With a Hammer for My Heart

by George Ella Lyon

  FROM GARLAND’S NOTEBOOK:

  I ain’t crazy. I am not crazy. I ain’t drunk. I ain’t stinking. I am not drunk. I am soper. Sober. I own my own bus. I own my own body. I’m alive in spite of myself. In spite of whole nations. In spite of acres of craters, headstones. I got a purple heart but not where you can see. Kids, grandkids—your progenitor is still breathing! How come I got no little ones round my knees? ‘Cause I kick and trip,’ cause I slap till ears ring. I survived, but the war took my grandkids. Son of a bitch, that’s a direct hit.

  This bus is a bigger box than I would have come home in. And I can see out of it. Yes sir. I see the top of trees, not their roots. Worms don’t crawl on me unless I’m breaking up the garden. But I can look down this hill and see soldiers moving. And I know what’s waiting, hidden below the road.

  Left, right, left. Into the foxhole. Left, right—slow it down, buddy. Stay behind the Big One. Big Mother Tank, War, God. In its shadow. Only chance you got. It’s wartime, boys. Play ball! Crack them peanuts and pull the pin with your teeth. Got to run with it—all the way down the field—put it in the hole, blow those suckers up! Move it or you’re dead on the floor. Come on, don’t lay there like some woman. Big old boy. Not dressed for snoozing. Get up! Aw God, head smashed like a watermelon. Come on. Any of you can still get it up, let’s go fuck their brains out.

  Big party. We’re all invited. See the fireworks?

  Now class, if the good guys die, it’s a mistake. Of course the flags is at home. No drummer boys either. But we’ve got colors: blood red, shit brown, puke green. Mud, too. Oily water. Drag him by the chin strap. Kick it, little brother. Don’t eat it. Might be somebody you know. Ink flows, steady as blood. Wires on the teeth. He died with his braces on. Galvanize him. Look look, take the boot off, take the foot off, take the leg off If he’s ours, gather all the parts. Ship him home. If he’s theirs, the Big Boys say, leave him lie. Or do a little more mutilating. Give as good as you got.

  Trouble is, I can’t tell ours from theirs. Ain’t any little boy the same? Flesh, dreams blown open. We keep marching. Robbing the dead for better boots.

  MAMAW: Nora Garland was a Sturgill before she married, so the first thing I did was call her cousin Marylee. I’m not set up to lie, so I just said I’d heard Garland was in jail and that put me in mind of Chloe, which made me wonder where Nora ran off to. This is not peculiar around here. We used to have a column full of that stuff come out every week in the paper.

  Mrs. Al Whitley’s nephew, Rob, visited over

  the weekend from Troy, Ohio, where his

  father, Landis Whitley, has been living

  since he left home in 1948.

  I didn’t know if Marylee would know, but if she did, I felt sure she’d get pleasure out of telling.

  “Last I heard,” Marylee said, “she was running a Kmart somewhere in Louisville—Bardstown Road? That might be right. Somewhere you have to go through a rope of roads to get to.”

  “So you’ve been to her house?” I asked.

  “No, but B.C. has.” B.C.’s Marylee’s husband. “He stayed with her a few years back when he went down for that UK-U of L game.”

  “What’s happened to the younguns?”

  “They’re all growed up, of course. Delbert got into some kind of trouble, but I believe he’s in the air force now. I don’t know about Ardith. Nancy Catherine’s got a flower shop.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  “In the same part, if I’ve not got my head on wrong. She’s a right pretty girl, B.C. says, but she’s not married.”

  “What about Nora?”

  “All by her lonesome. Don’t think she had the nerve to try another man.”

  “You reckon she still loves him?” That kind of talk furs my teeth, but I thought Marylee might like it.

  “It don’t seem possible to me. But the heart’s a thorn patch, Ada. One thing I’ve learned is, you never know, do you?”

  “No, you never do.”

