“Well, would you like to watch the register again while I go out for a bit?”
Sierra loved to work at the register, and this did seem to cheer her up. Her expression was brighter as she stepped over to the counter.
“I just have to run over to the library.” There were still some books, those old town histories that hadn’t gone online that she could check for information about the hanged woman, and someone named Anu. “Maybe we can talk when I get back?”
Sierra nodded, and Mona stepped outside into the harsh sun, its sudden heat like a blast from a furnace, unusual for the Green Mountains in June. The new corn would probably shoot up an inch today, and in her garden, there’d be a bushel of peas to pick.
In the library, she breathed in the coolness of the stone walls, the smell of old books and the seasoned oak of the tables and chairs.
Alice Spinelli was sitting at the front desk, and she glanced up from a book as Mona nodded and walked past her toward the local history section. Seeing her reminded Mona of Gus again, and again came that image of his lifeless body lying on the ground like one of the stones, as if he had simply gotten up and walked away from it. And maybe that’s what he had done. After his strange and lonely life, his spirit had been free to leave. Maybe just being alive was a kind of torture for Gus, living in fear and always having to hide and escape from people.
He had been close to his mother, and she’d always shielded him, her vulnerable child, from the harshness of the world, so it must have been a comfort for him, when she was gone, to believe in this Anu. Mona had always assumed that Anu was something Gus had made up or hallucinated, but now she wondered. Was Anu the hanged woman?
The town history section was a place she knew well from her study of the bridge and the mid-1800s. In that era, there was no hanging mentioned, so if there was such a thing, it must have happened earlier. She took three books from the shelf: Robinson’s Wild Mountain Lore, Town Chronicles from the Seventeen Hundreds, and Town of Wild Mountain, Vermont, by Ernest Buffington. She’d read Buffington several times, but she might have missed something.
She brought them out to one of the two long tables and sat down, turning first to the indexes and tables of contents. An hour later, having sifted through the town chronicles with all of their minute details about who had bought which property and for how much, and boring stuff about Robinson’s ancestors, she turned a page and gasped. Here was something about a woman being hanged. In 1790, when the town was first incorporated and there were no more than a hundred residents, a woman named Ann Clough had been hanged. But this woman was a horse thief, and Gus had said Anu was hanged as a witch. Could this be the same woman, or had Gus gotten the story mixed up?
Mona sighed, closed the book, and looked up and out of the room’s one small window at the hot June sky.
There was another presence in the room—someone looking at her.
Standing beside the window, Alice, tall and stately, in a long orange-and-yellow tunic. She raised her eyebrows, and her deep brown eyes looked curious, intelligent. “Anything I can help you with?”
Mona shrugged. “Nah. I’m trying to figure out who this hanged woman was that Gus used to talk about.”
“Oh, I know about that!” Alice pulled out the chair on the other side of the table and sat down. “Frank told me about Anu, and I looked her up on the Internet.”
“Anu? What did you find out?”
“She was a Celtic goddess. Goddess of fertility, a mother earth kind of figure.”
“How would Gus know about a Celtic goddess?”
“I don’t know, but she was very powerful, a nature goddess, at one with the mountains and the rocks.” Alice’s eyes were wider now, and she looked luminous. “The stone circles in Ireland were probably sites of goddess worship.”
“But Gus’s Anu was hanged. And the only record I could find of anyone hanged in Wild Mountain was this woman named Ann, who was a horse thief.”
“Maybe he mixed them together. The Celtic Anu was also the goddess of death.”
“Fertility and death, both?”
“Yes; not that different from the Christian story, when you think about it. The god dying in the winter and being reborn in the spring. Of course, this would have been a goddess.”
“Hmm. And what would that have to do with lesbians?”
Alice raised an eyebrow “Well, I don’t know. Female energy? There’s a New Age spiritual movement that sees the female divine becoming more prominent, and even necessary for the healing of the earth.” She pursed her lips and looked out the window. “Gus could be very coherent and intelligent-sounding at times. He used to come in here and use the computer.”
“Gus? Use the computer? I thought he was morally opposed to electronics, that everything, for him, had to be off the grid.”
