The Storycatcher

by Hite, Ann

  This swear wouldn’t be hard to keep because why would I ever speak of the things he told me his last afternoon on the mountain? I wished away the whole day like casting one of Amanda’s conjures. But a spell couldn’t repair a story. “Yes, I promise.”

  “Good.”

  “What about money? I have some money at the house, Will.”

  He shook his head. “No. I won’t take what you may need down the road. This ain’t over just ’cause I’m leaving, Faith.”

  “Where will you go? How will Amanda live through this?”

  He stood. “You go on, now. I’ll take care of myself. Go back to the house. Don’t look back at me, Faith. Go on. Remember all I told you. It links us together.”

  I opened my mouth but I closed it back.

  “Go on, now.” His voice broke.

  The first three steps made me stumble like a child taking her first walk. Then I broke into a run. Never, ever again did I want to think about the day I lost my father and my best friend. Will yelled something, but I kept running.

  “God, are you real? And if you’re real, why would you make him leave? Why? He’s all I got now. Are you there?” I yelled at the sky like I’d seen Daddy do. God didn’t answer.

  The kitchen was empty so I went straight to my room. I had to do something. Then I remembered the dream about Amanda’s grandmother and the sewing basket.

  PART SIX

  Finders Keepers

  June 1939

  “If you find something, it’s all yours whether you want it or not.”

  —Shelly Parker

  Ada Lee Tine

  SWEET JESSE BOBBED UP AND down in the water. Will stood in the cabin. On his head was a tattered cap with his bushy hair pushing out from underneath. Tough times or not, the boy had to have him a real haircut. All the money from our catches went into his college jar. He was in his third year and I was right proud of him. We’d made do when he was away and he came home during the summer to help me fish. My life started and stopped each day with the thought of him.

  The air was heavy with a weather line coming in on us from the west. A land storm. They could be the worst and we had white folks coming too. I shook my head just thinking on it. A shadow stood just behind Will, near the boat’s wheel. There Roger was looking after my boy. Had he lived, we would have looked after Will together and things would have been a lot different, but I couldn’t bring myself to think on it. Will brought hope and love into my life when there wasn’t a bit more left. That made him my angel. Not many women had an angel.

  “Ada, what you smiling at?” Will laughed.

  “Just a thought scooting through this old brain of mine.” I stood on the dock.

  “I got us a good catch today, best of the whole month. Now we need us a good price on shrimp.”

  “Lordy be, you right about that,” I said. The shadow stood there like he was listening to us. “I’m thankful. Lots of folks don’t have nothing at all, Will. I heard yesterday they done busted up a Hooverville in Brunswick, near the tracks. God bless. That’s got to be the saddest thing ever. I never thought I’d see a day when folks went without eating in our parts. There’s always a catch, has been since slave days.”

  “Hard times, Ada, will cause folks to do things they wouldn’t normally do.”

  “I’m right proud you going to college. Did I tell you that?” I grinned.

  “Yep, you sure have, but just keep saying it.”

  “What you see for the next year, Will?” I stepped into the boat.

  He started the engine and scooted Sweet Jesse out from the dock, headed upriver. “You know it don’t work like that. I can’t see my own future. Don’t want to. And I never know how far ahead I see. It’s too messy to put any store in.”

  I squeezed his hand. “What you see for me?” The tingling began in the tips of my fingers.

  His eyes went kind of glassy. “Peace. No matter what. You’re a peaceful soul, Ada.”

  I let him go. Peace. Now, that was a good thought to carry through the summer. Peace. But Will was the peaceful soul, not me. He was my boy, but he was a strong man.

  “I see this white family getting on your last nerve.” He laughed.

  I play-slapped at him. “That ain’t seeing no future. That’s just fact.”

  “It might take me longer than I thought to finish college.” He grinned.

  “Why?”

  “I’ve been thinking big. That’s all.”

  The gulls flew overhead looking for some leftover catch.

  “Did you know there was a colored man killed for no good reason right here the same year I came?”

  I laced my fingers together behind my back.

