I took a deep breath to steady myself, then I bent closer to him and carefully cradled his paw in my hands.
I caressed the back of my finger over the rough pad of his front paw. My soft touch to let death know I was there. Then I pushed my mouth closer and whispered the secret scriptures, low enough so only death could hear. Words my papaw taught me to say that death cannot ignore.
The air around me grew colder, a sign that death was pulling on the energy to manifest itself. That slight shift as Blue’s soul-song grew stronger, slipping from death’s hold, told me so. I hummed my own soul-song—a nameless hymnal sung by the grave, but it has played in my head now for years. It invited the dog’s soul to join mine out here, to dance in my palm.
I readied my hands open, so I could clap our two souls together, so we could push death out—
A brash truck horn honked. It caused me to jump and Blue to flinch. Bubba Dunn, in his old Chevy, came to a screeching halt on the roadside next to us.
“Come on, Weatherly. They told me to fetch you and hurry,” he hollered out the passenger window. His oldest son hopped out of the truck and nodded for me to get in.
But I didn’t want to go. I wanted to save Blue.
“You hear me, girl!” Bubba yelled. “Leave that damn animal alone and get in!”
His son wrenched me up by my elbow and shoved me in the truck like I was a petulant child that needed handling.
From behind, I heard Adaire cursing as she hurriedly jumped in the truck bed before we took off.
“Did it work?” I screamed through the back glass to Adaire who was kneeling at the tailgate, stretching her neck, watching to see if the dog moved.
After we made it down the road a piece—too far for her to see anymore—she turned around and shrugged, then sank down in the truck bed, her heart just as heavy as mine, tears threatening to spill down her cheeks.
My chest tightened as an awful burn lit up my lungs. I coughed once, then a second time. Quickly, I grabbed the dirty grease rag from the floorboard and hawked up a small wad of black ooze. Sin Eater Oil. Wasn’t much but I hoped it meant I had saved Blue.
When we made it to the house, Grandmama stood there in the driveway. Scowl-faced and angry, she turned away at the sight of us pulling up to the house, tossing a dismissive hand toward Bone Layer.
I didn’t have to ask what we were doing. I knew. Somebody was dying and needed me. From the looks of it, whoever it was, Grandmama didn’t approve.
Silently, I got in the truck as Bone Layer held the door open for me, and watched in the side mirror as Adaire stood there, arms smarted across her chest and anger scrunching up her face.
Bone Layer, in his yellow-plaid farm shirt and plowing khakis, drove with a furrowed brow, like his only mission was the road. He didn’t say word. An expressionless and emotionless rock like always.
“If it’s Mrs. Coburn, I won’t do it,” I told him after a long silence. “That old hag spat on me and called me devil child.” Of course, it was because Adaire and I had toilet-papered and egged her house, but we only did it because she tattled to the preacher after she caught us smoking behind the church shed.
As we approached the center of town, instead of heading out to the country to visit one of the church folk, Bone Layer turned north, up the mountain.
“Why we going up here?” A lick of fear rose in my chest. We lived on Appalachia’s edge, not in the thick of the trees. We’re not hill-folk, but we’re not flatlanders, either.
And we weren’t allowed north.
Well, Agnes Wilder wasn’t allowed.
Papaw never told me what Grandmama had done to get kicked out of the hills, cast down to the bottom with a good riddance. But there was no going back for her, it seemed. I’d only been up here once before myself.
We drove high, where the roads wound and narrowed. Pines stretched tall and thickened. Homes, sparse and toothpick-frail, looked as if they’d slide right off the mountain if given the chance.
The narrow dirt road led to a small square house. An older home with faded gray lap-jointed wood siding with the prettiest pale pink painted on the shutters. In the yard stood a bottle tree taller than Bone Layer. It crooked to the side, its branches weighed down by the colorful glass bottles, all shades of blue, to trap the spirits that tried to get inside.
A big-boned elderly woman in a floral cooking dress stepped out onto the front porch to greet us. Just from the looks of her, I imagined she smelled like home cooking and Jesus.
Worry lines etched deep on her face, but then relief relaxed her shoulders at the sight of us. I didn’t know this woman from Adam, but I could tell in the assured steps Bone Layer took to get to her and the careful way he cupped her hands in his own, she was someone important to him. I’d never met Bone Layer’s friends, wasn’t aware he had any. But the heavy murmur of his words comforted her in a way that only people who went way back could.
I smelled death before I even stepped on the porch. A stagnate smell. Like the rotted stump water mosquito larvae thrived in.
“Are you sure?” she asked Bone Layer after sizing me up. “She looks awfully young.”
He nodded. “She got it from Augustus,” he told her. My papaw’s name, though tainted by his marriage to my grandmother, was all she needed to let me inside.
“She looks like her mama,” she said, admiring my face. “Cleodora,” she introduced herself as she opened the rickety screen door for me to enter. “But you can call me Miss Dora.”
Inside was pristine; it smelled like Pine-Sol and fresh biscuits. Curio cabinets were tucked in all the corners of the room with every kind of religious figurine you could imagine. Angels and crosses. Little mini churches. Baby Jesus and crucified Jesus. They lined the walls and down the halls.
I swallowed hard, my unholiness stuck out like a cowlick in such a religious home.
“This here’s my grandson, Lucky.” She stepped to the side so I could see the pitiful man lying on the couch underneath a crocheted blanket. Maybe late twenties. His eyes were sunken, rimmed with dark circles. His lips were bone-dry and shriveled. There was a familiar frailness to him, one I’d seen a time or two before. Cancer.
Not sure what kind. It didn’t matter.
Death was creeping in on him, like a shadow, slowly inching over his body a little bit every day. His death probably wouldn’t be for weeks yet, but it was coming.
I thought at first, what I had heard when I walked in, was the muffled sound of a church choir on the AM radio. But that murmured harmonic music was coming from the man. His soul-song was a sweet, mournful sound. Whoever this man was, he was worth saving.
“Doctors said there’s nothing more to do with him. Just take him home until the Good Lord calls,” she said to us, but looked down on her grandson like he was a most precious gift. “But I told them, the Good Lord set people on the earth that can do things better than them. That’s why I called you, Jonesy,” she said. He’d been called Bone Layer so long I’d forgotten he had a Christian name.
A weak smile pushed up the corners of Lucky’s mouth as he looked at me. “If I’m seeing a sweet angel, Big Mama, I must be dying,” he said and gave me his best effort at a wink.
“Hush now.” Miss Dora fanned that nonsense away with her hand as if shooing flies. “I don’t want to hear none of that talk. You let this girl do what she does. You’ll be up and about in no time.” Her worried eyes weren’t so sure, though. Then she turned to me. “Jonesy and me will be out on the front porch if you need us.” She patted her grandson’s leg one more time with an everything’s-gonna-be-alright kind of pat, but the tears welled at the edge of her eyes.
