Summer in Mossy Creek

by Deborah Smith

  “This here was the love of your crazy old great aunt’s life, sweet pea,” she said. I gazed at her as though I had never seen her before. “This man was a soldier for us in Korea. He died a long time before you was ever born; that’s why you never knew about him. Nobody talks about him, ’cause they think it’ll hurt me. I reckon it would. We was sweethearts and best friends all our lives. We was getting married, we thought. I almost married him before he left for the war, but we thought we’d just wait so it wouldn’t be so hard.”

  She traced the shape of the little cross on the tombstone with a stubby finger. “When you’re young, you don’t ever think the people you love will go away forever. That’s why folks love so easy when they’re little—like you, pumpkin. You don’t have no fear of what can happen.”

  I couldn’t help my heated response. “I’m afraid of everything! Most of all I’m afraid of being a grouchy old Stroud that nobody likes and everybody talks about! That’s why I won’t admit I love anybody. I’m not even wasting my time.” I sat there like a mad, wet bird with my feathers all puffed up.

  I had no idea why I’d said any of that or where the words had been hiding inside me. All I knew was that I was going to be ten-years-old and nothing in my life would ever improve. No kids would suddenly write me friendship notes in class or pick me for the games in P.E. because they truly liked me. My family wouldn’t find me amusing or wise or worthy of their attention just because I was a year older. And here sat my great aunt, the only one I liked, caring for someone who had been dead all my life. Caring for a grave, while I was planning to turn her in for grave robbing.

  Aunt Burt looked hard at me. “Therese, people waste their whole lives on being afraid. That’s why you need to keep on lovin’, just the same. So when you get old, like me, you won’t be sitting here thinkin’ how you wished you had. It ain’t wastin’ time to hang on to the people you care about. It’s wasting time to pretend you don’t care.”

  She swiped at her runny nose with the back of her hand and grinned. “One day, you’ll be plantin’ pretty things on your old Aunt Burt’s grave and I’ll know you’ve taken my advice, and that you’re taking care of my memories.”

  I watched as she pulled a little piece of thrift from the base of the soldier’s tombstone. “Therese, you take this back home with you.” She put the tender plant in my hand. “You give that there to your mama and you help her plant it. You help her remember who she is and that she’s a loved woman. She should be out here today planting and picking, just like you. I think maybe that’s why she let your granny bring you out here today. Maybe she needs you to help her remember what it’s like to be a daughter.”

  “Did Mama help plant with you?” I asked, suddenly aware that my crime-stopping plan was falling apart. “I mean, did you all put these plants out here?”

  “Why yes, what else did you think?” I said nothing. She looked puzzled and somewhat amused. I realized I never wanted her to know what I had been up to all day long. She looked away from me, across the hillside, before speaking again. “We have to take care of our kin’s graves. We’ve been comin’ out here most of our lives. I guess we mean to just keep on coming until somebody has to come for us, too.” It began to dawn on me, like warm water spreading through my limbs, that I felt proud of my great aunts and my granny for the first time.

  They weren’t thieves. They weren’t grave robbers. Not like I thought. They were more like big-haired, overweight, tobacco-toting good fairies. They weren’t anything to be ashamed of; they were the keepers of this realm of forgotten souls. I looked at my stout, squat aunt with admiration and wonder and threw my arms around her thick neck, nearly toppling us over.

  “Therese!” She laughed her big, bubbly laugh. “Honey, I guess that means you’ll take your mama a plant.”

  “And Sue Ann too, and even Sally, I guess. They should get one, too. So they know they can come next time.” I felt giddy. Like I had surfaced from an exhausting swim up through deep, dark waters.

  Darcey and Granny walked up to us about then. They were deep in conversation.

  “Won’t that be something?” Darcey was saying. “I can tell everybody how this root-sprig of azalea came off the grave of a man who knew the Dick Clark. I heard he shook Mr. Clark’s hand and had a Coca-Cola with him right there in the restaurant! This azalea has a lot of historical significance, don’t it? I wonder, Georgie, if this sort of plant adds value to a house?” Darcey examined a little piece of azalea attached to a spindly root.

