by Jack Riggs
CULLOWHEE IS ANOTHER HOUR into the mountains. Western Carolina is there, the college where I enrolled for the fall of 1954. I went to be a freshman there after a summer working at a church camp near Myrtle Beach, but never finished. By the end of September, I was married to Peck, Kelly still just a speck inside me. Hurricane Hazel had devastated our small home—the storm surge came in on us at the highest lunar tide of that year. All of Garden City Beach was part of the sea for days, the marsh disappearing with everything else under the powerful surge.
“Now you belong to the low country,” Peck said grimly when we finally got a boat and could get back to where our small house had stood. It was just gone, along with everything that I had brought with me.
After I was married, I held on to my hopes that I would one day come back to Cullowhee. I kept a catalogue of classes to the college, along with a letter promising a scholarship, in a small drawer in the bedroom. When I was alone, I would look at it as a source of strength, say to myself that the pregnancy was just a momentary pause in my life. I really believed, as foolish as it was, that I would deliver Kelly and then return to my life. But as we floated past where our house had sat just days before, I felt all of that die deep inside my body.
Now here I am again with my daughter, traveling along the Tuckasegee River and then onto Cullowhee Road until the college is before us, a cluster of buildings gathered like ancient outcrop-pings against the side of a mountain. When I pull onto the campus I cannot help but think of what I missed, what my life might have been like had I stayed and graduated. I wanted to be a teacher, that's all I can remember now. If there was more, it has long since faded into what became my life. It is Kelly's turn, I think. Then maybe it will be mine again, maybe. I catch my heart racing at the thought.
Kelly is out of the car before the engine is off. She has no idea where she's going. “Can you wait a minute?” I say.
“No,” she says back to me. She is walking away fast, legs pushing her up a steep sidewalk.
“Where are you going?”
“To camp, Mother. I'm going to camp just like you want so you can go back down there.”
“Kelly, that's not fair.” I look around to see if anyone else hears us, but we are late, nearly seven o'clock, the last ones to arrive it seems.
I pull her clothes bag from the car, carry her softball equipment in a large canvas duffel slung over my shoulder. When I finally catch up, she has stopped and sits on a wall, legs crossed, elbows on her knees to rest her head. I toss the bags at her feet, accidentally scraping them against her tanned skin.
“Hey” she whines, “that hurt.” She rubs the spot where the keys hit her face, the wound still fresh.
I look at her wishing I wasn't angry, wanting Kelly to understand in a way that might help us get along. “I'm sorry,” I say. “I didn't mean to hurt you. Let's just go register. I think that will help both of us.”
“I can do it by myself,” Kelly snaps, giving up any chance of a compromise.
I look up the hill to where girls are pitching balls in front of the gym. There's laughter, and I can only hope that Kelly will fit in once I am gone. “Well good,” I say. I feel tears in my eyes that I don't want Kelly to see. “You can do it all on your own then.” I pull the paper from my pocket containing information she will need, her application, and the check to pay for her camp. “That's Breese Gym over there. Go sign in, and I'm sure someone will help you find your dorm. Have fun.”
When I leave, I see Kelly's face fall, but I don't turn around. I understand there is no history in all of this for her and that mine is tainted by the mistakes I have made, but for the moment I don't want to be the adult here. I don't want reason. I just want to leave.
I walk down the sidewalk, the steep angle pushing me into a little jog until it bottoms out and I am by the car. When I look back, Kelly is gone, the stone wall where she sat empty. Then I start to worry. I can't see much from the car. The street is narrow, draped by trees that cast deep shadows onto the cars parked along one side. The only thing I can do is drive beside the gym and look for her.
It's hard to make out the faces of the girls darting by, weighed down with bags and backpacks. They walk in twos and threes, joking and getting along, creating new friendships so this new world won't be too hard. It had been that way for me the summer I worked at Myrtle Beach. Had it not been for Kimberly Jordan, my best friend, I never would have made it to the end of that first week. After I met Peck, everything changed, nothing was unfamiliar.
I had heard of the camp during revivals that spring. A minister my father knew in Franklin encouraged him to let me go. The camp was for the month of August. There would be a group of teenagers from the mountains working around the arcades, cleaning the beaches, handing out tracts, visiting local churches to sing on Sunday mornings. There was chapel and a sermon every morning, Bible study and prayers in the evenings. Kimberly's parents talked to my father, but it did little good. He was still afraid of idle time, what such a place might encourage if young minds weren't kept busy enough with the work of the Lord. It wasn't until he returned one morning from Whiteside, two days before the bus was to leave, that he reluctantly gave his approval.
Myrtle Beach was like living in a dream, and when Kimberly left early to go home, sunburned and homesick, I stayed on by myself, and Peck changed my world forever. I met him one day when we all rented air rafts to float on the water. He was surfing with Teddy that afternoon, and when a wave washed me off the raft, he was there to pull me out of the swirling tide, sandy and wet to the bone.
