I’m wandering around town and all I see is ghosts. I walk from Reason, by the library, down Main Street past the Town Hall, Grammercy and Carter’s. I slow down and force myself to breathe slow. No sense hyperventilating so early in the evening. I slow down even more at Fleming’s. There’s no music coming from inside the shop. Its shutters are closed. All the shops are. Everything’s shut tight until after the Warding Off. It wouldn’t be fair for folks to have to miss it on account of needing to work, and it just wouldn’t be proper to have folks running through town disturbing customers. Business can wait until after the Warding Off.
Still, I’m at Fleming’s Keys and Keys Music Shoppe and Locksmith, jiggling the doorknob the way the boys and I used to do when we were kids. Romulus, Remus and me were closer than three believers in a cape. We did everything together. Even though they were twins, they didn’t leave me out of nothing. Not that I would have let them. Just one year older, they got to do everything just that little bit before me. They’d let me tag along even when folks warned against it.
I’M rattling the doorknob but, looking down, it’s Remus’s young brown hand that I see.
“Let’s hurry inside,” he’s saying. “So no one sees us.” His face is large brown eyes, big grin and life.
“We should have just gone in around the back and climbed through the window. Wouldn’t nobody see us.” Romulus keeps careful watch. “Maybe we shouldn’t do it. If Mother finds out—”
“Get out of the way,” little me says. I push past the two of them to make my way inside. The shop is filled with music. It’s coming from inside the back room and all around us. We’re surrounded by trumpets, trombones, pianos, organs, drums, flutes, clarinets, a harpsichord and music stands of all shapes and sizes. There are stacks of music sheets and books scattered on the chairs, piano benches and instrument cases. I lose the boys, who are pretending to play instruments too big for them to carry. I walk up to the counter to see the handmade violin Fleming keeps in its case behind the glass.
It’s beautiful. One day, I tell myself, it will be mine. I don’t mean to but my fingers are pressed against the glass and then on top of the counter and then inside. The case is in my hands and if it weren’t for its intricate little lock it would be open and I’d be plucking the violin’s strings till I yanked a tune out of them.
“Your parents know you’re here?” Fleming asks.
He puts out his hand for the violin. I run my fingers along the case then wipe the streaks and smears they leave behind with the cloth Fleming gives me to do it. He’s shorter than Daddy but sort of takes up more space. I have to look up at him when he talks. His denims are hitched up by his favorite suspenders, the plaid ones with musical notes going up and down them like a song.
“No, sir, they do not.”
He smiles. “Good, then it’s time for your lesson.”
Fleming flips the sign on the door from Open to Closed, pulls down the shutters and draws the curtains, and for the next hour the boys and I take turns practicing scales the way Fleming’s been trying to teach us to for months. We’re getting better at it. One day we’d be good enough for a concert if we wouldn’t get in so much trouble for being here in the first place. Mother and Daddy don’t approve of Fleming. He’s always singing, writing and playing music, cavorting with his wife, Charlie Ann. She makes the best sweet potato pies in all Curdle Creek, but that doesn’t stop folks from whispering about the two of them.
“You should be on the road, playing for a big band, traveling around the world,” Romulus says. He’s been banging out the Curdle Creek anthem and this time it sounds recognizable. “You have a gift.”
“Folks from Curdle Creek do not go on the road. My gift is teaching music, not playing it.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “Didn’t we hear you playing before we came in?”
“Please don’t spread rumors like that.” Fleming stands up, snaps the piano lid closed, pushes out the bench. It scrapes against the floor but he doesn’t mention it. “It’s time for you all to go. I need to tune all of these instruments. The band needs them for tomorrow. I can’t keep them waiting.”
Fleming works so hard for the town. Music makes him happy. If Mother knew how happy it made him, she’d speak to the Council and get him put into the band. Maybe he’d end up directing it. I talk to Mother about it as soon as the boys and I get home. She agrees. Fleming would be happier if there was a change and she has an idea of what that change could be. She’ll talk to Mother Opal and the Council about it. Just leave everything to her.
Charlie Ann’s name is called the next day. There’s been no music in Fleming’s ever since.
I let go of the knob and walk away. I won’t bother Fleming with my burdens. I could call on Mae or Jeremiah. There’s no reason not to. No ordinance against visiting before the Moving On. As a widow and now a daughter of a soon-to-be Moved On, it would be bad luck for me to be turned away on the evening of their nuptials. But we’re friends, and friends take risks with luck from time to time. If anyone would understand how I feel, it’d be them.
