With a Hammer for My Heart

by George Ella Lyon

  Lord, when I think of such a child on that mountain in that bus. And I knew she’d go back. She’s got a big heart. Hearing Garland’s story, she’d want to reach out to him. And then she’s curious, the kind of youngun who has to see what makes fire burn. She’d go back. I just had to be sure I got there first.

  The trouble was, it was Thanksgiving week when she told me, and all the kids was due in, plus John’s brother Ed from over at Dwarf. I’d have to climb a mountain of potatoes and swim a river of gravy before I could get off the Creek again. So I called Lawanda up when I got home. I’m not much for the telephone but I will use it if I have to. I said what was true, that she should hold off another week or so before seeing Garland, just to let things settle. And I told John I’d need to go to Cardin right after Thanksgiving to fetch cake makings.

  “I thought you did your trading yesterday,” John said. “Ain’t you got a brain?”

  “That was for Thanksgiving,” I told him. “This is for Christmas.”

  Now I couldn’t go on Friday because Burchett and his family was leaving up in the day, and I always make them a turkey pie to take home. But Saturday morning, right after milking, I set out.

  I did stop at Fraley’s for flour and sugar and dried apples in case I didn’t have enough. Then I drove the Hallspoint Road at the bottom of Amos’s hill. Parked the Plymouth almost in a ditch.

  A wind had come up and the light was thin. Lord, I felt old, headed up that hill. Kept thinking how warm Chloe’s kitchen used to be.

  There was nobody in what I made out to be First Bus. Neat as a pin, just like Lawanda said. But it was padlocked. I walked through the broken garden. Not enough cornstalks to hide in. I went around to Second Bus.

  I could see Amos through the door. He was asleep in the aisle, zipped into a sleeping bag like some huge caterpillar in its cocoon. Back seats had been taken out, but for some cause he didn’t sleep there. I could see a table, clothes, some kitchen stuff. The bus was awful trashy. The glass box for fares was full of cigarette butts.

  I knocked.

  Nothing.

  I pounded.

  He groaned and put his forearm over his eyes.

  I called out to him.

  “Amos! Amos Garland!”

  He muttered something and sat up. His face hurt to look at it.

  Crawling out of the army bag, getting to his feet and wrapping it around him, he stood up and stumbled toward the door.

  Yanking at the lever to open it, he said, “Who in greasesplattered Hell are you?”

  “Ada Smith, Lawanda’s mamaw.”

  “Oh, no.” His face knotted.

  “We need to talk.”

  He looked and looked at me. Finally he said, “Other bus. Give me a minute.”

  So I turned and eased off the high steps. I looked down the hill. The Plymouth could have been a green rag about to blow down to the creek. I thought how I could still catch it, still head back to Little Splinter….

  “All right, Mamaw.” Amos was dressed now—greasy jeans, flannel shirt—and carrying a coffee can. “This way.”

  He handed me the can while he undid the lock.

  “I’ll get the heater going,” he said. “This bus gets colder than kraut.”

  So I followed him in. It was just like Lawanda said— books and maps, everything neat as a pin. He showed me where to sit, turned the heater on.

  “Amos—” I started.

  “I know why you’re here.”

  “I knew your sister.”

  “Dead and gone,” he said, and headed toward the back of the bus.

  “I helped lay her out.”

  “Prettied her up for the send-off?” He raised his eyebrows at me. “Kind of hard, weren’t it, with that hole in her head?”

  I went down the aisle.

  “Don’t lay any hands on me.” He was measuring coffee with a bent-lipped spoon.

  “Amos—”

  “Say that one more time and I’ll show you where I keep my gun.”

  “Garland, then.”

  “Now and ever shall be.” He poured water into the pot from a plastic jug.

  “I know you lost Nora—”

  “You know too much.”

  “And your children—”

  “Little snakebites.”

  “And I know that makes Lawanda—”

  “You don’t know nothing about Lawanda.”

  “I saw her born.”

  “Saw Chloe out. Saw Lawanda in. What are you, some kind of doorkeeper?”

  “What are you?”

  “I’m a drunk.”

  “What else?”

