Ghost on Black Mountain (18 page)

“Naw, can’t today. You keep reading those leaves. You got
the gift. If not for you Carl would have been bit by that moccasin. It was your warning that made me go look after what he was doing. He wouldn’t have seen that snake.”

I couldn’t take no credit. I told her that. But she insisted my warning saved his life.

“Let me know what you hear after Mrs. Tiller.”

“I will.” Eagerly turned to leave.

A ripple of dread spread across my chest through somewhere deep in my body. Why had I let Nellie go to the quarry alone on a day the town was let loose with grief? I couldn’t concentrate on Mrs. Hamilton’s clothes. I stood in the kitchen window, watching the street.

When the strange truck turned into the road, I was still there. The truck had A
SHEVILLE
S
TONE
printed on the side. My heart turned over as it slowed to a stop in front of the house. Still I stood in my place. A man with a round belly got out of the truck. He was Owen’s boss. Then I seen my Nellie. The air left my lungs as I ran out the door. Little sounds of grief pushed from my chest.

Nellie’s eyes were rimmed in red. “Mama,” she sobbed, burying her face in my stomach.

Owen’s boss—I couldn’t place his name in my mind—took off his cap. “Mrs. Clay, there’s been an accident.”

Those words echoed in my ears and down my spine. Part of me went weak with relief because my baby was safe. The other part of me became tight and rigid.

“Owen was killed, ma’am.” There it was, the picture the tea leaves kept trying to form. “The chain broke and a big stone fell. He never understood what happened.”

But I knew Owen had been understanding this for over a year. He’d been waiting. “Did my girl see her daddy die?” The words began to spin.

The man nodded. “Yes ma’am.” The words were quietly
tearing my mind apart. I had no deep love for Owen, but all the same I felt part of my soul was missing.

“There’s something we need to talk about.”

Nellie sobbed. I had no one but her. No one.

“Can we talk later? I got to think.”

Owen’s boss took a step closer. “We got to do something with the body, Mrs. Clay,” he whispered.

Yes, the body. Oh God, his body. Something had to be done.

“You want me to send him to the funeral home? It’s a right nice place.”

What did a huge rock do to a man’s body when dropped from that high? “Yes.” I whispered into Nellie’s hair, “Why don’t you go wash your face. I’ll be right there.”

She never looked at me, only nodded and walked in the house with her head hanging down.

“Owen took out a big life-insurance policy a year ago. That should help some. I’ll get you the paperwork.”

Oh Owen, you knew. All the times I hated him for his coldness seemed a sin. “Thank you.”

And Owen’s boss was gone, leaving me standing in the yard.

Mrs. Hamilton’s big fancy car turned down the street. My shoulders went slack. Eagerly got out and came to me. “I’m here.” I cried into her neck. I cried for Owen and what we never had. Somehow I had to convince Nellie to marry a man she loved and who loved her. But better yet a man with the same mind as hers. I cried because I didn’t know what I was going to do. A part of me wilted away that day.

Eagerly gave me a squeeze. This is what friends did for each other.

“He had a death policy and I didn’t know.”

She nodded.

*   *   *

By the time the funeral home put Owen in his shining oak casket, I was set on my purpose, my direction. Nellie turned quiet on me and never once did we talk about what she saw that day. She wouldn’t have any of my coaxing. I took a big part of the life-insurance policy to bury Owen in Darien. Me and Nellie rode in the front of the hearse. Nobody came to stand by his grave as he was lowered into the ground. Who could I call? He wouldn’t have wanted anyone else there anyway.

“There’s the woman I talked to from Daddy’s old house, Mama.” Nellie pointed to a clump of trees at the edge of the cemetery.

My blood froze in my veins. A beautiful woman dressed in the prettiest pink suit watched us. When I blinked, she was gone.

“Did you see her, Mama? She just disappeared.”

“I didn’t see a thing, Nellie.” My words were cold.

Nellie looked at me like I was crazy. My whole world was upside down and some old ghost wanted to make it worse. “I mean it. No more talking about that woman. You didn’t see nothing, understand?”

“Okay.” She looked away from me.

I had hurt her feelings. The last thing Nellie needed was to have her crazy grandmother’s spirit chasing her through life.

“Mama.” Nellie looked at me.

“Yes.”

“One day I’m going to marry someone just like Daddy.”

I wanted to correct her but shame filled my heart. Owen was her father. I couldn’t talk bad about him. “Nellie, I’m going to tell you what my mama told me. Don’t go looking for some fairy-tale marriage. They’re not real. And never fall head over heels for no man, save some love for yourself.”

She was quiet and studied me like she was a adult. “Mama?”

“Yes.”

“Someday I’m going to live here in Darien.”

“No you won’t, Nellie. No reason to. We’re from Asheville, me and you.”

“Yes I am. You’ll see.” Her stubborn look reminded me of Owen. Maybe she needed to think this to be closer to her daddy.

“And Mama …” She took my hand. “You’re going to live here with me.”

