Devil's Call

by J Danielle Dorn

  “What have you done?” Eva asked.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “My perfume bottle’s gone,” she said, her tone grim. “I know you done something, Lily; I can feel it in the air. Last night I dreamed they were burning you. What’ve you done?”

  “Take it easy,” I said as I climbed down from the window seat. “I ain’t done nothing that can’t be undone.”

  “That’s of no concern to them,” she said. “You know how easy men scare. You may as well have turned him into a goat.”

  “Do you know that one?” I asked. “Would you teach me?”

  Eva rolled her eyes and did not answer, knowing well when I was gnashing my teeth.

  By the next evening the brute had fingered me as the one who hexed him, and all of the men who had seen me disappear on the street had had time to work themselves into a posse. The tavern downstairs was full as ever, weary travelers and riverboat conductors looking to stand still for a few hours keeping the taps running and the aunties bustling, but it was like my cousin had said—my hex had left a stain in the air.

  I succeeded in my task of keeping distance between myself and my mother, and though I did not see her the rest of the day, I did feel the prickling of magick that was the grandmothers and the eldest cousins casting a protective circle around the property. No one with ill intent in their hearts could cross the threshold of the place, but none of my kin thought to ward the house against my leaving.

  I stepped out of the inn just before sundown, intending to go on about my evening in spite of what was gathering outside, and in doing so found a group of ten men waiting for me, with more stopping what they were doing to see what would happen. Those ten were armed with ropes and torches they intended to light, not for brilliance but for burning.

  Your gran had seen me leave the house, and set down the glass she was filling to rush out after me, to fling wide the doors leading to the inn’s front porch and step between me and the posse. I still do not know whether what happened next came by coincidence or by some Work of my cousins seeking to keep me safe. But at that moment, with everything else going down, an army company rode into town on their horses. They were on their way to the Mexican front and like as not intending to stop at the barracks just outside of town for the night. Instead of rest, they found a group of men looking to string up a witch.

  The posse was in no state to take on a company of soldiers, and while the others dismounted, a soldier with a corporal medic’s insignia rode up to me and held out his arm. I was preparing to run when I looked up from the hand to glimpse the face. His cap hid his red hair, but I recognized the eyes in an instant. It was the soldier who had escorted me back from Texas a few years earlier. He had earned some stripes since the last time I saw him, but unlike the other noncommissioned officers, he did not wear a sword.

  “Why am I not surprised?” he asked, with a lopsided grin that I answered with a scowl. He held out his hand more firmly and said, “I’m trying to help you, come on now.”

  So I grabbed Corporal Callahan’s forearm and, rather than allow him to haul me into the saddle behind him, used him as a ballast.

  I was dressed for an evening of cleaning up slopped beer and climbing cellar stairs to fetch more gin, not for riding horses, and I was quite certain the animal would buck me if afforded the opportunity. Once I was astride the saddle, I latched my arms around the corporal’s waist so tight I heard the wind shoot out of him.

  “Easy,” he said, and started the horse to trotting. “I ain’t gonna let you fall.”

  “The hell with you,” I said. “I ain’t gonna let me fall.”

  Aside from squeezing through crowds of gamblers and drunks, or the rare embrace I tolerated from an uncle or a male cousin, I had never been so close to a man before either. To be frank, they were stranger to me than horses were. Upon inhaling, I found the corporal did not reek of tobacco or whiskey, as I was expecting. Nor was I transported by his nearness or his scent. Whatever stories Agnes had been telling us younger girls about being around men were just that—stories.

  “Where in the hell are you taking me?” I asked.

  “You got a mouth on you,” he said.

  “Where? Tell me.”

  “We’re gonna ride around for a bit and then double back. Lieutenant Ness has got a way with people. I’m sure the mob’ll be long gone by the time we get there.”

  “Well, bully for Lieutenant Ness,” I said.

  This too made the corporal laugh, which caused a curious flush to blossom in my chest and find its way into my cheeks. I had no interest in charming or impressing this gentleman, but something beyond my control occurred when I heard him smile. All I knew was I wanted this ride to end so I could return to the inn and accept the punishment awaiting me.

  So I kicked his boots out of the stirrups and replaced them with my own. In the moment I had earned by startling him, I sent his boot and the spur attached to it into the horse’s flank. As the animal began to canter, the man who would become your father asked me whether I wanted to hold the reins too.

  I loosed an unladylike snort but gave no other reply. To our left was the Mississippi River, to the right the bloodied western sky. I was growing accustomed to the quiet of the evening when the corporal spoke again.

  “You know, this is the second time I’ve saved you after someone called you a witch and said they were going to kill you.”

  “You call that saving?” I asked. “I’d been just fine without you.”

  “Is that so? And what’s your pa think of all this trouble you keep getting into?”

  “How should I know? I never knew him. Got this far without his help and don’t need yours, neither.”

  “Well, you got ample kin from what I’ve seen.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “Absolutely nothing.”

  I could not see his face, but I knew his smirk was gone.

