Blood Kin (15 page)

Granny Grace didn’t answer at first, busy rubbing the leaves all over Sadie’s arms and legs, and the side of her left cheek. Then she laid a hand on Sadie’s right cheek, gentle like her momma used to when her momma still liked her. “Dont fret none, child. Found you out in the woods this mornin outside my place. Looks like you run smack dab into them trees last night. Woulda heard you, but...” She blinked her squinty brown eyes, and the clean part of her face colored some like she was embarrassed. “Well, I drinks a bit most nights. Heps me sleep when my mind goes runnin off somewheres I dont want it to go. Rolled you onto an old sack and drug you in here.”

Everybody knew Granny Grace in those hills. There were three Granny women Sadie knew about around Morrison — Granny Collins who lived in town, Granny Willis over near the poor farm in the bottom land before you started up the hollow, and Granny Grace. Everybody said Granny Grace knew more than the other two, that she was the last of her old family come off that ridge down in Tennessee, but she was darker than most anybody else around here — even darker than Aunt Lilly — so some folks wouldn’t use her, not even for catching babies which by reputation she was best at — some said she could turn a baby most every time before it come out wrong with no harm to the child or the mother. And when she couldn’t turn it, and it died in there, well, supposedly she knew how to fix things so the momma didn’t die.

Once Aunt Lilly told her all about how it was done. “Dont you get pregnant, Sadie. Girl your age that baby’s goin to turn wrong most every time, specially if the daddy’s the wrong kind. Dont let that daddy be the wrong kind, you hear?” And Aunt Lilly looked at her like she knew something, or at least wanted Sadie to tell her something, but there were some truths it did nobody no good to know. “That baby dies, they got to break it to get it out of you. They poke a hole in its head and they break its skull and then they pull and scrape it out of you in pieces!”

Some folks used Granny Grace, but some of them wouldn’t let her in their houses, so everything she could do she had to do behind the house with everybody looking.

As far as Sadie knew, nobody ever knew where Granny Grace lived; it was always “back in them woods somewheres.” So if she could figure out where she was she’d be the first.

Sadie moved her head around. She was down inside a big scooped out place under some kind of lean-to. The back wall was rock, and in between the grass sacks and canvas hanging down the sides she could see dirt walls built up. A bunch of old house windows had been propped up in the front and made steady with stakes and mud. All around there were rough gray planks put up on flat stones to make shelves, holding jars and crocks and bags full of stuff, some of which smelled awful sweet and some that were nasty, about evenly matched so she couldn’t decide which was worse. She shifted her weight and heard the crackling underneath her — a bed tick stuffed with corn husks most likely. “I hate to ask, but do you have something I can eat?”

Granny Grace leaned back and picked up something, handed it over. “Here’s a little cold tater. I knows it aint much, but times is hard. Where was you runnin from anyhow? Child your age — your folks be worried.”

Sadie stuffed the potato into her mouth. She couldn’t remember the last time she ate something. “I left that snake-handling meeting. My uncle, he scared me a mite.”

“You a Gibson? Oh hell, girl, you goin to buy me some trouble! Me and the preacher, we dont mix!”

“I’m sorry; I dont want nobody hurt cause of me.” She sat up and gasped from the pain.

“No no, Granny Grace, she dont mean for you to leave. I sorry. That preacher, he may be yer kin, but that’s one evil man — I dont care if he do say he’s a preacher of the gospel. Here now.” She put a warm jar of liquid into Sadie’s hand. “You drink this here sweet tea. Dont taste too good, but makes you feel better.”

Sadie couldn’t see through the dark, turning liquid. Things floated around in it — she couldn’t tell whether they were living or not. “What’s in this, Granny?”

“Oh, bit of this and that. Onions and ivy, snip of catnip, cocklebur, wild clover, flax, red cedar, sassafras. Might have put some marigold and wild cherry bark in there too, but I dont rightly remember. Some sage, probly, and honey — I always put some honey into most things. A little sweetness make everything better.”

Just a sip made her face wrinkle up. The onions especially were strong, and something so bitter she figured it had to be good for you. She couldn’t taste the honey at all. She closed her eyes and tried to drink it straight down. She got almost to the bottom before a coughing fit made her drop the jar.

“You musta liked it!” Granny Grace said. “Most folks dont get past that first sip.”

