Page 8 of The Bane Witch

8

Crow Lake

Myrtle seems nervous, turning off the lamps and sconces one by one, their little red shades darkening to plum. At the last, she pauses and eyes me from across the open room, her face haloed in its light, warped by wicked shadows. “I must confess, I’m a little surprised you found me. How did you do it?”

My own eyes are adjusting, trying to take in the details of where I find myself. The walls are paneled in honey-stained wood that matches the several small cedar tables and log chairs, their backs burned with the image of a tree. A kitchen takes up the rear of the room; and an L-shaped counter made of rough wood, bark, and twigs is situated left of the entrance. A black spiral staircase pierces the back of the café. To a sleeping loft, perhaps. And a wall-mounted TV hangs to the right. Overhead, a couple of old wagon wheels dangle from chains, lanterns suspended from the outer rings like rustic chandeliers.

I clutch my backpack awkwardly. “You told me, remember? You said you lived in Crow Lake. You made me promise not to forget.”

She breezes past me on her way to the front door. “Yes, but how did you know I would be here ?”

I tell her about the article I found, memorized.

She eyes me with pride. “Clever girl.”

“You live here?” I ask, taking in the cozy lumberjack interior.

She laughs. “In the café? No. You’re lucky you caught me. I was just making sure the coffee makers were set for the morning. I always do it at close, but second-guessing myself has become a bad habit in my old age.”

We step outside and she locks the door behind us. “Follow me,” she instructs as she starts around the building toward the woods. The night is rich with smells and sounds, alive and awake in a way few places are. It feels almost illicit to stand among this much nature, outnumbered. The sky is riddled with starlight, the trees a wall of black beneath it, as solid and unbreachable as any man has built. As she nears them, I ask, “We’re going in there?”

Myrtle stops and turns toward me. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of the dark?”

I shake my head despite my reservations. I’ve stepped off a bridge. Surely, I can handle a patch of woods at night. But these woods are not a patch, they’re a sea, rolling over mountain and hill, valley and glen, blanketing the state in a thick carpet of leaves. And they do not know me. I am a stranger here. A sheep in the lion’s den.

She steps through the brush into the void.

Pausing at the edge of the forest, I look up, letting my eyes skate up elongated trunks to the ocean of stars beyond, the only thing greater than this wilderness. I am caught between infinities. There is a split second of knowing that once I pass through this barrier, I can never go back. My mind shakes the thought off like a dusting of snow, and I step in.

I quickly realize we are on a narrow trail, scarcely perceptible in the night. But Myrtle seems to know her way; her steps never falter. I do my best to place my feet where she placed hers, stumbling when I get it wrong. But she doesn’t chide me for it.

“I was sorry to hear about your mother’s passing,” she tells me as we wind deeper into the forest. “I loved Lily despite our differences.”

Slowly, my eyes are adjusting. The shapes of leaves emerge from the blackness, the subtle colors they wear. I even manage to avoid a few switches before they smack into me. But it’s the smell that really comes alive, rich and sweet as incense, the many notes of a perfume. Some hit me up front, others linger, waiting for me to notice. It is a performance, the scent of the forest, interactive and dynamic.

“She killed herself,” I blurt.

It’s the first I’ve spoken of it to anyone. I told Henry she died but never how. I was too ashamed, too afraid he’d think less of me. I didn’t realize until this moment how desperately I need to unburden myself. How trapped my grief has been inside me these last three years, like the steel sphere in a pinball machine, ricocheting off every surface, doing more damage.

Myrtle stops and stands stock-still, the earthy, southwestern pattern of her wool robe the only reason I can see her at all. “I know,” she says quietly.

“I still don’t understand why,” I say as we start walking again. But I feel, deep in my bones, that it is because of me, because of that day. What have you done? Her voice slips around inside my skull, an echo that never ends. And now I have done it again. “I could have helped her,” I tell Myrtle. “I had money. If I’d only known she needed it. She didn’t even tell me Gerald was dead. She was so proud.”

We approach the straightforward frame of a log cabin. From the porch light I can see it’s painted dark brown with lively green trim and a red front door. It perches in the forest like something from an old folktale. Myrtle clomps up the stairs to its small porch and sets her hand on the knob. Glancing at me, she says, “Your mother was many things, Piers. But in the end, I don’t think she was proud at all.”

