Unraveled (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-seven

Miss Becky had already been to the garden by the time we got ready for school. Grandpa was gone, busy with law work. He hadn't been to the field at all since Friday and I knew it was worrying him.

I pushed back my empty breakfast plate. I wasn't too interested in finishing my milk, because it was fresh from the cow that morning and a little too warm for my taste.

Miss Becky gave me her mock frown. “Y'all rolled out early for a school day.”

Mark wiped up the last of the honey on his plate with half a biscuit. “We're gonna go feed.”

She finished her own eggs. “That'll be sweet of y'all. Grandpa'll be proud of you for it.” She picked up our breakfast plates and dropped them into the dishpan full of water. “What a time for the phones to be out.”

We lost electricity pretty regular and the phones were just as likely to go out as well. That was one more problem with our party lines. Her comment made me think. “I dreamed about lights last night, colored lights and sparks. Think there's a line down?”

“No. I think somebody didn't hang up and the line's open.” Miss Becky fussed around the kitchen, getting it cleaned up so she could start dinner. It seemed like she was constantly cooking one meal after the other. “I was listenin', and it sounded like somebody moving around in a house. Miss Whitney, most likely. I think I can hear her whistling in the background. My lands. I never did like to hear anybody whistle. Your Aunt Lucy whistled all the time when we were kids and it always set my teeth on edge.”

I gave Mark a big grin. Even though they'd see each other in class, Pepper'd called the last three mornings and jabbered at one another until the bus came down the road. I listened a couple of times at first, but they didn't talk about anything other than rock 'n' roll that interested me. Half the time Mark said “uh huh” and “yep” while Pepper did most of the talking. They wouldn't be at it this morning, though.

Miss Becky started to peel a potato, but put it down and dug around a drawer for her whetstone. “I despise a dull knife.” She sat down at the table with us and worked on the knife's edge. She slowed down for a moment, thinking. “Was your dream last night from the Poisoned Gift?”

“No ma'am. I don't think so, but you never know.”

I figured it was her way of worrying things out and it probably had to do with the dead man we saw at the fair. She never did act like most women who needed to talk through everything that happened around them. She just waited until the time was right and never asked too many questions. “You two all right this morning?”

What with dreaming of colored lights, flickering and flashing in the air like fireflies, I felt a little tired. I knew Mark tossed and turned, too, because I roused up several times to hear him on the other side of the room. I knew he was probably having a hard time of settling in since he'd been living in another world only the week before.

Mark shrugged and kept his head lowered.

Miss Becky's eyes softened and she stopped sharpening her Old Hickory. She rubbed the back of my neck. “Boys, we can talk if you want to.”

I could tell she had something on
her
mind. I shook my head. I was glad Pepper wasn't there, too. “We're fine. I just dreamed all night, and I guess I'm tired.”

The living room clock ticked in time with the rhythmic circular grinding against the stone as she worked the edge of the blade. “Top, I'm-a-gonna tell you something that might help you with them dreams, but you boys have to promise me and God that you'll never breathe a word of it to no one. I believe you're old enough, though I don't even want Pepper to know. It's about your Grandpa Ned. Can y'all keep it?”

I 'magine we both sat there with dumb looks on our faces, because I'd never heard Miss Becky talk about Grandpa at all. Mark blinked at me, and I realized he was as shocked as I was. We nodded.

“I know this is asking a lot of you, Mark, right now with you barely getting here and all, but you boys need to know this about your Grandpa.”

“Yessum. I'm afraid I'm gonna feel bad about keeping it from Pepper, though.”

“I know, hon. But it's not one of them secrets that's bad, it's one to help Top.”

“Okay.”

“Good.” She kept working the knife on the whetstone, not making eye contact with us. “There's something in the Parker blood that I've called the Poisoned Gift ever since I met your Grandpa. The thing is, the Gift skips generations. Your Grandpa Ned had it when he was younger, when we first married, and it almost tore him to pieces.

