Sunlight sparkled in her hair, and as I watched her, another twinge hammered my chest. I realized my misgivings with a pristine clarity. I wasn’t afraid of running the gauntlet of Tennessee. It couldn’t do me any worse than it had already done. No, my ache arose from the thought of losing Em in the end. Without my noticing, she’d become my reason for being. I had many more things to show her, to teach her, a lifetime of hugs to give her. And less than a day’s worth of time.
I sighed and tried to memorize the feel of her miniature hand in mine as I reached to help her up from the grass. “All right, Em. We need to get back to the cave. I’m going to pack everything up, and we can wait for our ride, okay?”
“Okay.” Bounce-bounce. “I’ll help.”
We descended into the ravine and sorted our gear in the shade at the mouth of the cave. A car slowed down on the highway, approaching the entrance to Bear Creek Mound. My eyes followed the flash of morning light on window glass and dark paint as it sped up and disappeared over the rise into Alabama. I rubbed my face and noted the position of the sun. Around eight o’clock.
“Let’s hurry with this stuff, Em. We can leave it behind those rocks over there until Leslie arrives. Pretend like we came to see the sights along the Trace if anybody comes along. Don’t tell anyone we camped.”
“How long will we be here?” She stuffed wads of corduroy and cotton into her bag. Set out a clean outfit to change. I knelt beside her and helped her fold them neat.
“Pudge promised me he’d try to get our ride here early, but who knows? She might have been delayed again. We might have a while to wait. It’s about eight o’clock now.”
“How do you know that?”
“How do I know what?”
“How do you know what time it is by looking at the sun? Most people just wear a watch, but you don’t. You always know where we are and what time it is.”
I clutched her sleeping bag and rolled it up like a snail shell. “I guess my step-father taught me.”
“I don’t know any daddies who teach stuff like that.”
“Well, I am a lot older than you, remember? Anyway, it was a long time ago.”
She pulled herself up on the rocks at the cave’s entrance and balanced on both hands before sliding back to the ground. I kept one eye on her and started to fold the other sleeping bag as she climbed the rock again. “How old are you? I mean, I don’t think you’re really old, like fifty, are you?”
She hovered at the top, waiting.
“Fifty isn’t really that old, Em. But, no. I’m not fifty.”
“Well?”
Slip-slide down.
“Well, what?”
“How old are you, then?” She stopped in the midst of climbing to watch me. I avoided her nosy eyes and strapped the sleeping bags to the packs. Zips and snaps and the distant caw of a crow.
“I was, am thirty-five. Thirty-five years old.”
Her lips moved as she counted on her mud-caked fingers. “That’s my daddy’s age, Merry! You and him are the same exact age! Isn’t that amazing?”
I threw the packs up over the lip of ground. They landed with a puff in the dirt next to the trail from the parking lot. “Yeah.”
“Maybe you will be best friends because you’re the same age.”
“Em, come here a minute. Sit next to me, okay?”
I sat on a cool, flat rock and waited for her to come and stand in front of me. Almost eye to eye. She smelled like mouldering leaves and Tinkerbell.
My hands hovered over hers, but I pulled them back and looked away, into the nothingness of the cave. “You have got to understand something about me, Em. Promise me you’ll try.”
“What?”
“I won’t be staying with you in Nashville.”
“But—”
“It’s my job to take you to your father. If I complete that job, I’ll get another one. I think.”
“But you can get a job in Nashville. Daddy’ll help you.”
“My job’s kind of unique, Em. It takes me all over. You won’t see me anymore.”
Her lower lip trembled. “Don’t you love me, Merry? Because I sure do love you. Almost as much as my daddy.”
“Aw, Em. Come on. You’re tearing my guts out here. Of course, I love you.”
My heart lurched like I’d been shot. I took her in my arms and pulled her to me. While she cried, I spoke into her frizz of hair. “I’ll always love you, Em. No matter where I am. No matter what I’m doing. A part of me will always, always be with you. Even if you can’t see me.”
