The Hawley Book of the Dead (13 page)

Jolon turned to me. “Girls? Your daughters? How many?”

“Three. Fifteen-year-old twins and a ten-year-old.”

“A lot
has
changed,” Jolon said.

“Do you have any?” I realized I knew nothing about him
beyond his phone number in the town directory. He was probably married with six
kids.

“Children?” He looked toward the line for fried dough with
maple cream, the progeny of Hawley clutching sweaty dollar bills. “No. Somehow
didn’t get around to it. Marriage, kids. Can’t say exactly why.”
His hand went up to the triangle of scar on his right cheek, one he’d carried
ever since a sledding accident when we were nine. When I’d goaded him into
climbing the biggest hill in town, with a hedge at the bottom that he crashed into,
slicing his cheek open. He’d had to have thirteen stitches. I’d plummeted
off my sled unscathed. Touching that scar was an old reflex. It meant he was thinking
more than he would tell you. At least that’s what it used to mean. I reminded
myself again how long it had been. That everything was different now. I was different
beyond imagining, and so must he be. Then the smile flashed again, and he said,
“Walk with me?”

I smiled back, hoped it was a warm smile, not wintry. My smile
hadn’t been used much lately, either. “I can’t refuse my Good
Samaritan. Although you left me stranded all those years ago. You never wrote, after
that one letter.”

“Call me your Not-So-Good Samaritan, then.”

We walked out into the sun, away from the crowd to the relative peace
behind the town hall. The view was of distant fields, dotted with round bales as tall as
he was. Third cutting, last of the season.

“What
did
happen, Jolon? I always
wondered.” I looked up at him. His silver eyes were turned to the fields, their
expression stark, unreadable.

“It’s a long story, now, and long ago. But you,
Reve.” His gaze returned to me, his face softened. “I read about your
husband. I’m sorry.”

It felt like a slap, that unexpected allusion to Jeremy. Then I remembered
how easily Jolon could blow my cover.

“Jolon, I have to ask you something. I’m using my maiden
name. I’m a Dyer again. No one here knows who I am, really. Could you
just … well, go along with that?” I didn’t say
why.

“Sure I can, Reve.” His eyes held so much pure kindness I
had to look away. “I wish I could do more. It must have been hell.”

This is where I would always shut down. Any time anyone wanted to offer
comfort, I’d get all stoic. But with Jolon, I wanted to spill it all, to cry and
throw myself at him, to tell him everything I was keeping in. All the rage and fear and
pain. I wanted to tell him it still
is
hell, it still is every minute. I wanted
to beg him to hold me like he used to until all the hurt went away. But we were
grown-ups now. Grown too far apart.

“I should get back to my girls.”

“Reve, if you need anything, I’m here.” It was a
simple enough statement, a common platitude, even. But I hoped like hell I
wouldn’t need him. Although he was my oldest friend, I couldn’t forget the
Hawley police emblem on his T-shirt.

“I’m sorry, I just … I have to
go.” I turned and stumbled off to find my family. I’d been without them
too long.

The old-time girl came to her at night, and in the daytime when she
used her string. Of course Caleigh knew the family stories, knew there had been other
Revelations, dozens of them through the generations, probably. She’d tried to
poke around the dining room fireplace one time, looking for the girl’s red book,
thinking that if she found it the dreams and visions would stop, but Mrs. Pike came in
to dust and Caleigh fled. Mrs. Pike scared her more than any ghost. She reminded Caleigh
of the witch
in “Hansel and Gretel,” just waiting to
pop her and her sisters into the woodstove.

It was this unfortunate connection that prompted a more troubling and
strange visitation from the past. “Witch’s Broom” was an old and
easy string pattern, not one of her intricate inventions. It was the first she’d
ever learned. She hardly used it anymore; there was no reason. She’d been
concentrating on designing a pattern she called “Skipping Rope Girl,”
trying to draw a friend into her new Hawley world. She was still working it out during
the fair. She was sitting on a stone wall in the sun with her grandfather and sisters,
watching the pony pull and occasionally dipping into a cone of maple cotton candy Gramps
had bought for them all to share. Then she happened to spot Mrs. Pike across the road,
riding a bike, of all things. One of the old-fashioned kind without gears, and a basket
on the handlebars. “Duh-nuh, duh-nuh, duh-nuh-nuh,” Caleigh sang under her
breath.
The Wizard of Oz
was her favorite movie. She must have unconsciously
slipped her string into a “Witch’s Broom,” for when she next looked
down, she saw the fan of the broom and the loop of the handle taut between her
fingers.

