Storm Girl

My feet are on fire as I run barefoot past cattails in meadows, on dusty paths alongside the river, through patches of dense pines. I only stop to scan the horizon.

Pa pulls on the reins of his horse and shouts, “Whoa!” when he spots me, my hand shielding my eyes, as I squint into the golden sun of late summer and call her name.

I hear the gurgle in his throat, and moments later, his spit lands on an unsuspecting daisy, phlegm foaming, oozing down the petals. I feel sorry for the little wildflower. The slime is disgusting—almost as disgusting as when Pa says, “If we find her and she ain't right, Janie, you know what I'll have to do."

His open-mouthed grin is an abyss of darkness, most of his teeth whittled down from rot.

At that moment, all I can feel is a pain in my heart like no other and flames licking my cheeks as hot tears streak down my sunburned face.

I watch Pa’s throat bulge as he chugs whiskey like it’s cold water from the bubblin’ brook. My mouth goes dry just thinking about it as he reaches his leather-gloved hand for mine, hoisting me onto his horse in front of him, my back pressed against his chest.

His horse sets to galloping, and the air smells of rain mingled with Pa’s stench—sweat, alcohol, and chewing tobacco, pungent and repulsive. I ignore it, keeping my eyes peeled for Magnolia. If Pastor Bill heard how hard I’m praying right now, he’d surely tumble, as Ma would say “ass over teakettle” from his podium in awe.

I’m worried my prayers won’t be enough.

Magnolia’s the only thing I love in this land that gets so parched in the summer it belches dust into my eyes, and so chilled in the winter it coughs up a blizzard, whipping the snow into a mad dance, sharp fangs biting my naked ears whenever I leave the cabin without my scarf. We sure as hell ain’t friends, me and this inhospitable, rugged, severe landscape. My only friend is my gentle, sweet mare, Magnolia, and I would do anything for her.

I’m just thirteen, but old enough to know something about the way Pa’s been looking at me lately ain’t right.

The other day while I was washing dishes, he came up behind me, and I felt his hands on parts of my body they had no right being. I froze, as still as a scarecrow on a windless day, and the butterflies in my stomach bashed into my ribs like an axe to wood.

Pa spun me around, his hands on my shoulders, so that my face pointed directly at his hairy belly—he wasn’t wearing a shirt. I had to stuff a high-pitched scream down my throat to keep from making him madder than a rabid raccoon on a muggy morning.

Looking down on me, he put his finger under my chin, forcing my face to tilt up. That same finger traced the short distance of my neck down to the collar of my dress.

I could hear Pa’s breathing getting real loud, like a dog in heat, when he said, “You’re real purdy, Janie, now that you ain’t such a tomboy no more. A real nice woman you’ve become, just like your mama, if I do say so myself.”

There was a strange gleam in his watery blue eyes, and then his calloused hands began to unbutton my dress, slowly at first, then faster and faster until he could fit one over the top of my corset.

My heart pounded in my chest, a loud thudding like a woodpecker on a tree. In a panic, I twisted away from him, ripping his hand off me. Ducking under Pa’s arm, I covered myself with the flaps of my open dress and ran as fast as I could to the barn.

I’d never saddled up Magnolia so fast in my entire life. Riding her like I was escaping from a monster, I let my hair come undone, flying behind me like a stream of mahogany-red flames blazing across the mountain prairies.

Back in the barn when night fell, I cried against Magnolia’s neck the hardest I ever had. Kissing my tears off her, I wished on every star I could see through the holes in the dilapidated roof, wishing Ma hadn’t died, wishing this life was just a nightmare I’d wake up from.

But I knew it was real.

Now, Pa’s horse, Brambles, is galloping toward the open plain, and I keep screaming Magnolia’s name as loud as I can. A blackness in front of my eyes makes the world spin sideways, and I’m dizzy with fear that she’ll be found with one or more of her legs broken—or worse, dead.

