CHAPTER 18

TL realized he didn’t know Willie James at all. He’d thought of him as weak-minded, but apparently he’d been wrong. Everyone was wrong. Willie James was the only one who knew everything! And all this time he’d been lying to protect Momma. I should’ve known! If I’d stopped grieving long enough to think about it, I mean really think about it, I could’ve figured it out. That’s why he let me dig up the grave—because he knew she wasn’t there! Yeah, he’d fought, but not really. Willie James could’ve stopped me if he’d wanted to. Damn! I can’t believe I missed it!

TL poured another cup of coffee, and sat at the little oval dinette table. It was 5:00 A.M.

Yet what had all the singing and moaning been for? It had sounded genuine. Willie James wasn’t dramatic enough to pull off that kind of performance. TL blew across the steaming black coffee and sipped slowly. Then, suddenly, he got it! Willie James wasn’t grieving for Sister; he was grieving because his plan, their plan, was falling apart. If he’d fought me too hard, TL reasoned, I would’ve known something was wrong from the start. So letting me discover that Sister’s body wasn’t in the grave was the only thing he could do. TL shook his head slowly. Willie James knew TL wouldn’t quit until he knew the truth. Willie James had counted on Momma keeping the contract never to tell. As long as she did, he could deter TL forever. But Momma told. She knew he’d come home one day, but she absolutely never dreamed he’d stay. Now that he was back … “Oh my God!” TL mumbled, sitting the cup on the table. “She wants me to stay. She gave me the truth so I’d have no reason, ever again, to leave. Or to think she didn’t love me. She’d breached the contract with Willie James precisely so I’d know how much she was willing to sacrifice for me. For me! At whatever cost. Oh my God!”

He dressed quickly and walked home. Willie James was slopping the hogs. Their eyes met for an instant, daring either of them to tell what they knew, but both nodded simultaneously like distant neighbors and went their way. Daddy’s truck was gone, so Momma was obviously home alone. TL entered unannounced.

“Hey,” he called.

Momma was sweeping an already clean floor.

“Thanks for telling me the truth yesterday. You didn’t have to. You really didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t, but I wanted to. You needed to know.”

TL got the dustpan and held it as she swept microscopic particles onto it. “I won’t tell Willie James you told me. I promise.”

Momma nodded. “Well, I’ll be damn!” She appeared shocked. “Finally!”

“What?”

“You startin’ to act like you got some sense. Like you belong in this family. Like you actually one of us.”

They didn’t speak for a while, then Momma said, “Let the boy have somethin’, TL. It’d do him good to think he know somethin’ you don’t. He done spent his whole life tryin’ to measure up to you, tryin’ to beat you at somethin’. What difference does it make if he don’t never know the truth?”

TL hadn’t thought about it.

“He was just protectin’ the people he love. Same way you woulda done Carolyn Swinton.”

Her innuendo was painful, but true. She moved to the sink of dirty dishes. “Been a long time since I trusted somebody like that. Kinda felt good.” She giggled slightly. “Whatever else you find out, just remember I didn’t do it.”

From somewhere deep within, TL gathered strength to say, “Ms. Swinton said she’s sorry.”

Momma stiffened without turning. “What did you say?”

“It’s in her journals. She asked me to tell you.”

Every conceivable emotion—rage, sadness, nonchalance, regret, pity—shaded Momma’s face. She resumed the dishes and looked straight ahead, through the small kitchen window, and out into nothing.

“She wanted to tell you herself, she really did, but—”

“Then she should’ve!” Momma snapped. “She didn’t have no right, sendin’ you to do her dirty work.” She wiped her hands and face with a blue dishcloth.

“She would’ve told you, she said, but Daddy asked her not to. He made her promise to let him handle you.”

“Handle me?” she screeched. “Handle me. Damn. That’s what that man’s been tryin’ to do? Handle me?”

“She really wanted to talk to you, Momma. It’s all in her journals. She knew she was wrong. She wanted to apologize.”

