1952—ANNIE
WHEN ANNIE NEARS her house, she tosses Ryce’s shirt in the ditch, drops her bike at the roadside, and walks toward her drive but doesn’t cross over. Two slender lengths of wood six feet tall, three inches wide, and two inches thick, and both appearing to have come from Daddy’s shed because they have been sanded smooth, stand on either side of her. A half dozen limp milk snakes have been strung up on each. They’ve been nailed to the posts. Some are more shriveled than others, meaning some have been dead longer than others.
Most of the snakes are of the reddish-brown variety and are covered with white blotches trimmed in black. Annie might wonder who helped Grandma pound those stakes in the ground, but they both stand at an awkward sort of angle and Grandma does have a way of getting things done herself, so it’s likely she had no help at all. It’s also likely, because there’s still plenty of room on those pieces of wood, she plans to string up more snakes.
Grandma has never talked about stringing up milk snakes, but it’s definitely her work and it’s definitely meant to keep evil from crossing onto the Hollerans’ place. She must have been searching for those snakes since they first discovered Mrs. Baine. Closing her eyes and holding her breath, though she isn’t sure why except maybe she’s the kind of evil those snakes are meant to keep at bay, Annie steps from the road onto the drive. After a half dozen steps, she opens her eyes. Nothing is changed. Annie doesn’t want to be near when Mama sees what Grandma has done or when Daddy discovers what has become of his perfectly fine pieces of wood.
The moment Annie steps inside the house, Caroline grabs her by both hands and begs Annie to tell every single thing about Ellis Baine. Caroline wants to know what he looked like. Was he as handsome as they say? Where has he been living? What did he say? Is it true he came to see Annie? Why would he do that? Why would he come just for Annie?
Before Annie can answer, Grandma walks into the kitchen. Caroline drops Annie’s hands and lowers her eyes as if that’ll stop Grandma from seeing what Caroline was up to. But like Annie always knows a thing before it has come, Grandma knows, and she gives Caroline a look that means she’d best mind her own business. Then Grandma cocks her mouth off to one side and leans in close to look Annie in the eyes.
“Where you been?” she asks. “Did you go off somewhere? Why’s your hair all wet?”
“Been out talking to Daddy and Sheriff Fulkerson,” Annie says, which is partly true but not altogether true. After Annie crossed through the snakes and made her way up to the house, she did see Daddy and the sheriff again. She leaves out the part where she rode her bike to the fields.
“Well, see that you stay put,” Grandma says, poking a melon baller at Annie so she’ll know it’s serious business.
Annie nods, says, “Yes, ma’am,” and Grandma digs her baller into the half watermelon sitting on the kitchen table.
“I strung up snakes,” she says, scooping up a round chuck of melon and dropping it in a glass bowl. “Did you see?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We’ll string more, the most we can find. You keep an eye out. Under things that are dead. That’s where you’ll find them. And we’ll string more.”
Walking with rounded shoulders and doing her best to hide her chest, Annie climbs the steps that will lead to her bedroom and thinks maybe she’ll find enough snakes to hang some outside her windows. As she passes Mama’s bedroom, Annie looks inside. Mama is sitting alone on the edge of her bed, her feet bare, her dress no longer belted. She’s pulled the tie from her hair, leaving it to hang down her face, and she’s staring out her window. She’ll be seeing the tobacco barn at the top of the hill. Maybe she’s waiting and watching for Aunt Juna.
Hearing Annie in the hallway, Mama turns. Her eyes widen, and her back straightens. She inhales sharply as if at first seeing someone unexpected, and then she realizes it’s just Annie.
“You’re the spitting image . . .” Mama says but stops short of saying Aunt Juna’s name. “I’ve such a headache. I’m going to rest just a bit. Can you help Grandma?”
Annie steps into the room and pulls back the blue-and-yellow patchwork quilt. From Mama’s bedside table, Annie pulls out the witch-hazel-and-lavender spray Grandma makes certain is kept at everyone’s bedside and gives three squirts to each of Mama’s two pillows. Not believing in the know-how or the goodness of the lavender or the sweet dreams it’ll surely deliver, Mama shakes her head as Annie pumps the small bottle, but smiles all the while. Then Mama slides between the sheets, lays her head back, and rolls on her side.
Taking Mama’s seat on the edge of the mattress, Annie looks out the window where Mama had been looking. Daddy and the sheriff are out there again. They’ve reached the top of the hill and are walking along the rock fence that separates the Baines from the Hollerans. They’ll be talking about the cigarettes they don’t believe Annie ever saw and the odd coincidence that Mrs. Baine would die on Annie’s day and isn’t it strange that a girl so fair as Annie would have those black eyes.
