Saving Wonder

by Mary Knight

  “Papaw? Would you give me my next word … please?”

  “Funny you should ask,” he says. “I was just thinking about how untenable this whole situation is. No matter which way we turn, there seems to be no solution.”

  I groan. “I’m not sure I like that word, either, Papaw.”

  He tilts his head forward and gives me one of those “get with it” looks.

  “I know … The word isn’t the problem,” I say in a singsongy voice. “I just wish it could get us out of it.”

  I go to bed thinking about how untenable my life has become, particularly relating to Jules. Stealing the dream catcher was bad enough, but keeping the truth from her was untenable. I realize that now and there’s no excuse. I go to bed wrestling with these thought demons, as Papaw would call them, and work up an awful sweat. Halfway through the night, I open a window. A cool breeze carries the scent of lilac and pine. It gentles around me like one of Mama’s lullabies.

  The sun is shining and that same breeze is blowing as Jules and I walk up Red Hawk Mountain. I’m itching to take her hand, but I reach in my pocket for old Gloria instead. I’m playing “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain” when out of nowhere comes this humongous KABOOM! Boulders and rock fragments are flying all around us, and the ground beneath our feet starts to break apart. Old Gloria falls into a gaping crevice as I grab for Jules’s hand and pull her toward me, but she beats on my arm, screaming, “Let go, Curley Hines! I don’t trust you! Let me go!”

  But I can’t let her go because our hands have become fused from the heat of the explosion and we’re stuck on this tiny island of earth sliding down the mountain at a frightening speed, and here comes Ol’ Charley right behind us, running on his roots.

  We finally land next to my family’s headstones in the grassy plateau above our house. Ol’ Charley plops himself down next to us, plunging his root-legs into the ground. At first I think we’re all safe until a swarm of mosquitoes the size of crows flies out of my daddy’s grave, buzzing and hovering around us, ready to strike.

  “Curley!” Jules screams, trying to swat them away with her free hand. “Do something!” But I’m frozen to my family’s plot, unable to move.

  I wake to the sound of pebbles hitting the side of the house and Jules yelling, “Curley!” But the sun is barely up and those mosquitoes are still buzzing. Am I dreaming? I stumble to the window. Jules is looking up at me, pleading. Her face tells it all.

  “It’s Ol’ Charley, Curley! They’re cutting him down!”

  She takes off at a run back in the direction of the chain saws. But it’s Sunday, I say to myself as I pull a pair of jeans on over the T-shirt I wore to bed, slip into my hiking boots, and sail down the stairs two at a time. I thought we were safe.

  Papaw sticks his head out of his bedroom door. “What’s all the ruckus, Curley?”

  “Ol’ Charley, Papaw. I’ve got to help Jules.”

  I take the path at a full run, but by the time I get there, it’s obvious I’m too late. Chunks of wood are strewn everywhere. Dozens of branches, like so many body parts, lie scattered on the ground around Ol’ Charley, his trunk already cut to half its original height. I recognize our special branch, pushed to the side like some cast-off piece of garbage.

  One of Mr. Tiverton’s goons wields a gigantic chain saw, making V-shaped slashes just above the hollow part where Jules and I used to hide, while another worker tries to hold Jules back as she struggles to break free. I’m just about to yell at him to let her go when she slips from his grasp and rushes at the foreman, who shuts down his saw as soon as he sees her coming.

  I’m reminded once again of screaming banshees, and I don’t know which sounds worse, the high-pitched whine of a chain saw grinding through three-hundred-year-old wood, or the desperation of my best friend’s screams.

  “What the—?” the man yells as he turns around. Jules is yanking on his orange vest, like one of those pesky little dogs nipping at an intruder’s heels. The whole scene has me frozen in place, that and seeing how Ol’ Charley’s life has been chipped away, limb by ancient limb.

  “Sorry, bud.” The other worker pulls Jules away, trying to stay clear of her kicking feet. “She’s a slippery one,” he says as the foreman pulls the cord on the chain saw and makes one last cut.

  “Jules!” I scream as she yanks herself free once again, tripping over a log and falling into a pile of sawdust.

