Southern Gods by John Hornor Jacobs Read Free Book Online

And in a way, she hadn’t. There was a lot of water under that particular bridge.
    Alice led Sarah into the kitchen and said, “Your momma’s having a bad day today. Chest hurting and short of breath. You can go up there in a little bit. First, come over here and let me look at you.”
    Alice drew Sarah by her hands and turned her to face the light spilling into the kitchen from the window above the sink. “Girl, you look tired here.” Alice touched Sarah’s temple lightly. “And here.” Touched her heart, above her breast. “I see he’s been rough with you.” Her hand went to the bruise at Sarah’s cheek.
    “Alice…” Sarah didn’t know what to say.
    “All men unman themselves, eventually. They don’t even need us to help them. They’ll do it on their own. But when they’re limp, when they’re powerless, they’re the most dangerous.”
    “Alice… I don’t—”
    “Sssh. Don’t worry. He won’t ever touch you again. You’re home now, and I’m gonna take care of you, just like I always did. You’re my girl. Always was. Always will be.” Alice smiled, then hugged Sarah fiercely. Sarah remembered.
    When she was younger, Alice watched after her, a glorified babysitter, a companion, vigilant and ever-watchful for dangers to body and soul and virtue. Once, when the Alexander boy asked to go walking with Sarah in the grove, and Sarah’s father nodded once in response, the boy took her hand and they walked into the trees, the smell of burning fields filling the autumn air. Out of sight of the Big House, they kissed, even though Sarah had been a little too young to understand the demands of a young man’s body. He held her close, pressing his body tightly to hers, his mouth heavy. He had tasted of peppermints and tobacco, not altogether unpleasant, and Sarah hadn’t really minded the kissing, the tight embrace. But then his hands moved on her back and she felt a little uncomfortable, then more uncomfortable when he pressed his pelvis tight to her waist. She pushed him away, just a little too hard, and he fell on his back, face clouding with anger, then surprise, his eyes locked on something behind her. Sarah almost knew, when she turned, what she would see. Alice, standing quietly by a pecan tree not ten feet away, staring at the Alexander boy, a heavy branch clasped in her fist, her calico dress ruffling slightly with the breeze. There was no doubt in Sarah’s mind what she’d have done with the branch if he’d gone too far. The boy had run away.
    Best of friends, Sarah heard them say, the folks in the town’s main street, as she walked by, that Rheinhart girl and her colored servant. Like she got herself a slave. Which hurt Sarah more than anything. She had never asked Alice for anything—protection, service—nothing except love and that was all she offered in return. Indeed, Sarah thought, if anyone owns anyone in this relationship, she owns me. I’m her girl, always returning to her, coming back to the home she provides.
    Now, in the kitchen, Alice gripped her tight and said, “You know, I ain’t gone let nothing happen to my girl. And that Franny! Whoo-ee. You sure make a pretty baby.” She shook her head. “Jim weren’t always so hard, was he? It’d kill me if all this time you spent away from me was… I don’t know… wasted.”
    “He’s… all right. He works hard.” She tried to keep the tears back. “I love him, but… no more. He’s not the man I married. Something in him was broken. Over there. In the war.”
    “Drinks too much as well, I hear.”
    “How can you hear that? You’re three hours away.”
    “Shoot, girl, you know I got my doodlebugs.” An old joke between them; Alice, since she was a child, claimed she had the gris-gris , the hoodoo charms that her grandmother and mother passed down to her. And the doodlebugs were, as far as Sarah could understand, the invisible familiars that Alice used to discover things. Sarah imagined them as little floating points