by Amber Foxx
If you still feel better writing, write me back, my home address is on this letter, and I’m giving you my cell phone number if you feel like you’re ready to talk. It’s two hours earlier here. I’d be real happy if you called.
Your loving Daddy,
Marty Martin
February 25
Tylerton, NC
Dear Daddy,
Thanks for writing, and for Granma Jackson’s rocks. They’re beautiful and it’s nice to have something that was hers.
I’m sitting on my back porch to write this. I can see a few daffodils budding, and it’s nice to be able to run without hats and gloves now. I wonder if I will ever get out there and race you out in the desert. I guess you’ll tell me more and we’ll see.
I’m finishing up my personal training class tomorrow and take my certification exam next week.
Hubert and I are back to doing more work on our house. It was his mama’s folks’ house they left him, and it’s old and kind of creaky. It being so wet here, stuff grows in it and on it. We had a pokeweed bush take root in the roof at the corner between the porch and the rest of the house last year and put roots into the house. Don’t know how we missed seeing that up there until it got big, but it made some leaks. Sometimes a desert sounds good. I wouldn’t mind drying out a little. Mountains sound good, too. I still never got used to living somewhere flat, either. And that’s Tylerton. Wet and flat.
I know I’m not telling you much about me. I will. I was excited to get your letter—scared what you might tell me though and I’m still worried what you’ll say when you finally do. I’ll send pictures once we’re past the big bump. Sorry I’m hanging back like this, but I still don’t know.
Mae
Looking again at Marty’s letter, Mae thought of how she’d had meant to hold that letter and use the sight to spy out his past. But Daddy would tell her when he was good and ready, and Mae could only hope he would tell her the truth—and that she could bear it. She sealed her own letter and leaned back against the sun-warmed wall of the house. In the distance she could see a few of Ronnie’s cats in the backyard, gathered around some small rodent they had killed like lions around a downed gazelle, and next door she could hear Ronnie and Joe talking as Joe worked on the yard.
Those old men sure would talk if they knew what this box of rocks was all about.
She took each rough rock from the box her father had sent and held it up to the light. Some of them were huge, others little pebbles. Mae didn’t know if the red ones were ruby or garnet—might be some of each. There were yellow-gold ones, citrine or topaz, a huge pale purple hunk of amethyst, and a little green one that might be an emerald.
Her engagement ring was an old Ridley family piece with a North Carolina emerald on it. All kinds of gemstones came out of the ground in Appalachian North Carolina. It meant a lot that Granma’s rocks were pieces of the mountains, but Mae would still put them in the attic with her other crystals and the book on how to use them. Daddy said Granma didn’t help him with whatever was wrong. Like Mae hadn’t helped Bernadette.
Leaving the porch free for the cats to take over, Mae went inside and carried the package of her grandmother’s crystals up to the attic. Putting them away with the broken chairs, old files, and the window screens felt sad, but she was at a loss what else to do.
She came back down, picked up her letter from the kitchen table, then walked to the post office and dropped the letter in the slot for out of town, imagining her father receiving it in that desert town on the Rio Grande. She wondered what would come next from this. Truth at last?
Passing Buddy’s on her way back home, she could see Hubert in the open garage, working on an engine. She didn’t drop in, though. Buddy didn’t like to have anyone but the mechanics in the garage, and she respected that. Anyway, she needed to get home and study for her exam.
A helmetless youth on a bicycle wobbled along the sidewalk, talking on his phone. Dodging his aimless ramble, Mae stepped aside into Buddy’s parking lot and felt her ankle give. Her first instinct was to right herself, but her foot had landed in a pothole the size of half a basketball. Her attempt to catch her balance only twisted her ankle more, and she fell.
The young man on the bicycle stopped and looked back at her still holding his phone, his voice indifferent. “You all right?”
In her pain, she snapped at the bicyclist, “No, I’m not. And you should get off your phone while you ride.”
“Bitch.” He rode off as Buddy and Hubert came running out from the garage.
