“Sherry, I’m heading out!” I call as I untie my apron and hang it up on the hooks just inside the entryway to the old kitchen.
Sherry looks up for a moment from where she’s scraping the grill. The kitchen of Sherry’s Diner is always sweltering, and today is no exception. Her face glistens with sweat. A few stray strands of gray hair that have escaped her neat bun are plastered to her neck.
“Don’t forget the fruit for Darla’s possums.” She wipes her brow with her forearm and motions with her head toward the walk-in where all the perishables are kept.
“Shoot, I almost left it. Thanks for reminding me.”
I squeeze past her ample backside and head into the walk-in cooler to find a giant plastic storage bag of scraps Sherry’s been collecting for me all day. My neighbor, Darla, works at Campbell’s Veterinary Clinic down the road and has a soft spot for all animals. The little yard around her trailer is always full of cats and now hosts a pair of possums she rescued, too. I haven’t gotten to meet them yet, but my youngest nephew, Jayden, has told me all about them.
You’d think a pair of possums out in the sticks wouldn’t be all that exciting, but to all the trailer park kids, it’s become somewhat of an attraction. All five of my nephews have been by Darla’s yard at least twice to visit Gomez and Morticia Possum.
“Thanks for saving them for me.”
Sherry grunts in response as I head out the door and into the dying light of early September. It’s still hot, but not anywhere near as bad as it was a few weeks ago. I pull out of the dusty parking lot and head home, turning up the radio to keep myself awake as I drive the empty two-lane roads between the diner and the trailer park. It wasn’t a long shift, but I have a seven a.m. class at the culinary college in the city and have been up since four a.m.
My days are usually long. Hopefully, someday, this will all pay off, and I’ll be able to have a more normal schedule. Though that’s a dumb thought. If the dream I am working my ass off for comes into being one day, I’ll have my own restaurant with my own kitchen that won’t feel like an oven 365 days a year. Which means I’ll still be working insane hours, but with actual financial stability and no crowding into a double-wide with all the family I have in this world.
I pull off the road and onto the gravel road that leads straight back to the Black Raven County Trailer Park. All the trailers have identical white siding with gray shingle roofs. Despite their uniformity, Darla’s trailer and tiny yard always manages to give off a cozy, witchy vibe. Her yard is filled to the brim with plants. They snake around each other, reaching out past the chain-link fence on all sides. Several cats roam about on the inside, lounging in the few places where plants haven’t taken hold.
Back when I was a kid, Darla’s was the house I always hung out at after school and on weekends while Memaw watched Wheel of Fortune. Now that all five of my nephews are stuffed into the trailer with us, I realize Darla was a saint to put up with me showing up every day after school.
Back then, I’d follow her around, helping her water plants and feed the cats, and she’d tell me these crazy fairy tales her grandma used to tell about the Deer Woman. Though the word “fairy tale” is probably too nice of a word. Gruesome horror stories would probably be more accurate, but her description of the Deer Woman—dark haired and stunningly beautiful—always made me think of a princess.
Nearly every story was the same. In her travels across the land, the Deer Woman would constantly come across women and children who had been abused by a man. Then she’d end up having to kill the abuser to avenge the victims. The man would die a satisfyingly grizzly death at the hands of the beautiful Deer Woman, and the woman and/or children would live happily ever after.
When I was little, I always thought Darla was ancient, but now that I’m grown, I realize she was probably barely out of her teens herself when I first met her. Which honestly probably explains her questionable choice of stories for the annoying neighbor kid.
Even back then, she had been the cat lady.
I wonder if she’s always just loved cats, or if she was like the women in her stories—fleeing some abusive man. I’ve never been brave enough to ask, and she’s never volunteered an explanation. I may be grown, but in her eyes, I’m still very much a kid in a lot of ways.
I shut off my car and step out onto the grass just outside her gate. Fairy lights decorate her porch, but it’s not enough to see by—the cats have become small inky shadows moving through the jungle of plants in the waning light. I lift the latch on the gate, and a deep grunt from behind me makes me jump. I turn slowly, expecting some terrifying wild animal, only to find three pigs staring at me.
“Would you let them in, Lori?” Darla’s voice yells from somewhere I can’t pinpoint. I push the gate open so the three pigs can enter ahead of me.
The first pig might be a sow—she is lighter in color and smaller than the dark pig that follows. An impatient, nearly-grown piglet takes up the rear. Apparently no one is moving fast enough. The piglet squeals and pushes past us all, racing ahead.
Behind the trailer, Darla is sitting at her picnic table, sipping on a glass of iced tea. A man and a little boy I’ve never seen before are kneeling in the grass nearby. I’ve never actually seen a man at Darla’s house. Could she actually have a boyfriend? I haven’t been by in a while, so I guess anything is possible. I stop short as my eyes fall on the two figures on the ground.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize you had company. We can reschedule.”
The man and the boy both look up at the same time. The boy has a possum cradled like a baby in his arms. The possum turns to look at me too, his mouth opening in a silent scream, begging for a treat. It’s then that I realize this is no normal father and son. These two are Gobelins. Both the boy and the man share the same light green skin coloring and dark eyes.
