VII

“Lord, help me through this day. Give me strength. Sustain me. Give me wisdom. Keep my family from harm. Amen.”

Emmett knelt ahead of the post. His hands held the nearly-forgotten leather of his father’s whip. The girl lay crying in the grass, her hands tied while Hosea tried to comfort her.

“It could’ve been far worse,” Emmett heard him say. “You could be dead right now. You could—”

“It’s time.” Emmett stood, and transferred the whip to his right hand. “Zella, stand. Hosea, tie her hands around the post, then step back. Matthew, go stand with Hosea.” He took seven steps from the post, and readied himself. “Evie, you don’t need to watch this.”

His daughter didn’t move.

Hosea had told him the story just a few minutes prior. He had taken Lee for a trot around the property—just down to the road and back. When they turned for the barn he spotted Eveline entering the woods, with Zella not far behind. His heart had sunk, and he rushed to put Lee with his mother while he searched for the girls.

When he got to the edge of the property he found no sign of the two. Just as he was about to inform Emmett, he saw the girls running. Eveline trailed Zella by only a few feet, but he saw the hunger in her step. He saw the essence of a hunt, the gallop in her stride and the panic in Zella’s.

He saw Eveline move faster than he’d ever seen her. She picked up a rock and hucked it at the other girl. Zella ran into a tree and collapsed. It was instinct that forced Hosea to move, not love or retaliation. He described it as “God’s orders.”

Hosea tore through the thicket and picked up a fallen log. As Eveline raised her knife Hosea swung, his ram striking the girl in the chest and knocking her back. She heaved, rolling over, and for the first time Hosea heard Zella screaming.

“It’s not Eveline! It’s not her! It’s not her!” she yelled, clambering up from the forest floor. She gripped Hosea’s arm, nails digging into his skin and cowered behind him. His shirt was soaked in her blood. “It’s not Eveline!”

“I understand!” Hosea yelled back. Emmett had heard those words echo off the hills. He pushed Zella away toward the farm and stood over Eveline, kicking the blade away and holding his log high, ready to bring it down. Eveline moaned and turned over, rubbing her chest. The color had come back to her pale skin as she slowly worked her eyes open.

“What happened?” she asked. Hosea heard Zella open her mouth, but had shut her up with a look. He knelt down next to Eveline and offered a hand instead. Together, the three of them walked to the barn, where Hosea had told his side of the story.

“Let me do it,” Matthew said. His hand was extended, shaking, but ready for the whip. Already prepared to clench a fist around it. “I want to do it.”

“No,” Emmett said.

“It’s my sister. Let me do it.”

Emmett turned to his son and narrowed his face. Matthew fell silent, and backed away to his position next to Hosea.

Emmett remembered whenever his father had to discipline the hands he always had justification. He had always given them a reason. As a boy he had never understood why, but now, standing behind one of his own, he felt it was only just.

“Zella,” Emmett started. “There will be no more running off. Any privileges we may have granted you will now be revoked, and for disobedience and conduct unbefitting a contributor of this farm you will receive ten lashes.”

He hesitated. “Is there anything you would care to amend?”

Zella remained silent.

He drew his arm back, up, and brought it down again. He heard the crack from the leather and jumped, staring at the red stripe that appeared against Zella’s dark back. He watched the trickle of blood flow down her side as she whimpered.

“Master Emmett,” Hosea called. “I would very much like to get this over with.”

Emmett raised his hand again, and out of the corner of his eye saw Matthew strike his eldest hand. He brought the whip down once more, this time without a crack, but watched as Zella endured the same result with a yelp.

He whipped her. Each time sapping a little more of his own strength. His gut churned with each new streak drawn across Zella’s back. By the tenth lashing he could hardly find it in himself to lift his arm, but he did anyway. He brought it down again. Hard. Listening for the final crack against the chirping in the trees, and the last shriek from the girl in front of him.

He dropped the whip and his head, pulled his knife from his belt, and stepped up to cut the girl loose. Hosea stepped forward and stuck out a hand to stop him, took the knife from Emmett’s quivering grip, and approached himself. He whispered to the girl, her body shuddering with each breath. Her back glinted red in the afternoon light, bright enough to cast a ray against Matthew’s smile. Emmett felt himself shiver at the sight.

He watched Hosea wrap the girl in his arms and drag her back to their quarters. Matthew raised an arm in complaint, but Emmett waved him off. He let the elderly man take his charge to her bed, and watched as he stumbled back.

