Sunshine Walkingstick Omnibus

by Celia Roman

  I cleared my throat, snapping the spell ensnarling them two. “When’re you gonna break me outta this gin joint, Fame?”

  He glanced at me and grinned. “You’re stuck doing time, little missy. Best get used to it.”

  I groaned and rolled my eyes, and accepted the prim kiss Anne touched to my cheek, but in my head, I replayed that moment and wondered if maybe my granddaddy weren’t the only one holding something back on me.

  My doctor turned out to be the very same one what’d grounded me a coupla weeks back. I shoulda knowed when the nurse come bustling in my first day awake and told me I weren’t going nowhere fast, confirming Fame’s pronouncement.

  Doc and Riley was colluding. I just knowed they was.

  It took an hour and several visitors for me to piece together most of what happened after I killed my grandma and passed out right there in the middle of the deep wood. Seems that last crash I heard was Libby chasing down a painter coming to finish me off if Betty didn’t do the trick. Libby took care of him right quick, she what’d been my grandma’s most trusted confidante next to my grandpa. After that, my family, human and two-natured alike, carried me and Betty outta the deep wood and made sure we each got the care we deserved, me to the regional hospital in Gainesville and Betty in a grave in the middle of Snowbird territory.

  That feud Fame told me about? Turned out Libby’d wormed her way into Betty’s good graces ‘long and along so she could get revenge for her grandma’s death. I didn’t much like being the instrument my cousin used to get even, but I weren’t gonna hold it against her neither. Family was family. When one member was wronged, it was up to the rest of the clan to uphold justice, ‘specially when the customary law didn’t apply.

  Libby didn’t come to see me herself, but a coupla Cherokee cousins I never met before sure did. They each had an odd glint in their eyes. Between that and the itchy feeling crawling under my skin when they was near, I reckoned they was two-natured. I was beginning to learn ‘em, I was. Whether that was a good thing or not, I never could ken.

  What did it matter? Seems like I been accepted back into the family with my grandma’s passing. Weren’t something I could dwell on, so I let it simmer in the back of my noggin along with all them questions Johnny hadn’t answered.

  I did call Libby soon as I could hold a phone and ask her to see to Miss Jenny’s Ew’ah problem. She promised to set herself to solving it lickety split, and I believed her.

  Riley come to visit ever chance he got. Lordy, that boy was underfoot so much I finally had to make up a list of chores to keep him occupied. That lasted the entire week Doc confined me to my bed like I was too helpless to take care of myself.

  Since I had a concussion, a couple cracked ribs, slash wounds in places I didn’t remember getting ‘em, and a mess of other cuts and bruises besides, I let it slide.

  Was Riley what picked me up on the day Doc finally set me free, just two days before turkey day. Me and my feller, and I reckoned he was, now that he been used as a hostage on my behalf, swung by Rabbittown Café not too far from the tower of my confinement. After I was good and sated on the best darn buffet a body could find, I made Riley take me to a very special place to fulfill a debt I owed.

  Didn’t take long to pick out exactly what I was looking for, a half growed mutt what’d been dumped at the animal shelter, but that thing squirmed and licked and yipped the entire drive from there to his new home.

  Riley called ahead and warned Dory. She met us out in the yard, followed by her son who was wearing the most curious combination of hangdog and suspicious I ever seen. Soon as Riley stopped his SUV and that puppy stuck his nose to the passenger’s side window, ‘twas a different story. Billy’s whole face lit up like a Christmas tree.

  I slid outta the car and set the puppy down, and ignored all my aches and pains as them two sized each other up.

  Finally, Billy glanced up at me from where he knelt beside the pup. “Can I keep him, Miss Sunshine?”

  I squatted down beside him amongst the twinges and pulls of muscles used too hard and laid a hand on his dishwater blond mop. “You sure can, Billy. See you keep him inside the back fence, wouldja?”

  “Yes’m,” he said, and flung himself around me while the mutt danced around us, yipping up a storm.

