Bloodroot

by Amy Greene

  But while his daddy lived, they had a nice life by the lake. Clint came and went as he pleased. He didn’t have to do homework. He failed three years in a row. Only reason he went to school any was because the truant officer threatened to put his daddy in jail. He never had to take a bath either and got dirtier and dirtier. He said them dirty smells was the ones he liked best, greasy hair and black feet bottoms and most of all fishy lake water. I thought that might have been what brung us together, the way we both loved fish. We must have seen each other’s secret scales glinting under our skins. There was something the same inside of us. Clint talking about his life always made me think about my own. I seen we could take care of each other in a way our mamas didn’t know how to.

  After Clint went back with his mama he thought every day about running off. But he said there was a part of hisself that would always be afraid of her. It was like her shrill voice froze him up, especially with his daddy gone. Clint told me, “If it wasn’t for Daddy, I never would have been brave enough to get away from her in the first place.”

  She made Clint go to work at the grocery store and help pay the bills. He didn’t mind about that. The store wasn’t as good as the lake, but it was still someplace to go. He said he liked the people there. He looked forward to going to work at night, but during the day at school he’d set around in class and get mad at his mama. It was like she won, and he couldn’t stand it. He’d beat up other boys the same way he wanted to beat on his mama. He was sorry after he fought them, but he said he couldn’t help it until he met me. “All that black hair of yourn looked like a big old pool of lake water,” he leaned over and whispered in my ear one day. “When I was standing behind you out yonder, I just wanted to dive right in it.” Hearing him talk that way made me feel like I was worth something.

  Clint told me all them things on the bus. Then he started bringing me presents, mostly barrettes and combs. I knowed he wanted them done up in my hair. I’d fix myself in the school bathroom and take it down before I got off the bus. I figured Pauline might not like my hair done up that way, but Clint sure did. Before long, we loved each other.

  JOHNNY

  After my visit with Laura, I made up my mind to attend the counseling sessions, as much as I hated the pastor’s son. Seeing her took something out of me. I couldn’t stand being at the children’s home any longer. Each meal at the fellowship hall soured on my stomach and the smell of wet limestone began to hurt my head. I was too tired to climb the iron fence anymore. I knew the only way to earn my freedom was to do as I was told, so I sat with the others in a circle of folding chairs and pretended to listen. The summer before I turned fifteen, the pastor’s son decided I was ready to have foster parents again. Nora Graham took me in late August to Wanda and Bobby Lawsons’ old clapboard house outside of Millertown. They worked long hours at the gas station they owned and when they got home they went to bed. They seemed more interested in the check the government provided for my upkeep than in being my parents and I was grateful for it. At the end of five years living among so many strangers, all I wanted was to be left alone.

  Like the children’s home, the Lawsons’ house was ringed in woods. It wasn’t the same wilderness I was used to, with craggy bluffs and limestone caves. These woods were flat and crowded with tall, skinny trees, the ground humped with snaking roots. I could walk for hours without the scenery changing, save a random piece of rusty junk here and there. Once I saw an old stove on its side, half buried in kudzu, and once a car bumper shaggy with honeysuckle. I traveled so far that I came out behind the high school, standing on a rise overlooking the football field. I saw how close I was to Millertown, how easy it would be to find Main Street and Odom’s Hardware. But I still didn’t know whether I wanted to forget who I was or go looking for the man I came from.

  Then I met Marshall Lunsford on the first day of high school and everything changed. At lunchtime I went through the line and took my tray to the first empty seat. There was a boy sitting across from me eating a greasy square of yellow cornbread. He was gawky and long-necked with dirty fingernails and a head full of cowlicks.

  “You’re lying through your teeth, Marshall,” the fat boy beside him was saying. “There ain’t even no coyotes around here.” He looked across the table at me. “You should’ve heard what all this retard said.”

  “I ain’t retarded,” Marshall said. “Me and my daddy went hunting up on the mountain and I seen a coyote.”

