Night Bird Calling

by Cathy Gohlke

  “Ha! You mean the Wishons and their like!” Norma touted.

  “Well,” Janice giggled, “the good-looking one, anyway.”

  “You think he might have told—?”

  “How do I know who told what? She had no business goin’ down there in the first place—especially not after Rhoan Wishon warned her. He showed Ruby Lynne the light of day all right. We keep to ourselves and they keep to theirselves. That’s the way of things—my father said so—and Mrs. Swope best understand that.”

  Celia listened till she couldn’t take any more. She pushed her way back to the seat in front of Janice, turned around so the bus driver couldn’t see, and spit in her eye.

  “Ack!” Janice squealed. “You pig!”

  “Better a pig than a traitor! Miss Lill opened her home to all—even the likes of you—because she cares about sharin’ Miz Hyacinth’s books with everybody. And you trot your prissy britches around tellin’ tales like a gossipy old lady, stirrin’ folks up to no good. What does it hurt you if Marshall learns to read? You afraid he’ll grow up and become mayor of No Creek? Afraid he’ll steal your daddy’s job and you’ll lose your shiny patent leathers? You’re slime, Janice Richards—slime lower than a slug, and anybody that has anything to do with you is slime, too. Doin’ what you did and gettin’ Miss Lill almost killed is near murder and like spittin’ on Miz Hyacinth’s grave at the same time. You shame us all!”

  It was the longest speech Celia had ever made and she meant every word. Jim Biggins, the tallest and handsomest boy in their class, who always sat in the back of the bus, began to clap his hands. “You tell her, Celia!”

  Janice Richards’s cheeks burned the color of ripe persimmons. She’d never care what Celia thought of her, but she cared plenty what Jim thought, and whatever Jim Biggins thought, the whole class followed. The gaggle of girls pulled away from Janice. Gratified, Celia marched off the bus and into the general store to pick up the mail.

  When she returned to the store’s front porch, Janice was waiting for her. The other kids, other than Chester, were gone. Janice stepped close as Celia hopped down the steps, doing her best to ignore her archnemesis.

  “You think you’re so smart, so clever, so much the favorite of everybody at Garden’s Gate. But I tell you, Celia Percy, beware,” Janice hissed. “You and your white trash family made an enemy today.”

  Chills ran up Celia’s spine at the venom in Janice’s threats, but she pretended not to hear and marched away, with Chester aghast at her heels. By the time she reached Garden’s Gate, the hair on Celia’s arms had settled down and the ire in her heart had risen. She flung open the back door and slammed her schoolbooks on the kitchen table. “Janice Richards is the meanest, nastiest girl in the school—in the whole history of No Creek going back five hundred years!”

  Chester, out of breath, trailed behind and plopped his books on the chair. “No Creek didn’t exist five hundred years ago. It was founded by the—”

  “I don’t care who found it! I only care who’s gonna hog-tie and tar and feather that no-’count—”

  “Celia Percy!” her mother exclaimed, running into the kitchen from the parlor. “Nobody talks like that in this house! I ought to Lifebuoy your mouth, young lady!”

  “It’s her fault, Mama! It was Janice Richards who told about Miss Lill helpin’ over to the Tates’. She did it on the bus today, made it look like Miss Lill was doin’ somethin’ wicked—”

  “It doesn’t matter, Celia.” Miss Lill walked in and Celia whirled to face her.

  “It does matter! Don’t you see? Those KKK would never have known if it hadn’t been for her followin’ you, tellin’ on you. It was her got them riled.”

  “You can’t blame Janice for riling them. Their own hate and hypocrisy and fear of what they don’t understand got them riled.”

  “How can you say that?” Celia demanded, her anger forcing her eyes to well. “They like to killed you!”

  “But they didn’t. And if they’d meant to kill me, they would have. They just wanted to scare me.”

  “Well, they scared me!” Celia’s jaw tightened. She felt like shaking Miss Lill. “Don’t you see? If they scare you and you leave, there’ll be nobody to stand up to them. We’ll just go back to bein’ who we were before you and Miz Hyacinth.”

