The Witch of Belladonna Bay

by Suzanne Palmieri

  “Oh, come on, Wyn! He didn’t do it. You know it, I know it. He couldn’t have done it. It’s like believing Paddy did it. It ain’t right.”

  “So if Paddy didn’t do it, and Grant couldn’t have done it … why is my brother in jail instead of Grant?! Seein’ as how they’re both innocent!”

  I paced. If that wasn’t the biggest fuckall of all time.

  “Look, if you really want to figure this out, start with Byrd, Wyn. She knows the truth. She has to. She knows everything.”

  “First of all,” I said, pounding on his desk, “Byrd is not the caretaker of this town and she does not know everything. You people. Really. And second? Right now, Byrd is at my cottage in my bed unable to talk. She’s been over to Belladonna.”

  “Damn,” he said, resting his elbows on the counter between us and rubbing his temples. “Okay. Byrd might not be able to talk, but think like a detective … her things, the stuff she surrounds herself with. Start there. As the Old-timers say, ‘Thems that’s closest to us ain’t nothin’ but moonshine and shadow.’”

  “First things first, Stick. Now that you’ve come clean about Grant, I want to know more about Carter. After that, I want to find the damn murder weapon. As a matter of fact, let’s reverse that. I’ll go back and look through Lottie’s house, while you find whatever information you gathered about Carter during the investigation.”

  “Well, Wyn, see…”

  “Of course. You didn’t do any of that, did you?”

  “Paddy confessed, Wyn. What part of that don’t you understand?”

  “What part of you didn’t believe he did it, don’t you understand? I mean, hell, Stick, weren’t you even curious?”

  He just looked at me, not able to say anything else.

  “Oh, forget it. I’m goin’.”

  “Do you need the keys?”

  “No, Stick. I never even gave them back to you.”

  * * *

  I could feel Grant there even before I saw the yellow lines of caution tape in the yard were taken down.

  I heard him breathe in and out, in my mind, before I noticed the cut lawn or heard the sound of the wet saw coming from the porch.

  And if I’d been smart, the smart Yankee I’d learned to be during all my years away, I’d have simply turned around. Because I didn’t need to see him again. At least I thought I didn’t. Our minds and our hearts do battle inside of us every day.

  I stood at the end of the flagstone path that led to the front porch and waited for him to notice me.

  He was standing there, leaning over the saw and cutting what looked like tile. He wore no protective goggles, and he had a cigarette hanging out of one side of his mouth. He was always able to do that—smoke without having to pull the cigarette out between inhales and exhales.

  Some thought it odd. I found it sexy. The ultimate in multitasking. He finished cutting the piece of tile and stood up straight as he saw me. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and put it out in an ashtray, precariously perched on the railing.

  It took him a second to say “Hey,” but just like always, I waited. It’s always best to give a Southern man a second to get his bearings. Things work slower here, conversation happens in a much more practical way than up north. I was starting to realize that all that “fast conversatin’,” as Byrd called it, was simply a wash of words. Because how do you find the things that really mean something in a fountain of words?

  “Hey,” he said. But he didn’t come down off the porch. I could tell he wanted to. I could almost feel the strain of his body working to keep still.

  “How come you’re here?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe your visit made me realize a few things.”

  He sat down on the porch steps, and I walked slowly up the path, trying hard not to step on the grass that grew in between, like we used to do as kids

  “Where’s the Angel of Death?” I asked.

  He’d taken a sip of his sweet tea and spit some out with a fast laugh.

  “Yeah, I guess you’d think like that about her. And you ain’t half wrong neither. I had to get outta there, Wyn. Hadda get home and start facing … hell, I don’t know.” He took a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of his T-shirt and shook one out.

  “Want one?” he asked

  “Sure,” I said.

  I took one, and he searched for a light, bumping into me as he did, making us both laugh. For a second I felt free, like nothing bad had happened and we were there under normal circumstances.