Momma mumbled something TL didn’t hear. She shook her head slightly, like one recovering from a spell. “I shoulda knowed it was all yo’ daddy’s doin’. If I woulda followed my first mind, I woulda went to her myself. But, no, I was too busy tryin’ to be a good wife, so I kept my mouth closed.”

“She meant well, Momma. She just didn’t do well.”

“I meant well, too.”

Momma looked at TL as if he had the power to forgive. They exchanged forced smiles, and TL moved toward the door.

“I ain’t mad at her no more. We was both grown women who made serious mistakes. One of them was mutual.”

TL knew what she meant.

“Well,” Momma said, “tell her it’s over. I’m through wit’ it. All of it. And”—she peered past TL’s eyes, into some internal place—“tell her we lost. Both of us.”

TL left. Willie James waved this time, wondering what in the world TL and Momma might’ve talked about, especially at six o’clock in the morning.

A quarter mile down the road, TL bumped into Cliffesteen. Her black dress was cleaned and ironed like new. The wig and hat were still a hot mess though, and her once-white shoes were scuffed so badly she should’ve thrown them away. She marched like a soldier in a regiment.

Her name was a combination of her father’s, Cliff, and her mother’s, Ernestine. Mr. Cliff Ross had been well liked in the community, although he was crazy, too. On Saturday nights, he’d get drunk and beat up Miss Ernestine, then stumble around the county talking trash until people got sick of him and told him to leave. You could hear him a mile away, singing and shouting about the goodness of the Lord. Somehow, after making his dreaded rounds, he’d find his way to the church steps and collapse until morning. Whoever arrived first would wake him and make him go in the back and freshen up. Then he’d reappear new, like a transfigured Christ, and lead devotion until there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. That man could sing! He’d lean back and belt hymns like somebody hollering across the field. He died long before TL left home, and any time people hummed church songs, it was Mr. Cliff’s voice they heard in their heads.

Cliffesteen went to his funeral, but stood outside. Folks begged her to sit with her mother, who, whenever anyone asked, said that Cliff Ross was the sweetest man the good Lord ever made, but Cliffesteen refused. “I ain’t right wit’ God. Ain’t got no business in His house.” So she paced the front steps, weeping occasionally not for her father but for her mother, who would now be alone. She worried about what Miss Ernestine would do with a farm and no man to work it. Her worries didn’t last long. Miss Ernestine died of cancer in the head a few months later, having left Cliffesteen a note, which simply said, “Gone.”

After that, folks said Cliffesteen never went back to the house again. Some said her daddy was her baby’s daddy, but no one knew for sure. And no one knew where Cliffesteen stayed. She’d appear out of nowhere, talking loud like her father, then walk away and vanish into the same invisible realm from which she’d come. The old farm fell apart, and the county took it over since no one paid the taxes. Daddy said a wealthy white family bought it and pissed off everybody in Swamp Creek. “I coulda beat Cliffesteen’s ass for that. She coulda at least tried to keep up the farm and pay the taxes, even if she ain’t got no sense. Hell, how much sense it take to sweep and mop and raise a few tomatoes? Now we gotta live next to white folks—again!”

TL waved first, but Cliffesteen waited until she stood before him to speak.

“Saw yo’ sister yesterday,” she said, biting her bottom lip and smiling at Jezebel.

“What? What do you mean you saw my sister yesterday?”

She fidgeted. “I mean … I saw her. Like I’m lookin’ at you now.”

TL smirked.

“You ain’t gotta believe it. Aunt Easter used to say most people can’t believe what they can’t see. Ain’t that a shame?”

“I don’t know.”

Cliffesteen danced from one foot to the other. “Well, I know.”

TL’s head said walk away, but his heart said stay.

“She misses you,” Cliffesteen said sweetly.

“How do you know that?”

“She said so.”

TL rolled his eyes and glanced at the trees and barbed-wire fence behind her. “What else did she say?”

“Oh, that’s all. She didn’t have much time.”

Didn’t have much time? What else did she have but time?

“Spirits be busy. They have work to do.”

