Natural Bridges

by Debbie Lynn McCampbell

  One night, he took me to a college baseball game, and I really enjoyed that. I missed going to all the Reds games when we lived in Ohio. Culler was impressed with how much I knew about the game.

  Connie thought the car was “totally cool,” and came along with us sometimes. We would cruise down the streets of the Transy campus, and she’d wave out the open top to all the guys. This activity embarrassed Culler, but he let it pass. He said he was happy to be able to see me more often.

  My whole family resented that I was gone every night, and they blamed it on the car. Even though Daddy could appreciate its classic value, he kept after me to sell it in a trade show and make some money off of it.

  Momma, on the other hand, thought the car was snappy, and liked riding in it. But she still punished me for my frequent absence from home in more subtle ways like deliberately not saving me any leftovers for supper when I got home late, or making a point to wear the same housedress three days in a row, claiming that all the zippers needed fixing on her other ones.

  Jason told me the car was a piece of junk, that Ford never did learn how to build a decent set of wheels, and too bad it wasn’t a Chevy. Hazel saw it and cried, saying it reminded her of the car her ex-husband’s girlfriend drove, even though that was a Mercury Cougar.

  Birdie thought that I should save the car and give it to her when she was old enough to drive.

  These were the accumulative reactions of my loving family when something good had finally happened my way. And inheriting a car was only the beginning. When it rains, it pours, even in Leeco, Kentucky.

  Exactly one week after receiving the letter, another benefaction came to me.

  I had taken all the chrome off the car and was in the garage polishing it when Clem yelled to me that I had a phone call. I wiped my hands on a rag, ran to the telephone, expecting it to be Culler.

  Clem handed me the receiver, regarding me with suspicion. “It’s for Fern Rayburn.”

  It was Dr. Erikson. He had another proposition for me. An offer more appealing than “neutering a bitch,” was how he’d worded it. He had a friend at the Livestock Diagnostic Disease Center in Powell County who needed a full-time laboratory assistant. Dr. Erikson had recommended me for the job. He gave me the guy’s number, told me to consider it long and hard, and call him with my answer tomorrow.

  All Clem had heard on my end was “Thank you,” and “I’ll certainly weigh it over.”

  And when I hung up, he asked, “Was that Erikson?”

  I nodded.

  “What’d he want?”

  I folded up the piece of paper on which I had written the number, put it in my pocket. “He was just asking after Heidi,” I said.

  “And how is Heidi?” asked Clem.

  “Oh, she’s doing real well. Hair’s grown back over both scars. You can barely see them. Birdie lets her out to play every morning; she seems to be getting around better.”

  “So she’s liking that fancy cage of hers?”

  “Yeah, she does,” I said, heeding Clem’s attitude. I couldn’t guess his stance. I wondered if he already knew something. “And that little house that Culler built keeps her nice and dry from all this rain we’ve been having.”

  “That’s good,” he said.

  I headed towards the garage. “I’m just shining my chrome. Holler if you need me for anything.”

  I sat back down on the floor, dipped my rag in the paste, and started rubbing down the fender. I was glad to be doing something mindless because I was distracted by the phone call and couldn’t focus on my task. I didn’t know what to say about the job offer. It sounded like a great opportunity, a chance to do something worthwhile, something I’d become interested in. Something I really believed I could do.

  But there was security for me here at Clem’s. I didn’t know how I would feel, abandoning him. And I felt bad for not being up front with him about the offer.

  To complicate matters, clearly the business wasn’t doing well. Clem could hardly pay the bills anymore. We’d cut way back on supplies, and he’d raised his gas price two cents on the gallon. I knew he depended on me; I understood him, and he knew I was dedicated. He was getting older, and he needed my help. There was no doubt about that.

  But I had myself to think about, too. This may be my only chance, I realized, to break free of the rut that I’d worn for myself. Being in the companionship of Culler and Connie, people with aim, with the courage to blaze their own trail, had begun to work on me. I found it inspiring to watch them work so hard at a goal, to strive to achieve something that would be for them, and them only, to take all the glory. They weren’t serving everyone else’s needs, burdened with trying to please people.

