“How?” I could make no sense of what she was saying.
Her face looked bleak and despairing. “Sooner or later, things are going to have to come to rights.”
“What things’re ye talking about, Miz Elda?”
She waved me away impatiently. “Go on back to Bletsung now. Go on, I tell ye. Longer ye stay around here, the more chance of trouble.”
I stood on the edge of her porch, heart breaking. I didn’t know when I’d be able to come back and see her. What if she died while I was gone? “I’ll miss you.”
Her eyes filled. “God’s bringing all this pain on us for what we done.”
I could tell her heart was broken, too, not by my leaving but by whatever dark secret she’d held so deep inside herself all the years. I came back and knelt beside her chair, putting my arms around her frail body one last time. “No matter what ye done,Miz Elda, I love ye and I always will.” Hadn’t I sinned and been forgiven?
With a sigh, she rested her cheek against my hair. “It ain’t what I did that haunts me so, dearie. It’s what I didn’t do, and each year that passes makes it all the worse.” She was weary with regret. “I reckon now that the mon’s dead, we’ll have to stay by the old ways ’til the mountains tumble down on us.”
The words came to my lips of their own accord. “Cast thy burdens upon the Lord Jesus, Miz Elda. No good thing will he withhold from ye if ye love him.”
“Did the mon in the valley tell ye that?”
“Yes, ma’am. And he said Jesus washes our sins away and makes us white as snow.” I told her the best part of what the man had said to me; the gift of grace he’d poured on me I poured on her. And her dry, old body soaked it in like rain on parched soil.
“Can it be that easy?”
“It was for me.”
She touched my cheek gently and smiled. “That’s because most of what ye did was in your own mind, child.”
“Wishing’s doing. The way God sees it.”
“Maybe so. Only I want ye to know your granny and I never thought for a moment ye pushed Elen into the river.”
“Mama did.”
She didn’t deny it. “Ye’d best go now, Cadi, before Brogan comes back this way and sees ye.”
“Is he gone to my father?”
“I’m afraid so.He was none too happy ye were down in the valley with his son. He’d like to lay the whole blame at your door.”
“It was my doing.”
“No, child. There’s a hand bigger than yours in all this. Ye’ve stirred up words my mama said to me years ago back across the sea. But I’m remembering more. As to the rest, in time, we’ll see whether God means to lift us up or crush us down. Now, go!”
Kissing her cheek, I went quickly down the steps.
“Cadi. One more thing.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Tell Fagan I’m right proud of him.”
Bletsung Macleod greeted me as I came through the door she’d left open for me. “He’s sleeping sound,” she said with a smile. The cabin was filled with the mouthwatering aroma of fine cooking. My stomach cramped with hunger, but I was so tired I could scarce hold my feet. “Sit there, darlin’.” She nodded to the table as she ladled a goodly portion of stew into a bowl. Setting it before me, she poured water into a pewter mug. “Squirrel stew and biscuits.” She took a cloth from a small basket. “Ye like honey?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
She took a bottle of amber from the shelf and opened it. “Split a biscuit and put it on the saucer.” I did and she poured honey in a thick golden stream until the biscuit was covered. Mama had never done such a thing, and I stared at the golden stream, sticking my fingertip in and tasting it. Laughing, she set the jar down.
“I never tasted anything so good.” Not even Granny’s hives had produced such sweetness as this.
“I always set my bee gums near the mountain chestnut. Can’t get better honey.”
She sat down opposite me. “Eat your stew, Cadi. Ye’re sorely in need of a little meat on your bones.”
Bletsung Macleod was as fine a cook as I’d ever visited, better even than Mama. I finished the bowl of stew and the biscuit, easing the thick sweetness with the cool mountain springwater. Full, I struggled to keep my eyes open. Unable to fight it any longer, I pushed the bowl away and put my head in my arms, going straight to sleep right there at her table.
I awakened to the sound of voices and found myself tucked next to Fagan. He was still sleeping soundly from the pain elixir she’d given him.
“The mon’s dead,” Bletsung Macleod said, and half asleep, I didn’t think much about her talking to herself. “Aye, I’m sorry to tell ye. Brogan was the one who done it. I reckon he left the mon alone as long as people stayed clear of him.”
