She twiddles the cigarette between her fingers. “Don’t think so. Sorry.”
“She could mix up medicines and things. People might have said she was sort of a witch, but—”
“Auntie Peake ain’t no witch.” The cook turns, glaring at us. “She’s a root-worker.”
Tyler tries to talk and sputters on his drink. I ask, “You know her? You know how we can find to her?”
“She mixed up medicines for folks the doctor couldn’t help. She never cursed anybody. Ms. Peake broke the curses witches put on people.”
“Well, it seems like people don’t really see the difference between root-workers and witches anymore.”
Scraping the grill with his spatula, he snorts. “Witches get their power from the devil. Root-workers get theirs from the Lord up in Heaven. I’d say that’s a big difference.”
“Yes, sir. Absolutely.”
“My parents, their first three babies all died before they were a week old. Broke my mamma’s heart so it never healed again. The doctor said she was just too frail to have babies, but she went to Auntie Peake, and Auntie Peake saw there was a curse on my mamma. An ex-girlfriend of my dad’s had put it on her when they got married. But Auntie Peake broke it, and I’m living, breathing proof that Ms. Mattie Peake never did anything but good for any soul. Don’t come into this place calling Auntie Peake a witch. My people owe her too much to let that stand.”
“I’m sorry. But do you know how we can find her? Please, we have to talk to her.”
“Oh yeah? What about?” He turns all the way around for the first time, glancing from Tyler to me with suspicious eyes.
Tyler says, “It’s our friend. She drowned and became a ghost, and we need to put her to rest, but we need somebody who knows about these things to help us.”
In the clear light of day, it still sounds unbelievable to me. But the cook just nods, wiping his hands on his splotched apron. “Auntie Peake had a stroke, something like that, few years back. I heard they put her in Morningside.”
“Morningside?”
“The nursing home out on 31,” he adds.
“Thank you! You don’t know how much you’ve helped us.”
After Tyler finishes lunch, we step back out into the noontime heat. I say, “I don’t even want to know what that burger is gonna do to your guts later.”
“That’s why you get the cheese, see? The cheese is like a parachute. It creates drag and slows the meat down as it hurls through your colon.”
“Tyler! Ew!”
He chuckles and shakes his head. “So you feel better now? Now that we’re clear Auntie Peake is a root-worker, not a witch?”
“I just want to know if this will work. I don’t care what she’s called if she can help Holly.”
Morningside has cinder-block walls painted half yellow and half white. It smells like Ajax and pee. After we sign in, the nurse points us down the hall. Auntie Peake sits in bed with her slippers on. She doesn’t look like much of a witch or root-worker or anything at all. One arm is shrunken and twisted from the stroke. Her body curves toward her strong side. Her roommate watches TV, but Auntie Peake ignores it.
“Ms. Peake? I’m Tyler. This is Jane, and uh, we need your help.”
“Get my glasses. On the table there.”
Tyler fetches her tortoiseshell glasses from the cluttered bedside table. She puts them on and studies us. Her eyes blink rapidly against the thick lenses—moths fluttering inside mason jars.
“Get my water there.”
Tyler hands her a cup of water with a bendy straw in it. “It’s my girlfriend, Holly. She drowned this spring. Drowned in Wilson Lake. And she’s become some sort of a ghost. It’s like she’s trapped in the lake.”
“I heard that you knew about another ghost,” I say, butting in. “Somebody named Tommy Mud-and-Sticks. We think Holly’s turned into something like him.”
Auntie Peake closes her eyes. “Poor, poor Tommy. That was the last winter before they built the dam and flooded us out of the holler. Old Amos Buckley had a devil of a time tracking him down and putting him to rest. ’Course, people love telling a good haunt story, especially after somebody got the notion that he only haunted the prettiest girls.” She grunts disapprovingly. “Vain little things all over Lauderdale County started swearing he’d come up, chased them ’round, for years after he was gone.”
It takes effort for her to hand the cup back to Tyler. Setting it down, Tyler says, “Amos Buckley. He helped Holly’s grandfather, actually. He was really sick, and Mr. Buckley found a fever disguised as a frog in his house.”
“Uh-huh. Old Amos was hard as a nail but twice as sharp. Won’t be any more root-workers like him again.”
“Do you know how he got rid of Tommy?”
“Same as any restless spirit, I imagine. Most aren’t wicked, they just gets lost. Happens sometimes when people drown in the river.”
“How come?”
Auntie Peake’s good shoulder shrugs. “The river has its own way of things.”
“You mean, like, it’s alive? It has a soul?”
“Only man has an eternal soul, young lady, only man can leave Earth to enter Paradise. But sometimes things of this earth—old, old things like rivers—they grow some power akin to a soul, something that makes them more than what you can see with your eyes or hold in your hands.”
“How?” I ask.
She shrugs again. “Rivers are strange. They’re not human places like towns. A human’s soul gets tangled up in the river’s power, it can be dangerous pulling them out again.”
“We know. We already called her once and … it doesn’t matter. We have to do it.”
Auntie Peake doesn’t ask what I mean. She sends me to the nurses station for a pen and paper. When I come back, she starts to write while explaining. “First, you have to find your friend, the part of the river that’s shaped like her. The body won’t be her body anymore, but her soul is still holding it together.”
I remember the clay-skinned thing that crawled onto the boat and spoke with your voice. I shudder, realizing we’ll have to face it again.
Auntie Peake goes on. “Next, mix together white chalk and slaked lime and draw a circle around yourselves. No spirits can step into the circle, so you’ll be safe. Then pray over her. Call down Heaven’s blessing using this prayer here.” She hands me back the scratch paper. The lines cramp up along the right-hand margin. They read, Lord, guide this troubled soul to rest. Carry her from darkness and cold evermore, for those washed clean in Your blood shall fear not. Amen.
I touch the words. Fear not.
“Holly’s motto.”
Tyler asks, “Huh?”
“Fear not. Remember? She painted it on her guitar.”
“Oh yeah. Yeah. See?”
I nod. We’re on the right path. This will work. It has to. “Thank you so much,” I say to Auntie Peake.
“That all you came for?”
“Yeah, I … I guess.” A twinge of guilt makes me squirm; we’re taking what we need from her and just leaving her here. It’s not right. But we’re so close.
Guilt hits Tyler at the same moment. He stammers, “Anything we can do for you before we go?”
She thinks for a moment, then, “What’s the milkweed like?”
“What?”
“The milkweed. Out in the fields, out by the roads.”
“It’s all over. It’s everywhere.”
“This late in the summer? Hmm … going to be a long, wet winter.”
We spend another half-hour telling her about the wildflowers and hummingbirds and pawpaw trees. Auntie Peake reads them all as weather signs for the coming year. I feel sorry for her, a root-worker cut off from the land, with just a window looking out onto a nursing home courtyard.