  “Yeah,” Granny said. “You just go on and tell everybody that azalea knows Dick Clark. We’ll visit you in the asylum.”

  Darcey laughed, and so did Burt. She got up and left me sitting by her true love’s grave. The three old sisters continued snipping and foraging, filling their pockets with botanical loot and proudly discussing where they would display their bounty. I watched, astonished by what I was seeing. Not because I had found the proof I had been seeking, but because I was seeing a metamorphosis right before my eyes.

  They spoke to one another not only in civil tones, but caring and gentle ones. They touched, supporting one another over tough patches of ground and giggling at quiet jokes. I saw Granny pat her baby sister’s back and stroke her hair, taking Darcey’s head to her shoulder while murmuring reassurances. Granny and Burt whooped with laughter over old memories of their mischievous childhood and sat down under a tree together to have a drink of water like old friends.

  I couldn’t imagine how I had missed the truth before. My prickly, mean-as-snakes Stroud kin weren’t grave robbers. They were comrades in the trenches; women who meant something to one another and survived because they stuck together.

  I liked the idea that I had been initiated into this secret society. My daddy’s Masonic meetings had nothing on this. I could see pieces of my own heart’s desires reflected back at me in these goofy ladies. When their pockets were finally full of green stalks and roots, I found myself eagerly cradling a few tufts of thrift. I would plant it in remembrance of so many things—especially that day.

  AS WE SHOT BACK toward Mossy Creek like a baby-blue streak of Buick, I felt like a different person. Granny and my great aunts prattled on as usual, but there was a connection between them I hadn’t noticed before. Underneath the pine-knot hard exterior, these women nurtured a tender, inexplicable kinship. And as was their tradition, they sang gospel songs most of the way back into Mossy Creek, admiring their stolen vegetation. I sang along with them. I saw each woman with a new respect. I saw her determination in the face of a lifetime of grub-work, hungry children and misguided men. Mistakenly, I had believed that they didn’t care for one another or know their value. In reality, they were courageous and unabashedly devoted friends. They were strong.

  We finished up with a jubilant rendition of I’ll Fly Away just before we dropped off Aunt Darcey. She got out of the car with a smile and a lightness to her step as she walked up the path to her trailer. She looked like a girl again.

  When we dropped Aunt Burt off at her old, green house she squeezed out of the back seat and said to my granny, “Call me tomorrow. I’ve got peas coming in and I need your help shelling on Saturday. You don’t need to dress up.”

  “I’ll do it,” answered Granny, with a good-natured snarl. “I can’t believe it’s time to sit out and shell peas again. Seems like we just finished up last year’s.” She rolled her eyes at Burt. Back to her old, cranky self.

  Burt waved her beefy hand at me as I peered out of the back of the Buick.

  Granny turned around and eyed me.

  “You were awful quiet today, Miss Therese. What’s happened to the rattle mouth? You growin’ up?”

  Burt and I exchanged a knowing look.

  Mossy Creek would have to find itself another crime-stopper.

  I had been converted.

  I GAVE MY MAMA that piece of thrift. She looked at me
with surprise and a question in her eyes. I didn’t know what to say, so I just hugged her. Later that evening, I heard her on the phone. She had called and was talking and laughing with my granny, holding an old handkerchief of my grandfather Claude’s under her nose. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen my mama cry through a smile. I couldn’t remember ever hearing her laugh with my granny. Something deep moved in Mama’s puffy eyes when she turned them on me, as I stood in the shadows of the hallway. She looked different to me, in the dim fluorescent light. She looked like her mother.

  I had learned the difference between having a name and having a legacy. I would have to earn the latter, whereas the first was a gift from the family in which I was only beginning to find my place. I had learned the value of kin, by blood or by choice, and the blessing of friendship by grace.

