Night Bird Calling

by Cathy Gohlke

  Perhaps he could help Ruby Lynne Wishon at the same time. The girl had been in church with her father and uncle since Rhoan’s “visit” to Garden’s Gate, but she’d sat wan and pale between them, a shell of the joyful teen who’d been learning to teach.

  Maybe, just maybe, the answer for all of them lay in one ball of twine.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I RAN OUT THE BACK DOOR as quickly as my legs could carry me. I hadn’t meant to insult or offend Reverend Willard, but he’d taken me by surprise. And when he touched me—doesn’t he know he mustn’t touch me?

  I’m terrified of my heart—the direction of my thoughts. I should not be alone with him. He looks at me as if he sees right through my skin to my soul—as if he sees me in a way Gerald never did, and he likes what he sees.

  Dear God, if You have any pity for me, any love for Reverend Willard, help him to despise me, to leave me alone. Association with me will ruin Jesse’s reputation, and that will ruin his life here.

  I was so lost in thought I didn’t see the form on the ground until I all but tripped over her. Bent and kneeling at the edge of the garden, covered in a long, threadbare dress the blue-black color of faded juniper berries and wearing an old-fashioned black poke bonnet, a little woman—no bigger than Celia—stopped her digging and lifted her spade. One keen brown eye and one grayed and sightless in a weathered face just as dark, framed in white wool hair, peered up at me. “Poor chile,” she lamented. “Poor, poor chile.”

  I looked behind me, glanced around the garden for the “poor child,” but didn’t find one. She meant me. That made me bristle. “Who are you?” It was a rude question rudely asked, and I realized just as quickly that she must be Granny Chree—the granny woman Celia had told me about when I first came, the one Gladys said had long ago been Aunt Hyacinth’s nanny, and before Emancipation a slave at Belvidere Hall. She was overdue to come dig herbs from Aunt Hyacinth’s garden. She was also the form I’d glimpsed in and out of the garden from time to time—those moments I hadn’t trusted my eyes or senses but had known someone was there.

  The woman lifted an elbow and I helped her struggle to her feet. She must be one hundred years old, or nearly, by my accounting, but looked eighty-five and weighed no more than a child of ten. “You’re Hyacinth’s girl, Rosemary’s child. You got your mama’s eyes, the eyes of the Belvidere women.”

  Nobody’d said that to me since Mama had passed. Aunt Hyacinth couldn’t see, so couldn’t say, and who else remembered my mother’s face, her eyes? It was good to be known for who I was, to have Mama remembered.

  “Spittin’ image. I knew her as a little bitty and as a young woman, before she ran off with that city man.”

  “My father.”

  “Hmmph,” she grunted. She straightened as best she could. “I was right sorry to hear about your mama’s passing, and then Hyacinth’s a stone’s throw after—mighty sorry. Your aunt was a good woman, a good, good woman.”

  I believed that, but what was a good woman doing hiding a white robe and hood in her hope chest? It was the most startling, most frightening thing I could have found. How could Aunt Hyacinth preach to me about the cruelties of the Klan and champion the notion of helping colored children in No Creek, all the while safeguarding a Klan robe among her most treasured possessions?

  “Say what?”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “But you not sure about that? You don’t believe ole Granny? Don’t believe what you lived?”

  “I just don’t understand—” I stopped. I couldn’t do this. “Aunt Hyacinth was so very good to me. She was dearly loved in the community. I just wish I’d known her longer, known her better—when she was younger. She said you and she were friends?”

  “Pert near sisters. I slaved and later earned wages right here when it was Belvidere Hall. Knew your aunt from the moment she was born, raised her like my own. That’s how it was in them days.” Granny Chree chuckled, picked up two burlap bags at her feet. “Though you ought not tell that in town.” She grinned. “Hyacinth understood the seasons and the earth. Once I moved out to my cabin in the hills, we’d meet over watermelon in summer and coffee or hot chicory come winter—depending on what year we’re talkin’. Let me come here and dig some of her horehound betimes, and feverfew. I was the one planted them, after all. I brung her thistle and ginseng from the mountain, black walnut leaves for tea—she was partial to black walnut. Cleans the blood.” She handed up a bag. “You know what to do with these?”

