She’d been telling him her stories daily for several weeks. Neither one of them had gotten much sleep. “No,” he replied. “At least not well.”
While his grandmother napped Michael walked out to the park across the street and sat at one of the picnic tables. The grass was neatly trimmed, the trees perfectly, almost unnaturally, shaped. No one else was in the park. In the distance, above the treetops, was the raised dirt and rock embankment of the interstate by-pass, now thick with some more civilized vine than kudzu. He couldn’t see the cars, but he could hear the susurration as they descended into the lengthy elevated stretch crossing several low valleys where the highway entered eastern Tennessee. He looked down at his hands. When had they scarred up like that? It must have been the day they’d taken the vine down from around the house.
He wondered if there was someone he should call about Grandma, but there really wasn’t anyone left to call, was there? His parents were gone, and most of those Gibsons from her generation as far as he knew. Perhaps those people had had children who still survived, but it seemed doubtful any of them would even know who Sadie Gibson was. If any of them had that mysterious Gibson feeling — a small family within the family — then they wouldn’t need to be told. They’d already know.
It was such a terribly sad thing, though, not having anyone to tell, not only for her, but for himself as well. He couldn’t call Allison, and he’d burned so many bridges with his self-centered behavior, he had no one else to tell about the things that had been happening in his life. He was in a sense as unreachable as his mother had been the last few years of her life.
The one time he’d visited her he’d still been in college, and when he’d first driven up to Southwest Virginia State Hospital in Marion it had struck him how like a school it looked, like a small college or boarding school. “Reality School,” he’d thought, a little embarrassed by his own flippancy. They’d brought him along with the other visitors into a large room with floor to ceiling windows. The walls were a pale green — they probably called it ‘sea mist’ or something like that. He supposed it was meant to be relaxing. He didn’t imagine the walls ever looked completely clean in that color. And it made him think of drowning in a public swimming pool.
His mother had taken one look at him and ran into the corner whimpering, unwilling to come out. He never found out who she thought he actually was.
A statue of a miner was a few feet away near one of the park’s many picnic tables. The plaque underneath was inscribed “To All the Ones Who Died.” The nearby mines had been closed down decades ago. He wondered who around here besides his grandma still possessed first-hand knowledge of those times.
Hobbling his way was an almond-skinned guy with a wide jaw. He had a stick with a nail in one end he’d been using to pick up trash and drop into the black plastic bag in his other hand. When he was right up next to him Michael looked into his wet, dreamy eyes.
“I think I recognize you,” he told the man.
The elderly fellow nodded. “I’m Mickey-Gene. So pleased to meet you. I’d been hoping to sometime. But I couldn’t get up the nerve. Is she there in the hospital?”
They went into Sadie’s room together. She was sitting up, looking all too bright and all too eager. “I waited,” she said. “I got lots more to tell I reckon.”
Chapter Twelve
HER GRANDDADDY’S FUNERAL took place on a Sunday afternoon. The sky was unusually blue that day, the few clouds hiding enough of the sun to keep things pleasant. Some of his people made the long journey from Wythe County way out on the other side of Walker’s Mountain. A sister and some Simpson cousins, and a few of the cousins’ little children and grandchildren who never even met her granddaddy and had no idea how to act at a funeral. They were a conservative, tight-laced bunch, and Sadie had never met any of them. Her momma hadn’t seen them since she was a little girl, but she invited them to stay in Granddaddy’s house. They told her that would be convenient, since they needed to go through Granddaddy’s things. That made Sadie furious, but Momma told her, “that’s just the way things are done, girl. It’s the depression, or so they tell me, and the only way some folks can get ahead is taking whatever they can get offen their dead relations.”
“But you’re his daughter!”
“Ah Sadie, I wasn’t much of one. He didn’t want me marryin your pa, and he was right I’m sorry to say, but I always held it agin him. He tried to make up, but I wouldn’t let him. Hold on to the ones what love you cause none of us’ll be here forever. I dont deserve none of my daddy’s things — they can have it all, if you ask me. Now, if you want something special, speak up now — I’ll make sure you get it.” The only thing on Granddaddy’s farm Sadie ever cared about was Granddaddy, so she didn’t even bother to answer.
