by Catie Rhodes
I hurried ahead and opened the car door for her and held it open until Brad got her settled inside. The two of us exchanged a glance.
“I can call Hannah, see if she’s up. She might agree to an early tour of the museum.” I wanted to erase the tension between us. We didn’t have to be friends, but I didn’t want to part on less than favorable terms.
“Thanks for the offer.” Brad actually smiled at me. “But I look slept in. In fact, these are the clothes I wore yesterday.”
“Fair enough,” I said.
Brad got into the car, started it, and drove back down the driveway. I waved as they left, half feeling like I ought to run after them and beg them to stay. I was in over my head, and Mysti was the first breath of anything like sanity I’d had since this whole thing started. The car pulled onto the highway and disappeared from my sight.
My cellphone rang. I snapped to attention and grabbed it. Oh, please let it be Mysti telling me she’d stay and help me through this. No such luck. It was Hooty. He started talking as soon as I picked up, not even giving me a chance to say hello.
“I called the warden at home this morning. He agreed to set up the visit if we get there by ten. The drive’s a couple of hours, and we’re going to have to hurry. When can you be ready?”
“Fifteen minutes.” We said our goodbyes and hung up.
I went inside to tell Memaw where I was going and to have our usual argument over getting one of her friends in to spend the day with her.
I paced back and forth on the porch while I waited for Hooty to pick me up, feeling more unprepared than I ever had in my life. This man who I didn’t remember at all might not even want to answer my questions. He might hate me for getting his daughter killed. All I could do was hope for the best.
Several minutes later, I lounged on the soft leather seat of Hooty’s silver Cadillac, listening to flute music on the stereo system. Hooty reached over and flicked off the sound.
“What, exactly, do you think Jesse might know to help you figure out who took the journals?” He flashed me a grin. “If you don’t mind telling me.”
I stared at Hooty’s round face, searching for an assurance he wouldn’t call me crazy. I saw the gray hair at his temples, and the deep lines taking up permanent residence underneath his brown eyes. Nothing more. I had to trust him, and that was a tall order. But this man had always taken time for me. He deserved a few answers.
“I think whoever’s behind the theft of the journals killed my father.”
Hooty sucked in a deep breath, and his hands tightened on the steering wheel. “How?”
I told him, and the telling took a good part of the trip to the prison. Hooty asked a few questions here and there. Mostly he listened. When I got to the part about my daddy’s ghost driving Mysti crazy, Hooty began to sweat. His reaction worried me. Hooty had never been thin, and middle age had spread him even thicker. I concluded the tale before he worked up a stroke.
“Well, I’m going to give you my advice, even though you didn’t ask for it.” Hooty took one hand off the wheel to wipe the sweat off his forehead. “Your uncle probably won’t have much to say about the day of the murder. Have some back-up questions.”
Oh, I had a back-up question, all right. I wanted to know what my father thought I was the key to and why.
The guard at the prison searched Hooty’s car. The act initiated a quick bolt of panic and paranoia. It was like a flashing sign reminding me I was crossing the threshold between the free world and the world of the incarcerated. My experience in the mental hospital taught me to fear any kind of lockup. Once there, I was at the mercy of those in charge. I twisted in my seat to stare longingly at the road on which we drove into the prison complex. Hooty parked the car and led me into a building I’d have never found on my own.
There began a test to my moral and legal character. I removed my shoes, turned out my pockets, and allowed a prison official to wand my clothed body and pat me down. I showed my ID to prove who I was, filled out a paper, and waited quietly.
Finally, a female correctional officer led me into a sad room where a row of industrial-style chairs facing a clear window awaited me. Each station had an old school phone through which I assumed I’d talk to my uncle because there was no way we’d be able to hear each other through the thick window. The room was empty except for me. Hooty’s connection to the warden managed to get me in for a visit even though regular visiting days were on the weekend. For a few seconds, I stood still, completely shell shocked. I’d expected an open room with tables, had even planned what I’d do if Uncle Jesse wanted to hug me. People fostered relationships in this room?