  “And that same night a white man and his colored girlfriend died.”

  “People tell stories. They add on something with each telling.”

  “Yep. And they told me plenty about the colored man who was killed for nothing. He sounds like a fine man to have known.”

  The water of the Altamaha River was deep, dark, and still with a hidden current underneath. I heard tell there was places upstream where it moved like the mighty hand of God, but for me, it owned the souls of history in Darien. And that day it lapped against Sweet Jesse, keeping time with Will’s words.

  “Folks in Darien think you’re a good woman, Ada Lee.”

  “That story works under my skin like that mountain of yours does you,” I said. “Something I want to put behind me.”

  “This island is my home. Always has been even if I didn’t know it. Does that make sense?”

  “Maybe not book sense, but perfect sense to me.”

  Will’s face was still. “Mama’s right where I left her. I’m sure of that. Working for the white pastor and looking after his wife and girl, protecting them with her hoodoo. She’s good at that. She’s got ties to them that run too deep to leave.” He looked at me hard. “I’m thinking the way Negroes are treated is wrong. White people do what they want when they want. Not all of them are bad. And even the good ones mostly don’t see us for who we really are. They see skin. They can go to the bathroom anywhere they want. They can eat where they want. They can buy a business or land anywhere they want. They sleep in the hotels they choose. Well, I want to change the situation.” He finished out of breath.

  “Don’t start that mess. You don’t need to die young. That talk will get you in trouble real quick. Shoot, there’s a law against what we’re doing right now, talking about the wrongs. Talking, boy. Mr. Jim Crow ain’t for fun.”

  His look darkened. “I’m not standing by and living my life in fear, Ada. I met some people at college in Atlanta.”

  “Well, you leave them alone. You understand? What happened to you on that mountain to stir you up so much?”

  “It’s not just about what happened up there.” He was quiet, thinking. “Here’s the thing: we both have our secrets we keep close to our hearts. I want to do something, Ada, so Negroes don’t have to keep those kind of secrets. I want to change things.”

  This mess of a boy was turning into a full-grown man before my eyes.

  “Ada?” He kept his stare on the crooked river.

  “Yep.”

  “Yesterday when I got on Sweet Jesse, I saw, plain as day, a man standing at her wheel. He was tall and thin. He turned and tipped his cap at me. He knew me.”

  I just watched the marsh.

  “I figure he’s the colored man that was killed for no good reason. And I think you knew him well, since he gave you this boat.”

  “If I counted all the coloreds that have been wronged, Will, I’d be counting till doomsday.” I sighed. “Nothing ever going to change that.”

  “I had to leave my family behind. A sister too young to understand that Negroes are just doomed to be wronged in a white world. The day I left, I understood what being a Negro meant. That man who owned Sweet Jesse came to point me in a new direction, a direction of change.”

  “What you know about him? Look where he went.” I spit the wor
ds. “His death didn’t help one person here in Darien, black or white. He left a hole. A big one. You get them big old thoughts about saving folks out of your head. He didn’t have them, never would risk his life for something that just couldn’t be done. He was a good man. That’s all. A good man. We are who we are here. Saltwater Geechees from Sapelo, peoples of Biali. He be a slave, Will, a slave that led other slaves on Sapelo. He taught them how to live a good life and be in their lives with as much grace as possible. A slave who was educated. Wrote a book of prayers.”

  “Ah, Ada, I’m sorry to worry you. You got them new nets ready for casting tomorrow?”

  “You’re changing the subject. I see what you be doing, Will.” I let him ask about them nets, but inside, them worried thoughts turned into a prayer.

  Lord, Will be needing you something terrible. He’s got this crazy notion that he’s going to save his people like Moses, but he ain’t Moses, Peter, or Paul. He’s just a boy you sent me when I thought I’d die. I give him to you. Keep him safe. Amen.

  MR. TYSON LET ME KNOW up front his sister and niece was coming in a rush and it wasn’t planned. He said they wouldn’t be a bit of trouble, though. That business about leaving home in a hurry tipped me off. I wasn’t no fool. See, I hadn’t messed with his house since I got the boat, since them murders. But Mr. Tyson was stuck. He had been good to me, especially after Roger was killed, so I owed him some help.

