Manroot (19 page)

They found the three half-full abandoned sacks.
The boys decided to combine them into two and they would carry them. As they sat dividing and arguing – “You’ve got less than I do,” Ryan accused, “my sack’s the heaviest.”

“
No it isn’t, Look, let’s measure them,” Kyle suggested, and as the argument raged, it came…a soft, anguished wail.

Kack froze; her face blanched white.
“Hurry, children, we must hurry,” she urged.

The sound rose.
Its pitch was urgent, bouncing off the tree, the rocks – changing directions. It was a banshee scream, the total terror of it full now at its peak of urgency.

Kack studied their faces.
She could see that they heard nothing. She felt it was near, coming closer –
it seeks!

She gauged the distance.
The house was too far. She knew a cave that was closer.

“
Hurry, children, hurry. Run!” They couldn’t ignore her urgent voice, still they did not understand. A strong wind had come up, whirling the leaves about.

“
Hurry – run!” she shouted, herding them before her.

When they reached the small cave she said, “
Go in. On your hands and knees go in.”

They crawled into the small, dank opening.
A lizard ran over April’s fingers and disappeared into the recesses of the cave.

Kack entered last.
She sat up, and with her back to the opening, created a shield to protect them.

“
What is it?” Ryan asked. “Storm’s coming?”

“
Never mind,” she said, turning her head. Her ear cocked; she traced its path. It skipped among the rocks, dying gently, losing strength, then rising to a frantic, erratic pitch, its scream one of abject terror, for it knew…
it knew what it was.

“
Cover your ears,” she ordered. It was a superfluous precaution, for she knew they did not hear its eerie voice. It was a privilege or a curse that she heard it so clearly.

They put their fingers in their ears and squinted their eyes closed.

She began humming. She needed a closer sound so she could not hear it so clearly.

April leaned back agains
t the smooth coolness of the wall. She closed her eyes.

“
No, no.” Kack shook her. “Do not sleep. It is the Oh mu.”

Too late
– she had said it. Now she must distract them. “Oh, I’m a silly old woman,” she lied. “I thought for a minute it was one of those awful summer storms – the Indians call them Oh mu. Let’s play riddles,” she said brightly.

“
Me first, me first,” Kyle insisted. “I know a good one from Daddy. What’s black and white and read all over?”

“
I know, a skunk,” April said, certain that she was right.

“
No,” Kyle said. “Guess again.” And they each sat there thinking.

Chapter 21

Three nights in a row they found April sleepwalking.
When she awoke, she would sob, “The river – the river. I’m scared of the river. Kyle shouldn’t have – ” She stopped in mid-sentence. She was afraid to even tell her mother about what she had dreamed.

The women kept silent, never sharing with each other the thought that the Judge was to b
lame. It had been too harsh a lesson. After all, the children were only twelve years old.

Only Hannah had a real inkling of what they had seen.
Tom had described to her vividly what drowned men really looked like.

Jenny couldn
’t blame the Judge entirely. She
had
given her permission. However, she felt that she should cut the visit short. If they left now, it would only be ten days earlier than they had originally planned, but she put it off, not wanting to hurt the Judge or her sister’s feelings. What happened the next night forced her decision. Their feelings were less important than April’s safety.

It was after midnight when Tom left the house to set out the mole traps.
The creatures had taken to favoring the west grounds, and their persistent tunneling there was creating havoc with the raspberry bushes. It had killed off a few already.

He moved off across the lawn.
The bright moonlight cast his shadow looming before him. Plainly in the silver light he saw the upraised furrows of their tunnels. He knelt, and digging with a trowel, he opened the furrow, placed the trap inside the tunnel, then patted the loose dirt back over it.

He surveyed his handiwork, pleased, although he knew it was going to take many nights and many traps to clear them out completely.
The Missus had told him to take any moles that he caught and turn them loose in the west woods. Sure he would, he said, and he laughed to himself. Women and their foolish ideas!

Starting on the next tunnel, he wasn
’t sure what made him stop to listen – something in the night, a misplaced sound. His neck prickled. The moon danced behind a cloud and he listened, then out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash of white.

He straightened, clutching the heavy trap in one hand.
Never been any problems around here, he thought. He rose and walked slowly over the lawn in the direction where he thought he had seen something.

He wasn
’t mistaken. Before him now at the edge of the woods, something white really was there. He was a sensible man, so he dismissed the nonsense of ghosts and such. Something was there. He could see it moving, changing direction, making for the river.

