What I Came to Tell You

by Tommy Hays

  “Sure.” Their father didn’t look up from what he said was a rare biography of Wolfe.

  The house seemed bigger inside but even so, it would be cramped for four people. There was this front room, and then as far as Grover could tell, there were three small bedrooms, and the kitchen in the back. One bedroom had bunk beds. He saw a couple of soccer balls and piles of books. Clay and Emma Lee must’ve shared this room. There was a bedroom that must’ve been Leila’s and another that must’ve been Mrs. Sparks’s. Next to this cabin, Jessie’s rental house was a mansion.

  “Emma Lee tells me you’re quite the artist,” Mrs. Sparks said.

  “I just mess around,” Grover said.

  “Emma Lee says she’s never seen anything like your tapestries,” she said. “You and I both know she doesn’t say anything she doesn’t mean.” Mrs. Sparks sat him at the big loom that was halfway done with what looked like a scene of a garden. She showed him how to slide the shuttlecock through and how to push on the pedal that pushed the yarn into place. It made a satisfying clicking sound.

  “How do you know what the scene is?” he asked. “Do you draw it first?”

  “I’ve been doing it so long I work from the pictures in my head.”

  After they drank their mugs of hot tea, Mrs. Sparks took them, with the dogs running ahead, along a worn path that led into woods, a dim, dripping forest of evergreens. With its ferns and moss, much of it encased in ice, and with its little animal paths running all through it, the place reminded Grover of enchanted woods where gnomes or hobbits might live. The forest held little clouds that they passed through. Sometimes they even lost sight of each other. After a few minutes they came into a large open area and on the far side, between clouds floating by, they saw the cemetery, the wet headstones gleaming. Grover remembered Clay saying that he’d looked after it. They walked among the headstones. They came to one whiter than the others.

  “That’s their daddy,” Mrs. Sparks said, coming up beside Grover. “He was a good father and a good husband.” She paused. “Before the war.” She showed them older headstones that included her husband’s, Emma Lee’s grandfather. “I’ll be buried here too one day. You can’t beat the view.”

  When they got back to the cabin, their father said they should leave.

  “They’ll be so sorry they missed you,” Mrs. Sparks said.

  “We wish they’d move back,” Sudie said.

  “Sudie,” their father said.

  Mrs. Sparks put her arm around Sudie. “I like a girl who speaks her mind.” Then she said, “To tell you the truth, I wish they’d move back too. Don’t get me wrong, I love them to death, but we’re in the middle of nowhere up here.” She looked at their father and Jessie. “The kids feel isolated. They both like Claxton. They love living in Asheville. Honestly, I was starting to enjoy having my house back. I’d lived alone for fifteen years before they moved in, and I’ve never gotten used to having so much family underfoot.”

  “Tell them to move back,” Sudie said.

  “I tried,” she said, “but their mama was shook up by Emma Lee nearly dying in that fire. She thinks it was a message from God.”

  “And you don’t?” Jessie asked.

  “I think she’s afraid,” Mrs. Sparks said.

  “Afraid of God?” Sudie asked.

  “Afraid of being happy again,” she said, not looking at their father.

  There was an awkward moment, when nobody said anything.

  “We better get going,” their father said.

  “One second,” she said. “Grover, come with me.”

  He looked at his father, who motioned him to follow her. “Jessie and I will be checking the Christmas tree,” his father said.

  Mrs. Sparks led him back into the front room and disappeared into the kitchen. In a minute she came out with a long cylindrical package wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. “A small token for just happening to crawl on your hands and knees into a burning house and just happening to carry my sweet Emma Lee to safety.”

  “Thank you,” he said, making sure to look her in the eye.

  “Your mama must’ve been one remarkable woman to have such a boy as you.” Her eyes seemed to glisten. He was halfway down the path when she called to him from the door. “Grover?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “The world needs our art whether it knows it or not!”

  He ran to the car and climbed in. As they pulled away, they waved at Mrs. Sparks standing in the doorway. The dogs chased their car down the dirt road. As their father started down the mountain, Grover looked at the wrapped package, turning it over and over.

  “Well, don’t just sit there,” Sudie said. “Open the thing!”

