The Storycatcher (20 page)

I stood. That’s when I saw the words
LOST
and
ARMETTA LOLLY
written on a marker. Was this the colored girl I read about in the church records? A cold breeze moved over me and a mist blew in from the woods, spraying my face with fine droplets of water. A deep sorrow rushed through my chest. Silly. If I were Shelly, I would claim the mist, the emotion that twisted my insides, proved there was a spirit, a ghost, a lost soul.

“Lost.” It wasn’t totally uncommon for a person to become lost on Black Mountain. Patty Harkin had come up missing and was found dead. Nellie Pritchard walked off from her house and was never seen again. Maybe this Negro girl lost her way in the woods. They were thick and dark from spring until late fall. But all the mysteries could probably be explained with diligent snooping.

Again the wave of sadness swept over me. I moved to another group of headstones close by. The Danielses. The low cloud pushed and pulled its way through the cemetery, dropping the headstones one by one into sudden darkness. The birds were silent. A few feet away I found a smaller stone,
PAUL LAMAR DOBBINS.
My fingers tingled as I traced the letters. Dobbins wasn’t exactly an uncommon name, but my heart knew this was the connection to Pastor Charles Dobbins.

Fear slammed square in my chest, taking my breath. Something moved through the mist in my side vision. A fleeting shadow, maybe a fox or a bobcat, scooted through the trees. I began to run, nearly falling over the angel to get out of the place. How stupid of me. By the time I could see my cabin the sun was out and I felt like a young fool. Thank
goodness no one knew. Zach wouldn’t think I was totally crazy. I had to tell him about what I found in the books and cemetery.

I WAS STANDING
by my truck when George Connor, a good friend and farmer from down the mountain, came barreling up the drive in his old pickup. He smiled as he climbed out.

“Maude, you look like you’ve been running around the mountain.”

Sweat rolled down my face. “Everything okay, George?”

“Well, I met Mrs. Dobbins driving down the mountain. Lord, I always give her room. She’s not the best driver, but today she was in a bigger hurry than usual.”

“Really? Doesn’t sound like Lydia. She seldom goes off the mountain.”

“I know.” He shoved his hands in his pockets.

“The mist was bad in the woods today.”

He nodded. “That part of the mountain scares a lot of folks. I’d stay clear if I were you.” He smiled.

“Well, I can see why they make stories up about the place.” I tried to laugh.

“You mean the old ghost house. It be scary, all right.”

“It’s the old Daniels house, right?” I tried to sound casual.

“Yep. I wouldn’t go there.”

“Mama said once that the Danielses were wealthy.”

He laughed. “I reckon, but money sure didn’t help them none. Nobody liked them. They had one decent child, a son, who helped start the church. The rest of the lot was touched in the head. That’s what my mama said. But you know how rumors are on the mountain.”

“Really, mentally ill?”

He shrugged. “That’s what was said. The Danielses never used planting signs, and they always turned their backs on folks down the mountain. They liked to make fun of hardworking people. Mama said they died out because of their scorn.”

“But who was mentally ill?”

George cocked his head to the side. “The father kept the young daughter holed up in the house. Wouldn’t let her leave for no reason. He made one of his housemaids live in the cemetery. When he died, the daughter got out and made friends with the housemaid in the cemetery. They say the daughter nearly grieved herself to death over her daddy. Finally she got married off and left the mountain, but she be buried up there.”

“How horrible.”

He grinned because it was just like George to spin a good story. “But I didn’t come up here to tell you all that, Maude. I just came from Asheville. The sheriff says he needs you to come see him. He has an answer for you.” George watched me. It must have been killing him to know what I asked the sheriff. And of course the whole mountain knew at one time I had dinner with Zach once a week.

“Good.” I didn’t even tell him a thing. “I’ll drive down.”

He tipped his hat. “I’ll take my leave since you won’t give me a juicy bit of gossip.” He laughed.

“George, all kidding aside, what do you know about that Negro housemaid that lived in the cemetery? I found her grave today and she’s mentioned in the church records.”

He gave me a long look. “You been digging around, Maude?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

His face turned quiet. “What I told you is the truth as I know it. See, I just know enough to stir things up.”

