“Then say it, Mam!” said Howling and Feral in unison.
“Say what?” she asked.
“A story!”
“A what?”
“A story!”
Vern smiled at the familiar call and response. She’d taught it to her children accidentally, as a matter of reflex. When Howling had just turned two and asked for a story one night, she’d asked, A what? And he’d repeated, I want a story! And she’d asked, What? again, and the cycle had repeated until the child was in a fit of giggles, crying out at the top of his lungs, A story!
It mystified Vern to think parts of Cainland were worth keeping, but she couldn’t disown all of her upbringing. If she did, there’d be nothing left of her. People aren’t born. They’re made. Without the Blessed Acres’ making of her, she’d be but a baby again, helpless and without form.
“A long time ago, in a little town filled with good, polite folk, lived a man named Brother Jon. He’d built his own house to be a home for himself, his wife, and fourteen babes. Now, this was very special, because he owned the land his house was built on at a time when people like him couldn’t own nothing because the white man’s greed always has him finding ways to put others down,” said Vern, speaking louder than usual to be heard over the storm.
“But Mam!” Howling said. “You said you can’t own land. It’s for all of us. The land is kin and trying to own it is like trying to own a person.”
Vern always rambled at her kids about this and that, trying to figure out what of her upbringing she agreed with and what she didn’t. She had no other outlet but the babes for conversation, having never talked to Ollie about these matters.
“Forget all that right now,” said Vern. “This man Jon owned a bit of land for him and his, but not so much that he was taking it away from anybody else, all right? He thought he’d found safety, finally. But one morning, he woke up to find his wife altogether different.”
“Wife?” asked Howling. “Was that what my pap, Lucy, was to you?”
“Yes,” said Vern. “Now hush. Do you want to hear the story or not?”
“Shh!” said Feral to his sibling.
“His wife smiled like she always did, kissed him like she always did, and helped him button on his shirt like she always did, but her smile did not look the same, her kisses did not feel the same, and she buttoned his shirt bottom to top, when before she’d always done it top to bottom. Woman, he said, who is you? And she said, I’m your wife. None of his fourteen children noticed the difference, but Jon could tell this was an impostor. The next morning, his wife still changed, he found his eldest son was now different, too. You are not my boy, he said. For my boy never did a lick of work in his whole life, spoilt ingrate he was, and you’ve mended the fence and it’s not even breakfast yet. Every day he awoke, and another one of his children was changed. He watched them as they moved through their days, fakes. Whenever he protested, they would state calmly, I’m your wife, I’m your son, or I’m your daughter. The only child who’d not been changed was the youngest. The night he was due to undergo the changing, Jon stayed up and watched over the child’s cradle. It was past midnight when he heard noises. He grabbed a fire poker and held it out, ready to fight, but a blow came from behind, knocking him right out.”
Howling and Feral both screamed, but Vern went on. “When he woke up, he found himself strapped down. A white man stood over him, metal tools in his hands, a wide grin on his pallid face. This might smart some, said the white man, and started to drill into the man’s brain while he was awake.”
“Was there blood?” asked Howling.
“There was.”
“Did it hurt?” Feral whispered.
“Fiercely. Poor Jon was awake as the white man took out pieces of his brain, rearranged them here and there, until, just like his wife and children, he was changed. By the end, there was nothing left of who he was at all. He moved through life like a puppet and could say but one phrase, I am Jon, even though he wasn’t at all,” said Vern, finishing the story.
“That white man was a night doctor, wasn’t he?” asked Howling.
“Yes,” Vern confirmed. All her scary stories revolved around these semimythological figures: white doctors who came in the night to rob Black people for medical experimentation. Her mam had told her these stories, brought with her from her life before Cainland.
“Was that man who tried to burn us up a white man?” asked Howling.