Chapter 2 | l’entree

Lemon-poppy cake, accompanied by two fingers of gin.

The first time I saw Alys Lawless was the summer of 1838, and with the drought, it seemed that the town of Burnt Creek might live up to its name. I remember the grass, higher than my head at eight years old, sere and bowed almost double under the blistering sun.

We were all crowded into Old Man Schein’s clapboard house to say our farewells. He’d passed the night before, and his people were in a hurry to get him in the ground, what with the heat and all. Well, we were mostly there to say goodbye, but my pa was also tasked with making sure the Schein boys didn’t raise too much of a ruckus. He was the law thereabouts, and those boys took any excuse to get drunk and rowdy. One time, they killed Mrs. Milligan’s goat, then strung the creature up from the church steeple. They spent a couple days in jail for that, but it didn’t change ‘em none. They’d supped with the devil, my ma used to say.

My pa stood behind the pinewood coffin with Matilda Schein to keep an eye on things. Like most eight-year-olds, once I’d gotten over being in the room with a dead body, I grew bored and wandered off. Mr. Seddin, who ran the mercantile, slipped me a shot of whiskey and told me to keep out of trouble. Then Alys and her ma walked through the front door in a blaze of sunshine and furnace heat. She was small, about my age, with bright green eyes and freckles. She wore her long, brown hair in two plaits that reached well down the back of her gingham dress. I would learn that they were Welsh, but Alys and her ma, who was named Rhian, called their homeland Cymru, but that was much later.

As soon as they stepped inside, everything stopped. It was the damndest thing. Even Ernest Schein, eyeballs already floating in the booze, quit what he was doing to watch as Rhian and Alys strode toward the body. I remember thinking it had to be hard to bear the weight of all our stares. Alys walked with her eyes down, refusing to look around, but her ma held her head high and walked with purpose.

“The sin eater,” someone whispered.

“Witch!” came another voice, but not so loud that you could identify the speaker.

Mr. Seddin made the sign of the evil eye and shuddered as they walked past him.

As they approached Old Man Schein’s corpse, Rhian released Alys’s hand, and she stopped beside me. To this day, I wonder if it was simple happenstance or something deeper at work.

Rhian Lawless stepped up to the body and looked old Preacher Perkins in the eye. “You’ll need to make yourself scarce, priest. My work makes your kind nervous,” she said, though not unkindly.

Preacher Perkins looked from Rhian to Matilda, eyes widening as understanding dawned. He tried to sputter some objection, but Matilda cut him off.

“You heard her. Off with ya. You can say the benediction afore they put him in the ground.”

With that, Preacher Perkins fled, and a powerful curiosity bloomed in my young heart.

“Did you bring it, Matlida?” Rhian asked.

“Aye.” Matilda produced a small bundle and proceeded to unwrap it. Inside was a small cake, which she set on her dead husband’s chest. “Are ya sure this’ll work? I— I can’t stand the thought of him burning in hell, no matter what he done to me nor the boys.”

Rhian cocked her head and stared at Widow Schein for a minute. “I know my trade, Matilda, but we’ll need these people to leave.”

“All of ‘em?”

“Save for you and your boys. I suppose the sheriff must stay to bear witness if the preacher needs his word.”

Matilda’s face was pale, and her hands shook, but she nodded. “Right, you lot. Everyone out but my boys and the sheriff!”

There was some grumbling at that, but most folks had only come out of morbid curiosity. Add the general sentiment around Rhian, and people fair ran out the door. I was about to follow when Alys grabbed my hand and tugged me back.

“Please stay,” she whispered, and I saw fear in her green eyes.

“All right,” I agreed and stood beside her. She didn’t let go of my hand even then.

“Place the offering on his chest, Matilda,” Rhian ordered.

Matilda did as she asked, then stepped back, one hand going to her mouth.

“Sheriff, pour a couple of fingers of that gin into a glass and bring it to me.”

My pa found a mostly clean glass, poured the clear liquor into it, then handed it to Rhian. She raised the glass in front of her and muttered something that slipped past my ears, then set the glass on the dead man’s chest and rested the cake on his mouth. Her head bent, she said something else. It sounded like water falling between rocks, or maybe the language of birds if they knew how to make words. Then, and this is the damndest thing, I swear smoke started coming from Old Man Schein’s body. It started slow, not more than a couple little tendrils of white smoke from his ears, but it got real strange, real fast. Gray and black tendrils started twining out of his ears and nostrils and eyes, and I’ll be damned if his mouth didn’t open and that cake near fell in. You could see the dead man’s throat working, and this black stuff oozed up, and the cake just sucked it up. Some of the shit swirling around in the air over his corpse snaked out and into the gin, which turned the nastiest, pus-yellow you ever saw.

She raised the cake in both hands, and it looked like it weighed forty pounds. Rhian took a bite, then another, her face going a funny kind of pale. By the time she got to the last bite, she was gagging, and the black goo stained her lips. She got it down, though. Alys clenched my hand so tight it hurt. Then Rhian grabbed that gin and knocked it back in one go, before slamming the glass down on the edge of the casket. She sagged forward, and I thought she was going to fall on top of the body for sure, but that woman had a constitution of iron.

“It is finished,” she said, her voice harsh, like she’d been screaming or crying all night. “My payment?”

Matilda’s face was pale, but she didn’t hesitate for one moment and handed a little leather purse to Rhian. “Thank you.”

Rhian didn’t answer. I’m not sure she could, to be honest, with how pale and shaking she was. She turned to go and held out a hand to Alys, who dropped mine and ran to her ma. She eased herself under her mother’s arm and, together, they left. Alys did give one last glance back at me, and there was gratitude in her eyes, along with some other emotion I was too young to identify.