What I Came to Tell You

by Tommy Hays

  “No, Daddy, please don’t …,” Grover begged, taking hold of his father’s arm. His father shook him off, and Grover found himself, like Sudie, on the ground. There was another crack of thunder, louder, and a brighter flash of lightning.

  “Daddy, please, that’s my best one yet,” Grover said, getting back up.

  “It’s over,” their father said. As he held the weaving in front of Grover, he tried to rip it in two but the bamboo frame was too strong. Instead, he tossed it into the darkness. “No more playing in the blasted Bamboo Forest!”

  Seeing Grover’s toolbox, he picked it up and hurled it into the bamboo, tools and twine scattering everywhere. He turned to the lean-to and the table and the chair that Grover had built from bamboo, and began kicking and smashing them.

  Grover was too stunned to move as he watched his father, like some wild animal gone berserk, tear his workshop to shreds. Every now and then lightning would flash and he’d see his father clearly, like he was watching a series of snapshots of his father destroying his workshop. When his father had finally finished, he stood there, catching his breath. Grover could feel him getting calmer.

  He turned to Grover and with something close to his old fatherly tone said, “Son, ever since your mother died, you’ve done nothing but come out here and be all by yourself. You ought to be out doing things with other kids. Otherwise, you’ll never get over …”

  The anger Grover felt right then toward his father was something he’d never felt before in his life. It was more than anger. It was hatred so pure and hot that it seared the back of his throat. Grover felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up and a bolt of lightning shot right down in the middle of the Bamboo Forest. The thunder was so loud it seemed to come from inside him.

  “The wrong one died,” Grover said quietly. He started to run out of the Bamboo Forest. He tripped over something and went sprawling, hitting his knee on a stump or a rock. It hurt but he picked himself up and ran and didn’t stop, didn’t even slow down. It lightninged and thundered again. Then it began to rain. He kept running, not knowing where he was going till he ran through the gates of the Riverside Cemetery, down the little roads, past hundreds of headstones, arriving at his mother’s headstone. Something warm ran down his shin. He pulled up his pant leg and, in the faint glow of a streetlight, made out a thin line of blood that had trickled down his shin.

  He slumped against his mother’s headstone, the rain coming down. “How could you leave us?” he shouted. He looked around at all the weavings that Jessie kept arranged so neatly around her headstone. In the faint light and slickened by the rain, they looked like shiny skeletons. Nothing close to what he’d dreamed of making for her. The bones of dreams.

  “I’m the crazy one,” he said. “I’m the crazy one making things for a dead mother!” Wiping the rain from his face, he gazed at her headstone, waiting for an answer. He got up and started kicking the weavings and kept kicking them, feeling a dark satisfaction as he kicked weeks and weeks of his work around the grave. “Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead!”

  Strong arms wrapped around him from behind. “Leave me alone,” he cried, thinking it was his father. “I hate you!” He tried to pull away, but the arms held him tight, then slowly turned him around.

  “It’s okay, darlin’.” A woman’s voice. A woman hugged him. He smelled a medicine smell like at the doctor’s office. “It’s all right, sweetheart,” she said, patting his back. At her touch, Grover felt something loosen down deep inside him, something that had been stuck there since that evening his mother hadn’t come home. He began to tremble, and at first didn’t recognize the sounds of his sobs.

  CHAPTER SIX

  GONE TO VIDEOLIFE

  Grover could tell by the light through his window that it was mid-morning. Put out with himself for sleeping late and missing perfectly good work time in the Bamboo Forest, he hopped out of bed. The ache in his knee and the bandage wrapped around it brought last night rushing back. The yelling, the smashing, the splintering. The lightning snapshots of his father destroying everything in his path. Workshop, weavings, months of work—not there, not there, so not there anymore.

