Over the River

by Sharelle Byars Moranville

  I nodded. I felt dirty prying into Grandpa’s things and reading words not intended for me, but my heart was racing to understand the mystery that had torn my family apart.

  “I guess I always knew it had something to do with the baby,” I whispered, my mouth dry.

  “Well, when Treva got that letter, she went storming outside,” Aunty Rose said. “Sleet was falling, and that’s when the accident happened. And I guess she was going…” Aunty Rose made a question with her hands. “I don’t know where she was going. Maybe just to show the letter to Mom, who was over at the henhouse, gathering eggs. But Treva’s feet must have hit the icy steps and shot out from under her. I heard her fall. When I got there, she was unconscious.…”

  My last memory of Mama bobbed to the surface for the first time in years. I saw her wind-chilled rosy face as she helped me into the car. She’d driven me down to the Clarks’ that November morning to make cookies with Grandmother Clark and Aunt Belle. The wind had been biting, and we’d bundled up and worn our matching rabbit-skin muffs to keep our hands warm. Mama’s hands had been startlingly warm against my cold cheeks when she kissed me good-bye.

  Aunty Rose’s face came back into focus. “—screamed and screamed,” she was saying. “And I thought neither Mom nor Dad would ever come. But finally Dad came running from across the road, where he’d been watering the sheep. And he picked your mama up and carried her inside. I knew Dad would make it all right. He’d bring Treva back.”

  I nodded. “I know,” I whispered, my tongue barely able to form the words. “I thought I could bring her back too.” Tears rolled down my cheeks and dripped on my arm as I gripped the tiny letter. “I never told anybody, but I knew if I wished hard enough, she would come back to me.”

  Aunty Rose took a deep breath and I shrugged, not able to tell her how crushed I’d been when my wishing power hadn’t been strong enough.

  After a while, I cleared my throat and wiped my eyes with my shirttail.

  “Tell me the rest,” I urged, my voice hoarse.

  “Well, Mom and I stayed with Treva, and Dad went tearing down to Uncle Retus’s for some of them to go get Doc Simmons. The doctor didn’t turn up here until almost seven. Treva was still unconscious, all that time lying on the couch in the sunroom where Dad had put her down. Dad sat beside her, in a chair, staring at her, his face like stone. I was crying because I didn’t want Treva to die, and Mom kept rubbing her hands.”

  I wiped tears off the letter, then I folded it and handed it back to Aunty Rose.

  “When the doctor got here, he said Treva had to go to the hospital in Huxley, so Uncle Retus went to Leghorn’s funeral home in Mills and had them bring the hearse, and that’s what they took your mama to the hospital in. Mom and Dad and I followed in the car. Dad told Uncle Retus to go down to the Clarks’ and tell them Treva was in a bad way, but to keep the news from you.”

  I remembered not having anything to sleep in that night and asking why Mama hadn’t come back for me. Grandmother Clark had stilled my worries with stories of sledding on the hill in the morning if the sleet turned to snow, and I’d gone to bed wearing one of Aunt Belle’s slips. In the night, I’d woken up, feeling something was being taken out of my body. It was as if God had reached into my middle and lifted out something I’d never even realized was there. The next morning, I’d wanted to tell Grandmother Clark about the feeling, but I didn’t know how to explain it.

  “So was my little brother born then?” I asked. “Did he die that night?”

  Aunty Rose drew in her breath. She nodded.

  “Why didn’t I know about the baby?” I asked.

  “Well, you were practically a baby yourself,” Aunty Rose said. “You’d have found out soon enough if everything had gone the way it was supposed to.”

  Aunty Rose slumped, her face in her hands, worn out from the story.

  The little piece of V mail lay on the floor between us. I stared at it—the accidental trigger to Mama’s and the baby’s deaths. But why couldn’t it have gone up in flames or blown away in the winter wind before Grandpa saw it?

  “When did Grandpa find the letter?” I said. If he’d never seen it, at least he wouldn’t have hated my daddy so.

