Signs in the Blood (13 page)

Engrossed in her thoughts, she had gone past the post office door when she heard a familiar voice call, “Señora Elizabeta, can you help me,
por favor
?”

It was Manuel Cruz, the Mexican worker who had helped Ben and Julio earlier in the spring. Manuel had come to the States for many years during the growing season to earn money to send to his family but had never adapted as easily as had Julio. He missed his home in Chiapas desperately and had vowed to return for good at the end of this year when he would celebrate his fiftieth birthday. Manuel was short and powerfully built: His dark chiselled features could have come straight from a Mayan carving. He was motioning toward Elizabeth and holding out several forms.

They went into the post office together and Elizabeth helped him to deal with various money orders and payments. When that was accomplished, Manuel asked, “Señora,
puede usted . . .
can you give me a ride to the Ready-Mart?
Mis amigos . . .
my friends will pick me up there.”

“I'll be glad to, Manuel, as long as you're not in a big hurry. I have to stop for chicken feed and for groceries on the way. And, please, not Señora. Elizabeta is fine. Unless you want me to call you Señor Cruz.”

She bought her stamps and together she and Manuel walked back toward the other end of town where she had parked her car. She asked about the family that was waiting for him in Chiapas. His face glowed as he told her that he had sent home so much money over the years that his wife had been able to set up a store,
“una tienda grande, Señora—perdóname, Elizabeta—
and she is making money with it. I will soon be able to go home.”

It was not until she arrived at her house and was opening the rear door of the jeep to pull out the bags of chicken feed that she saw the bright red sticker. Affixed crookedly below the back window, its bold, uncompromising letters shouted:
RACE MIXING IS SIN.
And in smaller print,
Joshua 23:12–13.
A twig from some thorny bush was trapped under the sticker.

CHAPTER 10

T
HE
O
THER
S
IDE OF THE
M
OUNTAIN
 (
F
RIDAY AFTERNOON)

S
HE HAD UNLOADED THE GROCERIES AT TOP SPEED
and shoved the milk and other perishables into the refrigerator willy-nilly.
The rest can wait,
she decided as she sat at her dining table, her grandmother's worn Bible before her. It was open to Joshua 23 and she read aloud:
“. . . if ye do in any wise go back, and cleave unto the remnant of these nations, even these that remain among you, and shall make marriages with them, and go in unto them, and they to you: Know for a certainty that the Lord your God will no more drive out any of these nations from before you; but they shall be snares and traps unto you, and thorns in your eyes, until ye perish from off this good land which the Lord your God hath given you.”

The red sticker and the thorny twig lay on the smooth maple surface of the table. She felt a wave of nausea each time she looked at them.
They're like a voodoo doll,
she thought, and shivered involuntarily. Her first impulse was to burn them; somehow just throwing them in the garbage wasn't enough. She picked up the sticker and the bit of thorn and headed for the fireplace, then checked herself.
I'll show these to Ben,
she decided, and carried the offensive objects out to the porch where she stuck them down in a battered old watering can. Then she went to the kitchen and scrubbed her hands, irrationally trying to get rid of the sense of violation.

The bundle of mail she had tossed on the kitchen table caught her eye and she took it into the living room to look through. A
New Yorker,
the electric bill, a funny postcard from a friend, a reminder from the vet that Ursa was due for a rabies shot, and a lemon-yellow flyer, evidently hand-delivered, as there was no stamp on it.

The flyer announced a tent revival behind the BP station on the bypass. Brother John “the Baptizer” Slagle, “the prophet crying in the wilderness,” would be calling souls to repentance for two weeks, culminating in a grand baptism in the “living waters” of the river. This announcement was followed by the words:
“BUT WHOSOEVER DRINKETH OF THE WATER THAT I SHALL GIVE HIM SHALL NEVER THIRST; BUT THE WATER THAT I SHALL GIVE HIM SHALL BE IN HIM A WELL OF WATER SPRINGING UP INTO EVERLASTING LIFE.
John
4:14
”

Below the text was a surprisingly well done drawing of a lake, divided down the middle by a stone wall. On one side of the wall, towering flames rose above the heads of the miserable wretches crowded into the burning pool. Tiny arms were flung up and tiny faces twisted in agony. Wiry little devils on the shore jabbed pitchforks at the few naked miserable souls who attempted to escape the inferno. On the other side of the wall, there were no flames, only gentle wavy lines of water. There were people here too, though not as many as on the fiery side. These wore flowing robes and radiant smiles and they held up their hands in praise and adoration to the shaft of light that shone down on them from a billowy cloud. At the bottom of the drawing in large block letters was the question:
“WHICH SIDE WILL
YOU
BE ON
?
”

“Arrgh!” Elizabeth cried, startling the dog James out of the reverie he had been diligently pursuing on the end of the sofa. “They're everywhere!” She quickly folded the yellow sheet into a paper airplane and sailed it away from her. James jumped from the sofa and gave chase, but the yellow projectile looped and glided effortlessly to hang from the very top of the bookshelves at the end of the room. The little dog stood and barked at the tantalizing shape.

