Signs in the Blood (30 page)

The snake was moving away from her now. It seemed to be making for the open door on the other side, but then it stopped and began to investigate the area under the driver's seat.
No, not there,
Elizabeth prayed silently.
Go
out
! Now!
As she watched intently, the rattler began to slide under the seat.
Out! I've got to get to Laurel!

“Oh, no, you don't!” Without thinking about the consequences, Elizabeth grabbed the reptile firmly around its narrow neck and flung it out of the car and into the ditch. “Arghh!” she cried as she shook her hands madly to get rid of the feel of the snake, then watched, trembling with triumph and adrenaline, as it slithered away into the weeds and vanished.

She was still standing there when she heard the sputter and rattle of an ancient truck approaching. It was the same old man she had raced by on the bridge. Now he gave her and her car a contemptuous glare as he crept by and disappeared around the next curve.

Frantic with worry and desperate to get to Laurel, Elizabeth jogged a little way down the road, in the opposite direction from the snake, and found a long dead branch. Snapping off the twigs as she went, she hurried back to her car. She had to get to Lonesome Holler but she needed to be sure there weren't any more snakes in the jeep. The thought of more snakes made her feel weak all over and she wanted to sit down.
I can't believe I grabbed that rattler. I didn't decide to; I just did it.
Her heart was pounding and she bent over abruptly, putting her hands on her knees and hoping she wasn't going to faint.

In a moment she felt calmer and she approached the jeep, still idling there on the roadside. Through the open door she could see a rough edge of burlap protruding from under the driver's seat. She jumped back, trembling. Then, gingerly, she poked the branch at the material. Nothing happened. Slowly, she maneuvered the branch to drag the burlap bag out of its hiding place. It resisted her attempts at first, but she continued to manipulate the branch and tug at the burlap. At last she hooked the bag out of the car, leaping away from it as it sailed through the air. It landed a car's length away and lay there on the pavement, flat and empty.

A red fog of anger rose in her mind as she remembered that Harice Tyler had used a similar bag
—or this one!—
when she had first encountered him. “Goddammit!” she shouted, spooking a blue jay out of a tree. “Only then it was copperheads.”

Somehow the anger cleared her head and she used the branch quickly, but thoroughly, to assure herself that there were no more snakes hiding in the car. Filled with a cold fury, she slammed shut all the doors, got in, and put the jeep in gear.

She was at the foot of Lonesome Holler in just over six minutes. Laurel's old green Subaru was pulled over to the side of the road and a piece of paper was flapping under one of the wipers.

Mum, I woke up real early this morning and decided to come right out. I wanted to get some pictures of MC in the first light. See you when you get here. XOX, L

XI-M
AY
1902

I was like to drop, not havin had no sleep so I took myself up the hill to the little place in the woods where I used to lay down with Levy. I felt so crazy-like that I could almost believe Aetha was right and I was just a-dreamin all that had happened. The ground was dry by now and I lay down in the little hidden place and fell fast asleep.

When I woke the sun was droppin down toward Pinnacle and my breastes was tight full again. I made for the cabin but the door was still bolted. I called out, Mister Tomlin, I need to feed Malindy. I say it nice and soft, hopin he'll not make me have the blindfold again.

At first he don't answer. Then he says in a voice that sounds hoarse-like, Your brat's asleep; come back in a little while.

I can't hear a sound from Malindy and that don't seem right. So I go back to the rock and clamber up to the window again. My fingers is tore up from before and I leave bloody marks over the scratches on the logs but I manage to get to where I can just peer over the sill.

Mister Tomlin was layin on the bed and didn't have on nothing but his shirt. He had a bottle of whisky in his hand and my baby was layin acrost his lap. Malindy didn't have on no clothes nor nary a hippin. She was snorin awful loud and didn't look natural somehow. Then I seen Mister Tomlin take a big swaller from that bottle and lay it to one side.

I tried to hoist myself up through the window but he come over and banged the shutter closed again. I heared him latch it and then heared the bedstead creak as he lay back down. I knocked on the shutter and called out, Mister Tomlin, you let me see my baby, but he didn't answer nary a word. I could hear his breath comin fast like it done those other times and I called out, What are you doin to Malindy?