  “The day after Treva died, Dad was just sitting in the sunroom, staring at the empty couch. He read the letter then, and it was like somebody had set off a bomb inside him. He tore into your mama and daddy’s bedroom and started throwing Harold’s stuff out. He took their wedding photograph off the wall and ripped out the picture and threw it in the stove.”

  I stared at Aunty Rose, knowing how scared she must have felt seeing Grandpa act that way.

  “He started burning your daddy’s clothes. Then he got the gun. Mom shoved me out the door and said to run to Uncle Retus’s and stay there until she came for me.”

  I put my hand on Aunty Rose’s arm. “Stop,” I said, tears running down my face again. I didn’t want to think of Grandpa like that.

  Aunty Rose swallowed. “I know,” she said, choking back her tears. “It was awful. But you were our sunshine. Our only hope. You helped fill the empty place in Dad’s heart. That’s why he wouldn’t let Harold come anywhere near you. He buried the baby off by itself out of spite, and I know he feels sorry about that.”

  “Sorry enough to make up with Daddy?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  Aunty Rose shook her head. “What’s done is done,” she said. “What’s said is said. It would take a miracle to make peace between them after all this time.”

  I nodded.

  We sat there for a while, cross-legged on the floor. I felt as drained as if I’d run up a mountainside.

  Finally we put the things back in Grandpa’s drawer, trying to make ourselves look innocent.

  Chapter 15

  Aunty Rose’s explanation of what happened didn’t help me close the divide between Grandpa and Daddy. Aunty Rose was right. What was said was said, and what was done was done.

  Since we’d been back from Oklahoma, Grandpa had been nicer to Daddy, but the rift between them was still about as wide as the Mississippi, and I was getting worn out running back and forth across the bridge.

  I tried to settle into school, and Daddy found regular work wiring houses a few miles north of Panther Fork. In early October, he asked me if I wanted to spend a Saturday helping start a job on a big farmhouse on the old toll road.

  Saturday morning, as we drove west, we watched pillars of clouds building on the horizon.

  “Looks like rain,” Daddy said. “Hope the man’s attic doesn’t leak.”

  The lunch sack Nana had packed bounced between us on the truck seat. She’d tucked in leftover biscuits and bacon and two pieces of pumpkin pie. I’d added some of the fudge Aunty Rose and I had made the night before.

  “Have you forgotten everything I showed you?” Daddy asked, turning in the drive at the two-story brick farmhouse.

  “I could fish cable in my sleep,” I told him as I helped unload the blowtorch and lantern.

  “Good,” he replied, putting his hand on my head. He stood watching me, a roll of Romex over one shoulder. “I think I’ve got a lead on a pretty good place for us to live.”

  I swallowed, wishing Daddy wasn’t looking right into my face.

  He took his hand off my head. “Well, you can think about it, Mae Bug.”

  We worked until about four, coming out into the windy rain that we’d heard lashing the roof all day.

  Once we packed our stuff and got on the road, I asked, “Remember that bathtub, Daddy? Wouldn’t a warm bath feel good right now?”

  I was filthy, and my arm was skinned where I’d lost my footing and fallen against a rafter.

  “That place I was telling you about has a nice bathroom,” Daddy said. Then he added, “Not that it should make any difference.”

  “We may be able to just stand in the road and take a shower,” I said, pointing to the next thunderhead coming over.

  Water stood between the rows of corn stubble
in the fields. A web of lightning connected sky and earth for an instant and thunder rumbled.

  Daddy watched the storm as we drove into it. “That’s got hail in it. See those orange streaks?”

  Just then the trees alongside the road bent low and lightning danced around us. The first drops that fell against the windshield were rain. Then little pellets of ice followed, pounding the truck.

  Daddy leaned forward, straining to see the road. Hail rolled toward the ditches, which were running full.

  “Glad the farmers got their corn in.” Daddy yelled to be heard. “This would ruin their crops. Has Will got all his picked?”

  “Except what was down in the bottom,” I yelled back.

  About that time, the hail stopped. But rain kept pounding on the road faster than it could run off, and I felt water bucking the truck.

  We were going right down the middle of the road, lights on, the windshield wipers whipping.