  “Before Aunt Hyacinth? Before the Belvideres? Who are—who were the Belvideres? Because I’m confused. On the one hand everybody in No Creek treats the Tates like good folk as long as they ‘stay in their place’ and do their chores. But the moment they want to learn to read, to buy land, to work in the bigger world, they’re pushed down, pushed back, and all the ‘good folk’—maybe even the Belvideres, for all I know—turn away and pretend not to see.” Miss Lill closed her eyes as if trying to get her bearings.

  Celia circled the table and grabbed one of her hands. “How can you say that, Miss Lill? Miz Hyacinth was the only Belvidere outside you I ever knew, and she wasn’t like that. And neither am I. Neither is Mama or Chester or Doc Vishy or Reverend Willard. We’re on your side, Miss Lill. I’m your friend! Don’t you see me standin’ here?”

  A shudder ran through Miss Lill that vibrated into Celia’s fingers—a shudder she felt deep in her bones.

  Miss Lill opened her eyes. “Yes,” she sighed, her eyes filling. “I see you, Celia Percy.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  GRANNY CHREE DIDN’T STOP COMING to see me when I recovered. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Her gentle but matter-of-fact doctoring had cemented our friendship. She showed up two or three times a week, just after the break of day. She never knocked but waited in a rocker on the back porch until I came out the door. Somehow, I always knew she was there. Her comforting presence drew me from a warm bed, like the tantalizing fragrance of biscuits baking.

  There was something otherworldly but so down-to-earth about her—the timbre of her voice, her way with words and the gentle expression of her hands that pulled something from deep within me. Time spent with her made me want to cry and chuckle softly all at once.

  She usually refused to step into the house, claiming she’d rather sit outdoors in God’s great big world, but one October morning when the frost lay thick on the ground, I pulled her into the kitchen and built up the woodstove before Gladys and the children rose. Together we sat at the table and sipped coffee strong enough to stand a spoon in. I told her again that I hadn’t heard her come. I just knew she’d be there.

  “You just respondin’ to the Spirit, chile.”

  If anyone else had said that to me, I would’ve felt irritated. I wasn’t convinced the Holy Spirit wanted anything to do with me.

  “You kickin’ against the goads, Lilliana. Won’t do you no good. The Spirit’s relentless. Won’t be lettin’ you go.”

  “The Spirit let me go a long time ago.”

  “You believe that? You suffered, chile, but you not the first.”

  “I don’t mean this.” I brought my fingers to my forehead, where I could feel the scar.

  “I didn’t meant that, neither.” Granny looked as if she could read my mind. “That man beat you.”

  I swallowed, not sure I should open that door. “My father was a hard man, but it was my mother who suffered most by him.”

  “I don’t mean your daddy. First time I met you, I seen that faint white ring on your finger. ’Pears to me you wore that tight like a shackle. Besides, a woman don’t throw off her weddin’ band for no cause. I see it in your eyes, in the way you stand and walk, the jittery way you look over your shoulder when you not engaged in somethin’ goin’ forward. The way you sidestep every man in your path, including Reverend Jesse.”

  I wanted people to see in me strength and determination. I’d not imagined my defeated past written in my posture or on my face. “I ran away—maybe you’ve heard that. Even if I have to leave this place, I won’t go back to him.”

  Granny nodded. “A man like that got no right to a wife.”

  “I wasn’t much of a w
ife to him.” It was the truth. After the first few months I could not stand to have him touch me, no matter how many times he said he was sorry he’d lost his temper, sorry he’d hit me or thrown something at me or bitten my leg, no matter how many times he’d begged for, then angrily demanded, my forgiveness.

  Granny reached across the table and clasped my hand. “Be done with him, Lilliana. Did you not hear me? That man abandoned you in his beatings. He done broke his marriage vows. You free. Don’t let him eat away at your life no more. He ain’t even here. Let those ghosts rest and move on in the freedom God give you. Jesus didn’t die so you can suffer. He died to free you from sufferin’.”

