The Last Sin Eater (11 page)

“What about us?” I fought back tears.

“You’ve got each other.”

“You shudna talk about death so much, Miz Elda. It upsets Cadi, and she just lost her granny not a month ago.”

“See what I mean?” she said with a faint smile, looking between us. Then she grew serious. “Fine and dandy. We won’t talk about me dying anymore. We’ll just sit and listen to Fagan tell us what that man’s been saying while he’s been hiding in the tall grass and bushes.”

Fagan blushed. “I don’t always hear everything he says ’cause of the river.”

“Just tell us what ye have heard.”

He let out his breath and scratched his head. “First time I heard him, he said the sins of the father are visited on the sons to the fourth generation.”

“Reckon that’s why we have ourselves a sin eater,” Miz Elda said, watching Fagan’s face. “So trouble don’t rise up to haunt us.”

“And then he said, ‘I will proclaim thy name to my brethren, in the midst of the congregation I will sing thy praise.’”

“Well, if that don’t beat all.”

“Yesterday he was talking about a rock and swallows.”

“A rock and swallows,” she said, thinking. “Maybe he meant the cliffs where the swallows build their nests, the ones near the Narrows.”

“And he was talking about building houses on sand.”

“That’s pure foolishness,” Miz Elda scoffed. “Anyone knows better than that. What would he say a thing like that for?”

Fagan shrugged. “I heard him say, ‘the stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner, and this is the Lord’s doing.’”

“A rock and swallows, houses built on sand, and a rejected cornerstone,” Miz Elda said and shook her head. “Maybe your pa’s right and ye ought to leave him alone. He sounds crazy.” She started rocking again, slowly, gazing off toward the valley as she sometimes did. “You two go on now. I need to rest awhile.”

It wasn’t rest she wanted. It was time to think on the things Fagan had told her. I wished she would tell me what was in her mind, but reckoned she was probably harkening back to a time past and trying to remember what it was she had forgotten.

“Did the sin eater ever come for the preserves?” Fagan said as we was walking down Miz Elda’s path to the meadow.

“Never did. The jar’s probably still sitting there.” A sudden idea came to me, and I started running.

“Where ye going?”

“To the graveyard!” I called back over my shoulder.

The jar of preserves was still there. I took it up and dusted the jar off with the edge of my dress.

“What’ve ye got in your head to do with ’em now, Cadi Forbes?” Fagan asked, panting from the run.

“I’m going to give ’em to the bee charmer.”

“What bee charmer?”

“The woman who lives in the cabin at the bottom of Dead Man’s Mountain.”

“The crazy woman?”

I glanced at him. “Who said she was crazy?”

“My ma. I told her I’d seen the cabin, and she said to stay far away from it. The woman living there is crazy.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Ma said she murdered her own mother and father.”

“Miz Elda said Rose O’Sharon killed herself, and no one knows how Macleod died.”

Fagan blinked in surprise and then his jaw set, his eyes darkening. “Just stay clear of that woman, ye hear. My ma wouldn’t lie to me.”

“I never said she lied.”

“Yes, ye did.”

“Miz Elda’s older than anyone else on these mountains, and I reckon she knows more than anyone. Even your ma.”

“Maybe ye oughta stay well away from Dead Man’sMountain, too! Chasing after the sin eater’ll get ye nothing but trouble.”

“Ye sound just like your pa,” I said, angry now. His face reddened. As I came out the graveyard gate, he blocked my way.

“Ye’re not going, Cadi.” When I tried to pass, he snatched the jar of preserves and hurled it against a pine, shattering the glass and splattering Mama’s blackberry preserves in all directions. “Now, what’re ye going to do?” Fagan spread his feet.

When I threw a punch at him, he caught my arm and swung me around, pinning me back against him. I twisted and jerked, trying to kick at his shins with my heels, to no avail. “Listen to me, you stupid girl! I did it for your own good!”

“People gotta think for themselves!”

“Ye gonna repeat everything that old woman says?”

“Are ye gonna choke me just like your father did?”

His hands tightened briefly in shock, and then he shoved me away from him. “What’d you say?”

I spun around, glaring at him. “I hate you, Fagan Kai! I hate you, and I hate your father! Did ye hear that?”

His expression fell slightly, and I knew every word struck hard and deep. “I heard you.”

The look on his face dissolved my anger and made me cringe. Feeling guilty, I tried to defend myself. “Ye shouldn’t have broken the jar. It wasn’t yours to break!”

