Redemption Mountain

by FitzGerald, Gerry

  * * *

  IN THE SECOND half, the Bones continued to dominate the game. The final score was 8–0, the largest margin by which any of Natty’s teams had ever won a game. At the end of the game, the two scouts from North Carolina hurried down to introduce themselves to Natty. They thrust their business cards into her hand and asked if they could meet Emma. Natty put her arm around her shy star. “Emma, these women are from the University of North Carolina, and they came to watch you play today.” Emma could only manage a tight, nervous smile and a shrug. She could do anything on the field but was consumed by her shyness off it.

  The older woman tried to put her at ease. “Emma, you’re a wonderful soccer player. The best I’ve ever seen at your age.” Emma blinked, as Natty smiled with pride. “Someday,” the scout continued, “we hope you’ll think about coming to the University of North Carolina to play soccer. Just keep us in mind, okay?”

  Natty was excited for her star player. This would be Emma’s ticket out of McDowell County. She wasn’t going to be trapped here in the mountains. “Ain’t that great, Em?” Natty enthused. “The University of North Carolina!” Emma smiled and whispered to Natty. Natty laughed. “Emma wants to know if you know Mia Hamm.”

  The scouts both laughed. “No,” the woman answered. “Mia was gone before we got there.” She shook Emma’s hand. “But I hope I’m there when Emma Lowe arrives.”

  CHAPTER 18

  The morning air was finally starting to feel like late September. Natty went back inside the trailer to get a jacket to put over Amos Ritter’s shoulders. She wouldn’t have to bother putting an ice cube in his coffee anymore. He’d be looking forward to the hot metal cup to warm his brittle fingers. But he would still be there every morning, on his stool until the snow fell.

  Natty loped off down the hill and headed up toward Old Red Bone at a comfortable pace. As she came abreast of the soccer field, a wave of elation came over Natty at the thought of last Saturday’s game. It couldn’t have gone much better. And didn’t Emma put on a show, in front of the women from the University of North Carolina, to boot! Natty was still thinking about Emma when she reached the top of the hill and was startled to see Charlie Burden standing in the street in his running shorts. “Morning, Mr. Burden,” Natty managed. “Thought maybe you’d given up on running in the morning.”

  Charlie fell in beside her, thankful for the easy pace. “No, I still go once in a while, but mostly after work,” he said. “Not much to do around here in the evening.”

  “You’re right about that,” said Natty.

  “Do you mind?” asked Charlie. “Me running with you?”

  Natty laughed. “’Course I don’t mind. Is that why you stopped coming out in the morning, ’cause you thought I minded?”

  “No, I just thought it would be … well, I didn’t think it was a good idea to be running together every day.”

  Natty thought about pressing for more of an answer, but she decided to let it go.

  “But there is something I need to talk to you about,” said Charlie. “Before this Thursday’s planning-board meeting.”

  Natty was surprised. “Planning board?”

  “I think we can get OntAmex to fix the roof of your library.” Charlie explained his plan. All Natty had to do was go up last and offer her library roof as a worthwhile community-service project. He and Hank would do the rest.

  “That’s all I gotta do?” Natty sounded skeptical.

  “That’s it,” said Charlie. “It’ll be easy.”

  “Yeah, easy,” said Natty sarcastically, as she ran on ahead. The path narrowed and they ran in single file for several minutes, enjoying the scenery. They passed through a glade of birch trees, then back out to where the mountain rose up steeply on their right. It disappeared precipitously on the left side of the path, dropping off hundreds of feet down to boulder-strewn chasms below. Charlie looked up to see that Natty had slowed to a walk, about ten yards in front of him.

  “C’mon. I want to show you something,” said Natty. She left the trail, scrambling up a narrow goat path that climbed through the pine trees. Charlie followed, trying to keep up with her as she sure-footedly navigated the winding passageway. In some places, the trail was so steep he had to hold on to some exposed roots to pull himself up. Then the path ended, and Charlie found himself standing amid a small grotto of fir trees.

  “Boo!” Natty suddenly appeared from behind a tree, making him jump. She laughed and started off through the trees toward the light. “C’mon,” Natty said. “This way.”

