The Yarn Spinner Read online

  “I blame you for this, Cathy,” Alberta said, as we made our way along a raised walk toward a platform in the back. There, beside a door marked Restroom, was another door marked WORK ROOM AND STORAGE. A stack of empty boxes sat between the doors.

  Macy gasped. “Lucy came outside! She’s unpacking. She set those boxes out.”

  “Blame me?” I said to Alberta.

  Alberta grunted. “‘Put a craft room in the sheep barn,’ the actress said as she donated the money to pay for the barn, hint hint. ‘Why sell all the wool to outsiders and not keep a little for spinning our own yarn?’ So now we have enough wool to start a sock factory, but NO ONE under the age of a hundred wants to spin yarn. Yes, this is your fault.”

  “This is just the first year of your sheep operation. Give it time.”

  “Here’s an idea, Scarface. Rainbow Farms Taxidermy. Pure Wool Stuffing. See our first project. Banger the goat.”

  “I’m going to steal your autographed picture of Rachel Maddow if you don’t shut up.”

  “For Goddess sake!” Macy cried. “Please stop arguing!” She climbed a short flight of stairs and we followed. “Wait here. I’ll tell Lucy you’re visiting.”

  I took Macy by one coat sleeve. “These.” I gestured toward my face. “It may not be good for her. Maybe we should rethink this.”

  In the four years since the accident, anyone who cared had seen my scars up close. If not from all the photographs taken on that turbulent night during a speech I gave at the Asheville Civic Center, when I first dared the world to take a good look, then surely in the public appearances since then. “These aren’t news,” I said, “But seeing a photograph and seeing me in the seared flesh are two different things.”

  Macy gave me the gentle smile that made her such a good counselor. “Lucy said something similar about you meeting her. That maybe she’d make you uncomfortable. Because she’s . . . ‘crazy.’ She thinks you might be afraid of her. Or ‘disgusted’ by her.”

  Oh, God. I took a moment to loosen the knot in my throat. “Tell her the only crazy and disgusting person on this farm is Alberta.”

  Alberta snorted. “Eff you and the goat you rode in on. Just do your thing. We’ve never had a suicide on this farm, and we’re not about to start.”

  “Excuse me,” Suzanne said quietly. She stood by the boxes, holding something she’d picked from the trash of bubble wrap and wadded newspapers. “A Bible.” She held it out. “Embossed with her name.” She opened it. “‘From Daddy to Lucy, with love.’ See the date? She’s had this since she was twelve years old. Look how worn the pages are. See the notes and the bookmarks?” Suzanne touched a cross on a necklace at her throat. “If she threw it away on purpose, she’s so angry at God she’s lost all of her faith. This is awful.”

  “Goddess help her,” Macy prayed.

  Alberta sighed. “Gimme. I’ll put it in the lost and found. We’ll pretend she dumped it by accident.”

  I opened the door, already smelling the scent of wool from inside. Lanolin and earth and the essence of an ancient gift to keep us warm. Lucy Parmenter had thrown away her past, her hope, her God, and hidden inside a burrito of wool with no idea what she’d do other than hide.

  Maybe she wasn’t ever coming out.

  Was she invisible? Granted, the work room was a warren of floor-to-ceiling garbage bags, the clear kind, stuffed with the clean, carded wool from last spring’s shearing. They were contained behind rows of narrow wooden slats that occupied two-thirds of the space, bulging like herniated discs between the braces. In the non-wool area, which was small, sat a twin bed covered in quilts. I saw Lucy’s imprint on its propped-up pillows. Two floor lamps, a desk lamp, and a lamp on a small side table by the bed cast small pools of light in the otherwise shadowy space.

  I hugged myself and shivered. The thermostat said sixty degrees.

  “Lucy?” I called gently as I shut the door behind me.

  I’m not a great actress, but I have a really pleasant and distinctive voice, and with the help of voice coaches I can . . . Okay, I’m no Meryl Streep. But I sound pretty. I put all the pretty and safe I could into “It’s Cathy.”

  “Corner. Sitting in the floor. I’m sorry, but . . . can’t move.” The soft voice curled from behind the last stack of wool bags. It was east-coast Carolinas, slower than a mountain drawl, lacy on the edges. The voice was sad. Tired. A little slurred.