But they are honeymooners first. Any conversation with the two of them would turn into a discussion with the four of them and, even though I know the good doctor and Florence too, that don’t make us friends.
If I go home I can at least be with Daddy, but I wouldn’t know what to say to him. The more I think on it, the less certain I am the message came from the ancestors. One by one before it’s done. Two by two until it’s through. Three by three just wait and see! More and more will grace death’s door! It could have been just wishful thinking. Ending the Moving On would ruin us. Wouldn’t be long before we turned against one another, seeing danger everywhere, in everyone. We wouldn’t be no better than anyplace else. Curdle Creek wouldn’t feel like home. Wouldn’t none of us belong to it. If I’m wishing on an end to Curdle Creek, I’m not the true believer I thought I was. I can’t admit I have doubts so close to his Moving On. That would be wrong. What Daddy needs right now is a plan. Preparing for the Moving On is everyone’s responsibility. If it’s going to go ahead, it’s meant to be, and if something or someone intervenes, that was meant to be too.
The mist is thick like fog. I keep walking to the end of Main, turn right and I’m on the overgrown path heading to the Curdle Creek sign.
The counter whirs like a clock and I settle down on the back ledge hidden by tall grass. Other than a few kids, the occasional lovers and the official counter, no one really visits the Curdle Creek sign. It’s tall and wide, a wooden billboard with a new-fangled counter in the right corner. The scrolling is automatic, connected to a device managed by the counter that ticks after each birth, death or Moving On.
When the children left there was an uproar. “Three Curdle Creekers Abscond in the Dark of Night,” the headlines read. For weeks, the editor of the Curdle Creek Gazette interviewed former friends, neighbors, teachers, employers, lovers. Wasn’t a soul alive they didn’t talk to about the children, Moses or me. Everyone gave an interview too.
The party line was the worst. The whirring of the counter waiting to tick over sounds like the Curdle Creek gossipers. Couldn’t pick up the phone without overhearing folks speculating.
“I heard the Deacons found them three towns over. Dragged each of them back for a special Moving On, bless them.”
Followed by gasps or cackling.
“Serves them right.”
“Where do you think they run off to?”
“Somewhere that’s making them wish they were right here.”
Cackling.
“Osira, is that you?”
To this day I won’t pick up the party line without saying “Osira here,” so folks at least have a chance to consider what they’re about to say before I hear it.
Residents wanted the counter to reflect the leaving. The timers said that was the way it’d always been done and that was the way it should be done now. The counter was sent out. Deducted three, tick, tick, tick, and went on his way. The non-believers said since they hadn’t been Moved On and could not be counted as dead without proof, they should be counted as still here, with the number reflecting the population before they left. The counter was sent out. The three were added again.
Moses disagreed. “Take them off and leave it there. They’re as good as Moved On.” But as good as Moved On is not Moved On. I wanted the numbers to stay. Maybe it let me think that one day the children might come back, one day they’d be forgiven.
“They will be Moved On in absentia,” the Council declared. Three effigies were created, one for each of the children. They dressed them in their clothes so that Jasmine’s wore a pretty teal dress and roller skates, Cheyenne’s wore a pleated pant-suit with sensible shoes, and Moses’s wore the zoot suit his great-grandfather wore on his first day as a lawyer. They even collected yarn to use for hair. They hauled them all through town like they would do if they were Moving On. Did the Warding Off too. I wanted to stay home. My stomach couldn’t take it. I couldn’t keep anything down. Moses made me go. Threatened to tell the Council that I put the kids up to it. Me and my hand-me-down stories about Well Walkers.
After the Moving On, the sign was corrected again. Curdle Creek, Population 199.
THE fog is thick. I’ve been in it for hours. Mother must be worried. I make my way back to the path, ready to turn onto Main. Sweat and humidity drip down my face, my arms; my blouse blooms with it. The Sisters swoop in. They sidestep the puddles, gather me in strong, bony arms and push me into the car.
“I’m on my way home for the Moving On,” I say. I smile to prove it. “Don’t want to be late.”
A wannabe Mother purses her lips at me. She shakes her head. Makes the sign of the holy bells.
“Only the wicked would rejoice at a time like this,” one of them says.
