Signs in the Blood (11 page)

Hit was a long time before Mister Tomlin come back in the cabin. I thought about the bull and the cows and how the ol bull would turn up his lip a-sniffin at their behinds afore he'd go to ridin them. I couldn't feature Mister Tomlin doin such as that but nor could I imagine just what would be the way of things. I looked at my sewin machine and thought that tomorrow I would set in to makin another quilt.

At last I heared Mister Tomlin comin to the door. I scootched down in the bed with the covers up to my chin. He come in quiet-like and said, Now, Little Sylvie, you needn't be afraid for I'll not harm you. I didn't say nothing, just lay there a-lookin at him. He blew out two of the lamps, but left burnin the one on the chest by the bed. Then he pulled off his coat and waistcoat and hung them on a hook. They was a bootjack by the hearth and he used that to get shed of his tall boots. He shucked off his britches right quick and I could hear the gold coins in the pockets just a-jinglin as he hung them britches on another hook. Then he set down in the straight back chair and pulled off his stockings. His feet was long and pale and hairy in the lamplight and his legs was thinner than what I had thought they would be.

Mister Tomlin blew out the last lamp and got into bed in just his shirt. The moon was near to full and a pale misty light lay over the bed. I could see the outline of his head there on the pillow beside me and hear his breathin comin fast like as if he'd been a-runnin. He didn't say nothing but reached his hand over and put hit up under my nightshift. He pulled me toward him and pushed his big whiskery face against mine. He commenced to kissin my lips and I begun to kiss back some.

Me and Clytie had practiced kissin on the backs of our own hands so we would know what to do when we got married but all them whiskers made it different. Then all at once he's tryin to put his tongue in my mouth. I had thought you was supposed to keep yore lips tight closed so as not to get spit on one another. But I remembered what Aetha had said and went on and opened my mouth.

All the while he's a-lickin around in my mouth, that hand under my nightshift is a-travelin around like one thing. My bosoms has just barely begun to show a little and I wondered was he lookin for them. Then he finds them and starts in to rubbin at my nipples till they're all hard and tender, like when the cold wind blows right through my dress. Next thing I know that hand starts down between my legs and I clench them together tight. He starts a-rubbin right there where the curly dark hairs is beginnin to grow, and just then there's a terrible racket right outside the cabin—the sound of whoopin and cowbells ringin and pie pans a-bangin together.

I reckon hit's a serenade, Mister Tomlin, I say as he jerks his hand away and sets up in bed. Them fellers always likes to cut a shine whenever they's a marryin. I could hear Billy Gentry hollerin, O Little Sylvie, give me a kiss and then someone else howled like an ol hound.

They was quite a few of them from the sound, mostly around the door. But I could hear laughin and someone cussin under his breath and I knowed that some of em must be climbin up on that big rock under the front window. That rock, hit's a great big thing most as wide as the cabin but flat topped to where you can walk on it. On its downhill side it's only about a yard high but where it almost touches the cabin a tall man could stand on it and look right in the window. Used to my Daddy would throw out salt for the cows on that rock and they would line up around the edges like kittens around a pan of milk. I thought hit would make a good place to dry apples come fall.

The sounds got closer and I pulled the covers up around me. Mister Tomlin, I said, they'll not leave less you go out and speak to them—maybe give them some money or a drink of whisky. I hoped he could get rid of them right soon for I was eager to know what was comin next between us there in the bed. My nipples was still as hard as acorns and I was beginnin to feel a kindly of a swimmie feelin down there where he'd been a-rubbin.

Mister Tomlin didn't say nothing, just hauled out of bed and pulled on his pants. He went to the door and opened it and the noise stopped. I could see the lights from some torches movin around and hear cowbells clankin. Boys, said Mister Tomlin, I understand that it's the custom for me to thank you for this ceremony of yours. I don't have any liquor to offer you a drink but here's a double eagle for you. I reckon that'll buy enough spirits for you all to drink my health and my wife's several times over.

I heared a chink as his hand went into his pockets and from the bed I could see the gold coin make a glitterin trail in the torchlight as Mister Tomlin tossed it high to someone standin there. They all set up a-whoopin again and ringin them cowbells, but they begun to move away. We could hear them hoorahin all down the mountain and at last Mister Tomlin closed and bolted the door and come back to bed.

He pulled off his pants again and got in beside me. I was ready for some more kissin and I turned my face toward him. He reached for my hand and brought it down between his legs. I kindly knew what to expect and I took hold of hit like he seemed to want me to. He groaned out loud and said, O Little Sylvie, and he was breathin fast again.

