In the kitchen, I open the refrigerator and drink milk right out of the bottle. I take the last slice of apple pie left over from the anniversary. The clock on the wall reaches its hands toward midnight. After putting on my socks and shoes, I slip on Granddaddy’s old coat that Granny puts on to go feed the chickens. Then I step out onto the back porch.
The chilly night air prickles my face, but otherwise I feel warm in the coat that used to swamp me with its size. To the right of the back door is the small bench where Granny keeps a big flashlight. I test it to make sure the batteries are good. A warm glow lights the way ahead. For a moment, I shine the artificial light under the porch and see Pumpkin and his kin curled next to each other, unmoving, only mildly curious about why I’m not curled up in my own bed.
The moon is of no help tonight as I walk around the side of the house where the two bedroom windows are. I step as lightly as I can, not wanting to wake up Granny and her shotgun. It is only when I get to the Red Bud Sisters that I let myself make my usual walking noises. Meanwhile, the crickets throb in the forest, their voices weak with autumn. Like my bedroom, I know every inch of the path down the hill. Yet it looks different at night and things scurry away out of sight.
The night shift, Mama calls them. Those animals that do their hunting and visiting at night.
When I get to Mama’s truck, I touch the hood, as though it might still hold warmth from hours before. However, it is as cold as the night.
The sound of my footsteps on the pavement keeps me company as I walk. I note the distinctive sound of the soles of my shoes, mixed with my stride. Just like no two fingerprints are ever alike, that probably goes for footsteps, too. I skip a few steps just to break up the rhythm and think of a song I heard on the radio by a new singer named Elvis Presley. Music is what keeps me company best, yet no sound comes. Any songs I might sing seem to have been stolen by the events of the day.
As I pass Aunt Jo and Uncle Daniel’s place, a single light outside the barn produces a whitish yellow glow. Dew moistens my face and the flashlight illuminates the fog that gathers along the river. The world is completely quiet, and it feels like a dream I might be having if I was sleeping right now.
I begin to hear other footsteps echoing in the night and pause mid-step, searching for sounds in the darkness. Nothing. I tell myself I imagined it. Besides, who in the world would be out here walking in the middle of the night except me? The whispers start again as I pass the old trail that leads to the cemetery. It seems odd that Mama didn’t hear the whispers, too. Usually she’s the one that notices things like that. She tried to convince me it was the wind in the trees at the bottom of the ravine, or the shape of the hillside that made the whispers, but I didn’t believe that for a second. The flashlight falters, and I refuse to get scared. I shake it to renew its strength. It flickers twice, then a third time, but continues to light the way. In the distance, at about eye level, a tiny red glow is suspended in the woods. It looks like a lightning bug that’s on fire, with a red glow instead of gold.
The whispers get louder and the red glow grows more intense. I stop walking, my heart looking for a way to escape my chest.
“You hear it, too?” a voice says. I jump like someone’s goosed me.
I recognize the voice and shine my light toward the woods and see Melody Monroe. She is smoking a cigarette at the entrance to the path to the cemetery.
“Hear what?” I say.
She sits in the pitch black of night without a flashlight or anything.
“Turn off that light,” she says. “It’s hurting my eyes.”
Reluctantly I do, and the darkness gets darker.
“You hear that?” she says, from inside the darkness.
“Hear what?” I repeat, my frustration growing.
“The whispers,” she says, herself whispering.
A sudden chill passes through me.
She inhales and the red tip of her cigarette glows brighter like a monster with a single red eye.
“Yeah, I hear it,” I say.
“Who do you think that is?” she says.
“Who?” I say.
Our two voices reach toward the night. I wonder if this is what it’s like to be a ghost and not have a body that’s yours anymore.
Whenever Melody inhales her cigarette, the faint glow outlines her face. Underneath the smell of cigarettes, I smell something sour, like moonshine.
“Who do you think is whispering to us?” she asks again, her words slurring.
I don’t answer and wonder if I should continue on to the Sectors or turn around and go back home.
“I think the whispers are your daddy,” she says. “I think it’s Johnny.”
I gasp, before I can stop myself.
“Your mama told me today that he slipped on icy rocks and fell down the mountain,” she begins again. “It would be around here where they found him. Near that old footbridge. You know the one?”
“I know it,” I say.
“Maybe we should get closer so we can hear him better,” she says.
A shiver of cold caresses my neck, and I reach for the gold medallion Mama gave me and find it missing. I search my pockets and then shine the light on the ground. Melody whines for me to turn it off. Mama is going to kill me for losing it, but I’ll have to search for it another time. I’m not going anywhere near that footbridge, not in the middle of the night, and not without my necklace to protect me and certainly not with Melody Monroe who smells like a giant jar of moonshine mixed with stale cigarettes.
“What do you think Johnny’s trying to tell us?” Her words continue to slur. “Do you think he’s trying to tell us who his murderer was?”
“Murderer?” I ask.
Melody laughs.
“Oh, that’s right, your mama said he fell.”
She is silent now, as though letting her words have time to sink in.
“So, what are you doing out here in the middle of the night?” she asks.
I could ask her the same. “I couldn’t sleep,” I say. “I was just taking a walk.”
