Goldeline

by Jimmy Cajoleas

  “That’s who you were taking us to? The thief?”

  “He was the only person I had,” I say.

  “He was a bandit,” says Tommy. “A real one. An evil man. He used you to rob people. Don’t you understand that?”

  “He loved me,” I say. “He was my only one.”

  “No he wasn’t,” says Tommy. “You got me.”

  Men with lanterns are off in the distance, heading toward us.

  “That’s them,” he says. “Goldeline, we got to go.”

  He looks taller now, braver somehow.

  “Get up! They’re going to kill us!”

  “I don’t care if they do,” I say. “It was all a lie, Tommy. Everything Gruff told me about Moon Haven. All the stories he told me about the Half-Moon Inn.”

  Tommy looks at me real curious for a second.

  “Too bad we didn’t make it here in time,” he says quietly. “It would have really been something to see.”

  “But don’t you understand?” I say. “The stories weren’t true. The Half-Moon Inn was just an old dump.”

  “How do you know?” he says. “You only saw it burned down, same as I did. Who knows what it looked like before then? I wouldn’t doubt it was just the same as you told me it would be. I wouldn’t doubt if it was even grander than in all the stories.”

  I gaze at Tommy a moment in wonder. It’s like he understands something I don’t, like he’s reminding me of something I nearly forgot.

  “I believe the stories you told me, Goldeline,” he says. “I believe every word. Now we got to go.”

  The men are coming faster now, they’ve spotted us.

  “Get up, Goldeline,” he says. “Get up!”

  Tommy yanks me up to my feet, and it’s like he’s pulling me out of a dream. Tommy’s right. We can’t get caught here, not like this.

  An orange cat struts and stretches itself out on the busted boardwalk. I think it’s the same one as before. It’s looking right at me, eyes gold and aglow. What do you say, kitty? Its tail loops up like a question mark, and I know.

  “This way,” I say.

  Tommy and me run to the closest storefront. The cat hops through a busted window smooth and quick as a ghost. The window is smashed and jagged with glass. I got to step careful through it. Tommy catches his knee on the glass and the skin rips and I think he’s going to scream but he shuts his mouth and grimaces it down. The store inside is wrecked, a druggist’s, little vials and bottles and powders all dark and horrible in the moonlight. It’s a strange world the night gives you, when medicine bottles cast shadows like demons in every corner. Outside the men gather, peek through the busted window, their lanterns and torches shining at us. We clutch each other behind a shelf full of bottles and try to become as small as possible. I scoot us toward the back of the store and a bottle falls. It’s just a tiny one, a hair tonic. Tommy reaches out to catch it but it tumbles off his fingers. The shatter makes every bone in me cringe.

  The men heard it too. They bang on the door of the store, they kick until the lock breaks and they’re inside and I know we’re done for.

  The orange cat looks up at me with her big eyes and shakes her head at me. She licks my palm, her tongue rough and hard, then meows her loudest.

  No! I hiss. Don’t tell them where we are!

  The kitty looks back at me as if to smile, and struts toward the front of the store.

  “Holy Lord, it’s just a cat,” says one of the men.

  “Best not be using the Lord’s name in vain,” says another one. “Not while we’re working for the Preacher anyhow.”

  “Shoot, he ain’t here. He’s off in the woods, hunting out escapees from the inn. He don’t got a clue what we’re doing.”

  “The Lord’s got ears everywhere,” says another. “That’s what the Preacher says. The Lord’s angels can hear everything you say, even everything you think. Then the angels come and whisper it right in his ear. That’s what he says, anyhow.”

  “You believe him?”

  “You seen what happens when folks don’t believe him? They wind up dead. Shoot, if that’s the case, I’ll believe every word the man says.”

  “Well, either way, if we catch these two, it surely will get us on his good side. Like the Book says, cover a whole multitude of sins.”

  “It says ‘Love covers over a multitude of sins,’ idiot, not nabbing a couple of little kids.”

  “Whatever. Just so long as we’re on his good side, I don’t much care one way or the other about love.”

  They walk off down the road slow and careful, shining their lights in every window, searching for us. It’s a strange thing, being hunted. I feel like my momma back on her death day, when they came by the house for her, when she sent me away to hide, when Gruff came and got me and brought me out to the woods.

