by Silas House
“I found it laying on the back porch. Somebody brought it here,” she said. “It had to be Marguerite. She’s the only one who would’ve had such a thing.”
Easter drank from her steaming cup and then held it in both hands atop her legs. Her eyes were studying him intently again, seeming to outline every feature of his face, trying to etch it perfectly in her memory. “Just open your letter,” she said. “You can go through the box later, when you’re by yourself.”
He knew Easter would not say another word, and there would be only the sound of the rain. He knew that every time he heard that sound from now on, he would look back on this and smell the old notebook paper of the letter he was now opening. He would feel the soft, almost damp paper under his fingers and see her beautiful, curved handwriting.
My Baby,
Tonight I intend to write about my life and my joys and my mistakes. I am writing a letter to your aunt Easter and to you, baby—to the two people closest to my heart. You are little as I write this. You’re sleeping on the pallet across the room from me, all little hands and pided skin. I’ve been watching you sleep tonight, and it is such a pretty sleep, Clay, a sleep that only a child could have on a dark, lonesome night like this. Someday, though, you will read this and know of me. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me for the things that I done wrong and to love me more for the things that I done right.
I have to set all this down to paper tonight because I feel like I’m going to bust from keeping it all in me. I want to get all the words down as right as I can and explain myself good. I know that I am about to die. Your aunt Easter, she has always been able to see things. She’d always know when somebody was going to get killed in a wreck or when a big tide was coming or something like that. But me, I always knowed things just about me. Like when I was pregnant with you, I knowed the minute it happened. I just set right up in bed and said, “I’m pregnant.” And now it has come to me that I’m fixing to die. I don’t know when—soon, though.
This morning I woke up before daylight, before anything, in that time when there is no day and no night. I went outside in my gown. The air went through the cloth and touched my skin, like water, and the ground felt so soft and new beneath my feet—I imagined that was the way the earth felt at the beginning of time. I went on up the mountain and walked the steep trail without taking one breath. I came to the clearing on the mountain’s top, where the yellow and purple flowers bend their heads. This is your favorite place, Clay. I pack you there on my hip all the time and lean over so you can put your face to the flowers. You breathe them in and laugh. Someday you will be big enough to go see them flowers by yourself, and maybe you will remember me best there, because we spent many a time there. This morning, though, I just stood there and breathed in the sweet air and waited. Directly the day broke, and the far reaches of the sky become purple and streaked with new sun. It has always amazed me how silent the sunrise is. It is such a beautiful thing that I always expected a great noise to come with it. All the land seemed to open up below me as the morning fog burned away, and I felt like I could see for miles and miles.
It was awful strange. I could feel the dew from the flowers’ mouths and it wet the backs of my legs. I could hear the birds begin to sing up there in the trees, welcoming in the day, and it seemed like I could smell each cool leaf on every tree. But there was more than that. I could hear people far down in the valley as they went into their kitchens sleepy-eyed. I could hear women lay bacon into skillets where the grease set to popping and bubbling. I could taste vapors come up out of the mines on the edge of town and smell the bedcovers that had just been rolled back. I took long, deep breaths of the air and felt dizzy from it, like it was something that could make me drunk if I had too much of it.
I have heard tell of this. I have always heard people say that when your senses become like this, you are about to die. Plus I have a great burden on me, like a rock laying overtop my lungs. This is a sign of death, and I feel it all through me. I cannot deny that it is coming for me. I told Easter, this evening when I came back down off the mountain. She says this is foolish talk, but I read in her eyes that it is not. She said, Anneth, you are only thirty-four year old, girl. What do you mean talking death?
But I know it is true and this is why I have some things to tell you.
I never have been like other women, Clay. I’ve never let anybody get the best of me. There ain’t no use letting people do you wrong in this life, baby, and just because I’m a woman don’t mean they’re going to. I have been known to outdrink a man and go dancing until daylight. I’m not ashamed of that. I’m not ashamed of anything about myself, because that’s the way I was made. I am telling you this because I am a honest woman, too. That is one thing that anybody can testify to. People around here have always talked about me, talked about how wild I was. I don’t blame them for talking—I am wild, but half of what they say is probably lies. You know that my mommy was full of Cherokee blood and from this I have always been filled up with life. When I was little I can remember being so full of wanting more that I thought I might blow up if I didn’t do something. A person so full of everything is never satisfied, though, and because of that, I have made a lot of mistakes in my life. But who hasn’t?
These are the things that you will hear about me and maybe wonder about when you get big, so I want to be the one to tell you the facts. I have no secrets. I’m an open book.
