As I was sorting through camping equipment on my study floor that night and stuffing it into the backpack for the river crossing, Mom came in and sat on the desk chair watching me. She was a slender woman. Good looking. Concerned. I glanced up into her face and wondered if the drawn look was the cancer already taking its toll. I shook it off. She still had five years to go and the cancer had been aggressive, quick in its lethality. She was still fine. She cleared her throat.
“You really seem to be coming into your own this year, Cager. You’ll be in sixth grade come fall and Joey will start first. Life is changing so fast. Too fast for me, I think.” She paused for a moment as if realizing she was talking to me above my level. I tried to focus my attention on my packing. “Anyway, I’m making up a pot of stew for Aunt Cealie. Do you think you could deliver it to her tomorrow?”
Aunt Cealie?
That scared a few old memories out of hiding. That crazy old woman had always intimidated the crap out of me as a kid. I blinked several times in astonishment at my reaction.
“Sure. She lives back up that deer trail across the river doesn’t she?”
“You remember then.”
“Of course.” You never forget your nightmares.
“Good. I’ll freeze the stew tonight so you’ll have time to set up your camp before you take it to her.” She stood up to go.
“I love you, Mom.”
Her hand rose to her throat.
“I love you too, Cager. Very much.” And in that fleeting moment my empty solitude flooded with a grace I could scarcely contain. It was the love of a mother for her child. “What brought that on?” she asked, apparently baffled at my sudden profession of care for her.
“I'm aware things are changing, Mom. I just wanted you to know loving you isn’t one of those things. That’s all.”
As she turned to leave she choked back a sob. Had I ever told her I loved her before? I couldn’t remember, and in that instant the plunging grace that had so unexpectedly swept down to enfold me unfurled it wings and was gone.
Chapter 17
The next morning Arlie came over to see me off. With my hand-me-down backpack slung over my shoulders, I stood holding the frozen pot of stew wrapped in a towel. Mom hugged me and told me to be careful, as though any kid has ever paid the slightest heed to such admonitions.
Arlie took the stew pot and walked with me a quarter mile up river where it ran straight for a mile or more and widened. You could wade across at that point. It was heavily wooded on both sides of the river now but there was a clearing on the opposite shore back to the south. That was where I planned to set up camp. I took the pot from Arlie, set it on the ground, and glanced up toward the road before slipping off my shoes and socks, and long pants and handing them to him.
“Stuff these in the backpack for me, will you.”
“Sure.” The pack jostled about as Arlie crammed everything in amongst all the camping gear. “Okay. It’s all in.”
I picked up the pot. “So, off to see the Wizard.”
“Be careful, Cage.”
“You’re sounding like my mom now.”
“Well, be careful anyway.”
I waved without looking back. The river bottom was sandy and slowly dropped away until I was waist deep. The current tugged at me steadily. I hiked the pack up on my back as I hit the deepest part but soon felt the pack lighten as the bottom went under. Great. The sleeping bag was on the bottom. Now that was wet. Several more steps and I climbed into shallower water again. A minute later I stepped out onto the opposite bank. I was in Alabama now. I turned back toward Florida. Arlie was still standing on the opposite bank. He waved then climbed back up to the road and headed downriver toward Stubbinville.
I stood on the banks of my own stream of time for nearly a minute. Unlike the river, my stream didn’t appear to be guiding me in any particular direction. I suspected I was on my own this second time around, too. Well, that was nothing new. I shrugged the pack up higher on my shoulders and set out for camp.
It took me about fifteen minutes to wring out the sleeping bag and lay it out in a sunny spot to dry. An hour later I had set up the tent, prepared a fire pit, and hung my food from a cord thrown over a tree branch to keep the bears from getting at it. There was nothing left to delay my delivering the stew to Aunt Cealie. I was surprised at my reaction at going to see her by myself. There was just something visceral about her. Even eighty years of life experience didn’t quite overcome the memories. Finally, calling myself silly, I grabbed up the stew pot and headed downriver to pick up the primeval animal trail that passed her house a half mile back from the river.
