The Soul Hunter

by Melanie Wells

  The report cards stopped coming after her sophomore year. I guessed that was about the time she got married.

  The next box held what looked to me like early sewing projects. One smock-like number, the original design surely intended to serve as a sweet little outfit for a young girl, was stained with red ink blotches and scrawled with the words “Daddy’s little girl.” The shoulder buttons were little metal skulls.

  I looked up as Sharlotta entered the room with two mugs of hot tea and a carrot for Melissa.

  “Valerian,” she said, handing me a mug. “Good for the nerves.”

  “Thanks. I guess it’s okay to cook tea, then?”

  She smiled with those fabulous teeth. “Technically this is an herbal brew rather than tea. With herbs, you really shouldn’t boil the water all the way. It bruises the leaves.”

  I took a sip. It tasted sort of weedy.

  She pointed at the jumper I was holding. “What do you think?”

  “I think Drew had some unresolved anger issues.”

  She laughed. “You got that right. That’s from seventh grade home economics. She got kicked out of class for that.”

  “What happens to you when you get kicked out of class at the Jesus commune? Do you have to go to hell without passing ‘go’ or something?”

  “Close. You get K.D.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Kitchen duty. Up at 4:30 a.m. to grind the wheat and make bread for 150 people.”

  “You guys ground wheat and made your own bread?”

  “I had my first slice of store-bought bread when I was seventeen years old. The year I left.”

  “What did you think of it?” I asked.

  “Not nearly as good as homemade. But sweeter.”

  “All that processed flour, I guess.”

  “No. Because no one got punished to make it.”

  “I saw her report cards. Who decides what biblical behavior is?”

  “Not us, that’s for sure.” She climbed on the chair and pulled down the last box. “This is the one you should be looking at.”

  She sat down on the floor, cross-legged, pulled the flaps of the box open, and handed me a stack of photographs.

  I sat down next to her and studied the first one. It was the face from the newspaper photo, but much younger, with wispy black hair and sad, lonely eyes.

  “Third grade,” Sharlotta said. “The year her dad died. That’s the year her mom brought her to the commune.”

  “How did he die?”

  “Car wreck.”

  “Same as her husband.”

  “Almost exactly. They both fell asleep driving.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Same road too. Out in East Texas. Off I-20.”

  “Autopsies?” I asked.

  “No idea.”

  “Will you write their names down for me? And the approximate dates they died?”

  She got some paper off Drew’s desk and wrote down the information for me. I tucked it in my purse.

  She went through the photographs with me, chronicling Drew’s demise from sweet, sad little eight-year-old girl into fuming, lost teenager. The last picture, at the bottom of the box, was Drew’s wedding picture. She wore a dress that was clearly of her own design—ripped pink chiffon with gray satin trim—combat boots, and, as a final accessory, a look of unconflicted rage. Her husband was dressed in a brown suit with a wrinkled blue shirt, a terrible tie, and a comb-over hairdo that made him look like a Nixon-era insurance salesman.

  “Not quite her type,” I said.

  “You got that right.”

  “Who’s this?” I held up a photo of a woman with brown, Reagan-era hair and a crooked smile.

  “Drew’s mother. Brigid.”

  “Odd name.”

  “It’s some goddess name. She picked it out herself.”

  “Is that a Jesus commune thing?”

  “She’s not a Jesus commune person.”

  “I thought you said she took Drew there when she was in third grade?”

  “To drop her off. Drew was raised by her aunt and uncle. Bob and Alison Sturdivant. They’re still at the Jesus commune.”

  “What happened to Brigid?”

  “She never saw her again.” She got up and pulled something out of a book on the desk. “Drew tracked her down a couple of years ago.”

  It was a letter, postmarked Shreveport.

  “It’s the only one she got.”

  I opened the envelope. The handwriting was erratic and barely legible.

  My darling daughter,

  Your letter caught me by surprise. I’ll need some time to think it over. Remember, your mother is where you find her. The earth will care for you, darling girl.

  Brigid.

  “What a nut-ball,” I said.

  Sharlotta hooted. “You got that right.”

  “Is it just me or did Drew Sturdivant have an unusually crummy life?” I asked.

  The mirth drained quickly from her face. “It’s not just you.”

  “There’s no last name on the envelope.”

  “I don’t think she uses one. She uses this instead.” She pointed at a symbol drawn at the bottom of the page.

  “An ankh. Same thing that’s on the headboard. Know anything about it?”

  “Just that she liked them. She wore one on a necklace. Never took it off. After I saw the letter from her mother, I figured that was why.”

  I looked through the pictures again. Drew wore the ankh in every photo, including that third-grade picture. A tiny gold one on a delicate chain. Like most little girls wore hearts or crosses. Where else had I seen an ankh recently? Somewhere. It had made a vague impression, but I couldn’t conjure up the memory. It was the ankh that had driven me back to this room, though. I realized that now. It was significant in some way. I could feel it all the way into my bones.

  “Can I see the bathroom?” I asked.