  “No.” I took the offering. “I don’t.”

  “Gladys tell you. She’s a good girl. She’ll help you get on your feet.”

  That was truth. I don’t know what I’d do without Gladys . . . or Celia or Chester. And yet I can’t ask them about that regalia. To connect Aunt Hyacinth with the Klan is an impossible idea—insulting to Aunt Hyacinth’s memory. There has to be an explanation. Who in No Creek is part and parcel with the Klan? Rhoan Wishon, surely. I’d assumed he might be numbered among the cross burners. Velma Richards and Ida Mae had made their opinions on race clear, but somehow I’d never imagined women participating in the KKK. Does that robe have something to do with our family secret—the shame Aunt Hyacinth spoke of? Is that what she meant about why Mama ran away?

  Granny Chree stood with her head tucked to one side. “You be a worryin’ chile. Full of troubles and plumb wore out.”

  I am.

  “You find it in your heart to let Granny Chree come dig herbs, like before?”

  “Yes. Whatever arrangement you had with Aunt Hyacinth before, please continue. It will be fine. But . . .”

  “What is it?”

  Now I tucked my head to one side. “Did you always feel welcome here? Did you feel . . . safe?”

  Granny Chree shifted her shovel. “With Hyacinth—and with her grandparents back in slavery days. Those Belvideres were cut from a different cloth than her daddy.” She straightened, tilting her head to see me with her good eye. “I heard Rhoan Wishon come calling. He be by again. Wishons can’t leave things alone.”

  It was an unwelcome prophecy, but a likely one.

  “Don’t you be bothered ’bout what come to pass. Can’t do nothin’ but meet trouble when it knocks on your door.” She slung the other burlap sack over her shoulder. “You have trouble, you send for ole Granny.”

  Granny Chree stepped through rows of herbs and vegetables and around the corner of the barn, disappearing into the woods beyond before I could bring myself to press my question.

  If I hadn’t seen her with my own eyes and heard her speak, I might have thought her an apparition. I closed my eyes to chase away visions of robed and hooded Klansmen menacing Marshall and turned to the rosebush I’d come to find cuttings and solace in. How could tiny, ancient Granny Chree help me in a world of cross burners and their secrets?

  Chapter Thirty

  CELIA SAW CLEAR AS DAY that Ruby Lynne was delighted to be teaching children again. How Reverend Willard had pulled that off, she couldn’t imagine. Ruby Lynne no longer taught Marshall—nobody did—and everybody made sure that neither Olney nor Marshall was scheduled to work outside Garden’s Gate when she came. Still, there were lots of younger children, colored and white, who needed “tutoring,” as Miss Lill called it.

  Ruby Lynne taught only the white children—her daddy’s orders, though she left cookies for children of both colors and hair ribbons for the girls when they came in to use the library. Giving just seemed to brighten Ruby Lynne’s soul and that raised her high in Celia’s estimation.

  Miss Lill had kept to herself for weeks through the summer and on into September, past the start of school. In the house she kept to her room. Outside, she took long walks up the mountain, never wanting company. Finally, one afternoon Miss Lill came downstairs and found Ruby Lynne at the kitchen table teaching the alphabet to seven-year-old Rebecca Mae, Ida Mae’s grandniece by marriage. The child’s laughter—like water bubbling over brook stones—seemed to wake Miss Lill, open her eyes
and ears. Celia figured she still viewed the world a little cockeyed, maybe, but at least no longer looked like a woman in a trance.

  Even so, Miss Lill wasn’t the same as before Miz Hyacinth passed. None of them were. A light had gone from Garden’s Gate, a light no one seemed able to find again.

  Miss Lill took to sitting evenings at Miz Hyacinth’s desk in the parlor to write letters of thanks to folks who’d tended her aunt in any way during her last days and to those who’d brought food or flowers to the house after the funeral. She intended to write to Biddy Chambers, Celia knew, because she’d heard Miss Lill ask her mama what she knew of the woman one afternoon in the kitchen.

