “What happened to Maisie?”

  “She told us she tripped weeding the fields on the Pearson place and sliced her head open on a hoe.”

  “We all know Bynum went upside her head,” I said quietly, angry.

  Teddy didn’t agree or disagree. “Doc Brazzle thinks Bynum discouraged her from leaving the field sooner for the sake of her day’s pay.”

  Mama shook her head in disbelief.

  Teddy swallowed, then said, “Micah told my parents that right after he and Daisy got married, Daisy asked him when he was going to start beating her.”

  Mama’s eyes got wide. My stomach nearly leaped off a roof. “What? Does Micah plan on hitting Daisy?”

  “No, of course not,” Teddy answered.

  “Then why in the world would she ask that?” I was beside myself.

  “Daisy’s folks still work the land in Sanford where her grandma and her daddy were born slaves.”

  “So?” I answered.

  “My mama thinks the folks that stay on the land where they were slaves treat each other bad because that’s all they’ve known. Daisy hails from people who ain’t risen out of all there was to slavery yet, like the beating and humiliating and driving people down. Daisy’s daddy beats up on her mama, her mama hits him back, and all her brothers and sisters are fighting and hopping mad all the time, stomping from their cabin to the fields and back. ’Cause that’s the only life Daisy’s known, she was asking my brother if that’s the only kinda life she’s ever gonna know.”

  “Didn’t Daisy ever go to school somewhere?” I asked.

  “Nope. I’ll be the first of my brothers to marry an edu
cated woman.”

  Mama glowed. I backed away from the table. “We better get going,” I said.

  Mama stood and accompanied us to the porch. I kissed her cheek. “Bye, Mama.”

  “Wait a second.” Mama pointed to the stand of cedars near our house. “Somebody’s coming.”

  A tall figure was walking casually down the hill in our direction. I spied a bowler hat, and some kind of metal, probably a belt buckle, glinted in the light.

  “I think it’s that fellow who took a shine to Sarah Hurston,” Mama said. “Remember, Carrie? We met him after Fanny’s wedding.”

  “Oh,” I answered flatly. “East Wheeler.”

  “Yes, that’s him.” Mama waved the handsome figure on. East Wheeler picked up his pace.

  When he arrived in our dooryard, East Wheeler removed his brown bowler. “Good morning,” he said cheerfully.

  “Good morning,” Mama responded, friendly but curious. Teddy shook East’s hand and introduced himself.

  “It’s nice to see you, Mr. Wheeler,” Mama said. “What brings you here this morning?”

  “Well,” East said, getting into it quicker than many might have, rightly assessing forthrightness to be a better tack than flavorless small talk: “I was doing a passenger pickup in Maitland the day before yesterday, and I overheard some women talking about the fine laundress your Carrie is and how it’s a shame that one girl hauls so many loads by herself.”

  Teddy crimsoned at the mention of my doing so much hard work alone. For some reason, his shame bothered me. “Yes. What of it?” I prompted.

  “I got to thinking,” he continued. “Maybe I can be of help and deliver some of those loads for you with my coach.”

  Mama had nothing against East, but she wasn’t anybody’s fool, either. “For how much?”

  East pretended to consider what I believe he had already decided. “A nickel for every half mile from pickup to drop-off.” He held his hat to his chest for a moment, the rim depositing a smudge on his white shirt. Given my line of work, I couldn’t help fixating on it. East’s eyes followed mine. In an attempt to brush away the dirt, his heavy hand deepened the stain.

  “Well, I guess this is what I get for not having a wife to properly dust my hat.” East smiled off his embarrassment. “Or the means to afford a laundress as good as you.”

  “Where’s your coach now?” Mama asked.

  “Back at my cottage, ma’am. A man tires of pulling on the reins of a beast. Any day now,” he continued, “I’m going to purchase a horseless. Just as soon as I earn me enough money,” he said, smiling. “If you like, you can tell me at church what you decide, Carrie, about accepting my help.”

  “All right,” I answered.

  East seemed to consider putting his hat back on and then thought better of it. “Y’all have a good day.” The handsome man turned on his heels and walked off the same way he had come, his bowler down at his side.

  When he was well out of earshot, Teddy asked, “What do you think?”

  “It would be nice,” I said.

  Mama put her hand on her hip. “I’ll help and won’t take your money for my trouble,” she scoffed. “You two get on now, before you’re late and in trouble with Mr. Calhoun.”

  At seven thirty sharp, Mr. Calhoun officially began the school day with three rings of his trusty bronze handbell. We lined up in order according to grade. As eighth-graders, we were last.

  Mr. Calhoun touched the shoulder of the first pupil in the line of the youngest children. The little ones followed Everett Hurston’s lead and filed into the schoolhouse. Mr. Calhoun waited a few moments before prompting the next group and then finally ours. Led by Zora, we entered. The younger children were all standing behind their seats and broke into applause as we entered the classroom. Our line gave way to a row. Zora glanced at me, I glanced at her, and Teddy glanced at us both. Mr. Calhoun let us have our eighth-grade moment. Then he took his place behind his lectern and nodded. “You may take your seats,” he said.

  Mr. Calhoun bade us good morning and said he expected excellence from every single one of us, especially his most senior pupils.

