Chapter 13 Mournful
Mournful
Kate Shaw
There are five days left before this school closes forever.
The hourglass is running out of sand, and my affirmations to the remaining students sound hollow even to my ears.
Up here, hunting and trapping are revered skills.
So are foraging and preserving food. Even the mountain language is quaint, and words like poke sallet, jasper, and airish will set the children apart in a disparaging way.
Today, Saturday, with rain beating on the cabin’s roof and buckets strategically placed to catch familiar leaks, I’m reviewing the paragraphs the children wrote for Creekrise about their best talents.
Some miss the point of the exercise entirely.
Luke brags that he can hold his breath the longest of anybody in these parts, and Jimbo counters with the fact he can stuff more acorns in his mouth than his brother—thirty-nine.
Some entries hold an air of humility, like Eddie, who writes that he believes reliability is his greatest talent, while Sassy Wright thinks she is the best at everything and is having a hard time choosing.
I’m chuckling at these declarations when I hear a shout outside my cabin.
“Kate, you in there?”
I glance out the window and see Eli standing in the rain like a numbskull and I wave him in.
He’s crying and throws his head back and wails, “Burley’s red!
” which doesn’t make a lick a sense. I open the door to this waterlogged gnome in his brown bucket hat and macintosh, looking more forlorn than I’ve ever seen him.
“What’s red?” I yell above the drumming rain. “And who’s Burley?”
He shakes his head over and over. “Dead, Kate. Birdie’s dead.”
The shock of his words sinks me to my knees. What?
Eli shuffles over to me and we hold each other and cry over the end of the world. He’s half in the rain and I’m on the threshold. I sob, “I am sick… How can this be? I talked to her only last night.”
“Death comes quick.”
I gather my senses. “Let’s get out of this rain and you start at the beginning.”
Eli rises with difficulty and plops in the kitchen chair. I pull mine closer. Rachel licks the water dripping from his slicker.
“How’d she die? Did she fall or get hurt?”
“No. She’s in her bed looking peaceful. Got the quilt pulled up neat. Hands are folded on her chest. I couldn’t find a reason for it, but she’s dead all the same. I came for a visit…” he stops. This shocking tragedy has unsettled him. He starts again.
“I come see her most Saturdays, you know. I come before I head over the ridge on my rounds to visit the infirm. Her door was open, and you know that means she’s home, but she didn’t answer my knock but I went inside anyway.”
This gentle man, who has seen everything from dead babies and lost limbs to mangled bodies and lost minds, chokes up again.
“What now?” I ask.
“I need you to go sit with her while I set the wake in motion.”
I shake my head no no no.
“Why wouldn’t you go?”
“She hates me…or hated me. Or at least didn’t approve of me.”
“What in tarnation are you talking bout, Kate Shaw? Birdie was grateful for you. She saw you for the gift you are. You’re talking nonsense. She even left you a note.”
“A note?” The childish me hopes for forgiveness. “What’d it say?”
“I didn’t read it cause it had your name on it. Get your slicker and come on.”
Eli opens the door and steps back into a damp world where the rain has stopped.
He doesn’t have his walking stick and I grab one for him.
“Hold your horses,” I holler in concern he will slip on these slick trails.
I catch up with him on a path I’ve walked every day for the past ten years.
A path on which many problems have been solved, but this time it feels different.
Empty. It no longer leads to my protector and most critical teacher.
In a dozen minutes, we’re at the empty doorway.
Leaves have blown inside that weren’t there last night.
It’s a place missing its heartbeat. You that teacher what needs new learning were Birdie’s first words to me, as though she knew everything about me that mattered.
Despite my ill fit back then, the witch didn’t give up on me.
She saw a troubled woman who wanted to bring hope to children.
But maybe it was hope for my soul I sought.
Maybe I was in search of my own salvation.
Pewter clouds bunch overhead as Eli and I face the open door.
We hear a ruffle of feathers and look up to see Samuel surrounded by the comfort of crows.
I have no doubt that he grieves an unfathomable loss, and he stares forlorn into the distance.
Shoulder to shoulder, crows line the branches of the hemlock tree, their feet clinched in place, their sleek blackness sharp against the milky sky.
Out of respect for the day, they are silent.
Without another word, Eli heads down the trail. I reach for the crooked nail holding a scrap of paper to the narrow doorframe. The paper with my name on it flutters like an agitated moth pinned against its will. With trembling fingers I unfold the sheet.
Books go to teacher.
I gasp and clutch my chest. How did Birdie know death would come last night? How did she have the wherewithal to write this note? Why would she entrust her precious books to skeptical, inadequate me?
The boughs of the hemlocks and pines begin to whip into a frenzy as rain returns.
I signal Rachel inside and close the door, half-expecting Eli to be wrong.
Hoping this is a cruel hoax, a test of obedience, proof of loyalty.
Hoping to hear Birdie chastise me for entering without an invitation, I close the flimsy door.
A clap of thunder has Rachel cower under Birdie’s desk in a space that is cold as a cave.
I haven’t been inside in years. I’ve taken to standing in the yard for a quick exchange caught on the fly.
But those first years I sat before her on a low stool and was instructed like the pupil in a master class.
The long room has grown narrower since I was inside. More books line the walls.
The sections I’ve read were because she ordered me to, but I’ve caught glimpses of others.
Folklore, mountain history, and healing recipes, some with foreign words.
And there are sketches of herbs and wildflowers and insects.
Whatever Birdie deemed important she’s been putting down on paper and binding in leather for three-quarters of a century.
She knew truth was fickle and got skewed in remembering.
She wanted to tie it down so it couldn’t morph into a variation.
But she died, and the burden of what to do with that collection passes to me.
