Signs in the Blood (17 page)

Hit squeaked awful bad and I was about to ask had he tried puttin a little lard on hit when he said, Miz Tomlin, the law says you're old enough to marry if your father agrees to it. What makes you think that you want a divorce?

Because I don't like bein married to him, I said, and because he whupped me with his belt. Hit didn't seem fitten to tell him the other reasons—all the nasty ways Mister Tomlin had. Seemed to me not likin him ought to be enough.

Lawyer Platt straightened up in his chair and reached for a big black book he had on a shelf by his desk. Miz Tomlin, says he, do you know what Paul says about wives being subject to their husbands?

Back at the depot I was setting on a bench and lookin at a sign across the way that said Wanted, Country Produce of All Kinds. Poultry, Eggs, Corn, & Wheat. Top Prices for Roots & Herbs when Properly Dried. Then what do I see a-comin along the street, hangin on a man's arm but Miz Honeycutt. She kindly sags and staggers as she walks and I think maybe she's been at them whisky wagons she warned me about. But the man who's helpin her along don't look drunk and he steers her over to where I'm a-settin. Miz Honeycutt's eyes is half-closed and her face is all swole up on one side.

Are you the young lady who sat with Miz Honeycutt on the train? the man asks real polite and I say that I am. I'm Doc Adams, says he. I gave Miz Honeycutt some laudanum to help her bear the pain of the extraction but she's slow to shake off the effects. Her husband's meeting her at Gudger's Stand. Would you be so good as to sit with her and make sure she gets off there? I'm fearful she'll sleep all the way to Tennessee.

Miz Honeycutt did sleep most of the way back with her head right there on my shoulder. She snored some and there was a kind of sweet smell on her breath, but something sweeter than whisky. Hit put me in mind of Mister Tomlin and that I weren't no closer to gettin shed of him. I thought about that old Paul too, and wondered how hit was that he'd come to be a saint.

Mister Honeycutt was waitin at Gudger's Stand and me and the man in the black suit helped Miz Honeycutt down off the train. Her husband thanked us and wrapped one arm around his wife, helpin her up into their wagon just as gentle as if she was made of glass. He even give her a kiss on the side of her face that weren't all swole up.

They drove off up toward Dewell Hill and I thought how happy that they looked. Then I took up my basket and started for the bridge. Hit were near six but hit don't get dark afore nine so I weren't lookin to have no trouble gettin home. I was the onliest one of the folks off the train to be headin across the bridge for the rest was all goin in the stores there at Gudger's Stand or up the road the Honeycutts took.

Under the near part of the bridge I see they's three fellers all huddled up together and passin around a fruit jar. I don't know none of them and they look kindly rough, but I hurry on and start across the bridge. I try to walk quiet but my boots on the bridge planks makes a hollow noise and by the time I get to the middle of the bridge I look back to see them followin atter me.

I walk a little faster and they speed up too. I hear them laughin and sayin things like, I'd sure like me some of that, boys. I think about turnin back and headin for the stores where there's other people, but I don't see how I'd get past these three. I think I'll hurry on to the other side. Once off this bridge, thinks I, I'll find some rocks and rock them offen me.

I get to the other side while they are still laughin and punchin at one another. I quick step down to the water's edge where they's a world of smooth river rocks and I fill my basket with as many as it'll hold. Good-sized ones, as big as my fist.

Before I get but a little ways down the branch I hear them comin. They're half runnin and they're not laughin now. I seen her first, hollers one. Shitfire, calls another, hit'll be who catches her first that counts. They was comin up on me fast and they had that look that dogs get when they gang up on something small and helpless. The one who was in front was well ahead of the others and when he got in range I let fly.

The rock hit him on his ear and he let out a great howl but he kept a-comin. You'll pay dear for that, you bitch, he hollers. I flung another and hit went wide but the next one caught him on the knee and he went down. The others kept comin and spread apart on the road to where when I threw a rock at one, the other would slip closer. They was better at dodgin than their friend had been and I was down to but one rock.

When they grabbed me and flung me down, I kept aholt of that rock. I meant to mash the nose of at least one of them but all a sudden they's the sound of a big horse cloppin along and I look up to see Levy. He's got a pistol in his hand and he says, Boys, you best get on out of here, right quick.

They pull me up and step back to their friend who's still a-settin in the road, holdin his knee and a-moanin. We was just funnin with her, says one. No harm done, says t'other, and they haul their friend offen the ground and make for the bridge.

Levy set there atop that great mare a-lookin down at me. What are you doin here, Little Sylvie? he asks me.

I been to Ransom, says I.

He looked at my basket, empty but for the water jar. Where's your husband? says he.

