Goldeline by Jimmy Cajoleas (i read books txt) 📕

FIVE

That night, asleep in my tent, I have the dream. It’s the same one as always, it starts the same way. I’m littler, and it’s Momma’s trial. Me and all the people of the village are gathered at the town square. The day is dark and smeary, hot as bad breath. Momma’s in the town square up on the scaffolding the Preacher had built, her white hair long down her back, all the fierce she’s got in her eyes. I can tell she’s scared, I can see her tremble a little in her knees. But my momma holds her head up straight, even though the Preacher calls her devil to her face, even though the Townies spit and shout horrors at her. This is the end, and my momma looks beautiful.

A cardinal posts up on a pole next to her, and Momma keeps looking over to it like she’s asking for help. The Preacher’s in his black suit, same one he always has, with that phony gleaming sheriff’s badge on his chest. He stands up on the scaffolding with Momma, like it’s a stage. This way he can be above all of us. This way we can all see.

I’m in the crowd, after Momma cut my hair off, wearing Momma’s shawl so no one knows it’s me. Momma told me to run but I didn’t know where to run off to. And I have to see her. I can’t leave her alone.

“I never done anything folks didn’t ask me to,” she says. “They all know what I am, and I’ve never done a thing but help the people here.”

The Preacher spits in disgust.

“Liar,” he says. “Is it not true that you have held congress with the Evil One?”

“I never met any devils,” Momma says, “much less anybody so grand or wicked as the Evil One. Unless of course you see the Evil One up here, staring me right in the face.”

“You heard it yourself!” says the Preacher. “You heard her say she spoke with the Evil One himself!”

He dances around on his platform, waving his arms wild, while storm clouds rumble behind him. A soft rain begins.

“They have witches up in the Northlands too, you know that?” he says. “Up in the Northlands where they’re brave enough to drive witchcraft out from their midst. Does the Book not say, ‘A witch shall be known by her deeds, and by her deeds she shall be condemned’?”

The Preacher is tall, balding a little bit on his forehead, with long white hair in the back, but handsome in the way that makes you catch your breath, even if you hate him. His right eye is bluer than the left, like a frosty windowpane in winter, and he’s got a long scar down his cheek. The Townie women all used to say how good-looking he was, especially before he got his scar, before he left for all those years, how he would have made a good husband. Momma’s hands are tied behind her back. The Preacher points at her.

“Pretty, isn’t she?” he says, his words weaving like a spider’s web through the air, a string of invisible magic spread out over the crowd, poisoning every ear that hears. “But her heart is a deep pit, a well of brackish water, and she has infected this community long enough.”

The crowd jeers, flings garbage and rotten food at Momma. But she refuses to cry, she refuses to bow her head.

“You used to be such a sweet man,” says Momma. “What happened to you, Cyrus? Where did you go?”

I never know why Momma says that. I never know why she calls him Cyrus.

The Preacher grabs a torch from one of the Townies. He lifts it on high like a king’s scepter. The flame casts a golden flicker on Momma’s face.

“You did this,” he says to Momma. “Nobody but you.”

Momma doesn’t scream though, she doesn’t cry. Not through the accusations, not through the hours of questions. Not once. Not until she sees me.

I don’t mean for her to. But she does. I got up too close and she picked me out, even under the hood and everything. Her chin quivers and I can see her start shaking. I know that just by being here and seeing all this, I’m breaking her heart.

The cardinal flies off from the pole. The whole town goes silent.

I scream.

Now is the part in the dream where Gruff claps his hand over my mouth. When he whispers, Come with me, Goldy. Come out to the woods with me. It’s my favorite part, the only good in the whole dream, where Gruff calls me princess, his Goldy, his sunflower. Found myself some men, he says. The old rabblers from the tavern. Gruff says the town is getting too religious, says this new religion is giving him the creeps. Time to head off somehow. Where we going, Gruff? Somewhere. And he carries me off to the woods.

“But what about Momma?” I ask him, when we’re good and far away, hidden deep in the forest. “When is Momma coming to meet us?”

Gruff grabs me then by the shoulders, softly but firm, and he stares me right in the eyes in a way that lets me know that I can trust him, that no matter how awful it is he will always tell me the truth.

“Your momma is gone, Goldeline,” he says.

And I cry and I cry and Gruff holds me, and he whispers that always he will take care of me, that he will keep me safe. Shh, Goldeline, cry it on out, Gruff is here for you, Gruff will always be here for you.

That’s how it always happens.

But this time, in the dream, Gruff isn’t there. This time when hands grab me it’s the Preacher. Somehow he’s vanished off the platform and he’s behind me, he’s got his hands over my mouth. Suddenly it’s not just him that’s the Preacher, all the Townies are preachers, every last one of them dressed up just