“It was Pa?” he said in a small voice.

He looked so hurt, I wanted to take the blame away. “He caught me coming back from the river. Said I was going against him.” My conscience smote me something fierce and I felt sick. My tongue had been like a fire, and I feared it had burned up our friendship. Seems like when you destroy something, you realize too late how much it meant to you in the first place. “Nobody knows, Fagan. I swear. I dinna tell my pa or anyone. And I won’t. Cross my heart and hope to die. I wouldn’t’ve told you if ye hadn’t broken the jar!”

“What’re
you
crying for? It’s
me
who’ll burn in hell.”

“Burn for what?” I said, sniffling and rubbing my nose.

“For every mean thing my pa’s ever done. Just like that man says. The sins of the father’ll be laid on the sons.”

“That ain’t fair! Ye must’ve heard wrong.”

“I heard him right.”

“Ye said the river—”

“I heard him plain, I’m telling ye!” His eyes teared up, and I remembered the day he’d come back from the river crying.

I came closer. “Then I reckon we could both use the sin eater.”

“And what good would it do to find him?We ain’t dead yet.”

“Maybe we could ask him to take our sins now.”

“Why would he want to do that?”

“I don’t know! But it’s worth asking him, ain’t it?”

He chewed on his lip, thinking. “All right,” he said, looking grim. “Tomorrow. I’ll meet you where Kai Creek joins the river. We’re going hunting.”

T E N

Hiding behind a curtain of mountain laurel, Fagan and I watched the crazy woman’s cabin, waiting for some sign of her. Neither of us was brave enough to hello the house and bring her out, nor willing to admit our fear. It was early yet, and we used that ready excuse as we waited for the sunlight to spill over the valley floor and chase the shadows away. Both of us sat, getting wet with the heavy dew that dripped down from the leaves.

“I went down to listen to the man last night,” Fagan whispered.

“What’d he say this time?”

“He kept calling out for us to come to him and hear the word of the Lord, and we’d have rest for our souls.”

“We’d be resting, all right. In our graves after being struck dead.”

“It dinna sound that way to me, but I wasn’t going to walk across that river. Pa or one of my brothers would’ve seen me. They’ve kept watch off and on.”

“I’m afeared of the mon, too, Fagan.”

“I ain’t afeared of
him.
I’m afeared what he’d
do.”
He raked his hair back, frowning. “I don’t reckon even Pa would do nothing to a man come from God.”

I didn’t say anything to that, for I was troubled in my mind remembering my nightmare. Besides that, Brogan Kai had looked able to do anything the day he had me by the throat. I reckoned Brogan Kai thought he was God. In this highland valley, at least.

A deer with her two fawns came into the open, grazing in the shadows not far from where we were hidden. Fagan sat up straighter, his attention fixed not on them but further on toward the forest. “Will ye look at that?” At the awe on his face, I looked to see a huge buck standing among the trees out of the edge of light, his antlers a majestic crown for a proud head. “Never seen one so big. Wish I had a gun.”

“How con ye say that? He’s so beautiful!”

“He’d feed a family through winter.”

I glared at him, thankful all he had was a slingshot.

When the cabin door opened, the doe’s head came up sharply, and she bounded away, the fawns on her heels. The buck melted into the forest. Fagan and I both leaned forward, peering through the dangling vines and waiting for Bletsung Macleod, the crazy woman, to appear.

She came outside in her long white nightgown, blonde hair curling down over her like a golden cascade clear past her waist. Stretching, she put the back of her hand to her mouth as she yawned. She walked along the porch and stood there at the end, gazing up at the mountain. She whistled like a bird and waited for a long moment. Then she whistled again, waiting once more.

“There it is,” Fagan said. “Did ye hear it?”

“Yes,” I whispered, for a whistle had come from the forest above.

“It’s not like any bird I’ve ever heard before.”

After that, Bletsung Macleod went back inside her house.

“Why don’t you make her something, Katrina Anice?” Lily-bet said, sitting not far away.

“Such as what?”

“I dinna say nothing,” Fagan said, glancing back at me.

“It was Lilybet.”

“Don’t start acting crazy on me!”

“I’m not acting crazy!” Hurt, I got up.

“Where ye going?”

“Down to the creek to find some flowers.”

“Flowers?
Now?”

“To make a garland for her, Fagan. She might take more kindly to us coming to her place if we have summat for her. And since ye took it into your head to break the jar of preserves . . .”

“Go on then and get the flowers. I’ll keep watch.”