Off buyin timber, says I. He'll not be home for three days.

Levy set there like as if he was makin up his mind about something. Then he says, I'm on my way to your daddy's place anyhow. I'm workin for him these next few days—sleepin in his barn and eatin at his table. I best take you home. He reached out his hand and I grabbed hit with my left and heisted my skirts a little with the other. Then I set my left foot atop hisn and he swung me up behind him. There weren't no saddle and I had to wrap my arms tight around him to keep from slippin offen the mare's broad back.

Levy clicked his tongue and the mare set off at a walk up the branch. I was breathin fast and my heart was beatin so hard that I thought Levy must feel hit against his back. His shirt was damp with the sweat of a July day but hit smelled sweet to me. I laid my cheek against his back and felt his muscles tighten up. Little Sylvie, he said in a voice that sounded kindly strangled like, Little Sylvie, what are you doin?

Them fellers scared me bad, Levy, I said. I feel all swimmie-headed.

He didn't say nothing more for a time and we rode on. We didn't see nary a soul for at that time of day most folks was havin their supper or tendin to their stock. I pressed up close to Levy and I could feel his heart thumpin almost like mine. The mare's back rubbed between my legs and my knees begun to feel as weak as water. I wished that hit was a hundred miles we had to travel instead of just two.

He let me off before we come to Daddy's house so as I could slip along the path through the woods. But by the time I unwrapped my arms from around his waist and got down from off the mare, I was on fire for Levy Johnson. And when hit was black dark and I was settin out on the big rock in front of the cabin, a-listenin to the crickets callin and watchin the lightnin bugs risin above the meadow, hit didn't surprise me none to see a black shape come a-walkin quiet and careful the same path I'd followed. He's a-whistlin that Little Mathey Groves song and I says, Hey, Levy Johnson. Hey.

CHAPTER 13

D
ÉJÀ
V
U
A
LL
O
VER
A
GAIN
 (
S
UNDAY)

T
HE NEXT MORNING
E
LIZABETH SAT AT HER DINING
table looking at the ugly red and yellow postcard, which she had propped against a pot of deep purple African violets. She was sipping her coffee and pondering the possible significance of the card and its lurid image when she heard Ben clattering up the basement stairs, the shortest route into her house from his cabin.

“Morning, Aunt E. Any coffee left?” Without waiting for an answer he headed into the kitchen, calling back over his shoulder, “So how was your date last night?”

“Not a date, Ben,” she replied serenely. “Dinner with a friend. And it was . . . interesting. He may be able to give me some help with the Cletus thing.”

Ben reappeared, a coffee mug in one hand and a heaping bowl of granola in the other. He started for his usual place at the other end of the table. “A late valentine?” he asked. “A little gruesome for my tender young taste but, hey—”

“I was hoping you knew something about it,” Elizabeth said. “I found it under the doormat last night. No telling when it was put there, though probably not too long ago because it was fairly clean until the dogs walked on it.” She picked the postcard up by its corner and showed Ben the blank side. “There's no message written on it. I thought maybe you might have dropped it.”

“Not me,” said Ben, deeply involved with his granola. “Must have come from one of your admirers.”

“There was also,” she continued, ignoring his remark, “a dead skunk on top of the doormat. And I'm reasonably sure the dogs didn't put it there because they didn't have any skunk smell on them. Were you around last night? Did you hear anything unusual—anything at all?”

Ben paused, a spoonful of granola halfway to his mouth. “I thought I caught a whiff of skunk when I came over this morning but last night, no, I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. I was in bed with earphones on and I had the music on pretty loud, you know.”

She knew. When Ben played his favorite bluegrass music, it was generally so loud that he'd likely be unaware of anything short of a tank crashing through the walls of his cabin. He obviously hadn't heard the gunshot that had brought her dogs back to the house.

“I think someone was creeping around in the woods,” she said, and went on to describe the events of the previous night, ending with “. . . and there was a light up at the ridgeline.”

“Man, that's weird,” Ben said. “I guess it could have been someone hunting out of season, but that doesn't explain the skunk or this thing.” He nodded at the postcard.

A thought occurred to Elizabeth. “I didn't show you what I found on my car Friday,” she said, leaving the table and stepping out onto the front porch. She retrieved the red bumper sticker and thorny twig from the old watering can and brought them to the table.

“I was walking through town with Manuel,” she explained, “and we were obviously friendly. Then I gave him a ride. We stopped for groceries and went in the store together. That has to be when someone stuck this . . . this thing on the back of my car. I must have shoved the groceries in the side door, because I didn't see it till I got home.”

Ben poked at the sticker with a disdainful finger. “What's the quote? I'm sure you looked it up.”

