Abigail Rutherford

Ms. Carter says Abigail has voices in her head, pressing their palms against the window of her eyes, trying to get out. I never knew exactly what that meant, but that’s how Ms. Carter explained Abigail to me the day she saw me bouncing my rubber ball on the sidewalk in front of Abigail's house.

I guess Ms. Carter was worried I might cross the line by accident, ‘cause up until today, I sure weren't planning to do it on purpose, no sir. I knew better than to wade through that fence—the one that staggered along the edge of the Rutherford property like Mr. Ford some Saturday nights, coming home from Clyde Bell’s Bar. Mr. Ford says he’s just drinking apple juice, but we all know it’s the 'shine. Apple juice don’t tip folks over like that. 

No sir, I don’t even go after my rubber ball if one of them so much as rolled into Abigail’s yard or through the space where the pickets got knocked loose—like Jimmy’s front teeth when he fell off his bike last summer. Nope, those balls just rolled on to their deaths, passing on to the other side to meet Jesus, like Reverend Abe says on Sundays. “Gotta meet Jesus, on the other side.”

I never liked to see them go, but I sure weren't about to go after ‘em. And today weren't no different—or at least, that’s what I thought. 

The whole of Magnolia Springs knew not to cross that fence line. There was a long story behind the fence that went back before I was born. Before Bo was born. Heck, even before Jimmy was born, so it was natural when Ms. Carter saw me close by that she says, “Celia Hicks, you be stayin’ way from there, ya hear.”

I always stayed on my side, but that didn’t stop me from looking over to the other.

I ain’t never seen nobody sittin’ with Abigail on the porch. She just sits there all alone, all day, with her mouth hangin’ open like Bo’s. He’s got a nasal condition that makes him breathe through his mouth. Sometimes he wheezes. I ain’t never heard Abigail wheeze though. I ain’t never got close enough to know. 

I was thinking about that now, as I was sitting in the bindweed with my wrecked ankle in my hand, staring over at Abigail who was staring back at me with her mouth hanging open like she was trying to say the words that just never came out.

She’s bony, Abigail. I can see her cheekbones pokin’ out under her skin, leavin’ hollows underneath ‘em. Kinda reminds me of that picture in the encyclopedia of a mummy somebody found under the sand.

Pa says a mummy’s a dead person buried a long time ago, and time and weather cover ‘em up ‘til folks go diggin’ ‘em out. Some folks do that for a livin’, just brushin’ sand off things. I like playin’ in the sand, and I thought that maybe one day I could brush sand off things too. But I don't think I’d wanna brush sand off the dead.

Abigail looked dead, sittin’ on that porch with her mouth hangin’ open and her cheeks bones sittin’ high, like they was in the front pew at church. She blinked, though. That’s how I knew she weren’t dead.

There’s plenty of balls in her yard, but ain’t nobody know exactly how many. We just know they’re there ‘cause none of us go fetchin’ ‘em once they cross to the other side. But the grass is bein’ strangled by bindweed, and bunches of crabgrass growin’ taller than my knees, hide ‘em. I ‘spose it’s kinda like the sand coverin’ the mummy—the crabgrass coverin’ the balls. Maybe one day, somebody’ll brush ‘em out. 

Jimmy says that Abigail was beautiful once, that she talked too. Jimmy says that his Pa says Abigail was a real looker who loved dancin' and singin' and that she was first in line for the picture shows and at Miss Fancy’s Groceries and Gifts when the new dresses came in.

The Rutherford's were rich, he said, and the porch that Abigail sits on alone now, used to welcome all kinds from Magnolia Springs.

Sundays in July, before the heat swallowed ‘em up, they’d have fried chicken parties. Cherry sodas stuck in buckets of ice—that kind of thing. I ain’t never seen anything like that.

The house is old now, and crooked like Jerold Walker’s teeth. What should be white is now yeller, and some of the shutters are hangin' off, lazy-like, like a good wind may have the mind to take one with it on the way out.

Pa said the house was beautiful when he was a boy. It ain't that way no more. It’s like Abigail. Silent, 'cept for the door in the middle. A black hole. Open. Waiting. 

