Blood Kin by Steve Rasnic Tem

“Never thought to swap her,” he said. It sounded like an old joke, repeated endlessly.
    Sadie sat down between the two, like them staring straight ahead across the valley. “You wanted me for something, Grans?”
    “Elijah,” he said.
    “Elijah.”
    “And Addie, honey.”
    “And Addie.”
    They sat that way for some time. When Sadie was younger, she might have thought the Grans had forgotten her. But she had learned that adults were like that sometimes. Talking took a while. You had to learn to use all the silences.
    Across the valley she could see a ramshackle barn, a broken-down stone wall attached. She couldn’t remember who it belonged to.
    “Yessir, I like them mountains,” Elijah said. “Gives you somethin to rest your eyes against.”
    Down below that barn was a small sleeping cabin, looking greasy in the dim light. Dogs ran back and forth the length of the porch, jumping into the trash pile at the end and tearing it apart. A sour smell wasworking at her nose, beginning to sting her eyes. She turned her head away.
    “We sold the coal rights to that land on them long deeds. Fifty cents an acre. Signed our X’s big and black as you please. Dumbest thing we ever did.”
    “ The dumbest,”Addie said.
    “I put a lot into that holler. Now I cant, I cant...”
    “Spit it out,” Addie said.
    “Get a thing out. We owned... we owned all you see.”
    Sadie looked out, trying to see as far as she thought the Grans might be seeing, and as far back. She didn’t know, but somehow she was sure they could see a lot further. They’d owned it all.
    “Worked in the mines... and I was already an old man. Hell... six or seven a day got kilt. Their kinfolk couldn’t afford to bury them.”
    She remembered she used to walk up that old logging trail above the Grans by herself. It was something special in the fall: you could look down into the hollow and there would be gray, pale blue, and orange trees.
    “Walt, he used to shoot his meat... out there in the woods. Afore all these others come. Raised his corn down in the bottom, just enough for his bread. Used a deer skin with holes for a sifter. Fires kept the bear and deer away.”
    Maybe she could stay with the Grans up into the night. That way she couldn’t make it to the church meeting and the preacher wouldn’t dare blame her because she had been with the Grans.
    “Been here a long time, Honey. Way back afore, buried our kin above ground. Little houses... over the graves. Ever afternoon we bowed toward the bell. Dont rightly remember why.”
    Sadie wasn’t sure if Elijah was talking about the Gibsons in general, or him and Addie personally.
    “Oh, been here years . Cant recollect how long. Nobody knows where we come from, and I swear I dont remember. Seen lots of starvin times. This aint so bad. Folks used to eat the sparrows they was so hungry.”
    They were trying to give her information here, memories, history. Sadie wondered what it was they meant to prepare her for, and why .
    “Chillen,” Addie croaked.
    “That’s right!” Elijah’s voice went higher. Sadie thought he sounded kind of happy. “Dont have a child you dont have nothin.”
    “Once the midwives done cotched them, they yours forever!” Addie almost shouted it.
    Elijah made his dry, coughing sound. “Never thought to swap her,” he said. His voice went lower. “You got our blood.”
    Addie cackled. “Gettin creatures born is important work!”
    “I promised the preacher I’d go to church tonight,” Sadie said softly. “See there, almost pitch dark already.”
    “Gettin old,” Addie said. The whites of her blind eyes glowed in the dark. “Not much time. Dont need it. Dont want it.”
    “Need new blood. Me an Addie,we got so old, full of forgettin, we got sick of it all.”
    Addie began a paper-thin, brittle wailing.
    “We got sick of the preacher, too,” he said. “Even if he is one of our’n. Crap gets out of hand.”
    Addie rocked back and forth, her mouth open,