  Sharlotta led me to Drew’s tiny windowless bathroom. I opened the medicine cabinet and found the usual items. Aspirin, mouthwash, Band-Aids with cartoon figures on them, razor blades. A toothpaste tube squeezed from the middle with a glob of white toothpaste oozing out from under the cap. And a box of tampons. I opened it. Only a few were missing. I didn’t see any forms of birth control. I shut the medicine cabinet and went back into the bedroom.

  Melissa was still working on her carrot. She left it and hopped over to me. I picked her up and snuggled her to my cheek. I couldn’t believe how soft she was.

  “You sure you don’t want her?” Sharlotta asked. “She loves you.”

  “I don’t need a pet.”

  “No one needs a pet,” she said. “That’s not what pets are for. They’re extra.”

  I stood there, hugging Melissa.

  “Come on,” Sharlotta said. “She loves you.”

  I could feel myself weakening. “I wish she weren’t so cute.”

  “Her hair’s the same color as yours.”

  I sighed. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

  “Great. I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

  We parked Melissa in the bathtub while we loaded her gear into my truck, and Sharlotta briefed me on the basics of bunny care. It didn’t seem too complicated. Put the litter box where she can find it and change the litter daily, keep hay in her hutch, fresh veggies and water out for her all the time, don’t leave the front door open, stuff like that.

  “You have to check her teeth regularly,” Sharlotta said.

  “For what? Cavities?”

  “Rodent teeth never stop growing. You have to clip them if they get too long.”

  “How am I supposed to know if they’re too long?” I was already starting to regret my impulsive, uncharacteristically optimistic decision to embark on pet ownership. With a rodent, no less. The irony was a little annoying.

  “Hers probably won’t. She has nice straight teeth. They grind down by themselves.”

  “Oh. Well, good for her, I guess. Anythin
g else I should know?”

  Sharlotta grinned. “She’s a raw foodist.”

  “I figured that.”

  “And she only likes root vegetables and lettuces and parsley. And firm fruits like apples. No broccoli or asparagus or anything like that. Nothing at all from the cabbage family. She won’t touch it.”

  “Picky.”

  “Discriminating,” Sharlotta said.

  She went back inside and came out a few moments later with Melissa and an enormous paper bag full of carrots and radishes. “Raw, dead, organic,” she said, handing me the bag. “Live, cute, and yours,” she said, handing me my new bunny. “She likes the vegetables at Whole Foods. The purple carrots are her favorite.”

  “Thanks.”

  I drove away with Melissa on my lap, a little stunned at what I’d just done.

  I set up her kennel in my bedroom, since it was the warmest room in the house. I said a prayer over that corner for good measure, hoping to keep Peter Terry as far away from my new roommate as possible.

  Melissa explored the house for an hour or so and then settled in at my feet, her head resting on one of my new fluffy pink slippers as I sat at my kitchen table in my bathrobe and examined my notes again. I had a stack of them by now.

  Sharlotta had let me take the third grade photo of Drew, along with the letter from Brigid, Drew’s mother, and a few other photographs.

  Drew’s photo was now on my fridge. I spread the letter out on the table in front of me.

  “The earth will care for you.” Who says a nutty thing like that to a daughter they abandoned ten years before? I dug her picture out of the pile and stared at it. What a loon.

  I looked up the address on the Internet and with a few other quick searches had a phone number for a psychic in Shreveport listed only as Brigid. I dialed the number. No answer. I left a message. I found no listing for Bob and Alison Sturdivant anywhere in East Texas, but I did write down a number for the Jesus commune. I’d have to work up to that one. I called David instead and asked him to make some calls to the county medical examiners along the I-20 corridor where Drew’s father and husband had died.

  I did a Google search for Anael watches and found nothing. I’d start calling jewelry stores in the morning.

  And then I called my old friend, Eli Beckman. He agreed to meet me tomorrow for coffee.

  I put glue traps around the house before I went to bed, with apologies to Melissa since technically, rats were her distant cousins. And then I tucked Melissa into her hutch for the night, flipped off the light, and hoped for the best.

  23

  Eli Beckman is one of those coffee people. Coffee with him is a religious experience. He orders his beans from a wholesaler in California and stores them in the sort of expensive, tiny refrigerator with the glass door most people use for wine. He grinds his own beans, of course, in a Rube Goldberg contraption on his spotless granite countertop in his massive commercial kitchen, then lovingly concocts his brew in another machine that cost, I’m positive, at least twice as much as my pickup.

  Since he is such a coffee snob, he won’t drink the coffee at commercial coffee houses. He insists it’s not oily enough. As though oiliness in a beverage is somehow a desirable feature. In fact, there is only one place in the entire city of Dallas where Eli Beckman will drink the coffee. So I parked my truck in front of the good rabbi’s house in North Dallas, knowing there was no tea in my future. I’d been invited for coffee. Coffee was what I would get.

  Rwanda A, Gikongoro Bufcafe was on the menu that day.

  Eli handed me the empty bag and pointed at the label as I settled in on a barstool.

