by Faith Hunter
For a moment I missed my dogs so strong my chest ached. They had been John’s dogs, working dogs, and he’d found my love of them amusing. Even before he died, they had been too old to work, but they hadn’t been too old to love or to love back. But the cats never had. Until now. Until Paka tamed them for me with her magic.
The dogs had been all I’d had for years, all that loved me when I was lonely or empty or afraid. And they had stayed with me all these years, until the churchmen decided them being dead would make a good message to me. I hoped my message to Jackie was just as strong, not that he’d ever cry over Brother Ephraim’s disappearance. No. He’d be after me eventually. And this time, things would be different. Because I was different.
At the thought, my hands burned and itched, as if in memory of the wood’s power zapping Joshua. Or the memory of Ephraim’s life slipping through my fingers. I might not have defeated Jackie today, but I’d put a hurtin’ on him he would never forget.
FOUR
I woke the moment the churchmen began their trek along the boundary of my property. The feel of their footsteps yanked me from a sound sleep, and I rolled from the hammock to the porch floor, dislodging the cats, who hissed and arched their backs in displeasure. Heart pounding, I pushed through the screened porch door and stepped onto the grass. There were three churchmen, treading steadily, carrying equipment that clanked, making the animals dart away or crouch and grow still, as was their nature.
But I’d been wrong. They weren’t on my property, they were a good fifty feet out, on the Peays’ farm, which adjoined my property to the northeast. And they were crossing over into the Vaughn farm. I realized that these weren’t men here to kill me. These were the watchers who spied on my property from the deer stand on the neighbor’s land, churchmen who had been there off and on for months. And I realized that I hadn’t seen them during the time when Jackie had attacked. He had sent them home, taken their place. That made sense. But, I had never before been able to feel the watchers that far out. This was new and unsettling, as if, with the gift of Brother’s Ephraim’s body and soul, my woods had grown, had spread their borders.
Overhead the leaves rustled uneasily.
I felt the men climb the wooden ladder nailed to an old bur oak, and settle on the deer stand that was built like a triangular treehouse, secured to the bur oak and two black walnut trees. One of them peed off the side of the deer stand. Stupid, that. Deer would avoid the place now. I didn’t feel worry or anger off the men. More that friendly, chatty emotion men exuded when they were with their friends and intending to be sociable for a few hours. I had never picked up so much from people on my land. It was more than disconcerting. Surely this awareness would dissipate over time.
I went inside and, working without light, opened up the wood box’s dampers and added two split logs to the firebox, both summer woods—wood that burns cool. One was a hefty piece of poplar and a smaller, dryer piece of pine. They would make more ash than the harder, faster-burning wood, but they were fine for keeping a fire going all day. The small pine lit right up, and I closed the wood box door. With the hand pump I added more well water to the hot water heater. It was something I had to attend to carefully, because too little water in the tank could allow the seams to melt, and replacement was expensive. The pump to the hot water tank wasn’t automatic. The well and cistern were on high ground, so gravity kept the rest of the entire system filled, but I had to hand-fill the hot water tank.
It was still dark when I washed up and dressed in fresh clothes, browns and greens, muted shades. I gathered my keys, library books, some baskets, and my purse, and walked silently to my garden, missing the dogs in the dark of predawn, their noses damp and cool as they poked at me, sniffing, warm bodies pressed against me, tails slowly swinging. The grass was wet with dew that wicked up into my skirt hem. It was too dark to get a good look at the garden, but the ground beneath my shoes told me that a bean plant was broken and weeping from the shooting yesterday, but was still alive; I’d lost some late tomatoes, including a huge, dark brown purple I had been trying to save for seeds, but the garden wasn’t traumatized—it would live. I raided it for cucumbers, several brown tomatoes, black tomatoes, and a dozen small purple tomatoes to trade at the market, a colorful mixture of peppers, and a mess of beans that would have gone stringy soon. All the veggies went into the baskets I carried, while in the back of my mind I was thinking that the plants needed pruning and the entire garden needed mulching and nothing was getting done out here in the soil and no foodstuffs were getting put up for winter. My garden was suffering another day with lack of care, this time because of Rick and Paka.