  When the men are good and gone, me and Tommy sneak back out the front door. Tommy limps a little from his knee but not much. When we pass the old oak I stop. I have to say good-bye to my Gruff.

  I run over to where they hung him, under the branches of a tree older than all of us, a tree that will probably still be here long after we’re all gone. I shut my eyes and try to see his face, try to look into his eyes and tell him I love him one last time. To thank him for saving me.

  Sure, Gruff may have used me to help him steal. But that’s just one way to tell the story, the way someone else might do it. In my story—the way I’ll tell it until I die—Gruff saved my life. He showed me how to live in this world, what an evil place it could be and how to make it good anyhow. That’s the way my story goes. And I dare anybody to tell me I’m wrong.

  Good-bye, Gruff. I’ll love you always in my heart and in my blood. I’ll love you always with every one of my bones.

  I blow him a kiss and let it fly up where his soul went, up to where the stars are. If love covers over a multitude of sins, then maybe Gruff’s love for me saved him a little. It’s worth a prayer.

  Tommy grabs my hand and we run back down the street, back from where we came, back to the woods, not a hope left in the world for us except that we’re two of us, together, not each one alone. Somewhere out there a wicked preacher waits, coiled up like a rattlesnake, fangs out and ready for us. He’s hiding out there, and I hate thinking that we’re running straight to him. But we got no choice. We run back into the long loud dark of the woods.

  FIFTEEN

  For maybe an hour me and Tommy stumble through the night. The moon is up high and ghosty, the clouds cracked like a mirror. It’s hard to walk strange woods at night. You step and you’re never sure where your foot will land, what vines can trip you, what clawing creatures hide themselves down in the dark.

  I can’t tell if we lost the men or not. Every few minutes I think I hear them behind us, a crackle and a stomp, a flicker of light where there shouldn’t be any light. A fog’s creeping up in the damp like there are demons on the prowl. We’re tired and we’re hungry and the night is dark and full of bird sounds, strange cracks and yips and breaks, what sounds sometimes like singing. It’s like these woods are alive and full of ghosts tonight, wicked ones, the spirits of stranglers and child-nabbers huddled around cold fires. I know we made it safe through this forest once, just barely, but I’m scared to test my luck a second time. Tommy holds my hand and we walk through the woods with our other hands out like blind people, like kids scared of getting any more lost.

  When we’re too tired to go any farther I find us a tall tree with thick branches and a lot of leaves. It’ll be good cover. We climb until we’re higher than a man’s head, up to a thick limb that forks just right for sitting. I hang my pack on a close-by branch where I can grab it easy if I need to. Tommy leans against the trunk and I lie back against him and he puts his arms around me, for safety. Even though it’s hot I drape Zeb’s momma’s cloak over us, to protect us, to keep us hidden. Bats fly around, little blinks in the night. The moon is so lovely and unscared. She just shines and shines and wishes us well. I turn my face towar
d Tommy as best as I can. In the night his eyes are dark and glistening.

  “Thanks, Tommy,” I say. “You saved my life again.”

  “Happy to,” he says, smiling. “I just can’t wait till all this is over and we can get to my aunt Barbara’s house.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “You’re really gonna love it there.”

  Soon Tommy’s sleeping, his soft breath on my neck, his heartbeat gentle against my back, the warmth of the two of us together in the tree, safe and hidden.

  I like being with Tommy, but it isn’t the same. Tommy can’t be my family. Not really. How can he be when all I can think about is Gruff, and always in my mind is Momma. My dead ones, the ones who loved me. They’re the only family I’ll ever have.

  The tears start. I keep them quiet, lest I wake Tommy, lest I call the Preacher to us. I cry until I feel sleep coming. I hope I don’t have any more dreams tonight. I hope I don’t dream of Gruff. I don’t think I could bear to wake up from it.

  It’s still dark night but I hear something, a cackle and a laugh from far off in the woods. Through the trees a little twig of smoke sticks out into the sky. People—a few men from the sounds of it—around a campfire.

