At the Scent of Water

by Linda Nichols

  ****

  She was shaking. She drove a ways away, then pulled to the side of the road and waited until her pulse returned to normal and her stomach stopped swirling. She did not want to go back to her father’s. She would have a word with him, for surely he had known, probably along with the rest of Gilead Springs, that Sam was back. But she did not want to see him now. She did not want to go to see Laurie or Ricky. She did not want to see Mary or anyone else she knew. She started the car again and drove eastward, leaving a long plume of dust in her wake. She drove to Asheville without stopping or pondering. She found a moving supply company and filled the trunk and the backseat of the rented compact with flat folded boxes and strapping tape. It was nearly one when she turned the car for Gilead Springs again. She wished fervently that she had left things as they were. Better to have remembered him with some vestige of love than to have this bitter, cold memory. She felt a dread at returning to Gilead Springs.

  She passed by the sign for the short jog to Silver Falls, and that was when she remembered the picture, that lovely picture of Jesus with the beautiful writing on the back, still wrapped in tissue and tucked in her bag, as a matter of fact. Annie Wright Johnson, it had said, Silver Falls, North Carolina. And here she was, wanting a delay. She turned the car and drove toward town. Seeing the visitor’s center, she stopped the car, got out, and went inside. It was a large empty room, the walls lined with glass display cases containing old photos and articles of history.

  “May I help you?” A young woman, blond, with a stylish shaggy cut spoke, and Annie felt surprise. She had expected the attendant to be old, a member of the blue-haired biddy committee, as she and Laurie had named Gilead Springs’ matrons.

  “I found a picture in an antique shop,” she said. “It’s inscribed by Annie Wright Johnson and dated 1920, Silver Falls. Any idea where I could find out about the owner?”

  “We don’t keep genealogical data,” she said cheerfully. “Miss Harrison at the Historical Society might be able to help you. It’s right across the square in that old Victorian house behind the courthouse.”

  Annie thanked her and walked back out. At the Historical Society, which obviously doubled as Miss Harrison’s home, she sat and examined the surroundings while Miss Harrison, surprisingly, consulted several Internet databases for genealogical information.

  “There are several branches of the family left,” she finally announced. “There’s Charles Johnson, who was the grandson. He used to live out on Millard Street, but I believe he’s in a nursing home in Bryson City now. There are two great-granddaughters in the database. One is in Virginia and the other in South Carolina. The only one local might be Mrs. Rogers over on Pigeon Creek Road. I believe she’s related somehow, but I’m afraid I don’t have time to research it right now. I have to leave for another appointment. I can give you directions to her place if you like,” she offered.

  “Thank you so much,” Annie said.

  Miss Harrison wrote something on a piece of paper, handed it to Annie, then took her purse and the two of them walked together to the door.

  “You don’t happen to have a telephone number for her, do you?” Annie asked as Miss Harrison climbed into her car.

  “Oh, you don’t need to call,” she answered.

  Annie wasn’t so confident, but Miss Harrison was on her way to gone. Annie waved a thank-you, got into her own car, then looked at her watch. It was nearly three o’clock. She could go back to Gilead Springs and begin packing up her past, or she could drop in on Mrs. Rogers.

  It only took a moment to make up her mind. She drove, following Miss Harrison’s directions, and when she saw her destination, she realized why Miss Harrison had been so sure that she didn’t need to announce her visit. She grinned and pulled in to the graveled driveway. They did not have these in Seattle or Los Angeles, she would wager.

  It was a small country store, a white wood-framed box. Rogers Mercantile, the sign proclaimed. There was one gas pump, a rusting yellow Pennzoil sign beside it. A bench beside a barrel of pansies. The wooden door was open. An Open sign hung from a nail on the screen door. The grass in the side yard was lush and green in spite of the drought, shaded by several large oaks.

