by Cathy Gohlke
A light burned through the church window and Celia saw Reverend Willard walking up and down the aisle, surely practicing his sermon. He did that often, once it was too cold to preach to the tombstones outdoors.
Silently Celia lifted the latch on the shed door. “It’s me, Celia,” she whispered and slipped through the door, closing it just as softly.
“Welcome!” The woman’s voice came through the dark. “We didn’t expect to see you today, Celia.”
“We sure enjoyed that pie. Ate every last morsel.” Celia heard the smile in the man’s voice.
“Clay all but licked the plate!”
“Happy Thanksgiving!” Celia felt her tinned offering small. “I brought you some turkey and fixings. Sorry they’re near frozen.”
“Turkey? I can’t believe it!” The woman’s voice sounded like awe to Celia, like she expected Moses did on Mount Sinai, and her heart warmed.
“Mama’s a real good cook. I wish I could have invited you to our table.”
“You’ve done more for us than any other human being, Celia Percy. Please don’t fret about a thing. Even the baby leapt inside me when she heard you coming.”
“She? How do you know she’s a girl?” Celia had always wondered if there was a way to tell.
The man laughed. “She don’t. She’s hoping.”
“I’d love a girl-child—to plait her hair and tell her stories, teach her to cook and sew and keep a home.” The woman’s voice faltered. “If we get us a home.”
“When. We will, Charlene. We will. I promise it. When we get to Tennessee. You’ll see. When we find your people, we’ll get a fresh start.”
Celia’s eyes had become accustomed to the moonlight that shone through the shed window. She saw the couple clasp hands, saw the man wrap his arm around the woman heavy with child. She wondered if it had been that way for her mama and daddy before the moonshine came between them. They’d been poor, too, and they’d needed a chance, a foot up, as her daddy used to say. He’d found it running ’shine for somebody. She didn’t know who, but like Ida Mae, she had her suspicions. Guzzling the ’shine had raised a demon between her mama and daddy and they’d fought all the time, sinking deeper into debt, until he was arrested. Celia had hated her daddy’s weakness.
She didn’t want that for this couple. She had to be the foot up until they could find real help. And not for them only, but for their baby about to come into the world.
“I’ll pay you and your family back for every morsel once we get on our feet, Celia, I swear it.”
“No need. But I reckon it was you split that wood yesterday.”
“It’s the least I can do. I made sure to wait till I knew nobody was home.”
“Thing is, you got to stop. That’s Marshall’s job and he needs it. Just take what I bring for now. I want to help. You can work it off once you get on your feet.” But she didn’t see how that would happen anytime soon. Nobody’d give him a job, and without a job how could he earn money, buy food, pay rent?
“I’d best get back. I’ll take the pie plate. Mama’s missing it.”
“Please, tell your mother thank you.” The woman meant well, but Celia couldn’t do that.
“Are y’all warm enough?” Celia could see her own breath in the shed.
“These quilts are wonderful. We’re toasty—just fine.”
“I stuffed those newspapers around the window and door, and that helped a lot. Thank you. I’d really like to do something for your family. If not splitting wood, there must be something.” The man’s brow wrinkled.
Celia nodded. “I know, and I appreciate that—I do. But it’s best you let it be for now. Please. I’ll come tomorrow, if I can.”
“We’re all right. We’ll be all right, won’t we, Charlene?”
“We will. We have to.” Celia heard determination in the woman’s voice.
Without another word Celia took the pie plate and slipped through the shed door, silently closing it behind her. She steered wide behind the cemetery, noting that the light in the church had gone out and the light in the parsonage beyond burned softly through the curtains.
She walked home, more slowly than she meant to, taking in the stars—brilliant in their spheres—and the clear, cold night. She left the pie plate on the back porch, so it would look like whoever took it had returned it, and cracked open the back door. All was quiet. She took off her shoes, tiptoed through the kitchen, and crept up the stairs, slipping through her door moments before she heard Miz Hyacinth’s bedroom door open and grown-ups whispering in the hallway.