  I rush in to help her—there’s no telling which way Ol’ Charley’s going to fall or when—but just like in my dream, she doesn’t want my help. She pushes me away and struggles to stand.

  “Let me go, Curley. We’ve got to stop him!” She springs for the man as he turns off the saw. Does she not understand that his job is already done? I wonder in desperation.

  “Are you out of your ever-loving mind?” the foreman screams. “This tree could fall at any minute!” He grabs Jules by the arm and starts dragging her up the path.

  That’s when it breaks. My heart. My rage. Split wide open down the middle of me.

  “Let go of her now, you stupid jerk!”

  I throw myself at his back, knocking the three of us down onto the soft, leaf-covered ground. Jules rolls away, but I’m still on top of him. He covers his head as I beat on him with my fists, spewing all the foul words Papaw told me never to say.

  “What have you done?” I scream, foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog. “I want Ol’ Charley back. Put. Him. Back.” Off to the side, I hear Jules sobbing.

  My arms are beginning to feel as limp as noodles, when I feel two strong hands grab ahold of my shoulders and pull me up. At first I think it must be the other worker and I’m ready to let another fist fly, but then I see it’s Papaw. Jules is clinging to Mrs. C.

  “There, there, son.” Papaw strokes the top of my head as I sink into him. “This is a terrible thing.”

  We’re standing like that when Mr. Tiverton himself emerges from the woods. He looks around, refusing to acknowledge any of us.

  “Why isn’t this tree down?” he shouts at his men.

  “We’ve had a little trouble with the locals,” the foreman mutters, brushing leaves and sawdust off his jeans.

  “You haven’t seen anything yet,” Papaw says under his breath.

  “What’s that, Mr. Weaver?” Mr. Tiverton takes a step toward us.

  “I said, you haven’t begun to see the trouble we’re about to cause.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, John … mostly for you and your grandson here.”

  “Let’s get one thing perfectly clear, Jim. Curley and I have made our choice, and we’re not sorry at all.” Papaw tightens his arm around me, and I’ve never been prouder.

  “Well, I think I better warn you, then,” Mr. Tiverton replies. “We’ll be torching these hills by the end of the week to get this lease ready for mining.” Jules lunges like she’s going to jump him, but her mother holds her back.

  Mr. Tiverton shakes his head and studies the ground, as though he’s lost something valuable in all those wood chips and sawdust. “Look. I know you kids aren’t very happy with me right now, but we need to move forward on this lease. We’ll save what we can, but most of these trees will have to go.”

  CRACK!

  “Stand clear!” the foreman yells.

  Ol’ Charley groans, teeters, and falls, slowly, like an old man slumping to the ground. All that remains is his hollow part, open to the sky.

  Someone lets out a wail that sounds more like a war cry. I can’t tell if it’s Jules or if it’s me, our despair seems so inseparable.

  Papaw whispers into my ear, “Go!” and gives me a nudge.

  The next thing I know, Jules and I are in each other’s arms.

  Untenable—adjective

  : not capable of being maintained or supported; not defensible; as an untenable doctrine; untenable ground in argument

  We’ve agreed to meet Helen by Ol’ Charley at the crack of dawn, that is, at the time the sun would normally rise if there wa
sn’t a mountain in the way. On this side of the Appalachians, dawn doesn’t actually “crack.” It’s more like a slow roll through mist and shadow. By the time the sun appears in all of its roundness, the morning will be half-gone.

  Papaw and I pour a thermos of steaming hot coffee and go by the Cavanaughs’, where Jules and her ma come out to join us. Chickadees, cardinals, and mockingbirds are beginning to stir within the fog-shrouded canopy. Jules shuffles past Papaw to walk by my side and slides a hand in my jacket pocket for warmth. We don’t say a word.

  Papaw’s always talking about “life’s greatest mysteries.” Well, one of those mysteries happened yesterday between me and Jules, when Ol’ Charley fell and left us empty, and then all that hugging and holding made us all of a sudden full. And in case you think we were cheating on JD, we never kissed. We never even held hands. We did hold on to each other for the longest time, crying over Ol’ Charley. For the rest of the day, we were inseparable, like how we were back in the olden days before JD, only different.

