Circle of Fire (Mysteries through History)

by Evelyn Coleman

  Aunt Sis screamed so loud, Mendy put her hands up to her ears.

  “All right, all right,” Mendy said, thinking fast. “Listen, Aunt Sis, I’ll take you out past the Devil. How about that? I won’t let the Devil get you.” She shined the flashlight so Aunt Sis could see her face clearly. “See? It’s me, Mendy. I’ll keep the Devil away from you, Aunt Sis. I promise.”

  But Aunt Sis shook her head. “The Devil ain’t scared of you,” she said.

  Mendy almost laughed. Aunt Sis wasn’t so crazy that she didn’t know that much. If the Devil was out there, he sure wasn’t scared of Mendy. Mendy sat down and moved as close as she could to Aunt Sis. She stroked Aunt Sis’s wrinkled hand gently, on the verge of crying at how mad Mama and Daddy would be if she didn’t get home soon. Then Mendy had another idea.

  She started singing the ditty that Mama had taught her yesterday. If Mama’s mama knew it, maybe Aunt Sis knew it, too. Mendy had been humming it ever since in her mind. Suddenly, Aunt Sis started singing it with Mendy. She squeezed Mendy’s hand back. Mendy sang and pulled on Aunt Sis’s hand until she finally led her out of the cave.

  Now it was dark. The last trace of sunlight had vanished from the woods, and a chill had crept into the air.

  Mendy removed the blanket that she kept as a lining in the wagon and wrapped it around Aunt Sis’s shoulders. Gently, she took the white cloth from Aunt Sis’s hand and stuck it into her own pocket. Then she helped Aunt Sis into the wagon and laid the walking stick across her lap. “You ready to go home?” Mendy asked, wishing she’d never started coming to these woods at all. Just like Mama said, these woods were trouble with a capital T.

  It wasn’t easy pulling Aunt Sis in the wagon over the ridges, rocks, and thistled brush. It took Mendy longer than she wanted it to take. Aunt Sis sang “The Green Grass Growing All Around” every step of the way.

  Once they reached Aunt Sis’s cabin, Mendy helped her wash up and gave her something to eat before putting her to bed. Mendy waited until she heard Aunt Sis snoring lightly. Then she pulled the cloth out of her pocket and examined it in the moonlight that shone through the window.

  As she stared at the red mark on the cloth, Mendy’s hand began to shake. The cloth was painted with that strangely shaped cross inside a circle—the same symbol she’d seen on the dingy cloth Mr. Hare had been wrapped in. Could Aunt Sis really have killed Mr. Hare?

  Mendy listened as the trill of the singing toad echoed in the trees just like a song, the way it always did on warm summer nights. It was late now, which meant Mendy was in for another whipping. She looked down at her clothes; they were full of dirt and ripped in places. Her legs were scratched up, too. Mama and Daddy both might whip her this time. Mendy checked that Aunt Sis was sleeping peacefully. Then she took the wagon and went home.

  On the way, Mendy thought about Aunt Sis. Her sleeping face had looked as sweet as a baby’s. No, Aunt Sis wouldn’t have killed Mr. Hare. Besides, Aunt Sis wasn’t the person who left the mushy-topped cigar or the beer bottles and cigarette butts in the clearing.

  But if Aunt Sis didn’t kill Mr. Hare, then who did? And why was Aunt Sis holding a cloth marked just like the one Mr. Hare was wrapped in? Maybe she had just found the cloth in the woods. But then, what did the red mark mean? Was that what had made Aunt Sis so scared?

  Mendy recalled Aunt Sis clutching the cloth and babbling, “The Devil done come … This proof the Devil is here.” What had Aunt Sis meant by that? Mendy shivered. She herself had surely felt the Devil’s presence in the clearing. Now, thinking of the evil people who killed Mr. Hare, Mendy considered something else. What if the trespassers knew about Aunt Sis’s cabin, not far from the clearing? What if they had come to her house to hurt her, and that’s why she ran to the cave to hide?

  Mendy felt sure now that the trespassers weren’t just stupid kids. Aunt Sis wouldn’t have been frightened like that by any kids. These were men, and whoever they were, Mendy felt certain they were dangerous, not just to animals but to people. She needed to stop them before they did something worse to Aunt Sis. Mendy felt weak with relief when her house came into view. She took her whipping without protest.