Buddy followed as Hubert helped Mae hobble into the garage office. At least she hadn’t heard anything snap besides her own temper. Holding the door open for them, Buddy said, “Let me know if I can do anything, get you anything. Aspirin’s on the house if you need some.” He nodded towards a rack of over-the-counter pain relievers beside the shelves of snack foods. “I’ve got to get back to these cars, but you give me a holler if I can help at all.”
Hubert helped Mae to sit with her foot elevated in one of the old, torn vinyl chairs. Then he went back outside to get a package of ice from the machine, returned and took a plastic bag from behind the counter, which he filled with the ice. As he placed the cold pack on Mae's ankle, he asked, “You gonna need an X-ray, honey?”
“I don’t think so. It didn’t feel like it broke.” The huge deductible on their insurance loomed in her mind. “I had a couple of sprains playing ball. I know what to do for it.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. Daddy taught me what the athletic trainers had him do for a sprain.” The image of her father helping her as a ten-year-old after she got hurt in a game, though sweet, hurt more than the ankle. She looked up into Hubert’s worried dark eyes. “I heard from Daddy. I was mailing my letter back to him when I stepped in that hole coming home.”
“Is he ... you glad to hear from him? Find out what he did?”
“Not yet. But it’s a nice letter. We’ll get there.”
“I don’t know. Something he doesn’t want to tell you right away ... Don’t get your hopes up.” Hubert must have seen the way his words hit her. “I’m sorry, hon. I didn’t mean to burst your bubble like that. It was—I didn’t want him to hurt you again. That’s all. I’m gonna run to the house and see if we’ve got an ace bandage for you.”
“I’ve got an ankle compression sleeve in the drawer with my summer things. I think it’s still good—haven’t used it for years.”
Hubert hesitated in the doorway. “You didn’t tell your daddy where we live or send pictures or anything did you?”
“He’s not a criminal.”
“You don’t know that.”
“They’d have had to do a background check to hire him.”
“—for what people get caught at.”
“Go get my bandage. I have to get home and study.” Mae shifted the ice pack and added as Hubert started out the door, “I didn't send pictures, or an address. I ... I had the same doubts.”
The last night of her personal training class, Mae hoped she might run into Bernadette. It might be her last chance to repair a friendship, to clear up the unease between them. She asked Patsy to drop her off and pick her up at the health sciences building.
Rather than spending money on crutches, Mae was getting around with a cane from the Ridleys’ collection of family objects, a fine old walnut cane with a top that screwed off to reveal a compass. Funny to be so poor you had to resort to valuable antiques. Randi walked down the stairs with her at the end of class, keeping an eye on Mae’s descent.
“You’re welcome to wait in my office. I’m sure you’re studying.”
“Constantly. It’s all I do when the kids are in school. I guess I’m lucky I’m unemployed.”
“And I thought my glass was half full.”
Randi unlocked her office and took a seat at her desk while Mae took the corner chair. A bouquet of pink carnations sat on the bookshelf, their spicy scent filling the small room. “Nice flowers. From R
ick?”
“Yes.” Randi logged onto her computer. “Trying to make up.”
“I’m sorry. Y’all had a fight?”
Randi glanced back at Mae with a soft smile. “But I like the flowers.” She turned back to her work. “Let me see what Charlie’s students have written.”
Mae opened her study guide to review her notes, but realized she wasn’t concentrating. Bernadette might be in, might not, but it was worth taking a chance. Mae borrowed paper and pen in case she had to leave a note and walked down the hallway, but the door to Bernadette’s office was closed. A metal basket on the door contained a few interoffice envelopes and student papers. It looked like Bernadette had been out for a while.
While Mae was still thinking what to write, she heard footsteps behind her and turned to see Charlie approaching, humming to himself, drinking a soda from a can. Although he smiled, Mae sensed coldness from him behind the genial look. She greeted him with a quiet “Good evening.”