  “You have to keep an eye out for her husband, Ada Lee. You have to know he’s nothing but trouble. I want you to call the sheriff if he shows himself on my property.” Now, this wasn’t like Mr. Tyson. That husband had to be one mean man.

  A shiver walked down my backbone. “I ain’t worried about her husband none. He don’t want to mess with me.”

  “He knows he’s not welcome, but call the sheriff if he shows up.” Mr. Tyson smiled. “I wouldn’t mind seeing him tangle with you, Ada Lee.” He laughed. Him and missus was on the way to their new house in Maine, late leaving. Mr. Tyson had somehow managed to do good even though there was a depression. Darien in the summer was too hot for them now. The old brown house pretty much stayed empty year-round. But it was an old family house from way on back, so he would never sell it. And I was glad about that.

  There I was in the big brown marsh house when Mr. Tyson’s sister came rolling into the yard in some old car that would have made her brother frown. Mr. Tyson loved him a nice car. The sister wore a scarf on her head and big sunglasses like she be Carole Lombard. But she didn’t hide a thing from Ada. I seen them bruises and thanked God that her husband wasn’t with her. Next out was some little white girl, who had a thick black cloud around her. Then out popped some old colored girl all arms and legs, but pretty in a plain way, like a woman who knows how to dress quiet and peaceful. As soon as she stepped out onto the driveway, I saw spirits walking out of the marsh to meet her like they had known she was on the way. Sweet Baby Jesus, this girl had the sight something strong.

  Miss Hollywood behind her dark glasses stepped toward me. “Ada, I’m Lydia, Tyson’s sister.” She held out her hand. Them fingers of hers looked like they might snap in two. Everything about Miss Hollywood made me think of those thin teacups Mrs. Tyson kept in the sideboard, gathering dust after years of never being used.

  Without thinking much about it—and that wasn’t like me—I took her hand in mine and shook it. “Yes, ma’am, we met a long time ago, when you was a young thing.” She was just a slip of a girl in a woman’s body.

  “You remember me, Ada?” She said this like no one cared after her. She turned toward the little white girl. “This is Faith, my daughter.”

  Now, something about that name released into the air made me let go of Miss Lydia’s hand. When I looked at this Faith, I seen more stirring around in that head of hers than I wanted to know about. Two girls brooding in the same skin. One was pale with dark eyes in a blue-eyed family, fading in and out. The other girl came from a hardworking life and sly. Lord, she was sly like a fox or maybe a weasel. Time would tell just who would be the owner of that pitiful body. I heard tell of people with several spirits inside of them. This girl was one.

  “You want to walk through the house and get acquainted?” I offered Miss Lydia. That’s when I saw her, Miss Mary Beth Clark, standing on the landing of the second floor. “Go take a look around.” I nodded to Miss Lydia. When they walked by and got out of earshot, I turned to the colored girl. “I be Ada.”

  “I’m Shelly Parker.” She watched the spirit, trying not to keep her eyes on it.

  “This is the first time I’ve been back here since she died.” I spoke low. Something quiet grew inside of me without a name or a face, like a dern old kudzu vine choking out the pretty with its fat green leaves. “You can stay with me at night.” I watched this girl with interest. Something about her was almost familiar, like I ought to have known exactly who she was and what she wanted in Darien.

  She turned that look of hers away from the haint. “I guess.”

  “Well, you can’t be staying on the Ridge at night, child. You be colored. You can come home with me. I got me a place in town for weeknights and then on the weekends, like tonight, we’ll head on back to Sapelo Island. You ain’t never seen nothing, nothing like it.”

  “Shelly can just stay with us at night here, Ada.” Miss Lydia stood halfway up them stairs and heard every word I said.

  “I’ll be needing help in the evenings at my place for the next day. The weekends just give her a break. This girl needs to be around young people.” I smiled real big. “My boy will pick me and her up at the dock this evening. I live on Sapelo Island, ma’am, in case you don’t remember.”

