After Eli (6 page)

* * *

In the night Michael removed the bandages from his arm and peeled open the cut with his fingers. He rubbed the palm of his hand over the lips of the wound, smearing the seeping blood across the razor line of the slit. His arm throbbed from torn tissue and he lay back against the pillow and breathed slowly
to quell the nausea. Then he rebandaged his arm and slept.

By morning the cut was puffy and infected. There was no fever, not to the touch, but Michael lay still in bed, his eyes floating beyond the faces of Rachel and Dora, as though wandering in a semiconscious dream. His breath was shallow, through his mouth. He did not answer Rachel’s questions as she cleaned and wrapped his arm.

“The fever’s in him,” Dora said, pressing with her hands against his throat. “Could be he’s got a weak heart.”

“Maybe it’s the snake poison,” replied Rachel.

Dora did not answer. She stared into the cloud of Michael’s eyes, searching for something she could not see.

“We better get him covered up. Bring the heat back out,” Rachel added. “Maybe get a spoon of whiskey in him.”

“Maybe that’s what he wants,” Dora replied cynically.

They covered him with two quilts and fed him three tablespoons of clear whiskey, and then they left the room.

He could hear their voices through the walls. The voices were muted, wordless, but he could tell they were arguing. He blinked his eyes rapidly to moisten them, then he adjusted his head against the pillow and a smile danced across his face.

* * *

For two days the wound split and bled and the signs of fever rose and fell in him at will and he was careful to maintain the appearance of a coma in the presence of the women. It was a risky performance, yet there was a joy in playing it—the skilled actor against his audience, flashing nuances like card tricks, balancing pauses against the rhythms he could feel pulsating throughout the house. Michael did not know why, but he knew there was someone else about to enter the scene.

That person was Mama Ada Crider.

She was a very old woman. Very withered. Very small. Her chest was concave and her back bowed in a cat’s stretch. Her face was emaciated and white as bone, her lips cracked and dry,
her eyes deep and dull and covered with cataracts that looked like drops of silver.

Mama Ada had the power of healing. She could stop bleeding and draw fire and blow away thrash. And she could do something no other person in the mountains was able to do: She could drive poison from people or animals. She used an Old Testament scripture that had been taught in secret by her mother, taught with an exactness that was the perfect print of her mother’s voice in word and intonation. And Mama Ada had never taught the secret to anyone. Her children had been sons, not daughters, and the dominion over poison was a gift of mother to daughter. The scripture and its precise saying was locked in her mind like a God-whisper and its cosmic power would be sealed with her death.

To the people of the Naheela Valley, it was not a witch’s power, not a thing of satanic worship that Mama Ada possessed. It was a command that had been poured over her at birth like an anointment. And it was mighty. There were stories about her. She could order snakes to stretch out like sticks and they obeyed. She had blown fire from people whose skin had bubbled in whelps as black as ash, and the burn had dusted away in fine powder. She had cured the thrash in babies too sick to open their eyes, whose parents had given them up for dead.

Rachel knew of the stories, had been told them as myths, but she knew them to be true. She had seen the power. It had happened when Sarah was a baby. Sarah had fallen and struck her face against a table, and her nose had begun to bleed profusely and would not stop. Eli had wrapped Sarah in a sheet and put her in the wagon and driven to Mama Ada. The sheet was soaked red and Sarah’s body had become limp, but the blood would not stop. It flowed in spurts, gushing with each heart-stroke, and Mama Ada had sat calmly in a chair on the front porch of her home and held Sarah across her lap. She had bent forward over the baby’s face, her eyes closed, and she had whispered something no one heard. Before she opened her eyes again, the bleeding in Sarah had stopped. The only thing Mama
Ada had said was, “Wadn’t no need to bring the child out. You could of just told me and it’d been the same.”

* * *

And now Mama Ada was in the room with Michael, seated beside the bed in a chair taken from the kitchen. Michael watched the scene from behind the false veil of his unfocused vision. He could smell the musk of death on Mama Ada like a dampness. Rachel and Dora lifted his arm and removed the bandages and placed it on a pillow at the edge of the bed. Then Mama Ada reached for the arm and ran her fingers over the cut. Her fingers were brittle and as cold as the skin of a reptile.

