Leaving Gee's Bend (16 page)

I hadn’t thought about hiding the animals. But I reckon Mrs. Cobb could say they was hers too. Now she’d have to catch ’em if she wanted to carry ’em away.

While Mr. Pettway herded the hogs, Mrs. Pettway dragged the ax in one hand and a hoe in the other. Looked like she was taking ’em to the outhouse.

“Where’s Etta Mae?” she said.

I started running again. “She’s on her way.”

I wanted to tell Mrs. Pettway wasn’t nothing to them rumors about Etta Mae being a witch. I wanted to tell her it was just bad luck. Wasn’t no reason to worry. But I didn’t have time to talk.

“Daddy!” I called soon as I saw him. He was digging in the dirt with his hands, and beside the hole was four jars of soup from the barn.

He put his hand on one knee and began to push himself up. “Hallelujah!”

“Don’t stop!” I said. “Mrs. Cobb is on her way!”

I ran past the woodpile, past the clothesline where Mama’s quilt still hung on the line. I ran past Delilah, who started braying soon as she saw me.

I grinned. Good old Delilah. I’d give her ears a good long scratch just as soon as I saw Mama.

The cabin looked like a mansion to me. Better than Mrs. Cobb’s house, better than anything I saw in Camden. I took the steps two at a time and pushed open the door.

It was the smell that hit me first. The shutters was closed so I couldn’t see too good, and the stench nearly knocked me over. It was worse than the outhouse on a steamy August day. I covered my nose and mouth with one hand and held on to the lunch sack with the other. Had to swallow hard to keep from gagging.

“Mama?” I lifted my head and breathed through my mouth.

No answer.

I took two steps toward the bed. She was buried under a pile of quilts, so I couldn’t see her face.

“Mama? It’s Ludelphia.”

“Lu?” she said, her voice raw as she shifted in the bed.

I forgot about the smell as I moved the quilts away from her face.

Oh, Mama!

Her eyes wasn’t stuck together no more, but they was red and swollen. And her hair was matted in places, like it ain’t been cleaned good. She looked worse than I had ever seen her. But she was talking, and she knew who I was.

When I touched my fingers to her blistered lips, she let out an awful moan. I backed away from her without even knowing it. The sounds she was making wasn’t people sounds, they was the sounds of a dying animal.

“I brought you some medicine, Mama.” I held out the lunch sack like a basket of berries and began to pull the bottles out. “Went all the way across the river to fetch it for you.”

The second bottle was slippery in my fingers. I fumbled around till the quilt top fell to the floor. When I bent to pick it up my head got to swirling. I reckon on account of the awful smell and finally seeing Mama again after all that running. Plus I ain’t even had a bite of that biscuit and ham Mrs. Nelson packed for me.

My knees began to wobble, and the weight of my head seemed to pull me down.

I was falling. Falling so slowly I felt every inch of air as I passed through it. So slowly it was like being inside a dream.

My elbows hit first. Then the bottles. Glass shattered everywhere, spraying clear liquid across the floor and onto Mama. Little pieces of glass dug into my skin, and I could feel blood coming out of the tiny cuts.

The morphine Mrs. Nelson had been so kind to give me found the cracks in the floorboards and folds of the quilt and disappeared.

“No!” I cried. “No!” The medicine in them bottles was my last hope. And now it was gone, all gone.

It was like my muscles was locked up. I couldn’t move from the spot on the cabin floor where I was sprawled out. I lay there with my head buried in my arms wishing I could cry. But it was like my eyes was locked up too. The tears wouldn’t come.

Wasn’t no way around it. I had failed. Mrs. Cobb might as well have shot me instead of that armadillo, for all the good I’d done.

Dear Lord. Mama always said every quilt tells a story. But I didn’t want this story. This was not the one I picked out.

“Ludelphia? You okay?” It was Etta Mae. I hadn’t even heard her come in.

I wanted to tell her about the medicine, but my tongue felt thick in my mouth. Whatever words I’d thought of before was trapped inside with all them tears.

I stayed on the floor. Mama was still moaning, and there was shouts coming from outside.

Without a sound, Ruben stepped into the cabin. “Mrs. Cobb’s pulling up to the Pettways! And she’s swinging around a shotgun.”

Dear Lord, the shotgun!

As I got my feet up under me, Mrs. Pettway started screaming from out in the yard. “I don’t care who you are, you ain’t taking this chicken. Mr. Cobb would’ve never done us this way! You ain’t got no right to take this chicken.”

