The Healing

Chapter 27





They soon found themselves paddling easily down the creek on a beautiful May morning, savoring the stolen sweetness of their escape. Every once in a while a nesting crane rose from the banks and took flight. Turtles basked in the sun, lined up on fallen limbs that reached out into the creek. As the canoe neared, a line of four or five plunked themselves into the water one after the other like ticks of a clock.

Granada had never been on the water before and she marveled at how the creek was a living thing with a will of its own, like an untamed horse challenging her to ride upon its back. At first she was unsure and jumpy and nearly made them spill, but Little Lord had proved a good teacher. Barnabas had constructed the craft out of a hollow log and made it small and light, easier for a child to handle, and the oars were made to fit Little Lord’s boy-size strokes. Within an hour, he had Granada paddling like a fur trapper.

At times the creek narrowed so that branches from the locusts and sycamores arched over the entire width of the creek, and when that happened, Granada dropped her paddle to the bottom of the canoe and wrapped her arms over her head, certain that moccasins were about to rain from the limbs and bed down in her hair.

Otherwise things couldn’t be better.

Granada looked back over her shoulder to check on Little Lord. His fair skin was already beginning to pink up in the intense morning sun. His pale blue eyes were bright. The boy grinned at her.

“You studying hard to be a witch like Polly?” he asked. “My book says witches use graveyard dirt and bat wings and salamander eyeballs and such to cast spells and turn princes into frogs. You know how to do any of that yet?”

It was true. Granada had read the book before he had. “Never seen her do nothing like that,” she admitted. “I figure it’s the way she looks at folks. Like she can open them up with her eyes and count their bones.”

“The evil eye!” he exclaimed. Granada could tell he had been listening to Aunt Sylvie as well as reading books.

“And the way she touches folks all over their bodies with them hot hands of hers,” she said. “And she whispers things in their ear.”

“Incantations,” he said.

“I reckon,” she said noncommittally. She thought of the night in the forest when Polly dug the hole. And the time outside the hospital when Polly sang the song and her body seemed to become young again. She remembered the warming in her own chest when Polly touched her. Was that magic? Was that the hoodoo Aunt Sylvie talked about?

“What else she do?”

“She crazy,” Granada said. “She say varmints, jaybirds, and such talk to her. She say they always telling her what to do.”

Little Lord laughed with delight, encouraging Granada to say more.

“And, Little Lord!” she exclaimed, forgetting her paddling and swiveling her body to look him in the face. “She goes around naming things! Up and down creation, she puts a new name on everything she sees. Things I never knew had no name. She showed me something she calls a headache tree. And toothache bark. Rattlesnake weed. A fever bush. Polly say folks don’t really see something until somebody names it. But soon as it got a name on it, they say, ‘Sure, I know what that is! I seen it all my life!’ She says to name something is to remember it down deep, where the roots go.”

She turned back around, shifted her paddle to the other side of the canoe, and dug deep into the water. “Yep,” she sighed, feeling old and wise, “she says a long time ago, her people used to be the namers of the world. I reckon she figures Adam who named all them critters was the first of her people. She says for the people to be free, they need to lay a claim to naming things again. And a person ought to start with his own self.”

Granada surprised herself at how effortlessly Polly’s words were flowing out of her mouth, almost like she believed them herself. She couldn’t help but continue. “And she says that God ain’t the one give the white man everything he got a hold of.”

“Where it come from then?”

“She says it comes from the slave woman’s bagina.”

“Bagina? What’s that?”

Granada shrugged. “I don’t know. Every time I ask she hoots and hollers at me and pops up her skirts real high. Laughs her fool head off. I told you she was crazy.”

Little Lord giggled again. It made Granada giddy to tell him everything. He was the only one who acted like he didn’t much mind what it was she came out with, whether he understood it or not. He just liked listening to her.

She had no sooner had these thoughts than Little Lord asked, “So how will you make my momma well?”

Granada had clean forgotten! There was something that Little Lord was listening for after all. She said the only thing she could think of that for sure wouldn’t do any harm. “I reckon I’ll feed her some mutton and port wine and whisper in her ear.”