I just lay there not knowing what should I do. But he has his notions and first it's one thing and then another and him a-gruntin like an old boar hog right along. Some of it seems plumb nasty to me but I think of what Aetha told me and how the preacher said the wife is subject to the husband and I do it.

Atter a time he kindly shudders and pulls me back up on the pillow beside him. Little Sylvie, he says, you'll be a fine wife, and he sets up and reaches over to a blue bottle a-settin on the windowsill. He pulls out the cork and takes him a big old swaller. I take my medicine every night, says he. It helps me to sleep. When he lay back down there was a heavy sweet smell on his breath. Good night, Little Sylvie, he says, and rolls over and begins to snore.

I lay there a-thinkin about what has just happened. Hadn't nothing hurt like Aetha had said hit would and I don't believe I'm bleedin nowhere, but except for some of the kissin and rubbin there at the first I weren't so sure what there was to like about hit. I get up and dip me some water from the bucket. Then I crawl back in the bed and lay there, a-listenin to Mister Tomlin snore and a-thinkin about my new sewin machine.

CHAPTER 8

T
HE
E
VIDENCE OF THE
S
ANG
 (
T
HURSDAY)

P
ANAX QUINQUEFOLIUS,
THE
A
MERICAN GINSENG,
“. . . appears plentifully on the north exposure of the hill, growing out of the rich, mellow, humid earth, among the stones or fragments of rocks.” William Bartram's words, written as he traveled through southeastern America in the late 1700s, were alluring, but as Elizabeth read on, turning the pages of
Foxfire 3
in search of more pertinent information, it became all too clear that ginseng was no longer common. While the once-common chestnut trees had been destroyed by disease, ginseng had been severely endangered by overhunting. The article went on to elucidate the various ways of hunting and growing ginseng, with an emphasis on the difficulty of finding it in the wild. Elizabeth sat at her dining table, reading as she ate her breakfast of grapefruit juice, coffee, and a thick slice of homemade bread topped with a scrape of olive oil and herbed goat cheese. Tracing the ginseng was the next step in her hunt for Cletus's shotgun.

The past two days had been a whirl of garden work. The tomato plants had been set out in their rows and the last of the peas had been picked. More broccoli had been added to the freezer, and the worst of the weeds in the flower borders had been ousted. The eternal battle to bring order out of chaos was in a momentary truce. Now she could devote a day or so to the task Miss Birdie had set her.

Elizabeth had decided that, rather than travel haphazardly from hollow to hollow asking for information about Cletus, she would “use the little grey cells” as Agatha Christie's Poirot had advised. Cletus's knapsack had contained ginseng; therefore, she reasoned, he must have gone somewhere ginseng could still be found.

She smiled at her own cleverness and read on. The
Foxfire
article was not particularly encouraging, pointing out that though “sang,” as it was called in the mountains, usually grew on a north slope, large patches could sometimes be found on south slopes, planted in the wild by ginseng hunters.
Great,
she thought,
that really narrows it down.

The buzz of the oven timer interrupted her reading. She pushed the book aside and gathered up her breakfast dishes. It was not yet eight o'clock and the morning air was still cool and misty. In the distance she could hear the plaintive calls of mourning doves and the clatter of a tractor bush-hogging a distant field.
Time to get going,
she thought.
Let's see what Birdie knows about ginseng.

Twenty minutes later she was knocking on her neighbor's door. A paper bag containing a still-warm loaf of banana bread was in the basket she carried, as was her map of the Bear Tree Creek area.

Birdie did not come to the door in response to Elizabeth's knock, but called out from her recliner chair, “That you, Lizzie Beth? Come on in.” The little woman looked pale and drawn, but she smiled up at Elizabeth. “I'm still down in the back, honey. Reckon they ought to take and shoot me. I kin just creep from the bed to my chair; that's 'bout all I'm good for.”

Birdie's cousin hurried in from the kitchen, a dish towel in her hands. Dorothy was a stout, capable woman somewhere in her seventies. She had worked for years as a nurse assistant at a senior care center and, now that she had retired, delighted in looking after all of her elderly kin. “Why, look who's here! And look what she brung you!” Dorothy bubbled, taking a long sniff at the banana bread Elizabeth handed her.

“Birdie's been namin' to call you. We talked to the high sheriff last night and he says it could be another week before they do that autopsy.”

“And he still don't think it were anything but an accident,” Birdie fumed.
“And
they still ain't found that shotgun. Law, honey, I hate it that I can't travel about and ask where my boy was those weeks before . . . but I ain't able and that's a fact.”

“Don't worry, Miss Birdie,” Elizabeth assured her, “I'm going to go out looking today. I think it would be good for me to start by finding out where Cletus might have gotten the sang that was in the knapsack.”

