NIGHT TOOK hold and the storm became alive. The sky was charged and crackling. Up high in the pouring black, a cluster of clouds paused above the world. They tingled with ions and unleashed great claps of sound and fire bolts along their path. The Dyboù let the clash of wind and rain lift him. He watched the deluge beat upon the little graves near the chinaberry, rivulets of topsoil running down the small hill, leaving small waxen faces bare to the wind.
Inside the house the girl was lost in the gold of love. Through the window his idiot son lifted up from the bed and handed her his shirt to wear then turned his back as she slipped it on. He watched the boy fiddle with the girl’s hair as the rain poured harder, little spirits lifting up against the whip of the storm. The light of the house was like sunlight cutting through the dark woods. The girl Ruby was eating an apple his boy had cut with a pocketknife. One child started whimpering softly as he approached. The crow was cawing as the girl popped a slice of apple in her mouth, the wind screeching through the pines as he reached the graves and in one easy move lifted a tiny, wriggling six-month-old and opened his mouth.
Maggie the Crow lifted against the storm, rain pelting her eyes, and screamed like a siren, an earsplitting caw that cut through the air currents and fell like an ax onto the floor of earth. The sky split open in answer and hurled a bolt of lightning close, too close to the house, ’til the spirit dropped his prey. To the uninitiated it was only the twist and turn of nature, but Maggie watched as Ruby Bell burst out the front door, hair flying, and ran to the graves of her children.
Ruby’s feet pounded in time with her heart as she leapt from the porch, Ephram’s pocketknife in her hand. It was hard, cold, sure. She had grabbed it as she swept out of the house. All of her children were crying as she raced towards them. Lightning had struck the chinaberry tree and one massive branch lay smoldering on the ground like a severed arm, flames flowering only to be smothered by the rain. The ghost children saw Ruby and hurled themselves towards her, knocking her to the ground. They each knew fear, had lived and died with it collecting in cold sweat against their skin, but still they scrambled towards her, tripping and falling, getting back up and running into her arms. Ruby lifted up and saw the thing they ran from. It moved in the dark, held at bay for a moment by the burning branch of the chinaberry. The rain fell in sheets across Ruby’s face, her eyes cutting between the heavy pines. Ruby had felt him for too long, had taken him to her bed. There he was, perched and waiting for her to lower her vigil. Her children knew like lambs sense a wolf prowling, and they pressed closer to her, limbs flowing through her chest, heads buried in her legs, her shoulders. Soft little shoes stepping onto her calves and pausing for a heartbeat before falling through her body like sand. The sky flashed bright with lightning and then growled low and hot. Ruby knew Ephram was watching her from the porch. She knew he was afraid of her, she knew it did not matter, she would not budge until her children were safe.
Ephram stepped into the rain, his chest bare under his suit jacket. He walked to Ruby and stood above her on the wet earth. That is when he saw the knife in her left hand.
“Ruby?”
She looked up at him through the reaching arms and heads of her children, and for a moment in the shadow and blackness, she forgot there was a man named Ephram, she held her knife tight until the sky flashed again and she caught the soft of his eyes.
“Ruby, come on inside.”
“I ain’t going nowhere.” The New York woman had washed away, leaving the girl from Liberty.
“Come on in baby, you getting wet. Ain’t nothing out here won’t keep ’til morning.”
The sky rolled thunder like a pair of dice. Ruby bored holes into the black of the woods and mumbled, “Man get back inside, you — you a good man, but don’t mess with things you don’t understand.”
“School me.”
Ruby looked up again and shook her head in futility. The rain grew thin for a moment and he knelt beside her, put his suited knee into the mud. “Didn’t nobody ever teach you to test a bridge before you cross it? Try me.”
Ruby pointed her knife towards the dark woods and growled, “Git back!” Then she whipped around and snarled at Ephram, “You spoiling my concentration. Sit down or get back inside.”
So Ephram sat on the earth and got wet. Wetter, as Ruby stood the night vigil, knife at the ready. Finally she said, “You think I’m crazy.”
“Naw, I don’t.”
“Well, you wrong. I’m crazy, but that don’t make me stupid.”
“Then tell me what you’re watching.”
Without turning her head she took one step onto a bridge named Ephram. “A man. One without benefit of flesh and bone.”
Ephram stared into the black dark.
“Who is he?”
She paused, then whispered, “Don’t know.”
“What does he want?”
Ruby glanced quickly at Ephram. “My children.”
Ephram sat quietly. He wanted to reach out to her, touch her free hair. Instead he put both of his pinkie fingers into his mouth and whistled, sharp and clear through the rain.
“What—?”
He stopped for a moment. “They say haints hate the sound of it.” Then he resumed. It was a sweet, clear warble that sang through the raindrops and echoed against slick trunks. Ruby watched him, whistling in waves and crescendos, and sure enough the thing waiting in the woods slowly ducked back and slunk away. Her heart slowed in her chest and she looked at this man. After a good long while she said, “You can stop now.”
So he did. “Did it work?”
Ruby let a smile tremble on her lips as she nodded yes. The rain moved off to the southwest while the wind blew in warm, and carried a bit of lilac along its edges.
“Good.”
Ruby looked at the waving sky. Ephram reached his open palm to her. “Come inside?”
“I’m staying out here on this hill tonight with them.”
“Then I am too.”
“No,” New York crept back, clipping at the heels of her words, “they need my full attention.”
“Maybe I can help.”
“You can’t.”
“Maybe I can.”
“You don’t know nothing about them.”
“You could tell me.” He reached out then and brushed back a ringlet of hair from her cheek, slipped it behind her ear. He caught hold of her eyes and said, “Ruby, tell me about your children.”
“I’m cold.”
Ephram stood and went into the house.
The truth was that Ruby had stories decades old that she had folded up and tucked away between her spine and her heart, tears she had shed in silence, private moments of pride. The truth was that she wanted to share the burden. Ephram came back and held a blanket between them. She unbuttoned the shirt he had given her and let him drape the warm blanket over her shoulders. The night air dried like sheets on a clothesline, crickets commenced their nightly song and lightning bugs sparked in the distance. Ruby began to speak. The waxing moon lit the small graves that covered the land.
“They’re tarrens. Spirits of murdered children.”
“How — where they come from?”
“Different places. They’s too many stories to tell. Some found me. Some I watched the crossing. One hundred thirty-seven stories in all.”
“Tell me one.” Then he gently brushed his hand over the top of the nearest grave. “Tell me this one.”
Ruby let out a low breath and looked at him, unsure.
Ephram nodded.
“All right then. All right then.” She paused a good long while. “You remember Miss Barbara we talked about so long ago in Ma Tante’s house?”