  Now I sobbed, shaking my head. “That’s nearly word for word what Reverend Willard told me—what he read one day from Oswald Chambers. But, Granny, God didn’t give me freedom. I took it. I made a vow to be married for life and I took it upon myself to run away. Isn’t that the same as stealing? God doesn’t condone separation but for a time before coming together again, and He doesn’t condone divorce except for adultery. The Bible says so—at least that’s what I think it means, what I was always told it means. I love God, Granny. I want to please Him. But I’d rather die than go back.” And I meant it.

  “The Good Word says for a man to love his wife as he loves his own body. You think God means for a man to berate and beat his own body? To crush his own spirit and try to kill himself over and over again? You don’t think that man abandoned you? Abandoned you in all the ways God meant him to be there and protect you? Paul speaks to that, too, as a means to be done.”

  I shook my head. She just didn’t understand. I didn’t understand.

  “Jesus say, if a man stumbles one of these little ones that come to Me, it’s better if a millstone be slung around his neck and he be drowned in the depths of the sea. You want that man killed? You want a millstone slung over his neck and him go down forever?”

  The whirring in my brain stopped. “What?”

  “You wish him dead?”

  I gasped.

  “That make it clean and easy, Lilliana. You be free, then, in your mind and in the minds of those you worry over, wouldn’t you?”

  I squirmed in my seat. “I know it’s wrong. It’s wrong to wish him dead!”

  “That what you doin’ by goin’ on, totin’ that load of guilt like this. You stumblin’, chile. That man is already dead to you. Leave him lie.” She leaned closer. “You losin’ sight of the love of Jesus and the freedom He died to bring you. You fallin’ by the wayside because you believe Jesus is holdin’ a sledgehammer over your head, ready to let you have it if you don’t toe that earth man’s line.”

  The picture she painted was ugly. Ugly and true.

  “As long as you lettin’ that man stumble you into believin’ Jesus can’t love you, he’s trippin’ on down that road toward that millstone and that sea. It be bad enough for him what he’s already done. The Lord don’t look kindly on oppressors; you know that. But you fallin’ away from the Lord under that man’s shoe, livin’ his victim all this life long, seals his fate. Don’t you see Jesus don’t want that for you—or him?”

  I’d never considered that my pain, my stumbling, believing myself alienated and rejected by God because of all my father and husband had condemned in me could in any way harm them. Could that mean God wanted me free from Gerald for Gerald’s sake—and for mine? Is it even possible God could want what I want?

  Granny squeezed my hand. “You think on that. You think on that and you pray and ask God to show you your life now, from this minute.” She pushed back her chair and rose slowly on stiff legs, hefting the bag of roots she’d dug earlier that morning, the last before the ground froze deep down. “Lilliana, you know anything about the love of God—how deep and wide and rich it is—or the freedom He bought you with the death of His own Son? Jesus showed us the kind of love a man is to give his wife when He died for us. That the vow your husband made and done broke. He broke that marriage vow in two and it’s dead. You think on that.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  IT WAS THE FIRST OF NOVEMBER when Celia found the locked box in the cellar, behind the budding Christmas cactus.

  “It’s a wonder that cactus is not dead and petrified. No telling how long it’s been down there!” Celia’s mama exclaimed. But Celia could see she was pleased. Her mama loved flowers, especially as the year and everything out of doors prepared to die. “It’s God’s reminder that miracles happen, that He can bring the dead to life.” Celia knew her mama was talking about more than flowers. She was talking about her husband. Celia feared to think of him as “Daddy.” Never would he or her mama understand the shame he’d caused Celia at school.

  She wasn’t the only girl whose father ran moonshine nor her father the only man in No Creek who’d been stopped by the law. But she only knew one other father who sat in jail. Leon Cutter was the only “convict child” besides her and Chester, and his mother was known to run around and even invite men to their home to keep Leon in shoes and their rent paid up.

  “That’s the way it is with jailbird families,” Janice had declared during recess one day, loud enough for Leon and Celia both to hear. “Those women run loose when their men are away; that’s what my mama said.”

  Celia had wanted to stuff dirt in Janice’s nasty mouth, but at that moment Miss Ferrell, their teacher, had appeared at the school door and rung the bell for the end of recess. They’d all had to line up while Janice looked smug and Celia marched in and sat down for arithmetic, pretending she’d never heard. She wouldn’t give Janice the satisfaction, but Celia hadn’t forgotten. Her mother wasn’t anything like Leon’s mother, but it shamed her for people to talk like that, and it hurt her for Leon, who couldn’t help being poor and couldn’t help what his mama did.