Pa can’t wait to watch my face when he slowly squeezes the trigger of his shotgun and shoots my Magnolia in the middle of her head. All the while, her brown eyes looking soulfully at the barrel of the gun. Or worse yet, at me.

One thing about Pa, though, is that he’s good at tracking down animals. He’s got a sixth sense for where the rabbit he wants for dinner is hiding, or the deer, or the squirrel, or the muskrat, when he hears that rustling in the bushes or the trees. He’s good at searching for people too.

Why, just last October, when the snow began to fall in soft flakes, and the trees stood bare against the harvest moon, Pa found old Beau Williams. Beau was drunker than a skunk passed out in a fallen log, so well-hidden not even the tips of his boots showed. Pa found him just in time—Beau would’ve frozen to death if not for Pa saving him.

If anyone can find Magnolia now, it’s Pa.

Except… I think to myself… the last few nights, Pa ain’t been much like himself.

One night, as I hid in the hayloft of the barn, hoping Pa wouldn’t come looking for me, I was disheartened to be woken up by his stumbling in the door, mumbling words that made no sense, even for him, in his drunken state.

“It’s always the way of the wicked woman that haunts a man to his very bones,” he complained, his voice rising an octave, his face wet with tears and snot. “Them beguiling beauties with their long hair and purdy lips. Women who know a man can’t have ‘em,”

“Nah,” he cried, “they don’t want a man like me, unless he begs or pleads or does something worse when that don’t work.”

He continued moaning, his head hanging low, eyes staring at his feet as he shuffled from side to side, spilling whiskey down his chin.

“I know you’re in here, Janie, you wild child, you seductress, you tempting little vixen,” he suddenly bellowed, “I know yer hiding here somewhere, and I want ya more than ever, woman-child. I’m sick an’ tired of my hands never getting the pleasure of your soft skin. Every time I touch ya, I’m befuddled by how you manage to get away. Maybe it’s the whiskey, but I ain’t never had any troubles getting your ma under me, even when I was pickled drunk. What kind of devil magic are you weaving over me with them purdy green eyes of yours anyhow?”

Pa dropped to his knees, head in hands, crying like a newborn. Then he wobbled to his feet, staggered out of the barn, hollering “don’t matter, witchy girl, I’m too tired tonight to deal with ya, so you can save yer voodoo for later. But this has gotta stop. I’m gonna make you mine, you hear me?”

With that, he threw his empty bottle down on the hay-strewn floor and tottered out into the night.

It took me a long time to fall asleep after that, clutching Ma’s old vegetable knife, hiding under my blankets, scared Pa would return.

That night, I dreamt of Ma—the nights when she was burning up with fever, and how terrified I was lying next to her, trying to comfort her as best I could.

I woke up wishing I was the one who had died.

Losing Ma was bad enough, but losing Magnolia would surely break me.

I try to keep my spirits up as Pa and me continue searching frantically, but just like I feared, that’s how we find her—at the edge of the river, suffering.

My tears won’t stop, and I wish I could die with her. There’s nothing left for me here in this dark, scorched, and motherless world no more. I’ve lost everything.

Pa’s already standing in front of her with his gun aimed just right. I cry harder, noticing her flank—there’s blood there, curdled in the sticky heat and punishing sun, and I can feel the excitement of the flies buzzing around her wound. It’s more than I can bear, not just thinking about her pain, but also about who could’ve done this, and why.

When the smirk on Pa’s face starts to emerge like a snake from the grass, I yell, “Wait, don’t shoot yet, Pa, please. I need a minute.”

I beg for a cup of the iced tea I had chilled in the coldest part of Apple Jack Creek, near the mountain runoff, and packed in his saddlebag earlier.

I need a moment to calm my nerves.

Pa nods and lets me pour us each a cup of the now lukewarm drink that seems like a refreshing, almost comforting Godsend right at this moment. I think of how my parched throat will feel when I drink it with my eyes squeezed shut so I don’t, no way, no how, have to watch when Pa pulls the trigger.

