Root Magic

by Eden Royce

  Once the pies went in the oven, we helped each other wash a bushel of collard greens straight from the field—we did it three times to get all the bugs and dirt out. Mama fried a piece of salt pork—what my gran called “streak o’ lean”—in her great big pan, then took out the strip of hot, crispy meat and sat it on a folded paper towel to catch the grease.

  My mouth was watering, but we couldn’t have it until all the work was done for dinner. We dumped huge handfuls of chopped collard greens into the thin layer of pork fat until they overflowed, then we pushed them down in the pot and topped it off with water, seasoning, and the lid.

  “I think that’s it, y’all,” Mama said, wiping her hands on her apron. “I’ll do the rice and gravy when we’re almost ready to eat.” She took her sharp knife and cut the slice of salt pork in half, the crisp sound of the meat making my belly rumble.

  Me and Jay each took our half and went out on the porch, chewing and licking our fingers. The air outside the house was cool and fresh, and we dragged it into our lungs to clear the heat and smoke from the kitchen.

  There was no need to bother with our jackets or shoes—the work would keep us warm for a while still. Since I knew Mama was going to tell us to bow our heads before dinner and say what we were thankful for, I asked Jay what he was going to say when it got to be his turn.

  “I dunno.” He looked down at the porch step and picked at a bit of loose wood. “What you gonna say?”

  So much had happened to us in the last year, both good and bad. It didn’t seem right to pick just one or two things to be grateful for. It didn’t even feel right to only choose the good things, because you could learn from mistakes.

  I leaned back on my elbows on our front porch and looked out over the farm. I closed my eyes and breathed in, letting the beads of sweat on my skin dry up in the cool air. Behind me, I could hear Mama’s slippers shuffling around on the hardwood floor, and she was humming. I didn’t know the song, but it didn’t matter.

  “Home,” I said.

  Jay nodded. “Me too.”

  When we finally went to bed, it was dark. In spite of everything that had happened, we’d had a good day visiting people on the island and bringing food to those that needed it. Some of the people were worried about how life would be now without a president who wanted to make us Negroes equal in the eyes of the law, but Mama and Doc told them we would do what we always did: help each other and try to survive. It seemed to cheer people up, hearing those words, and I realized that Mama and Doc were doing a little something to fill the gap that Gran left behind too.

  The last person we visited was Mr. Benjamin. We brought him a batch of Mama’s peanut candy and half of a pound cake. He accepted the gifts with thanks and invited us in for a drink of sweet tea. He also held out his hand for me to shake, then gave me a special thanks for telling him that his daughter was doing well and was happy.

  On the way home for our own dinner, Jay was unusually quiet. I nudged him in the side to get him to race me home, but he didn’t move any faster.

  Finally, when we got to our road, I stopped him. Mama and Doc kept walking, knowing we were within earshot if me or Jay needed them.

  “Well, what is it?” I asked my brother, who wouldn’t look me in the face.

  He didn’t answer for a few moments. “Jez, do you think you growing up faster than me?” He asked the question so quietly, I knew he felt ashamed to be asking it.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, you’re a grade above me now, and you’re already way better than me at rootwork and all,” he said. “You were able to do something for Mr. Benjamin, really help him. And I . . . I ain’t done much at all for anyone.”

  “No, I don’t think so. We’re gonna be good at different things at different times. That’s normal. It doesn’t mean you’re not getting better. We—”

  I stopped myself. It was clear now that Jay didn’t want us to get far apart like I thought he did when he wanted Tony to be his blood brother. I had been scared we were growing apart, and here he was, scared I was going to outgrow him.

  “Well,” I said, “since we’re gonna have different things happen to us, then it means it’s even more important we stay close.”

  He nodded, his lower lip puffed out a bit.

  I threw my arm around his shoulders and gave him a quick squeeze. “Don’t worry. I’m not gonna leave you.”

  He let me hug him for a minute before he pushed me away. But it meant he was back to himself. Tough on the edges, trying to hide his softness. “One thing I ain’t worried about is you, Jezebel.” But his smile was twitching the corners of his mouth as he ran down the path to our house.

