The Storycatcher (7 page)

Rain beat against the walls of the church, a decent church if not for pastors like him. Windows dripped and then poured. Still he kept out of sight in the dark room. No one had ever bothered to give the walls a good whitewash, and that made for a gloomy place.

“My retribution is too great!” he cried.

This was one big word, but I figured he was going on about what God expected of him as a man. The rain came to a stop. And there we were, quiet, listening. Not much time went by before the sound of a wagon crunched on the path outside. Someone had come to ring the bell. The same bell tolled seventeen times for me. Me, a colored girl from Ella Creek. That was because Amelia wanted to say good-bye. Otherwise a colored girl’s death on this mountain would have gone unnoticed.

Pastor crawled out from under his pew and brushed off his pants.

Mr. Harkin removed his hat and walked in the front door. He bowed his head and mumbled some words.

Since I died, sometimes I could see a person’s story, the real one, not the one made up in their heads. Mr. Harkin had lost his daughter
to murder—except he didn’t know it was murder; instead, he thought she got turned around in the woods—and he rang the bell himself that day. I shook off the vision. At least the daughter’s murderer would die, be killed in a bad way that he deserved, by his wife. She would get clean away.

Mr. Harkin reached for a rope dangling from the opening in the ceiling.

Pastor stepped into the aisle where there was some light. “Peal Harkin.”

“Pastor.” Mr. Harkin gave him a right irritated look. “You should let your whereabouts be known.”

Pastor frowned. “Where else would a good pastor be? Who was hurt?”

“Loop Wilkins was in his field.” Loop was a mean drunk that beat his poor wife all the time. The Lord only knew the last time he stepped foot in a church. But he could have been the most honest person on that mountain, seeing how he let everyone know just who he was. “He’s dead. The storm picked him and his tractor up and turned them over. He was crushed.” Mr. Harkin’s cheeks were pink from hurrying. “Took his head right off. Mary, his missus, found him.”

“Anybody else?” Pastor came closer so his face could be seen clearly. There was them wishes about Mrs. Dobbins dying again. He looked right at me. Sometimes I was sure he could see me, wished he could. He needed to know that nothing he did was ever truly hidden.

“Some hurt. Maude is headed to your house. You best be on your way.”

If the locals knew what I’d seen walk across Pastor’s face, they’d run him off the mountain, scared or not. A black, oily smoke gathered over his head and shot through the room like a living thing. The desire be powerful. Lord, someone needed to put a stop to him before he did some real harm. But nobody knew my story. If I could find the right person—one that could see and hear me—all this mess could be
stopped before it got way out of hand. That white girl who died knew part of my story, but she didn’t get to tell. She was coming with a story of her own, and together we were going to stop this terrible meanness. This I knew down to the bottom of my toes. ’Cause what’s right is right. And us two both was looking to make better of our time on earth before we moved on.

W
HEN A GIRL LOSES SOMEONE
they love most, someone who knows them inside and out, something goes missing inside her soul. That is the girl I had become the summer of the hailstorm, the summer Will left. A large square of silk, folded small and pushed down the front of my dress, my second skin, soft and smooth, gave me a promise, an escape. The crayons that Miss Tuggle gave me, dark green and black, were in the sides of my slippers.

“Where are you off to?” Mama stood at the kitchen window with her back to me.

“Just going to take a walk in the woods,” I replied. I opened the back door and slipped out before she tried to stop me. I hadn’t been in the woods since Will left, but Mama didn’t notice this. That summer she spent most of her time staring at our side of the mountain, as if it spoke to her in a voice that only she could hear.

“Watch the sky. It feels like a storm.”

And it did, a bad storm; one that had been brewing for three weeks. The day Will left—and his last words, his request—was something I pushed out of my head each and every time an image showed up. My whole world collided with the unthinkable and spun out of control. Gone. He was gone.

