by Tommy Hays
The arcade was busy with Christmas shoppers. Grover had always been struck by how early Christmas seemed to start downtown. Their father said it was good for business. He said that some stores made most of their money during the holiday season.
A group of people had gathered in the center of the arcade where three musicians—a banjo player, a fiddler and a guitar player—played old-time Christmas music. The fiddler, a bearded man, had left his case open, and it was full of coins and dollar bills. They played fast and hard. People tapped their toes and clapped in time. It was the kind of music that was difficult not to smile to.
“Man, they’re hot.” Clay took off his backpack and started to clog.
“Clay’s won the clogging competition at the Lamar Lunsford Festival every year since he was four,” Emma Lee said.
“Look at that hillbilly go,” said a well-dressed older man to a woman in a fur coat. Grover could tell from his accent that he was not from the South.
“My brother is not a hillbilly!” Emma Lee had whirled around and faced the man.
“I didn’t mean anything by it.” The man laughed and looked at his wife, then back at Emma Lee. “I think your brother is one hell of a dancer.”
“Don’t call him a hillbilly,” Emma Lee said, her jaw working.
“I really don’t see the problem …”
“You heard the girl!” Another man stepped up to the well-dressed man. Grover had noticed him standing behind them, listening to the music with his wife and two little blonde-haired girls. He had long hair, wore a ball cap and a hunting jacket.
“I didn’t mean anything by it.” The well-dressed man wasn’t laughing now and his face had turned pale. “Tell him, Gertrude.” He turned to his wife but she pressed her lips together as if this wasn’t the first time her husband’s mouth had gotten him in trouble.
“I wouldn’t call nobody a hillbilly,” the man in the ball cap said, leveling his eyes at the well-dressed man, “not if you expect to live a long and healthy life.”
“Is that a threat?!”
“It’s one of them health advisories.”
The well-dressed man started to say something but seemed to think better of it. He took his wife’s hand, and they disappeared through the crowd.
“ ’Preciate it,” Emma Lee said to the man in the ball cap.
He gave her a wink and nodded toward the band. “The fella’s right. Your brother’s good.” He stepped back and joined his family. Grover saw the sad look flicker across Emma Lee’s face as she watched the man’s little girls take their father’s hands and lean back against him.
The band shifted into a faster song, and as the fiddle sped up, so did Clay’s footwork. More people gathered to listen to the music and watch him dance. Emma Lee shrugged off her backpack and joined her brother. Other people stepped out of the crowd, joining Clay and Emma Lee, and pretty soon it seemed as if half the people in the Grove Arcade were dancing.
“Come on.” Emma Lee waved Grover up.
He thought about going up, but his feet wouldn’t move. He knew good and well that if his mother had been there, she’d have been dancing right in the middle of them.
Grover watched Emma Lee drink her hot chocolate. He didn’t know if it was the cold or the dancing, but her cheeks had reddened and her eyes glistened. They had stopped in at Bean Streets long enough for Sudie to beat Clay in checkers.
“Oh, gross,” Emma Lee was muttering under her breath.
A dreadlocked couple kissed and stuck their tongues into each other’s mouths right in front of their table, where Mr. Critt had hung a sprig of mistletoe on the tip of the mannequin arm coming out of the ceiling.
“Make me gag,” Emma Lee said louder.
Grover laughed, nearly spraying hot chocolate everywhere.
“Don’t knock what you haven’t tried, sister,” the dreadlock girl said to Emma Lee. She nodded toward the mistletoe. “Why don’t you and your boyfriend give it a whirl?”
“I’m not her boyfriend!” Grover said.
“Never too early to start,” the dreadlock guy said, then, as if he was demonstrating, kissed the dreadlock girl another long kiss. The couple sauntered off toward their table in the back, his hand in her back pocket.
Grover couldn’t bring himself to look at Emma Lee. He kept his eyes on the checkerboard as Sudie quickly finished off Clay. When he finally did look up, the expression on Emma Lee’s face wasn’t at all what he’d expected. He couldn’t be sure but he thought she looked a little hurt.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, my sister has a thing for Thomas Wolfe,” Clay said as Emma Lee ran ahead and disappeared into the Old Kentucky Home. Clay looked at the rocking chairs lined up on the long porch.