  Charlie followed her to the edge of the trees, where she stopped. “Okay, now close your eyes and don’t open them ’til I tell you to.”

  “I’m all yours,” said Charlie, smiling as he made a show of closing his eyes tightly. Natty reached out and took hold of his right wrist, conscious of the fact that this was the first time they’d touched, and led him onto the surface of a gently sloping boulder. Charlie could feel the change in the light and a gentle breeze on his face.

  Natty instructed Charlie to sit down on the slope of the smooth rock and to continue to edge his way farther out until she told him to stop. “You ain’t afraid of heights are you, Mr. Burden?” she teased as he came to the edge of the boulder. “Okay,” Natty said, sitting next to him with her legs over the edge. “You can open your eyes.”

  Charlie’s stomach rode up as if he were on a roller coaster. He was literally hanging off the edge of the earth, surrounded on three sides by open space. Only a few feet of rock were between him and a fall of what seemed like thousands of feet. “Oh, God,” he said breathlessly.

  Natty couldn’t help laughing at his reaction. She’d sat on this same spot so many times since she was a teenager that she’d forgotten how precarious a newcomer might find it. “Relax, Mr. Burden, you’re fine,” Natty assured him. “Just don’t lean too far out,” she added, with a mischievous laugh. Charlie sat up, his palms pressed firmly against the rock on either side of his hips. Natty watched him with a broad smile.

  After a few moments, he began to relax and was able to appreciate the spot. It was more than simply the view. It was the feeling of being suspended in midair, with nothing above or below to confine or limit—as close to flying as one might get while still in contact with the earth. Charlie nodded to show that he was all right. He edged down the rock to where Natty was and inched his legs over the side as she had done. “This is a pretty incredible spot,” Charlie said, peeking tentatively over the edge.

  “Been coming here since I was twelve,” said Natty. “My girlfriends and I would come up here to smoke cigarettes and talk about, you know, girl talk. Then sometimes we’d bring our beer up here—lucky no one ever fell off—and our pot, when we were in high school.”

  “Ever do anything legal when you were a kid?” Charlie asked.

  Natty laughed. “Those girls are all gone now—they all left, like most of the young people. Funny how even the poorest hillbilly kids can find a way to go to college if they got a mind to—or they just move on, to Ohio or Pittsburgh or down to Charlotte. Anywhere to get out of the coalfields.”

  “But some people stay,” said Charlie, watching her closely.

  Natty shrugged. “Some people get trapped.” Turning back to the view, she added, “And then they grow to love the mountains so much, they never want to leave.”

  “So you’ve been coming up here alone all these years, since you were in high school?” Charlie asked.

  Natty smiled. “You’re the first person I been up here with since I told my girlfriends I was pregnant, beginning of my senior year.”

  “I’m honored,” said Charlie.

  “You should be.” Natty pulled her feet up onto the rock and sat with her arms around her bent knees. Charlie gratefully followed her, crawling backward like a crab to a spot a few feet farther up the boulder. “Now I come up here ’bout once a week to have my quiet time and work on my daydreams.”

  “What kind of daydreams?”

  Natty
laughed. “Aw, you know. The typical hillbilly-girl dreams. Kind you have when you’re alone a lot in the mountains.”

  “Tell me,” Charlie encouraged.

  She stretched out her left leg and bounced her knee up and down on the rock. “Well, I can’t tell you about the big one, the one every little girl in the mountains has.” She laughed and flashed a mischievous smile. “But I got others.” Charlie waited.

  “They’re mostly about my husband,” she said. “Ain’t nothing too exciting. Main one is that we’re living in this cute white house with a nice lawn and some bushes in the front. It’s in a nice neighborhood—like the ones I sometimes drive through over in Bluefield, with lots of friendly people and kids playing—and in my dream I know all our neighbors, and Pie and Cat got lots of friends. And I’m standing in the front doorway, and Buck and Pie and Cat are coming up the front walk and holding hands, with Buck in the middle.…” Natty’s voice trailed off.

  “Don’t sound like much of a daydream, does it?” Natty asked. “Thing you got to realize is that I ain’t once, in twelve years, ever seen my husband hold hands with either of his kids. It just ain’t something Buck would do. He don’t pay much attention to ’em.”