  “Only that Miz Hyacinth considered Biddy her dearest friend—‘friend of a lifetime,’ she’d say. Reverend Willard knows more,” her mama mentioned, peeling potatoes at the sink without turning round. “He’s the one read all Biddy’s letters out loud once she lost her sight, and he’s the one wrote down everything Miz Hyacinth wanted said in return. I think he’d be proud if you asked him.” Her mama turned to Miss Lill. “He misses Miz Hyacinth something fierce. It’d be a mercy to give him the opportunity to talk about her.”

  “I can’t do that.” Miss Lill shook her head. “I know you don’t understand why. I’m sorry.”

  Celia kept quiet and stepped back into the hallway, just outside the kitchen door, knowing that the only way she’d hear more was to make herself invisible.

  “Reverend Willard doesn’t understand. Why do you shut him out so? He’s a good man, Lilliana, a kind man, a man you can trust. And he’s grieving, just like you. You’d be company for one another. That’d make Miz Hyacinth smile.”

  The sigh Miss Lill released as she pulled a chair from the table and plunked down sounded like the weight of the world rested on her shoulders. “Aunt Hyacinth might like it, but she wouldn’t expect it.”

  Celia heard another chair slide over the floor and pictured her mama sitting across the table from Miss Lill. She peeked around the corner in time to see her mother clasp both Miss Lill’s hands in her own. “Tell me what’s burdened you so. You weren’t this miserable the day we laid her to rest. What is it?”

  Miss Lill choked back sobs. “You wouldn’t believe it . . . at least I don’t think you’d believe it.”

  “Try me. Holding darkness inside never gave anybody peace.”

  “I’m so confused. My family is burdened in secrets. Aunt Hyacinth told me—oh, never mind. There’s just so much I wish Aunt Hyacinth had explained to me, things I know she meant to—things I wish I could ask her. She was so in my corner, especially where Gerald was concerned, and now . . . Navigating this life without Mama or Aunt Hyacinth is so hard. It’s . . .”

  “Exhausting?”

  “Yes!”

  “I do understand that. Lilliana, I know you’ve endured terrible losses. I know Gerald is a horrible threat that you live under day by day—Miz Hyacinth told me and I see it in your face. But you’re not alone in this.

  “You have to know you’re not the only one struggling with a man gone bad. My Fillmore ran moonshine for two years before he was caught and arrested. Every night he’d go out, I’d hold my breath, scared to death he’d be caught or shot. Every night he came home drunk from his victory over the run. He wasn’t as mean a drunk as the Wishon boys, but nasty enough, and I was so ashamed. Ashamed to stay and afraid to go. Where would I go? I loved him and I hated him, wished him safe and wished him caught.”

  Celia swallowed. She’d never heard her mama talk like that, had never really known what she thought of her daddy’s public shame.

  “And every Sunday, I pinned my hat in place and marched into that church as if I were a God-fearing woman whose man worked a respectable job, selling honey from our bees and scratching a bare living from the garden dirt behind our cabin and selling pelts in Ridgemont.” Now Celia heard her mother sigh. “That bit of work was all a sham, a cover-up for what he was really doing . . . running moonshine for somebody who paid him as much to keep his name secret as he did for running the risk of being arrested—or shot dead.”

  “You never learned who hired him?”

  “He never told a soul—not even me, no matter that the revenuer said he’d let him go if he gave the man’s name.” Celia heard the weariness in her mother’s voice. “I have my suspicions. I believe Fillmore was just too scared to say who—scared of what they might do to him or to the kids and me. I believe he bought some kind of protection for us by going to jail. How can I not love a man who does that?”

  “There’s so much I don’t understand about this place.”

  “Well, now,” Celia’s mama said, “isn’t it that way everywhere? The thing is, we can’t let our fears or things we don’t understand weigh us so far down that they keep us from picking up and going forward. We’re still on this earth for a reason. Your mama and Miz Hyacinth were called to their rest, but you weren’t. Now, why is that? What are you here to do? I reckon that’s the point to figure.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  THE MORNING AFTER MY HEART-TO-HEART with Gladys, after rummaging through Aunt Hyacinth’s closet, half-fearful of what else I might find, I came across her old school satchel tucked into the back of the top shelf. The leather was worn and even cracked, but the retired satchel still looked serviceable.

