The Cursed Ground

by T. R. Simon

  Zora didn’t care. “Who was that, Mr. Clarke? What were they so angry about?”

  Mr. Clarke cut his eyes toward Mr. Cools, Mr. Slayton, and Mr. Edges, at a loss about how to answer her questions.

  This made Mr. Slayton laugh. “You best watch out, Joe. Zora’s about the finding-outest person in this whole town. She probably already knows more about this than you do, and she just got here!”

  Mr. Clarke cracked a small smile.

  “I don’t like to brag, Mr. Clarke,” Zora said, “but it’s true; I am pretty good. And me and Carrie here — you know you can trust us with a secret.” She gave him a serious look, and I knew she was thinking about that time we solved a murder, back when we were in fourth grade.

  Mr. Clarke’s face got serious again. He pulled up a chair and sat so his eyes more or less met ours. “Listen, girls. I do trust you, as much as I trust anybody in this town, and more than some.” He shot a meaningful look at Mr. Slayton when he said this.

  “Aw, now, Joe . . .” Mr. Slayton complained.

  “But this is a situation I’ve got to think on. I’ve got to think on it hard before I tell another soul. Now, what your mama need this morning?”

  Mr. Clarke ushered us into the store, attended to our purchase, and ushered us back out. On top of the parcel that held a paper cone of salt and a smaller one of nails, he placed a roll of colored candy wafers to fortify us on the way back.

  As we were leaving, we heard Mr. Slayton murmur, “So what’s this all about, Joe?”

  Mr. Cools added, “Just between us menfolk.”

  “Y’all just heard me say I got to think before I talk,” said Mr. Clarke. “Y’all think you the exception?”

  “Aw, now, Joe . . .”

  “Come on, Joe . . .”

  Zora opened the waxy paper roll and popped a pink sugar wafer into her mouth. She sucked the candy thoughtfully. “So, Carrie, what you reckon that was about?”

  “Darned if I know.” After last night’s events, this was doubly unsettling. But what unsettled me enlivened Zora.

  “Joe Clarke is about as shut-mouth as Mr. Polk and Old Lady Bronson. This town’s just spilling over with secrets.” Her smile got a little wider. “And I mean to be there to catch the overflow. Now, let’s go check on Mr. Polk!”

  We were halfway to Mr. Polk’s place when Teddy Baker rounded the bend in the road, in the buckboard his older brother Micah was driving.

  My heart beat a funny little rhythm when I saw Teddy. Zora and I had been digging in the dirt and sand, swimming in the Blue Sink, and climbing trees with him since we could say our alphabets. I can’t remember a time we weren’t together like three tight buds on an inkberry branch. Lately he’d been taking heat from other boys when he chose our company over theirs at recess or when he passed up playing baseball to listen to one of Zora’s madcap schemes. Just turned thirteen, he was now taller than me and just half an inch over Zora, who until then had been the tallest of the three of us. We all seemed so different from how we’d been just a year ago. All kinds of strange, prickly, and warm feelings were overtaking me these days; the strangest were my feelings for Teddy.

  He jumped off the buckboard, smiling brightly. “What y’all doing out here this morning? Don’t Mrs. Hurston got you doing chores?”

  Zora laughed. “We doing a chore right now, Teddy Baker.”

  Teddy glanced at Zora’s paper parcel and the roll of candies. “Uh-huh. Going to Mr. Clarke’s store ain’t never a chore to you, Zora.”

  “Say, Lothario,” Micah yelled from the buckboard, “you coming back with me, or you staying here with your two wives?”

  Teddy rolled his eyes and slapped the back of the wagon. “Go on,” he said. “I’ll be home before supper.”

  Micah whistled. “Ladies, the only way to share him is to cut him in half. It’s what King Solomon would do!” He pulled a face serious as a judge, and we all had to laugh. At seventeen, Micah was the spitting image of his father — tall, with kind eyes and a cinnamon complexion, sunburned from plowing fields every day in the hot sun.

  Our feet took us to our favorite meeting spot, under the shade of Zora’s favorite tree. According to Zora, the graceful old pine bent down its canopy of thick green branches to shade our three heads, and it laid down soft beds of pine needles especially and only for us three. She called it the Loving Pine, and we spent many an afternoon under it telling stories and pondering life. Her feelings for that tree were so deep they rubbed off on us. Teddy and I felt the same love for its rough bark and prickly needles as she did.