  Charlie recalled the angry-looking man in the white pickup who’d stared at him and Pie up on the bulldozer.

  Natty interrupted his thoughts. “How about this daydream? Buck and I are sitting in a real fancy restaurant in a big city someplace, having a bottle of wine. Then Buck pulls this little box from his pocket and gives it to me. I open it, and it’s this beautiful diamond ring, ’cause we never bothered to get a ring when we got married. And Buck says”—Natty looked up at Charlie and fluttered her eyelids playfully—“‘I love you, Nat.’” Natty leaned back on the rock. “Stupid, too, ’cause I don’t even care about rings.”

  When she leaned back, Charlie noticed the curve of her breasts under the jersey, pulled tight by her broad shoulders. As she lay on the rocks with her thin, smooth legs, still shiny with a light coating of perspiration, Charlie thought she looked like an extremely sexy woman and a little girl at the same time. He had an urge to reach over and pull her to him. He took a deep breath and was relieved when Natty spoke again.

  “Reason it’s a fantasy, ’case you’re trying to figure it out, is that Buck ain’t once—since we been married—told me he loves me. Oh, he let it slip out a couple a times when we were goin’ at it in the back of his daddy’s Blazer, when I was in high school. ’Course, he was usually drunk, and it was right before he—well, you know.” She smiled at Charlie. “Got carried away by the moment.” Natty sat up and braced her arms behind her. “But never after I told him I was pregnant.” She continued in a low voice, almost to herself. “Ain’t a big deal, but a woman’d like to hear it once in a while.”

  Charlie didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t expected Natty to share such intimacies, but he was glad she had and didn’t want her to feel embarrassed. “So why did you marry him?” he asked, instantly regretting how insulting it sounded.

  Natty wasn’t insulted. “Why? God! ’Cause I’d been in love with Buck ever since I was in the fourth grade. All I ever dreamed about for most of my life was marrying Buck Oakes.” She gazed up at the clouds overhead. “’Cause that was the best day of my whole life, is why.” Natty turned toward Charlie, and, with the sun on her face, he noticed for the first time an unmistakable thin white scar over her left eyebrow. Then he saw an even fainter scar just over her lip, also barely visible.

  “I adored Buck all through school, and he never even knew I was alive.” Natty dropped her head slightly, shading her face with the brim of her cap, as if she knew the sunlight exposed her. “I was two years behind him, and he had plenty of girlfriends. I’d write his name all over my book covers and watch him in the hallways and the cafeteria. Then I’d go to all the football games and pretend that I was his girlfriend. I’d make believe that we were going to meet up after the game and that, whenever he looked up into the stands, he was trying to find me.” Her voice fell away. “Wasn’t as pathetic as it sounds,” she said. “I was just a kid in love.”

  Charlie laughed, transfixed by her soft, wide mouth. “What happened? How did you finally get together?” Charlie asked, not wanting Natty to quit talking.

  “What happened was the luckiest day of my life, is what happened. Day before Thanksgiving, my junior year, my girlfriend and I are out late, driving around drinking beer, and we end up out at the Roadhouse. Couldn’t go inside ’cause we were only seventeen, but we used to hang out in the parking lot. Anyway, across the street from the bar, there’s a little store that’s also the bus station. So, about eleven o’clock I walk over to get some cigarettes, and my heart practically comes to a stop, ’cause there’s Buck Oakes, sitting in the bus station waiting room.

  “Buck was in his first year up at WVU on a football scholarship, but there he was, sitting all by himself with this big suitcase and a duffel bag, looking like a pile of last week’s dog shit, with this sad, scared look in his eyes.” Natty smiled briefly and rubbed her eyes with the sleeve of her jersey.

  “I could tell something was up, ’cause of all them bags, and the look on Buck’s face said he wasn’t just home from Morgantown for the holiday. Normally, I’d’ve swallowed my tongue and run out of there, but that night I was feelin’ a foot taller from the beer and all, and Buck’s sitting there looking … real ordinary, you know. So I walk up to him and I says, ‘Hey, Buck’—first words I ever said to him—‘Remember me, from school? I’m Natty DeWitt.’ And Buck looks up and squints at me with those bloodshot eyes, and the first words Buck ever says to me, he says, ‘Oh, yeah, little Miss No-tits.’” Charlie and Natty both laughed. “Anyway, Buck and I get talkin’, and he tells me that they threw him off the football team ’cause he hurt his knee and couldn’t play.” Natty sighed. “God, he seemed so much different from when he left. So much of the fun had been sucked out of him.