  Celia hoped her mama was so pleased by the find of the Christmas cactus that she wouldn’t notice the locked box it sat on, but she did.

  “Celia, what’s that box?”

  “I don’t know, Mama. Just found it.”

  “Where’d you find it?”

  “In the cellar . . . behind the flowerpots. Behind the Christmas cactus. That sure is a pretty flower. Bet it’ll bloom like nobody’s business come Christmas.” Celia edged her way to the door, hoping to distract her mother.

  “You come back here with that right now. It’s not yours.”

  “Don’t reckon it’s anybody’s, Mama. It’s just an old, rusty thing.”

  “Which means it must have been down there a long time, which means it belonged to Miz Hyacinth.”

  “Yeah, and she’s dead now. I can take care of it for her.”

  “Which means it belongs to Lilliana.”

  “Aw, Mama, Miss Lill won’t care about some crusty old box.”

  “Don’t you sass me—”

  “What won’t I care about?” Miss Lill appeared in the doorway and Celia’s heart sank. Outnumbered. Outgunned.

  “Celia just found this box—and this Christmas cactus—in the cellar. Looks like both have been hiding there a long time.”

  “Well, the flower can’t have been there forever, but this box sure looks like it has.”

  Celia didn’t hear disdain in Miss Lill’s voice; she heard curiosity and knew that she’d never get to tackle the box alone. “Let’s see what’s inside it!”

  “Now, Celia, Miss Lilliana might want to go through that in private.”

  “But I found it!” Celia wailed, exasperated and out of patience.

  Miss Lill, thankfully, looked like she understood. “Let’s open it together—now, shall we?”

  Celia sighed, grateful. “There’s a lock, no key.”

  “Right. Hmmm. I guess we’ll have to bust it open.” Miss Lill frowned.

  “No, now just a minute. Let me see.” Celia’s mama pulled the box toward her and pulled a hairpin from her bun. She stuck it in and fiddled the lock, folded her brow into a set of wrinkles Celia knew well, and cocked her ear toward the box. Celia didn’t hear anything�
��no tumblers turning or anything clicking into place—but her mama drew a satisfied smile and lifted open the lid. Then her smile stopped, but her eyebrows rose, and Celia thought she might burst from wanting to know what her mother saw.

  Miss Lill turned the box to face herself and Celia.

  “A gun,” Celia pronounced. “Who’d lock an old gun in a box like that?”

  “Someone who wanted to hide it,” Miss Lill said softly, as if to herself.

  “Someone who wanted it gone—forever,” Celia’s mama said, snapping closed the lid of the metal box. “Which is just where it’s going now.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  THE GLORIOUS COLORS of October’s leaf showers had given way to November’s stark and naked trees against a somber mountain sky. My aches and pains from the beating I took, especially the headaches, had eased, but not gone. My heart yearned for a good long ramble in the woods or up the mountain, but my head was still too light and my energy low. Each cold night after Celia and Chester finished their homework, we’d sit together in the parlor-library by the fire, reading stories aloud or playing Criss-Cross Words. Gladys was a formidable opponent, which delighted me no end. Celia wrote down every word over two syllables in her Eagle tablet of Amazing New Words while Chester pored over baseball cards he’d traded for at school and we all drank steaming cups of Ovaltine. It was my favorite time of day.

  One night, just after supper, as lightning flashed and the wind and rain whipped the corners of the house, causing the fire to sputter, there came a pounding on the back door. I was setting up the board game and thought Gladys was still in the kitchen, so I didn’t go at once, but the pounding came again. I heard Gladys’s footsteps cross the room above and find the stairs. The pounding became a softer, more feeble knock. Panic stole into my heart, a premonition I couldn’t explain. Celia and I glanced at one other and sprang to our feet. I threw the back door open to the rushing wind, the pelting rain, and a shivering Ruby Lynne Wishon. Her fair skin bloodless, her lips and cheeks bruised, she fell into my arms.