Running on Red Dog Road

by Drema Hall Berkheimer

  “Well now, wasn’t that something?” Sister Wood asked.

  Mother and Aunt Lila agreed that yes, it most certainly was. Vonnie and Sissy had enough sense to keep quiet, that is, until Grandma made the mistake of asking them how they thought we did.

  Sissy smiled and nodded and got away without saying.

  But Vonnie didn’t hold back.

  “I’ll tell you one thing right now,” she blurted. “I’m not setting a foot in that church again if y’all get up there doing that in front of God and everybody else that knows us.”

  Grandma said she expected it didn’t sound that bad, but when nobody came to her defense, she said of course everybody knew this was just a rehearsal and all. We practiced a couple more times, but soon Grandma stopped mentioning it and switched to a project she was good at—making quilts for the missionaries in Africa.

  But I wasn’t ready to call it quits. Mr. Pursley’s next recital was scheduled for the following month, and I was counting on redeeming myself.

  When he came up with the idea of me and Vonnie playing a duet, I could not be talked into it. This was my moment, and I wasn’t about to share it. I finally decided on “Leibestraum,” which was a good bit harder than anything I’d tried before. I was determined to shine, so I practiced that song until everybody at home was sick to death of it.

  By the day of the concert, I was ready.

  My taffeta skirt rustled as I went wringing and twisting up the steps, crossed over to the piano and flashed my toothiest movie-star smile at my audience. I sat down, arranged the taffeta around me, and played “Leibestraum” through to the end. After I took my bow, I walked off the stage just a little slower than necessary. Like the last square of Hershey’s chocolate on your tongue, some things are meant to be savored.

  Although I never played in public again, I had done what I set out to do. By this time Vonnie and I were bored with the piano, so we talked Mother into letting us quit taking lessons. Still, anytime I hear the opening movement of a Tchaikovsky concerto, Mr. Pursley is playing piano in his parlor, and I am sipping tea from china I could crush in my hand like a Dixie Cup.

  24

  The River Ran Cold

  I watched the top half of Vonnie streak by the window. Mother, waving a cherry-tree switch in her hand, sprinted a few steps behind. By the time they came around again, I could tell Mother was gaining on her. I figured it would take a couple more laps before Vonnie got caught.

  “Save me, Grandpa, save me!” she hollered, but he was off somewhere out of earshot.

  Grandma didn’t even look up. “What must the neighbors think?” she muttered, darning away at a sizable hole in a thin black sock, more than likely one Grandpa needed for church.

  Vonnie had settled in on pitching fits to get her way—and Mother had settled in on not letting her. It all started when Mother hung her new stockings out to dry after rinsing them in vinegar water, which was supposed to make them last longer, although I don’t know if it did.

  “Vonnie, run quick and get my hose off the line before it rains,” she directed.

  Though the sky was cloudless, thunder rumbled under its breath nearby. Just as Vonnie got to the clothesline, rain began to plop on the ground. She yanked the stockings off and ran for the house.

  And Mother saw her do it.

  She lit in about those being brand-new stockings bought special to go with the suit she was wearing that very night and she’d be unlikely to find that color again, not to mention how she’d ever afford to buy another pair even if she did. Why Vonnie had snatched them off the line and ruined them was a complete mystery. It wasn’t because she didn’t know better, because she certainly did, and there was no need to say she didn’t.

  Mother examined the stockings toe to thigh, sticking her hand up each one and holding it to the light.

  There was a snag in the foot of the second stocking.

  Instead of keeping her mouth shut like any reasonable person would know to do, my sister talked back. The more Mother fussed and fumed, the more Vonnie sassed. She was bound and determined to get in the last word, but Mother wasn’t about to let her. That soon led to Vonnie being sent to break a switch off the cherry tree. Vonnie handed her the switch, then took off running.

  I was almost rooting for her.

  There’s things about a person you can’t help but admire.

  The rain petered out after only a spit and a promise. I went out and sat on the porch steps so I’d have a ringside seat for the final round. Mother held Vonnie’s wrist with one hand, trying and mostly failing to land a swipe or two on her twisting legs. Knowing full well she wouldn’t get switched while she was down, Vonnie collapsed belly-up on the grass like Queenie did when she came upon a bad-tempered cur. She sucked in some air, arched her back, and screamed bloody murder.

