Cold. Wind. Cold. Follow me.
I pulled a handful of corn from a pocket of my skirt. As Brim milled it to bits between her killer teeth, I leaned against her warm, winter-shaggy neck. Send some prayers for Gus, I whispered. I’m worried.
Brim and I made our way past the charred rubble of the sheep barn, with me holding onto her coarse mane for support.
I had set up my spinning wheel in the old dairy barn’s long, drafty hall between the wooden berths where dozens of milk cows had munched their hay and grain. I settled on the stool and began filtering long strands of wool from a basket at my feet.
Luce.
Gus’s voice came through as if he’d spoken out loud.
My bones dissolved, my legs shook, and I slid off the stool. I sat on the dirt floor gasping for air and clawing at the wool.
There are trap doors everywhere. Quick sand and invisible cliffs. Hidden meanings and riddles; windows you were never meant to open. Check under the bed, and behind the back seat of the car, and inside the closets. Never go to the store alone. Never go outside at night. Never go outside at all, if you can help it.
My heart hammered. I patted the bulge of my pill container in my skirt pocket, just for reassurance, while struggling to inhale through my nose, slowly.
It was like trying to siphon yogurt through a straw. This was bad.
Breathe in, blow out. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .
Suddenly, everything turned quiet. The wool sent emotions mixed with a kind of psychic text message, sometimes clear, often muddy, like a card you find soaked in the rain by your mailbox. I listened hard, but it had stopped transmitting.
Heat, fear, the itch of my skin under layers of cotton and sweaters. He must be hurt.
The flock gathered around me, nuzzling me. I didn’t mind their well-managed smells, and they didn’t mind my well-managed agoraphobia. They knew me for the whir of my wheel, the whoosh of my carding drum, the click of my knitting needles. I was their Silent Shepherdess.
She Who Sits and Spins and Rarely Speaks.
My brain was on fire.
It was a message. Let me feel his pain. Let me. I can take it. I know pain. I can handle his pain. Just not my own.
Nothing.
I got up and staggered into a stall I used as my private cubicle. Seated on the air mattress with my laptop and phone, I tried to reach Tal, then Gabs.
No answer.
Just checking in, Tal. Still haven’t heard from Gus. Two weeks on patrol and counting. Longest patrol yet. I thought sure he’d be back at the base by today. You’ve heard anything?
Cookies or dill pickles. Sweet or sour. Tal and Gabby would have tuned into him through their gift, and he through his.
My heart pounded.
I jumped when my computer dinged.
Hey, Luce! Nope, no word from Gus. But all my vibes are good. Never once have I, Gabby, or Gus been in serious danger that the other two haven’t sensed it. Gabby and I have been talking about our parents. We sense-smelled them all morning. Always a good sign, when they’re around us. I’ll pick you up in thirty minutes for the trip to Asheville. Take your meds. We’re going shopping!
I slumped.
Maybe my imagination was in overdrive. Tal and Gabs would be calling you if they’d sensed anything. Or heard anything. Except—what if he had been able to hide his injuries from us? Having psychic gifts was no guarantee the universe couldn’t sneak past you most of the time. Gabby had almost been shot by Jay’s deranged aunt. Tal had been tracked by thugs her ex-boyfriend sent.
Sweat soaked my cotton underwear and the Unbreakable Ewe tee Cathy had given me for Christmas. My feet, cased in the soft, striped socks Gus had knitted for me, felt soggy inside my hiking shoes. I could almost see steam rising from my gray wool skirt and sweater.
Breathe and imagine relief downloading into your brain. You’re growing stronger. You’re tougher. Breathe. Refill. Fifty percent, sixty, seventy, eighty. Almost full.
It stuck at 82 percent. Not bad, by my standards.
I’d had an ordinary panic anxiety attack, not a message from Gus.
Okay, I texted back. Ready in 30.
THE HARDENED HANDS of Afghani men and boys reached past the soldiers and medics to touch me, ignoring Sanchez’s pleas in Pashto; they helped carry the litter, they patted my bloody face above the oxygen mask and yelled above the noise.
“They’re thanking you, Sir! Thanking you for saving the village.”
I couldn’t save Bazir.
