The Year the Lights Came On (29 page)

Freeman’s tree was not a tree as other trees are trees; it was a monument. He had taken Wesley and me to its location a few times, but he warned us against ever going there without him. A man’s tree, according to Freeman, should never be trespassed. A tree was put on Earth by God for one man and one man only, and it was simply a matter of man and tree meeting at the proper time. “It’s a feelin’,” Freeman had described. “You just walk up to a tree someday and there it’ll be and there you’ll be and you’ll know it’s all yours. Then you just take out your knife and carve your initials
in the bark, and that does it. From then on out, that tree belongs to you, and it don’t make no difference whose land it’s on.”

We had obeyed Freeman’s warning to stay clear of his tree. There had been times, in fact, when Wesley and I walked in circles, skirting the area, just to avoid casting eyes on the F.B. proudly sliced into the bark—the F.B. that had healed into a scar and had turned dark in age and weather. It was Freeman’s tree. It even had Freeman’s pride.

But we had been impressed by Freeman’s advice and had spent days, innocent and receptive, in search of our own tree. Eventually Wesley decided such a discovery had to be a private quest, and that it had to be totally unexpected. He was right. One day, while serving my sentence of isolation because of my association with Megan, I was wandering in the edge of the swamp and something made me stop and look up. There, waiting patiently, was my tree.

It was a sycamore. It was not as majestic as Freeman’s beech. It did not have limbs elbowing anemic pines and water oaks out of its stretch; there was nothing intimidating about it, nothing bold and absolute. My tree was straight and thin. It had bark that was young and smooth, a gray-white bark with flecks the color of ink. My tree had a childish look, a woefulness that seemed almost apologetic, and it appeared clownish wearing a squirrel’s nest at an awkward tilt in a limb flopping too far from its trunk. But I loved that tree, loved it from the first accident of looking up and seeing it and wondering why I never before knew it was there. I took my pocket knife and carved C.W. in the bark, high up, boring in the periods with the small blade. My tree. I knew that someday it would be as complete as other trees I had read, where legends of childhood were carved in a code language of
initials. Who loved who. Which year when. Hearts and arrows. Puckered lips. Poems. Yes, poems. Two days after discovering my tree, I gouged out a three-word poem:
Eyes of Green.

*

We followed Wesley in a single file over the spine of a hill that Freeman had named Hog Mountain. As a mountain, it was an insult. As a hill, it was peculiarly out of place in Black Pool Swamp. At the bottom of the slope, there was a small branch—a half-branch—fed from an underground spring. We found the animal path of the half-branch and trailed upstream until we reached a clearing. Freeman’s tree was a hundred yards across the clearing, at the base of a separate gathering of hills.

“That’s it,” announced Wesley, pausing to scan the clearing. “Where?” asked Alvin.

“Over yonder, Alvin,” I said, turning him in the direction of the tree. “That big beech tree across the clearin’.”

From a hundred yards Freeman’s tree looked like a fighter, wild and daring. It seemed to recognize our presence. A wind we could not feel swam through a pond of leaves in the top limbs of the beech, and the limbs waved a greeting to us.

“It’s big,” Paul muttered.

The limbs waved again, but not in greeting. Now it was a warning, a mute’s signal to leave. Something, some nerve at the base of my skull, began to tighten. I whispered, “Wesley, Freeman’s not there. Let’s go.”

“What’s the matter?” Wesley asked, annoyed.

“He’s right,” Paul replied anxiously. “Let’s go.”

Paul had sensed it, the gesture, the silent caution that pushed against us. I looked at R. J. and Otis. Bravery seeped from their faces as they stared at the tree, hypnotized.

“Maybe it’s best we go get Dover,” suggested Alvin.

“Why?” asked Wesley. “You act like you’re scared. You lettin’ your imagination run wild. What’s there to be scared about?”

Alvin was not convinced. “Wouldn’t be fair to Dover,” he protested. “I’m not scared, Wes. It’s just that Dover might think we didn’t tell him everything.”

“Well, I’m goin’ over there,” Wesley announced in a loud voice. “You can come with me, or you can stay right here. I don’t care.”

Wesley stepped into the clearing and began to cross toward the tree. Alvin followed. Then R. J. and Otis and Paul. I did not want to go, but I did not want to stay behind, alone. “Wait a minute,” I yelled. “Wesley. You better wait, or I’ll tell Mama.”

