The Angel Whispered Danger (2 page)

“You know—down where that raft washed up a long time ago, but they never found those people who were in it—the ones with the funny names. They drowned, Darby says, and their spirits are still there; he says they’re doomed to look forever for their bodies in the river because they did something bad.”

“Then their spirits must be shy because I never met them,” I said. “And that happened way before I was born.”

“Oh, Mom!” Josie rolled her eyes. She didn’t think much of anything happened before I was born, except maybe the discovery of fire.

“No, really. And I don’t know how bad they were, although people said they did a bad thing. They were supposed to have robbed a grocery store somewhere up near Dobson, but I don’t know if it’s true.”

They were a young couple—hippies, my mother said—and they’d stolen the raft from somebody’s vacation cabin several miles upriver. The girl’s name had something to do with the moon—Waning Crescent, or something like that. Marge used to laugh and say her father must’ve been a weatherman. And the boy called himself Shamrock—only it looked as if his luck had run out.

Earlier we had skirted the city of Charlotte and the land began to rise gently as we approached Statesville. Soon we would be in the foothills, and then the mountains themselves, where cold streams boiled and twisted alongside the spiraling road. In another hour or so we would reach Bishop’s Bridge and home. I still thought of it as home even though I had lived away for more than ten years. Ned and I had married during our senior year in college, and Josie arrived a few weeks before our first anniversary, just in time for the family reunion. I smiled, remembering how excited we were the first time we brought her home to show her off.

“Uncle Ernest is grouchy,” my daughter said, scratching a scab on her knee.

“Uncle Ernest is a bachelor—or as good as one; he’s not around children a lot, and you know he doesn’t hear so well . . . and don’t scratch that, Josie, you’ll make it bleed.”

My great-uncle had been married briefly when he was in his midthirties, I was told, but Bramblewood had proved too isolated for his young bride. I heard Cousin Violet telling Mama once that she thought Ernest was too set in his ways to have married.

“And that Ella made me eat lumpy oatmeal one time, and she’s always burning the toast,” Josie continued, referring to Uncle Ernest’s longtime housekeeper.

“Ella’s old. Give her a break—and she’s Miss Stegall to you. Besides, we’re not staying with Uncle Ernest. We’ll be at Jo-Jo and Papa’s,” I said, using the names she called my parents.

“But they’re not even going to be there! I wish we could go to England with them so we could see Aunt Sara’s baby.”

My younger sister, Sara, expected her first child within the next few days, and my parents had flown over to greet the arrival and help out with the new baby. Sara’s husband was sales manager of a division of a large electronics firm over there, and they lived in a community on the outskirts of London. Mom, who had never been out of the country, was so excited about the baby, she forgot to be afraid of flying all the way across the Atlantic.

“I wish we could be there, too,” I said, “but we just can’t afford it right now. Sara’s promised to send videos, and they’ll be home for Christmas.” Also, if I knew my mother, they probably wouldn’t be able to get the plane off the ground she’d have so many pictures to bring back. This would be their second grandchild after Josie’s birth ten years ago, and it had been a long and frustrating wait, especially after our sad loss.

“I just hope it’s not a boy!” Josie said.

“You like Darby and Jon okay, and you’ve always loved playing with little Hartley.” Marge’s youngest at three was, according to her, “no bigger than a skeeter bump,” but had already managed to climb from the mulberry tree to their garage roof and was a maniac on a tricycle.

“Beats hanging around with that dumb Cynthia,” Josie said. “Darby said he bet if she ever had an idea it would bust her head wide open.”

“Burst,” I said. “And Darby oughta be ashamed talking about his own cousin like that.” I hated to admit I had felt the same way about Cynthia’s mother, my cousin Deedee, when I was her age.

And she still got under my skin. When we were home just last Christmas, I’d heard Deedee bellowing in the produce department of J & G Groceries, telling Mr. Jim Whitby, who owns the store, that his coconuts didn’t slosh. Mr. Whitby’s about eighty—deaf in one ear, and can’t hear in the other—and the poor thing never did understand what she was saying. I hid behind a pyramid of canned cranberry sauce until she left.

“You don’t have to be best friends with somebody in order not to be rude—and she
is
your cousin,” I reminded my daughter—as well as myself. And if you could hear eyes roll, Josie’s would’ve sounded like marbles in a can.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said a few minutes later as we turned onto Highway 16 on the outskirts of Wilkesboro, North Carolina.

