The Storycatcher

by Hite, Ann

  She nodded. “What kind of spell?”

  “A death spell.”

  Mary Beth Clark watched me. “I’m here for a death too. I wonder if it will be the same death.”

  “Maybe.”

  “But I have come to talk to Shelly. She has to hear my story. I might just have to use your trick to tell her.”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  She laughed. “Your trick of sharing a body. I like the idea of that. Then she’ll have to listen to me.”

  “You don’t need to do that. Shelly can hear and see us spirits just fine.”

  “Faith? Are you talking to someone up there?” Missus yelled.

  Mary Beth Clark was gone.

  “No, ma’am. Just talking to myself.”

  “I do that all the time.” Missus laughed.

  PART SEVEN

  Death Quilt

  June 1939

  “Two things make a death quilt work: blood from the one that got hurt and blood from the one who did the hurting.”

  —Arleen Brown

  Shelly Parker

  WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO think about a brother who was living down here on some island and never ever sent me a letter? I know those weren’t the thoughts I should have been pondering. He was older, grown, and I wondered if maybe I just imagined he was Will.

  He caught me staring at him. “What do you think about the boat ride?”

  Now, any other time I’d be dying to talk about the ocean, but my mind was slap full. I shrugged. Why in the world wouldn’t he have at least sent a letter? Why?

  “I guess this must feel strange.” He guided the boat toward the island.

  “Maybe.” I said that word with a attitude full of sass.

  He was quiet.

  The water turned smoother as the boat neared shore.

  “I guess you have lots of questions.” He scooted right up to the side of the dock like he could do it with his eyes closed, like he’d been doing such things all his life.

  The Will I remembered couldn’t drive a boat.

  “It’s not as simple as writing a letter.” Will looked straight ahead.

  “Really?”

  “You got to show Shelly the island this weekend.” Ada moved close to us.

  Will looked away from me.

  “That’s okay. He doesn’t have to show me anything.” I guess part of me wanted to hurt Will ’cause I sure was aching.

  He didn’t say a word.

  MY STOMACH RUMBLED at the smell of onions and green peppers cooking. “Here, you chop,” Ada said, handing me a clove of garlic and a sharp knife.

  I chopped just like I did in Pastor’s kitchen on Black Mountain.

  “This smells good.” I didn’t look at her.

  “You listen to me, girl. You don’t go judging him. You and him has a lot to talk about.” She looked at my hands. “You finished with that?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I passed her the garlic.

  Three scoops of yellow rice went in a pot of simmering chicken broth. “I see that look, young lady. I know what be running through your head. He ran off and never got back to you. Find out the story first. What kind of boy was he when he was home?”

  “Quiet and sweet most of the time.”

  “So you think he just up and changed into some mean old person? You think he didn’t want to see you?”

  I shrugged, even though she knew exactly what I was thinking.

  “You got a lot to learn about growing up.” She wagged a finger at me. The kitchen was so hot, sweat poured down my back.

  “He should have let Nada know where he was. Them two had a way of talking that only they understood. And he just up and left one afternoon.”

  Ada looked at me. “Must have been mighty lonely.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, your mama and brother talking between each other like you not even there.” She stirred the garlic, onions, and peppers, adding a little extra butter.

  “Ah, it wasn’t like that.”

  “Maybe not.” She shrugged. “But they had something to talk about that you wasn’t a part of. That’s what I heard you say. What was it?”

  “I don’t know. I was younger by a lot.”

  “Shelly, your room is ready.” Will stood in the door.

  My cheeks warmed at the thought of him hearing us talk. “Thank you.”

  “We’ll be through here in a bit. You go take your walk on the beach.”

  “Can I steal Shelly?” He gave Ada a big smile and she glowed.

  “Go on, Shelly. Take you a walk with Will.”

  No one asked me if I wanted to go. Maybe I didn’t want no part of him.