Elizabeth stared at the nose-diving airplane.
What is that reminding me of?
she wondered.
I had a thought just then—but it's gone. Damn these senior moments.
James continued to bark and dance about, then ran to the door and whined urgently. With one last look at the yellow plane, Elizabeth said firmly, “Come on, James, let's go for a walk.”

She strolled along the path at the top of the pasture, James bouncing along at her side with occasional forays into fascinating clumps of weeds or pauses to sniff and mark a random rock. At the edge of the woods was a simple bench, a weathered oak plank nailed to two locust posts half buried in the ground amid clumps of yellow violets. It was one of five benches scattered along this path; Sam had made them as a birthday present for Elizabeth years ago, dubbing them the “stations of the walk.”

She sat down and looked back at her house and its surrounding gardens and at the barns and sheds and the fields of herbs and flowers that stretched out below her, nestled in the wide lush hollow beneath Pinnacle Ridge. So many years to create this beauty, this safe haven, and now, suddenly, she felt as if it was all in danger. The mountain rising in the west behind her house had always seemed like a silent sentry with its protecting arms wrapped around Full Circle Farm; today, it seemed alien and dangerous, for now she knew what lay on the other side.

It all started with Cletus's death,
she mused.
So violent and inexplicable. And the more I look for answers, the more ugly things I find.

She tried to imagine who could have wanted to hurt Cletus, how he could have been a threat to anyone. Could he in his wandering have seen something that made him dangerous to
. . . to who? A racist, hate-mongering militia, a bunch of weird people named after stars, an old guy ready to shoot someone for digging ginseng on his place, or his son who collects copperheads and rattlers to handle in church? Did one of these have a secret that Cletus stumbled on to? And how could I have known so little about what and who was over there just on the other side of the mountain?

When she and Sam had first moved to the farm, they had made a point of getting to know their nearest neighbors on Ridley Branch. But, aside from a few friends living on Bear Tree Creek, all “newcomers” like themselves, the other side of the mountain might as well have been the other side of the state. And through the years many new people had come to the county, buying up the old mountain farms and trying to find a way to make a living. Some had not stayed long; some had become a vital part of the mountain community; and others, who had come in search of solitude, had kept a very low profile, happy to be no more than a name on a mailbox, if that. Elizabeth had realized some years ago that she no longer knew, as she had at one time, all the newcomers on Ridley Branch or Bear Tree Creek.

She let her eyes follow the outline of the ridge, thinking again how little she knew of her neighbors.
At least those militia creeps are five or six miles away,
she thought, then smiled.
And the closest ones are Walter and Ollie Johnson, just a little ways down the other side. They're good people, I'm sure of it.

Once again she recollected how she and Sam had climbed the mountain and had found their cows in Walter and Ollie's pasture, next to the beautiful old cabin. Sam had admired that cabin, noting the great size of the carefully hewn chestnut logs that were its walls and the precision of the dovetail notches that joined these logs.
But that's all changed,
she thought.
Sam is dead. Walter and Ollie live in a trailer farther down the mountain now, and that revival preacher on the flyer, John the Baptizer, that's who's staying in their beautiful old cabin. Who knows how many fanatics live just over the ridge? Cletus probably did. Cletus could have visited all of them,
did
visit most of the ones I know about.

The thought depressed her even more and she stood up to resume her walk. James began barking fiercely as Molly and Ursa emerged from the trees, trotting along the path toward her, on their way back to the house after an adventure of some sort. The two dogs ignored James but greeted Elizabeth in a businesslike fashion and continued on their way, no doubt ready for food and a nap.

The second bench was set a little way into the woods, facing northeast. Here she looked across treetops down into the valley of the river. Below her was a pasture where some of her red cows were lying in the shade at the wood's edge, chewing their cuds and staring at nothing in particular.

They look so peaceful,
thought Elizabeth.
They don't worry about things like people do. It's that old question, Is it better to be a happy pig or an unhappy philosopher?