  I know I should stay up in the tree. I know it’s too dangerous to climb down, to go searching, but I have to. Something tugs in me, a quiet whispering voice on the wind that latches into my heart and begs me forward. I loosen Tommy’s arms from around me, careful not to wake him, and draw the cloak over my shoulders as I slide down the tree to the dirt below. I feel as if I’m in a dream, the soft flowing fog, the night birds, the lightning bugs blinking like green little souls.

  It’s so easy to be quiet when it’s just me alone, no Tommy crashing around behind me. Barefoot on the soft soil, I take myself through the fog, led by the breeze as if it were a song only I can hear. The moon looks down with a question in its eye. I’m on a mission, I know that, woken up just for this purpose. I creep close to the ground and quiet as a cat to the campfire. Three men lie sleeping around it, with four more sitting up, their backs hunched down, facing the fire. A soft-singing voice hums quiet, and it takes me a minute to know the song, but I do. It’s a hymn.

  The voice is one I know too, from real life and from nightmares. It’s the Preacher.

  “Right fearful night,” says one of the other men. “Could be all sorts of bandits afoot.”

  The Preacher stops singing.

  “Worse things in these woods than mere bandits,” he says. He chuckles to himself. “No, I’d reckon bandits are the least of our fears.”

  “What you getting at, Preacher?” says the other man. “It’s just kids we’re chasing.”

  “Kids, yes, from first look. Kids just like any other. Could be your very own children, your nieces and nephews. Evil loves to take a form of innocence, of beauty. Even a child.”

  “You saying these kids is under the grip of the Evil One?” says the other man.

  “Inside them lie dark and malign forces, set against us,” says the Preacher. He speaks slowly, softly, like he’s reciting. “The girl has a forked tongue. Her words are venom, a false gospel, rot to your ears. She will enchant you. Same as she enchanted the boy. She bent him, twisted him fiendish, made him crooked and as wretched as herself. He’s lost to us.”

  The smoke from the fire is a black curtain toward the woods that I can’t see past. It’s as if the fire itself is talking. When it wafts away I see the Preacher sitting up on a log, his back stooped, his silhouette a giant black crow.

  “How’d she get like that? I mean, how did a devil come to this girl we’re hunting?” says the third man.

  “Her mother,” says the Preacher. “Her mother was a witch. One of the first we cleansed, back in Templeton, in the early days of our revival, when the Lord first gave me the words with which to heal this land. A spirit of witchcraft may enter a child many different ways, by blood, by ritual. Sometimes the spirit even passes into a child through the bottoms of her feet, the tenderest place, while the babe is still in her mother’s womb. Such a child is doomed before she is born. So it is with the girl we’re chasing. She is her mother’s daughter, through and through, from the white hair to the gold of her eyes. Every bit her mother.”

  I hate when the Preacher talks about Momma. I hate that his words can touch her, can call her face up in my mind, can put her face over mine. That’s not his right. I creep around the edge of the campsite, so I can see them better. The Preacher spits into the fire. His hands twist a long blade of grass around his finger, twirling and untwirling it, tight then loose, in a spiral. He is working his magic over them, casting his enchantment with words. When he speaks it’s like I can see the words dangle and twirl in the air, dancing through the night and smoke and fire, bewitching the men, holding sway over their hearts and minds.

  “What do you know about evil?” says the Preacher. “From whence does evil come?”

  “You mean how folks go wrong?” says the other man.

  “I mean how evil begins. It starts small, tiny and quick as a notion, a pinch on bare skin, a stray spark in the cold darkness, that’s what evil is. But it isn’t content to be a spark, a pinch, a notion. A notion begets an idea, a plan. Just as a pinch begets a touch, flesh on flesh, a caress. And a spark always begets a flame.”

  The Preacher stretches his hands over the fire, spreads his fingers wide, the gangling spindly talons of them. The fire glows his hands red, glimmers his teeth. His scar shines like a seam, a stitching place healed over wrong.

  “It’s an ancient story, the very first one in all the Book. The Great Garden at the Beginning of the World. Perfection was a trial and man failed it. But the problem wasn’t man. It is the nature of man to fail such a test, creature that he is, lit alive by desire. Dangle the wicked fruit before a man and every time he will pluck it. The problem isn’t us. The problem is the fruit—tender, red-rotten, the tempting fruit. The garden is vast, and the trees are many. As the Book says, ‘Find the tree which beareth the tempting fruit. Uproot it and let it burn. Lest the evil sow its seed, lest the evil cause itself to spread, lest the garden be overwhelmed.’