  “A lighter would help. I’ll get one,” he said. “Want some tea? I’m goin’ inside anyway. And I fixed the porch swing and fan if you wanna sit down up there and have a talk.”

  “That’d be great. You sure were busy this morning,” I said as he walked inside. My voice held an awkward flirtation that made part of me cringe.

  Hadn’t I come here for facts? Hadn’t I come here to find proof that put more blame on him than Paddy? Didn’t it seem strange, maybe a little more than strange, that directly after he knew that I was thinking of him as a suspect he comes back and cleans up the place? Alibi or not, Stick could have been wrong about the time of death.

  He’d been wrong about everything else.

  But I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was sit on their porch and smoke a cigarette, drinking some sweet tea, just like when we were kids, hoping he’d sit real close when he came back outside.

  My ring felt even heavier on my finger. Oh, Ben. What was I doing to you?

  When Grant came back out, he balanced a clean ashtray, a lighter, and two glasses of iced tea as he pushed the screen door open and let it slam.

  The way that door slammed.

  It used to slam twice … once with Charlotte and me running out. And once with Grant and Paddy following along after us. All of us free. All of us sent out to play.

  Free. Free to do and be and play, free from the future. The horrible future that I think, now, we all felt pressing on us.

  Out of breath and halfway to the beach, we’d stop.

  “Wanna play hide-’n’-seek?” said Paddy, always. It was his favorite game.

  “Nah,” said Grant one day. We were thirteen at the time, Grant and me. Charlotte and Paddy were twelve.

  “Aw, you just wanna go work on your boat engine,” said Charlotte, who usually lost all interest in playing if Grant wasn’t around.

  “I say we play hide-’n’-seek backwards,” he said.

  “How do you mean?” asked Patrick, his amazing, open face completely ready to be duped.

  “Me’n Wyn are gonna team up, see, and you and Lottie you go on and hide. But you have to stay there until we find you. No runnin’ for base if you can’t see us, okay?”

  “So we stay together?” asked Patrick, already liking the idea, because he already liked Charlotte.

  “Yeah, you got the picture, now … go!” he said, sending them both off running before he even had a chance to count.

  “Come on over here with me, “he said, taking my hand.

  “They ran off that way,” I said, pointing in the other direction.

  “You really think I wanna play that fool game? I want some time alone with you, Wyn.”

  My heart beat so fast I thought it would explode. That I’d die right there.

  He led me to a bench by the beach. We sat there, staring at it, but he didn’t let go of my hand.

  Is there anything else in the world that compares to the first time a boy you like holds your hand?

  “You gonna kiss me, Grant?” I asked.

  That’s when he laughed, his great big old laugh that sounded like he was much older than thirteen. Sounded like it should belong to a man that lived a long and wise life.

  “Ain’t you direct?” he said.

  “Well, I simply wanted to know because, well, if a girl is going to have her first kiss she should be prepared.”

  He leaned in and tilted my face with his finger on my chin, and that kiss—the kiss all first kisses are made o
f: cotton and hot summer days—left me thick with new sensations. Waking up parts of me that I didn’t know I had.

  A girl’s first kiss. In one kiss, climbing a tree will never be the same. Music will never sound the same. One kiss. That first kiss changes everything for everyone. But I couldn’t help but feel, that day, with the breeze off the Gulf and Grant’s strong mouth pressed against mine, that I was special. That no one had ever had a first kiss quite like that.

  “Well,” he said, pulling away from me. “How’d I do?”

  “Fair,” I said, and then pinched him on his upper arm and ran away. Ran all the way home. Not because I was scared but because I wanted to be alone and remember that kiss. Make it last in my mind.

  So I ran, leaving Grant to find Paddy and Charlotte. And when I got home, I went in through the kitchen and straight up the stairs, determined to lie on my great big bed under the ceiling fan and stare into my memories for a while.

  But Naomi was standing at the top of the stairs. I was so surprised to see her up and about that I almost fell backwards.