Of course by the time eight years rolled around and Hobbs Pritchard showed up, I had forgotten that Nellie ever said such a thing.

When I read her letter that nice man brought down Black Mountain, I saw her plain as day standing in that graveyard. The air was cold when we put Owen in the ground. Nellie stood there watching. I caught a glimpse of the woman she would become and how she would change on me, how she would hunger after a man to replace her daddy. No one story is completely free of pain, and Nellie’s was dotted with more grief than she deserved. But I had no doubt she saw something that day besides the ghost of Pauline Clay. She saw her future. She knew that something trying was on the horizon.

Part Three

Shelly Parker

Twenty-nine

N
ada was right proud of my gift. If she could have bragged on me, she would have shouted from the top of Black Mountain. But we didn’t have no one to talk to, only each other. We was the only Negroes on the mountain and that made for a mighty lonely life. All I had was Faith Dobbins, who made me her baby doll until I got old enough to be her maid. But she did teach me how to read and write real good. Nada said I had to be careful and act dumb because smart coloreds were punished. It was just a fact of the times.

Nellie Pritchard was the first white person to treat me like a regular girl. Of course I never let on because Nada would have frowned on the whole business. She was my mama and one of the best conjures to come out of New Orleans, who happened to work for a pastor and his family. In those hard times, work was work. Folks from all over the mountain came to her for everything from a corn on a toe to catching a husband. That’s why Nada thought my gift was something special, except we had to hide it from Pastor. He was strictly Christian in his thoughts.

The day Hobbs brought Nellie up the mountain Nada kept sniffing the air. “Something is marching our way, Shelly. I can’t tell if it’s good or bad. I think a little of both.”

That was the evening a woman spirit came in my room. See, that was my gift, seeing haints stuck on earth for one reason or another. This woman was one of the friendliest spirits I’d come across. Those were the kind of spooks who might do anything. She stood in the corner of my room, a tall figure.

“Why you here?” I couldn’t be nice cause she might use it against me.

The woman studied me so long I was sure she was one of those silent ghosts. Then she moved close to my bed. “I’ve come because of Hobbs Pritchard.”

Now this didn’t put her on my good side. “You in the wrong place, ma’am. I don’t go around the likes of him or anyone attached to him.”

The woman smiled. “You’re a smart girl. That’s why I’m here. You’ll be a good helper. I always stood up to Hobbs.”

“That ain’t something to be bragging about, seeing how you’re dead and all.”

She didn’t pay me no mind. “I want to save that new little wife of his.”

“I can’t help you.”

“Hobbs will ask you to come work.”

“You be crazy, woman.”

She looked me over. “Hobbs will hire you to clean. You will help me by telling that little girl to go home. That’s the house I died in, you know.”

“That ain’t one bit comforting, and no ma’am, you got it all wrong. My mama would never let me work for the likes of Hobbs Pritchard.”

The woman laughed and walked right through the wall. She was one mixed-up ghost, thinking I would be working for Hobbs Pritchard, not in a month of Sundays.

Ten minutes later Nada waltzed into my little room off the kitchen. “Shelly.” The name was full of concern.

I was in some kind of trouble. “Yes ma’am.”

She sat on the side of my bed. That’s when I knew something was wrong. “Shelly, Mrs. Dobbins has done something without asking me.”

That woman never asked. She was all about ordering.

“She does what she wants. This time she’s crossed over the line.” She waited. This was bad all the way to the bone.

“Mrs. Dobbins has promised Mrs. Ida Pritchard that you will go help out at the old Pritchard place.”

I sucked in air. “Nada,” I managed.

She looked away from me. “Shelly, it’s finished, done. My hands are tied.”

“Throw a spell.”

Her shoulders sagged. “You’re going. Mrs. Dobbins said you’re old enough to work on your own.”

But I knew the last thing Nada wanted was me to go under the same roof with a murderer.

Thirty

S
o the first time I laid eyes on Nellie Pritchard she was standing in that nasty kitchen looking as lost as a mountain girl in a big city. She was pretty to look at with them light-colored curls scooped up in a tail like a horse. Nada said that Hobbs Pritchard had a way with girls that just dumbfounded her. This new wife had to be stupid when it came to men. You could smell his meanness for miles away.

The first day she worked right alongside me, getting her pretty hands all dirty. That house was in sad shape. We worked quietly. After we’d been working in the front room for a while, I looked up and saw the man spirit looking in a window. If not for the glass, he could have touched Nellie as she polished a table. At first I thought the man was real. Most of the time when spirits appeared, they looked odd in some way. But he seemed normal except for the wild look in his eyes. He wanted in that house something bad. The hairs on my arms stood straight up.

I refused to stay there one more minute. “Mrs. Pritchard, I reckon I’d better head home.”

She glanced out the window, but the man was gone. “Hobbs will be here soon. Thank you for all your help.” She held out her hand. “I’ll see you in two days.”

That girl wasn’t nothing but trouble. What did she think, I was going to shake the hand of a white woman I was working for? “Yes ma’am.” I laced my fingers behind my back.