I picked my way through vines and briars and reached the water. “Why can’t he see you?” I said to Lilybet. I was tired of her mysterious answers.

“You know why.”

“Because ye don’t exist. Because you’re in my head.”

Lilybet merely smiled as she sat on a moss-covered boulder, her blue eyes clear and filled with knowledge of me.

“Gervase Odara thinks you’re a taint,” I said stubbornly.

“She thinks I’m worse than that.”

“But it’s not fair.”

“Life isn’t fair. It’s difficult. From the moment you draw your first breath to the last.”

“Why does it have to be that way?”

“Because men are stubborn. They wanted their own way, and God allowed them to have it.”

“And so Fagan and I must suffer.”

“As all suffer. It’s one long test of faith, refining you for what you were meant to be.”

“And what’s that?”

“Find out.”

“Why can’t I know now? Why can’t ye just tell me?”

“Because you’re stubborn, too. You still refuse to understand, even when the truth is all around you in everything you see from the depths of the earth to the stars in the heavens.”

All the anger went fromme, andmy throat tightened with grief. “I don’t want to be stubborn, Lilybet. I want to understand.”

“You will find all the pieces, and God will bring them to light.”

“When will that be?”

“In his time.”

It didn’t take me long to find all the flowers I needed, and Fagan was where I’d left him, peering through the vines. “She’s still inside. She’s stoked up the fire. See the smoke?”

I sat and worked quickly, making splits in the stems and tucking others through until I had made a garland for her hair. I kept thinking about all Lilybet had said to me, making sense of none of it. I looked at my handiwork and hoped Bletsung Mac-leod would like it better than Mama had. “It’s done.”

“It’s a fine thing, Cadi.” His words pleased me enough to make me blush. “Did your ma teach ye how to do it?”

“Granny taught me.”

Gathering our courage, we went out into the open at the base of Dead Man’s Mountain and approached the small cabin. “Helllloooo!” Fagan called and I held the wreath so that Blet-sung Macleod would see it. When she didn’t come out of her house, Fagan called out bolder,
“Heellllooo!”

My heart jumped. “The curtain moved.”

“Come on then. Don’t hang back.” Fagan motioned to me as he walked toward the house. “We brung ye summat, ma’am!”

“I don’t want nothin’. Go away!”

“We’re just being neighborly!”

“I said, ‘Go away!’”

My shoulders drooped, but Fagan stood his ground, jaw tense. “We ain’t leaving until ye come out and talk to us!” He sounded more like his father than I had ever heard him before.

“Fagan,” I whispered, mortified. There was enough on my head without him making it worse.

“I told ye to stay away, Cadi Forbes, and now ye come back and bring this rude boy with ye! Git on! Git out o’ here!”

Fagan blushed dark red. “I ain’t meaning to be rude, ma’am, but we—Cadi and me, that is—need to talk to ye. We don’t mean ye no harm.” He nudged me. “Tell her!”

“We mean ye no harm, ma’am!” I called out to confirm his declaration. “And we brung ye summat.”

After a long moment, Bletsung Macleod opened the door and came out onto the front porch. She was now dressed in a worn dark skirt and faded blue shirtwaist, her hair gathered into a hasty braid. “Why can’t ye leave well enow alone, Cadi Forbes?” she said in a despairing tone. “Why can’t ye stay away from this godforsaken place?”

“I gotta put the pieces together.” I knew as I spoke that it made no sense to anyone, not even me. Fagan looked at me quizzically, but didn’t say nothing.

Bletsung Macleod stayed in the shadows, standing near a post. She reminded me of the doe, ready to bound away at the first hint of danger. And it seemed odd, her being growed up and all. Seeing her like that made all my own fears seep away, and I was filled instead with a strange tenderness and pity toward her. “She’s afeared of us, Fagan.”

He sensed it too. “We’ll go slowly.”

As we came closer, she glanced quickly toward the forest, her movements tense of a moment. I looked toward the forest, too, wondering if she had seen something like a bear or a painter, but nothing was there out of the ordinary that I could see. So Fagan and I kept acomin’ ahead until we was standing to the right of her front steps. I laid the flower garland on the porch at her feet and then backed away.

Bending, she picked it up and looked at it. She touched the purple flower petals, then gazed at me, perplexed. “Thank ye, Cadi.” It sounded almost a question. Her gaze moved to Fagan, studying him with a faint frown. “What be your name, lad?”

“Fagan, ma’am. Fagan Kai.”

