Hazard

by Margaret Combs

  I lost count of how many times we set out after supper and meandered through the streets of Denver. Being in the back seat with the disheartened emotions of my family swirling around me, unspoken, swamps my memory of Jewell Avenue. My parents didn’t go out by themselves, did not hire a sitter and get together with church friends or chaps from Martin Marietta, partly because they couldn’t afford to do so, partly because neither one of them could manage the laughter and jolliness of others. The drives were the way they dealt with despair.

  If I remember any small break in my parents’ gloom it was on Sundays, the only time we drove up Sheridan and got out of the car. Alameda Baptist Church was the one place my parents sighed into some sort of comfort. After service, they lingered in the front entrance, talking and smiling with the pastor, my father holding Roddy in his arms, my mother looking pretty in her hat and dress.

  “Mighty fine boy you have there, Brother Ray,” said the pastor, pointedly. “Mighty fine.”

  “That’s the truth, meat on his bones,” answered my father. “Ticklish too.” He wiggled a finger in Roddy’s ribs, triggering a baby giggle and a burst of smiles.

  Barbara Ann and I ran around on the front lawn, but never far from my parents. I wanted to hear their voices and see them smile. I drank it in with the resilience of a six-year-old so it would last the rest of the week.

  Not surprisingly, my mother needed more comfort than a single sermon on Sunday could offer. When her grief swelled beyond her ability to manage, she clustered us into the car and took us on a different ride. This happened only a few times, the first being in the late afternoon, with light dimming over the rows of ranch houses in a dense suburb north of the city. My mother was behind the wheel, and Barbara Ann and I were in our school clothes. We pulled into a driveway and Mama got out of the car.

  “Can we come in?” Barbara Ann asked with her usual gutsiness

  “No, stay here and watch your brother; don’t get out of the car.” Mama said.

  She looked tired, gray swags under her eyes. I watched her circle around the front of the car and knock on the front door.

  A silhouette appeared in the doorframe and I recognized Mrs. Hays, Barbara Ann’s Sunday school teacher. She was a warm older woman who had five children of her own. Pushing the screen door wide, Mrs. Hays waved and smiled to Barbara Ann, and then, with a kind look, she put her arm around my mother and steered her into the house.

  “Why are we here?” I asked from the back seat.

  My sister knew more than I did. Unlike me, she paid attention and observed.

  “Just because,” she said, not unkindly.

  I sighed and opened my box of crayons, flipping through the pages of my coloring book until I landed on the fairy godmother shu-zamming the pumpkin into a golden coach. This was the way I nudged time along, sinking into the comfort of blues and purples, the rage of red and orange. I chose colors carefully, submerging in the task of coloring and forgetting about being trapped in the back seat of a car for an infinite amount of time. When Roddy fussed I handed him burnt sienna and a Big Chief tablet, and he scribbled like there was no tomorrow.

  When Mama emerged again from the house, I glimpsed her puffy eyes before she slipped on her sunglasses. For a moment, she sat behind the wheel, looking out the side window. She was grappling with the skids of young marriage, three children, and the aftershocks that came with my brother: doctors, tutors, dead ends. Now, even the car key gave her a hard time, eluding her as she rummaged in her pocketbook. Finally, flinging the purse aside, she turned to my sister.

  “Oh, Barbara Ann,” she said, her voice tangled up, “all I’ve ever wanted was a family that was happy.”

  Right there, out loud, was the truth I feared: we were not a happy family. A sensation spread through me, a thickening in my arms and legs and up my collarbone into my throat. I didn’t know there was such a thing as claustrophobia but I felt something squeezing my chest. For the first time, I wanted out of the back seat, out of the car, and also, in a deep and hidden part of me, I wanted out of my family.

  Chapter 4

  Home to Hazard

  Rustling my ten-year-old legs, I lifted a crushed cheek from my pillow. Hot, soaked air pushed up my nose, filling me with the smell of rotted leaves and honeysuckle. A tiny shoot of pleasure sprouted in my chest. I knew instantly where I was: deep in the South, burrowing far into the Appalachian Mountains, toward my grandparents’ home.

  “Law sakes,” my mother sang out from the front seat, “I’m a wreck.” A coal stone bounced off the hood of the car and she flinched, hands leaping up to her breast bone.

