Goldeline

by Jimmy Cajoleas

  Momma never had any reason to leave Templeton except for little errands she would run, journeys that didn’t last more than a day or two. She never let me go with her, said they were secrets, not meant for little old me. Even as a tiny thing I had to fend for myself, but it was all right. I could make a fire, I had books. The animals would come to play with me. Momma would draw the star and the wolf into the dirt around our house, for protection. Nothing bad could happen to me if I stayed in the house. And nothing ever did. Not until I left it.

  Momma never taught me to draw the symbols. I used to bug her about it when I was little.

  “It isn’t just the drawing,” she said. “Anybody can draw a star in the dirt with a stick. It’s what you put into it, what comes through you and into the stick. What makes the star gleam, what makes the wolf howl.”

  “Always just looks like stick drawings in the dirt to me,” I said.

  “That’s because you don’t see yet,” said Momma. “It’s the same with the songs. It’s not the words, but how you sing them. That’s why I taught you the nothingsong. It’s the most powerful of all because there aren’t any words. It’s about whatever your heart makes it be about.”

  I didn’t like not knowing anything. I figured I was old enough for the world. I wanted to talk to squirrels and have them talk back to me. I wanted the rabbits to show me where they hid their gold.

  “Someday maybe you’ll see, if you’re all good and blessed and lucky.”

  “Then you’ll teach me?” I said.

  “I won’t have to, Goldeline. By then you’ll already know.”

  Momma was always saying stuff like that. Lot of good it does me now. For the first time maybe ever, I feel a little angry with my momma. Why is she not here now? Why didn’t she teach me better? How are me and Tommy going to eat today?

  Tommy sniffles. His head is in my lap. He’s dreaming, making little dream noises, sighing. I poke him awake.

  “We got to get moving,” I say.

  “What time is it?”

  “Late,” I say. “We have to go now, Tommy. It ain’t safe to lie here and dream all morning.”

  Tommy looks out to the woods and shivers. We get to walking.

  There’s a strange wind out, hot and fire-smelling. I wonder if the Preacher hunts us in the day, or if he just walks his men through the woods with torches all night, calling out to us. The thought sends cold spiders up and down my back, and I walk us a little faster.

  Above me and Tommy swoop birds. They touch on a branch and are gone, little brown ones. But no crows, no cardinals. I do see a blue jay, but I don’t like them much. If you mess with their nests they’ll go crazy on you. One time a blue jay nest fell out of a tree in front of our house. The momma bird went crazy, diving at us, trying to peck our eyes out. Gruff was there that day, visiting Momma. I didn’t know him so well then. He was just Momma’s friend.

  “I’ll shoot it if you want,” he said.

  Momma gave him a look that could have wilted an orchard.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  It was strange being trapped in our own house, and kind of fun. Eventually Momma had to put on her heaviest cloak and run out to scoop the fallen nest up. She carried it out to the woods, the momma bird trying to peck her the whole time. After the nest was away from our house, the blue jay left us alone. A week later I went and found the nest. There were three dead baby birds in it. The momma bird had flown off by that point and left them. I dug a little grave and promised to bring flowers but I forgot until just right now.

  I never brought flowers for Momma’s grave either. I don’t even know where she’s buried. I know they wouldn’t let her in a churchyard. But I don’t like to think of Momma in a pit somewhere. I like to think of her as smoke, that she’s in the air above us, sung out like a song.

  That’s how I like to think of it, sure. But if the Preacher catches me, will he burn me too? Will Gruff even know where to bring me flowers?

  Me and Tommy walk for hours, till way after the sun has arced and headed on its way down to the dirt. Tommy’s dragging. Both of us are tired, both of us hungry and thirsty. I got to think about hunting us some food somehow, catching some rabbits maybe. Something. I don’t know how. It’s not like we have time for me to stop and build a trap.

  We come to the edge of a clearing and there’s these two cardinals on a branch together, just sitting there, red as fall leaves.

  “Hello there,” I whisper. “I been seeing a lot of you guys lately.”

