Farewell, I'm Bound to Leave You

by Fred Chappell

  “‘That’s a pleasure to hear,’ he said, ‘because it’s a right far piece to get there and you’ll be going slow. Leastways I hope you will.’

  “It took her a moment to catch on. ‘But I never drove,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how to drive.’

  “‘I’m going to tell you how.’

  “‘I don’t think I can.’

  “‘Sure you can. Anybody that can catch them a big old fish like that one can drive. Let me see that thing.’

  “She held it up and he wagged his head in wonderment, just the way she’d hoped he would.

  “‘I’d call it a keeper,’ he said, but then he grimaced. He opened his left hand to show his key ring ready for her. ‘This here’s the ignition key,’ he said, and went on to explain, patient and salty, just as if he was in no pain or danger, how to drive. He answered all the questions she could think to ask. ‘There’s easier trucks to learn on,’ he said, ‘but if you can drive my old Ford, you can drive anything. I was planning on learning you anyway.’

  “‘I don’t know about this,’ she said.

  “‘Yes you do,’ he said. ‘Because you’ve got to. You’ll be all right. Just keep your head like you had a big old fish on your line. You understand me now?’

  “‘Yes, sir.’

  “‘Hurry along, then. Leave your stuff here with me. Try to make some speed, but be mighty careful. Stop the first people you see and tell them what the trouble is.’

  “‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  “‘You better be quick,’ the old man said. ‘Because if I get hungry, I’m going to eat your fish.’”

  * * *

  “She struggled on the mountainside, pulling herself up with any handhold she could find, but slipping backward on the shale. Once she went down on a patch of sharp gravel and tore her jeans and when she saw her knees bleeding, she tried not to think about it. Already her mouth was dry and she wasn’t halfway up to the road.

  “When she got there, she had to pause and think which way to turn and she began to talk to herself aloud, being her own old man Worley. ‘Slow down,’ she said. ‘Think it out. We started up on top of a ridge where that walnut tree was and the road goes uphill here to the right, so it must be in that direction.’

  “Her reasoning was sound. After the second curve she spotted the truck under the towering walnut and let out a noisy sob of relief.

  “She climbed in on the driver’s side and for a brief moment crossed her arms on the steering wheel and laid her head there and wept a little. Her legs ached and burned, her throat was sandpaper, and she was frightened.

  “Then she collected herself and tried to get her thoughts in order, though the strange sensation of sitting on the wrong side of the truck cab distracted her. On the passenger side the seat was firm, but on this side it was butt-sprung. And the litter underfoot—the broken tools and paper cups and soft-drink cans—confused her feet as she tried the pedals.

  “She dug the key ring out of her shirt pocket but couldn’t fit the right key into the ignition until she thought to turn it upside down. ‘If I can’t even get the key in, how will I ever drive this thing?’ she asked. And answered: ‘By learning me some patience, the way God gave Job boils.’

  “When she twisted the key, the starter whined and the truck lurched forward against the walnut tree. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Remember you’ve got to push the clutch in.’

  “She had to balance forward on the edge of the seat with the steering wheel brushing her chest in order to reach the clutch. When the motor caught at last, she concentrated on finding reverse. Not an easy task. She kept putting it into second, rocking against the tree, and killing the motor, but finally she backed it out into the road, wrestled it into low gear, and rolled away.

  “‘Somebody could have come around the curve right then,’ she said. ‘They would’ve hit me smack dead-on. There wouldn’t be nothing left of us but license tags.’

  “It was dreadful to push in the clutch and feel the truck speed downhill. This time she couldn’t find second and skidded around a gravely curve, holding her breath when the rear end fishtailed. The gears scraped mercilessly.

  “‘Slow down.’

  “She hit the brakes and slid toward the ditch and almost killed the motor again. ‘I’ll keep it in second,’ she announced. ‘If I keep trying to change gears, I’m going to roll off the mountain.’