She sat on the second bench and pondered.
Some people say it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you believe in something. But those militia people believe horrible things. And even my neighbors, with their faith in the Bible as the literal Word of God . . .
She remembered clearly how at some point she had known that the religion of her childhood held more questions than answers for her. Reading about the slaughters resulting from the Crusades and the Inquisition was, for her, the beginning of a deepening distrust of organized religion of any kind. And subsequent history: Northern Ireland, the Middle East, Bosnia, and, most recently, the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York
—right here, in our country!—
all this brutality fueled by religion—had done nothing to change her mind.

It's dangerous when people believe that they possess the only truth and that God is on their side,
she argued with an invisible opponent.
It can allow them to treat nonbelievers as inferior or even nonhuman. Look how some religions—even Christianity—have justified slavery. And treating women as inferior to men, don't get me started on that one.

It was time to move on. At her side, James stiffened and, once more, sent forth an alarming peal of barks. The dog was staring anxiously down at the gravel road that wound past her garden and up to the house. Through the trees she could see a familiar red-headed figure emerge from the barn. Alerted by James's barking, her daughter Laurel looked toward the woods and waved, then continued on up the road. Elizabeth smiled and started back to the house, pleased, as always, to see her younger daughter and, again, as always, slightly apprehensive.
What new adventure?
Sam used to say when Laurel would burst into a room, as she so often did, calling out “Pa! Mum! You'll
never
guess what I'm going to do!”

Laurel was a perpetual source of delight mixed with concern. Wildly independent, she had always insisted on what she called her own “space.” Elizabeth had, as they grew older, tried very hard to stay out of her daughters' private business, usually waiting to be told rather than asking. She had, however, tried just as hard to let her two girls know that she was always willing to listen and that her love was unconditional.

When, during her senior year of college, Laurel had become romantically entangled with a visiting art professor, Elizabeth had offered a quiet warning and then shut up when Laurel had explained the timeless nature of the passion she shared with her Aristides. And though Elizabeth had agonized privately as the affair wound down and the charismatic older man had left her daughter for another young woman, she had done her best to support Laurel's careful portrayal of a free spirit, unfazed by love's betrayal. Time had healed that wound, but Elizabeth was painfully aware that she would always be a little uneasy about what life had in store for her strong-willed younger child.

Laurel's backpack, a wild medley of solid reds and oranges, mixed with a marbleized fabric of turquoise and yellow, lay open on one of the porch rockers. Her sandals had been kicked off at the door and Laurel herself was at the kitchen sink getting a glass of water.

“God, it's good to have some decent water,” she gasped, draining a glass at a gulp and immediately refilling it. “That city water is so incredibly bad. I think I'll start taking jugs of water back with me. Hi, Mum,” she added as an afterthought.

Laurel was tall and slender, almost six feet tall, with the bony features of the true redhead. Her bright copper-colored hair, which she wore, to Elizabeth's mute dismay, in fat dreadlocks, was pulled back and confined by a wide purple band. She had on baggy white pants that were spattered with every imaginable hue of paint and a tight knit top of flaming scarlet. She was almost beautiful and she was definitely memorable.

“Hi, sweetie,” said Elizabeth, hugging her daughter hard. “What's up?”

“Not much. I don't work tonight so I thought I'd come out for a while. I saw Ben at the bridge; he said to tell you he was heading into Asheville to meet some friends. Oh, and he told me about Cletus! That's so awful. He was a really sweet guy. You know I still have that little wooden pig he carved for me. How is Miss Birdie doing? Ben said she was kind of freaking out.”

Elizabeth explained the situation briefly, but already Laurel's attention was wandering. “So you're just driving around the area finding out where Cletus went before he tried to cross the river. Why does it matter to Miss Birdie?” Laurel asked, her head in the refrigerator as she scouted for leftovers. She emerged with a container of pasta and continued. “But anyway, I was looking in the barn for that old aquarium we used to have. I've got an idea for an installation.”

They went into the living room, Laurel talking a mile a minute about her upcoming show. “. . . And they like all my great goddess paintings, so I thought—” She broke off, then with a burst of laughter, she hopped up on the step stool that sat at the foot of the bookshelves and retrieved the bright yellow paper airplane snagged high among the books. “What's this, Mum? Are you lapsing into a second childhood?” Without waiting for an answer she launched the plane toward Elizabeth. “Remember how Rosemary and I used to sail planes from the top of the stairs? There were always some caught up on those bookshelves. There're probably hundreds down behind the books.”

Laurel retrieved the glider from the corner of the sofa where it had landed, then, noticing the lurid drawing on the wings, unfolded the sheet and smoothed it out. She gazed intently at the picture and then squealed, “John the Baptizer! I can't believe it! Mum, he's coming here! On the bypass! Oh, this is so cool; you
have
to go with me.”