“Leave me t’be,” she said in a weak, ruptured voice.

And Rachel and Dora stepped away to the foot of the bed, against the quilt wall, and watched as Mama Ada pulled her face to Michael’s arm.

Michael could sense her lips moving close to him. He could feel her cool breath against his arm. He wondered with amusement how he should react to the old woman and her hocus-pocus of deceptive divinity. Her fingers fanned over the wound in a spider’s touch, meticulously, like a reader of braille. Then her fingers stopped and she cupped the palm of her hand over the cut and blew on his arm, circling her own hand. It had the feel of a cool, gentle wind. Michael’s body quivered in surprise. A lightness entered his arm and swam up his shoulder, across his back, and along the corridor of his spine. His left hand snapped open by a command he could not control and his fingers spread wide, straining the muscles. He could feel an electric shock numbing his fingertips. His mind whirled dizzily and his head rolled against the pillow. A word he did not know filled his mouth and broke through his lips in a guttural cry.

* * *

Suddenly Mama Ada dropped his arm. Her hands snapped open, palms down, and her thin fingers began to tremble. Her
eyes widened and her tiny, dry mouth cracked open in a tight circle. Her hands turned up and she began to push weakly against an invisible force above Michael’s body. Her head twisted left, to her shoulder, and a feeble cry—a whine—rose from her mouth.

“Mama Ada?” whispered Rachel.

“Watch her,” Dora warned.

Mama Ada sank back against the chair and her head bobbed in a rubbery seizure. Her hands fell to her sides and she closed her eyes tightly.

“Be gone, be gone,” she cried. Her eyes flew open and she stared into Michael’s face. Her arms and hands rose again and she waved them in a swimming motion, stroking the air, pushing it aside. “Be gone,” she repeated, whispering.

“Mama Ada? What is it?” Rachel asked, stepping toward her.

“Somethin’s there,” Dora said quietly. “She feels it.”

“Mama Ada?”

“I told you,” snapped Dora. “There’s somethin’ about him.”

The swimming motion of her arms slowed and stopped and Mama Ada stared fearfully into the space beyond Michael. Her arms closed in front of her, under her chin, as though pinned to her body. She began to bend forward at the waist, falling.

“Get her,” called Dora, moving quickly.

Dora and Rachel reached Mama Ada before she toppled from the chair. They held her and let her head rest against her own shoulder. Her eyes were widened in terror and her breathing was deep and erratic.

“Go get Floyd,” Rachel said to Dora. “She looks bad.”

* * *

It was morning, in the prelight of day. Michael leaned forward, his elbows on the oilcloth of the table. He held a cup to his mouth, breathing in the rich vapor of coffee.

“Ah,” he said peacefully. “It’s the fullest I’ve been since I
took a mind to splurge my last few dollars at a restaurant in Memphis. It was a feast like this, all right. Little restaurant with tablecloths made out of two colors of pink. And the waitress wore a starchy little white uniform with pink lace. Even on her cap, it was. She was turned up and snooty at my bein’ so scruffy-lookin’, but when I ordered the evenin’s best, plus a half-bottle of imported pink champagne to match the pink tablecloth, why, she changed her mind. Couldn’t have had better service if I’d been the blessed Pope, mind you.”

“It’s good to see you eatin’,” Rachel said. “After not takin’ a bite the last couple of days.”

Michael replaced the cup in its saucer and nodded.

“But it’s not to be taken as a slight,” he replied. “I don’t have much recall of the past few days, to be truthful. Just some flashes of light, like the heavens openin’ up, all bright and shiny after a rain. I guess it was the poison that that blessed lady drove out. It’s a miracle, I’d say. In Ireland, she could be sainted for such a gift.”

“Mama Ada’s helped out lots of folks,” Rachel said. “It’s her way.”

“Well, she’s got me beholden to her. There’s no other way of puttin’ it,” vowed Michael.

“You feelin’ better this mornin’, Mr. O’Rear?” asked Sarah.

“Fit as a fiddle,” Michael answered merrily. “Fit enough to dance the day down and still have some left for night. It’s one thing I do, Miss Sarah, I bounce back. Why, I knew a fellow once—a Britisher, he was—who caught the malaria soldierin’ down in India, and he’d get those chills so bad, you’d have to strap him down to keep him from vibratin’ away. Then he’d get the heat and they’d have to wrap him in wet sheets. But, quick as that, he’d be up and about. Sassy as the soldier he was. And I’m the same.”

