Chapter 11 Sunday
Sunday
Kate Shaw
Over the following days, I think of Lydia Brown and her bravery.
The magazine article was a pretense; the crone meant more to her than a story.
There was a hungry look on her face when she saw Birdie, a look reserved for idols and heroes.
But who in their right mind chooses to stay in the dark outside a witch’s place when the witch doesn’t want you there?
It was hard for me to leave her, but I wasn’t going to fight Lydia’s battle.
I know not to push back against Birdie. I’d say Lydia was crazy, but I don’t think that’s it.
There’s more to that woman than beauty and polish and nerve. She’s keeping a secret.
On a misty Friday morning, one week after the good news was delivered by heartless strangers, three boys leave school to conduct their final interview for Creekrise.
The assignment is simple: For our newsletter they are to interview Mr. Curtis Sunday, an animal stuffer who specializes in black bears, wild boars, and ghost cat cougars.
It’s said he makes dead animals look alive.
The boys have their list of questions. Eli made the arrangements.
Curtis Sunday lives where the hermit Pharrell Moody used to live.
Pharrell was the legendary man said to have been possessed by the devil fifty years back but who was exorcised by Eli’s preacher daddy and granddaddy.
It was one of the first stories Eli told me when I came, and I believed little of it.
What I do believe is that with every retelling, the story grows more far-fetched, with Pharrell prancing naked on the mossy roof of his hut, his skin coated in mud, and howling to the moon while his fingernails turned into claws.
Unlike Pharrell who died, his story never will.
The morning passes routinely. Students help each other with multiplication tables and vocabulary tests and begin writing about their best talent.
After lunch, I read the next chapter of Tom Sawyer where Tom has misbehaved and will have to whitewash the fence.
This is a confusing image since there are no whitewashed fences up here.
It reminds me of how many simple things will confound these children when they go to town.
We’re debating Aunt Polly’s punishment for Tom when Eddie, Luke, and Jimbo crash through the school door.
Their clothes are tattered, voices hoarse, arms scratched, and eyes glossed with fright.
Luke trembles and Eddie sputters, Git the sheriff, Miz Kate, and they sink to their knees.
“Hold your horses and let me see if y’all are hurt,” I say, and a quick scan shows no serious wounds.
“Loretty, get the boys water, and Sassy, my first aid kit.” The boys take turns gulping water from the ladle and get their wind back enough to tell the story that ends with the shocker: Curtis Sunday is dead.
I call the sheriff and the day drags into late afternoon before he arrives, takes the boys’ statements, and they leave with their parents.
Tomorrow the sheriff will go to Sunday’s place with his deputy.
I carry the weight of this unsettling incident up the path, slogging through the wet woods, exhausted more than usual.
When I pass Birdie’s trailer, she stands in the doorway backlit by her oil lamp.
Her unkempt hair is piled off-kilter on her head.
I call out, “Got a minute?”
“I got some minutes.”
I need to repeat the story to understand it. It’s too surreal. “Three boys found Curtis Sunday dead. They went to interview him. That’s tragic enough, but I want to tell you the bits that don’t make sense.”
Her face stays in the shadow.
“Eddie, Luke, and Jimbo agreed that he was sitting in a rocking chair with his body starting to spoil. They didn’t see wounds or blood.
The old man was surrounded by his creatures mounted in scary poses.
Some of the animals’ eye sockets were set with dull green stones instead of resin.
Jimbo used his pocketknife to pry the stone out of the panther’s eye socket.
The boys say they’re raw emeralds but I’ve never seen one, so I don’t know.
But he stole it and he knows better—but that’s when the story turns stranger. ”
I clear my throat. “After he plucked out the stone, the chair holding dead Mr. Sunday started to rock.”
Birdie stays mute, so I go on.
“The boys got scared, even Eddie, and they ran out of the hut with Jimbo still clutching that stone. All three said they were chased by phantom animals. Could hear wild animals crashing through the underbrush. Even Eddie, who’s the most trustworthy boy I know, said he could feel their hot breath on his neck, they were that close.
” I take a deep breath and add, “They sounded convincing.”
I don’t mention the three ghosts with red eyes that swirled through the treetops.
Birdie puffs on her pipe, like I’m supposed to read smoke signals. She waits so long I’m ready to leave, when she says, “You believe ’em?”
That’s her first comment? To cast suspicion on my doubts?
“Some of it. Not all.”
I’m miffed that my voice sounds defensive. Birdie and I have been at this crossroads a hundred times. She never offers an explanation that I can understand.
“How come you think that’a way?” she adds.
“Me?” I strike back. “A chair doesn’t rock on its own. Dead, stuffed animals don’t chase boys. Curtis Sunday is dead. Jimbo did steal a green rock, but for the rest I think their fear got the best of them. That’s all.”
She pauses again and I turn to leave when her cutting words stop me. “You so gall dang sure a yourself, Kate Shaw. So gall dang sure…” Birdie uses the condescending tone I despise: the superior adult calling out the weak child.
“No, I’m not sure at all. In fact, I’m rarely sure of anything.”
She snickers. “You be that teacher woman hearin somethin she cain’t ’splain, so she boil it down to nothin.
That the best yor educated brain got?” She blows one last stream of pipe smoke and leaves the open doorway.
The smoke hangs in the air. I’m so mad I could spit darts. I am ready to leave this place.
Holding my flashlight at my feet, I continue the trudge up the path, muttering.
I didn’t stop to argue, old woman. I wanted your opinion, for Pete’s sake.
Wanted you to explain so I could understand.
But, no, you had to put me in my place. Had to criticize me for wanting logic instead of a damn Grimms’ fairy tale.
As I near my clearing, I let go of my anger before I see Rachel.
He moves slower these days since the killing snow that almost took our lives last February.
I let go of the anger because this creature only gives kindness.
I light the lamp on the counter, hang my slicker and satchel on pegs, fill his bowl, and wish I had something better to give him than dry food.
He gulps the nuggets in three swallows while I flop on the sofa.
He comes and lays his head on my belly and studies me.
I confess, “I know you’re tired of hearing this, but I’m not made for this place.
Not the pushback, not the judgment, not the mystical mumbo jumbo that everybody swallows without question.
Maybe it’s good that the end is here and we get to go somewhere else—but where shall we go, my friend?
” I rub his velvet ears, and he loves it.
“We’ll go somewhere far away. Somewhere that doesn’t have steep hills to tax my knees.
Someplace that doesn’t keep me twisted out of sorts.
A place with soft sunshine. One grounded in common sense and defendable science.
A place where the magician performs tricks but understands it’s only an illusion. ”