While on their recent camp in the woods, the group encountered a girl. They asked the girl what she was doing. Her response was that she was looking for rocks for her younger brother. They got her name and address. The girl has been identified as Betty Carpenter of Shady Lane. A mystery novel was found on Carpenter’s person, along with a handwritten story about the Peacocks and their disappearance. The sheriff took both the book and the handwritten story as evidence, only to later release them back to Carpenter’s father, Landon Carpenter.
43
Who can open the doors of his face?
—JOB 41:14
A handful of frozen blackberries thawing on the kitchen counter. The leaves of the potted plant in the living room turning yellow. Mom accidentally dropping her mug. The coffee spilling across the floor. Her on her hands and knees sopping it up with a towel. A pale rope coiled on the front yard like a sleeping snake. I was eighteen and these are the things I remember as I walked out of the house and toward the woods with Dad.
November of 1972 was a solemn month that knew exactly how things would end. Outside, the sun was not seen behind thick gray clouds. Despite this, the golden leaves seemed to glow like little lightbulbs were screwed into the branches. Me and Dad sat on the hood of the Rambler he had parked in the woods. The Rambler was no longer a journey a man wanted to take. Its engine was gone. Its tires were flat. Its time had come and passed. The car that had driven us so many places had become mine and Dad’s place to sit in the woods.
He’d brought along the transistor radio. I tuned through it while he read that day’s edition of The Breathanian. The newspaper had misprinted the year on the front as being 1932 instead of 1972. They used correction fluid to white out the 3 and replace it with a handwritten 7. At the moment, Dad was reading an article about Tuskegee and the black sharecroppers who died during the syphilis study. Dad sighed and looked up from the article to watch the turkey buzzard circling above us.
He folded the paper and laid it off to the side. From his coat pocket, he pulled out a shiny red apple. He cut it in half with his pocketknife while I tuned to a station playing Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.” Dad hummed to the song as I set the radio down and took my apple half from him. I stared at the burn scar on his palm.
“I’ve always wondered about that,” I said.
“Oh, have ya?” he asked. “I got it when I was a boy. A man come passin’ through. He had the most peculiar books. When opened, flames would leap up from the pages. In the flames, the story was told. But there was a price to pay for openin’ the books. For at the end of each, the book would catch fire, leavin’ nothin’ but ashes on the ground. The man knew I was fascinated by his magical books, so he kindly gave me one. I opened it and watched the entire story play out in flames. There were horses gallopin’ and queens who were part women, part horses fightin’ for their thrones.
“On the last page, there was a hummingbird. A little thing who escaped before the book burned. She was beautiful, the flames twisting and turning to form her, but I knew an entire forest fire could break out if the burning bird landed on a single leaf. I had to get her. It ain’t easy catchin’ somethin’ made of fire, though, and I burned my palm on her wing tryin’.
“As I nursed my burn, the bird flew out of my reach. I thought of all the things in this world that could catch on fire. Then it started to rain. Fire and rain have never been friends. The bird tried her best to dodge each raindrop. I could see the fear on her face. She didn’t want to die. When the rain doused her left wing, she still tried to fly with her right. She wanted to live so badly, but the rain was putting her out. I cried as the little bird disappeared in a puff of smoke.”
Dad lowered his eyes to the scar.
“What I’ve just told you is the beautiful lie,” he said. “Would you like to hear the ugly truth?”
“Yes,” I said as he flung his apple half to the ground.
“When I was a boy of fourteen,” he said, “a man, much whiter than me, drove into town in a shiny new Ford Model T. Automobiles were somethin’ rare when I was a boy. I was so awestruck by it. It was the first car I’d ever seen. I remember how everyone gathered ’round it after he parked. He left it runnin’ as he went inside the market. We all remarked on how loud the unfamiliar sounds of its engine were to our ears. I got close enough to the car to touch its door. I was mesmerized by that most extraordinary invention, but at that very moment, the man came out of the market.
“ ‘Get your hand off my car, nigger.’ He was yelling at me.
“I had known men like him before. I knew to just leave, but somethin’ in me wanted to face the man.
“ ‘One day,’ I told him, ‘God will turn out all the lights to remind people like you that in the dark, you won’t be able to tell who is white like you and who ain’t. We’ll have to treat one another equally. We’ll learn it’s not our skin color that makes us good or bad. And only when we learn that, will God turn the lights back on.’
“That’s when the man grabbed me by the arm. Without sayin’ a word he forced my palm onto the car’s hot engine. I screamed and cried, but no one helped me. When he released me, he said, ‘If the lights ever go out, I’ll take to feelin’ the right hand of everyone in this world. When I feel that scar upon your hand, I’ll know me a nigger. Because that’s what you are, boy. It’s what you’ll always be.’ ”
I tossed my apple half to the ground by Dad’s. Holding my knees into my chest, I told him I preferred the beautiful lie.
“Yeah, well, I—” He sharply moaned as he gripped his chest.
“Dad? What is it?” I watched blood drip out of his nose.
“Nothin’, it’s just—” He winced.
“I’m goin’ to get Doc Lad.” I started to slide off the hood, but he grabbed my arm before I could.
