Silk and Stone

by Deborah Smith

  His breath pulled short. “Samantha? What’d I do to her?”

  “You scared her. You told her I was a witch. She has nightmares because of you.”

  “That’s not true.” He knew he wasn’t supposed to argue with grown-ups, but he couldn’t help himself. “You wanted to keep her. You would have kept hold of her and Mrs. Ryder, and now you’d be doing terrible things to her, just like you do to Tim.” He was unhinged; his mouth was working without his permission. “But you can’t hurt her, because she’s mine, and I’ll take care of her.”

  Aunt Alexandra stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “My God,” she said under her breath. “Sarah’s behind this nonsense.” She cleared her throat. “Well, let me tell you something, little man, and you be sure to tell your mother. I am a witch, and if any of you meddle with my family again, I’ll turn you into lizards.”

  That was too much. His mind whirled with what he’d glimpsed when he touched the ruby; he had power; he’d show her. Jake blurted out, “You kissed that lawyer from Asheville. You were in a room with books on the wall, and you kissed Mr. Lomax, and he put his hand up your dress. And you let him.”

  Her face turned so white, her eye makeup stood out like a raccoon’s mask. She clutched the corner of the table and leaned down slowly, and for one terrible second he imagined her opening her mouth, and that it would be filled with fanged teeth. “If you ever”—she bit each word off between those fangs—“ever tell a lie like that, again, I’ll—”

  Tear your heart out and eat it.

  She didn’t say that, she said something about paddling him until he couldn’t sit down, but his mind insisted that Tear your heart out and eat it was what she really meant.

  “I don’t see Jake as a liar,” Uncle William said. Jake spun around. Aunt Alexandra’s hands went to her throat. Ellie’s arm jerked and knocked a silver cup on the floor.

  Uncle William stood in the doorway. His face made Jake think of a skinned rabbit—the hide peeled down to bare white meat with red splashes like bloodstains on his cheeks. Uncle William’s eyes were awful dead spots in that skinned face. “Tell me exactly what you saw, Jake,” Uncle William said. “And where you were when you saw it.”

  Aunt Alexandra leaned on the table. She gasped for air. “William, he’s just a child. He’s mad at me, and he made up that lurid story.”

  “Tell me, Jake. Don’t be afraid. Just tell me the truth.”

  Jake was paralyzed, only his thoughts working at super speed. What have I done? I did what Granny told us to never, ever do. I let pride get hold of me. I let our secret out. His knees were weak. He’d hurt Uncle William. He couldn’t tell how he knew about Aunt Alexandra and Mr. Lomax. Ellie had a grip on his arm, he realized finally. Her fear poured into him. She knew what a crazy, stupid thing he’d done.

  “I lied,” he said, choking. “I did make it up. I’m sorry.”

  “You see?” Aunt Alexandra said. Her voice shook.

  But Uncle William walked to him slowly, almost shuffling, as if his feet couldn’t quite find the floor. He bent down and took Jake by the shoulders. “I don’t think a boy your age knows enough about the ugly things adults do to make up a story like that.”

  Ellie tried to rescue him. “Moe Pettycorn left a magazine in Fathers waiting room,” she said. “It had pictures of naked women in it. I think that’s where Jake got the idea.”

  “That’s right,” Jake added quickly. “That’s it.”

  Uncle William still had those dead-looking eyes fixed on Jake’s. “No, that’s not it.” His jaw worked. “Did you hear your mother and father talking about Aunt Alexandra? Did they say she’s been doing something bad?”

  “No!” Jake shook his head numbly. “I swear on a stack of Bibles. I made it up.”

  Uncle William sighed so hard that the air rattled in his throat like a moan. His fingers were digging into Jake’s arms, sending sensations like wasp stings into his muscles. Pain. A clamp squeezing down until not even a butterfly’s wing would fit inside. Jake was feeling his uncle’s pain, and his head reeled with it. He knows I saw something. He’s sure.

  “You and Ellie better go on home,” Uncle William said. “Go on now.” His hands fell by his sides.