  “The door is leaking,” I said, scooting over to the middle as the water sprayed my right shoulder.

  Daddy didn’t spare it a glance. “We better hope we don’t meet anybody,” he said. “Or one of us is going to get washed out.”

  We rumbled across the low wooden bridge over Panther Fork Creek. The creek boiled even with the bridge, making little eddies over the planks. Overhead, a railroad trestle crossed the road and the creek at an angle.

  The mile to our turnoff seemed to take half a day.

  “You sure we haven’t missed it, Daddy?” I said, gripping the dash, looking for landmarks.

  “I’m not sure of anything,” he said, hunched over the steering wheel.

  “There!” I said. “There’s Andersons’ barn.”

  Daddy slowed and turned. The truck settled in the mud, fishtailing at first. But Daddy kept it out of the ditch.

  We were almost home. In about half a mile, Grandpa’s barn loomed out of the storm on the right, and I took my first full breath in a long time. When we pulled into the drive, I leaned my head back in the seat.

  “You’re a good driver, Daddy,” I said, feeling like I didn’t have a muscle left in my body. “I didn’t think we were going to make it.”

  Daddy stopped the truck behind the house. The rain was letting up some.

  “What’s a little rain to an old navy man?” he asked. But I saw his hands shaking as he switched off the motor.

  Day had turned almost into night, partly because of the thick clouds, partly because it had taken us so long to get home.

  I could see Nana against the lamplight inside, watching for us.

  “Well, you ready to get wet?” Daddy said.

  “Sure. You coming in?” Then I answered my own question. “You better come in.”

  I could sense Daddy weighing waiting out a storm with Grandpa against trying to make it on down to Grandmother and Grandfather Clark’s without going in the ditch or washing out someplace.

  Nana opened the door and made a megaphone with her hands. “Harold,” she called. “Come in.”

  Daddy nodded at me, then we opened our doors and ran for it.

  I could tell by the way Nana practically yanked us inside that something was wrong.

  “Will hasn’t come up from the bottom ground,” she said.

  Her cold fingers smoothed my wet hair off my forehead.

  Aunty Rose came running from the sunroom. “You’ve got to go look for him, Harold,” she said, making hand motions like she was just waiting to turn my daddy around and push him out the door into the storm. “The radio says that west of here, they’ve had seven inches since—”

  “Rose,” Nana said, closing her fingers around Aunty Rose’s wrist. “Hush.

  “Maybe Will just got the tractor stuck, and he’s walking out,” Nana said to my daddy. “But I’d think he’d be here by now.”

  “How far back is he?” Daddy asked. Rain ran down his face from his hair.

  “About three-quarters of a mile,” Nana said. “Which way did you come in?”

  “Along the old toll road,” Daddy said.

  “Then you might have seen him. The bottom ground is just south of the bridge.”

  Daddy and I glanced at each other, remembering what we had seen.

  “Which side of the creek was he working on?” Daddy asked.

  “Could be either. He planted on both sides.”

  Daddy nodded again.

  All I could think of was Grandpa wading Panther Fork Creek in the summer and fishing out a water moccasin to show me.

  Nana drew me to her side. “You better get out of those wet clothes,” she said. “Rose, help Willa Mae find something dry.”

  How could Grandpa get in real trouble? He’d lived on Panther Fork Creek all his life. He’d be walking in any time now, muddy and mad at getting the tractor stuck but wanting his supper.

  “I think I can make it back up the road,” Daddy said. “There’s nobody’s ruts but my own. I’ll have a look for Will.”

  “Rose,” Nana repeated, her voice stern and her hand firm on my shoulder this time as she guided me toward Aunty Rose, “take Willa Mae. She needs dry clothes.”

  Aunty Rose clasped my hand and tugged me to the back of the house. I heard Nana say, “You better take a rope … never know … hurry…,” and Daddy said, “… shovel … extra lanterns.…”

  Aunty Rose’s teeth were chattering. She nudged me through my bedroom door and started yanking open my drawers like she was mad at me.

  A wave of fear washed over me. Could Grandpa really be in trouble?