The wind stirred the leaves outside her window, and I heard a soft, deep voice.
“Cadi went back to Elda’s after helping the boy here,” Blet-sung Macleod said. “I was surprised she come to me. Don’t know what made her do it considering what most people think of me. She’s the only child who’s come near this cabin, her and the boy. She’s a strange one, she is, given to talking to herself.” She laughed softly. “When she first got here, she started in talking like someone was standing in the house. Scared me clean out of my wits, I con tell ye. I thought she’d brought a taint with her. But the boy said that’s just the way she is. Reckon it comes of being heartbroken and cast out. . . .”
Again, that soft, deep voice.
“Purely so. I was surprised when she came back instead of going home to her mama and papa.”
I heard the response clear this time. “She’s been staying with Elda.”
Who was speaking? Bletsung Macleod perched on a stool next to an open window. She went on talking, all the while keeping her head up and looking at the mountain as she spoke. And then, with a sharp quickening of my heart, I knew who was sitting below her window.
The sin eater.
Fagan moved, the rustling of the cornhusks like thunder in my head. I closed my eyes quickly, heart pounding, as Bletsung Macleod fell silent. He was here, all right. If I let them know I was awake, he’d want me to talk to him, to tell him what the man of God had said. And how could I tell him the truth without causing him more grief? So I pretended to be asleep when Bletsung Macleod left her seat by the window, came across the room, and leaned over us. She tended to Fagan first, rinsing a rag and dabbing his bruised face, tidying the quilts. She brushed some hair from my forehead. “Cadi?” Determined she not catch me out, I moved slightly, giving a soft moan and pulling the quilt up higher. Then I held still as a sleeping mouse in its hidey-hole, not moving again until I heard the soft scrape of the stool by the window.
“They’re still asleep.”
The sin eater spoke softly in question.
“She dinna say anything about what the mon said. She’ll likely sleep the day away.”
“Ye’ll be glad of the company,” I heard him say quietly.
“Aye, I am that. I’ll do whatever I can for them. The boy’s a brave one, going against his father the way he has. Brogan never had the courage to do it. And Cadi’s Gorawen Forbes’s grandchild. That’s for sure. The woman was kind to ye. I’ll treat Cadi like my own child.”
Again, he spoke.
“Well, it ain’t my doing,” Bletsung Macleod said, sounding distressed. “I dinna tell them to come.” A pause and the gentle, calm voice. “No, I won’t take ’em home.” Her voice was low and fierce. “If ye could but see what Brogan done to his own son, ye wouldn’t suggest it. People who treat their children the way these two’ve been treated don’t deserve to have ’em at all. And besides that—”“Bletsung, my love, would ye have it so if it were you?”
My love?
“We’ve no right to judge.”
Bletsung Macleod was silent so long I wondered if she was angry at the man for his gentle reprimand. Cautiously, I opened my eyes just enough to see her still sitting, pale and pensive, by the window. She was
staring up at the mountains. Perhaps the sin eater had gone away again.
“I reckon you’re right.” She sighed. “Oh, sometimes I can’t help thinking what might have been.” Closing her eyes, she bowed her head sadly.
“There ain’t a day goes by that I don’t think about what I done, Bletsung, and what’s come of it. I thought I was sparing ye from suffering, and instead I’ve brought it on ye twenty years and more. Ye should’ve gone o’er the mountains with my kin and started afresh somewhere else.”
“How could I leave when my love is here?”
“Ye’d be long married with children of your own by now.”
“I only wanted yours.”
They both fell silent. The maple leaves rustled, and I heard the plaintive sound of a mourning dove.
The man spoke softly, and Bletsung rose from her stool. “Oh, please, stay awhile longer. Ye don’t have to say nothing. I just like knowing ye’re close to me.”
“I’m always close.”
She eased back onto the stool again, running her hand along the windowsill. “Not close enough . . .”
“The mon should be properly attended.”
“What con ye do about what’s happened?”
“Nothing, I reckon, but I con take the mon’s body up onto the mountain. I know a proper place where he can be laid to rest.” He said something more, his voice soft and tender, and then there was only the rustling of leaves in the maple and warblers singing.