  Jake turned, grabbed Eleanore’s hand, and pulled her out the back door. They ran down the driveway and through the gate, and didn’t slow until they were on the sidewalk into town, walking toward Father’s office. Then Jake looked at his sister sickly. “I’ll never do it again. Granny was right. We can’t tell anyone. Not even Mother and Father.”

  Ellie bobbed her head like a jerky puppy. “Maybe Uncle William will forget about it. Sure. Sure he will.” She tucked her chin and studied him worriedly. “Was it really awful when you touched that ruby?”

  “Worse than anything.” Jake’s mouth was bone dry. He wanted to gag. “Don’t ever touch it. It’s not like a game. It’s full of her. She really is evil.”

  Evil. They’d heard that word in stories Granny told them. There were evil things in the world, and, most terrifying of all, ravenmockers who ate people’s hearts.

  “I bet nothing will happen,” Ellie said loudly, as if saying that would make it so.

  Jake wanted to believe that. Despite all Granny’s warnings, he had let a ravenmocker know that he recognized it.

  Now he understood how Moe Pettycorn must have felt, always worrying about bombs no one else could see.

  He began to think, by that night, that everything must be all right, like Ellie had said. Nothing strange happened; Aunt Alexandra didn’t show up to make good on her lizard threat; Uncle William didn’t come to accuse Mother and Father of telling stories about his wife.

  Mother finished one of her watercolor paintings of the mountains while the Saturday-night chicken and dumplings bubbled lazily on the stove. Father pulled the summer’s first ears of corn in Mother’s garden, then sat on the front porch, cranking a churn of peach ice cream and listening to a baseball game on the portable radio.

  Jake and Ellie sat in the middle of the cow pasture as the sun set, discussing the day endlessly, while tiny bats zipped across the purple sky above the granite chin of Razorback Bald, and deer edged out of the forest to steal grass beside the wire fence.

  The Cove was as peaceful as ever. They dragged themselves to supper and ate enough to keep Mother from noticing their mood. By then it was ten o’clock, and they escaped to get ready for bed. “See?” Ellie whispered when she met Jake coming out of the hall bath. “Nothing happened.”

  He didn’t think he could sleep, and for a while he lay in his bed with the sheet thrown back, his skin damp and sticky inside one of Father’s old T-shirts, and he watched fireflies make yellow pinpoints of light against the screen of his open window. They were eyes, winking at his secret. Exhausted, he drifted into dreamless sleep.

  “Son, wake up.” Father bent over him. Jake rubbed his eyes and tried to focus. The hall lamp made a box of light across his bed; the air had the cool, settled feel of deep night. Jake looked at him groggily. Father’s inky-black hair made a ragged outline against the light; he was dressed in a fresh shirt and pants. “Get up and pull some clothes on,” Father said. “We have to go to town. Ellie’s already up. Hurry.”

  That cleared away the cobwebs in Jake’s drowsy mind. He heard Mother’s quick footsteps moving around hers and Father’s bedroom, next door. He got a terrible sinking feeling around his heart. “What’s the matter?”

  “Uncle William had an accident.”

  Chapter

  Seven

  The little tree in a corner of the hospital sitting room had dropped most of its leaves on the floor, and the dirt in its pot was sprouting cigarette butts like some kind of seed pods. Jake kept staring at it from his and Ellie’s seats on the cold plastic chairs along one wall. His throat dry as old glue, he whispered to Ellie, “How can Uncle William get well in here if they can’t even keep that tree going?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered, glancing around worriedly.
“But when I’m a doctor, I’ll take care of my trees.”

  A lady in a candy-striped dress pushed through big double doors and jerked when she saw them. “What are y’all doing in here?” she asked. Her voice echoed in the empty room. “Dr. Raincrow sent me to check on you. You’re supposed to be waiting in the car.”

  Jake slid off his chair and faced her. He couldn’t sit still. He couldn’t wait in the dark, in the car. “How’s our uncle? What happened to him?”

  “He fell down and bumped his head. Now, you two ruffled chicks come with me, and I’ll buy you some hot chocolate from the snack machines, and—”

  “I’m scared,” Ellie announced, running over to the lady and sticking her hands up. “Will you give me a hug?”

