Her Loving Husband's Curse (10 page)

“I think I’m doing all right.”

The cauldron in the hearth caught Sarah’s eye. It looked like it should bubble, bubble, toil and trouble while the three witches in Macbeth cast spells and foretold the future, hysterical with evil visions and dastardly deeds. She looked inside, checking to see if the heavy black pot could be unlatched and removed, shaking her head when the seventeenth century fastenings held strong.

“I never should have left this,” she said. “I should have had it taken out during the remodeling. She’s going to think it’s a child hazard, and it is.” She jumped at the hollow knock that echoed like a loud No! No! No!

James stroked her hand. “It’ll be fine,” he said. “Relax.”

He opened the door, and the social worker walked in, stiff and stoic, underpaid and overworked, an unsmiling woman in an ill-fitting purple jacket with linebacker shoulder pads and a purple flowered skirt. She looked, Sarah thought, like a summer plum. She was slump-shouldered and long-faced, like this was the fiftieth home she had visited that day and it was always the same, smiling faces, fresh-baked cookies, guarantees they would take care of the child whether they would or they wouldn’t.

The plum-looking woman entered the great room without saying hello. She didn’t acknowledge James or Sarah. “You have a lot of books,” she said finally, writing in the spiral notebook in her hand.

“My wife and I both like to read,” James said.

Sarah stepped aside as the woman nodded at the flat-screen television and shook her head at the three hundred year-old desk, scratching more notes. James looked over her shoulder, trying to see what she wrote, but Sarah shook her head at him. She didn’t want the woman to notice anything odd about James, though his curiosity was human enough. The plum-looking woman stopped in front of the cauldron.

“Are you witches?” she asked.

“No,” James said, “but our best friends are.” When the social worker didn’t smile, James stepped away. “The cauldron came with the house,” he said. “We thought it gave the place character so we kept it.”

“How old is the house?”

“It’s from the seventeenth century,” Sarah answered.

“How long have you lived here?”

Sarah and James looked at each other.

“Two years,” James said. “We both work at the university.”

The plum-looking woman nodded. “If you’re approved you’ll have to have that thing,” she gestured with her pen at the cauldron, “removed. It’s a safety hazard.”

“Of course,” Sarah said.

“Does this place need an inspection? Sometimes these older houses have bad wiring, or improper plumbing.”

“The house is up to code,” James said. “We made sure of that when we had the place remodeled.”

“When was this remodeling?”

“They finished during the summer. I have the paperwork here.”

He handed her the forms that said the three centuries-old house met the qualifications of a twenty-first century inspection. She glanced over the paperwork and nodded, writing more notes. She looked around the kitchen, the bedroom, the smaller room in the back. She scowled at the wood ladder that led up to the attic.

“Can that be removed?” she asked.

“We can take it out if it’s a problem,” James said.

She nodded, scowling more at the cauldron as she walked back into the kitchen.

“Would you like something to drink?” Sarah asked.

“Thank you. Water would be fine.”

“We have some cold water in the fridge,” Sarah said.

“No need to trouble yourselves. I’ll get it.”

Before Sarah could protest, the social worker opened the refrigerator and eyed the groceries before pulling out the water pitcher. Sarah dropped into a chair, unable to hide the horror on her face. What if the social worker saw James’s bags of blood? But James nodded, pointing to his temple, an ‘I’ve got this’ look in his eyes. He pulled a glass from the cupboard, poured water for the plum-looking woman, then joined Sarah at the table, smiling the whole time.

“What do you do at the college?” the social worker asked.

“I’m a professor, and my wife is a librarian.”

“What do you teach?”

“English literature.”

She sipped her water as she glanced over the application in her manila folder. “I think you’re my son’s English professor. Levon Jackson. Do you know him?”

“Very well,” James said. “He took two of my classes last year, and he’s in my Shakespeare seminar this term. He’s a bright young man, and a very good writer.”

Mrs. Jackson clapped her hands, her mother’s love everywhere on her round cheeks. No longer the plum-looking woman, now she was Levon’s mother.

“You should hear how he raves about you, Doctor Wentworth. Every day he comes home saying, ‘Doctor Wentworth said this,’ or ‘Doctor Wentworth said that.’”

“It’s a pleasure teaching a student who wants to learn,” James said.

Mrs. Jackson’s round-cheeked smile lit the room. “You’ve done a world of good for my boy, Doctor Wentworth. I was so worried about him after that back injury meant he couldn't be considered for the NHL draft. Going pro is all he’s talked about since he put on his first pair of skates. When that was no longer possible for him, he floundered. He didn’t have plans for anything else, and now he wants to be a professor like you. I’m pleased to meet you, Doctor Wentworth.”

“Please, call me James. It’s my pleasure.”

As Mrs. Jackson looked over the paperwork, James winked at Sarah.

“I don’t see any problems here, Doctor Wentworth. Everything seems to be in order. Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll have the rest of the paperwork approved by my supervisor.” Mrs. Jackson looked at Sarah. “Mrs. Wentworth, you have a lovely house with a lot of history here. Any child would be lucky to have such a home.”

“Thank you,” Sarah said.

