With a Hammer for My Heart

by George Ella Lyon

  I hung up, shaking, but I was laughing too. Everything I’d said was so stupid and I hadn’t been able to stop it. I went to get a drink of water and the fountain splatted me in the face. That set me to crying, which was so goofy I had to laugh again, so I lost five minutes in a bathroom stall trying to calm down. You might as well spend some time in there. It costs ten cents to get in.

  The ticket man told me how to get the bus to Bardstown Road and I raced to the stop when I saw it pulling up. I was the last one on and the tail of my hair almost got caught in the door. I’d tied it back in the bathroom, thinking I could at least control my hair.

  Downtown was all big glass buildings and parking lots. Wind off the river blew dirt in whirls up the street. The ride went fast, past a park, up a ramp, and onto the big road, speeding around with a million other people, then zoom, off at a traffic light and the next minute up to a curb.

  A woman across the aisle started getting up and I asked her if this was the right place.

  “ ’Fraid so,” she said, tying her head up in a scarf the color of Windex.

  “Would you know where the flower shop is?”

  “Humph!” she said. “Only flowers I’ve bought was when my husband died, and the undertaker took care of that.”

  “Sorry. Thanks anyway.”

  “Humph!” she said again and pushed on out.

  The driver told me I’d been closer to the address when we were downtown. We’d come out around the city and were headed back in Bardstown Road. I’m used to a town that you can’t miss. He said to stay on three more stops.

  …

  As soon as the bus pulled away, I could see the florist across the street.

  It was small: one door and one window. But it looked pretty. The tail of the G in Garland looped all around the door glass and there was a Christmas tree with poinsettia lights in the window. Bells rang as I walked in, and there was the scary smell of cold flowers.

  A small gray-haired woman stood behind the counter.

  “May I help you?”

  “I’m the one on the phone,” I blurted. “I need to see Nancy Catherine.”

  “Are you family?”

  “No, but she is.”

  The woman raised her eyebrows at me.

  “Send her on back here,” a voice said through the wall. “I’ve got ten minutes to go.”

  “It’s her lunch hour,” the woman told me, patting the cash register. I knew I should say I would wait but I couldn’t.

  “Where is she?”

  “Right this way.”

  You’d think from how she acted that she was showing me through a hotel, but there was only a little hall behind the counter, with a cooler full of flowers on the left and a workroom on the right. When I first looked in, I didn’t see anybody, just a pair of tennis shoes upside down on the wall. Then I stepped around a table. Nancy Catherine was standing on her head.

  “Hello,” I said.

  She smiled, I think. It was hard to tell.

  “You’ve got to have more to say than that.”

  “You talk like your daddy.” That’s not what I meant to say! She shocked it out of me. My nose burned and I could smell ammonia, like I do right before I cry. Stop it, Lawanda! I said to myself. You’re not a baby! Say what you came for. Nancy Catherine’s feet swayed like she might turn right side up but she didn’t.

  “Really?” Her voice had changed. It had a mean sweetness to it.

  “I’m from Cardin. I’ve come here on the bus because I know your daddy. I’m his friend—”

  “That must be interesting!”

  I tried to look her in the eye to get that sound out of her voice, but it was hard with her head down at my feet. She had on a purple jogging suit too.

  “It is. But he’s sick. He’s in jail, to tell the truth. And I came here because he needs you.”

  Plain and simple. I was being plain and simple.

  Nancy Catherine flipped upright. She was tall and big like Garland. Her face stayed red.

  “And who went to get this dad you say I’ve got when all his kids needed him?”

  “Nobody, I guess. You could have tried.”

  “Yeah, trading scars for a ticket? Who are you?”

  “Lawanda Ingle. His … neighbor, sort of.”

  “What’s he done now?”

  “Well, he drinks and—”

  “I know all I need to know about his drinking.”

  “Do you know you look like him?” The more I looked at her, the more I saw it: if Garland lived better and was younger and a woman, he would look just like her.