She lights another cigarette off the one that’s almost finished. Then she flips one of the tiny red glows to the ground.
She stands and then stumbles toward me. I take a step back and feel her reaching toward my arm.
“What are you doing?” I say into the blackness.
“I’m going to introduce you to your daddy.”
She lunges forward and this time grabs my arm instead of air. “Hey, stop it!” I say. Her grip is strong for someone who has been drinking all night.
“Johnny would like you,” she says. “Probably like he liked my sister.”
The laugh that follows doesn’t have any humor in it. Melody seemed much nicer in the light of day.
“Come on, girl,” she says, trying to drag me.
“Let me go!” I jerk away and she loses her grip. I turn on the flashlight and shine it right into her eyes. She winces and puts her hands up as protection from the light. It’s then that I realize how weak she is, and the fear I felt moments ago drifts away on the cold breeze.
“Well, if you’re not going with me to hear what Johnny has to say, I guess I’ll go by myself,” she says. “Knowing Johnny, he’ll probably give me an earful about how your mama was the one that killed him. But knowing Johnny, he probably deserved to get killed.”
“Mama would never kill somebody,” I say.
“You’d be surprised what people will do,” she says, as though she’s had experience in being surprised. “You be careful,” she adds. “All sorts of ghosts out here.”
But she is the one stumbling around. She is the one that needs to be careful. I think of the footbridge she will have to cross to make it to the cemetery and wonder if she can stay upright long enough to cross it. She goes in that direction, and I call out for her to be careful. She trips and cusses and then pulls herself up again.
When her footsteps finally fade, I turn on the flashlight again, grateful to have the way illumi
nated. At the boulder where Melody sat are the butts of several cigarettes, as though she’d been sitting there a long time.
How dare she say that Mama killed someone. Mama would never resort to violence to solve anything. Granny might, but not Mama. I tell myself to forget about running into Melody Monroe and try to shake the creepiness away, but it sticks to me like the falling dew.
Halfway between both places, I wonder whether to go back home or to the Sectors. In the next second the wind picks up, and the whispers return, this time louder. I listen for a message on the wind that will solve this mystery once and for all.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Wildflower
In the dream, Lily is about to fall into the ravine. Over the years, I’ve had this dream a dozen times and was reminded of it yesterday before Melody Monroe arrived. It always gets my heart racing. Awake, I tell myself it isn’t real. That everything is all right. But something feels terribly wrong. To reassure myself, I reach a hand over to Lily’s side of the bed. I roll over and touch the other side of the mattress. I sit up in bed.
“Lily?” I call, not caring if I wake up Mama. “Lily?” I call louder.
I get up and turn on the light, stepping into my slippers and then putting on my robe. I open the door and find Mama in the hallway.
“What’s wrong?” she says, shotgun in hand. Her long gray hair drapes down her back. I hadn’t realized Mama’s hair had grown so long.
“Are you sleeping with that thing now?” I ask, pointing to the shotgun.
She doesn’t answer.
“Do you know where Lily is?” I ask.
“No idea,” she says. “Maybe she’s reading in the kitchen.”
I follow Mama into the empty kitchen. A plate sits by the sink, evidence that Lily has had a snack. Mama never leaves even one plate or cup unwashed before bed.
I turn on the back porch light and step outside. Winter is close. I can feel it in the breeze. “Lily?” I call again.
Mama steps outside, too. “My flashlight’s gone,” she says. “And Joseph’s coat.”
“Where would she go on a night like this?” I ask, more to myself than Mama.
“You two have a fight?” Mama says.
She sits the shotgun next to the door, perhaps ruling out foul play unless I’ve caused it.
I pause to think, rubbing warmth into my arms. “I brushed her hair before bedtime. I thought we were back on good terms.”
“It’s hard to know with Lily,” Mama says. “She’s much quieter than you are about things.”
We go back into the house. “I wish we had a telephone,” I say to her. “Now I’ve got to wake up Daniel and Jo.”
“Who would you call?” she asks.
“Pearl, I guess.”
“June would have sent word already if Lily was over there. She wouldn’t want you to worry.”
Mama’s right. June would have sent Horatio over here in the middle of the night just to set my mind at ease.
“Where is she, Mama?” I ask.
With no answers, she looks as worried as I feel.
To make sure we haven’t missed her, Mama and I search in every room. Our house is small enough that it doesn’t take long. There are no real hiding places in this house. The closets are small and have too many things inside to hide a person. Quilts are stored under the bed. I go to the front door and turn on the porch light and go outside. I call Lily again. Then I remember Melody Monroe standing in the yard. Could she be at Melody’s?
I run into the house and throw on my clothes from the day before. Mama studies my every move, telling me not to panic, but she doesn’t look that calm, either.
“I’m going to drive over to the Monroe place and see if she went over there,” I say.
“Surely she wouldn’t have,” Mama says.
Lily’s whole life has turned upside down in these last two days. I’m not sure what she will do anymore. I take the flashlight I used the night before and go into the kitchen to find new batteries. Luckily Mama has one package left.
“Do you want me to come?” Mama says, looking around for her shotgun.
