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It’s three days before the Moving On and, just like the sun rises and sets whether you see it or not, the Moving On comes around year after year, same as the Warding Off, whether or not you believe in it. Traditions are like that, sure as a bronze church bell. We’re all preparing for it in one way or the other. Even the ones who say there’s no call for it, it’s old-fashioned, we’ll be damned. What does the Moving On care about their reservations now, umpteen years in?
Shadows flicker and dance along the walls like twin pallbearers. Every so often my stomach drops. Must be all the excitement. Running of the Widows, the Calling, the Moving On, the Warding Off. All that coming and going. All that running. It’ll be the busiest week in all Curdle Creek. I could die just thinking about it.
The living room is hot, a little too hot if you ask me but I’m not one to complain. Mae likes it that way. And, Mae’s company. Besides, an unwelcoming host is maybe not the worst thing you could be here but there’s no sense in getting on Mae’s bad side. Not on the night before the names are called.
Folks say the Calling is down to luck. Folks whose names get called don’t have much of it. If you believe that, you’ll believe just about anything. Not that I think Mae would have anything to do with my name being called this year. She would do it if she had to, we’d all do it, but who would listen to her, a widow with a chorus of dead husbands as wide as the Creek is long? Mae’s name don’t have any more luck to it than mine does—at least not until the Running of the Widows. A good run could change everything.
“Do you have your eye on anyone special this year?” Mae asks. She’s standing in front of the mirror, staring at me over her shoulder while her slender fingers lace up her girdle, pushing parts into places I’m not sure they’re meant to be.
I lean back into my soft leather chair, tilt my head to the side, lick my lips and roll my eyes slightly. Having my eye on somebody’s got nothing to do with marriage. The first time’s for love, the second’s for luck. The third one … well, if you live long enough to have a third one, the third one’s for life. So they say. Everybody knows that. “Mmmm,” I say.
“Try again,” she says, “you look like you’re drooling. No one likes a desperate widow. You’ll scare off all the good ones before it’s even time and you’ll be single for another year.”
It’s just like Mae to blame me for my predicament. Sooner or later we all run out of luck. The Running of the Widows is like a second chance at it—says so in the book.
“How is it seductive when you do it, and not becoming when it’s me?”
“Practice, dear,” she says sounding just like Mother Opal. “An unpeeled fruit is sure to waste.”
I roll my eyes for real this time. “Book I, The Law of Attraction,” we say together. We laugh and, since we’re alone, we do it out loud. It feels good too. I haven’t had much reason for laughter since the children left, and then my Moses, first the Calling then the Moving On not twelve months after. Mae’s bent over, holding her sides, and even from here I hear the pop followed by what sounds like a hot pan full of popcorn kernels but isn’t. Mounds of stretched brown flesh burst through the polyester girdle, leaving it pockmarked and wide open.
She doesn’t have to ask, I slide my tray of varnish, nail files and ice to the side, slip my feet into my slippers, careful not to mess the polish, and start the operation of pulling and prodding things back into place. “You sure you don’t want to try a bigger one?” I ask.
I don’t mean it to sound mean but Mae flinches anyway. Everyone loves a supple bride but loathes a supple widow. “We can’t all afford to pray to the gravity gods and hope for the best.”
I nod. I’m wearing two corsets, one for luck and another because I don’t believe I have any. But if this body looks natural to her, who am I to say otherwise? “Please don’t quote my mother,” I say. I touch my hand to her shoulder.
Mae flinches once more. “Your hands are freezing! Have you been playing in the cemetery again?”
“Are they cold enough?” I’ve been dipping my hands in and out of ice all evening. Cold hands yield good luck. It’s an old widows’ tale but, if nothing else, anyone who lives long enough to be an old widow knows a thing or two about luck.
“If they were any colder you’d be lying up next to Moses.”
“Down. I’d be lying down next to Moses, may the ancestors watch over his soul.”
If there is one, there ain’t no way my Moses made it all the way to Heaven. Not with all his carrying on in life. All that begging. Spare me! Spare me! Take her instead! Shameful. We make the sign of the cross to ward off my dead husband. I’d light another candle but with the sitting room full of them one more might cause a fire. We’re meant to be praying to the Mother of Fertility like every other single sister but instead we’re getting ready for the Running of the Widows like any widow with good sense would be. Better than throwing salt over your shoulder, jumping six times before crossing a bridge or spitting in the well, latching on to another family is an almost foolproof way to—not exactly beat the system, but the bigger the family, the better the luck. Or the better the chances your name won’t be called in the morning. Not that Moving On’s not a privilege and all.
“You know cold hands mean a cold heart,” Mae says.
