The Storycatcher (30 page)

I DIDN’T SLEEP AT ALL
that night. At one point when the moon was straight up in the sky, I went out to sit with my angel in the garden. Her beautiful milk-white marble face stirred something inside of me. The half-moon’s light washed over her. A fresh rainstorm had come and gone, weaving cool air over the summer heat. Clarity was a sweet drug, a peace I hadn’t felt since before Arleen’s death.

The young colored girl stood near the big oak. I went to her, thinking that Shelly would be proud of me for accepting what I saw.

“Shelly has the book, ma’am,” she said. “She has the story. It be up to you to stop him without knowing the whole reasons. Use that cross of his. Punish him with that.”

“Who are you?”

The girl shook her head. “I be the one stuck to Pastor. I know his whole story.” She began to fade, and the trees behind her showed through. “I be the one who owns that angel you stole.” And she was gone.

She owned the angel. I was losing my mind, but I would tell Zach that Amanda confirmed the cross belonged to Pastor Dobbins. Now I was seeing ghosts. What could I say about that?

“T
HAT GIRL BE THE TIDIEST
I’ve seen any white girl,” I said as I walked into Faith’s room behind Miss Lydia.

She nearly jumped a foot. “You scared me, Ada.” She laughed. In her hand was that hateful quilt. “You must not let Faith know I was handling her work. See this silk?” She rubbed the center of the quilt. “That is mine. I had it put away in my room. This cloth belonged to my mother. I always thought I’d make a baby blanket from it, but I never found the time.” She looked off, kind of dreamy.

Lordy me, I’d only seen the thing in passing on Friday when they arrived. The picture of the gravestone was perfect. Some old girl named Arleen Brown. Little buttons and lace were sewn here and there. From the looks of that quilt, there was a powerful spell that went into the sewing. Shelly had been right to worry over it. “It be a strange quilt, ma’am, even though it is pretty.”

“Oh, I know what you mean. At first I thought it was odd she would put gravestone rubbings on a quilt. But now I’m attached to her work.” Miss Lydia shook her head. “She doesn’t get it from me. I sure don’t sew.”

I touched the old lace, and an angry feeling hit me. Somebody had been done wrong. The quilt was a story of pain. I looked closely at the picture from the stone. The hand of God was reaching down and breaking a chain. “I don’t like that picture.”

“It is horrible. I’m not sure why the Browns had that put on their daughter’s marker. She was only fifteen when she died. Maybe they felt broken by God.”

“What girl would be roaming around a graveyard taking the pictures off the stones?” This just popped out before I thought on it long.

Miss Lydia smiled, so I guessed she didn’t take no offense to the question. “I don’t know. There is a lot about Faith I don’t know. She has always been quiet and stayed off to herself.”

“We got strange gravestones on the island. She’d have a time with them.”

“I bet your island is pretty, Ada.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m partial because it is my home.”

“I don’t even know where home is anymore. I wish I could go to your island.” She began to fold the quilt.

“It’s the best place in the world. You get ready one Friday morning and I’ll take you. My boy can bring you back before dark.” I said this without even thinking. This woman had managed to get on my good side.

“Would you? I bet Faith would love it too.”

Now, just the mention of that white girl’s name set my teeth on edge. “We’ll do just what I said. I’m going to clean your room, ma’am. This one is too clean to mess with.”

The biggest cold chill settled on me in that little room at the top of the house. Once, it had been my favorite room ’cause I could see the island on a clear day.

“I’ll see you downstairs, Ada.” Miss Lydia left me standing there.

“That be one strange white girl that keeps her room like this,” I mumbled to myself.

“Yes, she is strange,” said a voice behind me, one I recognized straightaway.

I didn’t turn to look. Nope, nothing at all I wanted to see. “Don’t be bothering me after all these years. I ain’t got a thing to say to you.”

“You blame me for your beau dying.” She still talked in that proper way of hers. Death didn’t take that away from her.

“I don’t blame no one for nothing.” Still I looked out the window.

Her laugh was soft. “You’re afraid of me, Lou.” She said that name with a hard edge.

“Not much I’m afraid of these days.” Boy, that was some kind of lie. I flipped the lock on the window and forced it open. The salt air filled the room, clearing my head.

“Why didn’t you like me? I never did a thing to you. You could have saved me. I died too early.”

This made me turn around. I couldn’t help myself. “You’re still some kind of fool, girl.”

“Me? You still work here.”

“Why are you here?”

She smiled. The mark on her neck made my stomach turn. “Me and you have a story together, Lou, but my being here doesn’t have one thing to do with that. I have a story to tell, but not to you. You didn’t care when it counted. I’m here to tell someone else that will listen.”

“You brought all that mess on yourself, Mary Beth Clark,” I shot at her.

“You’re right about that. But tell me, was it because I was with a white man? Or because I was dressed nice and talked decent that you were mean to me?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “What makes you any different than a white person passing judgment?”

“You ain’t the only one who lost something that night. I lost my life when Roger died. They killed him ’cause of you.”

She tilted her head to one side. “Yes, ma’am, but he came here at the wrong time. Me and him were having a conversation. That’s all.”

