by Leah Weiss
“The wood chips was still bunched round where that rosebush was, and I got down on my knees. I remember how bad my hands shaked over that bush cause I don’t wanna find it dead under there after all the love Willis poured on it.
“But, hallelujah! What I saw was little nubs of life on them branches. Proof of the Lord’s promise of salvation. Oh, Sadie, a piece of my Willis growed in my yard!
“Quick, I got chicken wire and put it over and round that bush so critters don’t eat at it. I watered that bush. I loved that bush, and it loved me back. It give me roses every summer since.”
My voice is raspy from telling the rosebush story. Sadie’s boohooing and I’m boohooing, and we both gotta blow our noses on snot rags. It’s a good kind of cry we do for all kinds of reasons, and we stand and hug each other, washed clean on the inside. Every woman needs to be loved like my Willis loved me.
I end my story like always. “There won’t a speck of reason why that rosebush come up in the spring. Sun too puny. Winter too cold. Air too thin. It grew cause Willis and me loved it.”
The light’s come back in Sadie’s eyes. “Can I see it?”
“Course you can, honey. Let me get my water bucket and you give it a drink.”
In the autumn afternoon, the old rosebush is a marvel. I feel Willis here even more than where his pine coffin lies in the ground. The blooming’s long done for the season, but there’s one tiny bud showing off. Sadie gasps and clutches her heart, tender as I ever saw her. I say, “I think this here’s for you, honey.”
She whispers, “I wish I had a man who give me roses.”
“Don’t give up on that, sugar. You got a long stretch of living in front of you.”
“I do?”
“Won’t say if it won’t true.”
I break the stem, careful not to get stuck, and inside I put it in a blue milk of magnesia bottle.
“This’ll come home with you tomorrow. It might open up if it’s got a mind to. It’s a late bloomer in the cold, so it’s shy. Right now we gotta deliver supper to some hungry children.”
• • •
When the Dillards get fed, and me and Sadie is in the truck heading back to my place for our own supper, I say, “Those folks got it bad right now and we brought merciful help. Horace Dillard can’t do nothing on account of bad lungs from working coal.”
Sadie stares out the window, likely pondering her own heavy load. Maybe she’s thinking bout Horace’s bad lungs from honest work and Roy’s bad heart for spite.
Later, we finish supper of corn bread and pinto beans, and I pull down the tin of molasses cookies to go with our tea. This is what I miss bout my Willis gone. A body to spend evening time with. Sadie’s quiet but got back that settled feeling bout her. I don’t want to push. I let her be till I say, “Roy,” and his name sits in the air.
Sadie says, “Roy Tupkin,” and he gets bigger in my little room.
“You afeard?” I ask.
“I be lying if I say I won’t.”
I look at that precious face grown old and weary already. “What can I do, sweet girl?”
“What you do right now. Give me a place to be that don’t hurt.”
“Wish you stayed longer. You could live here if you wanted.”
“It’d shame him.”
But tonight she stays and don’t pester me to go back to Roy’s place. When it’s bedtime, I blow out the oil lamp. The weak light of the woodstove pierces the dark. Sadie crawls into the featherbed beside me. She’s light as a feather herself, so I don’t hardly feel her there till she cries and rolls into my soft side. Ain’t had a body lay this close for a lotta years. I fold her in my arms and she shakes and sobs, broke and empty, and can’t hardly catch her breath. She loosens the hurt and sad that bout pulls her under.
If this be a night of wishing, then I wish Sadie was mine to keep.
I need Mother Jones’s backbone—God bless her mighty soul. If she was in my place and worried about Sadie, she’d nail Roy Tupkin’s sorry ass to the side of the Rusty Nickel so all Baines Creek saw his meanness. She’d show Sadie the truth. She’d help her break free from what’s already broke.
All I do is hold her, pull the chill outta her baines, and comfort her with warmth.