“We’re almost there, Captain. Let’s go up on that drip. Whatever’s bothering him, he needs to let it go.”
Maybe I’m no better than that bastard I killed today.
The keen of the woman’s grief stabbed me deep inside. Revenge. She cut my voice out.
Luce, I called.
The path was empty. My voice, and hers, could no longer connect.
I had lost my charms.
I WAS TRAPPED in the produce section of Mother Nature’s Super Soul Foods, Asheville’s biggest organic grocery store. I kept one hand in my knitted tote bag, clutching a wooden spindle Gus had sent me from Afghanistan. I’d wrapped it in a pair of socks he’d made for me.
“Come on, Lucy. Trust us. He’s fine. I know you have premonitions about him, but I think you’re wrong. He’s okay.” Gabby prodded my shoulder with a finger. “We’d feel it if he wasn’t. Gus will be home on leave in a few weeks, and you’ll be living here in the city by then, and you’ve got to do what Macy said.”
“Try not to scream?”
“De-sensitize.”
“That sounds like something you do to with a scrub brush,” Tal said.
Gabby gave her an evil green-eyed stare. Jay was finally back to his old arrogant self, again, after nearly dying, but Gabby was still not in a mood to coddle anyone who took her focus away from his recovery. “Push the cart,” Gabby ordered.
I tightened my sweaty hand on the grocery cart’s hemp-wrapped organic bamboo handlebar. Enya’s famous Celtic music droned over us. Music to seduce whales and sell odd varieties of carrots.
People aren’t supposed to suffer panic attacks in Asheville. It’s the South’s equivalent of your laidback hippy aunt, the one with the vague herbal smell and the subscription to Yoga for Wiccans. In Asheville, people get in touch with their inner mountain spirits. They meditate. They chant. They wear crystals. They find themselves.
I’d probably never find myself again.
Tal and Gabby had been through hells of their own, but they stood tall. Me? I stood small and white-blond, like the tassel on strange corn. I was trying to get bigger. Today, however, was not that day.
“You okay, Lucy?” Tal patted my shoulder with a strong, freckled hand. Tal was giving, huggable, fluffy. A big red-headed ewe sheep, defending the flock. “You did great in the clothing stores. When we finish here, we’re going to Gab’s condo and have some wine and you’re going to model your new clothes for us.”
“That’s an order,” Gabby added.
Gabby? More of a llama. Tougher wool, a biter, likely to spit . . . but very loyal and protective.
Breathe, stop sweating. No one can hurt you here among the vegetables. It’s safe. It’s all-natural. It’s organic.
My hand shook on the cart. The entire cart shuddered.
“Calm down,” Tal soothed. “You’re going to crack my box of eggs. Relax your grip on the handle. You’re going to pop a finger joint.”
“I miscalculated. I thought I could make it all the way to the parsley.”
Tal pried my hand off the handle. She rubbed it as if I needed thawing. “Remember what Macy says. Don’t give up. Let the panic roll over you and just be patient. Then go on with your shopping.”
Gabby bent down t
o peer at me. “Stop worrying about Gus coming home. You don’t have to have sex with him right away. You’ll tell him about your past. He’ll understand.”
I swore her voice could be heard all the way to the tofu chicken aisle.
I just stood there, shaking harder. “Next time we should practice going somewhere Gus might find more entertaining. He and I discuss a lot of books—what about taking him to Rabbit Glen Bookstore on book club night? That’s a place we should go to next. Book Club night in Turtleville.”
Both sisters gave me the side-eye.
Safe, breathe, safe. Nothing in this grocery store can upset you.
Well, except for maybe that produce clerk over there by the rutabagas. By Asheville standards he was ordinary. Tattoos, piercings, a mass of blond dreadlocks pulled back in a clump. I stared at the thumb-sized wooden plugs in his ear lobes. Didn’t those things hurt? How did he protect the tender lobe-holes when he took his wooden plugs out to wash them?
Stop thinking those thoughts. Breathe. Find your comfort zone. All is well.
Gabby wrapped one strong hand around my forearm then cupped her free hand to her mouth. “We need the price of Xanax on aisle two,” she intoned in a perfect imitation of the store’s PA system.