  “You better be,” I yelled before racing after him.

  Dinner was wonderful. A little sadness still curled inside me because this was the first time we’d ever had a Thanksgiving dinner without Gran. She loved to cook and she loved to take care of all of us, so she didn’t let us do much work toward making the meal. But this year, everyone had a part in creating this food, and we were grateful for that.

  By the time dinner was over, me and Jay both needed to lie down.

  “You had a good day, Jez?” Jay asked me, yawning wide and long.

  I smiled and hugged my pillow. “I did. I wasn’t sure I would, because it’s been a hard week in a lot of ways.”

  Jay sucked his teeth. “Been hard longer than that. Been a hard school year for you so far.”

  “And it’s not even half over yet!” I rolled onto my back. “Don’t remind me, Jay. Let’s just enjoy what’s left of this day.”

  He grinned at me. “It was a good day. And good pie.” He rubbed his belly.

  I swallowed a laugh when I felt a cold chill of intuition come over me. Something was happening. My head felt light, like it was lifting away from my body. That meant it was something bad.

  Jay felt it too—I could see it on his face. He jumped out of bed and into his overalls and ran out of our room. I scrambled out of bed, threw my clothes and shoes on, and followed my brother.

  Doc was at his worktable, surrounded by the bags of graveyard dirt we collected for him. He also had a red brick in front of him on the table, broken into big chunks, and he was pounding them into powder when we arrived.

  “What’s wrong with you two?” he asked.

  I sat down on one of the stools to catch my breath. “We . . . felt something bad was going to happen. I can’t explain it.”

  Doc stopped what he was doing. “You feel it too, then?”

  I nodded. “It was strong. I got really cold all of a sudden.”

  Doc hummed deep in his throat while he bit his lip. “Whatever it is, we need to be ready for it. Help me mix this up now.”

  We made two more pots of graveyard dirt mixed with brick dust and some rock salt; then we poured it in a wide circle all around the cabin. When we were done, me and Jay followed Doc up to the house to do the same there.

  “You had already started making this when we came in. Do you know what’s going to happen?” I whispered, keeping my bowl of protection powder close to my chest.

  “I don’t.” He took a deep breath. “But there’s something in the air, something off, and it concerns me.”

  “Intuition,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “You always follow it?” Jay asked, his pot of dust almost empty. His lines of the mixture were thicker, wider than mine.

  “Be generous with it, Jezebel,” Doc said. Then he answered Jay. “Yes, most times. But sometimes, people forget to listen to it, that little voice that makes you stop and think. Makes the hairs on your arm stand up. Ever feel that?”

  Jay nodded.

  “Did you listen to it?”

  “I did this time,” he said.

  I poured the last of the dirt, and the three lines of powder—Jay’s, Doc’s, and mine—came together in a broad oval around the house. “Now what do we do?”

  “We go inside and wait.”

  At Doc’s ins
truction, we carefully stepped over the dust circle. Any smudging of the line would kill its protection, leaving us open to whatever was out there. When we got inside, Jay went to tell Mama what we’d done.

  “I know how protection circles work, Jay. I watched you all. My question is,” she said, squinting at her brother, “will it help if Deputy Collins shows up here? Or are you expecting some haints?”

  Doc threw up his hands. “I don’t know. Could be anything, Janey. Anyone. We just need to be prepared. This farm is all we have.”

  “Along with our lives.”

  “That goes without saying.” Doc frowned. “But we’re a family, and we can handle whatever is coming together, right?”

  Mama pressed her lips together. Then she said, “Right.” She looked at me and Jay. We threw our voices in as well.

  “Right!”

  I started to feel a little better.

  And that was when Doc’s cabin exploded.

  22

  Thick, black smoke poured out of what was left of the cabin and rose toward the sky. Flames crackled, adding the scent of burning pine to the overwhelming smells from all of Doc’s potions and oils combined. As the wind blew, it shifted the smells: sweet spices to bitter moss to a plain funky, nasty stink.

