My
water broke in mid-morning on the first day of August. Burdy,
Doc and Leela-Ma were with me when Rain was born. Zeb, who’d been off with Shug Mosely somewhere, showed up not long after.
Rain
was perfect. There was not one flaw on him. No double-forehead. No limbs
missing. Not even a birthmark or mole. His features were so fine, he was pretty
enough to be a girl. When Leela-Ma got him all
cleaned up, she wrapped him in a blanket and handed him to me.
“I
made that blanket special for the baby Doc and me
never had,” Leela said.
The blanket, made from well-worn blocks of denim, was
soft as kitten fur. Leela
had trimmed it out in an ivory satin.
“I’ll embroider Rain’s initials on it if you like.”
“I’d like that very much,” I said. Leela
seemed to have aged over the past few months. The folds over her eyes were
full. I noticed creases around her smile and there were even some furrows in
her forehead and her eyebrows were graying.
“Leela,” I said, touching her
forearm.
“Yes, honey?”
“You
would’ve made a wonderful mother. I’m sorry you never had a baby of your
own.”
Tears
filled Leela’s eyes. Her lips tightened. She
swallowed hard and nodded her head in a knowing way. “I appreciate that,” she
said, bending over to kiss my cheek. “But
today’s a day of rejoicing. YOU have a beautiful and healthy
baby boy for me and Doc to love and enjoy. Now give me that baby back for a
minute. I know Doc is eager to hold ‘im.”
Cuddling my son close, I sucked in his sweet breath. Zeb and I had decided that whether the baby was a boy or
girl we was going to name it Rain after the water thundering off Horseshoe
Ridge.
“Rain is the perfect name,” I said. “He smells like the
air after a storm.” I kissed him on the cheek and handed him back to Leela.
__________
It weren’t long after Rain was born that I began to fret
about the graves rising
from the government lakes. For years, government men had
been coming into the valleys
and building dams. They’d built one uptown where the Holston joined with the French
Broad River.
Them
government people knew what would happen when they plugged up the river –
they’d flood entire towns – so they came in and offered people money for their
land and told ‘em to move what dead they could to new
cemeteries.
It
was plum awful the way they treated them people, making ‘em
move from the land that held the sweat, blood, and bones of their mothers and
fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, and for some, of their daughters and
sons. Hundreds of folks had to find themselves a new home and twice as many of
the dead were forced to move.
Burdy
said some of her kin’s graves upriver never did git
moved because them government men said they didn’t
have to move the bones of Injuns or half-breeds. Burdy
figured that’s how come when late summer come ‘round some of the gravestones
started rising.
“The spirits are
angry,” Burdy said. “It’s disrespectful to drown the
dead the way they done.”
I don’t know what it
was about them graves rising up that a’way. It ain’t
like I’d seen any stones poking up from them waters. I hadn’t been upriver, but
something about that whole situation unnerved me. I got to where I didn’t want
to be around water a t’all. I didn’t want to draw it.
Didn’t want to bathe in it. Didn’t
want to do the dishes or the warsh. Didn’t want to even drink it. I got to where I could go
nearly till noon before I’d take a sip of it, and only then one spoonful at a
time.
When Rain was born my
breasts were so ripe that sometimes I’d wake in the middle of the night and me
and Zeb would both be sticky with milk. But once I
got to dwelling on all the life drowned in them government lakes, and all them restless sobby souls, I
dreaded water worst than anything. I wouldn’t even warsh
the vegetables that Zeb brought in from the garden. Burdy and Leela-Ma took to doing
the laundry for me. Burdy tried to talk to me about
it, so did Zeb, but all their talking and all my
wanting didn’t change a thing.
My mind weren’t working
properly. I’d always loved being near the water. I liked the holy silence of
still waters and the all-over tingly-feeling that bathing in the falls give me.
I liked the sweetness of cold water drawn from the well and supped from a tin
cup. I liked the power that come with taking a dirty tater or carrot and
plunging it into a pan of soapy water and scrubbing it till it was clean as new
soul. And I loved rinsing my hair still it squeaked between my fingers.
Preacher Blount give a
message about how we ought to take control of our minds and bring them under obedience,
not of the flesh, but of the spirit, so I began to pray for deliverance. The
voices, they kept telling me that God couldn’t hear me, that He wasn’t
listening. Preacher Blount said to expect fiery arrows from the devil, and that
the only way to be victorious in the battle for the mind was to stand firm on
the Word of God.
So whenever I felt
afraid, which I did near ‘bout all the time, I would pray and read my bible.
