Catching Moondrops

by Jennifer Erin Valent

  And Granddaddy Mac would nod and cling harder to the Bible. It was like that tattered book kept him alive, and every evening he’d ask my daddy to tell him what was inside. Daddy would get his own Bible, and I’d sit in the next room and listen to him flutter through the thin pages until he landed on the place he wanted to read from. Then his strong, fluid voice would recite the words until Granddaddy fell asleep, and even after if Daddy wanted to hear the words for himself.

  This went on every day Granddaddy Mac lived without Granny Rose, all twenty-two of them. That’s all he could do without her, just twenty-two days. And on the evening of that twenty-second day, as I watched Granddaddy Mac struggle to pull in air, I listened to my daddy tell his daddy all about Jesus and what He did to save us all from our sin. I watched my granddaddy, all hardened by years and work and pain and loss, well up with tears and nod.

  “I believe it now, Son,” he’d said at length. “And I know I’ll see your momma soon, sittin’ at the feet of Jesus.”

  I barely ever saw my daddy cry, but he cried something good when he heard his daddy say those words. There was such peace in his eyes that night, even in the face of loss. A half hour later Daddy sat at Granddaddy Mac’s bedside with his Bible next to his heart, his other hand on his daddy’s arm, just waiting for the life to drain out of him, and said the Lord’s Prayer.

  My granddaddy had never been a spiritual man, but he knew the Lord’s Prayer, and his lips moved to recite the prayer along with my daddy. But his breath ran out before he got to the part about trespasses, and he stopped to murmur his very last words in a whisper so soft I could barely make out what he said.

  Two seconds later, Granddaddy Mac died with a Bible in his hands and a prayer on his lips. But the very last words he said to my daddy were “Don’t let them put me in the colored graveyard.”

  I thought about him as I walked toward Cole Mundy’s house. I wondered why, if God’s so good, a body could come to know Him lickety-split like Granddaddy Mac did but still have bitterness left in his heart. What’s the point in asking Jesus into your heart if He doesn’t clean it up right off when He gets there?

  Anger burns the soul like matches, in little flames that singe and sting but mostly don’t do much. But those little singed spots smolder, and after a while they can build up into an inferno that no bucket of water can put out. That’s the kind of anger I had now. I’d had six years of angry matchsticks striking against my heart, and there wasn’t much now that could cool things down.

  Walking down that road with enough anger in my heart to weigh a body into the ground, I figured it was too much work to find goodness. Daddy had always told me we need to keep a watch on what we let in our hearts because what we let in there is what eventually comes out, only it comes out stronger than how it went in.

  “It’s like when Duke goes sniffin’ out some critter,” he’d told me once, “only he wanders into a skunk’s house and comes out without any dinner for himself and with a good ol’ stink on him. That’s what happens when you let the bad stuff inside you. You think it’s gonna get you somethin’ good, but all it gets you is a whole lot of rot that don’t do nothin’ but make you stink.”

  Well, I’d been sprayed by a skunk before, and the funny thing is that after a while you get used to the smell. It’s like your nose just up and changes its mind, and you don’t care so much about whether you get cleaned up or not. It’s not so much like that for the people around you, though, and I remember my momma and daddy trying everything from tomatoes to vinegar to get me smelling right again. And I fought tooth and nail against every new cure they tried without thinking once about how uncomfortable my smell made them.

  As I rounded the corner, thinking about those bygone days, a tiny little doubt started to tickle my brain, one that made me think maybe I shouldn’t put my momma and daddy through the stink of me again. After all, here I was walking around with a dirty heart and a vengeful mind with no regard to how unhappy it made life for them. What kind of good was I to them if I brought them nothing but heartache?

  Or what about Luke? I well remembered how worried he’d been that night I left him behind to come here and confront Cole Mundy alone. How long could I continue to act as though my desires were the only ones that mattered?