Momma held up pretty well then fell apart at the funeral. Aunt Lilly might have been a help to her but she never showed up. Aunt Lilly didn’t show up to a lot of things if Uncle Jesse was having a bad drinking spell. Sadie was shocked that her daddy came — even more shocked that he dressed up for it and even held Momma’s hand when she was crying especially hard. But Sadie couldn’t watch for long, afraid she’d start crying too, and the one thing she wasn’t going to do was cry in front of that bunch. But she couldn’t just leave her grandpa’s funeral either, out of respect for him, so she just walked away from the bunch of them, and went out there among the headstones to think.
She didn’t know how long this little patch up on the mountain had been a cemetery, but most of the dead people she knew were buried there. Folks said it was because of the beautiful view, like the dead would care, being in the ground and all. But people liked to have a picnic on Grave Decoration Day, and this was a plum spot for a picnic.
The headstones were all made out of limestone, which was everywhere in the hollow, used for foundations and wells and paths and such. Sharp ridges of the pale gray stone traced the hillsides like the exposed spines of giant skeletons, and from a distance this cemetery, too, looked like nothing more than a field full of rocks. She stopped to read a few, but the lettering on most of the old ones was practically worn off, the wind and the rain wiping them down to a collection of shallow bumps and soft grooves. She guessed folks didn’t have much choice about what kind of rock to use but it seemed a shame to have gone to all that trouble to mark your last place in the world and all anybody would ever know was that there was a bunch of unknown bones under their feet.
Some of those older stones had a circular piece at the top with a star or a flower inside, and a few of the fancy ones had a carving of a vine or a rose bush growing out of a big heart. She didn’t know what kind of vine that was, but reckoned it wasn’t kudzu.
“You aint shopping for a stone are you?”
She looked up. Granny Grace was sitting on a stump a few feet away, grinning at her. “What are you doing here?” Sadie asked.
“Why howdy to you, too. Same as you, here to pay my respects to your grandpa. Cept I’m over here cause I’d make your family none too happy if I was over yonder. Come to think of it, why aint you over yonder?”
“Dont like them people much, most of them. Wouldn’t want their like to see me cry.”
“I unnerstand, child. More than you might think. You gots to wear a brave face in this world, that’s for sure. You can always take it off at home, cept I guess not everbody can even do that.” She held a hand up to shade her eyes and peered across the cemetery to where the graveside service was still going on. “Who’s that sayin the words? It aint the preacher of course.”
“Reverend Billings from just over the Tennessee line. I guess he knew Granddaddy in the old days.”
“Well, least the preacher didn’t try to horn in. I guess that’s why them gray womens aint around.”
“You see them too?”
“Yep, you and me. And maybe the Grans, cept they’d never say. Anybody else round here with the sight I dont knowed them.”
“Who are they?”
“Dont know pas
t theys dead women, and dead not too long I figure. And they belong to the preacher somehow.”
Sadie hugged herself. “They keep lookin at me.”
Granny Grace frowned. “Well now, I see them, but they dont look at me, so I reckon they got some kind of message for you, or they need somethin from you.”
“But what?”
“Oh child, I dont know everthin. We just gots to take this one step at a time. Next up we gots to get the preacher’s Bible away from him.”
“You know about that?”
Granny Grace laughed. “I said I didn’t know everthin. But I do know somethin.”
SADIE AND GRANNY Grace stood back in the trees a long time watching the preacher’s house. The only reason they knew he was still home was because of the yellow lamp flicker they could see through a window near the back, moving a few times as the preacher carried the kerosene lamp from room to room. Sadie was cold and scared and wanted to go home. She was sure her pale dress must glow in the dark — all the preacher had to do was peek out the window and he’d know for sure it was her. Granny Grace on the other hand was so dark and dirty and woodsy that Sadie could barely make her out and she was standing right next to her.
“Let’s leave,” Sadie hissed. “He’s got church tonight and he’ll be taking his Bible. We aint got no chance at it.”
“Patience, missy. He’ll be goin for supper soon. He wont take that special Bible to eat. He wont carry it round like that.”
“How you know he wont be eating at home?”