Jimmy says it was the devil that did it. That he came in one night when Abigail was sleepin' and bent over her, and sucked her voice right out of her skin.

I suppose that’s part of why we all stay away, on account of what Jimmy says. He’s the oldest, so he knows things we don’t know. But sometimes I wonder if Jimmy’s got his facts straight. Jimmy sees the devil in everything. In the movies, at the park dancin’, when the men play chess or cards, he sees the devil where even the devil couldn’t be bothered to show up. So I wonder if maybe Jimmy is seein' wrong. 

Besides, Ma says that ain’t what happened. Ma says that Abigail just tipped over one day, and all the words spilled out, and there wasn’t nobody there to pack ‘em back in.

These are the things small towns talk about. Picture shows, and who’s comin’ for Sunday dinner, and why Abigail Rutherford don’t talk no more.

The kids stay away ‘cause they don’t want what happened to Abigail to happen to them. Her place is po-sessed, Jimmy says. If you step in the yard, that same thing will happen to you. Your mouth will slide open, and words will slide out ‘til there ain’t none left. All yer left with is the voices, like Ms. Carter says, scratchin’ against your eyes trying to get out. 

Jimmy says the devil is what got Mr. Rutherford.

Bo says it was Etta.

Bo’s Pa told him it was the hex of Etta Gray that she laid on Abigail and the Rutherford's property the summer of ‘56 on account of what happened at the chicken fry party. Abigail was found behind the woodshed with Etta’s boyfriend, kissin' and such.

Pa says being purdy doesn’t mean it makes you nice. I think about that sometimes when Jenny smiles at Bo all purdy like. I want to tell him, be careful, she’s awfully purdy, that might make her awful mean, and Bo and me is friends and I don’t want nobody being mean to him. 

Anyway, Etta didn’t take to having Abigail kissing her boyfriend, so Etta went home and put a hex on Abigail and the Rutherford property. That’s what folks say anyway.

From what Pa says, people didn’t think much of the rumor until a month later when Mr. Rutherford smashed Mrs. Rutherford's head into bone splinters with his Wilson Dynapower. A seven iron. He wiped off the bits of hair and bone and blood and then took it to the Governor’s Club and shot the best game of his life, John Wilson said. Pa says Judge Wilson was set to sit at Mr. Rutherford's trial but had to step down, seein’ as he had been playin' golf with him that day. The new judge sent Mr. Rutherford to the big brick house, Pa says that’s the Bryce Hospital over in Tuscaloosa where they send people who ain’t quite right in the head. 

Some says that’s what stole Abigail’s voice. Not the devil, not the hex, but the shock. ‘Cause it weren’t but a short time after that the town noticed she weren’t talkin' and it seems to fit right to me, if my Pa did that to my Ma it might just shut the words up in me too. None of this stopped the talk of Etta’s hex though.

Etta moved up to a cabin in the woods after all that happened, not with the boyfriend though, nobody knows where he’s at.

Anyway, Etta makes moonshine from apple slices she roasts in a hollered-out stump. Etta sells it to Clyde Bell in glass jars with tin lids. I suppose that’s why Tom calls it apple juice, seein’ as it’s made out of apples and all. 

It was after all that that folk got funny about the Rutherford place. Even Miss Fancy, who Ma says, loved dressing Abigail in her fancy dresses she had brought in from Mobile, didn’t even talk to her no more. Ma says Miss Fancy won’t even take her groceries but has a delivery boy drop them at the gate—the black iron gate that squeals when it opens, like it were waitin' long and hard for someone to come and ease its out of its troubles.

That black gate did squeal like a hurt cat hollering for help. I was thinking ‘bout that now—how that gate yawlled like a cat, as I sit here in the bindweed holding my hurt ankle. I wish I didn’t know what it sounded like. I wish I went back to before my hand even touched that gate to push it open. Too late now, I suppose. Maybe Jimmy and Bo will come back with help. I’m hoping they do. I’m hoping they will come fast. 

Abigail is staring at me now, her mouth open, words hanging out and never coming. I got fear all up in my chest, and I can barely breathe. I’m scared so bad even my tears are stuck. My ankle is throbbing in my hand, and it’s hurt bad, I mean real bad, but this ain’t at all why I’m scared.

