Passion's Joy (18 page)

Two hundred or so paces away, the path made a sharp turn through the trees, and Joy rounded a bend at the exact moment the song stopped. She stopped, too, staring for a long moment in delight.

The old stone house was lovely and startling so, a refuge from the surrounding wilderness and surely drawn from the pages of a fairy tale. It was a small stone house, stone being uncommon enough in the moist muddied land to be a miracle in itself. A blood-red waterfall of trumpet vines spilled down one whole side of the house. A dazzling array of colorful flowers surrounded the area, all with waist-high blossoms tamed into rows distinguished only by the color of the blossoms: pansies and daisies, trumpets and marigolds of orange and red and gold, and wild red cannas.

Smiling, Joy practically skipped along the garden path but quickly came to another abrupt stop. A remarkable old woman sat in a rocking chair beneath the shade of an ancient towering oak tree. A dog lay at her feet, lazily thumping his tail without a lift of head. Two goats wandered nearby. A large white torn cat slept in a potted plant on the only window sill. A hummingbird's house hung from a branch of the tree and many tiny colorful creatures visited there.

"It's about time," the old woman said. "Have a seat and sit a spell. I have many things to

tell."

Joy's gaze locked with the old woman, and for several long seconds it seemed someone

threw away the key. Old, yet ageless, no lines marked the passing years and yet, that she was ancient, there seemed no doubt. The old woman grinned toothlessly. Yet the thin face presented a perfect symmetry of features, which somehow suggested a profound serenity.

This could not be the voodoo witch people spoke of with terror!

Joy felt an inexplicable warmth as she studied the puzzle presented in the old woman's eyes. The dark pools shined with a bright light, which seemed to be the source of the warmth she felt, yet for all this, mischief sat there as well. She decided in the instant she liked her a lot.

The old woman shucked peas into a wooden bin; her hands worked without interruption. An empty chair seemed to be waiting for Joy, and on the small wooden table between the two chairs, sat two tall glasses of lemonade. A coconut shell sat near-by, a black ribbon tied around it.

"Do you know where I might find the medicine woman in these parts?" The old woman chuckled, "Don't you recognize me, child?"

"Ohhh!" Joy was pleased. "Well!" She got to the point. "I came in the hope you might help me," she first said, setting down to pet the small shepherd dog. "I'm told you have knowledge of

herbs and medicines, and my uncle has consumption. I hoped you might have a potion to help him."

"Nothin'll help him but the maker, child."

Joy felt an inexplicable warmth spiraling from her bare toes upward, enclosing her in consolation and security. As quickly as the heat spiraled up, it spiraled down before vanishing as if it never was.

"I made him up some medicine, though." Her gaze moved to the coconut jar. "I ain't sayin' it'll cure him, but it should ease the worse of his time."

Joy touched the jar with a question. The old woman must keep potions ever ready for the many ailing people who came to her. The idea that the concoction was used for all ailments made her question its value. She had a half dollar to pay, but she did not want to spend it for a potion of no worth.

"Ain't no charge," the old woman said. "I don't charge folks worse off than myself."

With some alarm, Joy glanced down at her clothes, wondering if her poverty showed there like a sign. No matter that. There was nothing to be done about that.

"Sit down a spell and taste the best lemonade in the whole world. You can help me shod these here peas.”

“What’s your name?” “Tetelle,” she smiled.

“Little Star!” Joy said with delight as she took the seat offered. After one sip of her sweet drink, she agreed it was indeed the best lemonade she ever tasted. Quite unexpectedly, they fell into an easy conversation. The old woman talked of many things: her garden and her green thumb, her creatures and her family. As was her nature, Joy put the inquiry into voodoo practices directly

"Oh that,” Tetelle laughed. “I was in fact taught by a high sittin' voodoo queen, mainly cause I've got the sight, but I don' practice none. Folks, I suspect, get practice and knowin' all mixed up..." The old woman began telling her of her many visitors, of medicine cures that were easy and those that were not. Joy learned many helpful treatments; some were highly unlikely and certainly unconventional, many she would discuss with Joshua at length.

