My ID was sufficient to get me onto the compound of God’s Cloud of Glory Church and I turned off the C10’s lights as the truck crawled forward. Holding my flash out the driver’s window I searched into the shadows on either side of the road, looking for fresh shoots of the vampire tree. It was too dark to make out anything in the gloom of a cloudy dawn, in the darkness beneath the scrub pressing up against the twelve-foot-tall fence that surrounded the church grounds.
Dissatisfied with my perusal, but unwilling to abandon the heated air and search on foot, I rolled the window back up, put the lights back on, and took the most direct route to the Nicholson house. The fact that the most direct route bypassed the vampire tree was just happenstance. Mostly. It was still there. Still creepy.
I parked the old Chevy beneath the trees in front of the three-story structure that was home to my extended family: my father, my mama, her two sister-wives, and all the assorted sibs and half sibs. Before I could get out of the truck, the door was yanked open and Mud, or Mindy as the rest of the family called her, threw herself inside and hugged me so hard I thought I might break in two. “I missed you’un,” she mumbled into my coat. Before I could respond, she reared back and said, “You’un stink like fire. Not like a campfire, but like garbage burning.”
I dropped off the seat, to the ground, and said, “I was at a house fire. Part of my job.”
She narrowed her eyes and studied me like she might an unfamiliar beetle she found eating basil in the greenhouse. “Did somebody try to burn a family out? Was they witches?” Her voice dropped. “Did they burn her at the stake?”
“No one got burned. No stake. All house fires stink really bad. And in the real human world, witches don’t get burned at the stake.”
Mud made a sound of disagreement that was remarkably like Mama’s and took my hand, pulling me up the steps to the porch. “Breakfast is on. You’un comin’ to church with us this morning?”
“No. Just breakfast and then home.”
“You’un fallin’ away? The mamas say you’un’s fallin’ away and driftin’ into sin.”
“I have a job. And no, I’m not falling into sin. But I don’t worship at God’s Cloud anymore.”
“You’un going to church somewheres else? ’Cause if’n you ain’t going to church then you’un’s falling into sin. Sam said so.”
“Did he now?” Sam was my older full sib and a bit of a worrywart. He also didn’t always know when to keep his big mouth shut. “I’ll speak to Sam. Let him know I’m not falling into evil and damnation.” Except I’d killed two men . . . so maybe I was.
Mud shoved open the door to the house and dragged me inside. The roar of voices hit me in the face like a huge fluffy pillow, warm and soft and smothering. I hung my winter coat on the wall tree, smelling bacon and waffles and French toast and coffee as I followed Mud into the kitchen, where she pushed me onto a bench and brought me a cup of steaming tea. “Mama, Nell worked all night putting out a fire and she needs to sleep so don’t nobody be giving her no coffee. It’ll keep her awake.”
Instantly I was bombarded with questions from the young’uns about fires and the exciting life of a firefighter and when did they start letting some puny woman fight fires. And then I had to explain about not being a firefighter, but that women could do any job a man could except produce sperm to father children.
At that point I was called down by Mama Grace, Daddy’s third and youngest wife, who said, “Nell Nicholson Ingram, I know you’un ain’t been gone so long as to have forgotten what conversation is and is not appropriate for the breakfast table. Hush you’un’s mouth.”
Mawmaw was coming in the front door and heard the final part of the conversation. “Let the girl talk,” she said. “That’s biology, and biology is schoolin’.”
“Thanks, Mawmaw,” I said.
“Though at this age,” she added, as she fell on the bench beside me, “I’m of a mind to say something more. Coffee, please, Cora,” she said, interrupting herself. Staring around the table at the females present, she continued, “While menfolk are handy to have around to do the heavy lifting, any smart woman can figure out how to do things on her own if necessary. And Nell has a point about the role of fathering children.”
I sat still and listened as the young teenagers at the table dove into an argument about women’s rights and women’s role in the family, politics, business, and the world in general. The boys started demonstrating muscles and their sisters told them to act like adults and then suddenly Mawmaw was quoting Archimedes about using a lever to move the world. Which digressed to Archimedes running around naked in public when he discovered new mathematic principles. And then the young’uns in the main room started singing the alphabet song, followed by a song about Moses in the Nile, followed by a song about numbers that I had never heard before. I didn’t even bother asking Mawmaw about her great nephew, Hamilton the FBI jerk.
I let it all wash through me, absorbing it and remembering the good things that came from growing up in God’s Cloud. As awful as some parts had been, growing up a Nicholson had not all been bad.
Mama plunked a plate in front of me stacked with French toast and a half dozen strips of maple-cured bacon. Melted butter ran down the yeasty, egg-soaked and drenched, French-style bread, mixing with blueberry honey. My mouth watered and my throat made some sound of amazement and Mama said, “Eat. We’ll bless it when your’n daddy gets here.” Then she upended a cup of her homemade whipped cream on top of the fried toast and I dug in. Oh yeah. Being a Nicholson was some kind of wonderful when it came to eating.
I was mostly done, groaning with the pain of a too-full stomach, yet still scraping my spoon across the plate to get the final dregs of deliciousness off it, when there was the slightest hint of change in the ambient noise. In a flash, the teens scattered, some outside to chores, others up the stairs. Mama Grace, soft and rounded, as if her body had been lined with down-fill, set a pot of stinky herbal tea at the head of the table and herded all the littlest young’uns up the stairs too. My own mama, Mama Cora, dished up a plate of waffles and set them beside the herbal tea. She removed my plate and poured me more China black tea. Her lips were tight. Her face was pinched. Something was up.
And then I heard the faint thunking. Without even turning around, I knew. I knew why I had been asked to breakfast. I knew why everyone had gone running. They had set me up. I glared over the rim of my cup at Mama and she ducked her head, not meeting my eyes.