  He fell back on his bed and remembered the rest—how Emma Lee’s mother had been on her usual evening walk through Riverside last night when it had begun to storm and she had happened to see him; how they’d run into Jessie and Sudie trotting up the street in the rain toward them; how they’d found their father on the front porch in the dark, crying into his hands and saying over and over, I’m sorry, Caroline. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry; how Emma Lee’s mother had made Grover change out of his wet clothes, then cleaned the gash in his knee and bandaged it; how Jessie had led their father, looking pale and exhausted, upstairs and put him to bed; how Jessie and Emma Lee’s mother had whispered in the kitchen to themselves; how Jessie said he’d spend the night on the couch; how Emma Lee’s mother had put Sudie to bed, and Jessie sat on the end of Grover’s bed till Grover felt his eyelids getting heavy.

  Grover climbed out of bed and looked out his window at the mid-morning light filtering through the bamboo. The worst part hadn’t been his father wrecking his workshop. The worst part had been seeing his father cry. Grover hadn’t seen him cry once since their mother had died. Not when he had come back from the hospital. Not at the funeral. Not even after the funeral when everybody came back to their house with plates and bowls and platters of food. It shook Grover to see his father cry. It made him wonder for the first time if maybe their father missed their mother as much as he and Sudie did.

  He smelled something he hadn’t smelled in a long time. Bacon. Then he heard laughter. Pulling on his jeans, he limped as quietly as he could on his stiff knee down the hall toward the kitchen. He peeked around the corner. Jessie stood at the stove, flipping pancakes; Emma Lee’s mother stood beside him, turning sizzling bacon over in the frying pan; Emma Lee was setting the breakfast table; and Sudie, still in her purple pajamas, sat on the couch and watched Sesame Street with Biscuit curled up next to her.

  “There he is,” Jessie said.

  “Let’s have a look,” Leila said, covering the frying pan. She had Grover sit at the kitchen table and roll up his pant leg. “You won’t need stitches,” she said, carefully unwrapping the bandage. She took a bottle of hydrogen peroxide from a bag, poured some over the cut, which bubbled, stinging a little. She dried the cut and put a big Band-Aid over it. She handed Grover the bottle of hydrogen peroxide. “Pour some of this over it every morning and every night before you go to bed and keep it clean.”

  Grover felt almost dizzy with all these people in his kitchen. Was this a strange dream? Or had last night been the dream, the nightmare?

  “Daddy’s down at the Bamboo Forest,” Sudie called from the couch.

  “Clay’s with him.” Jessie slid a couple of pancakes onto a plate and put it in the oven to keep warm.

  “Emma Lee,” Leila said, “why don’t you and Grover go tell them breakfast is ready?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Emma Lee said, setting a fork on a folded paper napkin. “Come on.” She grabbed Grover’s arm and led him toward the door before he had a chance to say that going to see his father was the last thing he wanted to do.

  “Get a jacket,” she said, taking down her coat from one of the pegs along the foyer wall, where coats and sweaters hung. “It’s turned cold.”

  “I don’t need a coat,” Grover said, pulling away. Opening the front door, he felt a blast of frigid air. He turned around and Emma Lee held his coat out to him.

  As they walked over to the Bamboo Forest, Grover noticed the sky was a stunning blue, as if last night’s storm had swept away all lingering clouds. The only signs of the storm itself were a few fallen branches and water beading like diamonds in the grass and on the tips of bare tree limbs. The air was light, wintry, and Grover found himself walking into a new season.

  “What’s going on?” Grover asked as they headed down the street toward the Bamboo Forest.

  Emma L
ee didn’t say anything.

  “Why are y’all making breakfast in my house?”

  “Somebody needs to,” she said.

  “Y’all don’t really know us,” Grover said.

  “Where we come from, neighbors help each other,” Emma Lee said. “Besides, your daddy called us this morning.”

  “He did?”

  “To apologize for last night,” Emma Lee said. “And to thank Mama.”

  As they neared the Bamboo Forest, Grover felt a familiar tightness push up into his chest. He had a flash of last night—his father slinging his tapestry into the bamboo, then his tools, then all the smashing. He stopped. “I’m not going.”

  “Whatever,” Emma said, shrugging, “but I gotta tell them breakfast is ready.” As she walked through the field and disappeared into the bamboo, several crows flapped out of the grass.

