The Storycatcher (37 page)

He placed a finger to his lips. “Arleen, be quiet. You have to let Faith come back into her body. You understand. I don’t know why you think you are helping her. It sounds like you’re just helping yourself.”

“That’s not true.” I wasn’t going to listen to him. “She can’t do what has to be done. I have to use the death quilt. There’s a soul sewn into it. That soul will die when I finish.”

“So you sewed the pastor into the quilt?” He frowned. “If he dies,
Faith will be the one blamed. That cannot happen. Let her go.” His voice was mean.

I stood up. “No. I won’t. This is my time. Not hers. I’m owed this.”

He reached for Faith’s hand.

I pulled away. And just like some ten-year-old girl, I ran. I’d go back to Missus.

“Arleen!”

Tires screeched and a violent shove sent my world spinning. Then all I heard was the loud thud. Footsteps all around me.

“Someone call an ambulance.”

I tried to open Faith’s eyes.

“That’s Ada Lee Tine’s boy. Check on him.” Hot breath hit my face. “Ma’am, ma’am?”

I managed to open Faith’s eyes. A man with a dark beard stared into my face. “Will,” I whispered.

“She’s talking!” he yelled over his shoulder. “They got to take him to the colored hospital,” he said.

“He saved my life. He pushed me out of the way.” The siren came close. Then I could see the red lights. Two men jumped from the cab and ran to me.

“Go check on Will! He got hit by the car. Not me.” A wild-animal sob escaped my chest.

I got to my feet. “Will?” He was in the middle of the road. Two white women stood on the curb watching. No one was helping. “Help him!” I went to him and squatted down. “Will!”

He looked at me and smiled. “Damn girl, you stay in trouble.”

“Help him!” I screamed at the ambulance guys. “What hurts?” I looked Will in the eyes.

“My knee feels bad.” His eyes were bloodshot.

Around his head was a puddle of blood. A wild scream worked inside me, but I kept it down. There. There. A cut near his eye. Not his head.

The men began to work with Will.

“We’re sending word to Ada.” This came from a colored man who seemed to have just appeared from nowhere. “He’s got to go to the colored hospital, ma’am.”

“No! He needs the nearest hospital. Do you hear?” I screamed.

The knocking in my head took up all the thoughts, and I fell down the dark black hole. Faith wanted to come back, and I had to let her. It was the rules.

T
HE SOUND OF BONES CRACKING
shook my dead soul. It was one of those sounds I knew and wished I didn’t. When he was done, he crashed through the woods with my angel. The white granny woman never heard him take the dern thing from her garden. He even watched her through her bedroom window while she undressed. Now he was trying to put the angel back before someone found the hidden place. The man was a devil.

“You be in trouble if you hurt the granny woman.”

He laughed hard and long. “You silly ghost, I’m the one with the power, not you, or her or the other bitch. Me! It’s over. The angel goes back where it belongs. It’s over. I have the power. Now Faith has to stay with me forever.”

I MET HER SOUL
when she left her body—Shelly’s mama—a bright glow. That meant she be lucky. All was at peace and out of her hands.

“Watch my children, Armetta,” she said. What made her think I was going to stay on the mountain that long? I wanted to leave just like her. It was way past my time. Then she turned into a golden crystal light and soaked into the sky. What made her soul different from mine? And then I knew. Forgiveness. She forgave herself for all she’d done. If I did that, could I leave? Could I go, even though I was still lost? Or did I have to be found?

“Where’s the cross?” he screamed as he went through her cabin.

This made me laugh. I laughed and laughed. His time was near.

T
HERE HE WAS
all shining and new. His leg wrapped. A cut here and a bruise there. He was whole like no truck ever hit him. Shelly stood on one side of the bed and me on the other. That Miss Faith stood in the room like she belonged. They said she caused a ruckus, not wanting him to go to the colored hospital.

“I told them to get Will the best white doctor in Brunswick, Mama.” She looked at Miss Lydia. Something had changed about this girl. Before she made me think of little irises that come up in the woods when it still be cold on the island. Quiet, studying, like she be thinking about her next move. Now she’d done turned into a bright red rose full of thorns and sneaky. Yes, sneaky. Something told me nobody knew just what might go through that one’s mind.

“She be back, the real Faith,” Shelly whispered to me across Will like he couldn’t hear a word.

“I need to talk to you, Shelly,” Will spoke softly.

She nodded.

“A white doctor ain’t going to see my boy.” My head was pounding with nervous pain.

“He’s not your boy,” Faith whispered. “The best doctor in Brunswick is coming. I insisted.”

“When’s he coming? Two days from now? His leg needs to be checked by a doctor today.” I know I sounded sassy to my boss’s daughter, but it didn’t matter.

“I promise he’ll be here. I just want the best care for him. He’s like family to us.” Faith said this nice and quiet. She wasn’t a bit sassy. Something had to be wrong with her.

“Will, did you ever let Amanda know where you were?” Miss Lydia spoke for the first time, studying my boy.

“This is my boy, Miss Lydia. I don’t mean no disrespect, but don’t go in our business. I’m going after our doctor.”

“Ada, I’m fine. My knee hurts but they wrapped it good.”

“I think Amanda deserves to know her son is alive.”

The whole time I’d known Will, I’d never seen him with a mean look on his face. He only had kind, soft words for folks. Now he shot Miss Lydia a hateful look, full of spite. The very spite I’d seen on Shelly’s face when she first saw him.

Miss Lydia looked like she might say something but she backed down.

I broke the silence. “I’m going to see Dr. Thomas. I’ll be back. Shelly, you stay right here with Will.”