I was glad to see a peach stand next to the gas station where we stopped, and took the opportunity to buy a large basket of peaches, some green beans and a few onions. Although I knew Mom would leave her kitchen well-stocked, I wouldn’t be able to count on perishables. And since we would be having dinner with Marge and her family that night, I got a basket for them, as well.

Two men in overalls joked with each other as they rearranged produce on long tables, and while Josie waited in the car I took my time admiring shiny jars of strawberry jam, peach pickles and plastic-wrapped loaves of homemade bread. The only other customers were a woman and a young girl. The older one wore a frothy dress in a splash of sunrise colors that looked oddly out of place in a rural produce stand, and she shook her bright head and held up a warning finger as her younger companion reached for a peach. How odd, I thought, since it was a peach stand. Still, it was a comforting place and I wish I could have lingered longer.

I hadn’t enjoyed local peaches since the summer before, and the rosy-ripe smell of them almost made me heady. I didn’t know if I’d be able to make it all the way to Bishop’s Bridge without biting into one—peach fuzz and all. Josie already had, and now she looked around for a place to put the pit, sticky juice running down her arm, and I thought of the young girl back at the stand who had probably meant to do the same. For the first time since we’d left the beach that morning, my daughter looked almost pleasant. “Good as last year’s?” I asked, handing her a wipe.

Josie licked her lips. “Mmm . . . maybe even better.” She sniffed. “You didn’t tell me you bought strawberries, too.”

“That’s because I didn’t. They’re out of season now. Don’t you remember when I bought some at the farmer’s market a few weeks ago, they told me that would be the last of them till next year?” Strawberries were my daughter’s favorite fruit, and the ones you bought in the grocery store just didn’t taste the same.

“Then why do I smell them?” Josie peered around the back of her seat as if she thought she might find some, like red treasure, hidden there.

“Must be your imagination,” I said.

So why did I smell them, too?

For supper, Marge served chicken pie made with a real crust, baked ham, candied sweet potatoes, green beans and hot biscuits with homemade blackberry jam. I had some of everything. “How do you stay so skinny eating like this?” I asked, pushing myself away from a chocolate cake shaped like a bus, and almost as big. We were celebrating Hartley’s third birthday, and he’s obsessed with anything with wheels.

“Chase after these three for a while, and you’ll see.” My cousin served her youngest the first piece, which he plunged into with both fists.

“All of Daddy’s side’s like that,” my cousin Violet said, watching Marge slide wedges of cake onto paper plates with Thomas the Tank Engine on them. “Wouldn’t you know I’d take after Mama?” She lifted her fork as if preparing for a relay, and dug into the icing.

“I hadn’t noticed that slowing you any,” Ma Maggie said.

Ma Maggie is my grandmother on Mama’s side and Violet’s first cousin, although they act more like sisters since they were born three months apart and raised next door to each other.

Violet didn’t answer except to raise a forkful of cake to my grandmother in sort of a salute. I guess by now those two have learned to shove each other’s comments in the background, kind of like the sound of the dishwasher running or the babbling of those talk show people on TV.

Now Violet dipped a corner of her napkin into a glass of water to dab at a smear of fudge on her dress. “Will you look what I’ve gone and done. Oughta wear a bib! Got this dress on sale at Ivey’s when I was in Charlotte last year, and I know I’ll never find another like it.”

My cousin’s dress was a shade of purple, as were all her clothes. This one was a crinkley rayon caftan with plum-colored flowers that may or may not have been wisteria blossoms en masse along the hem.

“Ivey’s Department Store hasn’t been in Charlotte for at least seven years,” Ma Maggie mumbled into her coffee.

“Why do you wear purple all the time?” Marge’s son Darby asked, ignoring a threatening look from his mother. “Is that the only color you have?”

“Of course not, Darby. But I like to wear this color because of my name, you see—Violet . . . and because my dear friend Hodges always liked it on me. He said it became me.”

Cousin Violet’s “dear friend” Hodges had courted her for close to twenty years before expiring of rheumatic fever soon after I was born.

“Your
name
isn’t Violet, and you know it,” Ma Maggie said. “You just made that up.”