  The lady’s mouth made an oh of sadness, and she put her arms around Ellie. Jake gazed at his sister in wary surprise, and Ellie peeped back at him with green-eyed slyness from under one of the lady’s pink-striped bosoms. “I’ll tell you what,” the lady said. “Y’all wait right here, and I’ll bring you some cookies from the nurses’ lounge. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Ellie said, still staring at Jake evenly.

  The lady disappeared up a narrow hallway off the sitting area, and the second they were alone, Ellie turned toward Jake. “He’s hurt real, real bad, and he’s behind two big doors with signs that say EMERGENCY ROOM STAFF ONLY.”

  They nodded at each other. Then they hurried through the doors into the belly of the hospital, and began searching.

  She was free, finally free, and she had the dead husband to prove it. Alexandra huddled on a metal stool with a blanket around her shoulders, her bare feet tucked under the torn hem of her pale silk nightgown. She felt stiff and swollen; her left shoulder ached where she’d fallen against the sharp edge of the bedroom dresser, and there were rug burns on her elbows.

  The pitiless overhead lights hurt her eyes; the room was all glaring light and stainless steel and shades of white. Nurses moved around her, and ambulance drivers, and the sheriff stood in one corner, making notes on a small pad. Someone pressed a cold cloth to her forehead, but she didn’t acknowledge it. “Your friends called,” a nurse whispered. “They gave Tim half a Valium, and he’s sound asleep in their guest room.”

  Alexandra nodded woodenly.

  Her eyes stayed on the gurney where William lay, a long, large mound under a white sheet. One of his pale, beefy arms was draped on the gurney atop the sheet. Sarah sat on a chair next to him, crying, her head bent to his arm and her hands clutching it. Hugh stood beside her, rubbing her shoulders as he talked with the emergency room doctor, too softly for Alexandra to hear through the buzz of shock in her ears.

  She wanted to scream that she did love William in a way, and she’d played by society’s rules as best she could through ten years of a completely mismatched partnership, and why hadn’t anyone ever cared when she was a fresh-faced girl being squeezed into a narrow future by her family’s ambitions?

  Her stomach churned, and she hugged herself hard. I could have backed out. I could have run away with Orrin, the way Frannie—

  No. The brief stab of guilt fluttered uselessly against the brutal truth. She was not suited to noble sacrifice; she’d been raised to equate self-esteem with a husband’s money and social clout. No matter how much the women’s libbers talked about new horizons, mo matter how many women put on pantsuits and carried briefcases, or how many college girls slept around to prove their sexual independence, nothing had changed.

  Except that now she had all of William’s money and prestige, and a son she would mold into an asset, and she was free to make her own choices. She had, in effect, more than Frannie or any other woman would ever get by pointless rebellion.

  She was sorry William had paid the price, but relieved that he was gone.

  The sheriff came over and squatted in front of her. He was an accommodating man from shabby mountain beginnings, and he preened over the new jail, the new patrol cars, the crisp, tailored uniforms—all paid for by rich new residents who laughed at him behind his back. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Vanderveer,” he whispered. “Just let me go over this here terrible night one more time. Then I’ll leave you alone, ma’am.”

  “I understand. Go ahead.”

  He looked at his notepad. “The judge got in a bad way from drinkin’, and he come upstairs from his office a little after midnight.”

  “Yes.”

  “He come into the bedroom, where you was reading a book, and you tried to get him to sleep.”

  “Yes.”

  “But he was in an ill mood, and said he meant to go out for a drive. Seeing that he could hardly walk, you begged him not to.”

  “Yes.”

  “You tried to stop him, but him, uh, bein’ not in his right mind, wrestled over the car keys with you, and you got knocked—you, uh, you fell down.”

  “Yes.”

  “He run out to the upstairs hall, and before you could get to him, he tripped at the top of the stairs. He hit his head on the top post and fell on down to the bottom.”

  “Yes.”

  “Little Timmy got woke up by the noise, and come out to see, and you took some time gettin’ him calmed down.”

  “Yes.”

  “And then you called the ambulance.”

  She shivered. “Yes.”

  The sheriff nodded and flipped his notepad shut. “A terrible thing. I’m real sorry, ma’am.”