“You reckon that works on a white person?”

“Course it does!” she snapped. Granada pulled hard on her paddle. Did he think their insides were so different?

The sun had begun its afternoon descent when the creek opened up into an immense bayou where the water stood dark and still and bottomless. Giant cypress and tupelo gum rose imposingly out of the depths, dropping curtains of moss from their branches. The children paddled without speaking into this gloomy maze of trees and water.

The long hush was broken when a sudden and terrible roar rose up. Granada’s heart seized in her chest. The sound had been as fierce as the bellowing of a bull.

“That was a gator,” Little Lord said in a dry whisper. “A big one.”

What frightened Granada the most was that Little Lord felt the need to whisper. Was it that close?

“Smell that?” he asked.

A slight breeze wafted through the swamp and she caught a sweet and sickly scent.

“Gator wallow,” Little Lord said before Granada could answer. “Barnabas says it’s the only thing smells like that.”

“What if he chunks us in the creek?” Granada gasped. “Nobody learned me how to swim.”

“Just hold on to the canoe,” he said. “Hey! Maybe we get a gator that got no more teeth than Silas.” He made an attempt at laughing, but it sounded more like a strangled cough.

At last they found an outlet from the bayou, a small stream flowing between two overgrown banks. For a while the channel coiled snakelike but then it started to unravel, branching off into a confusion of choices. They wound around so much that the sun was never in the same place. In their faces, behind them, first to their left and then to their right.

“Little Lord, you reckon you know where we are?”

Little Lord didn’t answer.

There was no current at all now and the water stood shallow and stagnant. They had to work their oars mightily. At times the creek was so narrowed by grass and cane and overhung with trees, it looked to Granada like they were moving atop solid land. Sometimes the channel gave out completely and they had to backtrack.

The late-afternoon sun was blazing hot, and Granada shook sweat off her face like she had stepped from a rain shower. The salt stung her eyes and blurred her vision. While she was lifting her shoulder to wipe her face, she thought she saw some creature scamper beyond the reeds along the shore, but by the time she looked, it had disappeared into the overgrowth.

It was while she strained to detect any movement at all that she heard the shriek. Both Little Lord and Granada recognized the sound.

“Daniel Webster!” the children shouted simultaneously.

Sure enough he emerged from a patch of mutton cane and began leaping up and down near the water, chittering wildly.

Little Lord nosed the boat toward the bank, guiding them under a dense overreach of branches. As they neared the shore where Daniel Webster waited, Little Lord reached up to sweep aside a screen of moss. What appeared to be a broken limb fell to the bottom of the canoe.

Little Lord screamed when he saw the moccasin slithering toward Granada. The panicked girl threw one leg over the side and then another, upsetting the canoe and throwing the two of them, along with the snake, into the murky creek.

Granada splashed furiously, sure that she would drown. Then her feet touched the muddy bottom. The creek was only knee deep.

She wiped the water from her eyes and saw the canoe floating empty down the channel. Little Lord was a few feet upstream wading through the cane toward Daniel Webster. And then she saw the snake swimming toward Little Lord.

Before she could scream, Daniel Webster leaped into the water, brandishing some kind of cudgel in his paw. Granada couldn’t believe her eyes. He was charging the snake with a heavy stick. After he landed two blows, the snake glided away.

Granada joined with Little Lord in cheering the monkey, laughing with relief. She had totally misjudged Daniel Webster and now wanted to hug his neck.

She started toward the shore only to have the deep mud of the creek suck a shoe right off her foot. As she felt around for the lost brogan, she heard the pitiful whine of a child. Granada looked up to see that now it was Little Lord who held Daniel Webster’s stick, furiously pounding the ground around his feet. And then the scream again. Little Lord dropped the stick and the wailing monkey jumped into his arms.

“Hurry up, Granada!” he shouted, red-faced, cradling the monkey in his arms. “Daniel Webster’s been bit. You got to save him.”

His words seemed to turn the water into molasses and the mud to quicksand. How could she tell Little Lord she didn’t know the first thing about snakebites? That she had never healed anybody of anything?