“How would you like to be named
Ida Clare
?” Cousin Violet washed down her cake with a swig of sweetened iced tea. “Ida’ clare, I believe it’s going to rain . . . Ida’clare, can you believe it’s almost Christmas already? Ida’clare, that boy must’ve grown a foot . . .” She shrugged. “I could go on and on. It got to where it was enough to make a preacher lose his religion!”

Darby and Jon elbowed each other and giggled.

“You’re excused,” Marge told her two older sons. “Go directly to the bathroom and wash your hands. Do not pass
go
and do not collect two hundred dollars.”

Josie looked from her cousins to me as if she couldn’t decide which was worse, being teased by her male relatives or remaining at the table with boring adults.

The boys won out. “You’re excused, too,” I said, and I heard the screen door slam as she slipped out after them.

“When are Lum and Leona getting here?” Ma Maggie asked of nobody in particular. Lum (short for Columbus) was Ma Maggie’s “baby boy.” He would be fifty-two on his next birthday.

“Sometime tomorrow,” Marge said. “They’re staying with Uncle Ernest.”

“Then God help ’em,” Violet said. “If they want to eat, they’ll have to order in. Ella’s gotten so blind Ernest says she put salt in the sugar bowl. And careless, too—why, I saw her in town last week in this old black dress so dirty it looked like it had done been wore to four country funerals. Lord only knows how old she is!”

“They’re a pair, aren’t they?” my grandmother said. “Ernest is getting deaf as a post, and Ella can’t see two feet in front of her, but she’s been there so long, she’s practically a fixture. I expect Ernest will keep her on as long as she wants to stay. Besides,” she added, “I don’t think it matters to Leona whether she eats or not—always on some kind of diet. Looks undernourished, if you ask me. It’s not healthy.”

Cousin Violet said she agreed and helped herself to just a
tiny
bit more cake.

“I expect Ernest is lonely up there in that big old house with nobody but poor old Ella for company,” Ma Maggie said.

“Might not be that way for long,” Violet said with an “I know something” smirk.

My grandmother peered over her bifocals. “What do you mean?”

“Been keeping company, I hear, with that little yellow-haired teacher they hired to take Myrtis Tisdale’s place.” Miss Tisdale, who had taught Latin at Bishop’s Bridge High since Gaul was divided into three parts, had died back in the winter. Rumor was that she died twenty years ago and they just propped her behind a desk.

“Since when?” I could tell Ma Maggie didn’t believe her.

“Since soon after she came here, I reckon. She’s even got him going to church.” Violet hid her magenta lips with a napkin, but I could tell she was smiling.

“Ernest? Our Ernest? I think you’re exaggerating. How come I haven’t heard about it?”

“Maybe if you’d go to church once in a while, Maggie Brown, you’d know what was going on,” Violet told her.

“Surely you don’t mean Belinda Donahue? Why, she’s young enough to be his daughter!”

“Ernest seems to like them that way,” Violet reminded her. “Anyway, the woman’s fifty if she’s a day.”

Sitting between them, I felt the situation might soon call for a referee and, since I wasn’t so inclined, signaled desperately to Marge.

“Actually, Uncle Ernest isn’t exactly alone up there. There’s that fellow who rents the guesthouse,” Marge said as she struggled to de-chocolate the hands and face of her squirming birthday child. “Casey . . . whatever his name is, but I doubt if he’s much company.”

“At least he takes care of the lawn,” Violet said. “That big old place is too much for Ernest. I keep telling him he oughta move into town.” She shook purple curls. “Of course, we all know that will never happen.”

Through the lace curtains of Marge’s dining room window I could see her two boys and Josie run to meet Marge’s husband, Burdette, as he pulled into the driveway after visiting a sick parishioner. My cousin Marge was the last person in the world I thought would marry a preacher—and a Baptist one at that—but she and Burdette not only accepted the other’s customs, but seemed to relish the difference. I only hope the members of the Jumping Branch Baptist never get wind of that St. Patrick’s Day back in college when my cousin colored her hair green and went wading in her altogether in the campus fountain. Burdette Cranford, although he wouldn’t admit to condoning it, had had a great laugh when Marge finally told him about her wild college prank. He was a giant of a man with ruddy cheeks, calm blue eyes and a laugh you could hear in the next county. Josie, who at two couldn’t pronounce his name, still called him “Cudin’ Bird” and thought he could do just about anything.