Sarah laughed quickly. Her eyes flashed.

“You’ll be goin’ on, then?” Dora asked bluntly.

Michael let the weight of the question crush the room. Then
he smiled easily and replied, “Yes, Miss Dora. I’ll be goin’ on, soon as the sun peeks up.”

“Not today,” corrected Rachel. “Not till you get some strength back.”

Michael shifted in his chair. He rubbed the snakebite wound with his right hand.

“Miss Dora’s right,” he protested. “I’ve got to be movin’ on. Likely I’ve missed out with the circus job in Florida, but there may be a ragtag carnival along the way.”

“The circus?” Rachel said.

“The circus, indeed. Wouldn’t you know? I’m a barker.”

He stood up with a grand sweep of his arms and struck a comical pose.

“Ladies and gentlemen, right this way,” he sang. “See the famous women of the mysterious East. Dancin’. Wigglin’. Tellin’ strange stories with the wavin’ of their arms. Right this way. Careful there, fellow, you’re lookin’ faint-hearted, you are. Maybe it’s the merry-go-round for you.”

Michael finished his chatter with a bow and a flourish and sat down heavily in his chair. Sarah laughed gleefully, covering her mouth with her hands. Rachel and Dora stared at him in surprise.

“I hope you’ll be forgivin’ me,” Michael said. “Bein’ off-color like that in front of ladies. It’s circus talk and it fits me the way a church hymn fits a good preacher. Just part of bein’ what I am, it is.”

“It’s—it’s no harm,” Rachel stammered.

“I’m takin’ advantage of your good carin’, carryin’ on so, but the spirit’s flown up in me like a sparrow, and bein’ Irish to boot, well, it’s just hard to keep down.”

“Nothin’ wrong with feelin’ some of life,” Rachel said hesitantly.

The mood changed in Michael like color. His smile fell. His voice softened.

“But I’m bein’ less than a gentleman,” he apologized. “I’ve
raved about things to feed my own selfish feelin’ and I’ve not asked about the three of you.”

“Nothin’ to say,” Dora remarked.

“There’s always somethin’ to say to others, Miss Dora,” corrected Michael. “Always. For one, I’ve been wonderin’, since I’ve got some senses back, about your menfolk. There’s been none around that I’ve seen. Could it be they’re off workin’?”

The room froze. Sarah’s stare locked on Michael. Dora turned away. Rachel stood at the table and began stacking the breakfast dishes.

“I’m askin’ your forgiveness if—” Michael began.

“No,” interrupted Rachel. “It’s—it’s a fair question.” She placed the dishes before her on the table and faced Michael. “Fact is,” she said, “my husband—Sarah’s father—has been gone a few years now. Off somewhere. He was always that kind of man. The wanderin’ was in him.”

Michael stood slowly. He turned away from the table and walked to the kitchen window. Outside, the mountains were washed pale with morning.

“If I could’ve guessed, I wouldn’t’ve asked,” he said slowly. “It’s not of my matter, and I’ve clouded this good house with hurt by bringin’ it up. I’m shamed by it.”

“No reason,” Rachel replied. “Wadn’t no way for you to know.”

Michael shook his head.

“But I am shamed. Ought to be,” he mumbled. “Here you’ve taken in a stranger, and a man at that, and that stranger’s been more fool than grateful. And there’s the neighbors—that fine old lady and her family. They must be thinkin’ the worse, and I’m shamed by it.”

Dora’s voice cut the stillness like a whip.

“That’s took care of,” she said. “Rachel seen to that.”

Michael turned back to the women.

“How?” he asked.

Again the room froze. The question lingered. Rachel stared hard at her sister.

“How?” repeated Michael. He heard the urgency of his own voice and tried to control it.

“I told them you was Eli’s cousin,” Rachel confessed. “He—Eli—is my husband.”

“O Holy Father,” Michael whispered desperately. “I’ve caused you to be bearin’ false words before your neighbors.” He dropped his head. A shimmer of delight arose in him.