Page 65 of Bad Seed

She smiled. “Why do you call me Sunshine?”

“Because you brighten my day. Now we eat because I can’t say pretty things to you on an empty stomach.”

Harley nodded, then took a big bite. “Ummm, this is good.”

He winked and followed his bite with a couple of potato chips. When a bird dropped down to the ground from a nearby tree, he tossed it a bit of bread crust. Another bird followed, and then a possum came waddling out from beneath a bush.

Harley ate in total silence, watching her Terminator turn into Dr. Doolittle, and wondered what other facets he had yet to reveal. She finished the sandwich, ate her fill of chips, and then slipped her hands into the jacket pockets to keep them warm. As she did, she felt something beneath her fingertips. Something round, flat, and metallic. She pulled it out.

“Brendan, this was in the pocket of your jacket.”

He glanced at the small gold medal in her hand and nodded. “I guess I forgot it was there.”

“Were you raised Catholic?”

“No.” He picked up the St. Michael medal and rubbed it between his fingers. “Clyde broke my arm when I was ten. I had to have surgery because the bone came through the skin. One evening before Mom got off work, I was alone in the room when a priest who was making the rounds came into my room. He asked me about my injury, and being a kid, I told him.” He paused, thinking back, and then looked at Harley. “The guy looked horrified. I thought I’d said somethingwrong, and then he pulled this out of his pocket. It was on a chain, and he fastened it around my neck. He told me that St. Michael was an archangel, a kind of warrior for God, and that he was giving it to me for protection, and then he left.

“I wore it hidden beneath my shirts for a long time. Didn’t want Clyde to see it, but then of course, he did. He yanked it off my neck and slapped me. Aaron was almost twenty by then. He took the medal away from Clyde, dragged him out behind the house, and they fought until Clyde couldn’t get up. Aaron came back inside, handed me my medal, then doctored my busted lip. After I got bigger, I kept it in the pocket of this jacket. Then I outgrew the jacket, and I guess I figured out that it wasn’t the medal protecting me so much as the belief it gave me to protect myself.”

Then he put the medal back in Harley’s hand. “For protection, when I’m not there to help.”

“I can’t take your—”

“You didn’t take. I gave. Put it in the jacket pocket, or wear it around your neck. The jacket, the mojo, and St. Michael are yours now, and I’m ready for hand pies.”

Harley swallowed past the lump in her throat as she zipped the medal inside an inner pocket with her phone and watched him unwrap two perfectly browned and glazed pastries.

“Apple, cinnamon, nutmeg, and brown sugar inside. Sweet like you,” he said, and took a big bite.

Harley’s hands were shaking, but not from the cold.She didn’t know how she was going to make this work, but she wasn’t going to lose this man. Whatever it took, wherever he took her, she wanted to be the one who loved him.

“Good?” he asked, as he watched her chew and swallow.

“Beyond good,” she said, and wiped a crumb from the corner of her mouth.

As soon as they finished eating, Brendan stood up. “If you’re ready to go back, I’ll take you down, or you can come meet some of the old ones. They probably already know you matter to me, or you wouldn’t be here, but they like to be introduced.”

She glanced at the cemetery, then slipped her hand in his. “Show me,” she said, so he did, starting at the front where the most recent ones had been laid to rest.

“This is Ella Pope. Up until her passing, she was the oldest living Pope on the mountain. She was everybody’s aunt Ella. She saw the past, the future, and what was about to happen, just like we’d turn on the TV. Up here, they call it ‘having the sight.’”

“Was she really that psychic?”

Brendan nodded. “It’s not that uncommon among our people. Cameron thinks his son, Mikey, has the same tendencies. He’s always speaking in future tense and past tense about things he can’t possibly know.”

“Are you?” Harley asked.

He glanced down at her and smiled, then lifted a flyaway curl from near her eye.

She immediately reached for the curls to push them back. “My hair. It has a mind of its own,” she said.

“I think it’s beautiful. It suits you,” Brendan said. “And no, I’m not psychic, but I know how to pay attention to my instincts. I’d say life taught me that.”

They moved on through the headstones, and as they did, he paused and picked up a piece of tiny black rock. “Look at this,” he said.

“What is it? Onyx?”

“Coal. These mountains have thousands of sealed-off tunnels from mines gone bust. Unusual to see this lying aboveground, though,” he said, and kept it as they moved on. “This marker is for Helen Pope, my grandmother, my mom’s mother. Over there are members of the Cauley family and, over here, members of the Glass family who’ve passed.”

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