Granada slogged up on the shore, her dress heavy and clinging to her legs. She began to tremble, not sure if it was from the chill breeze off the water or the expression of frightened expectation on Little Lord’s face. In his eyes was such a look of awful wanting Granada decided that if she didn’t know what to do, she would have to make it up. She began like she had seen Polly begin, by taking charge.

“Let’s find a place to lay him down,” she said, trying to control the quiver in her voice.

Granada led Little Lord to an open place under a locust tree. She knelt and raked up a soft mound of leaf mold. “Now put his head down here like it was a pillow and I’ll take a good look at him.”

As Little Lord began to lower Daniel Webster to the ground, Granada tried to think of what Polly would do. She decided to begin by looking into his eyes and then whispering into his ear.

But the monkey never made it to his bed. Shaking violently, he lurched from Little Lord’s embrace onto the ground, where he staggered drunkenly on all fours.

Daniel Webster’s left leg was impossibly swollen. Halfway down from his knee was the double-fang mark, red and raw.

“Do something, Granada!” the boy cried.

Granada could no longer look at him. “Polly ain’t learned me nothing, Little Lord,” she confessed, her voice small. She threw a hand to her face, not wanting Little Lord to see. “Ain’t nothing I know to do.”

Daniel Webster was stumbling erratically, veering from side to side for a short distance. Then he would stop, weave a few moments on his feet, and begin again.

Granada knew what the monkey was doing. He was trying to make his way into the deepest woods, like animals do when they are ready to die. She had never thought of Daniel Webster as an animal before. He had always been so humanlike. Unlike her, he even had a last name and ate at the master’s table. He was allowed to touch the mistress anytime he wanted. But now he was dragging himself off to die like the poor beast he was.

Granada turned to Little Lord, wondering how badly he hated her now. Though his face was wet with tears, his fists were clenched and his jaw locked. She had the sense he was readying himself to do something required of a man.

Granada watched as he reached into his pocket and retrieved his grandfather’s derringer. He held it in his little-boy palm, gazing at it for a moment like he was disappointed to have found it. Then he gripped the gun firmly, his finger on the trigger.

Several yards away Daniel Webster moved slowly, pulling himself along by his arms. His legs dragged uselessly behind him.

Without speaking, Little Lord walked toward the dying pet, his steps weighty.

“Little Lord!” Granada gasped.

He stood over the animal, his arm stiff by his side, the gun pointing at the ground. Daniel Webster moved forward a few inches, and Little Lord took another step. Finally Little Lord reached down to stroke the monkey’s head. Daniel Webster turned his eyes toward the boy to see who had touched him, and, as if knowing what was about to happen, raised his eyebrows in expectation, a forgiving grin on his face.

Little Lord raised the silver barrel to the suffering animal’s head. The boy’s sobs were so intense they lodged in Granada’s own chest, but she kept her eyes open for him. She would bear the memory for Little Lord.

When he pulled the trigger on the old derringer, the dead dry click echoed through the woods. The gun’s age or perhaps the creek water had saved Daniel Webster from a quick, easy death. The boy flung the pistol into the bramble and then stood there with his arms useless at his sides, lost and alone.

“Little Lord,” Granada said.

The boy’s frail body seemed to collapse in on itself. His shoulders caved and his back slumped.

“Little Lord,” she said again, her voice breaking.

This time he heard. He ran to her and threw his arms around the girl, nearly unbalancing her. He continued to clutch her in a ferocious embrace, sobbing violently into her chest.

They remained locked in each other’s arms for a long while, until Daniel Webster had dragged himself from sight and his cries died out in the deep Delta woods. In the leftover glow of the setting sun, as they fiercely held on to one another, Granada thought back to the day Mistress Amanda had gripped her hand so tightly, and recalled how at that moment she understood, in the deepest parts of her, the place where she belonged. She felt that way now.

• • •

The children sat shivering under the locust tree as a light breeze from the creek carried the lush scent of wild blooms. They were wet and hungry. Little Lord’s hunting pouch was empty of all the food stolen from Aunt Sylvie’s kitchen, and they had not even been able to build a fire to warm their clothes or to keep the wild animals away.