  “Only if you want,” he said, sensing the pause I took. I’m sure he was surprised that I didn’t just cow down and show him how happy I was to see him alive. That old Shelly would have followed him to the end of the earth. That’s what I always did, follow him, sucking them two fingers, thinking he was just as good as Pastor’s Jesus that walked on water.

  I washed my hands under the faucet. “I guess.”

  “Good.” He turned.

  “You be nice to him,” Ada whispered. “Just think on this. Why hadn’t your mama gone looking for her boy? Hm?”

  I left that kitchen as fast as I could.

  Will waited for me in a truck. “Come on. There’s nothing like a little talk while walking on the beach. You’ll see.” The drive was short.

  The wind blew so long and hard I could barely hear Will.

  “This is Nanny Goat Beach. I like to walk this way. Mr. Reynolds and his friends use that part.”

  The white sand was warm but not too hot to bare feet. The sun was over to our left and hit the water here and there with sparkling light. Everywhere was shells. I picked up one that was perfect and smooth with a pink inside.

  “That’s a pretty shell.” Will touched the smooth circles that began in the center and worked out.

  “It’s for Nada.” I couldn’t look at him, so I watched the water rushing into the beach, creating a louder sound than the wind.

  “You turned out to be a beautiful young woman!” Will yelled with a smile on his face.

  I almost kept quiet. It seemed too much to speak with the wind pushing at me. “Why you say that?”

  He looked at me funny. “You really don’t know how pretty you are.”

  I laughed long and loud. All those years of trying to be noticed, to get Nada to see me as something besides a little girl, folded out in front of me. Pretty was long blond hair and white skin. Pretty was lacy dresses and blue ribbons hanging down my back. “Nothing pretty about me.”

  He shook his head. “You can’t see who you are.”

  Now he was working on my last nerve. “Well, you sure don’t know. Do you? You ran off. I clean and cook just like Nada. That’s my life. I take care of selfish old Faith and Mrs. Dobbins, dodging Pastor when I can.” The words were so angry they were louder than the hum of the ocean.

  He touched my hand, not a bit mad. “I have the gift of reading. Two children with gifts that are more like plagues. Nada turned us out special. I read you today on the boat. Do you want to know what I saw?”

  And there it was. My future offered to me. What fifteen-year-old girl wouldn’t want to know? But a feeling was building inside of me, a feeling that men only cared about themselves. “I can’t know nothing. It’ll be too hard to go on living my life on that mountain with Nada. I won’t run off and leave her, Will. She needs me.”

  “That’s not much of a life, Shelly. And it doesn’t turn out like that.” He walked on ahead.

  “SHELLY, GET UP!” ADA YELLED from the front room. “Will wants you to go with him somewhere.”

  Will didn’t even look at me good. “Come on,” he said.

  So why did I follow him?

  He parked the truck in the same place as we did the evening before. “Come on. Hurry.” He jumped out, and I ran behind him.

  He nodded to what looked like really long
pieces of half-dried grass, swaying in the dern wind that blew all the time. “These are sea oats. They grow in the sand dunes.”

  And really, why would I care? But I did. Miss Tuggle would love some of them in her garden. The water rushed in and out, rocking me. This was the kind of place I could live if I let myself. Will sat down on the sand and pointed to the place beside him. I gave us some extra room. He watched the gray-brownish water move in and then pull out. Then he looked out further like he might be searching for the flat end of the earth.

  “Now watch.” He leaned over to me without moving his stare.

  Where the sky touched the ocean turned a thin strip of orange. The orange grew wider and turned brighter.

  “There.” He pointed like some little boy.

  The waves far out into the sea grew bigger. The orange turned into the sun and stretched its yellow fingers across the water, sparkling. Then what I thought was a wave twirled into the air and then another. The ocean was coming alive, dancing in the twinkling bright light. I could only stare. The waves were alive, sparkling when the sun hit them. Creatures, large fish. Their bodies were shiny and wet. Two jumped into the air at the same time and twisted before disappearing into the water again.

