The Last Sin Eater (5 page)

Gervase Odara frowned as Miz Elda answered. “Reckon so.” She rubbed her aching legs. “No one really knows where he lives, except maybe—” The healer cleared her throat. “Hmmm,” Miz Elda said, meeting her glance. She looked at me again. “Could be he’s living in a house he built or a cave he found, but he ain’t so far removed from us that he won’t know when he’s needed. Don’t ye worry yourself about it.”

I knew to leave off asking where to find him and tried another track. “How did he come to be the sin eater?”

“Why, he was chosen, of course.”

“Chosen? How?”

The healer turned while mixing another mug of medicine for Miz Elda. “It isna good for a chile to be so fixed in her mind about the sin eater.” She came to us and handed the mug to the old woman.

“I was just wondering what to do if Miz Elda died and—”

Elda Kendric snorted. “Just because yer granny has gone on her way don’t mean every soul past seventy is going to chase right on after her.” She drank the remedy, shuddered, and held out the empty mug to Gervase Odara. “Thank ye kindly, Ger-vase.” She moved easier, shifting in her chair. “I’m feeling a wee bit sleepy.”

“Soon as we get some vittles into ye, we’ll put ye to bed. I’ll come round tomorrow and see how ye be.” The healer had brought bread, berry preserves, and a jar of thick soup, which she was warming over the fire she’d stoked.

“Let’s just visit awhile. I’ll eat after ye go.”

“Ye’ll eat now, Elda.”

The old woman looked at me, eyes twinkling. “She doesna trust me.”

Gervase Odara cracked an egg and stirred it into the soup she was heating over the fire. Pouring it into a bowl, she brought it back and put it on the table.

Elda Kendric took the proffered spoon in her gnarled, misshapen fingers. “Nothing tastes good anymore.” But the bread and berry preserves were to her liking, especially when washed down by tea brewed from the green bark of a wild cherry tree.

The healer sat by her, making sure she ate every bite and drank every drop. They talked about others in the cove. Mercy Tattersall was in a family way again, seven babies in eight years, and the woman is done in from the last. Tate MacNamara shot the painter that had been killing his sheep. Pen Densham’s son Pete fell from the hayloft and broke his leg in two places.

Not once did they mention the sin eater.

“Thar now, dearie, ye sleep well,” Gervase Odara said, having seen the old woman to her bed and covered over with a quilt. “I’ll come by tomorrow.”

“Cadi,” the old lady said sleepily. “Ye come by anytime, dear-ie. We’ll talk about yer granny. I miss the old soul.”

“Thank ye, ma’am. I hope ye’ll be feeling better.”

She took my hand and held it strong as Gervase Odara turned away to tidy up the cooking things. “We can talk about other things, too.”

It fixed in my mind that she was talking about the sin eater, and it was all I could do not to press her right then and there with questions. But she was already dozing off, the healer’s remedies sitting well with her and easing her poor body of its pain.

Lightning split the gray sky with white as we were on the way home. “We’ll keep to the trees,” Gervase Odara said as the deep rumble rolled. She was afeared, and rightfully so, with the sky brightened again. I heard of a man once who was running for home and got struck dead in the meadow just below his house. Granny said she reckoned he had done something real bad to rile up God like that.

Another jagged shaft of light struck in the distance, and I thought sure it was coming for me. A wind came up as the thunder rolled again. Closer and closer it came. Granny had told me God’s voice was like the thunder, and he lived in the dark clouds. She had learned all this when she was very young in Wales and had attended services every Sunday with her mother and father. “He is fire and wind,” she’d said.

“Is God speaking to us, ma’am?”

“Shouting more like it,” Gervase Odara said as the thunder rolled again, so heavy and loud now the hair stood up on my head. “Stay to the trees, Cadi, and move along. The skies’ll open afore we can make shelter the way ye’re dawdling.”

As the lightning flashed, I thought I saw someone standing in the trees above us. The light blazed hot, and there he was in his tattered clothes and hood.

“Sin eater!” I cried out and then the light dimmed and so did he.

“Hush now!” Gervase Odara snapped, having glanced sharply up the hill. “Thar’s nothing there.” She caught hold of my hand and pulled me back and along with her through the woods. When I looked back over my shoulder, he was gone.

Mama sent me for firewood as soon as we arrived home.

Lilybet was waiting beside the pile of oak Papa had chopped.

“The healer says you’re not all ye seem to be,” I told her. “And she told me I shudna open my heart to ye.”

She smiled sadly. “Do ye think I mean ye harm, Katrina Anice?”

“No.”

Her eyes softened and she came closer. “You must trust your heart in this. Heed what it tells you.”

