by Tommy Hays
“Why don’t the kids sit there,” their father said to Leila, as a table of four women got up to leave. “We can sit over there.” He pointed to a table for two by the window.
So Grover, Sudie, Emma Lee and Clay sat at their own table. Grover and Emma Lee ended up sitting in such a way that they could see their father and Leila across the room from them. Sudie and Clay sat with their backs to their parents. The four of them talked for a while, but then Grover began watching his father and Leila, even though they were too far away to hear what they were saying. For a long time his father and Leila hadn’t talked at all. They mostly looked out the window and sipped on their hot chocolate.
“We miss y’all,” Sudie said. “The neighborhood isn’t the same.”
“Nothing against Bakersville,” Clay said. “Just feels kind of on the slow side after living in Asheville. Doesn’t it, Sis?”
Emma Lee nodded but was also keeping an eye on Leila and their father, who talked some now but didn’t smile.
“I’m a city boy at heart,” Clay said, looking around at all the people in Bean Streets.
Grover and Emma Lee glanced at each other. Something was being decided in the conversation between their parents. Leila’s eyes had reddened and their father looked down, tracing his finger around his cup. The more he watched them not talking, not smiling, not offering the least glimmer of hope, the angrier Grover felt.
“Mr. Lunsford says he’s cutting down the Bamboo Forest,” Sudie said.
“He can’t do that,” Clay said.
“Daddy says it’s his land and he can do what he wants to with it.”
“Grover,” Emma Lee said.
Grover looked away from their parents and tried to focus on Emma Lee.
“You didn’t tell me about Mr. Lunsford,” Emma Lee said.
“What’s there to tell?” Grover said, trying to hold back the anger in his words.
“I’m your friend,” Emma Lee said.
“So?” Grover said, feeling his face heat up.
“I’d want to know something like that,” she said.
“It’s the end of everything, okay?!” Grover said, hearing himself shout. “It’s the end of everything and there’s nothing you or anybody else can do about it!”
Bean Streets grew quiet, except for a couple of the street people who laughed about something. Grover ran out the front door and started down Biltmore Avenue, hands thrust deep in his coat pockets.
“Grover!” his father called. Grover heard footsteps come up beside him. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. “What in the world was that all about?” his father said, catching his breath.
Grover shook his head and started walking again. His father followed after him, walking along beside him. “Did Emma Lee say something? Or Clay?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Grover said.
“Was it something I did?” his father asked.
Grover stopped. “I don’t know what it is. All I know is that for a little while tonight everything was okay. In fact, everything was really good, and then all of the sudden everything wasn’t. And talking about it won’t help!” Grover said, and started walking again. “Talking about things just makes them worse.”
His father walked with Grover, but didn’t say anything else. As they walked through downtown, Grover was vaguely aware of the brightly colored lights outlining buildings and hanging in storefronts. Christmas decorations made him feel left out.
“Daddy,” Grover said, “if you like Leila, then do something about it.”
They walked along for a little bit.
“Isn’t it too soon?” their father asked.
“It’ll always be too soon,” Grover said.
“Won’t it be strange for you and Sudie?” their father asked.
“Of course,” Grover said.
After they’d walked three or four blocks, Grover began to calm down. He remembered his sister. “Where’s Sudie?”
“The Roundtrees were going to drop her by Jessie’s on their way back up the mountain,” he said.
Grover felt foolish for ending the evening the way he had. The Roundtrees had gone back up the mountain, probably for good, and he hadn’t even said good-bye. By the time Grover and his father walked across downtown, Grover felt too tired to be upset. His father must’ve sensed the change, because when they turned a corner and found a city bus idling there with the door open, his father put his hand on Grover’s shoulder and said, “How about we ride the rest of the way home?”
Cold and tired, Grover nodded, and together they climbed into the light and the warmth of the bus. They were the only passengers.