  I held on with my best arm and squinched my eyes tight against the tears clogging my sinuses. Blue eyed, blond headed Billy Kildare what favored his mama in looks and manners, he didn’t look a thing like my Henry, but them boys’ hearts was the same inside and out. When I done for Billy, it was almost like I was doing for my boy, too, in some way I could define only as a twang in my heart of hearts, deep down where a woman’d be foolish to look too hard.

  Riley knelt beside me and wrapped himself around us both. Dory laughed and went to fetch a good chunk of fresh made sour cream pound cake, and I reckoned weren’t nothing better in the whole wide world than the moment I was in, ‘specially with the promise of cake and ice cream to come.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Took me another week to get where I could move around without my side pulling. I give in to common sense and eased off on the chores for a spell, including letting Trey and Gentry help Missy with Thanksgiving dinner and clean up. The critter kept me company when this folk or that wasn’t dropping by, though darned if I could get it to talk again. It just sat there looking at me like I was crazy for chattering away at it, and maybe I was. All I knowed was talking to it was better’n letting the fact that I killed my own grandma tumble around in my noggin.

  Poor Henry. My poor, dear baby boy.

  One day, Missy come by carrying one of them big, fancy department store boxes.

  I set aside the book about building websites I was reading and eyed that box real suspicious like. “What’s that?”

  She plopped down onto couch beside me and set the box down between us. “I picked this up special for you the last time I was out shopping.”

  “It ain’t another dress is it? ‘Cause I got plenty now, thanks.”

  “Sunshine,” she said in that patient voice she used when me and the boys was about to dig ourselves into trouble. “I know for a fact you only own two dresses. One more isn’t going to kill you.”

  “It might,” I muttered, low enough where she couldn’t make it out. I raised my voice a tad and added, “You don’t gotta do for me now, Missy.”

  She leaned forward and cupped both hands over mine, and held on like she never meant to let go. “Of course, I do, darling. You’re mine as much as you are Fame’s.”

  For no reason a’tall, tears welled up in my eyes. Missy’d always been a good friend to me, right from the day she stepped up on Fame’s porch claiming to’ve lost her way in the deep wood. Me, I figured we was the ones what was lost and she was the one doing the finding, but what’d I know?

  Missy squeezed my hands, then tucked hers away on her lap. “Go on and get a shower, then you’re putting this on and I’ll fix your hair.”

  I sniffed back tears and let her chatter on whilst I got up and did as I was told. I might be a woman full growed, but even I knowed when to mind my elders.

  An hour later, I was dressed in a slim fitting black dress, hose I hadn’t knowed I owned, and low heels to match the dress. Missy done my hair up good in a loose French braid. Riley banged on the front door and marched right on in, a habit he took up right about the time he brung me home this last time. He was dressed up right smart in a sports coat and slacks with his hair slicked back and a serious expression on his face.

  “Better get a move on, Missy, or you’ll be late,” he said.

  Missy jumped up like a cat on a hot tin roof and skeedaddled outta there.

  I patted the edge of my bed where she’d abandoned me, silently inviting Riley to sit. Soon as he settled down beside me, I said, “What’s going on here?”

  “You’ll see soon enough.” He draped an arm around me and tucked me against his chest. “Have I thanked you for making sure the panthers didn’t eat m
e alive?”

  I snorted, but couldn’t quite make myself pull away from his warmth. “About ever hour. When you gonna cut that out?”

  “Am I embarrassing you, baby?” he teased, and I fell in with it and teased right back ‘til he said it was time to go and ushered me out to his Range Rover for a drive.

  When we pulled into the church where me and Henry’d gone, God rest him, I turned toward Riley and pointed at the parking lot full of cars. “You gonna tell me what’s going on now?”

  He waited ‘til he wedged the Range Rover in between Fame’s old beater and a shiny new Mercedes and cut the engine before saying word one. “We wanted to do something special for Henry.”

  My gaze drifted to the crowd mingling in the neatly trimmed cemetery attached to the church. It was a sunny day and unaccountably warm. A light breeze blowed through the trees surrounding the field of stones, easing the sun’s sting on the folks gathered there.

  “We who?” I asked.