  You can’t imagine what a relief it is after the dream catcher incident to know we’re still friends. Sometimes it takes a great sadness, Papaw says, to remind you of what really matters.

  Now that it’s May and all the leaves are out, it’s harder to see up the mountain or even down the path, so when we come around the bend to the place where Ol’ Charley used to stand, we are caught completely off guard. We expected to see Helen, but standing with her in a circle around a section of Ol’ Charley’s trunk are over a dozen folks in what look like ceremonial regalia—the women in long silk dresses with bands of diamonds circling their skirts, the men in colorful ribbon shirts, jeans, and moccasins. It takes me a minute to recognize Sheriff Whitaker out of uniform. He nods and smiles sadly at us. His ma is leaning over a rock, preparing something. He bends down to whisper to her, and her face lights up when she sees us.

  “Ah … our friends!” Helen beckons. She’s wearing a long white dress with bands of turquoise and gold. Around her waist is a beaded belt with hummingbirds near the tasseled ends. “We are so glad you’ve come.”

  The circle opens to make room for us. Jules stands beside me and links her arm through mine, something she has never done. I look around the circle. This must be what everyone else is doing, but no. She must be cold, I tell myself. She just wants to get warm.

  An early morning mist hangs in sheets around the open space created by the mining road. Ol’ Charley’s many branches and sections of trunk are stacked outside the circle. Our favorite branch, the one we used to sit on, is lying off on its own nearby.

  Helen leans into her son as he lights a stick of what looks like tightly bound grass over the cup of an empty shell. Once lit, the end of the stick smokes and glows like the tobacco in one of Papaw’s pipes. It smells like Thanksgiving. Helen approaches us, smiling. Beginning with Papaw, she waves her hand over the stick and bathes each one of us in smoke from head to toe. “This is called smudging, my friends. It’s what we do to clear away negativity before we enter into anything sacred.”

  You came to the right people, I think as I look down at the sea of sawdust that used to be Ol’ Charley covering the ground at our feet.

  Helen returns to her original spot. I could have sworn she was no higher than a fence post, but here among her people, she stands straight and tall. As she stretches out her arms to encompass the circle, her long, fringed shawl opens wide behind her like a white bird unfolding its wings. She is old and she is beautiful, a venerable presence, as Papaw would say—in fact, did say last night when he gave me my new word. He said I’d already lived out a year’s worth of untenable in a single day.

  Helen addresses the circle. “We are here to honor the life of this beautiful tree that has given so much to our people. We do this by offering the gift of tobacco and, of course, our prayers.”

  She draws a handful of tobacco out of a leather pouch. Raising her cupped hand to the sky, she turns and offers blessings to each of the four directions, and then, facing into the circle, she adds three more—above, below, and within. At least, I think she means “within,” since she’s tapping her fist gently over her heart. I never thought about “within” as being a direction, but now that I think about it, there are days when so much is going on inside me, that’s the only direction I see.

  After acknowledging the seven directions, Helen lets the tobacco fall through her fist, drawing a perfect circle on Ol’ Charley’s trunk. Each member of the gathering then steps forward to honor Ol’ Charley with their gift of tobacco while speaking prayers in their native language. Many of the words Papaw gives me have their origins in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries, and I’ve always thought they were old. But these words? These sounds forming somewhere beneath their tongues? They feel as old as the mountains.

  After everyone but the four of us has said their prayers, Helen and her son walk around the circle to where we stand, offering each of us a handful of tobacco from a leather pouch so that we, too, can pay our respects.

  Papaw walks up to Ol’ Charley and scatters his tobacco first. “Thank you, Old One,” he says, “for watching over our mountain.”

  When it’s her turn, Mrs. C puts a hand on Ol’ Charley and bows her head. “Thank you for protecting our children,” she prays, “and for never letting them fall.”

  As for me, I sprinkle my tobacco slowly. I’m so full of memories and sadness, all I can do is stand there, feeling my heart thump. I just can’t find the words. Finally, I give up and trudge back to Papaw’s side.