  As I came upon Cole Mundy’s property, what little good sense I had started to eat away at my anger like ants at a picnic. We had enough trouble around here that I figured maybe I didn’t need to go stirring it up myself. I stopped at the front of the house and stared at it, telling myself to walk away for a change, to just let it go.

  But sometimes things don’t happen the way we plan; in fact, I’ve learned that most things don’t happen the way we plan.

  As I began to walk away, I heard the sound of something I hadn’t heard much in my life. But it was the kind of thing that sticks in your head once you hear it. It was the sound of a man crying like his life was pouring out through those tears. It was a sound much like I’d heard from Malachi Jarvis just a short time ago, and it twisted my already-nervous stomach into a knot so tight, I wasn’t sure it would ever give loose.

  Creeping slowly so as to avoid making any noise, I approached the side window of the Mundys’ barn and peered in, knowing full well I was interrupting a sort of privacy nobody should have to forfeit to another human being. But conscience wasn’t my strong suit just then, and I squinted to see past the row of shovel and rake handles that striped my view until I caught sight of Cole Mundy sitting there in a heap on that dirt floor, his head in his hands. The wails that came from him didn’t seem to come from his throat but from deep down inside of him in some place most people don’t even know exists.

  I didn’t know what to think. Here I was all set to pour my hatred out on this man, one of the men that had become akin to Satan in my mind. My every thought had been on people like Cole Mundy and Delmar Custis, on how they were evil in suspenders and should all die and burn in hell for eternity. I had all sorts of ideas about who they were deep down inside, but I can tell you with certainty that not one of those ideas ever had anything to do with them sobbing out their troubles on the dirt floor of a dirty old barn.

  What little bit of conscience I had left finally tickled my heart and made me look away. I stared off into the sun that now sat half-shrouded by a black cloud and marveled at how it reminded me of myself, a woman with a heart that was meant to shine but was being overshadowed by grief and rage. I stared at it for a few seconds and then turned my back on it and on Cole Mundy’s anguish, and I walked away.

  Unfortunately, I took my hate with me.

  Chapter 16

  I didn’t go into town that day I saw Cole Mundy on his knees in his barn. Instead, I walked to the pond and sat staring at my reflection in the water for most of the day. It was likely the worst thing I could have done because thinking too much can sometimes be the enemy of good sense, and the more I thought about the things I’d been through in my life, the more sense just slipped on out of me. At nightfall I made my way home and walked up to my room without so much as an exchange of hellos with my momma and daddy.

  Fear can haunt you anytime of day, but it’s especially fond of the nighttime. During the day, things can seem a little brighter, but once the darkness settles in, all sorts of fear likes to creep on in with it. And that night, evil thoughts swirled around my head like the very demons of hell were walking circles around my bed. In fact, Gemma would say that was exactly what was happening.

  Gemma believed in Satan and demons and all that sort of thing. I believed in God and heaven and hell, so I figured there had to be someone in charge of hell, but I didn’t quite believe in the kind of Satan Gemma did. The way she saw things, this whole earth was just covered in good spirits and bad spirits, all fighting against each other every day like some sort of perennial battle of good and evil. But Gemma was a hand-raising, Jesus-praising Christian, and I figured her ideas of such things were as dramatic as all her other church ways. I’d told her as much in the past. />
  Every now and again, though, I’d get a feeling in the middle of the night like someone was choking the air out of me. My whole body would freeze, fear would fall over me like a wet blanket, and I’d shoot up in bed gasping for air. Gemma would wake from the ruckus I made, and as soon as I told her what happened, she’d point at me and say, “You see that? That’s them evil spirits I’m talkin’ about.”

  To which I would reply, “You believe in voodoo dolls, too?” Then I’d roll over, pretending I was going right back to sleep.

  I never really did, though. Most times I just spent the rest of the night tossing and turning, trying not to think of evil spirits camping out in my dreams and blaming Gemma for putting those thoughts in my head in the first place.