  “I don’t give a goddamn what he looks like.”

  “Alive or dead?”

  “Who are you really? Who sent you here?”

  “Nobody. Nobody even knows I came except my mamaw. She bought the ticket.”

  “Why?”

  I hadn’t asked myself that; I had to sort through it out loud.

  “She’s a healer—that’s part of it. She knows I care about him. And she knew his sister, your aunt Chloe.”

  A softer look crossed Nancy Catherine’s face.

  “I remember Chloe.”

  What could I say to keep it there?

  “She and Mamaw were friends while your daddy was a soldier. Mamaw remembers the store at Redbird.”

  “I played in that store.”

  Nancy Catherine’s big smart face got prettier as she remembered. Her hair was short and getting gray and capped her head like feathers.

  “Mamaw told me about the party when Garland came home,” I said, knowing I was headed the wrong way but not knowing where else to go.

  Her face clamped down.

  “Is that what you call him?”

  “He says that’s his name, first and last.”

  “Not Amos? Not Daddy?”

  I shook my head for the first question and had to keep shaking. She went on.

  “I hid from him that day behind barrels, next to the harness. I can still smell fear in the sawdust and leather, in the lake of pee I left on the floor.”

  “He was mean to you?”

  Her head jerked up like she was throwing back long hair.

  “Viola,” she said to the door, “lunch hour’s up. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “But, Miss—” said the voice behind me.

  “Go on.”

  The words shoved Viola down the hall and out the door.

  Nancy Catherine’s eyes took in the room: baskets, vases, ribbon. “You know what this business is about?” she asked me. “It’s about hating flowers. It’s about wiring the living to the dead.”

  I nodded. She could have been in a bus.

  “And that was my daddy. He loved us the way the knife loves the stem.”

  “He’s grieving over you,” I said.

  “I doubt that!” she spat out, then ran her hands over her hair. “Come on. I’ve got to keep store.”

  She plunged past me. I walked down the hall in her wake. We stood behind the counter while she inspected receipts stuck on a spike post by the cash register. If that was the morning’s work, it wasn’t much.

  “It’s Lavonne?” she asked.

  “No, Lawanda.”

  “Well, have a seat, Lawanda.”

  I climbed onto the wicker stool. She didn’t seem so mad now. I thought about taking off my coat.

  “Pull off that coat and stay awhile. ”

  I had to say something first.

  “Your father is a good man,” I told her.

  “Like acid is a good drink.”

  “I ran off to tell you he’s good!” I said this louder than I meant to. I could feel my cheeks getting hot. Her eyes were like ice. “He’s old and in trouble and I’m part of the trouble he’s in.”

  “You’d better explain yourself.”

  So I did, as far as I could, starting with the magazines and ending up right where I was. She laughed once—I forget where—but she wasn’t laughing when I finished.

  “Jesus, Joseph, and M
ary!” she said. “If that’s not a case study.”

  “It’s my life.”

  “Well, don’t think you own it, honey. My life’s been in many a manila folder.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Social workers, Lawanda. The cleanup crew Uncle Sam sends in when a disaster like my father strikes.”

  “He was struck first.”

  “Huh!” she said. “Do you know what I was doing in there?” She pointed back to the workroom.

  “Standing on your head, it looked like.”

  “Meditating. Trying to center myself.”

  I could feel my face go blank.

  “Every day at noon, I have Viola come in so I can go run, and then I meditate. I’ve been trying to get my life back for thirty years, Lawanda. What he took. What’s in those folders.”

  “Maybe you could get it from him,” I said.

  She snorted. “The dragon may guard the treasure, but I won’t walk through fire to get it. I’m all over scars.”

  “Mamaw said your mother said that.”

  “What?”

  “About Garland.”

  She just looked at me.

  “When your mother bathed him after the war, she said he was all over scars.”

  “Well, he gave what he got,” she declared. “And now he’s about to put that map on you.”