  Grover carefully untied the twine. One of her weavings. He unrolled it across the backseat and into Sudie’s lap. The weaving that Jessie had pointed out—of the cemetery and the mountains beyond.

  “Oh, Grover,” Sudie said, gently stroking the fabric. “She gave you the best one.”

  When they got home, Jessie cut off a few inches of the tree with his chain saw so it would stand in their living room. He helped them get it up in the stand, then said he had to go home and check on Tippy.

  Their father put on the lights like he always had, with Sudie checking the strands for any bulbs that needed replacing. When their father brought down the big box of ornaments from the attic, Sudie’s face darkened and her eyes got all shiny. Grover knew what she was thinking. Their mother had always been in charge of putting on the ornaments. Sudie was reaching to hang a gingerbread man ornament on a limb, when her shoulders slumped and her face crumbled. Their father was busy replacing a bulb. Grover nudged him.

  “Sweetheart.” Their father sat Sudie beside him on the couch.

  “It’s not the same, Daddy,” Sudie said, rubbing her red eyes with the heels of her hands. “It’s just not the same.”

  “I know,” their father said.

  Grover agreed with Sudie. It wasn’t the same. Hadn’t been the same since that April afternoon. If only they’d somehow known what was coming, they might’ve paid closer attention to the time they had left with their mother.

  “We don’t have to decorate it now,” their father said. “If y’all would rather wait.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Sudie said, sniffling. It was something their mother would’ve said.

  Grover and his father exchanged glances as they watched Sudie push herself up off the couch and carefully hang the gingerbread man on the tree. She dug around in the box of ornaments until she pulled out a long small box. She opened it and slowly unwrapped the paper until she arrived at a clear glass teardrop. Grover and Sudie had gone in together and bought it from an artist at the Grove Arcade for their mother Christmas before last. She’d said it was her favorite ornament. Sudie started to hang it on the tree but then paused and her lip trembled.

  “Here,” she said, taking Grover’s hand and placing the teardrop gently in it. “Hang it somewhere high,” she said, looking at him with clear eyes. “Where everybody can see it.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  IT WASN’T JESUS

  Ever since the woman had stabbed the For Sale sign into the Bamboo Forest, Grover had thrown himself into his weavings in a way he’d never done. He spent every spare moment in the Bamboo Forest, weaving harder and faster. Whenever he wasn’t in school he was in the Bamboo Forest, cutting, tying and weaving. When he was at school, he filled notebook after notebook with sketches. He hung the weaving Mrs. Sparks gave him on his bedroom wall, and at night fell asleep looking at it, touching it. He dreamed of leaves and limbs weaving themselves. He’d wake wide-eyed late in the night, pull on his clothes and his coat, tiptoe through the house and sneak out to the Bamboo Forest, where he’d work for an hour or two, then slip back into the house before anyone knew.

  Grover wasn’t sure what had come over him. Maybe it had to do with the Roundtrees moving. Maybe it had to do with this being the first Christmas without their mother. Ma
ybe it had to do with knowing that the Bamboo Forest wouldn’t be around much longer. Or maybe it had to do with keeping sadness at the edges. He didn’t know, and he didn’t have time to figure it out. The ideas for tapestries came so fast that he could hardly keep up with them. His tapestries had gotten so big they needed more support. Instead of tying them in place, he began weaving his limbs between the living bamboo shoots. It kept the big weavings from toppling over and caving in on themselves. He did this more and more, weaving in his collected limbs between the standing bamboo.

  He liked the look and the feel of the more brittle cut limbs woven between the flexible living shoots. Up was living, across was dead. He couldn’t move these tapestries since they were rooted in the ground, so when he finished one, he’d simply leave it and move on to the next. He cut a spiral hallway into the Bamboo Forest, like photographs he’d seen of the Guggenheim Museum in New York and wove tapestries all along the hallway.

  Sudie kept him supplied with limbs. All he had to do was reach into the pile she was always stocking and choose the perfect limb. On the weekend when he wove all day, she brought him lunch. On those nights their father stayed late at the Wolfe house, she carried his supper out to him, while he worked by flashlights.