His father dropped change into the change counter. Grover always liked the sound of the coins tinkling against the glass. They sat a couple of seats behind the driver, a gray-haired man. The driver closed the door and pulled out into traffic.
After a while the bus driver looked up at them in his rearview mirror and said, “How y’all tonight?”
“Better,” his father said, “now that we’re on your bus and out of the cold.” He patted Grover’s knee.
“I know that’s right,” the bus driver said.
Grover yawned.
“Grover,” his father said, “I want you to know that you don’t ever have to take care of me. At least till it’s time for the old folks home.”
“Okay, Daddy,” he said. As if all the night’s events suddenly caught up with him, Grover felt exhausted. The bus rounded a corner, leaning him against his father. But even when the bus straightened out, he let his head stay on his father’s shoulder.
CHAPTER TWENTY
BAD NEWS
Saturday, Grover spent all all morning in his workshop, remembering his father’s warning to check for Mr. Lunsford’s car. As usual, Sudie had come with him and was a lookout. Mr. Lunsford hadn’t returned to the Bamboo Forest, at least as far as Grover could tell. Jessie, who’d come down a couple of times to walk through the hallway again, said Mr. Lunsford had always been a little afraid of their father.
Grover had continued to work hard, knowing it was only a matter of time—weeks or even days before Mr. Lunsford had the Bamboo Forest leveled. He felt like the man in “The Pit and the Pendulum,” a story that Mrs. Caswell had had them read. The blade lowering, getting closer and closer. He could almost hear it. Wanting to make the most of the time he had left, he’d been working on his biggest weaving yet. Twelve feet wide and seven feet tall. The size of a small billboard. He’d had to a haul a stepladder into the Bamboo Forest to be able to weave in limbs high enough.
At lunchtime Sudie brought him a peanut butter and honey sandwich so he could keep working. After lunch Grover had just gotten started back working on the big weaving when Sudie called to him. “Someone’s coming.”
Grover started down the ladder.
“Never mind,” Sudie called. “It’s just Jessie.”
Grover climbed back up the ladder.
“But he’s bringing some people with him,” Sudie called.
Grover jumped down off the ladder and ran to where Sudie sat on a rock, looking through their father’s birding binoculars.
“You’re never going to believe this!” She handed him the binoculars and when he finally focused on the group, he saw that Jessie was leading Mrs. Caswell, Miss Snyder and Mrs. Dillingham straight to the Bamboo Forest.
“Why’s he bringing them?!” Grover whispered.
Sudie was already racing out of the Bamboo Forest to meet them. She ran up and gave Miss Snyder a hug.
Grover ran back to the workshop, packed up his tools, then, grabbing up his toolbox, started to make a run for it, but when he turned around, Jessie and the three women were there, looking at the big half-finished weaving behind him.
“Oh my Lord,” Mrs. Caswell said, walking up to it and lightly touching it.
“Goodness,” Miss Snyder said, looking at Grover and then back at the weaving.
“Astonishing,” Mrs. Dillingham said.
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“I brought these ladies over to get a look at your work,” Jessie said.
Grover nodded but didn’t really understand.
“Sudie,” Jessie said, “why don’t you show them Grover’s gallery?”
“Sure,” Sudie said. “This way.” She showed them the entrance to the hallway, and the three women disappeared down the passageway with Sudie. Grover could hear them oohing and ahhing as they went deeper into the gallery. At one point he heard Mrs. Dillingham exclaim, “Miraculous!”
“I’m sorry to surprise you like this,” Jessie said in a low voice to Grover. “I figured you wouldn’t let me bring them if I told you ahead of time.”
“Why?” Grover asked, feeling angry.
“People need to know what you’re doing back here,” Jessie said.
“But why’d you bring them?” Grover whispered. These were the last people on earth he’d ever want back here. His teacher. His counselor. His principal. And it wasn’t even a school day.