I swallow and follow her inside.

The interior of the cabin is like something from a movie set—glowing log walls and a stone fireplace, a rack of antlers over the door, braided rugs and handwoven baskets. I drop my backpack onto the buffalo plaid sofa and pick up a hooked pillow featuring a bear surrounded by red berries. Myrtle busies herself in the small but open kitchen where folksy twig accents mark the wood cabinetry and an old Hoosier cabinet stands against one wall, cluttered with enamel canisters. “Are you hungry?” she asks.

“I had crackers,” I say, sinking into a willow armchair with worn-in cushions. “Yesterday.”

She frowns and begins making me a sandwich—tomato, spinach, and herbed goat cheese, bread so thick with whole grains it practically sprouts. It smells divine. When she brings it to me and I start eating, her frown lines deepen. “Good God, child. When’s the last time you had a proper meal?”

Embarrassed, I set the sandwich down. “A couple days,” I tell her through a full mouth, not counting Regis’s grilled cheese, not sure if I should mention Regis or the grilled cheese I had there.

Truthfully, I quit eating much at least three days before I made the jump, nerves killing my appetite. Only when Henry was watching did I pretend to eat anything. But Henry never liked me to eat overmuch, so it was easy to fool him. It wasn’t weight that he cared about but control. “Don’t forget yourself, Piers,” he would tell me. We would have whole meals out where every bite I took was preceded by a glance in his direction, the silent but obvious look of approval on his face. When that look shifted, I set my fork down no matter how hungry I felt. The one time I didn’t, he took me home and held my face in the pillow until I wet myself. I learned after that.

Her eyes slide to my booted foot. “You’re in trouble,” she says plainly. She looks concerned but not surprised.

“Not anymore,” I tell her. Henry will never find me up here, miles from the comforts of urban living. I felt unsure until I arrived, but being tucked into the forest like a chick beneath the wing of a hen, so much unadulterated nature pooling for miles and miles—I can’t imagine it. And by now he’s found my note, knows I’m dead. Even without a body—it could have easily washed into the Atlantic—he won’t know to look at all if I did my job right. I permit myself a modicum of relief.

Myrtle leans back into a leather armchair, watching me eat. Beside her, a stack of old books glow arsenic green. “It’s been a long time, Piers,” she says quietly. “Why now?”

“I don’t go by that anymore.” My eyes meet hers. I’m not ready to talk about Henry yet, about why I came, how I got here. And while she’s family, Aunt Myrtle is a stranger to me. I look down at my sandwich, appraising. “You can call me Acacia.”

“Can or should?” she asks.

I don’t say anything, and she nods. “You didn’t answer my first question.”

I swallow my bite of sandwich. “I told you. I have nowhere else to go.”

She looks at my fingers denting the bread, a few still stained maroon from the berries. Our eyes lock. She remembers. She knows.

“There was a man,” I say.

“He still breathing?” she asks, watching me.

“Yes.” Technically, Henry is alive. But Don is not. I’m not sure how much I can tell her. But I cannot tell her that. She cannot know it’s happened again.

“He know where you are?” she asks this time.

I shake my head as I take another bite. “I never told him about anyone but Mom.”

“Why the name change then?” she presses.

I’m so tired. I just want to eat this sandwich and pass out somewhere soft and warm. But I can’t show up on her doorstep after all these years with nothing but an empty backpack and a broken foot and not expect questions. All in all, she’s being incredibly understanding. I can’t imagine anyone else taking this half so well. Then again, I can’t imagine anyone like Aunt Myrtle. She’s a breed unto herself.

“He’s dangerous,” I tell her, my voice barely a whisper. “He thinks I’m dead. It was the only way.”

She stares at me as I finish eating, then rises to take my empty plate. “Come on,” she says, heading toward an open doorway at the far end of the room.

“I can stay in one of the cabins by the road,” I tell her, not wanting to put her out any more than I have. “Just until I get on my feet.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says ushering me into a comfort able bedroom with a simple iron bed covered in a jewel-toned quilt. Two pillows in plaid shams rest on top. A floor lamp with an old hide shade is already on in the corner as if it were waiting for me. “You’re family.”