I stowed the produce in the bed of the truck, along with a few treats for Kristy, one of the librarians who was also a gardener. We had become friends, and I didn’t have many, so the few I had were special. Whenever I went to town, I always put a thing or two in the truck for her.
I started the old Chevy, which coughed when it turned over, but ran quiet, and backed quickly around, hoping to keep the backup lights from being seen by my watchers. Without headlights, I made my way along the crushed-rock drive and on down the mountain. I was able to feel my woods all the way, which was new and a little disquieting, but it let me know that the men hadn’t moved from the deer stand and probably hadn’t seen me leave. They would have no idea where I’d gone, and might not know what to do about my absence, without making the long walk back to the church compound to ask for instructions. Hopefully by the time orders were relayed—on foot, thanks to the lack of cell signals—I would be back home and the repair men would be here.
It was after sunrise when I pulled into a street parking spot for the second day of a weeklong farmers’ market. Normally, it ran only on Wednesdays, but the city fathers were trying new things to bring people and money into town, like an extended schedule for the farmers’ market for fall produce. I parked the truck in an inconspicuous spot and made my way through the park, feeling odd, but oddly right, to be wearing one of my new skirts, sturdy shoes instead of work boots, and a button-up blouse over a T-shirt. I’d chosen a dark green skirt and matching T, with a white overblouse, colors and shapes close to the garb worn by the churchwomen, though theirs were all hand-sewn, and I had purchased mine at a local clothing store.
Going to market was wise in ways other than just seeing my family. I traded even or received cash for my veggies and jams and preserves. I didn’t reckon I’d be getting a check from PsyLED right away. It might take weeks to be paid and enjoy the freedom of having money, a disposable income.
Fleetingly I wondered if freedom would make me dangerous, as the churchmen claimed freedom did to a woman. And then decided that if it did, I didn’t care.
Spreading a small blanket on the dew-wet grass, I tied my hair back with an elastic and sat, my small pocketbook in my lap, my back to a tree, my baskets close to my knees. I set a wide-brimmed hat on the blanket and slipped off my shoes, placing my feet in the grass and working my toes into the soil. I leaned back against the tree bark. Contact with tree and earth shivered through me, sudden, shocking. I drew in a slow breath, feeling the power of my land even here, so far away from my woods. That had never happened before. Never had my woods found me when I was off-site. I breathed out, letting the electric tingle settle into me, into my bones and my viscera.
This was more. Too much more. Even in my resistant brain I knew my magic had changed. Grown.
Brother Ephraim’s blood and death had been far more powerful than I could have known. For the first time I felt a twinge of worry about his passing into the woods, his blood smelling so odd. Maybe he had been sick. He would have died in moments anyway, I knew that, but with him gone, at my hand, only minutes before nature would have taken him . . . was that really murder? Was the blade of the merciful still murder? The garrote of the priest to the one on the stake to burn? By today’s standards, yes. But it hadn’t always been so. And if it was now, should I care? Wa
s my claim and Paka’s agreement about me having the right to rule on my land correct? Or had my deliberate actions changed the nature of Soulwood, and me as well, me reaping the death I had sown? I wasn’t sure about the questions, and I had no certain answers. I also had no guilt or shame in what I had done, and maybe that made me as evil as the churchmen, and as dangerous as they claimed free women were.
I closed my eyes, feeling the sun rise, lifting over the horizon, the first pale rays turning golden, warming the earth. I settled into a partial lotus position, hands on my knees. The churchmen, if they passed this way, would ignore me, thinking me a modern-day hippie. Others might think me a new-age sun worshiper, or a Jesus freak out to pray, or a Hindu, or a yoga practitioner. I was none of those, but if I ever prayed anymore, it was like this, my face to the sun, in contact with the woods and the ground.