The world seemed to get all slow then. There was a strange humming in her
ears, and her eyes went blurry. When she could focus again, she was still sitting on the
same stone wall, but everything else around her had changed. Her grandfather was no
longer next to her enjoying his cotton candy. Her sisters were gone, too. The paved road
had turned to dirt. The huge maples that lined the road had dwindled to sticks. Most of
the houses were gone, turned into tall stacks of loose hay dotting the rolling, stubbly
fields. The houses that remained were smaller, meaner, unpainted. But the town hall was
there, big and white and imposing among all the tiny houses. There were people crowding
around the common. There still seemed to be a fair or something happening, but instead
of T-shirts and jeans with baseball caps, the women wore long, dark skirts and those
white hats with wings. The men wore wool pants and light blue shirts. Some wore long
jackets. It was like a uniform. Caleigh tried not to move, to be noticed. She
didn’t know if she could be seen, but she hoped not. She was wearing her green
Hello Kitty shirt, which looked good in the twenty-first
century, but
she didn’t think it would go over wherever, or when
ever
, she was.

She tried to figure out what was going on. There was a kind of stage where
the pony pull had been. It had a wooden plank on it, like a picnic table on its side,
with holes cut out in it. A man walked up to the plank, followed by two other men
holding the arms of a woman. Caleigh couldn’t be sure, but she seemed like a
younger version of the old woman of the dreams. The woman’s hair was fuller, red
and shiny as a sheet of copper, a little like Caleigh’s own hair. But her eyes
seemed the same. The men stepped away, and Caleigh could see the woman’s hands
were tied.

The man on the stage spoke, loudly enough so everyone could hear.
“Ya been accused of hexing Josiah Tompkins and his mule, Bethia Dyer.” The
woman’s last name made Caleigh gasp. It was her mother’s family name, the
name they all used now.

A skinny, crotchety old man piped up from the crowd. “And
that’s the truth, Deacon Taylor! I rode my good mule past her house not two weeks
ago. She spooked my mule so’s I fell on the ground and caught a cast in my knee.
Had to be away from my fields a week, now I canna get the mule to plow or ride at
all.”

“Had you any witnesses?” the man called Deacon Taylor asked
from the stage.

“What have I the need? She be the evil one.
She
need the
witnesses. Remember, she spelled Eliza Chook’s girl, who had the pox after Bethia
taught her her letters.”

There were murmurs in the crowd, and a woman yelled, “And she
an’t right from it yet!” All heads turned toward a fat woman with double
chins. “That’s right! This girl hexed my little one, sure enough. Martha
were still too poorly to come today, or she’d be here with me. Her father had to
stay to mind her.”

By the time they all turned back to the stage, the red-haired woman was
gone. She’d escaped somehow, in spite of bound hands and two men standing beside
her. A gasp rose up from the crowd, and Josiah Tompkins ran to the platform, looked
under it every which way. Caleigh forgot herself and laughed out loud. He was like a
chicken scurrying for food.
“She’s gone and
vanished!” he exclaimed. “Another spell!” The crowd buzzed.

A big man strode up onto the stage. “Rubbish,” he said.

Deacon Taylor stepped toward him. “Now, Urbane Sears, I
don’t know how the girl was spirited away, but we’re tryin’
to—”

The big man laughed then, but to Caleigh it sounded harsh and bitter.
“You can try all you want. You’ll not be trying it on my Bethia.”
He turned to the crowd. “I won’t let you country fools break my marriage
to this girl, or my family, or my store. I’ll close up and move back east, and
you can trade down to Northampton if any of you put a hand on her again. Or set your
tongues going. There’s no such creatures as witches. Get that into your thick
pates. I won’t abide this.” He stomped his way down the stairs, where the
woman joined him, her hands free now.

Urbane Sears led her away. The crowd parted for them. Just then, it seemed
to Caleigh that everything started fading at the edges, breaking up and rearranging
itself. First the stage faded, then the crowd, then suddenly the magician Setekh
appeared riding Mrs. Pike’s bicycle, and said, “I’ll get you, my
pretty.” Then even he faded and Caleigh was back at the fair with her grandfather
and sisters, the ponies straining against the weight on the stone boat. The sun on her
face was hot, and she was sleepy. She wondered what had really happened, then lay down
on the wall, propping her head on her arms and having a little nap for herself. Her
grandfather gently placed his cap over her face to shield her from the sun. He let her
sleep.