  Fear had a hold on me this night, only it wasn’t the kind of fear I’d had before. This fear had its roots in the thought of living my life with murderers going unpunished, and by the time the dawn peeked in through the window, I was bound and determined that in some way, sometime, I’d make those men pay for what they’d done.

  I’d been three full nights without sleep. I’d gotten past the weariness that comes at the beginning and gone on to some sort of emergency mode, where I seemed to be running on high speed, fueled by all my imaginings of white-robed men hanging from trees.

  I quickly readied myself for the day and made my way out of the house before anyone would spy me. Today was Noah’s funeral, and I knew Daddy wouldn’t have anyone working in the fields in honor of that. We’d seen plenty of death in Calloway over the years, and Daddy never let a stitch of work be done in the fields on funeral days. “In honor of a day’s mournin’,” he’d always said.

  I set out down the road, compelled by some twisted part of my soul to go back to that old tree by the roadside where I’d watched Noah Jarvis’s dead eyes plead for help. The thought had come to me in the middle of the night while I’d wrestled with those evil spirits Gemma talked about, and I was determined to go there as soon as the night drifted away.

  I reached the tree just as the sun started to turn its branches to gold, and I was amazed at how innocent it looked, as though no boy had given up his life on it just days ago. That was until I caught sight of the six inches of rope that still hung from the branch where Malachi had sliced through it. It hung there like a shadow over the earth, reminding me of the full force of man’s evil. With steps like a child, I slowly walked beneath the tree until I was level with the rope and stared up at it until the muscles in my neck began to burn.

  I wondered what went through his head as they beat him with their fists, kicked him, dragged him down the street against his will. What was it like as they tied that rope around his neck and he waited for his life to drain away? Did he hear them laughing, jeering at him as his body twitched and struggled for freedom?

  What kind of men look a young boy in the eyes and laugh with the knowledge that by the time they’ve had their way, he will no longer be part of the earth he was rightfully born to?

  I knew the answer. I knew those men, and I’d seen the hate in their eyes for myself. I knew who every one of them was. And I knew that not one of them deserved to live another day.

  By the time I pulled myself away from that tree, I was so overcome with emotion, it was as though I was watching myself from outside my body. I don’t even remember how I got from there to the colored cemetery. The cemetery sat well behind where the colored church once stood. I knew it would be only a few short hours before they would gather in memoriam on that burnt-out grass and then proceed to lay Noah Jarvis to rest here. The hole had already been dug, and I sat by the empty space in the ground that waited for Noah’s body to fill it. Just as that tiny bit of rope hanging from the oak tree had absorbed every part of me, so did this deep, dark hole in the Virginia clay.

  Fittingly, the clouds began to overtake the sun, dimming the landscape to fit the somber occasion. If you sit in faint light and stare at one particular spot for long enough, everything surrounding you seems to fade away, like you’re entering a dark tunnel. As I sat there staring into the dirt, it seemed as though there was no end to that chasm in front of me, almost as if once they began to lower Noah’s body, it would keep going deep into the earth, never finding the bottom.

  I don’t know how long I sat there. No thoughts went through my mind, no wild imaginings or vengeful schemes. In fact, there was nothing inside me, like everything that had once filled me up had spilled into that yawning tomb in front of me. If anyone had seen me there, my shoulders slumped, eyes staring vacantly into the dry earth, they would have packed me up for the asylum. But no one saw and nothing diverted my attention until murmuring voices announced the arrival of the first few mourners.

  They were still out of sight, and I managed to shake a small piece of myself free from the solitary place I had retreated into and stand, brushing the grass and dust from my skirt.

  The first person I recognized was Miss Taffy, who had worked with Gemma at the Hadley home some years back. And then there was Poinsettia Watts, wearing one of her bright floral dresses that couldn’t do a thing to brighten the sadness on her face. Her daughter, Posy, walked alongside her. There was a smattering of other folks with them, people I mostly knew by sight but not by name.