  I looked down at my watch. It was one o’clock. I still had an hour to work, but I wondered if Clem would consider letting me go early, without pay. I needed to talk to someone about this. Someone with wisdom and experience.

  28. Crown of Glory

  I found Grandma sitting in TV lounge B with some old man in a wheelchair watching WWF Wrestling. I recognized Hulk Hogan strutting around in the ring, in dark sunglasses, flexing for the fans.

  Both Grandma and the man seemed heavily absorbed in the round. The man had his wheelchair parked right up against the vinyl sofa where she was sitting. It looked like they were holding hands, but I couldn’t really tell. The only light in the room was the blue glow from the television set.

  “Grandma,” I said.

  She looked startled to see me, nudged the man rather forcibly on the arm, then introduced him as Earl.

  He smiled, turned up his hearing aid, which made it whistle sharply and Grandma yelled at him to turn it down.

  Ever since she had been crowned queen, she seemed to be doing better in the home. She was getting along with the other residents, and participating more in group activities.

  On Tuesday nights, just before Moonlighting came on, a group played Spoons in the TV lounge. This game was supposed to be therapeutic for the arthritic patients, as it challenged their reflexes and exercised their joint flexion. Grandma enjoyed the game, was getting quite good at it, and talked about it often whenever we came to visit.

  The only trouble with her being selected as the queen, though, Hazel told us later, was that the crown was not hers to keep, it belonged to Peaceful Pastures to use as a prop each year, and Grandma wouldn’t give it back. She had it hidden somewhere.

  “Did anyone see you come in?” she asked, leaning to look behind me.

  “No, why?” I asked.

  “What about Mossie?”

  “I didn’t see her,” I said, sitting down next to her on the sofa.

  “She must be still out on the patio, then,” she said.

  “Where is she?” asked Earl.

  “On the patio,” shouted Grandma. “She’s still looking for Orion.”

  “Who?” asked Earl.

  “Orion,” said Grandma, glaring at Earl. She was obviously annoyed with his questions. “Some star out there.”

  “From the movies?” he asked, starting to wheel towards the door.

  “No!” said Grandma, exasperated. She grabbed his wheel to stop him and turn him towards her. “In the sky. Those people from that planetarium yesterday left a telescope.”

  “She’s looking for a star in the middle of the afternoon?” I asked.

  “She don’t know the difference,” said Grandma. “What did you come here for? Birdie tells me you have a beau feller.”

  “I do have a friend, Grandma.” I looked at Earl. He was squinting to listen to us. “Do you mind if we go talk in your room a minute?” I asked her. “I need your advice on something.” I signaled, with my eyes, towards Earl. “It’s kind of private.”

  She hesitated, looked at Earl, back at me. Then she shouted, “My granddaughter needs to talk to me in private. We’ll be right back, don’t leave.” She leaned in close to me, whispered, “He calls me ‘His Royal Princess.’”

  When we got to her room, she closed the door, and
said, “You ain’t pregnant now, too, are you?”

  “No, Grandma, I’m not pregnant. It’s actually more complicated than that.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.” She climbed up in her bed and lay down. “That little Daisy sure is a sweet thing, but Lord Almighty, she cries loud enough to put you into orbit. Reach down there and pull that afghan up over me. It’s always freezing in here.”

  I covered her up. “Grandma, do you remember when we were little girls, Florabelle and I, and you’d tell us to wish for something big when we grew up?”

  She hesitated a minute, thinking back. “Yes. I used to quote some verse. How did that go?”

  “I can’t remember the words, but it had something to do with failure not being a sin, but low aim is.”

  “It is not a sin to not reach the stars … but it is a sin to have no stars to reach for. Was that it?” She sat up, pleased with her memory success.

  “That was it. Reaching for the stars.”