  “That why you joined the army?” I asked.

  “I wanted to save people, and the army needed medics. I make it through the war, I get to be a doctor.” I heard his grin return. “Besides, coal mining ain’t in my blood.”

  “Too bad. Your face would look better with soot on it.”

  He laughed, and though I would have denied it at the time, so did I.

  “Why’d you want to be a doctor?” I asked.

  He held his tongue a moment, and I let him.

  “Surmise it’s my own way of getting back at Death for taking my kin. Even the score, or something.”

  We rode in silence, the angry, fatherless witch and the kinless corporal with an account to settle with the Reaper. As I look on you now, I realize that was the moment I first began to pine for your father.

  By the time we finished the circuit around the waterfront, the corporal’s brothers in arms had cleared the front porch and the street of both lynchers and bystanders, and the only folks left outside were a tall man wearing the single-bar insignia of a second lieutenant and your gran, eyeing us like she knew what was coming. Maybe she did. She waited for me to dismount before she thanked the lieutenant and the corporal kindly, and she waited for them to trot off to reconvene with their men before she took me by the arm and marched me into the Library. I would have preferred one of Aunt Griselda’s tongue lashings compared to your gran’s punishment, but I learned.

  The next morning, I and my cousin Charlotte were sat in the courtyard garden while the rest of the household cleaned up after breakfast. My task was to restore a fallow section of garden. I was to do this not with my hands but with my Will. Charlotte was sat crafting a chain from the daisies she grew by passing her bare palm over the grass beside her. Aside from the occasional rustling of the breeze through the trees, her humming was the only sound in the yard. I was unable to convince even a blade of grass to emerge from the dirt and fixing to give up when the both of us heard the jangling of spurs from within the house.

  My cousin kept working at her chain, bu
t I dusted off my hands and found my feet, holding my shoulders square so as to seem taller than my due. Even with the heels on my boots, I was the shortest of my kin. Stood before a man full grown, I aimed to carry myself like a woman.

  “We are bound for Fort Smith,” said Corporal Callahan, and he kept his hat in his hands though we were out of doors and the sun was beginning to overtake the eastern sky. “I wanted to make sure you ain’t found more trouble since I last saw you.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I asked.

  “Not at all,” he said. “In fact, I hope if ever our paths cross again, it is to wave and say hello, and if you and I decide to stop and chat awhile, I will find it a pleasant change of both pace and peril.”

  Though I had no desire to fall for him, I desired less that this man would think his absence affected me. So I stuck out my right hand and did not react when the false certainty in the gesture provoked him to smile and clasp palms.

  “Farewell, Corporal,” I said, giving his hand several firm shakes.

  “See ya around, Miss MacPherson,” he said.

  He let himself back inside the house, and I returned to my place in the dead patch of garden. No sooner had I smoothed my skirts and breathed in deep the smell of nothingness, the garden dirt needing blood and bone to live, than Charlotte laughed at something the flowers were whispering to her.

  “You’re gonna marry him,” she said.

  “The hell I am,” I said.

  “Look,” she said, and held up the necklace she had been weaving as I conversed with the army doctor.

  “What am I looking at?” I asked.

  “These two right here,” she said, and pointed to a knot in the necklace. “They tied themselves together.”

  “You sure that don’t mean you and Thomas Hume are gonna run off and have a bunch of babies?”

  “Thomas Hume is afraid of me,” she said. “That one ain’t afraid of you.”

  That was not enough to convince me of anything, not at the time, but my heart must have been yearning towards lighter things. As I passed my palm over the dead patch of earth, the dry gray dirt churned and rippled. When it settled again, it was rich and dark and good. It did not turn to dust when I sank my fingers into it. I pulled them out again, and the damp soil clung to my skin, and from out of the holes grew wildflowers.

  Your father sent me a telegraph upon his arrival in New Orleans. It read:

  Bound for Veracruz. First time aboard ship. Think you would like it in N.O. Stay out of trouble. Matthew.

  Sensing he had little else to lift his spirits, I began to write letters to him. I did not write often, and I did not write much. From where I sat in my dry, quiet bedroom, this soldier had traveled farther and freer than I ever had. He was where my thoughts went when I allowed them to wander during lessons and meals.

  Months passed before I received a proper letter in the post from the army doctor. He answered the questions I had posed in my own correspondences, and asked a few of his own. I resisted the notion of allowing him anything other than distant friendship, though of course my cousins found the affair romantic and needled me for details soon as a new letter arrived, dusty and battered. Naming the sensation was impossible at the time, but my cousins kept on with their needling, and it occurred to me that I, in my seventeen years of life, had never felt understood until I began corresponding with your father.

  As that occurrence came to me, so did its companion—that each span of time between letters might be the final silence, that I would never know if he had died because so far as the army was concerned, I was nothing to him.

  One morning, I took a long walk out of the city and into the quarry fields that lay west of the Missouri River to search for a rare stone. Looking back, I could have spoken to my mother of my need and asked for her assistance. But admitting to her I feared for the safety of a man I only truly knew through correspondence would have meant admitting it to myself. So I went alone.