Sadie’s legs were badly scratched, and in some places she must have run the branches right into her skin. The worst places had some kind of foul-smelling poultice packed into the wounds, with tobacco leaves spread over the top. She didn’t remember getting hurt; she barely remembered running. It had been like her thoughts were on fire and she had to put them out.

“Can I go?” she asked. “I need to go. Ma and Pa, they’ll kill me most likely for not coming home.”

“Oh you can go. Granny Grace, she unnerstand. Just be keerful with them wrappins, best let them stay awhile.”

“I should pay you. This is your business, healing.”

The little old woman cackled like a hen getting its neck broke. “Granny Grace only charges the ones what can pay. Child like you, I just ask a favor. Go with me to the General Store to gets what needs gettin. Cant get everthin I needs out these woods no more.”

“Well, I dont have no money...”

“No, child. Granny Grace has the money. She just got a face too black to buy anythin in that store. But if I come in with you, they think I been hired by the family. I give you the money and you do the payin.”

“But if I come in with you, Granny, everybody in there will think I’m
pregnant
or something.”

“Dont worry, child.” Granny handed her a crooked walking stick with a swollen, gnarled head. “Granny’ll set them straight. Let’s get crackin.”

Sadie herself was on the short side, but she had to bend over when she stood up under the lean-to, and hunch over even more as she started to go through the lopsided door (painted “haint blue,” Granny said, to keep out any nasty spirits roaming the woods).

“Stop! Dont step over that there broom!” Sadie looked down at the stick she was about to step across. Granny scrambled over and pulled it out of the way. It ended in a ragged head of straw. “You’d be an old maid for sure!”

Sadie thought that would pretty much be a blessing, but she didn’t say nothing, not wanting to be disrespectful. Her momma always told her you lost a tooth for every child you had. By that reckoning Granny Grace had had a bunch, or did a body lose teeth for mid-wifing them too?

Granny looked up at her and grinned. “In case you were lookin, I’m wearin my dress inside out. Fraid it cant be helped. I accidental put my clothes on inside out this morning — now I gots to wear them that way all day.”

Right outside the lean-to there was a pen with an ugly goat and a big coop woven out of green branches for some skinny chickens. A few feet on the other side was a small oven made out of rock and clay. A little bit of cornbread, still steaming, lay on the flat stone out front of the oven.

The little area was pretty well hidden under low branches that had been tied and pulled to make a wall of green around and over Granny’s place. Sadie never could have found it if she hadn’t already been there.

Granny led the way in her stained inside-out burlap dress dragging the ground and the hem wearing down to string. The patch quilt shawl around her shoulders was big enough to swallow her twice over, and once in a while Sadie got a peek at things Granny had hid there: a glass jug from a cord around her neck and a basket with some eggs for trade and close to her chest the handle of a gun. They climbed the rise a spell until they came to a path Sadie kind of recognized. From there they had a pretty good view through the trunks of the open valley and the hills spread out below. It was early morning, the trees more gray than green, that part of the hollow below them smudged with dabs of yellowed fog.

“Goin to rain soon. Last night they was a ring round the moon and this mornin the rocks are sweatin.”

Sadie had heard of that way of telling rain before, so maybe it was true. Granny Grace chattered on all the way down the mountain toward town, with nary a break to draw breath. Sadie didn’t know if half of it was right — a lot of it just sounded crazy. But she listened politely, thinking that maybe Granny didn’t get much opportunity for having her say.

“So’s I told him if he soaked them seeds in milk first the melons that come would be lots sweeter and sure enough they was — now he gives me a bunch ever season free. I tell you, you gots to know
how
to plant and
when
if you want to farm this here hard mountain land — mostly rocks and clays and nary a square inch of that good soil they gots in the bottoms. You plant yer taters, turnips, beets in the dark of the moon. Then leave a bowl of cream and some cornbread out for the little people and maybe they’ll help you out some!

“... I use a green fork from a peach tree to find water. Some folks use a bit a wire but that aint ever goin to be no good!

“... for aches and pains I use the chicory mostly, vinegar and mud packs if it be stubborn, garlic, black birch sap in a salve, and on the sore joints crushed boiled white walnut bark, wit some oil o’cedar.

“... I done wadded up some cob webs and packed them into your wounds to stop the bleedin, and then some of that witch hazel.

“... girl your age best sharpen themselves a ten penny nail. Keep filin it and filin it till it be
real
sharp, then hide it somewheres you can get to it quick. Then one of these old men be messin with you, you can protect yourself, stick him where it dont feel so good.”

