Signs in the Blood (4 page)

Aunt Belvy raised her hand and pointed heavenward, then swayed and at once two men were there to catch her when she fell. Elizabeth felt stunned
—Was she talking to me?—
and glanced at Miss Birdie to see what her reaction had been. Birdie's head was bowed; she was smiling peacefully as her lips moved in prayer.

A tall man in black trousers and a pale blue long-sleeved shirt made his way to the front of the room. He was broad shouldered and slim hipped, with a wide, unexpectedly sensual smile that flashed white against the rich tan of his face. His dark, hooded eyes swept the little congregation and there was an expectant hush as people settled back on their benches. It seemed to Elizabeth that his gaze rested on her briefly, summed her up, found her wanting, and moved on. She noticed two young women sitting together in a pew near the front nudging each other and blushing as the man at the pulpit nodded and smiled at them.
He'd be good-looking if he didn't use so much hair goop,
Elizabeth thought.
A preacher with bedroom eyes, how odd.

“Thank you, Lord, for layin' your hand on Sister Belvy.” The tall man held up a Bible with an odd mottled binding. “It's in His Word, ain't it?”

“Preach it, brother!” called out a man on the front row.

“First Corinthians, book twelve, verses eight through ten tells us ‘For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; to another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues.'” He was speaking from memory, the Bible still unopened. “‘They shall speak with new tongues,' it says in Mark.”

The sermon, if it was a sermon, continued. Aunt Belvy, now recovered, sat up straight near the front, fanning herself vigorously and calling out an occasional amen. Miss Birdie had resumed her seat and was leaning back with her eyes closed, breathing heavily. Elizabeth relaxed slightly, keeping an eye on the as yet untouched serpent boxes, and surreptitiously began again to study her surroundings.

The little congregation, no more than twenty people, sat on simply made wooden benches. The white-painted walls of the concrete block building were unadorned except for a faded reproduction of Leonardo's
Last Supper
on the wall behind the pulpit, beside a plaque bearing the verses which defined this “signs-following” group of believers.

And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.
Mark 16:17–18

The windows on either side of the room were filled with plain frosted glass. A low platform held a lectern, a table with paper cups, a plastic jug of water, and the serpent boxes. To one side of the platform sat a man with a guitar and a woman and a teenage girl, each with a tambourine. Elizabeth had noticed that the girl had managed, in the way of teenagers everywhere, to look bored, even as she had rattled her tambourine all through the frenetic praying and speaking in tongues.

In general, the men and women of the church had the look of the hardworking rural folk of Appalachia. The women all wore dresses, most with long sleeves even on this warm evening. All had long hair and many let it fall unconfined down their backs. None wore jewelry, not even a wedding band. A few sleepy children leaned against their mothers. The men wore jeans or slacks and long-sleeved shirts buttoned to the neck. Their hair was uniformly short and there was not a beard or a mustache to be seen. One or two of the younger men sported modest sideburns, trimmed a careful inch or two below the ear top.

The sermon appeared to be winding down now. The guitar began again and, with a final song, the service was over and men and women began to make their way out of the little building. Elizabeth waited in her place while Miss Birdie went forward to speak with Aunt Belvy. The man who had been preaching tucked his Bible under his arm and picked up both of the serpent boxes. He stepped down off the platform and stood chatting casually with two other men. One jerked his head in Elizabeth's direction and said something. There was a low laugh from the other two men.

Miss Birdie and Aunt Belvy appeared to be catching up on several years' worth of talk. Elizabeth put her hand in the pocket of her denim skirt and fingered her car keys.
Come on, Birdie! It must be nearly eleven and we've got an hour's worth of twisty roads ahead of us,
she thought, then relaxed.
Who knows, maybe Aunt Belvy's explaining her prophecy to Birdie. Maybe she's even telling her what happened to Cletus.

The tall preacher with the serpent boxes left the other two men and started for the door at the back of the room. A dark-haired young woman, one of the pair who had blushed when the preacher nodded to them, came toward him from the pew where she had been waiting, but he brushed past her with a polite word and continued down the aisle. Elizabeth saw the look of puzzled hurt on the girl's face change to anger as the preacher came nearer. He stopped in front of Elizabeth and, leaning down to set the boxes on the bench, said softly, “I don't believe I know who you are.”