My heart ached within me, ached for something I could not define. Looking into her eyes, I believed she knew what it was I longed to have, and if I but trusted her, she would show me the path to finding it. I thought the sin eater was the key. I wanted to tarry longer and tell her about my visit with Elda Kendric.

“Go back for now, Katrina Anice,” she said. “We’ve time to talk tomorrow when you’re out and about in the sunshine and the meadow.”

I stacked one last piece of firewood on my arm. Glancing up again, I saw she was already gone. Straining under the burden I carried, I returned to the house.

Gervase Odara was leaving as I came in, the rain having already stopped. She tipped my chin and told me to remember what she’d told me.

Mama was making preparations for supper when I dumped my heavy load into the woodbin. “Put another log on the fire, Cadi,” she said dully. She didn’t say another word to me for the rest of the afternoon.

Papa and Iwan washed up outside and came in near dusk for supper. Plowing, tilling, and cultivating the fields had been done in Aries. Now that the fruitful sign of Taurus was upon us, planting had begun. Papa always said crops planted in Taurus and Cancer would stand drought.

“What’ve ye been doing all day, little sister?” Iwan said to me, ladling out another helping of Mama’s stew.

“I went to Elda Kendric’s with the healer.”

“And how’s the old soul?”

“She’s in terrible pain, but doesn’t reckon she’ll be dying soon.”

Iwan grimaced and said nothing more. I saw by his expression that I had said too much already. Mama ate slowly without speaking to anyone. Papa looked at her several times, like he was waiting for something from her. After a while his face hardened, and he didn’t look at her again. He finished eating in silence, pushed his plate away, and stood. “I got work in the barn.” He went out the door.

Iwan went outside and sat on the porch while I cleared and washed the dishes. Mama left me to it, sitting at her spinning wheel again, retreating into her solitude. When I finished, I went outside to be near my brother. He was the only one who had not been undone by our tragedy. I sat on the edge of the porch and rested my head in my arms on the railing. We didn’t say anything. He was tired and I was sad, and both of us were looking toward the barn where the lantern light shone through the open door.

As soon as the sun came up, I set about my chores, in a hurry to be finished and free to return to Elda Kendric. She was working in her garden when I arrived out of breath and with another bouquet of mountain daisies. She didn’t pause from her labors, but I could tell all was not right with her.

“You paining again, ma’am. I could fix you another remedy.”

“And likely poison me. What do ye know about remedies?”

“I was watchful of Gervase Odara. Honey, vinegar, and whiskey.”

She gave a snort of disgust. “Gave me a headache.”

“And bees.” I dreaded the thought of catching them and trying to hold them properly while they bestowed their healing stings upon the old woman, but I would do it if it would give her ease. And gain her goodwill.

She kept hacking at the soil with her ancient hoe. “Work . . . will . . . ease . . . the . . . pain . . .”

“Why dunna ye let me do the hoeing, and ye con walk around in the sunshine?”

She paused a moment, thinking. Handing me the hoe, she set off. She kept such a distance between us that I couldn’t ask her anything about the sin eater. I worked alone until Lilybet came to keep me company.

“Do ye think she knows anything about the sin eater, Lilybet? It’s said she tells stories that ain’t always true.”

Lilybet nodded, sitting on a patch of green and watching me work. “Oh, yes, she knows. She’s the oldest lady in the cove. She’s lived a long time. If anyone knows anything about the sin eater, it will be Miz Elda.”

“She’ll have seen him at other gatherings, I reckon. But how do I ask her?”

“Straight out.”

Turning, I called out, “Miz Elda, what do you know about the sin eater?”

She stopped from her meanderings and turned to stare at me. “What do ye want to know about
him
fer?”

“Tell her the truth,” Lilybet said. “It’s more likely she’ll help you if you do.”

The way Miz Elda was staring at me, I was fair to certain that Lilybet was right. The old woman knew very well why I wanted to know about the strange man and his doings. “I need his help, Miz Elda.” And, mortified, I started to cry. I didn’t know the tears were even coming until they were upon me. Head hanging, I clung to the hoe and turned away, ashamed.

Miz Elda limped to me and put her gnarled hand on my shoulder. “Aw, chile. I could feel yer hurt yesterday when ye wuz here with the healer. It fair pours out of yer eyes. Anyone with a lick of sense would know yer sorry for what happened.”

“Being sorry don’t help much.”

“Time heals wounds.”

I shook my head. “Not this kind,” I would have said if I could have gotten the words past the lump in my throat. Some sins can’t be covered up or talked away. I longed to have the evil I had done
removed.
And it seemed the sin eater was the only one who could do it. “I have to find him, Miz Elda. I have to find him
now!”

“He canna do a thing for ye, chile. Dunna ye see? Let it go.