When Granny said that last bit of advice she laid her hand on Sadie’s arm and gave it a little squeeze. That was all. Sadie knew it meant something but it was something she couldn’t talk about, at least not yet.

Granny Grace stopped in front of Levitt’s General and looked Sadie up and down. She bent down and peeled the tobacco leaves off Sadie’s legs. Sadie scrunched up her face, but the pain wasn’t too bad after a minute. “You look public enough I reckon,” Granny said. “They just opened, wont be many folks inside. You’ll have to go in first. I’ll be on your heels — that ways they’ll know we come in together.”

Mr. Levitt nodded at her from behind the counter when she came in. Three old men sat on bulging feed sacks by the stove, but it didn’t look like there were any other customers yet. One of the old fellows stared at her sleepily, like he might know her, but she didn’t recognize him. Their small town was full of adults who knew everybody, and children who knew almost no one outside their own family. The store looked half dark. Mr. Levitt jerked his head a little when Granny Grace joined her, then he appeared to decide something, and nodded again. “If you ladies are here to shop, I’d best go turn on the lights in them other two rooms.” He came around the counter and was passing Sadie when he paused and spoke softly to her. “Miss, I dont mean to embarrass you, but I cant sell your family nothing on credit right now. Your daddy... he’s way behind.”

Granny spoke up then. “No problem, Boss. She’s got the cash.” Levitt frowned at Granny. She pulled a hand out of one wide pocket, showing the dirty, wadded up bills in her palm. “And dont you go thinking the girl’s pregnant. She aint!”

Mr. Levitt turned red and walked quickly away toward the dark rooms at the back of the building. Sadie’s face burned so hot she thought she would faint.

“I got me a good salve for heat stroke iffen you need it child,” Granny said. She went into her other pocket and pulled out her list. It was a ragged scrap of paper filled with writing, and drawing, and marks like what a bird’s feet might make in the dirt. If it was English writing it wasn’t like any kind Sadie had ever studied in school.

At that moment Missy Bacon came in with her little baby. Missy was only a few years older than Sadie and had gone to the same one room school, so they’d studied on different things, but Sadie could always hear what the teacher was teaching them older kids, and it wasn’t much different, except the words got longer, and sometimes they wrapped around each other until they meant something else.

Missy was busy with the baby so she didn’t even look up or say hello, wiggling her finger on it and making it laugh. “Dont tickle that baby under the chin if you dont want him a stammerer when he grows up,” Granny Grace said. Missy looked down at the frayed little dark woman, turned around and left without saying anything.

Granny went to the counter and put her bark basket up there, shouting “I gots eleven cackleberries after the one what broke!” Sadie laughed out loud; her grandpa used that same name for chicken eggs.

Coming out of the back Levitt said, “Appreciate your honesty.”

“Hell, body be a fool to try to cheat a store keep with countin.” Granny glanced back. “You comin girl?” Sadie scooted up to her side. Granny was treating her like
her
granny but Sadie didn’t mind, even if old Levitt did. Granny tore off part of the list and handed it to her, along with an empty feed sack from under her shawl. “You can read this part good enough,” she said. “It’s just the regular goods.” She scurried to the back of the store without another word.

Sadie stood there shyly, not sure what to do. She often went into Levitt’s to pick up something for her momma, but never for more than a couple of things, and never with this much money involved. The big Moon Pie display on the counter made her think about how hungry she was, and how sometimes when her momma sent her here she got an extra ten cents for a coal miner’s lunch — a Moon Pie big as her hand and an RC Cola to wash it down. But she reckoned she couldn’t ask Granny Grace for such a thing, it wouldn’t be being grateful.

She heard Granny back in the back singing to herself, the Carter’s “Winding Stream,” her voice switching back and forth from harsh to sweet. It was enough to stir Sadie to move, and she went down the shelves then, picking out Lemon Junket, Fleishmann’s Yeast, Baker’s Cocoa, Ovaltine, and Knox Gelatine. The store was out of the Campbell’s Oxtail and Mock Turtle soups. And she had to get Mr. Levitt to get the Del Monte prunes and Liebig’s Extract of Beef down from the high shelves with that long-handled grabber of his. Every time she saw him do that she imagined he had a skinny, extra-long arm and it always made her laugh.