Bloodroot

by Amy Greene

  Then one morning, I got sick. I hung over the toilet wishing for Clint, but he was gone to work. After a few minutes it finally dawned on me. That whole time I was lonesome, mine and Clint’s child was already with me. I seen what had been causing my sadness. I just needed a brand-new little baby. I already knowed it was a boy, too, the way I know things sometimes. Later being pregnant was like a dream, because I couldn’t touch or see him. It was like my womb was another planet off in the sky. But right then he was real to me. I closed my eyes and thought of Mama. I wondered if I was ever this real to her when me and Johnny was in her belly. I imagined my baby, warm and heavy like Percy in my arms. Me and Clint was close, but it would be even better to have a child inside my body. I needed to be that close with somebody. I wanted a chance to be the kind of mama mine wasn’t to me.

  When Clint got home from the grocery store I was standing on the trailer steps. He came up whistling and jingling his keys. He stopped as soon as he seen me, halfway across the grass with a big patch of yard still between us. I blurted out, “I’m fixing to have a baby.” Clint turned white and dropped his keys. We had a time finding them later. Then he came to me like he was sleepwalking. He fell down on his knees and hugged my belly for a long time. I looked out across the lake. His hair smelled like the water.

  Them first weeks, Clint would lay his sunshiny head on my belly and try to hear the baby’s heart beating. Louise from the grocery store gave us a book of names. We stayed up late looking but never found one we liked. He’d rub my feet and we’d try to think up what the baby was going to look like. Clint wanted him to have black eyes, I wanted blue. Sometimes we’d even fight about silly things like that. Clint would get mad and stomp off. He’d slam the door so hard things would fall off the walls. I knowed he was going to swim, even though it was fall and getting cooler outside. He seemed glad about the baby, but someway it made him nervous, too. I figure he was thinking about his parents, and the bad times he had when he was a little boy. He always came back in the trailer and said, “I’m sorry for being hateful. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” Sometimes he was happy but sometimes he got quiet. He started staying outside more, working on his car. It helped Clint having something to work on. He still loved that Pinto.

  Then one afternoon while he was at work and I was getting ready to cook supper, I heard a car door slam and a loud shrill voice. “You come on out of there, Clint!” the voice was saying. “I swear I’ll burn that place to the ground with both of y’all in it!” I knowed right away it was Clint’s mama, even though I never met her. I rushed around in a panic, looking for my shoes. “You ain’t no better than that sorry daddy of yours!” Clint’s mama was hollering. “I always knowed it!” Her voice was getting closer. I hurried through the living room and opened the front door just as she was fixing to pound on it.

  “Where’s Clint?” she screamed at me. She was swaying on her feet. I could tell she was drunk or maybe on pills. She didn’t have any teeth and there was blue tattoos all over her arms. Her eyes was nothing like Clint’s.

  “He’s gone to work,” I said. I pulled the door shut behind me. It was a chilly day outside and I hugged myself, wishing I had put on a sweater.

  “You’re a liar,” she said.

  “No. He’s at the store.” I came down the steps and she backed up. “He’ll be home around five-thirty if you want to come back then.”

  “Listen to you,” she said. Her words was hard to make out for the slurring. “Trying to run me off from my own property. This place belongs to me, not you.”

  I didn’t say anything, just stood still hoping she’d leave. She stared at me. Then she went to crying. “People’s always doing me this way,” she said. It was even harder to understand her words through the tears. “I ain’t never had nobody. When I was little they was always passing me around. Didn’t none of them want me.” She wiped tears away with the back of her hand. “D’you know they took my first babies I had away from me? Put them with my ex-husband’s people and they never would come back to live with me. Then I had Clint and he picked his sorry old daddy over me every time.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I wished I could make her feel better. I reached out my hand to her. I opened my mouth to ask her to come on in the trailer, but she went back to mad again. I never seen anybody act so mixed up since I left Pauline behind.