  She had no trouble crying. She was overwhelmed by the idea of how well she’d survived, and a sense of being invincible, and reliving every sacrifice that had brought her to this point in her life.

  “Now, now,” the sheriff said, patting her shoulder. “There won’t be much talk. Poor Judge Vanderveer just tripped and fell down the stairs. That’s all I’m gonna say in the report.”

  “Thank you. I don’t want his good name hurt by gossip.”

  The sheriff solemnly tore scribbled pages from his notepad, crumpled them, then tucked the wad in his shirt pocket. “Done,” he said.

  “Uncle William’s dead?”

  The boyish voice rang with horror, bringing everyone in the room to shocked attention. Hugh Raincrow whipped around, and Sarah swiveled on her chair, her swollen eyes filling with ragged alarm. Alexandra inhaled sharply. Goose bumps scattered down her spine.

  Jake and Ellie stood just inside the room’s doors, staring at the gruesome scene, as dry-eyed as bandits. The sight of her nephew frightened Alexandra more than anything she’d expected, bringing a dizzy sense of the unexplainable, the threatening. But he’s just a child. Just a child. Just a child who’s listened to Sarah’s vicious gossip about me.

  Just a child who, somehow, had guessed her most damning secret.

  “Hugh, take them out of here,” Sarah cried. “Sweeties, go outside. Go. I’ll be right there. I promise.”

  “But he’s dead,” Jake said, clenching his hands by his sides.

  Hugh looked at them sadly. “That’s right. Come here.” Alexandra recoiled in amazement and dread as he brought them to William’s side, an arm around each of their slender shoulders. With a detachment that belied the strain in his face, he calmly explained to them about skull fractures, and edema of the soft tissues surrounding the brain—on and on, in his most professional tone, until Alexandra realized the wetness in her palms came from her fingernails digging convulsively into the flesh. Goddamned doctor, she thought hysterically. Goddamned eccentric Indian, showing off his tough little mongrel children.

  “He fell,” Ellie said, crying, and looked at her brother. “He had an accident, and his brain swelled shut.”

  Jake broke away and stumbled toward Alexandra, his chalky face and brilliant green eyes a weird contrast to the Indian-black of his hair; his eyes searing her with an intensity so startling, she leaned back on her stool. When he stuck out his hands, fingers splayed, she used all her willpower not to shield her face.

  The sheriff rose from his crouch and waved Jake forward. “That’s right, boy,” the fool said som
berly. “Your aunt could use a hug.”

  Her breath rattled in her throat. Her hand darted in front of her eyes. “No!” she yelled, not caring what anyone thought of her strange reaction.

  But it was too late. Jake latched on to her wrist and gripped like a vise. Some stunning emotion flooded his face; his mouth opened in a silent gasp. Alexandra jerked her arm away. “Get them out of here! They shouldn’t be here! I can’t take this!”

  Nurses surrounded her. She was dimly aware of Hugh guiding the children out, but before the doors closed behind them, she caught one last glimpse of Jake’s face.

  It was filled with pure contempt. He couldn’t know anything, but he did. She collapsed into a nurse’s consoling arms.

  Just when her future belonged solely to her for the first time, a new and unimaginable threat had taken seed.

  He lay in his bed with the covers pulled up to his shoulders. He felt feverish; Father had given him two aspirin and apologized for upsetting him in the emergency room.

  Father and Mother had no idea what upset him.

  “Jake, Jake, don’t feel bad,” Ellie begged. The house was filling with dawn sunlight and unfamiliar sounds. There were a dozen people in the kitchen, some of their kin from Cawatie, friends from town, all come to keep Mother company and cook mounds of food for the next few days of respectful visiting. Ellie had crept out of her room to keep Jake company. She sat next to him, her legs curled against his hunched back. “You didn’t hurt Uncle William,” she told him. “It was an accident.”

  “What I said made them have a fight,” Jake answered raggedly. “And now there’s nothing I can do about it. Nobody I can even tell, except you. And you can’t do anything either.” He shivered. “I hate her. Hate her. What about Samantha? Just what am I going to do about Samantha?”

  “Aunt Alex’s niece? What about her? Huh?” Ellie sounded completely bewildered.