by Ann Hite
The day Hobbs brought Nellie up the mountain Nada kept sniffing the air. “Something is marching our way, Shelly. I can’t tell if it’s good or bad. I think a little of both.”
That was the evening a woman spirit came in my room. See, that was my gift, seeing haints stuck on earth for one reason or another. This woman was one of the friendliest spirits I’d come across. Those were the kind of spooks who might do anything. She stood in the corner of my room, a tall figure.
“Why you here?” I couldn’t be nice cause she might use it against me.
The woman studied me so long I was sure she was one of those silent ghosts. Then she moved close to my bed. “I’ve come because of Hobbs Pritchard.”
Now this didn’t put her on my good side. “You in the wrong place, ma’am. I don’t go around the likes of him or anyone attached to him.”
The woman smiled. “You’re a smart girl. That’s why I’m here. You’ll be a good helper. I always stood up to Hobbs.”
“That ain’t something to be bragging about, seeing how you’re dead and all.”
She didn’t pay me no mind. “I want to save that new little wife of his.”
“I can’t help you.”
“Hobbs will ask you to come work.”
“You be crazy, woman.”
She looked me over. “Hobbs will hire you to clean. You will help me by telling that little girl to go home. That’s the house I died in, you know.”
“That ain’t one bit comforting, and no ma’am, you got it all wrong. My mama would never let me work for the likes of Hobbs Pritchard.”
The woman laughed and walked right through the wall. She was one mixed-up ghost, thinking I would be working for Hobbs Pritchard, not in a month of Sundays.
Ten minutes later Nada waltzed into my little room off the kitchen. “Shelly.” The name was full of concern.
I was in some kind of trouble. “Yes ma’am.”
She sat on the side of my bed. That’s when I knew something was wrong. “Shelly, Mrs. Dobbins has done something without asking me.”
That woman never asked. She was all about ordering.
“She does what she wants. This time she’s crossed over the line.” She waited. This was bad all the way to the bone.
“Mrs. Dobbins has promised Mrs. Ida Pritchard that you will go help out at the old Pritchard place.”
I sucked in air. “Nada,” I managed.
She looked away from me. “Shelly, it’s finished, done. My hands are tied.”
“Throw a spell.”
Her shoulders sagged. “You’re going. Mrs. Dobbins said you’re old enough to work on your own.”
But I knew the last thing Nada wanted was me to go under the same roof with a murderer.
Thirty
So the first time I laid eyes on Nellie Pritchard she was standing in that nasty kitchen looking as lost as a mountain girl in a big city. She was pretty to look at with them light-colored curls scooped up in a tail like a horse. Nada said that Hobbs Pritchard had a way with girls that just dumbfounded her. This new wife had to be stupid when it came to men. You could smell his meanness for miles away.
The first day she worked right alongside me, getting her pretty hands all dirty. That house was in sad shape. We worked quietly. After we’d been working in the front room for a while, I looked up and saw the man spirit looking in a window. If not for the glass, he could have touched Nellie as she polished a table. At first I thought the man was real. Most of the time when spirits appeared, they looked odd in some way. But he seemed normal except for the wild look in his eyes. He wanted in that house something bad. The hairs on my arms stood straight up.
I refused to stay there one more minute. “Mrs. Pritchard, I reckon I’d better head home.”
She glanced out the window, but the man was gone. “Hobbs will be here soon. Thank you for all your help.” She held out her hand. “I’ll see you in two days.”
That girl wasn’t nothing but trouble. What did she think, I was going to shake the hand of a white woman I was working for? “Yes ma’am.” I laced my fingers behind my back.
The old woman spirit hovered on the stairs. “Tell her to leave this house now.”
I looked the other way. “I got to go, Mrs. Pritchard.” And I was gone out that back door. Of course I couldn’t get the man spirit out of my mind. He was a strange haint.
Right before I fell asleep that night, a thought came to me clear out of the blue. The man spirit was Merlin Hocket. I sat straight up in bed. Everyone knew about Merlin and the doom he brought.
Hobbs Pritchard was a walking, talking mess of meanness. I wasn’t never going to tell Nellie nothing those spirits wanted, no way, nohow. I was staying out of it.
