Saving Grace

by Lee Smith

  “Mama,” I hollered as I went in the house. “Mama!”

  * * *

  I CHECKED ALL the rooms and then the toilet, saving the barn for last. By the time I walked out the back door, I knew she would be in the barn. I knew it as well as I ever knew anything, but at first I didn’t see her. I pushed open the door as far as it would go, and stepped inside and stood straining my eyes to see into that familiar sweet-smelling darkness, but I couldn’t connect what I saw with my mother.

  It swung from a rafter, turning slightly in the breeze I’d made opening the door. It was as limp as the rag dolls Ruth Duty made for me and Billie years back, its head flopped over crazily to the side. The dark face was swollen past any real recognition, mouth open, tongue out, eyelids drooping, eyes not really closed but not open either. I grew terrified that it would raise its head and look at me, that I would have to know what was in those awful sightless eyes. It didn’t, of course.

  Of course, it was my mother.

  She had looped some clothesline around a rafter, then made a noose, then climbed up on the corncrib and put her head in it, then jumped off the corncrib. She had planned everything perfect. Her feet hung about a yard off the straw, one of them bare, the other still wearing one of the old brown shoes I knew so well. Her work shoes.

  The small bare foot looked white and ghostly dangling there in the gloom, not scary but pale and sad. I sank down onto the straw and pulled her foot to me and kissed it. It was cold. A bit of red remained on a couple of her toenails—she had been vain about her pretty feet and still painted her toenails sometimes, when Daddy was out of town. This was the only trace left of that dancing girl from long before, the girl I could scarcely imagine, but as I sat crying in the dark barn and covered her cold bare foot with kisses, the harsh stranger she’d become just disappeared, went out of my mind entirely, to be replaced by my sweet young mama of old, who had told us stories and sung to us by the hour, and kissed all our hurts away. I’m not sure how long I stayed out there in the barn with Mama, but I have always been glad of that precious time, for I was able to say good-bye to her then in my own way.

  It was full dark when I saw a light on the path outside and heard Lamar’s voice calling me. “Buddy?” he said cautiously. “Buddy?”

  I tried but could not speak.

  Lamar stepped through the open door and held the lantern up. What he said then was not words really, just an awful sound in his throat. He put the lantern down and reached for me, but I crawled back, back into the darkest corner of that little old tobacco barn, away from the light, away from his touch. I felt that if he touched me, I would be lost—utterly, utterly lost. I cringed down in the swinging shadow cast by Mama’s body, and when I could finally speak, I spoke the truth as it was given to me in that moment, through my new and dreadful gift of discernment.

  “This is your doing and your fault,” I said, and my voice was not my own. I did not call him Lamar, for I was no longer sure it was his name. I didn’t know what his name was, or who he was, or what he was. All I knew was that Mama’s death was his doing, and I knew that absolutely, that she had been lonely and desperate and that he had come to her then, had lain with her as he had lain with me, and that she could not stand it, and now she was dead. Her body hung between us, turning in the lantern’s yellow light.

  “You’ve got it wrong, Buddy,” he said. “It wasn’t me. It wasn’t never me. It was him, all along.”

  “Who?” I said.

  “Him. That son of a bitch,” Lamar swore softly in the reeling light.

  I stared at him until he turned black before my eyes, the edges of his form crinkling as flames ate in toward the middle, like a photograph on fire, burning inward until he was gone, leaving nothing but a dark place in the air.

  I never saw him again. None of us did. He stole our car and Mama’s little bit of money that she had left—he threw the empty blue sock down on her bedroom floor—and lit out for parts unknown. Straight for Hell, I reckoned, though later it was said that the highway patrol found the car broke down and abandoned someplace in Louisiana.

  I did not take in much of what went on for a while after that, and I don’t have any memory of who came and got me out of the barn, or who cut Mama down, or where they took me next. I do remember that they buried Mama in the Duty family graveyard up on the mountain in the pouring rain, after a funeral where everybody cried and cried. Daddy didn’t come because he was still in jail. I remember them shoveling dirt onto Mama’s pine box, and how it turned into runny red mud in the rain, and Ruth Duty kneeling and getting all muddy and they had to help her up.

