She drew in a shuddering breath and started across the lot to the cabin, wind clashing through the leaves. She braced herself before mounting the steps and knocking on the door as she had just yesterday. When there was no response she pounded harder, until she heard the shuffle of footsteps inside. At long last Beulah opened up with a broom in her hands. She looked as tired as Annie Clyde felt. Her puckered face browned with age, the folds of her neck grimed it seemed with years of soil, wearing a shawl over her checkered dress in spite of the season. As soon as Annie Clyde saw her time seemed to stop and the words tumbled out. “I know you lied.”
Beulah studied Annie Clyde, her rheumy eyes gleaming out of wrinkled pits. “I didn’t know where he was, though,” the old woman said. “That was the truth. And he ain’t here now.”
“But you know where he could be.”
“If I did, I wouldn’t tell it. Look at you. You might shoot him.”
“I’d shoot anybody over Gracie.”
“Well. I’d take a bullet over Amos.”
Beulah pressed her mouth into a line, her chin jutting. The sun came out some. Annie Clyde felt the light on her back. “He’s my son,” Beulah said, as if that was explanation enough.
Annie Clyde saw herself reflected in the old woman’s glasses, a gaunt shadow holding a gun. She lowered the rifle from her shoulder, overcome with sudden regret. She looked down at the rain blowing in on Beulah’s feet. “Would you let your son take my daughter away from me?”
“If I believed for a minute Amos had that baby girl,” Beulah said, “I’d put the law on him myself. I’d take a bullet for him, but that don’t mean I’d let him get away with nothing like that.”
There was another silence. Annie Clyde opened her mouth but her voice cracked.
“Lord, youngun,” Beulah said. “You’re plumb peaked. Get yourself in here.”
Annie Clyde sighed through her nose as she stepped across the threshold. Beulah put aside her broom and took the gun from Annie Clyde’s hands. She leaned it against the pie safe in the corner. She steered Annie Clyde to the table at the back of the room and pulled out a chair. It was straight and hard but Annie Clyde was glad to be off her feet. Beulah must have heard the click of her throat. She poured Annie Clyde a cup of water from an aluminum pitcher and sat down across from her. Annie Clyde drank deep, tasting the bitter minerals of the spring. There was no sound in the gloom of the cabin besides a clock ticking somewhere. Then Beulah asked, “Why don’t we get down to it, honey?” There was such compassion in her voice that Annie Clyde felt like crying. But she wouldn’t let herself. If the tears came out, she might be unable to stop them.
“I don’t believe in fortune-telling,” Annie Clyde said.
Beulah smiled. “That’s all right.”
“Seems like if anybody could see where Gracie is, it ought to be me.”
Beulah reached across the table to touch her hand. “It’s a mystery why certain ones have the sight. I never know if I’ll be showed anything. A lot of times it ain’t what I want to see.”
Annie Clyde flinched away. “I shouldn’t have come in here. I just needed to know if there’s a chance you could help me someway.” She swallowed hard. “Have you tried to look?”
“For your little one?”
Annie Clyde nodded.
“I been looking ever since you left here yesterday.”
“Have you seen anything?”
Beulah’s eyes were sad behind the scratched lenses of her glasses. “No,” she said. “I ain’t seen a thing.” She lifted the pouch from around her neck. “But if you want me to, I’ll try again.”
Annie Clyde’s pulse quickened. She put down the cup. It was what she wanted, but she recoiled at the thought of the bones. Beulah got up and stood at the head of the table. After a moment, Annie Clyde rose from her chair at the opposite end. Beulah loosened the neck of the pouch, her face lit by the drizzly window between them. She looked into Annie Clyde’s eyes. “Now, you be sure about this,” she said. Annie Clyde wiped her lips and nodded again.
Beulah turned the pouch up and spilled its contents. They bent over and studied them together, heads nearly touching. Annie Clyde wanted to see something herself, maybe Gracie’s face, but she couldn’t discern any pattern in the bones. After an agonizing minute or so she lost patience with Beulah’s silent concentration. “What is it?” she asked. “Do you see Gracie?”
Beulah raised her head like somebody waking up. “Yes,” she said, but with seeming reluctance. Her voice was far off and troubled. “Not where she’s at. Just that she’s alive.”
Annie Clyde released the breath she’d been holding and sat back down in the chair, almost knocking it over. The tears came then. There was no holding them in. It was a deliverance to hear someone say it, whether or not it was true. The sobs tore from her throat and wrenched her shoulders. “Hush now,” Beulah said. When she came around the table Annie Clyde could smell her oldness, like snuff and drying lavender and mellowing fruit. After a while, Beulah got slowly to her knees in front of Annie Clyde’s chair and took off the brogans she was wearing. She began to rub and knead Annie Clyde’s sore feet in her hands. “You’re wore out. Why don’t you come over here and close your eyes for a minute?” She led Annie Clyde to a bed in the corner and helped her onto the sagging mattress, drawing a blanket over her legs.
Annie Clyde meant to lie still just long enough to catch one breath. When she opened her puffed lids again she thought she’d slept a few seconds. But once her eyes adjusted she could tell by the slant of light across the bed and the dryness of her dress that it had been much longer. She got up quickly and began hunting her shoes. Beulah was standing at the fireplace making hoecakes, the smell filling the cabin. When she saw Annie Clyde awake she went to the table and took the brogans from under it. “Thank you,” Annie Clyde said as Beulah handed them to her. “You can thank me by having a bite of dinner,” Beulah said. “I get tired of eating by myself.” Annie Clyde paused and then put down the shoes. They sat at the table together and ate in silence. The hoecakes were sweet in Annie Clyde’s mouth. She shoveled them in, washing each bite down with more water from the spring. When she was finished at last she got up from the table without a word and went to the pie safe where James’s rifle was propped. She took the gun up and turned toward Beulah, clenching the stock tight enough to blanch her fingers. They looked into each other’s faces. Unlike Washburn’s, Beulah’s gaze didn’t waver. “Come back anytime,” she said. Annie Clyde was the first to drop her eyes. The heat from the cook fire made the room hard to breathe in. The gun was light enough to hold in one hand. She picked up both brogans in the other, gripping them by the heels. Tying the laces would take too long. She felt an urgent need to be away from Beulah and the stifling cabin. She would stop to put her shoes on once she’d put some distance between herself and the old woman’s fortune-telling bones.