  Teddy stretched out on the ground and smiled lazily up into the thick branches of the Loving Pine. That smile put a jarful of butterflies in my stomach, and, wanting to turn his gaze on me, I asked Zora, “Should we tell him?”

  That made him sit up. “Tell me what?”

  Old Lady Bronson had told us not to breathe a word about what happened at Mr. Polk’s, but surely telling Teddy was not the same as telling grown folks. Besides, Teddy had a special relationship with Mr. Polk; he was the only other person he would let tend the horses. And if anyone could ease his mind about his horses, it would be Teddy.

  Everyone who knew Teddy knew about his plan to be a veterinarian. Teddy took every chance he could to spend time with people who knew more about animals than he did. Since no one knew horses better than Mr. Polk, last June Teddy asked Mr. Polk if he could spend the summer helping him out whenever he wasn’t needed on the farm. Mr. Polk, who had never worked with anyone as far as we knew, said yes — or, rather, he didn’t say no, and he also didn’t say no when Teddy asked if he could bring his best friends to watch sometimes. That was how we ended up spending a good part of the summer perching on an outer ring fence and watching Mr. Polk train the newest acquisition to his personal stable. It was a chestnut stallion from Ocala named Moss Star, and Teddy narrated for us everything we saw.

  Mr. Polk had a gift for training horses that others gave up on or called impossible, untamable, or even ruined. We saw him do it with Moss Star. Moss Star had kicked a stable boy up in the air like a rag doll, and the only reason the owner wouldn’t put him down was that he had “spent too much money to see a bullet bleed it all away.” Instead, the owner traded Moss Star to Mr. Polk for a tame mare.

  The first day, Mr. Polk let Moss Star out into the ring and left him alone. He let the horse kick and run and buck and grunt and whicker for an hour, two hours, a whole morning, until the sun was straight overhead. And all that while, Mr. Polk was there, standing stock-still, hands at his sides facing out. Whenever Moss Star looked his way, he’d nod his head slowly, as if to say, Yes. Yes, I understand. You are right to kick and buck. This is good.

  Then he opened the gate back to the stall, where fresh water and a pail of oats were waiting. After lunch, they’d do the same thing; the horse would exhaust himself and Mr. Polk would give his soft nods of approval.

  The next morning started out as more of the same, but after the better part of an hour, Mr. Polk disappeared. You can believe Moss Star noticed it. He looked all around and raised a ruckus when he couldn’t see him. Then, just when Moss Star was ready to break down the paddock gate, Mr. Polk reappeared — and he wasn’t alone.

  From the other side of the stable and into the outer ring he led old Juniper, with nothing more than a braided rope draped loosely around the horse’s neck, the two of them just slowly strolling along. Polk wasn’t ignoring Moss Star so much as concentrating on Juniper, but when their eyes did meet, he gave Moss Star that gentle nod. This was the routine for a few days, and then, just as Zora and I were getting bored, Mr. Polk did something different. He started shortening and alternating the sessions with Moss Star and Juniper throughout the day — until it was a half hour Moss Star, a half hour Juniper. Then, one day, maybe five days into this routine, Moss Star walked up to Mr. Polk and lowered his head, just as he had seen Juniper do so many times. Mr. Polk stroked Moss Star’s neck and placed the rope ring gently over his head, and the two of them took
their first walk around the ring. From that day on, there was nothing Moss Star wouldn’t do for Mr. Polk.

  Those summer days, Teddy studied everything Mr. Polk did — the hand gestures, the nodding, the tongue-clicking sounds he made to communicate commands. To tell the truth, I probably did, too. As long as we kept our distance, neither Mr. Polk nor Moss Star seemed to mind having observers.

  After the third week, when Mr. Polk finished up a session with Moss Star, he’d wave us over, and we could actually pet the handsome animal on his sweaty flank. Finally, Mr. Polk handed Teddy the rope and let him cool Moss Star and return him to the stable. Mr. Polk would run a handkerchief under the brim of his hat to mop up the sweat. He’d offer us a drink from his canteen. In all the time I knew Mr. Polk, it never occurred to me that his silence might be a conscious choice, not God’s design.