Very funny. I wished I could laugh. I wished I could breathe. I wished I could leave Rainbow Goddess Farm without hyperventilating. I wished I were a MacBride pioneer woman, brave and enormous, instead of little Lucy Parmenter, a suburban refugee.
I wish I could throw myself into Gus’s arms right now, wearing nothing but a smile.
Tal tugged my arm. “One foot in front of the other. Just take it slow.”
Move slowly? If I move any slower I’ll go backwards in time. “I need to get back to the farm before the weather turns. Carl can drop me off at the helicopter, and I’ll wait for you to finish shopping.” Carl, a bodyguard working for Jay, had been a Navy SEAL. He and his wife, an Asheville pediatrician, had five daughters. We talked about babies, guns, and how to drown people.
“The weather isn’t going to turn,” Gabby said. “We’ll get a few snow flurries, that’s all.”
“You’re blocking the aisle,” a woman said loudly. “You people need to hold a counseling session somewhere else. What’s wrong with . . . ” She stared at Gabby, recognition creeping into her eyes. “I hope all that Wakefield money makes you happy in Hell.”
Wakefield soared over the vegetable bins. Every anti-fracking, mountain-loving customer in the vicinity tuned into the signal. Jay’s uncle was always in the news. Even though under indictment for a decades-old attempted murder—a case that looked increasingly less likely to ever go to trial—he continued to run the state’s largest mining company. Wakefield Industries wanted to start drilling for natural gas in the state parks.
Gabby scanned the scowling faces around us. “Jay Wakefield is no longer in the mining business. He’s a builder and investor. He’s responsible for preserving some of the oldest buildings in Asheville. He’s against fracking.”
The woman rolled past, eyeing Gabby balefully. “Wakefield apologist.”
“Your soul smells like rotten sauerkraut. And I don’t mean that in a redundant way.”
Tal’s phone chimed. She plucked it out of her tote and frowned at the screen.
“Military,” she said, holding up the phone for Gabby to see, her green eyes worried. She whispered, “I don’t smell a thing. You?’’
Gabby shook her head. “Gimme.” She took the phone. “I’m older.” They had a joke. Take-charge Gabby, the older one. I’m older, she’d say, whenever she claimed something out of Tal’s hands.
“Hello? Gabby MacBride here.” She cocked her head, listening to a voice that Tal and I couldn’t hear. The color drained out of her beautiful face. Gabby took a deep breath. “But the explosion didn’t kill him. He’s going to live, correct? He’s going to live?”
Gus.
12
“LIGHTS OUT, CAPTAIN. We have very good anesthesia here. You’re going to take a nice, long nap while we work on your left leg and tidy up a few other spots.”
Blinking up into the bright lights of an operating cubicle in a field hospital, I tried to see Luce. Sky-blue eyes like worlds of sadness in a delicate face framed with hair the color of white gold against North Carolina mountains. Yarn spinner. Wool charmer.
Luce. She’d been hidden down inside me, not able to come through the cloud of pain and drugs. I’d put that video on a constant loop, memorized every second of it. I can handle this as long as she’s there. Hell, yes.
I shut my eyes and dropped down into the mental hammock where Luce always joined me. It was easy to conjure her brew-essence at will; to soothe my loneliness, my emptiness, and yes, the raw need to slide inside her and move until we both blended together. The essence of Luce . . . a taste of honey and crushed fruit, blueberry wine, too sweet to make a dark beer . . . Luce came from tender starters, that’s how her brew always tasted in my mind, but there was something fragile, too . . . something easy to spoil.
At night, on patrol or in my cot at the base, I’d lay awake inside her, letting colors and textures form around the taste of her spirit, the heat and shades of light and dark, all of them gliding over my body. As if she were stroking me.
There were times, deep and powerful moments, when we’d talk all night, her nighttime in North Carolina, and she’d be outside in the moonlight with her sheep. I knew something was damaged inside her; just not what. It would be wrong to push, even playfully. But she’d say something like, “I always wear the socks you made for me, they’re very comfortable and roomy,” and as simple as that statement was, the essences that poured out of her would make me so hard I’d have to get up and pace my small room and try not to let the arousal creep into my voice during the rest of the conversation.
