by White, Ruth
Mama went straightaway to fix us some lunch, and Porter settled down with the Sunday edition of the Bluefield Daily Telegraph.
“I reckon Woodrow is becoming quite the traveler,” Porter said to me.
“Whadda ya mean?” I said.
“Yesterday Bluefield, today Roanoke.”
I sat up and looked at Porter. “Ro’noke?”
“Yeah, his Aunt Millie and Uncle Russell took him there today.”
“His Aunt Millie and Uncle Russell?” I said. “What for?”
“To see his daddy.”
“His daddy?”
“Is there an echo in here?” Porter said with a grin.
Porter relished any opportunity to tell folks interesting things they didn’t already know. That’s why the newspaper business fit him like a glove.
“Tell me!” I said.
“While you young’uns were galavantin’ all over West Virginia, your grandpa had a long-distance call from Woodrow’s daddy. He said he has admitted himself to a special hospital in Roanoke. His brother, Russell, and Russell’s wife, Millie, were driving out there today to visit him, and he wanted Woodrow to come along.”
“What’s he in the hospital for?”
“To get dried out.”
“What does that mean—to get dried out?”
“It means he’s soggy with alcohol.”
“In other words, he’s an alcoholic,” Mama said, coming in from the kitchen, “and he needs medical attention. Lunch is ready.”
You didn’t have to tell me and Porter twice to come and eat. We settled around the kitchen table, said the blessing, and began to fill our plates.
“Does that mean Uncle Everett is addicted to alcohol?” I asked.
“Yes, alcoholism is an addiction,” Mama said.
“That’s another thing Woodrow and Joseph have in common,” I said. “Joseph’s daddy is addicted to gambling. Is there a hospital for that, too?”
“I don’t know,” Porter said, “but there should be.”
“How long will Uncle Everett be there?”
“He’ll probably be hospitalized for a month or so, but he plans to stay in Roanoke permanently,” Porter said.
“He’s moving away from Crooked Ridge?” I asked.
“Yeah, he has a job offer in Roanoke, if he straightens himself out. He also wants to stay near the hospital in case he backslides.”
“Do you think he’ll make Woodrow move with him?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Mama said. “You see, Gypsy, there’s a woman in the picture now, and it’s my bet she does not want Woodrow.”
“You mean Woodrow’s daddy is gonna get married again?”
“I think so,” Mama went on. “Everett wants to file for a divorce from Belle. That’s another thing he said on the phone.”
“Does Woodrow know that?”
“He’ll find out today,” Mama said with a sigh. “Poor kid.”
“How could Uncle Everett do that to Aunt Belle when she’s not even here to speak for herself?”
“I doubt seriously that she would care if she were here,” Porter said.
“I think she’d be glad,” Mama agreed. “But it’s still hard on Woodrow. They’re his parents, and he loves them both.”
I told Mama and Porter more details about our trip. I talked about Cassie and Pap, the old toothless man, the Bluegrass Blues, and the Luckys. But they were most interested in Joseph and Miz Lincoln.
“How tall would you say she is?” Mama wanted to know.
“She’d come about up to my shoulder,” I said.
“Is that right?” Mama said. Her eyes were big. “I wonder how she goes about shopping for clothes? Does she shop in the children’s department, or what?”
Porter laughed. “You would think of that.”
As the day wore on, Mama let me be as lazy as I wanted to be, and between naps I finished my Nancy Drew mystery. A person needs a day like this once in a while, I thought. Life with Woodrow had turned into one never-ending adventure, and that can wear you out.
When Woodrow came home, late that evening, he did not tramp across the yard to see me, like I thought he would. I was surprised, but I pulled myself off the couch and ran next door through the mud puddles to find out what was happening. I was even more surprised when I got there and learned that Woodrow was already in bed.
Granny and Grandpa were sitting on the couch, watching The Ed Sullivan Show. I settled down between them, and Dawg squirmed right under my feet. I petted her.
“I think Woodrow’s a little depressed,” Granny said. “Even when you have a rough childhood as he did, it’s hard to say goodbye to it.”
