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What Red Shirt Said to Constable Bell

A woman can do it too, maybe, but I’ve heard monthlies and being with child interfere. They have a different electricity. That’s the moon or mercy of God, I would reckon, but this don’t mean they ain’t involved. Ruta Lee’s heart had hardened for Samuel before he whoshed up like a torched hay barn. She’d gone sour as buttermilk in a thunderstorm, and some want to blame lightning by way of understanding it all, but he was in Anse’s Seed-n-Feed holding forth on animal habits when, as Anse himself swears on a white Bible, Sam’s eyes shined hard and his mouth gaped like he was gawking flying horses or horned horses or some of the other wonders of livestock he’s—was—likely to wander off on with his fancies.

And it was Helen Mary Lockeridge said there was no early smoke to speak of, just a smell of match sulfur or the devil himself, then a column of fire everybody jumped back from, no longer lived than it takes to stroll over across the road. That was when the smoke and the screaming, and the still sizzling body of poor charred up Sam slumped to the floor, which was scorched in most a perfect circle. Law me, I never. Since I was a chap I’ve bore the burden of this nickname, but it never scared me before, just a joke my brother Sutter laid on me with no intent, as I had a red chambray, and I had it on me one day—

That’s not what you hanker to hear, I expect. Listen up, Mr. Bell. Wasn’t no harm but to that sole spot—nary damage to wall or ceiling where a bolt might have run through, which leaves to my mind two choices. It, the burn, come up from the floorboarding, an old floor but stout, hard shellacked to bear a heap of boot traffic, strong joisted, mostly oak, all six inched deep and twice so wide, made to last—age, storm, kegs dropped, hard fighting. I’ve been to the cellar, and there’s no sign of fire on the underside, the spiders still living high, their webs not troubled by the torching, so the other choice is simple: the fire come from Samuel. Except of course how it got in him presents a whole nother matter I’d not want to surmise on, as the witchy possibility crosses a body’s mind and other curse practices, which I set no store in, in ordinary times, which is not now and maybe never.

I know this. Such has happened elsewhere, as the Asheville papers have several times in passing or as result of detail reporting touched on it—human interest, freak events. The flame’s most always red as a cardinal bird or wakerobin trillium, from what I can figure, and over to Claybank it was a preacher in his pulpit, in Lenoir a farmer in his garden and the sky again blue as robin eggs and as still, which means it’s not being in a store nor breeding horses that draws it. You wonder about foxfire and fireflies and will-o-wisp, other quirks of nature, but what makes a fully human man just downright wick up and blaze? I said earlier back Ruta Lee, and I’d have my suspicions, but the Methodist and farmer didn’t have vows connecting them to any old tragedy we know, which you being newish to us might not have been filled in on.

Ruta Lee was a Foster before from over to Wilkes, and the song made them all famous if the manhunt and court case and hanging didn’t. Her aunt Laurie, who was no saint herself, met a knife blade under the full moon and bled her life out, and the blame fell on the Dula boy was courting her and two others besides. Common talk says there was ambush and poison planned, not to mention a disease of venery moving among that love-tangled faction. Ailments of the carnal parts are said to attack the reason. That story will never be settled, and feelings run high unto the most distant cousins.

Samuel had shifted his name Dula to Alda when just a stable boy and kept his papers and lips locked up, but it wasn’t much a secret among the local hen parties nor the Neversweats perched on the courthouse steps. Just seldom openly given tongue to, and since Samuel was useful at the forge, whether hammering shoes or axles or fancy hooks, and even better when a mare foundered or gelding seemed to grow his stones back and act crazooty, nobody wanted to trouble him. You could send your boy over after the poorwills had dozed off and nobody but owls were lurking and swooping about, and he’d saddle up and cross the county to treat strangles, a running sore or a hundred other ails. We have a fine run of Morgans in this area, as I know you ride one, that black, on occasion, and Samuel Alda favored a roan mare himself, but Ruta Lee took to suspicioning when he swapped to a sure-footed iron color quarter that he was up to mischief and not always treating mares of the equine persuasion when messages took him off till morning. That black horse would of made his movements harder to eye along a ridge, and there’s other women in our precinct known to yearn for, rope or no rope, the Dula blue peepers and charms.

So the feud has been moving through their blood these six years, and rumor is—you can’t set too much stock in rumor, but there it is—she of recent found out his true people, as a bloodstock expert would of said, his line came out. And that might mean she felt fooled and foolish, rash and rude about it, and anyone from Philomena Weddle to my own lady wife might say she had cause, and she has always been one to keep her counsel and dibble in her own bean plot, but she has a temper and a turn of spirit hard to describe, harder to grasp. Also a connection to root healing and peculiar words. It might be something that just happens when you mix oil and water, pigs and skunks. It might be just a spark when a match head rasps on sandpaper, an unnatural act of nature when the stars are lined up, the wind is close and feelings run high. Nature has its ways and works beyond our ken. But do the facts signify Ruta had powerful and vile intentions and summoned something with her heart and mind that burned her husband and his soul to the world of the unknown and mysteries and ghosts? That would be a horse of another feather, and called to court, I’d testify I simply have no earthly idea.