“So.” I came to stand beside the branch, looked down at him. “You’re not angry with me?”
“Not hardly,” Donny said, straining against the part of the tree that held his leg. “You ain’t the one that broke this damn tree.”
“I told you it ain’t hold him,” Dover said plainly, looked up at me. “’Sbeen too wet these past days.”
“Well, it’s holding you down right good.”
The third brother was silent, unconscious.
I couldn’t figure why they were being so cordial to me when I’d just foiled their hanging and let the quarry escape. It was stranger than the rest of the event, but I was grateful for whatever angel watched over me, and set to the matter at hand.
“I’ll see what I can do about the branch,” I told them. I prepared. “I’m going to push it back, if I can. If I make things worse, like it starts rolling over you, sing out. Right?”
I leaned my back against the branch, dug my heels in, took a deep breath, got my palms underneath the thickest part. Arching my back, I strained my legs. The wood creaked, moved. Donny and Dover pressed the branch away from them hard, gasping. The limb rolled away enough for them to drag themselves out, retrieve the third silent family member.
“Is he hurt?” I said, moving slowly out of the way, making certain the limb wasn’t coming back my way. “He’s unconscious.”
He moaned, opened his eyes, blinked, belched, grinned.
Clearly the boys had been drinking more than copiously.
“What did you think you were doing?” I had to ask, breathing hard, leaning against the fallen pine.
“We wasn’t gonna kill him or nothing, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Donny said slowly. “But we surely did scare him a good sight.”
“Shut up,” Dover said, swatting at his brother. “We were only messing around.” He stared up at me. “Did you see who it was?”
“Did you see where he went?” the one on the ground said, rallying.
“I wouldn’t tell you where he went,” I assured them calmly, “and he had a bag over his head. Honestly, what’s the matter with you boys?”
“I miss Truvy,” the one on the ground said softy. “That’s what’s a matter with me anyway.”
His sentiment silenced his brothers.
Moonlight brushed away a small portion of darkness in the grove; crickets took up their communion once more; night resumed. I peered into the woods where the hanged man had run, but he was long gone, no movement there at all.
“Lucky you was here, Doc,” Donny said finally, reaching out his hand. “No telling how long we’d a had to lay out under this here tree.”
I helped him up.
“I’m glad you see it that way.” I couldn’t help a quick glance at their rifles.
Dover noticed. “You know you’d already be gone if I’d a wanted you dead.”
I knew. They were perfect shots; the night was clear; I was a big target.
“I’m still coming to visit tomorrow, if that’s all right.”
They looked at one another.
“Problem?” I folded my arms, legs apart.
“It’s just that since Truvy’s gone,” Donny said, eyes to the ground, “the place is kind of a mess.”
“It’s a train wreck is what,” Dover agreed.
“I don’t care about that,” I started.
“Maybe not,” Donny interrupted, “but Tru, she’d be mortified for you to see her house in such a state. Could we meet out on the road?”
“Or we could come to your house,” the nameless brother offered.
“Hush!” Dover commanded.
“How about ten tomorrow morning?” I relaxed. “I’ll pull up and honk the horn.”
“Good enough,” Dover said quickly.
An owl called, an arrow sound through the air.
All four of us jumped.
“I’m going back to the cemetery now,” I said. “Andrews is in my truck drinking apple brandy and I’m afraid he might try to drive.”
“You don’t want that,” Donny said, retrieving his rifle. “When you have a lot to drink, it’s better to walk.”
“Good night, then.” I turned without another word, my back to three armed men. I heard the shuffling boots, clacking barrels, sniffing.
As their sounds receded behind me, I let out a breath, realized my fingers were shaking. The image of the dangling man, barely real, batted inside my head.
Up toward the path, moonlight spilled an abundance over the open field. Moths and night birds zagged the air; a rabbit, roused by our noise, was looping around white rocks by the fence.
Aching a little from the strain of moving the tree, I held the top wire down and managed to step over the fence. I stood a moment, calming. The tombstones seemed cleaner in moonbeams than in flashlight. I stared at the oldest, the war hero’s grave. Part of the engraving was covered over by dead honeysuckle; I pulled the vines aside.
Cursed be him that moves my bones.
I knew Andrews would be amused to hear that a phrase written on Shakespeare’s tombstone was to be found in our graveyard as well.
A short drift of autumn breeze lifted my hair; a spiderweb fluttered in the brambles that topped the stone. Woven into the new edge of the web were three frayed strands of artificial thread from a cloth or a dress, the color of roses. I pulled one; the web shuddered but held, collapsed when I removed all three.
I pocketed the thread, took a last look about. The Deveroes were gone, as far as I could tell. The night had closed around the place where they’d tried to hang a man. The rest was fall: crisp breeze, flurry of brown leaves, white beams brushed across a dying landscape.
Once, walking the last few hundred yards back to the truck, I saw a figure move out of the corner of my eye, but when I turned, it was a billowing pine bough, beyond it the Angel of Death.
Andrews had locked the truck from the inside and it took a little doing to get him to open my door.
“God, if you had been one minute longer,” he said waving his empty bottle in my face, “I swear I’d have started this truck and gone home without you.”