“Stay here and listen,” he said. “I wanna tell ya somethin’.”
“I’m goin’ to get Doc.”
“Listen, please. I have to say it. Please, Little Indian.”
“What do you wanna tell me, Dad?”
“I want you to leave Breathed.”
“I’d never leave ya, Dad. I’m staying with you always.”
“You are meant to fly out of this burnin’ book.” He pulled me into him. I let him cradle my cheek against his chest. I could feel warm blood dripping on top of my head from his nose.
“You’re just tired,” I told him. “That’s all. You’re never gonna die.”
“Do you think it’s possible for me to go to heaven?” he asked.
“Of course you’ll go to heaven, Dad. But not today. Today you are stayin’ south of heaven with me because…because…I don’t know what I’ll do without you.”
He kissed my forehead.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that I love you, Little Indian. I don’t know if I’ve ever said those words.”
“You said them every time you told me a story.” I looked up into his eyes.
He smiled. I knew it would be the last.
“Have I ever told you I loved you?” I asked because I really didn’t know.
“Every time you listened to one of my stories.” He nodded. “Do me a favor, Little Indian? Take my boots off.”
“I have time,” I said as I stared out at our apple halves on the ground. The halves laid so perfectly together, they made a whole fruit, as if it was only a ripe red apple that had, then and there, dropped from the branch.
44
Our bones are scattered at the grave’s mouth.
—PSALMS 141:7
Story always has been a way to rewrite the truth. But sometimes to be responsible for the truth is to prepare oneself to say it. My father did not die in the woods. He died at the hospital. His blood all over my white dress.
The afternoon had started with me, Lint, and Mom sitting with Dad on t
he back porch. There was iced tea served with talk of the changing autumn leaves.
It was then that Dad stood with his arms hanging stiffly by his sides.
“The old man is awake.” Mom chuckled as she chewed on a piece of ice from her glass. “You still dyin’?” she asked because he had started to tell us he was dying every morning for the past few weeks. Everyone thought talking about his mortality was something an old man did.
“I have to go to the bathroom.” He had announced it in a way he’d never done before.
“All right.” Mom looked up at him. “Well, we ain’t gonna hold your hand. Go on, now.”
He slowly walked into the house, leaning on his cane more than I’d ever seen him do.
“The man moves like he’s ancient,” Mom said, the ice in her glass clanking when she went to drink the last of her tea. She scooped the lemon slice out. As she ate its flesh, we heard a loud thump from inside the house. We rose from our seats, set our glasses down, and walked in a line toward the screen door.
The squeak from its hinges echoed throughout the quiet house as we stepped into the kitchen. There, dropped by the table, was a dish towel spotted with blood. When we stepped into the hall, we found Dad on the floor just outside the bathroom door. Blood was streaming out of his mouth, forming a puddle beneath his head.
Mom would spend the rest of her life trying to get these stains out of the floorboards, but failing. Anytime anyone would ask about the spots, she would say, “The wood of the floor was cut from a bleedin’ tree. Ain’t nothin’ more to say.”
I ran over to Dad while Mom quickly stepped to the phone. There was no ambulance service in town at the time, so who answered emergencies was the local funeral home Grinning Brothers. Their hearse served as Breathed’s ambulance as was the case in many small towns at the time.
She threw open the phone book and licked her finger to turn the pages. Then she removed her earring and stuck her finger into the holes of the rotary phone dial.
“C’mon, c’mon.” She tapped her foot as the wheel spun.
The receiver shook as she held it to her ear, waiting for someone to pick up. I sat on my knees behind Dad’s head and propped him up onto my lap as I listened to Mom tell the funeral home we needed to get Dad to the hospital.
“It’s Shady Lane. Just over the bend. Yes, yes, please hurry.” She placed the receiver down and put her earring back on. “They’re on their way. Jesus Crimson.”
Not knowing what to do with her hands she began to smooth the sides of her dress.
“I should make some dough for dinner rolls. You know the kind, Landon.” She nodded at him as he rolled his head back in my lap and moaned. “The kind you like.”
She ignored his sounds and instead spoke to him as if there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.
“While we’re at the hospital, the dough will have time to rise,” she said. “Then when we’re all back tonight, we can have fresh rolls and noodles with potatoes. I’ll pick up a roast from Papa Juniper’s. A real expensive roast. Then we’ll all have dinner tonight. Won’t that be nice?”
By the time she’d finished talking about the noodle and dinner roll dinner we would never have, she wrung her hands so hard, her wedding ring came off. She couldn’t catch it before it fell to the floor. It clanked against the floorboards, rolled a little ways, then circled several times in the same spot until it was still. She stared at the ring. It was a small golden band. She quickly picked it up and slipped it back on.
“I’ll go make the dough,” she said.
Without looking at Dad, she ran into the kitchen. We could hear her set the big bowl on the counter and rummage through drawers as she yelled she couldn’t find the rolling pin.
“Goddamn it, where is it?” she asked.
Seconds later, her relieved discovery.
“I’ve found it,” she said.