Traffic was already busy this morning, the vibrations of passing vehicles subtle under my feet. A cop on foot patrol paused by me, and I smiled without opening my eyes. “It’s a beautiful morning, Officer.”
I felt him start, the emotion passing through the ground and into my body. “Ma’am,” he said as he moved away. I felt it the moment his attention went elsewhere. Interesting. I wondered again if this awareness would fade as Ephraim’s energies were absorbed and commingled with the other man I’d fed to the forest. The sensation I was getting was . . . overly alert, agitated, hyper-reflexive. If I was presented with a child like this, by a concerned parent, I’d suggest he or she be given chamomile tea with lavender or lemon balm. For an adult, I’d suggest blending in valerian. But this was wasn’t a human, it was the woods themselves. I couldn’t see a way to feed my woods a soothing dose of herbs big enough to do it any good unless I bought out an herbal supply store and dropped the chamomile from an airplane. The image made me smile.
A voice said, “I almost didn’t recognize you.”
Rick. So much for being hyperalert. I hadn’t known he was there. Was that because I had claimed Paka, and through her also placed a claim on Rick? That was a scary thought. I opened my eyes to find him standing on the sidewalk nearby, facing Paka, as if he was speaking to her and not me. I interlaced my fingers and stretched my arms up over my head, hiding my mouth from view as I said, “That was the idea, me in churchwoman attire, or close to it.” I leaned out, stretching to look at the booth. “They’re here, setting up. If I’m a clock, then the church booth is at two o’clock. The women are my sisters Priscilla and Esther, and the Cohen sisters.”
It was an odd grouping of churchwomen to say the least, as the Cohens had been taken from the punishment house during the law enforcement raid and into protective legal custody, last I’d heard. I was surprised to find them living back among the church folk, walking free, and out in public, unless the menfolk wanted the world to see them and assume that they were okay. Or maybe they were here so that Priscilla and Esther could watch and then tattle on them. Anything was possible in the twisted minds of the churchmen.
“Go away,” I said to Rick and Paka. I felt them drift to the far right, away from the churchwomen’s booth and into the market.
Hours had passed as I sat on the land. It was ten a.m. and most booth spaces were open, so I stood, put on my hat, took up my baskets and blanket, and walked across to the nearest booth. Like the others, it had a tentlike tarp overhead, a long table in front, and unopened boxes at the rear. The vendor sold unusual varieties of seeds and late-planted beans that were still in the pods for canning or eating now. Since my garden had been shot up, I traded some of my winter squash—three heirloom varieties—for some purple-podded pole bean seeds, a packet of rare Kentucky Wonder bean seeds, as my own stash was smaller than I wanted, and a packet of rattlesnake beans for spring planting. One can never have too many beans. I canned and dried mine, and sold them fresh, in season, by the peck basket at another market on the roadside. While I dickered with the vendor, offering my veggies for their seeds, I also traded for three varieties of heirloom lettuce seeds and one variety of melon—Rocky Ford, which looked good on the package.
While I dawdled over the seeds, I managed to make eye contact with Priscilla from beneath my wide-brimmed hat. I shot a glance to the outdoor latrines, and held up a hand, flashing five fingers two times, suggesting a meet in ten minutes. I got a slight nod and a tense line of lips in return, and went on to the local pickle producer. She took my largest basket full of small, firm cukes and exchanged them for five small jars of her secret recipe of bread-and-butter pickles. There were enough cukes to can more than ten large jars, but I didn’t want to do the canning, so the trade was good enough for me. I didn’t eat much in the way of cukes and pickles, and the face creams I made only lasted for so long in the fridge.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as Priscilla made an excuse and headed for the standing, portable toilet booths. Without picking up my speed, I made a line to intersect her, and caught up.
When we were out of sight of the sales booths, Priscilla rounded on me, her face pinched and drawn, made worse by the hair, bunned-up tight atop her head. “Are you trying to get me in trouble or did you’un just get stupid alla sudden?”
“Neither.”
“Then talk fast. People are mighty jumpy roun’ the church today.”
