I opened my mouth, about ready to tell Sylv to shut it up, but then, I knew I couldn't. It would be a lie denying what Sylv said and he'd know it the second I opened my mouth. I knew what he meant. Dempsey had already gotten ideas. We both had. He'd held my hand just last week when Aron and Slyv walked in front of us back to Bastie's farm after the parish priests held a picnic down by the lake. I'd liked the way Dempsey ran his thumb over my knuckles, how my palm smelled like the sugar cane he'd cut down for me as we walked back.
"Nothing … " I swallowed, wanting the words to stay down in my throat. But Sylv's eyes went hard, a little worried and I couldn't keep a thing to myself. "Nothing happens with us. Nothing bad."
He nodded, scrubbing his chin with his thumbnail as he led me away from the Square, away from the crowd. We weren't in a hurry to get back, not when the day was running hot. Not when Mama was sure to have us back in the heat for more deliveries.
"I like Dempsey. He's a nice fella and he ain't nothing like his kin. That's a good thing, but sis, you got to be smart."
"He needs us, Sylv. If we weren't around, who'd clean him up when his daddy gets means and drunk and beats on him? Who'd hide him when the beatings are bad?"
"You ever think maybe it's us that gets Papa Simoneaux mean? You ever think that crazy white man beats on Dempsey because he don't stay with his own people?"
It might have been that. God knows I'd heard that hateful man screaming at Dempsey about being with the likes of us before. I'd heard the nasty things he'd called us and the things Dempsey's mama sometimes said about my Bastie and my mama. Hateful, all of them, but especially when they'd catch us swimming near the dock that splintered our two properties. Especially when Dempsey would run off to keep from getting beat on-and he always ran to us.
Sylv knocked my arm, pushing me a little, a tiny movement followed with a smile as we walked through the crowd. I knew then that his fussing was over. For now.
"You kiss him yet?" He didn't want to know, I could tell with how he rolled his eyes and made smooching sounds with his puckered lips. "Dempsey and Sookie sitting in a tree … "
"Oh shut up." I messed his hair, popping him on the back of the head. "You tease me and maybe I will go tell Mama about you and Lily." My brother's frown was hard and his eyes went all funny, like he was scared if Mama knew what he'd been up to there'd be a whipping in his future. But he tried to play it off, act like my threat didn't bother him none.
"Tell her." I didn't buy the way he shrugged or how he brushed me off with a toss of his hand.
"Okay. I'm going." And as I took off, jogging through the crowd with my fussing brother running behind me, I tried to stay tickled. I tried to not worry so much over Dempsey being hurt again. I tried something fierce to keep from reminding myself that the best thing for him, for all of us, would be to let him be.
If only I could muster the strength to do that.
Willow
Nash called me a witch. He didn't know I heard him, but I had. It came in a mumble, something low and quiet as I rubbed his temples, as he drifted off and I knew why. He floated, went where you're supposed to when you meditate. He could call me a witch all he wanted. I wasn't, by the way. I liked to think of myself as a healer. Someone who touched and held and wanted nothing more than to help.
But Nash struck me as the type of man who needed to put a name to things he didn't understand. Usually, the wrong name. He was a man of science, of things concrete, that could be broken down and explained away. Numbers were his thing. They moved in and out of his head, sang to his soul because they made sense to him.
Two days after I helped him get some rest, and he was still having vivid dreams. I knew he was. I heard him calling out in the middle of the night. But the sleeping itself hadn't remained, at least nothing restful. I heard him for the past three nights, moaning and whining, though he'd never own up to it.
It was Nash that took up most of my thoughts that day. Sunday and the farmer's market had been packed. I'd been doing pretty well selling my cupcakes to folks ambling by, their bags full of organic vegetables and sweet, sweet berries and plums. Everyone was in high spirits, at least until the skies opened up. Things thinned out pretty quick then, it came down in buckets, and each one, it seemed, right on the top of my head. Cabs passed me by and so I ran, darting under awnings as much as I could and then, God help me, I spotted that poor cat.
He limped toward my building, all skitterish and slinky, like he was doing his best to not be spotted because bad things happened to him when he was. I hadn't fussed much about the weather-it was only water, after all-but then the rip of thunder cracked bright white lightning against the sky and the thought of a poor little critter caught out in this storm had me worried. Skinny guy was alone in the world and hurt, from the looks of him, and now soaking wet.