Celia drew a deep breath and released it. It took less than a minute to change her clothes and crawl beneath the quilt on her bed. She shivered from head to toe, still nearly frozen from her late-night venture. But she wasn’t sorry. She’d helped somebody, fed somebody.
It made her think of the stories Doc Vishy had told her and Chester of how people had helped him and others persecuted during the Great War. He’d crossed Europe on foot, half-starved, before finally reaching a port and working his way across the Atlantic to New York. If people hadn’t helped him—and he said the few who did had risked their lives to do it—he’d never have survived, never have made his way to New York or from there to No Creek. If he hadn’t come to No Creek, he couldn’t have saved Chester’s life the night of his appendix attack. And what would Celia’s life be like without her brother? She scrunched her eyes at the horror of the thought.
Celia had been careful to think of them as “the man” and “the woman.” Without names they’d not been quite real, and what she was doing was not real—not really stealing, not really lying. She could stop anytime—that’s what she’d told herself.
Charlene. Clay. They used their names freely in front of her, and they called her by her given name. No pretending. It’s what friends do. Friends means helping one another. She’d taken that step and could no longer go back, no longer imagine she could stop, and truth be told, she didn’t want to.
Chapter Fifty-One
DR. VISHNEVSKY CONFIRMED Ruby Lynne’s pregnancy and predicted the baby due in early spring. I nearly cried to realize she’d been raped even before she came to us that first time. Evidently Ruby Lynne had already done the calculation, for while his confirmation seemed to carry the weight of a death sentence, she didn’t seem surprised, only resigned.
Ruby Lynne refused to give the doctor the name of the father, which convinced me all the more that it was Rhoan Wishon. I wanted to call the sheriff.
“No!” Ruby Lynne cried. “Daddy’ll kill me! He’ll kill me! You don’t understand. Promise me you won’t tell him!”
“No one is calling the sheriff without your say-so, Ruby Lynne,” Dr. Vishnevsky soothed. “But you must realize that you can’t keep a pregnancy hidden. You’re already beginning to show.”
Ruby Lynne didn’t answer. Dr. Vishnevsky continued, “Besides that, you need extra care, good food and rest, and to be excused from some of your heavier chores. You’re young to be having a baby. Some precautions are needed.”
But she couldn’t seem to hear him. She was terrified, and in order to calm her, to help her sleep, he finally gave her a mild sedative. Gladys and I stepped out into the hallway but kept the door open. We heard him talking softly, reassuring her as best he could that he would be available anytime she needed help or to talk, and that if she wanted, he would deliver her baby or arrange for her to go away to a hospital in Winston-Salem or Asheville—both far from No Creek. He didn’t speak of her father but said she wouldn’t be alone. Finally she fell asleep.
Dr. Vishnevsky packed his medical bag and we all tiptoed downstairs into the parlor.
“I still think we should alert the sheriff. Ruby Lynne cannot go back into that situation.” My head pounded. I felt like tearing my hair out.
“I agree that it’s not safe.” The doctor nodded. “I found signs of further abuse—tears, cuts, bruising—that were not there when I examined her before.”
“Who knows how many time
s she’s been through this?” My stomach roiled.
His eyebrows rose and he passed a weary hand across his furrowed forehead.
“We must call the sheriff!” Why couldn’t they understand?
“If you do that, you’re as good as signing Ruby Lynne’s death warrant.” Gladys was firm. “And the sheriff and Rhoan are drinking buddies—good ole boys in a holler of no account. You can’t depend on justice for Ruby Lynne, any more than we could with the Klan attack.”
“Rape is a grave accusation. Unless you have witnesses or proof, or unless Ruby Lynne admits it . . .” Dr. Vishnevsky shook his head, agreeing with Gladys. “Is her father actually the perpetrator? I don’t know. If so, why is she so afraid of telling him?”
“Because that would expose him to others. He may well have threatened her if she tells.” I should know. I knew about men who beat, then threatened a woman into silence. I pushed my shaking hands behind me. Still, I had no proof, and Ruby Lynne refused to name the father. But it was clear that the abuser wasn’t going to stop. “We can’t do nothing! We can’t possibly send her back there!”