The correctional officer directed me to one of the stations. I sat in the chair and stared at the empty space across from me, exposed and spooked by all the official procedures. Visiting an offender in prison was nothing like bailing Chase Fischer out of jail for public intoxication. A hopeless heaviness hung over this place, cold with fear of the unknown and desperation.
A door on the other side of the glass opened, and I straightened, heart thudding and anticipation crawling over me. A small man with his hands cuffed behind his back walked in. The door shut, and the man backed up to the door. A second or two later, he stepped forward, his arms by his sides. His heavily tattooed forearms stood out against his white uniform. The amount of salty white in his black hair struck me as did the lines that started at the corners of his eyes and creased down his cheeks. My uncle looked much older than Hooty even though they graduated high school the same year. He eased himself into the uncomfortable chair on the other side of me.
I froze as I stared into his black eyes, a soft memory of laughter—the side-splitting kind—playing just out of reach in my head. I loved this man when I was a little girl. He smiled, and the webbing of lines etched themselves deeper into his cheeks. We reached for the phones at the same time.
“You look like my brother.” His voice seemed both familiar and unfamiliar. “But not in a bad way.”
“You used to make me laugh.” The words came out sounding more hollow and lost than I intended. After all the trouble to get here, I wasn’t sure I could talk to this stranger.
“How’s Momma? When I found out you arranged a special visit, I worried she might have taken a turn.”
“Not good, but there’s been no dramatic change,” I said. “I’d intended to come, but…”
“Momma said she was working on you.” He shifted in his seat. “It’s hard to come here, and I thank you for coming. Once Mom’s gone, you’ll be my last blood connection to where I grew up.”
Which is my fault. His daughter, Rae, wouldn’t be dead if it weren’t for me. I swallowed hard. Should I tell him I was sorry for what happened to his only child? The sterility and finality of visiting a family member in this setting had me off balance. I wanted to say the right things, do the right things, but I didn’t know how. My gaze drifted off Jesse’s face and onto the little counter in front of me. I noticed it was worn where countless elbows rested on it as they tried to fit a lifetime into a few minutes. Had they felt as empty as I did? I forced my mind back on track. The clock was running on this visit. Time to get down to business.
“I came today because I have some questions to ask you.”
“Before you say the first word, let’s get one thing straight. I’m not going to talk about the day someone other than me murdered your father.” He leveled his gaze at me to make his point. “Last thing I remember was the night before it happened. If you don’t remember what happened, you can’t expect me to.”
The finality in his voice left no room for wheedling. I shrank into my chair, resisting the urge to fiddle with my hair. Switch gears. Do it fast. I forced myself to start talking.
“Barbie, my mother, is back in town. I happened to see a letter she was writing—”
“You went through her stuff?” His grin made him look a decade younger.
“Yeah. She said she wanted to come visit you, but…”
“Well, you can tell that bitch there’s no way I’ll ever agree to see her again.” His cheeks reddened. “I ain’t got nothing to say to her.”
I shook my head. “No, no. I’m not here to convince you to see her. It’s about something she said in the letter. She mentioned my daddy saying I was the key to something.”
He stared at me through the glass, his expression unreadable.
“The letter indicated she thought I’d open up to her, be more receptive to her coming back into my life, if she could tell me something special about myself.”
“And she didn’t send you here to try to trick something out of me?”
What? I sat up straighter. He had my interest. “I promise she didn’t. We barely speak. She spent my whole life ignoring me.”
“Maybe it is time I should tell you.” He rubbed one hand over his short hair and tapped his fingers on top of his head. A memory came to me of Memaw telling him he looked like a monkey when he did that. “Paul never intended it to be kept from you, I don’t think. He just died before you got old enough to know.”
“If it has to do with the Mace Treasure, now might be a good time.”
His eyes widened, fear lighting them. “Why’s that?”