  “But I’ll fight for him this time, little girl!” she hollered. “You better believe it!” She stumbled backward into Clint’s Pinto and fell. It was pulled up close to the trailer so he could work at night by the porch light. He never took it to the store. It was still in bad shape, so he drove the green car. “I been fighting people my whole life!” she screamed, spit flying off of her lips. “I been in fights all over this state!” When she got up I seen there was something in her hand. It was the jack handle Clint used to change the Pinto’s tires. “I always win, too,” she said. Then she raised the jack handle and I thought she was going to come after me with it. She crashed it into one of the Pinto’s headlights instead. Then she beat out the other one. I couldn’t stand to see her hurting Clint’s car. I ran at her faster than I thought I could move. There was noises coming out of my throat that didn’t seem like me. Clint’s mama had her back to me, busting out the Pinto’s windshield. I jumped on her from behind and grabbed hold of her face. My fingers was hooked into claws. They dug at her cheeks. I yanked her backward until she dropped the jack handle. She tried to sling me off but I hung on tight. She pried at my fingers but I wouldn’t turn loose. She dropped to her knees and tried to crawl away. I couldn’t let her go. I beat her head and bit her shoulders, put my whole weight on top of her. I wanted her to bear it all. “Don’t you hurt Clint’s car!” I yelled in her ear. “Don’t you ever hurt Clint’s car!” That’s all I could make myself say, even though there was a lot more that I wanted to.

  Pretty soon I felt tired and rolled off of her. I laid in the yard breathing so hard it hurt my throat. She stumbled up and started limping to her car. “You crazy little bitch!” she tried to holler, but her voice was nearly gone. “I’ll call the law on you!” I laid there in the grass shaking for a long time after she took off. I couldn’t believe what I had done to her. I asked the Lord to forgive me. I was sorry but most of all I was worried about my baby. I thought something had broke inside me, the way it broke in Mama.

  JOHNNY

  I left the Odom house in a daze, duffel bag over my shoulder. I had meant to search for my father after seeing Frankie Odom, but there was a weight on me when I walked out the door. I didn’t know what to make of all I had heard, especially the last thing my grandfather had said to me. I wandered down the street and paused at the stop sign to look around, head heavy and muddled. I noticed a house on the corner that seemed out of place in such a seedy neighborhood. It was white with two stories, set back from the curb on a manicured lawn. Urns with ivy topiaries flanked the front door and a sign above it read “Imogene’s” in fancy script. It was obviously a shop, not a residence. I crossed the grass thinking dimly of calling a cab to somewhere. When I opened the door I was standing in what looked like a living room crowded with musty-smelling furniture, price tags dangling off everything. A woman appeared out of nowhere, small with dyed hair and a powdered face. I assumed that she was Imogene. When I noticed the book in her hand my whole body tensed. Like always, a sign. But this time I would rather not have seen it. She was holding a slim volume, forefinger marking her place. It was a book of poems like one I had found in the woods but in better condition, not swollen with moisture or specked with mildew. She smiled at me. “Can I help you with something?”

  “What’s that book you have?” I asked, buying some time to collect myself.

  She looked at her hand. “Oh,” she said. “I have a friend by the name of Ford Hendrix who travels all over the place hunting old books. The ones he doesn’t keep, he brings to me.” She paused, maybe deciding if I was dangerous. I must have passed inspection because she smiled at me again
. “I’ve got more upstairs if you’re interested.”

  I thanked her then excused myself and hurried up the stairs. At the end of a narrow hall there was a room with books shelved from floor to ceiling. I ran my fingers over the spines, closed my eyes and took in the good smell. There were no others like those I found in the woods, but if I hadn’t been broke I would have bought one anyway.