“But how will I know you’re there if I can’t see you?”
“You’ve loved your daddy all this time, Em, and you haven’t been able to see him, right?”
Her hair tickled my nose when she nodded.
“You’ll know I’m there. Somehow, you’ll know.”
“Do you promise?”
I turned watery eyes to the sky and uttered empty words to form what I hoped would not be a lie. “Yes. I promise.”
FORTY-SEVEN
An eighteen wheeler. I gauged the retreating sun as it pulled into the parking area. Almost sunset.
Em and I spent most of the day at Bear Creek Mound, running up and down its dirt sides and wading in the creek, looking for a ghost. We even explored beyond where we slept at the entrance to the cave. She didn’t squirm when I hugged her more than my share of times. In my heart, I counted them all. One less time, and one less time.
Another day almost gone.
The truck pulled to a stop, and I studied our ride. A black hulker with a chrome grille pulling a refrigerated tank. A white-haired woman drove that monster. And yet, she was agile when she hopped down from the cab. Hands in the back pockets of her jeans, she walked over to us. Her gait was unguarded. Casual.
“You Merry?” Her voice boomed like a man.
I stood to greet her, pulling Emmaline up beside me.
“Yes. Nice of you to pick us up.” I stuck out my hand, and she shook it hard.
“Leslie Lynn, and it was no trouble a’tall. Sorry I’m so blasted late. Ain’t always easy to find enough fuel for that rig to drink these days.”
“It’s a problem everywhere, I hear.”
“Yep. Managed enough to get us to Nashville. I got another delivery up there tomorrow, so I can take you then. These beasts ain’t allowed on the Trace, but I make up my own rules and mostly, nobody cares in this back end of nowhere. That plan suit you? Going on in the morning?”
My throat dried up. I covered my mouth and coughed, trying to expel my growing dread. “I guess it will be fine.”
Leslie eyed me for a beat. Seer’s eyes. The kind that could read minds. She jabbed her thumb over her shoulder. “Throw your stuff in the back of the cab.” Turning to Emmaline, she knelt, and her gruff edges dissolved into grandmother-hood personified. “You ever ridden in one of these big trucks...what’s your name?”
“Emmaline. And I’ve never even seen a truck like yours up close.”
“Well. Are you in for a treat.”
“Can I ride in the front? Do you have a CB? What funny name do people call you on it? Can I talk on it? Will anybody answer me? Does—”
“Whoawhoawhoa. Slow down, girl. It ain’t wise to throw your skirt up in front of strangers.”
Emmaline’s brow crinkled. “Huh?”
With a hand on Em’s shoulder, Leslie led her to the truck. I picked up our gear and followed their tracks, a few steps behind, fighting to get my gnawing funk under control.
“Always best for a girl to maintain some mystery.”
“My mother always said that, but she never explained what it meant.”
Leslie took her hand. “So, she wanted to keep things a mystery to you.”
“Oh. I get it. It means holding some things back, right? But how can I have mys
tery, Miss Leslie?”
“Watch folks before you ask a bunch of questions. Sometimes, they’ll tell you what you want to know without you ever having to say you wanted to know it in the first place.”
I studied Leslie’s close-cropped grey hair and tried to imagine her younger, charming the britches off men. Her lean figure and ready smile made that vision no stretch.
She lifted Emmaline into the cab. I went around the other side and climbed the chrome steps into the passenger seat. Emmaline twitched beside me, but she didn’t touch anything. I could almost see her thinking that she had to act grown-up.
I rubbed my temple to block out the tell-tale starburst that flashed at the corner of my left eye.
I tossed our things behind me, into an alcove with a narrow bed. The proportions, the sheer size of the cab, made me dizzy. I slumped against the glass of the window, cooling my forehead against it. A solitary crow circled, up high.
Leslie pulled herself into the driver’s seat and started the engine. It sputtered deep music, a mechanical rumble. I watched her feet work the pedals as she shifted gears. Almost like synchronized rowing. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. Tried to breathe through the panic that was overtaking me.
