Let Me Die in His Footsteps (6 page)

1952—ANNIE

ANNIE STANDS NEAR
the stove in Grandma’s kitchen. The air is thick and damp, steamy even. Every window is closed, and Grandma has not turned on any lights. Instead several candles burn, their wax just beginning to spill over. Dim light flickers on the pale-yellow walls. Long shadows fall from chair legs and table legs and from Grandma, who stands near the sink. Two cast-iron pots sit on the stove, a low flame burning beneath each, and clouds of steam rise. Grandma, wearing her best quilted robe and her Sunday morning slippers, is carving a loaf of bread.

“Water’s ready,” she says to Annie and tips her head in the direction of the two heavy pots simmering on the stove. “Will you see to it?”

Grandma’s long white hair hangs loose down to her waist. Wiry strands, frayed and broken off, frame her watery blue eyes. That long hair and the soft light from the candles and the tone of Grandma’s voice, pitched ever so slightly deeper than normal, make her look and seem less like a grandma and more like a woman Annie doesn’t know so well. Grandma gave Mama her name. Long before Mama married Daddy, Grandma knew Mama would be born a girl and named her Sarah. Watching Grandma now, Annie imagines she looks like the woman she was before she became a grandma.

Knowing she shouldn’t speak while the water is simmering, Annie nods to Grandma and sidesteps around the table where Mama and Caroline sit. The rims of Caroline’s eyes are red from all the crying, and she is letting Mama hug her and stroke her hair. She’s probably thinking about that husband-to-be of hers and wishing he were here to comfort her and protect her. Annie wishes he were here too because then he could get a good look at Caroline when she isn’t looking so pretty.

Before doing as Grandma asked, Annie glances at Mama, but she doesn’t shake her head or give some other sign of disapproval, so Annie opens the cupboard next to the stove, reaches into the back, and pulls out a small dark bottle. The glass is smooth and warm in her hands. She protects it from the light by wrapping her fingers around it, and holds it away from her body so as to not warm it. Grandma taught Annie to do these things always when handling lavender oil. She unscrews the bottle’s small lid, lays it on the counter, taking care not to touch the inner rim, and tips the bottle over the first simmering pot. One, two, three drops. She does the same over the second pot.

“Think the water’s got too much get-up-and-go, Grandma,” Annie says, even though she thinks no such thing. “Should I let off a little?”

Caroline doesn’t have the know-how and so won’t know what “get-up-and-go” means, and as bad as it is to use the know-how in a way that will make a person feel bad about not having it, Annie figures Caroline brought it on herself. She stole Annie’s vision, but someone is dead up there at the Baine place, and that’s what Mama and Daddy will care about. They won’t trouble themselves with Annie’s visions, and Annie shouldn’t be troubling herself with them either, but she can’t stop thinking about Ryce and that dead frog and every kid who will want to know who she saw down there in that well and was he a boy who will want to kiss her. They’ll not believe her if she tells them Caroline stole her vision.

They’ll not believe Annie if she tells them there was a man—a dark-haired, blue-eyed man—who was meant for Annie. They’ll not believe Caroline saw him first because she always does things first or better or faster. Instead, they’ll say what a pity there is no one for Annie, no face in the bottom of her well. It will be worse than having the boys run from her. They’ll pity her. All of them. But when someone’s dead, no one will care about such things that trouble Annie.

Grandma leans over the pots, waves a hand through the steam, and coughs. The lavender will sting the back of the throat if the water is too hot, so maybe Annie is right after all.

“Sure enough,” Grandma says, giving Annie the soft sort of smile people give when someone has died. Later, Grandma will tell Annie what a good student she is and what a great knack she has for the know-how. Not everyone who has the gift has such a good knack. But Grandma will only say those things when Mama isn’t near enough to hear. “Just a smidgen though,” she says and gives a wink. “Want to keep a lively steam going.”

Lavender makes bees lazy, has a calming effect on them, and that’s why Grandma simmers it in this way. From daybreak to dusk, the bees light upon the bluish-gray blossoms that will soon enough burst into full bloom, and then they float, don’t fly, aimlessly, weightlessly back to their hives. Drunkards, Grandma calls them on those days when she watches the lazy dance from her kitchen window. The lavender soothes them. These are the most peaceful bees you’ll find. That’s what Grandma says, and she must figure the whole family is going to need a good bit of calming before the night is over.