  “Ain’t that enough?”

  “No.”

  “I’m a mean old man.”

  “What else?”

  The water was starting to boil, shoot brown jets into the glass knob.

  “Baccer juice,” he said. “A mouthful of baccer juice.”

  “God’s own creature,” I told him.

  “Then God done some pretty poor work.”

  “And Lawanda—how’d She do on Lawanda?”

  “Oh, Lawanda’s a guest of the world,” he said.

  “You think Lawanda don’t know hardship?”

  “She don’t know much.”

  “She knows what it’s like to be hungry.”

  “Good. She’s alive.”

  “She knows what it’s like to be scared sick by somebody you love.”

  “You want some of this?” He held up the battered pot. “The cups ain’t exactly clean.”

  “If it’s hot, I’ll take it.”

  The cup was white with green lines around the rim, a truck-stop cup.

  “Milk?” he asked, holding up a can of Pet milk.

  I shook my head. “You sure are civilized,” I told him.

  “More’n when I lived in a house.”

  I followed him up the aisle, grateful for a cup to hold to. “Lawanda—” I started.

  “Lawanda’s dead.”

  “She is not. She—”

  “I don’t want to hear no more about her.”

  “All she wants—”

  “She wants all everybody wants and nobody gets, and I can’t stand to look at it.”

  “Oh.”

  “You preachers got any respect for that?”

  “I’m no preacher.”

  “What are you then?”

  “An old woman.”

  “What else?”

  “I got a gift, if that’s what you mean.”

  “A gift?” he said, raking the fingers of his right hand through his beard. “Ain’t that dandy?”

  “Sometimes it’s awful.”

  “God tries to get you to haul ass to Nineveh?”

  “Or thereabouts,” I told him.

  “She’s like you.”

  “Who?”

  “Her we ain’t talking about.”

  “She’s like you, too,” I said.

  He looked like he might throw the coffee in my face. Instead, he said, “So tell me about Nineveh, and don’t leave out the whale.”

  And I told him. Everything from the vision to being churched to learning I was a healer. Seemed like he didn’t bat an eye.

  “You ever see her again, this woman Jesus?”

  “Not like that first time.”

  “Don’t it make you wonder?”

  “What?”

  “Well, you could’ve had a stroke.”

  “Maybe so, but I didn’t.”

  “You got any of them feathers with you?”

  “What for?”

  “You ever heal pictures?”

  “Pictures?”

  “Yeah,” he said. His eyes were heating up now. “Let’s see your plumage, Mamaw. ”

  I can’t say why I did it—it goes against everything—but I reached in my coat and into my dress front and took out a wing feather from a quail.

  “God’s elbows!” he said.

  “Could be.”

  “You wait here,” he told me.


  Heavy and old as he was, he made a beeline for Second Bus. The draft from his leaving hadn’t died down till he was coming back through the door.

  He had a shoe box.

  He sat down with it on his knees. I’d have give more than I can say not to have seen what was in it.

  Pictures, like he’d said. Old ones—his mommy and daddy, I guess. One of him in his uniform, one of Nora, a wedding picture, and then God’s plenty of the younguns— baby pictures, school pictures, one from the paper when Delbert won the spelling bee. Every one of them had the face burnt out.

  I breathed in hard.

  “That’s what I do to what leaves,” he said.

  “You must have left, too, then. Your face is burnt out.” He stood up.

  “Here,” he said, shoving the box in my lap. “Call up your spirits.”

  “You’ve done called up yours,” I told his back as he went down the aisle.

  “Ever take whiskey in your coffee?” he asked me.

  I don’t cry, but that’s where I would have started.

  “No.”

  “Take it straight?”

  “No.”

  “Shame to drink alone,” he declared, coming back up the aisle.

  “You seem to manage.”

  He sat down.

  “I do with what I got.”

  I ran my hand through the pictures like they was leaves.

  “I can’t look at this,” I told him.

  “My burnt-out people?”

  “You with that bottle.”

  “You know your way down the hill.”

  “Yes sir, and I know the way you’re going.”

  “Feet first,” he said.

  “And not a heart in you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Means you’re trying to drown it, burn it away.”