  This was how I knew we were getting close to where I was born. My father’s veined hands steadied the wheel as Mama fussed at the coal truck up ahead. In another curve or two, the town of Hazard, Kentucky, would emerge from the crumpled mountains, its plucky houses hanging off the blasted cliffs. Taking us there was a curling road, barely wide enough for the rumbling coal trucks puffing and swaying like black elephants up the inclines. For the better part of two hours, we’d been inching along, the steam of the mountains swirling around us.

  “Not long now,” my father said, with satisfaction.

  I huffed; he’d said this three times already. Now that I could smell Hazard, I couldn’t wait a moment more. For my family, Kentucky was an oasis—a place of respite and ease born from belonging. My parents missed this in Denver, especially my mother: the relief of being surrounded by family. For her and my father, and already for me, Hazard was more than simply home. It was a place to shake off the wariness of the world and find reprieve from the constant vigilance and worry around my brother. In Hazard, my parents had been exceptional, smart, good-looking, elevated, most likely to succeed—unlike they were in Colorado, where all of their promise had crashed in on them. I couldn’t say this, even to myself, but I sensed a softening of strain and self-consciousness in Hazard, and a peace of mind that had been a part of their marriage for a small while, before malady arrived.

  Beside me in the seat, Roddy whined, rubbing his face. He was six years old and seemed as fed up as I was with this rambling. Sandwiched between me and Barbara Ann, he snorted, flutter-kicking his pale legs and feet, his bare toes pink and puffed in the heat. For a few seconds his hands flitted around his mouth and then tangled together in a squirmy knot of fingers as he grimaced and twitched his head. Who knew what was really in his mind? He had no words, and I’d given up on him ever saying anything. His eyes were no help at all, darting to and fro. His funny growling noises were all I had to figure out what he was feeling and how he was sorting out life. Right now, he might be thinking we were going to drive forever and never sleep in a bed again.

  I dipped my nose toward his head: a sweet, tangy whiff, like Juicy Fruit.

  “We’re going to see Grandpa,” I whispered.

  For a half second, he quieted his legs and tipped his chin my way.

  “Pineapple upside-down cake,” I sang, wiggling my hips.

  He hummed, a small buzzing sound rising from his throat, like a cicada’s.

  “Soon,” I said.

  We were now three days on the road, nearing the end of a trip from Denver to Hazard that marked every summer in my memory. My parents traded off the wheel throughout the night, and by day, Mama handed soft, Saran-wrapped cheese and lettuce sandwiches, sweet pickles, and peeled Sunkist oranges over the back seat. I didn’t know it at the time, but we were just short of being poor. My father, recently out of the Air Force, was laboring at the bottom rung of an engineer’s ladder, and my mother, bowing to the customs of the times and my father’s desires, and also my brother’s needs, had abandoned both her college studies and any thought of working outside the home. All of this meant our back seat was the closest thing we would get to a motel room for many years.

  Part of me knew something my family never said aloud: that even if we had mounds of money to spend on motels or restaurants, or on fancier excursions, say to Carlsbad Caverns or Disneyland, we still wou
ldn’t go. We had my brother and he wasn’t meant for those places. Roddy was someone we couldn’t hide, and we didn’t try to—he went everywhere with us—but because of him, we were different. We didn’t go on spontaneous adventures or try out new playgrounds or restaurants. Young as I was, I knew that being out among people was painful for my mother. Whenever we did venture to the Denver Drumstick or Big Boy, everything started out okay as she clustered us to the table and fussed at us to put our napkins in our laps and keep our elbows off the table. But within a few minutes people began to glance our way and linger on Roddy, his hands fidgeting for no reason, his eyes darting up and down at his plate, his voice a bundle of grunts and shapeless flat noises. I heard Mama explain to the waitress how Roddy was “different.” Sometimes, if the order was delayed and he was too hungry or tired, he’d haul off and wail like a giant toddler, and we’d have to leave, sitting in the car while they wrapped and bagged our meals.

