It was nearly three a.m. by the time Sandy got home. She kicked off her shoes, drank a big glass of water, flopped down on the couch, turned on the TV, and fell asleep.
She dreamed about her sister, Cheryl, but in the dream she turned into somebody else and found herself in a heated argument.
“He was gonna marry me, Nancy, and you knows it!” Sandy shouted with another woman’s mouth. She felt small and worn out, and she looked down to see her hands folded on an obviously pregnant stomach.
The other woman, if sixteen years can make a woman, smiled slyly at her.
“Where’d ya put ’em, Nancy? Where?” Sandy felt a stabbing pain in her back and reached around awkwardly to rub her spine. Does pregnancy really feel this bad?
“Whatever do you mean, cousin Roseanna?” The blonde girl simpered and smoothed her pale yellow frock.
“I made them garters, and you knows it. I ’broidered his name and mine, and I done all the carryin’ on like grandmam taught me. They’re mine, and no good can come from your thievin’ of ’em.” Roseanna/ Sandy needed to pee. She felt hot and itchy. She needed to sit down.
In a very low voice, Nancy said, “I took your name off them garters, Roseanna, and stitched in mine. ‘Nancy and Johnse’ is what them garters sez now.” Her face glowed with confidence, and Sandy/Roseanna saw what a child Nancy still was. Big bosoms and a husband don’t make you a woman.
She looked around for the nearest chair and fell into it. Nancy ’s smooth brow creased. “You look awful red, cousin. Lemme go get your mama.”
She was too tired even to protest. She whispered, “I thought I could make it right. I thought, ’cause I loved Johnse, that I could make everybody stop fighting. The magic worked on Johnse. He loved me.” She sucked in air like there suddenly wasn’t enough. “I thought I could work magic on his papa, Devil Anse. Maybe stop the feud.” She felt herself sliding off the chair and came to rest on the hard mud floor, gloriously cool against her face. “I shoulda put the feud first, ahead of Johnse. It ain’t never gonta stop now. That fool girl broke my magic, I don’t know what’ll happen.”
Her ears rang, and she closed her eyes. The ringing continued, and Sandy woke to the answering machine taking a message from somebody selling something.
She sat up, blinking in daylight. Slowly she reached into her skirt and pulled out the wadded paper towel. She unwrapped the garter and set it on the coffee table. After a while, she went and got the other one. She examined them inch by inch, inside and out, but didn’t find anything that looked like lettering, just a few tiny needle holes where, maybe, thread had fallen or been picked out. She grabbed the phone and called Blue Ridge Bazaar with a few questions for Rennie McCoy.
When she’d finished telling him about wearing the garters and about her dream, McCoy didn’t say anything for a moment.
“Hello?” Sandy said.
“You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?” His voice sounded uncertain.
“I’m not a liar, Mr. McCoy.” Sandy thought she was calm, but her voice shook.
“I’m sorry, it’s just… Does the name McCoy mean anything to you?”
“Doctor, classic Trek.” She thought again. “And the real McCoy, whatever that means.”
“Nothing else?”
She thought hard. “The Hatfields and the McCoys. Hillbillies. They didn’t like each other much.”
She heard a sigh, probably over the word ’hillbillies. ’ Oh well, it’s said now.
“In 1880, Roseanna McCoy and Johnson Hatfield acted out the Blue Ridge version of Romeo and Juliet. They didn’t marry, though she was pregnant and that would’ve been the normal thing to do. A year later, Johnson did marry a McCoy-not Roseanna but her cousin Nancy. There was never a good explanation for why Johnse had switched women, especially after Roseanna saved him from being killed by three of her brothers.”
Sandy looked at the garters, blue satin gleaming in the morning sun. She picked them up, so light, so lovely to be so dangerous.
“Over the next ten years, thirteen people died in the feud, including Roseanna’s sister, four of her brothers, and Roseanna herself.”