  Their father had become so busy with the Thomas Wolfe Christmas that Grover and Sudie hardly saw him. For a little while their father had said that A Thomas Wolfe Christmas was an overwhelming success but lately he’d just been saying that it was overwhelming. He stopped making breakfasts for them. Often he was cranky, like he’d been in the old days when the Wolfe house was empty of visitors. Judging from his father’s behavior, Grover guessed that success and failure had a lot in common.

  Their father was too preoccupied to notice Grover’s grades had slipped. Grover’d been working so hard in the Bamboo Forest that when he was at school he could hardly keep his eyes open. Often he’d lay his head on his desk, and the next thing he knew, Mrs. Caswell would be calling his name, and he’d jerk his head up. At recess, he’d fall asleep working his Rubik’s cube. Sam or Mira would wake him when the bell sounded. One day, Miss Snyder woke him and asked him to come back to her office.

  “Mrs. Caswell will wonder where I am,” he said, sitting in a chair in her office.

  “She’s the one who asked me to talk to you,” Miss Snyder said. “She says you’ve been falling asleep in class.”

  “I’ve been a little tired lately,” he said, trying to stifle a yawn.

  “Your schoolwork has suffered. Is something going on at home?”

  “No,” Grover said.

  “You answered that mighty fast.”

  “Our father has been busy at the Wolfe house.” He hoped this would be enough to satisfy her counselor’s curiosity.

  “Are you sure there’s nothing else?”

  “Nothing.” Grover didn’t want to tell her about the streak of tapestries he was working on. As exhausted as he’d been lately, he felt more like himself. When he was hard at work in the Bamboo Forest, he became connected to something solid and true. Something he could count on. Something that would not go away.

  One afternoon, Grover had been putting the finishing touches on the last weaving—his biggest yet. He was tired but happy. He’d finished a whole hallway of tapestries. He’d woven in the very last pine limb of the last tapestry and was standing back, studying it, when Sudie came running through the bamboo.

  “That lady,” she said, out of breath. “She’s back.”

  Grover and Sudie crept to the edge of the Bamboo Forest and watched the woman haul five For Sale signs out of her trunk and stab each into the ground. They waited till she’d driven off before they walked over to the signs. Grover’d never seen a realtor put out more than one sign. Every driver who passed would notice and sooner or later someone would buy it.

  “I hate those signs,” Sudie said.

  “Remember what Daddy said,” Grover said.

  “I know, I know,” Sudie said. “If we pull them up we might get him in trouble.”

  A cold wind blew and the signs made a little singing noise.

  “They’re so many of them,” Grover said.

  “Maybe we could pull up just one,” Sudie said.

  “I don’t know,” Grover said. “I have a funny feeling about this.” He looked up and down the street but he didn’t see a soul. “It’s too quiet.”

  Sudie ran up to one of the signs and was straining to pull it up. As she slid it out of the ground a man streaked from around the far side of the Bamboo Forest. Sudie dropped the sign and ran back up the path that led to the studio. The man followed her, and Grover ran up behind him. Sudie had reached the studio when the man grabbed her coat. Grover shoved the man hard, and when he did, the man lost his grip on Sudie’s coat, but then he whirled around and grabbed Grover’s arm tightly. “Now I’ve caught you.” Grover recognized the voice before he recognized the face. He tried pulling away but Lunsford’s grip was strong.

  “Grover!” Sudie had stopped when she saw Mr. Lunsford had hold of him.

  “Go get Jessie,” Grover said. “And take Biscuit with you.”

  Sudie scooped up the dog and ran hard through the bamboo.

  “What is this all back here?” Holding Grover’s arm, Lunsford looked around at the tapestries and the lean-to and the piles of limbs. He glanced at a couple of Grover’s tapestries. “Hard to believe your father would come to me hat in hand just so you could make these silly things. This is child’s play.”

  Grover tried to pull away.

  “Speaking of your daddy,” Mr. Lunsford said, “let’s see if he’s home yet.” He walked Grover out of the Bamboo Forest and headed up the street.

  “He’s not home,” Grover said, seeing his father’s car wasn’t in the driveway.

