Lost Lamb

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Lost Lamb - book excerpt

Chapter 1

My name is Deidra Ann. I am twelve years old and I have big problems. First, I don’t know where my Mama went off to, and I have no idea who my Daddy is. Granny said the only thing Mama told her when she dropped me off at two weeks old was that the devil got through her defenses. Sometimes I turn my head from side to side in the mirror trying to separate my parts—nose, mouth, ears—to see if they resemble the ones in the family pictures that line the hall, or if they are different. One thing for sure, no one in those old photos has red hair with wild curls and my grass-green eyes.

Another problem is that behind Granny’s house is a haunted forest with twisted trees. It is so thick in there, among the trees, scrub and vines, that darkness leaks out into the meadow. Granny claims it isn’t really haunted but if not, then why doesn’t she let me go in? After all, there is a footpath into the forest marked by two pines leaning against each other. It isn’t easy to see the entrance from granny’s house on the opposite side of the wide meadow, lessen you know about the leaning pines.

Maybe it’s because we live downwind from the crematorium that sits on McCaw Hill and when it’s going, the tops of the trees reach out to catch the wisps of smoke that escape the crematorium’s tall round smokestack. Sometimes, if that person’s death comes sudden or by some foul means, those wisps whisper their truth. Least it does for those who can hear such things.

Restlessness tugs me from sleep this June morning. The same feeling makes me dress real quick and, after I use the toilet and scrub the yuck from my eyes, I go into the kitchen. Normally, by the time the sun is up, Aunt Willa is sitting at the kitchen table in a dress and low heels, hair piled on her head, and lipstick in place, ready for the day. On a normal day, she has a coffee cup in hand and the Bible open atop the Formica table. This morning, she’s standing at the kitchen window staring at something outside.

Here’s the thing about my auntie. Something happened before I was born and whatever it was scared the bejesus outta her. I don’t know what happened, seeing as how everybody claims it’s not for children’s ears, even though I’m nearly thirteen. She fled to my granny’s house, new husband following, stumbled into her mama’s arms, and locked the door against the outside. Sure, she sometimes ventures out in the daylight far enough to work in the garden, but beyond the picket fence is danger and she refuses to venture into what she claims is shark-infested waters.

That explains why she’s in Granny’s kitchen staring out the window.

“What’s you looking at?” I ask joining her.

“Mama,” she answers.

When I pull back the curtain to see for myself, there is my granny standing at the

garden gate, still as a statute, watching the dark woods. Her head is tilted like she’s listening to something, one silver strand of hair escaping the hooded jacket she’s wearing.

“Not good,” I say.

“Nope,” Aunt Willa agrees.

“I’d better…”

“Best you do,” my aunt concludes. At that, she moves back to the table to finish her coffee and the daily scripture reading. I pull on a jacket hanging on the hook by the back door and go out to join my granny. It hits me as soon as I open the door, a great wave of desolation and fear that rolls over me like fog on a late fall morning.

“Augh,” I grunt.

“And praise God Almighty,” my aunt prays as I close the door behind me.

Remember what I said about the crematorium? Some people say that a person’s soul leaves their body when they pass. What I’ve come to believe, what most natural-born issue of my granny believes, is that some residue of what makes one person different from another remains behind. When the flames of the crematorium ignite a body, that residue floats up the tall smokestack, eddies and swirls in the breeze, and is caught in the tall Loblolly pines behind Granny’s house. That usually explains the emotions that catch me by surprise when I step outside. This morning what I feel is different; something stronger and more alive. Instead of being wispy like smoke, this is potent enough to smell. Something has gone terribly, unexpectedly wrong.

“Granny?” I ask, walking toward her. I don’t want to startle her, seeing how deep she is inside her mind. She has one hand on the gate latch like she’s about to open it.

“Morning, baby,” she tells me, quickly taking her hand off the gate and putting it around my shoulder. We stand there, just inside the picket fence, watching dawn brighten the yard.

“Something really bad happened,” I tell her.

“Yes, it did. Not an unnatural death this time, but something different, something bad.”

“We gonna find out?” I ask, already suspecting the answer.

“We are, but first I have to see Mrs. Lambert. She’s coming by as soon as the Bible School bus picks up their young’uns.”

Some places, like this southern state with too many vowels, Granny might be called a witch, but here in this isolated place, it’s simply explained that she’s got the touch. It’s inherited, like her brown eyes. Granny has the touch. I do, too. I suspect my aunt does but she refuses to acknowledge it. I tend to believe my mama is still running from it.

People come from all around, even from farther than nearby Clemmons, seeking Granny’s advice. They talk to her of illnesses, unfaithful spouses, bad children, or problems between them and God. Some bring dollar bills for payment, but mostly they bring fresh eggs, a chicken, fruit jams in every hue, and sometimes even fresh-baked bread wrapped in dish rags. I’m happy to learn Mrs. Lambert will be arriving because that most likely means we’ll have smoked pork roast for dinner, seeing how her family raises pigs. Yummy.

