by Lee Smith
“I’m not young,” I said.
Ruth just looked at me. “Honey, you’re young,” she said.
* * *
I KNEW I could do a lot worse than to follow Ruth Duty’s directions.
So the upshot of it was that I got in my car and drove over to Piney Ridge that very afternoon, stopping only to buy gas. It took me about three hours.
First I went by the Tabernacle to see Travis Junior’s grave. The snow on it did not look cold. It looked like the softest blanket in the world. Maybe he was lucky, I thought, to die as a baby, and not have to walk through this vale of tears. I was horrified to think this. I stayed there in the cemetery as long as I could stand it, and then got back in my car and sat parked up the road from the Words’ house waiting for Travis’s truck to show up. I did not doubt that Helen would shut the door in my face if I knocked. She had already turned on the porch lights and it was nearly dark when his old black truck came around the curve. My heart rose as I saw those headlights cut across the snow. I had the biggest urge to run to him that minute. Travis! Travis! I would cry.
But something held me back.
Instead, I got out of my car and walked along the fence in darkness, with only the pale eerie glow of the snow to light my way. I heard the hollow sound of the truck door closing, then the creak of the toolhouse door. I knew Travis was putting his tools away. He had done this every night when we were married, even though he had to get them right back out the next morning. I used to ask him why he didn’t leave them in the truck, which would have been a lot easier, but he’d just say, “In the truck?” and look at me like I was crazy. He loved to put his tools in the toolhouse, is what it boiled down to. He liked to hang them up on the pegboard where they went. I crept around to where I could watch him. I stood hidden behind the cedar trees and looked at him—at his tall thin body, his long jaw, his beaked nose, his black hat, his strong wide shoulders. A strong man. A good man. I had left a good man, a man who loved me, for a bad one. Now I couldn’t even remember why I had done it, it all seemed so long ago.
Then Travis locked the toolhouse door and turned so that the hard white light fell directly on his face, that familiar face so full of bones and hollows, a skeleton’s face. Travis stood staring intently into the winter night with his dark eyes fixed on some distant point beyond the light, beyond me, even beyond the mountains. His was the saddest, most terrible face I have ever gazed upon. I understood then that he was still looking for me, still waiting for me to come back. But in that moment I also knew that I could not go back. Ruth was wrong. For me there would be no going back.
It was given to me to see Travis Word’s whole life as days of duty stretching in a long unbroken line into the future, to that evil day when he would end it abruptly and for all time, end it himself in that very toolhouse by putting his staple gun to his head, oh it would be awful. I saw it as clear as anything. The gift of discernment is a gift you do not want to have.
The cold wind moaned through the cedar trees as I stood there. My feet were blocks of ice.
Then Helen opened the back door. “Travis?” she called in her nasal voice.
“Coming,” Travis said.
I waited until he was inside the warm house before I left the safety of the trees and made my way back to my car through the bitter cold.
I spent that night at the new Howard Johnson’s out on the highway. I had an English muffin the next morning before heading across the mountains toward Waynesville. Somehow a plan had been forming itself in my mind while I slept, so that I awoke full of purpose, and knew what to do next. I left my waitress a big tip and then paid for the room in cash, thanks to Randy Newhouse.
By the time I pulled into the Food Lion parking lot, the snow had melted to form big gray slushy puddles.
I knew I would need supplies.
* * *
I WALTZED THROUGH the Food Lion like somebody that has won a giveaway, tossing everything I wanted into my cart. Bananas, cereal, milk, Cokes, soup, bread, stuff for sandwiches, hand lotion, toothpaste, shampoo and rinse, you name it! The lights in there were very bright and gave off that buzzing sound which was getting me all keyed up. I smiled at everybody, though I didn’t see a single soul I knew.
Until I got to the meat department, that is.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” A voice broke into my thoughts as I studied the different grades of hamburger.
“Well, I don’t know,” I said. Then I started talking too much. “I am just figuring out which kind of hamburger I want. It used to be that they only had one kind, just plain old hamburger. Do you remember that? It sure was easier then.”
