Just Shelby

by Brooklyn James

  “What are we going to do about Grandpa?” I mediate, focused on the one grandparent who has been a constant in my life.

  “I don’t know, baby. They got it all wrong.” Mom blots her eyes and nose on a tissue. If I hadn’t witnessed her go through withdrawal before, I’d think she was crying over Grandpa.

  “That sweet old man couldn’t gut a tsitaga if you put the knife in his hand.” Finally Enisi says something we all can agree on. “He didn’t murder my boy. And if Mason was shot down over drugs, it was on account of drugs he was buying for you.” She whirls around, pointing with the gutting knife in her hand at Mom.

  Her drama lost on Mom whose back is turned to her, but Mom seems to know the knife is there. “Says the distiller. Be careful, ‘medicine woman,’ or you’ll be rooming with my daddy.”

  “What distillery?” Enisi puffs, slinging her equipment and the bird into the sink for a rinsing. “You mean the one that got shutdown over tax evasion because of your underhanded dealings.” She roughly pats the bird with paper towels. “The one that had been in my family for generations. The one that treated more people in this holler than the local hospital. Until you came along, drawing all kinds of attention to my boy.” Stuffing the hen with vegetables and citrus, she rubs it down with a buttery herb concoction. “Uncle Sam wouldn’t know the difference between moonshine and medicine if I held his hand through the teaching.”

  “What was coming out of the still wasn’t the cause of Uncle Sam’s prying.” Mom specifies that the IRS was chagrined by being swindled out of their cut.

  “Just how do you pay taxes on something that ain’t fully legal,” Enisi snaps. “It was a catch-22, and they knew it.” She slams the oven door on a fully dressed hen. “It’s legal now…that he’s dead. God-given, natural, herbal remedies…if the land gives ’em to us, how aren’t they legal.” She grinds some of those herbs using mortar and pestle. “They’re sure as hell safer than that other stuff they’re pumping into these hills legally!”

  “I need some air,” Mom says, breaking out in a sweat but hugging her abdomen like she’s cold.

  “Stay put.” Enisi places a firm hand on her shoulder, gesturing to me with the other to retrieve the throw blanket decorating the back of the couch. “You’re stronger than the ache, Maisy. For all our sakes, prove me right.”

  I drape the blanket over Mom’s slouched and shivering back and rub warming hands over it the way I’ve seen Grandpa and Miss Patterson do. She shrugs me off, as if it hurts even to be touched.

  “If you have something else to do, baby, go ahead. I’ll be fine.” Mom doesn’t want me to see her this way.

  Has she forgotten that I’ve seen her worse off than this.

  I turn my attention to Enisi at the counter. She dumps the ground herbs into a mug, fills it with a green-tinted liquid steeped from the tea pot, and tops it with a few drops of each from three amber glass bottles.

  Like the scent of my father’s aftershave, the sensation is distantly familiar. He used to store them “in dark places” around the house. Some bootlegger. I don’t recall him “running” anything. But I do recall people coming to our door buying and trading for the little amber bottles. He even had business cards: 3rd Generation Extracts, Mason Lynn, Herbalist & Distiller. Do drug dealers have business cards?

  “Gaultheria procumbens,” I read the handwritten, stick-on label from the first bottle.

  “Wintergreen,” Enisi says. “Its properties are similar to aspirin. For inflammation, fever, aches and pains.”

  “Mentha spicata,” I continue on with the second.

  “Spearmint. For nausea.”

  “Cannabidiol,” I end with the third.

  “Hemp. ‘CBD,’” she accentuates. Maybe at the hype it has received lately, like it’s anything new.

  “Marijuana?” Wouldn’t it only perpetuate my mother’s addiction?

  “They don’t teach you young ones anything but fear or excess, do they. More hemp came out of these hills than any other state until Tricky Dick’s ‘War on Drugs.’ Used mostly for its fibers, it does have medicinal properties. But they banned it, banning economic progress with it. Shame if anyone makes a living. It’s pure hemp oil. Ain’t enough THC in it to get a flea high. For her pain, anxiety, and the cravings.”