  “Mind if I come over there and sit with you?”

  “Not at all. I can offer you a soft drink from my miniature refrigerator. But I’m afraid you’ll have to help yourself.”

  “Thank you, but I’m fine.”

  “I . . . I was raised with better manners than this.”

  I made my way through the clutter, moving slowly, as if I might spook her. I took a deep breath. Try every angle. “Lucy, you’re bunking in a barn. Miss Maple Belle’s Rules of Etiquette don’t apply.”

  I reached the last stack of wool and stepped into the alley behind it.

  There, in the dark, in the corner, dressed in at least three layers of sweaters, leggings, a floor-length denim skirt, and with a quilt wrapped around her, sat a small girl-woman with a doll’s face and hair so blond it was nearly white. What was left of it. It appeared to have been chopped off with a hacksaw about an inch from her scalp.

  She keeps shearing her hair off, Macy had said. And the layering of clothes—it’s all about self-defense. Armor. Making herself look ugly. She thinks that will protect her.

  “Miss Maple Belle’s Rules,” she said. Her voice was hoarse. Her lips moved like cracked leather. “You have a Miss Maple Belle Etiquette School Certificate?”

  “Why, yes!” I fluttered a hand to my lavender sweater. “Her classes were taught all ovah tha South, you know. Do you?”

  She nodded wearily. Her head bobbled.

  She looks like she’s withering in front of me. Like a flower about to shrink in the first frost.

  “Well, then, Miss Lucy, I’m your guest, so as you know my wishes have to be accommodated. I am freezing my Maple Belles off.” I hustled back to the thermostat and turned it up to seventy, then to her desk, where I grabbed two bottles from a pack of bottled water. “I’d like some tea. You must join me, you hear?” I filled an electric kettle and flipped its switch, then dug out two mugs, tea bags, sweeteners and dried milk from a set-up Macy had placed on a small table for her. “Not to sound gauche, Miss Lucy, but what kind of eats do you have around this lovely home?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I can’t swallow.”

  I found packets of instant cereal, protein bars, and other assorted non-perishable survivalist food. Exactly the kind of lonely menu I’d planned when I hid in Grandmother Mary Eve’s house, at first.

  I dropped my satchel on the bed, fished out my cell phone, and punched an emergency number. A strict rule: Never interrupt kitchen prep at the Café unless someone is dying or just won the lottery.

  “Jesus loves you at the Crossroads Café,” Cleo McKellan answered. “Who’s hurt?”

  “I need a package for one, extra on the love, right now, at the Rainbow Goddess.”

  Cleo inhaled sharply. “You better hope somebody’s dying.” She hung up.

  I looked at Lucy, who was gazing into space. I felt doom all around her. Someone was dying, yes.

  THEY SAY MY grandmother, Mary Eve Nettie, was a biscuit witch. They say there was, and is, a gentle brand of spiritual outreach in any cook from the Nettie bloodline. A Nettie cook can deduce hungers in people, far beyond the obvious intuitions about a person’s culinary palette.

  I have some psychic inclinations, and food is part of them, but in my case it hasn’t developed as a cook’s talent so much as a “cook’s assistant’s” talent. Fine by me. Learning to bake a Delta-worthy biscuit was a huge part of my rehabilitation. I overcame my
fear of fire—even stoves terrified me—and I learned patience. Most of all, proving that I could master the delicate art of a good, from-scratch biscuit symbolized how many untapped talents I might have. Small ones, big ones. Like loving Tom and becoming a mom to two foster daughters. If I could mix, knead, nurture and bake a great biscuit . . .

  But when it came to some serious biscuit magic, there was only one Delta. I’d sent out the bat signal, and Delta was now on the job.

  “You gonna eat this, baby,” she said to Lucy, holding a spoon to her lips. In it was a crumb of biscuit fresh from the café’s oven, soaked in cream gravy. Lucy’s eyes were fixed on it. Her nose flexed, inhaling. I had lain in a burn ward, drugged and bandaged and half-crazy, with a shipping box open on my stomach and my good hand fervently dipping chunks of cold biscuits into stone-cold cream gravy anchored in special freezer packs. The nurses had stared at me as if I were a wolf eating the legs off living rabbits.