  “You go ahead and get my clothes out,” I said, turning to run back to the kitchen. “I need to tell Daddy something.”

  I slipped out the kitchen door and through the darkness to the truck. Nana and Daddy were coming from the machine shed, each carrying a lantern. I got in the truck and hunkered down on the floor on my side, shutting the door behind me, not worrying that they would hear the noise in the pounding rain.

  I curled up and hardly breathed when Daddy opened the door on his side. He turned out the lanterns and set them on the seat inches from my face. The smell of kerosene made my eyes water.

  Daddy slammed his door and started the truck. I stayed where I was until he’d driven quite a ways up the road. Then I uncurled, saying, “Daddy, I don’t mean to scare you—”

  He yelped and jumped so high, I was afraid he’d either tackle me or spin the truck around in the road before he settled back down and I could finish my sentence.

  “—but I wanted to come with you to see about Grandpa.”

  I guess the silence was just because Daddy couldn’t find his voice for a while. It didn’t last long. Before I could even get the lanterns set on the floor and myself in the seat, he lit into me.

  “Did you tell Rose you were coming along?” he asked.

  “No, I—”

  “Don’t you know they’ll be worried? What will they think has happened to you?” Daddy shook his head in the darkness, and I could feel his judgment. “I better take you back. I’ll turn around up here at the road.”

  “No, Daddy! Please.” I swallowed, sorry that I was causing worry. “Hurry. What if Grandpa is hurt?”

  Daddy shook his head again, but at the corner, he went left toward the bridge instead of turning around, and my body went limp with relief.

  The rain let up for a minute, but thunder pounded in from the west. Great, deep surges of light rolled across the countryside as if giants were looking for something tiny in the landscape.

  “Will the lightning get us, Daddy?” I said, suddenly scared not only for Grandpa, but also for us.

  “There’s nothing we can do about it,” Daddy said, his wide-eyed face illuminated in one of the washes of light. “Lightning is like the ocean. It does what it does. It’s big.”

  Daddy hit the brakes and the rear end of the truck waved back and forth as he spun the wheel, trying to keep it under control. A flare of lightning lit the area in front of us. Where a road and a bridge should have been was a swirling
mass of water spanned only by the railroad trestle overhead.

  “The bridge is out!” Daddy said.

  The truck came to a stop, rocked back and forth by eddies. Daddy shifted into reverse as another bursting bomb of lightning lit up the creek.

  “Did you see that?” Daddy yelled to be heard over the thunder. “Look. Ten o’clock.”

  He was backing up as fast he could go, hanging out his window, straining to see behind us in the darkness, trying to escape the fingers of water.

  Where was ten o’clock? What had Daddy seen? I gripped the dashboard.

  “There,” Daddy yelled, when he had finally gotten the truck away from the rising creek. He pointed ahead and off to his left. All I saw was pitch darkness beyond the weak beam of our headlights.

  “I don’t see…,” I began. Then the rain eerily stopped its pounding for a minute and the sky lit up like day.

  “There,” Daddy yelled again, cutting the motor and leaping out of the truck. “Across the water. It’s Will’s tractor.”

  On the opposite side of the creek, I glimpsed what he was pointing to. I clapped my hands over my mouth to catch the scream.

  In another burst of light I saw the red tractor clearly, flipped over, its front tires up in the air.

  Daddy was scrambling to the roof of the truck. I heard the weight of his body overhead. I thought for a minute that he’d lost his nerve and was trying to get away from the rising water that had taken the bridge, then I realized he was getting a better look across the creek. I stepped out, going knee deep in water, hanging on to the door handle.

  “Do you see Grandpa?” I cried.

  “Wait for the lightning,” Daddy said.

  Suddenly the lightning was our friend, and I begged it to come, prayed for it to help us.

  By the time it surged, I was up on top of the cab too and thought I saw Grandpa pinned under the tractor.

  I clutched Daddy’s sleeve as the world went black. “How are we going to get across the creek?”

  “Only way is the trestle,” Daddy said.

  “The railroad trestle won’t wash out, will it?” I asked, my voice choking.