“What about the baby, Johnse’s baby?” Sandy remembered being pregnant in the dream.
“Roseanna got measles and miscarried.”
“And I’ve got her garters,” Sandy said. She stroked the smooth satin and thought about Roseanna McCoy.
“Yes, I guess you do.” She heard regret in his voice. “What are you going to do with them? I mean, it’s none of my business, but if you don’t want them, I’d be hap-”
“Well, I’ll have to find something else for my sister, but I plan to keep them.”
She heard McCoy sigh. “Just be careful.”
Sandy laughed. “Worried that I’ll use my powers for evil instead of good, Mr. McCoy?”
He didn’t laugh, but she thought he might be smiling when he said, “Excuse me, your ‘powers’?”
“I really don’t know what use these things are, other than the obvious. I’ll keep them safe, though.” Sandy wondered, “Do you have any other family heirlooms in your store, Mr. McCoy?” Wouldn’t it be great if he did, she thought. I’d love to see what else the McCoy women might have conjured up.
“Call me Rennie. I’m the last of my branch of the family, so I’ve inherited the lot. The stuff from my grandmother’s house was what finally pushed me into opening this store. I wonder what other surprises there might be?”
Sandy thought fast. “I’m going to be traveling soon, and I might be coming your way. If there are other things Roseanna, or anyone else in your family made, things like the garters, it might take a woman to make them work.” She crossed her fingers, hoping that he wasn’t married. He seemed nice on the phone, but even if he looked like Quasimodo crossed with a muskrat, Sandy needed to see what might be in his store.
“Do you know when you’ll be in Kentucky?” he said slowly. She definitely heard a smile in his voice this time.
“Not exactly. But you might want to keep an eye out for a woman in stockings.”
SEEBOHM’S CAP by Peter Schweighofer
Major Prentice Vance of St. Louis, Missouri, peered across the table at the supposed German spy. Headquarters claimed the man could betray Operation Overlord, but Vance couldn’t tell how an ordinary army rifleman might have useful strategic knowledge about the impending invasion of Europe or how he could have transmitted it to Germany without detection.
And why would the man be foolish enough to carry around any evidence betraying his allegiance to Nazi Germany like that cap?
Vance gazed at the cap in fascination. It sat limp on the vast table between him and the spy-nothing more than a crumpled piece of faded tan fabric with a bent visor and worn patches halfway down the top seams, and marks that seemed to indicate its former owner wore wireless headphones over it. A spattering of blood dried brown in the harsh desert sun dotted one side. Such a worn, mundane cap seemed out of place sitting on the highly polished massive table, centerpiece of the palatial dining room in the countryside mansion the Office of Strategic Services had requisitioned from its British cousins.
Private Benedict Kelly of Culbertson, Nebraska, army infantryman and alleged German spy, stared at the cap as if it were some kind of malevolent demon waiting to pounce on him and consume his very soul. He craned his head as far back as the tall dining room chair would allow, his white-knuckled hands gripping the armrests. Vance couldn’t tell whether the sleepless, bloodshot eyes and the sallow skin came from several days of imprisonment and questioning or from sheer dread of that cap.
Vance’s assistant, Lieutenant Laura Jackson from Peekskill, New York, didn’t take any notice of the cap and didn’t display any discernible emotion at all. She sat in a chair pushed well away from the table, one leg draped over another just enough to show off her nicely turned ankle. Someone had pushed back the heavy curtains to allow light from the tall French doors nearby to filter through the sheers, casting a diffused light throughout the dining room and giving Jackson a deceptively angelic aura. She might only serve in the Women’s Army Corps, but Jackson possessed an uncanny knack for disappearing on errands and returning at the right moment with exactly what Vance required (a baffling trait Vance secretly intended to investigate someday.) Jackson maintained her focus on the steno pad balanced on her leg, occasionally glancing up from her notes to size up Private Kelly and his reactions to Vance’s polite queries-questions phrased more as conversation starters than demands.