Mama Stalks the Past (6 page)

“Uncle Chester sounds so alert and intelligent,” I said to Mama as we drove back to Otis. “If it wasn’t for his old body, you’d never believe he was over ninety!”

“That’s because the mind doesn’t age as fast as the body,” Mama said reflectively. “As the years pass, Simone, the chasm between what the mind wants to do and what the body can do grows, until the gap becomes so wide it can’t be bridged. That’s when you realize how many years have passed!”

“I can’t imagine you and Daddy being that old,” I said.

Mama smiled. “Time and life catch up with everybody, honey.”

The thought of my parents growing old and dying reminded me of when I was a little girl. I used to pray every night that I’d die before they did; I didn’t want them to leave me.

Mama must have read my mind. “Death is not something you prepare for, Simone, it’s something you accept.”

It was after eight-thirty when we pulled onto Highway 633 and crossed Tenth Street. We crossed the railroad track in darkness lit by the enormous orange moon overhead and a half mile later turned off onto Smalls Lane. When we stepped out of the Honda, the cold autumn air pushed me to walk quickly into the house, but Mama hesitated. Her ebony eyes seemed glued to Miss Hannah’s house next door. “Shh!” Mama whispered, holding her finger to her lips. “Listen!”

I stopped, and strained to hear the sound that had caught her attention.

It came again, this time loud and quite distinct in the evening hush. A sharp snap, as if a twig had broken under a shoe. Then another twig snapped. A bush rustled.

We stared at the spot where the noises were coming from—a bush near the foot of an old oak tree. The oak shook and leaves fell. The tree seemed to tremble as if something shook its trunk.

“Who is that!” Mama shouted. I jumped.

There was another sound. Then two huge German shepherds pushed their way through the brush in front of us. They glared at us. They growled.

Mama rolled her eyes heavenward and stood her ground. But I wasn’t so courageous. My heart pounded as I grabbed her arm and pulled her toward our porch. As quickly as I could get the key turned in the lock, I pushed her into our house.

Mama and I sat at the kitchen table, drinking chocolate almond coffee and reliving my fear. “You should have seen your face.” Mama laughed.

“I was scared,” I said. “Okay?”

“You were
terrified
!”

“Who knows who or what could have been in those bushes?”

“Simone, you’re right. There could have been
three
dogs instead of the two!”

“Yeah, right,” I muttered, about the same time as my father put his key into the door.

“What’s the security alarm doing turned off?” he said, by way of greeting. Daddy is a firm believer in the security alarm. There had been a few burglaries even in peaceful Otis over the past few years.

“Thank God it was turned off,” I whispered, thinking of how much harder it would have been for us to get into the house and away from those nasty dogs.

“We went out and forgot to put it on when we returned,” Mama told him.

“Where did you go?” Daddy asked.

“Uncle Chester’s house,” I answered somewhat sharply, annoyed at the habit my father had of wanting to know your every movement.

Daddy scowled.

“Your cousin Agatha called,” Mama explained, her tone still light. “Your uncle stopped eating again.”

“I don’t know why Agatha worries about Uncle Chester. I’ve told her more than once, when he gets hungry he’ll eat,” Daddy said, his voice louder than it needed to be.

“He hadn’t eaten for two days,” I said.

Daddy scowled. “Don’t you believe that. I’m willing to put good money on Uncle Chester having food stored away. He’s just
making
Agatha think he’s starving.”

I laughed. “Is he that cantankerous?”

Daddy didn’t answer. When he stumbled toward the table, I exclaimed, “Watch out!”

“I’m okay,” he snapped.

“James,” Mama said, a protective tone in her voice, “I’ll fix you a cup of black coffee.”

Daddy lowered himself onto the chair very carefully, perching on the edge of the seat. “I appreciate that, Candi,” he said, smiling thinly.
“And you’d better check to see why that floor is so slippery.”

“Remember, Mama,” I said, eyeing Daddy, “we have to go next door to look for that envelope.”

“You ain’t got that envelope yet?” There was more sarcasm in Daddy’s voice than I thought necessary.

Mama poured him a cup of steaming black coffee. “Simone wanted to wait until you could go with us,” she told him. “In case there are dogs.” She started to laugh.

I cut in. “In case Nat comes home and finds us,” I corrected. “He’s got a healthy respect for you, Daddy.”

“He doesn’t want me to get his behind in a sling,” Daddy said.

“I’d feel better if you were with us,” I told him. “Maybe tomorrow night!”

“You’re leaving tomorrow,” Mama reminded me.

“Oh, yeah,” I said.

Daddy glanced up at the clock. “What’s wrong with now?” he asked.