“Let’s get this over with,” Hosea said.

“If you hadn’t struck my sister—”

“They might both be dead,” Hosea interrupted.

Matthew grasped the whip from the ground. “You just earned yourself another lashing.”

“No,” Emmett interrupted. “Tensions are high, let’s not make this worse than it has to be.”

“Agreed,” Hosea said. He stripped himself of his blood-stained shirt, casting it into the dirt and tying his own rope around the pole. He slipped his wrists into the knot, and pulled it tight with his teeth. His legs straight, his back pulled tight, he waited for his punishment.

Emmett approached from the front. “Tell me again what you saw.”

Hosea loosened. “I already told you. The girls were in the woods, Lady Eveline had a knife and was on top of Zella, ready to kill.”

The crack of the whip shot through the farm and Hosea flinched.

“Matthew!” Emmett barked.

“No! Master Emmett. Let the boy do it, he needs to learn one day, as you did.”

He looked to his son, who smiled once again. He raised his hand and before Emmett could call for him to stop, the whip came down across Hosea. He winced again, but that was all.

“Hosea, this can all stop if you tell me what happened,” Emmett said. His voice came out more pleading than he’d intended. He looked to his daughter, who was watching with wet, strained eyes.

“Master Emmett, I’m telling you what I saw. What I saw was one poor white girl holding a knife to another poor black girl. I can’t tell you more than that.”

Crack.

“Yes you can.” Emmett knelt and looked up into Hosea’s face. For the first time he noticed the lines that deepened his cheeks. Rivers where years of hard labor had taken their toll. His skin was pulled tight around his eyes and the deep brown echoed the torture he was enduring, but his lips remained taut. “I know you’re keeping something from me.”

Crack.

“Sir, I don’t keep nothing from you.”

Crack.

“You kept Mal from me.”

Crack.

“That wasn’t m—”

Crack.

“—Ah!” he cried out. Brief, and stifled. Enough for Emmett to hear, but for Matthew to continue.

“Hosea, what aren’t you telling me?”

Hosea met his eyes, and shifted away. He pulled his arms tight to strengthen his back as another lashing came down on him.

“All those stories I tell your kin, they’re all true,” he said. “I know you stopped believing them when you grew, but I tell you I know. When I saw Eveline, it wasn’t the Lady Eveline I knew. There was something else in her eyes, sir. Something darker. Her skin wasn’t hers. The way she held that blade, it wasn’t hers. When I hit her with that branch I saw her change. Her skin, sir. It changed.”

“How do you mean?”

“She was pale, sir. Paler than pale.”

Crack.

“Ah! Goddamn!”

“Hosea, it’s all a story.”

“Sir, it ain’t.”

Crack.

Emmett launched to his feet and drew his knife. He cut Hosea loose and wrapped an arm around his old hand.

Crack.

“Ah!” Emmett yelped. He looked to his stinging arm and watched the beads form. The tear in his shirt began to soak with blood and Hosea fell to his knees. Emmett turned on Matthew, who raised his hands and dropped the weapon.

“I told him he gained one more.”

Emmett faced off with his son, his fists clenched and his jaw tight. He jerked a finger toward Eveline. “Take your sister inside, boy. Leave everything there, I’ll deal with you when I’m back.” He bent down to grab Hosea’s thin arm, hoisted the old man over his shoulder, and dragged him down the road to his quarters as he heard his children shuffle off.

Emmett kicked on the door as Hosea slipped from his grasp. He felt the wrinkled hand shove him back as he watched the black man stand straight and step into the shack.

“I’ve yet to hear the truth from you,” Emmett said.

Hosea waved him off, and Emmett stepped through the doorway. He laid a hand on Hosea’s shoulder, which he tried to shrug off. Emmett pushed him to the bed, flinching as it creaked under his weight.

He understood the silence. Clyde was holding Zella down atop her bed, while Wiley held a wet rag to her back. All three were watching. Emmett realized he hadn’t stepped foot in their home since his father had caught him sneaking books to Hosea, nearly three decades prior.

“Do you need us, sir?” Wiley’s voice trembled. His small frame shivered as Zella squirmed under him.

“No, he don’t,” Hosea responded. His eyes remained on Emmett, fixed to his face. “And he was just leaving.”

“Zella, one more time, what happened out there?” Emmett asked. “You answer that, and I’ll leave these boys here to patch you up.”

