Chapter 8 Rebuke
Rebuke
Lydia Brown
I was in the presence of a powerful being when I faced Birdie, and I don’t want to leave. From the sharp gaze in her eyes, the raised chin, and ease of her stance, Birdie Rocas knows important things. Things that matter to me.
I moved to Appalachia twenty-five years ago because of my status as orphan and because of an intricately carved bear.
My middle sister Lucy bought the bear from a mountain craftsman for my sixteenth birthday, and from that carving grew a fascination for story quilts, folk art, and pottery.
Those kinds of handmade treasures first crowded my room at the boardinghouse near college that I shared with two roommates.
I had followed in the footsteps of my sisters Lucy and Bert, and at that College in the Sky I received my first degree in library science.
It was a bonus that Asheville was on the edge of Appalachia, the spiritual place that began to heal the hole in my soul.
I was a witchy girl—until I wasn’t. But Birdie Rocas is a bona fide witch.
Her rusty trailer high on a mountain is as close to a portal to the other side as I’ve found.
The triangle on my palm burns with knowing, and I touch it and feel it throb.
To my way of thinking, it would be foolish for me to walk away tonight, so I stay and wait outside her door, sitting at her yard table while the cicadas and click beetles and frogs ratchet up their racket.
Help me understand why my gift has forsaken me, Birdie. There’s a long line of ghosts on the other side that I long to hear from. For comfort I often list them in their leaving order. My grandmother Oma, my sister’s husband Wade Sully, sweet Mama and Daddy, and Trula Freed, Aunt—
—The trailer door flies open and startles me.
“You gots to stop yor yammerins,” Birdie declares with her hands on her hips in reprimand, her anger palpable, her outline electrified.
“But I haven’t said a word,” I stammer in defense.
“But you thinking hard, Lydia Brown, and you gotta let me be. It ain’t time for you to know my secrets.” She slams the door and leaves me stunned. The trigon is swollen like a bee sting.
I am baffled that Birdie remembered my name, then I’m perplexed.
Why would she say I’m thinking hard? Why would she link me to her secrets?
Why did she say the time isn’t right? I have no choice but to leave her clearing and take my mental yammerins with me, but the thoughts inside my head sounded like words to her. I know this witch is important to me.
With every step I wish I didn’t have to leave, but I follow the creek with my penlight at my feet and my walking stick in hand.
These dark woods alive with chittering night sounds don’t frighten me like they did Kate.
Her wounds were excessive for someone who has lived in this wild place for ten years.
But I know to be on high alert. Being in the woods after dark is dangerous, and old-timers would call it pure foolishness.
These hills are home to many predators: black bears, coyotes, and ghost cougars, but I listen for a different sound.
I listen for the snort of the wild boar who also inhabits these hills.
In the early 1900s, they were brought to the Lodge of Hooper Bald for a rich man’s sport.
That sprawling preserve is a hundred and fifty miles southwest as the crow flies, and once tired of the folly, the owners turned the boars loose.
The hogs scattered and multiply to this day.
Its lethal tusks can gore and gut a man in seconds. That’s a fact.
I was ten years old when I saw one. I had a warning dream about my friend Yancy Mayhew, and in that vision Yancy was killed by a big hog with tusks.
Daddy said I’d described a wild boar. Nobody I knew had even seen a boar, so I felt foolish speaking about something that seemed more horror story than real.
But all the same I told him. Days went by, then a week, then Yancy’s truck pulled in the yard and I walked to the tailgate, drawn by dark energy.
And there he lay: a massive, muscular, hairy monster with evil tusks.
Shot square between the eyes, it still wore the shock of surprise.
My warning dream had saved Yancy’s life.
Long after, he died from something else but not the gore of a wild boar.
That’s how my spirit dreams were supposed to work.
And here I am in Yancey County in the dark, thinking about Yancy Mayhew, who is long gone.
Tonight, without incident, I enter the clearing.
It’s a ghost town without a soul stirring.
At my car I take off muddy boots and stash them in back in a paper bag, slip on sandals, and unloop my skirt so it falls to my ankles.
My Timex reads 7:52. A faint light shines from the back room in the boardinghouse and smoke curls from a skinny chimney.
I’m tempted to knock on Miz Jolly’s door and ask to rent a room.
Would I be forgiven if I showed up at Birdie’s place at daybreak?
Would she reward my tenacity? But while I contemplate, the light winks out.
That’s when I see them.
Up in the hills.
White lights bob above the trees, and if my bearings are right, they dance above Birdie’s place. I watch them float into a straight line. They’re luminous and lovely and radiate peace. They give me delicious goose bumps. I watch till they fade into the trees.
Reluctantly, I start the Jeep and the motor is obnoxiously loud.
My glaring headlights sweep the small enclave of buildings—and in front of the schoolhouse I spot a child.
The girl I saw at Birdie’s. The one they called Loretty.
But what is she doing standing in the dark?
Why isn’t she home with her family? I drive toward her and roll down my window to ask if she needs help—
But no one’s there.