  “A drop of sweat made her nose itch and she tried to wipe it off on her shoulder but was afraid to take her eyes off the road. She knew she was swinging too wide on the curves, but when she tightened down, she was always late. The washboard stretches of road bounced her so high off the seat, her foot would slip from the accelerator and the truck would lurch almost to a standstill. It’s not many times a girl will wish for more lard in her bucket, but this one time Earlene knew she was too light where she needed heft.

  “She risked a glance at the speedometer. Thirty miles an hour. She would have sworn she was going sixty, the gravel spraying up behind her and the truck leaping up and down like a jackrabbit and the flowery roadsides whizzing by. Thirty was still too fast, but when she braked on the curves, she slid the wrong way. And when the road climbed again, she had to floor the accelerator to keep going at all. She would rather chance a wreck than have the motor die on a steep upgrade. ‘I don’t know what I would do. Roll backward all the way home, I guess.’

  “But then on the next curve there was a car headed toward her, a rusty red station wagon bearing down fast. She swerved to the right-hand side, rubbing against the clay bank with big tree roots protruding. There was a tearing noise and the truck rocked fearfully, but when she tried to pull back onto the road, the ditch kept crumbling away so that the truck was leaning against the bank and digging in. Then she saw it coming, the big rock sticking out of the bank, big as a corncrib, but there was nothing she could do. It took out the window on the passenger side and crumpled the door and skewed the truck halfway around, setting it crosswise in the road.

  “‘If a car comes through here now, we’re all doomed,’ she said. ‘Just a red spot in the road.’

  “She twisted the steering wheel to the left as hard as she could and gentled the acceleration and the truck straightened out. It was hard to turn and she was sure there was something wrong with the steering. The right fender would be rubbing against the tire, but there was something else wrong, too. ‘He is going to have an A-one conniption fit when he sees his truck,’ she said, and began to wonder if she could impute the damage to the crazy driving of some splatter-shirted tourist.

  “The safety glass of the broken window flapped like a pillowcase in the wind and gritty dust stung her face and made her thirst more acute. She thought she heard the engine making strange noises, sounds no truck on earth had ever made before, and she could only hope the motor would hold out until she reached wherever she was going. The downhill grade had become pretty steep, so she knew she was nearing the western valley. There was a bridge there at the bottom and from the bridge straight up the river it was only about a mile and a half to where Mr. Worley lay in pain. ‘They’ll probably go up from the bridge to rescue him,’ she said, but the optimism of this sentence sounded hollow and she shook her head. ‘I’d just better mind keeping this old busted truck in the road.’

  “She had come to the last and steepest slope of the mountain and she knew it to be full of hairpin turns, so she stopped and put on the emergency brake and wiggled, sweating and muttering, into low gear. Steam was billowing from the radiator and it blew back in her face when she let the brake off and went slowly down, the engine roaring like a thresher in an oat field. ‘I hope this thing won’t blow up like a big firecracker,’ she said.

  “But she was getting close to the bottom. She could hear, or imagined she could hear, the river dashing against its boulders down there beneath the treetops. She hated crawling along like this with Mr. Worley hurting and maybe in danger of drowning. ‘But what good would it do him if I
drove off into the river?’ Still, she was glad he couldn’t see her inching along.

  “The road leveled out now that she had reached the bottom, so she stopped again and got it into second gear and went bumping along. Her jaw muscles ached from clenching her mouth shut; every time she talked to herself, her teeth clicked together and she bit her tongue. The crippled truck was shaking violently. Like a cat trying to pass a peach pit—that was what Mr. Worley would say, and Earlene nodded at the thought.

  “Because she felt a sweet relief. She could hardly believe she’d got down off the mountain alive in this busted-up old truck, but here she was on level ground. All she needed to do now was find somebody to send after Mr. Worley and save his life.

  “She spotted the bridge ahead and two vehicles pulled off beside it. One of them was a ranger. He was questioning a tourist in a red-and-yellow Hawaiian shirt and they both turned around to see her coming. They heard this engine about to blow up, she thought to herself. Just look at their faces. I’ll bet they never saw such an old wreck of a truck still traveling on the road. They look like they’re seeing Frankenstein’s monster.