“I don’t like the way you’re moving around,” I said.

“Let me get some coffee in me, that’s all I need. Right, Candi?”

It was past ten when my parents and I slipped through the freezing November darkness toward the Mixon house. We were less than a hundred feet from Miss Hannah’s front door when we heard a barking dog, and then the sound of a door slamming. “Mr. Brown has taken his dogs inside,” Mama whispered.

We hurried to the darkened house. As Mama had predicted, we didn’t need a key. Daddy pushed the unlocked door open and turned on the lights.

The little house smelled of rotten fish mixed with beer and cigarettes. Things were thrown about, stacks of newspapers, cans, and cigarette cartons. Piles of dirty clothes mounded in each corner of the sparsely furnished rooms. Mama shook her head in disappointment; Nat had already begun selling everything, I thought.

“Let’s go to the bedroom. I want to get this over with,” Mama said, motioning me to follow.

Miss Hannah’s bedroom was practically empty. There was a double-sized square of clean carpet where the bed had once stood. The curtains were still up, but you could see light spaces on the wallpaper where pictures had hung.

We spent the next few minutes searching every nook and cranny of the one closet in the
room, looking for personal papers, notes, letters, telephone numbers, a diary, or an address book. We found nothing. Nothing resembling the envelope Miss Hannah had told Calvin Stokes about.

Mama looked disappointed. She started for the bedroom door and was about to open it when she stopped. A broom leaned against the wall, a dustpan was upright beside it, and in the shadows sat a small green footlocker.

I took the broom and swept the cigarette butts and crumpled packs of empty Marlboro Lights in a pile. Mama opened the lid of the footlocker.

“Look at this,” she said to me. Her voice was excited.

Given the chaos of the house in which we found it, the trunk’s interior was surprisingly tidy. On the left, neatly folded and stacked, bath towels were beautifully monogrammed with Miss Hannah’s initials. Beneath the towels were sheets that had little pink roses on them. On the right-hand side lay an old Bible.

Hannah Mixon’s name was on the flyleaf. Mama flipped through the book and found a folded-up sheet of paper tucked into its back. The crude map was a diagram of a farm. It showed where a barn was supposed to be, a machine shed, a grain bin, and fields. Paper-clipped
to the diagram’s top right-hand corner was a photograph of an old house.

Mama refolded the map and slipped it back into the Bible. “I’m taking this with me,” she said. Tucking the Bible under her arm, she motioned me to follow her out of the room.

Daddy was leaning against the front door, waiting for us. “No envelope?” he asked.

Mama shook her head. “Nothing but this Bible.”

Daddy walked to the front door and held it open. He yawned. Daddy never found Mama’s sleuthing very exciting.

When we stepped out of Miss Hannah’s house, I had the sudden odd sensation that someone was watching us. To my left, toward the back of the Mixon’s house, I thought I saw a flicker of movement, a shadow. I turned quickly to look. Nothing.

But as we walked across the darkness of the yard, the feeling that we were being observed intensified. Again, I looked around. Nothing, nothing at all! The street was empty. No loose dogs. No cars. Not even a winter breeze rustled the trees. Still, I felt my hair rising up along my scalp.

I touched Mama’s arm. “Do you feel like we’re being watched?” I whispered.

Mama’s eyes were scanning the area. She nodded.

“You do?” I exclaimed, satisfied that for once I wasn’t being paranoid about dogs.

“Yeah,” she answered, softly. And from out of nowhere, a chill swept down the empty street.

Ahead of us, Daddy kept walking home, but Mama and I stopped and stared out into the darkness. There were no signs of life. The widely spaced streetlights created shallow pools of wan illumination that served only to heighten the impenetrable shadows in between. Ever so faintly in the darkness I thought I picked up a sharp
tap, but neither Daddy nor Mama seem to notice.

Daddy motioned us forward, impatient with our nervousness. We hurried after him. Still, when I closed our front door safely behind us, I could feel the unseen presence outside like a cold wave, something chilly and secretive.

I headed for the kitchen immediately. Coffee was definitely in order. The message light on the answering machine was blinking. Daddy pressed the playback button.

“James, Candi, this is Agatha,”
an anxious voice stammered. “
Uncle Chester is sick. The ambulance has taken him to Otis General Hospital!”

“W
here is Hannah’s Bible?” Mama shouted.

My eyes snapped open. I jerked upright.

“I put it on the desk in the kitchen,” Mama continued loudly. “Simone, did you move it?” My mother was standing at my bedroom door, her face stern, her hands folded across her chest like a drill sergeant. I was groggy, but I could see that she was fully dressed. She had on a calf-length skirt, a sweater, and her fuzzy pink bedroom slippers.