Clay, I have been married three times. Now, a lot of people around here would say this is the worst thing ever was. But it ain’t. There are way worse things, baby. I divorced my first husband because I didn’t love him no more. We were married six months, and as soon as I married him I realized I couldn’t even stand to eat at the same table with him. He made me sick to be close to. It’s just one of them things that happen, that we can’t control. I know in my heart of hearts that it’s a much worse sin to live with somebody you don’t love than it is to divorce them. Then I was married again for two years to a man who had another woman the whole time I was with him. I wouldn’t about to take that off of no man. So I quit him and that was that. Then I married Glenn, who has been the only daddy you have ever knowed, since I was with him from the time you was inside me until you was three year old. But Glenn is not your daddy, and don’t ever let anybody tell you that he is. I was pregnant when I married Glenn, and he knowed that, but he promised to treat you just like his own and raise you up the best he could. Soon as you was born, he went back on his promises. He wanted you to have his last name, but I refused, I wanted you to take my family name. He always was jealous of you and that is why I am fixing to leave him. He is mean to you. Jealous of you, and one day I will have to pack up and leave him.
Now I’ll tell you what I know about your daddy. This is the hardest part for me, the part you will have the aw-fullest time understanding. Before you was born, I just had divorced my second husband and I worked at the Depot Cafe. I run that little restaurant by myself. I was always meeting people because it was right there at the train depot and people was all the time getting off the train and coming in there to wait out the next one. One day a man come in there, and when I seen him I just about fell over. I cannot say what made me so crazy about him. Like all other things, it was just something that happened or was maybe meant to be. He was the prettiest man I had ever seen, that’s for certain. His hands was what struck me the hardest. His fingers was big and straight, long and smooth, like somebody that ought to pick a guitar. His voice seemed to pour out of his mouth so calm and easy that it could smooth out your whole day. His name was Bradley Stamper, and he was from over in Laurel County. He was on his way to Ashland by train, going off to Vietnam. Back then soldiers was always coming through Black Banks on their way to Ashland. That’s where they got sent to Vietnam from. He had some people up Ashland and was going up there to stay a couple of nights before he left. Soon as we met, I knowed I had to keep him with me as long as I could. It is too complicated to explain here without writin
g a book, Clay, but it is a feeling that someday I hope you will know of. I started talking to him that day and it was all just perfect, like I had just throwed a bunch of food into a pot and it had turned out the best soup ever was. Now, I’m not simple enough to believe in love at first sight, but there was something there. The first night we met, we went for a ride. I had a little Falcon that I loved to drive, and I was always going off on long drives in that little car. We drove and drove, all the way to Virginia. When we crossed the state line, we pulled over on the side of the road atop this mountain and stood there and looked back at Kentucky. For a long time we stood there and watched everything below us. That is a hard thing to come by, comfortable silences between two people, especially two people who have only just met. Way over to our left we could see a strip mine. The mountain’s top had been completely cut off and the sides looked like a big scar on the face of the earth. Your daddy studied this strip mine for a long time and finally said he couldn’t understand doing that. As God is my witness, I believe that is when I fell in love with him. I had never met a man like that before. Seeing him look at the land like that just about killed me.
We spent two whole days together. We never slept or eat a bite. We met around four o’clock on a Thursday afternoon and he left me about six on a Saturday evening. In them two days, I felt like I knew him better than anybody in the world, and I told him everything about myself. Don’t ever think I had a one-night stand and this is how you come into this world. That’s not how it was.
He left on the train, but I wouldn’t go to the depot with him. I had a room in the back of the restaurant made up for when I wanted to stay in town, and I just laid in that bed back there and cried and cried. I never had cried over a man in my life. I could hear the train pulling away and I just squalled into the pillow. I knowed I would never see him again and that I would never get over him. But he had his papers to serve his country, and there was nothing he could do about it. Love is the last thing that can stop a war.
By the time I couldn’t hear the train no more, I quit crying and put my hands on my belly. That’s when I knowed I was carrying you.
He sent me one letter from over there, but I don’t have it for you. After you was born, I never could find that letter. I know I didn’t misplace it. It just disappeared, gone like a ghost had snuck in and took it away. So the only thing of his that I have to leave you is this little silver medallion that he give to me that morning he left. It says “Saint Christopher Protect Us” on it. When I was having you, I laid there in the hospital with that necklace wrapped around my hand, holding the medallion in my palm. I held it so tight that it bruised the inside of my hand. You could see the blue mark it made for days after. There was a little nurse in there that had to pry it away from me.
I don’t reckon he ever knowed about you, baby. I wrote letter after letter, but I know in my heart that he never got none of them. He wouldn’t have denied you, I know it. I don’t know if he died over there, or if he come back to Laurel County or if maybe he settled somewhere. As bad as this sounds, I like to think that he give his life over there, otherwise why didn’t he come back to me? I have tried to reach him. I checked the state casualties every week in the paper, looked for him in all the phone books in Laurel County, wrote and wrote the army. But I never could find him, and I’m sorry. I hope that if he is still alive, someday you’ll be able to meet him. Just know this—there is nothing dirty or wrong with the way you come about. You are the most pure thing that ever come from me, Clay. People say that I fall in love with every man I meet, but that’s a lie. Your daddy was the only man I ever loved in my life.
Your aunt Easter is the only person in this world who knows what I have just told you. I didn’t care what people thought of me, I just didn’t want them knowing my business, so I never told people who your daddy was. It was my story to look back on, and I didn’t want anyone else sharing it. Your aunt Easter is a good woman and not a hypocrite like most. Always be good to your Easter, for she would lay right down and die for you.