In the distance they heard the scream of a panther, and they moved even closer. Granada could tell that Little Lord was thinking of Daniel Webster somewhere out there alone. Soon, she imagined, there would be wolf packs prowling through the woods. She had often heard their howls from the plantation. Once during broad daylight she had seen a bear snatch up a squealing hog and tuck it up under his arm and carry it off like a sack of feed. Maybe the bears would not be hungry for children tonight, not with all the spring berries.

She sighed wearily. “Little Lord, I ain’t getting back in that boat, even if we can find it. I’ll take the roving beasts of the woods over them tree snakes and rumbling gators.”

Little Lord said it didn’t matter really. He was so turned around he didn’t know the way anymore. He’d got them good and lost. Walking was as good as paddling, which was as good as sitting, he reckoned. He was farther away from his mother than ever.

Dark was coming fast to the forest, and the air already vibrated with the shrilling of night insects. In the dimming light, they walked deeper into the woods, hand in hand, looking for a place to sleep. They found a giant oak with thick mounds of moss spread between its sprawling roots and, without speaking, settled together onto a soft green bed. Neither resisted the sleep that beckoned.

Granada’s dreaming seemed to take up where it had left off that morning. She was standing again at the entrance to the forest tunnel. Polly was there, but she was no longer shoving the girl and Granada felt no fear. The voices calling her into the darkness were not as menacing. Tonight they were chanting, and Granada recognized the words as the same Polly had sung outside the hospital cabin. It was the song Polly’s mother had taught her. As she had that night, Granada was both lifted and drawn by the words.

After a time, the words blended into a single sound and Granada knew it was her name they were calling, but one she had never heard before. She strained to make it out, but the voices grew faint.

Granada woke and from where she lay she could see the night sky through a break in the bowering branches. For a moment she thought she might still be in the dream.

Again she tried to recall the name the voices had intoned, but could not. She remembered only the beautiful music. No longer tired, her mind hummed and her heart ached with a knowing she could not name. The dreaming had aroused within her a far-flung sadness that would not form itself into pictures or words. She found herself wanting to wake Little Lord and tell him about the dream, but what would she say?

She raised herself on her elbow and studied the boy. He was lying on his side facing away from her. A small square of pale moonlight framed him, and she could detect the soft rising and falling of his shoulder.

Granada had never once seen the mistress embrace Little Lord, but she had often watched the child of a field worker or yard servant as he slept serenely in his mother’s arms, the two, mother and child, forming one. What it must be like to hold and be held so tightly, to belong so completely to another, that one could never be hurt or lost.

The hollow place below her throat filled with the distant longing once more, a vague memory of touch and caress.

She conformed her shape to his, like a spoon, and carefully draped her arm over his chest. As she drifted off to sleep, she could feel his heart beat secretly into her palm, as if she had been entrusted with the most fragile of things.

• • •

The next morning Granada was startled awake by a sharp poke at her back. Looking up into the gray-lit sky she saw a dark, scowling face peering down at her. Granada didn’t move at once, her mind not willing to accept what she saw. But there was no denying it, there she was, as big as life, standing bright against the early dimness. For a moment she forgot to be ashamed of her closeness to the boy.

“Polly! How you find us?” Granada asked, scrambling to her feet and waking Little Lord.

“Weren’t hard. Monkey whispered in my ear.” Then Polly laughed scornfully. She pointed her snake stick toward the rising sun. “The house is just over thataway. Took y’all all day to get out of spitting distance.”

They had been going around in circles! Granada didn’t know whether to feel shamed or relieved, but when the hunger suddenly gripped her belly, relief won out.

Little Lord was lying on the ground, gazing up at Polly like she had stepped out of one of his fairy tales. His dirty, sunburned face was still streaked with tears, and again Granada felt a consuming tenderness for him.

“What you staring at, boy?” Polly fussed, and then studied him for a moment. “Looks like you done lost your best friend.”

Granada was about to tell her that he didn’t need reminding of what he had lost, when she heard a familiar screech followed by a burst of excited chattering.

Limping around a clump of sweet gums came Daniel Webster, bandaged and frail but alive, hurrying the best he could toward Little Lord’s extended arms.