  “When she got to where they were standing, she stopped the truck dead center in the road and cut the motor and climbed down. Me, too, she thought. I’ll bet I look like something they never saw before, either. Worse’n the truck. I’ll bet they think I’m a certified crazy person.

  “The ranger was coming toward her, with the tourist following tentatively, and she stood her ground, though she dreaded trying to answer any questions about her driving. But her legs kept trembling and finally buckled and she plopped down on the running board and gazed up in mute appeal into the ranger’s face. He was a middle-aged man with a bright complexion and his eyes were full of concern.

  “‘What’s wrong, young fellow?’ he asked. ‘Have you hit another vehicle back there on the road?’

  “‘When she tried to answer, she couldn’t. Her mouth and throat were parched and she couldn’t seem to get her breath. She looked down at the gravel and her damp tennis shoes, thinking, All I did all the way down the mountain was chatter to myself like a monkey and now I can’t speak a word.

  “‘Take it easy, son,’ the ranger said. ‘Take your time. Is there anybody hurt back there where you came from?’

  “She looked up now at the ranger, intent on his question, and at the plump tourist gawking at her with his mouth open, and stood up so quickly and with such an intense expression on her face that both men, with a concerted startled movement, stepped back from her. Wildly she looked from one to another. Then she ripped off the old felt hat all stuck to her head with sweat and flung it down in the dust and banged her fists against her hips. Her pretty red hair tumbled down on her neck as she cried out, ‘I ain’t no goddamn boy!’”

  * * *

  “Now I don’t think that was what she meant to say first thing off the bat,” my mother explained. “But it must have been foremost in her mind at that moment, because the sentence shot out of her mouth like a rock from a slingshot.”

  “What did those men say to her?” I asked.

  “Nothing. She told me they just stared at her like a person that had escaped from Bakersville Hall still dressed in a strait-jacket. Of course, she went on to tell them about old man Worley and the peril he was in and where he was located. She even had the presence to mention her fish and ask them to bring it out, too.”

  “Did they bring it?”

  “They sure did.”

  “How big was it?”

  “Just a little over ten pounds.”

  “I’d call it a keeper.”

  “Wasn’t she a brave young thing?” my mother said. “She’s my age now and still a spirited woman. Everybody knows what Cousin Earlene is like.”

  “How come you know so much about it? The things she was thinking and talking to herself?”

  “She told me a lot and then I put myself in her place so I could tell the story to you. That’s what storytellers do. Maybe you’ll remember that if you ever take a notion to tell stories. Do you think you’d like to be a storyteller?”

  “Maybe. But I don’t hardly know any stories.”

  “Don’t worry,” my mother said. “You’ll learn some. All you have to do is listen.”

  THE WIND WOMAN

  It seemed that my mother told me she had a number of duty calls to pay and asked if I would like to accompany her. And it seemed that I was younger than I actually was and said yes and we set out westward toward Hardison County in the old wooden station wagon we used to own and not in the new green Chevrolet sedan. It seemed that we were soon off the main highway, following rattling gravel roads squirming between mountains taller and bluer than any I remembered. My mother was wearing a smart linen dress and white gloves and white shoes and kept her gaze on the road, which went continually bright and dark with tree shadow. It was like she was not looking out a windshield but peering into something, a dim corner or a deep well.

  “We must pay our respects,” she told me. “First to the River Woman, who lives in the grassy bottom acres by the Little Tennessee. Then we must visit the Cloud Woman and the Fire Woman. The Moon Woman lives in a cave on the far side of Ember Mountain; I hear she has been ailing and has had doctors in, so we mustn’t stay long, but we have to make our call. If Aunt Priddy is home, we will stop by for tea but then must travel on to see the Deer Woman and the Happiest Woman. But I am most particularly anxious for you to meet the Wind Woman. Do you know why?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Well, I saw the other day that you were writing poetry in one of your notebooks. I don’t know what you were writing about, but if you ever take a notion to write about our part of the earth, about the trees and hills and streams, about the animals and our friends and neighbors who live in the mountains, then you must meet the Wind Woman, for you’ll never write a purposeful word till you do.”