  That’s about where we left it, just a few more back-andforths and I was off. Then I called Louisville information. Nothing for Nora, but there was an N. C. Garland in Beechwood Estates, 43A. Without even reckoning what to say, I dialed. No answer. Of course not—she’d be at work. I got the operator again and asked was there a Garland’s Flowers. Sure enough, that dead voice came on: “The number is area five-oh-two-five-five-five-two-five-six-one.” I wrote it down, then studied on it. If I called, she was pretty sure to answer. Then what? This was Lawanda’s story. I just sat there by the phone, hands sweating. I fanned myself with the phone book. “Exchanges for Cardin,” the cover says, “Iona, Calvary Creek.” Not Louisville. Not Bardstown. “Mossy Creek. Little Luck.” I thought of Jonah and the day Amos asked if I had to haul ass to Nineveh. I thought of Samuel waked up in the night, saying, “Here I am, Lord. Send me.”

  LAWANDA: Mamaw was standing across the street when I got out of school Wednesday. She didn’t smile or wave, just waited for me to find her. In a thick brown coat and with her head tied up, she looked like a bird, feathers ruffed out against the cold. I had the weirdest feeling walking down the steps, like I was something lifted up, about to drop. It just passed over me, like the light in a Xerox machine. Then I was on the sidewalk and headed across the street.

  When I got right up to her, Mamaw nodded.

  “For a minute, I could have took you for a Ingle,” she said.

  “Who?” I knew I didn’t look like Dad.

  “Your aunt Delma Jean, lives off in Michigan.”

  “I’ve never seen her.” We started walking toward town.

  “Made a right pretty woman.”

  “Where are we going, Mamaw?”

  “It depends. I located Nancy Catherine.”

  “Where?”

  “Louisville. ”

  “Will she come?”

  “I ain’t called her, Lawanda. I figured that was yours to do.”

  We walked past houses, the library, the undertaker-hardware store. She told me about Marylee Sturgill, about all she’d found out. We came to the courthouse. The jail is a boxy building on the side.

  “Let’s set a spell,” Mamaw said, and pointed to the low wall.

  “Don’t you want to get coffee or something?” It was cold and I remembered that day I let Mamaw take a chill up at the laurel rock.

  “No.”

  “Garland’s in there.” I looked at the barred windows.

  “I know. I reckon this is as close as you can get.”

  I had this pain in my throat and made a funny noise. My eyes burned.

  “All right,” she said. “All right, Lawanda. We’re looking to get him out, so drink them tears.”

  I pushed my tongue against my teeth and nodded. I spread my hands out on my French book.

  “You can call Nancy Catherine straight off or you can go see her,” Mamaw went on. “I’ve got money for a ticket.”

  “Just one?”

  “Just one, but it goes both ways. I figure she’ll give you a bed and you can come back the next morning. I’ll hog-tie your mommy and daddy till then.”

  “If I call, she might not talk to me,” I said, fear drying my mouth. “But if I show up at her door, she’ll have to let me in.”

  “It’s her flower shop you got to show up at. You can’t leave till in the morning, Lawanda. You got to get there before they even know you’re gone.”

  “Oh. ” This was a relief and a disappointment. I was ¡ready to go. Then it hit me.

  “You know, it’s funny I should have to take a bus for Garland.”

  Mamaw didn’t answer.

  “Him living in a bus and all.”

  She laced her fingers together, then twisted them like roots.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I feel like his eyes is pecking at us. We got to move.”

  But first, she took a handkerchief out of her coat pocket.

  “They’s enough money here,” she said, “for the big ticket and a bus to Bardstown Road. An
d calls. Pack you some extra lunch.”

  I nodded. She reached in her other pocket and pulled out an envelope.

  “This has got the addresses and numbers and everything. You call Nancy Catherine when you get in. Don’t go another step unless you’re sure she’s there.”

  “Okay.”

  “And if it ain’t her, or she’s gone to Florida or something, you call and I’ll meet you at the next bus back.”

  “Yes, Mamaw.”

  “Lawanda—” She looked at me real easy all over like rain. “They’s a feather in with them names. It’s for you going. It’s for Nancy Catherine if she comes back.”

  Mamaw leaned over and put her cheek against mine. It was skin.

  “You’re real, Mamaw!” I said, and laughed at sounding so stupid.

