“Yeah, but weren’t you proud? With them war heroes and all. Didn’t you want people to know how brave they were?”
“Well, I didn’t know that at the time. In all honesty, I was just surprised your dad made it off. He signed up in one of his fits of restlessness, thought he might change his mind again. Those other things come later. Too late, really. When nothing else matters, especially not some rusty metal and a folded flag.” Lishie stood and walked over to the kitchen to pour coffee from the kettle. “I guess I should count my stars that at least Bud made it back.”
“Yeah,” I agreed unconvincingly. I guess I should have been more thankful, too. I mean Lishie couldn’t have raised me alone. Bud had served a purpose. Still, he would have made an easy trade for my father.
“Lishie. Tell me the story again.”
“Oh, son. Dontcha get tired of it?”
I laughed. “You know it’s different every time.”
Lishie smiled. “Okay. Okay.” She wrapped the dishrag around her coffee cup and nestled herself into her rocking chair by the fireplace. “Let’s see if I can remember …”
Lishie had the letters, but she only pulled those out anymore when she was alone in her room. She much preferred to recite from memory, building the story each time she told it.
“He still seemed like such a boy to me. Even in his uniform. They both did, though Bud has always had that hard edge to him. That’s what being the oldest does to you. Your dad, though, he just grinned from ear to ear when we dropped him off at the station. They’d gotten into the war late, really. By the time they finished training, it was practically over. I was grateful for it, to tell the truth. Otherwise, I guess you wouldn’t be here.” Lishie closed her eyes. “Yes, he was so pleased to finally ship out. I hadn’t seen him that happy in a long time.” “How long until you heard from him?”
“Way too long. A good month and a half, I believe. But once the first letter came, they seemed pretty steady every week. Sometimes I got two in one week. I was still getting letters after we buried him. Now I tell you, that’s mighty hard to take. Hearing your son’s voice about how well he’s doing when you already know he ain’t coming home.”
I wanted to ask her why I had only been allowed to see one of his letters, the letter she read to me about Bud being lazy; but I didn’t want to upset her or delay her story.
Lishie stopped and walked over to the stove. She busied herself by making another pot of coffee. “You want a cup?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I agreed. I needed to hold something warm in my hands.
“So most of the letters just talked about what things looked like over there. It was like he was on some kind of European holiday—just like the rich folk take. He told me about the other men and where they were from. He’d make fun of Bud.” Lishie smiled.
“I guess Bud wrote similar things.”
“No. Bud never wrote.” Lishie dropped her smile. “He just sent word by your dad that he was okay. I was just thankful that they were stationed together; otherwise I guess I would’ve never heard from Bud.”
“He didn’t even write after dad was killed?”
“Well, in all fairness, he probably didn’t have time. The army was at least good about that. They knew you didn’t have a mother and her folks had long been gone. Bud was now the man of the house for us all. The war ended soon after, anyway. They sent him back not long after we received your dad’s body. Made it back in time for the sittin’-up.”
I had never heard Lishie refer to my father’s “body” before.
She lit the stove and circled back. “So they sent a courier to tell us what happened.” She stopped and turned to me. “You’ve heard this a hundred times. You sure you want to hear it again?”
I nodded.
“Well, now the army and Bud have a little different story, so what I take as truth is really just me piecing the two together, that and just knowing your dad and what I think he’d do.”
“Can’t imagine anyone knows better than you.”
Lishie continued, “Early one morning the men woke up to the sound of a gunshot. That’s what the army says. I think the rest of the story is that those boys stayed up too late playing cards and maybe even drinking whiskey and the night watchmen fell asleep, so the enemy had no problem sneaking up on ’em without firing a shot.”
“That does make more sense.”
“So our boys start runnin’ around, grabbin’ their weapons, waking everybody up; but nobody can find your dad. Course, nobody is takin’ a head count either. They’re just tryin’ to stay alive. Bud starts yellin’ ‘round for him, even goes lookin’ for him, but he’s not in his bunk.”
“Did Bud tell you that part?”
Lishie didn’t answer.