“Did he tell y’all what happened today?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Grandpa said. “His daddy told him that a relative is planning to move into their house on Crooked Ridge. He told Woodrow to go there and look through his mother’s things, decide what he wants to keep, and dispose of the rest. He talked about Belle as if she were dead.”
“So when are you gonna take Woodrow up there to Crooked Ridge?” I said.
“It has to be this Saturday,” Grandpa said. “The feller wants to move in the following week.”
“Woodrow was planning to go back to Bluefield on Saturday,” I said.
Grandpa shrugged. “He can’t do both.”
The next morning the rain had stopped, and I met Woodrow, as usual, to walk to school. He was quiet, and I didn’t push it. He would tell me everything by and by.
When we got to Mr. Collins’s homeroom, Cassie came rushing up to us, grabbed Woodrow’s arm with one hand and mine with the other, and pulled us off into a private corner away from our classmates.
“What was in the letter?” she whispered excitedly to Woodrow.
“What letter?” he said.
“The letter your mama wrote to you. I know she did! I dreamed it.”
“I didn’t get it!” Woodrow said, and now he was excited, too. “Maybe it will come today!”
“No, no, no!” Cassie said. “She wrote it before she left you. In the dream she was standing on a stairway with a letter in her hand. There was one word on the envelope, wrote out in large block letters—WOODROW”
“How do you know it was before she left?”
“Because she was sad to be leaving you. She was crying!”
Woodrow was stunned into silence.
“So there wadn’t no letter from her to you?” Cassie prodded.
“No, me and Daddy and the sheriff and everybody searched the cabin good. We looked ever’where for any clues. If there’d been a letter, we’d a’ found it.”
“It’s another parallel to Joseph’s story,” I whispered. “His daddy sent him a letter that he never got, and your mama wrote you a letter that you never got.”
“That’s right!” Woodrow said. “Read the signs!” He turned to Cassie again. “In the dream, what was Mama wearing?”
“I couldn’t see that,” Cassie said. “She was standing in the shadows.”
“On a stairway?” Woodrow said. “There’s no stairs there in the cabin. There’s a ladder going up to the loft, that’s all.”
“Maybe that was it,” Cassie said.
“Saturday me and Gypsy are going up there to my old house,” Woodrow said.
It was the first time I had heard I was going along, but that was okay. Me and Woodrow assumed a lot of things about each other these days.
“Go with us, Cassie!” he went on. “Maybe you’ll pick up something while you’re there.”
“What about Bluefield?” Cassie said.
“Bluefield will have to wait. Daddy’s cousin Calvin is gonna move into the house next week, and I’ve gotta sift through Mama’s things.”
“Sure, I’d like to go,” Cassie said. “Pap can get by without me one Saturday.”
Bitter cold days followed, but the sky was clear. I had a new wool hat to keep my ears warm, but I soon decided I must have an allergy to wool, because it made my head itch some
thing awful. On Thursday morning, as Woodrow and I walked to school, I had to stop for a moment, and ask him to hold my books while I took off the hat to scratch my head.
He stood there without a word, watching me scratch. It appeared that his mind was anywhere but in the moment, or he would have been laughing at me. Since the weekend he had grown more and more gloomy, which was definitely not his nature, and he had dived into his schoolwork like he was consumed with it. He studied every hour he was not sleeping or eating or doing his chores.
“I haven’t seen you without your nose in a book this whole week,” I said.
He didn’t answer. I replaced the hat and tied the string under my chin. I took my books from him, and we continued our walk.
“You know what they say about all work and no play,” I chided him. “What’s it gonna get’cha to study so hard, anyhow?”
“It’ll get me to be the smartest person in the world,” he answered in all seriousness. “I’m gonna read Grandpa’s whole set of encyclopedias.”
“What!”
“That’s right. I started on Monday, and I won’t be doing anything for fun till I’ve finished.”
“How far are you up to now?”
“I am up to aardvark.”
