Morgan James - Promise McNeal 02 - Quiet Killing (16 page)

I could not help but laugh. By the time she sang all the verses I remembered the story. God brings the prophet Ezekiel to a valley strewn with dry bones. God
tells him to prophesize to the bones, and when he does the bones rise and are made flesh. God tells Ezekiel something to the effect that His people will know him when He opens the graves and breathes his spirit into them. Was Ezekiel writing about the Second Coming of Jesus? Was this Old Testament writing part of the Second Great Awakening that Mr. Kolb was telling me about? Why was the Bible verse so important to January McNeal?

When I remembered January was accused of digging up the graves of his wife and child, dem dry bones ceased to be funny. I stopped laughing at about the same time Susan stopped singing. Over our silence, we heard a muffled high-pitched laugh from the bedroom off the kitchen. Mrs. Allen stood up. When I touched her arm, she sat back down. I whispered, “I know. In the closet. Let’s just let her be for now.”

Susan sat across from me and reached over to hold Mrs. Allen’s hand. “MaMa,” she said quietly, “a couple of days ago you and a little girl were up on Fire Mountain.”

Mrs. Allen sighed and looked down at the tabletop. “Yes, me and little Missy. I’m ashamed I didn’t help you none, Miz Promise. I was so scared for Missy— and for me, I froze up. Couldn’t think of nothing to do. Then I seen Fletcher up on the rise with his rifle. We hid down in the laurels and when I knowed the man was shot and Fletcher was coming for you, we come on home. Missy was real upset about seeing that man.” Tears spilled behind her glasses and she wiped them with her apron.

“It’s all right, Mrs. Allen. I wouldn’t have wanted you to put yourself or the child in danger.” I really meant what I said, and hoped she believed me.

Susan continued. “What were you doing up there?”

She held on to her apron tail and began to twist the corner. “It was that dang blue stuffed elephant of hers. She was running the mountain all morning and then came in without the thing. Nothing would do but for us to go fetch it.”

Susan frowned and pressed her fingers against her eyelids. “Oh MaMa, you know that little girl shouldn’t roam around the woods alone. Nowhere is safe like it was when Daddy and Mac were kids. And another thing, you’re eighty-three years old. You got no business hiking up that mountain.”

“Well, don’t you think I know how old I am? And don’t be telling me what I got business doing, and what I ain’t. You think I’d just turn her loose on her own to get shut of her. I told her to stay close to the house. She don’t mind like she should. Leastwise, not yet. But she’s a good little girl, all and all.”

“Okay, okay,” I interjected, “Let’s just leave that for now. It won’t help to get angry with each other.”

Mrs. Allen cut her eyes at me; her body huffed up with righteousness. “I ain’t angry at nobody else. I’m purely upset with myself that I didn’t do nothing to help you. If you could forgive me, I’d be much obliged.”

“I do forgive you. You hear me? I mean it.”

After a few seconds, she answered, “Yes, ma’am. I hear you. Thank you. Thank you kindly.” The twisted apron went back to dry more tears.

Susan shifted in her chair and took a sip of tea. I was waiting for her to ask the really important question, and I didn’t have long to wait. “All right. We need to get something straight. I’ve been thinking about this, MaMa, and it seems to me that the whole time you say you’ve had this Missy child as a visitor, you haven’t brought her to Granny’s store, not even once. I haven’t seen you in town with her, at all, and neither has Daddy. Nobody has. How long has she been here?”

Mrs. Allen puckered up her mouth in concentration and then answered. “I make it nigh on six, maybe seven weeks.”

“Seven weeks,” Susan repeated. “Pretty long time for a visit from a long lost cousin.” Her statement hung in the air like a line of rain soaked laundry. “Doesn’t that seem like a long visit to you, Miz P?”

I cleared my throat. “Well, yes. Now that you say so, it does.”

Susan got up and closed the door into the bedroom. “You want to tell us how you came to have little Missy for a visitor, MaMa. Cause I’m thinking you don’t have a cousin in Tennessee that might have a granddaughter named Missy. And I’m also thinking you don’t bring her to town because you don’t want her seen by anyone.”

Mrs. Allen fiddled with the tablecloth, brushing up imaginary crumbs into a neat pile. “Well, I don’t for sure know her name is Missy. She comes to it when I call. But she’s a quiet little thing so I don’t rightly know her true name.”

I looked from Susan to Mrs. Allen, then back to Susan. Susan was giving me her—go ahead and jump in— look, so I did. “Does she talk at all?”

Mrs. Allen looked at me as though she wanted to argue, but didn’t. “Well, I hear her out in the yard singing little made up songs sometimes. Can’t tell iffen them’s words or not. Lets me know what she needs, but not many outright words. That’s why I don’t take her to town or nowhere. I don’t want folks to think she quare, or simple, cause she ain’t.” Her look to Susan seemed to be pleading: give Missy a chance; you’ll see; it will be all right.

“She’s a real smart little girl, Susan. Sits and reads all those books you left here when you growed too old for them. And I know she’s really reading cause I can see the gladness in her face when she follows the words. And Lordy, wait till you see her running and jumping around. She can do handstands, summersaults, and climbs up trees like a little monkey. She’s a loving child; hugs me every night afore she goes to sleep.”

