Hidden Moon (3 page)

“We came up to visit a couple weeks before I was due to have you. We hadn’t been here an hour and my water broke. You were born in Bland, Nikki.”

I returned her smile, though it felt pretty weak to me. I had roots in Bland County. This was a shocker. I could no longer consider myself a Florida native.

“So why didn’t we ever come back to visit?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. You were only a couple of days old when we left to go back home. Your dad never wanted to come back, but he called your Gran every day or two to check on her.”

I kicked my bare feet against the wooden lattice on the bottom of the porch. Life had just pulled the rug out from under me and my mother didn’t seem to notice.

“I hear Emily up and running around. I’m going to go check on her,” she said as she got up to go back inside, “The moving guys should be here in a little while, so I’m going to start cleaning. Come in and get some breakfast in a few minutes, okay?”

“All right.” I listened as the screen door slammed. It was just me on this porch now. This porch that once heralded the glorious day of my arrival. Did it matter where I was born? Virginia or Florida, I was still alive either way. And I was here, whether I liked it or not.

Sometimes you just don’t get a choice. What matters is how you are going to react, I decided as I got up to follow her into the house. I was going to make the best of this new life, no matter what.

“Donuts are on the table,” my mother called out from the living room as the screen door slapped shut behind me.

I found the box, and crammed one in my mouth. Definitely not a healthy breakfast. I drowned the sugar with a huge gulp of milk. Then I heard the crunch of gravels outside. Someone was here.

A young-looking woman with short, chocolate-brown hair was getting out of a small blue car. She looked up at me and smiled.

“Hello. I’m Anita. We live down the street, so to speak. We’re your closest neighbors, so we took it upon ourselves to be the welcoming committee.” She gave me a bright grin, showing lots of straight, white teeth.

“I’m Nikki,” I said, smiling back at her. “Come on in. My mother is in here somewhere.”

As if she had heard us, my mom came out the door, wiping her hands on the sides of her jeans. “You’ll have to excuse us, we’ve been cleaning. I’m Brenda, and you’ve met Nikki. The little one running around here somewhere is Emily.”

“I’m Anita, and this is Brian, my son,” Anita said, nodding towards a dark-haired boy who was getting out of the other side of the car. “We just wanted to see if you guys needed anything. We saw you drive by yesterday evening, so we thought we’d drop by this morning and introduce ourselves.”

“Come on in,” Mom urged, holding open the door and bumping me out onto the porch at the same time. “Overlook the mess.” They both went inside and left me and the boy to stand there looking at each other.

He grinned at me. “So, I think they’ve hit it off rather well, don’t you?”

I laughed. “Yes. My name is Nikki.”

“Yeah, I think I’ve been introduced to you three times now.” His blue eyes sparkled “Are you ready for school?”

“I’ll be a junior this year, and no, I’m not ready,” I said, offering him a half-smile. “I hate being the new kid.”

“Oh, it won’t be too bad. At least you won’t be starting in the middle of the year. Don’t worry about it, I’ll show you around. You probably are in most of the same classes that I am. It’s a small school. Listen, the bus doesn’t come up this far, so if you want, you can catch a ride with me. I mean, if you want to,” he added quickly.

“Yeah, that would be great.”

“So are you guys related to Aunt Mae? I mean, I know she wasn’t your real aunt, or mine, for that matter, but that’s what we always called her.”

“Aunt Mae? Do you mean my great-grandmother?” I asked. When he nodded his head, I added, “I didn’t know her. We never came to visit.”

“That’s a shame. She was a nice lady,” he said, “and I’m not just saying that because she helped us out when I was little. She was like an aunt to me. I’m glad that you all are going to be staying. Some of the people that rented the house out after she passed away were college guys. They were always partying, and well, you can see what they did to the place. Not to mention, I think they had the reservation on its toes. The tribe was keeping a pretty close eye on them, especially after they decided to have a bonfire one night and it got out of hand and spread towards the forest.”

“Do they come close? The Indians, I mean. I saw an Indian boy at the edge of the woods yesterday. He didn’t look very happy. He just stared at me,” I said, pointing toward the back yard.

“A boy? You mean, about our age?”

“Yes, I think so. Who was he?” I asked.

“I think it might have been Adam,” he said, “There are only a handful of Indian guys about our age, and they all stick close together at school. They’re pretty close anywhere else you see them. But it’s Adam that always seems to be in charge, and if he didn’t look very happy, I would bet it was him. He’s not too friendly and he takes everything seriously. Too seriously, I think. But I don’t know why he would be here unless he was just checking everything out.”

“Oh,” I said, not sure if I should ask what color eyes Adam had.

“So, do you know anything much about them?” he asked.

“Other than you, they are my only neighbors. That’s all I know.” I said.

He grinned at me, and pushed his dark hair out of his eyes. “Okay, that’s a no. Our
neighbors
as you call them, are the tribe called the Wighcomocos. They are one of the oldest tribes in Virginia, historically dating back to 1607. In case you’re wondering why I sound like I’m quoting this, the school takes field trips there every year, and Mrs. Graham says the same thing every year. You’ll get off the bus and the first thing you’ll hear,” he cleared his throat, then assumed a high pitched, nasal voice, “‘The Wighcomocos were one of the six tribes encountered by John Smith in 1607…”

I laughed as he kept up his repertoire for the next few minutes, and applauded as he finished. His face flushed with embarrassment.

“Well, you just wait. You’ll see,” he said, trying to clear his throat back to normal. “You’ll have it memorized in no time. I had it down verbatim by the time I was in first grade.”

“
Oh, well. At least if there’s a quiz on it, I can get you to help me since you seem to be an expert.”

