Sunny was more gifted than Stella, for sure. The way she’d controlled the filaments with that mouse—that was like nothing Stella had ever been capable of. But she was still just a child. And she was going into the cave alone. The weight of the God’s will would crush her.
* * *
—
sheriff whaley came into the building at just after 4:00 p.m. Stella was standing at the bars by the time he reached her cell.
“About time,” she said. “My bladder’s about to burst.” She held the Coke bottle behind her back.
Whaley shook his big sad face. “You know you’re going to prison, don’t you?” He was holding the key to her cell but hadn’t made a move toward the lock. “It’s just a matter of time.”
“At least prison has a john in the cell. Can I pee, please?”
He winced, as if hearing a woman discuss urination offended him. He put the key in the lock. Swung open the gate. “I wouldn’t take too—”
He’d just seen the bottle in her hand. His eyes widened.
“You know, if this were the movies,” Stella said, “this is the part where I break this thing against the bars, hold the jagged end to your throat, and use you as a hostage as I make my escape.”
Whaley stared at her.
She handed him the bottle. “Could you throw this out for me?”
“Get the hell out of here.”
She raised an eyebrow.
He waved at the open door. “I said, get the hell out of my jail.”
And if this were the movies, she thought, this is the part where he shoots me for “escaping.”
She walked out in front of him, unable to shake the tingling at the back of her neck, into the breezeway between the cinder block building and the department proper. There she saw Pee Wee and Merle, standing beside a white man she didn’t recognize, and suddenly felt a wave of relief.
This time it was Merle who stepped forward to hug her. Stella soaked it in, grateful.
Pee Wee said, “Marcus, this is Stella Wallace. Stella, Marcus Ruvolo.”
There was a time Stella didn’t know what a truly first-class suit looked like. There was no doubting Ruvolo’s: a custom-tailored pearl-gray pinstripe with high-waisted pants. The pleats were as long and sharp as scimitars.
She shook hands with him. “I’m guessing you’re a lawyer?”
“Better than that,” he said. “I’m your lawyer.”
* * *
—
ruvolo wanted to take her to his office up in Knoxville, but Stella didn’t have time for that, so the four of them drove her to Merle and Pee Wee’s house. The lawyer wanted to discuss legal strategy. Sheriff Whaley had never formally charged her but claimed he was getting around to it. The state gave the police a lot of leeway in that regard. He’d already impounded her car and seized the farm, and had threatened to go after her other personal property.
Stella thought of the five hundred dollars she’d hidden under the car’s seat. That was gone now.
“There will be rough days ahead,” Ruvolo warned her.
“Just keep me out of jail,” she said. “For a few more days.”
She left him in the living room. It was almost sunset, and the ceremony would take place after dark.
She went into the bathroom. Peed, and then splashed water in her face. She didn’t look at that porcelain tub.
Merle was waiting for her on the other side of the door. “Care to let me in on what’s going on?”
“I’ve got some things I got to do. You don’t have a cigarette, do you?”
“Always.” Merle produced a pack of Luckies, lit one for her. “It’s suppertime. Stay and talk with me, stay the night. Your old bed’s free, if you give me a minute to clear off some books.”
“I wish I could.” That was the truth. If there was a place on this Earth she felt safe, it was here. Even more than her own house.
She didn’t know exactly how much Merle and Pee Wee knew about the Birch family religion. When they took her in, Stella had told them nothing. She could scarcely bear to talk at all. That first month she spent days straight in the spare bedroom they’d given her, curtains pulled, lights off. They thought she was in despair over Lunk’s death—which was true enough. They told her that his death wasn’t her fault—which was kind, but dead wrong. Merle fed her and kept her clean.
It took Stella some time to get there, but one night she finally realized, It’s time to be done with this mopery. What was the point of lying around, waiting to feel better? There was no God to forgive her. Nope. Better to take arms against the sea of troubles.
Merle found her in the bathtub, her wrists open. The idea had been to cut the badness out of her, and die clean.
They could have had her committed, but Pee Wee drove her home from the hospital while Merle held her in the back seat. They took turns at her bedside for weeks, until Stella could do a decent impersonation of a normal person. She went on with that impersonation for the next three years. In all that time, Stella never let on that the Ghostdaddy was in her head. She never mentioned its name. Not when she was awake, anyway. She had no control what she screamed in her nightmares, and those came every night for a long while. She’d wake up with her throat sore and the echo of her own voice in her ears, Merle sitting on the bed beside her with a stricken expression—pretty much the same one she wore now.
So. Even though Stella had told Merle and Pee Wee almost nothing about the Ghostdaddy, they probably knew plenty.
“I’m worried about you,” Merle said. “I can see you holding on by your fingertips.”
“There’s nothing for it,” Stella said. “I got to go make things right. You were right the other day—I been walking away from my responsibility. I got to make up for that.”
