Signs in the Blood Read Online Free PDF Page A

tongues.
    “Praise God,” someone called out, and most of the congregation began to pray aloud, not the same prayer but individual outpourings of emotion. Men and women standing, kneeling, swaying, sobbing, rejoicing—each one speaking directly to God in fervent, personal tones of praise and supplication. The clamor of voices and music rose in a crescendo and Aunt Belvy's long white hair began to shed hairpins and escape from its knot as the old woman's head swung in ecstatic circles. Miss Birdie punched Elizabeth in the ribs with her elbow and whispered excitedly, “She's gettin' close!”
    Five short days had passed since Dessie Miller's death and the discovery of Cletus's body on the rocks of the French Broad River. Only yesterday Dessie had been laid to rest in the little hilltop graveyard, but Cletus's remains were still in the Asheville morgue, awaiting the autopsy mandated by the state for “unattended” deaths.
     
    Miss Birdie had appeared on Elizabeth's front porch early Saturday morning, flushed and exhausted from the hike up the steep road that her battered old truck couldn't climb. “Why didn't you call me?” Elizabeth had demanded. “I would have come over.”
    “I know you would of, honey. But I just took me a notion to walk while I still can. Let me just set here in this rockin' chair and get my breath.” Finally, after a glass of water and the usual mountain courtesy of small talk before asking a favor, Miss Birdie had come to the point.
    “Sheriff says hit were likely an accident,” she informed Elizabeth. “He thinks Cletus was a-crossin' that trestle at night and done lost his balance. But, Lizzie Beth”—the little woman had balled up her frail fist and banged it down on the flat arm of the wooden rocker—“there weren't no way Cletus would of gone out on that railroad bridge. That boy was just naturally afeared of heights! Why, he'd get all swimmie-headed just going up a ladder. He'd even unch way down in the truck when I had to drive us across the big bridge over the river. There ain't no way anybody can tell me Cletus went to cross that high up old trestle where you can look down between yore feet and see the river and the rocks.” Birdie's voice was urgent and her wrinkled face had been deeply troubled. “Lizzie Beth, honey, I got to know what
really
happened.”
    Then she had paused, as if to collect herself, and had looked out across the valley where the morning mists were rising up from the river toward the warmth of the sun. “Ay law, hit's purty up here, Lizzie Beth. Makes a body see why you put up with that steep old road.”
    The little woman had slumped back in her rocker and seemed to look inward. Her face was sad but after a moment she smiled weakly and gestured toward Ben's cabin. “You know, hit was right over yon where Little Sylvie lived.”
    Elizabeth followed her gaze. The one-room cabin was said to be about a hundred and fifty years old—the oldest on the branch. Hastily constructed of small logs that one man could lift, it had nevertheless been in continuous use up to the 1950s. Its dry-laid stone chimney still stood square and true, and Ben had rechinked the gaps between the logs. A gnarled apple tree and an overgrown mass of orange daylilies beside an old-fashioned deep pink shrub rose gave evidence of past occupants. The cabin had been built just uphill of a huge flat rock that reached head-high next to the cabin and sloped to waist height at the front. Elizabeth remembered lying on that rock with Sam beside her on a warm August night, watching the Perseid meteor shower trace glowing trails across the deep black velvet of the summer sky.
    “You know, Lizzie Beth, I'd plumb forgot that ol' story till poor ol' Dessie started in to talkin' about hit when I sat with her that last day. Wanderin' in her thoughts she was, like they sometimes do.” Wiping her eyes on her sleeve, Birdie added, “Ay law, I do miss Dessie. Seems hard to lose her and my boy all to