  Mendy wished she could just tell Daddy everything that had happened. He might know what could have scared Aunt Sis enough to send her to the cave, or what the symbol on the cloth meant. But tonight, even Daddy was mad at her.

  Mendy went to bed, but she tossed and turned, unable to sleep. What she had seen tonight made no sense to her. And uneasiness about the trap she had set began to creep over her. Maybe she should just leave these evil people alone. And besides, what she’d done with the snakes was mean and nasty. Sure, they were only water snakes, but whoever found them would think they were copperheads. Was it right to do that to a human for killing a rabbit, even if the rabbit was Mr. Hare? As Mendy lay there, she wished she knew whether she was doing the right thing. But she had to do something to scare the men away in order to protect Aunt Sis.

  And then the answer struck her: Doing something wrong will never set anything right. Isn’t that what her parents and Grandma had taught her?

  Tomorrow she would undo the trap. She’d just have to think of another way to protect Aunt Sis.

  The next day was Saturday, so Mendy had fewer chores. She hurried to Aunt Sis’s and was glad to see her back to her right mind. Aunt Sis greeted Mendy cheerful as ever.

  “I got you an orange doper in yonder,” Aunt Sis said. “Hit ain’t cold but it’s good.” Aunt Sis would often say hit for it.

  Mendy went inside and got the orange soda off the table. Grandma called them dopers, too. Mendy debated whether she should bring up Mr. Hare or the cave, but Aunt Sis seemed so peaceful that Mendy decided against it.

  When Mendy went back out to the porch, Aunt Sis was standing and looking out at the dark clouds building up over the woods. “Hit’s gon’ be a frog strangler coming up in a few. We’s best get on inside.”

  A few minutes later, hard rains thundered through the forest. The rain on the tin roof sounded like men buck dancing on top of the house. Aunt Sis whiled away the time telling Mendy stories about Grandma when she was a girl. Aunt Sis said that even when Mendy’s grandma was little, she could heal animals and people.

  “Your grandma was a pistol, though. She had a pet skunk. And when anybody bothered your grandma, naw, she weren’t no fighter—she’d just let the skunk take it up for her. Ain’t many folk wanna bother your grandma, neither.”

  Mendy laughed so hard that tears came to her eyes. It had been a long time since she’d laughed out loud.

  Soon the rain stopped, and the sun came out and dried up the leaves quick as nothing. Mendy told Aunt Sis she’d be back later. Aunt Sis didn’t realize it, but she’d given Mendy an idea.

  Mendy headed to the Taj Mahal with a new plan. The snake trap would only have been good for revenge, but it wouldn’t protect Aunt Sis or tell her who the men were. Aunt Sis’s story had helped her figure out a trap to do just that.

  At the clearing, Mendy undid the snake trap. Then she picked some herbs in the damp shade—catnip, quinine, and a red flower that Grandma said Mendy should not use “because it would knock a body out.” Mendy stopped by her cave and got a sack, then went tracking, reading the forest floor as easily as she read her schoolbooks. The trees had protected the ground from the rain except for a light sprinkling.

  Daddy had been teaching Mendy how to track since she was a little kid. Tracks with five toes on both front feet and hind feet meant coon, badger, skunk, beaver, porcupine, muskrat, or bear. Four toes on front and hind feet meant fox, wolf, coyote, bobcat, rabbit, even a house cat. If the paw print had small triangle marks in front of it from claws, that narrowed it down to a coon, skunk, coyote, fox, or dog.

  Today Mendy was scouting for a critter with five toes in front and back, and triangle marks in front of the paws. She was looking for a white-striped skunk.

  During the warm months, Mendy knew, skunks spent their days sleeping in thickets, so that
’s where she concentrated her search. Grandma always told her that even though skunks had sharp teeth and claws, they weren’t attack animals. That’s why they had spray. Grandma had showed her exactly how to approach a skunk to catch it. “If the skunk don’t want no part of you, it’s gonna show you it means business before it sprays. It’ll raise its tail or stand on its hind legs, and as a last warning it’ll stomp its front feet at you as if to say, ‘Git!’”

  It didn’t take Mendy long to find a skunk curled up asleep in a thicket. She tiptoed up to him and placed the herbs and the red flowers close to the thicket. Mendy hunkered down nearby and threw a stick toward the skunk. He raised up and stared in the direction of the thud. Then, almost like a gleeful child, he scurried over and sniffed the leaves and the red flowers that Mendy had left. Mendy watched the skunk eat until they were all gone. He took a few steps, then lay down. Mendy waited patiently until she could see he was sleeping soundly.