  That night I lay in my bed, listening to Sally run on about Earl’s many virtues while I thought about the day I’d just had. I pulled the sheet up under my chin and sighed. I had followed Miss Ida’s advice and kept my eyes open to things I had never taken the time to notice before. I would have to tell her she was right about Opportunity.

  I turned my head to look at my sister, sitting up in her bed with her knees tucked under her chin while she talked on the phone, in the dark, to Earl. I knew who we were now, whether she did or not. She was already important, with or without Earl, because I was her sister. Some day, we would be grave tenders and grave robbers, together.

  As she lulled me to sleep with her dreams of raising little Earls, I dreamed a sweeter dream. I dreamed of baby blue Buicks and shady cemeteries and dead sergeants and love. The year of my tenth birthday would come and go, but no matter whose name I decided to add to the one I carried behind me now, I would always know who I was.

  A Stroud woman.

  Lady Victoria Salter Stanhope

  The Cliffs, Seaward Road

  St. Ives, Cornwall TR37PJ

  United Kingdom

  Katie Bell, Assistant Editor

  Mossy Creek Gazette

  106 Main Street

  Mossy Creek, GA 30533

  USA

  My dear Katie:

  I’m thrilled to learn that Sagan Salter has appeared in Mossy Creek. Do keep me posted. I’d love to know more about him. Perhaps in some decade past we might be related. I still haven’t been able to find out about my mother’s American family. I know she was being reared by the Hamiltons, but I don’t know why. Through the Cornwall Genealogical Society I’ve found out about my English ancestors. But I have a feeling the answer to the Salter mystery is to be found in Mossy Creek.

  As for the other residents in your lovely village, I feel as though they’re my friends now. My little part of the world is very different. You asked about Cornwall. Let me explain. Cornwall is the southern-most point of land in mainland England. It would be a county such as your Bigelow County. Much like your mountains seem to cuddle your little cove, the Atlantic Ocean embraces the little string of villages that make up our special part of England. I live in St. Ives. In the summer our village is filled with hanging flower baskets, tourists and fishermen. We have cobblestone streets, quaint little shops and friendly Cornishmen ready to invite you to tea. In fact, I’m going to send you my own ingredients for a real English Tea. Maybe your local chef, Bubba Rice, would like to try it.

  Yes, we’re English but we were originally Cornish. At least my ancestors were. I’ll tell you more about that later. For now, let me say Bolla tay/coffy? (Cup of tea/coffee?) Until next time, Gothewhar daa (Good day).

  Your friend,

  Victoria

  P.S. Let me know about Sagan. If memory serves me, he’s the first male Salter in Mossy Creek in years.

  Chapter Seven

  LOUISE and JACK

  “Friendship is one mind in two bodies.”

  —Mencius

  IDA HAMILTON WALKER stuck her head around the kitchen door and said in a frazzled voice, “Louise, we’re running out of potato salad.”

  “Here.” My daughter Margaret handed her a Tupperware bowl straight out of the refrigerator. I would have dumped the salad into a crystal bowl, but didn’t suggest that. This was Margaret’s first foray into the world of Southern post-funeral feasts, so I refrained from correcting her. I doubted those Visigoths eating me out of house and home in the living and dining rooms of Aunt Catherine’s little cottage would notice.

  I’d only bought the ham and the turkey, of course. Half the town had descended on Aunt’s house with food the minute they heard she had breathed her last. They brought everything from sweet potato casseroles to homemade coconut cakes. They filled Aunt’s refrigerator and mine as well.

  Good thing, too. Unlike Moses, I couldn’t call down manna from heaven, and after Aunt’s funeral, practically the whole town of Mossy Creek came back to her house to chat and eat.

  And eat some more. I swan, you’d think it was a church picnic instead of the aftermath of a funeral for a ninety-two-year-old woman. But she had wanted a great big party, and I was glad to help her get her wish.