“I got every right, Mrs. Pettway.” Mrs. Cobb’s voice sounded like it was coming from between clenched teeth.

“You gonna have to kill me first. You hear, Mrs. Cobb? You can kill me, but you ain’t getting my chicken!”

Ruben looked back at us, his face as worried as mine. I’d seen what Mrs. Cobb could be like when she got mad. And I wasn’t sure if what Mrs. Pettway was doing was brave or just plain dumb.

Then Ruben slipped back toward the door. “You two stay in here with Mama,” he said. “Don’t you move from this cabin.”

Soon as Etta Mae and me both nodded, Ruben let the door close behind him. I didn’t have no idea what he was planning to do.

Screams kept coming from outside, and the chickens scrambled beneath the floorboards of the cabin. As the hens squawked and clucked, bits of cotton and chicken feathers flew up through the slats and landed on my skin. The pieces stuck to the bloody places on my hands and arms.

I held my arms out in front of me. I looked like something out of a nightmare. Like a ghost or something from one of Aunt Doshie’s visions. Not like a girl at all.

“Etta Mae?” I reached between the slats for more cotton and pressed it against my skin. “Etta Mae, come close!” My head was clear now and my tongue was fine. “I need you.”

As Etta Mae got to me, she sucked in her breath. “Mercy, Ludelphia! Gonna take some scrubbing to get you all cleaned up.”

No, that wasn’t what I was talking about. “First we got to get dirty,” I said and wiped my bloody hands across Etta Mae’s cheeks.

“What you doing that for?” she said, her eyes wide with alarm. Then she started to back away from me.

“It’s the only way, Etta Mae.” I reached out again and wiped my hands down the front of her dress. When I got to the torn hem, I gave it a firm yank. The cloth split just like I knew it would. “Don’t you see? Mrs. Cobb thinks you and me is witches. So we gonna
be
witches.”

As a piece of her dress fluttered to the floor, Etta Mae didn’t say a single word. Just stood there letting me do what I was gonna do. I wiped my hands on Etta Mae’s dress over and over, till it was so streaked in blood and bits of cotton and tiny feathers that it looked like she’d been rolling around with the chickens under the house. “Now you do me,” I said.

Etta Mae squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her hands into the broken glass. She scrunched up her face but she didn’t cry out. And when she brought her hands back up her palms was all bloody just like mine.

It was like we had switched places. Now I was the one taking care of Etta Mae. And just like I said to, she wiped her blood on my cheeks and my arms and my dress. We each reached through the floorboards and grabbed up as much cotton as we could get our fingers around. Handful after handful we pressed into our skin till we didn’t look nothing like ourselves no more.

Outside the screaming had turned to crying. Mrs. Pettway was wailing like the train I’d heard in Camden. That sound sent chills right through me.

“I’ll be back for that chicken,” Mrs. Cobb said. “But first I’m going to deal with your neighbors here. The Bennetts.”

Dear Lord, Mrs. Cobb was right in front of the cabin!

“Just do what I do,” I said, grabbing Etta Mae’s hand. “You ain’t a witch, and I ain’t neither. But if this is the end of Mama’s life, I won’t have the last thing she sees be Mrs. Cobb taking away everything we got.”

Etta Mae squeezed my hand. “Ludelphia Bennett, as I live and breathe, that lady ain’t coming into this cabin.”

Her eyes glowed as they looked into mine, and I knew whatever happened, we was in it together.

WE CROUCHED INSIDE THE CABIN AND LISTENED to what was happening outside. We was waiting for just the right time to make our move.

“See here, Mr. Bennett,” Mrs. Cobb said. “Ain’t nothing you got that don’t belong to me now.”

“But my wife, she’s real sick, Mrs. Cobb. If you take that ax, won’t be no way for me to chop wood for keeping her warm. And we got a new baby too, just three days old.”

“Rose!” I said aloud. I’d forgotten about Rose.

Etta Mae patted my arm. “She’s fine, don’t you worry. Mrs. Irvin’s been looking after her.”

I took in a deep breath and let it out real slow. Just as soon as this was all over, I was gonna see Rose for myself. I was gonna hold her in my arms and rock her back and forth.

Outside Daddy went on talking. “Please, Mrs. Cobb! Me and my boy here, we’ll work extra hard. I promise we’ll make it up to you next planting season. Just give us some time, Mrs. Cobb. All we need is time.”