  Grandma had heard enough. She came out of the house, a cup in her hand, making a beeline for the middle of the fracas.

  “Young lady, you’d best stop that racket by the time I count to three or I’ll douse you so fast it’ll make your head swim, and don’t you think for one minute I won’t.”

  She lifted the cup higher. “One. Two. Three.”

  Vonnie, still squalling, flashed her eyes at Grandma to determine if she was serious.

  She determined wrong.

  Before a heartbeat passed, Grandma dumped the cup of water on Vonnie, who sputtered and coughed and made a big show of it like she was strangling to death. Grandma didn’t fall for it. Without a word, she handed Vonnie the dishtowel she usually wore thrown over her shoulder. All the starch taken out of her, Vonnie sopped at her hair and tears and runny nose.

  “Come on to the house now and get you some supper while it’s hot,” Grandma said, talking just as nice as you please. “It’s ten past the hour, so we’ll have to hurry a little.”

  She held out her hand and Vonnie took it.

  Miraculously, the fit was over.

  Mother and Vonnie appeared to be past their fuss about the stockings, and dinner went off without a hitch. Grandma saw to that. Every meal we sat down together—breakfast at seven, dinner at noon, and supper at six, folding our white flour-sack napkins and placing them on our chairs after each meal. After supper Grandma collected them and put clean ones out before breakfast the next morning.

  “Tuck that napkin in before you drip all over yourself,” Grandma scolded. “Your mother’s expecting company in a little bit and you need to be presentable.”

  I picked up an ear of buttered corn, but not before I took the napkin off my lap and tucked it in the front of my dress.

  Oh, we had rules up to the elbows we weren’t supposed to put on the table.

  “Vonnie, Vonnie, if you’re able, get your elbows off the table,” I singsonged. Then she watched extra hard to try to catch me.

  Grandma’d say things like: “Wait till Grandpa says grace.” “Don’t talk with your mouth full.” “Say, ‘Please pass the gravy,’ instead of doing a boardinghouse reach.” “Ask if you can be excused before you up and leave.” “Consider what’s fit to talk about at the table lest you go blurting something out.”

  She looked straight at me when she said that blurting part.

  “I think I’ve heard enough of that,” she’d say, drawing her eyebrows down and giving me a look.

  I didn’t seem to have an ear for what was fit talk, but I could depend on Grandma to set me straight. David Stanley getting his nose bloodied wasn’t fit, although it wasn’t a fair fight since the other boy was way older. David, on the other hand, was wiry and tough and had stood his ground, so I was rooting for him until the very end. Nor was Sissy peeing her pants in class, making a perfect round puddle under her desk. She’d raised her hand like we were supposed to and the teacher paid her no mind at all so it wasn’t her fault. And Cora Hinkley coming to school with her hair chopped off because she had head lice couldn’t be talked about. The teacher forced her to wear a cap made from cutting off an old stocking. That just seemed wrong. I wanted
to see if Grandma agreed with me, but she was hurrying us through a supper of macaroni and cheese, green beans with scrappy ham, apple dumplings, and cornbread left over from dinner. She was anxious to get the kitchen cleaned up before Mother’s company came at seven.

  Mother had got a notion to take up the wool cabbage-rose carpet, uncovering oak floors dulled by time. She’d have the carpet cut and bound into throw rugs. Although she usually tackled such jobs herself, she decided the job was big enough to call in a professional. Ralph Matthews, listed in the Yellow Pages as owner and operator of the Tru Finish Floor Company, showed up.

  After the job was done, he called our house several times. Grandma answered every time.

  Had he left his hat there?

  No, she was sure he hadn’t.

  Had she come across that hat?

  No, it was nowhere to be found.

  Finally he called and Mother answered.

  That’s when he asked her for a date.

  Mother spent a long time getting herself ready, putting on the soft gray herringbone suit and white crepe blouse she’d pressed earlier. Dabbed with clear nail polish so it wouldn’t run, the snag in her taupe hose was covered by her black spike pumps. She clipped pearl earrings to her ears and finished the look off with a red hat topped by a tuft of feathers.