  “That ain’t all he told,” the fat boy piped up. “Why don’t you tell him the rest of it, see if he believes you any more than I do.”

  Marshall’s face turned red. “It ain’t no lie. Me and Daddy got separated. Then I heard this growling noise. There was a female coyote coming out of a cave. I guess it must’ve had pups. Well, I stood right still and it kept coming at me.” Marshall was enjoying himself, getting carried away. He leaned forward. “I figured I ort not to run, cause if I fell it would’ve ripped my throat out. I stood my ground and the next thing I knowed, that coyote was jumping at me. Then I caught hold of its head and gave it a twist. That thing fell down dead with its neck broke, hit the ground like a rock.”

  “You’re full of it,” the fat boy said, shaking his head.

  “What mountain was it?” I asked.

  Marshall’s eyebrows shot up. He seemed startled that I had spoken to him. “Bloodroot Mountain.”

  “You live on Bloodroot Mountain?”

  “Down at the bottom of it,” he said, and went back to stuffing his mouth with great hunks of cornbread.

  “You really believe this retard killed a coyote?” the fat boy asked smugly, as if he already knew what my answer would be.

  I looked Marshall over, cold settling around my heart. “He might have.”

  Marshall looked up from his tray at me with surprise and gratitude. I could tell that he thought I was an ally. It was just what I wanted him to think.

  After school, I walked into the late summer woods with Marshall Lunsford on my mind. If I befriended him, I could go home whenever I wanted. I knew he’d be glad if I asked to sleep over. I had seen the hero worship in his eyes. He even claimed to know the Lawsons. He said Bobby was a distant cousin of his mother’s. But I remembered how hard it was seeing Laura. It would be even harder to see our house on the mountain.

  I walked a long way under the rustling green leaves, head down and hands in my pockets. After a while, I came to a wire fence with a sign that said “No Trespassing.” I slid under and kept going. The terrain was mostly the same except for the evergreens crowded now among the leafy trees. I topped a rise littered with pine needles and saw, not far off in a clearing, a leaning shack no bigger than an outhouse. My heart sped up, some crazy part of me wondering if this was my father’s house. Maybe he would even be waiting there for me. I walked fast, breathing hard, but when I reached the shack I was afraid to look. The woods had grown eerily silent. I held my breath and peeked inside. I saw a mildewed blanket and piles of damp leaves rotting in the corners. In the middle of the floor were three water-swollen books. Like the lighter in the cave, they seemed to have been left there for me to find. I stepped inside and knelt to pick them up. They appeared to be old poetry books. I stacked the volumes in the crook of my arm, leaving square shapes in the grime where they had been. I walked back to the house and crawled under the porch to read by the diamond-shaped light through the lattice until dark.

  My fingers shook as I turned the mold-spotted pages. It was like hearing my mama’s voice in my head, the lilting way she recited her verses, the rhythm and music of all those poems bringing her back to me. Then, about halfway through the last volume, I dropped it in the dirt. I’d seen my mama’s words, those she whispered so often I thought they were from the Bible or maybe something she made up, printed there in smeary ink.

  “These beauteous forms, through a long absence, have not been to me as is a landscape to a blind man’s eye, but oft, in lonely rooms, and ’mid the din of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
in hours of weariness, sensations sweet, felt in the blood, and felt along the heart….” I picked up the book and read the poem over and over. It had been written by William Wordsworth about a place called Tintern Abbey. I whispered it out loud and my mama’s presence came creeping over me. I looked down and saw a dark blot with crawling tendrils like long, black hair spreading over the dirt and pooling around my feet. I know now it must have been my imagination, but it seemed like she was more with me there under the Lawsons’ front porch than she had ever been on Bloodroot Mountain.

  I crawled out from under the porch and went inside, holding tight to the books from the woods. Wanda had left my plate wrapped in a dish towel on the stove. I ate in the darkened kitchen and put my plate in the sink and took the books to my room along the back of the house. I switched on the naked bulb overhead and wrote my first poem sitting on the bed. I scribbled until pale light seeped under the window shade and my fingers were numb and the arm once stiffened by a copperhead bite sang with pain. It was clear now what I needed to do. This was a sign I couldn’t ignore. I had to see our house on the mountain one more time. Then, whether he was alive or dead, I had to find my father.

