Farewell, I'm Bound to Leave You Page 15

“‘Would you like to go there?’ Aunt Sherlie asked. ‘Would you like to journey to the world to come?’

  “‘If I think about it during the daytime when I’m doing my chores,’ Sarah said, ‘it makes me scared to think of dying. But when I see her—I mean, it—a-shining before me in the air, I think it wouldn’t be so bad.’

  “‘Do you feel like this apparition means either one of you any harm? Does it threaten you?’

  “‘It frights me,’ Sarah said. ‘I am getting a little bit used to it, but it scares me to look.’

  “‘How about you, Talbot? Do you think it’s harmful?’

  “‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but I don’t want no hants in my house. I want to be shut of it for good and all.’

  “‘Does it come ever night?’

  “‘No,’ he said. ‘Just whenever it pleases. But it comes a whole lot.’

  “‘Does it always come at the same time of night?’

  “They shook their heads. ‘Might come just after bedtime, right when it gets dark. Might come just before sunup. No telling when. That’s one reason we ain’t been able to get used to it.’

  “‘I never will get used to it,’ said Sarah Lucas, and I saw that Aunt Sherlie took notice of her tone of voice, which was not angry or frightened, but wistful and longing.

  “‘You say there’s no music to accompany the dance of this spirit,’ said Aunt Sherlie, ‘but what about smells? Sometimes a ghost will bring an odor into the room with it, a smell that reminds you of something you nearly forgot.’

  “Talbot shook his head, but Sarah tugged at his arm. ‘Why, Tal,’ she said, ‘there is a smell. It is the smell of apple blossoms, plain as day.’

  “‘I never noticed no smell.’

  “‘Well, it’s there. As plain as day.’ She turned to Aunt Sherlie. ‘What does it mean if I can smell apple blossoms and he can’t?’

  “‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘A lot of times a spirit will strike one person one way and somebody else right there in the same room a different way.’

  “‘Have you ever heard of any hant like this one?’ Talbot asked.

  “‘Not exactly. Seems like I heard from Aunt Ora Culpepper something like back when I was pigtail age. Most hants are unrequited spirits. That’s been my experience. Mostly they are lovers who never got the man or woman they needed and the waste of their life makes them suffer so they can’t rest proper. Some hants are revengeful spirits from days long ago, a way-back ancestor you might never have heard of. They are harmful and mighty powerful sometimes, and the only way to lay them is to find out the awful secret thing they did in their lifetime and open it up to the light of day. But they only visit certain houses and barns and trees and when those are gone, the spirits are gone, too. Now and again, if somebody—a widower or a widow woman—gets married again, there will come a spirit to haunt them out of simple jealousy.’

  “‘You mean Little Mary,’ Talbot said. ‘Sarah and me have talked about that, but she don’t have nothing to do with it.’

  “‘How do you know?’

  “‘If you ever seen this spirit, you would understand exactly. It is a tall and shining woman as bright as silver. It is a woman like she might be made out of moonlight. She is as downy in the air as snowflakes. But she’s a natural woman, too.’

  “‘What makes you say that?’

  “Talbot reddened and swallowed and shook his head and looked out the window into the pleasant springtime weather. Sarah answered for him. ‘Because sometimes when she twirls around, her thin gown flies up and you can see.’

  “‘Oh my,’ Aunt Sherlie said.

  “‘But it ain’t nothing bad,’ Sarah continued. ‘It’s like she don’t notice what has happened, and if she did notice, it wouldn’t make no difference. She don’t mean any more by it than a four-year-old youngun playing in the yard. It’s only natural to her, is all.’

  “‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ Talbot said.

  “‘It’s the kind of thing a woman will know and a man might not, if you understand what I mean.’ The sentence must have darted out of Sarah’s mouth before she realized what she had said. Maybe she had contradicted her husband’s word before on some dull winter day when they had been in the house too long together. But she’d never done it in public and never imagined that she ever would or could. She glanced at him quickly, but he appeared not to have noticed.

  “‘I think I do understand,’ Aunt Sherlie said. ‘Now, Sarah, I want you to tell me when your birthday is. Just the day—I don’t need to know the year.’

  “‘June the fifteenth.’

