Chapter 9

Chapter 9 of 56 · 13-minute read

I pick my way, barefoot, through the tall grass along the fence row. The Bahia grass swishes at my ankles, then gives way to freshly mowed grass and an occasional bale of hay. I pivot to get my bearings. I hadn’t expected to find the pastures mowed, especially so cleanly. And I certainly hadn’t paid anyone to do it on my mom’s behalf as I had her unkempt yards. Whoever had been taking care of the pastures and keeping them cleaned up had gotten only so far, and most likely yesterday, judging by the freshness of the cut.

When I was very young, cattle and horses kept the pastureland neatly grazed. I can’t recall my dad ever mowing the fields, though I do recall a few times when he sent Shelby out to do it after he sold the livestock and before Shelby deployed to the Middle East.

I follow the perimeter fence. The black haze from my old wards hovers low to the ground, with the newer ward, fiercely blue, using it as a foundation, building off of my own energy. I’ve never seen anything like this. Oh, I’ve seen ritual circles outlined in fire visible only to those of us with that talent, but I’ve never seen wards on the farm, other than my own. I’ve been so busy selling my house, packing it up, and settling Jesse’s old lawsuits, that I’ve been neglectful in my self-assigned responsibilities to my ancestral land. I can feel it now, the spirits that dance here. There’s a sense of welcoming me home as a prodigal daughter.

I’ve always loved the land here, even if my relationships with the people here and in town have always been convoluted and conflicted. The land itself has always felt like my paradise, and I’ve been closely connected to it, growing up watching the seasons change, planting and harvest, the movement of the stars and planets in the sky throughout the wheel of the year.

I better understand now the heartbreak of ancient and not-so-ancient peoples who have been displaced from their land and the land spirits there. I’ve lived in several places now and called them all home, but not one of them has felt the same as the ground where my ancestors lived and died, daily stomping their energy into Mother Earth. My English-speaking ancestors came here only two centuries ago, intermarrying with the tribes, runaways, and explorers new to the area, all of whom shared the land. I carry the dust of this land in my own bones, formed in my mother’s womb, and in her mother’s before her. I’ve taken sustenance from this land as a growing child, eating of its bounty and drinking water from the streams and from the underground aquifer and from the rain above.

Despite my walking away from my mom and her need to minimize my childhood trauma, I sense the unseen world around me, rejoicing.

“I’ve missed you,” I whisper.

The pasture gives way to grassland dotted with shady oaks, their heavy branches dipping to meet the ground.

Someone, probably the same one who has been mowing the pasture to keep it neat, has trimmed some of the big grandmother oaks so that I can actually walk under them without hitting my head. Excess limbs stand together in stacks but whether they’re waiting to become bonfires or firewood, I cannot tell. The only thing I know for certain is that they didn’t fall in that formation and my mom didn’t do it herself.

I choose my footsteps carefully across a small stream leading to the creek that crosses the farm. Someone, sometime, has placed steppingstones across the shallow gully that is usually dry except after heavy rains. A few hawthorn trees have sprouted along the banks, probably from last year’s mayhaw berries that washed downstream to the farm.

Reaching the largest oak in the pasture, I splay both hands across its trunk. It’s almost as if I can feel its heartbeat, if it had one. Life force, definitely.

I gaze upward through the thick, dark green branches at the blue sky. Euphoria fills me as I’m welcomed home. I close my eyes, grinning.

“I’ve missed you,” I whisper again, then raise my voice so that everyone but my mother in the house a quarter mile away can hear. “I’ve missed you!”

“I’ve missed you, too.” A deep voice. Edged with a chuckle. Human.

My eyes fly open. I whirl to see who’s there.

Virgil steps out from behind the other side of the tree, blue T-shirt and faded jeans, an axe over his shoulder, blue fire in his aura.

I stare at him. He’s on my mom’s land, but less than fifty feet from his own on the other side of the fence laced with blackberry bushes. And the blue energy around him? The wards? Does he even know that he can do that? He must. Unless the bind rune on his wrist is a crazy coincidence.

I can’t exactly ask him. What would I do? Flag him down and say, “Hey, Virgil, are you a witch? Is that tattoo a sign that you’re a member of a coven?”

This is a small Georgia town where everybody knows everybody, and it’s firmly entrenched as a third notch in the buckle of the Bible Belt. People here aren’t exactly open-minded about anyone who is “other.” I know. I grew up here, ostracized by other kids and their parents as well, long before I was a witch. I was simply a brainy kid with lots of strange ideas that didn’t fit into anyone else’s understanding of how life should be. I was forty-five before I understood that all my strangeness as a child came from my extended dysfunctional family. When you grow up in the muck, the muck seems normal.

