The Last Sin Eater - The Last Sin Eater Part 5
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The Last Sin Eater Part 5

But how do I ask her?"

"Straight out."

Turning, I called out, "Miz Elda, what do you know about the sin eater?"

She stopped from her meanderings and turned to stare at me. "What do ye want to know about him fer?""T ell her the truth," Lilybet said. "I t's more likely she'll help you if you do."

The way Miz Elda was staring at me, I was fair to certain that Lilybet was right. The old woman knew very well why I wanted to know about the strange man and his doings.

78"I need his help, Miz Elda." And, mortified, I started to cry. I didn't know the tears were even coming until they were upon me. Head hanging, I clung to the hoe and turned away, ashamed.

Miz Elda limped to me and put her gnarled hand on my shoulder. "Aw, chile. I could feel yer hurt yesterday when ye wuz here with the healer. I t fair pours out of yer eyes. Anyone with a lick of sense would know yer sorry for what happened."

"Being sorry don't help much."

"Time heals wounds."

I shook my head. "Not this kind," I would have said if I could have gotten the words past the lump in my throat.

Some sins can't be covered up or talked away. I longed to have the evil I had done removed. And itseemed the sin eater was the only one who could do it.

"I have to find him, Miz Elda. I have to find him now!"

"He canna do a thing for ye, chile. Dunna ye see? Let it go. What's done is done. Y e gotta live yer life through with what happened. Y e just weren't thinking. That's all.

Things happen when people ain't thinking. Do good to others from here forward, and ye'll only have the one black mark at the end."

"I 've need of the sin eater, Miz Elda."

79"Y e've a long time yet before ye've need for the sin eater. He ain't coming for ye 'til ye've breathed yer last."

"I wish I was dead, and then it'd be over." I dropped the hoe, ready to run.

Miz Elda caught hold of me and turned me back again, gripping my shoulders in her clawlike hands and shaking me slightly. "Dunna ye be too quick with yer wanting to die. God might hear ye and take ye at yer word. Y e hear me? He's done it before. Donal Kendric used to moan about his troubles and say he might as well be dead, and God took him at his word. Y e hear me? Y e tell God ye're sorry for such foolish talk. T ellhim!"

"I won't."

"Y e tell him!" She shook me again.

"I won't!" Pulling free, I lashed out in despair railing at the poor old soul though none of it was her doing. "Why must I wait? Why must it ever be that way? Why can't the sin eater take my sins away now?"

"Because it ain't the way things've been one, dearie."

"Well, who made things that way?" "Laochailand Kai," she said wearily. "He said he had need of one as he lay dying, and God knows he was right about it.

Well, we made sure he had one." Expression 80closing, she headed back for her porch.

I followed close behind, wondering if I understood her rightly. "Thar were none before then?"

"Aye, thar were, back across the sea where we all come from, in Scotland and Wales and England. The sin eater then was usually a poor peasant who lived well away from everyone else. I remember the sin eater who come to our house when my mother died. Hewho come to our house when my mother died. He stank with the sins he'd taken on himself and wore rags like a beggar. My mother was a good woman given to kindness to any who came for help, and that sin eater drankthreefull glasses of wine and demanded more bread as though she'd been the meanest sinner in the district."

"Maybe he was jest hungry."

She stopped and looked at me, frowning slightly.

"Well, now, I never thought of that." "Please, Miz Elda.

Can't ye tell me where our sin eater lives so I could talk to him?"

She shook her head. "I t won't do ye no good to know where he is, chile, if'n he doesna want to be found."

She walked laboriously up the steps, clinging to the railing. "Fetch me my pipe and rabbit tobacco. I t's on the table inside." Groaning, she sank into her willow rocker and rested her head against the back.

81Blinking back tears, I did as the old woman asked.

I had sins enough upon my head without plaguing the poor old dear to death. She looked ready to die right then, and if she did, it would be another sin upon my head for riling her up so. Thinking of Granny, I tappedhead for riling her up so. Thinking of Granny, I tapped down Miz Elda's rabbit tobacco and lit the pipe myself.

When I put it in her gnarled hand, she thanked me and commenced to draw the smoke deep, sighing as she released it. "The weeding ain't done yet."

"I 'll finish up afore leavin'."

"Finish now and give a poor woman rest." With a heavy sigh, I relented. "Y es, ma'am." I went back to my labors in her garden.

Lilybet was waiting. "Don't be discouraged, Katrina Anice. Keep looking. Y ou'll find him."

The sun rose high and hot as I worked. Soon the sweat was beading on my face and dripping down the back of my neck. I kept on, determined to finish what I 'd started. Going down on my hands and knees, I pulled the weeds that threatened to choke out Miz Elda's crop of carrots, okra, and corn.

"That'll do!" Miz Elda called. "Come and sit awhile."

She seemed quite mellow now, 82drowsy from smoking her rabbit tobacco and comfortable with her face in the porch shade and her body in the sunlight. She rocked slowly. "The sin eaterlives up on Dead Man's Mountain."

I t made perfect sense. I t was the one place Granny had neversent me. But Iwan had gone there and never seen him and I said so.

"Maybe he just never said."

"He would have told me."

"Did he go to the top?"

"He said so."

"Well, do ye see every deer in the forest?"

"No, ma'am."

