If the Creek Don’t Rise

by Leah Weiss

  What I saw for the first time was colors. At ten years old, I had to learn my colors like a baby cause I don’t know a single one. There was greens and yellows and reds. But it was the blue sky and white clouds that tickled me most. They was pure is what they was, and surely a peek at heaven. I wish my brothers coulda seen colors.

  My folks told me they give me Mother Jones’s whole name and hoped I’d grow a backbone straight and strong as hers. They hoped the red hair on my baby head was a sign I had spirit to spare.

  Truth is, I won’t much of a fighter. The good and bad of me is that I see blessings most every day in every way. Even when it’s a speck that shines in a gray sea of sad. It’s how my heart looks at things. My folks was kind not to let me know they was disappointed in me.

  That hero, Mary Harris Jones, she’s been gone forty years now, and folks still say her name Mother Jones respectful, like in church. On the day I take my leave, this Mary Harris Jones—who was lucky enough to marry sweet Willis Jones and don’t have to get used to different, and whose name always got scrunched in tight to Marris Jones that fits me better—is gonna ride out on the next puff of wind. That’ll be fine by me. I don’t look for glory in this world.

  We come to Baines Creek after a long walk part the way and rides from strangers the rest. Mama said baines is another word for bones so I thought I’d see a lot of bones on the ground, but I don’t see any that first day. They must have been underground like my brothers.

  We go to cousin Luther Hicks’s place with our heads down low from loss and our bellies empty. They feed us beans and give us a roof outta the weather.

  They got a boy named Walter who’s twelve to my ten, and a nasty bugger. He tried to catch a look at me when I use the privy or wash at the creek or change clothes in the shed where we stay. I stay away from him as best I can, but he’s a sneaky little snot with too much time on his hands.

  One time, Mama asked me to pick blackberries before the critters eat em all, and I make a bark basket and go like I’m told, but I watch out for Walter. I pick as fast as I can when somebody shoots at me! I drop my basket and fall to my knees. I look round while my heart knocks like knuckles on wood. Then they shoot again and miss me by a foot. Dirt kicked up off the ground to the side of me.

  Then I know it was ornery Walter. I pick up my basket and go back to picking berries. He shoots off to the side again to mess with me, but he gets tired after a while when I don’t pay him no mind.

  I think Mother Jones would have kept right on picking berries, too.

  • • •

  I got a handful of days to fill before Skeeter comes and it’s chicken-killing time, and my Sadie needs tending to in the worst kind of way. I seen her a handful of times since Gladys and me went to lay eyes on the teacher, Miss Kate Shaw, at the start of September. What I saw that day was Sadie beat up and it tore me apart, her just married a few weeks back. I never feel more helpless than when I see Sadie watching Roy and following after him and that lizard Billy Barnhill who’s more dumb than danger.

  Now everybody’s talking bout that D-name girl gone missing. That could happen to our Sadie if somebody don’t do something. She needs to hear somebody loves her and that she’s got a place to come to if she’s inclined to leave.

  I cook since sunup cause I don’t visit empty-handed, specially for family. I put the huckleberry cobbler and potato bread on the truck seat. Add a jar of my watermelon-rind pickles cause they’re Roy’s favorite. He’s got a sweet tooth, and them pickles is a peace offering if he’s at the trailer and don’t want to let me in. I don’t think to ask Gladys to go with me this morning cause she already give up on the girl. Plus Sadie’s life looks a lot like her granny’s. I don’t blame Gladys if she shies away.

  The old truck starts on the first try so that’s a good sign. I drive past Gladys’s place. She’s out in the yard looking down at the rusty plow that’s been sitting useless in the weather for years. Her and me can’t move that plow though we aimed to long ago. It’s like it growed roots into the earth a mile down. It’s where Walter got killed years back by the perfect storm sent by God. Gladys don’t look up when I toot the horn and wave.

  Walter’s death was a miracle is what some folks called it, and I think a lot of halfway Christians studied their Bible more after Walter got smote for his sins. I hear moonshine was off for a spell back then. Everybody now knew for a fact that God slays sinners and strikes em down for their transgressions.

