“Out,” I say crisp and clear in case she didn’t hear me the first time and head to my room.
Clementine’s, the local family-owned restaurant, sits off the main highway, and up behind the diner is what all the bus tours come here for. The Sugar Hill Plantation. Named after the sugar cane once grown there. At some point, sugar was no longer needed and cotton took its place. A dark history that brings tour buses through Black Fern for an education. An important reminder of the scars we set upon this land, its people.
The roadside market with homemade goods from locals helps occupy the tourists on their way to and from.
It’s past five when I get a break between tour buses. Adaire used to help us at the market until she started waitressing at Clementine’s to save up for school. I’d sometimes find her leaning against the brick wall behind the diner, taking smoke breaks by the trash bins.
I’m half looking over my shoulder as I toss the garbage in the dumpster; my gaze snags on the plantation at the top of the hill.
It’s a perfect dollhouse from this distance. You’d think the fresh white paint and the towering columns of a gorgeous mansion wouldn’t jostle your nerves. But Sugar Hill comes with too much weight for me to ignore.
Clementine’s rear kitchen door shrieks open. The manager, Mr. Pruitt, steps out. His short-sleeve white business shirt and thin black tie a decade behind. He glares at me through chunky black-framed glasses. His eyes dip to my Led Zeppelin T-shirt disapprovingly. Bastard wouldn’t give me a job when I asked.
My fingertips pinch the cherry off the joint I’ve been smoking, and I tuck the leftover roach in the tiny pocket of Adaire’s high-waisted brown shorts I borrowed this morning. They look like they’re made from a vinyl snake. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the same fabric on a bar stool before.
I spit a fleck of the bud off the tip of my tongue and meander back to the front.
At our booth, a small crowd of tourists have gathered around Bone Layer. He brings his taxidermy birds to sell at the market—he finds them out by the Dillard’s abandoned barn, the ones who didn’t have enough sense to stay away from the cats who have run of the place. It’s how he makes the eyes that fascinates people. Incredibly realistic, tiny bead-like things, perfected by dipping and re-dipping liquid acrylic and painting layers in between. The artistic act so beautiful, you could almost believe Bone Layer was a good man. Kind, even.
The caw of a crow yanks my attention upward. On a telephone wire, a black bird perches, surveying the land.
Folks at church say crows are foretellers of death, that they portend bad things to come. Deemed “unclean” because they’re scavengers.
I think it’s a crock of shit.
I watch the bird, wondering if I would know it was Rook or not.
Black birds are everywhere. Especially when you’re looking for a particular one.
“Are these angels?” a Christian lady with a Bellevue Baptist T-shirt asks me. She points to the simple folk dolls I sewed from vintage fabric, adding feathers for wings.
“Forgetting Dolls are what we call them.” I take one down to show her. “They’re for forgetting things you don’t want to remember anymore. Grieving, your worries, heartache, or whatever weighs you down. There’s a little pouch inside the chest.” I open its arms to show her the ribbon that closes off the pocket. “You write down your worries or a person’s name and stuff it inside. Then you bury the doll and say a little prayer. Let your grief, your worries, your...whatever fly into the heavens.” I flitter my fingers upward, my standard sales maneuver. Then I catch sight of Rook in my periphery and freeze.
It’s him. I’d know those dark eyes anywhere. My heartbeat punches in my throat and hammers in my ears. I’m terrified to move, for fear he’ll disappear.
Quickly, my eyes dart around for Grandmama.
“That sounds like voodoo,” the woman says, yanking back my attention. She assesses the doll with judging eyes. “Only Jesus can heal our grief and broken hearts.”
I fumble some apology, trying to explain it’s just a silly notion and Jesus does all the heart healing in our house, too. But she’s no longer interested and wanders over to Myrtle’s stand, who’s selling crosses made out of grapevines and pussy willow.
Rook has stepped away. I eye his shadowy figure through the chicken wire of our display wall and make my way around.
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself from smiling like a fool. His eyes meet mine. They trail over my face, my mouth, and back to my eyes again.
I’ve changed equally as much as him these last few years.
A black T-shirt hugs him tight, something he’s grown too large for. He points to one of the dolls. “Crow feathers?” The depth of his voice is sin to my ears.
I swallow hard, suddenly feeling awful that I have to say yes. Grandmama sets out pokeweed berries soaked with my Sin Eater Oil for the crows that try to nest in our barn. She claims they’re a nuisance (though it’s said it’s a bad omen to kill them). I always wondered if there was another reason—I dump them out when I find them, in case Rook were to wander inside.
Then Bone Layer showed me how to make Forgetting Dolls.
But I don’t tell Rook any of this.
“They are.” I quietly follow him to the backside of our booth, farther away from my grandmother’s ears. “I stitch them with little crystal beads,” I say, as if this makes up for the fact that they died.
Quietly, he observes each doll. I cringe with an unspoken apology. His silence makes my skin itch. He trails his fingers over each set of wings, the slight bend from his fingertips causing the blue iridescence to flex—the same color captured in his dark hair.
“They’re beautiful.” There’s a Mona Lisa quality to him. Like he’s hiding something. I quirk my head ever so slightly, as if just by doing so I could tune into his thoughts. That hidden smile of his grows a fraction. It quickens my pulse.
His hand moves near mine. His eyes land on the gold initial ring on my pinky, pleased to see it there. Of course, I still wear it.
Now I’m looking at him more freely. He’s taller, and no longer the lanky boy I once knew. I’m surprised when I see the tattooed crow on his forearm. The ink is a rich black color, and it’s amazingly detailed: inside the torso of the crow’s body the face of a woman. Her eyes—my eyes—stare hauntingly back at me. How could a tattoo artist capture them so well? Unless they were described by someone who knew, really knew them, could convey their depth and color so accurately as if they’d been studying that one pair of eyes their whole life. That’s what I tell myself. That I might mean as much to him as he does to me.
“When did you get this?” I trace a finger across the tattoo.
He shakes his head. “I don’t remember.”
I draw back, confused. He can’t remember?
“Excuse me, honey,” says a new customer holding three dolls, disrupting the electricity of the moment. “Can I pay with a check or are y’all cash only?”
“Cash only,” I say, giving Rook a quick apology. The lady calls her husband over for some money. I have to return to the front, where Bone Layer guards the cash box, to fetch her change.
As soon as I’m done with the transaction, I work my way back to Rook when Grandmama grabs me by the elbow, bone-crushing tight.
Fear spikes up my spine. I glance past her shoulder, but Rook is nowhere in sight.