“It’s on the back porch,” I tell her, “but no, I don’t want you to come.”
She looks relieved.
“Maybe you should go get Daniel,” she says.
“No need to wake everybody up, at least not yet,” I say. “Let me go over to Melody’s and just make sure she’s not there.”
It’s the fastest I’ve gone down the hill in a long time. The truck complains when I start it, like an old man not wanting to turn over and get out of bed. I don’t give it time to warm up before I pull out and drive down the road toward the crossroads. I park where I did the day before and head into the woods with the flashlight. I can’t imagine what Melody might have told Lily. We never got to talk about that yesterday. Melody has no way of knowing the whole story, anyway. Though from what she said to me, she has guessed some of it.
After a day of sunshine, the mud is less sloppy in places but it is still slow going. The cabin door is open and the light is on. It looks like somebody might have just stepped out to get a piece of firewood for the wood stove. I call Melody’s name. Then Lily’s.
“You in there?” I ask, stepping onto the front porch. My heartbeat quickens. I wonder if Melody has a shotgun she keeps close like Mama does.
An empty jar of moonshine sits on the table, as well as the same faded china cup with the chip on the handle. There’s a letter beside the cup, and I step close enough to read it. It’s addressed to someone I don’t recognize, probably Melody’s aunt, and it is signed Lester, short for Doc Lester. I pick it up and hurriedly try to make out his messy scrawl.
Doc Lester writes Melody’s aunt that she might want to meet Lily. That she is a special young lady. He tells her that she sings at the church, and then he says something about me. I shine the light closer. Her mama doesn’t deserve her. She’s a bad influence, he writes. As her next of kin, you should come and take her back with you.
His words frighten me. There’s never been any love lost between us, but I never thought he hated me enough to think me unfit.
I search the room to see if Melody’s things are gone. Could she have taken Lily back to Kentucky on the bus tonight? My body tenses. But her open purse is still on the bed, revealing the wadded dollar bills she offered me earlier. She hasn’t gone far without any money. But where has she gone on this dark night? I go outside again and up the slight rise to the outhouse. I pass the huge oak tree where Melody’s sister Ruby hung herself when I was twelve. A branch, as big as I am, has broken off and fallen to the ground. I shine a flashlight into the top of the tree and remember Ruby’s funeral—easily the saddest I’ve ever attended, aside from Daddy’s. A shiver climbs the back of my neck.
At the outhouse, I call Melody’s name again. Something scurries away, and I catch the tail of a raccoon in the beam of my flashlight.
If Melody and Lily are together, where would they go? My secret sense answers me and I stop cold. Half running, half trying not to trip, I make my way back to the truck. I drive past our house and driveway and stop on the road at the beginning of the path to the cemetery. Cigarette butts are tossed next to the boulder in front of the gnarled dogwood tree that marks the beginning of the path. I remember the dream that woke me earlier. Lily falling. Lily falling into the ravine. Forcing myself awake before she landed.
Aiming the flashlight up the path, I begin to run. Every few yards I call out Lily’s name. When I get to the footbridge, I stop to catch a jagged breath. I shine the light down into the ravine, but its beam doesn’t reach the bottom. I call for both Melody and Lily, my shout edging toward a scream. But the forest is quiet. Dead quiet. I remember how Lily said she heard whispers here, and I wonder what the ravine would have to say if it could speak. Would it tell the story of Johnny’s death? Johnny lying dead at the bottom. My gold medallion around his neck? Sadness reaches for me in the darkness, as if tapping me on the shoulder to get my attention. It
is an old sadness. One I haven’t felt in a long time.
The wind shifts in the trees, and the sound of the rushing water drifts from below. I remind myself that a forest at night isn’t a scary thing for me. Daddy would take me fishing in the middle of the night or he’d take me and my sisters to a dark meadow to count lightning bugs. Daddy made nighttime seem magical instead of scary. Yet the darkness tonight feels different. The night is hiding something from me.
Searching for relief from my panic, I shine the flashlight into the forest. It feels like someone is watching me, but I see no one. I call out Lily’s name. I wait, listening for an answer. When none comes, I turn around and retrace my steps, pleading with the angels and demons of the past to not let history repeat itself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Lily
After walking down the middle of the dirt road that leads to the Sector’s house, I question what I’m doing here. Not being able to sleep was part of it, and then running into Melody Monroe. But also, I want to see Crow before he leaves.
One light is on in the kitchen window of the small farmhouse. It occurs to me how easy it would be to spy on people if a person wanted to. I turn off my flashlight and let the kitchen light guide me in. It could be anybody in that kitchen. Horatio or June, or any of their four kids, Crow being the oldest.
Please, God, let it be Crow, I say out loud.
Mama says she and God aren’t on speaking terms anymore. But how can you see a gold Mary and be mad at God at the same time? Aren’t they related? I step closer, grateful that the curtains were left open. A lone figure sits at the kitchen table reading a book, his back to the window.
Thank you, I say, looking up into the starless night.
I tap on the window and shine the flashlight to light up my face. Crow smiles. He opens the kitchen door.
“What are you doing here?” he whispers.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I whisper back.
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