  I was the one who come up on Walter the morning after the storm cause I needed to see if Gladys was okay. I saw Walter even from a distance down the road and could tell it won’t right how he leaned on that plow. I could tell he won’t passed out drunk in the yard like a hundred times before. This time puffs of smoke come off his blackened body.

  From top to bottom, Walter Hicks was scorched. His clothes was burned clear off the front of him, and his skin was black as coal dust he never worked in. Even his pecker was shriveled like a burnt sausage. What little hair Walter had on his head was gone.

  It was his face that was the clincher. It was the face of a man who saw the devil straight on and knew the forever fires of damnation waited for him: Walter’s eyes was burned out. The skin on his nose, cheeks, and lips was burned clear down to the hard white of his bone. I guess he had so much hooch soaked in him that he lit up like kindling when lightning struck.

  I looked down on that dead man fried by fire back then and wondered how many sins Walter Hicks carried to damnation in that charred, black soul of his. He beat on Gladys cause she stayed. He beat on Carly till she run away. He messed with me, too. Once. Almost. But I grew a backbone.

  • • •

  It’s the same tired story these hills hear a million times. A nasty boy who can’t keep his britches buttoned. A coward who sneaked his daddy’s hooch to find courage.

  The summer I turned twelve, me and Mama and Daddy moved down the road on Bentwood Mountain to our own place where Walter won’t in my mind the way he was those years we was in the shed in the back of his house. When we lived there, I looked round every corner for his oily self being sneaky. Here in our own place I got other things to worry bout, like Daddy taken to bed and Mama grieving like he was already dead. It won’t a sunny time for the Joneses. If food was gonna get cooked or a dish washed or wood chopped, I gotta be the one to do it.

  I took two buckets to the spring that day to fill. I come back up the hill and the bucket straps cut into my palms. I set down the buckets to give my hands a rest when Walter stepped from behind a tree and blocked my way.

  “Move outta my way, Walter Hicks. You got no business with me.”

  “Marris Jones, why ain’t you friendly to me? What’d I do to you cept let you live at my place? This how you thank me?”

  “Your place? Let your daddy hear you say that and he’ll take a belt to you.” I lifted my chin a bit and stared at him like I knew what I was doing.

  He unbuttoned his fly and pulled out his limp dingdong, grinning. Nothing was between him and me but two buckets of water and whatever courage I could find. Mother Jones come to mind when I needed her. Maybe her soul found me in a sad pickle cause I said, “You step aside! I’m gonna pass, Walter Hicks.”

  I must have surprised Walter cause his jittery eyes settled for a second.

  “What you say?”

  “You ain’t gonna hurt me today or any day.”

  “And who’s gonna stop me?” Walter looked round and slid his belt outta the loops. “It’s just you and me out here in the woods—girlie. Your crappy daddy’s bout dead, and your mama ain’t far from it.”

  I picked up the water buckets, squared my shoulders, stared him in the eye, and said, “Get outta my way.”

  “And if I don’t?” His voice lost steam when his britches scooted down round his knees. He held on to a sapling to keep from tumbling backward.

  “You don’t want to kno
w,” I hissed and walked past him, determined to march on till I was safe at the cabin, even if the weight of them bucket straps dug clean through to bone.

  When I got home and got over my shakes, I wondered what I meant when I said You don’t want to know, cause I got no idea.

  Walter never bothered me again. It was round that time Gladys come along.

  • • •

  I drive my truck slow, thinking on Walter Hicks, when I pass the Dillard place with a yard full of young’uns digging in the dirt. I yell out the window to four-year-old Eddie, “Tell your ma I’ll bring supper for y’all later.”

  He runs in to do the deed and comes back on the porch and shouts, “Ma says you a angel.”

  I don’t turn my back on friends in need. The Dillards is one and Sadie’s the other, and she comes first cause she’s family. I pull in Sadie’s yard and don’t see Roy’s truck, so I leave the watermelon-rind pickles on the seat cause Sadie won’t partial to pickles. I knock on the door and step back so it can swing open, and when it does, I see Sadie smile big like I’ve come for a party.