Susan patted her hand and asked, “MaMa, how did Missy come to be at your house? Who brought her here?”

After she removed her glasses, and cleaned them on her skirt, she told her story. “Well, it was like this: back this February it was wicked cold outside. There was a crusty little snow on the ground, and I was in the side yard there at the bird feeder putting out more seed. A little white car come slipping and sliding up the hill. Then a young woman rolled the window
down and hollered out to me if I was Honoree Mullins Allen. Well, not many folks know my given name is Honoree, and fewer still remember I was a Mullins, so I reckoned she must be kin of some kind. I allowed I was Honoree and told her to get on out of the car and come on in the house where it was warm. She come up on the porch holding little Missy, asleep in her arms.”

Mrs. Allen paused for a moment, a distant look in her eyes, then continued. “Well, Missy is a tiny little thing, but this woman was only a little bit of a person herself, so I went and took the child from her. Once I done that, she said thank you and walked back to the car, just as calm as you please. I thought maybe she was gonna get her purse, so I stood on the porch waiting for her. But she cranked that little white car’s engine over, and the last I saw of her was her Tennessee license plate heading on down the hill.

“So there I was, standing out there in the cold with that little child asleep in my arms. Poor little baby girl was left with nothing but the clothes on her back and that blue elephant she was holding in her sleep. Not even a clean pair of underwear or a warm jacket.

“For some days I thought that woman would get sorry for leaving her child and come back. Now I expect she ain’t coming back. And you know what? Missy don’t seem to mind one bit. She ain’t never asked about her even once.”

My mind was ricocheting off the walls. What was wrong with this mother? How could she just drive up to a stranger’s house and leave her child on the porch? And how could a child not miss her mother?

Susan looked just as confused as I felt. “What did the woman look like?”

Mrs. Allen took a swallow of warm tea, thinking. “I reckon she favored Missy. Only she had bright yellow hair, where Missy’s is more pale like. Can’t say much more, except like I done told you, she wasn’t a big girl. Not as tall as Miz Promise here.”

“Could she be a Tennessee relative? One you haven’t seen in a long time?” I asked. “She knew your given name and where you live.”

“Like I said. I thought she was kin when she called me by name. But there’s nary but one cousin left alive in Tennessee, and I called her on the telephone; she don’t know nothing about a young woman with a child. I got no idea how that young woman knowed my name and where to find me. No ma’am, I think this is like when your great grandmother Reba was took in by the Sorleys. A family is who loves you and takes care of you. Looks like I’m Missy’s family now.”

I knew I should explain to Mrs. Allen that times have changed since Reba was given to Enid and Joab Sorley. You can’t just drop a child off somewhere and not come back—that’s a serious crime— or take a child into your home because she was left on your porch. North Carolina has laws to protect children from abuse and abandonment. We have social services, foster care, lawyers, and judges—rules, lots of rules. Though I did wonder, sitting there and feeling the unconditional love Mrs. Allen had for this child, if government agency decisions would be best for this child? One thing was certain; the child was obviously traumatized and needed Mrs. Allen’s love. The thing
that was not certain, at least not yet, was whether this child was responsible for my barn fire, and the burning kitchen chair.

Susan picked up the conversation with an excellent question. “MaMa, did you call Sheriff Mac and tell him about Missy? Report that she’d been abandoned… so maybe he could look for the woman?”

Mrs. Allen lowered her eyes and studied her hands. “No Sweetheart. I didn’t. Like I said, I thought maybe the mama would have a change of mind and come on back. Anyway, Mac ain’t been around to see me in a while. You know how busy he is with being sheriff and all. I reckon nobody asked about her until your daddy came over here this week and saw her pink overalls hanging on the clothes line.”

“She’d been here six weeks by then. Why didn’t you call us for help?”

“Well, I know all of you got your own life to live, and I didn’t need no help. We get along just fine.”

My curiosity was piqued. “Mrs. Allen, I know you don’t take Missy to town, and she didn’t have any clothes or anything with her—except the stuffed elephant. How have you managed to buy her clothes, shoes, and all the other things a little girl needs?”

“Oh that ain’t no problem,” she answered cheerfully. “You know years back of this we had the Sears wishing book to get things in the mail. Now, what with those new computer things, you can look at the pictures and order up anything you could ever want. They drive it to your door in no time atall.”

I was sure Mrs. Allen didn’t own a computer. Now who did I know conducting a thriving business on the
Internet? “You mean Fletcher Enloe has gotten you what you needed?”

“That’s right. Fletcher and me been acquainted for some years. He can be a hard man, but he’s a good man. I helped nurse his wife when she first got the cancer, and I take him pies and canned vegetables from time to time. Little Missy took to him like any one thing, and she’s purely in love with that big white buck goat of his.”

“You mean Hubert? Hubert the two-hundred-pound smelly monster who eats all the blueberry bushes along my pasture line?”

Mrs. Allen smiled and nodded yes.

15

Susan was quiet until we crossed over the Fells Creek Bridge. Then the words came tumbling out. “I can’t believe this…what in the world are we going to do…you can see how attached MaMa is to that little girl…did we even ask how old she could be…what if she was kidnapped? MaMa could go to jail as an accessory to the crime. Oh Lord, this is
so
my fault. I should go over there more often, be more a part of her life…like she was when my mamma died, and…”