“Well, Diedre Ann,” Mrs. Lambert tells me when I answer the door. “I thought sure you’d be at summer Bible School.” She narrows her eyes. “Why aren’t you?”

Like that’s anyone’s business, I think, but don’t let those words out. Instead, I shrug and say, “I’m staying here to help my granny with canning the green beans.” I point to the corner of the garden where the beans look like they’re ‘bout ready to explode off the vines they’re growing so fast.

“Well, no reason why your auntie can’t help her ma out?” she snarks.

I narrow my eyes. She knows darn well Aunt Willa doesn’t go outside. Maybe Mrs. Lambert’s kids need to share with their mama what they learn in Bible study about being kind to others.

She waves her hand dismissing both her slight and my steely silence, “Never mind that, where’s your granny?”

After Mrs. Lambert leaves, a satisfied smile on her face, a bag of garden herbs for whatever ails her, and minus one roast, Granny and I pick strawberries and green beans from the raised garden beds and cut tender leaves of lettuce. After that’s done, Willa’s husband, Billy, comes home from his job at the sawmill. I run to meet him, and he picks me up and twirls me around.

“How’s my favorite little monkey,” he sings before sitting me back down. “Whew, honey, you’re gonna kill me yet.” He puts a hand on his lower back and fake wipes the sweat off his brow. It’s a routine we’ve been doing forever, but it still makes me giggle. Uncle Billy is the most handsomest man I know with straight blonde hair that he keeps having to sweep off his brow, and brown eyes shot with rays of gold. Sawdust powders his hair and shoulders making it look like he’s been anointed with fairy dust. He’s smart, too. After he realized the only way his new wife was going to leave her mama’s house was in a pine box, he built a little cottage for the two of them just up the rise and connected their house to his mother-in-law’s by way of an enclosed pass-through so Willa wouldn’t have to venture outside.

“Smells great,” Billy exclaims when he comes inside.

“Smoked pork,” Willa answers.

My auntie is standing over the kitchen sink smashing up cooked potatoes in the pot that she has placed inside the sink so she can get leverage with the smasher. Granny is fixing a salad of strawberries and lettuce I helped her pick earlier.

“Set the table, Deidre Ann,” Granny tells me, bringing the salad bowl to the table. “And you,” she says pointing to Billy, “get yourself cleaned up, dinner’s almost ready.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Billy says and winks at her.

By the time dinner is done and the dishes washed and put away, it’s too late to have Billy drive us into town so we can learn what had haunted our morning. Plus, my aunt and uncle have already gone up the pass-through to their own home.

Granny is nodding over the book she’s been reading.

“Good Lord, is it that late already?” Granny asks when she rouses herself. The book she had been reading has fallen from her hand and now lies in her lap.

I had been engrossed in my own book—one of the Nancy Drew mysteries I checked out last time we went to the library. “Near ten o’clock,” I say, glancing at the clock on the fireplace mantel.

Granny yawns. “I’m going to bed. Don’t forget to turn out the lights and check the door locks,” she instructs.

“I will,” I say and go back to reading.

I wait for a while, listening to the toilet flush and the squeak of bedsprings as Granny settles in for the night. Then I put a marker between the pages, close the book, and walk on bare feet through the kitchen and out the back door to stand on the stoop.

I’m not afraid, even though the moon is just a sliver and it’s always pitch black out beyond the fence. The air is scented with pine and stars shine in the night sky. Looking up, I find the Big Dipper and the swirl of brightness that marks the edge of the Milky Way. There is just enough breeze to whisper in the treetops. I listen for a long time trying to summon the troubled spirit we had sensed this morning, but it’s gone. I go inside, turn the thumb lock, click off the lights, and go to my own room.

Chapter 2

Granny and I go into town with Uncle Billy the next morning in his 1966 Ford pickup. Uncle Billy loves that truck.

“Bought it spanking new, straight offa the lot,” he told Willa last year after he drove it up the lane and parked it right outside Granny’s garden gate.

If he’s not washing and polishing the blue and white exterior, he’s spending Sunday afternoon with the hood up. Tinkering is what he calls it, tools in hand. The truck has a bench seat with a cover that Aunt Willa sewed. I sit in the middle and when my uncle pushes his foot on the clutch, he hollers out the gear and I move the shifting stick to the right location. It’s my favorite thing to do.

“I swear this girl is gonna be a racecar driver,” declares Uncle Billy. “She slips through the gears like greased lighting.”

“Right now, she can’t reach the pedals so don’t let me catch you teaching her to drive yet,” Granny says. “You hear that, Deidra Ann?”