  That’s the sort of thing Momma used to say to birds, or really any kind of little creature. She’d face a squirrel on a branch and ask him what’s what and he would tilt his head and chatter at her and she’d laugh and laugh. I’d ask her what the squirrel said and Momma would say, “Nothing for your ears, Goldy.”

  “But I want to know!” I’d say.

  “Then listen,” she’d say.

  All I could ever hear were chirps and whistles, same as with the cardinals. It’s pretty enough but it isn’t words. It isn’t stories. They tilt their necks and swivel their heads and fluff their feathers and mum up. It’s like staring at pages of print before I could ever read a word. I used to just open a book and make up what was inside. Every book was about baby pigs who find a lucky mushroom.

  “Why are you always talking to everything?” says Tommy. “If it’s not a bird it’s a bush or a flower. Like you got something wrong in your noggin.”

  “It’s grown-folks stuff, not for kids. I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

  “Remember this kid right here saved your life two nights ago. This kid’s only a year or two younger than you.”

  “Then it’s girl stuff.”

  “Girl stuff is talking to birds?”

  Why can’t I ever understand things like my momma could? Maybe she was faking it. Making it up, like what I used to do with the books. That’s a thought.

  I look one of the cardinals dead in the eye and he winks at me. Then all of them take off into the air.

  “That was weird,” says Tommy.

  “You think?”

  “You’re always such a . . .”

  “Such a what?”

  “Such a jerk! I mean it.”

  “Hush.”

  “I will not hush.”

  I clap my hand over his mouth. “You hear that?”

  It was a voice, a rich, deep, chocolaty voice. A lady’s voice, singing.

  Tommy pulls my hand from his mouth. “Hear what? But wow, do you smell that?”

  I do. It smells like hot cornbread. It smells like roast lamb and baked potatoes. It smells like the whole window of a pie shop. It smells like a rich kid’s house on Christmas, the smell that would waft through the windows and catch me like a trap and send me home hungry every holiday in Templeton. It smells like a whole world of delicious, and it’s coming from the clearing right up ahead of us.

  “Careful,” I say. “Could be anybody out there waiting for us.”

  “I don’t care who they are,” says Tommy, “so long as they got cornbread.”

  He runs off through the trees, and I follow him hollering.

  We hit the clearing and the sun blasts us so strong I have to squint my eyes. The field erupts with purple and yellow wildflowers, bright as candy. It stretches almost two hundred feet all around and is stuffed with the sweetest smells, honeysuckle and better. Butterflies blink and twitter around me like happy thoughts. The grass under my feet is the softest I’ve ever felt. Everything in this place is alive. The flowers seem to turn their heads and stare at us.

  “Tommy?”

  He’s laughing, running toward the smell. But when he sees where it comes from he stops.

  At the edge of the clearing, right before it fades into forest again, is a house. A big blue thing sat eight feet up in a tree that comes down through the floor like a big fat chicken leg. It doesn’t look like a tree house though. It looks like a real house, with a roof and a chimney. It’s like somebody took a house off a street so
mewhere and stuck it in this tree. I’ve never seen anything like it. The house leans down toward us like it’s trying to hear what we’re saying. It’s got one big window facing us like a great eyeball, but the curtains are drawn and I can’t see inside.

  “I’m scared,” I say.

  “But it smells so good,” says Tommy. “And I’m so hungry.”

  I feel the tug in me, the tiny invisible string attached to my insides, pulling me forward. The sweet singing louder and louder in my ears.

  “I know that song,” I say.

  “What song?” says Tommy.

  “It’s a song Momma used to sing me. It’s her cooking song.”

  “Goldeline,” says Tommy, “there isn’t any song.”

  “Of course there is. It’s all over the place,” I say, pointing to my head. “It’s right here in my ears.”

  “Y’all just gonna stand there yapping or you gonna come up to my house?” The voice is a lady’s voice, thick and rich as gravy, like a fat grandma voice. It sounds old and warm as a family quilt.

  Me and Tommy look at each other.

  “Y’all late,” says the voice. “Dinner’s been ready for a long while now. Y’all coming up or not?”

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” says Tommy. “But we don’t know how to get up there. To your house.”