  “‘And when was Little Mary’s birthday?’

  “Talbot thought a good long time before admitting sorrowfully that he disremembered.

  “‘That’s bad,’ Aunt Sherlie said. ‘Little Mary’s birthday is something you both ought to remember.’

  “‘I remembered it when she was alive,’ Talbot said. ‘But now that Sarah and me are together, it is gone from my mind.’

  “‘Are you right certain about that, Talbot Lucas? Mightn’t there have been some years you’d forget?’

  “He stared at her, reluctant, irritated. ‘Maybe,’ he said at last. ‘Maybe now and then.’

  “Aunt Sherlie pondered, turning her silver thimble slower and slower until finally she stopped and rested it on the arm of her chair. ‘Perhaps it will be all right anyway. We might not have to hit the exact birthday.’

  “‘What are you talking about?’ he asked.

  “She turned to Sarah. ‘Now here’s what I’d advise you to do, Sarah, and you should get Annie Barbara to help you out if she’s willing to do so.’

  “I jumped right in,” my grandmother told me, “and said how mighty glad I would be to help them in any way I could. Because I was not going to miss out on any part of this adventure, you could wager to that. And of course I was pleased as punch that Aunt Sherlie felt like she could depend on me. When I got home to tell my mother about this, she would be as proud of me as if I was a prize scholar.

  “‘All right, then,’ Aunt Sherlie went on, ‘this coming Sunday if the weather stays fair, you two must go out and gather a double armful of apple blossoms and take them up on Siler’s Hill. When you get there, you must braid some of them into coronets and wreaths and strew the rest on Little Mary’s grave. Decorate it real nice and clean up anything around that needs it and just make everything look as pretty as you know how to do.’

  “‘Do you want Talbot to go with us? She was Tal’s wife.’

  “‘That won’t be necessary,’ Aunt Sherlie advised. ‘Not this first time, anyhow.’

  “‘Will it work?’ he asked. ‘Will decorating Little Mary’s grave make the hant go away?’

  “‘No,’ Aunt Sherlie said. ‘But it is the first thing that must be done. And the other part ought to be just as simple.’”

  * * *

  “That was an outing I won’t forget,” my grandmother told me. “It was as pretty a day as you could wish for. Blue sky and sweet breezes. My daddy led us down into what we used to call the Old Broom Orchard and helped us cut all the apple boughs we could carry. We rolled them up like wheat sheaves and wrapped some flour sacks around them and tucked them under our arms. We made some sight, looking like that, because Aunt Sherlie had told us to dress up in good clothes. I didn’t wear my very best because I knew Siler’s Hill was a steep climb with some briar patches partway around the path. But Sarah wore her best because she had only the one dress-up outfit in pearl gray wool with some broad black edging around the collar. It was light wool, but it was too heavy for a warm day in May and with Siler’s Hill before her. The truth is, that was a dress she had for church and for funerals and every other stitch she owned was workday.

  “Daddy had hitched Maybelle to the buggy for me and I drove the four miles down to Sanderson Ford and tied her to the yellow maple there by the river. Then Sarah and me got our apple blossoms out and crossed the foot log and started up the mountain.

&nb
sp; “That was the day we got to be such good friends, Sarah Lucas and me, and I bless Aunt Sherlie’s dear gray head every time I think about it. We did exactly what she said to do and had the grandest time. There was no sadness in it and no jealousy on Sarah’s part, and no fear, either. She told me all about how the hant came at night and seemed to be inside the room and out among the stars all at the same time. And how when it first came she’d pull the covers over her head and tremble like the fever had struck. How she had got used to it a little and even admired to see it, though Talbot didn’t and never would.

  “We sang a verse or two of a hymn before we left, holding hands and looking at the grave site with its coverlid of apple blossoms. Then we came back down the mountain and drove little Maybelle over to Aunt Sherlie’s house, where Sarah’s husband was waiting to take her home.

  “He was sitting in his straight chair with his brown hat on his knee, and they had been talking for some little time, I expect. You could tell from Talbot’s face that he’d been provided with plenty of fodder for thought and not all of it easy to chew on. Sarah and I came in and made our manners. Aunt Sherlie questioned us closely about what we’d done and we told her, not leaving out anything. She was pleased, I could see that, but her smile faded a little when Talbot asked in his blunt way if his house was shut of that shameless spirit yet.

