Ghost on Black Mountain (21 page)

I was only a few feet away and could smell the men’s sweat. Lines cut across their faces with worry and something like rage. The young man pushed the door closed and turned the lock in one motion, leaving the crowd outside to roar their disapproval.
Two men just on the other side of the door yelled words a girl shouldn’t hear. One of the men had a cap pushed down on his head, hiding his eyes. His fingers formed a fist. The man hit the glass with one swift motion. The glass turned into a spiderweb and took flight. A rather large piece struck the young man in the forehead. A red stream of blood splattered over the blue tie.

“The paper said you have jobs!” yelled the man who shattered the glass.

A touch on my arm made me jump, and I dropped the brown bag on the sidewalk. A sickening crack let me know what I had done as the brown paper turned wet and the air smelled of flowers. Mama would kill me.

“Young lady, you need to go home. Things are about to get ugly. No place for a girl.” The man speaking had once been handsome. His dress jacket told me he had known what it was like to have money in his wallet before the world turned upside down. I bent down to pick up the pieces of the bottle; a fist caught the man’s jaw. I was knocked to my knees. Sirens and whistles told me the police were near.

“Go on now.” The man’s eyes were the bluest blue. “Go!” He gave me a push.

I left the bag of broken glass and ran until I could see the beauty shop. Mama would be livid. There wouldn’t be any explaining how I broke her perfume. When I swung the door open, the bell tinkling, relief flooded my chest. Mama smiled her sweetest smile. “Well now, here is my beautiful daughter, Rose.”

Our luck had changed, and it came in the form of Mr. Homer J. Carson, a fancy business owner from North Carolina, who happened to drop in the shop for lemon shampoo. Lemon shampoo for a man; I just couldn’t imagine. Mr. Carson owned the only rock quarry in Asheville and his business was doing just dandy thanks to the WPA and all its projects in the South.
He took one long look at my mama as if he were drinking a glass of ice tea on a hot day. Mama packed up her hoodoo, quit the numbers, and put on her entertaining hat. The change was that easy. Homer J. Carson married her before she slipped away from him and moved us to Asheville, the city of romance. Mama sure made me want to throw up with that one. Her move into a new high-society life and pretending that our old life never existed might have fooled some, but I, Rose Gardner, her daughter in every way, knew better. When she looked at me, she couldn’t help but remember exactly where she came from, the beautician who ran numbers, conjured spells, and almost sold her only child for a thousand dollars. She couldn’t hide behind her pretty smile, behind her clipped and proper words, and that’s what made her decide I needed to change too. But her lessons in determination led me up Black Mountain almost four years after Hobbs Pritchard came up missing.

I was the daughter Mr. Carson always wanted but never had. His late wife, Jessica, who was everywhere in Mama’s new home—on the walls, in the closets, and even in the kitchen, where her apron still hung on a hook by the stove—wasn’t crazy about children. Mama didn’t marry Mr. Carson to make him forget his wife. She didn’t marry him for love or romance. No, as long as he gave her lace dresses, new hats, and a hefty allowance, Mama was in heaven.

She warned me to stop using the hoodoo she taught me, told me to put those backward ideas behind me. And I listened, and even gave it a try, until Hobbs Pritchard came into my life. I’m the reason Hobbs came up missing, a misguided spell.

Because of Mama I met Hobbs. If she hadn’t been having one of her fancy parties, where ladies whispered behind her back, where she could never measure up to dear Jessica, my life would have turned out completely different. She had
ordered a hundred of those dainty finger cakes that a girl could pop in her mouth and let the icing dissolve on her tongue, even though Mama told her it only added weight to her hips.

Hobbs showed up with the bakery’s deliveryman, who was his poker buddy. He tried to sell Mama homemade liquor to serve at her party. Mama could see straight into his soul and see herself. I’m sure that’s why she detested him on sight.