  And then there’s Jules.

  Jules marches right up to Ol’ Charley, all business—like she’s going to throw that tobacco down and be done with it—but then she falls to her knees, crying. I mean, the sound of her sobbing echoes clear down the holler. I want to run over and make her feel better, but all the solemn faces around the circle hold me back. And then it hits me, the thing that Helen and her friends seem to know:

  Jules is praying, too. Her tears are her prayers.

  After the longest time, Jules picks herself up and heads back to us, wiping her eyes on her jacket sleeve. I’m all set to let her link her arm in mine again, but she leans into her ma instead.

  Helen raises her face to the sky as the rest of the circle takes hands. “Hoyana osda Unetlana wado,” she begins. “We thank You, Creator, for the support Ol’ Charley has offered these two young people, Curley and Jules, and we ask that You continue to bless them. May You continue to bless all of us and our ancestors, too, as You show us the way to our ancient burial site, our sacred ground. Show us how to protect it, so that we may teach future generations to honor the old ways.”

  When she’s finished, everyone in the circle says, “Aho,” which feels a lot like “amen.” Papaw and I aren’t Sunday-go-to-meeting people, but this whole morning has felt way holier than any altar call I ever witnessed at Anna Ludlow’s church on the rare occasions she’s invited me.

  Helen picks up her cane and leans against it as she looks across the circle at me, Papaw, Jules, and Mrs. C. “Thank you for coming, my friends. This occasion would not have been the same without you. We think of you as our tree’s guardians and are grateful for your protection.”

  “But …” I start to object, feeling guilty all over again about letting Ol’ Charley down.

  She raises a hand. “There was nothing you could do to stop this. The end of this life was ordained.” She looks lovingly at the place Ol’ Charley used to stand. “This tree has served its purpose. It has protected our mountain for hundreds of years. Now it’s our turn.”

  “Aho,” a few of her people say.

  “Does that mean you’ve found the burial site?” Jules asks in a quiet voice, softened even more by the morning mist.

  A tall man with a long black braid down his back steps into the circle and speaks. “We have found indications of a burial mound at the very top of the mountain,” he says. “There are archeologists in Wonder Gap right now, beginning a preliminary investigation.”
>
  Jules and I look at each other in amazement. Could it really be?

  “Tiverton’s planning to torch all the trees on top of the mountain,” Papaw announces to the gathering. “He’s threatened to start sometime this week.”

  The man shakes his head. “We were afraid of that. Hopefully, the archeologists will find something soon.”

  “And having public opinion on our side should help,” Helen adds, looking over Ol’ Charley at Jules and me.

  I’m about to remind her about the press conference this afternoon, when we hear a series of doors slamming along the county road several hundred yards away. It’s impossible to see who our visitors might be, given the thick undergrowth of the woods. I glance down at Papaw’s oversized wristwatch and see that it’s not yet 8:00 a.m.—too early for Tiverton’s men, but then, I thought they didn’t work on Sundays, either.

  “Before we’re joined by the others, whoever they may be,” Helen proceeds calmly, “we are here today, not only to honor this tree, but to move it—at least in part. We may not have been able to prevent Ol’ Charley’s demise, but we can certainly determine a resting place where the tree as a whole can be remembered. Any idea where that might be?” She’s speaking to Jules and me now.

  I gaze at the section of trunk Helen is proposing to move, and I want to say, That’s not Ol’ Charley. But then, if what Mr. A says about DNA is true, the whole is encoded in every part. I think of our family cemetery up on the grassy plateau above our house. Maybe my dream was giving me a premonition of where Ol’ Charley’s memorial is supposed to be.

  I look over at Jules. She grips my arm and leans in close to my ear. “By your mama and little Zeb, Curley … and your daddy, too,” she whispers. “That would make a real nice place for us to sit.”

  She sees us together. Blood rushes to my face.

  Speechless, I look over at Helen and nod in the direction toward home.

  “Curley.” Jules points. A caravan of television news vans is now parked along the mining road. Several camera operators are already strapping on their gear, accompanied by folks who look like reporters.