  She carefully laid the skunk onto the sack. Then she loaded him in the wagon and headed back to the clearing. She put the skunk inside the hole along with a few twigs to eat and covered the top with the wire screen. When the skunk woke up, he could get out if he wanted to bad enough. Mendy didn’t think the skunk would wake up tonight, though, and if he didn’t, he’d likely sleep through the following day, too.

  Mendy hoped the skunk would still be in the trap when the trespasser returned. The skunk would spray for sure if he were surprised down in the hole. Then the culprit would be easy to find, because he’d be full of skunk sulfur. Mendy put the red-marked cloth and the bowie knife back in place and smiled.

  Mendy left the clearing feeling that this was the best plan yet. Nobody would get hurt, and she might actually learn who at least one of the trespassers was. Mendy stopped by to check on Aunt Sis and then headed home. Now Mendy felt more at peace. Soon she would know who’d been stirring up trouble at the Taj Mahal.

  CHAPTER 6

  TROUBLE WITH A CAPITAL T

  The next day was Sunday, and Sunday was family day. Mendy knew there was no chance of slipping off to check her trap. She was sure the skunk would be sleeping anyway. He wouldn’t attempt an escape until nighttime.

  Mendy put on her Sunday dress, lace socks, and shoes without her usual arguments. After church, Daddy and Mama sat on the front porch, watching Mendy play with Li’l Ben in the front yard. A little later, Daddy churned ice cream while Mama made a peach cobbler for dinner. They ate dinner late.

  Afterward, Daddy read to Mendy and Mama from a book that Myles Horton had sent home with him called As a Man Thinketh. Mama didn’t say much, but Mendy could tell she would rather hear reading from the Bible. Mendy only half listened. Her thoughts kept going back to the trespassers. Had they come back to the clearing? Had they found the skunk trap? Mendy bit back a grin, thinking about one of the trespassers getting sprayed. But then her stomach twisted. Maybe, she realized, he would think Aunt Sis had put the skunk down in the hole and go after her. Mendy needed to get to the Taj Mahal, but there just was no way to do it.

  Finally, Daddy stopped reading and got ready to leave. He had to drive through the mountains to Chattanooga tonight for a blacksmithing job that was going to last all week. For the first time in her life, Mendy felt glad when she saw Daddy drive off.

  The minute Mama went to bed, Mendy sneaked out. She saddled up Tandy, placed a canteen on the saddle, and rode toward the Taj Mahal.

  As Mendy neared Jeb Connor’s woods, she saw lights flickering among the thick trees like giant fireflies. A plume of smoke rose up from the clearing.

  Heat flushed through Mendy’s body. The people who had killed Mr. Hare and scared Aunt Sis were in the woods right now. Mendy felt her knees trembling. She hugged herself as a shiver traveled like a snake down her back.

  At the edge of the woods, near the stream, she tied Tandy to a tree and removed the canteen. “I’ll be back. Stay put,” she whispered.

  At the stream, she wet her feet and filled her canteen. Mendy moved silently through the woods, the way Daddy had taught her to sneak up on an animal.

  Mendy began to hear sounds from the clearing—the noise of grown men talking and laughing. She stood very still and listened.

  There seemed to be a lot of men, more than Mendy had expected. Snatches of words floated out to her—angry, mean words. She stood at attention, every muscle in her body tense. Her heart beat wildly inside her chest. Her palms itched with sweat. But she could not turn back now. She had to know who these people were.

  Mendy knelt down, opened her canteen, and began to inch forward under the cover of thick thorn bushes. As she crawled, she held the canteen in front of her and soaked the leaf-covered ground with water to make her movements quieter. Thorns pricked her hands, knees, and arms. Tiny trickles of blood dotted her skin. Finally, she was close enough to peep through the tangle of bushes into the clearing.

  What she saw stopped her breath.

  A dozen men stood in a circle around a fire. White robes covered them from head to foot. They wore tall, pointed white hats. And they were waving white flags with that blood-red symbol.