Bletsung Macleod said nothing more. She was staring up at Dead Man’s Mountain, tears streaming down her cheeks.
At ease with his departure, I fell back asleep.
“She loves him, Fagan,” I told him when I awakened late in the afternoon. I’d gotten up and peeked outside, making sure Blet-sung Macleod would not hear. She was in her garden, wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat, hoeing weeds.
“It ain’t our business.” He groaned when I sat on the bed, for even that slight movement hurt him. His face was a mess of purple and black, one eye swollen completely shut.
“Maybe not, Fagan, but it bears thinking on, don’t ye reckon? He loves her, too. Ye should’ve heard the way he spoke to her, so soft and sweet.” I felt melancholy just thinking about it. “Papa used to talk to Mama that way.”
Fagan lay still as he could to keep the pain at bay. “My pa ain’t never talked to my ma like she meant summat to him, but I’ve seen her look at him as though the sun wouldn’t rise without him. Don’t see how she can feel that way . . .”
“It ain’t hard,” I said, thinking of my own situation. “Ye con love people without ’em loving ye back. Especially if ye know the reason they can’t bear the sight of ye.”
He turned his head and opened his good eye. “Maybe ye’re wrong about your ma, Cadi.”
I shrugged, sure I wasn’t. “It don’t matter anymore. I’m used to the way things are.”
“No ye ain’t.”
I bit my lip and worried it until I could answer without my voice trembling. “It’s my own fault things are the way they are. I may not have pushed my sister into the river, but I wished she’d fall.”
“I’ve wished ill on my pa and my brothers, too, Cadi. That ain’t why things happen. It weren’t your fault Elen died.”
“I know that now, Fagan, but don’t ye see yet? Fault don’t matter. I know what I am. I’m a sinner. Even when I tried to do good, it turned out bad.”
“No more than anyone else. Some worse than others.”
“Your father, you mean.”
“Yes, my father. And my brothers. I hated ’em, Cadi.” His good eye teared up. “So where’s the difference between me and them, I ask ye? If I hadn’t accepted Jesus and been washed clean down there in the river, I’d be the same. I was the devil’s own and thought I always would be. And now, everything’s changed.We’re not the same, Cadi. Ye gotta believe what the mon told us.”
“I want to believe, Fagan, but where’s accepting Jesus gotten you? I should never have gone.”
“Why not?”
“Look what happened!”
“Ye found hope, didn’t ye?” He was still aflame with it, even hurting as he was.
“It dinna last long, did it? The mon’s dead.”
“He told us the truth, Cadi. Didn’t ye feel it right into the heart of ye? Couldn’t ye hear God’s own voice in every word he spoke?”
“Everything the mon said made perfect sense while he was saying it. But maybe because I wanted so badly to feel I was forgiven, I’d have believed anything.”
“You were happy, Cadi. Ye should’ve seen your face. You were aglow.”
“Aye, I was so filled up with happiness I was fair bursting with it,” I said, tears coming. “And then your pa comes with your brothers and beats the life out of that poor mon and the spirit right out of me. Where was God then, Fagan? I keep thinking and thinking about it, and I can’t put it to rights with the way things are. Nothing’s changed. Nothing ever will.”
“That’s because we’ve been doing things all wrong, Cadi.”
Angry and frustrated, I glared at him. “Aren’t ye listening to me, Fagan? Everthing’s the same as it ever was.”
“No it ain’t.”
I was trembling inside because of my own weak faith. I had walked away unharmed and terrified, and there was Fagan, battered and broken and ready for a holy war.
“He done nothing but tell the truth and got killed for it,” I said.
“It can’t end there.”
It hadn’t, though I didn’t want to tell Fagan that the man had laid the burden heavy upon me. Most unfitting, to my way of thinking. I was a child, an outcast. What could I do?
Yet the hand of God squeezed my heart. All that was within me clung like ivy to the trunk of that great tree I’d been grafted into. Me, a sprout and not a branch. Not yet, anyway. I’d opened my heart and God had come pouring in. God with his forgiveness. God with his mercy. God with his love. I didn’t deserve any of it!