“I don’t want moonshine. I’ve moved on to better things.” She laughed and turned her back, motioning the deliveryman to follow her in the house with the boxes. “You do understand my husband owns the stone quarry?” She flung this over her shoulder like a dart at a dartboard, smack dead into the bull’s-eye.

I watched the whole scene play out while sitting on the back porch swing. Hobbs probably wouldn’t have noticed me if I hadn’t laughed. Any girl on this earth could see how handsome he was, but his looks weren’t what made me tingle. Excitement vibrated off him with a fiery energy.

“What are you sitting out here for in those fancy clothes? Shouldn’t you be helping your mama with her high-and-mighty party?” He sneered.

I stood and met his stare. “I don’t give a damn about my mama or her so-called friends. I’m bored to death. This city is dead.”

He threw his head back and laughed at the sky. And it wasn’t a nice laugh. “Come on with me into your mama’s garden. It seems right pretty. Maybe we can find something alive in there.” Again he laughed.

Mama prided herself on Jessica’s flower garden, famous for its hedges that formed a maze guests loved walking through. I held out my hand and he helped me off the side of the porch.

Hobbs lit a cigarette, and we kept a lazy pace, not touching,
even though I wouldn’t have minded. As soon as we were in the middle of the maze, he pulled me to him and kissed me.

My body melted into him. I had to be a lady and not let things go too far. “Excuse me, but maybe I didn’t want to kiss you.” I’d been kissed plenty of times. Shoot, I even let some boys go to second base before I halted their fun. That was my intention with Hobbs.

He kissed me again, long and sweet.

In the kiss I tasted danger. “Your friend should be ready to leave.” Even I could hear the lack of conviction in my voice.

“Let him go. I’m a big boy.” He kissed me again and pushed me against a tree, tugging at my dress and underwear. I tingled all over.

“This is enough.” I was more determined.

“No teasing, little girl. I know there’s not one thing ladylike about you.”

His hard part freely bobbed around. God, I couldn’t help but be amazed since I’d never seen one before.

I pushed his chest with all my strength. “I’m going back to the house.”

“Nope. Don’t fight me. You know you want this.” He held me without much effort.

I wiggled but it didn’t make any difference. The first push hurt but things moved so fast I couldn’t even cry. He finished before I could summon the air to yell. I never imagined my first time would be pushed up against a tree in the middle of a hedge maze. I always thought I’d be in love, but Mama always said love doesn’t have a thing to do with anything.

He zipped his pants and looked at me. “What’s your name?”

Mama said not to give my gifts away. No good man wanted to buy the cow if he could get milk free. I looked at the ground. This wasn’t going like I wanted.

“Hobbs Pritchard is my name.” He touched my hand and
turned to walk away but came close again. “I’m coming back to see you. Meet me here at midnight.”

“Rose, Rose Gardner.” His scent of whiskey and sweat was on me.

“I’ll meet you right here, Rose Gardner.”

“I know hoodoo.” Was this a threat or an offering?

He kissed me one more time. “I just bet you do.”

A rush of energy ran through me. Did I hate him or love him? There was no in-between place.

“I like you, Rose. I like you a lot. Do you like me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Good. You can find out.” He was gone before I could say another word.

I was left straightening my dress and hungering after a man who most would say was the worst kind of creature. But he liked me. I needed someone to like me.

When I met him that night under the moon, he held a rose—a rose, mind you—in his fingers. Now, that took some thought. His hair was combed back straight. “This is for you.”

I took the blood-red rose. “Thank you.”

He shrugged. “I’ve been thinking on you all afternoon.” He didn’t sound happy.

I waited.

“It was your fault that I did what I did. You wanted me to do it. I’m never wrong. I thought you’d been around some.”

“I haven’t.” I was wearing my prettiest blue dress.

“You got me confused, Rose.” He lit another cigarette. “You might be different from the girls I come across. How old are you?”

“Twenty,” I lied.

“That’s young, but not too bad. I don’t want no trouble from that mama of yours.”

A breath caught under my ribs. “My mama doesn’t care if I ever come back.” The truth after so long sounded sad when released into the air.

