by Ronald Kelly
And just as the last spasm of life seemed to shudder through her being, she pulled her hand away from Vera's stomach and found herself back in the world she knew —a world of light and color and concerned hands reaching out to grasp her.
"Cindy . . . what happened?" demanded Maudie, her voice upset. "What in tarnation is the matter with you?"
Cindy ignored her mother's flustered questions. Her bright hazel eyes were glazed as she stared blankly at Vera Mae's puzzled face.
"It's dead," she told her.
Vera Mae Holt leaned forward, her confusion now edged with cold fear. "What did you say, child?"
"The baby . . . it's dead."
Maudie Biggs was shocked into dumb silence, as were the others present. Her hands closed firmly, almost angrily, upon the girl's narrow shoulders. "Now, that's pure nonsense, Cindy. Why would you want to say such a terrible thing?"
The numbness had worn off now, and the redheaded girl stared at her mother, tears welling in her eyes. "It's true, Mama," she choked hoarsely. "I swear it's true. It is dead. It is!"
Maudie glared hard at her daughter and then glanced up at the other ladies. Clara and Stella both eyed the child coldly, as if they thought her outburst to be some awfully distasteful joke. Vera Mae and her mother were just the opposite. They seemed truly affected by Cindy's exclamation. Vera Mae sat back in her rocking chair, her pretty face pale and sick with worry.
"That's a mighty hateful thing to say to someone in Vera Mae's delicate condition!" Maudie said heatedly. She steered Cindy toward the edge of the porch and swatted her sharply on the bottom. "Now, you take your brother and wait for me out by the gate. I'll be there directly."
Cindy cast a quick glance at Vera Mae, a glance full of pity and sorrow, then took little Sammy's hand and descended the wooden steps. Old Tippy, the Biggs' bluetick hound, poked his head from where he had been dozing beneath the porch and reluctantly followed the two children. As the trio crossed the ankle-deep grass of the yard, Cindy heard the young mother-to-be speak in a trembling voice.
"Mama ... I don't feel so good. I want to lie down for a while."
Then Cindy was running. She reached the chicken wire fence and its open gate, its metal strands rusted orange from years of neglect and harsh weather. She released Sammy's hand and hugged the hinged post, her eyes streaming with bitter tears and her breath hitching in shuddering sobs. What she had just experienced on the front porch of the Holt house was something she could not even begin to comprehend. It had all happened in her mind, yet it had been so real. The entire episode had horrified her, as did the knowledge that Vera Mae's unborn baby had died only a few short moments before.
She listened as her mother apologized for her unusual behavior, then saw Maudie's blurry form through the prism of her tears. A moment later the woman's powerful hand had closed around Cindy's upper arm, hustling her down the dirt road toward home.
"How dare you embarrass me like that in front of Vera Mae and the others!" grated Maudie, dragging her daughter to the side of the road. She pulled a slender switch from a hickory tree and stripped the leaves from its length with one sweep of her hand. "You just wait till we get home, young lady! I'll give you a whipping you won't soon forget!"
Cindy Ann stared at the wicked switch through her tears, her bare legs almost stinging at the mere thought of the punishment to come. She cried mournfully all the way home, but it was not for her own sake. Her tears came because of something she had seen just before pulling her hand from Vera's bulging waist.
A fleeting glimpse of a small, white casket being lowered into a gaping maw of Tennessee red clay.
Chapter Two
They buried Vera Mae's stillborn child the following Sunday.
The cause of death became apparent at the end of her torturous labor. The umbilical cord, the life link between mother and child, had entwined itself around the delicate neck and strangled the infant boy.
Only a few neighbors and close friends accompanied the Holts and their kin to the little cemetery near the Coleman Church of Christ. The day was identical to the one on which the baby shower took place. The sky was clear, the sloping hillside with its scattering of tombstones blanketed with a carpet of young clover and buttercups. Women in dark dresses and veils and rawboned men in ill-fitting suits stood out conspicuously against the sunny, spring afternoon. In everyone's mind, there was something basically wrong about the day's cheerfulness. It just did not seem like a day for burying.