  “You made these?”

  “Harvested, dried, distilled, and measured them myself.”

  “And they’re safe?” I ask. A drug is a drug, isn’t it?

  “If you know what you’re doing.” She winks an almond-shaped eye that holds more secrets than I’ll ever know.

  With a wooden whisk, she gives the “tea” a good mixing before setting it down in front of Mom. Horned spoon and lips pursed blowing until the steam settles, she ladles some of the tea and force-feeds it to Mom.

  “I’m not an invalid,” Mom snaps, yanking the spoon from her hand. “You’re free to go.”

  “And what, leave this poor child here with you while Gus is locked up. He’s the only reason I never filed for guardianship.” Enisi briskly wipes her hands on her apron and pivots to the stove, where she skims wild greens from a pot of boiling water, transfers them to a pan, breaks a few eggs over them, and lets them fry. “Prove his innocence or get clean. Them’s the only two ways to rid yourself of me.”

  Finally inspired with motivation, Mom gulps down every last drop of the tea.

  “What is that?” I point to the greens in the pan.

  “Gulahi,” Enisi says.

  “Watercress,” Mom clarifies.

  Gulahi sounds much more interesting, if only I had phonetic reference to break down the language. And how does my mother know. What other things does she know that she hasn’t taught me?

  “For her bones and her blood,” Enisi explains, setting a serving of the sauteed greens down in front of Mom. “I reckon her pressure’s off right about now.”

  “And what is that?” I ask of the clear liquid in a Mason jar, resembling the contents of the jar Billy Don shoved on me at the river. Enisi sloshes the liquid into the sink and along the countertop, cleaning up from the plucking and gutting.

  “It’s a better antiseptic than it is a drink.” She smiles. “My enisi used it as mouthwash and as a natural preservative in canning food. She relied on nothing that didn’t come from the land or that she couldn’t make herself.”

  So, that’s what Lynns do. “And music,” I almost whisper, “did my father inherit that as well?”

  Mom hears me anyway. I can feel the circumspect eyes in the back of her head, narrowing at me.

  Enisi chuckles. “I guess we like music as much as anyone. But he was a music fanatic.”

  Like Ace. If he was such a fanatic, “How could he let it go?” I think about running and college. If I didn’t have a dream to chase, I would probably end up just like…Mom.

  “Something came along more important than music.” Enisi runs her index finger down my imperfect nose.

  Me? I crushed my father’s dream? I feel like that hen—gutted.

  “Your mama was quite the musician herself,” Enisi actually pays her a compliment.

  And my mother’s dream, too.

  “Enough!” Mom throws her fork down onto a half-eaten bed of gulahi. “Homework, bath, bed, Shelby. You have school in the morning.”

  The UK application packet, rescued from the trash and stained with coffee grounds, sits on the kitchen counter. A sticky note atop it reads:

  If I can’t take mining seriously, I’d better seriously think about college. Got the message, Pop, loud and fucking clear.

  Pop needs to blow off steam, enough to take a run. The only time he dares to these days is when he’s pissed, living with black lung. Once as fanatical about running as Shelby, he still holds a few school records. The ones she didn’t break.

  Hell, I hope he took his inhaler.

  Opening the medicine cabinet, I push to the side a collection of small amber glass bottles. The damn things should be thrown away. So old that the labels are peeled o
r pulled off, some on their last drops, others half full. They’ve been that way for as long as I can remember. Apparently they are of no use to him anymore. Unless they were Mom’s. God forbid he throw out anything left of her.

  Useless and obstructive bottles out of the way, I can clearly see his inhaler. In the medicine cabinet and not in his pocket! I swear he has a death wish.

  When did he leave? I’d better give him an hour or he’ll be doubly pissed at me for checking up on him.

  “This oughta take an hour,” I mutter, sitting down at the kitchen table with a pen and the admissions application.

  Surprisingly it doesn’t. It takes about fifteen minutes. No required essay, thank God! Mom already included a return envelope with postage. But I need a letter of recommendation from a teacher or the guidance counselor. I’ll get on that tomorrow.