  But those care boxes from Delta, along with phone calls from her friend Tom, kept me alive.

  The power of the Love Biscuit had worked then.

  It had to work this time, too. It had to.

  Lucy didn’t move. Delta didn’t pressure her. Still dressed in her apron with THE LARD COOKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS AT THE CROSSROADS CAFÉ on it, with one of her husband, Pike’s, Jefferson County Sheriff’s jackets over the apron, her jeans, her striped socks and hiking sandals, she hunched closer to Lucy and hummed under her breath. I cocked my head, trying to make out the tune. We sat side by side, cross-legged on the cold floor. I tucked a strand of Delta’s graying brunette hair back under its bandana.

  Delta hummed louder. Amazing Grace, the old hymn.

  I added my hum to it. Harmony.

  Suddenly, Lucy’s eyes flashed to us. Sheer rage filled them. “There is no grace!” she yelled. “And it doesn’t save anyone!”

  I froze. Delta didn’t blink. Just nodded. “That’s an argument for another time, baby. But I’ll tell you what saves you tonight. The eternal biscuit and the ever-loving cream gravy. We love ya, baby. You’re here in the Cove with your cousin Delta and your cousin Cathy, baby. You gonna be just fine, baby. You gonna eat biscuits and gravy, baby.”

  Cousin Lucy. Yes, already.

  Lucy stared at Delta as if she’d risen from a strange soup. With her eyes opening wide for the first time, I saw how dilated they were. Completely stoned on pscyh meds. I remembered that feeling. “Am I crazy?” she whispered. “Was the rape my fault? Was I naïve and careless? Am I indirectly responsible for my father’s heart attack?”

  “No, baby, none of that’s true. It’s gonna take you a while to clean all those thoughts out of your head, but you’ll do it. For now, all you gotta do is eat.”

  Lucy’s muddled gaze went back to the spoon. She lifted a small, shaking hand from inside the quilt, curved her fingers around Delta’s freckled, kitchen-hardened ones, and slowly pulled the spoon between her lips.

  The second the manna of biscuit/gravy hit her tongue, she gulped the tiny bite in one swallow. Trembling all over, she lunged toward the box of food we’d balanced on her knees. She hesitated as if checking for predators around her kill, then plucked a piece of biscuit, swiped it in gravy, and brought it to her mouth. As she chewed, she moaned. Again. Pluck, swipe, chew, moan. We watched the ritual escalate until the moans vanished into feverish, hungry sounds and she was nearly shoving each bite between her lips. The biscuits, the gravy, the side dishes—mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, creamed corn, squash casserole, and more. Vanishing.

  I gripped Delta’s forearm. “She’ll make herself sick.”

  Delta watched her sadly. “She’s already sick. This is probably the first sign of life anybody’s seen in her. Leave her be.”

  We sat there watching as she ate everything, finally falling asleep sitting up, with her hands in the empty box, unfurled like lost children.

  “She needs something to reach for,” Delta whispered. “The way you decided that learning to bake a decent biscuit was your holy grail. We’ve gotta find something for her to hitch her star to.”

  A feathery wisp tickled my nose. I brushed it away. It floated down between Delta and me, settling on her apron. We stared at it. A bit of soft gray wool.

  “Well butter my butt and call me done,” Delta said. “The Lard does work in mysterious ways. Somebody just sent us the answer.”

  LUCY SLEPT ALL night and ate a good breakfast the next morning. Macy told us she was back in the corner, under the quilt, but at least there was progress. We set up a schedule of regular deliveries of food and visits from both me and Delta.

  “That girl has a long, long way to go but we’re gonna get her there,” Delta shouted back. We were in the car. She likes open windows. Her hair blew everywhere. She said she was fifty-four years old and by-god she was going to let it grow down to her ass like it was when she was a wild young woman separating big Pike Whittlespoon from the herd and perfecting her cooking magic under the spellcasting eye of my grandmother.

  We were in my Hummer, headed towards Turtleville and Delta’s mysterious errand before our second visit with Lucy. It was a Tuesday morning, the one day a week when the café was closed. Tom and the girls would be home by Thursday. Good. I felt ragged, sad, as if I were reliving my early months here in the Cove. Afraid of the future, again.