“Gracie?” the voice said.
I was so shocked I almost fell over dead. Then I realized it was Doyle Stacy, as gawky and sweet-looking as ever, one side of his face hanging slack though the other half appeared real glad to see me. He wore a bloodstained white apron over a nice blue oxford-cloth shirt and a tie.
“Well, this sure is a blast from the past!” I said stupidly, sounding like Randy Newhouse, which embarrassed me as you might imagine. But you cannot lay down with a pig and come up smelling like a rose, that’s for sure.
Doyle Stacy smiled at me with his good side. “I swan,” he said. “I was just thinking about you the other day, and wondering where you had got to, and how you was getting along.”
“I’m fine,” I said too fast, juggling my cart.
Doyle’s steady gray eye, the good one, took me in slow. “We heard you was married to a preacher man over in Tennessee,” he said.
“That’s true,” I told him. “I was.” I watched this register on him.
“Children?” he asked then.
“I’ve got two,” I said. “Two girls. One’s married and one’s in college.”
Doyle nodded. “That’s good,” he said.
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead as people kept pushing me aside to get to the meat counter.
Doyle jerked a thumb at my cart. “Looks like you’re stocking up,” he said.
“I am,” I told him. “I need to be ready.”
Doyle did not ask, Ready for what? He just nodded. “That’s always a good idea,” he said.
The two of us stood like islands in the fast-flowing stream of shoppers, staring intently at each other across all the cellophane-wrapped packages of meat. Though I knew he was several years older than me, Doyle looked strangely boyish—maybe because of the paralysis. The left side of his face had not aged at all, and the right side had not aged much. He had plenty of hair, which was still sandy-colored and wavy, a nice straight nose, not much chin, and the biggest, whitest buckteeth you ever saw. He would not win a poster contest, that’s for sure!—another one of Randy’s expressions. I put two packages of Holly Farms chicken in my cart. I knew there wouldn’t be any electricity up there, but it was so cold I figured I could put the meat outside someplace, maybe down in the smokehouse as was done in the olden days. Doyle was watching me closely with a sweet little half-smile on his face. I remembered all about him then, how nice he was, and what good care he took of his mother. I picked up some hot dogs.
“Grace Shepherd,” he said. “I would have known you anywhere.”
I put the hot dogs into my cart and looked at him. He did know me, I could see that, just like Lamar had known me, only Doyle knew the other side of me, which Lamar had never seen.
“You’re coming back, ain’t you?” he said.
I said I didn’t know what I was going to do, that I was waiting to find out, Waiting to hear. “I guess I sound like I’m crazy,” I told him, “but I’m not. I swear I’m not. I am recently separated from my husband, is all, which has made me kind of nervous.”
“That’ll do it,” Doyle said, fixing me with his good eye. “But my Lord Jesus Christ has got the best nerve pill available, and it’s called salvation.”
I started backing u
p. “I don’t know if I’m ready for that,” I said. My heart started beating too fast.
Doyle nodded, all business. “Well, He’s ready when you’re ready. We’re holding services ever Wednesday night, ever Saturday night, ever Sunday. Same as always.” He paused. “I reckon you remember all that. We’re out the Zion Hill Road now, in that stone building that used to be Darrell Dotson’s small-engine-repair shop, in fact that’s what the sign still says to this day, ‘Small Engine Repair.’” He smiled at me, a smile so full of joy that I was seized by wonder and fear.
“He’s waiting for you right now,” Doyle said. “He’s been waiting a long time, but He’s real patient, and He’s got all the time in the world. He’ll wait for eternity if eternity is what it takes.”
By then the fear had expanded to panic. “I don’t have the slightest intention of going over there,” I said. “You must be crazy.”
“They call us crazy, but that’s all right. It don’t matter what anybody calls us. You know that, Gracie.”
“I don’t know any such thing. As a matter of fact, I have to get back to Knoxville in a few days. I’ve got a new job over there, and a new boyfriend, and a lot of things to take care of.”