  “Ain’t your feathers going to fix that?”

  “Make the faces come back? Not if you’d rather see labels on a bottle.”

  “I’d sure rather look at Jack Daniel’s than you.”

  “Comes as no surprise.”

  “What does? What does surprise you, Mamaw? You’re about as even-tempered as a rock.”

  “I’m surprised you let my girl off this hill with nothing split but her heart.”

  “God Almighty!”

  “That’s what I told her, that God was protecting her up here, where she knew she shouldn’t ought to have come.”

  “You are one stinking old woman! Who do you think I am?”

  “Somebody who don’t see the light, and it shining on him.”

  He grunted. “That’s a pretty thing to say.” He tilted the bottle and drank. “But it don’t put faces on my pictures.”

  “You have one of Lawanda?”

  “No.”

  “That’s good. Thank you for the coffee.”

  “You going to give me one?”

  “No. But you can have the feather.”

  I put it in the picture box and handed it over.

  “Mother Jesus, huh? You reckon they nailed Her up in a skirt?”

  I stood by the steps, my hand on the silver pole.

  “ ‘The Lord stood upon a wall made by a plumb line,’ ” I recited, “ ‘with a plumb line in his hand.’ ”

  “What’s that?”

  “Amos,” I said. “The Prophet.”

  “Flap them Bibles, jiggety-jig.”

  “All I’m saying is, we’re measured. However you been praying, keep it up.”

  “Not me!” he boasted.

  “I bet that garden gets you on your knees,” I told him. He laughed a big long braying laugh. It followed me on a thin wind down to the road.

  GARLAND: Mad old woman goes off and leaves me with this box. I watch her, then turn and steady myself, putting my hand on the heater. Hot as God’s tongue. Blisters my hand so, I can hardly hold the box or a bottle. Never had a woman cross my doorsill but brought bad luck.

  Nora: hardest-hearted, softest-bodied woman I ever run into. Didn’t care for me once she had them younguns. Picked my pockets clean.

  Chloe: the biggest gift God give her was a ticket to her own funeral. Face like a heart. Man drives up, breaks it with a shotgun. The rest of her still smooth as a snake.

  My own girls, Ardith and Nancy Catherine, dancing and singing: now why? Their mommy scared, their daddy no account. They’d go on making songs for their clothespin dolls. I hit my girls. I had to. World’s too hard.

  And then Lawanda. Hikes up here, Miss Priss, with a hammer for my heart. I don’t care a whit about her. Don’t ever want to see her fuzzy blond face again.

  She’s smart, Lawanda is. She’s tough. But she shouldn’t never have climbed this hill. If she was mine, I wouldn’t allow it.

  And sending her mamaw—big old slap-jawed woman! No, Lawanda didn’t do that. She must have told her mamaw, though. Knowing Chloe. Mamaw’s big hands on Chloe’s flesh.

  Footlocker. Coffin. Bus. Give me a jailhouse. Send me somewhere, you officers of the law! Am I going to rot up here? Are you leaving me to do my worst?

  I got their faces. I don’t need them on these pictures. They’re burnt into me is what it is. I see them every time I close my eyes. Used to see them in the bottom of a glass. Now I just drink out of the bottle.

  Okay. I ain’t so pitiful. They’s worse than me. I could go to town if I took a mind to. I got better pants than this. I could go see Curtis Ballard. Where’s he got to, anyway? And if Howard Ingle was there …

  I don’t want to think about Howard Ingle. Nor his daughter. Nor his Bible-mouthed mother-in-law. God’s plumb line! I reckon it drops straight down to Hell.

  And everything in between’s so crooked, it makes that plumb line look like a guy wire. Yep. A guy wire for Satan’s telephone pole. Call me up, Old Scratch, you hot number. We’ll fry the bird feet. We’ll burn the whole box here— Nora’s whelps and Mamaw’s breast feather.

  But hold off till this evening. Right now, I got to go to town.

  …

  That Mamaw’s done sprung me from my bus without a bite to eat. Aw, hell, my digestion’s mint anyway. Belly burns and every mouthful I send down is just fuel for the fire.