After a few minutes, Mama’s breathing turns heavy and slow. Leaning toward Mama’s nightstand but not lifting her weight from the mattress so as to not disturb Mama, Annie pulls open the small drawer. Inside is Mama’s copy of the Bible, its binding split, an embroidered kerchief Mama’s mama made, and a stack of envelopes tied off with a piece of white string.
When Annie was in third grade, her teacher visited the house on a Tuesday afternoon, and that’s when Mama and Daddy told Annie about Aunt Juna. The teacher, Mrs. Johansson, visited because Annie had been skipping rope and singing about Juna Crowley with eyes black as coal and counting how many Baines would die this day. Annie hadn’t known Juna Crowley was her Aunt Juna. Caroline was too young yet to hear these things, but Annie had to know. Their own Aunt Juna was the one with evil living in her eyes, the one who turned fields to dust. She was the one all the folks of Hayden County feared. But Aunt Juna loved her family all those years ago, Mama had said. She didn’t want to leave, but she did, packed up her bags and left so peace could be made. It wasn’t like people say. She was peculiar, is all. She was good, and she is your aunt, and one day she’ll come back because she loves us all.
After that day, the girls kept on singing about Juna Crowley and twirling their ropes and telling their tales, but Annie never again joined in. The other girls learned too. They learned Juna was Annie’s aunt, and when they grew older, they learned Juna was Annie’s mama and that Annie had her black eyes and evil ways. Lastly they learned Joseph Carl Baine, the man who lies at the crossroad into town, was her daddy. Annie listened with a different ear after that Tuesday afternoon, and every story she heard, every tale she was told, made her worry more about the last thing Mama said the day Mrs. Johansson visited: Aunt Juna loves you, and one day she’ll come home.
Annie slides a finger under the twine tied loosely around the envelopes, looks down at Mama to see that she’s still sleeping, lifts the stack of envelopes, pushes the drawer closed, and walks from the room.
• • •
DOWN IN THE kitchen, the watermelon has been cleaned out and the smell of cloves and cinnamon has faded, though Annie’s cake still sits in the middle of the table. Or, more likely, the spicy smell has been crowded out by the lavender that always swells when the clouds burn off. Now that the sun has returned, the day will be particularly unpleasant. The air will be thicker, enough to catch in a person’s throat. Grandma will walk around the rest of the afternoon, patting at her chest with a kerchief; Daddy will strip down to his undershirt; and Mama will pin up her hair and fan the back of her neck with last week’s church bulletin.
“What are you thinking, child?” Grandma says when Annie walks into the kitchen.
Using a dish towel instead of her kerchief, Grandma blots the crease where the two sides of her large chest press up against each other.
“Ma’am?” Annie says, slipping into a chair at the kitchen table, her arms still crossed tight over her chest. For the third, maybe fourth time today, her face turns hot and surely red too. Grandma has a way of knowing things, and her asking Annie such a question means Grandma knows Annie stole those letters.
From out on the porch comes a laugh, a giggle really. It’s Caroline, and from the sounds of the other voice, she is out there with Jacob Riddle. Annie stretches to the right until she can see them through the back door. They’re sipping tea, Grandma’s sweet lavender tea. Caroline is sitting on the bench swing, while Jacob Riddle is leaned up against the railing, one leg draped over the other. He’s looking at Caroline like most fellows look at Caroline, like he can’t quite believe she’s sitting right there in front of him, close enough he could reach out and touch her. Annie grabs the bottom of her chair with both hands and scoots back to the table, where she won’t have to see that look on Jacob Riddle’s face.
“What are you thinking wearing that heavy sweater on this Godforsaken muggy day?”
“Rain left me with a chill,” Annie says, the sounds of Jacob and Caroline laughing together on the porch dousing any relief she might have felt because Grandma didn’t know about the letters.
Already Grandma is boiling potatoes for her potato salad, and soon enough she’ll mix up the cream and sugar Daddy will freeze out on the porch. Since it’s a special occasion, Mama will have invited Abraham Pace to join them for supper, and he is almost certain to bring Miss Watson. All of it to celebrate Annie finally becoming a woman.
“Is Mr. Pace coming tonight?” Annie asks, tugging and fanning the sweater and wishing she hadn’t scooted away from the open door.
He’ll tease Annie, Abraham will. He’s always teasing her for being faster and taller and stronger than most any boy in the county, but tonight he’ll tease because Annie doesn’t look like the one who has crossed over to being a woman. It’ll be Caroline who he says has sprouted such that Daddy ought have a shotgun at the ready for all the boys who linger past their welcome.
“And Miss Watson too?” Annie says. “Will she be coming too?”
Annie expects it to happen when she goes into town or at Sunday morning services. Some folks will choose a different pew or cross from one side of the road to the other when they see Annie. They don’t mean to be nasty, just figure better safe than sorry. Now Miss Watson has become one of those people. She was worried for Ryce when he stood out in that field with Annie, and now Annie will have to sit across the table from Miss Watson and wonder why she’s so afraid.
