Black Angels

Author:Linda Beatrice Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US

It was kind of nice being in the quiet by herself. She was never left by herself here at Betty’s, and she never remembered being by herself back at home. She was always with Granny or with the pickers.

She found some spiderwort and remembered that Betty had made her some tea out of that when she had a stomachache. She would put the blue flowers on the table and they would thank the Great Spirit, cause Betty would make them, and they would eat molasses and biscuits and salt pork and butter beans. She wandered a little farther, farther than she would have if she had been worried about her dream that day.

When she looked up, there were lots of pine trees, more trees than she remembered seeing around Betty’s house, and there were lots of tangled vines and one or two big tree branches that had fallen during a storm. She was farther away than she had ever been from the cabin. She thought maybe she should go back, but she could see the sky through the treetops and it was still almost blue violet. She didn’t hear the river that ran behind Betty’s house, and she didn’t hear the boys any more.

Then she saw a whole bunch of bellflowers up ahead. Betty used them for coughs. The first time she’d had some was when she was getting over the sickness she got in the woods. She looked around to see if there were any bellflowers closer to her, and then she noticed something strange.

A half-smoked cigarette. Right by her feet. Not Betty’s, she knew. Betty only smoked a pipe. Whose was it if it wasn’t Betty’s? And where was the person who had smoked it? All at once the woods seemed to get very quiet. Daylily felt a chill, a chill that reminded her of something she didn’t want to remember ever again. She didn’t want to think about the bad stuff, but she remembered it all. It just kept coming at her. She was staring at the soggy cigarette, like somebody’d put her in a spell.

And then she noticed next to an oak tree what looked like the print of somebody’s foot in the damp mud. She was still standing in the same place and the flowers were up ahead. It seemed to get very dark there in the trees. She raised her head, and on the other side of the flowers was something that looked like an old campfire that had been put out by the rain. There was something not right about that. A person had been there, maybe a long time ago, maybe not. She saw an old tin cup on the ground, but what she didn’t see was someone standing in the shadows.

In the stillness of the woods, there was a small sound. She started. A familiar sound. The sound of a dog whining, no, the sound of a dog almost crying, crying like a baby, like he might be hurt or sick. She felt like she was fastened to the ground, too scared to move.

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