“Take responsibility tomorrow.”
“Sorry, can’t wait. Maybe after this is over, we can sit down and I can explain everything. But right now I need to use your telephone.”
* * *
—
a woman answered the line. Her hello was a challenge.
Stella said, “Mrs. Bowlin? This is Stella Wallace. I was wondering if—”
“You said you were gone.” Mrs. Bowlin’s voice was harsh. “You promised I’d never hear from you.”
I said you’d never see me again, Stella thought. But arguing with Alfonse’s mother would get her nowhere.
“I’m so sorry,” Stella said. “I am. Please don’t hang up.”
A deep male voice spoke from somewhere on the other side. Mrs. Bowlin said, “Stay out of this, Antoine.” Alfonse’s dad. Mrs. Bowlin came back on the line. “We’ve got nothing to say to you.”
“I just want to talk to Alfonse.”
“You’re a little late for that.”
Stella stood in Merle’s living room—stood because the couch and chairs were occupied by books, sweaters, packing boxes. She could hear Pee Wee, Merle, and Ruvolo talking in the kitchen, not twenty feet away. She turned and bent over the receiver. “Did the police get him? Bobby Reed told me he left town before they got here.”
“No thanks to you.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
The line went silent, except for a faint hiss. Stella listened for any stray breath in that static.
Then Mrs. Bowlin said, “He may have mentioned Myrtle Beach.”
“Oh.” Stella straightened. “I…hear it’s nice.”
“For hurricanes. Goodbye, Miss Wallace.”
“Wait! Please. Alfonse was going to get something for me. A souvenir.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“I was just hoping that—when he gets back—he’d drop it off at the cove. Could you let him know that? I need it right away.”
“My boy is not going into the cove, not for anybody.”
&nbs
p; “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t—”
“Anybody. You’re a hurricane yourself, Miss Wallace.”
The click was loud.
Fuck me, Stella thought. She needed Alfonse’s help. But now he’d gone to ground, and she had only herself to blame.
Stella walked into the kitchen. The three of them looked at her.
“I need to borrow a car,” Stella said.
Merle looked at Pee Wee. The lawyer suddenly became interested in the window.
Stella felt terrible. Nobody had been so unreasonably kind to her as these two. When she was a teenager, Merle had lured her back into the world with books like a trail of bread crumbs. Pee Wee had taught her the moonshine distribution business, taking her with him on deliveries, showing her accounting, all the things that Abby never had to mess with because he had Pee Wee. And when she started making her own shine Pee Wee had not only staked her but become her first bootlegger, introducing her product to rich clients he’d cultivated for years. She couldn’t ask anything more from them, yet she had to.
Merle said to Stella, “Are you going to get it into a shoot-out?”
“I can’t guarantee I won’t.”
“Take Pee Wee’s then.”
Pee Wee laughed, said, “Come on, then.” Walked Stella out to the garage and his Sequoia Cream Buick Roadmaster. She was less than six months old and goodness gracious, she was beautiful.
“I was about to make a trip west with the latest batch,” Pee Wee said. “Just let me unload.”
“No. Keep it in the car.”
Pee Wee raised a devilish eyebrow. That moonshine was worth a lot of money, to both of them.
“I’ll make it up to you,” Stella said.
“It’s your liquor,” he said.
“I meant the car.”
“Ah! Be careful with her!”
She drove east, with the setting sun pushing her into the mountains.
21
1938
Her body woke her. The sound it was making was so odd—a high, soft wail. As soon as she concentrated on it, it stopped.
This was the wrong body. She could feel it, arrayed around her. The wrong number of limbs. The wrong size. Wrong everything.
The eyes opened, revealing wood beams and a ceiling that seemed very far away. The room glowed with a frosty white light. She waited. Listened to the body breathing. Slowly lifted a hand, marveling that it obeyed her. The hand touched her face, and she felt the wet. Tears.
Then she realized she was alone, and the body made that keening sound again.
A human voice spoke to her. She didn’t want to look, didn’t want to be alone. She closed her eyes again, and fled.
* * *
—
she awoke again to a light so bright it burned. She tried to sit up, but fell back against the mattress. Rolled onto her side.
After some time she was able to get her legs over to the side of the bed. She stood, and immediately her knees buckled and she fell to the floor. The pain seemed very far away.
The door opened, and a voice said, “What are you trying to do?” Motty. The woman reached under her arms and heaved. Pulled her backward until the bed was under her again.
Stella looked around. The room was so bright. “Where is it?” she asked.
“Sit here, don’t try to get up. Your legs are weak.”
Stella’s body was weeping again. “It was here. I—we were here, together.”
The God’s thoughts, sharp as razors. It had wounded her to try to hold them. But it had been glorious. She’d become glory.
