Signs in the Blood Read Online Free PDF Page B

would she go off when she wanted to see her baby so bad that she left scratch marks in the logs? And why didn't no one ever blame her husband for not lettin' her in to feed that baby?” The old woman shook her head. “Ay law, they tell these stories, but I reckon sometimes they don't get 'em just right. One'll say one thing and another'll have it to be different. But hit was a hundred year ago and I guess hit don't matter to no one anymore.”
    Miss Birdie had rocked in silence for a moment and then had said, “Lizzie Beth, I need for you to do something for me.”
    “I'd be glad to,” Elizabeth had replied, happy for any chance to help her friend. “Do you want me to talk to the sheriff for you, Miss Birdie? I could tell him about Cletus and how he was afraid of bridges.”
    “Honey, I done told him that. He just don't want to pay no mind. No, Lizzie Beth, I got another thing to ask of you. If you don't care, I want you to go with me to that Holiness church over there in Cocke County, Tennessee. They's a woman I know over there named Belvy; they call her Aunt Belvy, and she's a prophetess in the church. When she gets the spirit on her, she can see things that's hid. She's found lost things for people back of this. I want her to tell me what went with Cletus's shotgun.”
    “His shotgun?” Elizabeth had asked in bewilderment.
    “Yes, his shotgun. They didn't never find it in the river nor up on that trestle neither. Cletus may of been slow, but whiles he was livin', he would of held on to that there gun. He was so proud of it . . . cleaned it all the time . . .” Miss Birdie's voice had faltered and she had looked away before continuing. “What I think, Lizzie Beth, is that somebody knocked my boy on the head and then threw him in the river. And if Belvy can tell us where that shotgun is, we'll be closer to findin' out who done it. They're holdin' a meetin' tonight and I'm askin' you to drive me over there 'cause I can't drive that far after dark and 'cause I know you ain't afraid of snakes.”
     
    Snakes. The two plywood boxes that sat beneath a table at the front of the room were an ominous presence. So far no one had touched the boxes or even alluded to them, but Elizabeth was constantly aware of their squat brown shapes, pierced with air holes in cross-shaped designs. The boxes seemed to exist within their own quiet circle of menace, untouched by the praying and singing that filled the church.
    “How do you know about this Aunt Belvy?” Elizabeth had questioned Birdie as they drove the winding road over the mountain and down into Cocke County with its rolling farmland stretching out before them, warm gold in the mellow light of the late afternoon.
    “Law, honey, Belvy used to live on Ridley Branch, up there where those McHenrys are now. Her and me been friends since we was young uns. Now, she was always real big in the church—there ever time they cracked the door. But then her and her man quit the Freewill Baptist church and took to going to a Holiness church they used to be over on Rocky Fork. Her husband and both her growed boys got to preachin' and to handlin' them snakes. And then, atter a while, Belvy got the gift of prophecy. Some says hit's the devil, not the Holy Spirit workin' on those folks, but I don't believe that. I've knowed right along that Belvy is a good woman. Howsomever, when one of their members got snakebit and died of it, the law shut that church down. Well, Belvy and her family and a whole bunch of them Holiness people just up and moved to Tennessee and opened them another church.
    “They don't handle ever time,” Miss Birdie had told her. “I called Belvy to ask could she help about Cletus and she said I'd have to come to church and see did she get an anointin' of the Spirit. She said she couldn't tell nothing without an anointin', just like wouldn't no one handle a serpent without the Spirit was on them.”
     
    Well, it sure looks like the Spirit or
something
's on a bunch of