“Now, I'm not gonna tell you everything, because I think the ol' Devil has a finger in that Gift, and some of the things that happened back then is best left alone. Your Grandpa had something different, though, a Gift that was both beautiful and terrible at the same time.”

Neither me or Mark made a sound. The ticking of the clock, the circular grinding, and her voice were almost hypnotizing.

“It skipped your Uncle James and your daddy, for some reason or 'nother, but you've dreamed them dreams and have gone through a lot over the last four years or so. I think you're a lot stronger'n you think. You stand tall in the rain, if you know what I mean.”

I didn't but I felt about ten times bigger just listening to her.

“The Poisoned Gift's different in every Parker male. Your great-great-granddaddy Will Parker knew when folks were about to die, if they were sick. He could tell 'em to change their ways, or what they were doing, and sometimes it worked.

“Your Grandpa Ned had something else. He told me about it when we was going together and I prayed about it might near every day after.” Her grinding slowed. “See, he could help folks pass over.”

I guess she noticed my frown and her sharpening sped back up. “When folks were bad off, if they were dying and making a hard time of it, he could hold 'em and they'd go easy, praise the Lord.”

I watched her eyes fill.

“Sometimes he'd sit by their bed and hold a person's hand. Other times when they were trying to die and it was really hard, he had to gather 'em up in his arms.” A tear welled and rolled down her wrinkled cheek. She didn't bother to wipe it away. “I've seen him help people get to Glory when they were too bad off to keep living.
Hallelujah
.”

That last word was soft, almost to herself. She almost stopped moving the blade on the whetstone.

Mark cleared his throat, and his voice was low and wavery. “It sounds like he was just killing them.”

“Oh no, hon. Ned just opened his arms and gathered 'em in. I believe that opened a way to Heaven's gates for them folks. But it was hard on him, and each time he'd be so wore out he couldn't do nothing for a day or so after.”

“He doesn't do it anymore.”

“That's right. We'd only been married for a couple of years, and he helped folks pass whenever someone could talk him into it. Then one day a little gal named Pickles came to him with her family and her bigger sister who was so bad off she wasn't nothin' but a bag of bones in her daddy's arms when he brought her into the house.”

“Pickles is a funny name for a girl.”

A tear rolled down Miss Becky's cheek. “She was a little colored gal, and I doubt that was her real name. But she was a corker, that one, only about seven or so.” Now both eyes flooded and tears dripped from Miss Becky's cheeks as she remembered.

“I'm not going into all of this right now, because you boys need to be a little older for the whole story, but he helped Pickles' sister cross over by just holding her. He cried over it and after that, things got bad in town and there was some people wanted your Grandpa to go to prison for it. Well, O.C. finally cleared it up, but Ned stopped helping people after that and a while later he lost that Poisoned Gift and it never came back.”

I blinked away my own tears. “I wish that would happen to me…that it would go away.”

“I don't believe it's the right time for it to go, hon. I believe the good Lord gave you something you need to learn to use. Maybe you can do something good with it when you get older and understand what it is.”

“How did Grandpa learn about it?”

She drew a deep, shuddering breath. “We was in a flivver, driving into Chisum one day and there was a bad wreck between a buggy and another car like the one we were in. The horse that was pulling the buggy was hurt bad, and it got loose from the harness when someone cut it free.

“We were just sitting there in the front seat, when that young gelding limped over to Ned and rested his head against Ned's shoulder, like he could help it. You know them old cars was open, so it was nothin' for that horse to do it, but Ned said when it leaned against him a-quivering and a-hurtin', something passed between them and that's how he knew he had it.”

I thought about Grandpa's own Poisoned Gift and understood why he let it go. “Maybe if I just quit using mine it'll go away.” It was a dumb thing to say, because I had no control when it came or went.

“I don't believe it works that way. The Lord will let you know what to do down the road.” She stopped grinding the blade and tested the edge with her thumb. Satisfied that it was sharp enough, she laid it on the table. “Now, that's all I'm going to tell you right now. You get the rest of it when you're grown, I reckon. And remember boys, you promised to keep this secret.”

We nodded the same time.

