Jesse

I didn't look out the window.

I heard nothing from the yard.

No footsteps, no sounds, no voice.

When I finally looked, the yard was empty.

The security light illuminated bare gravel on the side of the barn and the first row of trees at the creek.

Nothing there.

I went back to bed.

Captain followed me into the room and got under the bed and stayed there until morning, Friday.

I got up at dawn.

Mama was already in the kitchen, coffee made, biscuits in the oven.

She acted as if nothing had happened.

I sat down at the table and she set a plate in front of me and poured my coffee and asked if I wanted honey or jam.

I asked her about the salt.

She said her mother and her grandmother and her grandmother's mother had all used salt.

She said it was an old practice from the mountains, older than the churches, older than the English-speaking people who settled these hollows.

She said she didn't know why it worked, or if it worked, or what the mechanism was.

She said she did it because Pearl did it, and because doing something was better than doing nothing.

I asked her about the Bible.

She said that was for her, not for the thing outside.

She said the Bible didn't have power over it, but it had power over her fear, and fear was the thing that would get her hurt.