I hope to God that you never doubt how much I love you and how close you are to my heart. You are my whole life. I see your daddy in your looks, but I see myself in you. I see me in your actions already. Maybe it’s a bad thing to wish on somebody, but I hope you are as filled up with living as I always was. As I write this you are three year old, so you may not be able to remember me. But I have wrote these words down for you in hopes that they will give you a sense of who I am. I can’t set here and list all the things about me that make me Anneth, but I think through reading the words I have wrote to you, you can gather a lot about me. If there is anything that I wish you could keep of me, it would be my voice to play in your head—I wish I could leave you beautiful words to come to mind when it is a mother’s gentle voice that you need.
I guess I ought to wind this letter up now. There is so much more I need to say, but I don’t know how to get it into ink. I’m setting by the open window and I’ve just now heard a whippoorwill calling. I have always loved their songs. There’s a piece of me you can hold on to.
Mommy—12 May 73
Clay put his face into his hands and began to cry the long, mournful weeping of true grief. He felt as if he had just sat down and talked to his mother. Easter ran her hand over his hair and down his neck. They did not speak. The rain pounding on the house sounded like blood drumming in his ears.
The phone was ringing, and even though neither of them got up to answer it, the sound seemed to break some sort of spell. Easter slowly took her hands off Clay and sat down on the chair arm beside him. He kept his head down, ashamed for her to see his tearstained face.
“I never thought I’d feel like that,” he stuttered. “I can’t explain it.”
“There’s lots of things in that box,” Easter said. “Take it home and look at it when you have plenty of time. And after that, if you have any questions, I’ll answer what I can.”
“Seems like that letter brought up more questions than it gave answers,” he said. “I never even knowed of no man called Glenn.”
“He was your stepdaddy.”
“And she quit him over me? Did he beat on me?”
“Naw, he never touched you as I know of. It was just his mouth. One thing I remember in particular because I was up there when it happened. Anneth had done told me she was fed up with him, but I never had seen nothing out of him until that day. That day he come home from work and Anneth had a big supper cooked for him, but he wouldn’t eat a bite of it. Said he had been craving a bacon sandwich all day and that’s what he wanted. You loved mayonnaise sandwiches better than anything, and you had eat up ever bit of the mayonnaise. When Anneth said they was out, he turned the kitchen table over. He throwed the empty jar against the wall. He screamed and went on and said if he ever caught you eating it again, he’d kill you.
“That evening, I went to town and bought four big jars of mayonnaise. I took them up to your-all’s house and set them on the coffee table right under his nose. I told him, I said: ‘That’s for Clay. If I hear of you touching it, I’ll come in here and slit your throat while you asleep.’ He knowed I wouldn’t tell a lie.”
Easter stood up and went to the window. “It was things like that,” she said.
Clay didn’t want to hear any more now. He didn’t even want to think about going through the box. His scalp crawled and his body jerked all over, like he had been up for days. Knowing how the letter had affected him, he couldn’t imagine what the contents of the box might do to him.
“Just take your time with it,” Easter said, and put the lid on the box. “It’s just little things she always kept.”
10
WINTER WAS LONESOME. The hills were black and shrunken, as if they were hugging themselves against the cold. The sky lost clouds and became one whole, slow-moving mass of casket-colored gray. The waters of the creeks and the river acted as if they had given up their will to move on and were covered by a burial quilt of brown leaves, left behind by autum
n. The cemeteries became ramshackle and looked forgotten: plastic flowers cracked in the cold, and brittle branches piled atop the headstones. The air smelled like smoke and metal.
This particular winter, the season’s mood had no effect on Clay. He spent long shifts in the mines, thinking about Alma. He had not even thought it possible to have so much to feel. His love affair with Alma was not instant—it did not bloom before his eyes like a flower opening in a time-lapse film. It moved slowly and steadily, subtle and quiet as the rivers of winter, and it was best that it happened this way for the both of them. They fell in love without much fanfare and before either of them had even realized it had happened.
Being with Alma felt like standing atop the mountain at Free Creek, breathing in the cool, crisp air that seemed to heal him.
Most of the time, they took long drives, listening to music and talking. They drove the curvy roads between Black Banks and Virginia or sped down the smooth parkway toward Knoxville or Lexington. Alma was still nervous about her separation and insisted that they only do things outside of Black Banks and preferably out of Crow County altogether. Clay’s face began to fade from the usual roster at the Hilltop.
“When’s your divorce going to be final?” Clay asked every time they went on a long drive.
“I filed three months ago and he still ain’t signed the papers. He’s got up to a year to sign em. I swear, I pray every night that he’ll sign em. After he does, it’ll only take about three more months.”
They were driving slowly over a winding road toward Cumberland Gap and came over a hill to find the road crowded with cars on each shoulder. Cars were parked bumper to bumper, so close to the road that it had been made into one lane. On one side of the road sat a small church with no sign to announce its name. A piece of cardboard had been nailed to one of the porch posts. It read REVIVAL HERE TONIGHT. The parking lot was full of cars.