The Storycatcher by Ann Hite

fast my hand was burnt before I understood what was happening, before the pain set in. That’s how this book felt in my fingers.
    “ The Weary Blues .” She smiled.
    The name floated on the air like music falling from the old pump organ in our front room.
    “It’s a poetry book.” Miss Tuggle’s words were a whisper. “Here.” She took the book back and opened it. “This poem is called ‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers.’ ” She read the poem as we stood in the middle of the room with all her books around. The words rocked me like a baby in its mama’s lap. The poem sang to me deep in my bones and talked of rivers like they was some kind of living, breathing thing. Dragonfly River was just like that, singing and moving down the mountain. Ever since I was a little girl, I’d go sit on the mossy banks and close my eyes. Will always called it being with God. I liked that. Being with God. Just being. Nobody wanting nothing but stillness. That poem was all about muddy water and sunlight, about coloreds throughout time being part of the rivers, as if rivers and coloreds was one and the same.
    When she finished, she shut the book and gave it back to me. “Langston Hughes wrote this book. He’s a Negro.”
    Those words caused time to stand still. A Negro. What a fine word. Much better than “colored.” I closed my eyes tight and hugged the book to my chest. “Yes.” That was all I could get to come out of my silly mouth. Nada would say Miss Tuggle didn’t have no understanding of coloreds. That it wasn’t her place to put a Negro’s book in my hand. And she was probably right, but I was still proud to hold them words close to me.
    “You should help Faith and me in the garden for book loans.”
    “Yes, ma’am. I will.” I didn’t even pause, knowing full well it would be like having my teeth pulled to be around Faith and in a garden.
    “Good.”
    We moved out on the porch. Me hugging that book tight in one hand and holding a plate of cake in the other. It was like a birthday party. I looked out over her yard happier than I’d been in a long time—wondering why I had been so afraid of Miss Tuggle—and seen them two gravestones under a great oak. There stood that mean colored-girl spirit I’d seen in the pastor’s yard earlier. She’d done followed me to Miss Tuggle’s.
    Miss Tuggle looked in the same direction. “Those are family graves.”
    That colored girl sure wasn’t no family of Miss Tuggle’s. “Most folks be buried next to the church, in Daniels Cemetery.” Nada would have called my words sassy.
    “I’ve never fit in with the church, never will.” Miss Tuggle kept her look on them graves. “Mama is buried in the cemetery. I don’t know where I’ll be buried.”
    “My daddy be buried in the colored part of the old cemetery up the mountain a piece. He grew up on that side of the mountain.”
    “My family always did things their own way, not like the rest of the mountain, much less the church. One of these graves belongs to my father. He hung himself from that very limb.” She nodded at the tree. “I was your age. The mountain never forgave him. When he was alive, he roamed the dark each night, searching for something to settle his mind. Now, that’s a story for another time. The folks on this mountain could tell it better than me, anyway. I don’t believe in magic or ghosts.” She said this with a firm voice.
    I looked away from that colored girl. “I learned two things from Nada: catch a story and throw a spell. Those be the two most important things in a person’s life. I have to believe. If I told you what I was seeing right now, you might believe. It’s no secret how straight and tall you are, Miss Tuggle. But that don’t make the haints just fairy stories.”
    “Straight and tall, am I? I like that. I’m sensible. Go ahead and tell me what you see.” I heard the mocking in her voice.
    “I have what Nada calls sight. That’s what folks here on the mountain call