I scrabbled until I could get me a purchase on one of the logs and pull myself higher. They was a knothole in the shutter and I could just make out to put my eye to it. Mister Tomlin was layin there on the bed like before but his head was flung back and his eyes was rolled up till didn't but the whites show. He had my baby in his hands and he was a-rubbin her up and down over his floppy old thing. Hit won't do no good, you nasty old turdhead, I hollered. You leave my baby alone.

I tried to push the shutter open but lost my grip and slipped down the side of the cabin. I stood there on that big rock, like to bust with hate for Mister Tomlin. Just then he hollered out that hit was his baby and he could do with hit like he wanted.

There weren't nothing for it but to run down to tell my daddy about what Mister Tomlin was doin. I near flew down the trail but when I got to the house they was all gone. I tried to think where they might be and then it come to me that hit was Wednesday and they was all at the Wednesday night church meetin. I ran in the house to see had maybe Romarie stayed home but no one answered when I called up the stairs. So I turned to leave, thinking to run to the church house and tell ever one of them about the terrible things Mister Tomlin was doin to my baby.

Just above the door, restin on a pair of deer antlers, was the English shotgun Mister Tomlin had give my daddy. I pushed an old mule-eared chair up to the door and clumb up so's I could reach down that fine shiny double-barreled shotgun. I knowed hit would have a kick even harder than Daddy's old gun. That one had like to knock me down when I had kilt that old coon what got all the cockerels.

I went to where Daddy keeps his shotgun shells. There was birdshot, like he used to shoot dove, and number five, like he used for turkeys. I looked till I found the double ought buckshot. Daddy had showed me how there was twelve round balls in each shell and he had told me how they would fan out and knock down any big buck. I put two shells in the shotgun and some extry in my pocket. There was a great peace come over me for now I knowed there was a way.

I was climbin the road back to the cabin when I heared hoofbeats. I drawed back in the thick brush and hid. I could hear that hit was Mister Tomlin and he was a-singin as he rode, singin about bein washed in the blood of the lamb.

I drawed a bead on him just like my daddy had showed me. With my left eye shut I looked down the long barrel to the little nub stickin up there at the end, then I leveled the gun till that nub was restin on the ramp there at the back. I brung the gun around slow till that nub shown against Mister Tomlin's whiskery face. I kept it trained on him as he rode and I could see them wattles of hisn, quiverin as he sung. I knowed that I had but to squeeze one trigger and he'd drop down as he went.

And I'd a done it too but it come to me that might not no one believe me about what he done to my baby. Like as not they'd arrest me, maybe even hang me. I knowed if that happened I'd likely never see Malindy again so I lowered the shotgun real slow and waited till he was good and gone and I couldn't hear his hateful singin no more.

Then I hightailed it back up the hill to our cabin. I thought to hear Malindy a-cryin but hit was quiet as could be. The shutter was still closed and he'd padlocked the cabin door. I didn't think twicet, just shot that padlock offen the door.

Hit didn't take but the one barrel to do it but that shotgun kicked like a mule. Hit would have knocked me plumb offen the porch hadn't I had my back mashed hard against one of them locust poles holdin up the porch roof. My ears was ringin so loud with the sound hit made I couldn't hear nothing else. I knowed the loud noise must of waked my baby and she was likely just a-screamin but I couldn't hear her. I pushed open the door and run across the room to the cradle. I was laughin and cryin and my dress front was wet with milk.

The cradle was empty, just the little rumpled sheets of domestic that I had hemmed so careful and the little quilt I had pieced when I was waitin for her. I put my hand on them and they was wet and cold.

Malindy, I called out and pulled back the covers of the bed. Malindy! I'd watched Mister Tomlin go and I knowed he didn't have her with him.

She weren't in the bedstead nor nowhere in sight and, though the ringin had near bout quit, still I couldn't hear no sound of her. I tore into the boxes and baskets that was stacked in the corner, callin out her name.

When I found her at the bottom of Mister Tomlin's travelin valise, I knowed right off she were dead. She was still warm but her eyes couldn't see me and when I took her up she felt like an old rag doll without no stuffin. I opened my shirtwaist front and put her to my breast though I knowed hit weren't no use. I bent my head down to kiss her like I had wanted to before and I could smell the sickly sweet smell of Mister Tomlin's medicine on her little lips. The taste was bitter and I could see a sticky trail of the medicine runnin down her chest to between her legs.