I waited. Nothing came to me. It was like being thrown into a moldy cellar after spending a lifetime living in a kitchen full of flowering hops, beer mash, open spice jars, pots of simmering sauces, and every good aroma known to every cook in every culture of the world.
I concentrated. Pinpoints of alarm crawled up my spine. It’s the pain meds. It’s the fear. Hell, no. There’d never been a moment in my life when I couldn’t pull up my kitchen charms. Luce. Wrap me in your shawls, pull me in.
But she wasn’t there, anymore.
THE BLIZZARD OF THE CENTURY, Bugle Eye called it on his Facebook page, before the internet and phones went down. CHECK ON YOUR NEIGHBORS. STOCK UP ON PROPANE AND FIRE WOOD. BRING THE PETS AND THE CHICKENS INSIDE.
Silence is a black pit filled with glowing eyes. When will their owners creep forward? When will those eyes merge with hungry mouths?
Up on Twist Thumb Ridge, where a huge barnacle of layered rock stuck out from the evergreens and rhododendrons, the cell phone tower bolted atop that ancient ledge grew an even thicker coat of ice. The tower served all of Jefferson County. Falling trees and slip-sliding vehicles took down the power lines. The county’s crews kept only a few roads cleared, and those were in Turtleville.
I carried my phone with its knitted pouch tied around my neck so no reborn sound, no vibration would escape me. It lay against the skin of my breast bone with cold regard, a rectangle of ice.
In Atlanta, Chattanooga, Nashville and other big southern cities, it was as if a glacier had formed over the streets. An inch of ice. Five inches of snow. A Dixie Ice Age. Up in the highest peaks of North Carolina and Tennessee, where the level above sea water felt like Canada, we were on the look-out for wooly mammoths.
Pike worked around the clock to take care of the five thousand citizens who inhabited the hollows and backroads of Jefferson County. He took care of people. So did Delta. She rode along on the county’s only bulldozer up to the north end—the high ridges surrounding the footprint of the mild Turtleville plateau—to take food to people living off the
grid, or who were too old and stubborn to come into Turtleville, where the churches set up shelter at the high school and the country club supplied food and blankets. Down at the Crossroads Café, Cleo and her team shoved tables against the walls and set up pallets. Folks in need of warmth and food filled the rambling house from its front veranda to its back dining rooms.
It was all hands on deck at the farm, caring for the livestock and each other. The high country reverted to the old paths and foot travel at times like this. Neighbors rode horses or hiked along razorback ridges to check on each other in isolated cabins and rickety house trailers. Deer haunches were pulled from meat coolers. Jars of homemade soup bubbled on camping stoves. Thermal underwear was already part of the standard wardrobe; also quilted camo overalls, waterproof boots, ski masks, and cords of firewood, propane tanks, generators, four-wheel drive and lanterns. Iron skillets and lidded pots older than the great-grandmothers who used them were set into fireplaces, heaped with coals, turning out cornbread and biscuits.
Everyone with a bulldozer, a backhoe or a garden tractor scraped trails along the side roads. Alberta used the farm’s ham radio network to coordinate the work. We were far better off than the counties around us—Jefferson County had a helicopter, thanks to Cathy and Tom Mitternich. People gossiped about Cathy’s wealth; did her movie star money beat Howard’s chicken fortune? Variety reported that her Dazzle the Dragon Rider paycheck was well into seven figures now—just for voicing the animated character in the highly successful franchise.
Delta shrugged and smiled when outsiders dug around for clues. After all, Cathy and Howard were both cousins of hers. But when people pressed her, Delta answered with the glint of sugared victory in her eyes. “Howard says he pays enough in taxes. Howard buys favors, Howard buys wives, Howard buys influence. But Howard won’t give a penny to help local causes. Does it bother him to hear folks wonderin’ if me and mine have got more from givin’ than he’s got from gettin’? You bet your donkey it does. When Cathy bought that whirlybird for the sheriff’s department? Boy howdy. You coulda heard a pinfeather drop in Howard’s camp. His cockadoodle-do had been cockadoodle out-done.”
The Kitchen Charmer Page 16