Virgil looks from me to his axe and back. He shrugs, chuckles again, and drops the axe to the ground. “Oops. Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you, Laurie.”

I feel the heat rise in my face. I do a quick backtrack on what I might’ve said aloud or under my breath to the Nature spirits and wonder how badly I’ve embarrassed myself.

“Well, hello again, Virgil. I wasn’t expecting to see you out here in the middle of nowhere.”

We both laugh. Yeah. Obviously, I wasn’t expecting to see him.

“I know,” he says as he sinks his hands into his pockets.

He’s not carrying his cane with him. Instead, it leans against the same tree that I was literally hugging a few seconds ago. That cane is more than a cane. It’s more like the staff of a High Priest. Dark wood, maybe walnut, beautifully carved and stained, with a carved stag head and antlers to the forefront of the handle. No doubt he carved it himself, layering in his energy and making it sacred in the process of creation. I share a deep affinity for the Antlered God, often associated with protection.

Virgil notices me noticing, and he takes a step toward his cane. It crosses my mind that I can easily hand it to him, but all the real witches I know don’t like for anyone else to handle their tools unless given permission to blend their energies. His gait gives way to a slight limp before he retrieves the cane and smiles up at me.

“So, what are you doing out here? Didn’t you have your appointment with Neil-Junior?”

“Yes, and it went fine. Thank you for using your influence to get them to work me in. I’m not sure what I would’ve done if I’d had to wait another week to find a dentist.”

“You’re welcome. What are friends for?”

Friends. Before this trip back home, the last time I’d seen him, he’d been a child. So had I, though I hadn’t thought of myself as a child back then. I’d been on the precipice of puberty and deeply offended to be referred to as a child.

“I see you’re getting reacquainted with your farm,” Virgil says. “The spirits of this place must welcome you back with love.”

We stare at each other for a moment. Normal people don’t talk like this, but witches do. Only those of us who are attuned to the unseen world.

Time stands still. A soft breeze rustles the leaves of the oak tree above us. The sound feels like a breath of air, drifting in soft puffs, as quiet and delicate as the touch of butterfly wings on the rose petals in Mama’s garden.

Virgil breaks the silence. “Is there someplace you’re going? You were sure walking in a hurry to get here.”

Was I? I can’t even say where I was headed in such a hurry. Away. To my safe spot walking in the fields of home, among the occasional trees, and eventually into the thick woods.

“I was, um, running away from home.” I force a laugh.

“I believe that. Best I recall, you did run away from home when you were eighteen and never looked back. Or so I’m told. I never heard of someone so eager to leave their hometown.”

I close the distance between us. I stand on the raised oak tree roots to be taller than him, still not quite close enough to reach out and touch his shoulder. “Really now? If I recall correctly, your mom was the one who ran away. Dix went off to college and she took you and moved to Nashville.”

“But that’s not running away. That’s running to. She finally decided to follow her dreams, and she hauled me along with her. Now,” he adds as he glances over his shoulder toward his side of the fence line, “she’s here with me.”

On tiptoe, I frown beyond his wide shoulders, but see nothing. What am I looking for? A ghost? I step down from the tree roots and into a rare spot of sunshine that trickles down through the branches above and feel the warm grass under my bare feet.

“See that field behind me, Laurie? Between where we’re standing and the main highway that leads into town?”

I nod. Pastureland and thick oaks. Maybe a pond or two just this side of the fence, and a creek that connects them all.

“See the big oak tree with the low-hanging limbs all by itself? That’s where my mom got her first kiss from my dad when she was sixteen. They were at some type of church hang-out at the house and snuck outside to be alone. My mom always said that’s where everything started for her, and where she wanted everything to end. Her grave is the first in the green cemetery that we started.”

I squint at the ground beneath the tree. Virgil reads my mind.

“Oh, there’s no headstone. Nothing at all but a metal rod in the ground with a number on it. It’s like that with all six graves here. We have a map back of the house in case any of their families want to visit, but most of our residents don’t have family close by, if at all, and all of them love the idea of spending their eternity so close to Nature.”

Somberly, I nod and stare at my bare feet. Then I stare into the distance and wonder where the other graves are on that side of the fence. The pasture is well-kept, and wildflowers grow in patches. The trees have been pruned, with nary a stray limb or piece of trash in sight. From one of the main branches of the tree that I will now forever think of as his mother’s oak hangs a rope swing tied to a single plank.