“The guests used to sit out here in the summers,” Sudie said. “A long time ago, people stayed in boardinghouses like this when they visited Asheville. Now they stay in hotels.” She pointed to the Renaissance Hotel, a huge, ten-story hotel across from the Wolfe house. “Daddy says the Wolfe house has been in the hotel’s shadow since the day it was built.”
Shading his eyes with his hands, Clay frowned up into the sky, looking over at the hotel and then back at the Wolfe house. “Now I may be wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time. But unless I’m sorely mistaken, the path of the sun over these two buildings is such that the Wolfe house would never find itself in that big old hotel’s shadow.”
Inside, the first thing Grover noticed was the bright smell of pine and fir. Along the edges of the main exhibit room lay wreaths, a small stack of cut fir trees and another neat pile of garlands made from pine branches. Emma Lee was already at the exhibits, stopping to read every word, something Grover hadn’t done in all the years he’d come here. Little Bit and several of the tour guides were draping garlands around the main room.
“He’s in his office,” Little Bit said, handing a garland to a tour guide on a ladder.
“You really are having a Thomas Wolfe Christmas,” Sudie said.
Little Bit glanced off toward their father’s office. “I thought your daddy would have a fit when he saw the bill. Instead, he said to make sure I got whatever I needed.” She lowered her voice. “His mood has improved lately.”
Grover walked to his father’s half-open office door and found him standing at his desk with Leila beside him. They were looking at an open book on the desk. The way they leaned together, almost touching, gave Grover an odd feeling. He knocked.
Leila and their father stepped back from each other.
“Come on in!” his father said. A tinge of red crept across his father’s face. “I was showing Leila a first edition Look Homeward, Angel.”
When Leila Roundtree looked up from the book, it hit Grover how pretty she was and how she wasn’t just somebody’s mother. He thought about how his father had accepted rides from the Roundtrees in the mornings, how he and Leila had started going on walks after supper, how he came back from those walks in a good mood.
His father led the Roundtrees through the house, starting downstairs, taking them through the dining room, the kitchen, the piano parlor, the sunroom parlor and then upstairs to the bedrooms. He showed them the room where Wolfe’s brother Ben had died. Even without reading the book, Grover’d heard his father’s spiel enough to know that Ben, Wolfe’s older brother, was the angel in Look Homeward, Angel.
With no other visitors around, his father unhooked the velvet ropes and let the Roundtrees walk throughout the rooms. Emma Lee hardly said a word the whole time. She seemed to soak it all in. One of the last rooms they visited was the bedroom where Wolfe’s father died.
“This is the very bed he died in,” Grover’s father said.
“I’ll be,” Clay said.
“Was he like Gant in the book?” Leila asked.
“A funny guy,” his father said, “full of life, quoted long passages of Shakespeare, built roaring fires and on occasion given to excess.”
“Given to what?” Clay asked.
“Drank too much,” Sudie sa
id.
As Grover’s father led Leila and Clay on down the hall to another room, Grover noticed Emma Lee linger. She laid her hand flat on the bed where Wolfe’s father had died. Grover came and stood beside her.
“They know of at least eleven people who died in this house,” Grover said.
He heard his father’s voice down the hall. Grover placed his hand on the bed. “Course everybody who ever lived in this place must be dead now.”
Emma Lee looked at him.
“Wolfe’s father. His mother. His brothers and sisters, all dead. Every boarder whoever stayed here has to be dead. And Wolfe’s been dead since 1938.”
“What are you saying?” Emma Lee asked.
Grover shrugged. “Just that everybody’s dead.”
“Or getting there,” Emma Lee said.
Careful to replace the felt rope, Grover led Emma Lee in the direction his father had taken Leila and Clay and Sudie, but found himself leading her down the hall toward the sleeping porch where Wolfe spent many nights and where he’d had to share the room with whatever boarder might be staying there at the time. It was Grover’s favorite room because it had so many windows and was lighter than the rest of the house.