“It might be safer,” I tell her truthfully. I don’t expect Henry to come looking for me, but two years with him has taught me to always look over my shoulder.

She smiles in the soft light. “We don’t fear men in this house,” she tells me. “Men fear us.”

W HEN I WAKE, it’s a quarter past noon, and Myrtle’s cabin is empty. I find the bathroom and take a long, hot shower, washing off days of filth and fear. I have to sit under the water because of my foot, now a grotesque shade of eggplant. After, I wince when I run a towel across the bruising around my left rib cage. I’ve been taking small breaths and aspirin to manage the pain, but it’s not enough. Still, a doctor will ask questions. They might see a news report and put two and two together. I wonder if Aunt Myrtle knows someone trustworthy.

In my room, I find a pearl-snap shirt on a velvet chair in the corner, along with a pair of denim overalls, a fresh pair of cotton underwear, and thin wool socks. My other things are gone. Myrtle must have realized I didn’t even have a change of clothes. The overalls are a tad long, but I roll the hems up. I’m just grateful to be clean.

I limp around the cabin, taking in its homey details. The designer in me delights in its quaint, romantic take on wilderness living, the wood ceiling and vintage Audubon prints, the tramp art frames and cross-stitch tablecloth—mushrooms with ferns and birds—and clumps of dried flowers and herbs. On a table by the sofa, I find a framed black-and-white photo of several women. I recognize Myrtle at once. She can’t be more than sixteen, her dark hair shining. Beside her stands another woman, nearly as blond as my mother was. She’s not as tall as Myrtle but just as assured, and they share the same jutting chin, square shoulders, and oval faces, the same glimmer of defiance in their eyes. Behind them is an older woman whose hair is pulled back off her face, her slim black dress severe in shape. And they are flanked by two more, a graying woman in white pearls and one who looks to be in her twenties with a sweater draped over her shoulders. They could be any group—a bridge club or a charity board—but there’s something restless behind their eyes that unites them, something feral.

Feeling brave, I step outside and marvel at the difference a little daylight can make. In the sun, the woods around Myrtle’s house are thick and gloriously green like something from a storybook, charming even, with trees that tower over the cabin and branches that run nearly to the ground. Ferns fan out across the turf, and decaying logs play host to mosses and shelves of fungus. Near the porch, a tender knot of white emerges from the dirt, spotless and enticing. A destroying angel, as Regis called them. More glint in the undergrowth like tempting fairy lights, weaving their way through the woods around the cabin. A spike of warning lances through my center like pain. Do they always grow so abundantly?

A red squirrel makes angry noises in my direction as I start down the trail. I don’t have Myrtle to guide me, but the path is evident enough, and once I clear the trees, the A-frame café sits only paces away. A large black Lab is lying in the sun near the front door. He barely lifts his head. Stooping, I can’t resist giving his head a good rub, delighting in the way his tongue lolls out happily. I asked Henry for a dog, but he couldn’t abide the smell. I place my nose on top of the Lab’s head and breathe in deep. He smells like comfort.

Inside, I find Myrtle behind the counter separating the kitchen from the dining room. A couple sits at one table with a little girl, and a man drinking coffee at the bar watches me as I enter. “Thank you for the clothes,” I tell her as I approach.

“Your others are in the wash.” She points to indicate the small addition jutting off the left side of the A-frame, a laundry and bathroom for the guests. She smiles as she refills the man’s coffee cup. “Acacia, this is Ed, one of my boarders. Get used to his ugly mug ’cause you’re going to be seeing it a lot. He lives in cabin five, likes to drink up all my coffee with his dog, Bart, whom I see you already met.”

I brush the dog hairs from my arms and smile at Ed as I take my seat at the neighboring barstool. “Hi.”

He nods. His eyes are close-set and sunken, camouflaged behind wiry, graying brows that hang over them like untrimmed climbers. A long nose and sloping cheeks end in a thick parcel of white beard. A trucker’s cap sporting a patch embroidered with a wide-mouth bass sits high on his head like a crown. “You renting a cabin all by yourself?”