The man meets my gaze with his nearly black eyes, and for a moment, I feel like I’m in a daze. I know I’m staring for way longer than is polite, but I physically can’t turn away. He keeps his eyes glued to mine as he stands up and brushes off his old jeans. “No, it’s time for us to get going. Corbin, tell Gomez goodbye.”
He’s dressed normal enough for these parts—torn jeans, a shirt with dark smudges here and there like maybe he works on cars. But my heart picks up as his dark eyes scan me in my waitress uniform and braids—the teenaged girl look always brings in more tips from the guys coming off the highway. I have no problem leaning into it and making money off of creeps, but for some reason it seems truly important that this man not think less of me for it. The little boy sighs, bringing me out of my daze. “Can I come back and visit, pleassssse?” he asks.
“If Darla has time for you, but you can’t just get off the bus here and not tell anyone. You scared your Mémé.”
“I’m sorry,” the little boy sighs.
“Thanks for calling me and letting me know, Darla,” the man says. His eyes meet mine again, but he says nothing, just smiles slightly as he walks past, hand in hand with his son. I turn and watch them go, not quite sure what the hell is wrong with me.
Darla clears her throat. “Never met a Gobelin before?” she asks.
“I have. There are several in my cohort at school. It’s just, he’s…”
“Hot?” she supplies.
I nod. “I couldn’t stop staring at him.”
“He’s available. His wife passed away six years ago, and I don’t think he’s with anyone at the moment.”
I smile and shake my head. “The hot ones are always bad news.”
She rolls her eyes and chuckles, shaking her head. “Have you ever met the pigs from the Dvergar Mine?” she asks, changing the subject.
I shake my head. I can’t say that I have, though I have seen the three pigs wandering around the place. It’s not all that weird to have random farm animals wandering about this far out in the middle of nowhere. I’ve seen chickens, all manner of dogs and cats, and last year we had a little herd of goats that just roamed around until someone accidently hit one. From then on, they fainted every time they saw a car. County had to come and collect them after that.
“This is Porshetta; her piglet, Frigg; and their rescue pig, Chad,” Darla says, introducing them.
Rescue pig? Named Chad? Who names anyone Chad? I have so many questions, but one rule of Darla’s is that we always treat animals like people, so I bite my tongue. “May I pet them?”
Darla meets Porshetta’s eyes for a moment. Some unspoken communication occurs, and then she turns to me.
“They prefer scratches behind their ears.”
I nod and kneel down to the piglet first before moving to Porshetta. “Is Frigg a girl’s or boy’s name?”
“She’s a girl.”
“So, Chad is not the daddy pig?”
Darla sighs. “Lori, would you question a new acquaintance’s paternity within the first few minutes of meeting them?”
I cover my mouth with my hand to hide my smile. “I’m so sorry, Porshetta. Frigg, please forgive me.”
Frigg doesn’t hear my apology. She is already halfway across the back yard. She races around like a little metal car on a racing loop like my brother, Junior, had when we were little. I wonder if they even make those anymore. All I see my nephews on are tablets. “Is she always like that?” I ask, nodding my head toward the piglet.
Darla takes a sip of her iced tea and smiles. “Yep. Did you bring fruit for the possums?”
I pull out a giant plastic bag from my backpack and lay it on the table. Darla’s eyes light up, “Oooo, this will be good. They’ll really like this.” She inspects it for a moment, then puts it to the side. “Are you ready for your reading?”
I nod. “I sure am.”
I settle across from her at the picnic table, and she pulls out a small deck of cards from inside a cloth pouch. Darla has been reading my fortune since I was a teenager, telling me which boys to avoid (all of them) and what career path to take (culinary arts). She’s never wrong, even if I ignore her completely and let cute boys break my heart.
Normally, she reads from a small standard tarot deck, but today, the cards she pulls out come from a plain white box with a picture of three pigs stuck to the front.
I reach for the box and look at the picture—it’s not quite an accurate representation of the three pigs in front of us, but it’s pretty close.
“You have a pig tarot deck?”
“No, no, not tarot. This is the Choracle,” she says as if it’s obvious. She takes the box from me and pulls out a slim deck of small cards, then begins to shuffle.
“The Choracle? Is that new?”
“I made it myself.”
“O-kay,” I say.
Darla raises an eyebrow at my skeptical tone. “In all the years you’ve known me, have I ever led you astray, Lori?”
I shake my head. “Nope.”
“The possibilities are not in the cards. They are here.” She taps my forehead lightly with the deck and then begins laying the plain white rectangles out. The spread—the way she’s laid out the cards for my reading—looks a lot like a cock and balls, but I keep that to myself. It has a column of three cards down the middle of the table flanked by two cards on either side of the bottom card.
“Is that Chad on a stripper’s pole?” I ask, pointing to the card at the “base” of the penis.
“It is. That’s in the ‘growth’ spot. It has a double meaning here, but we’ll get to that eventually.”