She turned away, and as Clyde opened his mouth Emmett heard the girl whisper something. His muscles tensed in the rays of sunlight streaking through the slits in the wall, but he remained silent.

“Fine.” He turned back to Hosea, still staring at him. “I’ve known you nearly all my life, I know when you’re lying to me. You don’t often, and I can respect that, but I still know.”

“I ain’t never—”

“What about Malachi?”

Hosea stopped. His jaw tightened as he clenched his teeth. A heavy breeze blew the door to their shack back and forth, slamming it into the wall. Wiley jumped.

“I know you’re not telling me something,” Emmett said. “And I know Zella’s keeping something too.”

“Sir, there wasn’t nothin’ about Mal—”

“He avoided too many incidents. At the wrong place at the right time too many times, Hosea. You can’t tell me he didn’t kill Mr. Barnes. I watched him come back that night, slip back onto the farm. I know it was him, too big to be anyone else.”

“Mal wasn’t no murderer.”

“No? Just another black man sneaking off for, what, a stroll through the woods? A fat slab of beef? A roll in the hay?”

“Mal never killed nobody, Emmett.”

“I kept my mouth shut because I knew what my daddy would’ve done to him if he suspected. He would have cut Malachi’s hands from his body and made him plow the fields with his teeth. I knew what he was, maybe I should have let him, but I’m trying to be better. I’m trying real hard, Hosea. But by God, if you don’t tell me what you know about my daughter I will cut your hands and make you plow that damn field with your teeth until the day you shrivel.”

Clyde stood from his kneel, but before he could take a step Hosea held out a hand, stopping him. Emmett laid his hand on the pistol attached to his hip, and eyed the black man carefully. As Hosea began to speak, he never varied his attention.

“I’m going to tell you this, and you’re not going to cut my hands off. If you believe me, fine. If you don't, that's all right. Either way, once this is done, we forget that everything that’s happened when we stepped through that doorway ever happened. Emmett, we forget it all. Is that a deal?”

“Done,” Emmett said. His grip loosened.

“You know I been telling your children about the rules I learned. We all know them, Emmett. We all learn them young, from somebody. Even your daddy, I’m sure. I tell them don’t go out at night, don’t listen to the voices, and if you see a dead thing to start running. I take it you and your son didn’t quite do that, did you?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Something happened when you boys found Mr. Hardy Fletcher, didn’t it? I wasn’t there, I don’t know what it could have been, and by the Lord I’m glad I didn’t have to see that sight that your boy did. Matthew was a fine young man, but he’s changing.

“Emmett, that thing your girl found in the woods, I didn’t want to touch it. I mean, I did, just like the rest of you, but I didn’t know why. That want scared me. The urge felt… I only held it because you told me to, but never directly. I wrapped a cloth around it, I couldn’t let it touch my skin. I’ve seen it before, or something similar. At first I didn’t think it could be the same thing, and maybe I still believe that, but it damn sure looks like it.”

“Hosea, these are ghost stories,” Emmett said, though he shifted his weight uneasily between his feet. “We tell them to scare each other. Scare the children. Right now my family is good and scared. We can stop.”

“Remember when I told you the rules? You were real young, younger than Master Lee I reckon. Didn’t even have your first horse yet if I remember right. Perhaps too young. Mal was there, he tried to warn me off, told me that your father would whip my backside to ribbons if he ever found out, and he was right. That man had a steel fist.

“I told you the rules, and you followed them. Too well. When your daddy tried to take you into the woods you told him no, so he beat us both. What I told you that I’ve never told nobody else is what happened to me. Do you remember?”

“I remember you telling me a tale. Something about being lured out there, about a woman in all black who kept waving you forward.”

Emmett noticed Zella stiffen at the mention of the woman.

“She called my name. Over and over again, and told me freedom was just across the line. When was this? Before I came here. Forty sowings ago, I reckon. She would stick up a finger from within her dress and she would wave me forward with it. She would walk backwards, away from me, and every time she disappeared behind a tree I would find one of those charms. Then she would reappear, further along, calling my name again.

“Only, when she did, it sounded like she was next to me. She might be as far away as your bed is right now from where we are, but her voice was in my head. She waved and called, but she was distant and immediate at the same time. I did not understand it. It… intrigued me. I was curious.