There came a pause, the peas were done and the old woman leaned back in her chair. "'Of course," she said, "my best talent is for fortune tellin'."

Like any well-bred and educated young lady, Joy received this with disbelief and delight in equal shares. "Ah." She smiled. "Will you tell mine?'

"Yours, well now, hit's what you're here for. I suppose, I should start by sayin' yours ain't a common fortune, as you don' have a common soul.''

Joy had not the vanity to entertain the truth of this, but she smiled indulgently. She would humor her new friend, as she no doubt would hear of how she would marry well, have many fine and healthy children and live to a ripe old age.

'To 'tell truth, I ain't never—in all my born days—seen such a light as yours. Lord, it was bright to start, but now it shines with the lives you touched. What gives me pause is, if’in your light is such, what must his be like? Even stronger, I know from my dreams."

Confused, Joy hardly knew what to make of this. What light? She shifted uncomfortably and looked across the field of flowers where the sun marked mid-afternoon. That light?

"And the babe sittin' on your shoulder… is as familiar as my own hand now. He, too, visits my dreams."

Joy glanced in alarm at her shoulder. Of course there was nothing there, and she blushed, embarrassed by this sudden nonsensical turn of the old woman's mind. Oh dear, did she sit with a mad woman? Or perhaps she had just fallen into senility?

"Sown with the seed of his father," she continued, "he will have that man's great strength, but with your very own goodness. His light is brighter that both of yours—" she shook her head

—"I can't imagin' it! That light’s gonna spread over the land like a great river quenching the thirst of misery everywhere. Yes, everywhere! Lord a mercy, everythin's dependin’ on his birth." She stared hard at Joy. "Everything depends on you fightin' the one man you're not able to fight."

The old woman leaned forward and said in a distant and soft voice, "If’in I squint my eyes just so an' look out yonder"—she stared off into the distance—"I see them all. There!" she said with an enormous grin.

Joy looked in the direction to see a dark forest background of flowers. Dragonflies and butterflies danced on the blossoms and bees—

"There,” she said again. “Lord a mercy, each light is so bright and distinct; the only thing they have in common is the joy of your name. There's the second one with his visions, a mind filled with numbers and figurin', and he's a gonna build great things that are admired long after our bodies is ashes in earth; there’s the poet, words touched by God but shaded with the devil's own wit, and

oh the ladies"— she chuckled to herself—"the ladies flock to him like bees to a hive! An' there the one you favor, so serious and dedicated to his medicine like the love past; and then the last. Yes!

There she is, I see her! The little girl who's gonna make her father swear she's more trouble than all his sons, as much trouble as her mother, but yes, she is gonna surprise everyone with her life's path."

Joy stared at an empty field of flowers washed in golden shades of late afternoon. She glanced back at the old woman. An otherworldly bliss marked the smooth lines of her face as she studied things that simply were not there. Joshua said the best way to deal with insanity was with calm—

Joy started, as the old woman suddenly collapsed. "Oh Lord," she cried in her hands. "I see them all so clear! Why, oh why do you let me see them so plain when they are nothin' but what might be! When they aren’t real like other visions?"

Absolutely unnerved by this point, Joy was about to jump from her seat and bid a quick goodbye and good day, but the air warmed and thickening with a hushed stillness. She felt as if the world change with a sudden, soft focus, warning her to be silent.

"You'se in fer trouble, chile. A great darkness lies ahead."

Joy gasped slightly. Though she thought this poor old woman to be stark raving mad, and what little of the strange mutterings of the insane mind she had understood, she didn't believe, a small voice still had to ask: "Is it Joshua?"

The old woman shook her head, and strangely, the madness seemed gone, vanishing with the visions. “The curse of my fortune tellin' is that I can most never name the dark things. I ain’t never seen into the darkness. I’ll tell you this dough, the darkness don't come from him."

This brought Joy a great relief. Joshua worried her most and Joshua's worsening health remained forever her worst fear. She felt certain she could handle anything else. The very relief made no sense, though, because, of course, she didn't believe any of this.

"So much is at stake, child." The old woman shook her head. "So much. Let me start with

this."