Mindful of the advice, I purse my lips too. There’s no sense in explaining it to them. I keep my silence to myself. I’ll leave them to make up stories about how they had to drag me back home to make me participate in my own father’s Moving On. How ungrateful I am. How far I’ve fallen from the believer I once was. We’re puffing our way toward my street. Mother will surely hear the loud pops and groans as the Sisters’ “hooded beast” shifts gears, making its way up Pleasant Mills as if the house is on the top of a hill it can hardly be expected to climb. The car will sputter up the gentle slope, gears slipping, tires spinning every so often for no reason at all. If there’s any luck in the sky, we’ll at least get stuck at the red light. It’s always red. As the only traffic light in Curdle Creek, red was as good a color as any.
There are only four cars in Curdle Creek. This one is wagon-like and too long. The seats are hard perches good for the bursts of spontaneous worship the Mothers-to-be are often guilty of. They catch the spirit like it’s a cold flowing from one to the next until they are all burning with love for Curdle Creek. Bugs and air hit my face. I do not complain. I know not to mistake this ride for goodwill. The top is down so they don’t catch something in case bad luck’s contagious. Even if the top were up, everyone would still know I was inside. Everybody knows when the Sisters take you home. They broadcast it on the AM radio then print it in the Creek News under “Creaks” so everyone knows it’s gossip and not to read it expecting verified facts. That keeps them from being accused of printing stories and not news again—and keeps folks from hounding them for retractions they won’t print anyway.
There’s no speed limit in town, and if there were, the Sisters wouldn’t follow it. Everything is an emergency when you’re one good deed away from being a Charter Mother. We hit every bump. My body lurches and slides across the bench between them, pushing up against one then the other. Try as they might to move out of the way, my arm brushes against one’s chest and she hisses like a mourning balloon letting out air. I dig my nails into the hard leather cushion, tuck my feet under the front seat, sit straight and play coffin bride in my head. I sit stiff as day-old bread.
We glide down Main and, too quick, we’re turning onto Pleasant Mills. Pebbles ping beneath the car, popping like corn kernels. The Sisters must be used to it by now. All streets lead to Main and they all, except for Main and one quarter of Pleasant Mills, are dirt roads. The timers say Country roads know the way home. The idea of changing anything gets them riled up. It was hard enough to get the town to agree to have Main paved. Folks hemmed and hawed so long I thought for sure the answer would be no. But then the Charter Mothers started scroll reading and deed searching and the paving started as soon as somebody could be trained to do it.
It would have been faster if they’d brought someone in from out of town. One of the ushers recommended that very thing. Do you have spare luck to share? This was the timers’ favorite question. They rolled it out every chance they got. Sometimes, they posed it even when it wasn’t true. There’s plenty of luck to go around. Just not all of it’s good. Luck had nothing to do with the cleansing of ’44. Our best plumbers can only be in one place at a time, which was fine until the pipe backed up, spewing Lord have mercys all over the town square. Of course, some of the children thought it was a chocolate fountain. That only added to the emergency. An outsider was brought in to create a sewage system. A more complex and reliable puzzle of pipes. Soon, every house had its very own toilet indoors. That man never did leave. I’m just as happy about it as anybody but someone’s got to do something about that Creek.
There’s a bang and a pop. The windscreen could crack wide open any moment, but of course it doesn’t. It’s Mother. She’s at the side, tapping on the door. Sister Two springs it open. I’m not even sure we’ve stopped fully when I’m pushed out. The door bangs shut behind me. They didn’t even bother to stop the car.
“I was on my way,” I say.
The tires kick up dust. With a screech, the Sisters pull away. I’ve thrown them off their schedule. They aren’t meant to visit until after we’re prepared to receive them. It’s bad luck, like seeing the bride before the wedding or saying I love you before your name’s called. There’s no time for foolishness like bringing home wayward girls. They’ll have to steal time from somewhere else to make up for this.
I tense my body for the slap and rush the words out so at least they’ll be the last thing she hears before she strikes. “I was blessed or I was cursed, I’m not sure which, but I know the Moving On has to end. The ancestors said so or I think they did and it’s not because Daddy’s name’s been called. It’s not because I can’t stand to lose one more person to that Creek. It’s not because it’s not fair even if it isn’t.” My words are muffled into Mother’s chest.
She’s hugging, squeezing me tight right here at the gate in full view of anyone watching. She hasn’t held me like this in years. I can’t move my arms to hug her back so I mouth I love you onto her skin. I feel her heart stop, start again.
“Mother Opal died,” she whispers. “This changes everything.”