“Stop.” I held up my hand. “I don’t ever want to know.”

“You’re part of what happened that night, Ada Lee Tine. You are part of that night no matter whether you want to be or not.” She waited a minute. “The old woman ghost used you to get here, to get into the house. That’s the way she moves from one story to another. She uses a live person who can see her and hear her. And there you were. Benton T. Horse killed me. He killed me, and the old woman ghost didn’t save me.” And she was gone.

“None of it had a thing to do with me.” I said this too loud.

“You don’t know.” The words sat in the room. I stepped out on the landing and seen Shelly standing at the foot of the stairs. Faith came into the front hall and cut a look up at me. For a minute I saw two girls in one. That’s when I understood I was looking at that girl from the stone, Arleen Brown.

T
HAT SUNDAY AFTERNOON
when I seen Miss Laura Wool’s death quilt, I knew I had to read Armetta’s book, knew I’d been wrong not to read it before then. Arleen, Faith—whoever she was—had a streak of bad running through her. I told Ada I was going to walk on the beach. I took Armetta’s book with me, safe in the pocket of my skirt. I settled on the part of the beach that met the hills of sand. I let the wind blow across my skin and the water sing to me. Maybe it wasn’t too late to find a answer.

April 3, 1869

I live in a small shack tucked in one of the corners right close to the bend in the river, not far from the Danielses’ plot. The shed was meant for tools, but I cleaned me out a space and ran a pipe out
the wall for the old wood stove Smug Platt hauled over there for me. All I need is a warm room with no one bothering me. I’ve given up on living in the world and decided to stay tucked away in the cemetery for the rest of my life.

On the left side of Ella Creek Cemetery is nothing but woods and the road leading down to the white farmers. On the right is Dragonfly River named by the Danielses. Mr. Daniels’s place is out behind the graves, about a half a mile in the woods. Folks on down the road believe the woods that separate them from Ella Creek Cemetery be full of haints. I reckon they know just what they’re talking about ’cause I see my share of spirits roaming the family plots, but me and them share the place with no problem. Those spirits don’t even surprise me no more. It’s the river that drives me slap crazy, the way it churns so loud, filling my head with long, mournful sobs. But mostly all those graves bring me some peace in this old world.

I take care of the graves: planting, raking, and all the things that make the dead seem looked after. It keeps me busy. I know lots of whispering is going on about me living in a cemetery. But here’s the thing: folks be real bad about throwing stones without looking at their own ways. See, I have me a good reason to be living right here. My daddy wandered off down the mountain and fell off his old mule into the river. He drowned. I was standing in the front yard of our old house when the mule came wandering back. I knew something terrible was wrong ’cause Daddy was attached to that old mule like a boy to his dog. Mama had only died a couple of months before, so I was alone when I went searching for Daddy. My mama, Liza Lolly, was something special. And if the truth be known, I loved her better than Daddy. I put him in a grave right beside Mama in the cemetery. Mr. Daniels don’t have a gripe with coloreds burying their dead there as long as they choose a plot in the corner away from the white family plots. Imagine a graveyard being separated
into skin colors. Lordy, what does he think? That we will rub off on him in death?

So I took me some slate and buried part of it in the ground so it stood nice and straight at the head of his grave. But for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to leave the slate blank like he had Mama’s. I spelled out his name with a piece of white chalk that I kept in my memory box. The first decent rain would wash him away.

My memory box is the one thing I keep from my old life. Inside is that chalk, a button from the shirt Daddy wore when he drowned, Mama’s real gold wedding band, a ribbon from her hair, and a note some old boy gave me when I was thirteen. He died a year later when he fell off a crazy horse while working on a farm down the mountain. And that was that for me. And if the person reading this right now wants to know how a old colored girl learned to write, the answer is Amelia Daniels, but that’s more of a story for another day. The good thing about living and working in the cemetery is I can do pretty much what I want. I like it that way. But them haints do get under my skin sometimes.

April 10, 1869

All I am good for is planting. I can plant anything and it will grow like some dern weed. Now, a few years back I had me a idea to go down the mountain and see the Swannanoa River. That is a decent-sized stretch of water. I can tell ’cause when I stand in the west corner of the cemetery, right on the edge of the woods, I can see it snaking on the valley’s floor. I bet it is quiet and lazy, not all riled up like Dragonfly River. But I never went. Couldn’t leave. That dern old mountain has me around the feet and planted me right here. So sleeping in my old shed comes to me just as natural as wildflowers coming back
to the meadow each and every spring. I like that word meadow. It sounds all nice and kind. Not much of that here on the mountain, kindness, not for coloreds, anyway. Each day I get up and work until dark, but always I wander over to Mama’s grave and have me a conversation with her. Sometimes I can hear her sweet, clean voice. She was the best cook ever. That’s what Mrs. Daniels said when Mama died. “That orange cake she made was divine, Armetta.” A cake. A stupid old cake. My mama was something more than her cooking. She was the air in my lungs and the push in my step. That’s why it didn’t take me no time to bring that cemetery into a show place. Folks, both white and black, walk by and whistle at the work I’ve done.