  The books in the Library named quartz as a stone of protection, one that would serve best as a talisman rather than a spell. Different colors were meant for different purposes. Rose for protection during pregnancy and childbirth, smoky for protection against ill will, blue for protection against fear. Though I will admit to being a brash girl who let her hot blood drive her more often than her head, in this instance I was not seeking to punish another for what they had done to me or mine. I was seeking to keep from danger the man who would be your father. I needed amethyst.

  Dusk did not come until late in the evening, but just before it did come and steal away the light with it, I found glinting far off along an unused trail a suggestion of what I needed. I knelt in the dirt and began to brush away the sand with my fingers. The amethyst’s edges were worn down by salt and storms and time, and I sat back on my haunches to consider its utility. The leather cord I had chosen wrapped around the stone as if they were both of them incomplete until this moment, and it was long enough that when I tied it around my neck, the stone lay flat against my breastbone.

  Once it was done, I secreted the charm beneath my dress. I knew the spell would work if I kept my thoughts on the corporal until I removed the charm. Though I allowed myself to feel foolish for a few seconds before beginning the long walk back to town, after that moment of reproach, I thought only of the man to whom I would mail the necklace in the morning.

  Thirteen days after the United States of America claimed victory over the United Mexican States, Eva and Charlotte chased me into the bedroom and onto my bed, testing the limits of the aging frame as they laughed and jostled.

  “How am I supposed to read it with your elbow in my face?” I asked Eva.

  “Open it, open it!” Charlotte said.

  “I’m trying!” I said.

  Once I had the letter free and open in my hands, I held my breath for not knowing what it would say. I was prepared for bad news, to learn the army was moving him to the desert, to the ocean, someplace I would never see him again. Or worse, that he was going to one of the big cities back east, engaged to be married to a coal baron’s daughter rather than squander his time on the half-breed daughter of a roadhouse matron.

  Eva squealed and clung to my arm as I read aloud what he wrote.

  Dear Miss MacPherson,

  It is with great relief that I write to inform you of the 6th Infantry’s orders to return north to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, so soon as we break camp in the morning. Though I will very much miss the sun, the sand, and the occasional scorpion nesting in my boot, we are coming home. The war is over. I have every confidence you and I will meet again in St. Louis, and feel it is not too much to hope I will not have to compete with an inebriate or posse for your attention this time.

  Yours, Matthew J. Callahan

  I had spent hours in the Library seeking spells that would force the days to proceed more quickly, or quell the ache in my chest when I thought of him. Speaking with my cousins did nothing but confirm my suspicions: that his red hair meant he would be fierce and loyal; that his pulling me onto his horse was the most romantic act ever recorded in the history of the MacPherson women; that my talisman had protected him from the perils across the Rio Grande.

  Our mothers sensed mischief, they having been teenaged girls themselves once, but it was not until the last letter telling of the soldiers’ return to Missouri that your gran called me into the tavern before we opened the doors for business. She handed me a clean rag and put me to work drying champagne flutes while she studied me.

  “You’re flushed,” she said.

  “I’m not,” I said.

  “It’s a man.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Dear heart,” your gran said, “I’m old, not blind. I’ve read your cups, and even if I hadn’t, it’s all over your face. You think you’re in love.”

  As I write to you now, my dear, I wonder what she would have said if I had asked her what she saw when she read my cups. I suppose she would have lied, or at least kept what she h
ad seen to herself. Divination is a power I have not studied as have some of my kin, but those who have devoted their studies to its mastery can appreciate the burden foreknowledge places on them.

  Nothing she could have told me would have changed what happened. I was too stubborn to do anything but what I was fated to do. Your gran knew that. She knew me better than anyone, at least before your father came along.

  4

  IT WAS A COLD WINTER’S DAY when your father returned to me.

  The snow was falling steady, and he had a dusting of white upon his cap and shoulders as he stood in the doorway. His insignia had gained another stripe since we had seen each other, which I believe made him a sergeant, but it was his eyes I noticed before his dress. They had aged. The sun had freckled his skin, and I would see later that it had lightened his hair. He was as I remembered him, but leaner, rawer. Otherwise whole and unharmed, his appearance brought a flush to my cheeks. I blamed the elements.

  “I’m not accustomed to meeting you in such circumstances,” he said.

  “In the snow?” I asked.

  “Without sign of peril,” he said.

  “Seems to me the war has fogged your recollection,” I said. “All you did was arrest a winning hand of brag and take me for a ride on what I recall to be a flea-ridden horse.”

  “I wore the necklace,” he said.

  “You did?”

  “Of course,” he said. “It’s hard to find quality jewelry for men in wartime.” I laughed. He went on, “I’m leaving in a week’s time to attend medical college in Illinois.”

  As I could not predict what he would say next, I held my tongue.

  He went on, “I was hoping you would join me.”