  It’s a waste anyway. My GPA and SAT scores barely meet the minimum.

  So I move on to something I want to do. Something I am actually interested in.

  Fucking strings—they taunt me on the Bootleg guitar. Played out, they need new life, a fresh start. Johnny tried to warn me. I can’t un-kiss her, un-feel it. Metaphorically, maybe, I try, uncoiling every string from its neck. Ah, yeah, that’s better.

  Customized right down to the label inside the sound hole, free of strings, I run my fingers over it. Weird. It’s kind of padded. Like there’s something behind it. Leave it alone. The last thing you want to do is mess it up.

  Where’s that blow dryer? I run out to the garage. I used it to loosen “Jeep Girl” decals from the window when I bought the Jeep from a lady down the holler whose daughter went off to college. Like Shelby will.

  “Silly Boys Jeeps Are For Girls.” “Jeep Girls Like It Rough.” “Badass Ladies Don’t Drive Mercedes.”

  Then why wasn’t her Jeep good enough to keep through college. Shelby will feel the same way about me.

  The dryer works! The outer adhesive loosens, letting me peel the label—still intact—from the interior of the guitar. There behind it is a secret note square, like the ones we used to pass around in class while passing the time.

  Reaffix the label. Put it back. If Mason went to the trouble of hiding it, it wasn’t meant for me to find.

  I’ll just pick it up, turn it over, then put it back.

  Shelby—it says on the flat side.

  A combination of cursive and print that’s reminiscent of my own handwriting, Mrs. Hall-Custer, my third-grade teacher, would not approve. Mrs. Ball-Buster didn’t have any luck getting me to change it either. Later I took pride in it, reading that Bob Dylan wrote that way too.

  Four triangles carefully untucked on the enveloped side, I do not stop at parallelograms or hot-dog folds, cussing myself out the entire time. I even go so far as to read the words on the unruled tan paper:

  When I have fears that I may cease to be

  Before my guitar has played for the world

  Before the music that cries within me

  Hold like full heart your fingers round it curled

  When I behold, upon your precious smile

  Huge cloudy symbols of a higher calling

  And think that I may never be worthwhile

  Their shadows, with the ego, come falling

  And when I feel, dear mine of creation

  That I shall never have you, music, and her

  Never relish in the adulation

  Of love, fame, happiness—more than we were

  Of the wide abyss, I sink and wonder

  ’Til it swallows me whole, pulls me under

  Middle school memories of folding secret note squares flood back to me. With a quickness, I restore the tiny self-enclosed square. No one the wiser that it was ever opened.

  I don’t even know whether I understood it. He wanted it all, but couldn’t have it all?

  Music. I listen to it all the time. I don’t read it. If the poem were a song delivered to my ears, I would get it. Wouldn’t I? Is that what playing by ear does—untrains the eye?

  I know who would understand it, who reads all the time.

  It is addressed to her.

  Does she want to get it?

  Short, fast, and light, every step counts. Appalachia chases me through the unfolding harlequin foliage of her woods, ablaze with fall colors in close pursuit of a wet spring.

  Inclimate, her wind gusts force me to run against it. As if she got wind of my meet and greet. Like a jealous mother, my life beyond her mustn’t exist. Insecure in what that would say about her.

  “What do you want from us!” I shout into the infinite echo of her walls.

  Appalachia got my father. And my mother too. She delivered me—a pawn in her possessive trap—when they were merely beginning to find out who they were and what they were capable of.

  How hadn’t I put it together? Mom loves me, but it is hard for her to do so. It cost her too much. I cost her too much.

  All my life, she has drifted between bond and gap, drugs the outlet of detachment.

  “I didn’t ask to be born!” Not to her, and certainly not here.

  “Over here!” a wheezy, deep voice calls out.

  Appalachia is a man?

  “Here. Help!” It calls again.

  The deer—wide-eyed, frightened, and leaping—becomes the draft horse. Head low, sure-footed and driving, leaves and twigs break beneath the weight of my feet, venturing off the trail and toward the voice.

  “Mr. Cooper?” I assess his slumped form, sitting and leaning against a red maple.