  I went quietly back downstairs, meaning to sneak out, but a square of door in a nook behind the stairwell caught my eye. It looked inviting with light falling through its cracks. I glanced over my shoulder as I turned the knob, feeling like an intruder even though the shop was a public place, and stepped out into the sun. There was a deck with garden furniture and more topiaries in pots. At the edges of the property a tall wood fence blocked out the neighboring duplex on one side and hid an overgrown lot behind it. I stood there among the plants, pots crowded under glass hothouses and bell jars, ivy and fern leaves trailing everywhere, and had a moment of disbelief that I was free. I would never see my cell at Polk County again. I needed to think about finding work and a place to stay, but the deck was so peaceful, I couldn’t resist sitting down for a while in one of the flaking wicker chairs. My whole body sagged, my arms and legs going limp with exhaustion. I hadn’t realized how bone tired I was, not just from that morning at the Odom house, but over the past four years locked up in prison. I looked at my duffel bag resting on my lap and thought of my notebook inside. If I could clear my head, maybe it would come to me what to do next. I took out the notebook and a pen, but after only a few lines my eyelids grew heavy. A cool wind stirred through the plants and blew over me like a spell from a fairy tale. I felt my fingers loosening on the pen as I nodded off. I don’t know how long I dozed before Imogene’s voice jerked me suddenly awake, the notebook sliding off my lap and landing at my feet.

  “Didn’t find one you liked?” she asked, standing in the doorway behind me.

  I jumped up as if I’d been caught stealing. “Not this time,” I said.

  Imogene smiled. “Well, my friend said he’d probably be by sometime today with another load of books. You ought to come back later and see what he brings.”

  I had no intention of going back. But when I left the shop, I still didn’t know where I was headed. I could have tried to find Laura, but I wasn’t ready to see her yet. It would have been like facing up to all I had done and seen since we were together last. I thought of the Law-sons, who had been good to me when I lived with them. Not far down the street from Imogene’s, I saw a phone booth outside a convenience store. I hesitated and then went inside to buy cigarettes first, a habit I’d picked up at the detention center. There was a long line at the counter and the cashier was slow. I stood under the buzzing fluorescents shifting from foot to foot, something nagging at me. After paying for the cigarettes, I walked out to the phone booth, tucking the pack into my breast pocket.

  I was looking up the Lawsons’ number when it hit me that I’d left my notebook behind. I froze, dropping the phone book to dangle at the end of its cord. I ran all the way back to Imogene’s with my heart threatening to give out on me. When I got there, throat raw and side aching, I barely registered the red truck parked at the curb. I didn’t bother to go inside the shop. I went around the house to where the garden deck was, praying the notebook would still be where I’d left it. I stopped in my tracks on the bottom step. There was a man sitting in the wicker chair, with long white hair under a greasy baseball cap. He was holding the notebook in his hands, so absorbed in his reading that he didn’t notice me. It took a second to comprehend what I was seeing. Then I crossed the deck in a few leaping steps, knocking over a flower pot, and snatched the notebook away from him. The man stared at me with wild eyes. I was assaulted by the stink of his sweat.

  “Hey, sorry,” he said, holding up his hands as if to prove they were empty. I saw that his ring finger was missing, a smooth, pink nub where it should have been. I backed off a few paces. “I assume that belongs to you,” he said. Standing, he was a striking figure in spite of his dirtiness, tall with broad shoulders and a sunken belly. His hair was white but his face was smooth. It was impossible to guess how old he was.

  “You should mind your own business,” I said over the thud of my heart.

  “I know, I know,” the man said. “But I had a good reason.”

  I looked down at the notebook, gripping it so tightly my fingertips were purple. Slowly, it sank in that someone had read the words between the covers. “You had a good reason,” I repeated. I thought of lunging at him again, but the image of that smooth, pink nub on his hand held me back. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “It’ll take some time to explain.”

  “Explain what?”

  “I needed to read your poems.”

  I stared at him blankly, unable to speak.

  The man grinned, teeth bright in his sun-browned face, and stepped toward me. I tensed, prepared to fight. “Listen, are you hungry?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Let me buy you a hamburger and I’ll tell you all about it.” He thrust out his hand but I didn’t take it. “Name’s Ford Hendrix.”

  “Do you know me somehow?”