The day he left, I stole the sewing basket from Amanda’s front room. Will’s great-grandmother, who was a house slave on a big plantation in Louisiana, not far from where I was born, had come to me in a dream. She told me the basket was mine to use. Amanda told the story of how her grandmother was the best seamstress and hoodoo woman in New Orleans. I had heard her tell this so much, I longed for it to be part of my history. So me, a nearly grown white girl, soaked in grief over a colored boy leaving, stole her colored maid’s sewing basket. Amanda never took the basket from its place under the black ladder-back chair near the fireplace, the very chair her grandmother sat in to sew clothes. When Amanda had sewing to do, she used Mama’s kit. So, while she worked in her garden out back of the cabin, not even knowing that Will had left for good, I walked in her door and took the story as my own. I hid the basket under my bed, way underneath, where only a young child would think to look.

I had never pushed a needle through cloth, but when I opened the basket and touched a pale-green loop of thread, I saw the woods the way Will loved them, lush, soft, wet with a fresh rain. I ached to create something of my own. At first I used old clothes I’d planned to put in the ragbag. I cut them into squares and stitched them together in a nine patch I’d seen the ladies on the mountain sew at their quilting bees. In and out, in and out, the needle slid through the fabric. The cloth gave off little sounds that could be heard in the silence. Spiders spun webs like stitches in a fine quilt. Then, one day I found the silk deep in the back of Mama’s old wardrobe like she had planned on making something special. Mama, of all people.

When I wasn’t sewing in my room with the door locked—that
pesky Shelly was always knocking and yelling to come in and clean—I walked through the graveyard. The markers reminded me of quilts, the beautiful flower borders and intricate details chiseled in the granite, no marble there. Families on the mountain worked hard with little to show for their effort. But still they managed to create art in their own way. All I had was a blank length of silk and a closet full of new clothes but nothing to honor my existence. In the cemetery a peace settled over the graves. Thoughts came to me clear and crisp. This was my place.

So the morning of the bad storm, I was in search of a special headstone. Just the right one. Miss Tuggle told me that if I covered the stones with paper and used a crayon, I could take the design for my own. Only Miss Tuggle would know something like that. She was so smart. If I had a friend on that stupid mountain, it was her. I told her mostly everything, even how I ached for Will after he left. But some secrets were never meant to be told, so they festered inside like an infected cut on a finger.

The stone chose me, pulled me there. A new stone. August 25, 1935. Fifteen years old. Fancier than any of the others even though the Browns were one of the poorest families on the mountain. I know this because their daughter took my hand-me-downs. The polished carving read:
ARLEEN, A DAUGHTER AND MOTHER. TOO YOUNG.
The silk draped over the stone like an A-line skirt fitted to Mama’s body. I smoothed the wrinkles away and held the cloth with one hand. The dark-green crayon moved over the fabric easier than I thought. The words formed in the scribbles. Curly leaves, flowers, and a hand holding a broken chain link. What could that mean? That Arleen was a link in the world’s chain and God broke her away? I bore down harder. Bits of crayon flew through the air and it broke. My fingernails ran across the hard surface, and one tore to the quick. I pulled my hand away in time to keep the blood from dripping on the silk.

The sky turned yellowish-green. Something was in the air. A loud clap of thunder shook the ground and I jumped to my feet. My head spun, but I ran, ran so hard a stitch of pain took my breath. The smell
of burnt wood nearly knocked me down as I got closer to Amanda’s cabin. Was she okay? I reached the porch just in time and flew into Amanda’s arms like some little kid. The sky let go of the ice.

As soon as the hail stopped, Mama came running across the yard with a scream caught in the expression on her face. “Amanda! Do you have Faith?” Like I was a little girl.

Amanda pulled both Shelly and me to the steps. “You be losing your mind, Mrs. Dobbins. You know she either be with me or you.”

“Go to the root cellar! This is a bad one. I grew up with twisters.” Mama stopped in front of us just as the sound of a train barreling toward us shook me to the bottom of my feet.

“Run!” Amanda screamed. The trees swayed in a frenzy. Mama ran in front of us to the root cellar door. She jerked on it over and over like a crazy person, but the thing was stuck fast.