As Pa gulps down the lukewarm tea, he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and says, his voice chilling “I did this for you, Janie girl, so you can never escape from me again.”

Just before the gun goes off, I throw my cup, still full, on top of a mulberry bush and cover my ears with my hands.

Instead of looking at Magnolia, I stare at Pa. I watch him fall, the gun tumbling down with him. He grabs his throat, gasping for breath.

It’s the oleander. His tongue is swelling, the poison doing its deathly work on him.

Losing interest in Pa’s dying, I bravely—or stupidly, depending how you look at it—turn my face towards Magnolia, to see if I can handle the carnage, the devastating sight my eyes are surely destined to land upon.

I need to hold her and say goodbye.

Suddenly, fear and relief battle inside me when I catch sight of her.

She’s rising, all four legs under her. She’s healthy, unhurt, trotting toward me with a shake of her chocolate-brown mane. I can barely comprehend it as I climb onto her bare back, feeling the rush of wind through my hair.

And then we’re not just galloping—we’re flying.

Higher into the sky that has now begun to mist with a soft cooling rain, quenching my thirst when I tilt my face up and open my mouth.

We’re so far off the ground that Pa’s just as small as a thimble when I look down.

The rain pelts harder, the wind blows faster, and there’s lightning illuminating the whole sky. Thunder too, loud like the boom of twenty cannons going off.

It’s a ferocious, down-pouring, wind-whipping, thunder-clapping storm, and I’m hypnotized by it, drawn towards it, like the colored flames of the candles in church, that Pastor Bill’s always showing off. The storm cools my feet, my burning eyes, my dry peppery mouth, and even my aching head that felt feverish and chockfull of blistering heat, just minutes ago.

It’s a beautiful, mysterious, ethereal, down-home, wished-for, wonderful storm. A storm as welcoming as a nuzzling from Magnolia after I’ve given her an apple.

When the storm breaks and the deluge stops, a comforting light suddenly glows from beyond. There, standing in that light, is Ma—alive, healthy, arms open, waiting for me.

She says, “It’s time, my whirlwind of a daughter, for you and Magnolia to come home to me now. I’ve been waiting for you to cross over, and finally, here you are.”

I swallow more tears though this time they ain’t sad tears but tears of joy, I’m happy but I’m also confused.

“But Ma,” I call out, my voice sounding strange like a whispering echo.

“I seen you die from the fever; how could you be here now?”

“Darlin’ Janie, my half-human and half-ghost girl, I’m in a place with the spirits and angels, a place you should have gone to with me, you died from the fever too, honey,” she tells me, her face glowing like candlelight.

“Except,” she carries on, “they never buried you with me; everyone thought you survived. But you were only half real, a ghost haunting Pa this whole time. You weren’t ready to cross over to my neck of the woods up here in this sacred place, just yet. Pa scared you something fierce and you were worried for the other young girls in town and on other farms. That’s why you decided he had to go.

You couldn’t let him hurt anyone else.”

“Mama,” I breathe, “are you telling me I’ve been half dead and half-alive all this time since you been gone? Is that why I could feel things like the hot sun, my tears, my stomach clenching, my head pounding? Is that what half-ghost and half-human means?”

“Yes, my sweet child, that’s exactly what it means. It was your legacy, your destiny, to do what you had to do. You were brave and clever, and I love you for it. But tell me, where did you get the oleander, there ain’t none of that growing around these parts.”

“The poison flower,” I say, remembering the day my nerves were stretched taut as the strings on Pa’s banjo, when I was hatching my plan.

“A friend gave it to me to plant in my garden, she brought it back from Texas ‘cause she thought it was purdy. But I learned from the native folk that it’s nothing more than a masquerade, a devil in disguise.”

Ma understands. She nods and beckons me towards her…