Chapter 30
“Well,” Virgil says. He hangs onto my arm to steady me, but I can feel the tremor of anger running through him. “You know, I both knew it and didn’t know it. I sensed something was wrong, even when we were kids. I think it’s easier not to believe things sometimes because you try to look at it from a logical, analytical point of view. We use facts for proof rather than our gut feelings. I know that’s gotten me into trouble more than once in my life. Knowing things absolutely in the pit of my stomach, but looking the other way because I couldn’t prove something to anyone outside of my body and the way it felt. When I was a young man, I thought I needed at least three data points to make a decision, but as I got older, I realized that one data point in my gut was usually enough, no matter what the physical evidence looked like. If a kid fears an adult, you gotta take for granted that there’s a reason, if they aren’t old enough to express it. Hell, especially if they aren’t old enough to express it.”
“How have you been this week, Virgil? I know I overheard you say something to Dix earlier about what a rough week it had been. And yet here you are, spending your energy to give me a break.”
Virgil gives my elbow a little squeeze. “Oh, don’t think I didn’t enjoy tonight. Just because our ritual wasn’t focused on me doesn’t mean it didn’t ease my own stress. And I do fucking love energy work with you.”
He pauses to squint upward at the sky. The heavy clouds to the north have drifted closer, and surely he hears the distant thunder that I do.
“Yeah,” he continues, “I gotta say. It has been a rough week. I had two patients this week, who are actively dying and—”
“‘Actively dying’?” I’ve heard him use that term before.
“Yes. That’s the term for the last days when the patient’s vitals signal that death is imminent. Changes in pulse, blood pressure. That’s when I sit with them, day and night, meditate with them and on them, help them pass. But the hardest part has actually been dealing with one of my patient’s relatives. He’s not actively dying. At least, not yet. I think he has another three or four months. My best guess after doing this kind of work for a while. Judging by his deteriorating condition. The grandson is becoming a royal nuisance. He calls every few days. Every time I tell him the answer is no, I’m not going to force family members to spend time with a patient if they don’t want to.”
Old Raymond again. Andy Ray’s manipulative father. The conversation I overheard the first time I visited Virgil in his office while Mama was still in ICU.
The first time I saw that lowest-bidder carpet from my visions.
“Let me guess. Your patient, when he was younger, abused his family, and now they don’t want to be around him. Am I right?”
Sure, I overheard the story from the visitor to Virgil’s office, when Virgil had refused to guilt trip family members into once again pleasing their abuser. But I also understand from a personal point of view, and I appreciate Virgil’s stance on it more than I can say. My dad had been like that. Abusive in his youth and middle age. Merely manipulative in his old age when he could no longer throw a hammer hard enough to hit us. Instead, he’d used his health as a bludgeon to guilt trip us and to manipulate us into making sudden, difficult visits home. With Shelby in the Air Force, most of the manipulation was directed at me. But only because my parents had such a hard time tracking down Shelby, specifically because of his assignments. If my dad had spent his last days in a nursing home, I’m positive that he, too, would have sweet-talked every distant relative and small town neighbor into calling and writing to guilt trip me into a weekly visit, even if it had meant giving up custody of my kids just so I could be present for him.
“So, um, what kind of magick have you done to stop the grandson?” Magick with a k in my world but without in his.
He sighs. “I try not to magic my way through other people’s relationships or what they’re dealing with because of an impending death in the family. I always find that it’s best to let these things work themselves out with no interference or redirection for me. In other words, it’s their shit to work through and I won’t manipulate the healing process for them. However, I did put some protective measures in place to stop the constant phone calls and emails.” Virgil pauses and looks at me with a smirk. Then he leans in to whisper in my ear, “I blocked him.”
Virgil makes me laugh. As I was taught long ago and as I told my own students, you don’t need to magick your way out of everything.
“So you’re rid of him?”
“Not exactly. Now he’s calling my boss and all the Board of Directors and trying to convince them to fire me. He has managed to find several other staff at the nursing home who have said that they would gladly play peacemaker and make sure that all the family members come together to make the old man happy one last time. Even at the cost of his loved ones that he hurt so badly years ago. They’re not ready to forgive him, and they’re certainly not ready to see him, and it’s not my place or anyone’s place on the staff to force them to. These things need to work themselves out on their own. The grandson sees it as me being the only thing that stands in his way of getting what he wants, and what he wants is what his grandfather tells him he wants.”
A drop of rain lands on the tip of my nose, cold, delicious. I tilt my head back to the night sky as clouds move across and hide the full moon above us. Another droplet splashes down on my cheek. I open my mouth to catch yet another.
We can hear the swiftly moving creek ahead of us. The area has been dry for most of my stay, except for the last few days. The creek has dwindled today, but tonight’s rainfall in the north has revitalized it, and now its water is reaching our farm. There’s a noticeable difference from before, when it had started to subside.
Beside me, Virgil laughs at my reaction. “We’re going to get wet. No way can we make it back to your mom’s house without getting soaked to the bone.”
“But wasn’t that our intention? To splash through the creek? Our little cleansing ritual?”