Tracks of deer and wild hogs and raccoon families crisscrossed the sandy trail as my ten-year-old body ferried my eighty-year-old mind ever deeper into the thicket. Finally the brush gave way to stately cypress rising up from a blanket of morning mist lying across the swamp. All was quiet but for the staccato hammering of a woodpecker echoing in the distance. On either side of the trail, loops and whorls of algae and pollen scum floated in the sunlight as if Nature, herself, had reached down to test the tranquil waters and left her latent prints on the glassy surface.
I pressed deeper into the swamp ducking around listless streamers of Spanish moss and tripping over gnarled roots festooned in seasoned crescents of wood fungi. The trail narrowed as it meandered along the higher ground avoiding those dark waters until, too soon for my tastes, the ancient cypress bridge connecting the trail to the small turtleback island rising from the surrounding swamp came into view. Crows cawed out a warning at my approach. As I stepped onto the low bridge, a shadowy form moved from the doorway to the porch of the lone cabin.
“Who all out dere comin’ to see Aint Cealie?” And there she stood. Sylphlike. Barefoot. Wearing the same faded blue chemise with the frayed hemline I remembered from past visits. Even from across the bridge I could make out her left eye, white with cataract.
“Micajah Fenton, Aunt Cealie. I got a pot of stew,” I called back as I crossed the bridge.
“Where’s your mamma? She all right?”
“She’s fine, Aunt Cealie.”
“Not unless my ears done took up lyin’ she ain’t. Can’t nobody fool Aint Cealie. Least of all a young’un like you, Micajah Fenton.” She hobbled out to the edge of the porch. “Come on up here an’ tell me about it.”
As I reached the algae-tinted porch steps, two crows fluttered down to perch on the railing. “I’ve got a pot of stew here for you, Aunt Cealie,” I repeated for lack of imagination.
“Oh, thank you so much. Jus’ set it on the stove inside if you would. I keeps a stew pot goin’ all the time. I’ll jus’ add that in.”
I climbed the half-dozen rickety steps. Aunt Cealie pointed through the door.
“It jus’ ‘round to you right.”
I peered into her cabin. It was unlit and smelled of warmed broth and wood smoke and fuel oil. Against the left wall several twenty-gallon drums of kerosene sat beneath an old lantern hanging from an iron bracket. In the corner, a substantial cupboard, dreary with age, loomed out of the shadows over a chipped porcelain sink serviced by a rusty hand pump. A tattered sleeping pallet thrown across rough-sawn planks resting on milk crates took up the opposite corner. Several colorful quilts lay folded across the foot. A large Bible and a red candle in a brass holder rested on another milk crate next to the pallet. I stepped in, skirted around a timeworn cypress table heaped with swamp greenery of various sorts, and slid the pot onto the warm potbellied stove on the right wall. Toward the back, an iron cauldron bubbled gently. I figured that, without refrigeration, maintaining a simmering pot all day was the only way she could keep the stew from going bad. A moment later Aunt Cealie was fussing around at my side.
“Go on back out to the porch, Micajah. I’ll get us a couple jars of mint tea. Just take one of them seats out there and I’ll be along in two winks an’ a nod.”
Three roughhewn wooden chairs waited on the porch offering thin, threadbare cushio
ns on their seats. I took the one by the door and, with my hands on my knees, sat stiffly, looking out across the bridge into the swamp. In the cabin, jars tinked and liquid poured. If I hadn’t had eighty years of experience behind me, I would have lit out like a scared rabbit and Mom would have to come get her own pot.
A moment later a mason jar of pale green liquid cradled carefully in Aunt Cealie’s gnarled brown fingers hovered next to my face. I jumped slightly before accepting it with a quick thanks and setting it in my lap. Then, thinking better, I took a polite sip. It was minty and left a cool sensation in my mouth. I didn’t see too much stuff floating in it, either. Maybe I’d live through this encounter after all. Aunt Cealie struggled to drag the adjoining chair across the rough boards to face me then eased down into it with a satisfied sigh. As she stared at me through her good olive-green eye, she got right down to business.
“Now I want to know what’s not right with your mamma, Micajah, and I don’t want no lies.”