  “You could say so.”

  My mouth went dry. I looked at his damaged left hand, now dropped at his side, and back at his bloodshot eyes. “What do you want with me?”

  “I want to help you, that’s all.”

  “What makes you think I need helping?”

  “I had a vision,” he said. “You were in it.”

  I stood gaping at him for a long time, wondering if it was pos sible that I was having a dream. Then I followed him like a sleepwalker to his truck, because he had read my poems. He knew me better than anyone else on earth now, even Laura. But there was another reason I went. It was the missing ring finger. I needed to know how he lost it.

  We didn’t speak as he drove with the windows down, bits of trash whirling everywhere. I couldn’t have carried on a conversation if he’d tried to talk. I still wasn’t sure if all that had happened since I’d left the detention center that morning was real or one long hallucination. He took me to a bar and grill on the outskirts of town and we went inside where it was dim and hot. He stood at the counter and ordered cheeseburgers from a man in a stained apron. Two men drinking coffee by the window nodded as we passed. We sat down and stared at each other across the table. A fly buzzed between us.

  “You say you had a vision about me.”

  “Yes.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I take after my grandfather. People called him the Prophet of Oak Ridge.”

  “So you’re a prophet?”

  Ford grinned like all of this was funny. “I was born fifteen years after he died, but my mother told me stories about him. He was always roaming the woods and one day, after he had been missing for a few weeks, he showed up at the general store in town and told his neighbors he’d seen a vision. Said a voice told him to sleep with his head on the ground for forty days and nights and he’d see the future. He predicted Bear Creek valley would be filled with factories that would help this country win the greatest war ever fought. People thought he was crazy. They locked him up for a while at the county farm, but now they know he was right. Twenty-eight years after he died, the factory was built in Bear Creek valley where they made the uranium for the first atomic bomb.”

  “What’s any of that got to do with me?” I asked, working to keep my composure. The man in the apron brought our food on a tray and left without speaking.

  “Nothing, except he’s the reason I see visions. It never happened until after I lost this finger.” He held up his hand. “That’s when I found God and the voice started speaking to me.” He took a bite of cheeseburger, mustard squirting down his chin. My food sat untouched on the table. Smelling it turned my stomach.

  “How’d you lose it?” I asked.

  He raised his eyebrows. “You mean my finger? It happened while I was
noodling for catfish. Some people call it grabbling. That’s where you wade out in the water and feel along the bank for holes where catfish go to spawn. The female lays her eggs in there and then the male moves in to guard them. If you stick your hand in his hole, he’ll bite it and you can pull him out. I was in the lake up to my neck, water so cloudy I couldn’t see a thing, even when I ducked under. The trouble with noodling is you never know what you’re going to get. That time it was a snapping turtle, bit my finger clean off.”

  I felt a vein pulsing in the middle of my forehead. I knew that he was lying. It was something about the way his eyes shifted. “That’s not what happened,” I said.

  “Well, I wish that’s what happened.” He grinned again in that maddening way.

  For a while I watched him eat in silence, smearing ketchup on his plate with his french fries, looking out the window as if I wasn’t even there.

  “What did you see?” I asked.

  “Hmm?”

  “In the vision.”

  “Not much. Just that you were coming to us.”

  “Who’s us?”

  “Me and my wife, Carolina.”

  I shook my head and laughed for what felt like the first time in years. “You’re one crazy son of a bitch.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But so are you. Because you believe me.”

  He was wrong. I didn’t believe him, but I felt like I needed to know who he was. When we finally walked out of the bar and grill, it seemed we had been there for decades. Ford fished around in his pocket for his keys and asked, “Where can I drop you off?”

  I thought about it. “I don’t know. Just take me back to town.”

  “Where you staying?”

  I took out a cigarette. “Nowhere right now. But I’ll figure it out.”

  Ford fell silent, leaning on his truck. I lit the cigarette and smoked, watching cars pass on the road. Finally he said, “Why don’t you come and stay with me for a while?”