“Finally, he hears your dad’s voice, but he can’t make out what he is saying. Shoutin’, really. He’s yellin’ something, but Bud doesn’t know what. So Bud follows the shouts and finds your dad standin’ on the other side of the barbed wire. And for the life of him, Bud can’t figure out how he got there or why he crossed the line. And then he sees the body of another American soldier hung in the wire and your dad’s runnin’ to him, shielding him from the incomin’ fire.”
I know the answer, but I ask anyway. “Why was the soldier in the wire?”
“Best they could figure, he was a sleepwalker. He did it a lot, they said. Of course, never got himself into trouble like this, but he must have just walked right into the wire and barbs woke him up. By the time he was trying to free himself, the enemy had started comin’ at him. He fired a blind shot. That’s what the men heard. That’s what woke them up. Your dad must’ve run out to see where the shot came from and realized his buddy was in trouble.”
It was late in the war. While I knew Lishie envisioned uniformed German enemies, it is far more likely that men across the fence line were remnants of a resistance. No longer formal soldiers recognized by any responsible government. Still, I remember the first time I heard that part. I had never felt prouder.
“They ever figure out how Dad got through the wire to the enemy side so fast? I mean, without getting caught in the wire himself?”
“No. But it doesn’t surprise me. That’s just how he was. Your grandpa used to swear that that boy would go in a cave and come out a waterfall clear on the other side of the mountain.”
I shook my head. I didn’t need my father to be any more magical than he had already been built to be. I needed him to exist in the world I lived in, flaws and all.
“He stood in front of that man and shot at the enemy until he was out of bullets. Then he took the other soldier’s gun and shot until he emptied all of his bullets, too. Army said that for sure. Said they checked the guns.”
Lishie pulled another coffee mug from the shelf and stared at the kettle.
“Who’d you say found him?”
“Bud got to him first. Lots of men saw him later, but there was too much gunfire. They had to wait until the enemy retreated.”
“And it was too late by then,” I finished her story. I knew she wouldn’t be able to. Up until that point it was like someone else’s story, a film she projected.
“Milk?” she asked, holding up my cup. “Good for the bones.”
“No thanks. Black’s fine.”
“I like mine with a little sugar.” She grinned. “Need all the sweetness I can get.” I was glad I had smuggled some from the inn back for her.
Later that night, I lay in bed and played out the story again. Details from my father’s story mingled with those of the soldier’s in the newspaper, to the point that I was afraid I could no longer separate them. It’s not that surprising, when I think about it. I knew just about as much about my father as I did the man in the paper. Lishie told me many stories over the years, but I only believed what I saw in print or what more than one person had said about him. I guess I was hoping one of the men’s stories would fill in the missing pieces for the other, but neither, no matter how much I wanted, could answer t
he one question that still lingered amid the faded newsprint and Lishie’s well-worn memory. Neither could answer the question churning over and over in my head ever since I was old enough to hear my father’s story from Lishie for the first time—old enough to hold a question deep inside when it didn’t fit the narrative on which it was precariously perched. How does a sleepwalker carry a loaded gun through the barbs without waking?
Chapter Eleven
A muted haze of morning sun leaked through the cabin slats into my bedroom. I was pulled from indiscernible dreams so abruptly it took me a moment to determine whether I was at home or the inn. Once I got oriented, my next concern was the oil lamp beside my bed.
Something was burning.
I inhaled deeply to confirm this fear and flung the quilt forward.
Something was burning.
It was not the oil lamp. My body relaxed momentarily, reasoning that perhaps Lishie had gotten an early start preparing breakfast. I slid out of bed and fumbled into my clothes. Before I made it to the kitchen, Lishie met me in the doorway.
“You smell that smoke?”
“Yeah, what you cooking?”
“Not me this time, boy. Get your boots on and take a look, will you?”
“Yes’m.” Lishie’s weather reports had been true. Cherokee was bone dry—had been bone dry practically the whole summer. It was as if Asheville’s torrential rains had sucked all the moisture from the west. It was unusual for places of such close proximity to suffer in such distinctly contrary ways, but this was an unusual summer, after all. Just as I escaped one extreme, I found myself planted in another.