  Miss Taffy caught sight of me crossing the grass and reached both hands toward me even though we were still twenty yards apart. I stared at her vacantly, loath to have any sort of funereal conversation: How sad to see such a young life cut short or His poor momma, she’s bound to die of a broken heart. But Miss Taffy, she didn’t say two words to me outside of my name. Then she grabbed me so hard it hurt, and I wondered where on earth this woman had gathered up this newfound sensitivity. Once upon a time, she’d sooner knock me upside the head with her purse than give me anything even close to a hug.

  But I suppose death does that to people. It sort of makes us all equal since we have one thing in common—a broken heart. I didn’t have the strength or inclination to return the hug, but I slipped into it all the same, grateful to be held up since I couldn’t much see fit to hold myself up tall anymore.

  Before she let me go, she whispered in my ear, “He was a fine boy, and I hear you was a fine friend to him too.”

  If I’d had any tears left, I would have shed them right there on her lavender suit, but I was fresh out. She reached up and patted my cheek before making her way to greet the others who were now filing into the meadow.

  “There you are.”

  I glanced back to see Gemma and Tal walking up behind me. She took my arm in her hand and turned me about, but once she caught sight of me, her whole face drained so much of color, you might have thought we actually could be related. “Jessie, you look like . . .”

  She caught herself, but I finished for her. “Death?”

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  I looked away from her prying eyes. “I ain’t slept much, is all.”

  She meant to say more, I know, but she didn’t get the chance to before we were joined by Momma and Daddy, followed behind by Luke, who was escorting Miss Cleta with expert care. Nobody said much to me. I suppose there really wasn’t much for anybody to say to anybody else.

  Momma kissed my hair and murmured, “Mornin’, baby,” but that was all she said. That was all she could say.

  What I remember about that funeral comes in bits and pieces, like chapter titles without all the story filled in. I remember how the wind picked up so that the ladies’ scarves flapped into their faces and they had to keep a hand on their hats. I remember standing next to Luke with his arm around my shoulders. I remember Gemma on my other side, keeping a clawlike grip on my hand. I remember the preacher talking about how Noah Jarvis would be sitting at the feet of God, worshiping, looking down at us every now and again thinking we were crazy to mourn over him being in paradise.

  But most of all I remember the way Noah’s momma watched that casket like maybe the top would lift off and her youngest would sit up and come running to her, like t
he Lazarus of Calloway County. She didn’t cry much. I figured she’d run out of tears just like I had. But she sure watched that box like a hawk, so much so that I wondered if she could see something we couldn’t.

  A roll of thunder rumbled across the sky, and all I could think was Not now. I’d loved thunderstorms from the time I was small, and I didn’t want them tainted by the memory of this moment, doomed to think of death every time a bolt of lightning lit up the sky.

  I supposed that was how it was for Gemma. I think that was the first time I fully felt the depth of her pain and understood how the memory of a horrible time could haunt you for life. At the sound of the thunder, her fingernails dug deeper into my hand, and I peered at her in time to see Tal slip his arm around her waist.

  It was good of him to take care of her like that. Maybe he even took care of her in a way I never had.

  The preacher told us all to bow our heads to pray, but I kept my eyes open, watching the tops of people’s heads, listening to the murmurs of some of the colored folk, who every now and again would repeat the preacher’s words in a whisper or say, “Yes, Jesus. Thank You, Jesus.”

  All I wanted was an explanation for why they would thank Jesus that they were standing at the graveside of a boy who’d been cheated out of life. That prickle of anger started in me again, and it occurred to me that I was thankful to discover I at least had some feelings left in me.

  But those feelings weren’t any kind of good, and as I stood there while the pastor finished up his prayer, they grew inside me like the rumble of thunder as the storm drew closer. The second he said amen, he launched right into the first verse of “Amazing Grace,” and even though I knew it, I didn’t have voice or heart to sing it.

  The voices around me grew louder with the thunder like they were bound and determined to be heard over it. Miss Taffy was the loudest. Her eyes were closed, those thick hands of hers raised to the heavens, and I watched her as she swayed from side to side, praising the God who had taken Noah away.