  “We’ll wait,” Mr. Lunsford said, keeping a grip on Grover’s arm. He seemed to be taking in the overgrown grass and the uncut bushes. “Son, you ought to spend your time doing something helpful for your daddy like yard work instead of messing around in that bamboo.”

  Their father’s car turned in the driveway. Grover’s heart sank. He would be furious that Lunsford had caught them pulling up signs. Their father had barely stopped when he was out of the car, marching toward them, looking as angry as that night he’d torn up Grover’s studio.

  “I caught your boy pulling up my signs,” Mr. Lunsford said.

  “How dare you!” his father growled.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy—” Grover started.

  “How dare you lay a hand on my son,” their father said. “Let go of him.”

  “But I caught him red-handed, pulling up my signs,” Mr. Lunsford said, sounding a little less sure of himself.

  “Let go.” Their father stepped up to Mr. Lunsford.

  Mr. Lunsford frowned at their father for a minute, then let go of Grover’s arm.

  “Him and that little daughter of yours were pulling up my For Sale signs.”

  “Sudie didn’t have anything to do with it, Daddy,” Grover said.

  “Honest to God,” said Mr. Lunsford, “what is all that mess your boy’s making back in there in the bamboo? If what he’s doing back there is art, then I’m Pablo—”

  His father grabbed Mr. Lunsford by the collar. “Don’t ever talk about my kids. They’re good kids. My boy is a fine artist and anybody who says otherwise answers to me.”

  Jessie came trotting up. “Let him go, Walt.”

  His jaw working, their father stared at Mr. Lunsford like he was making up his mind. Then he let him go. Mr. Lunsford hurried down the driveway, looking behind him and tugging on his collar. When he was at the bottom of the driveway and a safe distance, he said, “You’ve done it now, Johnston. You’ve gone and done it now.”

  They watched Mr. Lunsford hurry up the street. They saw him pick up the one For Sale sign and stab it angrily into the ground next to the others. He climbed into his shiny new Audi and drove back to the bottom of the driveway, rolling his window down.

  “I�
�ll be having that canebrake leveled,” he yelled. “It’s an eyesore. Come to think of it, that’s probably why the property isn’t selling.”

  They watched him drive off.

  Grover still couldn’t believe their father had grabbed Mr. Lunsford like that. “I’m sorry if I got you into trouble,” Grover said.

  “I was the one who pulled up the sign,” Sudie said.

  Their father looked at Jessie. “Any openings for an assistant landscaper?”

  “I think you’re jumping the gun,” Jessie said.

  “Lunsford has been waiting years for an excuse to get rid of me.”

  “He won’t cut down the Bamboo Forest,” Sudie said. “Will he?”

  Their father glanced at his watch. “I need to get back. We have five busloads of church ladies coming in.” He looked up at Grover and Sudie. “Will y’all be okay a little while longer this evening?”

  “They can come to my place and do their homework,” Jessie said. “And I’ll feed them too. So stay as late as you need.”

  He nodded at Jessie. “And thanks for calling me.”

  So that’s why their father had shown up out of the blue.

  “I’ll try not to be too late,” their father said, starting to get into his car. He looked at Grover. “Don’t go over to the Bamboo Forest again this evening.”

  “But …,” Grover began.

  “I said don’t go over there!” his father snapped. Then in a quieter voice he said, “At least not anymore today. It is his property.” Their father backed out of the drive.

  “I left my toolbox,” Grover said to Jessie.

  “I’ll go with you,” Jessie said as they watched their father drive away.

  Jessie and Grover and Sudie walked back to the Bamboo Forest, pausing on the street to make sure no one was around. Jessie shook his head at the line of For Sale signs.

  “Let’s do this quick. We don’t want Lunsford catching us.”

  “Will he get Daddy fired?” Sudie asked.

  “Your father has a lot of friends in this town,” Jessie said.

  Grover couldn’t get over what his father had just done. Not only had he stood up for him and Sudie, he’d defended his weavings. Grover had gone across his studio to pick up his toolbox when he saw Jessie standing in front of a couple of the big tapestries. They were as tall as Jessie. “Lord have mercy,” he said. “These are incredible. You did these?”