  Doc made like he was gonna run outside, but Mama grabbed his shirt. “Are you a fool? You don’t know who or what is out there.” She glanced at us. “You two get away from there.”

  But it was too late. We were already at the window, looking out at the burning cabin and farther, down the path into the marsh, now lit up by the flames coming from the fire. Jay saw it first, and he jerked back, away from the window.

  “Mama,” he yelled, pointing.

  Then I saw it.

  A slow-moving police car was coming up the path. No sirens, no lights, only the flames reflecting off the shiny black-and-white car.

  “Edwards?” Doc asked, edging closer to the window.

  “No,” Mama said from the middle of the kitchen. “I don’t think so.”

  The car stopped a good spitting distance from the porch, and the door eased open. We all held our breaths, not moving.

  “Wrong time of year for a barbeque, ain’t it, y’all?”

  “Collins.” Mama ground the name out from between her teeth.

  We could hear his laughter through the closed window. A hush fell inside our house as we all looked at each other.

  “Well, then,” Mama said, and stomped off to her room. When she came back to the kitchen, she had a gun. It was so small, Mama’s hand almost covered it completely. But I could see enough of the dark silver-gray metal to know it wasn’t a toy. And it wasn’t nothing to play with. Mama meant business.

  Me and Jay each ran for opposite corners of the room while Doc stood there in shock. “Where on God’s green earth did you get a pistol?” he asked. When Mama didn’t answer, Doc kept at her. “What do you think you’re gonna do with that? Shoot somebody? Then where are you gonna be?”

  Mama’s lips flattened out into a thin line that reminded me of Dinah’s. “I will protect my family, John.”

  I had never heard Mama call Doc anything other than, well . . . Doc. Hearing his government name was more than a surprise. It made me look at him in a whole new way.

  Jay tiptoed away from his corner, and I met him behind the big kitchen table. He slid his hand into mine, and Doc slowly stepped forward toward Mama. Her hands were shaking.

  “I know you will,” he said. “You always were the protector, even though I was born first. It’s time to let me take on my responsibility, Janey. It’s way past time.”

  Mama took in a deep, shuddering breath, as her fingers slid over the smooth metal of the gun. “I was never afraid of the ghosts, you know.”

  Doc nodded. “I’ve been knowing that.” He brought Mama her favorite apron, the one with the palmetto trees on it. The one with the big pockets. “Put this on. Keep that with you if it makes you feel better.” He nodded at the gun. “But I need you to trust me that this is all going to be okay.”

  She looked at Doc first, then at me and Jay standing together. Then she nodded once and slipped the small gun into her pocket.

  “Evening to ya,” the deputy yelled from the bottom of the steps. He looked like a ghost set against the darkening night. “Got a call there was a disturbance out here.”

  “You’re not even wearing a uniform,” I yelled back.

  “Hush up,” Jay said from the side of his mouth.

  “True enough, girl.” Deputy Collins grinned and pulled up his dungarees at the waist. “Thing is, as an officer of the law, don’t matter what I got on when it comes to doing my job.”

  “Oh, I’m not doing this. I’m not dealing with this foolishness.” Mama shoved her way past Doc and opened the door. The heat from the fire hit our faces and took the chill off the night. Once Mama was out on the porch, she folded her arms across her chest. “What do you want out here?” Her voice was hard.

  “Nothing to do with you, Janey, so don’t get all worked up. I’m here for your brother.”

  “Stay back.” Mama’s head tilted up, and I couldn’t tell if she was talking to the deputy or me and Jay. She moved over to block the open door. “For what reason?”

  Me and Jay crouched down under the window. What could we do? Jay looked at me for an answer and I didn’t have one. Out of habit I reached in my pocket and froze. Dinah wasn’t there. She was in our room, and I didn’t dare move to go back there and get her.

  But I did have the coin, the one I got from my trip to Zar. I rubbed it, flipping it round and round in my fingers, thinking. Thinking that if I had stayed there in that place of joy and beauty, I wouldn’t be here now. And I knew I was supposed to be. I had to find a way to help.