  Not wanting to be solely responsible for breaking our word to Old Lady Bronson, I looked at Zora expectantly. “Well, tell him!”

  “Yeah,” Teddy demanded, “tell me!”

  “But we gave Old Lady Bronson our bond of silence in exchange for a story.”

  “Old Lady Bronson?” Teddy marveled. “Why would you be making deals with that old roots woman?”

  “You gotta swear to keep this a secret,” Zora breathed, and she put her right hand on her heart and held her left index finger out for Teddy to hook. This was the way we’d made promises to one another for years.

  Teddy hooked his finger with hers. “OK, now tell!”

  “Mr. Polk can talk,” she said.

  Teddy looked at her like she had two heads. “What do you mean, he can talk?”

  “Just that,” she continued. “We heard him talk to Old Lady Bronson, same as we’re talking right now — except in a language we never heard. He ain’t mute; he just chooses not to speak!”

  Teddy looked to me — I suppose to check if Zora might be pulling his leg.

  “It’s true,” I said. “We both heard him.”

  Teddy sat dumbfounded. “But how did you come to hear him speak?”

  Zora was on her feet in an instant. Her words drew pictures of what we’d done but made the pictures so vivid that I was living them anew. The night wasn’t just late and wet. It was “the darkest hour of the night under the shadow of a looming tempest.” We weren’t just checking on Mr. Polk. We were “on a rescue mission to outwit Death, facing the dark forces of the devil himself.” Old Lady Bronson wasn’t just a conjure woman, but “a portal between the worlds of light and darkness.” And Mr. Polk’s wound deepened from a nasty cut to “a sword slash from an unknown foe.”

  When she was done, Teddy jumped to his feet and stared at us. “Stabbed!” I think I had managed to put away the magnitude of the violence done to Mr. Polk until Teddy spoke that word. “Are you sure he’s OK?”

  Not wanting to see Teddy worry, I pointed out that Old Lady Bronson was who folks called after they saw Doc Brazzle. Where Doc worked medicine, Old Lady Bronson sometimes worked a miracle. There were no hands more adept at turning a breech birth or binding a limb after a mule kick. Had Mr. Polk suffered from appendicitis, Doctor Brazzle would have been my healer of choice, but for a wound to the body or spirit, Old Lady Bronson was the better bet.

  A little relieved from worry, Teddy’s mind went to the stables. “What about the horses? You think they’re back?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Zora said, “and we’re on our way there.” I could tell that she was pleased as punch by Teddy’s eagerness to return with us to the stage of the adventure.

  As we took off, Zora shook the brown paper parcel with the nails for the chicken coop at me. “I bet John’s really waiting on these now,” she said with a grin.

  I can remember the sharp taste of salt in the air. We stood in front of the ship at dawn, the day already hot. Prisca held my hand tightly and clutched her doll, Maria Luz, in her other hand. The gangway stretched before us like a bridge to nowhere.

  The night before, Mama Sezelle had lain next to me. “Be a good girl, Lucia. Do as they tell you.” A tear slipped from her eye. I had never seen Mama Sezelle cry. Her wrinkled face, brown like dried cacao seeds, was creased with sadness. My throat burned and hot tears rolled down my face.

  “Why do I have to leave you? I don’t want to go.”

  “You are an orphan, Lucia. You must go where you are wanted.”

  “But don’t you want me?” I cried.

  “Of course I do, child, but it is not my place to keep you. You are of my heart, but not my blood.”

  I wrapped my arms around her, pressed my face into her warmth, and cried. “Remember,” she said, stroking my face, “the trees speak, the birds speak, the plants speak, the land speaks. Listen and you will hear my voice.”

  Mama Sezelle was not my mother, but she had cared for me since my own mother died when I was almost three, taken by fever that consumed us both. When my mother passed, Mama Sezelle kept me alive. She fed me goat’s milk and rice. Her work-worn hands showed me how to hold a spoon. My small hand grasped hers when I felt afraid.

  Her little shack was my world: the white light from a full moon glowing through our one window, bats sailing across the night sky, the thin sheet quilted with birds stitched on in red and yellow and green, our wooden table with a mortar and pestle, the thick wooden mixing bowl only for ceremonias sagradas.