“I been studyin' on that, Lizzie Beth,” Miss Birdie replied, hitching herself painfully up in her chair. “You know, spring ain't the time for diggin' the roots. Most folks can't even find the plants in the spring; them green leaves don't look any different from a lot of other weeds. It's in the fall when them leaves turns that yellowy gold and that big bunch of red berries jest hollers at you that folks digs the roots to sell.”

She furrowed her brow and went on. “All's I can think is that Cletus must of been goin' to carry them roots to a patch som'ers else. You mind they had a right smart of dirt in with 'em. Likely he had a patch som'ers back in one of them hollers. He allus did bring in a mess of roots in the fall. Law, that boy was so proud to be earnin' money. Last year he made 'most a thousand dollars and he told me that this year he'd have even more.”

Birdie suddenly looked troubled. “You know, Cletus kept that place a secret even from me 'cause he knows . . . he knew . . . I'm bad to talk . . . and they's some would rob ary sang patch they could. They's a lot of mean folks wouldn't think twicet . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“Why don't she go over and talk to Raym Tyler?” suggested Dorothy. “You know, up in Little Man Holler? He raises tame sang and he buys the wild. Likely he might know something.”

“Raym Tyler!” Birdie spat. “Don't you name Raym Tyler to me. Them Tylers is a rough bunch. Why, when my man Luther was still livin' at his daddy's place, him and Raym Tyler like to kilt one another, disputin' over that line fence. No, she won't do no good talkin' to no Tylers.”

Though Birdie refused to discuss Raym Tyler further, Dorothy was persistent. She was sure that Little Man Holler would be the logical place for Elizabeth to start her investigation into the source of the ginseng. “Raym ain't so bad as Birdie makes out,” she whispered as she followed the departing Elizabeth to the front porch. As she did so, Dorothy glanced furtively back at her cousin, but Birdie's attention was fixed on the television set where Oprah was participating in a demonstration of the Heimlich maneuver.

“I know he's bought sang from Cletus and give him a good price, too.” Dorothy's voice was conspiratorial. “Why, he even hired Cletus a time or two to help him with those trout ponds he's got up there. Course Cletus knew not to say nothing to Birdie about it account of how she always took on so against Raym.”

On her way up Bear Tree Creek once again, Elizabeth's attention was caught by a luridly painted old white Ford stopped at the foot of the road leading up to Walter and Ollie Johnson's place. The words “Prepare to meet thy God,” as well as various Bible texts, were painted in foot-high letters along the sides of the aged vehicle. The trunk was open and a lean man in shiny dark trousers and a white shirt was lifting two bulging plastic grocery bags from its interior. As he hoisted them up, the flimsy material of one gave way and its contents spilled out, rolling into the road in front of Elizabeth's approaching car.

She braked immediately to avoid running over the cans of food that were scattered in front of her. The man gave her a brief nod and began picking up his groceries and setting them out of the road.
That must be the guy who's staying up in the old cabin,
thought Elizabeth.
The evangelist.
She cut the motor of her car and called out the window, “Excuse me, could you help me?”

The lean man glanced at her curiously, then, carefully setting the last can to the side of the road, walked over. Poverty-thin but wiry, he gave the impression of a man possessed by some inner tension that he had constantly to keep in check. He moved with the deliberate care of a martial artist, as if alert for a sudden defense. Elizabeth guessed that he was probably in his forties, though his pale blue eyes stared from a face as lined and careworn as that of a much older man, and his once-blond thatch of hair was stained with silver.

“Are you the one staying in the Johnsons' old cabin?” she asked, wishing she could remember what they had said his name was. “They told me, that is, I was wondering if you had seen . . .”

He confirmed that he was indeed the one staying in the Johnson cabin and listened to her questions about Cletus without a change of expression. Finally he said brusquely, “Afraid I can't help you. At least he's in the Lord's hands now,” and turned away to rummage in the back of his car, presumably for another bag to hold his groceries.

Abruptly dismissed, Elizabeth continued on her way. As she passed the little heap of cans and boxes the evangelist had piled by his car, she was puzzled to see, amid the cans of beef stew and baked beans, a box of sanitary napkins.
That's odd. Walter and Ollie didn't mention that he was married. What would . . .
Her thoughts were interrupted as a heavily loaded log truck came groaning around a curve toward her. It was straddling the centerline of the road, almost forcing her into the ditch. She prayed that the loose gravel and dirt of the shoulder would hold, and waited, without breathing, till the rumbling monster had passed.
Slagle,
she suddenly remembered, watching the hulking truck in her rearview mirror disappear around another curve.
That was the name. John the Baptizer Slagle.