I don't know how long hit was that I set there, just a-whisperin to her and callin her all the pretty names I had for her. I even sang her the horsey song but when she began to grow chill in my arms, I made up my mind. I'll not have you buried under his name, Malindy, I promised as I laid her on the bed. Then I tore one of the pages from out the account book Mister Tomlin kept and wrote down the truth of what had happened. I querled up the paper real small and put hit into the empty medicine bottle that was there by her cradle.

Your name is Malindy Johnson, I told my baby, and I washed her clean with the water that was there in the bucket and dressed her in the little white outing gown that I'd worked pink and purple thrift flowers on. I tucked the bottle with the paper in it under her gown next to her heart and I wrapped her tight in the blue and white World Without End quilt. She looked so natural hit was almost like she was just asleep.

I carried her outside the cabin and laid her beneath the plumy ferns nigh the branch. The ground was soft there and I thought she could have the music of the water rushin over the rocks for a lullaby. Then I took the grub hoe from the shed behind the cabin and commenced to dig. I sung the song about the angels as I labored.

The dirt was soft and she was so little. Hit didn't take no time to make a hole big enough and deep enough. I laid her down and covered her face with the quilt. Then I begun to put in the dirt, a handful at a time till she was all covered. My tears was rainin down on her but every handful of dirt took her farther away from me. When I couldn't see her no more, I finished fillin in the hole, rakin the dirt with the hoe. Then I kneeled down beside her grave and prayed that I would die too. Hit seemed that there weren't nothing left in this world for me. But when I closed my eyes I thought of Mister Tomlin, a widder man again and lookin for a young wife. I'd not have him do another girl this way, thinks I.

I got up from my knees and told Malindy goodby and I went back into the cabin. I took a shell from out my apron pocket and reloaded the shotgun Mister Tomlin had give my daddy for me. Hit wouldn't take but one barrel for what I was naming to do but I meant to be ready. Then I set down to wait. I knowed hit would be nigh dark afore he come back but there would be light aplenty. . . .

CHAPTER 24

B
EHOLD
H
E
C
OMETH
 (
W
EDNESDAY)

E
LIZABETH DROVE AT A RECKLESS SPEED, SQUEALED TO
a stop by Walter and Ollie's trailer, and started sprinting up the road. Walter and Ollie came out onto their porch to see who it was, but she just called to them that she would stop by later and explain. As she rounded the first bend she could still hear Ollie chattering.

A huge poplar tree lay across the road, its tangle of still-living branches making passage almost impossible. As she crawled under the trunk near the root ball, Elizabeth could see that she was following a well-worn trail, the same path John the Baptizer must take when he came to visit his daughter and the child.
Calm down,
she thought, as she scrambled over another downed tree, a locust this time.
You got here before him and that's what counts.

It was many fallen trees and at least forty minutes before the little cabin came into view. Elizabeth was panting with exhaustion as she opened the door of the room where Mary Cleophas and her baby had been. No one was there, but otherwise it looked just as it had two days ago—the neat cots, the boxes of food, the Bible on the table, the little paper cranes dangling on their threads.
Laurel's probably got her up by the pool taking pictures,
Elizabeth thought, and hurried out the door and up the hill to the clearing in the woods.

It was as empty as the cabin. Elizabeth stood, hands on hips, under the big oak tree that grew by the side of the pool, wondering where her daughter and Mary Cleophas could have gone. She started to call Laurel's name, but her throat was dry and burning with thirst. Kneeling by the little pool, she bent to scoop the cool water in her cupped hands.

Mary Cleophas's pale blank eyes stared up at her through the clear water. Her mouth was open in a silent cry and her long blond hair wreathed around her and the swaddled child that she still clutched in her arms. Her body swayed in the water.

“My god, my god,” Elizabeth whispered. Then: “Laurel!” she called frantically. “Laurel!”

The door to the room where the paintings were kept was shut; she pushed it open and called again, “Laurel!” The light here was dim, but against the far wall she saw the unruly tangle of red hair that was her daughter's most arresting feature. Elizabeth's cry of relief ended in a sob.

Half-concealed by a stack of canvases was a life-size portrait of Laurel's head and upper body, painted in John the Baptizer's ruthless style. White flowers twined through the flaming red hair, and she wore a purple-and-orange shirt that Elizabeth recognized. Elizabeth put out a tentative finger, but she already knew. The paint was still wet.