“I believe, Fagan. I do, but I’m terrible afraid. Your pa spoke to Miz Elda and he’s gone to my folks, too. If he did this to you, he’ll do worse to me.”
“God will protect you.”
“He dinna protect the mon by the river. He dinna protect you.”
Fagan grasped my wrist tightly. “God was there. I won’t pretend to understand why things went the way they did, but I know this. Ye’ve got to tell people the truth.”
I gave a faint laugh, jerking my wrist from his grasp. “The Kai, ye mean? Ye think I should go and tell your pa?”
Grimacing in pain, Fagan closed his eye again. “No. I’ll tell him myself when the time comes to do it.”
I felt ashamed. After all his pa had done to him, Fagan wasn’t losing courage. “I told Miz Elda,” I said, wanting Fagan’s approval.
“That’s one.”
I shuddered, thinking of Brogan Kai looking for me. I was bringing grief to my family again, now more than ever. Yet, even now, I yearned to share what I had heard. Telling the old woman the word of the Lord had been easy because she’d been waiting to hear what God had to say. I could tell my brother, Iwan, but he’d be quick to take Mama and Papa’s side. And if I were to show up now, they wouldn’t likely let me open my mouth before Pa’d be using his belt on me and lock me in the woodshed for causing trouble with the Kai.
“Maybe Miz Elda’ll tell Gervase Odara.”
“Maybe,” Fagan said softly.
“I’ve been thinking, Fagan. It would not make people happy if I was to tell them what the mon said.”
Turning his head slowly, he opened his good eye and looked at me. I felt like Peter denying Jesus.
“I mean, think about it,” I said softly. “All our folks believe the sin eater’s taken their sins away so they could be clean before God. You think they’re going to be happy hearing their loved ones’ve all gone to the grave with their sins still on ’em? Ye think they’re going to want to know their folks are probably burning in hell?” I thought of Granny. “Who
’d want to believe a thing like that?” I hoped the Lord would see all the good in Granny’s heart. She’d loved me when I wasn’t worth loving and had been kind to the sin eater when no one else cared what happened to him so long as he did his duty. She set out food for him when all the rest gave him only their sins to eat.
“The mon said God sees the heart,” Fagan said, more certain than I. “We gotta trust him, Cadi. We can’t be looking back at the dead. We gotta look to the living.”
“What if we tell people the truth and they won’t listen, Fagan? What then? They ain’t listened up to now. The mon was speaking to all of us, but we were the only ones to go down to the river and cross over.”
“That don’t change nothing, Cadi.”
“So the same thing could happen to us that happened to that poor mon by the river.”
“We can’t think about what could happen. We gotta think about what God wants us to do. We’re going to face him someday, Cadi. You and me, standing before the Lord Almighty. You want to tell him you knew his Son died for everyone in this valley and ye dinna tell anyone but one old woman?”
I hung my head in shame. I kept thinking about the blows Fagan had taken while I hid in the darkness.
“Jesus knew what it’d cost him, Cadi. And he knows what it’s gonna cost you.” Fagan took my hand again. “The fear ain’t coming from Jesus, Cadi. It’s coming from my pa. Ye can’t let him hold ye back from doing what ye know we have to do. Ye can not withhold the truth. If ye do, it ain’t God ye’re serving, it’ll be the Kai. And there’s no hope for any of us if ye let him lead ye.”
My stomach quivered as I thought of my promise to the sin eater. He was the first one I needed to tell. If not for him, I’d never have gone down to the river and heard the word of the Lord at all.
How was he going to feel when I told him everything he’d ever done had been for nothing?
“Please, Cadi.” Fagan tried to sit up. Groaning, he lay back and closed his eyes.
I leaned over him. “Your head aching?”
He grimaced at my touch. “Hasn’t stopped.”
I eased myself off the bed so as not to shake him and went to fetch a cool damp rag for his forehead. “Thanks,” he said. He felt for my hand. When I slipped mine into his, he squeezed it tight. “We’re in this together.” He fell asleep again. Still holding his hand, I lay down atop the quilts and watched him until I could no longer keep my eyes open.