I reach the waters a full fifteen seconds ahead of him. A quarter mile south of us where some of the land is still swampy, I might be concerned about alligators or water moccasins. Here, where the creek comes closest to the house, is as safe as it gets for wading across the stream when it’s still only a few inches deep. We are barely north of the bridge that allows us to drive four-wheelers, trucks, and farm equipment into the “Back 40” of the property and just south of mayhaw trees that flank either side of the creek and leave tiny apple-like fruit bobbing in the creek every April. Later this evening, if the rain keeps up, this creek will fill up to its brim—a solid six feet deep of rushing, dangerous waters that will flood the lower parts of the farm and spill over into the swamp.
And I’m okay with that. It means that no one will get into the swamp where Bobby died and excavate his car, much less him.
Behind me, Virgil trudges down the creek bank to join me. Steadying himself with his cane on the decline, he makes his way to the edge of the water and toes off his boots. I stand at the upper edge of the creek, the flowing water not so deep that I might lose my footing but still enough to cover my ankles. Virgil wades in beside me.
It’s just the two of us here now with the earth and water and clouds above us. Our own version of the Druids’ land, sea, and sky.
Deep in this watery trench, we can see nothing around us and hear nothing over the booming thunder. We splash and laugh, and it feels like all the world’s troubles are washing away. This is what I needed: this night, this friendship.
If I had to choose the best part of this evening, though, it would be a tossup between seeing my mom content by a backyard cookout and working a little magick with another witch, even if our traditions are very, very different.
I’m only now realizing that a part of me has always longed for someone to have this kind of connection with. I found it in the past covens of mine, but not in a partner. Jesse was supportive in his own way, and without him, I probably wouldn’t have realized my dream of the healing center or its newer incarnations. But while Jesse happily attended all public and some private rituals with me, he lacked both the gifts and the knowledge to lead them with me. He never had any desire himself to study witchcraft. That wasn’t a problem between us, ever, but standing in circle with Virgil does make me wonder what I’ve been missing all this time.
As for Quent, my first husband, he didn’t believe in magick or religion or life after death or life beyond the earthly plane or the supernatural. Or in me. Quent never understood me and maybe never loved me. Jesse didn’t think he had to understand me because he loved me, anyway. Even now, Dixon doesn’t understand any of this and would probably be willing to take part, but he would never be passionate about it. It’s just not him. Pamela, although I think she’ll become a good friend, would never understand. Probably most people back here in my hometown wouldn’t.
But Virgil? He gets it. And even though I love that my mom found some peace and contentment tonight, it’s connecting with Virgil that has made today even more special.
Thunder cracks above us. The creek waters rise a little higher, now above my ankles and midway my calves. The thunder clap echoes.
I whirl on Virgil. “Say, where there’s thunder, there’s lightning.” At least that’s what I’ve always heard. Blue light flickers above us on the opposite side of the creek bank. The heavy, dark clouds roll in closer above, now completely blocking the moon. The whole bowl of heaven takes on an ominous tone.
A streak of solid light cuts the darkness between us as Virgil fumbles to remove the flashlight from his back pocket. It’s steady for a moment until it tumbles out of his grip and splashes into the water at our feet. The light swirls in the fast-moving eddies and then sails away.
I can’t see Virgil anymore. Everything’s gone dark, except for the occasional flicker of lightning from a distance. I grope the air in front of me, my hands outstretched in a desperate attempt to find Virgil. The thunder is a constant rumble and I can’t make out his silhouette, no matter how hard I squint. But every so often, a flash of lightning illuminates the sky and for a split second, I can see the blue energy in Virgil’s eyes, glimmering like stars against the darkness. I grab for him.
“I think we need to get out of the water now,” he yells over the rising wind. He grins back at me, the flicker of light shining for a split second on his teeth. The blue energy of his aura brightens, outlining his body so I can find him in the dark.
The heavens above us seem to open up, even as we step out of the now knee-deep water and half-crawl up the creek bank to level ground. Within seconds the rain is in my eyes, running down my collar, plastering my clothes to my bare skin as if I stepped into a shower stall of cold water at full blast. I backhand the water out of my eyes, but it’s still not enough. I squeeze my eyes shut as I search for a patch of dry fabric in my clothes to wipe away the rain and find none.
“Do you hear that, Virgil? It sounds like… I don’t know… a horn or a siren.” Thunder rumbles overhead again, the kind of thunder Daddy always called “muddy.”
Leaning heavily on his cane, Virgil battles to his feet and pulls me up with him. “Yeah. Yeah, I hear it. It sounds like a car horn. There. Did you hear that? Like an SOS.”
Together, we brace against the onslaught of rain as we try to stand up and detect our path back to the house. I hold up my forearm in front of my eyes to shield my face from the rain, now blowing sideways in sheets. I blink through the water flowing down my forehead and into my eyes, but I can’t blink it away completely. All I can see is water and blurry blue lights in the distance.
The SOS honks out again. I blink at the blue lights ahead. Between sheets of rain, I can barely make out two police cars sitting in the backyard between us and the back porch where my mom usually sits and rocks every afternoon.
Mama.
I take off in a dead run for home.
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