Miss Faith looked at me with pity, and that made me madder than anything. She thought I didn’t understand who Will belonged to. She was the one who didn’t get it. He didn’t belong to his mama, Shelly, her, or me. He belonged to Sapelo Island.

“Don’t worry about me, Ada,” Will said.

“You hush and let me do what I’m supposed to do.” I left him in the room. Dr. Thomas stood at the end of the hall near the nurses’ station.
Our little hospital wasn’t nothing to look at, but the care we got from Dr. Thomas was the best on the coast.

“Hi, Ada.”

“Can you come look at my boy? He’s the one who got hit by the truck, saving that sassy little white girl.”

“Yes, ma’am. The whole town is buzzing.”

“Could you look at his knee and eye?”

He ran his fingers through his hair. “I can’t, Ada.”

I had to take me a breath. “Why? Is it money? I can pay. I won’t leave no bill.”

His face turned straight, almost sad. “You know I don’t worry about money, Ada.”

“Then what?”

“That white girl done called in Dr. Ballard, the white doctor. I can’t step in front of him.”

“I give you permission to treat my boy. I don’t want no white doctor.” My voice was getting loud.

“Ada, it’s not a bit about what you want, or I want, or even what your boy wants anymore. Dr. Ballard could close this hospital down just ’cause he feels the notion. He doesn’t like treating coloreds, but the niece of the richest family in Brunswick called him. This is serious business, and I have this whole hospital of patients to think about.”

“That fool girl.”

“Yes. I think her heart was in the right place.”

My thoughts rushed around my head.

“From what I’ve seen, Will is stable. Ballard will be here. It seems he’s having lunch with the mayor.”

“Lord.” I needed to put that Miss Faith in her place. “Thank you, Dr. Thomas.” I stormed back down the hall.

“Things are going to be just fine.” Will was talking to Shelly. Miss Lydia had taken that daughter of hers out of there.

“We got to wait on the white doctor thanks to little Miss Busybody.”

“Ada, she wasn’t trying to cause trouble. She’s from Black
Mountain. Things are a little different there.” He looked over at Shelly. “We can’t blame Faith for the way she acts. She doesn’t know all the rules.”

Just then the white doctor entered the room. “Okay, folks, I was called by Tyson’s niece. She wanted me to check out some colored boy that saved her life,” he said, looking at Will with a big old rich plastic smile on his face.

“This here be Will,” I said.

“Understand, I don’t make a habit of treating coloreds. But Tyson is an old friend. I can’t do it again.” He looked over at Will. The light reflected off his shiny bald head. “Now, what’s the problem?”

“He was hit by Parker Lock’s milk truck, saving Mr. Tyson’s niece.” I wanted him to know I didn’t no more want him there than he wanted to be there.

He looked at Will. “A truck, you say?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s a nasty cut there. I’ll have a nurse stitch you up. Any other complaints? You look good to me for someone hit by a truck.” He laughed at his own joke and looked at a gold watch on his wrist.

“My knee hurts.” Will frowned.

Dr. Ballard pulled back the sheet and began mashing Will’s knee.

Will sucked in air.

“Bruised. Stay off of it for a week. I guess I’ll leave you to the capable hands of the nurse. She’ll stitch you and rewrap that knee. You can go home first thing in the morning.” He smiled. “I have a meeting. You have a wonderful day.” And out of the room he walked.

“See, I told you, Ada. I’m fine.”

Will looked over at Shelly. “What do you say when I get out in the morning, we go to Black Mountain? I think Mama should be part of our talk.”

Shelly broke into the biggest smile. “She’ll be so excited, Will.”

My heart bottomed out. “I guess I’d better go fix Miss Lydia’s supper before it gets any closer to dark.”

Will turned his smile on me. “You’re going with me, Ada. I’m not
leaving you behind. Then when I’m finished, we’ll both come back. I told you the island is my one and only home.”

The nurse came in with a tray.

“You and Shelly go back to Mr. Tyson’s. Tell Faith we’re going back to the mountain tomorrow. Mrs. Dobbins might want to stay behind. I got the feeling she has left Pastor for good.”

“You have to stay off your knee,” I fussed.

“It will be fine in the morning. Don’t you think?” he asked the nurse.

She smiled. “I have a feeling with you it will be in working order.”

I gave him a big old hug. “I love you, boy.”

He squeezed my hand. “I love you, Ada,” he whispered in my ear.

I had to turn my head to keep him from seeing the tears in my eyes.

“See you tomorrow, Shelly.”

She took two steps toward the door and ran back to him, hugging him too. “I’m sorry to be so mad at you.”

He smiled. “Ah, I would have been mad at you if you did what I did.”

And that was that. We left.

Miss Faith and Miss Lydia stood by the car in the back parking lot. Nothing about them made me think of mother and daughter.

“Did Doctor Ballard come?” Miss Faith asked. There was a calmness in her eyes that hadn’t been there when she came.

“They letting him come home tomorrow morning.”

Miss Lydia touched my arm. “I’m sorry, Ada. Faith acted without my knowledge. She just wanted the best for Will. Those two grew up together. Faith nearly grieved herself to death when he left.”

Now, in all my years of working for white folks, not one ever said they were sorry for something they did to me.

“It all worked out.” That girl of hers could learn something from her mama.

“I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to Faith. She’s everything to me.”

Faith looked at her like she couldn’t believe her ears.

“I got to buy some supper fixin’s. You go on home. Me and Shelly will catch us a ride.”

“No, Ada. I’ll drop you at the market in Darien.”