  Mama Sezelle cooked for Don Federico and we lived behind his house. Every morning I would enter the kitchen with Mama Sezelle. I would hold her skirt while she cut onions, and I let the tart fragrance sting my eyes. I would wash the rice with water in a large tin bowl, removing every brown grain. I would watch Mama Sezelle’s fast hands as she peeled and pulped guanábana for its sweet milky white juice.

  In the early afternoon I would sneak behind the breakfront in Don Federico’s library and listen to the lessons Prisca, his daughter, took while Don Federico read his beloved books. Afternoons were always natural science, French, and geography. I loved them all, but I especially liked when Prisca’s tutor, Señor Mercedes, would ask her to stand in front of “the world as we know it,” a beautiful globe nearly as tall as Prisca herself, and recite the countries, their capitals, their rulers. After he left and Don Federico went to take his siesta, Prisca would beckon me in. We would spin the globe and slap our hands to its smooth surface, declaring ourselves the princess of whatever dominion held still beneath our fingers: Cathay, the Argentine, the Kingdom of Congo . . . In the late afternoon, thirsty and filled with mischief, we would seek out Mama Sezelle in her kitchen. Prisca would laugh and pick hot plantains from the frying pan, Mama Sezelle slapping her fingers away. She would grab my hand and pull me into the garden, a sea of flowers and lime trees stretching a long way before the corner of the shack that Mama Sezelle and I lived in became visible.

  We made up songs in Spanish, and in the French I couldn’t help learning. We carefully lifted wasp nests that had fallen from tamarind branches and restored them to their perches. We made dolls from unripe cashews, each brown seed a cap for their green heads — doll babies nestled to our bosoms. We were inseparable, both having lost our mothers before memories of them could form. When we were smaller, I scarcely knew where my arm ended and hers began; we were so close we believed ourselves to be the dark and light versions of the same girl. We sang songs we learned and songs we made up, danced everywhere we went, read to each other, acted out stories, pretended to be wood nymphs running in and out of the lime trees or water sprites in the surf. Anything and everything we could think of, we did. The differences between us — she the daughter of a gentleman, me an orphaned serving girl — never bothered us. It was the natural order of things, not worthy of remark.

  The night before I left, Mama Sezelle took the bowl from the table. She spat in it and made me do the same. She lit a tallow candle and dripped the melted fat into the bowl. She prayed with words I barely understood. Words she spoke with the other older women of our town. Words they spoke when the whites had gone to sleep, when young
mothers in hard labor needed strong hands to pull the newborns into this world, when suitors were scorned or lovers spurned.

  Then she whispered in my ear, “Remember.”

  My legs shook as Prisca and I followed Don Federico into the stomach of the ship. Five days later it spat us out in a country called Florida, in a city called Saint Augustine. Here, Don Federico told us I would have to call him Master Frederic from now on. Here, he told us, he would join the widow who was to become his new wife, the woman he took us from our island to marry, the woman he promised Prisca would be the mother she had never had. Because I was an orphan, he had the power to bring me to Florida with them. And he took me because Prisca would not leave me behind.

  In Florida everything looked, smelled, and sounded different. Overwhelmed by homesickness, Prisca cried as a carriage drove the three of us from the ship to the house of a distant cousin.

  That night, Prisca and I lay in bed. I listened for the sound of crickets, but even the insects sang in a strange new language there. I got up and went to the window. The moon was half full. My eyes looked over the garden and I saw two palm trees grown from the same trunk. Mama Sezelle said a split tree like that meant a house divided. I crawled back into bed, knowing we had done more than simply leave one place and come to another.

  The next day everything moved quickly. In the small church we met Miss Caroline. She was small and round. Her eyes were quick, but they did not smile when her mouth did. She hugged Prisca and carefully put a new bonnet on her. Master Frederic told me to wait with the boy by Miss Caroline’s carriage while the three of them went into a small church. The boy’s skin was burnished in reds and browns, and his eyes took in everything. He spoke to me, but I could not understand his words. I smiled at him to hide my fear, and he smiled back. Thin and reedy, he looked to be eleven, like I was. He picked up a stick and drew the outline of a house in the sand. Then he pointed into the distance. I nodded, acknowledging that my future lay south of where we stood.