  Then I don’t remember anything at all for a long time, until one day when I kind of came back to myself and found that I was sitting in Ruth and Carlton’s kitchen, at their round oak table, eating homemade vegetable soup out of a blue bowl with a big spoon that said “U.S. Navy” on it. I was surprised to see that it was still summer, and that I was still alive. The soup was delicious.

  * * *

  BILLIE WAS WORKING at the Dutys’ grocery store now, and made two-fifty an hour. She was pleased as punch with herself. She smiled at everybody that came in the store, though she wouldn’t talk to them much, since she was so shy. She was getting real fat too. I started going over to the grocery store myself, as I didn’t have anything else to do. But I hated the way everybody stared at me and Billie, pitying us. Everybody that came in there knew who we were, and knew what had happened to us. I couldn’t stand this. I couldn’t quit thinking about it either. For more and more it seemed to me that it was all my fault. What if I had just refused to give Lamar that drink of water, and sent him on his way? None of it would have happened.

  I felt dirty. Nasty. I felt like anybody could just look at me, even there in the store, and see what I was, and know what I had done with Lamar. For I did it first, I started it all. Mama would still be alive today if it wasn’t for me. The worst thing was, I couldn’t figure out what to do about it now. I knew that I had sinned, and that I had been a slave of sin. I knew that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord, as in Romans 6:23.

  The big problem was that God wouldn’t have anything to do with me now, though I tried and tried to pray. He was as far from me as He had been close at the Homecoming. He had turned away His face. So I couldn’t think what to do next. I felt that I was waiting for a sign. I was not surprised to look out the open door of the grocery store one day and see Daddy get off the Asheville bus, which always stopped at noon. He was carrying a black suitcase. He looked all around for a minute, blinking in the bright September sunlight. Then he walked right in the store. Billie Jean started crying the minute she saw him, and ran to Ruth, who hugged her. Carlton stiffened up behind the counter. But he did not come around to greet Daddy, nor offer his hand, though Daddy had started smiling his big Gospel smile. I could tell that he was prepared to take up his ministry right where he had left off.

  But, “They’s been some changes in your absence,” Carlton told him solemnly across the counter.

  “What do you mean, ‘changes’?” Daddy asked. He looked pretty much the same as ever, his white hair maybe a little shorter. He cut off a hunk of hoop cheese from the big round on the counter and ate it without taking his eyes off Carlton Duty.

  Carlton reddened but held firm. “There’s them, and I am among them, sir, who feels it was a sign from God, Fannie being took thataway, and Ruth getting hurt on the same day, and so we have laid the serpents down for the time being, until we hear different from the Lord.”

  “I’ll tell you what the Lord says.” Daddy’s voice was as clear and deep and full of power as it had ever been, but Carlton shook his head.

  “No sir, you will not,” he said sternly, though he blushed a fiery red. “The Lord can speak to me as good as He can speak to you. Why, he can speak to any one of us, just as He has spoke to your own daughter, Florida Grace.�
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  Daddy looked at me good for the first time since he had come in the store. I had stopped dead in my tracks at the sight of him. My heart was beating like a jackhammer.

  “Is this true, Grace?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I didn’t want him to know anything about my gifts. I looked down at the counter, at my own hands on the counter, and wouldn’t say. Everybody else got quiet too.

  Daddy’s big booming laugh rang out false in the silent store. “Well, well,” he said. “Well, well. I reckon I can see how the land lays. I reckon we had best take this up with God at the next meeting, and see what He has to say about it. Come on, girls. Florida Grace, Billie Jean. Mind me now.”

  But Billie burst into tears and flung her apron up over her face. Ruth kept hugging her tight, and did not let her go. Ruth reached out with her other hand for me.

  “All right,” Daddy said shortly. “Come on, then, Grace.” He raised his voice.

  It was his voice that did it. For I thought then of Mama, and the light that came to her face whenever he spoke. I had to go to him then, I had to go with him, though my heart sank like a stone in my chest. I walked out from behind the counter.

  Gravely, Carlton took one of the keys off the big ring he wore on his belt. He put it down on the counter. “Take the truck,” he said.