“Well, maybe not.” Alice went to the computer at the side of the room, switched it on, and connected to a website. “Here it is. Listen to this: ‘Anu was one of the oldest goddesses in Ireland, more like a primal force of nature. There are two mountain peaks in County Kerry called the Paps of Anu, because they look like breasts with nipples. Anu was supposed to be the mother of the gods, feeding them from these mountain breasts. In the present day, Wiccans gather at the full moon and make bonfires and anoint different parts of their bodies with menstrual blood.’”
Mona winced. Alice was relishing this story, but it made her squeamish. “Menstrual blood rituals? This is getting a little too weird for me. Anyway, I’ve gotta go.” She stood up. “See you on Saturday.” She waved as she walked to the front door and out into the hot sun. She shuddered, in spite of the heat—but maybe Alice was right about Gus. Maybe Gus had been into all that goddess stuff, and really believed that lesbians were going to heal Mother Earth. Of course, it was doubtful that Luke would take this as evidence that he was innocent of setting the fire. Mona’s shoulders slumped. She’d have to find out who had done it.
When she came back to the store, the phone was ringing. It was still early June, normally a time for sweaters, but today was hot as July and she’d need to get the fan out of the back room. Sierra had answered the phone, and was standing open-mouthed. She held the phone out to Mona, and said in a loud stage whisper, “It’s Chief Spinelli! For you!”
“Hi, Luke, any news?”
“Well, yes.”
“And?”
“Well, there’s been an accident in Claremont, New Hampshire.”
“New Hampshire? Are you talking about Johnny?”
“’Fraid so. Blue BMW, 1999?”
“Yeah.”
“Plates turned out to be forged, but it’s him, all right. The car was carrying explosives, so when it hit the truck going the other way, the whole thing burst into flames. Not much left, but his girlfriend identified him.”
She stood stupefied, looking at the phone. Johnny? Dead? She’d just seen him last week, with his usual confluence of smiles and threats, and her usual reaction of tension and confusion. How could this be true? How could there be a world without that enormous chunk of a presence, that huge part of her existence? Then, remembering Luke, she said, “Thanks, Luke.” She put down the phone gently, ever so gently—and, without saying anything to Sierra, who was looking at her with curiosity, walked slowly back to the storeroom and sank down onto her chair. She’d wanted to be free of Johnny, but not this way. Or had she wished for this? Had she made it happen with her thoughts? Could you feel relieved and guilty in the same breath?
Around her, everything was normal: the old oak desk, the dented swivel chair, the shelves with files and canned goods, the boxes of paper products stacked up on the floor, the pale green paint, chipping and peeling, that she’d been meaning to redo ever since she’d bought the store, the faint smells of coffee and potato chips and apples. Everything the same, but completely different now. Johnny O. was dead.
39
FRANK WATCHED MONA’S SILVER BRAID SWING back and forth across her black coat, in and out of the light from his f
lashlight. She’d told him about the death of her ex, and he couldn’t help but feel that it was a good thing. That guy had been trouble, and the further away he was from Mona, the better. John O. Duval couldn’t come back to bother her now.
The trees dripped with moisture, and the humid air smelled of wet pine bark. Yesterday morning, the rain had come so fast, it had almost flooded his driveway, and Alice had called to suggest they postpone the memorial service. Then, at noon, the downpour had ended as suddenly as it had begun, and a brilliant sun illumined the fresh new leaves of the maple trees and the budding willow trees cascading like umbrellas of delicate lace. Tourists came to Vermont for the fall colors, Frank thought, but an early summer day like yesterday was the real treasure in this land, an occasion of pure delight.
The day before yesterday, Alice had come to Frank’s cabin to pick his brain about Gus and talk about the service. She’d sat on his sofa, perched like a large nesting bird, and sipped her tea, her brown eyes gazing soulfully at him, then looking intently around the room: at the pictures of Erica as a baby, the Afghan prayer rug, the Mexican bowls stacked on the shelf above the sink. She emitted some spicy fragrance, clove or ginger, that wafted through the room and disconcerted him as she talked and waved her arms around.