None of this made sense. He understood now why people dismissed her.

“Come on,” she said. “Let me show you somethin’.”

TL wasn’t sure why he followed her—and Jezebel—but he did. They walked across the Williamses’ land, then crossed the Jordan in a shallow place. He’d been that far, but when she proceeded into another expanse of thick, dense forest, TL almost turned around. She stopped and beckoned him on, so he huffed and continued.

In the woods, the morning sun disappeared. Darkness lingered like fog on the tops of trees. How does Cliffesteen see? All he could do was follow her, and even then he could hardly keep up. Occasionally, she’d wait, then press on, and soon he’d be lagging behind again.

He learned to follow her voice. She made up songs along the way about God, humans, spirits, and animals. Hers was a rough contralto with heavy vibrato, but it was strangely soothing. She sang loudly, too, like a person walking the planet alone, and doing so in complete contentment. The sound echoed through the woods, then hid among the leaves, but he could always tell its origin. Some notes were louder than others, blazing a melodic trail that assured he wouldn’t get lost. The journey became easier. His eyes adjusted to the dark. Somewhere along the way, he grew to trust Cliffesteen.

One of the songs stayed with him. It spoke of a rabbit that had died, and all the animals of the forest that attended its funeral. Some wept aloud, others more softly, but everyone grieved. It was a bizarre tale set to music, but perhaps that’s why it was memorable. The refrain stuck out most:

And ye shall rest where the spirits dwell

In the Valley …

Until you become like God again

Until you become like God again

Until you become like God again

At the close of each line, she held the final “n” with perfect vocal control as the note reverberated through time. TL wondered if anyone else had ever heard her sing. Not like in front of the church, but for real. It probably wouldn’t have mattered. They would’ve called her crazy anyway.

When the songs ended, he saw the log cabin house, high and lifted up. It sat among the trees of the forest, as if it were shy, as if it were hiding from someone. There was no yard, no space between the house and the woods. Tall pines shielded it on every side like soldiers guarding a fort. One might’ve thought the house had sprung naturally from the earth, sitting on eight-foot stilts like a wooden throne. It resembled a military fort, with a tin roof and one window on each of its four sides. A porch, extending from the front, was accessible only by a long, steep staircase that looked too fragile to climb. Cliffesteen climbed it, though, and called, “Come on!” so TL took a chance and mounted the stairs, too. She stood on the porch proudly.

“This is Aunt Easter’s house. She built it years ago. All by herself. I been keepin’ it up since the Put Away. Come on in.”

When he stepped through the doorway, he saw the vision again, that city made of gold. It was just as before, with the hawk sitting atop one of the steeples, glancing around as if he were guarding the place. When the bird took flight, his enormous wings flapped slowly, propelling him through the air and allowing him to circle the city without detection. Then, as quickly as the vision came, it vanished.

Cliffesteen nodded with excitement as she rocked. She didn’t know what he’d seen, but she knew he’d seen something. The revelation must’ve rested on his face.

“I see stuff all the time! Don’t let it scare you.”

Except for twin rockers, the huge living room was totally bare. It felt eerie. No paintings or pictures on the walls, no rug on the floor, no tables. Nothing.

“Have a seat.”

He did, but he didn’t rock. Instead, he looked around for something memorable, something normal, but didn’t find anything. Not right away.

“Aunt Easter liked it like this so her company would have plenty o’ room. Plus, she always hated clutter.”

Cliffesteen looked toward the windowsill. TL turned and yelped “Aww!”, prepared to run away.

“Oh, he don’t bother nobody. That’s just Ol’ Jack, lay ’round waitin’ fo’ mice o’ frogs o’ somethin’ else to eat.”

Clutching the arms of the chair with all his strength, TL wondered what he’d gotten himself into. “I think I’d better go,” he said, and stood.

“Don’t leave,” Cliffesteen pleaded. “Please. Not yet. You s’pose to be here.”