  I didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

  “His bus is full of maps,” I said. “There’s probably one of Bardstown Road.”

  “Lord God, I hope not.”

  “He studies things.”

  “You know he was a teacher?” she asked.

  “Yes. Mamaw told me.”

  “When I was real small, he got a first-grade desk for me and painted it yellow.”

  I could picture that.

  “He got me a big tablet and fat pencils.” She looked at the pen in her hand, then put it down like it hurt.

  “And you won’t do the least thing for him? You won’t give him one day of your life?”

  “You don’t know anything about it!” Nancy Catherine’s face looked hard, hard. What if she didn’t come? It was my fault Garland was locked up, but I couldn’t get him out.

  “I don’t know about your childhood,” I told her. “But I know about now. I know your daddy’s sick and alone, and you look so much alike. If you saw him, it would be like looking in a mirror that showed what could happen to you a long time from now—”

  “Stop it!” Nancy Catherine grabbed me by the arm, then let go, horrified. “It’s already happened!” she hissed.

  That’s what I needed. “To you, yes,” I said, “it’s already happened. You don’t have to be afraid. But I’m afraid. I didn’t know what I was getting into when I went up there. If you won’t help Garland, help me!”

  I was almost crying. Nancy Catherine looked away. My hands were shaking, my shoulders. I took a deep breath.

  “Mamaw sent you a feather,” I said. “Will you come back with me?”

  Nancy Catherine stared at the cash register. “But Lawanda …”

  I dug in my pocketbook for the envelope with the feather. “Here,” I said, holding out what I figured came from a crow.

  “ ‘Dark as the night that covers me,’ ” Nancy Catherine said, not reaching for it.

  I said, “He’s the only daddy you’ve got.”

  “I know that! And I barely survived him! Why should I go risking my life again?”

  “To save him.”

  “Who says I want to?”

  “Because he risked his for you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Nancy Catherine asked, grabbing Mamaw’s feather, waving it in my face.

  For what seemed like a full minute, I did not know. But I could feel an understanding stuck in my throat. I could hardly breathe. Flowers around a coffin—that’s what this place smelled like, a wreath, a garland—That was it!

  “In Germany, in the war!” I blurted out. “He risked his life for all of us. He went over there for you and all his kids and family and even me, far down the road.” I was saying stuff I didn’t know I knew. “And he got wounded—”

  “Not much!” she put in.

  “Not that kind, the kind that tore open his life.”

  “So?” she said, a little shaky.

  “So it never healed.” I jumped down from the stool and stood there crying, choking through the words. “And you’ve got to help him.” I took her by the arms. “You’ve got the same scars!”

  She put both hands over her face.

  I let go and hunted on the counter for Kleenex. When she spoke, she sounded different, like TV.

  “That’s what my therapist tells me,” she said. “Until I face the old man, he’s just a roadblock in my life.”

  “So?”

  “So if Viola can work full-time a few days, I’ll come,” she said. “But it’s myself I’m going to set free, not him. He can rot in that jail, for all I care, assuming something already putrid can rot.” She ran the feather under her nose, then sneezed.

  “Mamaw says the feathers come from angels,” I told her.

  “Yeah,” she said, “the kind that shit on your head.”

  NANCY CATHERINE: So she comes blazing into my life with a wild tale about my daddy and a mane of hair like the youth of steel wool: Lawanda Ingle— is that a name? Gets me off center, all wobbled into memory, promising to go back with her to Cardin, and then gives me a feather. You know, like from a bird. I don’t know what kind. I have enough trouble with flowers. And she says her mamaw uses it in some primitive ritual. You have to admit this is interesting. My daddy’s a nut, but her grandmother is a witch.