“So you’re on our side of the fence to make sure the state of our farm doesn’t make your property look bad?” I smile to let him know I’m teasing.

“Oh! By the way, I can mow your mom’s yards, but she insists you’re taking care of it. I’m not sure about that since I talked to the yard service you hired and they said she’s told them she can do it herself.”

That’s my mom. Caught somewhere between being independent and being self-sacrificing.

“Thanks, Virgil. I’d appreciate that until I can get the lawn service back out here.”

“I don’t mind. I have to mow mine anyway, and hers won’t take another twenty minutes on my big riding mower. I’m just looking out for your mom. That’s why I’m out here today. And most days. I can see your farm and your mom’s house from my home office, so I’m usually over here a couple times a week to run off scammers trying to sell her something or buy her land for a pittance. Run off your no-good cousins, too. It usually does the trick when people find out that you handle her finances, but every now and then, it’s handy to have a man—Dix or me, in this case—run them off so that she doesn’t feel threatened. That will probably stop now that you’re back.”

“I’m not sure I’ll be here that long.”

Virgil studies the Antlered God on the handle of his cane. “Really? I thought you might be here a while.”

“My mom said that?” I wouldn’t doubt it. “No, this is just an interim stop on my way to wherever I go next. I decided to sell my house, and who knows where I’ll end up next? My furniture is in storage, and when I decide, I’ll have whatever belongings aren’t currently wedged into my car sent to my next destination.”

“You sold your house without a plan for where you go next? I know it’s been a few decades since I knew you and we were both, literally, children at the time, but I always knew you to have a plan. This doesn’t sound like you.”

It’s hard to explain to anyone else, but I feel comfortable enough with Virgil.

“I just had a bad feeling. I can’t explain it beyond that.” It had taken me long enough, but I had finally learned to listen to my intuition. “Before that, I’d started feeling a push to leave and make a fresh start in some other part of the world. Then suddenly, I felt like—still feel like—something bad is going to happen there. My daughters are grown and gone. I’ve wrapped up all the legal reasons for hanging around. So I thought I’d start a new life. I’m just not sure yet what that new life is going to look like, and I guess I need a little time to figure it out.”

Normally I know exactly what I want things to look like so that I can manifest them properly, but in this case, I don’t know what the next phase of life looks like, only how it feels, and how it feels is… peaceful.

Virgil stabs his cane into the ground and leans against it. “Well, don’t tell me you’re leaving. I’ve already had a bad enough day.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s the other reason I’m out here. I regularly try to keep the farm cleaned up for your mom. You know, if there are any storms or roof leaks or things like that. But today I needed to do some physical labor. I had a great time last night with you and my brother and your mom, but this morning was just sheer hell. So afterwards, I thought I would come find a tree that needed shaping up and chop some wood.”

I laugh. “Sounds like you’d prefer to take that axe to something other than a stack of fire logs.

“You caught me. Today was my day off, which is why I stayed out so late last night. I’m not even full-time at the nursing home because they’re on such a tight budget, and all my hospice work is as a volunteer. But I have this patient who is nowhere near ‘actively dying’—that’s the term for it—and asking to see his children. Half the family wants nothing to do with him and the other half of the family want to force that half to forgive him for things he’s done. And I’m getting pulled into the middle of it. There are things I could do to help my patient, but he doesn’t want any part of it. Almost like he wants to make everything as difficult as he can, and he keeps egging on his grandson to do his dirty work.”

I don’t say anything. Try as I might, I can’t think of anything. The days leading up to my dad’s death had been brutal, and it had gotten to where he would try shenanigans on a weekly basis to force Shelby and me to come home and sit by his bedside while he either ignored us or lambasted us. He didn’t care what his games did to us emotionally or how his manipulations threatened our careers or other relationships. Shelby especially, in his position with the military, didn’t need Daddy’s antics taking his mind off his safety.

Virgil clears his throat to bridge the awkward silence. “A lot of endings are messy,” he continues. “They’re not always full of love and legacy. Some—like this man—have a lot of guilt-tripping. People don’t just change when they’re near the ends of their lives and go all sweet and regretful. Some people do have regrets, but a lot don’t, and they’re scared and out of control and become that much more controlling. By the way, how’s your mom doing?” His eyes grow large. “I don’t mean that those two are related or that she’s doing that!”

“About the same as usual.”

“That’s another reason I try to check in on her regularly. Since she had her stroke⁠—”

I jerk my head up “Stroke?”

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