Next morning, I don’t wanna take Sadie back, but I do. Roy’s truck is still gone. When we go inside, the note is where I put it under the jar of watermelon-rind pickles and the pie sits on the counter. Sadie puts her rosebud on the window ledge. I give her a hug, then pick up my pickles. Roy don’t deserve no peace offering.
Before I head home, I make my way over to Preacher Perkins’s place and tell him my worries about Sadie, and together we wonder what we can do to protect her. The look on his face says it all: not much.
• • •
Today, Skeeter comes, and I got extra air in my lungs. Nobody brung word that he won’t coming so I let myself think it might happen for real. Skeeter’s my firstborn, a lot older now than when my Willis died at thirty-two years. No mama likes to say she’s partial, specially when both boys she births is good, but when one of em comes out like his daddy she loves, it happens natural.
I pick a fat hen off her nest, step outside the coop, give thanks to the Lord, then break her neck. I chop her head off with my ax, quick scald the body in a pot of water, pluck her feathers for pillows, and put the body in cool water to rinse off the blood. Inside an hour that hen has gone from sitting in a coop to being cooked, and I start fixing dumplings.
I’m rolling out the dough when I stop and say out loud, “Lord, I hope Skeeter’s wife can cook. A woman who can’t cook good misses the best part of comfort.” I set the table with my three plates and make sure I get the cracked one. Last thing, I fix a pan of biscuits ready to pop in the oven when they come. The extra can go home with em. I take off my apron, hang it on a hook, and check the clock.
It’s ten past nine.
It’ll be afternoon before Skeeter’s car comes down the road. Last time he stayed two hours and looked itchy to leave every minute of it. He looked old that visit. I want to know city living agrees with him. I want to meet his new wife. I want to see him treat her special. Like Willis treated me.
• • •
I got time between ready and Skeeter coming, so I take my chair to the front yard to wait and think on my other boy, Obie. Thirty-one years ago he come home for the last time in as fine a casket as these parts ever see.
Seemed after Obie went to soldier camp there was a accident. A uniform man drove up here with Obie in a long, polished box with a flag over it. That man stayed till we put Obie in the ground, then he pulled off that flag, folded it, and give it to me. I don’t want to keep it but don’t have the heart to tell him, so I put that flag in the bottom of the trunk Willis made me when I was a new bride.
It’s odd birthing two good boys and then one of em leaves life before he could hardly grow a beard. Obie loved to hear me laugh. One time at supper, he stuffed six biscuits in his mouth, then he crossed his eyes till I snorted buttermilk out my nose.
Twenty-two years. That’s all the time he got on this earth and I’m hard-pressed some days to recollect how he looked, and that shames me. The only picture I got of him is in his soldier uniform with his face serious and his eyes pretending to be brave. That picture is tucked under the folded flag.
Now there’s only Skeeter.
• • •
Mr. Turner, the mailman, drives down the road and sees me doing nothing and stops.
“Got a circular today, Miz Marris, my howdy for your Skeeter coming, and a little gossip, if you want.”
“What kind of gossip? I don’t like the mean kind.”
“This one’s funny. Bout Prudence Perkins.”
Prudence is the preacher’s spinster sister, and a more sour soul you’d be hard-pressed to find. “You got my attention. What happened?”<
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Mr. Turner shifts his truck into neutral and sets his arm on the window frame.
“Well, it won’t what she done so much as what somebody done to her.”
“Even better.” I stand up stiff and bend forward to touch my knees, but only reach halfway. I stand back up on the dizzy side.
Mr. Turner won’t a bit good at telling news cause he always blurts out the punch line before its time.
“Prudence Perkins got locked in her outhouse.”
Now he could have done a lot with that news if he told it slow, but it’s still funny.
“How long?”
“All morning, I guess. Preacher come home and can’t find her in the house. He yelled her name and she shouted out, ‘I’m in the privy!’”
“He tattled that kind of news bout his own sister?”
“Well, no. It was me who timed it right. I delivered mail when I heard her shout kind of weak and I heard the preacher shout back, ‘Let me get my wire cutters. Hold on to your britches!’ That struck me extra funny.”