Doyle smiled at me like he didn’t believe a word I was saying. “Can I come up there and visit with you?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“I could bring you down to church, Gracie. I’m asking you to come worship with us, that’s all. It’s the same old church. It’s the same old God. There ain’t no other way.”
I thought about the other ways I had tried—living a lie with Travis, worshipping flesh and the things of the world with Randy Newhouse. Yet I resisted. “I’ve got my own car, thank you,” I said. “But as far as me coming over there to Zion Hill, you can just forget it. You hear me, Doyle? Forget it!”
Doyle stretched his arms out across the meat counter and kept smiling at me, his face shining like sun on the snow. “I’ll see you,” he said softly.
I wheeled my cart away in a rage, not looking back, though I could feel Doyle’s eyes boring into me, all the way down the long buzzing aisle. I went through the checkout and left, still furious.
* * *
THAT WAS A week or so ago, I forget exactly. I am losing track of the time up here. In fact there is not any time up here now, not really, except for the day and the night, and the different light of the sun and the moon on the long white sweep of the snow. Lord it is cold too. The well is froze. I could not break the ice so I am drinking out of the creek now. Daddy always said he liked the water up here, that the water up here is better than anyplace else.
When Carlton drove up the road I walked down there to see him. He was like a tall black stick against the snow, standing beside his car.
“Honey, you come on back with me now,” Carlton said.
“I will be down directly,” I told him, but I knew I wouldn’t. “Don’t worry about me, I am just fine,” I said. “I have got some things to work out in my mind, is all. I am just taking a break.”
Carlton nodded and blew his breath out like clouds in the air. “Well yes, I see that,” he said. “But you ought to know that Misty has been talking to Ruth on the telephone and they are so worried, they are going to get up a little posse and come after you if you won’t leave. Why, Ruth would of been with me right now if she was well enough to make the trip,” he said. “And Misty says she can’t believe you would want to miss Christmas thisaway, miss seeing your only little grandbaby on Christmas Day.”
Carlton was leaning forward peering into my face, trying to see what I was thinking, but I am wearing these old sunglasses now which belonged to Evelyn I believe. I have to protect my eyes from all this light. I found Evelyn’s sunglasses in a dresser drawer along with her old movie magazines. Some of the big stars then you can’t hardly remember now, such as Deborah Kerr, what ever happened to her? What ever happened to us? Carlton I know will be dead in a year. I could see the cancer in his chest like a bunch of dark grapes. I do not want to see what I see nor know what I know. I hugged old Carlton as hard as I could.
“You are getting so thin,” he said.
“I have been on a diet,” I told him. “You know I needed to go on one!”
“What about that old heatstove? Is it working okay?”
We both looked up the hill at the house, at the feather of smoke from the chimney. “Sure,” I said. “And there’s lots of coal.”
“Well.” It was clear Carlton hated to leave.
“Listen,” I said. “You tell Ruth that you have seen me and I am fine. You tell her to call Misty. It won’t be long, I swear. And I am just fine. You tell them that.”
Carlton nodded. “Okay, honey. But you come on down in a day or so, and quit worrying us all to death, you hear me?”
“I hear you,” I said. “I will.”
And so Carlton left, and I stood there at the bottom of the holler and watched him go, his green car creeping along the packed snow of the road which actually is not slick at all if you go slow enough. I got in my own car and started it and let it run awhile, something I have been doing every day or so just to keep the batteries up. This is a good little car though Randy hated it, he likes American cars. But who cares now what Randy Newhouse thinks?
I turned the engine off and climbed back up the hill, stopping by the barn to call the two horses somebody is keeping up here now, two big old rawboned work horses. He comes by here to feed them every two or three days, but I don’t know who he is nor if he has leased this barn and pasture or what. In fact I don’t even know who this farm belongs to. It doesn’t matter to me as I am interested in the fruits of the spirit now, not the things of the world. The old horses came over blowing plumes of their breath in the frosty air, to eat the apples I brought them. Their lips curled back and showed their long yellow teeth. Among serpents we find the rattlesnake, moccasin, and copperhead. Among true believers we find the Word. Travis Word looked like a horse, I always thought. These horses are as big as trucks, their hair all matted and dirty. No one is taking care of them. They are only good for work I guess, or this is what he thinks anyway, the one that keeps them here. From the front room window I have seen him come, a fat man, a square black shape in the snow.