Vera Mae stood beside the tiny grave with her new husband and their kin. She looked much different than she had a few days earlier. The glow of motherly expectation had been replaced by grim depression, and she looked as if she had aged twenty years overnight. She stared across the small hole in the earth, her glazed eyes settling on familiar faces. The recognition seemed to fire an ugly emotion deep in Vera Mae, and she glared at the gathering of concerned country folk with the deepest of hatred.
Most of the blonde's hard feelings were directed at the Biggs family, who stood foremost at the grave's edge. Maudie was there, along with her husband. Clayburn Biggs was a lanky, dark-haired man of forty; a man bronzed Indian red from a life of back-breaking work in the harshest of elements. His face was long and homely and hangdog sad. At the urging of his wife, Clay had abandoned his faded Duckhead overalls and dusty brown hat for his best Sunday-go-to-meeting duds. Patent leather shoes and a touch of Wildroot Creme Oil had transformed Clayburn Biggs from a grease monkey of a tobacco farmer into a rather impressive figure of a man.
Vera Mae's hate raked the faces of the couple and then moved on to the Biggs children. Polly stood beside her mother, while Josh, a sheepish youth of fourteen, took his place beside his pa. Next to him stood Johnny, the eldest. Vera had gone to school with Johnny, but did not know him as well as the other boys in her class. Whereas all the other boys could not keep their eyes, or their hands, off the spicy blonde, Johnny Biggs had never flirted or come on to her in any way. He had always been the perfect gentleman, much to the disgust of Vera Mae's ego.
Her eyes left Johnny and centered on Cynthia Ann. Cindy caught Vera's burning gaze on her. She sensed the hatred directed at her and averted her own eyes to the exposed earth of the gravesite. There it was, the same as in her fleeting vision a few days before. A gaping black hole tunneled by spade and hoe from the rich Tennessee clay. And, within, a perfectly constructed coffin in miniature. Someone had been thoughtful enough to put a thin coat of white paint upon the pine boards, again turning Cindy's strange prophecy into stark reality.
The preacher, Brother Stan Powell, began to read from the Twenty-third Psalm as men respectfully removed their hats and women began to sob softly into lace handkerchiefs. His words were comforting to them all. He told of Vera Mae's tragic loss and gave it a blessed meaning, assuring that God had chosen in His divine wisdom to recall the unborn angel back into His heavenly fold.
Everyone seemed to take solace in the good reverend's soothing words. All except Vera Mae. Her eyes continued to glare at the little white casket as if her very will might raise the precious baby from its eternal rest. The young woman's emotions were understandable to them all, especially the ladies, for Vera Mae had lived a miraculous dream for nine long months. A dream that had abruptly plunged into the depths of nightmare because of the single touch of a child.
After the preacher had said all there was to say, folks began to express their heartfelt condolences and file down the rocky pathway to the churchyard. Winston and Vera Mae seemed far away, unreceptive to the constant barrage of sympathy. However, when Clay and his family walked over, the young blonde's eyes grew livid with sudden fury. She pushed past Clay and Maudie, searching out the source of all her grief, all her lost hopes and dreams. Finally, she found it. As Winston took his wife gently by the shoulders, Vera extended a trembling finger at the cowering Cindy Ann.
"You!" she cried. "You're the one who did this! You're the one who hexed my baby!" The grieving woman's words came at a rapid pace, slurred,
but clearly heard by everyone there, even those on their way down the pathway.
Cindy stared up at Vera Mae, frightened at the spectacle she was making of herself. Everyone within arm's length could smell the liquor on Vera's breath. Obviously, the girl had gotten hold of a bottle shortly before the funeral. Cindy knew much of the woman's anger was just a mixture of grief and cheap whiskey, but a good portion of it was out of genuine loathing for the girl with the fiery red hair.
"Come on now, Vera Mae," Winston told her softly. "There ain't no call to blame the child. What happened to the baby was the Lord's doing, not Cindy's."