“Good. Now, don't even bring it up to your Grandpa. He'd be mad if he knew I told you.” A weight seemed to be gone from her shoulders and she straightened. “Norma Faye's coming by to get me in a few minutes. We're going over to Wanda Leah's house to quilt. Y'all don't miss that bus.”

She forgot about the knife and wrung out a washrag and wiped the table. “Top, put out the alfalfa when you feed so you won't go to wheezing. Give 'em some extra cubes. They didn't get fed yesterday, neither. Y'all stop and gather the eggs on the way back. My buckets were full when I came back from the garden.”

A horn honked down on the highway as a car went past. Folks who knew us always honked howdy. Miss Becky glanced out the kitchen window. “That was Ralston's car. I believe I saw Miss Sweet in there with him.”

Miss Sweet was one of John Washington's old twin aunts. She was the local healer for the coloreds and poor white folks who couldn't afford a doctor. Most of the white folks didn't admit that she came by when she did, but she didn't care who she helped. In fact, she kept me from dying a few years earlier from a bad asthma attack.

The kitchen door was open and we saw the car turn down the oil road past the Assembly church. It made the bend at Uncle Mason's house and kept going.

Miss Becky turned back to us. “They're heading down to the bottoms. There's a family living in that old house down on the slash. I heard their baby had the croup.”

Mark knew the place. “The shack just down from Mr. Benson's place?”

“You remember that house?”

“Yeah. One of the Clotworthy boys lived there.” He pulled his hair back out of his eyes. “You remember, that set of twins was in our class before I had to go to Oklahoma.”

I remembered. “They wore tennis shoes so worn out that they flapped when they walked.”

“Bless their hearts.” Miss Becky picked up the sharp knife and went to peeling potatoes. “Well, I'm gonna make this potato salad and Grandpa can take some of it over there if they're having troubles.”

“I thought you were going quilting.”

“I'll let these soak 'til I get back. You boys be careful and watch for snakes. I killed a copperhead over by the propane tank this morning. The lake coming up is running them out of the bottoms.”

***

It was warm for so early in the day, and I figured it'd be a hot one. The bitterweeds were already giving off their sharp smell in the warm sun. We followed the trail Grandpa mowed through the pasture from the gate to the barn. While we walked, Mark tied his hair back with a leather band Pepper had given him.

I watched him fiddle with the knot. “You know Grandpa or Uncle Cody's gonna make you get a haircut before long.”

“Yeah. Mr. Stevens told me I needed to get it cut. He said I looked like a girl and school rules say it needs to be short.”

Principal Stevens was our dough-faced principal who didn't take much off any kid for any reason. I opened the barn's pipe gate. “When you gonna do it?”

“When somebody makes me.”

We exchanged grins. I climbed on top of the stacked hay and dropped a bale down to Mark. He grabbed the wires and used his leg to bump it along to the gate. I knocked another one to the barn floor and climbed down. Alfalfa bales are heavier than Johnson grass, and it was all I could do to half drag, half carry it out.

Mark broke up his bale and scattered the sections. The cows drifted up from the plum thicket, mooing and throwing their heads. They tore into the hay, snuffing and snorting each other out of the way. He handed me the pair of dikes Grandpa kept on the feed barrel and I clipped the bailing wire and scattered my bale. The cows were already gathered when we shook out two buckets full of range cubes.

Norma Faye turned in the drive and saw us. She tapped the horn twice and waved through the windshield. Miss Becky came out with her train case full of sewing stuff. At least that's what she called it. Mama'd called it an overnight bag and that stuck with me. Miss Becky got in Norma Faye's front seat and they left.

By the time we replaced the lids on the barrels full of nuggets and creep feed, the back of Mark's shirt was wet and I was dripping sweat. We headed for the chicken house. The grass in that part of the pasture was thick and tall. I figured that after school I'd start Grandpa's old push mower clean up the trail for him.

A twist of bailing wire held the warped door closed. It didn't fit flush, so Miss Becky used a piece of old board to brace it closed. I reached down to pick it up.