  The wind rustled the bamboo leaves.

  Grover sighed and started across the field, entering the path through the bamboo. He tried to brace himself. Last night had seemed not quite real, like walking around in a nightmare. The lightning had given him glimpses, but he hadn’t been able to really see. He tried to prepare himself for the mess he was about to find. He heard them coming back through the bamboo, slipped off the path and crouched down. Emma Lee, Clay and Grover’s father passed right by him.

  “I believe we’ve got his workshop looking pretty good,” Clay said.

  “I appreciate your help,” Grover’s father said, passing within inches of Grover and not seeing him. His father looked pale, hollow-eyed and exhausted, but there was something about the warm tone of his voice that Grover hadn’t heard in a long time.

  “Guess he went on back,” Emma Lee said, glancing right where Grover was hidden, meeting his eyes, yet walking on.

  “If he’s like me,” Clay said, “the boy’s probably got a appetite on him.”

  Grover waited, shivering and watching his breath come out in little clouds. A crow cawed. He stepped out of the bamboo and walked along the path till he came to the open circle. He couldn’t bring himself to look. Slowly he lifted his eyes.

  Had he lost his mind? The place seemed as it had always been. The lean-to, his worktable, even his chair were all there, together and standing. His neat piles of supplies were as he’d left them. His toolbox, which his father’d hurled into the bamboo, sat underneath the lean-to. Grover went to it, finding only a little dent in the side. He opened it. His saws and his twine were all back in the drawers. They weren’t in the drawers he kept them in, but most everything seemed there.

  Then he looked up. On the other side of the clearing, hanging where he always hung his tapestries, was the tapestry he’d been working on. He walked up to it. A few of the evergreen limbs were broken or missing but most of it seemed to be there.

  “Those bamboo grids you make are tough.”

  Grover turned around and saw his father standing there.

  “I came back for your toolbox,” his father said, walking up. “Sudie reminded me you always bring it back to the house.”

  Grover looked around at his workshop. “When did you do all this?”

  “I got up early,” his father said, “and came out here to repair things as best I could.” He looked at Grover like he was waiting for a judgment.

  Grover turned away and looked at the tapestry. Did his father think he was going to get off that easy?

  “Clay helped me.” His father picked up a stray length of bamboo and set it in a pile. “I’m very sorry about how I’ve been these past few months.”

  Grover believed him, but he still couldn’t get past the wall of his anger. A flock of crows flew overhead, settling into the bamboo on the far side of the workshop. Grover thought of his mother and how she would’ve said to try with his father.

  “I’m sorry about what I said last night, that the wrong one died,” Grover heard himself say. Then, surprising himself, he said, “I didn’t mean it.”

  “Sure you did,” his father said, starting to put his hand on Grover’s shoulder but seeming to sense Grover wasn’t ready for that. “Who wouldn’t wish the mother over the father? It’s perfectly natural. In fact, it shouldn’t be any other way.”

  His father reached out and stroked Grover’s tapestry. “There’s not a night that goes by I don’t wish it had been me who’d gone to Videolife instead of your mother.” He sighed. “But what came to me this morning was this,” he said, rubbing his temples. “We’ll have to settle for me.”

  Grover looked at his father.

  “How’s your knee?” his father asked.

  “Okay,” Grover said.

  His father was looking at the tapestry. “I meant to ask, was it you who came out here last night, after I … lost it?”

  Grover shook his head.

  “This morning when I first got here,” his father said, “your weaving was already hanging back up. And your toolbox was sitting there with some of the tools already back in it.”

  “Maybe Clay?” Grover said.

  “I asked Clay and Emma Lee and Leila, and I asked Jessie, and none of them came out here last night afterward.”

  “Sudie,” Grover said.

  “She didn’t go anywhere last night and didn’t wake up till a while ago.”

  Looking at the tapestry that blew slightly in the wind, Grover felt goose bumps rise on his arms. Was his mother still here in some way? Was this somehow her doing?

  “Grover?” his father asked.

  “Nothing,” Grover said.