  Daddy looked at him.

  “That boy took off in your car,” Carlton said. “He’s long gone now. He left right after—” Carlton bit his lip and looked down.

  Daddy picked up the key. “Let’s go, Grace,” he said. He grabbed an orange soda out of the cooler as he left.

  I followed him out the door into the dry golden afternoon. We got in the Arnold’s Electric truck. “Billie and me have been staying with Ruth and Carlton,” I told him. Without a word, Daddy drove the short distance to the Dutys’ house and stopped in front. “Get your things,” he said. I ran in. Their door was never locked. It did not take long. I came out with my arms full and got back in the truck, and Daddy drove up to Scrabble Creek. He parked at the foot of the hill but made no move to get out of the truck.

  “How did she do it?” he asked me finally. He did not look at me but stared straight up the hill at the house.

  “She hung herself on a piece of clothesline,” I told him. “Out in the barn.” I felt like I was talking about somebody I didn’t even know.

  Daddy shook his head. He looked pale and old and beat down.

  We walked up the hill and into the house, where everything was pretty much the way Mama had left it, for Ruth and Carlton had been checking on things, and me and Billie had been in and out frequent too. Daddy kept looking around like he didn’t know where he was. He kept picking things up and putting them down, such as the little statue of two dwarves that said “Rock City” on it, and Mama’s sewing basket still where she’d left it on the sofa in the sitting room, and the blue willow teapot in the kitchen. There was no sign of Lamar to be found. He had vanished without a trace, as if he had never been there at all. Daddy walked back into his and Mama’s bedroom, and I followed him and saw him open the wardrobe and bury his face in the folds of her few dresses hanging there. I watched him for a long time. Later I went into the kitchen and opened up a can of chicken noodle soup and poured it in a pan and measured a canful of water into it and put it on the stove to heat. Somebody had to do this, with Mama gone. I ate some soup and then Daddy ate some. As I was going to sleep, I heard him walking all around the house carrying on, calling out to God and praying. It sounded like there was a whole lot of people out there, but it was only Daddy.

  I don’t know if he ever went to sleep or not. Right before dawn he woke me up and said, “Come on, Grace. We’re going.” I sat up instantly, completely awake. I was not surprised, though he had not told me that we were leaving. Most of my clothes were still in the Arnold’s Electric truck. I dressed in the dark and gathered up the rest of my clothes and went outside, where Daddy stood on the porch looking at the black outline of Coleman’s Ridge against the lightening sky. We walked down the hill together. I didn’t look back once. I didn’t need to.

  For I had my own picture of the house on the hill by Scrabble Creek which I had loved, my own picture safe in my mind already, like the little scene in the miraculous Easter egg which Marie Royal had kept on top of the dresser in her bedroom. This was a white sugar egg with a clear window in one end, where you could peep in to see a tiny castle, with a moat and a king and a dragon. This scene never, ever changed. Each time I peeped in, it was always the same. Our early years in the wonderful house on Scrabble Creek seemed to me perfect and everlasting in that same way, and I loved to think about them, peeping into the egg in my mind whenever I chose, as Daddy and I traveled the South. I remembered all the good things that had happened there, and sometimes right before I went to sleep, I even thought I could hear the musical waters of Scrabble Creek and feel Mama’s soft good-night kiss on my cheek.

  Traveling Light

  ONCE DADDY AND me got on the road, it all came back to me, us being on the road before, when I was little, crammed into that old Studebaker. Back then, we surely could have used a nice big truck like the one from Arnold’s Electric. We could have used the room. All of us kids could have been in the back under the camper top. We could have played there. But now it was just me and Daddy on the huge seat in the cab, rattling around like two peas in a pod. I felt so lonesome, like about a hundred people were missing. Daddy was not much for talking, at least not to me. He didn’t seem to be that interested in me. He took me along because he needed me to read the Bible out for him to preach, the way Mama used to do.

  I was an instrument of Daddy, the way he was an instrument of God. I understood this, and bore it without complaint. I felt like it was my due some way, my duty. This had to do with Lamar.