The sky was grayish pink by the time my feet hit the front porch. A dense grayness limited my view to about twenty feet in any direction. It was impossible to determine the course of the smoke. Winds initiated a dreadful game of hide-and-seek. The smoke billowed toward our house like smoldering tumbleweed. Stepping back, I stood poised to run as best I could, or call out to Lishie at the very least. I opened my mouth, sucking in filmy air and expelling it back in a fit of coughing that left me bent, clutching my knees. When I straightened again, Preacherman’s truck breached the opaque barrier and skidded sideways right at me, stopping a mere two feet from the front step.
Lishie opened the cabin door and pushed the screen so forcefully forward it knocked me out of my infantile pose and straight onto my ass. She had fastened a red bandana over her nose and mouth. The thin cloth rose and fell with her exaggerated breath.
“Shut tight the windows and carry water to the washtub, son.” She stepped over me and squinted into the yard. “There’s Preacherman. When you finish the other, get on back out here and help him with the clearing. I’ll get yuns some breakfast to stay you in just a bit.”
Preacherman eased out the driver’s side coughing and rubbing his eyes. “Your uncle here?”
“No, sir. We just got up. Haven’t seen him.” I wanted to tell him a likely truth. That Bud was laid up drunk or sleeping off a drunk. That he’d be here as soon as most of the work was already done.
“You seen a fire line yet?”
Was he serious? “No, sir. Just got up. How close you think it is?”
“Hard to tell. Won’t know until the sun’s fully up. I haven’t seen a line myself. Just the smoke. And it’s been so dry.”
I nodded.
“You go help your Lishie. I’ll get started out here and see if I can figure out the direction.”
“Yes, sir. Be right back.”
Preacherman and I worked until the sun turned the smoke a grayish mauve and then dissipated into a blue summer sky. By noon, I began to wonder if it had all been a shared dream—how quickly the smoke cleared seemed almost unexplainable. I would have kept questioning this reality had Bud not lurched through the doorway just as Lishie, Preacherman, and I were sitting down to lunch.
“It Sunday already?” he hawed, reaching for a plate from the stack beside the sink.
“Preacherman’s been helping us in case the fire saw fit to make its way over here,” Lishie said.
“That so? Little skittish, ain’t you?”
“Have you seen the fire line, Bud?” Preacherman asked.
“Nah. Heard it’s down Painttown, though. Shouldn’t be nothin’ for us to worry with.”
I must have breathed a heavy release.
“Going to check it out after lunch, though.” Bud turned toward me. “Ride along if you want.” By “ride along,” of course, Bud meant I would drive. At least that way I’d know I’d get the car back in time to drive to Asheville on Sunday.
An hour later I was driving Bud down the mountain across town and within five hundred feet of the fire line. The long, curved red glow painted its way horizontally across the bank, designing an almost magical barrier between charred earth and dull, brown roughage. We were not in the heart of the blaze. Though the air was smoky, the heat was tolerable. “What are we doing here?” I asked Bud.
Bud reached into the back seat and pulled his shotgun from the floorboard.
“Has that been in the car the whole time?”
“Since this morning.”
I exhaled deeply. Had the gun been in the car while parked at the inn and found, I certainly would have been fired, arrested, court-martialed—hell, whatever they do when a brown boy is within inches of a deadly weapon and white people. Especially if the weapon is tucked out of direct line of sight.
“What are you doing?”
“Huntin’.”
“What?” I opened my car door as Bud had his and stood beside him as he stared up the side of the bank that hadn’t yet burned. “Are you going up there?” A charge of birds—cardinals, hawks, and several others I couldn’t distinguish in their haste—clouded the sky.
“Hell, no. What kind of fool do you think I am? There’s a goddamn forest fire up there.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Shit, Cowney. You’re right dull, ain’t you? I don’t have to go in. That fire is about to send every living creature, ’cept those with wings or scales, running off that bank. When they come this way, I just point, aim, and shoot. Easiest day of hunting I’ve had all year.”