“For one thing, I do their yards, and I’ve been telling them about your weavings for a while, and with Lunsford about to do away with the place …”
A flock of crows passed overhead, making a loud racket and settling on the far edge of the bamboo.
“You know when he’s cutting it down?” Grover asked.
Jessie sighed. “I ran into a fellow yesterday walking around the edge of the Bamboo Forest. He told me Lunsford had hired him to clear this all out.”
“Did he say when?” Grover asked, his heart feeling suddenly hollow.
Jessie looked at the ground. “Day after tomorrow.”
“Monday?” Grover sat down on the big stump in the center of his workshop.
“I asked him if he’d mind giving me a call as soon as he was sure what time of day he’d be clearing it.” Jessie sat down next to Grover.
After a little while, the women emerged with Sudie from the hallway. They surrounded him.
“What you’ve done here is remarkable,” Mrs. Dillingham said.
“I’d heard about your weavings,” Miss Snyder said, “but I’d had no idea.”
“This is important work, Grover,” Mrs. Caswell said. “People need to see this.”
“Indeed,” said Mrs. Dillingham.
Grover only half heard the women as he sat on the stump, looking around at the Bamboo Forest. Monday it would be gone. As the women left, Jessie said he’d go with them, that he needed to get back to work. Sudie followed them out, then returned in a minute and found Grover still sitting on the stump.
“I’m not working anymore,” he said.
“You mean today?”
“Ever.”
“Why not?”
“They’re cutting it down on Monday.”
“Oh,” she said, sitting down on the stump beside him. They were quiet for a little while. Finally, Sudie said, “You need to finish this one.” She nodded at the giant half-done weaving.
“What does it matter, Sudie?” he snapped. “I’ve been working on these weavings for weeks, and I’ve been working in the Bamboo Forest nearly all my life, and it’s all going to be gone in a couple of days.”
“You have the rest of today and tomorrow,” she said. “Finish it.”
He pushed himself up off the stump. “I have to go someplace,” he said.
“Can I come?”
“No.”
“Come on, Biscuit,” she said, sounding hurt. “Sesame Street’s on.” She stomped out of the Bamboo Forest.
Grover waited to be sure Sudie was gone, then headed up the street and turned in at Riverside. He hadn’t visited his mother’s grave in a while. The tapestries he’d made for her had all but fallen apart. The leaves and limbs had mostly disintegrated. Mainly what was left were the sturdy bamboo grids, tapestry skeletons. Grover sat down on a little wall and faced her headstone. He’d been thinking a lot lately about a night just a few days before she’d died.
It had been a Friday night. Their father had had to stay late at the Wolfe house and Sudie was spending the night up the street at Grace’s. Grover and his mother had eaten supper and Grover was headed out the door. “I’m going up the street,” he’d said. Sam had a new video game he wanted to show him.
“I was thinking we might play a game,” his mother said.
“Like what?”
“Anything but Candy Land.” Candy Land was the main game little kids wanted to play in her office.
“I told Sam I’d come up after supper,” he said.
“How about checkers?” she asked. “Or Monopoly?”
“That takes so long.”
“Scrabble?”
“I’m terrible at Scrabble.”
“What about chess? Let’s play chess. Come on, Grover, I play games all day but I never get to really try.” She started to get the chess set out of the game cabinet.
“I told Sam I’d come up,” Grover said. What he didn’t say was that Sam had been telling him about his new Minesweeper video game all week. The other thing was that lately Grover’d found his parents more and more boring. The idea of playing a game with his mother on a Friday night when he could be up the street with his friend made him feel trapped.
Grover had walked up the street to Sam’s that evening, glad to be out of the house and headed toward his friend’s. If only he’d known, he would’ve played every single game in that cabinet with her. He thought about his father. He thought about Sudie. Even Jessie. What if something happened to one of them? What wasn’t he doing with them now that he would regret later? Life, he was beginning to understand, was one long last chance.
