by Celia Roman
“The third what?” I asked, and just about did curse then. Weren’t no use asking Old Mother questions. Hadn’t I learnt that time and time again? I clamped my mouth shut and jogged over to her instead, and held out a hand, mindful of the last time I done the same. Back then, she ‘bout fried my noggin and, if that doctor of mine could be believed, nigh on caused a heart attack what’d forced me into bed rest for a week. God’s honest truth, I weren’t too eager to repeat the experience, but I couldn’t hardly leave her out in the cold now, could I?
She unfolded herself and placed a cool palm against mine. “Have you seen the third?”
“The third what?” I said it gentle as I pulled her upright. Weren’t no helping what addled her and no use getting all het up over it neither. I was just hoping the third didn’t have hide nor hair to do with me. “You want some breakfast ‘til we find this third?”
“Breakfast,” she murmured. “Gravy?”
“And biscuits, if you want ‘em.”
I turned and led her toward the trailer, walking slow and easy on account of her being barefoot, and she followed along like a trusting lamb. The first hint of wrong threaded into me. This weren’t like her a’tall. For one, she didn’t cotton to folks laying hands on her. If I’da remembered that a few weeks back, it mighta saved me a whole lotta hurt.
For another, she weren’t one to linger in fellowship. Experience taught me that and was reinforced by gossip. Old Mother was an odd duck, protective of her privacy, and not a’tall inclined to socialize.
I sure could relate to that.
‘Long and along, I got her inside and sat her down at the kitchen table, fetched a warm quilt and thick socks, tucked her into ‘em. She was a limp statue, hindering more’n helping, and docile as a babe on the cusp of sleep.
Old Mother tucked the quilt up under her chin, in fists hidden behind the hand-stitched patchwork. It gleamed red and gold against her near ebon skin. “Have you seen the third?”
I paused where I was, kneeling in front of her with my hands wrapped around the fuzzy green and purple socks covering her slender ankles, and glanced up. “What’s the third?”
She blinked them chocolate brown eyes of hers at me and her forehead furrowed. “Who, Sunshine. The third is yours, and he is a who.”
It hit me square in the head what she needed. I slapped my palms against my thighs and launched myself into a stand. “All righty then. You just sit yourself right there and I’ll get the third for ya.”
Her hand snaked outta the folds of the quilt and grasped my wrist gentle like. Her palm was smooth against my skin and warmer’n it been when last I felt it. “Thank you,” she said. “I knew you could help me.”
A weak laugh huffed outta me. Well, that’s what I done, weren’t it? I helped folks, even them what normally didn’t need none.
I filled a mug with water from the tap, stuck it in the microwave, set the clock. Hot chocolate should do the trick of warming her whilst I whipped up some vittles and texted my cousin, him what was the third of his name.
Sometimes I was dense as bedrock and twice as dumb.
Trey poked a wary head through the front door right about the time I slid a tray of from-scratch biscuits in the oven to cook. He glanced between me and Old Mother, cleared his throat, then inched into the living room and shut the door behind himself.
“You, ah.” He cleared his throat again and them blue eyes of his, not quite as wild as his daddy’s, landed on Old Mother and stuck there. “You need something, Sunny?”
I jerked my chin at Old Mother as I jiggled the bacon cooking on the stove. “Was her what needed you, cuz.”
“Oh.” He scrubbed bare palms down his jean clad thighs and danged if a faint blush didn’t add to the red touching his cheeks thanks to the early morning chill. “I, uh.”
I lost my patience right about then. Danged if I had all day to hang around whilst he ogled the local hoodoo woman. “Sit yourself down. I’m cooking breakfast.”
“I already ate.”
Old Mother coughed real soft, and he jumped like a snake struck him.
“Sit down,” I said a mite more gentle. “She don’t bite.”
Not as far as I knowed, nohow.
Trey inched across the room and settled into a chair at the shiny new table next to Old Mother.
I turned back to the bacon. Whatever it was what dragged her here, let them two sort it out. I’d had my fill of visions and portents and the pain what accompanied ‘em.