TL’s soul rumbled. How could he make sense of a woman who lived with a gigantic black snake? Yet the yearning in Cliffesteen’s eyes compelled him to stay. What does this woman want? Why am I supposed to be here? He resumed his seat.

“Ole Jack was Aunt Easter’s friend. Well, one o’ them. Wherever she went, he wasn’t far behind. She said she found him one evenin’, sliverin’ up a tree after a bird’s eggs. She told him he oughta be ’shame o’ hisself. Plenty o’ mice runnin’ ’round here without him havin’ to take somebody else’s babies.” Cliffesteen cackled. “So he come down out o’ the tree and followed her home. He been here every since. She said he stayed ’cause she was the only person ever respected him enough to speak.”

What the hell? TL changed the subject. “Was Easter her real name?”

“Yep. She said it was. Said her momma named her Easter ’cause she was born Easter Sunday mornin’. That’s the way colored peoples used to do. They’d name chil’ren accordin’ to when they was born. Or what day they was born on.”

“What about her father? Who was he?”

Cliffesteen shrunk a bit, rocking easily. “Said she didn’t have none. Said her momma had her all by herself.”

TL’s brows furrowed. “Come on. That ain’t true. It’s not possible.”

Cliffesteen shrugged. “Jesus didn’t have no daddy. Not no earthly one.”

“God was His daddy.”

“Then God was her daddy, too.”

There was no way to win this, so TL dropped it.

“Aunt Easter was special. She knowed thangs other people didn’t know. She could see what people couldn’t see. Animals minded her like lil’ chil’ren. I seen ’em.”

“Okay.”

“No, for real.” She moved to the edge of the chair. “She wunnit na’chel. She was … outta this world.”

“That’s what everybody said, that she was different.”

“But not just different. Special. She could go between levels, talkin’ to the livin’ and the not livin’.”

Their eyes met.

“That’s how come she knowed ’bout yo’ sister. She felt it. She knowed it was comin’, she just didn’t know when or how. A sharp pain started in her side that day and went all the way down her hip. She couldn’t hardly move. Said she seen yo’ sister in her mind, cryin’ and hollin’, and she knowed somebody had done hurt her. She woulda went over there if she coulda got ’round. Next day, when the pain let her go, she seen the grave.”

Cliffesteen touched TL’s hand. He shivered. It was ice cold.

“She talked to the spirits, and they told her what happened. She didn’t tell me what they said. It wunnit my business.”

TL’s chair began to rock, involuntarily.

“But, like I told you, I seen her spirit. More than once. Seen it a few times. She’s so pretty.”

Cliffesteen closed her eyes and smiled. She knew TL wouldn’t leave now.

“I always see her in the same place, down by the Jordan River.”

“The river?”

“Yeah. There’s a little cave I go to sometimes. It ain’t for most folks, but I like to sit there and let the spirits talk to me.”

“I ain’t never heard of no cave by the river.”

“Nobody has. Weeds and vines keep it covered up. Aunt Easter showed it to me when I was a little girl. It was her favorite place. Jezebel likes it, too.”

“Well, take me there.”

“I can’t. Not yet.”

“Why not?”

She hesitated. “’Cause you don’t believe.”

“In what?”

“The spirits.”

“What difference does that make?”

“You gotta believe, Aunt Easter said, to go to the cave. She made me promise not to take nobody what don’t believe. Said the spirits get real offended. If it ever happen, they might not come again.”

“This is crazy!” TL said getting up and walking toward the door.

“That’s where I saw yo’ sister. In the cave. In the Valley.”

His feet got heavy. He didn’t turn around.

“Don’t you wanna believe?”

TL couldn’t have cared less about believing, but he wanted to see his sister, so he stayed.

Cliffesteen stood. “Let me show you how to believe.” She extended her hands.

TL blinked cautiously. He felt as if he were getting into something he’d never get out of.

She moved toward him and took his hands and led him back to the rockers. Once they sat, she started clapping and humming.

“Trust me. I wouldn’t hurt you. I’m just gettin’ you ready. I wouldn’t take you nowhere I can’t bring you back from.”