  It was a relief not to go to those public places. Instead, I learned to relish the tinier pleasures of our road trips. A few hours ago, we’d entered the deeper parts of Kentucky and temperatures had sweltered up in the nineties. That’s when my father swung the car into a forlorn Phillips 66. Lassoing my belly, he’d lifted the weighty red lid of the Coke machine, holding me over the frosty smoke. Plunging in my fingers, I hauled up a bright orange Nehi, pressing it to my temple as he swung me back to the ground. Fffffft, the top popped away, and I opened my throat to a bubbly tang.

  Now, with the empty Nehi rolling at my feet, I sat up and scrubbed my fingers in my hair, pushing my tongue, gummy and unwashed, over my teeth. The final mining turn-off was behind us, and the walls of kudzu were giving way to the rooflines and storefronts of Main Street. I felt a new ping of joy.

  “Here we are,” Barbara Ann said, in wonder.

  Dark-haired and olive-skinned, my sister was the opposite of me. At thirteen, she had already sprouted the long limbs that would carry her into womanhood. She pointed out the window where the First Baptist Church of Hazard was coming our way. Its promenade of steps, bleached white in the hot light, led up to the glory of polished wooden doors and, even higher, to a peak of stepped brick, which took my eyes to heaven.

  “See?” I said softly into Roddy’s ear. “Mama and Daddy were married there.” I wanted him to stop his rocking and notice the moment—to share it with me. The First Baptist Church of Hazard was the most sacred, mysterious place in my heart. One day, I believed, I’d sweep down the aisle in my own wedding gown.

  Roddy’s nose followed my arm out the window and, for whatever reason, he complied, puffing up his ribs and twisting to see what was there.

  In another minute we turned, tipping up a steep hill, and at last we were there, on High Street. My father parked and turned off the engine, and I craned my neck to read the big blade sign on the side of the brick building: “Combs Furniture.” That was my name up there, where everyone in Hazard could see it. The painted glass beckoned in gold letters and, underneath, two enormous doors stood open to the street, their wooden edges worn and rounded by customers’ hands.

  Untangling my legs, I jumped out to the blistering curb. Hop-scotching around in my bare feet, I slipped on my flip-flops and then headed straight through the big doors to the store’s sprawling inside. For a few seconds I paused and swooned, partly from the sight, and partly from the sudden swell of aromas. The air stirred with heat and the heady scents of walnut and cedar, mixed with the sweet pungency of my grandfather’s tobacco. Hulks of furniture, thick-legged and heavy, clogged the floor clear to the opposite wall, pocked by floor fans swiveling and whirring in a vain effort to battle moisture and moths.

  “There her be,” my grandfather said. His voice, mumbly around his pipe, rose from somewhere within the maze.

  I squinted, looking hard to find him. His footsteps emerged from the deepest part of the store, coming up from the damp stone cellar, where, for a time, he’d harbored his prized chickens until Grandma couldn’t stand them anymore. Now, I spotted him, soft-shirted and baggy-legged, standing in the center of the room where a mess of catalogues and invoices weighed down a thick slab of table.

  Plunging into the maze, I chose a winding path around bed sets, bureaus, lamps, and all manner of sofas and chairs. Beneath my feet, ancient floorboards kindled in a bright crackling of sounds. When I reached him—my Papaw, my father’s father—I threw my twiggy arms about his neck and hugged, not knowing what to say. In my few years alive, I’d figured out that Papaw never said much, nor hugged readily. Still, I relished stepping into his world, so mysteriously different from my own. It wasn’t only the sweet and musty aromas of the store, or the bittersweet taste of poplar honey I’d soon sample from his beehives, or even Grandma’s savory shucky beans and red velvet cake. It was deeper. I felt easy and protected here and, though I didn’t know at the time how to account for it, I felt cherished.

  Daddy called, “Hello!” and, in the next moment, Barbara Ann and Mama and Grandma were all there, bunched in a huddle of greetings. The pent-up energy of the trip tingled down my arms and legs, and I itched to scamper about the store. Barbara Ann, largely broody and remote these days, was too much of a lady to be silly, so my eyes danced over to Roddy. He was huddling close to my mother, pulling on his bottom lip. He had soft cheeks and light brown hair clipped in half-moons around his ears. A cowlick sprang from his crown like a spit of wheat grass. His eyes flitted left, right, and then caught on me.

  I ducked behind a rack of linoleum rolls. Stretching my lips wide, I sprang above the rack and flashing a rubbery smile, before plummeting back to a squat. He giggled.