That turned out to be a lie. I was with Nellie when she saw Merlin Hocket in the woods, even if she refused to say he was a ghost. But it felt real good to know someone had the same gift as me, even if they was dumber than a doornail.
Thirty-one
The young girl wore a plaid dress with a deep-blue shawl draped around her shoulders. I watched her standing by the church for the longest before I knew she was a spirit. I was down behind our cabin that butted up to the old Daniels Cemetery, washing the Dobbinses’ clothes. Mrs. Dobbins didn’t like me to hang the laundry close to the house. I guess she wanted folks to believe she never cleaned her underthings. This girl I seen was older than me but not grown. Her hair was long and red. That pretty kind of deep red. Her thin frame looked like she might break in half. I watched her as I scrubbed Mrs. Dobbins’s cotton underpants.
The girl stared right at me.
“Here we go again,” I said into the wind.
She picked her way through the headstones, careful not to step on any graves. Her feet were tiny, and she didn’t have on no shoes. That’s how I knew she was wearing her burying clothes.
I scrubbed those underpants like it was my favorite thing to do. This little old haint caused the hairs to stand up on my neck. Just as I straightened the pair of cotton underpants on the clothesline, there she was, moving toward me not two feet away.
“You go on now,” I fussed.
“Hobbs is bad.” She had her hands folded in front of her.
“I’m about sick of hearing about Hobbs,” I said.
Her eyes were a cool gray. “They searched for me, you know?”
“Who you talking about?”
“Near the whole mountain. And I was right under their noses. It took them two weeks to find me and by then, they couldn’t tell what happened. That’s how he planned it.”
“What’s your name?” I couldn’t remember no search.
“Patricia, but I was called Patty.”
“What be your last name?”
She cocked her head to the side. “Harkin.”
The Harkin girl that came up missing when I was eight. Lord be, not many people mentioned that death. They was scared of bad luck. Nada always said there was something fishy about her dying. “Why you around now? That was a long time ago.”
“It’s that dern girl.”
“What girl?” But I knew.
“The one he brought up the mountain. She needs to leave soon. If she don’t, bad will touch her family from here on out.” And the Harkin girl turned and walked away, disappearing into the cool breeze.
This here was more than some ghost tale.
Thirty-two
I worked at Hobbs Pritchard’s house every Monday and Thursday. I had better sense than to try and talk to Nellie about them spirits again. She wasn’t going to listen to me none. You could see it carved in her face. She was one of those who had to find things out on her own. Anyway, one of Hobbs’s buddies got himself killed when Maynard Connor blew up Hobbs’s still. Nellie acted like she didn’t know nothing. I had a hard time believing she was that stupid. But Nada said sometimes we play dumb to keep the truth away.
The night before Thanksgiving, Mrs. Connor came to get Nada to throw a protection spell for Maynard. I sat over in the corner
so I could hear any good gossip she might bring.
“That wife of Hobbs Pritchard brought herself to my door today.” Mrs. Connor looked older than Mrs. Dobbins, but Nada said that wasn’t the case. She was younger by five years. That’s what life on this mountain did to a pretty woman. It worked her over good.
Nada was putting together a bag of herbs for Mrs. Connor.
“If you want to call that little slip of a thing a Mrs. She ain’t nothing but a girl.” Mrs. Connor cleared her throat. “I was pure-out mean to her. Couldn’t help it after all the bad blood between Hobbs and me.”
Nada looked up from her work. “Well, I reckon that could be expected.”
“She’s as stupid as they come. She thought I’d be her friend. She acted like she didn’t know a thing.” Mrs. Connor got quiet for a minute. “She ain’t nothing but a girl, someone’s daughter. I bet her mama is sick over her.”
“I bet you’re right, Mrs. Connor.”
“Hobbs Pritchard has done things we can’t even guess at.” Mrs. Connor sighed.
“He’s one of those people who have no feelings.”
Mrs. Connor nodded. “What about that Harkin girl a while back? He was sweet on her and her daddy ran him off.”
I was putting the story together. Lordy be, Hobbs had been involved in that Harkin girl’s death.