  When I went to Odom’s Hardware a week later, I didn’t have to fake being sick to get out of school. The Lawsons left for work at dawn and I waited in my bed, thinking a hardware store wouldn’t be open so early. I brought my notebook from under the mattress and wrote again until my mind was empty and the sun was higher in the sky. Somehow getting the thoughts out calmed me. My hands were steady as I pulled on my shoes and ran a comb through my hair. I left the house and cut through the woods until I came out behind the high school. It wasn’t a long walk from there to Main Street. The buildings were abandoned looking, display windows crammed with junk, some cracked and repaired with tape. When I saw Odom’s Hardware, my own name painted on the dull red bricks of the building, my stomach clenched. It felt like someone or something else piloted my body down the sidewalk to the propped-open door. I stepped inside and the floor was made of wide, grimy planks that creaked under my feet. Once my eyes adjusted to the gloom I saw long aisles of shelves holding dusty cardboard boxes spilling bolts and screws and hinges. By the dirty light of the smeared plate-glass window I saw him perched on a stool behind the counter, just inside the door. It seemed as if he’d been waiting for me all along. I walked closer to see my uncle better, a smallish man with cigarettes in the breast pocket of his shirt, sitting in a shaft of whirling dust. He was unremarkable, with slicked-back hair, a plain, ruddy face, and ears too large for his head.

  “Help you?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” I said, taking another step closer. He rose from the stool and placed his hands on the counter, leaning forward. The way his eyes narrowed made my heart race.

  “What are you looking for today?” he asked. I could see his mind working as he took me in, trying to decide where he knew me from.

  “My father,” I said.

  He stared at me hard for a long moment, face strangely still. He touched something metal hanging from his neck, gleaming dully in the gloom. I saw that it was a pair of dogtags. He rubbed his thumb over them as if for comfort. Then he laughed but his eyes didn’t change. “Your father, huh? Are you pulling my leg?”

  “No.”

  The man stopped laughing. That’s when we remembered each other at the same time. I could see the light coming on in his eyes. In my head, he was standing in the parking lot of the co-op all over again. I could hear the slap of his palm on Mr. Barnett’s hood. I stepped closer and put my hands on the counter so we were almost nose to nose.

  “What’s your name, boy?” he asked softly, although I suspected he already knew. I could smell cigarettes on his breath, in his clothes.

  “Odom,” I said. “Just like yours.”

  The redness crept up from his neck to set his lined face on fire. “I know you,” he said, calmly enough. “I knowed your mama, too.”

  I pressed my palms harder into the counter and stared at his throat, imagining how it would feel between my fingers. My voice was surprisingly even when I opened my mouth. “You said you knew what she did to your brother. Is he dead or alive?”

  “You think I’d tell you a damn thing about my brother?” Hollis Odom asked through gritted teeth. A dot of spittle landed under my eye. It burned there but I didn’t move to wipe it away. “Hell, you probably ain’t even his. I didn’t know that whore had any babies. I would have called the human services on her after I seen you all at the co-op but I figured they’d come around with their hands stuck out, wanting us to take responsibility. We don’t owe you nothing, boy. You been signed over to the state a long time ago. You ain’t no Odom. And you ain’t got no business sniffing around here, so you might as well get along, before I put you out.”

  “What was it you called her?” I asked, jaw clenched so tight my teeth ached. My hand shot out to seize his throat as if of its own volition. His eyes bulged and his face went plum. He pried at my fingers and I dug in deeper, the dogtags pressing into his flesh. I can’t say when I would have let go if he hadn’t scrambled around with one hand under the counter, knocking things onto the floor, and come up with a gun. He thrust its long barrel into my face. It didn’t even look real. I let go of his throat and watched, heart drumming in my ears, as he whooped and coughed and spat, leaning on the counter for support, still clutching the gun in his hand. When he was finally able to speak he croaked between hectic breaths, “You get out of here before I shoot you right between the eyes. I ever see your face in here again I’ll have you throwed under the jail. You hear me?”

