Chapter Two

Bringing in the Sheaves

"Well, aren't you about as dumb as a box of rocks to pull that shit in court," Aunt Violet says to me from the other side of the jail bars.

Sure enough the sheriff let me rot a night in jail before informing me Stone wasn't pressing charges, after all. Egg assault by a woman half your size... Well, you'd look like a straight-up pussy for crying foul. But it was worth every second in this stinking cinder block to see that pained expression on Stone Rutledge's face.

Aunt Violet looks like hell, face puffy and red from crying. Or the alcohol. Or both. That spicy cinnamon Dentyne gum can't hide the smell of cigarettes and vodka still lingering on her breath.

"Stone deserves worse," I say to her and sit up to stretch. My back is killing me from sleeping on the compacted cotton pallet they call a mattress. My jaw aches a bit from when Sheriff Johns introduced my face to the floor.

We both glance down the hall as we hear the sheriff give the order that I'm to be let out. Deputy Rankin, with his belly hanging over his gun belt, grunts as he hoists himself out of his chair. His keys jangle on his hip as he waddles down the dimly lit hall.

"Is Grandmama angry?" I ask Aunt Violet.

"When is Mama not angry," she says to me, then turns to the deputy. "Hey, Dewayne. How's your mama and them?"

Deputy Rankin looks down his nose at her and doesn't answer. "You're free to go," he says dryly, clearly unhappy about having to do any kind of actual work.

"I see you're still eating your mama out of house and home," Aunt Violet says, not happy about getting snubbed.

He frowns back at her. "I see you're still sucking on that vodka bottle."

Aunt Violet makes a pfft sound in response, then scratches her cheek with a single middle finger. "Bastard," she mumbles as we walk away. "Don't worry about Mama, Weatherly. She'll find something new to bitch about tomorrow."

The bright morning sun smacks me square in the face as we enter the front office's waiting room. My jaw clamps tight when I find Stone Rutledge, leaning over the intake desk, signing some papers. His wife, Rebecca, hovers off to the side. Her face bunched up in disgust as her eyes scan the room. She clutches her Dooney Bourke satchel like she's expecting to be mugged.

"No, I'm certain. No charges to file," Stone says to the woman behind the desk. "That family has been through enough." He hands her back the paperwork. In his periphery, he catches sight of me and does a double take.

There's a scratch on his cheek. Good. His eyes are rimmed red and irritated from the rosehip hairs I tossed in his face. Even better.

I give him my best fuck-you glare.

A deep sadness washes over his face as he locks eyes with me. The genuineness of it kicks me in the chest and throws me off for a minute. Until I realize he's just playing up the empathetic mayor image for the room full of voters. What an ass.

We're almost to the door when Rebecca makes a tiny grunt of disapproval, giving voice to what everyone else in this room thinks of us...white trash.

"Let it go," Aunt Violet warns, then snags me by the elbow and guides me out the door, making sure I don't do something stupid yet again.

Not two seconds outside, Aunt Violet is fumbling through her purse for her pack of Marlboros. She lights her cigarette with an urgent shaky hand.

We pass Rebecca's sparkling white Cadillac Eldorado—a convertible no less. It's an out-of-place crown jewel compared to the other junkyard relics parked around it. Aunt Violet grumbles when she sees it.

"You know what I heard?" she asks.

"What?"

"I heard Jimmy Smoot hauled the mayor's precious little Corvette to the shop because somebody put a jar of nails behind his tire." Her voice full of mock surprise. "Wonder who could have done that?" She eyes me knowingly, then blows a long plume of smoke out the side of her smiling mouth.

"I have no idea." I wrestle back a grin as we get in her car.

"Wyatt's got him a job working at the Lasco factory over in Mercer," she tells me as we pull out of the parking lot and head toward the house. "It's a good job. He'll make lead maintenance technician in no time." She flicks her cigarette ash out the window crack.

"Seriously?" I say, incredulous. "He's not going to stick around and help us figure out how to make Stone pay? He's just moving on? Is that what we're all doing?"

Shame creeps across her face; she won't look at me. "Well, we gotta keep going somehow. That's how life works, baby girl." From the cup holder, she picks up her Styrofoam drink and swirls it around. Ice shushes inside, mixing the watered-down contents. Then she takes a large swig like it's medicine. I suppose it is.

It's hotter than Hades in the car. I roll down my window to let a breeze in and the cigarette smoke out.

"Have you talked to Davis?" If there's anyone who's going to help me, it's Davis. He loved Adaire fiercely. He's not going to lie down and take this verdict as the final say. "What does he think we should do?"