  Instead, I tried to get past her without touching her, I didn’t want to be touched by her. I didn’t even want to make eye contact with her. But she held her two stick-thin arms out, blocking me.

  “Where have you been?” she asked me.

  I decided to push past her anyway. And as I did, she fell limp against the hallway wall.

  “I am talking to you,” she said.

  I turned around. That rage I had as a child held no bounds.

  “Now? You want to talk to me now? I haven’t even seen you in a week!”

  “It’s not my fault, Wyn,” she said. But she used that voice, that soft, weak voice that made me cringe. The one that she used when she needed attention.

  “It’s not your fault! What are you even talking about? Who smokes that poison into their lungs, Mama?”

  “Where were you?” she repeated.

  “I was out playin’ with Paddy and Lottie and Grant, okay? May I go now?”

  “Why don’t you kids hang around here anymore? I miss you all so much.”

  She walked toward me and put her arms around me and smelled my hair. I used to love that when I was little.

  “Because you told us we couldn’t! Now stop touching me, Mama,” I said, pulling away.

  “You’ve been kissed,” she said.

  I turned around and headed to my room, fast.

  “You are too young to be kissing!” she screamed after me. And she continued screaming and screaming incoherently. My door was shut, my eyes were shut, my ears were shut, and I could still hear her. And then Minerva must have come, or Daddy, because the world went quiet again.

  And then, as if nothing happened, I stared at my ceiling as I’d first planned and remembered the feeling of Grant’s lips on mine.

  The screen door slammed and I was all grown up again with more on my mind than kissing. Because it slammed only once. Lottie and Patrick weren’t around to make it slam again.

  “What are you thinkin’ on?” asked Grant, jolting me back to the present.

  He didn’t sit next to me, just leaned against the railing and handed me a glass of tea and a lighter for the cigarette I was still holding.

  “So I see you’re fixing up the place.” I ignored the question, placing the glass of tea on the ground and lighting my cigarette.

  “Yeah, I figured it was about time I came on back. You know. Face stuff.”

  “So you said. What are you facing, Grant?”

  “Demons, I guess. Mistakes. Seems to me, you’re doin’ the same thing.”

  I laughed, because he was right. And because he always made me laugh.

  “I suppose so,” I said. “Only I’m not cleaning up a crime scene.”

  “Stick told me I could. Told me it wasn’t considered an active crime scene anymore.”

  I just looked at him, standing there all solid and handsome. I noticed the bloodshot eyes were gone. I noticed that he seemed less rough than he had in New Orleans. He cleaned up quick.

  “Well, I was just coming on by to check it out for myself. I know there’s a murder weapon around here somewhere.”

  “What you want it for, Nancy Drew?”

  “Because it might have prints on it. I have to figure this thing out, Grant. There’s not much time left.”

  “Maybe whoever did it wiped it clean.”

  “Maybe they did,” I said, eyeing him.

  “You really think I did it?” he asked.

  “I don’t care.” I lied. “But I do know Paddy didn’t do it. I know it like I know the back of my own hands. Anyway, Stick just gave you an alibi.”

  He put out his cigarette and went back to the wet saw.

  “Look, I’m tryin’ real hard to get myself back on track. I quit drinkin’ and got a job over at Sam’s. Barback, but it’s a start. I don’t need this shit from you. And you know what else?”

  “What?’ I asked, getting up and snubbing out my own half-finished cigarette.

  “You never could see past your own self. You’re so sure Paddy’s innocent. But you don’t even know him anymore. You may think you know him like the back of your hand, but my mama always had a saying that I think is more appropriate for you right now.”

  “Oh, yeah? What was that?”

  “Can’t see the forest for the trees. You’re blind to what’s closest to you, Wyn. Just like all you Whalens. Just like all of us, I guess.”

  I felt the anger in my throat tighten into a knot. I walked over to him and poured my sweet tea over his head. Then I punched him hard. In the arm.