My father’s face loomed in my memory, the same fear brightening his eyes. Then, the moment snapped shut like a door closing. I shook it off and told Jesse about the theft of the Bruce journals, about the book of folk medicine and what it really was. Then I told him the hardest part to tell, the part where I had a vision and saw Priscilla Herrera the day she died and heard her say what would happen if the wrong person tried to take the curse off the treasure. I expected him to scoff at me. Instead he stared at me with an unnerving intensity until I squirmed in my chair.
“You know your gift comes from Momma’s family, don’t you?”
I nodded, surprised he knew after the way Memaw acted about it. A stray thought burrowed its way into my conscious. Maybe she acted the way she acted because Jesse and my daddy knowing got them into trouble.
“Paul thought—in the last month or so of his life—Momma’s grandmother was Priscilla Herrera’s daughter.”
I dropped the clunky plastic telephone receiver. It hit the Formica cabinet in front of me with a bang. Jesse winced and took his receiver away from his ear. I sat there rocking, trying to stave off the dizziness buzzing around my head. Little by little, I collected myself and picked up the receiver again.
“Why’d he think so?” My voice shook.
Jesse reached across his body and pushed up the sleeve on his uniform shirt, showing me his raven tattoo, nearly buried amidst a sea of other art, but almost identical to mine.
Surprise at seeing the tattoo again shook me in my seat. I set the phone down on the counter and gaped. I rolled up my own sleeve to show him my raven tattoo and nodded. I hadn’t imagined Priscilla’s tattoo. She didn’t add it to my vision to make me relate to her. She had the same tattoo as me. My uncle had it. It meant something big in my life. I put my face in my hands and took deep breaths to keep from screaming. The more I tried to cordon off this part of me, the more it crossed barriers and invaded something else.
Jesse, a man I didn’t know and never really would, put his hand on the glass between us, and I put mine to it, very aware we looked like some idiotic cliché but not giving a shit. We dropped our hands after a long moment and picked up our phones again. I spoke first.
“Why did my daddy think the tattoo meant we were related to her?”
“He found out Priscilla Herrera had the same tattoo about a month before he died. It was in those books Isaiah Bruce had. As for why, ever’body in Momma’s clan’s got the same tattoo. Can’t be no coincidence.”
“Your mother—my Memaw—doesn’t have a tattoo like this one. Since she’s been sick, I’ve seen enough of her to know.”
“Not her.” One side of his mouth and one eyebrow rose, and despite the surroundings, I saw the mischief I half remembered him capable of. “She left ‘fore they could talk her into getting it. Ain’t you met none of ‘em? Didn’t one of ‘em give you the tattoo?”
I thought back to the night I got the tattoo, the way everybody seemed so interested in me, and the spooky punchline to the whole experience. Slowly, I nodded at Jesse.
“Bet my momma had a fit over it.” A hell-raising smile spread over his face.
I remembered Memaw’s anger and horror. A smile crept over my face even though it wasn’t funny. My uncle closed his eyes, his body bumping with silent chuckles. After a second, it hit me, too. I took his cue and kept my giggles silent. Maybe it was an unspoken rule of this barren place.
“Memaw only told me about her family last year. How do you know so much about them?”
“She never told you because she thinks if me and Paul never met them, he’d never have gotten the crazy idea he could take the curse off the treasure.”
My head reeled, drunk on too much information. Jesse took in the expression on my face and held up his free hand.
“Awright. Let’s take it one thing at a time. You asked how me ’n Paul knew about Memaw’s clan, right?”
I nodded.
“We were awful kids, wild, always sneaking off to Shreveport and Tyler. Sometimes we’d go as far as Dallas or Houston.” He stopped talking for a moment and stared at me, smiling at something only he could see. “We met ‘em at a—”
“Roadside carnival or fair?”
“Yeah.” He cocked his eyebrow again. “It was like they were waiting on us. ‘Course they all got…talents. Same way you got talents, right?”