Aunt Violet lets out an exasperated sigh. "What else we gonna do, Weatherly? Call the governor, tell him we've got a shitty mayor down here? You saw in court how chummy they all are. The Good Ole Boy's Club," she says in a mocking tone. "Rich folk like Stone ain't ever gonna pay. That's how it is. Just something the rest of us have to accept." She flips on her blinker with an angry hand, and we turn down the gravel road.

"I'll never accept it," I say. We ride the rest of the way in silence.

At the house, as soon as she shifts the car into Park, I reach for the door handle—

"Hey." She lays her hand to my arm, and I pause. "I got something in the mail this week," she says with a lilt in her voice, as if whatever this is will make everything better.

From the sun visor, she pulls down a postcard and hands it to me.

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

An image of the coastline, blue waters and soft sand, waves across the front. My mama's hurried handwriting scribbled on the back.

Every now and again, I get a postcard from her. Dallas, Texas. Memphis, Tennessee. San Diego, California. Always with a Wish you were here! Like it was me who chose not to go with her, and I was missing out. It's a penance for her guilt. If she thinks of me now and again, it absolves her from the feelings of neglect and abandonment. Or so I'm guessing. Really, I'm too grown to give a shit anymore.

"Your mama's sorry she couldn't make it to Adaire's funeral," Aunt Violet says as if that's alright with her, but I see the pinch in her eyes. "Darbee doesn't have enough money to get home right now. But she says she's got herself a promising job at a souvenir shop." Aunt Violet always gives her older sister the benefit of the doubt. I've never understood why.

According to Violet, Mama used to be an honor roll student who loved church. A Goody Two-shoes who never swore. An all-around saint. Then she got pregnant with me, and everything changed. The sister she remembers and the woman I know are two entirely different people.

For years, I let it eat at me that my mama never stuck around. Pawned her newborn off on her parents, like I was a doll she was tired of playing with. Hell, neither of my parents seemed to give a shit about me.

When I was seven, I asked Aunt Violet about my father. "He's a ball-less sack of shit for not stepping up and taking responsibility for his daughter. And your mama wasn't no whore." I should have been relieved, but I cringed. "She wasn't married, but that didn't make her no whore," Aunt Violet went on. "But she wasn't fit to be a mama yet, she had some wild oats to sow—heartache will do that to you. That don't mean she doesn't love you. Just means she loves you enough to do what's right for ya. Now, you go on outside with Adaire and make me some mud pies." She shooed me out the door, half a cigarette flopping from the side of her mouth. I never asked about my father again.

I wanted to believe Aunt Violet, I really did. But seven-year-old me had a hard time understanding how you could leave someone you loved behind.

"She says she'll come home for Christmas, though—if she can save up enough," she adds like it's a consolation prize.

Tell Weatherly I said hi. That's what she wrote on the postcard. Me—an afterthought at the end of her pathetic excuse for a relationship with her family.

"Why bother?" I toss the postcard on the seat and get out of the car. Twenty-two of my twenty-four Christmases I've spent without her. I don't see why that needs to change now.

The smell of fresh cut grass lingers in the air. Bone Layer is busy with the bushhog before the sun cooks everything alive. Laundry hangs on the clothesline strung from the smokehouse to a pole stuck out in the middle of the yard. Wood clothespins clump in a mesh pouch of fabric that looks like it's hanging on for dear life. I hate the way my clothes smell after drying on the line—thick with the outdoors and baked stiff from the sun.

Grandmama stoops over in the vegetable garden, picking tomatoes. Her long-sleeve blouse, brown floral and faded from the years, keeps the fine hairs of the tomato vine from itching her arms. It's eighty-plus degrees and she's got on nylons, too. I'm burning up just looking at her.

Agnes Wilder reminds me of a shriveled up apple that fell on the ground and rotted; what's left barely resembles the sweet fruit it once was. She loves her some Jesus, but she don't act like she's learned much from him.

I imagine she was born into this world bawling and squalling, and that permanent scowl just never left her face. If she's ever smiled, I've never seen it. I don't know what happened to her, but it made her foul-tempered and damn near impossible to live with. I loved my papaw something fierce, but I can't imagine what he ever saw in Grandmama that made him fall in love. Or so I'm guessing, because otherwise I can't square how the two of them ever married.

"It's gonna be a scorcher," Aunt Violet says to her, following me across the yard.

Grandmama props the bushel basket on her hip, then casts a scornful glare that lands right on Aunt Violet.