  Annie parked the car, got out, and walked toward the store. When she opened the screen door, the bell on it jingled as the spring screeched. The wooden floor creaked under her feet as she stepped inside. She looked around her and blinked, not sure where to look first. She didn’t know when she had seen so many objects crammed into such a small place. And the smells! She closed her eyes to take them in. There was that old smell again, along with woodsmoke and an overwhelming aroma of apples. She opened her eyes and saw them—red, yellow, and green—in front of her in bushel baskets. Behind them was a shelf stacked high with honey. Some jars were clear light amber, others rich dark brown. Some with a floating comb, some without. The next rows held jellies and jams in jewel tones, red and orange, purplish black, and light yellow. She turned and swept her eyes across the rest of the tiny room. There were shelves and tables, every inch crammed full of something. Cans and boxes, cakes and pies, a whole wall of candy, canned goods, a small refrigerated case, and shelves with everything from Mars bars and gummy bears to peppermint sticks and a jar of horehound drops.

  “I’ll be out there in two shakes of a lamb’s tail!” a voice called out from the room behind the shop. Annie saw a stove and a kitchen table through the doorway.

  “Take your time,” she called back and continued looking around her.

  There was a wall display of flyswatters, a cardboard holder of nail clippers, two missing, a lit display case featuring a profile of an Indian, but oddly, full of gum rather than chewing tobacco. A red, chest-style Pepsi-Cola cooler. She opened the lid. It was stocked with glass bottles. She turned toward the shelf of baked goods. A coconut cake was encased in cardboard and cellophane, loaves of bread decorated with red and blue and yellow dots. There were apothecary jars full of pretzels and pickles, macaroni and chocolate-covered peanuts. Shelves full of blue jeans and overalls. She passed another doorway and peeped inside. Sacks of feed and grain filled the room.

  She walked toward the worn checkout counter and waited, this intersection of past and present doing seesaw with her emotions. Tentacles of memory were reaching out to grip her, and if she wanted to be free, she should leave now. She stared at the wire rack of potato chips by the cash register and remembered standing beside one by the lake in Gilead Springs. She could almost feel the wet hair on the back of her neck, the warm air, and the dampness of her swimming suit as she stood in line to buy candy.

  “Sorry about that. I was just taking my corn bread out of the oven. I get a bit peckish in the afternoon.”

  Annie turned in the direction of the voice and saw a very old woman, tall, thin, wearing a blue shirtwaist dress and Nike tennis shoes. She came through the doorway of the living quarters. She had white hair, short, fluffy, and curly. She beamed with delight, as if looking out and seeing a stranger was the most interesting thing that had happened to her in weeks.

  Annie smiled, and her college days rushed back to her. For her senior journalism project she had done a documentary compiled of oral histories of the residents of these hills. Every other day or so she had taken off with her tape recorder and notebook to interview some old man or woman in a cabin or a nursing home. Oh, how they loved to talk, and for a few minutes both of them could forget they were sitting in Dew Meadow Manor and instead were back in the hollow, spinning wool beside a low burning fire or threading the loom and weaving. This place was a piece of history all by itself. She wondered how long it had stood here and guessed since the thirties.

  “Can I help you find something?” the woman asked.

  “My name is Annie Dalton,” she said. “Are you Mrs. Rogers?”

  “Livin’ and breathin’,” she said smartly, and Annie couldn’t help but smile.

  “Miss Harrison from the Historical Society said you might be able to answer a few questio
ns for me.”

  Mrs. Rogers looked surprised but nodded willingly enough. “Can it wait, though?” she asked. “My corn bread’s getting cold.”

  ****

  “Thank you. That was delicious.” Annie stared down at the remains of the buttermilk and corn bread. She hadn’t meant to impose, but Mrs. Rogers had insisted she come into her kitchen, then had cut her a generous square of the golden corn bread and pulled a quart of buttermilk from the door of an ancient refrigerator. Annie remembered Grandma Mamie serving her the same thing, the sure cure for an empty stomach or an aching heart. Her grandmother had been a fine old woman, full of spark and vinegar and stubborn faith.

  Theresa rarely spent the night with Grandma after the age of twelve. They were Annie’s times. Her special jaunts. She and Mamie would spin and talk and eat. Oh, Mamie was a fine one for the bedtime snack. Cold fried chicken or a biscuit toasted in the oven with butter and peach preserves. Buttermilk and corn bread. Or the ever-present ice cream. They would eat and talk and finally pray.

