The Day of Small Things (37 page)

Birdie stood motionless for a few moments. Then she turned toward the path that led into the woods and up the mountain.

Dorothy had her hand on the doorknob and her mouth open to call after her friend to wait, that she would come with her, when behind her the cellphone she had left on the couch began to ring.

All thoughts of Birdie disappeared and Dorothy hurried to grab up the phone, fumbling with the still-unfamiliar buttons.

“Calven? … Oh, the sheriff’s office … Yes, this is Dorothy Franklin.… You found the white van? Was there any … I see, abandoned in the woods … in Yancey County? … Well, whose vehicle was it? … Stole down in Georgia … What about that sign? … Oh, I see what you mean … one of them magnet ones and they just stuck it on the side.… Tell me, wasn’t there nothing to say where they might be now? … No … no, I understand and I thank you for letting me know.… Yes … yes, I’ll do that. Thank you again.”

The call ended; Dorothy heaved a sigh and stepped outside to see if Birdie might still be in sight but the little woman had disappeared.
I could go after her … but I got a kind of feeling she likes her time alone. Besides, this news’ll keep
.

Returning to the sofa, Dorothy picked up the book but found she couldn’t concentrate.

I’ll get me a glass of ice tea
, she thought, starting for the kitchen.
And then reckon I’ll go after—

The rumble of a vehicle rattling the planks of the bridge across the branch broke in on her thoughts and she turned to see who it was. By the time she reached the door, a dark blue compact car had come to a stop at the edge of the yard and a heavyset woman in a long-skirted housedress was getting out. Dorothy opened the door and stepped onto the porch but the woman just nodded at her and continued on around to the passenger side.

Dorothy squinted; this visitor looked vaguely familiar but she couldn’t quite put a name to her or remember where she’d seen her. Then, as the silver-headed form of Aunt Belvy emerged from the car, she knew.

The prophetess kept one hand on the car door and slowly and deliberately pulled back her head and shoulders till she stood straight as a young poplar tree. Her daughter-in-law
Marvelda, Marbella … something like that
waited without comment as the old woman, taller by a head, surveyed the surroundings. Aunt Belvy’s haughty hawk’s-beak nose lifted as she turned her face toward the path Birdie had taken and stared into the trees, evidently seeing deep, deep into the heart of the woods. Dorothy watched, fascinated, fancying for a moment a houndlike quiver and flare of the old woman’s nostrils.

But now Aunt Belvy had motioned for the other’s arm and the two of them were making their careful way across the grass to the low porch. Dorothy stepped outside, holding the door open, smiling and nodding at the visitors to make up for the fact that she didn’t know how to address them.

“Howdy there … you uns come right in. Miss Birdie’s just—”

“Out walking about, ain’t that so?” The dark eyes in the hawk face bored into Dorothy as if daring her to contradict what was obviously a statement of fact.

“I believe she just wanted a breath of air. She’ll be back directly. Now you uns come right in and get comfortable.”

Aunt Belvy, supported by her daughter-in-law, paced solemnly into the house and allowed herself to be settled on the sofa, where she folded her hands, leaned back, and seemed to go to sleep. The daughter-in-law
what was her name? Marcella? Marelda?
gave the old woman a fond look before motioning Dorothy back out to the porch.

“Is she all right?” Dorothy kept her voice low as she glanced back through the door at the still figure of Aunt Belvy.

“Oh, Mamaw’s just fine. She does that time and again—calls it ‘gathering her powers.’ Does it afore church, mostly, or if she’s going to a healing. I couldn’t say if she’s praying or sleeping, but everwhat it is, when she opens her eyes, it’ll be Katy bar the door.”

The daughter-in-law raised a finger as Dorothy started to speak. “Just don’t argue with her or treat her like she ain’t got good sense or, buddy, she’ll put you in your place right quick.”

A rueful laugh accompanied a shake of the woman’s head. “I learned that the hard way, believe you me.”

Dorothy looked toward the path, hoping to catch sight of Birdie—Birdie, who in spite of her frail old age was better suited to deal with these people than she, Dorothy, was. But there was no sign of her friend—only the quiet rustling of an afternoon breeze stirring in the treetops and the crimson flash of a red bird disappearing into the green depths.

The gray-haired woman
Marvella, that was it
looked at
her watch. “Well, I got to scoot back home and fix supper—Mamaw said she’d be here through the night to keep vigil. Told me not to come for her till after dinnertime tomorrow. She said that, for good or for ill, her work’d be done by then.”

It took a few moments for Dorothy to find her voice. When she did, she called hurriedly after the retreating figure. “Marvella, now you wait a minute! Does Miss Birdie know about this? She didn’t say a word to me about it. And what do you mean, ‘keep vigil’? If you don’t care, I believe it’d be best for you to stay till Birdie gets back. It’ll not be long; I’m sure of it.”

The daughter-in-law was halfway to her car, but she turned and gave Dorothy an unreadable look. “Ain’t no call for me to wait. Mamaw’s set on what she’s doing.”

“But what
is
she doing?” Dorothy pleaded. “If she’s spending the night, don’t she need a toothbrush … a nightgown?”

A half-smile crept across Marvella’s face. “No, she won’t need none of that. She’ll be setting up. Mamaw had a Seeing that she was going to be keeping vigil all the night long—doing battle for an immortal soul.”