  Will smiled. “Dolphins. They put on a show each morning.” The sun was full and bright. The dolphins seemed to dance on the water. “They’re called angels of the sea in many books.”

  Books. I looked at him. Yes, angels.

  He unfolded a cloth with two biscuits coated in sweet, dark syrup.

  I took one and allowed the bite to soak in my mouth until it was nearly gone.

  When we finished eating, the dolphins had left. They faded away one at a time like I had been dreaming.

  “I have something else to show you.”

  I never opened my mouth on the truck ride down a bumpy road that seemed to cut straight across the island through the woods. Every kind of strange bird I could think of and some I sure didn’t know showed themselves. Then the trees disappeared and the marsh grass waved back and forth near a dark, wide, still creek.

  Will parked the truck close to an old wooden dock where there was a net. “Take a look at this.”

  The water was moving in a quiet, strong way.

  “Tide’s coming in.” Will picked up the net. “This is a seining net. Do you know what that is?”

  “No.”

  “This is how fishing started here with the Geechees.”

  “The what?” I looked away before he met my stare.

  “Geechees. That’s what the Negro people on Sapelo Island call themselves. See, these families, my father’s family, go all the way back to slave days and further here on this island. They didn’t have a way to own a boat back then. So they fished the way the elders did in their homeland.” He looked at me quiet-like. “They all ended up here because they were stolen from their land and made into slaves. And that isn’t right.”

  Part of me was just too stubborn to agree.

  “Everyone was poor and still is, but they knew how to take a catch from the ocean even if they didn’t have a boat.” He picked up the net with little weights tied to the edges and a long rope that he tied around his arm. “I’ll show you how they fished. Then we are going to take our catch and eat lunch.” He took a piece of the net and placed a weight in his mouth. The thing opened like a flower when it was in full bloom and landed on top of the water, sinking. Will held the rope. He waited and then tugged. He waved me over to help him pull in the net even though I had a feeling he could have done the work all by himself. The net dropped on the dock. Inside were shrimp and a couple of good-size crabs with shells that looked blue in places.

  “See, the water gave us our lunch just like it did the Geechees a long time ago.”

  That simple. I took a breath and sat down on the dock without thinking. The water seemed to hum with a slow movement.

  “My daddy, William Tine, was a netmaker until he left the island and met Mama in New Orleans. Ada still uses his nets, mending them when a hole opens. I guess it’s her way of honoring her love for him. Brothers and sisters are like that even when they don’t agree.”

  Someone loving a person that much was hard for me to hold on to. And I wasn’t going to talk to him about brothers and sisters, ’cause he didn’t know a dern thing.

  “Let’s go to eat our catch. Ada will cook it up.” He turned and looked at me. “So Faith is in Darien?”

  I stiffened. “Yep.”

  He nodded.

  “Nada’s doing real good, Will, in case you were wondering.” My words came out mean.

  “Things aren’t simple.”

  “You’re not the only soul who had hard times, Will.”

  “My leaving wasn’t about hard feelings.”

  “What about Nada?”

  A big bluish-gray bird flew to stand on the bank.

  “That’s a blue heron. It’s catching food for the day.”

  So we wasn’t going to talk about Nada.

  “YOU GOT TO DROP US at Miss Laura Wool’s house,” Ada told Will. Then she looked over at me. “She be one of the best root doctors on the coast.”

  Will nodded. “I’m going to Sweet Jesse.”

  Ada smiled. “I wondered how long it would take.” She smiled at me. “He spent the whole day with you yesterday, missy. Most days when he’s home from school, he’s on that boat. It be like them two are married.”

  Will only smiled.

  He dropped us in front of a tiny green house that sat on the edge of the community Ada called Hog Hammock. “You want me to come back for you?”

  Ada laughed. “We can walk. Do us good.”

  As I stood waiting on Ada to slide across the truck seat and get out, Will smiled at me. “I have a good life here, Shelly.”