  She wondered during those prayers. She remembered little of her grandfather but enough to know Mamie’s life hadn’t been easy. They were poor, and his temper was short, frayed from the never-ending strain of putting food on the table and clothes on the backs of their children.

  She had spent many nights in Mamie’s back bedroom, lying on the squeaky iron bedstead, reading Mamie’s old black leather Bible and copies of the southern Baptist magazine, gazing at Mamie’s things on the dresser: her comb and brush, her round, wire-rimmed glasses, her hairpins. She would hear the dogs barking out in the distance and the train’s lonely whistle as it passed.

  She looked across Mrs. Rogers’ kitchen now and could almost see Mamie’s tall figure in the shapeless gown, thin gray braid dangling down her back, preparing their snack. Wisdom would be handed out during those times. Hard, weighty rocks of faith, good for tethering flighty hearts.

  She remembered the porch with the swing at the side, the row of ladder-backed rockers lined up, and she could see her uncles lounging, her grandmother moving among them, the glasses of sweating iced tea or cups of steaming coffee, could hear the sound of women’s voices coming from the kitchen, the clink of dishes and silverware, the clatter of pots, and the delicious smells wrapping around her heart, securing her firmly to this place, to these people.

  She had eaten Mrs. Rogers’ corn bread with those memories circling in her mind and hadn’t protested very much when her hostess put another hot square on her plate. “Thank you. That was the best corn bread I’ve eaten in years,” she pronounced now.

  “Well, you’re just as welcome as rain,” Mrs. Rogers said, and Annie smiled. It had been a long time since she’d heard that expression.

  “I suppose you’re wondering what brings a perfect stranger to your door.”

  Mrs. Rogers sat down in the ladder-backed chair, crossed her legs, and swung one foot. She had the look of someone who didn’t stay still for long. “I knew you’d come around to telling me eventually.”

  Annie smiled again and reached for her purse. The picture was inside, carefully encased in tissue inside a paper bag. She pulled it out now, took off the wrapping, and handed it across the table. She watched Mrs. Rogers’ face light with recognition.

  “Why that was my grandmother’s,” she said. “I remember seeing it in her house when I was a girl.”

  Annie’s heart sank then, for she would have to give it back. She had thought of that, of course, but what she hadn’t realized was that she would mind doing it so much.

  “I wondered what had become of her things,” Mrs. Rogers said.

  “This one traveled a long way from home. I found it in an antique shop in Los Angeles.”

  Mrs. Rogers gave her an amazed stare, then shook her head and swung her foot again gently. “Well, you don’t say.”

  Annie nodded.

  Mrs. Rogers turned it over and read the back. Her face softened. “Yes, that was her. Grandma was a godly woman. At least at the end when she wrote this.”

  Annie sat up straighter. “Why do you say at the end?” she asked.

  Mrs. Rogers shrugged. “She had a hard life. It took her a while to come to this.” She nodded down at the sentiment, and Annie read it again. Earth Has No Sorrow That Heaven Cannot Heal. Annie Wright Johnson. Silver Falls, North Carolina, 1920.

  “Do you have time to tell me her story?” she asked.

  Mrs. Rogers considered. “I could tell you a bit of it, and you could see a bit for yourself. I managed to save a few things from Imagene,” she said grimly.

  “Imagene?”

  “My daughter.” Her mouth became a tight line, and she shook her head. “When my mother died, Imagene and her cousins took charge of clearing out the house. She had trunks of these old things, and they got rid of most of them.” Annie could see grief on her face. “Said it wasn’t worth anything. Can you imagine?” she asked Annie, aggrieved.

  “No. I can’t,” Annie answered truthfully, shaking her own head. “Of course, you have to keep this picture,” she offered gallantly. “It should belong to you.”

  Mrs. Rogers considered for a minute, and Annie saw the light in her eyes at the prospect. But she finally shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said, handing it back. “I think you’re the one who’s supposed to have it,” and as Annie took it back in her hand, she felt a chill, for that is how she had felt herself. That it had traveled across years and miles and that it was no accident it had landed in her hands.