  Coffee and whiskey, I can tolerate—that’s about it. And a real hard apple. Most other stuff, you can have. And me with a garden big enough to feed the five thousand.

  Nothing left now but broccoli and collards. I done decapitated my cabbage the first of last week. Rolled their little heads into a hole I dug. No cellar in a bus.

  I ought to take Curtis Ballard some of them cabbages. Make him a mean slaw. Sit down with that and some beans, a pone of bread … well, Curtis has got people to sit down with. Me, I don’t want nobody.

  So I’ll tell him to come on up to the place and get him a head or two. Why should I have to haul the things to town? I’m no peddler. A good thing, too. I couldn’t sell water to a man whose house was afire.

  Lawanda, now, she sold me them magazines. One music, one science. You’d think they’d be real different. Nah, they’re both full of numbers. Gives me the headache.

  Where’d they put that town anyway? Thing is, I started out the long way, I think. Yeah, I did. Didn’t want to crash into them Ingles. No sir. That Mamaw’s a Mack truck. Fact is, I don’t want to see a living creature but Curtis. Shut my eyes to them squirrel-hunting boys back there. Sure don’t want to see no woman. Harlots riding the beast, every one of them.

  Somebody ought to mow this mountain, clear-cut it, bush-hog it. How’s a man supposed to walk with sawbriers and saplings snatching at his legs? Why don’t the earth grow roads? You ever think of that? It grows rivers, don’t it? Me, I think the Creator was flat-out drunk. By the time He got to us, anyway. I mean, if you’d done made dark and light, and thought up land and water, if you’d got the life spark started and then fired it off into everything from lizards to tobacco plants, wouldn’t you want a drink?

  It was the weekend, anyway. Friday night, let’s break out the jug and make m
an. Or maybe it was Saturday and He was hungover like a wet blanket on a fence. That’d account for why we’re so puny and hateful. God being who He says and all, can you think about what a headache He’d get? You reckon on that next time you look in a mirror. Might tell you something.

  I swear my knees is giving out. It’s the pitch of this ground, sliding and grabbing. And my shoe sole catching on rocks or sticks and peeling back like a tongue. I could do with hooves, I’m telling you.

  There it is, the little town of Cardin. Looks like hair in an armpit. Stinks, too. You ever notice how everything people makes has to shit sooner or later? And they go right on acting like it don’t. Might as well not diaper a youngun. I ain’t even down there and I want to go home already.

  No, I don’t. I want to walk into We-Suit-U. I want to see Curtis Ballard in his own bus.

  Cold, though. Radio weather. Kids used to listen. “Good morning,” it would say. “Good morning, I’m the Christmas Bear.” Chained to a voice. Sit in a circle. Go anywhere. So I threw it out, all of them crying.

  Aw, God, it don’t do to think about it.

  A red light. Look, hanging there, swinging. And people stop for that contraption. They turn on their blinkers and wait.

  Lock their doors, too. Polish their shoes. Ain’t it pitiful?

  I know where We-Suit-U is. I used to get clothes dry-cleaned. I worked in this town, got my pay, my zippers zipped. At home I had a bedful of kids and a wife.

  I even been in the bank. Used to go regular. None of that green wadded in a sock for me. Going to rise above.

  Good thing I brought this pint. Curtis might be thirsty. I don’t drink on the street, mind you. They’s a billboard I can go behind over at the gas station.

  Might as well pee while I’m here.

  …

  “What do you mean, who am I? Who are you, you big, white, ugly thing? You can’t haul me in for bodily functions.

  “Yeah, well, I ain’t got the key to their goddamn rest room.

  “I’m telling you, I don’t need a policeman. I got somewhere to go. The We-Suit-U cleaners. Going to visit Curtis Ballard, a friend of mine. Long time. You call him. You …”

  GALT: Now we’re into it. Now we’re really into it, boys, and I don’t know who’s going to get out. I been a jailer a long time and the way I see it, we get two kinds of clients: the dangerous, who pass through once, and the regulars, who come and go like family. This Garland’s been one of those. Obnoxious, but not a threat— that’s what I would have said.