He took the short cut.
When the moon reappeared, he saw her clearly: her eyes wide open, hands at her side, moving like a zombie, tears streaming down her cheeks.

He didn
’t know what to do. She walked past him, not seeing him or anything that was real. Whatever her tear-filled eyes were seeing, it wasn’t the dark woods.

Jeez, he thought.
Why did he have to find her? He remembered some sort of old wives’ tale that said you shouldn’t wake a sleepwalker or they’ll die. It wasn’t his kid or his responsibility. He saw she was too close to the river. He didn’t have time to go back and get the Judge. He’d have to do this himself.

He came abreast of her, reache
d tentatively for her small hand. “April! April, honey. Let’s go this way,” and with his other hand he reached across her back, touched her shoulder and eased her around.

There was no resistance.
She walked where he led her. She tripped a time or two. Her face changed; her eyes widened. He was afraid, so he went slowly now, walking in short steps that matched her.

Slowly, they got there.
He released her hand and opened the door.

Up the steps they went.
He wasn’t sure – should he get the Judge, or her mother? Then the decision was out of his hands, for she tripped on a step and fell sprawling on the landing, which awakened her, and she began crying loudly.

Lights came on one by one.
The Judge appeared in his bathrobe, then Jenny, and Hannah; only Elizabeth didn’t awaken as she had taken a sleeping powder.

“
My God, Tom, what are you doing?” the Judge demanded.

“
I found her walking in her sleep, headed for the river.”

Jenny rushed forward, crushing April to her.
“Baby, oh baby.”

Between sobs, April gasped, “
Kyle shouldn’t have---” Again she stopped herself. The recurring nightmare was so vivid, so real to her, that she had become afraid of falling asleep. She saw her cousin Ryan, or was it Kyle? – she saw him lying drowned, on the table, so blue, so cold, with only a green worm slithering down his bloated chin…

It was understandable that they needed to leave early.
April’s own bed at home, her own room – familiar, everyday things from her real life and not the summer visit, seemed the answer to Jenny.

April needed to be away from Castlewood, from her cousins and the river.

The dream was slow in leaving, and many a night Jenny rose to comfort her sobbing daughter, so it was easy to turn down the invitation the next summer.

The summer
following that, the boys were going to Boy Scout camp; the summer after, the Judge took his family to Europe. Thus the tradition of the summer visits was broken.

Letters and holiday phone calls kept Jenny in touch.
Over ten summers later, the Judge and Elizabeth went to Ohio for Jenny’s funeral. The boys were backpacking in Europe and couldn’t be reached in time.

It was the day after her mother
’s funeral, when her aunt and uncle had returned to Missouri, that April had it. She hadn’t endured it for years – the dream.

It was as real and vivid as ever.
Shaking herself awake, she wondered was it Ryan or Kyle in the dreams? She still wasn’t sure. She remembered her small cousins; she hadn’t seen them since they were twelve.

She aro
se, made some hot tea. With fondness she recalled the ginseng. Many people put it in their tea these days: Kack had been ahead of her time.

She cupped the warm mug, looked into the amber liquid, and sipped slowly, knowing she
’d be awake now till morning. The dream would pass: it had before. A word tumbled over and over in her mind.

Precognition.

Chapter 22

A week after the Judge’s seventy-fifth birthday, he knew he couldn’t wait any longer, so he scheduled the appointment with the doctor in St. Louis. It took an incredible effort to pretend in front of Kyle and Ryan that all was well. They had been in town for the birthday celebration, but were now safely off to pursue their lives. Kyle was in the state capital of Jefferson City, and Ryan had returned to Africa.

After preliminary tests, the doctor persuaded him to remain at
Barnes Hospital. Tom had taken Elizabeth off in tears, the Judge reassuring her that he was fine, yet knowing deep down that he was not.

She returned the next morning, Tom following in her wake laden down with the photograph albums and scrapbooks.
Some vague, peculiar thought was in her mind that if he viewed the record of their life and happiness, he couldn’t possibly leave her.

In the long hours of waiting, he was restless; he wasn
’t used to inactivity. Even after his retirement, he donated the swimming pool and grounds to an organization for handicapped children; he sat on the board, made sure they had everything they needed to create a working, viable camp that would enrich the children’s lives. He kept busy with the greenhouse, he saw that Katherine was supplied with books, he looked after Bruce. He was not an idle man. So, to sit in the stark hospital room, interrupted only by nurses and interns sticking him with needles, made him impatient.