Marvella opened the car door and paused. The afternoon sun reflected off her glasses and danced across Dorothy’s face, making her blink and shade her eyes.

“She’s worried near to death about your aunt.” Marvella’s voice was somber and measured. “The day after you uns come to our church, Mamaw had me to call on my prayer group to pray for Miss Birdie—said Birdie’s always been a quare somebody, though she has fought hard against her own nature. And then yesterday Mamaw had her Seeing—she says that on this very night Birdie will have to make her choice for once and for all, choose
between God and the Devil, choose between Heaven and Hell.”

Marvella ducked her head to check her watch again. “Will you look at the time! I got to get on home. My neighbor’s giving a Tupperware party after supper and I promised to come buy something. But don’t you worry—I’ll be back tomorrow. You take care now.”

(Birdie)

S
eems every time I climb it, this old road up to the burying ground gets steeper and longer. Was it only a week ago I come up here, rejoicing in the flowers and the birds and all? Today I might as well have on blinkers for all I can see is the hard path ahead nor do I hear aught but a rain crow, croaking out a warning. Law, how much has happened in so few days.

The afternoon sun is right warm for the time of year, and when I get to the shade of the woods, it’s a relief to lean on my stick and rest. Would have been easier had I taken my truck and come by the river road, but that would have set Dorothy to asking questions I ain’t got no answers for. Best she think I’m just a crazy old woman who’s too fidgety to set still.

Which is true enough, I
am
fidgety, but the fact of the matter is I need help. I see all the deeds and doings of the past coming back around, each with its heavy burden of unpaid debt. And there’s this sweet child Calven—in a sight of trouble, him and his mommy—and Dorothy
begging me for help. What does that long-ago promise matter if I can do this one good thing? If I could just be sure of the power not turning on me, the way it did … But at my age, I can’t see that there is much more I can lose.

Oh, I have turned it over and over in my mind till it made me think of the cream in a churn when the butter won’t come. I have tried and tried to see a way clear … but all that I can figure is that I need the wisdom and the powers of the Gifts … those same Gifts I turned my back on so long ago.

Ain’t none amongst the living I can talk to about it except for Belvy—and I already know what she would say. Belvy’s right quick to call any magic that ain’t Jesus-magic “witch work.” She would shake her head and go to praying for me, was she to know what I’m about.

Luther was of Belvy’s mind—at least while he was living. Law, how he would take on when I would come up this way to talk to my angels and to Granny Beck. “Miss Birdie,” he would say, his face all sorrowful, “you know they ain’t there. Every single one of them is with the Savior, the blessed little lambs.”

And he would take my arm and lead me away from the graves. Sometimes he would want us to say the Lord’s Prayer together, or to read a psalm or some such—as Luther got up in age, he got right churchy.

Don’t matter now—I visit with him just like I do with the rest of the Quiet People and it seems to me that at last he understands. Tonight, though, it’s Granny Beck I need to talk with. Oh, I’ll say a word to the others and to Luther and the young uns, but it’s Granny can help me decide.

My feet is just dragging and it’s hard work to put one
in front of the other. I know that I am almost to the old home place and, more than usual, I dread passing it today. All that pain and hurt that I’d thought long gone is back.

When I round the bend and see the big boxwoods and the old chimbley, the smell of the smoke and the charred wood is as fresh in my mind as if it was still happening.

“We’ll burn them out,” Luther said, thinking to put an end to things he feared because he didn’t believe in them, and he dashed the lamp oil in their hiding places and laughed to see the flames roar and leap. But when the wind come up and the fire jumped to the house, the laughing stopped. We could only watch the flames swallow the cabin up as we flew about with rake and hoe to clear a firebreak so as to keep it from spreading to the barn and the woods.

I was heavy with my first child but I worked right along with Luther till the others, who had seen the smoke, came tearing up the road with
their
implements. One of them took my rake from me and told me to go set down but I went to stomping out cinders whenever I seen one light.

By the time the house had fallen in and the wind had laid, the soles of my shoes was burned through in three places. But we had kept the fire from spreading.

I can’t say that I much regretted the house; seemed like so much unhappiness and ill temper had soaked into the very walls and all through her belongings that was still there. I hadn’t wanted to take none of that when we moved to our new house down on Ridley Branch. But I grieved for the Little Things and for myself that I wouldn’t never see them again.

At the biggest boxwood I part the leaves and peer in. This was where their dancing ground was fixed and this
was one of the first places Luther poured the lamp oil. The fire scorched the trunks and leaves, but after so many years, there ain’t no sign. I push my head in a little farther and it seems I see the circle of stones, just as it used to be but that there is a gap where one stone is missing.

I puzzle over this as I walk on, past the old barn and up the road. There is a twitching and a hurry in the tall grass beside the barn, a tinkling of glass from the old dump, and a confusion of little squeals, so faint as to be more the idea of sound than sound itself. And I know they are there.

They never left me—the Little Things. I kept my promise to Luther not to sing the Calling Song, but through all the days of my life, they have stayed near at hand—a rustling in the leaves, a feather brushing my cheek, a twig snapping sudden, the humming that grows louder and louder, then stops all at once—oh, they let me know they’re there.

But I never see them no more—like children with hurt feelings, they hide from me, always just at the corner of my sight. Sometimes, like now, I even see the grass move and bend as they pass, but never the Little Things themselves.