  Ralph, a confirmed bachelor who lived a mile or so away with his mother, was blond and good-looking. I guess that was my mother’s type, because my father was blond and good-looking too. Mother and Ralph saw each other regularly after that first date. His mother didn’t seem happy about it. Grandma probably wasn’t either, although I never heard her say so. It didn’t matter. He was at our house most every evening.

  Ralph owned a summer camp on the Greenbrier River, not far from where Grandpa held the baptisms in water that ran cold and deep. Sometimes when we went to Ralph’s place on the river, I’d think of Grandpa standing in a suit in that numbing water, a few converts waiting their turn. People on the bank sang,

  There is a fountain filled with blood,

  drawn from Emmanuel’s veins,

  and sinners plunged beneath that flood

  lose all their guilty stains,

  lose all their guilty stains.

  Images played in my head like a moving picture show.

  The summer camp wasn’t a camp at all; it was actually a frame house. A big room across the front held a dilapidated divan and several beds, and one end had been partitioned off to make a separate bedroom. The enclosed back porch was now a kitchen with an old Frigidaire, the kind with the motor poking up through the top, and an oilcloth-covered picnic table. Some of the back porch had been sectioned off to put in a bathroom that opened into the big front room. Next to the house, a weathered rowboat lay upturned against the trunk of a massive tree that leaned so low over the river we could walk out on the trunk. Vonnie and I spread a towel and ate our lunchmeat sandwiches there, balancing cold bottles of Dr Pepper between our legs. We ate strange foods like pickle loaf, baloney, liverwurst, sliced white bread, and Little Debbie oatmeal cakes.

  Grandma didn’t think that stuff was fit to eat.

  Ralph painted KATY’S FIRST YACHT on both sides of the boat in wavy blue letters that ran front to back. My mother’s name was Kathleen, but Ralph called her Katy from the start. When he put the boat in the water, he broke half a bottle of ginger ale on the front for good luck. Mother wouldn’t let him waste the whole bottle. Although he’d patched up the bottom of the boat until it looked like a crazy quilt, the river still seeped in. Every now and then Vonnie and I bailed with an old coffee can we kept fishing worms in. After a few trips, Ralph came up with the idea of tethering the boat to a tree and leaving it in the water. That made the wood swell up so it didn’t leak as bad.

  While Vonnie and I splashed in the river, Mother sat on a quilt rubbing suntan lotion made of baby oil and iodine on her legs. Vonnie laid back until her whole body was under water except her face. She held her arms out and floated, toes just breaking the surface. She was showing off, so I ignored her. Mother had sent her for swimming lessons at Waterdale, the community pool near downtown. She promised me I’d be big enough next summer.

  I stuck my toe in, gradually wading up to my knees. The cold always took me by surprise. Fed by icy mountain streams, the rivers and lakes never warmed up, no matter how hot the summer. Buttery yellow clay oozed between my toes. Silver fish no more than an inch long nibbled at tiny air bubbles on my ankles. I hopped from one leg to the other to keep them away. I imagined crawdads waiting to grab hold of my toe, but I’d stirred the water up too much to see them. The seat of my bathing suit, a green checkered one of Vonnie’s I hadn’t quite grown into, filled with silt. Holding the elastic out and wriggling my bottom back and forth under water helped, but I was still gritty.

  Naked as baby mice, Vonnie and I hurried to spray each other down before the hose, warmed like a coiled snake in the summer sun, ran cold again. Teeth chattering, we wrapped chenille housecoats around us. We thawed out on a quilt that smelled of mothballs and fell asleep to the river slurping at the muddy bank.

  Ralph was just back from picking up the Sunday paper.

  “Fellow at the filling station told me there’s something down the river we need to see before we head back,” he said to Mother. “This is likely our last boat trip this summer, so pack up a picnic and we’ll make a day of it.”

  We loaded the boat up to the gills, making it ride low in the water. Ralph paddled down the river a piece and around the bend. There, not a mile from our place, a swinging bridge swagged over a narrow place in the river.

  “Can we walk on it?” I asked Ralph, sure the answer would be no.

  “I don’t see why not,” he said, “that is, if it’s okay with your mother.”