“Nothing, Aunt Cealie, honest. She just sent me out here today because I’m camping out down by the river tonight. It saves her a trip, I suppose.”
“That’s true as far is it go,” Aunt Cealie countered. “But they’s more ain’t they? Sumppen you ain’t tellin’ me. So let me ax you a question.”
“Okay.” I took another sip of mint tea.
“Did your mamma ever tell you who I was?”
“Sure. You’re Aunt Cealie.”
“Thas not what I mean an’ I reckon you knows it.” Her café au lait skin flushed and grew tight and smooth as Moroccan leather in her agitation. The effect almost belied her age. But her ears betrayed her. Hanging loosely, they sprouted whiskers as long as match sticks. And her hair, fine and white as the cobwebs in the timbers of the porch roof, raged about her head in that style of crazy old women everywhere.
“Why don’t you just tell me then,” I suggested.
She sat bolt upright. “Don’t you smart off to me, Micajah Fenton. You know nuthin’ I’ll sally. Nuthin’ a tall. But you gonna know afore you leaves here this mornin’. Your turn’s been comin’ a while now.”
“Sorry, Aunt Cealie. I didn’t mean any offense. I’m all ears,” I said glancing at hers.
She leaned back at that and took a long draught of tea then wiped her chin where the liquid had leaked from around the corners of her mouth. “Now you sound like you ready. Sit back. This won’t take long.” After a momentary pause to swipe at some imaginary gnats, she began.
“You mamma’s granddaddy, that were Ole Man Pierson Byrnes, were a slave owner right here in dis county. He had two sons and a daughter. Your granddaddy were one of those sons and as decent a man as ever lived. The other son were a waste of gravy. The daughter, she run off to Texas wit’ a passin’ carpetbagger. Never seed or heared from her again. Didn’t care to neither.” She took another sip of tea then eyed me closely. “Your great-granddaddy owned my mamma. Owned me too. Mamma worked the housekeepin’. I was borned in the summer nine years ‘fore the War was over and did with, and I remember six of them years like they was yestiddy.”
So Aunt Cealie was almost 98. I wasn’t surprised.
“Is you listenin’ to me?”
“Sorry again. I was just marveling at your age.”
“That’s all right then. I marvels at it myself now and again. I ‘spect the Good Lord done lost count o’ me out here in dis swamp. Anyways, back to my story.
“Some time after the war your granddaddy took my mamma and me wid him when he moved up around Bay Minette. That were about ninety-seven as I recall. Mamma died shortly after that from the Yellow Fever. It were a awful time. The fever took your granddaddy’s only little girl too. But he kept me on an’ he had five more babies after that and every one of ‘em died before they was five years old. They all laid out in a row over in the Old High Pine Cemetery. His wife, she died right after the last baby and he remarried some years later. That nex’ wife didn’t care nothin’ for children but it weren’t long ‘fore she come down with a bad case of baby poisonin’ herself. They had a little girl. That were 1918. I remember ‘cause the Great War was jus’ over. That woman wouldn’t have nothin’ to do wid that baby. I raised that child from the day she were born. It were your mamma, a course. But you already figured that out didn’t you.”
I nodded.
“Then you tell me the rest, Micajah. I can see you done figured that out too.”
“The slave owner, Old Man Byrnes, was your father as well. My grandfather was your half-brother. You’re my mom’s aunt. My great-aunt.”
Aunt Cealie sat dead silent for a dozen heartbeats studying me from head to foot and back again before she spoke. “Now you know who I am,” she squinted and caught me with that single, green eye, “I wants to know who you is. You ain’t who you was last visit and you done lied to me onct this mornin’. Don’t you do it again. You almost as old as me now. I can tell a old soul when I meet one. I done met plenty. An’ you one of ‘em. Ain’t no ten-year-old could of figured out what you jus’ did from what I said.”
So I had let my guard down and been outfoxed. I leaned in toward her and she did the same toward me. “You’re right, Aunt Cealie, but if I told you the truth you’d accuse me of lying again.”
“It had to do with that thing showed up over your house las’ fall didn’t it?”