  “Did I look that bad when I came here?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. You were covered up in a ski mask. Looked like a terrorist. We took bets on when you’d hi-jack a crop duster or blow up the courthouse.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. It was pretty exciting. We thought maybe we’d make the National Enquirer. But then Tom settled you down and damn. Nothing.”

  “Well, I am sorry.”

  She grinned. “Don’t worry. There’s lots more trouble where you came from.”

  I turned off the Asheville Trace and headed up into the ridges of Turtleville. The seat of Jefferson County perches beside the wild and rocky Upper Ruby Creek, a no-frills all-natural car wash along the river road on a windy November day. Delta sputtered and hit the window button as cold spray smacked her in the face. “Now I’m awake,” she said.

  “What do you mean ‘Lots more trouble where I came from?’”

  “I’ve got kin to manage all over these mountains. I’ll tell you more in a minute. Turn off there.”

  I headed over a bridge then down Fox Run, the pretty lane that meanders out past the wintry rose bushes of Kaye’s Heirloom Plant Nursery, where Tom orders all the stock for his small vineyard. Another two miles further out and Delta hitched her thumb at a smaller lane. Pete Wallow Industrial Parkway.

  The “parkway” was one lane, graveled, and the Pete Wallow family was the only one who lived on it. The only industry was their ten-unit storage shed, Pete’s tractor-trailer garage, and an abandoned grist mill on Wallow Mill Creek, a branch of the Upper Ruby.

  We walked to the storage unit among towering oaks and quiet mountains. Up on a knoll, where the Pete Wallows lived in a big log house, a woman cupped her hands over her eyes on the front porch and yelled, “That you, Delta Whittlespoon?” to which Delta hallooed back, “Sight for sore eyes, Teas Barely Wallow,” followed by gesturing that meant everything from How’s your mama? to Have a nice day.

  Teas Barely gestured back, then disappeared indoors.

  Delta unfurled keys from a set of rings that could run a castle. “Back in the 1930’s there was a moonshine war up in the Little Finn River Valley between Wakefields and MacBrides,” she said as if it was casual gossip. “But it was really about mining rights and old family feuds. The MacBrides were God’s people—our kin, Cathy—but the Wakefields were stronger. They won, though people never forgot that MacBrides made the best corn whiskey in the south.” She flipped a long key out of the collection as we reached a row of sheds. “And the fin
est woolen goods. When they came over from Ireland in the 1830’s they’d brought the best sheep with them. Nothing could compare to the MacBride mill goods. But be that as it may, the MacBrides were wiped out. Their whiskey and their sheep were gone. Their wool mills were ruined. Not much of their belongings were saved.” She turned the key in the lock on a shed door. “Pull.”

  I slid the big door aside on its tracks then stared at what was stored inside.

  I stepped into a world of spinning wheels and mysterious vintage devices I vaguely recognized as related to wool processing. The scent of the past raised goosebumps on my skin. It was like stepping inside an old house where the aromas of so many lives had been absorbed in the wood and fabric.

  Delta stepped in beside me. “I was trusted with these,” she said quietly. “I know people who know where the bodies are buried. But it’s more than that. It’s family. You do for family.”

  Lucy takes a small turn of the spindle

  “LUCY?”

  “In here,” said a voice from inside the pile of quilts on her bed.

  I sat down on a small recliner, looking around the workroom-slash-refuge in the afternoon light that crept through a barn window I hadn’t noticed the evening before. A heavy flannel sheet had been stapled over it.

  A plain office desk was stacked with unopened boxes. Clearly Lucy wasn’t ready to face the past more than a bit at a time. An artist’s easel and a box of paints and brushes sat on the tile floor. A chair held a jumble of tote bags and luggage. Since the room had no closet, Macy had brought in a freestanding clothes rack.

  So far, Lucy had only hung up a sad-looking yellow sweater, as if it were lost from a sunny day that she had forgotten ever existed.

  Happily, the remnants of lunch from the café sat on the little table beside the miniature fridge. Lucy was hiding beneath quilts, but Lucy was eating.