  Riley shrugged. “All of us. You do so much—”

  I snorted, and he clapped a hand on my thigh, gentle in deference to the bruises still blooming bright and ugly and bone deep.

  “You do a lot for all of us,” he said, his voice firm. “It’s past time we did something for you.”

  I shook my head at that. Don’t know where he got the notion I did anything for anybody outside of what needed doing, but when he come around the side of the SUV and helped me out, I kept my lips glued together. Weren’t gonna argue with him on holy ground. Besides. I was curious as to the whos and whats of the goings on.

  As he led me through the parking lot, I had plenty of time to get a good gander at who all was gathered there. Fame and Missy and the boys, of course, and some of my kin on that side of the family. Miss Jenny was there with Teus at her side, and in spite of the mourning dress she wore, she couldn’t quite hold back the smile decorating her lovely face. David was there, too, accompanied by a feller I knowed not a’tall. The Kildares stood behind him, Billy wearing a frown above his starched shirt and tie.

  I recognized lots of other folks, too. Aunt Sadie and some of her get, Jazz and BobbiJean and Mrs. Treadwell, too, but what surprised me was the number of darker skinned Cherokee dotting the sea of people. Libby nodded at me as did the man by her side. Her husband, I guessed, seeing as how two of the young boys standing beside her looked just like him. Charlie took one look at me and burst into a huge grin, and behind him, Johnny stood solemn and proud surrounded by a handful of Cherokee what seemed vaguely familiar.

  Riley led me right through all them folks to a row of chairs lined up in front of a fresh placed marker. Preacher Robinson stood there holding a Bible, but it was the tombstone what caught my gaze. Henry Walkingstick, it said above the dates of his birth and death, and below ‘em was a simple line.

  Born on Earth to bloom in Heaven.

  I fixed teary eyes on the picture of Henry gracing the top of the stone while Riley sat me down between Missy and his mama, then took up guard behind us as the preacher man began to speak.

  I don’t know what he said. I was too lost in Henry, too overcome by the grief of losing my boy and the love held in that stone, give by a community I always thought’d rejected me and him both.

  They hadn’t, though, had they? Me and my boy’d carved out our own place and created a family outta nothing, seemed like. Only now that I was sitting there surrounded by folks what’d interrupted their day to remember Henry, I had second thoughts. This was family, this girding up and taking care and sacrifice. This was where our family’d been all along, if only I’d been awake enough to see it.

  Preacher Robinson said his piece, then folks drifted by and paid their respects, and I sat there like a lump and let Missy and Mrs. Treadwell speak for me when sorrow and love and pride got so tangled up in me, my tongue stuck in place.

  Teus and Miss Jenny come by, and when they did, he leaned down and whispered soft to me. “I owe you a great debt, Sunshine.”

  I reared back and narrowed my eyes at him. “How you figure that?”

  His mouth curled into a knowing grin and his hand tightened on Miss Jenny’s elbow, and that was answer enough. “One quarter of your marks in exchange for the service you rendered.”

  “Miss Jenny ain’t no service,” I retorted.

  “The service of introducing us. One quarter is fair, yes?”

  I thought about it for a second, I truly did. Eight of them marks circled my left nipple. One quarter was only two marks gone, and that didn’t seem like nearly enough, you ask me.

  “One quarter and my eyes back,” I said.

  “Deal.” He ran an elegant hand careful like over the ‘do Missy’d coaxed my hair into. “There now. Better?”

  I blinked my eyes, tried to figure out if they felt different, and nope, they sure didn’t. I opened my mouth to say so, but what come out instead was, “When you gonna call in them other marks?”

  He stood up then, straight and tall and regal like the deity he was, and them ocean colored eyes of his went all foggy. “Soon, Sunshine.”

  “Can’t be soon enough for me,” I muttered.

  “Everything in its time.”

  Miss Jenny broke off her conversation and kissed my cheek, and she done the same as Teus, whispering a quick thank you in my ear where nobody could hear. As they was walking off, Teus turned around and said, “Lay your ghosts to rest, Sunshine.”