TL didn’t know what she meant or what to do.

“Breathe and relax. Stop thinkin’ and start feelin’.”

What?

“You get on outta here, Jack! TL’s scared o’ you. Come back later on.” The snake raised his head and slivered away.

She kept humming something in a low, minor key. TL knew the melody but couldn’t think of the words.

After several minutes, her humming increased. TL studied her, but she didn’t look at him. Then her clapping intensified. She was lost in this makeshift ritual. Her feet began to stomp the floor to the same rhythm with which she clapped, and the house began to vibrate. TL knew there was no turning back.

She rose and danced like Indians at a powwow. Again, TL knew the song she hummed, but the words just wouldn’t come. He would’ve left had he not thought it rude.

Cliffesteen moved counterclockwise around TL. It was the song that drew him in. The rhythm and melody were so intense he couldn’t help but close his eyes and sway his head. He didn’t know if he was beginning to believe, but he was definitely beginning to feel.

Most frightening was that the rockers kept rocking. Not fast, but easy. TL didn’t try to figure that out. He just accepted it for what it was. Whatever it was.

Cliffesteen circled faster now. The rhythm hypnotized him. If only he could figure it out!

Suddenly, it came and he started singing. He hadn’t meant to—in fact, he’d intended to maintain safe distance from this thing Cliffesteen was doing—but the sound came forth on its own. She nodded vigorously. There they were, stomping and singing and dancing in the middle of Aunt Easter’s house, high and lifted up, trying to free TL from disbelief.

This lasted ten or fifteen minutes, TL guessed. He couldn’t tell. It might’ve been hours, since time was probably different, he thought, in the spirit realm. It had gotten hot. Sweat appeared across his forehead and inched its way downward. He blinked often to keep the salty droplets out of his eyes. The more he wiped them, the more they multiplied, until streams of water covered his face. Cliffesteen was feeling something. She mumbled, “Um-hm,” and looked at him. Her eyes glowed red like smoldering coals. It scared TL at first, but everything scared him in Aunt Easter’s house. All he could do was continue singing, hoping that, soon, he would become a believer.

Cliffesteen was sweating, too. The edges of her black, straight, stubby wig were soggy and clinging to her temples. She’d unbuttoned the top of her dress, revealing moist cleavage and a ragged, white bra. Her scuffed, off-white shoes rested slightly outside the circle.

After another rotation, TL sang loudly and Cliffesteen went berserk.

Talk about a child

That do love Jesus …

Here’s one!

She flung her arms wide and hollered, “Yeeeeeeees!” Perhaps she already knew the words or maybe simply hearing them excited her. It didn’t matter. She’d heard the song before, somewhere, and the melody had moved her and she’d recorded it in her soul and apparently she had kept it all these years. TL had learned the spiritual in college, singing with the Clark College Philharmonic Society, and he remembered it because the organ prelude always wrecked him long before any words were uttered. When the lyrics ushered forth, they always made him cry:

Talk about a child that do love Jesus,

Talk about a child that’s been converted,

Talk about a child that do love Jesus …

Here’s one!

Their voices meshed into a loud, brash harmony. Cliffesteen wailed like a mother before a dying child. TL cried softly. There was an energy in the room he couldn’t explain. Or control.

TL repeated “Here’s one” until his hands floated into the air. He didn’t know why. In church, he’d had context for this kind of thing, but deep in the woods, in a cabin high and lifted up, he wasn’t sure what it was. They were in the spirit, he presumed, he and Cliffesteen, right in the middle of Aunt Easter’s living room. TL wasn’t afraid anymore. Watching Cliffesteen’s wild antics confirmed that she wasn’t of this world; she was Aunt Easter’s kin. She knew things others didn’t.

While TL sang, he imagined himself talking to God. The glory around the throne overwhelmed him. He told God all about his troubles, and God told him to hold out a little while longer. The house trembled. He was the child now that’s been converted, and he was too joyous to stop. Had Daddy seen him he would’ve laughed at how ridiculous TL looked, dancing in this house with Cliffesteen, lost in a dimension between heaven and earth, or perhaps he would’ve grabbed him and dragged him away from this crazy place in the middle of the forest. But no one knew they were there. No one in the human realm.