I laughed. “Oh, that is so true, George.”

“You have a wonderful day, Maude, and tell the sheriff I’ll see him again soon. Then he can tell me all about your meeting.” George would go home and tell his wife how crazy I was getting, living all alone like I did. A new rumor to begin floating around the mountain.

“It’s a pure pleasure, George, as always.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the Negro girl in the yellow dress standing in the meadow near the woods. In a blink, she disappeared.

ZACH WAS SITTING
at his desk when I opened the door to the sheriff’s office. “You got my message fast enough.” He grinned.

I took the empty chair. “You know George Connor. He couldn’t stand to hold it in long. You found out something about Charles Dobbins?”

He pulled a folder out of a pile on the desk. “Yes, my friend proved your concerns. I think you need to tell me everything you know.”

“First, what have you found?”

“I know why Charles Dobbins came to be a pastor on Black Mountain and why he hasn’t left. And Maude, you were right. He never would have chosen this place on his own.” Zach drummed his fingers on the paper.

“So tell me.” My stomach fluttered. Would he believe what happened to me in the cemetery that morning?

“His father is a big guy in the Episcopal church in New Orleans. Pastor Dobbins was pulled out of the class he taught at the local seminary and sent to run a revival all over the Southeast. He wasn’t a pastor but a teacher, but a lot of the students were complaining to the head dean about his beliefs and theology. So Pastor Dobbins ended up on the coast of Georgia. His father sent the youngest brother, Lenard, along to keep Charles in line. Lenard was and is known all over New Orleans for his taste in card games and losing money, the black sheep of the family. Anyway, he took off the first night to play cards somewhere on a dock in this place called Darien. When he came back early the next morning, Charles was missing, so he reported the disappearance to the sheriff. That’s when he found out the police had discovered the body of a young Negro woman in the warehouse near the bank of the Altamaha River where Charles and his brother had pitched their revival tent. Then the story gets more interesting. My friend says there was another Negro girl found but the story went cold there. No one pressed charges against Pastor Dobbins or his brother, not even a report
by the sheriff. The way my friend found out about this was Lenard himself, talking after a few drinks and a card game. Two witnesses put Charles with the first Negro woman before she was found dead. Lenard confided that he believed his brother was very capable of killing. My friend said you could chalk Lenard’s story up to differences between brothers, but still. It’s something to think about.”

I never saw myself as a woman scared easily, but that was the second time in one day I got a cold chill.

“Whatever happened that night, Dobbins and his little family—including their maid and her son—were packed up and sent to Black Mountain for good. To me, that indicates something bad happened. I figured his father pulled some kind of strings to get Charles off the hook. Then put him in a safe place where he couldn’t do much damage. You can’t get more isolated than the mountain. Also, Mr. Dobbins had a reputation in New Orleans for his taste in colored maids, if you know what I mean.” He looked at me. “What did you find in the church records?”

“Mostly deaths and births, but I did find out there was a Negro girl who came up missing in 1870. She was loved so much by Amelia Daniels that she put up signs attempting to find her. Kind of strange for the times.” The angel came to mind and I smiled.

Zach wore an intent stare. “It seems your concerns are correct, Maude. Now tell me what you think the good pastor did.”

I waited a minute. Once my thoughts were out, I couldn’t put them back, or as Mama used to say: Open a can of worms, and you can’t close it again.

“George Connor told me Lydia Dobbins left the mountain in a hurry. The woman never leaves the mountain.”

“You can’t arrest a man because his wife leaves him.” Zach frowned at me. “Tell me.”

I took a deep breath. “Arleen Brown died in childbirth in the summer of 1935.”

“That’s been four years ago. Why now?”

“Her death seemed a simple case caused from childbirth gone bad. But she told me something right before she died.” The words hung in the air between us.

“What did she tell you?”

“That she was forced into having relations with the baby’s father.”

He looked at the ceiling. “And that is, who? And why now? Why not five years ago when it happened?”

“I didn’t have a real reason. I didn’t know the person responsible.”