  “‘No,’ said Aunt Sherlie. ‘Not yet.’

  “‘That’s what I thought,’ he said, wagging his head like a threatening mastiff. ‘That hant ain’t got nothing to do with Little Mary. It don’t look like her and it sure don’t act like her. It’s been nothing but a waste of time to go traipsing up to her grave. Little Mary was a quiet, hardworking woman as dependable as they come. She wont no half-nekkid dancing devil.’

  “‘It won’t be long till June fifteenth,’ Aunt Sherlie said. ‘And on that day, Talbot Lucas, you must take your wife, Sarah, down to Plemmons’s store and buy her some pretty things—some bright silk ribbons for her hair or some lace she might like the look of, or maybe a little gold locket.’

  “He was thunderstruck. ‘A gold locket? You must think I’m some sort of railroad millionaire. We’ve got all we can do already, trying to make ends meet.’

  “‘I understand that very well,’ Aunt Sherlie told him. ‘But we’re not talking about spending a fortune. Just a little bit of money once a year to achieve your peace of mind.’

  “‘Every year!’

  “‘Every time her birthday rolls around, you’ll do a little something to put some color and joy into her life. And every year at apple blossom time, you two will climb Siler’s Hill together and decorate Little Mary’s grave. And if you do these two bidden things, then all will be well in your house. And if you don’t, then you had better be pleased to welcome the Shining Woman anytime she appears. Because she will be keeping you close company till you move away or die.’

  “He wagged his head again. ‘I still don’t believe it’s got anything to do with Little Mary. If you’d knowed her and had seen this hant, you wouldn’t believe it, either.’

  “‘I did know her—a little bit,’ Aunt Sherlie said. ‘And I’ve got a pretty good idea what this ghost looks like. You came to ask what I thought and I’ve told you that, and anything you decide to do now or not do—well, that’s your choice to live with.’

  “Sarah spoke up then and said, ‘Aunt Sherlie, I don’t have no need of ribbons or frilly whatnots. It’s a tight fit for us with money. Tal is saying the truth.’

  “‘I understand you’d never ask for anything like that for yourself,’ Aunt Sherlie said. ‘Maybe you can think of this little bit of joy on your birthday as a bitter medicine you have to choke down one way or another.’

  “‘Are you sure about all this?’ Talbot asked her. ‘Dead certain?’

  “‘No,’ she admitted. ‘It’s a kind of guesswork. But it’s the best guess I’ve got and the best advice, wrong or right, that you’re going to get.’

  “Then Talbot rose and touched Sarah’s shoulder and she rose too. ‘I thank you,’ he said, all stiff and formal. ‘I thank you for taking the time and trouble. I don’t know whether we’re going to do what you say or not. I’ll have to think about it.’ And he clapped that old dented brown hat on his head and the Lucases departed.”

  * * *

  My grandmother was silent for such a long space that I got anxious. “That ain’t the end of the story, is it?”

  “It’s the limit of all I know for certain,” she replied.

  “But what happened? Did the Lucases do the things to make the ghost go away or not?”

  “I think they did. I knew Sarah as wife and widow for thirty years after that and she never mentioned the Shining Woman again. But somewhere or other among Tal’s things, she’d come across a tiny picture of Little Mary, and she always kept it in that first locket Tal gave her.”

  “Then it must have been the spirit of Little Mary after all.”

  She nodded slowly. “I believe that to be the case. Of course, with hants you never know for sure.”

  “Well, why didn’t it look like her? How come Talbot Lucas, her own husband, couldn’t recognize her?”

  “Because he never had recognized her.… I’ll tell you what Aunt Sherlie told me when I asked the same question. She said I was a healthy, good-looking seventeen-year-old girl from a free-spirited family and that when I closed my eyes to try to see myself as I wished I could be, it would be just myself I saw—only at a highfalutin fancy ball or standing in a rose garden or inside a stately house. But Little Mary came from a different way of life and in the secret nighttime she saw herself as tall and blond and lissome as the springtime willow tree and free as the wind. The Shining Woman grew in her little by little every day and when she died, that was the spirit that was set free.”