  “Fuck you,” I said icily, walking down the porch steps. I took one at a time. Waiting for some retaliation.

  There wasn’t any.

  “Don’t bother calling me, you son of a bitch,” I yelled from the main road. The saw started up again, only I heard him yell after me anyway.

  “I never said shit about calling you.”

  Damn. He hadn’t. Had he?

  26

  Byrd

  One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.

  —The Little Prince

  My prince had created a castle out of all the things that had gone missing since he killed his mother.

  These were Jamie’s prizes: corrugated rooftop shingles, trash cans, plyboard, even half of a garage door.

  He had built me a junk castle and a junk garden, but it was beautiful. Half in a tree, rambling down to a ground floor. He was a regular Robinson Crusoe.

  “Come live with me and be my love,” he said. “Or princess of the alligators, you like that title, right?”

  How could I still love him? It don’t matter, I just did. Don’t trouble yourself anymore about it, just keep on listenin’ to the story like you been doin’. But my infernal mouth took over.

  “I don’t want to stay here, Jamie. I want to go back home and put everything back to the way it was before.”

  “We can’t do that, Byrd. If’n I go back, they’d put me away. Somewhere for crazy people. Like in that movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a place like that, only for kids. They might not even let me out when I git grown. They could just keep me.”

  I stood still, crossing my arms. But I have to admit, the castle was really interestin’ and I wanted to explore it some. But I knew I had to stand my ground.

  “I wouldn’t let them do that. I’d be on your side the whole way.”

  “Don’t you care that I killed her, Byrdie? Ain’t you scared of me now?”

  “No, I ain’t!”

  I meant it. But that didn’t matter. I needed to get back so I could tell someone what he did so I could get my daddy outta jail.

  “There has got to be some way that we can all get what we want,” I said.

  “I want you to stay here with me. It’s nice here. Quiet. We could live here together like in The Blue Lagoon.”

  “You know what I think? I think you an’ me spent too many Sunday aftern
oons watching junkola movies in your room, that’s what I think.”

  “Please, Byrdie. I’m so lonely. And sometimes I feel him rising in me, and I don’t like it.”

  “Feel who?”

  “Farley! I’m possessed by him, don’t you know? How else could I have killed all those little animals? How else could I have killed my own mama?”

  He was getting upset.

  “I was there when you killed those animals, you did it because you were savin’ them. ’Cause they were all sick and weak and dyin’. It was a good thing, not a bad thing.”

  “It wasn’t always the case, Byrd.”

  “What?”

  “Sometimes, when you weren’t with me. I’d take one that was just … fine. And kill it. I don’t know why. It’s Farley. I know it. I’m full of him up to my eyes.”

  Jamie. My Jamie. He could kill his mama … and I’d understand. Sort of. He could put my daddy in jeopardy, and still, I was willin’ to forgive him. But animals? Ones that weren’t even hurtin’?

  My blood turned to ice, I swear it.

  “Farley’s not real. Jamie. He’s made up. I know it and you know it. And if it was real, I’d be the one to bear it, not you. It would travel in the blood.”

  He knew I was right.

  “Don’t say that! I have to be him!”

  “Why?”

  “Because if I ain’t, then it’s been me this whole time bein’ evil. And I don’t want that to be true. I want to be the me you see, Byrd.”

  “Then you are,” I said. But I was thinkin’ something different. Evil comes in all shapes and sizes. Like princesses and princes. Also I was thinkin’ that love sure as hell is blind.

  “I’m hungry, Jamie,” I said, a plan of sorts taking shape. “If you want me to stay here, I better get us somethin’ to eat. I don’t fancy squirrel.”

  “What if you get lost?” he asked.

  “I will always find you,” I said. And I looked him straight in the eyes so he knew I was talkin’ true. It’s something we do, me and him.

  “You won’t run away, will ya, Byrdie?” He was peelin’ a stick and poking it into the sand. Jabbin’ it hard.