Alice had asked about the commune, and he had told her Gus’s nickname, “Thunder,” and about that youthful mixture in him of intensity and shyness.
“And what about this stone circle?” she asked.
“The stone circle was a kind of calendar,” he said, “the stones placed to correspond with the solstices and the equinoxes. What else it was used for is not clear, but the scholars think the Neolithic people had religious rituals there, since religion was not separate from the cycles of earth and sky—”
“That’s it!” Alice’s hands flew up in the air.
“That’s what?”
“The summer solstice! It’s this coming Saturday. We’ll have a memorial solstice celebration.” She went on, throwing out names of poets and reiterating her idea that Frank could play folk songs on the guitar. He interrupted her eloquent flow to remind her that he played the violin, not the guitar. “Even better,” she said, and went on with her plans.
Now he trudged behind Mona, the blackness of night melting into a predawn gray, his violin case in his backpack, the box of ashes in his hands along with the flashlight. What were they going to do with the ashes? He hadn’t thought to ask Alice. The box felt awkward and strange, and he alternated between holding it out straight, like an offering at the altar, and letting it hang and bump his hip when he stumbled on a rock.
Mona turned around. “Hey, Frank, you okay?”
“Okay.” The sun wasn’t up yet, but the sky had become a lighter shade of gray, light enough to see without the flashlight, so he switched it off and put it in his backpack. He patted the cedar box. “I think Gus is okay, too.”
The path steepened and rounded a bend, and they concentrated on climbing. The morning birds began a chorus of warbling and trilling, and then the black flies, as if on signal, started to buzz around Frank’s head. Mona handed him a bottle of insect repellant, and he sprayed some on his head.
When the path leveled off, Mona stopped. “Is this it?”
Frank peered into the woods, but all he saw was a dark space and a few spindly trees. “I don’t know. I’ve never been here at this time of day.”
“Greetings.” Alice Spinelli appeared out of the darkness, like a ghost in her white robe. Her hair was plaited into a mass of corn-rows, and she had some kind of sparkly tinsel or glittery thing on top of her head, like a crown or a halo. Like the angel in a Christmas pageant, he thought.
Mona sat on a boulder, and Frank put the box down on the ground. He looked at his watch. Four forty-eight. “The sun is supposed to rise at five o-six.” he said.
“…And will appear at dawn on the standing stone,” Alice said, pointing to something they couldn’t see in the darkness, “according to Gus.”
Two other people came forward out of the shadows: Erica and Jake, solemn in their dark clothing. Everyone swatted at the black flies. Mona handed around the repellant, and the strong smell of citronella infused the air.
Erica sat down beside Frank, and Jake started talking to Alice. Roz and Heather appeared on the path, with Acheson Levy behind them, looking bewildered—and, behind him, Charlie Perry, muttering to himself.
More people arrived: Leo Bailey, Eli and a few other children, Edson and Pauline Perry, Cappy and Iris Gold.
As Sierra, with a pack of other high school kids, came into the clearing, Alice raised her white-robed arm in a gesture like the sign of the cross. “We’ll stand over there,” she said, “at a distance of thirty feet. Please face the triangular-shaped standing stone. And I’d like everyone to pick up a small stone as you go to your place.”
Pauline Perry’s high voice carried above the murmurs of the crowd. “This is too weird! Maybe we should go back, Ed.”
“In silence, please,” Alice commanded. “This is part of the ceremony.”
“Jeezum,” Pauline complained, but then joined the crowd, which had spread out searching the ground for stones—dark figures bending and bowing in the weird half-light, like the gleaners in the Millet painting. Charlie and Edson stood in the back, mumbling, conspicuously not looking for a stone.
Soon, everyone had gathered behind Frank and Mona, who took Frank’s hand and gripped it as they faced the standing stone. She was looking across the clearing toward a leafless tree with a divided trunk and one branch suspended almost horizontally, in silhouette against the sky. Spectral, he thought, like a hanging tree. Had Gus seen it that way?