While Mae composed her note, leaning her cane against the wall and writing propped against the door, Charlie took a note from the basket on his door. In her peripheral vision Mae noticed a blue and lavender floral envelope. Probably from Dana.
Bernadette, hope you’re doing okay. This was my last trip to CVU except for my exam Saturday—
“Leaving a note for Bernadette?” The answer seemed so obvious Mae simply nodded. Charlie unlocked his office, glancing at Mae's cane. “My knee came back at you, did it?”
“Don’t take credit.” What an ego, to make that connection. “I stepped in a hole.” Eager to get away from Charlie, Mae scribbled her cell phone number on the note, dropped it in the basket, and stuck her pen in the pocket of her sweatshirt jacket.
Charlie’s eyes pinned Mae and his voice took on a hard note. “I need a minute of your time.”
“What for?”
He exhaled sharply through his nose, shook his head, and walked into his office. “For a young lady who got a job as psychic to pay her tuition late—by special arrangement—you seem quite poorly disposed towards me. I can’t see why.”
Hammering the double favor home. Bibhi and Deborah had owed Charlie, so they helped Mae. Now he wasn’t going to let her forget that she owed him. Sounds from inside his office indicated some movement of papers and a chair. Reluctantly, Mae took her cane and limped to the doorway of Charlie’s office. If he was going to call in the favor, she might as well get it over with.
“Have a seat.” He nodded towards a chair at the cluttered table and sat at his desk, setting his soda on some papers. “I won’t bite.”
Resenting the implication that she might be afraid of him, Mae walked in with as much dignity as her injury allowed and sat. Charlie leaned back, fingers interlaced to the first knuckle, and tapped one finely shod foot. Suede shoes this time, on those neat, small feet.
“Bernadette,” Charlie said, his voice low as if taking care not to be overheard, “is not doing well.”
“I’m sorry to hear that—”
“And it has been ever since you—She said she was your practice client as a personal trainer and as a healer. Am I correct?”
“She volunteered for the trainers’ practical experience, yeah.”
“Don’t play games with me. You tried healing her, didn’t you?”
“She wanted me to exp—”
“And you had no idea what you were doing, did you?”
“I’d never—”
“Precisely.” He bit the word off like a crisp piece of apple. “You’d never done it before. You can do a few psychic tricks of no great skill, so you think you can walk where shamans fear to tread.”
“I didn’t think that.”
“But you did it. You tried, didn’t you? Inexperienced, ignorant ... Did it ever occur to you that playing healer like that might be dangerous? Would you want a personal trainer with no skills?” He waited, but Mae didn’t give the obvious answer. She knew he was pulling strings and didn’t want them pulled. Charlie said, glowering, “I don’t think so.”
Mae thought of the shock she and Charlie had shared when she took a look at his knee. It had been painful, but Bernadette had seemed happy after the attempt at healing, even though she didn’t get better. “She didn’t feel bad like you did when—”
Charlie slapped his hands down on his thighs and leaned forward. “Electrocuting my leg was nothing.” He took a deep breath. “Nothing in comparison to the harm you did to Bernadette.”
Mae felt alarmed, but also distrustful. “What happened to her?”
He sat back, laced his fingers all the way up and tapped his thumbs together, hands resting on his belly, studying Mae. “I’m telling you this for your own good. It’s not an attack on you. I know you don’t like me, but it’s not mutual. I think you’re well-meaning but ... you shouldn’t be doing what you’ve been doing. Bernadette is ... fragile. She’s complicated. She lives in a spiritual world because she can’t live in the real world. One wrong step in the spirit world, and you can do a great deal of harm. Especially to someone like her. Do you understand that?”
Mae wanted to argue the assessment of Bernadette as fragile. Complicated was more like it. As for taking a wrong step in the spirit world, even though it came from him, it sounded like what had happened. Maybe returning that lost part of Bernadette, that hurt child, had been a mistake. Made her more unhappy. More susceptible to Charlie. Let the wolf in. If Mae had done that, she had taken a wrong turn for sure. “I think I do.”