“He never knew from night to night where he’d have to sleep,” Grover said. “Or who he’d have to share a room with.” He pointed to the two beds that took up most of the room. “His mother was so cheap she’d squeeze as many beds into a room as she could. She even rented to people with tuberculosis. When he died of tuberculosis of the brain, they said he might’ve caught it from having to sleep in boarders’ beds.”
They could hear his father’s voice down the hall as he reeled off facts about Wolfe’s seven brothers and sisters. Outside, the wind whistled and a loose shutter tapped against the house. Grover reached for Emma Lee’s hand.
She looked at him and then down at his hand holding hers.
Her hand was warm and rough at the same time. He let go.
They didn’t say anything. The wind whistled outside and the shutter continued to tap against the house. The two of them stood watching the wind in the bare trees and the light fading outside. Down the hall, their families’ voices were coming toward them.
CHAPTER TWELVE
MERLIN WANTS IN
“Class, line up for lunch,” said Mrs. Caswell. Chairs scraped as the kids lined up with their parents. It was Wednesday, when the school served Thanksgiving lunch and family were invited. Sam’s father was in line. Mira’s mom. Ashley’s mom. Both of Daniel Pevoe’s parents and his grandmother too. Almost everyone had a parent with them, some had both. The other night Sudie had invited their father to the Claxton Thanksgiving lunch, but he had a business lunch he couldn’t miss. Sudie was disappointed but hadn’t said anything. All morning, Grover had held out hope that their father, who was known for surprises, might show at the last minute.
Still in her nurse’s uniform, Emma Lee’s mother arrived as Mrs. Caswell led the line down the hall. Emma Lee, who’d been quiet all morning, gave her mother a weak smile, and Leila put her arm around her shoulder.
“Is your daddy coming?” Leila asked Grover as the line started down the stairway.
“He’s busy,” Grover said.
“He has a lot on his shoulders these days,” Leila said.
Why did adults always make excuses for each other?
When his class filed past the offices, Grover noticed Miss Snyder at her desk, doing paperwork. He darted into her office. He’d been to see her a few times since the first meeting and had stopped feeling quite so strange passing her office. It didn’t feel like his mother’s anymore. Miss Snyder looked up from a form she was filling out.
“Would you sit with Sudie at lunch?” Grover asked. “Our father can’t come.”
“What about you?” Miss Snyder asked.
“I guess I could eat with her, but it wouldn’t be special.”
“What I mean is,” she said, “would you like me to sit with you too?”
“That’s okay,” he said.
“Why is it okay?”
“I don’t need anybody sitting with me.”
“Why is that?”
“I’m older.”
“I see.” Miss Snyder rubbed her chin. “So older kids don’t need people to sit with them?”
“Well, there’s that,” he said, “plus talking to people tires me out.”
“Like now?” she asked. “Am I tiring you out?”
He glanced back at the passing line of his class.
“Of course I’ll sit with her,” she said.
In the cafeteria he sat beside Sam, whose father sat across from him, talking and laughing. Dr. Newcomer was a very funny, very nice man and a good father, it seemed to Grover. He’d coached Sam’s soccer team for years, had been a troop leader in Sam’s Boy Scout Troop and was always doing things with Sam, like taking him camping in the Smokies or skiing up at Wolf Ridge or to see a basketball game in Chapel Hill.
Emma Lee sat on the other side of him, hardly speaking to her mother. This didn’t seem to bother Leila, who talked a lot to Mira’s mother, the mayor of Asheville and a big supporter of the Wolfe house.
Halfway through the meal, Grover leaned over to Emma Lee and said, “Pretty good turkey, huh?”
Emma Lee smiled but seemed to drift back to wherever she’d been.
After school, Grover went to work in the Bamboo Forest. As usual, Clay came over and helped. The tapestries Grover was working on had gotten so big he needed an assistant to stand on the other side to help him weave in the long limbs.