  “Try the ladder,” says the voice.

  A rope ladder hangs down from an open trapdoor in the house’s floor. I don’t know how we both missed it before.

  “Bunch of hungry kids I cooked for,” says the voice. “Now come on up the ladder and let me feed y’all. ’Cause I know y’all are hungry. I been knowing that for about two weeks now. I got plans. Now come on up and stop making me wait on my own dinner.”

  “I think we should go,” says Tommy. “Don’t you?”

  My first thought is Of course we shouldn’t. Don’t you know what happens to hungry kids who go into strange houses?

  But the singing is so loud, so sweet. It’s right inside my ears, I can almost taste it. It reminds me so much of Momma, like she’s right here with me, something that isn’t just me remembering. I feel the tug of the invisible string, the desire to go. I want to go up to her house. I have to.

  “Please?” says Tommy.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Please, Goldeline? Please?”

  I know her song, Momma’s cooking song. The song means it can’t be bad. The song means it has to be a good thing. Besides, I’m so hungry.

  “Let’s eat,” I say.

  “Are you sure?” says Tommy.

  “Of course,” I lie.

  I test the rope ladder with my foot and it’s sturdy. I haul myself up and through the floor into the tree house.

  The house is crammed full of furniture, clothes, knickknacks. I’ve never seen so much stuff piled up anywhere, not to mention in one single house. There’s a giant wood table with heaping plates full of cornbread and roast duck and turnip greens and mashed potatoes and beans and rice and gravy for days. The table has three chairs around it, just for us, carved with symbols of owls and stars and wolves. A blue fur hangs on the wall next to a carving of an old man holding a skull. There’s a woodstove and a kettle fire and shelves and shelves of books, more books than I’ve ever seen in my life, thick books and skinny books and books with pages hanging out of the bindings. A giant spoon and fork are nailed to the walls like they were paintings, jars full of roots and vegetables and spices hang from the ceiling, a wall of plates and pans and pots and a row of cooking knives hanging like icicles, an opossum mounted with its fangs poking out. A massive clock shaped like a church tower leans a little toward us as if it could topple over and smash everything at any minute. It’s just the kind of home I’ve always wanted, wild and full of wonders.

  Moving all through the chaos is the fattest lady I’ve ever seen in my life. She’s in a red dress down to the floor and she seems to glide like a giant floating strawberry. She has big red cheeks and the biggest belly and she’s singing that song. It’s my momma’s song and it’s my song and it comes straight from her heart, she doesn’t even have to sing it. Her blue eyes sparkle, her gray hair is all bunned up on her head, her hands are big and wide and in pretty white gloves. I want her to hold me. I want to lay my head on her chest and sleep for days.

  Already I love her. I don’t know how, but I do. I feel like I’ve known her my whole life and longer.

  “Are you my grandma?” I ask, and I don’t even mean to.

  “No, child. I’m nobody’s grandma. But you can call me Bobba.”

  “Bobba’s kind of a grandma name,” says Tommy.

  I’m so enchanted by the house I didn’t even hear him come up behind me. It’s the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen. There’s a stuffed raccoon hanging off the wall and when I touch its fur it bristles.

  Bobba smiles at Tommy. She’s still got all her teeth.

  “Now sit on down,” she says. “Calling me grandma. Lay all y’all’s stuff down, now, we are fixing to eat. Set your heavy bag down, right there, right by your chair.”

  It seems like a miracle, but there’s an empty spot in the house, just big enough for my pack. I feel my shoulder ache from it, where it’s worn me down red and raw. I lay the pack down, with everything me and Tommy got in the world in it, Zeb’s money, his momma’s cloak. I set it right down and all of a sudden feel lighter, freer, the whole weight of what we’ve done and what’s been done to us and where we have to go next and the Preacher and Gruff and Momma, all of it gone, even if it’s just for a moment.

  “Don’t that feel good?” says Bobba. “Don’t it feel good to lay your troubles down?”

  It does. It feels wonderful, like coming home. I feel freer than I’ve felt since Momma died, since before I took off to the woods with Gruff. I haven’t felt so good in ages.