What’s done is done. Ye gotta live yer life through with what happened. Ye just weren’t thinking. That’s all. Things happen when people ain’t thinking. Do good to others from here forward, and ye’ll only have the one black mark at the end.”

“I’ve need of the sin eater, Miz Elda.”

“Ye’ve a long time yet before ye’ve need for the sin eater. He ain’t coming for ye ’til ye’ve breathed yer last.”

“I wish I was dead, and then it’d be over.” I dropped the hoe, ready to run.

Miz Elda caught hold of me and turned me back again, gripping my shoulders in her clawlike hands and shaking me slightly. “Dunna ye be too quick with yer wanting to die. God might hear ye and take ye at yer word. Ye hear me? He’s done it before. Donal Kendric used to moan about his troubles and say he might as well be dead, and God took him at his word. Ye hear me? Ye tell God ye’re sorry for such foolish talk. Tell him!”

“I won’t.”

“Ye tell him!” She shook me again.

“I won’t!”
Pulling free, I lashed out in despair, railing at the poor old soul though none of it was her doing. “Why must I wait? Why must it ever be that way? Why can’t the sin eater take my sins away
now?”

“Because it ain’t the way things’ve been done, dearie.”

“Well, who made things that way?”

“Laochailand Kai,” she said wearily. “He said he had need of one as he lay dying, and God knows he was right about it. Well, we all made sure he had one.” Expression closing, she headed back for her porch.

I followed close behind, wondering if I understood her rightly. “Thar were none before then?”

“Aye, thar were, back across the sea where we all come from, in Scotland and Wales and England. The sin eater then was usually a poor peasant who lived well away from everyone else. I remember the sin eater who come to our house when my mother died. He stank with the sins he’d taken on himself and wore rags like a beggar. My mother was a good woman given to kindness to any who came for help, and that sin eater drank
three
full glasses of wine and demanded more bread as though she’d been the meanest sinner in the district.”

“Maybe he was jest hungry.”

She stopped and looked at me, frowning slightly. “Well, now, I never thought of that.”

“Please, Miz Elda. Can’t ye tell me where our sin eater lives so I could talk to him?”

She shook her head. “It won’t do ye no good to know where he is, chile, if’n he doesna want to be found.” She walked laboriously up the steps, clinging to the railing. “Fetch me my pipe and rabbit tobacco. It’s on the table inside.” Groaning, she sank into her willow rocker and rested her head against the back.

Blinking back tears, I did as the old woman asked. I had sins enough upon my head without plaguing the poor old dear to death. She looked ready to die right then, and if she did, it would be another sin upon my head for riling her up so. Thinking of Granny, I tapped down Miz Elda’s rabbit tobacco and lit the pipe myself. When I put it in her gnarled hand, she thanked me and commenced to draw the smoke deep, sighing as she released it. “The weeding ain’t done yet.”

“I’ll finish up afore leavin’.”

“Finish now and give a poor woman rest.”

With a heavy sigh, I relented. “Yes, ma’am.” I went back to my labors in her garden.

Lilybet was waiting. “Don’t be discouraged, Katrina Anice. Keep looking. You’ll find him.”

The sun rose high and hot as I worked. Soon the sweat was beading on my face and dripping down the back of my neck. I kept on, determined to finish what I’d started. Going down on my hands and knees, I pulled the weeds that threatened to choke out Miz Elda’s crop of carrots, okra, and corn.

“That’ll do!” Miz Elda called. “Come and sit awhile.” She seemed quite mellow now, drowsy from smoking her rabbit tobacco and comfortable with her face in the porch shade and her body in the sunlight. She rocked slowly. “The sin eater lives up on Dead Man’s Mountain.”

It made perfect sense. It was the one place Granny had never sent me. But Iwan had gone there and never seen him and I said so.

“Maybe he just never said.”

“He would have told me.”

“Did he go to the top?”

“He said so.”

“Well, do ye see every deer in the forest?”

“No, ma’am.”

“The sin eater’s like that. He keeps himself hidden away until he hears the passing bell.” She rocked and smoked and added with a sly look at me, “Or gits the call.”

She was hinting at something, and I was about to ask her what when Fagan Kai came unexpectedly from the woods and helloed the house. He had two dead squirrels tied together by the feet and slung over his shoulder, and he was sporting a black eye.

“Come on up,” Miz Elda said quick enough. “Have a fight, did ye?”

“No, ma’am,” he said solemnly, his mouth tightening.

“Kais are always fighting,” she said in an aside to me.

With scarcely a glance in my direction, Fagan addressed the old woman sitting on the porch and smoking her pipe like she was royalty. “Thought ye might like some fresh meat, Miz Elda,” he said as his dog flopped down in the shade near the steps.