She’s always quoting one book or the other, trying to out-holy me. It’s not a competition but I throw in Book IV to shake her up. “Desire is for the young, matrimony for the ready,” I say. She giggles.
Once we’re dressed, I take the rollers out of my hair. It’s twisty just as I like it, with coils of gray blended with dark brown. Age looks good on me. I pucker up, slide on dark red lipstick. Mae’s dark plum looks good against her skin. I tell her and she blows me a kiss across the room.
We set the table for four. One place for each of our dead husbands. I fix them both generous portions, plates piled high with macaroni and cheese, juicy slices of beef, plump shrimp, fat potatoes dripping with soured cream and fresh-churned butter.
“Isn’t that too much starch?” Mae asks. As if dead people count calories.
“I think it’ll be just fine,” I say. “I’d imagine they burned off a lot when they passed—from the running.”
I might have been a bit overzealous when it was time to ward off my Moses but it was nothing as undignified as Mae’s whooping and hollering chasing poor Clifton’s soul away. I could hardly bear to watch, although of course I had to. Nobody in Curdle Creek misses the Warding Off, and what sort of best friend isn’t at her friend’s ceremony? One that’s courting trouble, I can tell you that. Missing a ceremony as important as the Warding Off is just plain unneighborly. It’s a good way to get yourself shunned. Being shunned is one step from being nominated, and being nominated is just as good as one foot hovering over the grave. Well, as being Moved On.
It’s been three years since Moses departed. Wasn’t Mae right there by my side helping his spirit to Move On? Then, year after year, right there performing the ceremony to keep him from coming back? So of course, when Mae asked to join me tonight, since there was something unnatural about waiting for a dead husband you hoped wouldn’t come to come, I said yes. Truth be told, once the Council stopped checking that Moses wasn’t hanging around haunting my bed at night, I stopped worrying about him coming back. I didn’t tell anybody though. There’s nothing worse than an ungrateful widow.
We mostly eat in silence, listening out for whooooos and moans. Mae jumps when the bell tolls six. That’s not even the time when Clifton Moved On, but we all have something that reminds us. Mine’s the barn owls’ eyes bright and wide like Moses’s, deep voices singing I love youuuu, youuuu the way he would have done if he’d ever said such a thing. The beef is too bloody, pink slides around the plate, and I can’t help but think the fork looks like a tiny pitchfork hunting it down. Still, it’s tasty, and I pop it in my mouth as if it’s my last meal. In a way it is: in two days’ time I’ll be a new woman, or at least a new bride again. I hope this next one has better luck than Moses, though. Imagine, your name being called on your wedding anniversary. As if bad luck runs in the family, I haven’t been invited to a wedding since. If Mae and I hadn’t married the same year, she might not have invited me to hers either.
“A toast,” I say. I raise the jam jar full of mint julep and pretend to clink it against Mae’s raised glass. “May the dead find comfort in their graves. Book XIII.”
“To the Moved On.”
We leave the plates around the table and settle down in the sitting room to gossip about wedding nights and first and last times. At forty-five, we’re lucky to have second chances. We have the Moving On to thank. A good Moving On yields a robust harvest. Twenty years of plenty means there’ve been more births than usual. The Running of the Widows, the Calling, the Moving On, the Warding Off—it’s all a small price to pay for the safety of the town. It could be worse.
“Imagine being alone forever,” Mae says.
She’s settled into Moses’s chair, feet up on the coffee table like he used to do. The chair creaks and stops, creaks and stops the same way it did when Moses was sitting there. Only, he’d stop to listen for footsteps. As if one of the children would be fool enough to sneak back here after so long.
Mae’s still talking about the departed like they’re still here, reminiscing about the time Moses fell off the ladder trying to fix the roof. “You should be grateful the old fool didn’t die that very day.”
“Mysterious ways,” I say. Thankfully, it was the Moving On that took him.
With one leg tucked under the other, her toes peeking out to wiggle when she rocks back, Mae looks like the chair was made just for her. We could grow old together. Best friends rocking back and forth, back and forth, sharing secrets like we did when we didn’t know any better.
My mouth is suddenly dry. My hands are shaking. What if the old folks are wrong and the Moved On can come back? Wouldn’t take long before the whole town was overflowing with Moved On husbands, wives, sisters and brothers. Come-back schoolmarms, pastors and neighbors popping up in the middle of services, living rooms, gatherings. It’d be enough to drive us all to the Creek. I’d like to think they’d come back thankful. Once they’d seen the memorials, their names etched in the town stone, their leather-bound Life Books shelved in the library, the bustling town with its new stop sign and paved road, they’d be grateful to have played their part in Curdle Creek history. Not one soul left behind, we like to say. They’d be forgiven their ungraceful departing. The howling, name-calling, second-guessing and all. Until their names were called again.
