The Day of Small Things

by Vicki Lane

  17 Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.

  18 No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.

  Trusting that one of these will prove acceptable, I am sincerely yours,

  William O. Lupo

  William O. Lupo

  Marshall Monuments

  Box 1054

  Ransom, NC 28753

  Chapter 59

  I Alone

  Monday, May 7

  (Birdie)

  I ain’t dead yet.

  I can hear them weeping and praying and carrying on as I make my slow way back through the darkened woods, and it is the strength of their prayers and love that is leading and carrying me on for the Cherokee Magic is gone from me. I am an old woman again, with an old woman’s wobbling gait and weakened legs, and the steep ground and many laurel limbs make the going almost more than I can bear.

  It would seem good, I think, to lay me down in the deep litter of querled brown leaves, to draw them up around me like a rustling quilt, and rest my bones. Not a bad way to depart this life, I think, on a mountainside gazing up through the leaves at the sky.

  I am so tired.

  Leaning on my stick, I gather my little remaining strength for what lays ahead. My task ain’t over. Like the feller in the Bible who comes to Job and says I only am escaped alone to tell thee—I got to tell the boy and Dorothy how it was, that it might bring them some small comfort. Especially the boy. I’d not have him carry so ugly a memory of his mother throughout his life. For good or for bad, our mothers stay with us.

  I close my eyes and see it all again: the Raven Mocker with his gun pointing at me, the young uns being led away by the Little Things. The Raven Mocker’s face has got an unearthly greeny-white glow about it and I know that I must act quick, now while there is yet some light, for in the black dark, his powers will grow stronger.

  I begin the Calling Song again, first in my mind, and then in my throat, and by the time it has reached my lips, I can hear them coming back, a mighty host of them, humming and throbbing like a single mighty heartbeat.

  And the Raven Mocker whirls and goes to fire his gun into the laurel thicket, in the direction the children has just gone, and the words of the spell to jam the weapon are on my lips when there is a blur of movement and Prin hurls herself between the Raven Mocker and the children.

  The gunshot rings out; there is a sharp cry; and at the same time, the cloud of the Little Things covers up the Raven Mocker and Prin. Prin, who here at the last has remembered that she is a mother and, so doing, has saved her soul.

  I stand froze to the spot, watching it all unfold. I am empty of Magic. I have made use of the Gifts and Powers and now it is all beyond my control. I can only watch and hope that the Magic don’t turn back on me like it has done afore.

  The cloud of Little Things hangs in place like a mighty whirlwind, hiding what has happened. They make a roaring sound but somewhere within the roaring I can hear a great screeching of anger and pain from the Raven Mocker.

  As I watch, the cloud begins to move again, not back to the road, the way the children were led, but across the clearing and into the deepest part of the laurel hell. The cloud is taller than a man, broader than three, and it kicks up the dead laurel leaves underfoot as it turns. It brushes past me in its going, so close that I feel the prick and sting of a few of the tiny bodies on the outside edge of the whirling mass as they hit and ping against my hands and face.

  The cloud and the thing inside it are fading into the dark of the laurel hell when I look around.

  And there lies Prin.

  Somehow I manage to drag myself back through the half-light of the close-growing laurels though they fight me every inch of the way like they would keep me with them forever. It takes a very long time and once I hear voices near me and heavy bodies breaking through the thicket. A man calls out to tell the sheriff that there is two people dead. I start to holler to them but I am most too tired to speak. It is all I can do to put one foot in front of the other.

  Then I hear the sound of Dorothy’s and Belvy’s voices, their separate prayers twining and twisting together, making a lifeline that leads me on and puts strength into me as I stumble through the darkening wood towards the dim light of the open mountainside.

  They don’t see me at first. Two lawmen are squatted down by the children, asking all manner of questions, and Dorothy’s eyes are shut as she prays aloud. It is Lilah Bel—Belvy—who spots me as I hobble out of the woods and stand there taking in deep breaths and admiring the open sky and the first twinkling stars.

  And then the lawmen are upon me—quick with questions about the man with the gun. I tell them that he has gone deeper into the laurel hell and I begin to tell them that justice is being done but I stop myself in time. They’d just mark me down for the crazy old lady I know I must look like—hair a-tangle and clothes all dirt-smeared and tore.