“That’s not quite fair, is it?” Before he could respond, two whitetail, a doe and fawn, sprinted through the smoke and down the bank. Bud steadied the gun against his shoulder. Two blasts echoed and the mother fell. He shot again, but the fawn was already running back into the smoke.
“Fair? Fair’s where you get cotton candy.” Bud shrugged and leaned back against the car, staring toward the ridgeline. “It’s sportin’ enough. Natural. I can’t help it if Mother Nature saw fit to set a fire.”
I walked over to the mother deer; her round black eyes stared into me as I watched her chest rise and fall quickly, and then cease altogether. The thirsty earth drank in her blood before it could pool at my feet.
Of course Bud and I both knew these fires weren’t usually the handiwork of Mother Nature. There had been no storms, so it wasn’t like lightning struck a tree and then all hell broke loose. No, these summer fires, especially the drought fires, were set by locals. Sometimes by men from fire stations in nearby towns who were bored and wanted some action. Sometimes by disgruntled hunters who hated the National Park Service and wanted to watch them squirm a bit. Sometimes by campers too careless to extinguish their campfires completely.
“You best move, ’less you wanna be next,” Bud hollered.
“They’re running for their lives. They’re trapped. That just doesn’t seem right.”
“We’ll see if you complain after a supper of deer steak or bear stew.”
“I’ll be back in Asheville by the time you get one cleaned and cooked anyway. How you going to get it home? You can’t put that in the car. You need a truck.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. Just stop in town and tell Joe I’m here. He’s supposed to come pick me up.”
Joe hung out between the bus station and the trading post and traded rides in his pickup for groceries or stamps or a new pai
r of shoes. Really, whatever he wanted that day. Likely Bud would be sharing any meat he procured with Joe for a ride back to his house.
“Those prisoners they got over there. They’s some Japs there, right? You ever talk to ’em?”
“There are some, but I don’t talk to the guests.”
“Guests? Shit, son.” Bud shook his head without looking at me. “As long as you’re over there, you might work up a deal for me.”
“A deal?”
“Yeah. See, I had a buddy I was stationed with. He married a Japanese girl. He had this whole business he had worked up for when he got back. Turns out Orientals pay a pretty penny for bear gallbladder. Bladders supposed to be some sort of Oriental medicine. He said if he ever found a way to export it, he’d be able to make a year’s pay just off one huntin’ season. You believe that?”
“No. Not really. Seems far-fetched to me.”
Bud stepped back and leaned against the car hood. “Yeah, probably right. But it’s worth a try, I figure. I’ll do the heavy lifting here. All I need is for you to ask around at work. See if there’s an interest. Try to get a price. Next time you’re home, I can send the bladder with you. Maybe a few of ’em if this fire keeps up.”
“Bud, that doesn’t sound like a good idea. I just can’t be trading with prisoners. I am pretty sure that’s against the rules. Plus, I don’t know if any of ’em even have any money now.”
“Oh, hell. They got money. They got money somewhere. Even the nationals, or they wouldn’t be holed up there.”
I shook my head and walked to the driver’s side. Bud stood and looked back at me. “You gonna take my car all summer, least you can do is ask a few questions.”
“Sure,” I lied, or at least I hoped I was lying. “I’ll see what I can find out.”
Lishie was quilting when I arrived home and had already laid out my packed suitcase on my bed. I knew that by this time the following day the suitcase would be filled with freshly washed and dried clothes without me having to lift one finger. I thanked her and slid the suitcase onto the floor so I could lay down a bit and rest my eyes. The smoke was still thick in my nostrils and my entire body felt dry and rough beneath the quilt I pulled over me. Gallbladders? Was he serious? More importantly, was he right? I could take a cut. Make enough to not have to go back to Bud’s ever again. Make enough to see that Lishie was taken care of. Make enough to even impress Essie. But I couldn’t shake the gaze of the doe—left to wonder if her fawn had returned to the fire.
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