“There she be, Nada.” Shelly pulled at Amanda’s arm and pointed to the woods.

An old woman leaned on her cane like she wasn’t afraid of the storm at all. She was odd and out of place. Almost like a dream.

“The woman is pointing for us to go over there.”

The woman swung her cane in the direction of the trees.

Amanda herded us to the spot where the cane was pointed. “Best be coming with us, Mrs. Dobbins. Now!”

Mama ran after us. “You’re going to get us killed, Amanda.”

“In the hole,” Amanda ordered. Shelly and I ran past the old woman and jumped into a deep ditch made by an uprooted oak. I held Shelly’s hand tight even though she tried to pull it away. I didn’t care whether she was hurt or not.

Mama and Amanda locked their fingers together in one solid link and put their bodies on top of ours. Their weight took my breath away. The wind turned loud. Trees began cracking and popping all around us, and then, in a rush of sound, one fell on us. When the storm passed, Amanda and Mama still held each other’s hands. That’s when I thought of my silk and crayons. Ruined.

“My foot hurts something horrible, Amanda,” Mama said in a whisper.

“You two got to help push this limb off of Mrs. Dobbins. It be on her leg.”

Me, Shelly, and Amanda shoved as hard as we could, and it rolled out of the way. I crawled out of the hole more than a little stunned to be alive.

Miss Tuggle rode into the yard on her horse. “You got hit hard. Is everyone all right?” She held her doctor bag on her lap.

“My mama is hurt!” I yelled.

She swung off her horse in one smooth motion, like a dancer. “I saw you at Daniels Cemetery just before the storm moved in. I’m glad you made it home.” Her long, dark hair hung around her shoulders.

Daddy was a shadow behind her, making his way toward us.

Mama allowed Amanda to hoist her from the hole. “We’re so thankful. If not for our Amanda, we’d be dead.” Mama’s face was scrunched in pain.

Shelly crawled out last, looking so much like Amanda it made me sick. She wasn’t a bit afraid. That trait she got from Will.

“Mrs. Dobbins has a bad broke ankle, ma’am.” Amanda held on to Mama, and I grabbed Mama’s other arm.

“Let’s sit her down over here.” Miss Tuggle frowned. Mama’s ankle was a horrible shade of purple, and her whole foot dangled in an odd way.

“Don’t you think she needs attention now?” Daddy touched Miss Tuggle’s shoulder.

She flinched and moved away. “I’m trying to give her just that.”

“But the ground?” Daddy cut a sideways look at me like I had disappointed him. My daddy was the handsomest man on the mountain. But this didn’t seem to impress Miss Tuggle in the least.

“I need to give your wife some medical attention, Pastor Dobbins. It seems to me your home took quite a hit.” She nodded at the house.

I looked at it for the first time. Part of the roof was missing, and a tree had cut down the middle.

“This is the safest place for now. Do you want me to look at her ankle or stand here and argue?” Miss Tuggle stared Daddy down.

A vacant look washed over Mama’s face. “My mother died one year after I married Charles. Only two months before Faith was born. Isn’t that right, Amanda?”

Miss Tuggle looked directly at Amanda. “Did she hit her head?”

“A big limb fell in the hole on us. She got the worst. Can’t say if she hit her head. It’s a wonder we lived.” Amanda looked at me and then at Shelly.

“Why didn’t you take Lydia to the root cellar?” Daddy’s voice had that mean edge.

“Charles wouldn’t let me go to my mother’s funeral. Said we lived too far away. Said I shouldn’t travel. I never got to say good-bye. I could have taken a train. Charles sat on his high and mighty throne like he was someone pure and holy. But he’s not, not after Georgia.” Mama looked at Daddy. “We arrived at Black Mountain, North Carolina by way of Georgia. Didn’t we?”

“Shut up, Lydia.” Daddy looked at Miss Tuggle. “She’s talking out of her mind.”

Miss Tuggle knelt down in front of Mama. “I’d like you to go down the mountain to Asheville. This break is too bad to be treated by me. You need a hospital.”