“Nothing, Momma, I ain’t thinking about nothing in particular,” is what I said.
If only she knowed what went on inside a me and how my heart felt like somebody stuck it in a thresher and put it back, shredded all to pieces. How I seen everything through the murky haze of what I done, while the sharp and pure knowledge of my own ignorance followed me about the way Laci had. I weighed how careless I’d acted. What set me back even more was recollecting all them times I’d seen that strangeness in her expression, coupled along with them odd wanderings a hers. All them little signs what showed me I should a knowed better. Laci had been changing, I’d seen it and ignored it. I’d refused to recognize anything except my own hardheaded selfishness, thinking on nothing but what I’d wanted, even when I should a known Laci was needing me more than ever.
Because of all that, won’t nothing agreeable or pleasing to me no more, not food, not company, not seeing the progress made on our new cabin, or even knowing all our efforts was finally paying off. What did it matter, like Momma had said all them months ago.
Papa made a weekly trek over to Dewey’s store where he’d call down to Sheriff Baker to check in. He never had no news, and I was certain there never would be any. By middle of April, the cabin was ready for windows to be cut. Momma got right aggravated when Papa and Mr. Powell went to get some supplies and Papa done the unthinkable. Like with the ham, he bought glass windows out of the rapidly dwindling stash of money made from our singing.
She fussed at him, but then he showed her seeds he bought for a garden, and he said, “Spring has sprung, and so has our cabin, and now, so will our new garden.”
He staked off an area where the old one had been, and Momma soon got to whacking at the soil, hoeing and weeding, and setting the tiny seeds into the banked rows of dark, rich dirt. One late afternoon, when the men was finishing the windows, Momma invited Joe, Lyle and Josie and the Powells to eat to finally celebrate moving into the cabin. After we ate, I gathered the dirty pans to carry them down to the creek to wash and surprisingly, Joe fell into step beside me.
“Wallis Ann?”
“Yes?”
He took some of the pans from me and knelt down by my side to help.
I said, “You don’t need to help. I don’t mind.”
Joe smiled and said, “I know, but I got to figure out a way to talk to you somehow.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I got busy dumping creek sand into Momma’s skillet. Then I got busy scraping at the pieces of food stuck to it and Joe got to talking. He filled my head with ideas of what he wanted to do to help out others, as well as plans he had at his own place.
“You know, I been thinking I might start doing like what I done here, going around to other folks who ain’t been able to fix their places, help them rebuild. It’s something I been thinking about.What do you think?”
“It sounds like a good idea.Very generous.”
“You think so?”
“Sure. It’s going to take a long time for folks to rebuild, but with help like you give us, it would go a little quicker.”
“I could work out something with them. Barter things. I was thinking maybe your papa and I could work together, and Jim Powell too. You reckon your papa would be interested? You think you all might go back to singing?”
Surprised at his idea of working with Papa, I said, “I don’t know about the singing. We don’t much feel like it lately. You’d have to ask him about all this.”
“What about you? What do you want to do?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, a year from now, five years?”
I sank back on my heels. I was shortsighted because I couldn’t picture moving on. Not yet. I could only picture the long summer ahead, and all the things me and Laci would have done together. Swimming in Stampers Creek, picking huckleberries, tending the garden, putting up vegetables with Momma, planting new fruit trees, fishing the Tuckasegee. Whenever I went down to the river, I seen her in my mind’s eye, sitting on the wishing rock, fiddle crooked naturally into the bend of her arm, head bent to hear the music that mingled with the water’s flow. I pictured us swinging on our old porch swing, the sun on our arms and legs, bare feet dirty from our ramblings, as carefree as if we was only young’uns again. I had to start thinking different. Maybe I would go to school when it opened again. That was all I could think of, my future as stunted as a garden without sun.
Joe said, “Wallis Ann?”
I went to scrubbing the pan, hard and quick. “Ain’t much to think about, really. Just try to get on with life best as I can, I reckon.”