  “You two look like the Evil One crawled up and bit you. Seen winter rabbits look less starved than y’all two. Sad days, children running around, needing old Bobba to cook for them just so they don’t starve to death. Heaven almighty, bad times afoot, good Lord.”

  “We are pretty hungry,” says Tommy.

  “Then eat, sweetheart. Been cooking all day for y’all.”

  “How did you know we were coming?” I say.

  “Oh, old Bobba has her ways. Shush up and eat now. We’ll talk about all that later.”

  “Are you magic?” says Tommy.

  Bobba smiles a little smile and holds a fat gloved finger to her lips.

  It’s okay. I already knew she was anyhow. Something weird in my blood that’s been there since always, something that was Momma’s—that’s what told me. That’s how I knew Bobba was magic.

  We eat. The food never seems to run out, and it’s been so long since we’ve had a real meal. I eat and eat and somehow I’m not even full yet, not close, not even after four helpings of mashed potatoes and gravy, which is my favorite. I eat until my plates are stacked and my stomach is so filled up the food just sits in my mouth, I can barely even swallow it. I’ve never been so full in my whole life. I’m so full it hurts. But then I get a whiff of the hot blackberry cobbler as Bobba pulls it fresh and steaming out of the oven and I gasp out loud.

  Bobba laughs.

  “Best blackberry cobbler this side of the river, you can bet on it.” She claps her hands. “But dessert comes in its own time. Now it’s time for tea.”

  Bobba pours out two cups of tea and they sit steaming in front of us. She dabs honey and a big block of sugar and a little milk in each.

  “I never had tea before,” I say.

  “I have,” says Tommy. “I don’t like it. Can we skip the tea and just go ahead and have dessert?”

  “Why you think you can skip tea? Civilized folk always have tea right at four o’clock, and it’s four o’clock now. I learned that in the Northlands. Y’all ever been to the Northlands?”

  “I never been anywhere,” says Tommy.

  “Figured as much. Y’all two wandering around here, whole w
orld on y’all’s backs, never even been out past the river. Hard to believe that’s what it comes to, two stupid kids or the whole Hinterlands is lost.” Bobba does her laugh again, her whole big warm body shaking with all the happy. It makes me laugh, Tommy too. We laugh ourselves about silly.

  “Can I eat cobbler now?” says Tommy.

  “Not until every drop of your tea is drained,” says Bobba.

  “But I don’t want any tea!” says Tommy. “I want pie! I want cobbler! I want it all now!”

  I take a sip of tea. It’s scalding hot and weirdly bitter, like chewing on something straight out of the ground. I feel it slide down my throat and slither into my stomach and my stomach turns a little. I don’t like tea I don’t think. Still, I want the cobbler. I want the pie. I’ve never wanted anything so bad in my life.

  Bobba slices out a huge slab of cobbler and places it daintily on a plate in front of me. “Finish your tea and it’s all yours,” she says.

  I have another sip, then a gulp. It’s cooler now. My mouth feels tingly, like when you lick an icicle.

  “Gimme some cobbler too!” says Tommy.

  “Fine, fine,” says Bobba. “No need to be fighting over Bobba’s cobbler now. Famous cobbler. Best cobbler in the land.” She heaps a steaming purple glob onto his plate. But her smile cracks a little bit, just at the edges. I can see it now, the yellow of her teeth, the little fractures in them like veins, all the powder on her face, the pinch marks on her cheeks, the great false red of her lips. It’s all a story, and I can read it maybe, I can read it if I try hard enough, if I wasn’t so full, if my mouth wasn’t so numb, if I hadn’t drank so much tea.

  Tommy sniffs the tea. “Gross,” he says. He pinches his nose.

  “Sip, don’t gulp,” says Bobba, with a full wide wolf grin now. “Little heathens. Gentlemen don’t gulp.”

  Tommy downs the whole cup in one big slurp.

  “Oh boy!” he says, clapping his hands together.

  We both eat and eat, and then have seconds, and then eat more. My stomach hurts from all the cobbler, from the sweet, from the mashed potatoes, from my whole last few days in the forest.