Granny Grace sighed like Sadie was a two year old that didn’t know nothing. “Cause he most never eat at home, not his supper anyways. Not that one.”
“Where does he eat then?”
“Everbody knows he goes over to the Mullins sisters for supper most nights.”
“I didn’t know,” Sadie said.
“That’s cause you a youngin. And that’s adult business.”
“They’re not even in his church! Why would he have anything to do with them? And why would they mess with him?”
“Cause he knowed better than messin round with women in his own church, that’s why. And some women, they look at his ugly and they think it handsome.”
“I dont understand.”
“Granny Grace dont understand it neither, but that’s how it be sometimes.”
The lamp flicker bobbed suddenly among the shadows at the back of the house, then moved quickly past the windows to the front before appearing on the other side of the wire screen in the front door. It floated there a few seconds, and Sadie imagined its burning eye watching her, then it bobbed again and led the dark silhouette of the preacher out onto the front porch. His broad hat was tilted down. It moved side to side and then he stepped off the porch and around to the woods on that side of the house. The floating light rushed down the path and disappeared.
Granny Grace bounded across the yard, Sadie struggling to keep up. “Think he locked it?” she whispered to Granny on the porch.
“Your daddy locks yours?” Granny pulled a lamp out from under her shawl.
“Not that I know of,” Sadie admitted.
Granny dragged her inside the front parlor of the preacher’s house and struck a match. “Well I reckon the preacher feels safer than anybody.” She lit the lamp.
On the back wall of the parlor was a framed picture of Jesus on one side of the door and a little photo of the preacher hanging on the other. His face was as white as a skull under his big black hat and his body an inky streak. Granny stared at the pictures, and then looked around the room. It was completely empty. “Preacher likes it spare,” she said. “Come on. Lotsa lookin to do,” and they rushed into the dark spaces beyond the door.
In the short dusty hall grit crunched under Sadie’s shoes. Granny Grace pushed the lantern into the dark, open doorway on their left. Sadie squinted, at first seeing nothing, or not understanding what she was seeing, just bits and pieces, an axe driven into the floorboards near the center of the room, and stacked behind it the severed arms and legs, of chair after chair, pieces of tables and drawer sets, all kinds of furniture chopped and splintered and stacked like firewood.
Granny whistled through her missing teeth. “‘Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth,’ as they say in Matthew. Looks like the preacher done took it literal.”
“What is this?” Sadie could hardly breathe.
“I dont know, child. I reckon it’s the room where he does his frustratin.”
They crossed the hall into the next room. Something soft brushed against Sadie’s face. Thinking it a cobweb she lifted her hand and felt cloth. Granny raised the lantern. Ladies’ dresses, hats, lingerie, hung from the ceiling. Granny moved the lantern around, shining it on the walls layered in more dresses, nightgowns, corsets and slips, a brassiere or two, a waterfall of what her Aunt Lilly called “unmentionables.”
Sadie picked up a small pile of green cloth on the floor in front of her. It was a flimsy little dress, and there was a tag inside. Miss Perkins’ it said. Sadie thought back to that day in the dress shop when she’d lifted the pretty little celluloid box. Mrs. Walkins talking about her missing daughter Phyllis and that green dress. The dress was suddenly a fiery pain in her hands and Sadie dropped it, tried to look away from it. She started to say something but Granny Grace kept moving the lamp, finding more and more things.
The lantern light flickered past a dusty, empty chair, but when Granny’s arm brought the lamp back around a woman was sitting there in her undergarments, weeping softly as she removed her rayon stockings. There was something watery about her, and the undergarments too, flowing and transparent. She looked up suddenly, staring at them as they stood in the doorway. Her mouth gaped wide, the opening rapidly growing larger as her lips and the skin around them cracked and blackened and peeled backwards and away from teeth and bone.
Sadie’s mouth made a noise and then the others rushed in, a flurry of pale flesh and liquid bone, hair rustling like dead weeds and dry leaves falling into bits and filling the air with their choking dryness and perfumes gone both sour and thick with a smothering sweetness. Sadie ran out of there and into the hall and then another door, turning around when she’d realized her mistake, but maybe turned too far because the next door didn’t lead her into anything she recognized but another door and another and it seemed she could hear her own footsteps running away from her into distant parts of the house.