“The third has come,” Old Mother said.
I near about rolled my eyes. Here it comes. I eased halfway around and fixed one eye on the bacon sizzling on the stove and t’other on them two, just so I could bear witness to somebody else being on the receiving end for once.
“Uh.” Trey’s foot went to jiggling under the table, rattling the metal legs against the top. “Yes’m, I sure have.”
Old Mother smiled, not big, but enough to show something I never thought to see on her round face: pleasure. “You are your father’s son.”
“Yes’m, I reckon I am.”
“He’s proud of you.” Old Mother’s hand flashed outta the quilt and landed on Trey’s forearm, gripping it tight through the thick canvas jacket he wore. “You’ll make a fine father yourself, someday.”
Trey’s foot went dead still and the color leached from his face. “I want to, sure.”
“Soon.” She released her grip, smoothed her fingers over his jacket, and her head cocked to the side. “Something’s coming, something dark and empty and greedy. You must be ready.”
My mouth twisted into a frown. “How come he gets straight advice and I don’t?”
“He is the father, Sunshine,” Old Mother said, like that made any sense a’tall. “A brother in heart to the mother of the spirit. The third shall rise up in her time of need, and the holy of holies will be fulfilled.”
Trey shot a glance at me, looking about as confused as I felt. “What?”
“Just go with it,” I said. “She don’t never make no sense.”
Old Mother laughed, and danged if it weren’t genuine humor floating outta her. When she spoke again, her voice weren’t that of a wise woman. ‘Stead, it held the flat plantation drawl of the Deep South and betrayed her youth to any what cared to notice. “I’m starving, Sunny. When’ll the biscuits be done?”
I blinked at her, couldn’t help myself. “Not long now, Old Mother.”
“Mary Alice,” she corrected in a sunny tone.
Trey’s expression softened into a grin. “Nice to meetcha, Mary Alice.”
I shook my head and checked on the biscuits, trying to ignore my mind buzzing away over Old Mother’s revelations and Trey’s reactions to ‘em, and the way her fingers never strayed too far from the cuff of his jacket sleeve.
Chapter Thirteen
We all et our fill, including Trey, who never was one to decline a homecooked meal. After, I sent Mary Alice, she what’d always been known as Old Mother, home with my cousin. Leastwise, I tasked him with carrying her to wherever it was she rested her head at night. Whether they made it there or not was another matter.
Maybe if Trey hadn’t made goo-goo eyes at her the morning long, I wouldn’ta been so worried, but he had, and I was. I never seen him show such interest in a woman before, not since high school nohow, and that interest was worrisome. It wouldn’t do for him to fall in love with a hoodoo woman. We didn’t know where she come from or who her folks was, for one, and for another, she was liable to curse his wiener if he didn’t mind his Ps and Qs real close like.
I snickered even as I shook my head. It weren’t none of my beeswax. Trey was a grown man. He could take care of himself, and if he couldn’t, he knowed where to find me.
Soon as I cleaned up the breakfast dishes, I put on one of Daddy’s LPs (Charley Pride Sings Heart Songs), plopped into the chair behind my makeshift desk, and opened my research notebook to a fresh page. A few weeks back, right about the time I met David and started working on
his monster catfish problem, I decided to organize like the business woman I was. It come in handy ever once in a while, like now when I needed to brainstorm ways to research a problem. Gone were the days spent scrambling through drawers for scrap paper. I now had a stack of college ruled spiral bounds tucked away under my desk for just that purpose.
It didn’t take long a’tall to jot down ideas to guide my research, since I had a fairly clear notion what I was a-looking for. How many cave monsters was there in this great big ol’ world? Just in case, I noted the strange odors and where I smelt ‘em, and my experiences at each crime scene. As an afterthought, I scribbled in a coupla words about that voice in my noggin, only I called it instinct in case anybody took a notion to prowl through my stuff.
No call giving folks more ammunition on the coon crazy part of my blood.