“I told them I was afraid you might,” I said, sliding in behind the wheel.
I told him what had happened; he listened with growing attention, widening eyes. It had all gone so quickly. I realized as I was talking how stunned I was. The retelling of the events assumed a dreamlike vapor in my mind.
“I don’t know where to begin,” he said, slumping at the end of my report. “They weren’t angry with you for breaking up their lynching. They were grateful to you for taking the tree limb off, which I’m not sure why you did. And you let them go to catch the poor man again? Do we go to Skid’s house or call him or what?”
“I thought you said there was a Raymond Chandler on television tonight.” I started the truck.
“Are you out of your mind? We have to find the man they were trying to hang. We have to call the police!”
“Look.” The truck’s headlights blasted the way in front of us. “The boys aren’t quite as stupid as they seem. They know I saw what they were doing tonight, so they know better than to go on with the plan now. They realize I’ll tell Skidmore what I saw. If anyone ends up hanging from a tree, they’ll be the only suspects. Also, they didn’t want me to come in their house tomorrow. It could be they’re actually embarrassed about the state of the place, or it could be they’re hiding something. I don’t want the police up there messing with things before I get a look.” I pressed the accelerator. “I haven’t told you the worst of it, the main thing.”
“There’s more?”
“I saw who it was they were murdering.” I found the way; the granite gateway came into the high beams.
“You said he had a burlap sack over his head.”
“After he got his hands untied, he ripped it off.”
We pulled through the front entrance, out of the graveyard, and both let out a breath. The truck turned right and picked up speed, on toward home.
“Are you going to tell me?” Andrews asked, realizing at last his bottle was empty, setting it at his feet.
“You’d know,” I said, “if you could clear your head.”
He only took a second.
“Holy Christ, they were trying to hang Able Carter.”
“That’s right,” I confirmed.
Five
“But he got away.” Andrews wanted confirmation.
“He did,” I assured him, “but you can’t imagine the look on his face.”
The way was bumpy; Andrews clutched the armrest on his door. “I would have lost my mind,” he said, mostly to himself.
The shock was wearing off for me as well. The realization of what it must have been like to be dangling in the air was prying its way into my mind. I was having second thoughts about calling the police.
“Luck, that branch breaking when it did.” But my voice was shaky.
“You don’t think it was luck,” Andrews said suspiciously. “You think it was some Jungian bit of Universal Synchronicity.”
“I think the recent rain made everything soggy,” I told him, “and the boys were in too much of a hurry or too drunk to realize that low pine limbs always break off and fall.”
“Despite the fact that they’re smarter than I think.”
“Shut up.”
The rest of the ride home was silent. The moon that had been bone white in the graveyard was a more reassuring snow color on the open fields. The racket of night was soothing as the road made a gentle sweep around the mountain to my home.
Once safely in my driveway, I turned off the engine, reached into my pocket.
“Look.”
Andrews opened his door and the overhead light showed him the threads in my hand.
“You found those in the graveyard.”
“More fiber evidence.”
“I need coffee.” He swung out of the cab and lumbered toward the house.
We’d started a fire, watching it instead of television. Andrews cleared his head; I tried to focus my thoughts. The orange light from the iron stove twisted around all the darker places in the room.
“Those graves we saw,” he said lazily, slouched down low on the sofa, feet up, shoes off. “Were they the loneliest things in the world or what?”
“‘Sarah, seven, lost’ was the worst,” I agreed.
“Sally.” He folded his arms. “That one’s name was Sally; the wife gone to angels was Sarah. Does it mean that little girl Sally was lost in the mountains or something and never found?”
“Probably,” I said, scraping one of the last kernels of popped corn from the bowl between us. “Happens every now and again. There are all kinds of stories about people lost on the mountain.”
“Stories you’ve collected, you mean?”
“Right.”
“You’ve been doing it, what? Ten years, I mean officially?” He closed his eyes.
“All my life, really,” I nodded, “but about twelve academically.”
“Which is eighty-four in dog years.” He reached into the bowl, found it empty, growled.
“Did I ever tell you about Truevine’s parents?”
“Did you ever tell me you were going to eat all the popped corn?”
“Apparently the whole clan was much calmer,” I said, “when the parents were alive. More like other mountain families at the time. Davy and Eloise were fine people.”
Andrews demonstrated his interest by swinging open cabinet doors in search of something more to eat. “I can’t find the popcorn.”
“There isn’t any more.”
“Well, I’m starting to get a headache from that brandy and I need food.”
“Whose fault is that?” I slumped down, staring at the flames.
“Who gave me that evil crap to drink in the first place?” he said, rubbing his temples.
“How did the Deveroes find Able?” I wondered, ignoring him.
“You mean when we couldn’t.” He poured himself some water from the pitcher in the refrigerator and came back to sit by the fire. “Especially when the brothers were, you said, twice as drunk as I was.”
“They found him near the graveyard,” I tried to continue my line of thought.
“Why do you say that?”
“Why would they take him any farther than they needed to?”
“Why didn’t they do it in the cemetery, then?” He put his feet up on the newspaper-strewn coffee table in front of us.