He did open the books in which
Elizabeth had so faithfully recorded their lives. He took no interest in the photos of him and her, young and smiling. It was when the babies appeared that his heart fluttered. Such a gift, such a marvelous gift. It was she who had given his life meaning.

Those two handsome faces stari
ng up at him: Kyle in his photographer’s phase, Ryan the young artist – the record of happy summers. Two barefoot boys with their fishing poles; two brown Indians swimming in the pool.

She had given him this incredible gift, and Katherine had taught them well; their love of the land and the creatures came
from her.

Still, he had b
een a good father to them. He had controlled Elizabeth. He had not let her inflict the sameness on them; he’d refused to allow her to dress them alike, he had insisted upon their individuality. Even now, their paths were diverse from each other – Kyle with his law degree, Ryan in Africa with the art commission. He remembered how they had searched for their real selves, and how he had remained silent. He did not advise or prod; he did not make his father’s mistake. They had chosen their own paths.

Hi sons, they had brought him a lifetime of hap[pines.
He loved them both as he loved nothing else in his life, except…

In a matter of days he was told that it was cancer and inoperable.

Chapter 23

The Judge insisted on being released from the hospital.

The talk of a hospice, and nurses calling her, only upset Elizabeth, and she took to having Hannah say she wasn
’t in.

Elizabeth
was exhausted from the traveling back and forth to St. Louis, and Tom, who drove her, was frantic until he heard every day that indeed the Judge was still alive.

Tom fumed and fretted to his wife, going from anger to anguish:
“We don’t have any papers about the acreage he promised,” and, “He’s already given away Castlewood.”

“
The Judge has always been a man of his word,” Hannah commented quietly.

“
I know, but what good is that if he’s dead? Can’t give his word then – and she,” he nodded upstairs, “what does she know about anything except buying things?”

It disturbed Hannah that after all the years they had worked for the Reardons, Tom should have grown so bitter toward them
– more so when he drank! Personally she loved them all. They were her family.

Bringing the Judge home was encouraging to Tom.
Now he could look for the right moment to introduce the subject of the promise. It was tactless, he knew, but Hannah and he had spent their whole life at Hilltop, and it wouldn’t be right. A man’s word is his bond.

The Judge came home a different man
– thin to the point of gauntness, his hair a shock of white, his firm step still there, but no one knew the effort it took to pretend. He was exhausted after the short trip from the car to the house.

Elizabeth
had moved his things into the east bedroom, and when he heard of it, he sat wearily in the hall while he ordered Hannah to move it all back to the green room which he had occupied for the last twenty or so years.

Elizabeth
was upset, and with tears shimmering in her eyes, she tried to explain. “But dear, I thought the morning sun would be nice, and the balcony – and you can see the river from that room.”

“
There, there, Elizabeth, it’s all right. No harm done. Hannah will soon have it all put back.” He comforted her as one would a small child.

He was glad for the delay.
It gave him time to sit in the high-back chair to catch his breath and summon his strength so he could manage the long flight of stairs without help.

Elizabeth
fussed with his overnight bags and felt angry that he preferred the dark green room which faced the woods and the cabin. Nothing to see from the windows, she thought. It was the one room in the house in which she felt uncomfortable. It kept quiet gray gloom even with the fireplace lit; the room had a strange cool quality, and she felt a presence of something there that she did not understand.

He refused the cold supper and called Tom to light a fire.
As he knelt working with the chips of wood, Tom cleared his throat, not knowing how to begin. Each time he started to say something the Judge was overcome with a spasm of coughing, and eventually Tom left the room, the fire roaring cheerfully. He cursed himself under his breath for not having spoken out about the acreage.

“
How could you ask?” Hannah sympathized. “At a time like this – why, he would think we’re burying him today!”

“
Well, maybe we are – who knows? He looks bad enough.” Sullenly, Tom went to bed, certain that it was their fate to be gypped out of what should rightfully be theirs.

The Judge went to the window; he found her slight figure bending over, planting or watering at the side of the cabin.

In the twilight he watched her strong motions as she bent and stretched, working in the soil.

His eyes fast
ened on her, feeding on her strength.

Then her hand arrested in mid-air.
She rose and turned to face the house, one arm up shielding her eyes from the last rays of the sun. She looked and saw him standing in the window.

Satisfied, he lay down and she came to him.