  She looked up at the ceiling, reciting. “Whether young or old, there is in every heart the love of wonder, the sweet amazement of the stars. The childlike appetite for what is next in store.” She looked back at me. “You reckon that’s what Mossie’s doing out there, looking through that telescope?”

  “Maybe. Maybe she hasn’t lost hope in spite of all her troubles,” I said.

  Grandma mused. “She still don’t know what happened to her that night. It’s kind of pitiful. Fractured her hip and left a bruise.” She sat quietly for a minute, then asked, “So what star are you after, then, Fern?”

  “I have this opportunity, Grandma, to work for an animal clinic in Powell County, as a lab assistant.”

  Grandma looked at me, eyes narrowed. “You ain’t going to be one of those people shooting cancer into rats, are you?”

  “No, I’d be helping farm animals.”

  “Well, what’s hindering you from doing it?”

  “I’d have to quit Clem’s; times are bad for him now. I don’t know if I should do it.”

  She nodded.

  “I’d be working full-time so I wouldn’t be home as much. Momma needs help, too.”

  Grandma was thinking.

  I waited.

  “Be true to thine own self.”

  “But what about Clem?”

  “Miracles lie in friendships. Clem, he’ll soon recover.”

  I had her going on the parables now; I knew I’d have to stop her. “Grandma, tell me in your own words, what I ought to do.”

  She sighed. “When I was only four, my Momma died. You knew that, didn’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, my Daddy split up me and Effie, my twin sister, and sent us to live with two different sisters of his. The aunt and uncle I’d been sent to live with were poor; they couldn’t do much for me. As you know, I married off really young and had your Momma and Hazel. My job was to work the farm and raise children. Your grandpa did a lot, but he was off preaching, too. Now Effie, on the other hand, she went to live with a rich old aunt of ours who had a lot of land, and they sent her off to a school in Indiana.”

  “Did you two ever see each other?”

  “We wrote letters now and then, but we lost touch. She’s dead now, but she had gone out west to teach English at a college.”

  I sat quietly for a minute, taking in her story. “So, now do you look back and regret not doing something more with your life?”

  She stared at me long and hard. Then she reached inside her dress and pulled out a chain around her neck, with a key on it. She took it off and handed it to me. “Open that top drawer of the bureau, there,” she said.

  On top of all her lotions and sundries was a rolled up red hand towel.

  “Unroll that towel,” she said.

  It was the crown.

  “Close my door and bring it over here.”

  I brought her the crown.

  Carefully, she placed it on her head. “It is a peace of mind that crowns a busy life of work well done,” she said. “I’m proud of my life. I accomplished a lot.” She removed the crown and held it in her hands, turned it slowly towards the window; the rhinestones caught the sunlight. “Effie had other choices. Like you do. If I would’ve had them, I would’ve taken them.” She handed me the crown. “Now put this away and don’t tell a soul where it is.”

  29. A Bird Without Wings

  It rained almost every day the whole week, and there was nothing to do around the house but sew and read. I was working full-time now, five days a week, with weekends off. I spent most of my evenings studying.

  I was reading more and more, now that I had transportation and an in at the library. Connie kept checking books out for me. I’d go to the search terminals late Saturday afternoons, make a list, and she’d get me the books.

  Ever since Brother Brewer had been electrocuted, I had become obsessed with neurology. Dr. Erikson had introduced it to me briefly that day we had spayed Heidi, but now, from observing the autopsies down at the lab, it was all beginning to make sense. It fascinated me how lightning could just fry the whole system in a quick flash. I was reading a lot about the brain, and I found the subject more engaging than the uterus.

  Connie and I had become pretty good friends. She teased me that if I ever became a neuro-surgeon, I should give Culler a lobotomy.

  Culler was busy all week with his midterms, so I didn’t see him at all. But I was looking forward to the weekend.