Grover was walking out of the cemetery when he saw Matthew raking up around some very old headstones in the Jewish section. At the sight of him, Grover felt a bolt of anger streak through him. He charged over to him.
“I know about you,” Grover said.
Matthew stopped raking, pushed his glasses back on his nose and leaned on the rake as if he’d been expecting Grover.
“I know about you looking after Mama’s grave,” Grover said. “About you repairing my workshop. About you helping me get Emma Lee out of the burning house.” With each thing he listed Grover heard himself become angrier. “And I know why.”
Matthew looked at him calmly.
“My father told me you were the driver,” Grover said. “He said it wasn’t your fault.”
“He didn’t tell you everything,” Matthew said matter-of-factly.
“Everything?”
Using the rake, Matthew picked up a handful of leaves and twigs, putting them into the wheelbarrow he’d been filling. “I had been answering my cell phone.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I glanced down at my phone to see who was calling, and when I looked back, your mother was right there in front of the car.” He motioned as if looking through the windshield at her.
Grover felt ambushed by this news. All he’d ever heard from his father, his friends, even the article that had run in the paper, was that the driver, who the paper had not named, wasn’t at fault.
“I can’t help thinking if I hadn’t taken my eyes off the road …”
“Did you tell the police?” Grover asked, his throat tightening.
“I told the police. I told your father. I told anybody who would listen. They all said the same thing—that I would’ve hit her anyway. They all said no one could’ve stopped in time.”
“You told my father?” Grover asked.
“He wouldn’t press charges.” Matthew sounded as if he’d wanted his father to press charges.
“You looked down at your cell phone?”
“I did.”
“And then your car hit my mother.”
“Yes.”
Disturbed by something, a flock of crows erupted from a nearby tree, cawing loudly as they settled into a hemlock halfway across the cemetery.
“I haven’t driven since the accident,” Matthew said, “and will never own another cell phone as long as I live.”
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br /> “Why tell me this?” Grover asked.
“I knew you wouldn’t be afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“The way I see it,” Matthew said, putting another handful of leaves in the wheelbarrow, “my only chance of moving on is to tell the person who is likely to hate me the most.” He glanced at Grover.
Grover just stood there, taking in the cemetery. The headstones and monuments came into such sharp focus it almost hurt to look at them. And there it was, the something else that had been weaving itself into his feelings since the day of the accident, almost without him knowing.
“I’m to blame.” Grover heard himself say it but he no more understood his words than if a stranger had spoken them.
“For what?” Matthew asked.
Grover felt a wall give way inside himself. “If I had gone to get the movie at Videolife like she’d asked, she wouldn’t have gone on that walk,” he said. “She wouldn’t have been on Charlotte Street with the dog in the first place.” This un-thought had been lying unspoken, hidden inside himself like a copperhead curled up in a Christmas tree.
A police car pulled into the gates, its blue lights silently swirling, and for a nanosecond Grover thought they’d come for him. But then came a hearse and a few solemn cars, their headlights shining. A funeral procession. Usually the lines of cars were much longer. The line for his mother’s funeral had been too long to fit into the cemetery. People had had to park throughout the neighborhood.
“You don’t have to do this,” Matthew said as he watched the line of cars wind along the far side of the cemetery and disappear over a hill.
“Do what?” Grover asked.
“Try to make me feel better.”
“Why would I care how you feel?!” Grover snapped. “You killed our mother!”
Matthew’s eyes widened and it appeared to Grover that he almost smiled.
“I’ve about finished up here.” The way Matthew looked around Riverside, Grover thought he meant he’d finished up at the cemetery. “I graduated,” he said. “I’ll be heading out in a couple of days.”
“Good,” Grover said, feeling confused and angry and something else he didn’t have a name for. Having remembered one person’s feelings he did care about, Grover began to trot up the little road. He happened to glance back and saw that Matthew had set his rake down and taken out a little notebook. He was bent beside a couple of headstones, scribbling away as if the dead were dictating to him.