  Ralph tied the boat off, and we walked over to examine the bridge, which hung ten feet or so above the water. Truth be told, it looked downright shoddy up close. The ropes were grayed and stiff. Some of the boards were missing or rotted through. I didn’t want to step a foot on it, but I couldn’t back out now.

  Ralph started over first, with me, Vonnie, and Mother following close behind.

  The bridge was narrow enough to hold on to the ropes on both sides. It swayed and creaked as we walked, scarier than any rust-scaled ride I’d been on at the carnival. Vonnie, who wasn’t a fraidy-cat like me, leaned over the side to look down at the water. The ropes groaned as the bridge tilted to a dizzying slant.

  “Quit doing that!” I complained. “You’re gonna make me fall.”

  But it was too late. My foot slipped and one leg plunged through a space between the boards. I tried, but I couldn’t get my leg out of that hole. Ralph and Mother each held to a side rope with one hand and pulled me straight up with the other. My leg was scraped from the knee down, but I wasn’t about to cry and have Vonnie call me a bawl-baby all day long.

  Ralph built a fire from dead wood we gathered along the bank. He whittled a few green branches to a point, sticking them in the river to soak before we speared weenies to roast for hotdogs. Mother stirred ketchup and brown sugar into cans of beans she heated on the coals at the edge of the fire. We poked marshmallows on the sticks six at a time and charred them black in the fire. Then we pulled the burnt part off and toasted the gooey part black again.

  After we splashed the stickiness off, we begged to play in the river, but Mother said we had to wait an hour so we wouldn’t get cramps. We passed the time by fishing and soon had a whole string of trout. I’d never caught more than a minnow or a crawdad, but Vonnie claimed she’d caught lots of fish before. If she had, I’d sure never seen them. Ralph poured water on the fire and tidied up while Mother tended to my scraped leg, feeling around for splinters. Vonnie started paddling around on one of the inner tubes we’d dragged along behind the boat.

  The cries come from a distance.

  We look up and see Vonnie halfway across the river, her inner tube nowhere in sight.

  Ralph takes off running, thrashi
ng through the shallows until the water is deep enough to swim. Mother and I stand and watch.

  Vonnie’s head goes under, an arm trailing down.

  Everything is in slow motion.

  She comes back up, hair tangled over her face, then sinks again. By my count she’s going down for the third time when Ralph reaches for her. She gets a stranglehold around his neck, but he grips both her hands and turns her to the side before she can pull him under. He swims with one arm, holding her head above water with the other. His arm crooks, dips in and pulls back, but slowly, like the wounded wing of a bird. I want him to swim faster.

  Lord don’t let my sister die Lord don’t let my sister die Lord don’t let my sister die, repeats over and over in my head. Ever now and then I add, I am sorry for all the times I’ve been mean to her. And I mean it. I hope God believes me.

  Ralph carries Vonnie to shore and lays her on her stomach, head to the side. Coughing and gagging, she retches up a mouthful of river water.

  But that’s a relief.

  It means she’s breathing, although a bit unevenly at first. Hands shaking, he turns her over to check her eyes. They are bloodshot, but she sees him, knows where she is. Mother rubs her with towels we’d brought and wraps her in a quilt. She starts to pink-up some. The first thing she wants is for somebody to find her inner tube.

  I helped Ralph clean the trout on a log when we got back to the camp house. He chopped off their heads and split them down their bellies, stripping out the guts and throwing them downstream for the turtles and crawdads to eat. Mother dredged the fish in cornmeal and browned them in lard. Everything was packed up, so she covered the picnic table with layers of the morning newspaper and laid the fish there to drain, frying up cornbread fritters in the same skillet. We ate in silence, tearing the fish off the bones with our fingers. We never talked about what happened. I knew there were people who would have. But not us.

  Grandpa and I are at the river. The sky is silvered, the sun a dull orange ball. Tree leaves tremble over stilled green water. No squirrels chatter, no crows caw, no mosquitoes buzz near my ear. There is only the silence. He lowers a young girl under the water. Her hair, long and straight, floats to the top. Her eyes are wide open, but I can’t make out her face. As Grandpa lifts her up, water flows down her body. Her arms twine above her head. She’s not a girl anymore. She’s a marble fountain.