  How many years, how many treks to the schoolhouse has this satchel seen? For all the confusion I carried since finding the robe and hood, I knew Aunt Hyacinth had been loved by the people of No Creek—people of all color—and that she loved them. Whatever that Klan regalia means, or meant in the past, you and I were both willing—eager—to allow everyone to use the library and to help them read. That’s still what I want. For as long as I’m here, as long as I’m able, that’s what I choose.

  The idea that I was free to choose my course and not to have it dictated by Gerald or my father or Rhoan Wishon or Ida Mae and Velma Richards shot a thrill through my bones. It was as if I were stepping into new shoes—my own new shoes chosen by my own self—and walking forward, not being led or directed where I didn’t want to go.

  I hadn’t heard from Gerald since he’d left in July, though he surely knew of Aunt Hyacinth’s death. Why he hadn’t shown up again, I didn’t know, unless it was because he believed there was no hope of his getting hold of Aunt Hyacinth’s estate. He wouldn’t have believed me but would surely have investigated that. Still, I knew better than to believe he’d just disappeared from my life. He wanted his freedom on his terms and would come again when he’d laid all his groundwork, when he had everything tied in a foolproof, legal bundle.

  But it was September, coming on fall days with new beginnings. Children were off to school, at least those who could be spared from harvests. I couldn’t sit around waiting, wondering when the shoe might drop. I had a life to live, for as long as I could live it.

  Downstairs, in the library, I chose a primer and a simple reader from Aunt Hyacinth’s many books, pulled a tablet and two pencils from the drawer of her desk, and tucked them in the satchel.

  In the late afternoon, once I believed that labor for the Tate family might be finished, I set out for their home. I was half a mile down the road when Janice Richards called from her front porch swing. “Mrs. Swope!”

  I drew a deep breath. I’d hoped to pass the Richards house without being seen. I didn’t need questions and I knew Janice was trouble.

  In a heartbeat she was walking beside me. “Where are you off to, Mrs. Swope? I’ll carry your bag for you.”

  “No thank you, Janice. I appreciate it but it’s very light, and I think your mother will want you home for dinner—supper—in a few minutes.” I bristled at the use of my married name. No one in No Creek called me Mrs. Swope except Ida Mae on occasion and Velma Richards. Apparently Ida Mae and Janice’s mother had compared notes.

  “She won’t care if I’m gone, long as I’m with you. You’re almost like a teacher.” Janice smiled a smile that told me she wanted to be included, but I dared not
take her to the Tate cabin or into my confidence.

  I stopped in the middle of the dirt road. “I’m sorry, Janice. I’d like your company another day, but I’m needing some time alone. I hope you understand.” I gave my most convincing smile and patted her on the shoulder. “I’ll see you at the library one day soon. You come by and pick out a good book. Bye now.”

  She frowned, but I turned and forged ahead, not waiting for her response, hoping she didn’t follow. I’d walked another quarter of a mile before I looked back. She was nowhere in sight. Her feathers might be ruffled, but I couldn’t help that. I’d pay her more attention another day. This mission couldn’t be delayed or I might lose courage.

  I’d never been to the Tate cabin, but based on a map of local homes and families that I’d found in Aunt Hyacinth’s desk drawer, I had no trouble finding it. I imagined that Aunt Hyacinth’s detailed map was something she’d created because of her teaching, wanting to know each of the families in and around No Creek, colored and white. At least, that’s what I hoped it was for.

  By the time I reached the rustic cabin tucked into the woods, my breath came out in vapored huffs. Whether that was from the trek uphill in the September cool or nerves watching for snakes in the underbrush, I wasn’t certain, but I gathered my courage, climbed the porch step, and knocked on the door.

  Mercy, Olney’s wife, opened the door. “Miss Lilliana! What a surprise.” She stepped onto the porch. “Everything all right over your way? You need Olney?”

  “Hello, Mrs. Tate, everything’s fine at Garden’s Gate. That’s not why I’m here. I wondered if I could talk with you a moment?”