She burst back out the door, whispering her daughter's name. A muffled thumping a little way off caught her attention. It emanated from a tumbledown outbuilding so overgrown with wild grapevines that she hadn't noticed it in her first frenzied search of the place. A small high window, fringed by the remains of rusty chicken wire and screened by vigorous green vines, faced her. “Laurel?” she said softly, and the thumping grew more pronounced.

The door was on the other side of the little building, held shut by an old three-tined pitchfork run through two hasps. She pulled the pitchfork out and, holding it in her right hand, cautiously opened the door. Up against the wall beneath the window sat Laurel, her bright clothes and hair powdery with dirt and the dust of ancient chicken droppings. A faded red bandanna gagged her and a rope bound her arms behind her, wrapped around her slim waist, and snaked down to tie first her knees and then her ankles together. Withered wildflowers clung to her dreadlocks. Her eyes were wide and angry and she made impatient noises in her throat.

Elizabeth dropped the pitchfork and ran to her daughter's side. “Laurel, sweetie, are you all right? Has he hurt you?” She tugged at the bandanna, working at the knot with trembling fingers. At last it was loose and Laurel spat out the second wadded rag that had been in her mouth. “Mum,” she whispered, “he's insane! He killed Mary Cleophas. He—”

“Where is he?” Elizabeth hissed urgently, her fingers busy with the knots that bound her daughter's wrists.

“He said he was going to the mountaintop to talk to God. But he's been gone a while. Oh, Mum, hurry! We have to get away.”

The knots were many and tightly tied. As Elizabeth struggled to free her daughter, Laurel gave her a frantic account of the past few hours.

“I got here about seven and walked up. I'd made sure his car was back at the tent revival place, so I figured Mary Cleophas would be alone and I could talk to her about who the baby's father was, as well as getting some good pictures of her in the early light. When I got to the cabin, the door was open and I went in. No one was there so I figured maybe she'd gone outside to pee or something. I was just standing there looking around when all of a sudden this shape filled the door.” She squirmed uncomfortably. “It feels like I could slip my wrists out if you can just loosen the ropes a little more.”

Laurel's numbed hands fumbled ineffectively at the knots around her knees as she continued. “It was him, John the Baptizer, and he remembered me from the day I went to talk to him about the show. It was a little creepy, after what you'd said about him maybe being the baby's father, but I tried to act all calm. He said he'd gotten a ride with someone last night after the revival because his car wouldn't start and he had something important to do out here. All the time he kept staring at me with this funny hungry look and I was starting to get really weirded out. Mum, for God's sake, hurry! He could be back any minute!” Her voice took on an edge of hysteria.

“I swear I'll always carry a knife after this,” Elizabeth muttered, and tackled the ropes at Laurel's ankles. “I've almost got them, sweetie. Just hold still.” Elizabeth's fingers were bleeding now and most of her fingernails, short though they were, were torn.

“I saw Mary Cleophas and the baby in the pool,” she whispered. “Why did he kill them?”

Laurel answered in a strangled whisper. “When I asked him where they were, he said God had revealed to him that the baby was the Antichrist and that he must put it to death. And Mary Cleophas, too, so that he could take a new bride.”

She swallowed a sob. “Then he grabbed me and shoved that stinking rag in my mouth. He's incredibly strong, Mum; he got my hands behind my back and held my wrists with just one hand. All the time he was singing this creepy song about the flowers and birds and the voice of the turtle and shit like that. He tied my wrists and he made me walk up to the pool and he showed me what he'd done, like it was something he was proud of. He said he'd sent them to glory at dawn like God had told him. Oh, Mum, did you see them? Mary Cleophas was still holding that poor baby!”

The knots at the ankles were stubborn and Laurel's frantic attempts to help with her still numb fingers only slowed Elizabeth. Keeping her voice even, and hoping to distract her daughter, she asked, “What else did he say?”

“He said that God had sent me to be his spouse and that together we would have a child that would do something or other. Rule with a rod of iron, I think it was. Anyway, he started fumbling with my clothes and I told him I was having my period.” She glared defiantly at her mother. “I know it sounds lame, but it worked. He backed off like I'd said I had AIDS and he said he couldn't go in unto me while I was unclean. So he tied me up to a tree and stuck flowers in my hair and did one of his damn paintings of me.”

The last knots around Laurel's ankles were finally giving way when they heard a voice echoing in the stillness.
“Behold he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills . . . Thou art all fair my love, there is no spot in thee . . . Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: Honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon.”

John the Baptizer was approaching, singing in a joyous baritone.