"Hah!" laughed Vera Mae. The sound came out humorless, a harsh and balking noise. "What happened to my baby was more the devil's deed than God's. She's a damned witch, I'm telling you. Laid her evil hands upon me and struck my baby dead!"
Cindy backed away from the raving woman, aware that she had met up with someone's legs. She looked up to see her big brother Johnny there. Johnny's nearness had always made her feel safe, for she had a special fondness for him above the others. But this time she could find no comfort from Vera's withering glare or the haunting truth of her hard words.
As the sobbing woman was led away by her mother and father, Winston Holt, haggard and unshaven, crouched before Cindy and smiled. "I don't want you worrying none about Vera Mae. She didn't mean it. Just her grief talking, is all." He put his calloused hand on her shoulder. "Nary one of us blame you for what happened."
But what he said was not true. Winston's concern was false. Cindy sensed that strongly as she looked into his handsome face. The hate that seethed beyond those sunken, blue eyes was every bit as real as his wife's. How could you have done such a thing, you little bitch! his thoughts screamed at her. How could you do that to our baby? She felt the heat well up inside him, felt the rage threaten to break from its restraint. She knew he wanted to grab her shoulders roughly and shake her, strike her savagely across the face. But the facade remained intact. Winston Holt walked away, that smile of innocent reassurance held rigidly on his face.
The tears came then, uncontrollable tears spilling down her freckled cheeks. She broke away from her family and ran blindly down the worn pathway, weaving through the departing crowd. Spotting her daddy's old Ford pickup, Cindy climbed into the bed and found a safe corner near the rear of the cab, next to the spare tire. There she wept, long and hard. She wept for Winston and Vera Mae, and for the baby that now lay forever beneath dark red soil; but most of all, she wept for herself. Why had she been cursed with such a horrible power, Cindy wondered. Why did she have to conjure so much misery, so much heartache and suffering, for herself as well as others?
Her sobbing had reached its peak by the time her family got to the truck. Clay, Maudie, and Sammy climbed into the front, while the others piled into the back. She sensed someone settle beside her and felt the comforting caress of a strong but gentle hand on the back of her neck.
"It's gonna be all right, pumpkin. Everything's gonna turn out just fine."
It was Johnny of course. Always Johnny who came to her aid. During her long stay in the hospital, he had been the only one, other than Mama and Pappy, to visit her regularly. She remembered those days best of all, him reading her books like Swiss Family Robinson and the Wizard of Oz, making her laugh no matter how sick she felt. What she would ever do without him, now that he was about to leave home for the steady work of the CCC camps, she could hardly imagine.
At that moment, she did not even want to. Cindy buried her face against Johnny's shirtfront and continued her soft weeping, reveling in the nearness of him, wanting never to let go.
Chapter Three
The amber light of the setting sun peeked through the broadcloth curtains of the back bedroom when Cindy finally lay, exhausted and cried out, on the big, feather bed that she and her sister Polly shared. The rest of the family sat around the kitchen table, eating supper. Their quiet voices filtered through the bedroom door along with the clatter of old china dishes and silverware.
Cindy had half expected her father to make an appearance in the doorway, telling her to quit feeling sorry for herself and join the others for supper. But he hadn't and for that she was grateful. In the hour she had lain on the quilted bed, the nine-year-old had mulled things over in her mind, sorting out confusion and unsettling questions, trying desperately to find the right answers. She found herself thinking about her life, how it had become so very miserable in the past year—the confining year of her illness.
It began last June, on a hot noonday trip to the branch. While the other children played in the near-dry creek bed, she had found a spot all her own. She had stripped down to her undergarments, intending to wade through a still pool of murky water. The summer had been sweltering so far, and there had been no rain for weeks; so only a few puddles of stagnant water could be found in the stony bed of Green Creek.
Watching for snakes, she started across the ankle-deep pool. Halfway there she felt a pin prick at the back of her neck. She swatted at the sudden sting and found it to be a large mosquito. Cindy forgot the bothersome insect and continued on, but then another one bit her and another, stinging her on the bare arms and legs. Suddenly, a living cloud engulfed her. The swarming parasites covered her body, stinging, bringing huge, ugly welts. The maddening buzz of the insects filled her ears, turning fear into panic. Cindy ran screaming up the hollow, away from the harrowing mist of disease-infested mosquitoes.