Joe was quiet for a while. I glanced over at his hands, well worn, and strong, hands of a man who won’t afraid of work neither.
He said, “I ain’t gonna tell you they’ll find your sister, even though it might be the right thing to say. All I’ll say to you is you got to have a little hope, and you got to think about yourself sometimes too. You see the cabin there?”
I looked to where he pointed. “Yes.”
“If you walked inside it right now, and closed the door, what would you see?”
I quit worrying over the skillet for a second, unsure what he was getting at. Eventually I said. “The walls, a roof, the floor.”
“But, what if you wanted to see out, beyond the walls? What if you wanted to see the woods, the river, the mountains and the sky? What if you wanted to see as far as you could?”
“It needs windows.”
“Right. Windows give you a view, otherwise, you can’t see nothing, no matter how hard you try. It ain’t much different in how we look at our world from inside ourselves.”
He stood, and as he went to walk away, he briefly touched my shoulder. It took me a long time to finish the pans and rinse them. I thought about what Joe said, and what he was trying to tell me. He was saying I ought to see what’s around me, that I was looking only inward, not outward. Again, I was taken aback by his ability to know so much. I’d forgot about that. The sun was gone, and only a streak of raspberry-tinted light was left peeking through the trees. I made my way to the cabin where Momma and Papa was already inside and getting ready for bed, and Joe was long gone.
The smell inside was comforting, a cleansing odor of cut wood and along with the night air growing warmer, and all the hard work of the day, it should have made it easy to fall asleep. Momma and Papa wished me a good night and went to their room. They settled down quick while I lay awake, my eyes staring at the closed-off walls, and all I could think of was Joe’s words, his wisdom. He was right, but I couldn’t help how I felt. I turned on my side, and stared at the empty spaces where I imagined Laci and Seph would have slept.
The weather got warmer day by day. April give way to May, and by then Papa and Joe moved from working on the cabin to working on a toolshed, and then a shelter for Pete. Meanwhile, me and Momma inspected the pie safe and the stove at the edge of the woods. Sadly, the pie safe was beyond repair after so long in the weather, but Momma’s Glenwood C stove looked pretty good. The outer cast iron area had rusted in many areas, but after I chased a family of mice out of the inside, we worked ourselves into a sweat cleaning it best as we could. When we got done, Momma then built a fire in it and that took care of things better than soap and water. Later on in the day when it was cool enough to touch, Papa and Joe moved it inside.
We clustered together in the kitchen looking around at how the inside of the cabin was starting to really look like a home. With the kitchen and sitting area together, and two small doors, one off to the right for Momma and Papa’s room, and a new one to the left, which was mine, it was close to the way the old cabin had been except for one thing. No attic room, and secretly I was glad, it wouldn’t have seemed right to climb the set of steps alone. Momma built another fire in the stove, then got to rolling out biscuits on the worktable Joe had built her one day out of leftover wood. She put them into the oven to bake, and of course she’d asked Joe, Lyle and Josie to eat before they went home.
“We only got some beans, biscuits and ham, but you’re welcome to it.”
“Thank you, but I best be getting them home before dark.”
Momma seemed disappointed while I was relieved. I felt irritable and tired.
Joe turned to Papa and said, “We ought to start thinking about seeing to a water source.”
Papa said, “It’s like you’re reading my mind. Instead of digging another well, maybe we ought to run us a wooden trough to the side of the cabin here, fit it with a rope to lift and lower as needed. We could build another spring house over it while we’re at it.”
Joe said, “We got a trough like that and it’s real handy.”
Momma said, “It’d sure be easier to get water.”
Joe was good as his word. Within a few days, we had water from the creek at our fingertips. It was right nice, easier on me for sure since I’d been the one hauling from the creek, but my mood still didn’t improve much.
