CHAPTER 25
BIRDIE
Birdie was suspicious of Lila at first. Her own people had lived in Henbane since the 1800s, and after a while you forgot that your family was ever from anyplace else, that a hundred-odd years ago they were from Kentucky, and they were the new folks in town.
When Lila came, there weren’t many new folks, nothing to bring them in—certainly not jobs. Every once in a while retirees would show up, looking to live out their golden years in the Ozarks, but most of them figured out pretty quick that it was nothing like the brochures. They all seemed confused not to be welcomed with open arms, but it took time to let people in. Sometimes it took generations. There were people in Henbane who’d never seen a Negro or an Oriental. Back when she was little, before Birdie had seen anyone much different from herself, her uncle came home from a street fair in Arkansas and talked about seeing a real live black man on the Ferris wheel. Birdie and the other kids likened it to seeing the bogeyman. When Lila showed up in town, supposedly from Iowa, folks saw right away that she wasn’t any ordinary midwestern girl. Something about her looked exotic, that thick black hair and those unusual pale green eyes and what looked like more than a tan. It had folks guessing, was she one of those half-breeds? Part Indian? Arab? Some sort of Mexican? That was before they started in on the witch talk and worse. She was different; people gossiped. Birdie was one of them, and she wasn’t shy to admit it.
She’d heard Carl had been flirting with the new girl over at the restaurant, had seen him driving her over to his house, and she didn’t know what to think. Boys’ll be boys, for one—they see something pretty, they go on point. She didn’t guess it was more than that. She never thought a Dane would up and marry an outsider. And she sure as heck didn’t want the girl living right down the road from her.
Rumors had started up, witchcraft and all that. You only had to look at the girl to imagine something supernatural at work, like a spell to make herself irresistible. Hogwash, mostly, but Birdie had no plans of getting anywhere near her until Carl called and said she was in a bad way and needed doctoring. Birdie had never turned down a Dane’s request for help, and even though she wasn’t a real doctor and hadn’t taken any kind of oath to help people, she loaded her supplies in the truck and went on over. She wasn’t trying to be saintly. Part of it was plain old curiosity, not unlike her uncle staring at the Negro on the Ferris wheel.
Carl told her that Lila had been attacked, but he didn’t say who had done the attacking. Birdie shooed him out of the room while she examined the girl, who lay there limp as a flour sack. Though her bruises weren’t fresh, it was hard to say how old they were. Once Birdie got under her clothes, she saw a bigger problem. The bite on Lila’s breast—it had to be human, though that was a hard fact to swallow—hadn’t been cleaned up right. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but it could get worse without care. Birdie set to work mixing a poultice of tobacco and mullein leaves and called her cousin for antibiotics. For nearly a week she tended to Lila, applying fresh poultices and doling out pills. Whenever Carl came in to see Lila, Birdie made sure she was covered up. As the swelling and redness eased, she could see more clearly the marks on Lila’s breast, the individual lines and points, and though she knew plenty of people with crooked teeth like the ones that had made those marks, she immediately thought of Crete. Some while later, when she heard that Joe Bill Sump had disappeared around the time she was called to treat Lila, she wondered if he’d been the attacker. Then she remembered he was missing teeth up front and couldn’t have been the one who had left the mark.
Birdie was a bit perturbed, seeing Lila in Althea Dane’s bed while Althea herself was stuck in a nursing home. Even when Althea’s health started to decline, she was a good neighbor. She was cordial, kept her distance, and brought pies at all the right times. Birdie and her husband, Sy, used to make music with Althea and Earl back in the days when their kids were small. Sy played dulcimer and taught Birdie, though she never got to be as good as him.
A couple weeks after Lila recovered, she came knocking at Birdie’s door just like an ill-mannered traveling salesman. Birdie opened the door but stood in the crack so Lila couldn’t see inside.
“I brought something for you,” Lila said. “Carl said you like squirrel.”
Birdie looked at the foil-covered plate the girl carried, Althea’s china pattern peeking out. Lila didn’t look like somebody who could cook good squirrel, though Birdie had no choice but to let her in, since she’d brought something.
“They’re dumplings,” Lila said, carefully setting them down on the kitchen table. “My grandmother’s recipe. Except for the squirrel.” She smiled hesitantly.
“Much obliged,” Birdie said, walking back toward the front door.
“I can’t thank you enough,” Lila said, “for helping me. I truly appreciate it.” Her eyes were all watery, and Birdie hoped she wouldn’t bring up the unspoken confidences between patient and healer. Birdie hadn’t said anything to anyone about the bite and had no desire to talk about it with Lila, either. Just then the girl’s eyes caught on something behind Birdie, and her face lit up.
“I’ve never seen an instrument quite like that,” she said.
Birdie moved out of the way so Lila could get a better look. “It’s a dulcimer,” she said. “My husband’s.”
“I play piano,” Lila said. “Played. Not in a long time. I was sort of terrible.”
Birdie didn’t offer to let her hold the dulcimer. “It’s nothing like a piano,” she said. “You set it in your lap and pluck it. He had a hammered one, too, you play with the little mallets, but I passed that one on to my oldest boy.”
“Maybe you could show me how it works sometime. I’d love to hear it.”
“I’m no good,” Birdie said, showing her out the door. She felt a little guilty after the girl left. She’d brought an offering of thanks, after all, and Birdie had been less than neighborly. Alone in the kitchen, she peeled back the foil and examined the dumplings. She thought about scraping them into the dog dish outside the back door, but she lifted the plate and sniffed first, and they smelled decent. She licked one, tasted butter, and took a bite. It was better than any regular dumpling. Better than her dumplings. Over the next few days, she ate them all, wondering how that strange girl had performed such a miracle with squirrel.