Will said.
“Can’t remember stuff. What’s the name of that ice cream Freddie’s bin eatin’?”
“Gelato.”
“Gel-aaaa-to.” His grandbaby were eatin’ things he couldn’t pronounce! “Think we can get some, for when Freddie comes home? Heck, son. You need me to drive? You plum near went off the road.”
He didn’t look so hot these days, his Will. Must be workin’ too hard. Needed a haircut and a good woman. A man his age should have a wife. Heck, he were married at Willie’s age. How old was he now? Couldn’t keep track of time. Lost August and September altogether. Now it were October. He could tell from the dogwoods.
“Dad?” Will said. “We’re taking a detour.”
“You’re not drivin’ to the cemetery, are you?” Jacob glanced down at the cardboard pipe in his lap. Looked like a giant bullet casin’. Freddie’s map were tucked up inside. Well protected. Good, good; good, good. “I won’t go.”
“No, Dad. I don’t want to go to the cemetery any more than you do.”
How many years since she’d crossed over? Three? Four? Didn’t want to know. Some memories was best left to rot. Never wanted Angeline buried. Wanted her ashes spread in the wind, but Will, he needed a grave. Needed to go visit her, make amends. Things been real bad between them when his Angeline crossed over. The boy wouldn’t even come to the funeral. It should have been him under that pile of dirt, not his angel. Ten years older. Should’ve been him.
Woo-wee, she were somethin’, his Angeline. Flitted around like a butterfly. Filled him with awe. Put him through hell during her black spells, but did he regret a single day? No siree, not one. Tough on Willie, though, real tough. She could be a real handful. The temper on her! Been hard on young Willie, that temper. Sometimes he’d had to lock Willie in his room. The boy resented it, of course, but how else could he keep his son safe?
Will swung the car around and put out an arm. Sort of thing he used to do when Willie were little, to keep him from shootin’ forward into the dashboard. Willie better not start treatin’ his old man like a kid. Where was they goin’? To the cemetery? He hoped not. He never visited. Couldn’t. Couldn’t think of his dear sweet Angeline under that red clay.
“I thought we was goin’ home, Willie. This ain’t home. Goddamn it. Take me home!”
“We can’t, Dad. We sold the old place two years ago. You had that fall, ended up at the rehabilitation center and we sold the shack. I tried to get you to come to New York, but you wouldn’t consider it.”
“I ain’t movin’ to New York. I been followin’ the trail of my people all my life. I ain’t livin’ anywhere but in the footprints of my ancestors.”
“I know, Dad. You made that pretty clear after your fall.”
Fall? What fall? But he remembered Will leavin’ him in that shithole, all right. Some things he remembered clear as day.
The car bounced around a curve. And that bubble of anger, it vanished. Pop! Gone.
Jacob sat up straight. Real straight. Ahead were a big pasture with snake-rail fencin’ and a horse skitterin’ around. And behind? A mighty fine view. So fine it could’ve been Occoneechee Mountain. His blood were all over that mountain. Heck, his skin, too. One time he banged up his right knee real bad sleddin’ down on the back of an old rockin’ chair. Woo-wee. Flew like the wind and ended up in the Eno. Still had the scar to prove it. Willie, he got scarred on Occoneechee Mountain, too. His mama, she felt real bad about that, but the boy never would let her apologize.
Them dogwoods, they were crimson, but the rest of the forest were still shades of green. Best color in the world. Color that made his heart sing. Didn’t he write a song about that once?
Well, he never. And an owl at the edge of the forest! Lots of Lumbee Elders, they said the owl were a bad omen, that if he hooted four times in a row, death were comin’. But he respected the all-seein’ night owl. Could set a man to thinkin’. No matter how great you thought you was, that ol’ rascal could look down and say, “Whoo, whoo, who are you?”
Six
Hannah followed half-buried signposts of time: a wagon wheel and two rusty mule shoes. There was living, breathing history in this forest, history that was tangible, history that endured. Protective spirits.
Saponi Mountain had spoken to her from the first day: You belong here. So much in life was transitory, but not the connection she felt to this piece of land. If she believed in reincarnation—and maybe she did, because her mother had been a psychic healer who taught her to discount nothing—she had lived here before, in another lifetime. And after everything that had happened with her father, well. Leaving wasn’t an option.
Weaving around wild blueberry bushes, Hannah turned into a shaft of dying sunlight, the orange glow of the magical hour her mother had called the gloaming. These days the gloaming descended too quickly into evening. Nothing beat the thrill of hearing coyotes and owls on her land, but nights alone were a bitter reminder that loved ones could leave and never return.
Crispy leaves crackled under her old hiking boots, and Hannah shivered despite the late-afternoon warmth. Dry wind rattled through the leaves of the hardwoods and, for a moment, she thought she heard a car. No, she did. There was a car on her driveway. Rising up on tiptoe, Hannah found a peephole through the sweetgums.
The back of her neck tingled.
Trusting people was her strength and, according to the boys, her weakness. Still, she was a woman without neighbors to hear her scream. She shook her head. How ridiculous, to think like Poppy and second-guess everyone’s motives, when honestly, who ever heard of a serial killer driving a Prius? Pretty pale green one, too.
Daisy whined, and Rosie flopped onto Hannah’s feet, rooting her to the forest floor.
The engine died and a young man got out. His hair said Californian surfer, but his clothes of tonal greens and browns suggested urban chic. Despite his tangle of blond hair, he blended in with the forest. He was slight but not skinny. Well-toned if she had to guess from this distance. He seemed oddly familiar. Was he one of Galen’s friends? Unlikely, since Galen hadn’t brought anyone home in a while. This guy didn’t look much older than either of her sons, but he moved with the stiffness of an old man. Maybe he needed some pokeweed. Always good for arthritic pain.
The stranger stared at her, or rather at the spot where she was standing. No way could he see her through the foliage and the shadows, but she huddled back against a white oak. A wave of light-headedness hit her. Another warning, maybe, that it was time to end the granola-bars-on-the-go diet.
A second man emerged from the car, much taller than the first. With the long, white ponytail and black leather vest, he had to be Native American. His head bobbed in agitation. The younger man moved quickly, circling the older man’s waist with an arm and guiding him back into the car. It was a filial gesture, and yet the two men couldn’t be related. They looked nothing alike.
The air tightened as if sealed in an invisible container, and the squirrels and the birds fell silent. Hannah closed her eyes through another wave of dizziness, her hands digging into the bark of the oak. A door slammed, the car drove off and a crow cawed.
When she opened her eyes, she was alone with the dogs. And in the bough above, there was an owl.
Seven
Will circled the bathroom. How were two grown men expected to share a space this small? How long would they have to stay here like a pair of shipwrecked refugees?
Dinner sat in the middle of his stomach—a coagulated mush of hushpuppies, the only thing he’d dare eat in the diner where everything was drowning in grease and nothing was organic.
He should find a hotel with a suite. No, find somewhere with a kitchen, a real kitchen, so he could