One day Momma said, “Wallis Ann, have you been struck blind? Can’t you see how he looks to you every time he’s finished doing something around here? It’s like a puppy following after you, begging for a crumb. At this rate, he’ll be on to a barn, fence, wood shed, corn crib, and anything else he can do, looking to you for some sign of appreciation.”
For the first time in a long while, a hint of the old Papa showed up. “In that case, don’t give him the time of day, Wallis Ann.”
I said, “Don’t worry bout that. Half the time I can’t tell if it’s day or night anyway.”
Momma and Papa looked at each other, and I said, “How can all this really matter?” I gestured around the cabin, and pointed at the surrounding yard. “Without Laci? Or Seph?”
Momma said, “We’re not forgetting them, Wallis Ann. You, out of all of us, you’ve always done what needs doing, even when it didn’t seem to make sense. You’ve always been the one to see the bright side, been practical. That’s all we’re doing. You know it’s not been any easier for your papa or me. We’re going to keep on having hope until there’s no possibility of having it anymore. That’s all we can do.”
I listened to what Momma said, and if I could have taken her words, shoved them deep inside me and held them close until I was sure they’d do me some good, I’d have done it. Instead it was like my mind, my spirit, had formed some sort of hardened callus nothing could penetrate.
I waited to see if she was going to say anything else, and when she fell silent, I said, “Yes, ma’am. I’m going to the river. I’ll be back in a little while.”
Momma sighed with frustration, but I went on with my gaze straight ahead, still blind, unable to get beyond my pain. At the river, I took my time, doing what I’d come to spend a lot of time doing since we’d returned, which was to watch the sun set. I’d walked along the edges for a while, poking at young dandelion shoots emerging, and spotted a few rainbow trout as they caught a current and rode it waiting on food to pass them by. They all pointed in the same direction, a hierarchy based on size, the larger in the front. You had to know where to look, how to train your eyes so you could separate them from the rocky bottom, or the deep green, quiet pools. I must have watched them a good hour or more.
At one point I thought I heard a shout, coming from the direction of the cabin. Pete was notorious for getting into the feed when he shouldn’t, and I pictured Papa yelling at him. I cocked my head listening. It got quiet again, so I stepped onto the wishing rock, and knelt down, leaning over a quiet pool of water, my hand holding my hair so it didn’t get wet. I stared into it, not looking at my reflection, instead I looked at the world behind me. I gazed at a mirrored sky, watching how the tiny ripples and undercurrent distorted the view, like my vision had gone all wobbly. I hummed a little tune under my breath that faded, and turned into a gasp when the water echoed back a figure over my shoulder. I froze, unable to determine if I’d finally seen a haint even though I seen exactly who it was. I twisted on my heels to face her, proving my eyes won’t lying. She was real. I won’t imagining things.
“Laci?”
I took in her appearance.
I repeated her name, still trying to understand. “Laci?”
Her hair was clean and fixed in a long braid. She wore a new dress. She had on the shoes Papa had bought. As if she’d only been gone for a few minutes, and not months, she reached out to slip her hand in mine. Then she done something what made me go weak in my legs and sent a shiver through me like it was the dead of winter again.
She opened her mouth, licked her lips, and then, with a bit of effort, she said, “Wall-is. Ann.”
Chapter 28
She said my name again, with less of a hiccup and clearer. My smile stretched wide as my elation at hearing her voice for the very first time overwhelmed and mesmerized me. She clung to my hand while I searched for what was different in her expression, because something was. Like I’d seen before, there was a deepening of understanding, an awareness what didn’t fade away this time. I had the impression there was yet even more, like something had broke loose inside her, bubbling up for us to see, and that it would continue to do so.
I said, “How did you get here? Did you come alone?”