Abraham Pace was the first person Annie and Caroline woke after leaping the rock fence, running through the lavender, and throwing open the kitchen door. Annie shook him by his large shoulder. He snorted, tried to roll away, but finally opened his eyes when Annie said that a dead person was lying by the tomato garden up at the Baine place.

Grandma had put on the coffee while Mama gathered up trousers, boots, and fresh socks for Daddy and Abraham. Daddy stumbled as he balanced on one foot while trying to tug on a boot. Mama yanked it away, loosened the laces, and asked if he would care for coffee before attempting to walk on his own two feet. Daddy took the boot, its laces dangling, pulled it on his foot, and then made out like he was balancing on a narrow plank by stretching his two arms to the side, stepping one foot precisely in front of the other, and moving steady as a sober judge. Mama didn’t have to say it out loud. Daddy was supposed to have followed Annie up that hill, but the whiskey had gotten the better of him.

“We’ll fetch Buell and give the place a look-see,” Daddy said, two boots on his feet, both sets of laces dangling loose. “And you all stay put.” He pushed open the door, but before walking outside, he turned back to Annie.

“You’re sure about this?” he said. “Sure about what you seen?”

Annie nodded. “I’m certain, sir.” She linked her hands, stood with her feet together and her back straight. She was of age now and so should feel differently, should act differently. More like a lady, she supposed, and wouldn’t a lady link her hands and stand with good posture? “Just as certain as can be.”

Daddy and Abraham were heading up to the Baine place, and Hollerans never go near Baines.

•   •   •

WHEN ALL THE
bread is sliced, and Mama and Grandma have started on their second cup of coffee and the lavender-scented air is almost too thick and sweet to breathe, Mama invites everyone into the living room. She says it’s because they’ll be more comfortable while they wait and maybe Annie and Caroline can even sleep a bit on the sofa. But really, Mama wants to go into the living room because from there she can look out the picture window and see the barn at the top of the hill. She won’t see the well or the tomato garden or even the littlest bit of the Baines’ roof, but still she’ll want to watch. Even when there is no dead person, Mama sometimes looks out that window. She’ll stand there for the longest time, her forehead resting on the glass, her breath fogging the window if the weather is cool enough, but always she lets the curtain drop and steps away when someone walks into the room.

At the sound of gravel crunching under a truck’s tires as it rolls to a stop, Annie opens her eyes. The steam has cleared and the house is cool, the air soggy as always in the early-morning hours. At some point during the night, someone threw a blanket over her. She gathers it around her shoulders and sits up, and as soon as she does, the memory of the empty well and the coming of the lavender and someone dead up at the Baines’ place fills her up.

Caroline is already awake, her blanket folded in thirds and draped across her legs. She sits on the edge of the sofa, her feet planted on the floor, her hands resting in her lap. Even the soft light of the sun just beginning to rise is enough to make her hair shine.

Mama hears the truck too. She steps away from the window, which maybe she’s been looking out all night long, and calls to Grandma. Walking into the living room from the kitchen, drying her hands on the apron tied at her waist, Grandma slides around her rocking chair and massages its wooden back as if it were a set of shoulders. Grandpa carved the chair for Grandma, and it’s all she has left of him, God rest. Stepping off to the side of the chair, Grandma gives it a nudge. On the smooth oak floors, it moves easily on its wide runners, rocking forward and back. Forward and back.

“What is it, Mama?” Caroline asks. “Is it Daddy? What’s happened?”

“Sit tight. We’ll hear soon enough.”

“You been feeling it, haven’t you, child?” Grandma says to Annie and begins rocking that chair a little faster. “You kept telling me and I wouldn’t listen. Shame on me for not listening.”

“Stop it, Mother,” Mama says. “I won’t hear any of that.” And turning to Annie, she says, “You too. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Annie says, wishing Mama would save some of her scolding for Caroline, who is the only one truly deserving of a scolding. Annie thinks to say as much, but that rocking chair keeps rocking, and something about it is concerning. She takes a step toward it, sliding one foot and then the other. That empty chair creaking and whining as it rolls forward and back makes Annie certain sneaking up on it is the thing to do. Each time it begins to slow, Grandma gives it yet another nudge.