“I hear,” I say, visions of speeding around the dirt track in one of those little cars now firmly lodged in my brain.

We have to park far away from the entrance of the Piggly Wiggly lot, this being Saturday, and everyone is in town using this day to shop. It’s our usual routine, but today Granny and I have another purpose.

“Morning, Mrs. Williams,” the meat clerk says, lining up packages of hamburger wrapped in brown paper.

“Morning to you, Daryl,” Granny answers. “How’s little Marsha Sue doing this week?”

“Much better, ma’am, thanks to the salve you made for my wife. We put it on just like you said, wrapped her little chest in cloth and she hasn’t coughed in the night since.”

“Good to hear, Daryl. Let me know if she starts in coughing again, will you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he tells her, going back to arranging the ground beef.

“Did you hear what happened, Alice?’ one my granny’s friends ask her.

“No, what?” Granny answers. She’s real casual about it, picking up a cantaloupe and sniffing it. Like we hadn’t stood inside the safety of the picket fence yesterday morning, heads cocked, knowing something real bad had happened.

“It was on the TV news last night,” her friend went on.

“Won’t have one of those idiot boxes in my house,” Granny sniffs. “And times the radio comes in, but times it doesn’t. What happened, you say?”

“Well...” Mrs. Johnson winds up, seeing an opportunity to be the first to tell us the news. Mrs. Johnson is a gossip and that’s why Granny turned the cart down the aisle when she saw her. I just stand beside the cart, ears cocked like a dog’s and my face blank.

“Well,” she begins again. “Jenny Rennick has gone missing.”

What? My nonchalant expression vanishes, and my eyes widen. I open my mouth to say something, but Granny turns to me, gives a small shake of her head and I close my mouth.

“Her momma called her in for dinner yesterday evening, but she never came. They are just beside themselves with worry.” Mrs. Johnson goes on, not even taking a breath. “They called the sheriff and looked everywhere. It’s as if a spaceship landed and sucked her up.”

Granny, all practicality, asks, “Someone saw a spaceship land?”

“No, no, I mean that’s how thoroughly she’s lost.”

Granny puts the cantaloupe back on the display and asks, “Where was she the last time anyone seen her?”

Mrs. Johnson flaps her hand. “They say she was just walking down the lane by her house. She don’t have any friends live down that way.” She lowers her voice, says ominously, “Nothing down that way but woods.”

A little shiver goes up my back making my neck hairs tingle.

“Oh,” Mrs. Johnson goes on, eyes landing on me. “That’s the direction to your house, right?”

“‘Bout three or four miles,” Granny admits.

“Jenny go down to visit with you, Deidre Ann?”

I do a big shake of my head. No way prissy Jenny would walk that distance. Or ever come visit me.

Mrs. Johnson looks around like I might just be hiding Jenny. She asks, “She is in the same grade as you, right? Sixth grade?”

“Seventh,” I answer. It comes out pretty snappish.

“Seventh next September,” Granny explains.

“So, you know Jenny?” Mrs. Johnson asks.

Oh, I know Jenny. She is not my friend seeing she’s always finding ways to torment me. What does surprise me is there is no mention of the posse of Jenny fans that usually surrounds her. We live at the very end of the road as it winds its way out of town. Of course, Jenny could have turned off on any of the side streets before that.

Or, she could have turned into the trees that only get darker and denser as the road makes its way toward Granny’s house. Part of me cheers that Jenny might be forever lost among the pines and thick brush. The other part is envious that she slipped into a place where I’m forbidden to go.

“So?” repeats Mrs. Johnson.

I shrug. “I just know her from school. Don’t know where she went.”

We don’t learn anything more about the missing Jenny as we make our way through the crowded aisles picking up coffee, sugar, butter, potatoes, flour, and canning supplies for the green beans. Uncle Billy joins us in time to help lift the sacks of groceries into the bed of the pickup. The sacks join lumber and metal joists.

“What’s you gonna build?” I ask as we ready ourselves for the trip back home.

“There’s a right shady spot under the elm by the pass-through between the houses. Thought I’d frame out a door and build a low deck, case Willa wants to step outside for a little fresh air.”

“Good idea,” Granny nods. “She’d still be close enough to wink inside if she feels anxious out there in the open.”

Uncle Billy never complains that his wife prefers the safety of Granny’s house to venturing out, but I often wonder if he wouldn’t like a chance to take her to a movie or dinner at Mama Zeta’s diner. A place outside, but still near the safety of home is a good first step.

Back at home, Aunt Willa and I help put the groceries away. Then she fixes sandwiches—leftover pork roast—and my aunt, uncle, and I eat at the kitchen table. Uncle Billy tells us tales about his life as a sailor and how the fleet followed a giant whale that leaped into the air, unfolded its wings, and flew up so high in the sky that it was just a dot. I believe him—I’ve seen his Navy uniform and stuff—all the way up until the whale sprouts wings.

