E-Book, Englisch, 352 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-80336-827-6
Verlag: Titan Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Clay McLeod Chapman is the creator of 'The Pumpkin Pie Show' and the author of Rest Area, Nothing Untoward, and The Tribe trilogy. He is the co-author, with Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick, of the middle grade novel Wendell and Wild. In the world of comics, Chapman's work includes Lazaretto, Iron Fist: Phantom Limb, and Edge of Spiderverse. You can find him at claymcleodchapman.com.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
TWO
The Brandywine Farmers Market has been around since I was a little girl leapfrogging over the headstones in the cemetery behind Shiloh Baptist while my mother bought her greens. Even longer than that. Every Saturday at nine on the nose, the church’s parking lot is overtaken by elderly entrepreneurs ready to hock their homemade wares. Each parking space hosts its own stall. Farmers pull in well before the sun even thinks about rising, just so they can snag those hallowed spots up front where the foot traffic flows freely. Truck beds become rusted cornucopias of fresh tomatoes, sweet potatoes, ears of corn sheathed in leathery green husks, cucumbers covered in a fine dust of dirt, broccoli, zucchini, pumpkins, strawberries, and baskets of blueberries. Some even offer jars of pickled okra and peach preserves. The local fishermen bring their bounty from Chesapeake Bay: blue-shells, oysters, herring, shrimp, mussels, clams, glass-eyed shad—all packed on beds of ice that slowly melt into a briny broth as the hours slip by and the humidity thickens. Hand-painted signs line the highway for a mile out on either side of the peninsula, luring in passersby with promises of local produce and seafood. People who call Brandywine home still live off the land and water. I live off your hands. The lines in your skin. The folds in your flesh. A palm reading sets you back twenty bucks. There’s tarot, too. I provide a full- or half-deck reading. Aura cleansings. This is as close to a career as I’ve got. Long as I can recall, there’s always been a palm reader at the farmers market. Used to be my gram. She’d pull out the same tattered tarot deck and let you cut it anyway you liked. I’m not entirely sure why she even did it—wasn’t like she was actually psychic—other than it got her out of the house on the weekends. I think she simply got a kick out of spinning yarns for a couple quarters, getting the kids all giddy over their destiny—You’ll live a long, happy life, hon . . . You’ll meet the fella of your dreams, darling . . . I spot good tidings heading your way, sugar . . . It was simple to pick up where she left off after she passed. Runs in our family, I’ll tell any customer curious about my bona fides. I slip on the same boho tie-back dress with batwing sleeves, armoring myself with enough bracelets that my wrists jangle, ting-ting. My work attire, compliments of our local Goodwill. Got to dress the part. I rarely wear makeup nowadays, but when I can afford it, I’ll give myself a little smoky eye shadow, just to complete the effect. I’m hoping to grow my hair out, but for now it’s trimmed in a bleached crop cut, short on the sides and longer up top, just to give my high cheekbones a fighting chance of catching somebody’s eye. By the time I roll into church, most slots are already full, so I situate my card table at the far end of the lot with the farmers market mafia. “Morning, Millie. Morning, May. Charlene . . .” Rain or shine, the biddies of Brandywine come out to sell their jams and freshly baked pies. These three hold court in their lawn chairs, watching over everyone with hawk eyes. “Was wondering when you’d show.” Charlene always sits sweating away in her bowed lawn chair before her stall, selling jams and jarred okra. She cools herself off with her paper fan like some Madame Butterfly in a floral print muumuu hooked up to an oxygen tank on wheels. My ride, she calls it, dragging it along with her wherever she goes. The rubber tubes branch out from her nostrils, leaving her looking like she’s sprouted a pair of catfish whiskers. “What did I miss?” I ask as I lay a silk scarf across my table, along with a handwritten sign in flowery font: PALM AND TAROT READINGS. “We were about to give away your spot.” “Don’t you worry over li’l ol’ me . . .” “Worried, nothing. You owe me for two weeks now.” Charlene serves as the farmers market treasurer, collecting everybody’s deposit for the church. “You can’t be running a tab.” “Mind spotting me? Just until the end of the