“I don’t know. I ain’t scared easy and you scare me. I ain’t got it in me to do a proper courting or be a proper beau. I might be gone for good tomorrow.” He was quiet. “I’ve done bad things, and the truth is I will probably do them to you. See, I’m telling you stuff that is best kept to myself. I can’t always control how I do things. My mama was disappointed in me when she died. Let’s just say the women in my life have been real let down for good reason.” His face was calm.

I was hooked. He was telling his heart to me. “I’m not looking for a proper boy; that would be boring.” I swirled the rose in my fingers.

“I ain’t no boy, Rose. I’m twenty-five going on twenty-six.”

“Well, if you leave me at least I had some excitement.”

He smiled and pulled me to him.

“I don’t care what you did, Hobbs.”

“Don’t say that, Rose. You would care.” He said this into my hair. “You might be different, Rose Gardner.” Kisses led to more kisses, and we took our time with the moon looking down on us. Something deep inside me said Hobbs Pritchard had never taken his time for anyone else. And that would be the only thing I was right about when it came to him.

When we rolled over on our backs, looking at the sky, I knew I would be Hobbs Pritchard’s girl forever, until he died and then some.

“I like you, Rose.” He lit another cigarette. We stayed there until the stars faded and the moon fell away.

Thirty-five

T
hings between Hobbs and me went fast, knocking the breath out of me. We moved at full speed for five months. I would meet him on the street, and he would take me to one of his poker games, where I sat at his side as a good-luck charm.

One night we stood on the street outside my house. “Hobbs?”

“Yeah.” He scrunched up his forehead.

I kissed his cheek. “Are you my boyfriend?”

He laughed so hard my cheeks heated. “I guess I am, Rose Gardner. I guess I am.”

“Haven’t you ever had a girlfriend before?”

“A long, long time ago. Things didn’t go so well. I haven’t had no use for it since then.”

I nodded. “You won’t be sorry being my boyfriend.”

“You’re changing all the wrongs, aren’t you?” He touched my cheek and laughed.

“Maybe.”

I was sure we’d get married. We saw each other four or five
times a week. But then one week in late September he didn’t come. At first I didn’t think a whole lot about it. He was Hobbs after all and probably got sidetracked playing poker, and he was winning. Another week came and went. I waited and thought about the pretty girls that made eyes at him. But we loved each other. I decided to check around and see if someone killed him or the law caught up to him.

He was sniffing out a little girl serving at the soup kitchen, one of those do-gooders. Miss Nellie Clay was her name, and she was as sweet to look at as a honeysuckle vine loaded with blooms, or so Hobbs’s friend at the bakery said. I let another week go by.

On my next visit to the bakery, Hobbs’s friend reported the news. “He’s marrying her today down at the little Baptist church close to the soup kitchen. Hobbs Pritchard getting married. I pity that girl.”

Without giving my actions any thought, I slapped him cross the face.

“What the hell is that for? I didn’t do anything.”

I walked away, moving in the direction of Hobbs. He couldn’t marry Miss Nellie Clay. He loved me. That much I knew. When I reached the church, I ran right to the doors with every intention of stopping a wedding. Hobbs held his new wife in a passionate kiss. She was tiny and fragile where I was tall and strong. Something powerful ran between Miss Nellie and me as our stares met. Her long blond curls hung away from her face. She was prettier than me. If I had to compare myself to this girl, I was an elephant dressed up in ribbons and satin to disguise my tough hide.

I left without a word. My life was over. Hobbs was married. All the way home I shook with a rage I was sure would kill me. I hated him, hated her. I wasn’t thinking straight when I finally ran into my room, shut the door, and dug deep in the back of
the old cupboard. Hoodoo isn’t something to be taken lightly, especially when a person believed with all her heart in its power. I threw a spell with a twist. This conjure would make Hobbs Pritchard hunger after me until he left that pretty, perfect wife. It was so powerful I wasn’t sure how fast it would work. I lit a candle, placed it in my window, and waited.