“And you know now. You think it is Dobbins? Why? You didn’t just pull him out of thin air.”

I looked away. Faith didn’t need trouble from Zach. “Something isn’t right about him. It’s a feeling.”

“Feelings don’t count as proof, and you know it.” He cocked his head to the side. “You’re giving me the runaround. Why?”

“I’m not.”

“Maude, what else?”

I reached into my pants pocket and pulled out the cross, dropping it on the desk. “This was Arleen’s. Her family never knew how she got it.”

He turned it over in his palm. “The Browns are pretty stretched, right?”

“Yes.”

“No one on the mountain has the means to own such a nice piece of jewelry except you and of course Charles Dobbins.”

I laughed. “You know it’s not mine.”

“I have to cover every possibility. You know that.” He smiled. “So, we have a cross and a dead girl’s last words.”

“In the church records, Amelia Daniels’s brother mentioned a missing cross with a diamond in the middle, but that was 1870,” I blurted. All of a sudden I wanted him to believe me.

He turned from the window he was looking out and stared at me again. “Maude, how did you get this cross?” The question stood between us. “I know you’re not telling me everything.”

I looked away from him and waited, waited because I wanted to save, to protect, Faith. “Faith brought it to me yesterday.”

His face remained neutral. “Where did she get it from?”

“I really don’t know, Zach. But I do know Arleen had it around her neck in the casket at the funeral. But I know Faith could never take it off. I know this about her.”

He plopped down in his chair. “Maude, we have a mystery but I’m not so sure it only involves Pastor Dobbins.”

“We have to leave Faith out of this. You have to trust me. If anything, she is a victim too.”

He slapped his hands on his knees. “We have a mother who may have taken her daughter off the mountain. We have a dead girl’s cross and her confession of being raped. We have to have proof. The cross isn’t proof.” He thought a minute. “Does Faith know if anything was going on between her father and Arleen?”

“I don’t know. She is a private girl. I do know he bought the girl a brand-new casket and brought it up the mountain. It was the talk for some time. And the Sunday before her funeral he tried to give the Browns the offering collection. Mr. Brown refused because of pride.”

“While all interesting, nothing proves he is a rapist, not even the information we got from New Orleans. He’s a pastor and we have to tread lightly. We have to pin this cross to him, and that will help a whole lot.”

“You know if Charles Dobbins forced himself on Arleen and she became pregnant, then in a way he is responsible for her death.”

“No jury would convict him.” Zach shrugged. “I’m going to do more snooping. Maude?”

“Yes?”

He frowned at me. “Do you think Dobbins is a threat to his daughter?”

“I’ve always seen him as a stupid man, an idiot, but yes, I think he could hurt someone, especially Faith, maybe even Shelly, his maid’s daughter.”

“Then you have to be careful.”

I looked away. “He won’t hurt me.”

“Just be careful. I’ve got to give this some thought. I’ll come up to see you in the next day or two. We can decide what the next move will be.”

“I’ll come down here.”

He smiled. “Still worried about what others think?”

I frowned. “No, I don’t want to tip off Dobbins.”

He nodded.

M
AMA’S WORDS WAS ALL OVER
me when I closed the door to Faith’s room and pulled the desk chair in front of the window. This way I could keep a watch on Pastor, who was stretched out in the backyard, yelling at the sky every once in a while. The charm quilt was spread out on Faith’s bed, and the old sewing basket sat next to it. What that basket held was part of the magic: a thimble, a pair of shiny little scissors, and lots of thread, some homespun and so old it broke when I pulled too hard while stitching. The thread colors, pale red, gray-blue, yellowing white, and coppery brown, painted the feelings being sewn into the pattern. Mama said in the old days a quilt was much more than a blanket to throw on the bed in the winter. A person’s story was sewn right into the design. A wedding quilt most of the time was made from scraps of clothes that once belonged to the beloved couple. A baby quilt gave hope to the sweet parents bringing the child into the world. And a
charm quilt could be a lot of things. This one was a death quilt and told the story of my death at the hands of all those who played a part. Death didn’t always come to a person in a straight line. Those involved sometimes didn’t even understand they had a place in the circumstances.