“And there’s his stepmama. We all know about that.” Mrs. Connor clicked her tongue.
And in those words, I felt purely tired. Poor old Nellie. Her life was as empty as a rain barrel in August. She needed one person on her side. I guess it was going to have to be me.
The day after Thanksgiving, I took myself over to Nellie’s house uninvited. I figured she needed some helping. You’d think I’d learn not to get in folks’ business, especially a white woman’s. The snow was a foot deep in places and there I was wading through it when I saw Patty Harkin standing by the big iron gates of Daniels Cemetery. See, the Daniels started the church about a billion years earlier. All that was left of them was the graveyard and a stone plaque saying Negroes could never be buried there.
“Hey you, colored girl,” Patty yelled.
I ignored her.
“You going to see his wife, aren’t you?”
I studied the road in front of me.
“Tell her if she knows what’s good for her she’ll get out of that house. He’s going to do to her what he did to me. You’d better tell her cause she ain’t got long. He’s going to stop you from going there soon.”
“You go on and tell her yourself. She can see spirits,” I yelled. But Patty Harkin was gone. There wasn’t nothing about the future I could change, but in my pocket I had me some brick dust. It was perfect for scaring away bad spirits. Mama’s dust was so strong it would probably bar Hobbs from his own house.
Nellie looked faded around the edges, maybe just a little crazy. She wore a big smile, too pretty and alive. Mrs. Dobbins did that a lot, and she was on the edge of entering the state hospital on most days. When I gave Nellie the dust, I could see she was holding back a laugh. I wanted to pinch her. She kept bringing up Merlin Hocket, but on that subject I wouldn’t budge. She was bent on believing in Hobbs and that was something I just couldn’t understand for the life of me. We worked together and then I left. Not one spirit showed itself, and for this I was thankful.
By the time I was headed home, dark wasn’t far off. Some folks thought just because I saw spirits all the time, like some people seen birds in the trees, that I wasn’t scared. Most of the time I got over that fear quick enough, but Hobbs’s ghosts put me in a jumpy place. I couldn’t tell what direction they were going in or where they would stop. It sure enough put the fear of God into me. If my counting was right, Hobbs Pritchard killed himself four people and got away with it. Merlin Hocket, his stepmama, Patty Harkin, and my daddy.
Daddy came to see me one time when I was about six. I was picking flowers out back, and he walked out from behind a tree.
“Shelly, you be picking some nice flowers.” He had the kindest eyes, but I could tell he was sad.
“Nada said you are dead, Daddy.” I backed away.
He squatted down and pulled up some clover. “Your mama is right.”
“Why can I see you?”
“You got a powerful gift, Shelly. It’s going to be a thorn in your side, but you can help people too.”
“How?”
“You’ll know when the time comes. Just follow your heart.”
“How’d you die?”
“Little girl, you listen to your daddy, never get mixed up in bad. You understand?”
I nodded.
“I got mixed up with a mean man. Naw, ‘mean’ is too nice a word. He was what some call evil. He could kill a person without showing no feelings. He killed me cause I crossed him. I told him I wasn’t going to sell moonshine no more. That’s what did it. He never even acted like he was mad, just killed me with a big old knife.”
I held a hand full of black-eyed Susans.
“He stabbed me, little bit, and then acted like it was a accident.”
“Who?”
“Hobbs Pritchard. Now, you stay away from him. He’s going to get close to you one day. Stay clear of him dead or alive.”
“Shelly, who you talking to?” Nada walked over to me. Daddy looked at her and I thought he might hug her, but instead, he walked away.
“Daddy.”
Nada stared at me. “What he want?”
“He said Hobbs Pritchard killed him and made it look like a accident. He said I should stay clear of him.”
Her hand trembled. “You do as you were told. Hobbs Pritchard would just as soon kill as not. One day he’s going to get his own. His kind always do.” She was talking more to herself. Her attention snapped back to me. “Throw them flowers down and get in here. We got some clothes to wash for Mrs. Dobbins.”
“Yes ma’am.” I let the flowers fall to the ground, marking the place where I seen my daddy.
And that’s what I was thinking on while hoofing it home in the dusky light. So I didn’t even notice Patty Harkin standing behind me in the cemetery.