  Mendy shivered like a wet dog. In the flickering firelight, the men looked like ghosts, or demons. Mendy was so close to the clearing that she could see a man’s ring glint in the firelight, could see shoes scuffing the dirt. The men were shouting now, their jeering voices so loud that the sound pierced Mendy like arrows. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The men were yelling about Myles Horton and the Highlander School. They were saying hateful things, calling Mr. Horton ugly names and saying he was a traitor. Mendy watched, her heart squeezed with pain as the men shouted and jeered. Tears streamed down her face. Why were they talking about Daddy’s friend this way? Who were these men?

  Mendy crawled backward until she was a safe distance away. Then she jumped up and ran, praying that the sound of her footsteps could not be heard. She shook so badly that she could barely untie Tandy from the tree. Mendy thought of Daddy saying people were upset with Myles Horton, and of Mama saying somebody would get hurt at Highlander one day. Would these men hurt Mr. Horton? Mendy couldn’t just stand by and let that happen. And what about Aunt Sis? Suppose they did something else to her.

  But what could Mendy do? She couldn’t tell Mama she’d seen this. She wished Daddy were home. Who else could she tell?

  Mendy’s heart pounded loudly in her chest. She didn’t know what to do, but she would do something. She had to.

  When Mendy was safely back in her room, she went to the dresser that she shared with her sisters. She picked up the framed photo of Grandma that sat on top. Mendy held the picture frame tight and wished that Grandma were here. She would know what to do.

  Mendy trembled in her bed all night. She could not sleep for thinking about what she’d seen in the woods. Mendy understood Mama better now. She understood what trouble with a capital T was, and it had something to do with that blood-red symbol. The symbol on the cloth that had been wrapped around Mr. Hare. The symbol on the cloth that Aunt Sis had clutched in her hand. The symbol on the flags those men waved in the air tonight.

  Maybe Aunt Sis had been right after all. Maybe the Devil was here—in Jeb Connor’s woods.

  The next morning Mendy made a decision. There was only one person who could help her: Jeffrey. He was the only person she could talk to—or at least he was the only one who wouldn’t whip her for going on Jeb Connor’s land or punish her for sneaking out in the middle of the night. Mendy scribbled out a note in their secret code and hurried to Jeffrey’s house.

  The back yard looked deserted. Mendy slipped to the clothesline, set the note under a big gray rock that Jeffrey could see from his bedroom window, and turned the rock flat side up so Jeffrey would know she’d left a message. He’d be waiting for her at the spring right after lunch—unless he really was the chicken-livered dog that Mendy had seen that day with Mama.

  After lunch, when Mama lay down to help Li’l Ben go to sleep, Mendy sneaked out of the house
and ran all the way to the spring. The afternoon was so hot she felt like she’d pass out by the time she got there. Mendy splashed cool water on her face, then paced near the spring, watching for Jeffrey.

  Finally she walked to the big willow and sat down under it. It looked like Jeffrey wasn’t coming. She couldn’t believe it. What could she do now?

  Just then something hit her on the head. For a second, she felt like she was sitting under Aunt Sis’s crabapple tree. She looked up but saw nothing. She snatched up a willow twig and started picking her teeth with it.

  Bop. A tiny rock bounced beside her.

  “Hey, who’s doing that?” Mendy yelled, jumping up. “Don’t hit me again or I’ll—”

  “Hey, Mend. Not so loud. It’s me. Do you want me to get caught?”

  “You snot-nosed chicken! What do I care if you get caught?”

  “It won’t be just me who’ll get caught, Mend. And I ain’t no chicken, either.”

  “You’re a chicken traitor, that’s what you are.”

  “Is that why you put out the emergency code? To fuss at me? Go on home, why don’t you, and leave me be.”

  Mendy stopped. Jeffrey was it—the only one she could talk to. “Naw, that ain’t why I used the code. I’m in trouble,” she said, sitting back down under the tree.

  “What type of trouble are you in?”

  “I don’t even know.” Mendy sighed. “Bad trouble, though.”

  “Bad trouble that you don’t know … How you know you’re in trouble then?”

  “Can you come down here, please?” Mendy said. “I’m tired of talking to a bird in a tree.”

  Jeffrey climbed down and sat beside her. “If we get caught again, I just want you to know my folks say they’ll send me away to a boys’ school.”

  “Come on, they wouldn’t do that.”

  “I’m not so sure anymore. My pa’s acting really strange lately. He wants to know where I am and who I’m with almost every minute.”