  “This is one of the finest coffees in the world,” he said reverently. “It’s grown by Rwandan farmers at an elevation of between fifty-five hundred and sixty-two hundred feet, give or take. Small farms, small harvest. Gikongoro is the name of the wet mill where the coffee fruit is removed from the bean. It has a low-acid taste, compared with, say, a Kenyan AA, which is a high-acid bean. High acid is a compliment in coffee, but I think this Rwandan is lovely. Just lovely.”

  “And Bufcafe?” I asked, studying the label. “What does that mean? It’s, like, buff? Does it work out? Lift weights? What?”

  “The exporter, Dylan. That’s the name of the exporter.” He tsked. “What you know about coffee—”

  “I drink tea.”

  “—could pass through the eye of a needle.”

  He poured me a cup and placed it in front of me as though he were offering me his firstborn.

  “Cream and sugar?” I asked.

  He glared at me. I smiled sweetly at him until he scooted the sugar bowl in my general direction and then opened up his Sub-Zero and handed me a carton of 2 percent.

  I doctored my coffee, sniffed it and tasted it, rolling it around in my mouth like I’d learned in a wine-tasting class once. I waited a moment before I pronounced my verdict.

  “It tastes like coffee.”

  Eli shook his head again and began to gesture wildly with his hands.

  “What’s the matter with you? Can’t you taste the fruit tones?”

  He closed his eyes as if in worship and took a delicate sip of his nonsugared, noncreamed coffee. “I’m getting banana, chocolate, honey, flowers…a hint of raisin. The mouthfeel is supple, smooth. The finish, resonant but gentle.”

  “You’re mentally diseased,” I said. “It tastes like coffee.”

  “And you have the palate of a chimpanzee.”

  “Rwandan or Kenyan?”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “And what can I do for you, my friend? Since your palate cannot be salvaged? You have some sort of Hebrew emergency, you said?”

  “That’s exactly it. A Hebrew emergency.”

  “Who knew such a thing was possible?” he said, clearly delighted. “All my years in Hebrew school, for just such an occasion!”

  I spread out my notes from Drew’s room.

  “What do you want to know about Lot and his daughters?” he asked, glancing at my papers.

  “Is that what it says?” I peered at the figures I’d copied from Drew’s headboard.

  “Your Hebrew—” he began.

  “Is like my palate. I know. Don’t make fun of me.”

  “Two years of Hebrew and she doesn’t know the word for daughter.”

  “Tell me what it says, Eli.”

  He ran his finger along the words.

  “It says ‘daughter of Lot, lost and little.’” He looked up at me. “A pun. In English, not in Hebrew.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “A little versus a lot.”

  “Clever. What else does it say?”

  “‘The Nephilim return.’”

  “What’s that? Nephilim?”

  “Genesis 6. Half-breed humans.”

  “Come again?”

  “I thought you went to seminary.”

  “Shut up and tell me what it means.”

  He held up a finger, signaling me to be patient—not my best thing—and left the room, returning a moment later with a small stack of books. He set them down and flipped one open, running his finger right to left, lovingly following the lines of Hebrew characters, searching.

  “Ah!” he said. He read it first in Hebrew, which of course did me absolutely no good. And then quoted, “‘The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men of old, men of renown.’”

  He looked up.

  “You’re looking at me as though you’ve answered my question,” I said.

  “Weren’t you listening?”

  “I-don’t-know-what-it-means.” I drew it out slowly, punching each word.

  “I thought you went to seminary,” he said again.

  I glared at him and picked up my spoon to put more sugar into my coffee.

  He waved his hands at me. “Okay, okay. Stop that.”

  I put the spoon down.
>
  “The Nephilim,” he began, “were a mysterious race of beings, pre-flood. The passage, as you can see, seems to indicate that they were some sort of half-blood race.”

  “Half what and half what?”

  “Sons of God—the Hebrew word there is ben eloheem—which in the Greek Septuagint—I hope you at least remember that—is translated angelos.”

  “Angels.”

  “Yes. Angels. But fallen ones, judging from the passage.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “The phrase ‘went in to the daughters of men,’ this is a phrase of some…force, you might say. The indication in Hebrew is that this was not a consensual act. In fact,” he pointed to the page and I leaned in to look at the word, “the very word Nephilim is from the verb naphal, meaning to fall—often associated with violence, or translated ‘to overthrow or fall upon.’”

  “You mean rape?”

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  “Demons, then? That’s what it means? That demons raped human women and the resulting race was this…Nephilim bunch?”

  “That’s the scuttlebutt.”

  “That’s so bizarre. How come I don’t remember this? I mean, this is the sort of event that makes an impression—something a person should point out if you were studying Genesis 6.”

  “Either you weren’t paying attention or your professor skipped right over it. That’s the traditional method for teaching this passage.”

  “What? Skipping it?”

  He nodded. “This is one we like to keep in our pockets.”

  “Why?”

  “Because nobody really knows what it means. It’s one verse. An obscure reference. And the implications…shall we say, my friend Dylan, they’re rather far-reaching, don’t you think? If it’s true?”

  “Are these people still walking around?” I asked, thinking of course of Peter Terry.

  “Don’t you remember what happens in Genesis 7?”

  “What?”