Wesley stopped. He was angry. “Well, c’mon, if you’re goin’.” I raced to him, beside him, close to him, our arms touching as we walked.

The clearing was a courtyard for Freeman’s King Beech. Visitors were announced by the trumpets of crickets and sparrows. Wildflowers waved like banners. Near the tree, in a slight curving terrace, two lines of scrub ash bowed in eternal servitude, their curtsying limbs bent toward the ground.

We stopped fifteen yards away from the tree.

“See anything?” whispered Otis.

“Nothin’,” answered Paul, also whispering.

“Wesley?”

“Nothin’, Otis. Nothin’. No need to be afraid.”

“What’s that, Wesley?”

“What’s what? You don’t stop it, Paul, you’ll scare Colin to death.”

“That,” Paul replied in a quivering voice. “That.” He lifted his
arm in a point. He added, “Hangin’ there. On that limb. Right there.”

“I don’t see anything,” Wesley said.

Paul took two steps closer to the tree and cupped his hand over his eyes. “There,” he repeated. He pointed to a limb of the tree.

We saw it at one time, in the exact, precise moment, as though our eyes were one with one vision seeing one thing.

Three snakes. Three snakes grotesquely slaughtered, their skins peeled away at half-body, peeled back to their tails, with the skins looped over the limb and tied in a bow like a ribbon. The exposed flesh of the snakes from half-body to their tails had bulged and ruptured in the heat and had soured to a deep purple color. The heads of the snakes had been smashed into a pulp of bone and muscle and the half-body still covered with skin had dried to a brittle grayish brown.

The stench gagged us. Gnats swirled around each snake, like hundreds of tiny vultures.

“Oh, Lord,” R. J. gasped. His face paled. He clutched his throat with both hands and turned away.

“It’s the Snake Spell,” whispered Otis.

Alvin moaned.

The Snake Spell. Yes. It had to be. Three half-skinned snakes hanging from a limb. The Snake Spell. Voodoo. Dark, secret, African magic.

“Wesley…?”

“Shuttup, Colin. I see it.”

The Snake Spell. They had told us of the Snake Spell when we were babies, each of us. It was a spell of ultimate horror to keep restless boys quiet and obedient. (“You behave, or that old witch
woman’s liable to put the Snake Spell on you. Then you’ll see. Then you’ll be sorry.”)

“Let’s go find Daddy, Wesley…”

“Wait a minute. Don’t go thinkin’ about them stories,” snapped Wesley.

Stories?

The Snake Spell was more than stories. It was real. People said so, so it was. It was real.

People said it had been used against one of the Pretlows, a child-beater, and he had fallen dead in the snap of a finger.

People said it had been used to cripple Hugh Shivers’ father after he had spit on an old black man for sport, when the old black man refused to hambone.

People said it had been used to produce boils and warts on the bodies of dozens of hard, selfish rich people who delighted in mistreating poor blacks and whites.

The Snake Spell was real.

People said so.

“Wesley, maybe we won’t get hit by it,” whimpered Paul. “Let’s back off, easylike.”

Wesley was irritated by Paul’s trembling. “Paul, I’ve done nothin’ to be afraid of,” he said, convincing himself. “Now, you can walk or run or do whatever you want to, but I’m stayin’ here. Anyway, maybe it’s meant for helpin’ somebody. Maybe Freeman. If there’s a place where somebody made a fire, that means it’s a helping spell.”

“I never heard tell of that,” Paul begged.

It was true. The Snake Spell could be for Good or Evil. People said so. It depended on secret incantations and secret gestures, and the presence of a ritual fire. If the spell was intended for Good, there would be a ritual fire. Always, always, the Good spell demanded a ritual fire. The fire produced ashes and ashes were used to rub on whoever needed help, and that person magically acquired the power of the wood that had been burned.

Wesley moved away from us cautiously. He circled under the snakes, dangling like chopped fox-grape vines. A few feet from the trunk of the tree, he stopped. “It’s here,” he called quietly.

We were suddenly released from the paralysis of fear. We moved quickly, in a lump, to Wesley. On the ground was a ring of rocks, carefully stacked. The inside of the rocks was charred. Three small pyramids of ashes were formed in the exact center of where the fire had been.

We were very still, commanded to be still by a phantom force that seemed centered in the three small pyramids of ashes.

“I thought that old witch woman was dead,” Otis whispered.