And then she was in a room that slithered. She couldn’t see nothing, but she could feel the shifting around her, the folding on top of folding, the bend and the curve of muscle, the intense focus on her, the new warmth in the room. And the sound was almost nothing, just scale across scale, punctuated now and then by a dry rattle like seeds in a gourd.
More crunches beneath her shoes, and curled debris along her ankles. The air stank, but she couldn’t place the smell. It made her think of decayed things, and places that hadn’t been cleaned in a very long time. Everything waited for her, but she couldn’t move.
Then footsteps and a light behind her as if somebody set fire to the room. The room was full of cages. The snakes twisted as if suddenly aware, their heads coming around, eyes reflected yellow from the lantern. But some were so large they could hardly move.
“Over there,” Granny croaked softly behind her. “That one.”
The light shifted a little, and there it was. The cage was slightly taller and wider than the others, and the front of it was hinged on one side, latched on the other. In the bottom of the cage was that big floppy Bible. Curled up on top of it was a giant copperhead, its jaws open so wide Sadie thought she could see all the way to the bottom of its insides.
“I’m gonna open that cage and get the snake out. You get that Bible.”
“What? No, Granny — how’re you going to do that? Can you talk to snakes?”
Granny cackled. “Child, you must think I got the real dark magics! No sir, I’ll wiggle a little, sing a little. I seen the preacher do it oncet. Cant see wh
y I cant do the sames.”
“No, Granny, I cant…”
But Granny Grace had already started moving, gliding back and forth toward the cage and wiggling herself so hard bits and pieces of all the stuff she carried with her all the time started falling off and knocking and clanging on the floor. She was saying words, too, or saying/singing them, words like bugga loo and Sally too hedaya heyday hoo so sad so sad and lonely my my body and soul, sad words and excited words and speaking in tongues kind of words and words like in that song she heard folks said was popular a year or two back.
Then Granny reached out and slapped open the cage door and that copperhead flew out its entire length mouth open like a stocking chewing its way up a leg. Sadie shook and squealed and Granny backed up against the wall swinging the lamp back and forth between her and the snake. “Move girl!” she cried and Sadie did, though it confused her with the light swinging back and forth so her hand missed the cage the first time. “Sadie Gibson! Get that Bible now!” And then she did, clutching the thing to her chest and turning around. Granny made a final low sweep with the lamp above the floor that caught the snake and sent it flying like a broken stick and the two ran through the house and out the screen door onto the porch and into the yard and almost to the woods before Sadie stopped.
“Wait!” Sadie said, bent over and breathing hard.
“You okay, child?”
“What if it isn’t the right Bible?”
Granny snorted. “It’s a Bible, aint it? Big and floppy like a dead bird or somethin. I seen him carry it around.”
“What if he has more than one and this one isn’t the same one, the special one?”
“Well come here, then. You take a look and say what you think.”
Sadie shook her head. “I dont know. How would I know? You’re the special one, Granny.”
“Child, I’m also the one dont know how to read. Just bring your eyes over here and tell me what they see.”
They sat down together in the grass and Sadie opened the Bible on her lap. There were all kinds of strings and ribbons and strips of newspaper and such marking places in the book, and she went to each one looking for something that might tell her what she was really looking for. The preacher had drawn lines under a lot of things and drawn boxes around certain sections, and there were words written in the margins and between the lines she could barely read. Real words and nonsense words and made-up words that still made her agitated and sick in her belly. The words eventually gave way to doodles — circles and targets and crosses and such that got more and more complicated, smooth lines leading into crooked lines that spiraled down into and around the words. Then there were all these animal drawings with their heads and legs cut off, the blood dripping down and pointing to certain words. There were faces, too, faces with three eyes, then four, then six, horns and wings and long skinny tails coming out of the heads as if the heads were their own separate animals. Then there were these crude drawings of naked people, especially women with their breasts and that place between the legs exposed. Pictures that weren’t very good, more like what a naughty little boy might draw and not like a grown man at all. But that made them even worse and she was ashamed to look at them how dirty they made her feel and thinking that was the way her own daddy looked at her body.
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