“If she dies, it’ll be because of you.”
I jumped ten feet. “I ain’t wanting to talk to you.”
“You know you want to know how he killed me.”
“My daddy said to stay clear of anything to do with Hobbs Pritchard.”
“Yeah, and now you’re working for his little wife.”
I took two steps away. “I don’t want to know nothing about Hobbs. I ain’t telling Nellie nothing.”
Patty Harkin studied on me a minute. “Did you ever think I’m here for a good reason?”
“I told you I don’t care.”
“He stuffed his handkerchief down my throat and hit me in the head with a log so many times I lost my face. He told me I deserved to die because I didn’t love him.”
“Shut up!” I was sick of haints. “Nellie won’t listen to nothing. She thinks she loves him and she don’t believe in ghosts.”
“But she can see Merlin and Hobbs’s stepmama. He’s going to kill her. It’ll be on your head.” She was gone. Shoot, could a ghost do anything besides drive me near crazy?
Thirty-three
Christmas brought Hobbs to Mrs. Dobbins’s door with a dark look on his face. “Here’s that colored girl’s money. I don’t want her at my house no more.”
“Did Shelly do something wrong?” Mrs. Dobbins never got too flustered with folks on the mountain, but Hobbs had her in a dither.
“She’s colored, ain’t she?”
Pure anger washed over me and ran out my shoes. Nada said we was supposed to ignore white folks’ ways and remember they’re the ignorant ones. But sometimes I thought I might pop wide open. Nada came up behind me where I was standing in the kitchen and placed a hand on my shoulder, reading me like one of her spells.
“My wife is lazy. I don’t know why I ever married her. She ain’t nothing like my mama. She’s going to clean my h
ouse like a good wife should.” He shoved the money at Mrs. Dobbins.
“I’ll make sure Shelly doesn’t go to your house again.”
“You best believe there’ll be trouble if she does.” He stomped out of the room and slammed the front door.
Nada pulled me back from the door just as Mrs. Dobbins stormed through. “Shelly, do not go to that Pritchard house again.”
I was polishing the already polished silver. “Yes ma’am.”
“Did you say anything to offend Mrs. Pritchard?”
“No, we got on real good.”
“That Hobbs Pritchard is as mean as they all say. Our church is better off without the lot of them.” She made a show of putting my money in a jar inside the cupboard. “For a rainy day.”
Yeah, whose rainy day?
When Mrs. Dobbins left, Nada turned from the kitchen sink and went to the cupboard. She pulled out half of the rolled-up bills and pushed them at me. “You can’t be thinking on that anymore.”
“We’ll get in trouble.” I took the money anyway.
“How? It’s yours.”
“Nellie’s in trouble.” This slipped out.
“You seeing haints around her?” Nada went back to the sink.
“Yes ma’am. Something is going to happen.”
“It don’t take no spirits to tell me that. You can’t go around her no more.”
“Yes ma’am.”
You could’ve knocked me over with a straw when Nada came to me on New Year’s Day saying I could go help Nellie one more time.
“You said I couldn’t go. Hobbs don’t want me there.”
“He’s gone for now. That girl’s got to have some help. You go over there and tell her what you know. Get it over with. Then come home. That’s all you can do. The rest is up to her.”
“Yes ma’am.”
By the time I got to Nellie’s house, the worst had happened. Merlin had weaseled his way in and was standing in the corner of the kitchen all cocky. Nellie seen him. I know she did, but she only laughed at me for being a fool. That put my feelings on my shoulders. I followed her up to that creepy attic where she found the wooden box. It was a burying box that folks put keepsakes in to bury with their loved ones. The bad had started and couldn’t be stopped. I know that now in hindsight. When Nellie pulled that necklace out, my stomach went sour. Then she touched that lock of gray hair, and chills moved through the air. All of a sudden I saw what Hobbs had done to his stepmama. I watched it play out. He held a pillow over her face. She struggled something terrible before she ran down and her spirit left her body. He pulled her out of the bed and onto the floor so it looked like she tried to get up but fell dead. Her name was Bess, and her heart was good. She was the old woman spirit.