And just like that, her spunky confidence shrivels, her eyes cast down, looking at her shoes like they have the answers.

Aunt Violet has never lived up to the standards of what Agnes Wilder thought her daughters should be. My mama fit that mold for a time, until she did the unthinkable and got pregnant out of wedlock. It's almost like Grandmama blames the daughter that stayed for the one that ran away. Aunt Violet has that wild and free spirit, too, though. Being pinned under a religious thumb just didn't suit her. The tighter those reins got, the more Aunt Violet bucked. Until eventually she didn't give a shit anymore and lived how she wanted to—going through men like they were handkerchiefs, drinking like a fish, and finding trouble with the law every chance she got.

"Your squash looks good," Aunt Violet says, trying to seem unfazed by her mother's coldness.

Grandmama responds with a grunt, then turns to me. "You acted like a fool yesterday."

"Well, that bastard deserved it." Aunt Violet quickly comes to my defense.

Grandmama's hand flies out, faster than thought possible, and slaps Aunt Violet across the face with a wicked smack.

"Grandmama!"

"Don't you cuss at me." Grandmama pushes herself right up in Aunt Violet's face.

Tears glass over my aunt's eyes as she cradles her stung cheek. A ghost of the feeling mirrors my own, something I've felt a time or two myself.

"I just meant he was no good for what he'd done." Her gaze slips back to the ground.

Secondhand embarrassment lingers thick in the air.

"That ain't right," I say cautiously. Even as Grandmama wields those hazy white eyes on me, I bolster up my confidence, ordering it to not back down. It cowers, anyway. Years of fear and habit are hard to break.

"Get inside," she snaps at me. "We have work to do." She gives Aunt Violet a get-gone look, one Aunt Violet doesn't have to see twice.

As I follow Grandmama up the porch steps, she tells me about some new salve she wants to try out today. I turn back to see Aunt Violet pull a pint of vodka from underneath her car seat and pour the last of it into her Styrofoam cup.

For a moment, I'm struck by a glimpse at an all too likely future, slipping vodka into my soda, just so I can deal with Grandmama. I should have moved out years ago. But this house and these four walls are all I've ever known. Opportunities are rare around here.

In the kitchen, the cobalt blue perfume bottle that usually carries my Sin Eater Oil sits empty on the counter next to Grandmama's secret recipe box.

Recipes in that box go back generations. Every Granny Witch has one, a grimoire of sorts. Filled with old-world traditions passed down from our Scottish roots, mixed with indigenous rituals our ancestors were taught when they immigrated here. Diverse in their practices, some Granny Witches are gifted naturally in herbalism and midwifery. Others in realms such as magic. Grandmama wasn't born with witchery in her blood, so she uses me—and my Sin Eater Oil—to bring her charms and hexes to life.

Like rashes for cheaters. Misfortune for thieves. Insomnia for liars.

On the box, the thin script reads RECIPES in a faded charcoal black. The painted red rooster on the front is all but worn away. It's a simple box with dovetailed corners made from soft wood. Grandmama keeps it locked with a bone-tooth key that lives on a brass chain around her neck. Carved from dark wenge wood with teeth for the bits. Animal or human, I do not know; both, I imagine.

I've never seen inside the box for more than a second or two at a time. She holds those recipes and their secrets close, for her eyes only. Over the years she's shown me how to mix herbs to make medicinal cures for common ails. Taught me how to birth babies. Shared a few minor spells that don't cause too much of a fuss. But anything more than that, any of her Granny Witch magic, that's a secret she's not willing to part with. Not yet, at least.

The tipped-open lid reveals the recipe she's been working on this morning. I stretch my neck to see what it is—

"Load the visiting basket," Grandmama says and slams the lid shut.

That long-handled basket can mean only one thing: it's harvesting day. Like that old hymnal "Bringing in the Sheaves," but instead of harvesting grain, we're harvesting Sin Eater Oil.

Every few months, when the bottle runs dry, we make our rounds to the nursing homes in the neighboring counties. If we don't find a soul that's soon to be parting from this world, Grandmama will find one that's just about ready and help it along, so I can swoop in and save them before dying. It works—most of the time.

Harvesting is God's work, Grandmama says.

I say it's awfully damn convenient how God's work always coincides with our supply running low and our pockets empty.

The Pleasant Hill Nursing Home is a redbrick facility with a dirt-brown shingle roof. It sits on a soft rug of green Bermuda grass. Misshapen boxwood shrubs scatter along its base. Two cheerful crape myrtle trees flag each side of the long covered walkway, their fluted forms fan heavy with pink blossoms. This place reminds me of my old elementary school, but instead of children, it's full of the elderly.