“Who woulda done such a thing?” I ask, knowing there is lots of folks who got reason for payback to that sourpuss.
“Don’t know right off.”
Mr. Turner giggles as he scoots back to the middle of his seat and drives off. I’m glad he don’t say bout that girl gone missing. There’s enough talk bout that.
He passes Gladys’s mailbox without stopping so today she won’t even get a circular. I might take mine to her this evening…or maybe not. She’ll likely think Mr. Turner missed her on purpose when he mighta forgot. Most days I can’t win with Gladys. She thinks she knows everything bout everybody. Specially me.
But she don’t.
Like the day Walter got killed by lightning.
• • •
I come up on Walter that time he was fried on top of the plow. His body was crispy like a skinny chicken, but I seen something else, too.
In the morning’s light, there was wide drag marks cross Gladys’s yard. They started at Walter’s dead body, rounded the corner, crossed the creek, and went up the hillside where the trail showed clear as the path to damnation. Looking at it, anybody would be curious what laid that track, and they might have a mind to follow it. Gladys don’t need curious right then.
Before the mud got hard in the day’s sun, I picked up tree branches blown down in the storm. I zigzagged them leafy branches over those muddy drag marks that crossed the creek and climbed up the hillside. I found that piece of tin that used to live under her porch. It’s got a burn hole in the heart of it. Lightning could make a burn hole like that. I pile the tree branches on top of that tin.
When I need to, I got the backbone of Mother Jones to do what’s right.
• • •
I’ve been sitting on this kitchen chair near three hours, and my bottom’s gone numb. I stand slow, hold my arms up, and bend one way and then the other, then pick up the chair.
And stop.
I hold real still. Listen careful.
It’s a car engine a ways off.
It’s coming this way.
I turn, holding my chair, and watch. A car rounds the curve. It’s one of them little fancy cars missing a top. A man drives and a woman wears a long scarf that trails in the breeze. The car horn toots three times.
It’s Skeeter!
He hits the brakes and the car stops beside me. My boy gets outta the car and hurries round back, and I think he’s gonna hug me, but he opens the car door, and the woman who must be his new wife leans out and upchucks right at my feet and some of it splatters on my shoes.
I put the chair down and step back. Skeeter helps the woman outta the car like she’s a invalid. Her lipstick’s smeared. Her hair’s a mess. The scarf on her head is cockeyed.
“Ma, this is Helen,” he says without looking at me.
Helen holds out a limp, cold hand for me to shake, then she turns quick to hurl again.
I step back. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Helen’s constitution must not care for this thin air. We didn’t know that till we got underway. That’s why we’re late. Sorry if we worried you.”
“What’ll make her better?”
“She may not feel like herself till we get back to the city.”
Not a word has come outta Helen’s mouth. I say, “I get a wet rag,” and I get a rag and a glass of water. When I get back, Helen sits on my kitchen chair with her head hung low. She’s pitiful is what she is.
I hand the rag to Skeeter and he looks like his daddy when he gets down on his knees, tender. He washes Helen’s face gentle, then her fingers one at a time. He dabs at some spit-up on her coat, but when he comes to her flat bosom, he hands the rag to her. She cuts a smile at him. Reaches out and tugs his earlobe.
He whispers, “You are beautiful.”
“Aw, Skeeter, you sweetie. I’m a wreck” is the first words I hear her say, with a little laugh.
I love her.
Just like that.
I love Skeeter’s new wife.
She sips a little water, and my boy helps her to her feet, then turns her narrow shoulders toward me like he’s showing off a prized blue ribbon. She’s got crow’s-feet round her hazel eyes and saggy skin on her skinny neck and not a speck of color in her freckled cheeks. She’s older than I thought she’d be, but Skeeter’s no youngster his self no more. Only that little car made em look young till they got close.
They look right side by side and I don’t have to ask Skeeter if he’s happy. He keeps one arm snug round her and tells me again, “This here’s my Helen,” and says her name extra special.