Daddy’s words seemed to echo in the silence that followed. For just a moment there was no screaming or snorting, no sound at all. My mind went back to that poor armadillo in Mrs. Cobb’s barn.
Hold on, Patrick.
Then
boom
!

Was it the right time yet? My insides was so knotted up, I wasn’t sure. So we kept waiting.

When Mrs. Cobb spoke again, her voice was all business. “Gentlemen,” she said, “get the animals first. You get me every single one of them chickens and put ’em in that sack with the others. Get the tools too. The ax, the shovel, the pitchfork. And whatever feed you can find in the barn.”

“Please, Mrs. Cobb.” I knew it was my daddy, but I ain’t never heard him beg before. It didn’t sound nothing like him.

“And don’t forget that mule,” Mrs. Cobb went on. “You listening, gentlemen? I want that mule.”

I squeezed Etta Mae’s hand and pulled her toward the door.
Now
was the time. Wasn’t no way Mrs. Cobb was taking Delilah!

Just before we stepped through the doorway, I remembered the knife Mama kept lodged in the wall. The one Etta Mae had put under Mama’s mattress and used to cut Rose’s cord. I yanked it out of the pine log, then together me and Etta Mae pushed open the door.

“Basheeka basheeba balloo!” I moaned as I walked onto the porch. I waved the knife in circles above my head, careful not to bump Etta Mae. “Basheeka basheeba balloo!” I said it louder. “Basheeka basheeba balloo!” we hollered together as we shook and spun our bodies. The knife danced in the air above us.

From the spot where she was standing next to the corner of the barn, Delilah started to bray. I knew just as long as she could see me, she wasn’t gonna stop.

Mrs. Cobb dropped her ledger and looked at me and Etta Mae. She held tight to her shotgun and pressed her other hand against her ear. “What in the world?”

I stabbed the air with the knife, and spit shot out of my mouth. “We’re the witches of Gee’s Bend! Pass through this doorway and you will
die
!”

Mrs. Cobb took three steps back as Delilah kept up her braying.

“You!” she shouted, pointing a finger at me. “I knew you was a witch!” I waved my arms in the air and moaned like I was possessed by the devil.

“And you!” she hollered at Etta Mae. Mrs. Cobb’s eyes widened and she stumbled just a bit.

I wanted her gone, so I grabbed the knife handle with both hands and started shaking my body the way it shook when I rode in that motorcar.

So help me, Lord, she was
not
coming inside this cabin.

Etta Mae glanced at me sideways, then started up with a throaty noise that sounded like something from the deep dark woods that you couldn’t see but knew you should run from.

Ruben shot a look my way and I real quick thumped my eye patch same way he always did. His eyes widened and he nudged Daddy in the ribs with his elbow. That’s when I knew he understood what we was up to.

“Please, Mrs. Cobb!” Ruben said over Delilah’s braying. “My mama’s in there dying all because of them witches.” Ruben looked over at Daddy, who kept his eyes to the ground. “Don’t want something bad to happen to you too!”

Mrs. Cobb pressed her hand harder against the ear as Delilah brayed over and over. “Somebody shut that mule up!”

At first nobody moved. It was like they was all frozen by Delilah’s racket and the sight of me and Etta Mae moaning and shaking and spinning like wild tornadoes.

It was Ruben that broke the spell. “I can take care of that mule for you, Mrs. Cobb. But first you got to give me the gun.”

Mrs. Cobb’s eyes went all dark. Then, just like in my dream, she lifted the shotgun and aimed.

I closed my eyes. I heard the shot and waited for it to knock me down.

“LUDELPHIA!” ETTA MAE’S VOICE FILLED MY EAR. “Ludelphia, she’s leaving! Mrs. Cobb’s leaving!” I opened my eye. I looked down at my body. I lifted my feet one at a time.

I was whole. She hadn’t shot me at all.

When I looked up, the men had already mounted and was heading on down the road. Mrs. Cobb walked toward the wagon, her shoulders slumped forward. The shotgun dragged behind her, leaving a trail in the dirt.

Was she crying? Was Mrs. Cobb crying? She looked so beaten down, I almost wanted to run over and tell her everything would be okay. I was all mixed up inside because I knew Mrs. Cobb had lost things too. Wasn’t no excuse for what she’d done, but I couldn’t help remembering that picture on her wall.