Suddenly TL heard a heavy thud! He turned and covered his mouth, muting a desperate scream. Cliffesteen turned, too. Sitting on the window ledge, as if he’d been conjured, was the huge, brown hawk with the snow-white head. “No way!” TL said. “I don’t believe this!”

Cliffesteen gawked as if a kidnapped child had been returned. She moved toward the window slowly, with deliberate ease and grace, and stroked the back of the bird sensually. TL couldn’t close his mouth.

“Been a long time since the Messenger come ’round. This is a good sign. Seem like after the Put Away, he just disappeared. I didn’t think I’d see him no mo’, but here he is.”

After swallowing hard, TL said, “I’ve seen that bird before! It’s been following me!”

Cliffesteen nodded.

“No, really!”

She wasn’t surprised. He explained that he’d seen the bird everywhere, walking down the road and sitting atop the building in the golden city, but again Cliffesteen wasn’t moved.

“The Messenger gets around,” she said. “He’s the go-between for this world and the next.”

TL was still in shock. “I just don’t believe this,” he murmured. “I’ve seen that bird almost every day!”

“Yeah, well, then he’s got a message fo’ you. That’s the only reason he’d be followin’ you. Guess you can’t help but believe now.”

Nothing felt real. What he’d once thought was simply a figment of his imagination was now standing before him in the flesh. How was this possible? It couldn’t be mere coincidence. He stared at the bird, which stared back, as if any moment he might open his beak and speak. Ol’ Jack returned and coiled himself in the corner, burying his head beneath his body.

“Aunt Easter used to call the Messenger whenever the wind blowed. She’d stand on the porch and make some kinda strange sound and the wind would carry it into the sky. I guess he heard it, ’cause wouldn’t be long befo’ he showed up. He’d swoop from the clouds like a bullet and land smack in the middle of the porch, right next to where Aunt Easter was standin’. She’d talk to him awhile, ’bout invisible thangs, I guess, then he’d fly off and tell everybody else what she said.” Cliffesteen laughed as she remembered. “Him and Aunt Easter was real close!”

This is insane! he thought. But he couldn’t leave.

“I guess that’s why they call him the Messenger, ’cause he spreads the message ’round the world.”

TL wanted to touch the bird, but he was too afraid. “What’s the message?”

Cliffesteen hesitated, then, in a voice that didn’t sound like hers, she said, “If I tell you, you ain’t never gon’ be the same again.”

TL held his breath. Did he really want to know?

She took his silence as compliance. “There’s a special place, between earth and sky, where life dwells together after this life. That’s how Aunt Easter put it. It’s a beautiful city.”

“Oh no…” TL began to back away, toward the door.

“She used to say it was made o’ pure gold. All spirits live there—humans, animals, trees … everything.”

TL trembled. How could she know about the city? He bumped into the door. Cliffesteen and the Messenger looked at him simultaneously.

“Aunt Easter described it as a great big majestic city, not made by man’s hands.”

Turning abruptly, TL ran through the door and down the long staircase. Cliffesteen and the Messenger peered at him from the cabin window.

“Don’t you wanna go there?” she hollered. “It’s the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen! No need to be afraid!”

TL slowed his steps, but only slightly.

“Everything righteous goes there! Everything! You don’t never lose life! That’s the secret message, Mr. Professor! Life can’t be destroyed. It jus’ changes forms!” The Messenger spread his gigantic wings and leapt into the air. “Ain’t no death!” she hollered. “Ain’t nothin’ but life! These are jus’ bodies we livin’ in fo’ now! Our spirits live fo’ever in that city made o’ purest goooooooold!”

Dashing through the woods, TL reprimanded himself for having followed Cliffesteen. He couldn’t listen to anything more. It was too much. Too true, too real. At home, he collapsed onto his own porch and cried tears of belief.