  Because Roddy didn’t have words, I delighted in making him laugh; not that he didn’t have a language of his own—grunts, lip pops, and whispers came from his mouth—but I already knew those weren’t for me. They were sounds for his inside room, where he went without me. His giggle, on the other hand, meant he was here with me, at least for a little while.

  Hunching, I scuffled behind the rack to the opposite end and crouched again. Through the gap between linoleum tubes I spotted the melon of his belly pushing out against his shirt and the flushed pink of his neck and chin.

  “Hi!” I screaked.

  Startled, he whipped his chin around, tracking my voice, and this time, he burst into a happy chortle.

  “Where is she?” I heard my mother say softly, conspiratorially. “Where’s your sister?”

  He fussed for a minute. I knew he wanted to stay put, huddling beside my mother. But then I heard what I’d been hoping for: his funny flat steps coming after me.

  At a much earlier time in his life, when he was nine months old, Roddy had opened his small throat and said “Dada.” So normal was this event and so natural its timing on the baby chart that my mother didn’t call me in from wherever I was playing. When I think of it now, I imagine a tender and private moment for my mother, with fingers of light spilling through the one window of the nursery, dappling Roddy’s rumpled PJs and the comical sprout of fuzz on his head. As with so many things taken for granted in life, the wonder of that moment didn’t fully register with my mother, or any of us, until it was gone. Though Roddy chirped “Dada” once or twice more, his speech vanished by his first birthday, as swiftly as it had arrived. He had not said a word since.

  “Hi, hi, hi,” I sang out again, stuffing my face into one end of a linoleum tube. My voice bounced down the ten-foot tunnel and burst out the other end. Roddy’s footsteps halted somewhere over by the cellar. For several seconds the floorboards were quiet. I was about to give up when, suddenly, his steps blasted alive again and, this time, they churned straight for me. In the next instant, his face appeared in the opposite end of the tube. Eyes crinkling, he peered down the tunnel at me.

  “Hi,” he said.

  I gasped, my breath hard and sharp. Did he say something?

  The corners of his mouth fluttered up and down, as if uncertain where to be, and then at last, he gave me a shy, flirty smile. I yanked my
head out of the tube and whipped my eyes around the room. Barbara Ann was dreamily fingering wallpaper samples lining the far wall. She hadn’t heard, nor had my parents and grandparents, who were still chatting busily in a cluster by the stairs.

  “Mama, Daddy!” I called out. “Come here!”

  I scurried in a circle as if chasing my tail, and then sprang up again, crying “Hi!” at the top of my lungs.

  “Hi,” Roddy said back. Just like that.

  A splatter of clapping burst from Barbara Ann as she abandoned the wallpaper and ran for us.

  “Did you hear that?” she called out.

  The floor rumbled with footsteps as the grownups came to life. My mother’s eyes lit up and a girlish laugh sparkled from her throat. My father smiled, and my grandparents nodded and chuckled, their eyes rounded with surprise.

  Dipping and springing like a Jack-in-the-Box at my end of the rack, I messed with my timing to surprise Roddy anew. Sure enough, he chirped “Hi,” as effortlessly and thoughtlessly as any boy, as if he had been speaking forever. His word was bright and startling. I wanted to catch and hold it in my hands, to keep it safe and flashing inside a jar, where I’d have it forever.

  He said “Hi” one more time before he turned his head away and ignored me. By then, it didn’t matter. He had spoken, proving that he was like me, he could talk. Drawing in a breath, I thought, He’s not retarded anymore. My ribs felt like balloons and I could barely balance. I didn’t know this was the airiness when worry leaves your heart—when sadness lifts from your shoulders and, suddenly, you believe you won’t have to carry it anymore.

  Everything rushed to me all at once: the way Roddy was going to be from now on. He’d say everything he hadn’t said so far, like all little brothers who couldn’t keep quiet, pestering me to teach him things, like Checkers and Go Fish, and he’d ask little friends over, telling lame jokes and making me roll my eyes. Better still, he’d come to school with me, cute as a teddy, holding my hand from the bus to the kindergarten room, where I’d dust his fuzzy head and squeeze him goodbye—as if neither of us had ever belonged to a disabled family.