For Sale signs, like stubborn weeds, had kept sprouting up almost as fast as Grover tossed them into the bamboo. He’d stopped when a police car started cruising their street, slowing in front of the Bamboo Forest. His father said the lot might not sell, that times were tight and few people would be able or willing to pay $250,000 for two little acres. Grover continued to go out to the Bamboo Forest every day, working harder than ever since any day could be his last.
“What was wrong with Emma Lee today?” Grover asked as he pushed a long hemlock limb into an opening.
“This time of year is hard for her,” Clay said, taking the limb and sliding it back toward Grover. “It’s hard for all of us but it’s special hard for Emma Lee.”
“How come?”
“Daddy was killed on Thanksgiving four years ago.” Clay’s eyes looked at him through a slot in the tapestry. “His dying was hardest on Emma Lee. I didn’t know him as good since I was so little when he first went over there.”
It was about dark when Grover and Clay straightened up the studio, putting everything neatly away. Grover picked up his toolbox, and together Clay and Grover walked out of the Bamboo Forest. The streetlights buzzed on and snowflakes whirled down through the light.
“The first snow of the year,” Grover said, putting his hand out. His heart lifted a little at the sight of it.
“Back home they would’ve had a bunch of snows by now,” Clay said.
They walked up the middle of Edgemont, looking up at the snow. When they came even with their houses, Grover heard a cat cry. Merlin sat on the sill outside the Roundtrees’ front window. He seemed to be looking at a flame flickering.
“Merlin wants in,” Clay said.
“What’s with the candle?”
“Every evening from now till Christmas, Emma Lee will light that candle for Daddy and set it in the window. She’s done it every year since he died. Says it’s to guide his spirit home. The only thing is that it’s also Merlin’s perch, and when Emma Lee set the candle there, he jumped up and knocked it down. Nearly caught the house on fire. Mama said we have to keep him out whenever Emma Lee lights that candle.”
A dark figure walked slowly up the street. Whoever it was, was tired. Grover recognized the battered hat. Jessie had on overalls and muddy work boots and snow collected on the brim of his hat. He looked at Grover’s toolbox. “Y’all been hard at it?”
“Grover’s working on a mon
ster weaving,” Clay said.
“What’s that racket?” Jessie walked into the Roundtrees’ yard and lifted Merlin off their windowsill and carried him back, holding the cat in his arms like a baby. “Cat, you’re one bothersome feline.”
“Mama makes us put him out so he’ll come home to you,” Clay said, petting Merlin. “She says it’s important Merlin knows he’s your cat.”
“Merlin belongs to no man,” Jessie said as the cat squirmed out of his arms, dropped to the ground and disappeared into the dark.
Headlights swept across the bottom of the street, and Grover could tell by the engine’s rattle that it was his father’s car. The headlights lit up the air, showing how heavy the snow fell. Grover and Clay and Jessie moved to the sidewalk as Grover’s father pulled even with them. He rolled down his window.
“It’s coming down, isn’t it?” his father said, sounding like he’d had a good day at the Wolfe house.
“Charles said they’re calling for eight inches,” Jessie said. Charles was the big guy who operated the backhoe at Riverside. “Maybe we ought to do our grocery shopping tonight? In case everything is shut down tomorrow.”
“We can grab a bite to eat at Five Points and then head over to the co-op,” their father said.
“Give me a few minutes to get out of these work clothes,” Jessie said. He started up the street.
“Clay,” their father said, “I’m glad y’all can join us for Thanksgiving.”
This was the first Grover’d heard about the Roundtrees eating Thanksgiving with them. As he watched his father pull into the drive, Grover thought there seemed to be a good bit of communication with Leila that he wasn’t in on.
“I better get home,” Clay said. “Mama’ll wonder where I am. See you, Grover.”
“See you,” Grover said, picking up his toolbox. He started up the front walk but then turned to watch Clay walk across their yard and disappear inside. The snow was coming down even harder. The candle flickering in the Roundtrees’ front window gave Grover a warm and dizzy feeling, like he was falling but being held up at the same time.