When we took a left turn along the main highway, a wave of nausea assaulted me. Foreboding. I swallowed and squeezed my lids together. A stab at sleep. I shut my eyes against the familiar things that flashed outside. The flat, swampy stretch of Alabama. The Tennessee River. That wandering ridge line that rose and fell all the way to Nashville, broken by one hideous spot. My spot. A roadside attraction for the few who remembered it.
“Where did you say your place is again, Leslie?”
“Near old Grinder’s Stand. Ever heard of it?”
My eyes fluttered open. I swallowed and flicked a trickle of cold sweat from my forehead. “Yeah. I have.”
“You can walk there if you want. Along the Old Trace. They keep it maintained pretty well.”
Emmaline reached out and held my hand, but I could barely feel it in mine. The fireworks were coming faster behind the whites of my eyes. I shielded them with one hand and sighed into the pain.
“Grinder’s is famous. Or infamous.” Leslie’s hands were steady on the huge wheel.
“Why?” Emmaline leaned her head on my arm and kept her eyes on the road scrolling through the glass.
I forced myself to answer, to talk about the damned place. Maybe describing it in advance would dull its edge, mute its power.
“Lots of people were robbed there. Stands were big places for thieves. Some travelers were killed, and others...well, they just died.”
“The stand burned to the ground a while ago. All that’s left is the old stone doorstep.” Leslie downshifted and motored the rig uphill. “Pretty quiet there, most of the time.”
“Will we see it, Merry? On the way to Daddy?”
“No. We won’t have time to stop, Em.”
Leslie ruffled Em’s hair with one hand. “I’ll take you over there. Merry don’t look like he feels too good. We can let him rest while we go exploring. How does that sound?”
I slumped further in my seat, my pounding head against the headrest, facing out the window. Mountain trees whizzed by in the light of dusk. Faded reds and yellows and oranges, a hardwood kaleidoscope of autumn. The air was crisper, the chill of higher elevation.
Or, perhaps the cold emanated from inside me. My breath froze on the back of my hand, and my toes were numb. Whatever would be, my end was close. I concentrated to keep my teeth from chattering.
“You can stretch out in back if you want, Merry. You look like you could use some rest.”
“You wouldn’t mind?”
“Nah. I got to clean up back there before I go on another run, but it’ll serve for a nap.”
I nodded and flung a shaky leg over the seat, dragging the other one behind me. The bed was too short, leaving me to curl up like an unborn babe, face to the trembling back wall.
Starbursts pulsed behind my eyelids, regular. Maybe Leslie would forget about me when we got there, leave me in the truck the whole time. Wake me after breakfast, when it was time to leave for Nashville. Maybe I would sleep through the whole thing.
I hovered above the road. Feverish. The ghost-like imprint of my surroundings invaded my dreams. Everywhere, they breathed their chilly, shimmering breath. I saw the winding wagon ruts. The leaning boughs of trees. The play of sunlight and shadow on the worn ground beneath my horse’s feet. A crude fence and a grazing cow. The inside of a rustic room.
Two bursts of gunfire on a lonesome autumn night.
FORTY-EIGHT
“Can we play this game, Miss Leslie?”
I pulled out the big white piece of plastic with bright colored circles on it and spread it out on the floor. Miss Leslie came in from the kitchen, a cup in her wrinkly hands.
Hot chocolate. For me.
I took it from her and let the steam wet my face. It smelled like warm cake. I stuck my tongue in to test it, coating it with creamy liquid as far as it would go, before I put it on the floor. “I’ll wait for it to get cooler. Will you play this game with me?”
Miss Leslie rubbed her back and cocked her head to one side. “You like Twister?”
“Yes. I love it. I’m real good at it. See?”