Where do I begin?
How long will it take?
What should I do with Birdie’s truths?
I stand in gray shadows and listen, but my friend doesn’t call out.
Her body lies on her narrow cot with a faded quilt spread neat, like Eli said.
Her gnarly fingers used to doing rest on her chest, which doesn’t rise.
With trepidation, I stoop and inch forward till I loom over her.
A woman with a face that looks like a dried apple-head doll with creases and crevices and a fat wart on her chin.
On a block of wood beside the cot sits a chipped teacup with moist dregs in the bottom.
I lift it and sniff, curious. What did it contain? What does it matter?
I need the stool I always sat on, so with knees bent to keep from bumping my head on hanging herbs, I shuffle to the other end of the trailer.
Rachel is asleep under the table. He doesn’t stir as I clomp and bump down and back.
I set the three-legged stool beside the cot and drop low, a tall girl in a small world with knees bent high and shoulders curved inward.
The drizzle that started when I entered now falls harder.
The wind buffets Birdie’s home from side to side, and I want to be anywhere but here.
I wish I could unhear Birdie’s disappointment in me last night.
Wish I’d simply asked to better understand the boys’ story.
Wish I’d listened with an open mind and not reservation.
I touch her wrist for warmth, and her skin is cold.
I feel desolate. Birdie was my sense of this place.
She grounded me. There’s a book closest to her cot.
I open the page she marked with an indigo bunting feather.
My favorite bird whose blue is an impossible shade of blue.
Like an Impossible Dream that came with me to Baines Creek.
I begin to hum the Man of La Mancha from the album I play in music class, then softly sing words that are made for this aching moment—to bear with unbearable sorrow, to run where the brave dare not go.
And I cry gulping sobs for the death of my friend.
What will this place do without Birdie Rocas? She knew the mysteries of the woods and had a cure for every ailment. She was midwife to every child born in these parts. How will Baines Creek cope?
My hand lies flat over the marked page as I look at it in the weak light from a high window. I hesitate before reading the words, mildly afraid. Will I see a cryptic message? Wisdom for the ages? The prophecy of her death?
Tentatively I raise my hand.
BUTT BOILS.
I blink twice and look again.
There it is. In all caps. I cover my mouth to suppress a giggle and feel a loosening in my tight chest. It’s been a long while since I laughed, and in today’s grave situation it really doesn’t feel right, so I try not to picture butt boils or body parts.
They creep in anyway and a silly smile stays as I read the list of herbs for the compress: tea tree oil, castor oil, neem-oil.
There is a footnote in small print that tea tree oil is poisonous and should not be consumed.
A disturbing thought enters my mind. Suicide.
Is that what happened? If so, that would trouble me to no end.
It would mean we’d failed Birdie, which is nonsense since we were never her keeper or her equal.
She was our keeper. But is it a possibility?
I turn the pages of this book and wonder why this recipe, this page was singled out.
Close to the front are pressed leaves I can’t identify, insect wings, berry stains.
Near the back is a tender entry: I knowd me a blind dog when I was but a girl.
He licked my feet and I give him a drink of my branch water.
Oh, Birdie, I whisper. I am a blind dog sitting beside a wise woman who has passed on to somewhere else.
At least I hope there is somewhere else you’ve gone, and I wish I knew for certain.
I cry messy gulps while the rain mimics my heartache.
I bravely take her right hand and rub my thumb over her stony skin, feel a callous on the palm, and turn it over to see it’s not a callus at all.
At the base of her middle finger is a raised mark, discolored but distinctly shaped like a slice of pie all puffed up.
I place her hand back on her chest and lean my head against the wall. I must have dozed because I jump when I hear my name, Kate, and turn toward the doorway. My neck is stiff, the light inside the trailer almost gone.
“Kate?” the voice calls again from the doorway. The day has drifted away, and I turn to see a stumpy shadow.
“Eli, is that you?”
“It’s me,” he calls out.
“Let me get out of your way.”
I shuffle to the door, still holding the book about butt boils.
Annie Walker and Sue Sorrels have come with Eli to prepare Birdie for burial.
Though Birdie helped birth Annie’s Luke and Jimbo, she’s never been inside this place.
I know from the squint of her eyes that she’s scared.
This trailer is a witch’s world peppered with pagan symbols.
Today is a test of Annie and Sue’s faith.
Eli may have assured them that the healer was a believer, but they wonder what they’ll find under all those layers of clothing. Possibly a butt boil.
While Tattler builds her a short coffin and will deliver it when it’s ready, Annie Walker and Sue Sorrels will bathe, dress, and tie the old woman to a cooling board to keep her from sitting upright when rigor mortis sets in.
Her quilt will line the coffin, coins will rest on her eyelids and a soda cloth on her face.
Brave believers will take turns and sit through the night until she’s buried so the devil can’t steal her soul.
Eli has explained these steps as I stand outside useless while their faith ritual begins. The rain has stopped.
“When will she be buried?” I speak low.
“Tomorrow after church.”
“Where will she go?”
“You mean heaven or hell?”
I scoff. “That’s not what I meant, Eli, and you know it. I meant where will she be buried.”
“Her family graveyard.”
“Birdie has a graveyard?”
“Behind her trailer. Not far.”
I look beyond the trailer to a place I never ventured. It’s overgrown with a tangle of thick vines. “Who else is buried there?”
“Her family gone before, I think.”
“Oh,” I say, surprised to hear that Birdie had family.
I know she didn’t spring from the earth or drop from the stars to walk among mortals.
I glance through the open door at her oppressive legacy of books and feel overwhelmed.
I itch to leave, but my plans changed today.
If I accept her request, I won’t be going anywhere soon.