“You’ve got it,” he grinned. “The tribe is friendly when you are on the reservation, even Adam for the most part. They are very proud of their heritage, and they love to teach. Some of the stuff they’ll show you is pretty cool.”

Then Brian turned, as if he had heard something in the woods behind us. “Oh, yeah. I should warn you. You’ll probably hear wolves howling, but don’t worry about them. I’ve lived here my whole life, and I’ve never seen them.”

“Oh, okay.” The hair stood up on the back of my neck as I remembered the feeling of being watched the day before.

Brian looked over my shoulder as our mothers came back outside, still talking. They said their goodbyes and Anita started toward the car.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you later. I think that’s my cue that we’re getting ready to leave,” he laughed.

“If you see the guy in the woods again and you’re close enough, look at his eyes. Adam’s got some weird eyes, kinda gold colored with black specks in them. You’ll know if it’s him,” he called over his shoulder as he made it to the door.

“Okay,” I stuttered, making a rather feeble attempt to wave as Anita started up the car and started down the driveway.

“Those eyes,” I murmured to myself, as the little car crunched in the gravels, turned and disappeared around the bend.

“Yeah, he does have some pretty blues, doesn’t he?” Mom teased, coming back up the steps.

“I guess so,” I smiled. “So what did Anita have to say?”

“She asked where I was working, and I told her I was going to start looking around for a job when you guys started school Monday. She told me that they were looking for a dispatcher down at the sheriff’s station where she works. She said if I was interested, she’d put in a good word for me
.
Can you believe it? We haven’t been here a whole day yet and I may have already found a job.”

“That’s awesome. So what does Anita do? Is she a dispatcher, too?” I asked.

“No, she’s a deputy. You wouldn’t think it to look at her, would you? She’s so petite and so friendly, you wouldn’t think she’s law enforcement,” she said. “But she said she loves her job and that it’s her way of helping people in the community. I asked her why she decided to be a deputy since it seemed like a dangerous job. I wish I hadn’t asked her. I didn’t know her well enough to put her on the spot like that.”

“Well?” I prodded, wanting her to finish her story.

“
She said when she was a teenager she had gone to a football game. After the game, she started to walk home since she didn’t live far. She only made it as far as the bleachers when a man pulled her behind the bleachers and raped her. No one saw the attack. Anita was so frightened, she had kept her eyes squeezed shut until she knew her attacker was gone, so she didn’t see him either. The police never found the man. Later, she decided that she could help other women like herself, she wasn’t going to be afraid anymore.”

“Wow, it’s great that she could turn something horrible like that around into something good,” I said. “What does her husband do?”

“She isn’t married.”

“What about Brian’s dad?” Then it dawned on me and my mouth fell open. “Oh.”

“She’s a very strong woman. I’m glad to have met her and I’m very glad she’s our neighbor. But just the same, don’t go wandering around when no one is around, okay?”

“Sure.” I watched as she went back into the house, and remembered Brian’s long locks of nearly black hair that fell toward his bright blue eyes. I wondered if there was a reason, other than my grandmother’s goodwill that caused Anita to choose to move so close to the reservation.

THE WEEKEND FLEW by. The real estate agency had been as good as their word. There were workers at the house all weekend putting a new porch on the house, replacing windows and doing all sorts of odd jobs that needed to be fixed. We watched them in fascination as the house seemed to transform in front of our eyes. They said by the end of the week all the work would be finished. I thought it should make it into the Guinness Book of World Records at the rate of speed that they worked. The only thing they weren’t going to fix was the paint on the house, which would be our job. My fingers itched to grab a brush and get started, but I couldn’t until all the rest of the work was done and the workers left.

Brian came by on Saturday as he promised, and Mom had agreed to let me ride to school with him. She dropped me off at his house on Monday morning on her way to check on the job at the sheriff’s office. She was going to drop Emily off at the grade school on her way.

Brian was leaning against an old blue truck with his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans, waiting for me. When I jumped out of our car with my backpack, my stomach was in knots.

“Good morning. Shall we?” He opened the door to the truck and waited for me to hop in.

“Good morning,” I smiled. “Yes, I suppose we shall.”

He jumped in the driver’s seat, and turned the key in the ignition. Smoke billowed out behind us in a huge cloud when the old truck fired and rumbled to life.

“Sorry,” he said, his face flushed. “It’s old, but I promise it will get us there.”

“Hey, it runs. It’s cool you have your own car.”

“Your mom doesn’t let you drive her car?” he asked.

“I’ve got my learner’s permit. I never got around to getting my driver’s license. I didn’t need it down in Florida. We lived right in town, so everything was within walking distance. I never thought much about it until now,” I explained.

“You want to drive?” he asked, gesturing to the wheel. “I’ll let you if you want. Practice makes perfect. And trust me, you’ll want to get your license There isn’t anywhere you can walk to where we live, unless you want to start out a day or two early.”

“No, I don’t think so. I can’t drive one of these.” I pointed at the manual gearshift. “I’ve only driven automatics.”

“Well, I’ll have to teach you. Whenever you decide you want to learn, just come on up to the house and I’ll have you driving in no time,” he grinned. When he saw the shocked look on my face, he changed the subject to my cell phone that was lying on top of my backpack. “You get anything on that?”

“No. I don’t think my carrier covers this area.”

He laughed. “Don’t take it personally. None of them work here. It’s like the dead spot of the United States. You know those little maps they have with all the little red dots that show there is coverage where you live?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, we don’t live anywhere near one of those little dots. And it isn’t because they haven’t tried. Someone is always putting a tower up in this county trying to be the first to get his company to work here. So far, Bland County is a dead zone and they can’t figure out why. The mountains have been catching all the blame so far,” he shrugged.