  She tells about the old woman while I finish out the afternoon. Also she eats her lunch. You would not believe it. A sandwich of something she calls dog meat—they make it from ground-up bologna seasoned with peanut butter and vinegar. She has a hod of this stuff between two pieces of balloon bread. Also she has an RC. I think of my yogurt, rice cakes, miso spread, and sprouts. Of herb tea. Then I think how Lawanda looks new and healthy as all get-out, while I look like what the garbagemen won’t take. Well, it’s because I ate the equivalent of dog meat when I was her age, that’s all. Moon Pies and fatback and soup beans, slabs of commodity cheese. Mother probably put Kool-Aid in my bottle. I know she did in Eddie’s. It’s what she could afford and it kept him quiet.

  I am stunned by this whole thing. I take the feather and blow on it. The sensation I get is like glitter spilled down my back. I shake my head. Lawanda watches.

  “What’s your mamaw’s name?”

  “Ada Smith. She was a Holcomb.”

  I laugh. “Holcombs don’t mean a thing to me.”

  There’s a frown between her eyebrows, but otherwise she just gazes. This girl is too calm.

  “Does Ms. Smith have visions all the time?”

  “No,” Lawanda says. “Just that one.”

  “And it was enough?”

  “I guess so. Enough to make her a healer, anyway. That keeps her busy.”

  “A lot of sickness in this world.”

  Lawanda nods. I think how to her that means cancer and black lung, while to me it means old Amos. AG, his initials say. Ag. Gag. Some dictionaries say Amos means “burden.” Why look it up? I say. Why drive five hours to meet it?

  But that’s what I’m doing, caught in his ego undertow. Viola says she can keep store. I close at four and Lawanda helps me deliver orders on the way home.

  “I’ve done this sometimes with Dad,” she offers.

  “Yours or mine?”

  She takes a deep breath. Maybe she’s not all that calm.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Done what?”

  “Delivered stuff. He’s the route man for the We-Suit-U cleaners.”

  “At least when you get the dry cleaning to the door, they don’t say it’s all wilted.”

  “Sometimes they do,” she says. There’s a break while she takes the Pine Cone Supreme to the Haddixes’. “One woman won’t a
llow her curtains to be put on hangers. I have to stand in the back of the truck and hold them over my arms.”

  I hoot and her gray eyes widen as if she never thought that could be funny. I practice deep breathing till we get home. Beechwood Estates, and not a tree in sight. Upstairs, end apartment, 43A—small but full of light. And the living room comer is a bay window, faceted out like a lute back. That’s where I have my cacti and crystals. Lawanda goes right over to it.

  “What a great lookout!”

  “Yeah. It’s a powerful place for me.”

  “I have a place like that,” she says. “The laurel rock up the hill behind our house. I go there to think.”

  “You’re young,” I tell her. “In twenty years, you won’t try to think.”

  “Excuse me?” She turns around, the last winter daylight her aura.

  “You’ll just be trying to get congruent.”

  She shakes her head.

  “Well, never mind. You want some juice or something before we go?”

  “No, but I need to call Mamaw.”

  “Sure. The phone is on the wall by the microwave.” I point her toward the kitchen.

  I really want to hear what she says to this woman, but nothing carries.

  When I come out with my stuff, she doesn’t look so good. She’s sitting in the comer of the couch.

  “You get her?”

  She just nods.

  “What did she say?”

  “Said my mom pitched a fit even Dad couldn’t catch.”

  “So?”

  “The two of them drove all the way to Sexton before Dad persuaded her I’d beat them home.”

  “Sounds like you’re in hot water.”

  “Boiling.”

  She smiles a little.

  “Let’s go then. I expect the longer you’re gone, the hotter it will get.”

  “Can it get any hotter than boiling?”

  “It could boil dry,” I say, “and ruin the pan.”

  “Okay.”

  We head out.

  …

  It’s not a bad trip once we make it through the traffic. I like getting out of Louisville, so something besides the river can shape my mind. I just wish it wasn’t Amos. I suggest Lawanda look through my tapes.

  “Ocean,” she says, holding one up. “What does it mean?”

  “Just that. Waves, surf, wind, birds. What you’d hear if you were on the beach.”