  She fell silent then and I could tell a dark thought had crossed her mind. “What else did she say?”

  “She said that as I grew older and got along in years, there would be a Shining Woman spirit that would appear in me. It would represent my youth that has gone away, but it would never be powerful in me like it was in Little Mary.”

  “Did it come true?”

  She gave me a swift glance. “Can you see me as a tall blond Spirit Woman dancing in the air and showing her fanny?”

  I started giggling, then laughing out loud—maybe too loud. “Yes,” I said. “I can see it in my head as plain as anything.”

  She smiled then what I had decided to call her “naughty smile” and brushed it away with a gesture habitually casual. “You know what I think?” she asked. “I think somebody ought to take a stick to you.”

  THE FEISTIEST WOMAN

  When word came that Ginger Summerell was getting married again, my father said he was happy for her. He added that he was a little surprised, she being the kind of female that prudent men shied from the way a lazy teenager might avoid an algebra test—and with that comparison, he shot me a meaningful glance.

  My mother admitted that she, too, was surprised. “I had almost lost faith that there were any stalwart red-blooded men left in the world,” she said. “I thought the age of heroes was long past.”

  “How can you entertain such a grotesque notion with Jess and me sitting right here with you at the breakfast table?” my father asked. “You’re looking at two natural-born heroes, handsome and stouthearted. I’ve been saving up to invest in a pair of white horses and a suit or two of armor.” This time his glance my way included a happy wink. “Shining up the armor—that will be your latest extra chore, Jess. I want you to scour those breastplates so bright that your mother can tweeze her eyebrows in the reflection.”

  “Joe Robert, hush,” my mother cautioned. “That’s not fit table talk.”

  “Here we are,” my father replied, “just back from the barn chores, where Jess and I waded to our ankles in cow manure. We are sitting at the table chewing smoked hog fat and eating runny scrambled eggs whose origin is too disgusting to recall. Yet the woman of the hous
e claims that talk about eyebrow tweezing is out of the bounds of good taste.” He gave a bellowslike put-upon sigh. “I tell you, Jess, the females have an unsteady sense of decorum. They are a vexation and a puzzlement to the masculine race.”

  “And a source of comfort and never-ending delight,” my mother said. “Don’t leave out the most important part.”

  “All right,” he said, “never-ending delight, I’ll grant you. But comfort and Ginger Summerell have rarely been linked by intention or by accident.”

  “Who is she?” I asked. “I never heard of her.”

  “The friend of women and the scourge of men,” he declared.

  “Why, Joe Robert,” my mother exclaimed, “what a thing to say. You know she’s one of the dearest persons alive.”

  “So I’ve heard at quilting parties,” my father said. “But in the hunting cabins it’s a different tale entirely.”

  “Doesn’t she like men?” I asked.

  “Of course she does,” my mother said.

  “She’s only just mighty hard on them,” my father added.

  “How is she hard on them?” I asked.

  “Just to give you an idea,” he replied. “We are calling her Ginger Summerell, even though she was married for ten years or so. She’s the feisty kind of woman a marriage name won’t stick to any better than a crow feather will attach to a turtle shell. I don’t know what caused her husband’s demise, but I suspect that he never quite recovered from his courtship with Ginger Summerell.”

  My mother spoke in her sternest voice: “It was heart failure. I want you to remember that, Jess, and refuse to be taken in by your father’s silly rigmarole.”

  “I’m sure the coroner’s report said heart failure,” my father countered. “But men of an inquiring and scientific nature will remain skeptical.” He rose and lifted the tall blue spatterware pot with its chipped black spout off the hot plate on the kitchen counter. He topped off my mother’s cup and filled his own nearly to the brim.

  My parents preferred chicory coffee, and when it was brewing, we could smell it in every corner of the house; in winter, with the air clear and brisk, its aroma invaded even the front porch. Sometimes, to save a little money, my father would sweeten his cup with molasses instead of sugar and this produced a smell even more enticing than sugared coffee. But then when I tasted it, the wonderful smell was replaced by a bitterly pungent taste that stung my palate and made my molars ache; it was only one more of the disappointments I had found to be endemic to the pleasures adults adored.