She was dizzy, and her stomach felt hollow. Every breath scraped her throat.
Motty stared at her. She was frightened.
“How long?” Stella asked.
“Six days.”
Six. Stella tried to fathom that. The time had disappeared.
“I want to see the sow.”
“That can wait,” Motty said. “You lay down, and I’ll—”
“Get out of my way!”
The force of the shout startled Stella. Motty too.
“Hold on, hold on.”
Motty put socks and boots on her feet. Helped her into a coat.
Stella breathed, told herself she felt stronger. When she got to her feet Motty stood close.
Outside, the summer had disappeared. How many times had Stella communed since Motty burned her Revelation—twenty, twenty-five? For weeks she lived half in the God’s thoughts. And then for six days, entirely swallowed up.
The sow was huge. She was only four months old, but she looked bigger than any hog they’d ever owned.
“This is the way it is,” Motty said. “This is the job. We go into the mine and come back with the truth, because we’re the only ones who can do it.”
“What truth?”
Motty’s eyes widened a fraction. “You don’t remember.”
Stella felt the panic rising in her chest. What did she say while she was in bed? What babble had spilled out of her mouth?
“It’s coming,” Motty said. “There’s going to be a child.”
* * *
—
snowflakes floated down from the clear night sky, one by one, like moon dust.
The door scraped open behind her. Abby called her name, twice: once in surprise, then in alarm. Stella sat on a stump, her arm outstretched, hand open. Each snowflake melted as it touched her palm.
“How long you been out here? Where’s your coat? It’s November, Star, you could’ve froze to death!”
She allowed him to steer her inside the cabin and set her in front of the fireplace. “You’re all wet! Oh, Stella.” Abby found a rabbit-skin blanket and draped it over her shoulders. He kept asking questions. The Russian boar grinned at her. The host of petrified animals regarded her with their glass eyes.
Her body began to shake. He knelt behind her and wrapped his arms around her. “Oh, Star, I’m so sorry. I’ve been worried about you.”
It had been two days since she left the bed. So over a week since her last communion. She was so alone.
“Motty wouldn’t let me come inside the house,” Abby said. “You know what she’s like when her mind’s set. She said you were feeling poorly, didn’t want me in the house. But…are you all right? Should I have gone in?” He smelled of woodsmoke and old sweat, with a tang of formaldehyde. He smelled like Abby. Of course he’d gone to bed drunk and was drunk still—she could smell the moonshine on his breath and hear it in that tumble of words. He only got loquacious when he was sauced. “Talk to me, little girl. Why were you just sitting out there?”
She hadn’t meant to go to Abby’s shack. She’d climbed the hill to the chapel, her legs trembling the entire way, only to find a new lock on the door. Motty’s doing. Stella was furious. She grabbed the lock, yanked at it.
The cold of the metal shocked her. She let go. Looked at her palm.
No, she thought. No.
She’d walked across the ridge to Abby’s place. She was afraid to knock on the door, so she sat on the stump and told herself, If he opens the door, I’ll tell him.
“Are you sad about that boy?” Abby asked. “I heard you had a fight. Don’t worry, he’ll come around. I know he’s over the moon about you.”
Abby thought she was heartsick. Well, she thought, I am.
Abby squeezed her and said, “That boy loves you. If you talked to him, he’d come back.”
A noise escaped her. Oh, Abby. Not Lunk. How could you be so ignorant?
“I guarantee it,” he said. “I can see it when he talks to you.”
Stop talking, she thought. Ask me what happened with the God.
He went on about the fickleness of young men, how they didn’t know their own hearts. He told her how they couldn’t see what was perfect even if it w
as right in front of them.
Finally Stella said, “Did you love Lena?” She was shivering, and her jaw was tight.
He eased away from her. His hands gripped her arms, but his belly was no longer pressed against her back. Then, as if to make up for this withdrawal, he rubbed the fur that covered her arms. Drying her, petting her.
“Sure I did. She was like a daughter to me.”
“When I was little…” Stella said. It was hard to talk with her chest so tight, so little air in her lungs. But she was grateful they were both staring at the fire—she couldn’t have said a word if he was looking at her. “When I was little, and I first saw that picture—you and Lena and Ray Wallace…”
He said nothing.
“I used to think, you were my father. You were taking care of me in secret, because of some vow you’d made to Lena, and that’s why Ray never came back.”
“Aw, Stella, that ain’t—”
“I know it ain’t true. I know. I was just wishing.”
“Ah, fuck me,” he said. He rested his forehead on her shoulder. “I wouldn’t mind if I was. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it?”
“No. Not so bad.” But it wouldn’t have made any difference. Not if they’d stayed here in the cove. The God would have called to her. The way it still called to her.
She’d stopped shaking. He rose to one knee and kissed the top of her head. “Let’s keep the fire going.” He got both feet under him.
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