According to Book XXVI, the Warding Off keeps souls from returning to Curdle Creek. As if anyone with good sense would come back here. Of course, there’s worse places to end up than here. But if the dead suddenly do come back, it means the Warding Off don’t work. Ain’t nothing worse than Warding Off someone you loved. All that screaming. I hate to think what would replace it. But if they could come back, and Moses among them? There’s a drumming in my ears. My throat is dry and I can’t hardly breathe. Moses back after all this time. He wouldn’t come alone. The threats, the accusations, the lies and all that screaming would come right back with him. And the spite. Ain’t no way he’d come back without a heart full of spite. It wouldn’t be love that brought him back to me, it would be the Running of the Widows. You can’t be a widow if the body comes back—no matter how it left, Moving On or otherwise. I’d be disqualified. It would be just like Moses to find a way to ruin this for me too.
I take a deep breath and say Ordinance 27.9 in my head. The ground beneath my feet is steady, steady as the handheld bell, when it’s my time, may I be ready, and seek no solace in a well. It’s Mother Opal’s favorite. As soon as I think about it, I feel my breathing sort of right itself. My hand is steady again. The old folks are right. If the Moved On could make their way back to the Creek they’d be forgetful. Wouldn’t know the rules so they couldn’t hardly be expected to live by them. They’d be misremembering rituals and reasons why and that it’s better not to ask questions in the first place. They’d cause chaos. There would be too many names in the Calling, too many grievances to dig up, too much gossip to sift through. Upsetting everything just because. Wouldn’t even need a body to do it. Wouldn’t have one to do it in if that was the case. Lord knows their old bodies wouldn’t be worth nothing. It’d be like putting on a wool sweater that’s been hanging in an unlined closet. Full of moths and holes. They’d have to slip into someone else’s body, if such a thing was possible.
Maybe not Moses, but it would be good to see my brother again. Remus was always good to me. He was my favorite. He’s been gone twenty years. I’d like to tell him I miss him. I can’t hardly think of Remus without seeing him huddled near the brick wall of the Old Post Office. Shivering. Mouthing some sort of prayer. Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it. Till it was running together. Dontdoitdontdoitdontdoit. Didn’t work either way. Seems like the sticky sound of the thwack, rock against skin, surprised us both. Him most of all though.
There’s a thud and the creaking stops. Mae purses her lips. I don’t know how long she’s been waiting on me to serve her. It’s rude. More than that, it’s unbecoming. I reach for the teapot but she beats me to it, slender brown hands picking up Moses’s favorite cup, holding it close enough to the teapot to clink china against china and rattle the lid. I don’t complain. Of course I don’t. It’d be something she’d have to hold against me and Lord knows I don’t need no one else holding nothing against me. Moses done enough of that for a lifetime. I offer my own cup, the homemade one that’s thick on one side, thin on the other, lined with a chipped gold strip of paint that flakes when I touch it. The handle’s long since broken off and I hold it by the middle so Mae can fill it with sassafras tea. It scalds my lips, burns my tongue. My mouth fills with bitterness.
“You like it?” Mae asks. “I grew it myself.”
It’s suddenly hot. Sweat drips down my neck. I feel it pooling beneath my armpits. There are two ways to answer a question like that. Offending my closest and dearest friend wouldn’t be worth it. Just shy of the Moving On, there wouldn’t be time enough for her to forgive me so she’d have to hold the grudge. By now, most people already know who they’re nominating and who they aren’t. But it’s never too late for someone to change their mind. I’ve seen it happen too many times. People get comfortable just before. They start smiling when they should be frowning, frowning when they should be smiling. Getting ahead of themselves, thinking they’re bound to make it through this Moving On just as surely as they made it through the last one. Not me. I’ve seen too many Moving On Eve nomination changes to last my entire life. I can almost hear Mother Opal calling my name at the Calling. Osira Alexandra Turner, she’d say. I wouldn’t mean to but I’d yell out, I know I would. If it came down to it, I wouldn’t be no more ready than anyone else—believer or not.
“It’s all right, you can tell me. I know you don’t like sassafras.” She’s back to rocking, talking in between sips and creaks. “I only bought it cuz Clifton didn’t like it either. I’ve got bags and bags of the stuff drying out at home. I’ve been giving it away every chance I get. Every time someone knocks on the door I give whoever it is a bag of leaves to take with them. I donated a whole tin of it to the church. Tried to drop some off at Carter’s Everything Store. You know what they told me?”
I lean forward. Wait, to be polite. Carter’s don’t accept nothing they can’t sell.
“That old lady said no. When I tried to tell her the store says they sell everything, she said ‘everything but that.’ Well, you know who I’m nominating this year.”