  “Come on in, Aunt Marris.” Her voice is brittle and hollow.

  I step over the threshold, puzzled. “I brung you some pie and bread. You know I don’t come empty-handed.”

  She leans over and sniffs too loud and too long. “It looks good. Real good.”

  I look close at Sadie and see her eyes is off. The dark parts are big as black dimes, and her hands shake when I give her the pie. I hold on to it so she don’t drop it, and we put it on the table. I take both her hands and they’re cold as winter creek water. We sit at the table.

  “Sadie honey, what’s got into you?”

  The girl acts weird, and I can only guess why—and none of it’s a easy fix. I look round for a jar of shine or some of that dandelion wine I give her awhile back but all I see is sweet tea.

  “Everything’s fine, fine, fine.” She rocks on the edge of the chair and twists a strand of her hair. She’s gone round the bend is what’s happened. Ugly gossip and Roy is likely the cause.

  I can’t leave her here so I say, “Sadie, listen to me.” I shake her by the shoulders gentle till she sees me. “I’m gonna take you home with me. I gotta keep my eyes on you till you come back round to yourself.”

  As I feared she would, she says, “No, no, no. I can’t leave and have Roy come back to a empty place. You go on. I want you safe away from here.”

  Lord have mercy! This is bad and none of it’s good.

  “Here’s what we’re gonna do, Sadie.” This is my no-nonsense tone I use to get Gladys to hear when she’s hardheaded. “I need your help. I gotta tend to the Dillards and you gonna help me. I’ll leave Roy a note. I even got him a jar of watermelon-rind pickles in the truck we’ll put right on top of that note.”

  I talk calm and move out the door and down the rickety trailer steps as fast as my swoll knee will bend, grab the pickles from the seat of the truck, and go back inside, out of breath. I wanna be away from here before Roy comes.

  I write: Roy, Sadie gonna help with a sick ma. I bring her back in the morn. Marris.

  The pickles sit on top to keep the note in place. Don’t want Roy to think I took Sadie and don’t let him know.

  Sadie still sits in the chair, looking at the floor and rocking without a rocker. I take her coat off the peg and wrap it round her thin shoulders. “Come on, honey. Let Aunt Marris love on you.”

  She stands and comes with me like a lost child, and I’m grateful I don’t have to be forceful. The girl’s had enough forceful.

  When we get to my place, I help her outta the truck like she’s sick and sit her at the kitchen table. I bend down and look her in the face so she hears better. “We gonna make pasties for the Dillards. Okay?”

  I put the flour, lard, and spring water in front of her, and she lifts her hands slow, starts mixing the dough, then kneads while I peel and slice potatoes and onions. Don’t want her handling a sharp knife just yet. She breaks the dough into pieces and rolls each one in a circle for the pasties; busy hands do a lotta good to settle a troubled heart. A story helps, too.

  “I ever tell you bout my rosebush on the side yard? How it come to live in my yard?”

  “I like that story,” she murmurs, and her face gets soft.

  “You want the long or short of it?”

  “Long, please.”

  I pour us both a cup of peppermint tea that’s been steeping in the teapot on the woodstove and drizzle in honey for sweet. She sips her tea and I start the story that winds round a bit but knows where to go.

  “I love flowers. My Willis Jones couldn’t pass a field of oxeye daisies or bluets or pussy willow without picking me some and bringing em home. He’d say, ‘Marris, these flowers won’t as pretty as you, but if they make you smile, then they can sit right on this windowsill.’

  “That man was a pleaser and a smooth talker in a good way. He was gentle like your daddy, Otis. They both liked their likker too much, but they was what I called sweet drunks. They got all mushy-hearted on hooch instead of mean like your granddaddy Hicks.”

  Now that I’ve got Sadie’s mind on something tender, I mound the thin slices of potatoes and onions on the dough she’s kneaded and rolled. I add a slice of thick bacon and a dollop of butter on top for flavor, cause the Dillards don’t get much flavor, and then pinch the circle of dough closed.

  “Pasties are the best kind of supper for a passel of kids. Easy to pick up in their hands. Good to eat hot or cold,” I say to keep sound in the room.