  “Can’t breathe.” He coughs, grasping at his chest.

  “What are you doing out here?” He carries no bow or gun. Is it even hunting season? Wearing an old-fashioned windbreaker tracksuit, he appears to be…“Running? You run?”

  “Not so well anymore,” he rasps out and tries to laugh, sending his lungs into a whistling and hawking fit.

  His lips are turning blue. “What can I do?” God, I feel so helpless. He looks like one of the guys on our team who has asthma and carries an inhaler in the waistband of his running shorts.

  Inhaler! Duh. I don’t have an inhaler, but I do have an amber glass bottle that Enisi insisted I take on my run. Mullein, she said, clears the lungs and cures shortness of breath. I don’t have asthma, I said. Take it anyway, she said.

  I reach beneath my sweatshirt and pull it from my sports bra.

  Mr. Cooper immediately recognizes the bottle. Pulling it from my hands, he cannot unscrew the dropper fast enough. As Enisi instructed, he takes not just a drop or two but the entire dropper under his tongue.

  How did he know to do that? Apparently everyone but me knew what Lynns did.

  Within a few minutes, the mullein seems to help.

  “I’d just as soon anybody but you found me,” he says, remorse in his tone.

  Guess I don’t have to wonder if Mr. Cooper would approve of Ace and me. And now is not the time to be picky about who finds him. I can leave as quickly as I came.

  “But I sure am glad you’re here.” He squeezes my hand with an iron grip. “Ace says you run faster than he can.” He smiles, his head pressed against the red maple. His hair, as dark and coarse as mine, stands out juxtaposed to the pale gray smooth bark.

  “Too bad I can’t lift as much as he can.” I smile back, warily, relieving my hand of his hold. Mr. Cooper is built like the guy on the expensive paper towels at the supermarket. There is no way I’m lugging him out of this rough terrain.

  “Go get him, will ya, kid.” He clutches the mullein to his chest.

  Gladly!

  “Ace! It’s your dad! A-a-ace!” I hear her before I see her.

  Is she running to me or from him? She looks spooked. I slow down enough for her to climb in, already searching the holler in Pop’s truck.

  She leads me to him, then waits in the driver’s seat while he half walks and I half carry him out of the woods and into the back seat of his crew cab.

  “What the hell were you thinking, Pop?” I say more ou
t of fear than reproach.

  “Same as you this morning, I wasn’t.” He growls, both at me and for air.

  Clutching an amber glass bottle just like the ones in the medicine cabinet, he empties the contents of its dropper right into his mouth.

  “What is this? Drugs? Pop, are you on something.”

  He scowls at me, his tongue too busy marinating in God knows what to form words.

  “It’s a tincture made from a plant. Mullein,” Shelby says.

  Like that makes it okay. Drugs come from plants, don’t they? And just what does she know about “plants.” “Pop, where’d you get this?”

  “From me, Ace. From my grandmother. Quit trying to make him talk. He can barely breathe. It’s fine. At least I think it is,” Shelby says, as though she never even considered how it might not be. “It is helping him breathe.”

  “To the hospital. Gun it,” I say.

  “Okay… This is new.” Shelby engages the automatic transmission, her left leg pumping for a clutch that isn’t there.

  “No hospital. Home,” Pop argues, attempting to sit upright but unable to stabilize his own weight.

  “Go,” I mouth the word into the rearview mirror and into Shelby’s clarification-seeking eyes. “Maybe if you had followed through on your checkup, any checkup, you wouldn’t be in this position,” I say to Pop, my hand firmly patting his back as his forehead rests on the passenger seatback.

  “You sound like your mother, son.” He tries to laugh, make light, but it sends him into a coughing fit. His elbows in tripod position over his knees, he clutches that amber bottle like a security blanket.

  What is in that damn thing? Shelby has a grandmother? “You have a grandmother?”

  Her brows upraise in the rearview mirror, causing a single line to crease above the left and highest arching one. “That woman…with the chicken.” She refrains from elaborating on what that woman did to the chicken.

  But I know. I was there. I saw.