  Connie had invited us to a Halloween party at Transy. It was a traditional thing there; I’d read about it in the newspapers. Some of the fraternities on the campus decorated one of the assembly halls to look like Count Dracula’s mansion in Transylvania, and all the students got dressed up and went there for a costume party. I was making our costumes. Culler was going to be Daniel Boone, and Connie and I were going as Shawnee Indians. I already had a fringed shirt for Culler to wear, and I was making his deerskin leggings. He was going to buy a tomahawk and a black felt hat. I was making our dresses out of some of Grandma’s material scraps we’d kept in the basement in a cedar chest.

  “Fern,” said Birdie, walking in and closing my bedroom door quickly. “You’d better hide.”

  “Hide? Why?”

  “Momma found them pictures.”

  I poked my needle into the bedspread. “What pictures? You mean the ones from Grandma’s pageant?”

  “No, the ones from the bridge that day. Of us on that skylift. She flared up like a green-eyed monster.”

  “Where did you have them?”

  “Taped up under my bed. She was vacuuming.”

  Just then, my bedroom door flew wide open, hitting the wall.

  “Just what did you have in mind letting Birdie dangle in the air like that, up over all them trees?” Momma shouted. She was holding up the eight-by-ten photograph of Birdie and Connie on the skylift.

  I sat up in bed. “It was safe, Momma, people ride it all the time. No one’s ever been hurt.”

  “Well, there’s a first time for everything. Just what were you thinking? That if she fell she could just flap her wings and fly?”

  Birdie had run in my closet; I could see her eyes blinking through the wood slats. “She’s okay isn’t she?” I said calmly.

  “That’s not the point.” Momma followed my eyes, trying to see what I was looking at. “Who talked you into this? That Culler?”

  “We all wanted to ride it,” I said.

  “That boy’s been nothing but trouble. Ever since you started going with him, you’ve been doing all sorts of crazy things.”

  I frowned. “What sort of crazy things are you talking about?”

  “Taking that job for one. You had a good job right down the road here, good hours, and Clem paid you good.” Momma shook her head, judging. “Some way you paid him back, quitting on him like that.” Her face was red.

  There it was, the familiar journey of guilt. It was true Clem was sore at me, would barely wave whenever I drove by the station, but I was giving him time, as G
randma had suggested. It was really none of Momma’s business, but she was huffed. Lately, she’d been a lot more uptight than usual.

  I shifted on the mattress and the springs squeaked.

  Birdie had to cough and tried to time it with the squeaks.

  Momma looked around, suspicious.

  “I made my own decision on that job, none of this has anything to do with Culler,” I said. “Why are you so bent out of shape?”

  Then Momma broke down. She started to cry and couldn’t stop herself. “I could have lost her,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Bird,” she sobbed. “She could’ve fallen out of that thing and died. Then I would’ve had nobody.”

  “Momma, come here,” I said. “Sit down.”

  She came over to the bed, leaned on my shoulder. “Florabelle’s gone, and now I’m losing you, too,” she said softly. “And your Daddy’s just so distant anymore, always worrying about work. Then there’s the conflict between him and your Grandma. I wish he’d just forgive her and quit making it so hard on me.”

  I put my arm around her. “You’re not losing me, or any of us. We all still need you, especially Florabelle now, with the baby. Daddy will let go of his grudge eventually.”

  “He just won’t talk about it,” she said, blowing her nose. “And you ain’t here anymore to make him listen.”

  “You know he’s stubborn” I said. “He does whatever it is he thinks he has to. And I’m just doing what I have to. Don’t you see, I want to learn how to do something special, something that will help more people in the world than just the ones here on this foothill. Can you understand that?”

  “But we still need you here, Fern.”

  I could hear Birdie sniffling in the closet. “Come out of there,” I said.

  Momma looked up.

  Birdie came out, sat down on the floor in front of Momma.

  “Everything will be okay,” I told them. And I hoped it would be.

  30. He has Risen

  Halloween night, I was ready to leave to take Birdie, who was dressed like Bat Woman, to a costume party at her school, when Hazel let out a bloodcurdling scream in her trailer. At first, we thought she was in the spirit of things, trying to spook us. It turned out, however, she had been in her bedroom, heard a noise outside, and something out there scared the living daylights out of her.