Laci turned to go to the cabin, leading me instead of the other way around. She held my hand so tight, my fingers was numb by the time we reached it. Momma and Papa stood outside with Sheriff Baker, and Clayton too, looking nervous while Papa glared at him. Strangely for me, seeing Clayton held about as much excitement as watching Papa whittle on a stick for hours. The way I’d felt before had run its course, the way some fevers consume you one minute and are gone the next. I was glad. I felt released, relieved, lighter, and my heart didn’t ache at the sight of him. Laci let go a my hand and hurried to Momma, who softly placed a palm alongside her cheek, shaking her head like she couldn’t quite believe she was actually here.
“Lord, child, I never thought I’d set eyes on you again.”
Papa stood on the other side, his own hand running down her arm, like they both needed to touch her, to assure themselves of her presence.
Sheriff Baker said, “There’s a bit of a story about all this, whenever you’re ready.”
Momma waved a hand towards the cabin, “Come in, please. We don’t have much in the way of furniture yet, but we got some coffee.”
We filed in, and stood by the fireplace. It was cooler inside, and the sheriff ’s boots made a solid sound against the strong wood floor.
He looked around, and said, “Looks like you’ve made good progress getting things situated.” He paused and pointed at Clayton. “Far as your girl here, you got this young man to thank, believe it or not. Son, you want to tell them what happened?”
Clayton looked like all his blood had drained out of him, his features had gone pale, even his lips. He swallowed, and glanced at Papa, who stood with his legs firmly planted, arms folded over his chest, putting off the air of a man who would need a lot of convincing.
Clayton said, “Yes, sir.” And he turned to Papa, and spoke directly to him, glancing occasionally at Momma as if she might offer him a bit more support, or at least be less intimidating. Her expression was not unlike Papa’s. Suspicious and doubtful. He looked away, and shifted uncomfortably as he began.
“First, I want to apologize. I shouldn’t have done . . . certain things. I hope you’ll hear me out, let me explain because I know all this wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been with Laci to begin with. Sure, you can blame me because she run off, but I didn’t have nothing to do with what happened after. When you come looking for me with that shotgun, I got scared, I admit it. That’s why I hid, and Laci was with me. All I could think was stay out of sight, let things cool down. We went into the Giant Snake tent, but she must have got scared because of the way I’d acted. Me running, pulling her along like I was. In her mind, I won’t acting right and she didn’t know why. I let go of her hand only a second, and she took off. I lost sight of her quick, so I went to Johnny Cooper and told him what happened and h
e told me to stay out of sight, and he would help with the search. Of course, later, when everyone got to looking for her, I wanted to help, only I couldn’t.”
Clayton glanced at Papa, and said, “He didn’t tell me what he intended to do. I swear it.”
Papa’s tone was sharp. “What he intended to do?”
Sheriff Baker interrupted Clayton. “I found out where the show had gone as far as other states. Turns out this particular outfit has been accused of keeping someone against their will before. A woman . . . without legs from Virginia. He knew because of your Laci being mute, she couldn’t give anything away.”
Papa said to Clayton, “You want to work for people like that?”
“I didn’t know! I don’t work for them anymore. No, sir. I quit.”
Skeptical, Papa said, “And so, how does this make you not mixed up in this somehow?”
Sheriff Baker spoke up for Clayton. “Well for one, I’ve never known someone guilty to come to the law for help. Usually they run the other way. Go on, son, finish your story.”
Clayton nodded. “The show always goes to Florida in the winter, but it was strange to leave in the middle of the night. That told me something was fishy, plus the fact I kept coming up on the notion Laci would go home if she could. And when the search went on and on, and she didn’t turn up, that seemed strange. Then, after we’d been on the road for a week or so, I noticed one of the workers taking food into a particular wagon they store the tents in. He’d come out without the plate. I went over to the wagon and listened. I heard something, a scuffling sort of noise. I kept watch until I figured out where he was putting the key. I got in one night and she was in there, hidden behind a stack of old tents, locked away. Like a dog. I was as mad as I’ve ever been because”—and now he looked at me, like he wanted me to understand what he was about to say—“I love her.”
The Road to Bittersweet Page 29