The turnoff to Little Man Holler was several miles past the two hollows she had visited earlier in the week; indeed, it was almost to the head of Bear Tree Creek. Straggling red letters on a weathered board shaped like a narrow fish said
TROUT
—1/4
MILE.
The nose of the fish pointed up a rocky road that twisted and climbed through a dense rhododendron thicket. Elizabeth shifted into four-wheel drive and followed the road through the dark gnarled roots and contorted branches, finally emerging into a clearing where a stone chimney stood. Thick clumps of yellow flag and a huge lilac bush flourished among the weeds. At the edge of the clearing, crumpled green and red leaves of rhubarb and the green froth of asparagus fern were all that remained of some farmwife's garden.

Beyond the clearing, the road divided and a second fish-shaped sign pointed down the left fork. More rhododendrons shaded the road, suddenly giving way to rolling open land at the base of steep wooded slopes. The Tyler place had evidently once been a prosperous mountain farm, judging by the four large tobacco barns scattered over the cleared land, now mostly given over to pasture. One field, however, had many long beds of low-growing green plants covered with black shade cloth.
That must be the ginseng,
decided Elizabeth, noting that the field faced north.

The two-story frame house that sat at the end of the road was in dire need of paint, but otherwise was tidy. A small parking area lay next to a little pond and a series of flumes, doubtless the home of the trout-raising enterprise. Another red-lettered sign listed prices for trout and proclaimed
TYLER'S TROUT AND GINSENG. OPEN ALL DAY, EVERY DAY BUT SUNDAY.

Elizabeth parked her car and got out. “Hello,” she called toward the house. Mountain manners held that a stranger should make his presence known before approaching a house, so she waited a few minutes before calling again, this time a good bit louder. “Hello, Mr. Ty—”

From behind the house came an ominous barking and the rattle of a chain. Suddenly, a heavyset elderly man wearing a pair of grimy overalls burst out of the door. In one hand he gripped a stout cane, in the other, a double-barreled shotgun.

Elizabeth froze, her eyes riveted to the gun. The old man raised it to his shoulder.

“Goddammit, Dewey—” he bellowed, then he stopped short. He frowned at Elizabeth. “By God, I thought you was Dewey; he's got him a car just like that.” Leaning the shotgun against the door frame, he limped down the worn wooden steps, making his way slowly to where Elizabeth stood. He pushed his face toward her and she could see the individual bristles of the gray stubble on his cheeks and smell the sour tang of his breath. Peering closely at her, his eyes narrowed behind his glasses as he demanded, “Be you kin to Dewey?”

For a moment Elizabeth was speechless; when she at last found her voice, it emerged as a ragged squeak. “No! I don't even know who Dewey is!” she stammered. Then, taking a breath and forcing her voice down to its usual pitch, she asked about Cletus and his shotgun. All the while she couldn't keep her eyes from going to the shotgun leaning against the door frame.

Tyler listened attentively to her questions. He shook his head thoughtfully when she finished. “Now that was the beatinest thing, to think of Cletus fallin' offen that trestle. Weren't like him atall to be up there. But, to answer yore question, I ain't seed Cletus since . . .” The gray-stubbled jaws worked pensively around the chunk of black chewing tobacco he had inserted at the beginning of Elizabeth's inquiries. “Lemme see . . . must of been back in March he come through here. I was lookin' for him long about now, though. He was gonna dig me some wild sang to put in my beds.”

The bleary eyes behind the cheap black-rimmed glasses crinkled and Raym Tyler began to wheeze with laughter. “We got us a plan to fool them buyers and make our tame sang to look like the wild.”

“There were sang plants in Cletus's knapsack. Maybe he had dug them for you,” Elizabeth ventured. “Where might he have gone to dig them, do you think?”

The old man lowered a suspicious gaze on her and tightened his lips. She went on shamelessly, “Miss Birdie's cousin Dorothy told me you knew more about sang than anyone around.”

“Could be. But them as knows, don't tell.” Nonetheless his face softened slightly. “I will say that they's sang all around here. That's how come this to be called Little Man Holler; you know the bestest roots is forked and shaped like a little man.” He scratched his ribs thoughtfully. “When I was able, I'd roam all these hollers and dig sang. But I allus planted the seed back, though sometimes I'd take and plant it in different places, just to fool them other sang hunters. I had me a big old patch way up on Devil's Fork that ort to be coming in good right now, and another . . . Well, just say, if nobody ain't found 'em and dug 'em, I had me beds in most of the hollers around here.”