“Oh, just angry old Bible stuff about going in to other nations and snares and traps and perishing off the land and thorns in the eyes. It makes me furious. I assume it's the work of those militia creeps we were talking about.”

“Probably,” Ben said, looking from the bumper sticker to the bleeding heart on the postcard. “So, are you thinking that the skunk and the heart are from them, too? That maybe it was them up on the ridge?”

“I don't know. It seems like a lot of trouble to go to just because I gave a Mexican guy a ride. There must be some other explanation. . . . I just don't know what it is right now. And another thing, what do you know about a Starshine Community over on Bear Tree?”

“That bunch of New Age wackos? Not much. They're supposed to be heavy into organic farming, but when our local growers group approached them about joining, they said they weren't interested. They never show up at any of the regional farmers' markets—I don't have any idea what they're up to. Maybe growing organic weed.” Ben laughed as he took his empty bowl and cup into the kitchen. He whistled the theme from
The Twilight Zone
as he rinsed his dishes and headed out the front door.

Elizabeth cleared away her own breakfast dishes and went into the little office where the computer was. Investigations into Cletus's death were on hold till Hawkins had talked to the medical examiner. Right now, she thought, she would find out more about the Starshine Community. She planned to call Laurel around noon when her daughter was likely to be getting up after a late night of tending bar. Laurel, with her wide range of acquaintances in Asheville as well as Marshall County, would probably know something about the star children. Till then Elizabeth decided to check out the Starshine Community's Web page and see what that might reveal.

The page opened with a solid black screen. A many-colored starburst appeared in the center, small at first, then blossoming into myriads of tiny lights that swirled hypnotically before resolving into a menu. Elizabeth chose an option that would add sound, clicked on
About Starshine Community,
and sat back to watch and listen.

Another starburst and Polaris's head, with riveting turquoise eyes and flowing white hair, appeared at its center. Ethereal sounds, of the type she had heard called “space music,” began to drift from two speakers, and Polaris's voice, resonant and enthralling, began.
“Welcome, starchild. Welcome, seeker. The heavens in their circuits have brought you to us. Endlessly evolving, endlessly revolving—”
Here Polaris's face vanished and the starburst began to form an eddying vortex. Elizabeth found herself staring fixedly into it as the music swelled all around her. The voice continued,
“This is the first step in your long journey to your primogenesis. . . .”

The screen dissolved to a busy street scene, crowded sidewalks and scowling faces. One figure, a young woman, stood a little apart with a look of bewilderment on her face. She was surrounded by a barely visible silver aura.

“Many of you have felt the signs—a feeling of alienation, a sense of
déjà vu.
Many of you, as children, have wondered if your parents
were
your parents, so unlike them you were.”

The urban scene dissolved to an idyllic country setting. A beautiful orchard, trees heavy with pink and white blossoms, lush green grass sprinkled with tiny white starlike flowers, and a group of young women sitting in a circle, hands cupped palm over palm, eyes closed in meditation. With a shock of recognition Elizabeth realized that she was looking at the same orchard she had driven by only a few days ago, possibly even the same young women, though not so obviously pregnant.
Like the man said, déjà vu all over again,
she thought and waited for the voice-over.

“If you seek to discover your true place in the universe, if you would reclaim your true heritage among the numberless stars, if you would rejoin the sidereal family and seize your birthright . . .”

Here the pastoral image changed to a shot of the night sky, but a night sky rarely seen by modern man. This was the pure sky, unsullied by man-made light, the sky that one might see in the middle of the ocean or a vast desert, a sky crowded with stars like a thick scattering of sand. Phosphorescent yellow-orange letters swooped across the screen and lined up to read “Come home to Starshine Community,” just as Polaris's voice offered the same invitation. The glowing screen changed to a businesslike list of addresses and phone numbers and other contact information.

Elizabeth clicked her way back to the menu.
Starshine Retreats; Informational Weekend Workships; The Farm; The Studios; The Crèche.
Methodically working her way through the information she learned that Starshine Community offered weeklong retreats for “those starchildren who must, for a time, remain in the world.” These retreats were offered “as refreshment for the spirit and as a chance for the starchild to continue his or her evolution.” The weekend workshops for “seekers” were “a time for the sincere seeker to evaluate his or her place in the cosmos and to determine his or her current stage of evolution.”

Ah,
mused Elizabeth,
in just one short weekend, you too can know your place in the cosmos. Quick workers, these star people. I wonder what Cletus thought about them. Polaris talked as if he'd been there often.
She noted, as the prices for a weekend workshop scrolled into view, that enlightenment was not cheap. Six hundred and seventy-five dollars, even with organic vegetarian meals and a “rotation” with Polaris, whatever that was, seemed high.
Could Janie afford something like that?
she wondered.
What do they charge to
live
at the community?