  “You remember how it was in Templeton, even just a couple years ago,” says the Preacher. He spreads his arms wide and his shadow casts a cross, crooked and long, his fingers stretched into the darkness. His words wild dancing things that swirl through the air, bedeviling the men. “Bars and gambling, murder and crime, the disease. Homes wrecked and ruined. The woods of bandits on the left-hand side, a cursed forest on the right, our good and faithful town of Templeton stuck right in the midst of them. Every nightfall brought a new terror, did it not? You remember how afraid you were. Isn’t it better now?”

  The Preacher claps his hands together. His white hair wild, his hat wide-brimmed, his face ghastly and firelit, like a devil conjured up just for this meeting, this purpose and this reckoning. The smoke from the fire trembles away from him, as if it were afraid.

  “You’re right about that, Preacher,” says the other man. “Templeton ain’t even the same town anymore. Folks are safe now. My wife don’t worry about a thing. Only thing my kids are afraid of is snakes. Ain’t a bit like it used to be.”

  “And you, Bolivar Greencoats,” says the Preacher, and I can’t believe it. There he is, Mr. Greencoats, the man me and Gruff robbed and set loose in the woods, a man given my own forgetting herbs. He sits by the fire, low-down and squat and afraid. “Do you not remember the state in which I found you? Do you not recall the way you blathered and blubbered, mind gone blank and eyes baffled wide, the confusion on your face? You could not recall the names of your children, Bolivar Greencoats, you could not recall the face of your mother. You, wandering the forest like a lost son of the desert, half naked and wild. I healed you, I set you free from the little witch girl’s enchantments. Do you recall what I have done for you?”

  “Yes sir,” says Mr. Greencoats. I can see the fear in his eyes. The fear of what I did to him, and the fear of the Preacher’s own power,
a magic every bit as dark as anything he accused me and Momma of.

  “These children are seed sowed by bad fruit,” says the Preacher. “They will grow, and they will become unwieldy. They will spread their evil throughout the land, their blasphemy, their witchcraft, until the land is overcome. Yes, and then they will ravage. Do you now understand why we must catch them?”

  “Yes sir,” says the third man. “I reckon I do.”

  Is the town really safer now that Momma is dead? Now that Gruff and his boys are killed? The Preacher might be right. Maybe we were bad for the town. Me and Gruff robbed so many people. In my ears I hear every terrified scream of them.

  “Wish we would have brought all the other guys, too,” says the third man. “Wish we hadn’t left them back in Moon Haven, while we’re out hunting something so fierce as devils made flesh.”

  “Hard to run an army through a forest,” says the Preacher. “We can move quiet, just the few of us. We can find her and the boy faster this way. The Evil One is cunning, both serpent and lion, always on the prowl. We must be sober, and we must be vigilant. The Lord is our strength. He won’t let us fail.”

  “Still,” says the third man. “Wish there were more of us anyhow.”

  “Get your sleep,” says the Preacher. “Come God’s blessed dawn we got demons to send home. Regis has this hour’s watch, don’t you?”

  “Yes sir,” says the other man. “Couldn’t sleep a lick after all this devil talk anyhow.”

  “He shall grant his children tender sleep,” says the Preacher, lying down. “And the Lord is good to his word.”

  “I hope so,” says the third man, lying down as well. “Hate gotdang nightmares.”

  Regis, the man on watch, clutches his rifle and looks toward the fire. There’s a big gleaming knife laid out on a rock by his side. I wait just outside the firelight, belly to the ground, my body hidden by the fog, for what seems like hours. I feel like a cat tracking a bird. My eyes are sharp in the night, I can see extra close, I can see the stubble on the watchman’s chin, I can smell his breath from the flask he sips out of once he thinks the Preacher is asleep. And the Preacher is asleep, far as I can tell. His chest rises and falls steady like, in a rhythm. All I have to do is wait for Regis to sleep too.