Annie has always known Aunt Juna is her real mother, though she isn’t certain how. She wonders if that’s why Mama is oftentimes short with Annie, quick to give a warning or brace herself for one of Annie’s misdeeds. Mama has never told Annie that Aunt Juna is her real mother. Daddy, neither. Someone must have once said something. Probably Grandma. Probably she said something when she thought Annie was too young to understand. Maybe she and Mama were playing cribbage at the kitchen table or piecing together fabric squares for one of Grandma’s quilts, or maybe Grandma was peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink, and the conversation turned to what different coloring and stature the two Holleran sisters have. Caroline is dark-haired with blue eyes, just like Mama, and already she has the same pleasing shape as Mama. Daddy says Mama is soft in all the right places, which makes Mama swat at him and wag a finger for talking such a way in front of his girls.

Annie, a scant one year older than Caroline, is fair with the oddest black eyes, and every time she starts to soften up, to fill out here and there, she grows another two inches and turns hard and lean again. Juna had those black eyes and same slender frame. Cut close to the bone, Grandma may well have said. Like mother, like daughter. Grandma is all the time saying things she ought not say. Mama would have shushed her the way she’s always shushing Annie. But Annie wasn’t too young, and somewhere along the way, sometime during her fifteen and a half years, Annie soaked it up. Aunt Juna isn’t an aunt at all.

Out in the kitchen, the screen door swings open and slaps closed. Two sets of heavy footsteps cross the floor. It’ll be Daddy and Abraham Pace, and they’ll be taking off their boots before setting foot on Grandma’s kitchen floor. Nothing rankles Grandma quicker than someone leaving footprints on her kitchen floor.

“It was Cora Baine,” Daddy says.

Standing next to Abraham, Daddy doesn’t look so tall. His dark hair is matted on top from the hat he would have been wearing. If Daddy is wearing boots on his feet, he’s wearing a hat on his head. His hair has a way of bunching up on him, particularly when the air is heavy and damp, and Mama is all the time smoothing it down for him. His jaw, where his beard has filled in since yesterday morning, is a darker shade than the rest of his face, and the whites of his eyes shine against his brown skin.

“Sheriff loaded her up,” Daddy says.

Except for the creaking and whining of the rocking chair, the living room is quiet. The last Baine is gone. Twenty years ago, there was a litter of them living up at that house. Cora and her seven sons. All those brothers were big men, or so folks say, tall stock with ragged beards and ragged clothes. Each of them, except Joseph Carl, was chased out of Hayden County by his own mama. How bad must a son be to get himself chased off by his own mama? Folks also figure most of those boys are dead by now. They all had a taste for whiskey, and whiskey lovers are dealt less years than the rest of us. That’s what Mama says to Daddy over toast and coffee on those mornings he wakes suffering the aftermath of too much whiskey. The only Baine left in the county is Joseph Carl, and he’s six feet under, sent there by Aunt Juna, and the both of them are legends for her having done it.

Aunt Juna isn’t the good kind of legend, but the kind that has wrapped itself around the Holleran family and hung there for almost twenty years. Annie has never met a single one of those Baine brothers or Aunt Juna, knows them only through pictures. They never smiled, not Aunt Juna and not those boys. Grandma says folks didn’t have much to smile about in those days.

“What happened to her, Daddy?” Annie says, taking another step toward that rocker and wishing Grandma would stop, for the love of the good Lord above, rocking that rocker. “How did she die?”

Abraham Pace will tell anyone he meets that he is the largest man in Hayden County. Not that he is fat, but he is tall and thick and broad. His fingers are so wide, his knuckles so big, he can barely wrap them around another man’s hand to shake it. His chin is as square as the end of a table leg, and he has a wide-set jawbone. But the thing about Abraham Pace that makes him hardest to look at is the bulging brow that hangs over his brown eyes. When he was younger, he would tell people, he had the reddest hair too, though it isn’t so red anymore.

“Not certain,” Abraham says, resting a hand on Daddy’s shoulder. “Sad damn sight, that’s for sure. Sheriff calling in someone from the state. Let them have a look at her.”

“What does this mean?” Caroline says, still sitting with a straight back, her hands resting in her lap.