“It wasn’t until that Indian found me that I broke from the trance. And that’s what I see it as now: a trance. I remember hearing hooves. They were in the far reaches of my mind, buried beneath this woman’s call. She was so vivid, her hair tangled like vines in front of her face. I remember seeing her chin, it was pointed, and one eye that grew unnaturally wider the further along I went. Her ankles shone through the bottom of her dress, it was torn below her knees, and they were so pale. Think snow, but discolored as if the horses had peed in it, then mixed it. And she was hunched, like her spine curved around.

“Then I felt a hand on my back and someone had lifted me onto a horse. I tried to claw away, but someone had hit me. Right in the chest. I thought my heart had stopped, but I was just coming back. It took until we got to his village for me to fully realize what had happened.”

“How is this relevant?” Emmett asked.

“The way Eveline looked. I don’t mean any disrespect sir, but she wasn’t her. Her skin was too pale. Her back was hunched. Her eyes, Emmett, they were wild. They were hungry, like an animal’s. I’ve only seen eyes like that in a man once before and it was in those woods, but I was too enthralled to be afraid. With your daughter, today, I was afraid.”

“Eveline wouldn’t hurt any of you. Her heart is too big.”

“But she held the knife anyway. I don’t wish to dispute Zella’s wrongdoing.” He turned to her for the first time since entering the shack. “I’ve told all my kin the dangers of the woods. They understand the rules, just as well if not better than yours.”

She looked at him with eyes empty behind the tears. Emmett watched them streak across her face, as she clutched Clyde’s hand weakly. Wiley pulled her hair from her back and dipped his rag in the bucket once again, and continued to clean her wounds.

“She knows she did wrong, but she’s too afraid to tell you why. She knows you don’t believe, I told her so, just like I tell all your children. But you have to understand, Emmett, whatever you and your boy found out in the woods by Mr. Hardy Fletcher’s home, it’s come back to haunt us. I knew it when you two strolled back. I knew it when Eveline first found that rune in the woods. I knew it when the sheriff came by, and the next day when Lee told me about the scratching he heard. And I know it now, as I lay here bloodied and your daughter is out there not herself.”

“That’s enough,” Emmett said. He rubbed his eyes, feeling the blood pulse through them. The back of his head kept pounding forward. “I think I’ve heard enough. No more tales, Hosea, or I swear I’ll take your tongue too.”

Emmett turned to the door, still flying back and forth across its hinges. It slammed closed, and Emmett had to pry it open to leave.

“Master Emmett?” Hosea called.

Emmett stood in the doorway, looking back. Wiley and Clyde had gone back to working on Zella, paying no attention to the white man leaving their home. Hosea leaned back on his bed, ready to fall into it.

“You’re right. I was lyin’ to you,” he said. “Not about today, but about Mal.”

“So he killed Mr. Barnes then?”

“Yes he did. Him, and two others. I heard him talk about them in his sleep before he did it. At the very least—if he didn’t do it himself—he knew it was going to happen.”

“Who were they?”

“It was Mr. Barnes first, then Mr. Carroll. He strung them both up somewhere on their property. It was Solm that told me they both killed themselves. If you remember, Mr. Hardy Fletcher bought out Mr. Carroll’s land from his son and incorporated it into his own.” “I remember,” Emmett said. “Who was the third?”

“The third was Mr. Wynn Landry.”

The others looked up, focusing on Hosea. Attention turned to Emmett, as he nodded and walked out the door. He watched Hosea fall back onto the bed, and just before the planks shut he noticed notches carved into the frame. As he wondered what they were for, the wind whipped at his jacket, and he raised a hand to his eyes, making his way back up the road to his house. More than anything, he wished to lay in bed, just like Hosea, and forget everything he’d been told.

His legs turned weak as he struggled to put one foot in front of the other. Step by step he made it up the gravel, every few feet glancing toward the treeline. With each escaped look he expected to see a woman in black, with pale legs, beckoning him with a single finger. She never appeared.

He stopped at the post to retrieve the rope and the knife he’d left. He bent over and watched as a couple pellets of blood sprinkled across the grass from his arm. It had just begun to sting, and he knew there would have to be repercussions. They could wait for tomorrow, the violence already endured was enough for one day. He got up and began walking toward where Matthew had left the whip when movement caught his eye toward the house.

Eveline was standing on the front porch. Her hair fell flat around her head, which was tilted slightly. Her dress blew with the wind, and even from the distance Emmett could tell her legs were pale.

In her hands she held the thick charm she’d found in the woods.