  “Yes, that’s right. And you have a son, Ada? I thought you never married.”

  “He be close family and staying with me now. He’s going to school to be a lawyer.”

  Miss Lydia smiled. “Is that what you want to do, Shelly?”

  Lord help, that poor girl looked confused like she hadn’t had many choices. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll stay with her.” Shelly cut a look at Miss Mary Beth’s spirit still standing on the stairs.

  “Well, that’s settled. Faith and I will go choose our rooms. Ada, you fill Shelly in with what she needs to know.” Miss Lydia started up the stairs again and walked right through Miss Mary Beth Clark’s spirit, but that Faith girl walked around the haint. Lord help me, she could see the ghost too.

  “She’s a fine-looking for a haint,” Shelly said.

  “Oh yes, she be fine, all right, and she thought that when she was alive. It’s probably what got her killed.” I turned to leave.

  “You know her?” Shelly asked. “I never know the spirits that come see me.”

  “I guess you could say I knew that one. As you get older, you’ll know some of the haints that come your way.” I walked back to the kitchen. “We ain’t got time for an old-home week with them kind of spirits. We got to get this supper fixed. I leave here every day at five and no later. Today be Friday, I’m going to take you to Sapelo with me. And I like to cook supper for my boy.”

  She nodded and followed me into the kitchen.

  Shelly Parker

  ADA LEE TINE was one of the strangest colored women I’d ever met, but then I’d only known Nada. She wore a feather and four colored beads tied around her neck with a piece of leather. Her dress didn’t have a bit of shape and was gray with no color at all. On her head was a black scarf. But it was the way she watched me—like I was the most interesting thing she’d seen. She was bent under the sink in the kitchen when someone came knocking.

  “Get that door, Shelly.”

  A tall, lanky colored boy not much older than me looked surprised. “I was looking for Ada Lee Tine.” He held a big wire basket with two horrible-looking creatures inside.

  “Sam!” Ada yelled as she stood up. “You got my lobsters.” She stepped in front of me and took the wire basket. “I guess it’s a dollar apiece, like usual?”

  “For you, Ada Lee.” He smiled.
/>
  “Get on out of here.” She laughed and shut the door. “He be one of the fishermen,” she explained. “Come on over here.” Ada placed the wire basket on the table. She checked on a big, tall pot full of water, heating on the stove. “Now, this here is lobster. God’s most beautiful creatures.”

  I frowned.

  “Oh, don’t you be making them kind of faces. I’m going to teach you to cook them. We’ll have some of our own tonight and later take us a walk on the beach. You like the ocean?”

  “Never seen it, ma’am.” The water began to steam.

  She shook her head. “Ain’t nothing about you that’s right.” Her smile was big. “Next week we’ll stay in my aunt Hattie’s old house. She’s been dead for a few years now, but I use her home when I got to be here in Darien. Never seen her spirit.”

  I let a breath out and nodded.

  She put her hand into the cage and brought out one of them ugly creatures. “He’s going to make a fine, fine supper. Don’t you think?”

  “He be ugly,” I said.

  She laughed. “Yes, ma’am, they are ugly creatures, but they taste better than a king’s supper.” She lowered the thing into the pot of hot water. A hissing cry filled the kitchen.

  I must have looked scared, ’cause Ada Lee Tine shook her head. “It ain’t really crying, child. Just sounds like it.” This woman had the darkest skin I’d ever seen. “You know how to fry cooked corn?” She pulled five ears of corn out of a cloth bag.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. You be useful.” She handed me the ears. “Then get to it. The butter’s in the icebox. We leave here at five on the dot.”

  Mrs. Dobbins came into the kitchen. “You can stay here if you want, Ada. It won’t bother me to have the extra company.”

  Ada Lee Tine kind of laughed. “No, ma’am. Like I said, it be Friday. I go to the island on the weekend.” Then she looked at Mrs. Dobbins real serious. “This is the Ridge, Miss Lydia. I ain’t never staying here after dark.”