“Might if’n they was dressed and skinned,” she said, the pipe between her teeth.

Red-faced, Fagan turned away and took the dead squirrels off into the woods, his dog trailing after him. She cackled softly and puffed away contentedly while I tried to get the conversation back to where it had been before his untimely intrusion. She would have none of it, and to add to my frustration, Fagan soon returned.

“Here they be, ma’am,” he said.

Miz Elda eyed the dressed squirrels disdainfully. “Too small for roasting,” she pronounced, bringing high color into Fagan’s cheeks again. “And I prefer possum.” His smile flattened out. “Or bear meat.” There was a definite twinkle in her blue eyes. “Don’t reckon ye’ve shot a bear yet, have ye, boy?”

“No, ma’am. Not yet.Haven’t seen one yet this spring.”His response implied he had the courage but lacked the opportunity.

Miz Elda cackled loudly this time. “Well, when ye do see one, I hope ye’re armed with more than yer slingshot, or the bear’ll be having ye for supper.” She pushed herself up from her chair and took the dressed squirrels inside.

Fagan turned and looked at me square on. “How ye be, Cadi Forbes?”

“Fair enough.”

“What ye lookin’ at me like that fer?”

“I was here first.”

“There’s room enough for two, ain’t there?” He came up the steps as though he owned them.

Lilybet was looking at me and I lowered my eyes, ashamed of my ill temper. “I was talking with her, that’s all.”

“So go on and talk. I ain’t stopping you.” He leaned back against the rail and crossed his arms over his chest. “I know why you’re here. You still looking for the sin eater, ain’t ye? Ye’re asking Miz Elda about him.”

“Maybe I am and maybe I ain’t.”

“Your face is red as a boiled crawfish. You’re asking her all right.”

“So what?”

“So you ought to leave well enough alone is all! You shudna be looking for the sin eater!”

“I con look for anyone I please.”

His face darkened. “You say? You owe me and you’d better listen. I asked my father about the sin eater like you wanted, and he knocked me off the porch.” He pointed to his blackened eye so I’d know it was my fault. “My pa said if I ever mentioned him again, he’d take the skin off my back.”

Pulling my knees up, I put my head down. After a moment, I looked up at him through a blur of tears. “I’m sorry.” It seemed no matter which way I turned or what I said, I did wrong.

“Pa said just mentioning the mon brings evil into a house.”

Remembering the sin eater’s eyes, soulful and sad, gazing at me from behind the leather mask, I shook my head.

Fagan frowned. “Why won’t you believe what you’re told, Cadi Forbes?”

“Because it don’t seem right!”

“What don’t?”

“That the mon who takes away sins should be so hated.”

“Ye dunna ken what you’re saying. He takes sin
into
himself. He
eats
it, doesn’t he? So it becomes a part of him, don’t it? And he’s been at it so long, thar ain’t nothing left of whatever he was before.”

“Then why did he sound the way he did?” I said, the tears coming again. “And his eyes—”

“Ye looked at him, did ye?” Miz Elda said from the doorway, and Fagan straightened guiltily. “Did ye, chile?”

I hung my head. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Were ye told not to?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then what made ye do it?”

My mouth trembled. “It was the way he spoke of Granny. As though he had pity on her and loved her.”

“Aye,” Miz Elda said. “He had good cause.”

“What cause?” Fagan said.

She came out onto the porch. Leaning on her cane, she stared off toward the valley so long I didn’t think she’d answer. She must have been considering what to do, for she said finally, “I don’t see the harm in telling ye.” Turning, she looked at me square. “For a long time after your Grandpa Ian died, yer granny’d go visit his grave. And every time she did, she’d take summat with her. Half dozen ears of corn, a bundle of carrots, a small sack of potatoes, some eggs. She went right on through the worst of winter taking with her some smoked pork or dried venison, a string of leather-britches beans, a jar of preserves. She’d leave those things on Ian Forbes’s grave for the sin eater.”

Turning slightly, she looked at Fagan Kai. “Most people give the sin eater a glass of wine and a loaf of bread, then give not a thought about him or what he took on himself for the sake of their loved ones. They don’t give a thought to what he’ll do for them someday neither.” She looked back at me. “Yer granny was different, Cadi. She looked out for the sin eater. She let him know she hadna forgotten what he done.”

Lowering her aching bones into the rocker, she placed her cane over her lap. “Now, Cadi here has a reason for wanting to find the mon and dunna ye go talking her out of it, Fagan Kai.”

“But my pa said—”

“Maybe your pa has a reason for wanting to stay clear of the mon.”

“What reason?” Fagan said.

“Who’s to know excepting maybe the sin eater himself?”

“Are you telling us to go looking for him?” Fagan challenged.