  “Who is she?” I asked. “I never heard of her.”

  “That makes it all the more important.”

  “Where does she live?”

  My mother turned then to give me the pitying stare she reserved for those whose ignorance locked them in a darkness as extensive as the nightside of Mercury. “I thought you knew that. She lives on Wind Mountain, right there on the knob beside the sawtooth gap. I thought everybody knew at least that much.”

  “Not me.”

  She looked away. “I used to write poems. They were about the affections of my heart. My heart was always selfish, but my head has been clear. I have a good head for business, better than anybody knows. That comes later. When my heart was foolish and untamed, I wrote many poems.”

  “I’d like to read them.”

  “Oh, you can’t read them, Jess. No one can. I set them down in pokeberry juice and oak-gall ink. I wrote out the words with many a flourish on the petals of mallow and dogwood petals and morning glory. Then I gathered them all up in a great bedsheet and walked down to the iron bridge over the Pigeon River with them slung on my back. I emptied them out onto the waters. I can still see them floating away in the air like butterflies and then settling on the river in a sunny glistening and floating away down to the boiling rapids. It was a pretty sight, believe me.”

  “So nobody’ll ever know what you wrote.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll bet they were real good poems.”

  This time when she looked at me, shadows from inside her mind rippled over her face like furls in a breeze-raked silk banner. “Excuse me,” she said, and pulled over to the side of the road and got out of the station wagon and wept.

  * * *

  She stood weeping in the road for a long time.

  * * *

  When she got back in and started driving again, I could tell she felt better. She said to me, “There is a difference between a young woman writing lines of affection and a poet writing true things to be known and seen in the world. That’s why we must call on the Wind Woman and you must open your heart to her.”

/>   “No,” I said. “No, ma’am. Please.”

  “Oh but Jess,” she said, “there is no choice. I never did it, you see. I never spoke my mind to her. I never opened my mind to the Wind Woman and listened afterward to what she had to say. So when my passion for love was calmed in marriage and when my own family was ringed cozily about me, I laid my pen aside, feeling I had little more to tell. It is passionate affection or sorrow that makes most of us poets, and when those feelings are smoothed down by the hand of time, we all become like one another again and only see and know the same things. But when our passions are high, we are different from one another and see all things more furiously.”

  “Why couldn’t we be passionate all the time?”

  She sighed a withering long sigh. “Some can. A few poets can. The rest of us can’t. I don’t know why.”

  “Maybe I can,” I said.

  “Maybe so,” she said. “But that would be all the more reason you must talk to the Wind Woman. Passion must feed on something, Jess, and a poet’s passion must feed upon truth. And that is what she can supply.”

  “Well then, I’ll talk to her. But I have to tell you, I’m pretty scared of the idea.”

  “As well you should be,” she said. “But that’s the way it was with me, and so I never did. And for that very reason, you have to.… Oh, here we are at Aunt Priddy McCamus’s house. We really must stop in to call on her.”

  * * *

  Aunt Priddy was more like a hummingbird than a woman, and she ushered us into her shiny-floored front room and perched us on the hard edge of a yellow settee and made us drink sassafras tea and eat honey cake off little plates no bigger than thumbnails. The cake was sweet and flavorsome but had no more substance than the perfume of the tea.

  Then we went into her garden in back, where roses yellow and white caused it to seem this plot of ground contained a sunshine all its own, not borrowed from the sun in the sky. A tall whitewashed plank fence surrounded it and great sunflowers with mustard-colored faces and saffron collars looked blankly down upon us. They were ranged along the fence in straight lines and my mother took pains to admire them. “They are so all-out gorgeous,” she cried. “Aunt Priddy, you are a wonder, you are.”