Finally, I made a list of the resources I thought’d be most helpful, starting with the local library’s back issues of the Foxfire Magazine and ending with what was stacked on my own shelves. If them didn’t hold the solution, I could always borrow the library’s internet and card catalogue.
Two hours later, my eyes was near about crossed in my head from studying tome after tome. I marked my place in one book (Giants, Monsters & Dragons by Carol Rose) and stood into a long, hard stretch. Lordy, this research business was tiring. Give me trudging through the woods any day. It was a sight easier’n tracking down leads in the written word.
I tidied my desk, then myself, and marched up to Fame’s on the trail connecting our properties. On the way, I stopped for a few minutes and knelt by the angel guarding Henry’s spot, though I didn’t try a wink to suss out his presence. It just didn’t feel right in the moment, and that hurt my heart so much, I sniffed back tears as I finished my trek.
What if I never felt him again, that love and sweetness, the simple acceptance I found only with him?
Missy met me at the door dressed in her go-to-town clothes, decent ones what fit ‘stead of the hand-me-downs she normally wore. She tugged me inside and bussed my cheek, then smoothed down the mess my stick straight hair’d gotten into on the walk up. “I was about to call and check on you.”
“I knowed I had to be here,” I said, mild as milk to take the sting outta the words. “Is the boys ready?”
“Almost.”
I studied her pallid cheeks and the guarded set of her mouth. “You ready?”
“Of course. It’s not every day a woman goes to see her lover in jail.” Her eyes slid shut and what little color was left in her cheeks drained plumb away. “I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t mean that.”
I cupped her hands in mine, warming the tense chill out of ‘em, and kept my voice quiet and gentle. “Don’t you worry none about it, Missy. Don’t you worry none a’tall.”
“Oh, Sunny,” she said, and her voice trembled and shook in the elegant column of her throat. “What are we going to do?”
“We’re gonna have faith, is what.” I squeezed her hands for good measure, just to let her know I meant business. “You hang in there, ya hear? What’ll happen to me and the boys if you fall apart?”
A tremulous smile curved her mouth. “You’ll be fine, Sunshine. You always have been.”
Was many a body could argue that matter with her, but today was not the day for the doing. I let her hands drop and went to round up Gentry, and tried real hard to forget the desperate fear growing in Missy’s pretty violet eyes.
Visitation with Fame went about like I thought it would. We drove to the Detention Center in Tiger, all four of us crammed into Fame’s car with Trey at the wheel. There was already a crowd waiting when we got there, in amongst the plastic Christmas decorations and a fake, tabletop tree decked out in miniature snowmen. What with the Christmas holiday speeding our way, I reckoned folks wanted to get their family time in where they could.
Me, I weren’t half as eager to be there as I shoulda been. I never did like jails. ‘Twas bad enough I had to visit my mama in one. I sure as tootin’ didn’t wanna visit nobody else there.
We waited in the spit-shined lobby crowded elbow to arse amongst the rest of them a-waiting. The room was quiet in spite of the radio spewing Adele outta tinny speakers somewhere in the offices, hidden behind tinted, bulletproof glass, and was marred mostly by the beeps of text message notifications and the occasional croupy cough. My own nose itched something fierce. I itched it, sniffing as I did, and caught a whiff of floor wax, pine cleaner, and cinnamon.
Somebody’d been baking holiday goodies, ten to one, which reminded me. I had my own baking to do come Christmas Eve.
Our turn rolled around ‘long and along. I let Missy and the boys go first. Seeing as how they was closer kin, it seemed like the right thing to do. Eventually, though, they was done and I had to trudge on back to the room divided by glass and phones and the thick line of the law.
For a minute, my mind reeled back to the first time I made this trip, back when I was a kid and the sheriff hauled Mama in for a double murder. I swayed where I stood, lost in the time burnt memory and the dull heartache living in me still. Jail weren’t no place for a young’un. Weren’t no place for decent folk a’tall.