  And I knew he did. It was probably what made me the maddest at him.

  After he pulled away, Ada looked at me. “What’s wrong with you, girl? I wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t talk to you again.”

  I looked away. “He left me, Ada. He left Nada.”

  She snorted. “So no forgiveness coming out you, girl. Good thing most folks don’t think like you. I don’t think your mama would want you acting like this.”

  And she was probably right about that.

  Ada pushed an old wooden door open, tapping on it. “Miss Laura, how you doing this fine day?”

  The room was dark and tiny but clean as a pin. A big chair sat under the only window. The old woman sitting there looked at me. “Who she be?”

  “No worries. Miss Laura, this is Will’s sister, Shelly.”

  Miss Laura gave me a hard look. I wanted to tell her I didn’t want to be there any more than she wanted me.

  “We came to see your quilts. I want Shelly here to see your charm quilt.”

  Miss Laura took her mean look off me. “It be right over there, Ada, in the trunk. But you know how powerful that thing is. Be careful.”

  Now my full attention was on the trunk and Ada.

  “Yes, ma’am. But I want Shelly to see it ’cause she won’t believe me if she don’t.” She shot a tolerant smile at Miss Laura. “She’s been raised in the mountains of North Carolina and don’t know a thing about the old ways.”

  “Lord, do I know what you be talking about, Ada. The only reason we still honor the ways is ’cause of being right here on this island. But now that Will, he be good. He understands.”

  “Yes, ma’am, but he’s one of a kind.” Ada looked at me.

  The quilt was wrapped in old, soft tissue paper. Ada brought it to the table in the middle of the room.

  “Careful, Ada,” Miss Laura said. “I don’t touch the thing much.”

  Ada folded the tissue paper back, and there was a faded blue, red, and green nine-patch pattern. There was a picture and handwriting on a piece of muslin right in the middle. The thing looked as old as Miss Laura Wool.

  She handed me a corner. “Feel it.”

  When I touched the quilt, my fingers tingled li
ke one of Nada’s spells. I seen a young black man dressed in an old suit of clothes. He faded in and out.

  Miss Laura Wool struggled to stand.

  “You don’t have to stand, ma’am,” Ada said. She moved to help her, but Miss Laura Wool waved her away.

  “You’ll find what you’re looking for on the mainland, girl. Then you’ll go home, but ain’t nothing ever going to be the same.”

  I looked away from her watery hazel eyes.

  “Your brother will live out his life here.”

  The quilt burned beneath my fingers.

  “This quilt was made into a charm to punish my man. He died in his wedding suit.”

  Ada tapped the quilt. “This is the same kind of quilt Faith be making. The one you told me about.” She continued to stare at the quilt. “I seen it up there in that room folded all nice and neat in her cloth sack. You’re right, Shelly. She’s got a charm quilt.”

  I looked at the middle of the quilt, where there was a picture of a gravestone. He died too young. I jerked my hand away.

  Miss Laura Wool laughed, a crackling sound. “You be right about that, girl. Don’t be touching it much. It’s the touch that brings it alive. Depending what this girl has sewed into her death quilt, it could kill you.”

  “How does it work?” I asked.

  Miss Laura Wool looked at me for a minute like she was trying to decide if I was worth telling. “A soul is locked into the sewing. Who be sewed into this girl’s quilt?”

  Who would Faith hate enough to sew into a spell quilt? But Faith wasn’t herself. She was Arleen. So who in the world did Arleen hate enough to help sew them into a death quilt?

  “If a soul be picked, they’re doomed to die. Ain’t much you can do to save them.” Miss Laura Wool smiled real big at me. “Lots of desires, pain, hate, and love goes into the making. You got to know the story to understand the use intended in the charm.”

  And in Miss Laura Wool’s words I saw Armetta. I had managed not to think of her too much since I left. I hadn’t even touched that stupid book of hers, but I knew I had to read it and sooner than later I had to know the whole story.

  Arleen Brown