Alice stepped out in front of the group and raised her hand high, a chunk of white quartz in her fist. “And now we stand, stone in hand, still as the mountain, one with the earth, with the rock we hold, the rock on which we stand, the rock of life.” Frank cradled his stone in his palm, feeling its shape like an egg, its smoothness and crevices. “Like the leaves and the grass,” Alice went on, “we are born, and we live some fleeting moments, then fade with the light.” Behind her, the sky was beginning to lighten.
Alice raised her other hand, both arms up in a gesture of supplication. “This is where Gus lived, and where he died. And what remains is the mountain, the rock, and the stones. Our bodies of water and flesh, they change and grow and die, our spirits rise and fall. And the mountain remains.”
Alice lowered her arms and swept one hand out and across the site. “Many eons ago, other people laid these stones to mark the rhythm of earth, sun, and moon and to mark this spot as sacred.
“This is the longest day of the year, the peak of the sun’s light, the summer solstice. On this day of light, as we acknowledge the turning of the earth, we remember Gus, a man who tried to live in harmony with the earth and its seasons.”
Alice fell silent, and the crowd hushed, leaving only the silence of breath and the faintest breeze as the sky swelled with a glowing light. Iris Gold and another woman sat on small benches they’d brought, their knees tucked under, their hands pressed together in prayer position.
Frank became aware of something—a gradual creeping something, a presence, arising and growing in indiscernible increments, filling the space like the light in the sky—like when Moses had stood on the mountain and felt the world vibrating around him, so full of presence that a bush began to burn. A spark, a flame, and a fire, an ever-burning fire that was the very heart of life itself. And in that heart, he discerned a message, a voice of wisdom. Was there some message here for him, Frank wondered, a call, a new direction?
He peered into the predawn light as shapes began to emerge, the human shapes of people who, at town meeting or at Mona’s Store, would be talking loudly, vying for dominance, laughing and jostling—but now stood in silence. They were waiting for something. The silence held the knowledge that this was where Gus had lived his strange life, and where he had died. Was his spirit here now, too, along with his belov
ed Anu?
“Jeezum,” Pauline Perry whined again and squeezed her body as close to Edson as she could get without jumping into his arms, glancing this way and that, her body tensed like a hunted animal. Edson frowned and squirmed, as if the ghost of Gus was about to jump out at him. Beside him, Acheson Levy’s shoulders were hunched more than usual, his whole body bent over, and he wiped his eyes and heaved loud sighs. Roz and Heather stood apart from the group, Heather dressed in a long yellow caftan, her red hair adorned with white feathers, and Roz in an old blue parka. Eli, beside Heather, stared at everything with curiosity, and peered across the site to the lone tree.
Alice signaled with her hand, and Frank realized she was calling him to come up to the front. She seemed to have marked her space as the chancel of this natural cathedral, and the standing stone behind her as a kind of altar. The whole area was so open and uncluttered, it was as if Gus had cleared the space in preparation for his own funeral.
Frank handed Mona the box of ashes, picked up the violin case from the ground, and took out the violin. He started to walk toward Alice, but then stopped. Alice had stepped aside, and was pointing to the pyramid-shaped stone. From behind it, a spark of light appeared. The crowd, already quiet, became so still that it seemed they had stopped breathing. The faint sparkle of light became a beam, and the beam broke into prisms and slices of sun, quickening and sharpening the space: a spotlight from the east, a revelation, the manifestation of summer solstice. A unanimous intake of breath, and an “ahh” as the circle moved from darkness to light.
The cool light of dawn, illuminating raw earth and faces silenced, stilled. Alice stepped forward, the image of authority in her white robe, raised her arms, and, with her eyes, urged Frank to come forward.
He pulled down his fisherman’s sweater as if straightening a suit jacket, and walked across the open space. When he reached the standing stone, he turned to face the people, raised the violin to his chin, tuned it quickly, and raised the bow. He pulled the bow ever so gently across one string, drawing out the note, slowly increasing the sound until the one note was almost a wail, then a whimper, then a tune developing, organic, like the growth of a plant in fast-motion photography, until it became a song, its melody straying to unexpected places, the minor key giving it a haunting, poignant sound. “Green Mountain Aire,” his own composition.
Wild Mountain Page 26