After Vespers that evening, I snuck away, walked to the beach, and Peck picked me up in his truck. It was a routine we would keep the rest of the month I was at the beach. He showed me the low country that summer—sunsets along the marsh that made my heart break. We slopped through black mud at low tide to harvest clams, the musky slick meat a foreign delicacy to me. There were conversations and promises of how we would trade off summers until I finished college. It was hot and sweet and full of love that summer, and when I left at the end of August, my heart broke hard for Peck Johnson, but I knew it was probably over and I was excited to go to college.
I left for Cullowhee soon after I returned home, excited about school and the fact that Clay Taylor would be there, that I would see him again and hear about Peck. We had written a few letters, but I longed to hear Peck's voice, feel his touch on my skin. Clay would carry good news, I hoped. We promised to look each other up when school began.
It was a hard summer for my father with the beach and my packing to go to school following so quickly after my return. He brooded constantly, irritated by both. He thought high school was enough, that there was plenty for me to do to help Momma until I met someone of faith, who I would marry and then start my own family. He stayed away while I packed, his walks to Whiteside lasting all day instead of just a few hours. Momma scoffed at his behavior. She could be strong when it was necessary. She stood beside me, took my side of the argument when I went to the beach and later when she drove me to Cullowhee.
On campus, I threw up each morning for the first three days I was there. I wanted to find Clay to ask how Peck was doing, but the morning sickness and what it surely meant consumed me. Instead, I made trips to the infirmary and was finally told the grim news by a nurse who knew the symptoms. “We can test you, if you'd like,” she said, so matter- of- fact that I assumed she said it all the time. But I knew, so I packed my bags and called Momma to come pick me up.
When she arrived, I didn't have to tell her anything. “Are you quick?” she asked, as soon as we were alone.
“Yes,” I said. “I think so.” And then I broke down crying, my body emptying out all the hope I had for my life, all of it lost. We sat in the car as kids walked past us going to their classes. Momma seemed to grow distant, my betrayal of her trust and loyalty during that summer a deep cut between us. My father would have to know the truth, and then she would have to endure the harsh accusations he would throw at her f
or not listening to him in the first place.
It wasn't the first time Momma had seen a girl in trouble, and I knew there was a way out. From time to time, there were girls in my father's small congregation who came to him in need of help. Some men back in the mountains could not keep their hands off their own children. It hurt my father deeply that men sinned against the word of God and would lay with their own daughters, but he would never judge them or condemn their actions. Instead he put it up to Momma to right the wrong.
These girls would come to her in the middle of the night and she would drive them deep into the mountains to see a woman who administered herbal contractors, blue cohosh root, pennyroyal leaf, or angelica. These toxic poisons could kill if not properly administered, and would certainly abort the pregnancy, remove the sin, and wash the child clean.
Some daughters were brought more than once, an issue that came as close as anything to dividing my parents. I heard the arguments from their room. How could God allow this, and how could a minister turn a blind eye, Momma would say. My father reprimanded her for questioning his wisdom, told her that it was his job to prosecute the teachings of Jesus, to carry out the burden of God in this cove. He forbade her from discussing it, told her it was a sin to deny God's judgment of redemption and salvation. “Don't be the sinner,” he said. “Lucifer has already made his mark. It's up to you to help erase it.”
She would always go into the mountains and stay for two or three days, depending on the stage of the pregnancy and the effects of the abortifacient. I thought that afternoon when she came to pick me up, she would turn the car toward the mountains to pay a visit to some Cherokee woman whose tonics could kill the very spirit of life inside my womb. I figured she would take me there, unknown to my father, to have the devil's mark removed from inside me. But she never did. “You have to call that boy,” she said. “He needs to make this right.”
When I asked about the woman in the mountains, she winced like the very words caused her pain. “Will I need to go there, like the rest?” I asked.
“No,” she said, her body rigid, her face torn with grief. “I imagine your father will never forgive me, but you won't go. I won't take you.”
I have seen Momma cry twice in her life, at my father's funeral and the day I asked if I would be taken into the mountains for an abortion. That day she wept in the car, sitting on the campus of Western Carolina, holding me so tight, I thought she might squeeze the child right out. “You won't go,” she said. “You will never go, because you're not like them. You're my child.”
I told Momma we could try to find Clay, let him know that I needed to talk to Peck, but she wanted nothing to do with that. “You'll call him yourself,” she said. “You don't need to tell no other boy about this.” We left Cullowhee that afternoon, my life already moving along a path that would bring me to this moment, where ghosts of an earlier life have long awaited my arrival.
I'm sitting in the middle of the road when the gym door opens and Kelly walks out. She doesn't see me there as she walks alongside another girl, easily carrying her bags, smiling, seemingly happy again. It makes me feel better. Still, I have to watch her walk away, see that her direction is toward a dorm, before I can leave and drive back to Walhalla.
When we left Momma in Whiteside Cove, I told her I'd be staying the night in Cullowhee, a mother- daughter thing. But that wasn't true. Here I am, a thirty- three- year- old woman, and I am still lying to my mother about where I'm going. How silly that I still do this, that I cannot live my life open and free like I always dreamed it would be. I thought I would have my whole life to right myself after Kelly was born, that I would find a way to do it all, but in the end I did nothing.