The old woman rose and searched the ground until she found a small stick. Upon returning

to the chair, she drew a circle with three points on the circumference and one in the middle. "These are the three lights shinin' on you. This one is dim and fadin' in the here and now,

but child, his light will be shinin' in your life forever after."

Joy wanted to ask who this was. Now that her fears concerning Joshua were relieved, she naturally wondered whose light might be ‘dim and fadin'? Though of course, she didn't believe a word of it.

"Now this one is mischief." She pointed and laughed at what she saw. "Or it was at first. His light just started to shine on you, but he will start the whole thing. One way or de other, he is responsible.

"This is the one, child." She drew the top point larger and larger. "Here is your life.

Everything rests on him. His light is the brightest, like I said, brighter even than yours. But it’s streaked with black. It is part of his great strength and will, and this is the part you will fight. He is the source of the darkness ahead."

Joy struggled to make sense of it, of any of it. "Who is he that he could be my life, but whom will I fight and for what?" As soon as she asked this question, she regretted it, for it sounded like she actually believed the turn of the old woman's mind!

"You will be fighting for the gift the lord gives you, and against him for the life.” Joy gave up trying to make sense of the woman’s words.

“And this is the help I can give: you must not doubt the gift, the goodness of your blessing. Your strength will come from knowing the truth of this goodness. And child, you will need all the strength and luck and maybe even magic to win a battle with the great force of his will."

Suddenly forgetting she didn't believe it, Joy waited with heightened attention for the old woman to explain those words. No explanation was forthcoming. The hushed stillness disappeared, replaced by the distant sound of an unseen brook running nearby, the cacophony of birds moving through the trees, a rustling of a slight breeze and the soft thrashing of goat hooves through the bush.

"Yes child." Tetelle mirrored her thoughts yet again. "I will leave you with this." The old woman took Joy's hand in hers and pressed her thumb in Joy's palm, closing Joy's fingers around it.

A heat suddenly burned there, spreading up her arm throughout her whole body, and Joy looked to Tetelle with shock, an unspoken demand for an explanation.

"You'll feel this when it comes. It will help you heed a foolish ole woman's words." She withdrew her hand, but gently brushed Joy's face with her fingertips, and Joy was staring at unmasked sympathy in the startling depth of her eyes. "No matter what, child, you'll have a good

life, even if in you are not strong enough to win. No," she whispered, "you won't be happy, but you already know happiness is but a small price for goodness."

Dear Diary,

Joshua woke early, and the greeting and smile he bestowed on Cory and I spoke of good spirits, despite the increasingly raspy sound to his cough. He breakfasted on an orange and melon

—not knowing I stole this in our increasingly desperate financial straits—and fell into deep slumber. Doctor Morson claims the affliction often takes a turn for the worse, just before a period of recovery. Recovery, my dearest friend, that you know I await eagerly with all my heart.

Sometimes I wonder if Joshua knows. Of course he must, for he's known forever this was the year his small inheritance ends. It would not have mattered so much, I think, if he was still able to practice his medicine. Still, he never mentions it, and needless to say, neither the Reverend, Sammy, Cory or myself ever mention to him the increasingly desperate situation in which we find ourselves. Financial concerns do worry me! I think of it nearly all the time.

Sammy works six days a week, the Sabbath saved for sermons and the chores Cory and I simply can't complete for want of sheer strength. Though Sammy rises at dawn and works till dusk

—Mr. Farnsworth granting no more than a privy break in between—and exhaustion wears hard on him, the few paying jobs he manages at night—repairing storm shutters, a table leg, helping erect a new barn—barely manage to keep us from debtor's prison. We owe three merchants, the pharmacist and the stables, and our landlord grows tired of our excuses.

What to do? What to do? Sammy has six months left apprenticed to Mr. Farnsworth, six months that never shrink, for every time Sammy borrows a dollar here, a dollar there, Mr.

Farnsworth adds weeks to his servitude. At this rate he will never be free! I have long suspected Mr. Farnsworth of racial hatred, unkind I know, but how else can one explain his treatment of Sammy, except that Mr. Farnsworth by some cruel trick of his mind resents Sammy's freeman status?