“Good. I understand from Deborah that you quit at Healing Balance.”
“Yes, sir. She wants me to come back, but I’m not going to.”
“Good.” He nodded. “You shouldn’t. I have studied with shamans all over the world and with Qi Gong healers in China, and I would suggest that you study for at least ten years yourself before you attempt anything more than a party trick again.”
“I’m through with all that. I didn’t like it. I thought I was interested, but once I got a look—” Mae stopped herself. There was no value in saying any more to Charlie. Might not even be safe, if that wolf shape in the night had been him. It was enough that she knew her own reasons and her own mind. “Are we done?”
“I believe we are.” He smiled and turned his chair towards his desk, picking up the flowered envelope and opening it with a letter opener. Mae rose, took her cane, and limped to the door. Charlie said, “Good luck with your certification exam. I’m sure you’ll be an excellent trainer.”
“I will be.” Mae looked back at him as he sat chuckling over the note. This arrogant, manipulative man telling her what to do, even though it was what she had already decided on, raised her hackles. “Might even be good enough to get you in shape.”
His neck stiffened and he pressed his fingers into the note. Mae could see his nails go white. But all he said, in a cold, controlled voice, was, “Close the door behind you as you go.”
Mae closed it. Maybe she shouldn’t have made him mad, but it felt good. He’d called in his favor—got her to do what she was going to do anyway. And she was never going to see him again.
Chapter Fourteen
“Tell Mama I think I passed the exam.” Mae limped along the aisle of the Cauwetska dollar store as Arnie, newly promoted manager, checked and straightened items on the shelves.
“I wish you’d tell her yourself. She misses you, you know.”
“Is anyone free?” came a voice from the front of the store.
“Coming.” Arnie stood, assisting himself only slightly with the support of the shelf, then walked briskly toward the front of the store. Mae followed, noticing the energy in his pace. The promotion seemed to have perked him up. “My clerk’s on her lunch break,” he called to the unseen customer. “Sorry you had to wait.”
As soon as Mae emerged from the aisle, she wanted to duck back Too late. Arnie’s customer was Malba Cherry.
“Well, Breda,” Malba said with a shake of her head, her gaze settling on the cane, “looks like you’ve ha
d a little bad luck.”
“It’s Rhoda-Mae," Arnie corrected her gently, as if Breda was a mistake. “You’ve met, then?”
Malba wore a prim fitted pants suit and carried a boxy little purse with knobby clasps in shiny metal. Her hair was conventionally styled in a straightened and re-curled bob. “Yes, but I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced.”
“Reverend Malba Cherry, my stepdaughter Mae Martin-Ridley. She’s Rhoda-Mae like my Rhoda-Rae, but she doesn’t use the Rhoda.”
The Reverend nodded, a smile pushing up her cheeks without quite reaching her eyes.
Mae said, “I had no idea you were a preacher, Ms. Cherry.”
“I got the calling late in life, but I heard it. Jesus wouldn’t let me rest until I answered.” She opened her purse and pulled out a pair of very small zip lock bags, each filled with a dried powder, one brown, the other grayish green. Both had labels that were actually business cards taped to the plastic. “Let me take care of my shopping first, Arnie, and then we’ll take care of yours.”
She set the bags onto the check-signing stand and unloaded her shopping cart. Along with trash bags, shampoo, and toothpaste, she placed a dozen or so small dolls in plastic packages, beads, sequins, spools of ribbon, and a stack of cheap dish towels onto the moving belt. Voodoo supplies? Right here and now, Malba Cherry seemed like anything but a voodoo woman.
As Arnie rang up the load and slid it into plastic bags, Mae couldn’t help but hear in her mind Sallie on some environmental rant about plastic.
“Those cloth bags are only a dollar, Ms. Cherry. If you shop here a lot, that’d be a good buy.”
“Oh, you’re married to one of those Ridleys, aren’t you? The organic farm Ridleys?”
“Yes’m.” Mae regretted her conscientious impulse. “My husband’s folks have that place.”