"The sin eater's like that. He keeps himself hidden away until he hears the passing bell." She rocked and smoked and added with a sly look at me, "Or gits the call."

She was hinting at something, and I was about to ask her what when Fagan Kai came unexpectedly from the woods and helloed the house. He had two dead squirrels tied together by the feet and slung over his shoulder, and he was sporting a black eye."Come on up," Miz Elda said quick enough. "Have a fight, did ye?"

"No, ma'am," he said solemnly, his mouth tightening.

"Kais are always fighting," she said in an aside to me.

83With scarcely a glance in my direction, Fagan addressed the old woman sitting on the porch and smoking her pipe like she was royalty. "Thought ye might like some fresh meat, Miz Elda," he said as his dog flopped down in the shade near the steps.

"Might if'n they was dressed and skinned," she said, the pipe between her teeth.

Red-faced, Fagan turned away and took the dead squirrels off into the woods, his dog trailing after him.

She cackled softly and puffed away contentedly while I tried to get the conversation back to where it had been before his untimely intrusion. She would have none of it, and to add to my frustration, Fagan soon returned.

"Here they be, ma'am," he said.Miz Elda eyed the dressed squirrels disdainfully.

"T oo small for roasting," she pronounced bringing high color into Fagan's cheeks again. "And I prefer possum." His smile flattened out. "Or bear meat."

There as a definite twinkle in her blue eyes. Don't reckon ye've shot a bear yet, have ye, boy?"

"No, ma'am. Not yet. Haven't seen one yet this spring." His response implied he ad the courage but lacked the opportunity. Miz Elda cackled loudly this time. "Well, 84when ye do see one, I hope ye're armed with more than yer slingshot, or the bear'll be having ye for supper." She pushed herself up from her chair and took the dressed squirrels inside.

Fagan turned and looked at me square on. "How ye be, Cadi Forbes?"

"Fair enough."

"What ye lookin' at me like that fer?"

"I was here first.""There's room enough for two, ain't there?" He came up the steps as though he owned them.

Lilybet was looking at me and I lowered my eyes, ashamed of my ill temper. "I was talking with her, that's all."

"So go on and talk. I ain't stopping you." He leaned back against the rail and crossed his arms over his chest. "I know why you're here. Y ou still looking for the sin eater, ain't ye? Y e're asking Miz Elda about him."

"Maybe I am and maybe I ain't."

"Y our face is red as a boiled crawfish. Y ou're asking her all right."

"So what?"

"So you ought to leave well enough alone is all! Y ou shudna be looking for the sin eater!"

"I con look for anyone I please."

His face darkened. "Y ou say? Y ou owe me 85and you'd better listen. I asked my father about thesin eater like you wanted, and he knocked me off the porch." He pointed to his blackened eye so I 'd know it was my fault. "My pa said if I ever mentioned him again, he'd take the skin off my back."

Pulling my knees up, I put my head down. After a moment, I looked up at him through a blur of tears. "I 'm sorry." I t seemed no matter which way I turned or what I said, I did wrong.

"Pa said just mentioning the mon brings evil into a house."

Remembering the sin eater's eyes, soulful and sad, gazing at me from behind the leather mask, I shook my head.

Fagan frowned. "Why won't you believe what you're told, Cadi Forbes?"

"Because it don't seem right!"

"What don't?"

"That the mon who takes away sins should be so hated."

"Y e dunna ken what you're saying. He takes"Y e dunna ken what you're saying. He takes sinintohimself. Heeatsit, doesn't he? So it becomes a part of him, don't it? And he's been at it so long, thar ain't nothing left of whatever he was before."

"Then why did he sound the way he did?" I said, the tearscoming again. "And his eyes -"

86.

"Y e looked at him, did ye?" Miz Elda said from the doorway, and Fagan straightened guiltily. "Did ye, chile?"

I hung my head. "Y es, ma'am." "Were ye told not to?"

"Y es, ma'am."

"Then what made ye do it?"

My mouth trembled. "I t was the way he spoke of Granny. As though he had pity on her and loved her."

Aye, Miz Elda said. "He had good cause."

"What cause?" Fagan said.

She came out onto the porch. Leaning on her cane, she stared off toward the valley so long I didn't thinkshe'd answer. She must have been considering what to do, for she said finally, "I don't see the harm in telling ye." Turning, she looked at me square. "For a long time after your Grandpa Ian died, yer granny'd go visit his grave. And every time she did, she'd take summat with her. Half dozen ears of corn, a bundle of carrots, a small sack of potatoes, some eggs. She went right on through the worst of winter taking with her some smoked pork or dried venison, a string of leather- britches beans, a jar of preserves. She'd leave those things on Ian Forbes's grave for the sin eater."

Turning slightly, she looked at Fagan Kai.

87"Most people give the sin eater a glass of wine and a loaf of bread, then give not a thought about him or what he took on himself for the sake of their loved ones. They don't give a thought to what he'll do for them someday neither." She looked back at me. "Y er granny was different, Cadi. She looked out for the sin eater.

She let him know she hadna forgotten what he done."

Lowering her aching bones into the rocker, she placed her cane over her lap. "Now, Cadi here has a reason for wanting tofind the mon and dunna ye go talking her out of it, Fagan Kai."

"But my pa said -"

"Maybe your pa has a reason for wanting to stay clear of the mon."

"What reason?" Fagan said.