Bone Layer parks the truck near the back, so it's a bit of a walk to the front doors. Ms. Claudette, the attendant at the front desk, nods a hello as we enter.

Inside, we're greeted by the perpetual smell of antiseptic and vanilla air freshener. An uncomfortable silence haunts the halls, only broken by the occasional moan of someone distinctively old and mentally declined. As a child, I thought this place was filled with sadness and sickness. And I suppose it might feel that way to a kid. But I also discovered the magic a young person has on the aged.

"How are you, Miss Martha?" I say to the tall sweet woman sitting crooked in her wheelchair, always parked near the front door. I kneel to get on her level. "I see you've got a pretty yellow dress on today." I smooth flat her hem that was hung on the brake lever. Not once has she ever spoken; the result of a stroke some years back. But her left foot starts tapping as soon as you speak to her, she's still very much there.

We visit often enough, trying to sell our baked goods, tinctures, and salves so that harvesting day doesn't look any different than the other times. But we try not to visit the same home twice in a row, just in case the harvesting doesn't go as planned. Or should anyone start asking questions. But still, we've done this enough that I know the patients well—their names, their stories.

Grandmama raises her brow in question. I shake my head no. As old as Miss Martha is—their longest resident to date—I don't pick up a hint of death around her. Grandmama sharply waves for Bone Layer to come along as she shuffles up to the front desk. He dutifully carries the basket of "goodies," following behind her.

"Claudette," Grandmama says to the attendant. "I have the perfect new salve for that stubborn arthritis of yours." Grandmama pulls from the basket a small baby food jar she's mixed: dried nettle leaves, almond oil, and beeswax. It's tinged a slight purple for the tiny drop of Sin Eater Oil she's added to it. Something that will make it extra potent and effective.

I begin my rounds in the opposite direction, taking a light stroll down the hallways. I check in on each resident, letting my extra senses sift through the souls filling the facility. I'm searching for that soft whisper of a soul's song. That tonal sound we all carry, but that's different for each of us. For one, it was a tinkling piano. Another, the coo of a dove. And on one particular occasion, the purring rev of a car's engine.

It's not something I hear with my ears, but an echo inside my head. It calls to my own soul, which always answers back.

I'm rounding the third hallway at the back of the building, when I catch it. A delicate sound. I glide the back of my hand along the cool wall, following the growing sound, leading me to the person who doesn't have long to live.

I stop in front of Miss Evelyn's room, and my heart sinks. She's one of my favorite residents. A tender-hearted petite woman with a sunshine personality that makes you feel special just by being in her presence.

But there's no denying it. It's here, the song of her soul. A light shushing, like the rustling of fabric from a breeze drifting through an open curtained window.

Faint still. A little ways off but soon enough death will arrive and take Miss Evelyn.

"Here." Grandmama startles me and shoves something in my hands. I'm about to tell her no, there's no death here. But she already knows I've locked on to something, probably followed me down the hall to see what I'd find.

I look down at the Saran-wrapped package I'm holding. A black picot ribbon tied around it with a black fern frond tucked underneath. Zebra bread. Dark veins marble through the spongy slice, made of sweet molasses and spicy cinnamon. Two ingredients that can hide the rancid taste of Sin Eater Oil.

"Well, hello, sweet girl." Miss Evelyn looks up from her book. Romeo and Juliet, of course, her favorite. "You bring me some of that delicious cake I love?" She eyes the gift in my hand.

Quickly, I glance toward Grandmama, who's already moved on down the hall. Then back to Miss Evelyn who waits patiently with a bright smile.

She looks so tiny as she approaches death. For a minute, I panic—what if Grandmama miscalculated and put in too much Sin Eater Oil? It could kill her straightaway. Then again, her husband passed a few months back, and she's been so lonely without him.

We've done this harvesting ritual for years, but today something doesn't feel right.

A chill prickles the hairs on my arms. It's only Miss Evelyn and me in the room, but I could swear we're not alone. Maybe it's something my heart wants to believe, but I feel like Adaire is here with us. Reminding me how precious life is.

Miss Evelyn only has the one daughter. Maybe she doesn't have much time left in this world, but it's not for me to decide. Not when loved ones are still here to spend that time with.

I look at the bread in my hand and do something I've never done before.

"Oh, this?" I say, holding it up. "No, ma'am. This is a soggy batch of banana bread that got mixed in with the good stuff." I toss the poisoned zebra bread into the wastebasket.