I shouldn’t have done the dare.

Pa says there’s just sumpthin' about boys and dares. One has to offer it, and the other has to take it up so as everyone knows he ain't a coward. Pa was right. 

It was the three of us, me and Bo and Jimmy, standing by the Rutherford property. We was just talking under the shade of the oak tree’s branches that were reaching over us like an umbrella from the sun. Spanish moss dripping from the branches, cotton candy like, spider nest like. It was Jimmy who put up the dare. We were there by the black gate standing between the wonky fence looking in Abigail's yard. Her porch was empty, just the rocking chair sitting there still as her mouth. 

Jimmy says to Bo, “I dare you to go into Abigail’s yard and stay in there while I counted to thirty.”

And it was Jimmy who says that I weren’t allowed to do the dare ‘cause I was a girl, and girls are chicken naturally.

I didn’t like that.

It don’t matter if I’m a girl, I’m not chicken.

And that’s what I said.

And that’s how I knew that the black gate squealed like a hurt cat.

And that’s why I’m sitting in bindweed with a bad ankle in my hand.

And that’s why I’m scared stupid right now.

I should have left right then, when Jimmy offered up the dare. It was almost suppertime anyway, and I knew Ma was roasting a chicken and I knew we was having mashed taters with it too ‘cause I saw her peeling them when I left. Instead I was here, proving I wasn’t as chicken as the one roasting at home.

I pushed the gate open.

Jimmy and Bo were watching me with big eyes. Jimmy thinking the devil would swallow me up, and Bo filling the air with wheezes.

I’m not gonna lie, I was pretty scared thinking I was gonna drop dead right there and then when my foot crossed the line. I closed my eyes and was praying that I wouldn’t be called to the light to meet my Lord and Savior, Jesus. When I couldn’t feel anything happening, no heat from hell, no bright light leading me home, I opened my eyes and saw I weren't dead so I kept walking. I could hear Jimmy behind me “nine, ten, eleven.” 

It was when he hit thirteen when it happened.

My foot found a ball. A hard ball. It rolled away and took my ankle with it. I went down fast. When I caught my breath, I realized that my foot was all twisted up and burning. Oh, it hurt like nothing I had hurt on me ever before, and the pain started squeezing out of my eyeballs. I checked for blood but only saw a lump turning purple, fast. I called over for Jimmy and Bo to come and help me, but they was frozen still as the plastic mannequins in Miss Fancy’s store. Only their eyes moved. Huge. Round. Blinking in unbelief. 

It was then we all heard the screen door slam and Abigail came out on the porch, and Bo and Jimmy ran off like they just seen Satan. Abigail’s mouth was wide open, her eyes were wide open and she started toward me, bony fingers pointing, bony legs moving her closer. Fear shot through me like I never felt before. I sat there with my bad foot in my hand, the pain squeezing from my eyes and fear of Abigail with her mouth hanging open coming toward me. My heart was pounding, and my throat was dry, and I could feel myself trying to holler, “Jimmy,” but my tongue couldn’t move. It was stuck, glued to the roof of my mouth. ‘Mmmmmmm’ was all I could get out, and there weren't nobody close enough to hear that. 

Abigail was pushing away the moss curtain that was dripping between me and her. Her blue dress thin enough I could see her bony knees pointing at me. I tried calling for Bo, but it came out like the buzz of a bumblebee. "Bbbbbb."

Abigail was close now, at my feet now. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. My mouth was a dark hole. Open. Waiting. All my words seized up behind my eyes.

***

They said they saved me from Abigail. Her arms wrapped around me like she was squeezing me to death, they say. On the other side of the fence where she dragged me, they say. They put her away for trying to kill me, they say. The fright of it all sealed my mouth shut, they say. Fear does that, they say. 

I wanted to tell them Abigail drug me over the crabgrass with her bony arms to get me over the other side. I wanted to tell them that she was not filled with the devil and that she was kind. I wanted to tell them that Etta’s hex was real, and the Rutherford’s place was very bad. But my mouth slid open and the words fell, and all my voice could do was pound on the glass window of my eyes, scratching to get out.