“Jumpy how? Who’s jumpy?” I pulled off my hat to see her better.
She looked back toward the booth, out of sight but not out of mind, and gripped her brown skirts in both fists. “Brother Ephraim done went missing last night. There’s those that say you’un are behind it, what with your witchy ways.”
“I’m not a witch,” I said, the words by rote. The assertion was the truth and not words I used to say to make me feel better.
I wasn’t a witch. I was something else. Something worse.
“Are you in danger?” I asked her softly.
“Because a you? Prob’ly,” Priscilla grumbled, but her expression softened as she took in my bruised face. “What happened? You okay?”
“I’m good enough,” I said. “So Brother Ephraim’s missing? What are they saying?”
“Him and Jackie and Joshua Purdy went hunting over close to your place, and Brother Ephraim walked away and never came back. And Joshua’s saying as how you called up a demon to attack him.”
“Mmmm,” I said, trying to be encouraging, trying to decide if I should tell her more. I decided not. “That’s it?”
“That’s enough, ain’t it?”
“I heard . . . I heard there were some outsiders around. Any new people in the compound?” Priss looked confused, and I tried to find another way to ask this, knowing how my matchmaker sister would take it, my sister who thought every woman needed a man and a dozen children in order to be happy. But I couldn’t think of anything except to blurt out, “Any new men?”
Priss’ face went from sour to happy and hopeful in an instant. “You thinking about taking a husband again? Coming home?”
“No, Priss. I’m not coming back to the church. It isn’t my home. Hasn’t been in a decade.”
Her face fell and she crushed her skirts again, a gesture that looked nervous as her hands smoothed out the wrinkles, gripped the cloth, smoothed out the wrinkles, over and over. “You’re helping outsiders again, ain’t you?” When I didn’t reply, she made an expression I had seen on Mama’s face, a pinched, fearful look, but it slid into resolute and stayed there. “Fine. Ain’t no new people. No new men. I heard that some a the younger boys was hunting and come upon a nonchurch boy and they’re playing in the woods together. Jackie seemed to know his people, and approved it, so long as they don’t act up or get into hooliganism and put graffiti on the houses.”
That was a surprise. While it wasn’t uncommon for boys or men to see or encounter nonchurchmen in the woods at hunting season, they weren’t allowed to interact with them, only speak and move on. Church people didn’t associate with outsiders. Even outsiders like me, who had
once been insiders, hence Priss’ nervousness. “Anything else new?” Gossip. I was asking for gossip, which I had never listened to when I lived there. But Rick wanted news, and I hadn’t talked to Priss in a long time. I didn’t know what might be important.
“Some stuff you wouldn’t know ’cause a you not coming round no more,” she said. “After the social services raid, Preacher Jackson took everything outta the punishment house. This month he installed a guest quarters there, with a tiny kitchen and bath and two little bedrooms. It looks nice. But then he put the winter supply cave off-limits for a bit, and we’re worried about having enough foodstuffs to last the winter.”
The punishment house had been a narrow structure with a bath facility and four beds, each bed equipped with straps to hold a woman down. The cave was one of three, the winter supply one used only for storage. “So where do the women go when they get punished now?”
“You’re always looking for the bad stuff. The dark side.” Her face went pinched again. “But this time you got a point. Jackie done built him a room on the back a his house. He’s in charge of the punishing now, both the women and the men. And he’s got him what Caleb’s calling a cadre of cronies who hang out with him and take part in the punishing. It’s got Caleb and Daddy and his friends all riled up. Caleb’s afraid him and his own bunch might have to fight for the church leadership.”
“Oh.” That meant the Nicholson cadre—my family—and their hunting buddies disagreed with church policy. I had no idea how to respond to that. It was beyond any expectation or understanding of the church and how it worked. In my recollection, no one got riled up about anything. They followed along like sheep to a shearing. Except that John and Leah had backed away from the church, and then John and I had left it. So maybe I hadn’t understood the politics of the church as well as I’d thought. I had only been twelve when I left it, all filled with righteous anger and—