  “I’m praying on it,” she said, and creaked to her feet. When I stood, too, she rested her hand on my shoulder. “I’ve always suspected the same of you.”

  FROM GARLAND’S NOTEBOOK:

  If I could come back over the bridge now—aw, Hickcock blew the bridge, don’t you rememberf Last thing he did. Against the sky, everything splattered. Canaan said, “Goddamn! You can pulverize anything!” Said it before we saw Hickcock, his square hands.

  I would have sent him back. On the line too long. He’d eaten his peck of dirt, swilled his blood, and then some. Wasn’t steady, like he had been. I could see. Them others could see, too, but they weren’t looking. And I didn’t have the badges to say who lives, who goes forward. If I’d of quit… What if I’d said, The hell with this; come on, Canaan, these bastards are going to get theirselves killed; if I’d of just started marching, me and Canaan, seceding from this war, buddy, not firing another round; you boys go on, just excuse us, we done enough murder, think we’ll ease on home.

  And who would have stopped der Führer then? Damned if I know. But nobody would have stopped Canaan. Maybe not Elias, either. Elias, I threw stones at when he was scared to climb down the tipple. Fool thing! If I’d of hit his hand, he could have let go and fallen. Maybe died. Maybe got a 4-F.

  Sack of potatoes, tub of guts. Like I could have picked Canaan up and run back with him. Back where? Who even knew where we were, splayed on the map by some pin?

  Round-top trains going by. Bosom of Abraham. So take the Promised Land and go home. Come on, Canaan, we’ll hotfoot it; we’ll swim on back to Kentucky. We’ll discharge our own selves. On the charge of insanity. Everybody else’s. Get you out of this pigsty, take you home, let Nora fatten you on soup beans, then ship you back to whoever you call Pa.

  I’ve got Lawanda, you know. She’s breathing. Doesn’t dream what the world can do. Wants to run smack into it. You can’t tell a person about that bridge. That it’s going to blow. That Hickcock set the charge deep in the mountain. That the war is everywhere. It’s in her schoolbooks, in the water fountain—turn the handle and it flashes. All the bones that light up this ground.

  LAWANDA: Here I say I want to go away to college, and just leaving overnight made my hair hurt. Of course, that was different. I didn’t know where I was going and nobody was supposed to know I was gone. All I knew was it would take me five hours to get there, so that’s how long I had to figure out what to say.

  I knew Garland was probably very scary to Nancy Catherine. Maybe all she remembered was him being drunk and mean. So why would she come back to see him? What could I say to her? It’s not like I would want him for a dad. But then, I’ve got a dad. And Garland is Nancy Catherine’s.

  I kept thinking how he said he’d lost more than I’d ever heard of. I looked out the window hard, like I could see what he’d lost in the bare brown hills going by. What could he mean except his wife and kids? And his sister, I guess. And whatever the war took. I couldn’t do anything about what was lost and gone forever, but Nancy Catherine was just in Louisville. She ought to at least come and look at him. They ought to see each other grown and old.

  Anyway, going to look for her was the only thing I knew to do. When you’re in trouble, you need family. Plain and simple, Mom would say, though there wasn’t a thing plain or simple about this.

  I’d brought along this book, The Prince and the Pauper. We were supposed to read it for English. Mr. Crawford said it’s so American, but I didn’t see why. I couldn’t find any Pilgrims or gangsters. I didn’t believe the story, either, but then I wasn’t sure I was supposed to. It could be a fable, or one of those other things, an allegory. That’s why I like math. Still, I had to read it, and I couldn’t think about Nancy Catherine anymore, so I settled in.

  There was a guy across the aisle who kept looking at me. He was tall and wore new overalls. He had soft brown hair, thin face, big hands. I kept reading, but his eyes were like the heat lamp in PE. I wished the seat beside me wasn’t empty. I wished he would get off at Kildav.

  No such luck. But a woman with a baby and another child in diapers got on. I knew he would give them his place.

  “You needing this seat?” he asked, bending over me like a willow.

  “No.”