“We can keep her here.” Gladys spoke quietly. “Until Rhoan comes for her.”
I closed my eyes, and memories of Gerald coming after me and dragging me from my father’s house rose before me. I couldn’t let that happen to Ruby Lynne.
“Call me if there are any changes. Otherwise, I expect her body will heal in time. She needs rest and nourishment. She’s not been eating enough or properly.” Dr. Vishnevsky turned to Gladys. “A balanced diet, greens, if you can get them, and red meat. I suspect some anemia.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Thank you for coming, Dr. Vishnevsky. I’m sorry we called you out on Thanksgiving. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Dr. Vishnevsky smiled and placed his hand on my arm. “Never hesitate to call me. I wasn’t feasting anyway.”
While he put his coat on, Gladys ran to the kitchen and wrapped a large slice of pecan pie. He was nearly out the door when she slipped it in his hand. “For later, with something hot to drink.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Percy. Thank you.” He tipped his hat in his old-world way and was gone.
The clock in the parlor ticked so loud my head hurt. What more can we do?
“Lilliana, there’s something you should consider.”
I pulled my hand away from my brow. “What?”
“What if it isn’t Rhoan’s?”
“What do you mean?” I wasn’t in the mood for riddles, from Gladys or anyone else.
“What if she wasn’t raped? What if she let . . . let somebody get to her and things got rough? What if she’s sorry now but wasn’t sorry to start?”
I thought I might throw up. “How can you say that? You saw what she looked like when she came here, what she’d been through—apparently not for the first time! And it’s happened again. Again!” I struggled to keep my voice down.
Gladys sighed heavily and sat down on the settee, her head in her hands.
I was sorry in an instant that I’d yelled at her. I wasn’t angry at Gladys. She was my ally. I was yelling for Ruby Lynne, for me, and for all the women who’d ever said no to a man who didn’t stop, who insisted on having his own way, “rightfully by marriage” or not.
Gladys looked up, moistened her lips, and whispered, “What if it’s Marshall’s?”
Chapter Fifty-Two
RHOAN WISHON WASN’T IN CHURCH on Sunday, which made Celia think that either he was out looking for Ruby Lynne or he was off on one of his many trips to nobody knew where. All anybody ever knew for sure was that Rhoan Wishon was a “businessman” and had “business dealings” all across the state and even west, into Tennessee.
Nobody else knew that Ruby Lynne was staying at Garden’s Gate, as far as Celia knew, and as her mama had told her, that was safest for everybody.
Ruby Lynne’s being there took the focus off of Celia and Chester, which was just fine in Celia’s mind. It gave her more freedom to come and go, made it easier to collect and deliver her food wages from the general store to the shed behind the church.
She just hadn’t figured on bumping into Marshall and his rake when she came out of the shed late that Monday afternoon.
“What you doin’ in there, Celia?”
“Marshall! You like to scared me to death! What are you doin’ here?”
“I’m sweepin’ up the last of the fall leaves, although, I have to say, looks like somebody got here ahead of me. Didn’t leave me much to do.”
“That’s mighty good of you.”
“It’s my job—mine and Uncle Olney’s.”
Celia took his arm and steered him away from the shed. “How was your Thanksgiving? I bet your aunt filled you all to the brim. She makes the best sweet potato pie I ever ate, and if I had to guess, Olney shot a turkey up off the ridge that—”
“Celia Percy—turn me loose! What you jabberin’ on about and what you up to?”
“Up to? Nothin’. Can’t a body be friendly?”
Marshall harrumphed. “Who do you think you’re talkin’ to? Do you know when you lie, or are about to, your ears turn pink? Do you know that?”
Celia didn’t. But betrayal by her own ears made her mad. They’d made it halfway through the tombstones when Marshall stopped in his tracks. That wasn’t far enough. “Why’d you stop?”
“Because you’re workin’ hard to get me away from that shed. What you hidin’ in there?”