13
On Saturday morning the radio weatherman predicted snow for the afternoon, so Grandpa was uneasy in his mind about starting up an isolated holler like Crooked Ridge without chains on the tires of his new car. By the time he’d drug the chains out of his storage shed, and Porter helped him put them on over the tires, it was close to eleven and the snow clouds were hovering.
Mama was down at the church house doing something or other, and Cassie had been with me since nine o’clock, waiting. We were both wearing our jeans that day, as well as heavy sweaters and boots. While we waited for Grandpa, I picked out a few songs on the piano that the Bluegrass Blues had done for us. I thought I did a pretty good job playing, but when Cassie and I tried to sing like Bonnie and the two Nancys, it was plain even to us that we should never try to make a living at it.
Woodrow couldn’t wait to get started. He wandered in and then out of our house, restless but quiet. He was still in a dark mood, which surprised me. Normally, Woodrow did not stay down in the mouth for long.
Finally, Porter came in, stopped in the kitchen to wash his hands, and yelled to me and Cassie, “Okay, girls, Grandpa and Woodrow are ready and waiting for you.”
Cassie and I grabbed our coats, scarves, gloves, and hats and hurried out the door. Woodrow had laid down on the horn before we got to the car.
“Git a move on!” he hollered.
He was sitting in the front seat with Grandpa, so me and Cassie climbed into the rear.
“All right, you girls, listen up,” Grandpa said. “If road conditions get too bad up there at Crooked Ridge, we’re not gonna try to drive home in the dark. We’ll have to spend the night. Are y’all ready to do that?”
“You mean sleep in that place?” I said.
Over the top of the seat, Woodrow shot me the dirtiest look he had.
“I slept there for twelve years!” he said hotly. “I don’t reckon one night is gonna spoil your pretty looks!”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I protested weakly.
“Porter said if we’re not home by dark, he’ll call the bus station and leave a message there for your daddy,” Grandpa said to Cassie. “Is that gonna be all right?”
“Yeah,” Cassie said.
“Are you sure?” Grandpa persisted.
“I’m sure,” Cassie said. “Pap won’t worry about me as long as he knows what’s going on, and that I’m with y’all.”
“Is there anything up there to eat, Woodrow?” I said, because I was already hungry for lunch.
Woodrow didn’t answer, and I knew right then I had ruffled his feathers good.
“Granny fixed us a big old picnic basket full of stuff,” Grandpa said quickly. “It’s in the trunk. So, is everybody with us?”
“Yes,” Cassie and I said together.
I wanted to run into the house for my toothbrush and nightgown, but seeing the mood Woodrow was in, I didn’t dare.
As we hit the highway and picked up speed, the tire chains made quite a racket. Above the noise, Cassie and I kept up a constant stream of chatter. We were excited about driving to such an out-of-the-way place with a possible snowstorm coming. It was another adventure with Woodrow. But he rode all the way to the mouth of Crooked Ridge wordless and motionless, except for scratching his head a bit.
Once we got there, he said, “This is where you turn, Grandpa.”
“I know, I know,” Grandpa said. “I’m not senile yet, boy.”
The holler curled up and up between the mountains, becoming more and more narrow and rocky as we went. I wondered what would happen if we were to meet a coal truck, because there was not room for even two cars to pass, much less a truck. But we didn’t meet anybody, so I didn’t find out. A light snow started, and Grandpa had to turn on his windshield wipers. Suddenly he pulled over to one side of the road and stopped the car. We were in front of the Prater house.
I had not been here many times in my life, and the last time was maybe two years before Aunt Belle disappeared. I had nearabout forgot how desolate and rundown the place was. It was a sorry sight.
A wisp of a memory came to me then. In the summer sun I saw me and Woodrow as little bitty kids, no more’n three or four, playing in the creek there behind the house while Mama and Aunt Belle picked blackberries on the bank. It was one of the few times Mama had taken me to see them, and it had been a right nice day.
I recalled the water sparkling in the sunshine, and me and Woodrow trying to catch the glitter in our hands. The pebbles were round and firm under our baby toes.