“Helen,” I say and get all mushy inside thinking of the sweetness Willis and me had that belongs to them now. “Glad to meet you.” I sound stiff like I’m sitting in somebody’s parlor on a horsehair sofa when my insides are about to pop and my throat closes up with too much happiness.
Just when I think this moment can’t get any better, my new daughter, Helen, loved by Skeeter, says, “I’m so glad to meet you at last. May I call you Mother Jones?”
Eli Perkins
Daddy took me to see the devil when I was nine years old. Mama didn’t want me to go, but Daddy said, “If the boy wants to come, he comes,” so I did.
The sun came up in a blue-sky morning and took some of the scare out of the day. Daddy carried his Bible clutched to his chest with one hand, and he held my hand with the other as we walked without talk through the woods to see the devil.
Granddaddy crossed the creek and came up beside us and walked. He took my other hand in his, so I was held tight by muscle and bone to my two heroes. I didn’t know who this serious Granddaddy was who came this time without a joke or penny candy like he usually did. He wore his black fedora low and carried his Bible like a small shield, like Daddy did.
Then the brother deacons came one by one from their places in the woods till they were four strong. They followed behind Daddy and Granddaddy and me, and their hard leather shoes walked on soft ground riddled with roots and rocks and fallen leaves. Above us, crows followed from tree to tree. They swooped low and cried soft.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, Son?”
“Where we gonna see the devil?”
“He’s taken up residence in the body of Pharrell Moody, God bless his soul.”
I’d heard about Pharrell Moody from grown-ups, in scattered whispers, with wringing hands and worry, and none of it was good. Folks had given up on him and wanted him gone.
Not Daddy and Granddaddy. They don’t give up on Pharrell Moody.
“What you gonna do?” I whispered.
“Help’s on the way, and we gonna cast out the devil and send him back to hell so Pharrell Moody can get back to living.”
Daddy gave my hand a squeeze of confidence, and we turned quiet and walked on.
• • •
I wake soggy brained, back in my aging body, stiff from a nap in my worn easy chair. I wonder what in the world pulled that devil of a day from my youth to the front of my mind. Back then when I was young, the name Pharrell Moody was folklore around here, part demon and part redemption. Pharrell Moody’s long gone from this world, and his flesh has turned back to dust.
I’m parched from my dream about the devil, so I get up and sip water from the ladle in the bucket, standing at the window looking out upon the valley. Good folks and sinners scratch out a life here in Baines Creek, but the devil works overtime, so my work as a preacher will never be done.
I leave the warmth of the house and head out to my workshop to busy my hands and think on my memory.
Pharrell Moody was the teaching moment forty-six years back that confirmed my call to serve God. What nine-year-old boy would not be changed for good at the power of God’s words that cast out the devil and sent him back to hell? It was one thing for me to want to serve the Almighty, Powerful God. It was entirely another to believe I was worthy of the calling. I still have moments when I think God might smite me for my nerve to call myself a preacher and step into the giant shoes worn by my daddy and granddaddy.
Some days I can’t believe God entrusted souls to my care. I doubt my strength. I doubt the Lord’s plan. That I live in the peaks and valleys of the oldest mountains on earth is a metaphor that never eludes me. The golden and the dank days, and the string of in-betweens meander like an old goat trail—my old goat trail.
“Brother, you out there?” Prudence calls flat-voiced from the back porch and stands in the shadows as usual, arms folded across her chest. Washed sheets hang under the eaves and sway in a chilly breeze.
I wave out the window over my workbench, then hold up five fingers to let her know I need five minutes. The screen door slaps shut, and I sand more wooden toys. When the cold comes in earnest, Christmas won’t be far behind, and these gifts must be ready. I turn wood scraps into trucks and dolls and bears, and the stack of toys grows. I write the child’s name on the bottom of each toy so they know they’re special. For now, here at the end of August when the seasons change, I don’t feel much pressure, so I tinker in my shop more than work.