* * *
AND NOW IT is Sunday morning days and days later, I forget. I know it is Sunday though because I wake to hear a bell. I hear a church bell ringing, the sound carries for miles of course across the frozen snow. I sleep in Mama and Daddy’s old bed where Mama has come to me in a dream. So I lie still now, trying hard to keep her. I love how the screen of her hair falls around my face when she whispers in my ear.
Come to me, Gracie, she says. Oh come to Jesus, honey. It is time now, it is never too late. Oh come to him it is time though I do not know what time it is exactly, the only clock up here that works is the one in my Toyota at the foot of the hill. The china clock has stopped at a quarter to two of some other day of some other year and I don’t have a watch anymore, I believe I left it in Gatlinburg.
But I have always minded Mama. Wrapping the blankets around me I drag them into the sitting room where it is a little warmer though the fire in the old stove has died down now. I shovel in more coal and leave the stove door open pulling the old rocker up close to it. Daddy used to pour kerosene right in the stove, how the flames would roar! though it scared us all to death. The velvet easy chair has disappeared. The old horsehair sofa is still yet here but now its springs stick out in every direction, you can’t sit on it. And the lamps are gone and most of the china. Thieves have been here, I reckon. Though they did not take Mama’s blue willow teapot nor her sewing basket nor this statue of the two dwarves that says “Rock City” on it. It is so ugly, I don’t blame them a bit for leaving it. It has been here as long as I can remember. I reckon it belonged to Elvie Mayhew, God rest her crazy soul. First she left this house in a hurry, and then we did. Our
linens are mostly rotted now. All returns to the earth, and the Spirit returns to God who gave it. I believe I will go to church today. I believe it is time.
But what will I wear? The clothes I have here are way too big for me now. I have got a safety pin in my jeans but they hang on my hips even so. You cannot wear jeans to church anyway, certainly not at your age. It is not respectful.
The fire roars in the stove and Mama whispers again in my ear. Okay. I leave my jeans in a pile and walk naked across the old heart-pine floor to her bedroom and open the wardrobe and sure enough, it is a regular boutique of the dead. I choose one of the four dresses hanging there, a navy blue gabardine dress with long sleeves and little white dots in the material. I take some time with my hair, brushing it all out like a cloud around my head. It is growing out now. I put on my tights and my boots but no makeup. Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. Every secret thing. This means you, girl. I have never been baptized, a fact which would surprise many who have known me in my life. A secret. It does not take me long to pack up. I am traveling light.
But it is still early, too early for church, so I will sit here yet awhile in the heat from the stove, which is a comfort as Mama always said.
When I leave here this time, it will be for good.
Oh but I remember the day when we first came into North Carolina, me and Billie and Evelyn and Joe Allen and Mama and Daddy and Troy Lee, all of us sitting in a circle in the dirt eating Ruth Duty’s coconut cake while our car burned up before our very eyes and black-eyed Susans were blooming by the side of the road and yellow butterflies fluttered all around. It is so hard for me to believe that Joe Allen is dead now. I can still see that one piece of straight brown hair falling down on his forehead no matter how often he pushed it back. Joe Allen was the best of us all.
I close my eyes to see him drifting in time and maybe I sleep for a little while but then I am awake, suddenly terribly terribly awake, and it is time. The Spirit comes down on me hard like a blow to the top of my head and runs all over my body like lightning. My fingers and toes are on fire. Oh Lord it is hard to breathe and I am scared Lord, I am so scared but I will let my hands do what they are drawing now to do and it does not hurt, it is a joy in the Lord as she said. It is a joy which spreads all through my body, all through this sinful old body of mine.