  Every grade was to begin the day with reading and handwriting, followed by mathematics and history. Geography was after recess. He also assigned sets of chores to each grade on a rotating basis.

  Morning and lunch of our first day sped by. During recess, our classmates bombarded Zora with questions about the grave robbery. It didn’t matter to them that Teddy and I were also eyewitnesses; they did the natural thing and looked to a storyteller for the details.

  “Zora, what did the grave look like?” asked Prat Jacobs, a caramel-skinned sixth-grader whose smooth face was punctuated by a chin dimple. “Was it just a hole in the ground or was there fire shooting out of it, like a portal to Hell?”

  Zora hesitated, both impressed by Prat’s imagination and a little frightened of it. “No. It was just a hole in the ground.” Uncharacteristically, Zora kept to the facts. She knew that, once she started to tell the tale, she might let slip too much about our last actual encounter with Chester Cools.

  Percy Bland, somehow sensing this, asked, “That last time you saw him, did you think Mr. Cools was really going to shoot you?” His interest in violence far outweighed his dismay at it. Masses of loose, shiny ringlets mixed with corkscrew curls crowned the boy’s moon-shaped face. A transplant from Georgia, Percy lived in Blue Bay with his mama. Last year, when Mr. Calhoun had Percy introduce himself on the first day of school, Percy included the information that his daddy was dead. Sometimes that really meant that your daddy was dead, like mine. Sometimes it meant that you didn’t know who your daddy was but did know that he was white. In Percy’s case, we suspected the latter.

  Zora answered honestly. “I don’t know what Mr. Cools was going to do. But I doubt he had it in him to shoot a couple of kids,” she finished, in defense of the old man.

  “Somebody gets hurt in Eatonville and you’re there, Zora. Always,” Stella Brazzle remarked petulantly from a game of jacks with Joanne, Nella, and Hennie: the Brazzle gang.

  Then Stella spoke to the entire schoolyard, beginning to recount Zora’s crimes of presence and proximity: “Remember that fella Ivory, whose body was discovered at the railroad tracks without a head? Turns out, he was a friend of Zora’s! And remember when Mr. Polk got stabbed a while back? Guess who was involved? Zora, that’s who. And maybe Mr. Cools wasn’t as crazy as everyone thinks. My father said Mr. Cools had barricaded his door. And no wonder! He was probably trying to keep Zora out! He was trying to keep away from her curse! She’s cursed, y’all, cursed!”

  Murmurs and gasps rippled across the schoolyard. Zora marched over to Stella’s cabal and scooped up the scattered metal jacks. Silent, seething, Zora heaved the mass of jacks into Stella’s face. Stella’s head jerked, and she immediately cupped her nose with her hands.

  Neat streams of blood, like skinny crimson ribbons, ran between her fingers. “Aaah!” she screeched.

  Stella’s yowl unofficially closed recess. Bell in hand, Mr. Calhoun sped outside.

  “My goodness! Stella, what happened?”

  “Zora Hurston!” Stella roared. “That evil girl tried to kill me!”

  Mr. Calhoun sent Stella home to her father teary-eyed and pitiful, apparently absolved of wrongdoing. Zora, on the other hand, was sentenced to a catalog of chores.

  During recess for a whole month, she was to wipe down slate boards and wash windows, shine the tongue-and-groove schoolhouse floor with linseed oil, scrub the cloakroom shelf where the lunch pails were kept, and tend to both the girls’ and boys’ privies. I felt horrible. Our schoolmaster said his eighth-graders had acted like a mob when he expected us to behave like role models. He also announced his intention to call on each of our families formally. Unsurprisingly, the Hurston house was the first stop on Mr. Calhoun’s tour. He had already been invited there for supper that evening to celebrate the start of the new school year. It wasn’t Reverend Hurston’s backhand
I feared most on Zora’s behalf. It was Mrs. Hurston’s disappointment.

  In an offering of moral support, I waited for Zora to finish her first afternoon of detention. Teddy would have stayed, but he had chores back at home. Since Mr. Calhoun had barred me from helping Zora, on top of waiting alone, that hour I did nothing worked me over good. I think Stella’s curse speech, given a little time, had worked Zora over as well. She set out from her first day of detention determined to find out once and for all what was behind all that had happened to Chester Cools.

  Zora rushed out of the schoolhouse and quickly through the schoolyard. “Let’s go!” she said.

  “Go where?” I asked. “Where are we going?” Zora had been having a conversation in her head. Her feet were in on it, too. I had a lot of catching up to do.

  “To Mr. Cools’s place!” Zora said, exasperated, as if it should have been obvious.

  I startled. “Why would we go back there?”

  “Remember the story Old Lady Bronson told us?” she said. “In that story, all the zombies had been slaves once. Well, slaves have masters. What if Chester didn’t dig himself out? What if his old master did? Maybe that’s who he was afraid of that day we saw him.”

  “No! You sound like the boys at recess today!” I protested. “If Mr. Cools were immortal, that would mean he was either God or the devil. I just can’t believe a poor old man with only a half-blind mule, a one-room cabin, and a peach tree to his name was either of those things. I can’t! Neither should you!”

  “I don’t think he’s God or the devil. I think Mr. Cools is something else.”

  “You mean was something else,” I corrected.

  “No. I mean is,” Zora answered. “And the secret to his immortality could be in his house!”