The clack of a phone’s handset against its cradle jolted me into the present. I strode forward like I hadn’t just missed a beat and a half, and sat down opposite Fame, who was already holding his handset.
A yellowing bruise decorated the left half of his jaw.
I yanked my handset up and snapped into it. “What in aitch ee double hockey sticks happened to your face?”
“Settle down, Sunny girl,” he said in that low, rough voice of his. “I can handle myself.”
“That ain’t the point.” I clutched the handset hard against my face and rubbed my forehead with the fingers of my free hand. “Sorry. I don’t like seeing you in here, is all.”
“I don’t much like being here. Any news?”
“I got some leads.”
“Which kind?”
I knowed exactly what he was asking: Human or monster? I sat back in my chair and eyed him through the plexiglass separating us. “Both. An old enemy, for one.”
He nodded, real solemn like. “I heard about that. Anything I can do?”
“Find me some evidence?” I snorted out a laugh, then shook my head once. “I’m working on it hard as I can.”
“I know you are, Sunny.” His expression never altered, but I could near about feel his relief, even through the plexiglass. “I trust you.”
I remembered something then I shoulda had front and center in my mind all along. This weren’t Fame’s first round doing time. He knowed how to play the game and knowed how to game the system. It set my own mind at ease. Whilst I was working the outside, he’d be working the inside. What a team we made.
Visitation ended before I could wiggle anything else outta him. Before I left, he asked me to keep digging, and I promised I would. Weren’t nothing else for it, was there, but to gnaw away on the bone he give me and pray to God I found something before a murder conviction hung around the neck of another member of my family.
We swung by Ingles on the way home so Missy could pick up a salad to round out the pot roast she had simmering in the crockpot back home. I went in with her whilst Trey waited in the car with Gentry. Weren’t no need for all of us to suffer the stares and whispers of local gossips.
Bless her, Missy glided through the narrow, brightly lit aisles with her head held high and her shoulders relaxed. Not a single soul shot a pitying glance her way, though a couple braved the wrath of the busybodies and lent their support by way of a few words shared here and there.
Whenever I doubted the good in folks, somebody always proved me wrong, and I was happy for it.
In the checkout line, that day’s issue of The Clayton Tribune caught my eye, not least because my uncle’s mugshot was front and center above the fold. I sighed and added a copy to the conveyer belt behind the greens Missy picked out, face down ‘cause I just couldn’t stand looking at that
picture for long.
And that’s when I saw it. “Fourth Body Found,” the article’s headline screamed, and right beside it, another’un what read, “Local Serial Killer?” I snatched the paper up again and started reading, and by the time I was done, I was madder’n spit.
Another body was found not far from Lily and Ferd’s campsite, and the site of that poor camper what’d died somewhat before them. Riley was holding out on me, he was, and danged if I’d let him get away with it.
Soon as I was finished reading, I plopped the paper back down and worked real hard on not spitting my mad out at Missy. I was saving ever last drop of upset for Riley, him what deserved it a mite more’n she did.
Boy, was he in for an earful.
Chapter Fourteen
Riley was waiting for me on my front porch when I stomped down the hill from Fame’s. I’d left there soon as Trey parked Fame’s car, too het up to even think on eating. A shame, too. Missy cooked a mean pot roast. Having to miss it twisted me up something fierce.
Or maybe that was betrayal gnawing at my innards.
I shrugged it off and marched right up to Riley, today’s issue of The Clayton Tribune in hand. “You seen this?”
His expression closed off in three seconds flat, so tight he coulda been a statue. He crossed his arms over that wide chest of his and stared down his nose at me. “Yeah, I’ve seen it.”
“And?”
“And what?”
I huffed and rattled the paper. “What you got to say for yourself?”
“I didn’t know.” He heaved a big sigh, let it out real slow. “I see you’ve jumped to your usual conclusions.”
“Usual!” I squawked.
“Christ, Sunny.” He yanked his work ballcap off and smacked it against his thigh, and danged if some of my mad didn’t sputter into his eyes. “Why do you always think the worst of me?”