“Acacia is family,” Myrtle tells him. “She’s come to stay with me for a while.”

“You don’t say,” he drawls, looking me up and down. “I think I see the resemblance now that you mention it. She’s not your daughter, is she Myrtle?”

My aunt shoots him an unreadable look. “A niece,” she says, “of sorts.”

“Huh.” He doesn’t seem to know what to make of that.

“We’re an old family,” she continues. “A lot of branches on the tree. We keep in touch.”

He nods slowly.

A blond woman breezes into the café, smiling at us as she approaches. She can’t be a day over forty, pretty in a simple kind of way. “Myrtle, you’re a lifesaver,” she says, beaming. “That vinegar-soaked tennis ball trick really worked! I can’t thank you enough.”

Myrtle smiles. “When I know, I know. If only everyone around here listened to me like you did,” she says, shooting Ed a look. Turning to me, she adds, “Beth Ann had a raccoon living under the front porch chewing up her stairs. So, I gave her a few tennis balls, told her to soak them in vinegar, and roll them right under there. They hate the smell.”

Ed cocks a suspicious eyebrow. “Those wouldn’t be Bart’s tennis balls, would they, Myrtle?”

“I’ll buy ya more,” she tells him. “Beth Ann, this is my niece, Acacia. She’ll be staying with me for a while. She needed a little R and R, and I told her some fresh mountain air would set things right.”

The woman turns to me, one hand brushing her straw-colored locks back from her face. “Welcome! You know, I moved up here a couple of years ago from the city. Got tired of all the pollution and noise. Best decision I ever made! You’re going to love it.”

I haven’t had a female friend in two years. And really, I never managed to forge those bestie bonds most girls do in childhood. But she’s so open and energetic, I can’t resist smiling. Maybe, in this new life, we can be friends. “Thank you.”

She pats my arm. “We’ll chat soon. Well, gotta go, Myrtle. Those turnips aren’t going to plant themselves. Just wanted to say thank you since I was passing by.”

Ed watches her as she leaves. “Remember when you didn’t think she’d last a month?” he says.

Myrtle smiles warmly. “Once in a while, it’s good to be wrong.” Then, she adds, “Anyway, try not to be too much of a pest with Acacia here, eh, Ed? Keep that hound of yours from baying at the moon all hours.”

“Aww, Myrtle, Bart never causes no trouble. You know that.” He turns to me. “Best boy that ever walked on four legs. I can promise ya that. You afraid of dogs?”

I shake my head, giggling. “No, sir. I love dogs. Never had one, but always wished I did.”

He brightens. “Well, Bart belongs to everybody around here. Ain’t that right, Myrtle? She don’t like to admit it, but she loves that dog as much as me,” he says, throwing a thumb in her direction. “You know, I had a great-aunt with tuberculosis. She stayed with us for a whole year when I was a kid. Slept right out on the porch when the weather was warm enough. Cleared her lungs right up. We got on good.”

Myrtle cocks an eyebrow at Ed like he’s lost it. “Uh-huh.”

He swats a hand at her. “All I mean is, lots of people come up here to heal what ails ’em.”

“And what’s your excuse?” she asks slyly.

He thrusts his lips out, rubs his beard. “Ain’t nothing wrong with me these mountains can’t fix.”

Myrtle scowls. “If that were true, my firewood would be chopped by now.”

He grumbles, standing. “I’ll spend the whole day on it tomorrow, Myrtle. Promise.”

“ Tomorrow? What’s wrong with today?”

He stretches his legs. “Old Bart and I got a busy afternoon of fishing planned. Gotta get out while we still have time.”

“Ed, I need that firewood. Preferably before the first freeze, or we’re both gonna count this our last winter.” She gives him a pointed look.

He swats a hand at her again. “I told ya, I’ll get to it.”

“All right then,” she caves. It’s clear she cares about him, despite his orneriness and procrastination. “Catch a big one, Ed,” she tells him. “Bring it back if you want me to cook it up for you later.”

He waves as he heads out. “Will do, Myrtle!”