  “And the reason he’s just sitting there is because he’s afraid to call his daddy to come pick him up. So I says to Buck, ‘Well, I got some beer in the car if you want to drive around a little, and then I can take you home,’ and Buck perks up and says, ‘Sure, we could do that,’ ’cause I’m sure that driving around, drinking beer with little Miss No-tits still sounded a hell of a lot better than waiting for an ass whuppin’ from his old man.” Charlie laughed.

  “I run back over to the Roadhouse and tell my girlfriend that I got to take her car and the beer, and she’s going to have to find a ride home from somebody, ’cause this is like the biggest break I ever got in life.” Natty laughed. “And I don’t even have a license. Hell, I never even drove a car before. But I pick up Buck, and my heart’s beatin’ like a damn drum. I’m nervous and grinding the gears, driving down the middle of the road with the headlights off, ’cause I don’t know where the switch is. But I’m acting real cool, you know, and Buck’s laughing and drinking beer and yelling about how I’m the worst driver he’s ever seen.”

  The smile faded from Natty’s face as she picked absentmindedly at one of her running shoes. “Anyway, we end up at this spot way back in the woods, and then one thing led to another…” Natty’s voice trailed off.

  “Then we’re in the backseat, and the moment came, you know, to shit or get off the pot, so to speak, and I didn’t even hesitate. I was scared to death, ’cause I never done anything like that before. Hell, I never even kissed a boy before that night. But I went ahead, ’cause I knew if I didn’t I’d never see Buck Oakes again.”

  Natty was speaking again in a soft voice, almost to herself. “I’m glad I did. Everything worked out fine.” After a long pause, she turned back toward Charlie. “Buck was right, his daddy was rip-shit about football. He stayed pissed at Buck for a long time. I always figured that had a lot to do with why Buck, uh … that he made Buck … Well, it don’t matter now.” Natty smiled at Charlie. “Everything worked out fine. Got married. Had Pie and Cat—wouldn’t trade them for anything. So … yeah,
worked out good.” She glanced at her watch. “I got to get going,” she said, quickly getting to her feet.

  Charlie did the same. She was right. It was getting late and they’d sat for too long, although he could listen to Natty talk forever.

  Back in the middle of the grotto formed by the tall pines, Natty stopped. “Look,” she said, pointing up to the shafts of morning sunlight that penetrated the high branches. “It’s just like a church, with the light coming through the stained-glass windows.”

  “Wow,” said Charlie softly. “It’s beautiful.” When he looked back down, Natty was facing him, about ten feet away. Charlie could see she was anxious, twisting her fingers together in front of her. “What is it, Mrs. Oakes?” he added, trying to ease her tension.

  She let out a sigh. “Charlie, there’s something I need to know,” she said quietly. “Something I need to get out of the way, ’cause I don’t know much about this stuff … ain’t met many men in my life, as you probably already figured out. But I need to ask you something personal, which I figure is all right, since I just told you all about the first time I ever got laid and a whole bunch of other intimate stuff.” They both laughed.

  “Sure,” said Charlie, leaning against the trunk of a hickory tree.

  Natty flashed an embarrassed smile. “Charlie … is there anything, um, happening here?” She waggled her index finger back and forth between them.

  “You mean—”

  Natty interrupted him. “Yeah,” she said, “between us.”

  Charlie smiled. “Natty, come on. I’m old enough to be your father.”

  She eyed him warily. “Hell, around here, man your age could about be my grandpa, but that ain’t what I asked you.”

  Charlie immediately regretted his shallow reply. It was obvious that Natty was serious, and deserved an honest answer. But what should he tell her? Should he tell her that she was the most alluring woman he’d met in years? As well as the kindest, most unpretentious, and emotionally honest? Should he tell her that he’d never known a woman who could make him smile at the thought of her, even when she wasn’t around?