“Oh, sure,” Grandma says. “Both of them, I expect. We’ve certainly enough food.”
After leaving Mama to her nap, Annie had changed into the dark undershirt she wears now and pulled on her gray sweater, and not even in the privacy of her own bedroom could she look down on what Ryce Fulkerson had seen. She tried. She stood in front of the mirror where Caroline stands each morning before school or before church to smooth her skirt and twirl side to side to study every angle. Annie looked at herself in the blouse that was still damp, wanted to see exactly what Ryce Fulkerson had seen, what he couldn’t hardly stop himself from staring at. She saw the same girl she’d have seen a week ago or a month ago. Her hair hung in knotted strands, her face was shiny was sweat and rain, and her clothes were wrinkled. Feeling not one bit smarter or older or more certain than she had before looking into that well, she turned her back on the mirror, yanked the blouse overhead, pulled on a dark undershirt that may well have been Daddy’s but ended up in her drawer by mistake, and slipped into her gray sweater.
Tiptoeing past Mama’s room, her arms crossed to keep the sweater closed good and tight, Annie couldn’t help but think of Emily Anne Tylerson and the day all the boys ran from her. Emily Anne’s half birthday fell on a Friday, so all week, the girls had helped Emily Anne plan what she would wear and asked her to promise she’d make the trip, even if she had to go alone. Everyone knew Emily Anne’s daddy overindulged and her mama was too busy with the young ones who couldn’t yet tend themselves, which left Emily Anne to tend her own self most days.
When Friday came, Emily Anne, wearing the same blue dress she wore to church every Sunday, came to school with a smile on her face. She smiled until the first boy ran away. He startled like she was a rat snake slithering underfoot, and then another ran and another, and the girls laughed, though they tried to hide it by turning their backs on Emily Anne. When one of the girls finally asked who Emily Anne had seen down in the well—it was most likely Lizzy Morris, though Annie couldn’t remember for sure—Emily Anne said she didn’t go because it was all foolishness anyway.
If it weren’t for a dead Mrs. Baine, Annie could have told everyone she didn’t go to the well either, but they all know she went, and by the time another day or two passes, they’ll all think Annie’s the one who did the killing too. The more Annie thinks about it, the more she’s certain it was Lizzy Morris who was so nasty to Emily Anne.
“You ought be the girl out there on that porch,” Grandma says, elbow deep in a sink of hot, soapy water. The backs of her arms jiggle as she works the tip of a nylon brush around a mason jar’s insides.
Standing from her seat at the table, her sweater still buttoned top to bottom, Annie starts to dry the jars as Grandma washes them. Most of the jars are clear, a few tinted blue, a few green.
Though Annie can’t see her, Caroline will have drawn her dark hair over one shoulder and will be petting it hand over hand. She’ll be blinking slowly so the light glitters in her long, dark lashes and smiling at Jacob Riddle.
Caroline is younger than Annie by a scant twelve months, but a person looking at the sisters side by side would never think such a thing. It isn’t only Caroline’s body that would deceive a person, though it would surely be enough. She would never make the mistake of leaving the house without the proper undergarments. The weight of her bosom wouldn’t let her forget. Caroline takes up more space than most. That’s what Grandma says. Caroline’s cheeks glow, her lips shine, and she carries herself with a straight back, chin lifted, head tilted ever so slightly to the side as if she’s all the time seeing a friend who’s been long lost to her and is so very happy to see her again.
Annie’s hair never looks freshly brushed even if she still holds the brush in hand. It’s ordinary. All of her is ordinary, and ordinary doesn’t take up so much space. While Caroline’s softness begs to be touched, an urge that is surely testing Jacob Riddle at this moment, Annie is hard and straight and no more touchable than an elm trunk littered with cicada husks.
“Don’t guess I much care,” Annie says, working the towel around another jar and rubbing her fingers over the thick raised letters that dress each jar.
“Still a shame,” Grandma says. “Here it is your day and you’re the one doing all the work.”
Once today is over, Daddy will walk between the rows of bushy lavender, talk with the fellows in town about what weather they expect will come this way over the next few weeks. He’ll snap a stem here and there, bend it, twist it, smell its insides. He’ll cup a fist around a lavender stalk, close it just enough, draw it out, and come away with a handful of gray buds. He’ll rub them between his fingers, sniff them too. He’ll close his eyes, shake his head, and exhale as if he’s smelled lavender one too many times, one too many Goddamn times, and finally, he’ll decide.