Elizabeth couldn't take her eyes off the Bible under his arm. The binding was snakeskin, the distinctive diamond pattern of the rattlesnake. Following her gaze, he suddenly thrust the book under her nose. “
That
what you come to see?”

Jerking back involuntarily, Elizabeth was instantly annoyed with herself for letting this oddly intense man startle her. She put out her right hand and answered evenly, “I'm Elizabeth Goodweather, Miss Birdie's neighbor. Aunt Belvy invited her to come to church and since Miss Birdie can't drive at night she asked me to bring her.”

Ignoring her outstretched hand, he asked, “Do you read your Bible? Do you know what it says in First Peter?”

She hesitated, tempted to compose some answer along the lines of
Yes, I have read the Bible; no, I have no idea what it says in First Peter, and why are you asking me anyway?
Without waiting for her response, however, he shook his Bible under her nose and continued, “. . . ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold.” The snakeskin binding brushed near her left ear, lightly touching her little gold hoop earring, and she had to repress a second backward movement.

“I can tell you ain't no Holiness woman.” He laughed briefly, then his dark eyes bored into hers. He seemed to consider for a moment. Then, as if the words were forced from him, he said, “You read your Bible and come back another time. You might could get hit with the Holiness gun.” Sticking the snakeskin-covered Bible back under his arm, he picked up the serpent boxes. “Too bad didn't no one get an anointin' to handle tonight. You'd'a seen what this is really all about, Elizabeth Goodweather.”

He raised one of the flat brown boxes up to Elizabeth's face and held it there, swinging slightly from its hinged handle. A thick, musky smell oozed toward her, filling her nostrils with some perilous message. She could see a slight movement through the air holes and hear a dry rustle as the big snake shifted defensively against the tilt of the box. Willing herself not to draw back again, Elizabeth tried to hide the chill that was lifting the hairs on her arms. “I'd like to see that,” she told the tall preacher, realizing with some surprise that she really would.

As they drove back to North Carolina, over the mountains, through Hot Springs and back toward Ridley Branch, Miss Birdie was full of ideas about what Aunt Belvy's words might have meant. “She said to look to the hills for help and that the wicked was hidin' in the dens and the rocks of the mountains. We got to look for the answer there, not in the river like Sheriff said. I reckon that sanctuary in the wilderness that's red with blood is where Cletus got killed, so that's what we got to find.”

“Miss Birdie,” Elizabeth interposed gently, “you know, I don't think the sheriff's going to pay much attention to what Aunt Belvy said tonight.”

Miss Birdie looked at her in amazement. “Law, Lizzie Beth, I know that. That's why you're a-goin' to have to help me search in them hollers where Cletus used to go wanderin'. Like Belvy done said, ‘The righteous will seek and the truth will be known.'”

L
ITTLE
S
YLVIE
'
S
S
TORY

I-A
PRIL
1901

I weren't but thirteen years of age when Daddy sold me to a stranger man for a shotgun and five hundred dollars. I didn't know that was what he done, but he done it all the same. Mister Tomlin was a rich man from over to Tennessee. He rode a handsome bay single-footin geldin named Nebuchadnezzar for some king in the Bible and he was travelin through our country buyin up standin timber. They said he was lookin out for a place by the river where he could build him a sawmill and float the lumber down to Newport. Mister Tomlin was an old man, something over fifty. They said he'd buried two wives and had grown children livin over to Greeneville, but he was most as stout as a young man and his hair was still as black as a crow's wing.

Me and Clytie was up on the hillside lookin for guinea nestes when we seen that fine horse a-comin up our road. Hit was nigh dinnertime and Clytie looked at me and said Lo and behold, here comes a stranger man and what do we have in the house to give him to eat? She knowed as well as I did that there weren't nothing but some cold biscuits from breakfast. We hadn't laid out to cook no dinner for Daddy had gone off to Ransom early that morning and we didn't look to see him back till dark. Maybe not till morning for Daddy was bad to drink when he went into town. He'd not abide nare drop of likker in the house, but when he went to Ransom, more often than not he'd get him a bottle of whisky. Then he'd have to drink it all up for he wouldn't bring it home. Romarie said that he'd solemn promised our Mommy when she was a-dyin not to have no likker in the house.