  She was actually my great aunt, and one of my few remaining relatives. I’d been run off my feet arranging the viewing at the funeral home, picking what she was going to wear into eternity, and organizing folks to meet and greet during the viewing at the funeral home before they moved her to the church for the service.

  Her old lady friends had demanded an open coffin, and I wasn’t prepared to put up with their complaints if I closed it. Lying in state, Aunt looked like a generic “aged crone” from Madame Tussaud’s gallery of waxworks, but that was unimportant. She was long gone from that body. She would have been the first to agree that if the empty husk that was left gave pleasure to her friends, it was fine with her.

  I also had to get folks to stay at both her house and mine during the actual service and the trek out to the graveside. According to Amos, the Police Chief, thieves actually read the obituaries. Then while the family is away burying old Uncle Victor or whoever, the thieves break into the empty house and steal everything in sight. Talk about tacky.

  Despite being the chief mourner, I’d spent most of the last three days in Aunt’s kitchen and on the telephone. Thank heaven for my Garden Club. They’d pitched right in with flowers and food, made sure the house stayed presentable, and saw to it that every dish and bowl was labeled and entered so that it could be returned to the right person with a thank-you note. Plus somebody was always available to greet folks who came by either the house or the funeral home.

  I’ve heard men boast that a girl only becomes a woman when she loses her virginity. Typical. As though that frequently uncomfortable and bloody encounter with a male is the defining moment in the female life.

  A girl truly becomes a woman when she is first initiated into that cadre of women who keep every sort of ceremony humming from behind the scenes. They are seldom appreciated, except by one another. They are the Marthas who spend most of any event around the kitchen stove and the sink.

  I became a member when my mother died. I was only twenty-five, and I hadn’t been a virgin since I married Charlie, but I was still a novice until after that event. From then on for the rest of my life I have been a part of that select group, and now my daughter Margaret was following in my footsteps.

  I suppose it’s like being invited into some secret female earth cult. Men are excluded simply because they don’t comprehend either that it exists or that it matters.

  So I was trying my darnedest to open the last bottle of watermelon pickles and having no luck at it, when the kitchen door opened and Ida stuck her head in again.

  “Louise, somebody out here wants to speak to you.”

  “In a minute.” I slammed the pickles down on the table lid first, heard the pop that said the vacuum had been released, and twisted off the top. “Who is it?” But she’d already gone bac
k to the crowd in the dining room.

  I wiped my hands down the front of my apron, pulled it off, settled my hair, and went out with my best funereal smile plastered on to meet whoever special had arrived.

  I hadn’t had the leisure to grieve for Aunt. She’d taken to her bed only a week earlier after fainting into her gladiolas while she was planting parrot tulips for spring. She refused to go to the hospital. I didn’t try to persuade her, although I knew I’d take some flack for that. The woman was ninety-three. If she wanted to die in her own bed in her own time, then I wasn’t about to have her poked with needles and sucking air through a tube and generally being treated like a piece of meat while she did it.

  I hadn’t shed a tear, nor even given more than a fleeting thought to my loss, although she was the last of her generation and I loved her dearly.

  But when I recognized Jack standing on the front porch behind the screen door, so big he cut off all but a tiny bit of light that surrounded him like a nimbus, I lost it. By the time I’d shoved through the folks standing around the dining room table and clustered in the small living room, I was sobbing audibly.

  Jack held the screen door open long enough for me to rush out onto the porch and into his arms. He’d always been the sweetest smelling man! Even when he was a teenager—most teenaged boys smell like unwashed goats—he managed to smell as fresh as spring. I felt those big arms of his around me and dug my forehead into his chest and just clung to him for dear life while I keened like an Irish fishwife.

  Now, my family does not display emotion in public. Tears may be tolerated if they slide silently down the cheeks. But sobs? Episcopalians, which is what I am, are affronted by any sort of unbridled public display. No doubt many of the funeral guests were horrified.