He’ll give Grandma a date, a Sunday later this month, maybe early July, and come seven o’clock the first Monday morning in June, Grandma will begin mashing overripe bananas and mixing up her lavender banana bread because it freezes especially nice. She’ll take her sewing kit from the top shelf of her closet and pretend to just get started on cutting and stitching the sachets, though everyone knows she’s been working on them since Christmas, quietly each night in her bedroom. In a few weeks, she’ll have Annie stuffing the small bags made from swatches of fabric she pretended to be cutting for one of her quilts with dried stems and buds, and Caroline will stitch them closed. This year’s harvest date will also be the day Abraham Pace gets married.
“Why was Ellis Baine here?” Annie doesn’t look at Grandma when she asks.
The nylon brush goes still in Grandma’s hand for a moment, and then it starts back up. “Visiting.”
“I don’t think so,” Annie says.
“He’s here because his mama died,” Grandma says, handing off another clean jar. “And because he’s trying to put the cap on the end of something. Folks need that, you know? To cap things off. That’s all.”
By the time Annie had come back from the field, Ellis Baine was gone. Daddy and Sheriff Fulkerson were starting back up the hill toward the tobacco barn, and the sheriff was wearing his shirt again even though Annie never did get to that button. Grandma must have sewn it on because it was buttoned up tight by the time Annie returned home. They wanted to know where Annie had gone off to, and she told them she’d been to see Miss Watson at the fields, which made both men smile because they thought that meant Annie had been to see Ryce at the fields. Run a brush through your hair next time, the sheriff had said and laughed, and then he asked to have a word, another word, about what Annie had seen last night.
Did you see the shotgun lying there alongside Mrs. Baine, he’d asked. Did you see how far she’d strayed from her front porch and that the garden hadn’t been tended in a good long time? Did you see that all those tomatoes were volunteer, come up from the year before, and that she hadn’t been out there tending her plants but had been there, a good long ways from her porch, for some other reason?
As the sheriff asked his questions, Annie fanned the front of her shirt and shook her head and said over and over that she hadn’t seen much, not much at all. She was having trouble sorting through the sheriff’s questions because she couldn’t stop thinking about all that Ryce had seen and not seen and wondering what he’d think of her now and how many more people would know what had happened by the time the sun came up tomorrow. Fortunately, the questions were mostly the same, except for those about the gun and the volunteer tomatoes.
One more thing, one more important thing, was also different. This time, Annie wasn’t the only one who found the sheriff’s questions disagreeable. When the sheriff asked if anyone had ever told Annie she sure did favor her Aunt Juna, Daddy pointed a finger at the kitchen door, ordered Annie to get herself inside, and told the sheriff that would be enough of that.
“Did she point that gun of hers at you?”
The sheriff had waited until Annie reached the porch and slipped one finger through the door’s handle before shouting that question at her.
“Odd, don’t you think?” he said, holding out a hand to silence Daddy. “Her toting that gun all the way out there. Odd unless she intended on using it. I’m thinking maybe she knew it was your day. Thinking maybe she was there waiting for you.”
The sheriff paused as if wanting Annie to tell him he was right, but she didn’t know if Mrs. Baine had been waiting there for her to come at midnight. Maybe she was. Maybe she was waiting there, knowing Annie would come and that Mrs. Baine would finally get to have a word. Mama and Daddy never allowed Mrs. Baine to see Annie when she came to the house after too much partaking. Sometimes Daddy would have to shout at Mrs. Baine to put that damn fool thing away, which meant she’d brought a gun. Maybe she had been there waiting for Annie, and a thought like that will take a good long time to sink its way in.
“Was she waiting there for you?” the sheriff said. “She point that gun at you?”
“I didn’t hardly see a thing,” Annie had said.
Out on the porch, Jacob Riddle stands. His head and shoulders fill the window. He pulls his hat low on his forehead, turns sideways, and draws his hands together like he’s getting ready to throw a pitch. There’s another giggle from Caroline.
“Why does Aunt Juna only send cards at Christmas?” Annie asks, sliding the last jar onto the table and tapping it until it falls into line with all the others.
Grandma runs her brush under the cool water and rinses it clean. “Don’t guess I know,” she says, taps the white bristles against the sink, and tosses a handful of fresh water to rinse away the suds. “Suppose that’s a question for your mama.”
“Strike three,” Caroline calls out.
“Will your snakes make her go?” Annie asks. “If I find more, will they make Aunt Juna go?”
“Full moon’s coming soon,” Grandma says, ignoring Annie’s question. She pulls open the drawer to her left and lifts out a serving spoon. “You drink it up, the moon when it’s full, it’ll show your intended good and clear as any well.”
Annie takes the spoon by its slender handle, runs her fingers over the large, rounded head. “Already seen him.”
More laughing from the porch. This time Caroline calls out that Jacob threw ball three.
“Maybe with the next full moon, you’ll see another fellow. A better fellow.”
“Yes, ma’am. Maybe so.”
Annie won’t be kissing Jacob Riddle by summer’s end, though Caroline likely will.