The click of another piece of my life falling into place paralyzed me.
“One of ‘em probably knew we were coming. Both of us got the same raven tattoo. Momma like to’ve had a stroke over it. Never seen her so mad, red faced and shaking all over. She got on the phone and screamed at somebody named Cecil for an hour.”
“Her brother.”
He nodded. “Yep. Me and Paul went hunting for them after that. Took us almost a year, but we found them off a backroad outside Livingston, Texas. Uncle Cecil told us some stuff about his grandparents working medicine shows, carnivals, and circuses. Then he told us to get out of Burns County before it killed us. Said his grandparents told him never, ever go to Burns County.”
Maybe I’d teach my kids and grandkids the same if I saw my mother dragged away and lynched for being something she couldn’t help, too. I shivered.
“Those were the kids Priscilla sent away and told never to come back to Gaslight City, Texas.”
“I don’t know that story. Where’d you hear it?”
I told him about the vision, about seeing Priscilla prepare to be taken away and lynched. I told him about the words she used to set the curse on the treasure. By the time I finished, his olive complexion had taken on a sallow cast. “When the Bruce family journals were stolen, the thief also got Priscilla Herrera’s spell book. I think they’re planning to take off the curse.”
“And those demons’ll flatten Gaslight City.” He shook his head. “Paul thought he’d found the key to the treasure after reading Isaiah Bruce’s journals because he interpreted her words to mean only someone of her bloodline could remove the curse and find the treasure.”
“And that’s us.”
He nodded. “Now you know why you’re the key and why knowing won’t do Barbara Butthead any good.” He glanced again at the guard in the corner. “Time’s up. Hey would you tell Rainey Bruce thanks for the reading materials she sent?”
“Sure, but wait a minute. At the beginning of our visit, you said something about me not remembering the day my daddy was murdered. Why would I remember?”
His mouth dropped open, and he stared at me for so long I figured he didn’t plan to answer. Then he said, “You were there, too. Didn’t you know?”
I heard a voice yell something but couldn’t make out the words. My uncle put the phone into its cradle, stood and backed up to the door through which he’d entered, sticking his h
ands through. The guard cuffed my uncle and opened the door, gripping his arm to take him away. Jesse slipped me a wink, and I blew him a kiss, sorry our visit had been cut short.
A correctional officer beckoned from the door, ready to escort me back to where Hooty waited. I walked in a daze, Jesse’s words echoing in my head.
You were there, too. Didn’t you know?
No, I hadn’t. A lifetime of snide comments and sneaky glances suddenly made sense. How could I have been present at my father’s murder and have completely erased it from my memory? How could I be a descendant of Priscilla Herrera? It was all too much, and I shut down, falling into Hooty’s arms in the waiting room and letting him hold me like he might have his own daughter.
Hooty got us out of the prison complex and turned his satellite radio to an ‘80s hard rock station. The sound of his rich baritone singing along with bands like Guns n Roses and Winger lifted some of the hopelessness off my shoulders. I even laughed at the way he tried to imitate the more high-pitched howls in the songs. He smiled at me and shut off the radio.
“Would you like to talk about your visit with your uncle?”
My arm twitched once, then twice, then three times, the muscle cramping. I rubbed at it and realized the sensation was coming from the tattoo Jesse and I shared, the same one my daddy had, and the same one Priscilla Herrera had. We passed a raven or some other kind of big, black bird sitting on a fencepost. It turned its head to watch us go by.
It’s all too much. I couldn’t process it.
“Why don’t you start with one small thing and go from there?”
I wasn’t ready to deal with Jesse’s theory about our blood connection to Priscilla Herrera and it had nothing to do with Hooty anyway. This weirdness, this otherness, was my lot in life. I’d never be any different, no matter how much I or other people wished I could. A great sense of loss settled over me. Once I accepted it, a realization hit me. I had the answer to the identity of the person causing all the problems.