“That’s impossible,” I snort.

“Trust me, it’s all true, Scouts’ honor.” He gives the Boy Scout honor sign with his hand.

I put fists on my hips. “Were you ever a Boy Scout?” I ask.

He shrugs and grins showing all his white teeth and says, “That part might be a stretch. But I swear I saw the whale leap out of the sea and fly.”

Aunt Willa lightly punches him on the arm and then kisses the top of his head as she goes to put her plate in the sink.

It doesn’t dawn on me until she does that, a task so familiar, that I realize I haven’t seen Granny since we brought the grocery bags inside.

“Where’s Granny?” I ask.

Uncle Billy and Aunt Willa share a look and a thousand unspoken words pass between them. I just hate it when grown-ups do that.

“She must be out in the garden,” my aunt finally answers.

“No,” I tell her, getting aggravated at all the secrets. “I can see the garden through the screen door, and she hasn’t been out there at all.”

I get up ready to bolt outside but my aunt halts me with this...

“Don’t forget to put your plate in the sink, young lady.”

Rats.

I pick up the plate, put it in the sink, not too quietly, and for good measure, toss the napkin into the trash. Then I bolt outside.

Granny is just emerging from the opening that leads into the woods. She walks down the path brushing something from her hair. She is holding onto a big clump of something green and ferny.

Then she catches sight of me.

“You finished lunch early.”

“Where did you go?” I ask, ignoring the lunch comment.

She shows me the clump. “These fiddleheads make a good remedy.”

Now, I’ve gone hunting fiddlehead ferns with Granny along the edge of the forest. She makes quick work of it. I calculate how fast she can cut against the time it took us to prepare lunch and eat. She could have picked a whole laundry basket during that period and still have time to pour a glass of lemonade and sit on the porch to drink it. Plus, there is a big difference between the half-shady areas where the ferns like to grow and the deep shadows of the woods. There is something else going on and no one tells me anything. I take a guess.

“You were looking for Jenny?”

“Why you ask that, child?” she asks right back.

My uncle has joined us in the yard. Aunt Willa watches from the screen door. They are all looking intently at me.

“It just popped in my head,” I answer lamely.

The air changes around me like everyone began breathing again after holding their breath.

“You think Jenny might have gotten lost in the forest?” Granny asks.

“I think Jenny is bratty enough to have done just that,” I say.

“She’s sprouted up this summer,” Uncle Billy says, changing the subject.

“She’s changing into a young lady,” Aunt Willa adds. “Maybe it’s time.”

Granny looks me up and down.

What the hay is going on?

“Not quite yet,” Granny tells them and that’s the end of the conversation. Didn’t I say I just hate when grownups keep secrets.

Later, after dinner, when my aunt and uncle have gone up the pass-through to their house and Granny is in the bath, I open up the back door and stand in the yard watching the woods beyond the picket fence. The sun has set, turning the yard into shades of grey and black, but it isn’t full dark yet. I’ve been forbidden to wander past the shady part where the limbs reach out into the meadow for as long as I can remember.

“Don’t you venture in there Deidra Ann,” Granny would warn. “Them woods so thick, even a snake would get lost in there. And speaking of snakes, they like to lie in the shade on a hot day and wait until a little morsel like you comes close and they’d snatch you up for their young’uns.”

I believed her then, and I can’t not believe her now seeing as occasionally we catch a garter snake sneaking through the grass. The snakes, however, hadn’t kept Granny from slipping down the path between the two leaning trees. Not once had she come back snake bit.

It wasn’t just Granny who warned me off the woods. Kids in school teased me about how my momma ran off with one of the wood snakes, although I was never sure whether they meant a man who be acting snaky or an actual snake. Not that it mattered. Mom was gone, only Jesus knew where she was, and I was sometimes doubtful even he knew.

A sound in the dark jerks me back to myself. There is a rustling sound, not like the wind rustling through leaves but something else. I take a step back, my heart pounding and prickles popping out on my arms. I squint, trying to see in the dark. I wish I had cat eyes, dark to them is just like day.

There it is again, a rustling sound. I focus on the path opening where I think the sound is coming from. I’m looking for…what? Jenny’s blond ponytail? She always swishes it around but what I’m hearing is not the soft swish of her hair but something…

A shape materializes in the space where the path meets meadow but before I can tease it out of the shadows, it’s gone. Remembering I had grabbed the flashlight off the counter before I went outside, I turn it on with shaky hands and aim the beam at the opening.

There is a gleam of eyes, sounds of a hasty escape and I sprint back to the house, feeling every minute like something is going to bound out of the trees and pounce on me. The beam of the flashlight dances as I grab for the back-door handle, stumble inside, and shoot home the bolt lock. Blood is banging around in my ears so loud that I don’t hear Granny at first.