Mommy died birthin me. I was her seventh. The first one was Romarie, who was a great grown girl when I was born. She was twenty-eight years old when I married Mister Tomlin, an old maid and like to stay one with the sharp tongue and mean ways she has. Romarie says hit was havin to raise up all us young uns atter Mommy died made her so ill-natured but Aetha, who's twenty-two and married to the Worley boy down the branch, says Romarie always was mean as a snake. They was three boys born too, between Aetha and Clytie, but they ever one died afore they was a year old. They're up in the graveyard on the hill, just three little stones in a line along side of the big white rock Daddy hauled on a sled to mark where Mommy lies.

Aetha says she can remember when Daddy used to be different, back afore all the boys died. Said he was allus laughin and whistlin and grabbin Mommy round the waist a-wantin her to dance. Aetha says that it seems like with every boy child that died, some of the spirit went out of him and then when Mommy was took he turned into the hard, scowlin Daddy he is now. Course I know hit's been hard on him, tryin to work a farm without no sons. He's taught us girls to do a man's work though and he sometimes hires help from the Johnson boys over to t'other side of Pinnacle. And I will say that though he is right strict with us girls, Daddy ain't never lifted a hand to hit a one of us. The worst he ever done is to call us turdhead iffen we're careless in our hoein and chop down a young baccer plant.

The stranger man kept a-comin up the road and I knowed he had to be makin for our place for they ain't no one else livin in this lonesome cove. Used to be Mommy's brother lived in the little cabin at the upper place but three years back of this, he married Widder Caldwell and moved to her place over on Bear Tree Creek.

I looked and seen Clytie hightailin it for the house, pullin off her sunbonnet whilst she ran. I figured she wanted to be there to greet the stranger man and that she was goin to try to primp a little first. Clytie is sixteen and like a she-cat in season when she sees a man. She says iffen she don't marry afore she's twenty, she'll throw herself in the river sooner than slave for Daddy the rest of her borned days. Myself, I don't see that it makes no difference one way or t'other who you slave for.

The stranger man reined up his horse and rested there in his saddle by the foot log that spans the branch runnin in front of our house. He didn't make no move to light, just set there a-gazin round at the barns and the house and the big bottom where we'd soon be plantin corn. I looked for him to hello the house and waited to see if Clytie would have had time to shift her rags and put on her Sunday dress. Then I seen Daddy a-comin up the road on old Bell. What on earth? I thinks to myself. What's he doin back so soon? I lit out down the hill for I knowed Daddy'd be wantin his dinner and bein as Romarie had left out early and gone down the branch to tend to Miz Phelps who was havin her fourth, hit was on me and Clytie to get the victuals.

I hit the back porch and went to the bin and began to bolt some meal for cornbread. I hollered to Clytie to build up the fire and in just a few minutes here she come, prissin along in her Sunday dress. She was bitin at her lips to make them red and I believe she had put powder on her face. I knowed she had some for I seen it in the box where she keeps her plunder.

I'll make the cornbread and biscuits, Sylvie, Clytie says. You build up the fire and go out to the meathouse and get some sidemeat. And pull some of them lamb's quarters. We can cook them up quick for a sallet.

I done what she said and got some taters out of the root cellar too. They was beginnin to swivel up a little and was sproutin some, but I pulled off the sprouts and set in to peelin. I could hear the sound of boots on the front porch and the creak of the hickory bark–bottomed chairs as Daddy and the stranger man set down. Daddy hollered out, You girls best step lively; we got company to dinner.

Hit'll be ready soon, Daddy, I called back. I could hear them talkin and laughin and Daddy said, They's three to choose from, all of them good hands to cook and ever one of em raised to work hard. I could tell he'd been drinkin for his voice was louder than usual and he was a-laughin.