  “Let’s go eat breakfast.” His father picked up Grover’s toolbox.

  Grover started to take the toolbox from him but his father said, “I’ve got it.”

  Then his father put his arm around Grover’s shoulder and started to lead him back home. At the edge of the Bamboo Forest, Grover nearly tripped over a red-ribboned stake in the ground. So that’s what he had fallen over last night.

  “They’re back,” his father said. Somehow Grover had missed the flagged stakes that had sprouted overnight like new bamboo shoots.

  So much time had passed since he and Sudie had pulled them up that he’d believed they wouldn’t reappear. Grover frantically grabbed hold of the stake he’d nearly tripped over and worked it back and forth, but it was in deep.

  “Stop!” his father said. “If Lunsford finds out my son has pulled these up, he’ll have my job for sure.”

  Grover let go of the stake. He hadn’t thought of that.

  His father sighed and set down the toolbox. “Oh, what the heck!” He looked around. “Come on. Grab hold.” His father bent over and took hold of the stake. “Maybe between the both of us …”

  “Are you sure?” Grover asked. He bent down, taking hold of the stake with his father. They both pulled, but it still didn’t budge.

  “They put these in extra deep,” their father said, grunting as he kept pulling. Grover pulled with all his strength and just as he’d decided once and for all that the world was a bleak and hopeless place, the stake moved and slid ever so slowly out of the ground.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A BIG OLD GRASS

  Later that afternoon, with their father gone to the Wolfe house and Sudie sitting by the woodstove reading a Ramona book, Grover decided he’d take care of something that had been bothering him since he’d woken up. He went out back, got their wheelbarrow and a rake from the shed and headed to Riverside. The day had turned colder, and it made the wheels of the wheelbarrow squeak. He was rolling the wheelbarrow up the street when he noticed Clay kicking the soccer ball against the side of his house. In the cold air, it made a ringing sound.

  Grover tried to hurry past, but when he sped up, the wheels squealed louder.

  “You working in the Bamboo Forest?” Clay asked, running over.

  “I’m going over to the cemetery,” Grover said, not stopping.

  “Need some help?” Clay asked. “Mama says yard work is my long suit.”

  “That’s okay,” Grover said. He was embarrassed t
hat he’d kicked the tapestries at the grave all around last night and didn’t want Clay to see what a mess he’d made.

  “Back home I took care of the family plot,” Clay said. “I used to mow and weed-eat the whole thing. I was careful not to nick any of the old gravestones.” He sighed. “I sort of miss taking care of it. Of course I miss that Mama paid me good too.”

  “See you,” Grover said and started back up Edgemont, the wheelbarrow still screeching. He glanced back and saw Clay walking slowly back toward his house, his shoulders slumped. Clay halfheartedly kicked a walnut that bounced up the street.

  “Now that I think about it,” Grover called to him, “I probably could use some help.”

  Clay walked along with him, talking the whole way up the street, past the Bamboo Forest and through the big iron gates of Riverside. When they reached his mother’s grave, Grover was surprised to find that someone had already straightened up. Jessie must’ve come by. The tapestries all seemed to be in one piece.

  “I don’t understand,” Grover said, picking up a couple of the smallest weavings. “I kicked these all over the place last night. I thought they’d be smashed to pieces.”

  Clay picked one up and tugged on it. “These weavings of yours don’t tear up.” Clay handed it to Grover.

  Grover pulled on it, gently at first, then harder.

  “Remember that first time I met you?” Clay said. “Kicked the soccer ball right into one you were working on. That ball didn’t hurt your weaving hardly at all. You know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Bamboo’s strong,” he said. “We did a section in my science class on it back at Bakersville Elementary. They use bamboo in Asian countries to frame houses. They even make big buildings with it. It stands up to earthquakes better, because it’s flexible and strong too. You’ve been framing your weavings with the toughest thing there is. Plus you tie some mean knots to hold ’em together.” Clay talked more about bamboo, as they straightened up a little more around the plot. “Technically bamboo’s a grass. A big old grass, still it’s a grass.”