The warm spice cake was in her basket, wrapped in a blue tea towel, and its rich and evocative aroma brought back memories of other Halloween visits. Elizabeth breathed in the spicy scent and tried to ignore the lump swelling in her throat. Once again, it was time to fulfill her promise to Miss Birdie.
The path to the little graveyard atop the wooded ridge seemed longer and steeper than ever, and Elizabeth stopped several times to enjoy the view and to breathe.
So many changes—over there, Dessie’s place had new owners who had let the once pristine fields and roadsides grow up in a tangle of weeds and saplings. Just beyond that ridge, the old Bailey place was being transformed into a conference center dedicated to some esoteric form of spiritual healing. Farther up the road, was an alpaca farm. All the old neighbors were gone—to live with children, to nursing homes, or just gone, to this graveyard or another.
Elizabeth sighed and continued her climb. I really need to talk to Birdie, she thought, as she reached the end of the road and saw the gravestones dotting the gentle swell of the ridge.
Why, honey, you didn’t need to come all the way up here. I’ll talk to you everywhere you might be.
The voice seemed so real that Elizabeth started and looked around. No one else was there, just the almost bare trees and the wind rustling in the falling leaves. She made her way to the rustic bench Phillip had installed the previous year and took out the journal she’d brought with her. It’s been a while since I read any of Birdie’s journals –too busy with here and now, alas. I need some there and then.
She spoke into the cool autumn air, “Birdie, I’m tired and heartsick. This election . . . the flood and what it did to s many folks . . . the state of the world and the fear that things are out of control have me in a bad place. Birdie, I miss you and your stories. I brought your journal with me, thinking this would be a good time and place to read some of it and find a little peace.
A gust of wind ruffled the pages of the open composition book in her lap and Elizabeth looked down. And Birdie spoke.
‘Ol’ Spivey Coles was the hatefulest feller you ever seed. He lived a ways down the branch from us and was as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. He kept a little store and, though didn’t no one like to trade with him on account his prices was so high and he’d cheat you soon as look at you, every now and again, when a body run out of something and couldn’t take the time to go to town nor to wait for the peddler to come by, well, you’d go on down to Coleses and try to keep your wits about you so’s he didn’t get no advantage, beyond the prices which, like I said, was shameful high.
It was Cletus’s sixth birthday and he was set on having him a birthday cake. I laid out to make a white cake with butterscotch icing and come to find out my tin of baking powder was missing. I looked high and low but didn’t do no good. And you can’t make a white cake without baking powder, now can you?
So down to Coles’s store I went. Cletus was tailing after Luther in the high field, and I hoped to get back and get his cake in the oven before they come in for dinner.
The store was set back from the road a little—a shackledy old place mostly held together by rusty tin signs for chewing tobacco. The bench out front was empty for once. They was usually a bunch of shiftless old fellers loafering there and I had dreaded having to pass by them as they was bad to say ugly things. But I could hear the clink of horseshoes around back where they liked to play so thought I could make my purchase right quick and be on my way.
Ol’ Spivey Coles was behind the counter and he give me a snaggle-toothed grin. ‘Why Miz Gentry, you purty little thing. Don’t see you in here much. What fer ye?’
‘A small tin of baking powder, please,’ says I, and he lays it on the countertop. ‘What’ll you take fer it?’
That grin got wider. ‘Why, I’ll take-’ and he come out from behind that counter, pulling down his pants till his ugly old thing a-pointing right at me.
I backed away from him till I was up against a big old open barrel of flour and him still a-coming. ‘You best stop right there, Mr. Coles,’ I said. ‘What if I was to scream?’
‘You scream and them fellers out back’ll want some too. Best you just pull up your skirt and lean over that barrel.’
‘Well,’ says I, ‘how do you mean? Like this?’ And I leaned back against the barrel.
He spit on the floor and came at me, meaning to grab me by the shoulders and turn me. Quick as anything, I kicked him betwixt his legs and jumped to one side. He doubled over and I got behind him and tipped him into the barrel, which was mostly full. He was kicking and carrying on but his noise didn’t amount to much. I grabbed my tin of baking powder and left a dime on the counter. Then I noticed the jug of sorghum he kept there and took it over and dumped it on top of him. ‘Maybe that’ll sweeten you some,’ says I.
I pulled his nasty old pants off too and put them in my basket.
When I stepped out the door, I could hear the horseshoes still a-chinking and I went on my way. At the church, I stopped and threw the pants up in the big maple by the road. Then I went on home and baked my cake.
The way I heared it was when the fellers grew tired of horseshoes, they went in the store and saw old Coles’s bare butt sticking out of that barrel and him a kicking and swearing up a storm. When they finished laughing, they pulled him out and, I mean to tell you, they say he was a sight on earth, what with the flour and sorghum ‘lasses stuck to him.
When they asked him what happened, he said it must have been an earthquake struck as he was heading for the outhouse. I reckon he didn’t want them fellers to know it was a woman done him like that.
That evening I told Luther about it, and he went round to Coles’s and warned him that if he didn’t pack up and get out of the county, we’d tell the story in church so folks could pray for him.
Ol’ Coles moved to Leicester in Buncombe and the pants stayed in the tree till they rotted They always gave me a good feeling when I passed by.
Chuckling to herself, Elizabeth closed the journal. “Thank you, Miss Birdie. I needed a story where the good guys win.” She stood and, taking her basket of spice cake, began to weave her way through the headstones, leaving a morsel of cake on each one. At the stone for Birdie and Luther and Cletus, she left an extra big slice