I bent over and reached my arms through my legs and put my hands flat on the floor. My face was hot when I stood up straight, but I still did a back bend. When I came up, I saw stars and stumbled a little. “Whoa. Maybe I should rest and drink my chocolate before we play.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Miss Leslie sat on her orange sofa and put a pillow behind her back. She patted the seat, and I crawled up beside her. I held my hot chocolate in both hands, careful not to spill any. My mother never let me eat or drink on the furniture, but when Daddy was around, we ate whole meals together, always in front of the big stereo, listening to all kinds of music. I liked it when we danced with sticky food fingers, because it felt like we could never let each other go.
Kind of like Merry. He made me do so many new things, stuff I always wanted to do, even if I didn’t know it. I thought back over the things he taught me: how to set up a tent and where to step in a rocky stream and how to read the map of the night sky. He never got scared, always tackled everything like he knew he could do it.
He was the kind of grown-up—the kind of person—I wanted to be.
Miss Leslie sipped from her cup. “Should we go check on Merry?”
“Maybe he should sleep for a little while longer. He’s got to be tired, because I’m quite a handful.”
Miss Leslie threw her head back when she laughed. “Yeah. I can see how you could be.”
“Merry always seems sad. Sometimes, I do things just to try to make him laugh.”
“Well, men like Merry, they need to laugh now and again.”
“When we get to Nashville, Merry and Daddy will be best friends. Daddy makes everybody happy. That’s what I told Merry. I said it to make him feel better, but it seemed to make him sadder. Do you think Merry won’t like Daddy?”
Miss Leslie put down her cup. “Aw shoot, honey. I don’t got no way of knowing the mysteries of man things. Men are a funny bunch.”
“But I’m sure Daddy will love Merry, because he worked so hard to get me to Nashville. We’ve been chased and shot at and thrown from horses and hid in closets and everything.”
“Yeah. You’ve been through the ringer, all right. Wicked folks have always been attracted to this patch of country.”
“Do you know Mister De Silva, too?” I ran my tongue around the lip of my mug. Remnants of chocolate melted in my mouth.
Miss Leslie shifted on her pillow and stared out the window. Moths beat against the glass, just under the porch light. She sighed. “Yeah. I know him.”
“How?”
>
“Well. See, that’s a complicated story. Might be too much for you, at your age and all.”
“Oh, Miss Leslie, you can tell me. My life is pretty complicated, you know.”
Miss Leslie cleared her throat and looked at me. “Um. Well. My daughter. She used to have quite a thing for Hector. Still does, truth be told. In fact, they were married for a little while.
“They aren’t now?”
“Nope. Men like him jump when a better offer comes along.”
“What does that mean? A better offer?”
“Well, some people, they have what’s called a wandering eye. They don’t ever see what they got, because they’re always pining for what they don’t. Hector’s one of them people. Good heart. Just gets bored with women.”
I looked at the pattern on the Twister board. Green and yellow. Blue and red. Is that why my mother had all her men? Because her eye wandered? She accused Daddy of cheating on her, but she had men around her as long as I remembered. Maybe she got tired of Daddy. Not the other way around.
Miss Leslie stood up and stretched. She stepped on a red plastic circle. “Let’s fun things up a bit, shall we?”
I slid my foot to a green circle. But I couldn’t make my mind stop thinking. Would Daddy go to hell because my mother divorced him? My stomach turned a somersault, and yuck came up in my throat. I never thought to ask the nuns at school. Thinking about it made my eyes burn. How could anybody sort through everything and decide who went to hell? It was all so tricky.
I jumped a little when Miss Leslie touched my back. “Hey. You there. What’s going on in that head?”
“Do you think people who get divorced automatically have to go to hell?”
Miss Leslie blinked. “Whoa. Deep thoughts, and here we are supposed to be playing a game.” She chewed the inside of her cheek and looked at me. I could see her brain trying to come up with the right answer for a child, but I wanted her to treat me like an adult. I put my hands on my hips and waited, while she walked over to the window. She didn’t look at me when she went on. “Emmaline, I don’t think divorce sends people to hell. Who taught you a thing like that?”
To Live Forever: An Afterlife Journey of Meriwether Lewis Page 21