Returning to the present moment, I saw that the seasons had turned it into a different place. For one thing, the creek was froze around the edges, and you’d have to be crazy to stick your toes in there. Also, the gray hills, towering steep and rugged all around us, showed no trace of that long-ago summer’s green.
The snow was coming down harder. When we got out of Grandpa’s car, I was struck by the quiet. We coulda a been the last people living in the world.
Woodrow’s face took on no particular expression, but I saw him swallow hard. It was the first time he had returned to this place where he had spent his childhood with his mama.
“I’ll start a fire,” Grandpa said lightheartedly, and slapped Woodrow’s shoulder playfully, trying to cheer him up, I reckoned. “You think there’s any firewood in there?”
Woodrow didn’t answer. He stepped up on the low porch, and the rest of us followed. He gave the door a push, and it kinda fell open. One of the hinges was barely there. I could remember nothing about the interior of the cabin, and I wondered if I had ever been inside.
“It ain’t changed a lot,” Woodrow said, as he gazed into the darkness.
I peeped in but couldn’t see much. The room was in shadows. Hesitantly, we went inside. I could see a window at each end of the room, but they did not give much light. Automatically, I reached for a light switch, but there was none.
“Where’s the light switch?” I asked Woodrow.
He walked to the center of the room and yanked a cord, but nothing happened.
“I shoulda knowed it,” he said sourly. “Daddy didn’t pay the juice bill.”
I shivered. I hadn’t counted on spending the day—and possibly the night—in a place with no electricity. After all, this was the middle of the twentieth century!
“Got any lanterns?” Grandpa said.
“There may be one up in the loft,” Woodrow said.
When my eyes were adjusted to the dimness, I could see a big stone fireplace along the wall by the front door, a ratty couch before it, two armchairs, and various other pieces of worn-out furniture. It was a dismal, melancholy room.
On the end wall to our left was a coal cookstove, and behind it the wall was papered with pages fr
om a Sears and Roebuck catalog. There were two tall gray porcelain cabinets for dishes and things, and a wooden table with four chairs. Near it was a washstand that held a water bucket, a dipper, and a wash pan. A dirty green towel was hanging from a rack on the side of it.
On the wall facing us as we went in, there was a doorway that led into the one bedroom. Right beside it was a homemade ladder that went into the loft. I looked up there and saw a gate at the top of the ladder. The loft had never been finished proper, and it was more like a balcony than a real room. It had a plank fence across the front of it. I knew Woodrow had slept up there.
At that moment Woodrow was climbing up the ladder in search of a lantern. I watched him open the gate onto a braided rug covering a plain board floor. The loft was tiny, barely deep enough for a straw-tick mattress against the wall, and a small chifforobe at the end, where Woodrow had no doubt kept his belongings.
Tucked into the roof, where it slanted over the bed, there was a small round window like ones I had seen on ships in the movies. It was the one touch of charm in this bleak place.
Woodrow climbed down the ladder with a kerosene lamp dangling from his arm. He carried it to one of the cabinets, fumbled around in a drawer for matches, lit the lamp, and set it on the table. The room’s dark shadows melted.
“There orta be enough firewood here to start with,” Woodrow said, and pointed to a large covered box beside the fireplace. “And some kindlin’ and paper.”
Cassie and I huddled together on the couch while Grandpa and Woodrow got a blazing fire roaring up the chimney. The room took on a more friendly atmosphere right away. We got out of our overcoats, gloves, and hats, and studied the room.
You could imagine it was much nicer when Aunt Belle was here to take care of it. There were pictures hanging on the walls, alongside homemade crafts, probably created by Aunt Belle. Some of Woodrow’s early childhood art was tacked to a board across the top of the bedroom door. We went in there and found a heating stove. It was more cheerful than the main room.
“Here’s some slack coal,” Grandpa said, peeping into a coal bucket by the stove. “I’ll get us a fire started in here, too.”
Woodrow removed some well-worn quilts and pillows from a wardrobe, carried them out into the main room, and spread them on the floor in front of the fireplace.