  “That’s between me and him,” Deputy Collins continued. “A man-to-man discussion. Tell him to come on out. Or I got a lot more gasoline where that came from.” He placed one hand near the gun on his side. “I know you must be in there, Doc. You shoulda just stepped in that trap—then I wouldn’t be out here now.”

  “My brother ain’t—”

  “It’s okay, Janey.” Doc placed a hand on each of our shoulders and gave a gentle squeeze. Then he went to the door. “Here I am, Collins. Leave the rest of them be.”

  “Doc, don’t you do this,” Mama warned.

  “I don’t see another way. Do you?” Doc’s voice carried over the sound of our breathing, loud in the kitchen and against the still-crackling fire burning the remains of the cabin. “He will burn this place to the ground, you know it as well as I do. And he won’t serve a day of jail time for it.”

  Mama’s mouth opened and closed without a sound. She knew he was right; the laws didn’t protect us—they were apparently only there to protect whites from us. Finally, she nodded.

  The moment Doc stepped through the door onto the porch, Collins drew his gun and aimed it right at him. Even in the dying light from the fire, I could see it was much bigger than the one Mama had in her pocket.

  “Good boy,” he said. “Let’s go now.”

  Doc frowned at the insult. After a second passed, he stepped down off the porch. He walked to Collins, twisting his face away from the heat of the fire and smothering smoke. We watched as both men approached the deputy’s car. Doc went toward the back door, but Collins yanked him away by the neck of his shirt. Doc stumbled and reached out his hands to stop his fall. Collins brought the bottom of his gun down on his head.

  “No!” me and Mama and Jay said all at once.

  Doc stumbled again, but didn’t fall. Not until the deputy hit him two more times with the nightstick he pulled from the belt around his waist. Collins turned back to us where we stood in the doorway of the house, frozen in shock, and grinned.

  “Your brother got a harder head than your husband did, Janey. His split open the first time I hit him. Made such a mess, I threw him into Charleston Harbor for the ocean to bury.”

  Jay looked at me, and I knew he was thinking
the same thing as I was. Did what Collins said mean he . . . killed Daddy?

  Mama blinked for a second. Then she screamed.

  She tried pulling out her own gun, but it caught in the seams of her apron pocket. She yanked at it until I heard the fabric rip, but I was already running. Out of the kitchen and out the front door.

  “Jezebel!” Jay’s voice joined Mama’s. I heard them, loud and scared, cutting through the sound of the fire. But there was no time for me to stop.

  Outside, the smells were even stronger, burning wood and sweat and fear and hate. I ran down the steps out to the circle we’d laid earlier to protect us. Thumps came from behind the police car, where Collins had dragged Doc after he brought him to the ground.

  A gunshot rang out, but I didn’t know which direction it came from. I threw myself down to the dusty ground.

  “Get back in here, Jez!” Mama’s voice was going hoarse.

  “I have to open the circle!” I yelled back.

  “Jez, no!” Jay yelled. “What are you doing?”

  I knew exactly what I was doing. Still, I worried it might not be enough. Through all the commotion and fire and the gunshot, would anything hear me? And even if they heard, would they come to help?

  When I opened my mouth, the sharp smell from the gun firing mixed with the smoke coming from the cabin, and I swallowed it. It tasted like burnt toast dipped in motor oil and made me want to throw up. Instead I coughed, trying to get the smoke choking me to come out. On my belly I crawled, pulling myself along, to the edge of the dust ring. I smudged it with my hand until I’d made a wide opening.

  Then I crawled though.

  I turned toward the cabin, the wood burning lower now but still too high for me to get close enough to rub away the other circle. I sighed in frustration and beat my fists against the dirt, hot on top from the close fire, but cold underneath.

  What could I do? I was eleven years old. And Collins was no haint that you could keep away with paint or dust. He was a grown man, an angry, violent one at that. I couldn’t punch and kick and fight him to save Doc.

  But maybe I could do something.