“Hiding? What am I hiding? Why would I be hiding anything in some dumb old shed? I got to get home. Mama will have supper on the table, and if I’m not there, I’ll miss and get in big trouble.”
“Then I guess you won’t mind if I take a look.” Marshall started back toward the shed.
“No! Don’t do it!” Celia’s heart nearly burst from her chest.
“You gonna tell me why I shouldn’t open that door?”
“I’m gettin’ ready for the Christmas play. I’m keepin’ my props in there and I don’t want anybody to see—before Christmas Eve.” It was a wonder how telling one lie made telling the next one easier.
“It’s not likely I’ll be seein’ your Christmas program, Celia—me goin’ to Saints Delight and you directin’ your program right here at Shady Grove.”
“Well, I thought you and Olney and the family might like to come. I want it to be a surprise.” Celia’s palms were sweating, even though it couldn’t be above freezing.
Marshall heaved a sigh of exasperation and waited.
Celia’s head pounded. She hadn’t wanted to tell anyone, to trust anyone, or to get anyone else involved. Already Olney knew, but he hadn’t interfered once and might have even figured the squatters had gone on by now. If Marshall opened that door, he’d be bound to tell Olney and maybe Reverend Willard. Olney couldn’t be part of it beyond the help he’d given or he’d lose his job. Reverend Willard would be in a fix what to do and might have to turn them out, being subject to the church and all.
“Celia? This got anything to do with that sack of food Uncle Olney had me leave behind the Belvidere stone?”
Celia swallowed. “Can you keep a secret?”
“If it’s a secret should be kept.”
“You ever wrung a chicken’s neck?”
“What?”
“You ever wrung a chicken’s neck? I found one and I need to wring its neck. I don’t exactly know how and I don’t want to ask Mama.”
“Is it one of Miz Hyacinth’s chickens?”
Miz Hyacinth was dead, so to be perfectly accurate, it was not, but to continue stretching the truth to Marshall was as bad as lying outright to Olney. “Sort of.”
“What do you mean, ‘sort of’?”
“Well, she’s not much of a layer anymore, and she’s one of the strays roosted in the trees till Miz Hyacinth bought more after Miss Lill came, so she’s set for roasting sometime.”
“Then why don’t you ask your mama?”
Celia licked her lips. She needed hel
p. Charlene and Clay needed help, but bringing anybody else in was dangerous. And yet she needed someone who could do things she couldn’t, things she wasn’t sure how. “I’m gonna trust you, Marshall.”
“You know you can.”
“There’s a man and his wife hiding in that shed what’s starving, and the woman’s about to bust a baby. The man wants to work but nobody’ll give him a job. Ida Mae run him out of the store because he’s a Yankee and a drifter. I’ve got to get them some food. I’ve been working for potatoes and such at the store, but they need meat. The woman’s poorly. The man does what he can to pay back—cutting firewood up to the house when nobody’s home and sweeping up the leaves here in the churchyard at night when Reverend Willard’s over to the next town and I don’t know what all. He’s not a mooch.”
“Celia Percy. You do beat all. Does Reverend Willard know about this?”
“No.”
“Your mama?”
Celia shook her head. “Mama said not to bring home strangers or strays. She put her foot down, but I know she wouldn’t want them to starve. She just won’t listen, and I fear she feels so beholden to Miss Lill that she wouldn’t ask her to give more. I can’t let them starve, Marshall. Jesus wouldn’t want that.”
“So you’re taken to lying and stealing. You reckon Jesus wants that?”
“Everything I borrow from anybody, I keep a record. Clay says he’ll pay back every penny, and he’s already doing every odd job he can by night. Even if he doesn’t pay it back, I’ll sweep Ida Mae’s store clean till I’m twenty. I look after the chickens at Garden’s Gate ever since we came to live there. Miz Hyacinth bought them special for me to mind, said I’m their caretaker—so it’s not exactly stealing. Sometimes you got to cull the flock for poor layers, you know. I just never wrung necks. I need someone to cook it, too.”
“I can’t get Aunt Mercy involved in that.”
The weight of impossibility lay heavy on Celia. She turned to walk away.