James escorted Mrs. Jackson to her car, said good night, and waved as she drove away. Back inside, James walked to Sarah, put his arms around her, and pulled her close. She felt the invisible fairy-like thread drawing them together again, only now it was looser, stretching out, over there to where someone else waited, someone they didn’t know yet but someone who was loved unconditionally.

Just because, Sarah thought. Whoever you are. We love you just because.

She pointed her chin up, and James kissed her. When she opened her eyes, he was smiling.

“Was that your idea to move the blood bags?” she asked.

“I thought she might look in the refrigerator,” he said. “To see how clean we are.”

“That’s why you’re brilliant, Doctor Wentworth.”

“I know,” he said.

* * * * *

They know. It is just as the trader man said. They are going soon, going West, the direction of Death, they say.

Going…

Going…

Gone.

They go about the night the best they can. The boys play ‘a ne jo di’ (stickball) in the moonlight, which they play with hickory sticks and deer-hair balls. They are families, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers. They laugh and cry. They grow angry and show kindness. One mother kneels near her crying son who has tripped running. Another watches her husband show their son a trick with the hickory stick. As I watch them I am reminded of Shylock’s words, begging for his humanity:

Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands,
 organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same
 food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases,
 healed by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter
 and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed…

I try to catch the eye of my neighbor, but he is busy with the medicine man while the women and children disappear into their homes. He is old, the medicine man, his face well creviced, his jowls low, though his silver hair is thick and he has the manner of someone who understands much. He nods at me, and I nod in return, thankful because he is the first Cherokee to acknowledge me. The tribal leaders have gathered and I am not supposed to be here, I think, but the medicine man does not seem concerned. I sit on the ground and watch as they begin the Stomp Dance. There are shell shakers wearing leg rattles made of turtle shells filled with pebbles, and the rattles provide a heartbeat-like rhythm as they dance around the red-blazing fire singing a language I do not understand.

The medicine man stands. He stares at me over the heads of the seated men. “Listen,” he says. “We are praying to you, our Creator, Unetanv, the Great Spirit. Who are we without our lakes and valleys? Our rivers and forests? The copious rain and the good soil?

“
Chief John Ross fought our removal in the United States Congress, in the United States Supreme Court. Do not the liberties of the American Declaration of Independence apply to us? ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.’ Does that not apply to us as well? But no one in the government would hear him.”

The men nod as they stare at the orange flames, at the crackling cinders, at the ground beneath them, at the half-hidden moon, or at whatever phantom images their blank stares show them. The medicine man watches me, a knowing gleam in his eyes. I sense his words are meant for me.

“
Listen. This is the creation story of our people. In the beginning, there was no land. Only water and sky. All living things dwelled above the sky. In this time, all beings lived and talked in common. Then the sky vault became crowded with the people and animals. To find more room, Dayuni’si, the water beetle, flew down to see what was there. It dove to the bottom of the ocean and brought up mud that grew and grew and grew until the earth was born. This was so long ago even the oldest medicine man cannot remember. Even I cannot remember, and I am the oldest of them all. Then the earth dried and man was created. A brother and a sister. And we have grown from there.

“
They have wanted our land from the moment they arrived. They have the right of discovery over the land, they say. But how do they discover what is already here? We were already here. Did we only begin to exist when they arrived?” The medicine man looks at me as though he knows I was here all those many years before. “They have taken our land as though it was theirs all along. For years they have chipped away at it, pocketing this piece here, stealing that piece there. After they decimated our people with their diseases they wanted more. Now they want it all. But we know the land was meant for us. For all of us. Many of our people converted to the Americans’ religion. Were not Adam and Eve expelled from their Paradise because they were not content? Here we are content. We know the wind is our brother. The trees are our sisters.

“
Great Creator, hear our cry. We want to be invisible so we can fly away like the birds and then the soldiers will not find us as they have already found others. We do not want to lose our ancestors. They are everywhere here. Where the soldiers want to take us, they are not there. This is what I have said to you.”

He sits, his head slumping under the weight of his fears. Everyone is silent, the singing crickets the only sound in the forest night. Then, the medicine man lifts his face and nods at me. He sees I understand.

CHAPTER 8

James learned about the new blog post when Jocelyn called him. He heard Billy crying in the background, the baby giving vent to his mother’s fears.

“Hempel’s doing it,” Jocelyn said. “He’s naming names. He must know about me since he mentioned dentists.”

Steve came home, and James heard him trying to comfort his wife and son. When Jocelyn excused herself to be with her family, James heard the dread in her voice.

“What are we going to do, James?”

“It’ll be all right,” James said.

He pulled up Hempel’s blog on his laptop, but he couldn’t bring himself to read it. He paced the ten short steps of his office, remembered the day just eight months before when Hempel sat in that very chair, flipping through these very books, waiting for some sign that James was the undead professor he thought he was. But James had fooled the reporter and sent him scurrying away. Now, if Hempel was ready to do what he hadn’t done before—name names—then James didn’t know what would happen. If other vampires were made public, how much longer could he stay hidden? When he was too agitated to ignore it any longer, he sat near the computer and read:

As most of you know, after ten years of service to the community, I have been released from my duties at
The Salem News
. But I have so much more to share. I am beginning this blog with the belief that, with the more proof I am able to provide, the more followers I will have. The more followers I have, the more people will be on the lookout for these insidious creatures that go bump in the night.