“No,” Wesley answered softly. “No, Granny Woman’s still alive. But she didn’t do this. She’s too old to be walkin’ around in the woods. That woman’s more’n a hundred.”

“Who done it, Wesley?”

“I don’t know, Otis. Maybe Freeman. Maybe he’s just bein’ Freeman and trying to scare us, or something.”

Alvin squatted and pushed in the peak of one of the pyramids. “But nobody’s used these ashes,” he observed. “Whoever set it up didn’t get the chance. Maybe they’ll be comin’ back.”

“Maybe,” Wesley said.

“I’ll bet that’s right,” R. J. added.

Alvin carefully rebuilt the pyramid, pinching the top and smoothing the sides. “We better tell about this,” he advised.

“No,” answered Wesley. “No, let’s keep it quiet right now. For a time, at least.”

“Why?”

“Everybody knows the Snake Spell comes from Granny Woman,” explained Wesley. “Everybody. If we told about findin’ this, half those men out kickin’ around this swamp would go stormin’ over to Granny Woman’s house and cause all kinds of trouble.”

“Yeah, you right about that,” R. J. agreed.

“But if Freeman put up this spell, he’ll be comin’ back,” Wesley continued. “And it’d be a lot better if we could find him here, than havin’ people go crazy trying to get answers from Granny Woman.”

Wesley was remembering Willie Lee and Baptist, and his promise not to involve them. He also knew every black in Emery would be committed to Granny Woman’s defense if anyone threatened her.

“All right,” Otis said, “what’re we sayin’?”

Wesley looked at the snakes, then at Alvin. “What’d you think, Alvin?”

“Seems to me we ought to camp out somewhere close by and take turns watchin’ for Freeman,” Alvin suggested. “If he’s comin’ back, it won’t be before night.”

“That’s a good idea,” agreed Wesley.

“We can say we’re goin’ to Wind’s Mill in case Freeman shows up there,” Alvin added.

“Better have Dover with us,” Paul suggested. “Havin’ him along will make it easier to get out.”

“Yeah,” R. J. said. “Wes, do we tell Dover about this?”

“Yeah,” answered Wesley. “Paul’s right. We need Dover. But let’s don’t tell anybody else.”

“We better take a vow,” counseled Otis.

Paul agreed. “Yeah, we need a vow.”

“We don’t need to do that,” Wesley said.

“Wesley, we always take a vow.”

“Yeah,” argued R. J.

“Let’s swear,” I said, pulling at Wesley’s arm.

“Well, all right, get it done with,” replied Wesley.

Above our heads were three half-skinned snakes. A ritual fire, with ritual ashes, was at our feet.

We crossed our hearts and hoped to die.

15

IT DID NOT SEEM REASONABLE
that Freeman would mock the Snake Spell. He believed more firmly than any of us in the ancient heritage of Granny Woman Jordan. But Freeman did not think of her as an “old witch woman.” She had The Power, and The Power was more than witchery.

Granny Woman Jordan had been a slave girl in the Civil War. In the battle of Kennesaw Mountain, she had suffered shell shock and when she again woke to reality, she discovered she was in an orphans’ home in Charleston, caring for wiggling white babies. The proprietor of the orphanage referred to her as “a perfect granny woman,” and that is why she adopted the name. In those years when her body was commanded to sleep-walk and sleep-work and sleep-live by another shadowy person, Granny Woman misplaced fragments of her past; her real name was one of those fragments.

Wesley and I knew many tales of Granny Woman because we were privileged to hear them from Annie. Annie was one of twenty children born to Granny Woman, and she was the mother
of Little Annie, Willie Lee’s wife. When I was very small, Annie worked with my mother during weeks of canning and harvesting. Annie had a special regard for me and I knew that I was treated in a spoiling manner by her. She had a gentle face and her eyes carried a star burning in the dark, liquid heavens of her pupils. Her fingers were long and slender and she knew how to bend and shape them in dozens of caricatures for playing animal shadows on the wall. She cooked cakes for me. Chocolate marble cakes. She would say, “My boy, he wants a cake. What color cake you want?” And I would answer, “Cake the color of you, Annie.” Mother tried often to discourage Annie from indulging me with chocolate marble cakes, but Annie ignored her. Once, in desperation, Mother hid the sugar and Annie walked two miles to Hixon’s General Store, where she charged five pounds to my father’s account. “That baby’s my baby, too,” declared Annie. “He wants cake, Annie’s gonna cook him cakes.”