  “Could you move your bundle then?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  He folded himself down carefully. For a minute, the smell of barn and wood smoke canceled out the smell of bus.

  He arranged his hands in his lap. “I reckon you can read,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I was watching you with that there book and I figured you could read.”

  “Well, yes.” I didn’t know what to say. He did, though. He seemed to have this conversation planned out.

  “I was wondering … could you tell me what it feels like?”

  “To read?”

  “Yes’m.”

  The question made me feel stupid, even though I was the one who could read.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it,” I told him. He just looked at me, his blue eyes fierce and friendly. “I guess it’s sort of like singing.”

  “I can sing,” he said.

  “And remember the words?”

  “Yep.”

  “You could probably learn to read then.”

  He nodded. “I never had much schooling. My pa died when I was still in the primer, so I had to quit and work the farm.”

  “That’s a shame,” I said.

  “Well, I don’t know. I took good care of my mommy, helped get my sisters raised.”

  “I guess that’s what’s important,” I agreed, feeling lucky all at once that none of us ever had to quit school.

  “And we’ve still got the farm,” he said, unlacing his hands and resting one across the bib of his overalls.

  “How old are you?” It was kind of sudden to say that, but I wanted to know.

  “Twenty-six. How about yourself?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Name’s Bev Combs. My pa was Ellis.” He held out his hand.

  “I’m Lawanda Ingle.” We shook hands and smiled.

  “Where you going to?”

  “Louisville.” I decided not to tell him why. “How about you?”

  “Just over to Iona to see the man that works on our pump.”

  We rode quiet awhile. My right shoulder was cold from the window, my left one soaked in his heat.

  “My mommy’s good,” he said, for no reason I could think of.

  “Mine, too,” I offered. It was true, but I hadn’t really thought about it.

  “She’s broke a bit, though,” he went on. “She does her work around the farm, but she does it slow. She’d understand if I was to get married.”

  “I’d think so, with you twenty-six years old.” I didn’t mean to come out hard like that. I was starting to talk like Garland.

  Mr. Combs’s face changed. It was a plain smooth good face, but all at once it got hard like a fist.

  “If you married me,” he said, holding one hand open like he might rest it on my knee, “you could teach me to read.”

  You are going crazy, Lawanda, I thought. This is what you get for trying to sneak out o
f town on a bus.

  “Marry?” My voice slid all over the place.

  “We got a furnace in the house now and a gas cookstove. You could bring every book you got.”

  I studied him. His face relaxed once he’d said his piece. There was a V-shaped scar at the comer of his mouth. I thought about touching it. Then I talked slow to keep my voice even.

  “I can’t marry you, Mr. Combs. I’ve got to go to Louisville.”

  “On your way back?”

  “And then I’ve got to finish high school. But it’s very nice of you to ask.”

  He ducked his head. “Probably they’s people ask you that every day of the week.”

  “No,” I said, wanting to give him something. “You’re the first one ever.”

  “Wish I was all it took,” he said, and stood up. “You keep on with your books there.” Before I could answer, he was swaying toward the back of the bus.

  I saw him again a little later when he got off at Iona. He tipped his cap. Lawanda Combs. I waved and felt like crying. We’d only gone fifty miles and I’d almost had another life.

  …

  When I dropped the quarter in the phone at the bus station, something hit the bottom of my stomach. It was a big gob of questions. What are you doing here, Lawanda? What are you going to do if somebody answers? If they don’t? If it’s Nancy Catherine? If she sounds like—

  “Garland’s Flowers,” a bright voice said.

  “Oh God.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m sorry. I mean, are you open?”

  “Till five this afternoon. May I help you?”

  “Are you Nancy Catherine?”

  “Miss Garland is at lunch now. If you want to call back after one o’clock—”

  “I’ll be right there. To see her. I’m coming on the bus.”

  “Coming from where?” All at once, the voice had a person behind it.

  “Oh, I’m already here. Tell her not to worry.” Why did I say that?

  “May I tell her who called?”

  “No. She wouldn’t know me.”

  “Miss?”

  “It’s all right, really. Don’t worry. I’ve got my own lunch.”