Goldeline by Jimmy Cajoleas (i read books txt) 📕

fanatics up north, wanting to set folks on fire. Five years he was gone, had to be, off getting his head filled with all kinds of garbage. When he came back, well, he wasn’t the same old preacher, and that’s the truth.”

Bobba knows the Preacher? We shouldn’t be here. Why are we still here? Why am I still hungry? Why haven’t I grabbed Tommy and bolted out of here already? Her fingers twitching, pulling invisible thread. Is Bobba doing this?

“Tommy was just teasing,” I say. “Nobody’s chasing us. Just a game we’ve been playing. We got lost. We were traveling with my uncle, Uncle Gruff. We just got to meet back up with him on the road, that’s all. Then everything will be right as rain.”

“Nope,” says Tommy. “Nothing will ever be right again.”

The room goes full quiet, except for the ticking of the great big clock and the clink of silverware against the plates.

“Tommy?” I say.

“Go ahead,” says Bobba. “Tell me all about it.”

Bobba’s fingers are moving fast, unspooling and unspooling, like she’s pulling the answer from him, like she’s unwinding the truth.

“We’re going to Moon Haven because that’s where Goldeline says we’ll be safe. But we’re criminals now. I don’t think we’ll ever be safe again.”

“That’s enough, Tommy!” I jump up to my feet and grab his hand. “Thanks, Miss Bobba, but we got to go now.”

“Sit down!” she thunders. The candles flicker and darken, the whole house shakes.

Tommy’s face falls into his cobbler. He doesn’t get up.

“You don’t remember me, do you, child?” says Bobba. “You don’t remember anything. Your momma did that, put a wall up in you. She didn’t want you to have to remember anything nasty, anything unpleasant. Yep, your momma just whisked those memories right out your pretty little skull.”

I try to run, but I can’t. Invisible arms push me back down to the chair. I can feel their warm fat fingers on my skin.

“Let me go, please. I won’t tell anybody you’re here. We’ll just disappear off into the woods and be gone, like you never even saw us.”

My vision swirls and I feel so hazy. I try to stand up, to reach over to Tommy, but I can hardly move. I feel like I’m in a tub of warm water, a bath full of flowers, the scent so strong it turns my stomach and makes me float.

“Is Tommy dead?” I say.

“No, honey, but he might wish he was, before all this plays out,” Bobba says. “Y’all two got one ghastly journey to take before it’s all over.”

“Did you poison the tea?”

“The tea? Naw. I poisoned the air,” she says. “And y’all been breathing that air ever since you first stepped into Bobba’s field.”

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“Because, sweets,” Bobba says, reaching up to the great bun of gray hair on top of her head. She lifts it, showing me a bald veiny egg of a skull. Long scars streak across her head, like claw marks, or maybe even burns. Did the Preacher do that to her? Is Bobba another woman he burned? She places the wig on the table and clears her throat. She slides off her gloves. Her hands are massive, hairy, with fingernails long as wolf fangs. “It’s like the Book says, if you bring forth what is within you, it’ll save you. But if you don’t bring forth what is within you, well, that’ll destroy you. Do you understand?”

I try to run but I can’t, I can’t even move, my stomach hurts, my head throbs, all the colors blur and smear together like a meadow of flowers. Bobba grabs my head and pulls my face to hers. I can see the green-gold swirls in her eyes, smell the dead-meat rank of her breath. Her hands are cold on my cheeks and her nails dig into my scalp.

“I need you to remember,” she says. “For your sake, and for your momma’s.”

Eyes wide open, pupils spiraling into mine, Bobba kisses me straight on the lips. My sight goes black, and I’m gone.

TWELVE

I’m in a meadow. There’s a tree at the end, the same tree that Bobba’s house sits on, but there isn’t any Bobba’s house on it. In a knot in the middle of the trunk somebody wedged a book. I pull it out. It’s warm and throbbing and soft. When I open the book it makes a cry like a baby and I shut it real fast. In the limbs of the tree are about a hundred cardinals, so many I think they’re leaves at first. They chirp and flutter and all at once rise, the flock of fire flies off past the sun and I fly off too, so high the trees look tiny, the whole world the size of a gumdrop, my face pressed against the sky like it was a mirror, the cold glass on my cheek looking at my face, but it’s not my face, not quite.

It’s not me at all. It’s my momma. I’m looking at my momma.

This is a memory.

One that is too old for me to remember, a forgotten one like a scar on my head that hair grew over and covered.

It’s Momma, young and white-haired and beautiful. Momma I love you. Momma how I missed you. She smells sweet as fresh rain, like honeysuckle. It’s the smell that hurts so bad. She picks me up and spins me and it’s like I’m floating upward, like a raindrop in reverse. She kisses me and I’m so small, I’m a baby. I know this is true because it feels true, but how could I remember being so small? Her face against mine is the softest thing I ever felt.

Bobba is there too, but she’s sweeter, gentler. Her hair is real and silver and wild all over her head. She has cobbler with her but I can smell all the good in it, it wasn’t made mean and wicked like what she made me and Tommy. She hugs Momma like