  They don’t linger but set off back into the woods, leaving one behind to help us to our car. I watch the beams of their flashlights weaving through the trees and think about what they will find.

  Calven comes over to me. His face don’t show nothing as he says, “We thought you was the one got shot. We saw him point the gun at you when we was running away.… They said there was a woman dead. I reckon it’s Mama got herself killed.”

  The hurt in his voice is like to break my heart and I put my arm through his and say, “Calven, son, help me over to Dor’thy and Belvy and let me tell how it happened.”

  Down at Dorothy’s, we call the woman at Heather’s house to let her know the young un’s here and to say we will bring her back after we have a bite to eat. Once we have tended to Dorothy’s ankle and made some sandwiches, they have me tell the story again, about how Prin gave her life to save her son, throwing herself in front of the pistol and dying as the bullet pierced through her heart. Calven is quiet, like he is trying to take all this in.

  He had told us how those three was going to kidnap Heather and how they couldn’t have known about Heather if not for Prin. “I hated her for that,” he says, “but now—”

  And he stops—for fear of bawling, I reckon.

  She weren’t no kind of mother to this poor boy, I decide. It just weren’t in her nature somehow. Running off and leaving him time after time and then putting him in the way of harm when she was around. But in her last deed, she gave him a greater gift even than her life. She gave him the sure and certain knowledge of her love—and he can carry that in his heart forever.

  It is almost nine-thirty when we see the headlights of a car threading their way down the road from the ridge. We peek out the windows till we see the sheriff department markings on the side and we stay still as a man gets out of the car and walks towards the porch. Not till he is under the porch light and we see for ourselves that it is the sheriff do we breathe easy and open the door.

  “We’ve found him all right,” says High Sheriff Mackenzie Blaine, looking around the room at each of us. “I wanted to let you know and see if you uns were doing all right.”

  He glances across at Calven, who meets his eyes and nods. Heather is setting on the couch next to him and she speaks up. “Are you taking that guy to jail?”

  The sheriff looks over at me. It is a long, knowing look and I give it right back. Then he says, “Well, no, we’re not. The thing is …”

  He rubs at his jaw like some folks do out of nerves. “The thing is, he got himself tangled up in the laurel somehow. Best we can figure it, he was trying to climb up one of those great big laurels, maybe trying to see over the top of all those bushes, and his foot slipped and he fell.”

  The sheriff looks from one to the other of us, judging how we are taking all this. “Strangest thing I ever saw. Like I said, he must of lost his footing and he fell. Of course, it wasn’t much of a fall; those laurels, even the big ones, aren’t
that tall. But he fell and caught his neck in the fork of a big limb with his toes just inches above the ground.”

  The sheriff turns towards the door. “The laurels saved us the cost of a trial—just like in the old times, he was hanged by the neck until dead.”

  Chapter 60

  The Mule

  (Birdie)

  They say a mule’ll serve you thirty years to kill you. It weren’t thirty years I served Mama but I reckon it was long enough. And who’s to say—if Mama had treated me like I was a person, if she had taught me right and wrong—maybe I wouldn’t have done what I did. Raise up a child in the way it should go, that’s what the Book says. But it was a judgment on me, all the same.

  I know that now—all them babes I bore to Luther what died so young or never drew breath—they was part of the judgment. And then for Cletus to be born simple, like what Mama had tried to make out I was. Oh, law, Mama paid for what she done to me—and I paid, time and again with each dead babe, for what I done to her.

  So many times I have lived that day—in dreams, in bright sunlight, when I least expect …

  I am back at the old home place, screaming at Mama for having cut the throat of my Snowflower kitty, hollering that I am going after Young David, and calling the Little Things to help me. I run up towards the dark trees behind the house, singing the Calling Song. Something inside of me has broken loose and I am afraid of myself and the way I feel and would try to stop it but the something is too strong. My face is burning in the places where she hit me—first with her open hand, then with her fist, and when that didn’t satisfy her, with the buckle of the belt. I can feel a thin trickle of blood, like tears creeping down my face.