“Superstitious,” I answered, “especially about that place.” I sat back. “You know, there is a strange feeling up there, don’t you think?”
“I do.”
“Like someone is watching. Like someone is there.”
“Besides the Angel of Death,” he laughed. Stopped, sat straighter. “Hold on. Davy and Eloise. The Deveroe parents. Were they the ones on the grave we saw up in the cemetery?”
“That’s what I was assuming,” I said, watching the glow of the coals.
“You’d think that family would be the kind to bury Ma and Pa in the backyard.”
“You’d think,” I agreed. “But if there is a Deveroe family plot there, I think it’s more fuel for my theory that Able and Truevine were hiding out up there. The girl likes to consult her mother on nearly everything.”
“No, that doesn’t make sense,” he said. “Where was Truevine while all this was happening to her swain? She wouldn’t just stand by.”
“Good point.” I glanced at the envelope on the kitchen counter that held the strands of cloth I’d found on the tombstone. “I can’t wait to find out if that thread belongs to her dress.”
“You like the theory,” Andrews said slowly, “that Able and Harding had words, Harding was accidentally killed, and the two lovers beat it into the greenwood, hiding out in a cemetery waiting for everything to blow over.”
“When you blurt it out like that,” I told him, “it doesn’t sound like much of a theory.” I closed my eyes, sighing. “But it’s something to do with all three; I mean Harding’s death and the couple’s disappearance are linked.”
“Sure,” he agreed, “but I think it’s as possible that the Deveroe boys saw Harding, thought it was Able, jumped him in the dark, realized their mistake, and left him. And we’ve seen evidence of that behavior tonight.”
“They can see better at night than you and I can at noon,” I argued. “And Harding’s their cousin.”
“It’s all guessing,” he whined, “and my headache is worse. You’re positive we shouldn’t call Deputy Needle and tell him what we saw?”
“In the morning.”
“But,” Andrews objected, “why are we waiting? We saw a crime and we should report it, not to mention the fact that you have evidence in a murder case sitting in your kitchen.”
“We don’t really know anything. I have no idea what the threads are, could be nothing. And I’m sure the boys are home in bed by now. They looked exhausted and they miss their sister. They want to be home tonight.”
“Guessing.”
“Educated.”
He gave up.
The fire popped; the glow dimmed. Eyelids were heavy; heads were light. Somewhere between waking and dreams, I saw my mother climbing the stairs.
She turned twice in a full circle, dancing in slow motion, in a black slip and no shoes. She was young, smiling. Her hair like a raven’s wing fanned out as she spun, and she called out a man’s name, not my father’s.
I sat up; she vanished.
Andrews was out, snoring. I rubbed my eyes and stood. I tried to make as little noise as possible as I made my way out the door, onto the porch, braced by the cooler air.
Everything was damp from the rain earlier, and the smell was fresh and ancient at once. On the left side of the house, where the largest patch of sunlight stays most of the day, the spice bed filled the air with a war of smells. I stepped off the porch; the moon was high, bright as dusk. Two full sage plants, one variegated, one blue-green, edged the northern curve of
the bed. I pulled one long stalk from each, fanned them in the air shaking off the rain. Drying them further with the sleeve of my shirt, I went back inside. Burning sage can banish any spirit.
Kitchen matches by the stove filled the air with sulfur; it took five to ignite the wet sage. Once both stems were smoking, I waved their incense around the kitchen, moving slowly toward the stairs, smoking the air where my mother’s ghost had danced.
Satisfied with my work, I tossed the rest of the sage into the flame, and the room filled with its scent.
Andrews roused then. “Something’s on fire.” He didn’t open his eyes.
I glanced once at the old trunk in the corner. The fire was nearly dead, I closed the stove doors. In the silence I knew I wouldn’t sleep. Too many ghosts.
“Andrews,” I asked him, “do you think you could listen to something, just for a second?”
“Listen to what?” he mumbled.
Why would my mother haunt me when I was thinking about Truevine Deveroe? And why bring me the dancing taunt of her infidelities?
“I have to read you something.”
“Why?” He opened his eyes. “Is it about our case?”
“Not so much,” I admitted. “It’s more about my case, I think.”
I went to the trunk in a darker corner of the room, sat, opened it as I had done a thousand times, a boy alone in the house. What’s sadder than memorabilia of the long dead? Why this preoccupation engaged me time and again I have no idea, except that I wanted some reassurance that the past was dead, the ghosts weren’t real, the bodies were buried.
“When my great-grandfather died at the age of seventy-one,” I tried to explain to Andrews, “all of his things were sold at auction except for this trunk. It contained papers and some personal valuables which he sent to my father, his favorite grandchild. My great-grandfather had been born in Wales but apprenticed to a silversmith in Ireland. The auction of his things brought a sizable bit of money. Some of it came to me for my university education. I’ll never forget the first lonely rainy afternoon, nothing better to do, opening this trunk.”
I raised the lid; the yellowed paper crackled; the story sat waiting to be read once more. I picked up one stack. There were perhaps a hundred others like it in the trunk, written in my great-grandfather’s arcane hand, all the same story written over and over again, all with the same title.
The Witch's Grave Page 7