The horses arrived while we were at the fair. I’d planned it as
a surprise for the girls. Grace and Fai had been mopey, longing for their horses. And
even though Caleigh didn’t like riding, she’d grown up around horses,
liked to pet and groom them, and spoil them with treats. We all loved the barn smells,
the velvety horse noses, the sounds of the big animals crunching grain and whickering
softly to us.

When we pulled in the gate, Nathan was feeding them
apples, and three lovely heads swiveled toward the car.

“The horses!” Grace shrieked. All three girls had been
telling me about their time at the fair, fizzing with excitement. Caleigh was bragging
about everything she’d eaten. Grace and Fai were all googly-eyed over a boy
they’d met, a cute boy who told them about the old tavern and the ghosts that
haunted it near the Five Corners. But all thoughts of the fair flew out of their heads
at the sight of our horses.

“Stop! Let us out!” Caleigh had already flung the car door
open. I hit the brakes and they all catapulted out of the car. They slowed as they
neared the fence. They’d been taught early and well never to run around horses.
Each girl shimmied through the fence and flung her arms around the neck of her
favorite.

I climbed through the fence last and my own horse, Zar, left Caleigh to
rub his face against me. As usual, I planted my feet and leaned into him so he
wouldn’t knock me flat with that heavy, bony head. I ran my hands over the soft
chestnut coat that had begun growing out for the coming winter. I could feel the muscles
in his neck flex, and he groaned with pleasure when I scratched under his mane. It was a
comfort to breathe in his horsey smell of wild garlic and sweat. I’d missed the
horses as much as the girls.

“Mom, I think Rikka put on some weight.” Fai’s gray
horse, Rikka, thin and lithe, was a fine-boned twelve-year-old mare, narrower than the
two geldings.

“I think it’s just the hair,” Grace said.
“They’re all so furry.” Her horse, Brio, black as a cloudy night
sky, deserted her when Rikka reached her head to nudge him in the butt. Brio was the
tallest and youngest at ten, but Rikka was boss of the pasture. Zar was the elder
statesman of the three. Our horses are Arabians, the most elegant of horses and the
toughest for the desert riding we love. They had logged hundreds of miles on the trail;
in Zar’s case, thousands. Zar was eighteen. He’d been with me longer than
my children had, longer than Jeremy and I had been married. He’d carried me
through both pregnancies, had helped teach all the girls to ride, even Caleigh, who
begged off after a year of lessons left her as indifferent to riding as her sisters were
passionate about it. “I just like to pet Zar’s nose
once in a while. That doesn’t make me National Velvet,” she’d
famously said when she was eight.

“I suppose all you horse-crazy girls will settle down now
you’ve got your children back,” Nathan teased.

“Hey, coz.” Grace sidled up to him. “Why don’t
you ever ride with us?”

Fai piped in, “Because riding is one thing we do better than
him.” All three girls collapsed into gales of laughter.

Nathan just shook his head. “You guessed the secret! You’re
too good. You all just laugh at me.”

It was true. Nathan could ride well enough, but the twins were
naturals.

“I hope you don’t mind going out with only your old mother
tomorrow. I want to show you the trails I rode when I was your age.”

Grace snickered. “Aren’t they all grown over by
now?”

“Yeah.” Fai butted me with her shoulder. “I bet all
the brambles and things have grown up around them, and trolls live under the bridges,
and the princess has been asleep for a thousand years.”

“Oh, come on, your mother’s not that old,” Nathan
came to my defense. “She was just a little girl when the spell was
cast.”

“Hey! Say I don’t have an evil spell cast on me!” I
pinched him.

“Owww! All right, all right. No evil spell, a nice one.” He
rubbed his arm, grinning. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

The girls paid no attention to us. Grace perched on the fence with
Caleigh, helping her braid Zar’s mane. Fai, her face furrowed with care, plucked
a burr out of Rikka’s tail. For that moment, we almost seemed like a family
again, almost complete, almost whole. But then I remembered it was a fragile illusion,
one that could tumble like a house of cards.