A week or so later, Cindy was put to bed with a high fever. When her temperature reached a dangerous level, one that could not be controlled with cold compresses and home remedies, the Biggs family knew that their folk medicine was losing out. Clay drove the girl to Nashville one stormy night and checked her into a hospital there. The doctor informed Clay and Maudie that their reluctance to hospitalize their daughter had only worsened her condition.
For two months she lay in burning fever, her young mind drifting in and out of consciousness. Ice packs and various medicines only seemed to hold the illness at bay. Cindy remembered very little about those days. The fiery fever had cut her recollections into confusing fragments. She faintly remembered the faces of doctors and nurses, and the faces of her parents visiting her every weekend. Her fever also brought hallucinations, such as the trunk overflowing with pretty, china dolls that sat at the foot of her hospital bed. The one she had wanted to reach for so many times, yet knew didn't actually exist.
And there was the rooster. That seemed to be the most vivid concoction of her delirium.
There had been a cafe across the street from her hospital room, a greasy spoon whose name she had forgotten. But its sign, which she could plainly see from the window, sported a large depiction of a strutting bantam rooster, the outline laced in neon. During the daylight hours the sign was blandly unimpressive. But at night, the sign was lit up and, oh, what a sight it was. The rooster itself came alive, its magnificent plumage glowing in neon iridescence of yellow, red, and green. In burning fits of fever, Cindy would sometimes imagine the great bird strutting proudly along her windowsill, the hissing and popping of old neon bulbs transforming into an echoing cock crow. The sights and sounds of the hallucination seemed starkly real to the little girl. They almost seemed to transcend the barriers of her weakened mind and awaken something hidden dormant, in the far reaches of her soul.
After a stay of six months, due to complications of pneumonia and mild meningitis, she was finally released in late November. She was still sick, but on a steady road to recovery. Most of her hair had fallen out, she weighed a good twenty pounds lighter, and her legs were so weakened from the illness that folks wondered if she would ever walk again. But the love and guidance of her family had made her slow recovery easier and less painful. By the spring of the following year she was nearly back to normal.
Cindy was concerned however with her father's staunch attitude toward her. Since her return home, Clayburn had had very little to say to his daughter, his eyes noticeably cold toward her. Although she d
id not know it then, Clay Biggs had sold a good portion of his precious tobacco land to Ransom Potts, the local banker, just to pay off Cindy's expensive hospital bills.
It was during her recovery that Cynthia Ann began to notice that things about her had changed. It was her thoughts and feelings that seemed strangely alien, a disturbing knowledge of things unknown to others. She began to sense things, to know about events that were to take place in the near future. The episodes were insignificant at first, little things, like what her mother would be fixing for supper that night or what song her brother Johnny planned to sing before he even picked up his guitar. But then the power had grown more frightening in nature. Like with Vera Mae Holt and her baby.
Cindy was jolted from her disturbing memories as her mother entered the bedroom and, shutting the door behind her, walked to the bed.
"You feeling any better, Cynthia Ann? I fixed you up a plate." Maudie Biggs held out a plate of white beans and a slab of yellow cornbread, as well as a glass of cold buttermilk. "It ain't much, I'm afraid, but you know how times are."
"Yeah, I know," said Cindy. Suddenly her problems were secondary, her ravenous appetite taking their place.
Maudie sat beside her daughter as the child ate. She watched her, concern etched in the lines of her plain face. Hesitantly, Maudie reached out and brushed the bangs from Cindy's eyes. The nine-year-old looked up to see tears welling in her mother's eyes.
"Mama . . . what's wrong?"
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry I whipped you the other day."
"That's all right, Mama," Cindy began, even as she remembered the stinging lashes of the hickory switch on the backs of her legs.
Maudie dried her eyes with the end of her apron. "No, it wasn't all right. I should've known what you said about Vera Mae's baby was true. I reckon I just didn't want to admit to myself that you really had the gift."