That night I did my chores and waited until the moon climbed up over the ridge before I went inside and told Pa I was going coon hunting. He said, "You taking Blue?" and I said, "He's the best, ain't he?" I put Blue on a leash, and he pulled me halfway across the cornfield, but I got him tied up to a corner post and said, "Now, you be a good boy. I can't take you with me this time." He was whining and straining at the leash, but I told him, "I can't sneak up on anybody if I you're running around baying your balls off, now can I?" Then I went into the woods.
The moon was riding high by then, and the woods were full of shadows and silver light, and I picked along until I got down to the creek. The moon was shining on the water, and I heard a fish slap in the dark. This time I tied my britches and my boots around my neck. Going barefoot would've been quieter in the leaves, but it was dark, and I couldn't take a chance on splitting my toes against a rock or driving a thorn in my heel. When I climbed out the other side, I let the water dry a minute and put my pants and boots back on. Then I walked up the hill and down the hill and followed the little trail that ran along the stream. The water trickling was all I could hear except one time—and damned near right over my head, too—an owl went "hoo-hoo" and started clacking like owls do. Somewhere down by the creek, the coyotes answered with a yipping and a wailing, and then it settled down to quiet again. I walked the trail until it rose steep, and the trickle sounded further away. I was looking for the rock shelf because I knew the cabin wouldn't be too far away, and this time, I thought, I'd take the trail all the way there. I figured if anybody was out, I could just duck back in the woods. But I never got that far because first I smelled smoke, and when I got to the shelf, I could see there was a fire burning back under it and the beads of the little waterfall were red and orange dripping down. So, I laid down on my belly and crawled to the edge of the cleft and looked back into the cave, and this is what I saw.
Five girls were sitting in a circle on the rocky floor of the overhang. They had on smocks, I remember that, and their hair was down, not put up with a comb or tucked under a bonnet. Around the girls were three small fires burning, and the smoke was curling up from the lip of the shelf. In the middle of the circle, an old woman—I figured she was the woman I heard talking in the cabin—was scratching lines on the floor with the end of a charred stick, and she was singing something in an unknown tongue. When she stopped singing, the girl I saw swimming in the creek left the circle and came to her, and they hugged. Then the girl started swaying back and forth, and the old woman was stroking her hair and whispering something. The girl started crying, silent at first, but then she wailed, and the old woman put her hand over the girl's mouth, and the girl was crying so hard, it about broke my heart to watch her. The old woman took her hand away and said in a loud voice, "Ruth Barnes, can you bear the grief?" And the girl said, "Yes'm. I can bear it."
Then the girl, Ruth, started saying over and over, "Stella, my Stella, sacrificed on a cedar tree; Stella, my Stella, defiled and deflowered; Stella, my Stella, always beside me, always present, always my sister: Stella, come." And the other girls started saying, "Stella, come," real low like a chant. They closed their eyes and held up their hands, and over and over, they said, "Stella, come," when suddenly, the three fires flamed up and crackled like somebody had thrown on a dead cedar branch, and the old woman cried out, and a ball of fire floated between her and Ruth. Then the ball was gone, and standing in the circle was a young girl; she looked to be sixteen or so, but her face was pale as death, and her head had a terrible wound, and her hair was clotted with blood, and her clothes were torn and patched and stained with blood, and her arms hung limp like a doll's arms. Her tattered dress fell to her feet. She went to Ruth and kissed her on the cheek, and I heard her say in a hiss like I would imagine a snake might sound, "My sister." One of the girls said, "She who was slain has come back." And the others said, "Amen."
"She who was butchered by men lives on."
"Amen."
"She who was innocent and unprotected, defiled and dismembered, returns again whole."
"Amen."
Then Ruth knelt to the pale girl and took her hands and said, "Thank you for saving me today. Thank you for coming, Stella."
And Stella said, "I wish I coulda killed all them sons of bitches."
The old woman put her hand on Ruth's shoulder, and Ruth said, "Gramma says you need to go home."
But Stella said, "No! My home is here with you! And with them," and she turned to the other girls. "As long as men have hearts of evil, heaven can wait one damned day more. I ask you, who stayed for me? Who saved me from the wicked men? Where was God when Satan and his demons drew near? When I called out to God and said, 'Save me, Father in Heaven!'? When Satan was slashing at me with an axe, and I prayed to my guardian angel, 'Save me!'? When that murderous son of a bitch lifted a rock against me and his demon henchmen laughed?"
The old woman said, "Hush, child, you risk damnation!"
"Let me speak, Grandmother! Though your now dead loins once bore my own mother who died of grief, I swear if you lift that stick to send me to Heaven, I'll throttle your withered neck!"
The old woman buried her face in her hands and said, "But what about my soul?"
And the pale girl said, "What about it? Your eternal home is as much a matter of chance as my own death was. Did I know that trail, the trail I had walked a thousand times, would take me to Hell? No!" The pale girl was in a fury. "Do you know where your trail leads? No! No one, not a one of us, not even me though I am dead and on the other side, knows a goddamned thing!"
But Ruth said, "I know one thing: You have ever stood by me. And I will love you always."
Jaw-shattered and toothless, the pale girl smiled and said, "I love you, too."
The fires flared once more, failed, and smoldered, and the pale girl was gone; only Ruth and the old woman were left in the middle. A girl in the circle stood up, took a bucket down to the stream and scooped up some water, and threw it on one of the dying fires. It hissed a little, and I could smell the wet smoke, so I thought, "I better get while the getting's good." I crawled back to the path and started along the stream toward home.
When I got back to the homestead, Blue started growling and barking like he hadn't ever smelled me before. I said, "Blue! Shh! What's got into you?" But he just growled more fierce than ever, and I walked up to him, but careful like. "Blue, stop it! It's me," but he snapped at me and growled, and I couldn't get closer to untie him. He hadn't never acted like that before.
I left him tied to the corner post and went into the house, and I was surprised to see Pa sitting by the fire and reading his Bible. He asked me, "Did you have any luck?"
"No, sir. Blue started acting crazy-like. I don't know what's got into him. I left him tied up by the cornfield."
"Did anything happen?"
"No, sir. Nothing too much. Nope. Nothing."
"We'll check on him in the morning."
"Dad?"
"Uh-huh."
"You ever heard of a girl named Stella Barnes?"
Dad closed the Bible and asked me, "Where'd you hear about her?"
I said, "One of the boys at school."
"Stella Barnes. That poor girl . . ."
"What happened to her?"
And then Dad told me the story of Stella Barnes, the murdered girl of Boone County.