She felt a little drunk. She’d had only a sip of buttermilk and a bite of bacon that morning, the only food in three days and the only thing besides a little water in two. She knew that was overly careful, and a longer stretch than usual, but the fasting had become a habit, one she enjoyed. In this state, an elevated sense of physical lightness and mental clarity, the Elijah Key sitting next to her seemed to be almost as much like something in a dream as in real life.
He looked at her, just a slight grin on his lips, head cocked back a bit the way he did.
“Are you all right?” he said.
She nodded her head. She wasn’t saying much of anything, to tell the truth. She nibbled the end of a stalk of Johnson grass she’d plucked on the way to the grove. The taste was sour and sweet at the same time.
He continued to look at her. The grin widened.
“What?” she said.
“Sometimes you seem like you’ve been hypnotized or something.”
“What’s that like?”
He’d seen one in town once, he said. A hypnotist. But it didn’t seem real. It seemed phony in an odd way. The hypnotist would do something like ask a person to close his eyes and he would talk to them in this lullaby way, not singing, just talking real quietly, or calm, or he might do that thing where he swung a pocket watch on its chain back and forth while he was talking and made the person go into a trance, and they would do anything he said to do.
“What kind of things?”
“Silly things, mostly. Like go over and drink a glass of water that’s not really there. I don’t know. I got bored at some point. But I thought it was funny the way the people would kind of go out of it, like they weren’t all there.”
“I’m all here.”
“I didn’t mean that. Anyway, when the hypnotist wanted to bring the man or woman out of the trance, he would snap his fingers in front of their face, like this,” and he snapped his fingers in front of Jane’s face. She laughed.
He got up and walked in a kind of slow circle in front of where she sat, hands in pockets, toeing at a fallen nut or twig here and there. He wore a pair of old Keds without socks and he kicked out of them and spread his toes in the grass.
“I could go barefoot all the time,” he said. “One thing I don’t like about working or going to school is wearing shoes.”
“I bet they’d let you dance at the dances without shoes.”
“I bet I’d get my toes stepped on all the time, ’cause that happens with shoes on, anyway.”
“I’ve never stepped on your toes.”
“No, you’re the best dancer, you really are.”
She looked away, embarrassed.
“I mean it. You’re a natural.”
“Do you like me?”
After a moment—“Yes.”
“Is that why you like me, ’cause I’m a good dancer?”
“That’s one thing I like about you.”
“What else do you like about me?”
He grinned and laughed, worked his shoes back onto his feet without using his hands, buying time or thinking.
“What?”
He hesitated, then reached up to take off his glasses and put them into his pocket. As if he was embarrassed to see her with the full clarity of vision they gave him.
“All right. Well. You’re pretty. And you’re nice. You’re not stuck up like other pretty girls, or most of them anyway. You don’t talk a lot of junk.”
“Maybe I don’t have much to say.”
“I’d bet you do. You just don’t talk just for the sake of jabbering on. Sometimes I think most girls jabber on so much because they’re afraid of not talking, or being with somebody and just being quiet. But that’s when you can really see somebody, when they’re quiet.”
He stopped and looked at her.
“Do you ever do that with animals, just sit and watch them, not saying anything, and just let everything get quiet until you can kind of hear everything, everything you couldn’t hear when your mind wasn’t calmed down, and you can see the animals calm down? Especially with horses, it’s like that.”
“That’s about the only way I can be around horses,” Jane said.
“You don’t like horses?”
“It’s not that I don’t like them. I guess I just don’t trust them.”
“Well, that’s probably smart. Any one with any spirit is going to be a little wild. Anyway, that’s something I like about you. What I was talking about before.”
There, he seemed to say, that ought to be good enough for you.
“But I’m strange,” she said then.
He looked at her seriously.
“I kind of like that,” he said.
She felt like asking, What about how else I’m strange, not the way you’re talking about? About how everybody knows there’s something wrong with me?
But if it didn’t seem to be something that was on his mind, that was good enough for her, too.
And after he’d gone, and she’d sat awhile in the grove by herself, and after she had walked back and was almost to the house, she stopped. She felt something building up inside her that she didn’t recognize. She wasn’t sure if it was love, or some kind of terrible fear that she didn’t recognize at all. Or both. And the voice of her mother was in her head saying, Just what do you think you’re doing, daughter? What do you think all that’s all about?
MRS. IDA CHISOLM knew it was most likely the devil’s work, but it seemed like the only person she could go to who might — black magic or not — give her some kind of words to think on, to lean on, and no one would know, if she was careful. She took money she’d hidden away from sewing work she occasionally did so she could pay the woman well enough to keep her mouth shut. On the other hand, the more she thought about it, the less she really cared what anyone would think about her going to a fortune-teller lady who read palms and had visions. It was the latter part that was a little frightening, though. It was said that before Eugenia Savell’s husband died they would dress up and go into their parlor and she would play the piano, old-timey songs, and the ghosts of dead soldiers from the old war would drift down from the high ceilings and dance. Some kind of ghostly minuet. Well, if that wasn’t the devil’s presence it would be hard to say just what it was.
She rode into town with Mr. Chisolm next time he went in for the stockyard and store supplies. Went with him into Tom Lyle’s big grocery and wholesale, where he made his order to pick up on the way home. When that was done she told him she would stay in town and do a little window-shopping on her own. Maybe get some fabric from Klein’s.
“All right, then. I’ll be done in a couple of hours.”
“I’ll be at the corner there.”
He stood there looking at her.
“What?” she said.
“Don’t get yourself run over by a train or something.”
“Ought to hope I don’t hitch a ride on one.”
“To where?”
“Away.”
As soon as he’d rounded the corner in the truck, the two cows shuffling for footing, making the occasional forlorn moo, she caught the streetcar toward the west side and got off in a neighborhood of what was once grand homes, now all looking a bit spooky with their mostly Victorian styles, most built just after the war when Sherman had burned almost everything down. Mrs. Eugenia Savell’s house was one of the few exceptions, having served as a hospital for both Union and Confederate troops during the battle. Which was part of what made the story of dancing ghost soldiers even spookier: It was said the ghost ladies were dancing with soldiers blue and gray, infinitely polite to one another in death, all sanctioned murderous allegiance no longer lingering in the spirit world.