day?” I’m not breaking the bank reading folks’ fortunes on a Saturday morning. There certainly isn’t a divination 401(k), but it takes the edge off rent. If any of these fine people wish to look further into their future, get themselves the Madi Price Special, well, I always tell them right where they can find me: Swing on by the old Henley Road Motel, just off Highway 301. I’m in room five. Just look for the neon sign . . . “I ain’t running a charity,” Charlene says. “Just let me read a few hands first . . .” “If I let everybody lapse on what they owe, where would we be?” “I’ll pay what I owe, I promise. Hand to God.” “She ain’t going nowhere,” Mama May mutters. Ever since her stroke, she’s been partially paralyzed, only talking out of half of her mouth, slurring her words. “Let her pay later.” Charlene adjusts herself in her lawn chair, grumbling to herself. “End of today. In full.” “You’re a lifesaver, Charlene. Thank you.” “Hot one for you today,” Auntie Millie says with a sigh. “My face is melting.” She’s not lying. Millie’s mascara clots her eyelashes in charcoal clumps. It looks like she’s wearing a pair of melting wax lips, all thanks to that thick shade of crimson she’s run over her mouth. “Weatherman says it’s only gonna get hotter,” May says. “Well on into the triple digits.” “Don’t you start in with that global warming nonsense.” “Ain’t nobody asking for your opinion, Charlene . . .” “Then stop listening!” Charlene rests her hand on top of the tank, palming the nozzle as if it were a cane, with a freshly lit Pall Mall nestled between her knuckles. “What’d you predict, Ms. Price? The End Times on their way?” “Already here, Charlene,” I say. Charlene waves her paper fan at me—oh hush now—before moving onto more pressing matters. “Did you hear Loraine Hapkins left her husband?” Most vegetables are gone by noon, but folks tend to stick around and socialize. Not to mention gossip. Brandywine is small enough that everybody’s business belongs to everyone else. If there’s anything worth knowing, these three will be chattering on about it. “I thought they were working things out,” I say. Loraine hasn’t come to see me for a consultation in over a month. Probably high time I pay a visit, see if I can be of any assistance. “Tell that to Noah Stetler,” Mama May mumbles under her breath. “What’re we talking about?” Auntie Millie asks, leaning in with her good ear. “Lor-aine.” Charlene splits the name in half like a wafer. “Oh, yes,” Millie nods. “Loraine’s been sneaking off whenever Jesse’s outta town.” “Hush your mouth, both of you . . .” “Everybody knows it’s true.” “No thanks to you!” Charlene holds out her sweaty hand to me, palm up, between puffs off her Pall Mall. “I’m long overdue . . .” “You want a reading? Really?” You’d be surprised how my personal enterprise doesn’t sit so well with the Sunday service set, always judgy about my witchy ways. But when push comes to shove, these ladies are just as eager for a peek into their future as everybody else. “You gonna turn me down?” Charlene asks. “Take ten dollars off my tab.” “Five.” “Deal. Let’s see what we got here . . .” I pore over her palm like a miner sifting for mineral deposits. “Spot some lottery numbers in there and I’ll give you half.” “If I see any winning numbers, you better believe I’m keeping them to myself!” I hear the rasp in her chest, water flooding a phlegmy engine. “How’s your health been lately?” “Why’re you asking?” I run my fingertip along the shallow crease within the left hemisphere of Charlene’s palm, as if I’m heading upstream. “Maybe you should schedule yourself an appointment.” “Why? What do you see?” “I’m no doctor.” I try distancing myself from a diagnosis. “Can’t x-ray you with my mind, hon, but when I see a line dry up like this, that tends to suggest something needs checking out.” Charlene stews for a spell. “I reckon I’m overdue.” “Good. Let’s keep you nice and healthy. Who else am I gonna buy my okra from?” “Lord, you haven’t bought okra from me in ages.” Charlene coughs, then asks, “How’s Kendra?” Hearing her name hits me right in the chest. I’m sure Charlene notices. “Doing just fine.” “She still living with Donny?” Of course she knows. Everyone in town knows Kendra is living with her father after spending nearly all sixteen years of her life with me. That’s the whole reason why we moved back to Brandywine. Back to the town where my parents disowned me and my baby daddy made it clear he wanted nothing to do with me. Charlene’s simply testing me, I can tell, digging around for a juicy morsel. Most days I can deflect, but for some reason this morning, it takes all my...