  Into the oven goes the Dillards’ supper and I top off our cups of tea. Sadie looks near normal. She even got a tinge a blush back in her cheeks from rolling pastry. I don’t go on with my story right away and she reminds me like I hoped she would.

  “You was telling bout the rosebush.” She rinses her floured hands in the bucket and wipes em on a towel and sits back at the table.

  “I was, won’t I?” I add a log to the stove, then join her at the table.

  “Now, I see a lotta flowers in my life grow natural on the mountainsides. Willis would hunt for new ones to surprise me. Once, when he was third day out hunting ginseng on Wolf Trap Ridge, he come up on a old farm he don’t remember passing before. Windows all busted out. Floorboards rotted. Chimney crumbled to dust, he said. And in that yard, right by the door, choked by a patch of jewelweed, he saw a rosebush with one tiny bud on it. It had to be brung up from the valley cause it won’t native to here.

  “Willis dug the whole thing up, careful to keep dirt round the root ball. Then he put it in his sack beside the ginseng, it taking up space where more seng could go.

  “Well, that evening, I was glad to see Willis get back from the woods safe. Hunting ginseng is crazy cause lazy fools do terrible things when the money plant comes in. They steal from the hardworking and don’t think twice. I cooked possum stew and a pan of angel biscuits for him, and I sat right next to him while he scarfed down three bowls of stew and six buttered biscuits like a starved man. He tells me bout the hunt and the pretty views he saw that made his heart swell.

  “After his belly’s full, I go to spread out the seng roots to dry, and he said, ‘Now hold on, woman. Don’t you snoop in that bag yet. I got you a surprise.’

  “Well, Sadie, I got tickled as a kid at Christmas to think of Willis thinking of me when he’s far off. When he pulled out that rosebush with one red flower, I cried at the beauty of something that come so far so I could see it.

  “‘Smell it,’ Willis said. He looked as proud as if he made the smell in that flower with his own two hands. And I did. I sucked in that perfume till Willis said, ‘Slow down! You gonna use up all the sweet,’ and we laughed.

  “Willis wrapped the dirt round that bush with a wet rag, and next morning he planted the little bush on the side of the house. He picked the sunniest patch of ground around. He got down on his
knees and dug a hole in the loamy earth. We don’t know if the little rosebush will like it here, but it won’t from Willis not trying. He watered it. He put coffee grounds round it. Worked in manure. When cold weather come for sure, he piled wood chips on top to keep it warm. I never did know where he learned to do all those things for a rosebush from the valley.”

  I hold up my hand and say, “Hold on, sugar. From the good smell, the pasties are done and I don’t want em to burn.” I pull the golden-brown pies out of the oven and set em on top to cool. The house don’t smell like roses, but pasties is good on a chilly day. This recipe come over from my Cornwall kin by way of Ireland and is good and filling.

  Now I come to the tender part of the rosebush story. Sadie and me feel the sad grabbing us before I even start the telling.

  “Willis died that winter, don’t you know. I didn’t see it coming till it was too late. A fever come on so fierce, and he throwed up blood and turned jaundiced. Some folks say it was yellow fever, but there won’t no proof to speak of. It was yellow fever that got Mother Jones’s husband and her children, too, before she turned hero, but I don’t know what kinda fever got my Willis.

  “We can’t bury him right away cause the ground is froze. Since they was close, Walter and Gladys found a kind spot in their hearts and come to help ready Willis for his burial. They keep him in his pine coffin in their lean-to where me and Mama and Daddy lived once upon a time.

  “One day next spring, after Willis got put in the ground in the Hickses’ burial plot, I felt a lonely heartache and it won’t stop. The heartache grabbed me with cold wiry fingers and squeezed hard. I prayed to the Lord for relief but feel guilty taking His time from important things. I prayed Willis don’t look down from heaven to see me feeling sorry-assed for myself.

  “Sadie, right then I stood straight up from this kitchen table filled with the light of hope. I walked out into the springtime I won’t paying a bit of attention to. I walked round the side of the house to that patch of sunshine like I was pulled by the Holy Spirit. I don’t have a choice cept to go where my legs carry me.