I cocked my head to one side. “You saw that? You couldn’t have. You can’t see out past that stand of cypress over there a hundred feet away.”
“It were a first quarter moon that night. Thas when I picks my mint from the little stream runnin’ into the river cross’t from your house. It’s sweetest on the first quarter moon. Not many knows that. So I was right on the river when that contraption bust out of nowhere directly over your house. The ground shook like the very foundations of dis earth was settlin’. Even the river sloshed up on my feet a bit. Like to scart me to death. And it glowed like the foxfire livin’ ‘cross the way there in them rotted stumps. It stayed jus’ ‘bout all night. I never seen nothin’ like it afore or since. And when it finished up wid whatever business it was doin’, the ground shook some more and it were gone. It took the swamp critters a good half a hour to settle down again.”
I sat stunned. She had seen the whole thing. At this point I didn’t see any reason not to let her in on the rest of it. Nobody would believe her if she told them anyway. And I had to tell her something.
“Aunt Cealie, do you know what a time traveler is?”
“Course I know. I done travelled acrost near ‘bout a hundret years of it practically by myself.”
“Well, I’ve travelled across seventy. I just came from the other direction.”
Aunt Cealie paused for a second then sat up straight. “You sayin’ you from tomorrey?”
I nodded.
A delayed shudder of understanding passed through her frail body. “And tomorreys after dat? You done seed everthing then. Why you mus’ even know when I’m gonna die. I bet you know when your mamma gonna die too. Am I right? That’s why it didn’t ring true when I ast you is she awright.”
I nodded again. “You’re right on every guess.”
“Then you wasn’t lyin’ to me a tall. You mamma’s well enough at the moment but you knowed she got sumppen wrong wid her. I’m right again, ain’t I?”
“Yes.”
Aunt Cealie drew back in her chair, hand to her weathered neck. “Tain’t natural you knowin’ such things. No, sir.” She gave her ancient head a quick shake. “Tain’t natural a tall.”
“I know it’s not. But there’s a reason for it. So, since you’ve told me your story, if you promise to keep it to yourself, I’ll tell you mine.”
She flashed me a look of annoyance. “Who I gonna tell. The raccoons?”
“Well, Mom for one. And you must have more people helping you than her. You two didn’t make those repairs on that bridge or cut all that firewood stacked over there by yourselves.”
“I gots a few first cousins twicet and mor
e removed helps out. But I knows how to keep my peace. I wouldn’t mind hearin’ your story if you wants to tell it. Just don’t tell me when I’m gonna die while you doin’ it.”
“Well, let me start by saying you’ll make it well past a hundred. Does that ease your mind any?”
“Not as much as you might think, but get on wid your story.”
So I told her the whole thing. When it was over she just sat staring at me while she took another sip of tea. Finally she rested the jar on her lap and tilted her head almost imperceptibly.
“You tellin’ me you done got down to the last day of your life then got a chance to live forever with a pretty young gal and done turned around and come back to save your little brother instead?”
“That’s about it.”
“Lord a mercy, I done heared it all now. How is such a thing even possible?”
“I’m just beginning to work on understanding that now, but it’ll be years before I know the answer, if ever.”
“Well, strange as you story is, it make perfeck sense now with what I been seein’ and hearin’ lately. That thing over your house, and that bidness ‘bout your mamma bein’ awright, and you figuring’ out I was your grand-auntie widout so much as a blink. So I gots to believe it all true. Ain’t no other way to account for everthin’. And here I thought I had this world figured out.” A look of true marvel had taken over her ancient face. “An’ you say you come back to save your little brother.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, if you don’t mind sharin’ it, what’s Joey need savin’ from?”
“I don’t know, Aunt Cealie. It was always a mystery.”
“Lord a mercy, Micajah, is I got to beat it out of you? What mystery? I don’t recall no mystery.”
“No. You wouldn’t. That’s because it hasn’t happened yet.”
Her eye lit up with a sudden comprehension. “Oh. I see now. It’s that time travelin’ thing. You the only one know about it so far.” She put her palm against her breastbone. “Can you tell me what you know?”
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