I find my way back to Cullowhee Road and then Highway 107 to drive out of the deepest part of these mountains, past Glenville and Cashiers, Whiteside Cove, where I don't even think about stopping. It is nearly seven o'clock when I arrive in Walhalla, a black leaden sky swirling above me. Clay is there, impatient that it has taken me all day to return to him.
It has been so long since I have seen rain that I get excited when it finally comes. It is the freshest sound I think I have ever heard. The drops touch my face. I feel the wind blow in my hair, the air cooling under the dense clouds, the temperature dropping. It is like a miracle to feel this change in weather, something the low country needs, deserves more than Walhalla right now. But it is here, and so I take what is given, and stick my tongue out to taste the raindrops as they gather intensity, a solid sheet of wet descending on Walhalla.
Thunder rattles the whole house. I run back inside, watch lightning illuminate the backyard where someone has left what looks like half a car in ruins. Its body parts have been torn out and strewn between the house and a small shed that is padlocked as if it is trying to keep the car from coming inside to save itself. “I'll get that cleaned up out there,” Clay says, apologizing for a mess he didn't make. He comes over to stand behind me, his hands on my shoulders. “You could plant us a garden out there, if you feel like it.”
There's an empty bird feeder on top of a pole and a clothesline, its wires limp, rocking side to side in the storm. We stand there watching a cardinal attempt to light onto the feeder, its bloodred body frantic in the wind until it gives up, becoming a momentary fleck of debris blown against the slate sky. Clay's hands move down my arms. His touch tries to be soft, but there's just so much softness in a man's hand. The rest has to be accepted for what it is. “How was it,” he asks, “being back at school?”
“Hard,” I tell him. “It reminds me just how close I came.”
“You'll be all right,” he says. Clay stays behind me pushing his body into mine. “You can have anything now, Cassie. You can go back to school, if that's what you want.” He turns my head so he can kiss me. When he puts his mouth on mine, it is not gentle, but full of a hard need.
I can feel his hand move to my breast, sliding across it, cupping it for a moment before he starts to unbutton my blouse. I need Clay Taylor to keep my head on straight, to let me know I am doing the right thing. I let myself go and Clay's strength is all that I have left. He lifts me in his arms, takes me to the bedroom where I lay watching him undress.
There is a scar on his chest that I have never asked about, a tan as deep as Peck's all over his body. He has a small patch of hair running up to his belly button. He smells of cigarettes and sweat. He removes my shorts and panties, his hands sliding the wet clothes from my body. I can feel the tightness of my nipples in the cooling air when he unsnaps my bra, the tug between my legs when I feel his fingers there.
“Slow, be slow with me,” I whisper, as I pull him down on top of me.
And then in the middle of it all, I feel my world begin to crash. I have never felt so alone and lost in a bed as I do at this very moment. Clay asks if I'm all right, and I whisper that it is the storm, that I'm sorry. “You're just not used to seeing rain,” he says. He sits up on the bed, lights a cigarette, but this time he doesn't offer one. His back is to me, the lingering storm holding us there in silence.
When the phone rings, Clay leaves and I hear him talking to someone at the fire station. “All right,” he says. “I can do that. I'll be up there in a half hour.” He comes back in to tell me that he needs to be at the station just in case there are fires started from the storm.
“How can there be fire in all this rain?” I ask.
“Other things can happen,” he says, “lightning strikes and such. Besides, the chief needs to be there to set an example.”
I tell him that I need an example set too, that I need to know this life won't be the same life I just left, a fireman for a fireman. “That's not what I bargained for,” I say.
“Just what was it that you bargained for then?” he asks. I can tell our poor attempt to make love has hurt.
“You,” I say, but that doesn't seem to do it for either one of us. It is the second time in all of this that I have been unable to be with him when he wanted me.
“Loo
k, I need to go,” Clay says, running a hand through his hair. “Will you be okay by yourself?”
“Sure,” I say. Then I tell him that in the morning I'll go to stay with Momma for a while.
This stops him, something unexpected that disappoints.
“I need to go, Clay,” I try to explain. “She has no idea about us. She thinks I'm sleeping on campus with Kelly tonight. God, I'm thirty- three and I still lie to my mother about where I'm going.”
He stands in front of me, his eyes sullen and dark. He's given all he can. I know this. It's up to me now. “Call before you leave,” he says. He grabs a T- shirt and then stands at the door, his body hardly visible in the darkening hallway. “Stay in touch, please.”
I tell him I will, then turn over to watch the storm intensify again, the thunder—empty barrels rolling over the top of this house. It is more rain than I have seen in a whole year, the moisture chilling my skin. I listen to water pour off the roof, Clay's truck starting up and leaving the driveway, his headlights sweeping through the bedroom when he backs out like he is searching for me one last time before he goes.
I sleep on and off, watching the alarm clock flip the hours, the sound of storm and rain fading into a quiet morning. The world begins to dry out as I eat and shower. I dress, pack what little I have brought, and leave the key Clay had given me on the kitchen table, nervous that he might show up now before I can get out. I don't want to talk about any of this right now. I want to go home to Momma and feel there are no strings attached to me anywhere. I hurry, pull the door shut behind me, almost running to where my car waits at the curb.