If anything, she grew more wary. “Brogan Kai’s son?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Ye dunna look like him.”

“No, ma’am. People say I look more like my ma.”

Tilting her head, she studied him. “Aye, ’tis true. Ye have your mother’s eyes.” Her mouth tipped sadly. “How be Iona these days?”

“She don’t complain.”

“Reckon she wouldn’t.” Bletsung Macleod glanced toward the forest again and then stepped forward, one slender, work-worn hand resting lightly on the rail. “She got what she wanted.” She sighed and looked down at us again. She didn’t ask why we had come. She wasn’t going to make it that easy.

Fagan forgot all about the sin eater. “How do ye come by knowing my mother?”

“Everybody knows everybody in this valley.” Her voice was heart-weary.

“I never heard of ye until a few months ago.”

I wondered if Fagan knew how belligerent he sounded.

Closing her eyes, Bletsung Macleod lowered her head.

“Why ye saying things to hurt her?” I whispered fiercely.

Fagan’s face jerked with pain. “I ain’t trying to hurt her. I just want to know the truth.” He looked up at the woman on the porch. “People say ye might have killed your own ma and pa.”

She raised her head and looked at him, blue eyes dark with pain. “That so? What else do they say?”

Convinced Fagan had made a fine mess of our visit, I clutched his shirtsleeve, hoping the feel of my hand might give him pause. It didn’t.

“Some say ye’re crazy.”

She just stood silent now, looking between us.

“Cadi here says ye’re a bee charmer, and she thinks ye might know summat about the sin eater.”

I could feel Bletsung Macleod’s gaze fix upon me then. Troubled, she searched my face. “How old be ye, Cadi?”

“Ten, ma’am.”

“Are ye ill? Do ye have a tumor or summat that’s drawing the life from ye?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then go on home and forget about the sin eater.”

“I can’t.”

Fagan stepped forward. “She has to talk to him, and so do I.”

“He won’t let ye near him.”

“I have to ask him summat.”

Her eyes flashed. “Questions! Sticking your nose in where it’s none of your business. And what for? So ye con carry more rumors like your folks? Well, I won’t help ye!” She started to turn away.

“I reckon if ye won’t help us, we’ll find the sin eater for ourselves,” Fagan said, chin jutting.

Bletsung Macleod turned to us again and leaned forward so that the sun shone on her face. She did look half crazed. “You leave him be! Stop hunting him like he was an animal with no feelings!” She looked square at me. “For the love of mercy, Cadi Forbes, he’s taken the sins of your granny on himself. Ye near got done in by a painter once, dinna ye? And he would have taken all your sins on him then, too. Can’t ye be thankful for him and leave the mon be?”

Covering my face with my hands, I sobbed. Fagan put his arms around me, holding me close like Iwan sometimes did. “Ye’ve no call to talk to her like that and make her cry!”

“You’re her friend, Fagan Kai. Make her see reason,” she said wearily and went back inside the house. Both of us heard the bar drop heavily into place.

Fagan tried to cheer me up on the long walk home, but some feelings have to ease on their own. You can’t talk them out or forget. Sometimes you can’t even make sense of them. You just gotta walk on through.

I was not of a mind for hunting with Fagan. I didn’t care to fish or pick flowers or do anything else but what my mind was determined to do. So when we come to Kai Creek, I told him I was going home.

As I walked through the woods, it came to me like a blinding flash of summer lightning: The only way Bletsung Macleod could’ve known about the painter was if the sin eater himself had told her.

Fagan went back with me three days running and then balked and went hunting. “She don’t know nothing about the sin eater.”

I followed after him for a while, hoping to change his mind, and then went back, taking up my vigil again behind the curtain of mountain laurel. I dozed off in the heavy moist warmth of the afternoon. When I woke, I saw Bletsung Macleod leaning out her window. I moved closer, wondering what she was doing talking to thin air.

Then I saw him. A man, sitting below her window.

Bletsung Macleod didn’t look down at him, and he sat low down, head bowed. Was it a hat he was wearing? No, it was a hood!

My heart quickened, and I slunk along the edge of dense greens, careful not to set anything moving.

Bletsung looked out toward the mountains as she spoke. Though I was able to get closer, I was too far off to hear anything. She spoke and then listened. I wished I could hear what they were saying to each other. They seemed in no hurry to end their conversation. No one had died, so it was for certain she wasn’t telling him he was needed at another funeral.

Heart thumping, I watched, intrigued by their camaraderie, wondering at it.