  As Daddy and I drove along through Tennessee, I thought about Lamar constantly, though by then I couldn’t even remember what his face looked like. I thought that he was the Devil, come to visit us and try to pull us down to his level, which he had done a pretty good job of. But then too I would remember how sweet he could be, how he’d watch out for me and make me go to school, and I’d get confused. I reckon the worst thing about it was how much I missed him. For I did. I did miss Lamar just awful in spite of everything, and this made me hate myself, and not mind going where I had to go, and doing what I had to do.

  Which was whatever Daddy told me.

  On the road, my main job was to read the map. As soon as it got full light on that morning we set out, Daddy handed it to me, soft and dog-eared around the edges from so much use. “God will tell us where He wants us to go,” Daddy explained, “but He needs for you to be His navigator.”

  “All right.” I unfolded the map and laid it across my lap. “Where does He want us to go first?” I asked.

  “Newport, Tennessee,” Daddy said.

  I looked on the map. As the crow flies, Newport, Tennessee, was not too far away, but it was a long wiggly line on the map, because of all the mountains. “It looks to me like you just keep on going on this road we’re on,” I told Daddy, “and then you turn off to the left first chance you get, up at Hot Springs.”

  “Ah, Hot Springs,” Daddy said. “We had us a grand meeting at Hot Springs, Grace, where many souls were brought into glory, it must of been, oh twenty years back, before you was even born. Before you was even a twinkle in your daddy’s eye.”

  “Well, why don’t we stop in there now?” I asked. “That was a mighty long time ago. I bet a lot of them have backslid and fell by the wayside since then. I bet they’d just love to see you coming.” I said this in a mean tone, surprising myself. Sometimes it was like Lamar had planted a little seed of the Devil in me which would prompt me to speak up and make fun, or say the ugliest things.

  Daddy looked at me hard. “Grace, Grace,” he said sorrowfully, shaking his head. “God forgives you, honey, and I forgive
you too.”

  Then I felt awful, of course. We rode along in silence for a while after that, me looking out the window as the beautiful countryside flowed past like water. The leaves were just starting to turn. Children stood out by the road waiting for the school bus, and smoke rose here and there up on the mountains, from little tucked-away houses you couldn’t see. I wondered who all lived up there, and what they were doing, and if a creek ran down past their house like it had past ours. Later that morning it gave me a pang to see the slow yellow school buses, but I couldn’t really connect myself with that earlier girl who had loved school so, and horses, and writing books. She was somebody I used to know a long time back. I went to sleep for a while, and woke up to find Daddy carrying on a big conversation with himself. He was talking about Mama a lot, and then sometimes it seemed like he was talking to Mama. “Fannie,” he wailed. “Oh Fannie, oh my God, Lord, Lord.” But when his pain moved me so much that I reached over to touch his shoulder, he jumped like he’d been shot, and his face darkened.

  “Your mama was not what you thought,” he said. “She was not what all she was cracked up to be.” He clenched his teeth, looking straight ahead, but then he appeared to forget me and started up grieving for her again. This time I did not interrupt.

  We stopped to eat lunch in a restaurant outside of Hot Springs, where Daddy embarrassed me by praying out loud over our sandwiches, but the owner of the restaurant seemed to like this, and when Daddy went up to the cash register to pay, she said it was on the house. Daddy grinned at me as we went out the door. “In that case, we should of eat more!” he said. “We should of loaded up!”

  I couldn’t help but grin back at him.

  We got to Newport around sunset, with Daddy driving from memory as to which roads to take to get to the church house. It was a small plain cinder-block building with no steeple and no way you could tell it was a church except for the hand-lettered sign over the door which said ONE WAY CHURCH OF GOD. We pulled up into a gravel parking lot to the side and got out to stretch our legs. Daddy smoked a cigarette while I walked around. The One Way church house was way up a holler, built in the overhang of a big rocky mountain so steep you couldn’t imagine anybody even climbing it. This location gave the church a forsaken, lonely feeling. I didn’t like it. But I could tell from the way Daddy had been driving that he knew his way now, so I figured this was the place in Tennessee that he had visited so much with Evelyn. I got all excited at the thought that I might see Evelyn.