When he’s gone, I turn to find a hot cup of coffee waiting for me. “His wife died a decade ago,” she tells me, watching them through the window. “She was the earner in the family. Ed hasn’t worked since he fell off a roof and broke his back in his early forties. He’s lucky to be alive. But he couldn’t hold on to his property without her income. Then the drinking set in. I let him stay here in exchange for upkeep around the place.”

“That’s kind of you,” I tell her.

She shrugs. “Ain’t nothing to it. He’s one of ours, is all. And we look out for our own around here.” Suddenly, her face falls, the smile dissipating like smoke. A serious look glints in her eye. “He comes in daily for the conversation. And he pokes around the place doing odd jobs for me. But he’s not nosy. He knows when to mind his own business, understand? He’s no threat to you.” She says this last bit as if she’s worried of what I might do.

“He seems nice,” I reassure her, “like the cantankerous grandpa I never had.”

She shrugs again. “He gets lonely.” Then she gives me a little wink. “The lonely ones always find their way to me. I put them out of their misery.”

I’m not sure what she means by that, but I’m too busy slurping my coffee to ask. “I take it you’re not married?”

She laughs in a low voice. “We aren’t all like your mother. I know my place, and it was never at a man’s side.”

“Never married, then.” I take this fact in, chew on it. “And no kids.”

“I had a son,” she’s quick to correct. “Couldn’t keep him. It was a long time ago.” Her eyes don’t meet mine. For a few minutes, we sit in uncomfortable silence. I feel guilty for bringing it up.

“You sleep okay?” she eventually asks.

I nod.

Myrtle takes in my appearance, the rolled cuffs and hang of the overalls. “When this family leaves, we’ll close up and drive to Malone, get you some clothes. You can’t keep wearing mine.”

“But I don’t have any money,” I tell her.

“I know,” she says, reaching out to smooth the hair around my face. “This round will be on me. And you need to see a doctor about that foot.”

I flinch. “I don’t know if that’s wise.”

Her eyes narrow. “An urgent care clinic. You’ll be in and out quickly. They won’t ask questions.”

I nod my assent, and she carries a pitcher of water over to the table with the family to refill their glasses.

“Guests,” she tells me when she returns. “Cabin three. They’ll be gone in the morning.”

“Do you get many this far north?”

“We stay full enough in the summer,” she says. “But it will slow down soon. Kids will go back to school, and people will prepare for autumn and the cold that comes after. They’re less inclined to travel then, which is just as well. Except the skiers. I have ten cabins altogether. Right now, not counting Ed and Bart, they’re all full, but tomorrow after that family leaves, we’ll have an opening. Next week, likely a couple more. By next month, we’ll sit at half capacity, and winter will be slow. But I like it that way. The quiet suits me. It’s the right kind of life for a Corbin.”

She makes it sound like I come from a family of recluses. Frankly, I wouldn’t know. And my mom, for all her desire to look like the perfect nuclear family, never really mixed much with people. Gerald was her everything, which is almost as sad as my and Henry’s marriage.

“Not like your big-city life, I guess,” she says. “Must be strange for you.”

I smile tightly. “Charleston had its perks, but I didn’t really get out much the last few years.” When I glance up, she’s staring at me. “But that’s all in the past now.” I don’t really care where I am at this point as long as Henry isn’t here. “Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot,” she tells me, pulling out a tub of egg salad and some bread.

I take a breath. “Why didn’t you ever come back? After that first time, I never saw you again.”

Her eyes look sad as she answers. “Your mother wouldn’t have liked that,” she says. “It was for your own good.”

“I was so alone,” I say into my coffee cup. “Meeting you was the only time I felt like I belonged.”

Until Henry. I remember the way he took charge on our first date, ordering for me, answering whenever the waiter asked me a question. I was so naive, so desperate to be someone’s. I believed it was a sign that he cared about me. It was the first time I truly felt valuable. But after we were married, it changed. Instead, I felt like something he possessed. Those early gestures were never about me; they were about him, his need to dominate. Maybe, if Myrtle had been a part of my life growing up, I wouldn’t have been vulnerable to Henry.

She squeezes my hand. “I should have come to find you after Lily died. I’m sorry.”

“Why didn’t you?” I ask.

Her face crumples and she quickly turns around. “Too many bad memories, I guess.”