I hop up to look outside. The trees are thinning this time of year. The wind rustles the few leaves left. The street is bare. The doors of the Old Post Office have been locked for years, the windows shuttered. The few houses in the cul-de-sac are mostly dark with families already settled in for the night. Other than the occasional hooting owl, screaming fox or arguing neighbor, it’s a quiet street surrounded by modest houses with neighbors who should know how to keep themselves to themselves. Still, folks got a way of being where you don’t expect them to be. I take a final look before drawing the living room curtains shut.
“You know you aren’t supposed to tell who you’re nominating. It’s a secret.”
Mae rolls her eyes clear to the ceiling. “You’ve seen how high them prices are these days? Ain’t no secret who’s getting the most nominations this year.”
If it was anybody else but Mae, I’d tell. I’d have to. Book XIII is filled with ordinances about influencing nominations. Every Curdle Creeker gets one nomination, regardless of age. That don’t explain how last year there were a thousand votes and ain’t but two hundred people living here. But mostly, the system works. It has to.
My heart’s beating loud so I almost don’t hear her when she says, “Remember when we were kids and we’d run up to the sign to see if the numbers changed?”
“It was better than reading the Curdle Creek Gazette. More reliable too.”
“Except it never said names.”
“Except that one time when they ran the ‘Predictions’ section.”
“Those predictions stirred up too much trouble.” Mae fans herself with a slice of lemon cake, sending crumbs here and there when she laughs. “It took the Council and the Mothers weeks to get the retractions printed.”
“Didn’t matter one bit. The only name they got wrong was the editor’s. Don’t expect she predicted that, though I don’t know how she missed it. Even I saw that one coming.”
“Well, there’s no way they’re changing that sign. It would cost a fortune to list all those names. Besides, if it’s good enough for the Founders, it’s good enough for us.”
I add another lump of sugar to my now-tepid tea. I take a sip, swill it in my mouth like brandy before gulping it down. Tea leaves swirl in the bottom of the cup. It’s bad luck to leave them there. I put the cup to my lips, slide my tongue around the bottom. When I’m sure I’ve gotten leaves, sugar, grit and all, I put the empty cup between us, an offering. Mae’s too polite to check while I’m watching, so I cut a polite sliver of cake and chew as slow as a new bride. She peers into the bottom of my cup to check that I drank it all. Nods like she’s adding to a checklist in her head. I would have missed it if I weren’t watching her from the corner of my eye.
“I like the sign just fine. Says all it’s got to say. Even with the fancy counter. Curdle Creek, one in, one out. It tells you all you need to know.”
There ain’t a sign wide enough to hold all the names of the Moved On. Folks been Moving On since the Founding in the 1800s. Probably even before that. It would be far wiser just to add the names of the Gone. The few who had stolen away from Curdle Creek before being Moved On. Isidore Stenton, Elijah Cross, Ezekiel Yates, my brother Romulus, my own children Jasmine, Cheyenne and Little Moses. All slipped into the night leaving hardly a ripple, just like Well Walkers. Ungrateful. No, there ain’t no need to be reminded of that every time I walk to town.
“I hear some places don’t even have Moving Ons,” I add. “No Warding Off either.”
I wait for Mae to ask me how I know. With only the one radio station, TV channel and newspaper, anything I know about anyplace else, Mae knows too. Unless someone told me. And the only people who would tell me anything if they could are my children. Lord only knows the world they’re living in. If they’re living at all.
“Know what they got instead?”
It can’t be nothing good. Wars, lynching, murders, riots, fires. I can still see the photographs from the Curdle Creek Gazette “Around the World” edition. Police dogs, wide-open mouths, rows of sharp teeth straining against leashes pulled tight. Then, dogs running, leaping in the air, leashes dangling. Blood. Brown arms and legs every which way and all those children. Babies really. Dead, every one of them. The world ain’t hardly a safe place to be. I’ve seen the pictures. Heard the rumors. We all have. Curdle Creek couldn’t survive without the Moving On. The harvest counts on it. The water relies on it. Even the land. Heck, the weather’s probably tied into it one way or the other. A place with no Moving On is courting problems.
A chill runs down my spine. There’s a draft seeping down the chimney. Nothing another log on the woodstove won’t cure.
“Chaos, and you can take that to the mill and grind it.” Mae tucks Moses’s throw around her legs.
“To the Moving On,” we say at the same time.
We’re suddenly quiet. Both thinking of the ones who slipped out of town, walked right across the town line and never came back. I don’t say it, but when I’m doing the Warding Off, I’m doing it for them. I’m not worried about the dead coming back to Curdle Creek, but if the living ever do, we’re all in trouble.
Copyright © 2024 by Yvonne Battle-Felton