  My gaze drifted to the picture of Henry crowning his shiny new memorial stone. The sun passed behind a fluffy white cloud and I shivered. Why was Teus so insistent on me letting my boy go? Weren’t no harm in remembering, was there? Wasn’t that why we was all gathered there?

  Johnny and all my Cherokee kin come by, in between some of Mama’s kin, and I thanked all of ‘em real polite. Libby winked at me and squeezed my hand tight, and said as how me and Riley best come visit soon.

  And Riley, that scamp, he answered for me, assuring her that we’d be there with bells on.

  Conner Robinson was one of the last to stop by. I stood up and give him a big ol’ hug in return for his. He let me go after a minute and stepped back, one narrow hand cupped over my shoulder.

  “If you need anything,” he said, “anything at all, you let me know.”

  “I’m doing ok, Reverand.”

  His hand tightened a bit. “The most charitable among us are often those who have little to give.”

  I cocked my head to the side. What was he on about?

  “But remember, Sunny. What’s given always comes back tenfold.”

  Riley come up behind me then and tucked an arm around my shoulder as the preacher man’s hand fell away. “Conner.”

  “Riley.” Conner reached into his suit jacket and drawed out a small slip of paper, then handed it to Riley. “Thanks for lending this to me.”

  I glanced at the paper as it exchanged hands, and was shocked to the core to see a replica of my boy, the very same picture what now graced his stone. “Where’d you get that?”

  Riley tucked the picture in his wallet without sparing me a single glance. “Mama sent it to me when I was in Afghanistan. She snapped it the summer after he turned five.”

  A year before Henry died. I swallowed down tears as memory rose up and engulfed me. Me and Henry’d been at the beach, same as me and Riley used to do. We run into Mrs. Treadwell while she was trying out a spiffy new digital camera, and she insisted on taking picture after picture of my Henry. A packet of ‘em had arrived in the mail a coupla weeks later. Don’t know why I hadn’t remembered that when I seen that picture on his tombstone. Funny what grief’ll do to a woman’s mind.

  The dream of Henry reaching toward me, his arms like tree limbs, popped into my head and I shivered again. Just a dream, that’s all. It was just a dream.

  Later, after Riley took me home, I slipped into the bathroom to change into jeans and a tshirt and closed the door firm behind me, shutting him out good. My reflection caught my eye and I leaned toward the mirror, checking the
job Teus’d done changing my eyes back. Sure enough, they was the same brown I always knowed, only a little spark lit ‘em, the same spark I seen in my Cherokee kin.

  I dropped back on my heels and stared at myself in the mirror. No, it couldn’t be. I didn’t have enough Cherokee in me to be two-natured and I hadn’t spent enough time around ‘em to take on the painter nature.

  I snorted at my fancy and marched outta the bathroom right into Riley’s arms.

  Me and Teus was gonna have a word or two about my eyes, but later. Much, much later.

  “Hey, baby,” Riley said in a soft, husky voice, and a smile growed on his face, lighting him up inside and out. “You ready for some supper?”

  I wrapped my arms around my feller and grinned up at him. “Steaks and baked sweet taters?”

  “Better,” he said and grinned right back. “We’ve got a reservation at Fortify.”

  “La ti da,” I teased, and Riley laughed and kissed me smack on the mouth, and I couldn’t think of no better way to spend the rest of the evening than right there with him.

  Cemetery Hill

  A Sunshine Walkingstick Novel

  Celia Roman

  Published by Bone Diggers Press, Clayton, GA.

  © 2017 C.D. Watson. All Rights Reserved.

  Cover © Domi Hlinkova, Inspired Cover Designs.

  ISBN 978-1-943465-27-9

  Description of Cemetery Hill:

  After my uncle Fame run his wife off for messing around with his brother, we thought for sure we seen the last of 'em. Good riddance to bad blood, right?

  Only, weren't no Happy Ever After in store for any of us. When my errant aunt and uncle turned up dead on Cemetery Hill, was Fame what was arrested for the crime, and me he turned to for help, on account of the long-standing blood feud between him and the sheriff.