  “We have the same name,” she pointed out, as if that fact had great significance. “And I’m from Gilead Springs. I just happened to be in Los Angeles, and there it was.” She wasn’t telling it right. There was no way her words could convey that sense of portent.

  Mrs. Rogers eyes were knowing. “Well, isn’t that a coincidence.”

  Annie looked back down at the picture silently.

  “My grandmother was the schoolteacher up in Cade’s Cove until she married,” Mrs. Rogers said, and Annie’s interest piqued even more.

  Cade’s Cove had been one of the oldest settlements in these mountains. The first white people had come in the 1820s. It had been a thriving community until the 1930s when the government had bought the land, relocated its citizens, along with five thousand people from surrounding communities, and formed the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. She supposed she was glad they had moved to save the forests from the sawmills, but it grieved her that so many people had lost their homes and memories. She had been up there in years past, strangely moved by the remnants of their lives.

  “Did you ever live there?” she asked Mrs. Rogers.

  “Yes, ma’am. My daddy had a homestead there until 1940.”

  “I thought the Park was formed in ’34.”

  “It was.” Mrs. Rogers smiled. “Daddy didn’t hold with the government taking away his land. He was the justice of the peace in the Cove, and he didn’t think it was right. He fought it. Went down to Asheville and hired himself a lawyer. Spent nearly every last dime he had, and he held out as long as he could. Finally, he ran out money. He sold the spread to the government and bought this store with what little they paid him.”

  “It doesn’t seem right,” Annie said, the injustice of it striking her again.

  “No. It doesn’t,” Mrs. Rogers agreed. “But it was all for the best.” She rose up then and disappeared, and Annie took a moment to look around her, trying to satisfy her interest without crossing the line from curious to nosy.

  The kitchen was a mix of old and new. There was a drip coffeemaker and an electric mixer on the old Hoosier cupboard, and a new electric range stood beside a cast-iron stove and an equally ancient refrigerator. The floor was old green linoleum with red roses. The flowered pattern was worn, nail heads showing through from the floorboards underneath. The curtains were starched red gingham. The drop-leaf table at which she sat was covered with flowered oilcloth, and on it was a ceramic loaf of bread containing what Annie knew would be Script
ure verses on small rectangles of cardboard. Everything felt friendly and warm, and she settled back in her chair, relaxed for the first time in days.

  Mrs. Rogers reemerged from what must have been the bedroom. She was carrying a small cardboard box, and she set it on the floor beside Annie’s feet. Annie watched as she took out a leather-bound book, some of the pages loose, and set it on the table.

  She flipped it open, and a yellowed newspaper clipping fell out onto the floor. Annie picked it up and read the headline before handing it back.

  “Brothers Die After Falling Into Icy Pond,” it said, Asheville Tribune, dated January 15, 1905. Annie’s heart thudded and was suddenly cold.

  “Go ahead,” Mrs. Rogers said, handing it back to her. “This was her sorrow.”

  Annie read the yellowed clipping.

  Friends in Swain and Cherokee counties will learn with regret of the deaths of Henry Clark Wright and Robert Francis Wright in Swain County last week. The lads were attempting to cross an icy pond when one brother fell through the ice. The other drowned while trying to save him, as reported by several gentlemen who were passing by and attempted rescue. Henry Wright was seven years of age and Robert Wright five years of age. They leave behind their mother, Annie Dorothea Billington Wright, formerly of Asheville, their father, Clayton Andrew Wright, of Buncombe County, and a sister, Sarah Jane Wright. The sympathies of the entire community are with the grieving family.

  Annie stared at the page, then handed it slowly back to Mrs. Rogers.

  “That’s terrible,” she said. “I don’t know how she ever got over it.”

  “It was a long road back,” Mrs. Rogers said, and she handed Annie the bumpy-grained leather book. “She wrote her thoughts down in this.”

  Annie took the diary from her, opened it, and began reading. The words jarred her, their meaning so incongruous with their lovely appearance. Her eyes fell to the middle of the page, to the words that had drawn her eye.