  I backed out of the store and into the sun. I stood looking at the building, breathing hard, thinking what to do next. It was only then that I realized I had somehow ripped the dogtags from around his neck. I was squeezing them tight in my hand, their notched edges biting into my palm. I opened my fingers and saw how old the tags looked, maybe from the Second World War. The name pressed into the metal was Franklin J. Odom. I knew they had belonged to Frankie Odom, my grandfather. I didn’t wonder what the middle initial stood for, either. It was John, like my father. It was Johnny, like me.

  LAURA

  I told Clint things on the bus, too. He’s the only one I ever told what happened to Mama. It was hard to say out loud. I told him about the mountain and our old house up there. The only thing I didn’t tell him about was Mama’s box with a finger bone inside. I’d look out the bus window and talk about how I wanted to go back. I told Clint first I’d visit the Barnetts and their dog, Whitey, and thank them for being so good to me and Johnny and Mama. Then I’d go in the house and lay in Mama’s bed, like she used to let me of the mornings. After that I’d wade in the creek and try to catch minnows like me and Johnny used to do. I’d climb up to Johnny’s rock where he got snake bit and look off down the bluff. Then I’d go high enough to find that white ghost flower and show Clint how it bled. One time he asked, “What about your mama?” I didn’t understand. He said, “Don’t you want to go visit her in Nashville?” I wanted to answer but I didn’t know how to say I’d got to where I’d just as soon see her dead than to see her locked up. I believe he felt bad for asking. I knowed he didn’t mean anything by it. He never brung it up again.

  Clint understood how bad I missed the mountain. He said, “Soon as I get me a car, I’m driving you there.” I knowed he was saving up money from his job. Going home seemed like something way off in the future that might never happen. Then one day Clint came to me grinning after school. It was spring already, close to the end of my freshman year. He led me out to the parking lot and there it was, a long green car with a busted place on the windshield. First thing Clint said was, “Now I can take you home.” I knowed he wasn’t talking about Larry and Pauline’s house. I hugged Clint tight and felt like crying, but not with happy tears. My heart was beating loud in my ears.

  That Saturday I told Pauline I was going to the library to write a paper for school. I hated to lie, but she never would have let
me go off with a boy. I walked to the end of the street. It was a nice day. The neighbor kids was out playing with water guns. I ought to felt good, but I was scared. When I got in Clint’s car, he pulled me across the seat and kissed me. Then he leaned back and looked me over. “What’s wrong, baby?” he asked, starting up the car. It was loud and the exhaust just about made me sick. I couldn’t say anything. When we got to the stop sign, Clint asked, “Which way?” I started getting even more tore up. I never thought about it before, but I couldn’t remember how to get there. I was just eight when I got took away. Clint must have seen the worry on my face. He said, “That’s all right. We’ll just head for the country until you see something you know.”

  We drove for a long time, past the city limits. We went down the two-lane highway, through Valley Home and Slop Creek. I had lived in them places. I should have knowed my way around. The mountains got closer but nothing looked familiar. I set against the door twisting my hands. Every once in a while Clint would pat my knee. “See anything you know?” he’d ask, and I’d shake my head. Finally when we got to Piney Grove he said, “Let me pull over here to this store and ask somebody.” It seemed like he was in there a long time. I kept looking at the mountains, getting hotter and sicker.

  I don’t know how long I set there until Clint came back. He opened the door and grinned at me. “That feller said we ain’t got far. Just hang a right here at the corner and keep going about five miles, then hang another right and I reckon that road goes straight up the mountain. Won’t be long.” He rubbed the back of my hair and I tried to smile, but my belly was hurting. I needed to use the toilet but I didn’t want to get out of the car.