“Do you th-th-think he’s g-g-gonna be okay, B-b-betty?” Lint asked as he looked down at Dad.
Lint had been unable to do anything more that whole time but stand up against a wall.
“Why a-a-ain…a-a-ain…”
“It’s gonna be okay, Lint.”
“Do you th-th-think if I made him one of his d-d-decoctions, like he used to m-m-make me, it’d h-h-help him?”
“Maybe later. Right now, why don’t you go outside?” I said. “Make sure the Grinning Brothers find us.”
He looked at me. It was the first time I’d really realized my brother had my father’s eye color. The same dark dollop that went golden on the edges in the light.
“You’re all b-b-bloody, Betty,” he said.
“It’s okay. Go on now, Lint.”
I listened to the sounds of him opening the front screen door. Mom heard the sounds, too.
“Is that them?” she asked from the kitchen. “I haven’t finished the dough yet.”
“No, Mom,” I answered. “It was Lint.”
“Good, good,” she said. “I’m nearly finished.”
She was all flour and butter talk after that, measuring out to herself each ingredient as if the rolls really did matter and we would all be home in time to eat them.
I looked at Dad. His head felt so heavy. The blood was still running from his nose and smearing onto my wrists each time he rolled his head in my hands. He had started to gurgle on the blood in the back of his throat before hacking it up. I noticed the blood splattered all over my forearms. It was as though something had burst inside of him. I thought of the glass heart.
Had it broken into tiny pieces, I wondered, now cutting him from the inside out?
I raised him up on my lap. That seemed to help him. On occasion his fingers would twitch. His eyes were still open and looking about, but it was as if he were disoriented, unsure if the walls around him were the walls of his own home.
“Everything’s gonna be fine, Dad,” I told him. “I’m here with you. Mom’s makin’ rolls. There’s gonna be a roast. Flossie will come in. Fraya and Trustin, too. We’ll all have dinner together. You can tell a story while we eat the noodles.”
He suddenly grabbed my wrist and squeezed it so tight, I thought I would lose my whole hand to him.
“Take my boots off,” he said. “Take my boots off.”
“But you’ll be gettin’ up and walkin’. You’ll need your boots on, Dad.”
“My boots. Take my boots off.” The blood had colored his teeth.
“They’re here.” Lint’s voice echoed off the walls as he hollered from the front porch.
“They’re here?” Mom’s anxious voice came from the kitchen. “Jesus Crimson.”
I could hear a couple of car doors open, followed by unfamiliar voices.
“My dad’s b-b-back here.”
When I looked up from Dad, I saw two dark-haired men pushing a stretcher. They both had long ears and small mustaches. They were grinning, yet it seemed compulsory.
“That’s a lot of blood,” the one with the longest ears said.
“All that blood will ruin our sheets,” the other one added, grinning wider.
“Ruin your s-s-sheets?” Lint grabbed him by the collar. I’d never known Lint to be aggressive before. He was fifteen at the time. I finally saw him as a teenager and no longer a little boy. “I’ll buy ya n-n-new sheets, goddamn you.”
They didn’t say a word more as they lifted Dad onto the white sheets on the stretcher. They rolled him down the hall toward the door. As I stood, I became aware of how much of my father’s blood was on my dress.
Mom was standing there, the sticky dough still on her fingers as she patted the sides of her hair.
“Now, Betty,” she said, “when we get back, I’ll need you to help me with the noodles. Your father usually does it, but he’ll be restin’ in his rocker. We mustn’t disturb him while we make dinner.”
He
r eyes dropped to the blood on me.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen that red dress before.” She spoke as if her mind was in another room.
“Yes, Mom.” I followed her down the hall.
She grabbed the car key from out of the little wooden bowl Dad had made to set on the table by the door. I was the last to leave the house, the front door slamming behind me in a way that made us all jump.
The brothers paid no mind to my whimpering father as they closed the hearse’s door shut and got in the front. I slid in between my mother and brother on the front seat of the Wagonaire. We sat so close, our arms brushed against each other’s in ways that felt intimate and strange to people like us. Mom quickly started the engine and waited for the brothers to pull out of the drive so we could follow them.
“Come on, come on, move.” Mom rolled down her window to yell at them.
She continued to yell and honk at them anytime she thought they were going too slow. Though we were driving at a speed that would normally get us a ticket, it still felt as if we were going no faster than turtles climbing up the river’s banks.
I wondered what others thought as they saw us speeding past.
Why they all sittin’ in the front like that? I imagined the old farmer asked his cows as we passed. With all that room in the back to sit, why are the three of them sittin’ so close like that?
Maybe the answer was in his question.
All I really did know for certain was the way Mom’s hands trembled as she gripped the steering wheel. She frowned and chewed the inside of her cheek every time the hearse slowed to take a curve.
“Just go.” She cursed at the brothers.
We were all headed to the nearest hospital in Sweet Temper. The closer we got, the more Mom looked as though she were entering the dark like a blue river, loose and unraveling, unsure of how to fix things. She reached over and turned on the radio, only to quickly turn it off again as if she didn’t know what to do with her hands.
Betty Page 43