She clicked impatiently through the rest of the menu. There was the organic farm “with growing times attuned to the sidereal calendar”; the studios, which produced, it appeared, a wealth of airbrushed “otherworldly” art, all for sale; and the crèche, which was not a day-care center, as she had assumed, but rather, what used to be called a home for unwed mothers.
A little something for everyone,
she thought.
But what's the attraction for Janie?

She glanced at the clock on the wall, noting that it wasn't quite time to call Laurel. A thought struck her: If she could get in touch with, what was his name, a yuppie-sounding name—Trey, no, Trent Woodsomething—the young man she'd given a ride out of the Starshine Community, maybe he could tell her more. She grabbed the phone book and quickly found the number for River Runners.

After a short wait, she was speaking with Debbie, one of the co-owners of the popular local rafting company. Elizabeth explained who she was and what she wanted.

Debbie paused a minute then said, “You're Ben's aunt, the lady with the herb farm, up on Ridley Branch, right?” then without waiting for more information went on, “Trent Woodbern isn't here anymore. He was planning to stay through the summer—one of our guides broke a leg rock climbing and Trent was going to fill in. Anyway, Trent did a couple of trips, and then some weird guys came in . . . let me see . . . I think it was Thursday . . . asking about him. Trent saw their car pull up and told me to say he wasn't here. He ducked into the back room and stayed there till the guys left. It was too weird. As soon as they drove away, he came out and he was seriously freaked—shaking all over. He told me he was sorry but he couldn't finish out the season; he would have to leave immediately.”

“Do you know where he went? Can you tell me how to get in touch with him?” Elizabeth asked.

“He left me his e-mail address, that's all. Said something about no one could trace him by that.” Debbie hesitated, then said, “I guess it wouldn't hurt to let you have that. I mean, I know who you are and everything. Your daughter Rosemary used to babysit my kids when she was in high school.”

“That's right, I remember now. It's been a while. But back to Trent, Debbie, do you remember what kind of car they were driving—those people who scared him so?”

“I sure do. It was a brand-new silver Navigator. Wretched thing took up almost two places in our parking lot. I don't know why they don't make those monster SUVs illegal.”

Elizabeth scribbled down the e-mail address that Debbie gave her, thanked her for the information, and hung up. She glanced at the clock—still not noon. She punched the computer On button and went to the e-mail page. With a feeling of optimistic doubt she typed a brief message:
Trent, I'm the woman who gave you a ride out of the Starshine Community. Debbie at River Runners knows who I am and gave me your e-mail address. I have some questions to ask about the community, as the daughter of a friend is planning to join. Please reply. Elizabeth Goodweather.

She keyed Send, hopefully flinging the message out into cyberspace.
Like throwing a coin in a wishing well,
she thought,
or a message in a bottle into the ocean.

Just as she turned off the computer, the telephone at her elbow rang. “Hi, Mum, 'sme.”

“Hey, Laurel, I was getting ready to call you. Tell me, do you know anything about a place on Bear Tree called the Starshine Community?”

“The baby place?” Laurel asked. “I've just heard that it's a really awesome place to have a baby—they do that underwater birthing thing and they have midwives and they're real supportive for single women. Why do you want to know?
You
're not, oh, that's silly, I mean, you couldn't be . . .”

“No, dear,” Elizabeth replied. “That
would
be a miracle on several levels. It's about the daughter of a friend . . .” It took a few minutes to explain about Phillip Hawkins and his daughter Janie, and by the time Elizabeth had finished Laurel's attention was fully engaged.

“So what does this guy look like, Mum, this cop?”

“Ah . . .” Elizabeth considered the question. “Danny DeVito, but tall? Or at least taller than me. But pay attention, Laurel, I don't know that his daughter is pregnant—I think she just wants to join the community.”

“Weird,” intoned Laurel. “I know I've seen literature about that place somewhere . . . the women's center maybe. Anyway, a guy I know said that his ex-girlfriend had moved to Starshine almost a year ago. He was really bitter, claimed she'd been seduced by the head guru or whatever out there.” There was a pause. “I don't think he meant that literally but—”

“Laurel, could you find out more about that girl? I'd really like to know if she's still there.”

“I'll try, Mum. Rolf has a studio down on the river. I'll see what I can find out. But what I called about was the revival. I've got to see John the Baptizer! Did I tell you—he does his paintings
during
the revival meetings—while he's preaching? That's why they have that terrific spontaneity. The first one's Wednesday; will you go with me?”