  Mama is right behind me. “You! Least!” she hollers, “Where do you think you’re going? You run off and I’ll put the High Sheriff atter you and they’ll haul you off to the ’sylum, that they will. Do you hear me, Least? You stop right there!”

  But I keep going and I keep singing the Calling Song. She is running hard now but I am quicker. I’ll not stay here and be her servant the rest of my life, the way she has planned it from the beginning. I ask the Little Things to help me.

  Bees and waspers and such has always knowed I meant them no harm. And it always is the way of it that if two folks are walking, one afore the other, the one in front who steps on the nest and riles them up won’t get stung if he keeps going. It’s the one coming next, the one who walks right into that great cloud of rank bees, who’s like to get stung bad.

  I keep hurrying on till I come to the tuft of long grass that marks the nest and I kick at it hard with my heel and keep a-going.

  Mama must of put her foot right into the nest for I hear her holler and then she commences to slap at the bees. The wild song they is humming fills my ears till I can’t hear the noises she is making no more.

  I keep on going, thinking of my Snowflower kitty and how Mama had done her—the little head all dangling and blood a-soaking into the pretty white fur—and I circle back around the house till I am in my hidey place under the boxwood.

  The little fairy cross is there in the middle of the stone circle and I pick it up and go to tapping on a stone, trying to make a pattern of sound that is different from the buzzing in my head. I tap and tap and tap till one of the arms breaks and I feel like I have done an evil thing. Then I just set and let my mind go blank.

  I set there the longest time until at last my blood has cooled and I begin to think I’d best go milk ol Poll. Mama ain’t in the house when I go for the pail and she has let the fire in the cookstove go most out. I build it back up and set the kettle to heating water to wash off Poll’s tits. There is quiet all around me.

  Mama is laying there on the path as I start for the barn with my pail of warm water. She don’t move as I come up on her. I squat down beside her and look at her face, all red and swole with a thousand bites, and when I put my ear to her bosom, I can’t hear no heartbeat. I rest my head there a little longer, thinking that was a thing I had never done and wishing that she had loved me, just a little.

  Then I set off down the road to call the neighbors, running all the way.

  Epilogue

  The Sound and Smell of Joy

  (Birdie)

  I’ve had my happy times—all tumbled in together with the bad—and by God’s mercy, it’s them that I remember the most—them that seems the realest to me. I think back to one of those happy times—when my first babe was not but a few months old—and I nineteen years of age with my new life before me.

  It is a July morning and I am on the back porch, running a wash through the wringer while little Britty Birdsong sleeps nearby in the basket we have for her. Luther is setting at the edge of the porch with the old push lawn mower he has gotten to keep things clear round the house. “With all the young uns we’ll have playing about, we need us a yard, Miss Birdie,” he said when he brought the contraption home that morning. “I traded two of Brownie’s pups for this mower. It’ll be a sight easier for keeping the grass short than that old swing blade I been using.”

  He sets there and sharpens the twisting blades just as careful, his file going shhhh-shhhh-shhhh on the steel, turning it from rust brown to shining silver. He takes his can of 3-in-One oil and drips some real careful on the workings, then looks up at me with that sweet smile of his. My heart swells in my bosom with love for this good man who takes such care of me and our child. And the whisper of the file and the scent of the oil seem like the sound and smell of joy.

  Later, when I am hanging out the clothes to dry and Luther is pushing that mower back and forth through the thick fescue, making a green fountain come arching out behind, the smell of the cut grass and clean laundry is enough to make me drunk. The mower’s rachety-rachet song has wakened the babe and she claps her little hands together and crows and laughs like she is trying to sing with it.

  Another few weeks and she will sicken with the summer complaint and the mower will stay quiet, rusting in the shed by the barn, and the laundry will be an endless round of soiled diapers and bedclothes and her little gowns. It will be late summer when we bury her and the yard grass will have grown knee high.

  But the joy of that perfect day, with me and Luther young and happy, comes back to me every time I hang out the laundry or whenever Bernice’s boy comes over to cut the grass. He uses a power mower—that rachety song is gone forever, I reckon—but the sweet green smell of new-mown grass don’t never change.

  THE END