Whenever I got to dwelling on those stones rising from the water, I’d turn in
my bible to Psalms 77:
The
waters saw you, O, God.
The
waters saw you; they were afraid.
The
depths also trembled
The
clouds poured out water;
The
skies sent out a sound.
Your
arrows flashed about.
The
voice of your thunder was in the whirlwind;
The
lightnings lit up the world;
The
earth trembled and shook.
Your
way was in the sea,
Your
path in the great waters and your
footsteps were not known.
I’d read it over and
over again, and begged for God to deliver me, but all that praying didn’t do me
one lick of good. The only time I’d go near water was to tend after Rain. One
Saturday, a month or so after Rain was born, Zeb asked if I wanted to hike up to the falls and go berry
picking.
I thought about it long
and hard. It was a real pretty day and I hadn’t seen the falls in such a long
time. The weather hadn’t turned yet, so the hickories and oaks were still
summer green. But I told Zeb no, maybe we could go tomorrow, after church. “I jes’ ain’t up to a hike today.” Then, I laid on the
davenport, reading my bible and praying.
Zeb
said he couldn’t understand why I wanted to lay around like that, staring off
into nothingness the way I done, but he didn’t know about the visions I had of
sad souls rising up in resurrection clothes soiled from the sludge in them
government lakes. Their hair slicked with slime, rotting fish coming out their
mouths. Slivers of fish guts seeping from their eyes as they
cried out to the Lord. No amount of praying took away the visions of
those peoples.
The dinner hour came
and went. I fixed Rain a bottle and give it to him. I’d told Zeb to go on up to the falls without me and he had, with a
bucket and a promise to bring home some berries. I put Rain down for his afternoon nap and was
about to lie back down myself when I remembered something.
Hitty.
She was made from witchwood, which all the old people, even Burdy, claimed could ward off the evil spirits. Since my
prayers seem hindered, for whatever reason, maybe Hitty’d
fix things. If she’d been able to keep the Diana-Kate
from capsizing in that awful storm, the way the book said she had, surely,
she’d be able to help me weather this storm.
All I had to do was
find her.
__________
“Leela? Leela-Ma!” I said, walking from the
sitting room to the kitchen with Rain tucked up snug against my neck.
“Back here!” Leela replied.
I kicked the screen
door open with my foot and kept it open with my shoulder as I called out,
“Where?”
“C’mon back,” Leela answered. I found her standing over the burn barrel,
stripping bark off a small hickory.
“Whatcha doin?”
“Need me a new broom,” Leela-Ma said. “Wore my other one clean out.” Piece-by-piece, she split and frayed the ends
of the sapling.
“Where’s Doc?”
“He’s over at the
church. Deacons prayer meeting.”
“I forgot,” I said,
shifting Rain from one shoulder to the other.
Leela
put down the hickory and reached for Rain. “Here, pass me that baby,” she said.
I did as I was told and handed her my son. Rain took a fistful of my hair with
him.
“He’s gonna snatch me bald one of these days.”
“Looks
like it,” Leela said, uncurling his tiny fingers from
my stringy hair, which hadn’t been warshed in I don’t
know how long. “Where’s Zeb?”
“Up
at the falls, berry pickin.”
“How
come you ain’t up there with him?” Leela knew how
much I loved Horseshoe Ridge.
“I
didn’t feel up to going,” I said. It wasn’t exactly the whole truth, but it
weren’t a bald-face lie, either.
“Oh,”
Leela said. She cuddled Rain and studied on me for a
minute or two. “If you don’t have time to tend to your hair maybe I ought to
cut it for you.”
A
soft wind blew down from the mountain. Leaves fluttered over us like the wings
of a thousand dragonflies. Leela’s offer was her
comment on my unkempt appearance. She was too nice to come right out and tell
me I needed a bath. It wasn’t like I didn’t know it myself. I was the first one
to smell me coming. I didn’t like it none but when you’re afeared
of something common sense goes right out the window. I figured best jes’ let her comment pass.
“Leela, do you remember that whittled doll I brung with me when I come to live with you and Doc?”
She
shook her head. “Cain’t say
that I do. Why?”
“I was wanting to take it back over to the house.”
“There
might be a box of your belongings in the attic, next to the boxes where Doc
keeps his daddy’s things. I can have Doc climb up there and get it for you
after supper if you like.”
“I’d
sure appreciate it.”
“You
got time to come in and sit a spell?”
“No, ma’am. I need to be getting back home and fixing Zeb some supper.”
Leela kissed the top of Rain’s dark head and passed him
back to me. “Well, then.”
“Tell
Doc if he cain’t find the box not to worry about it,”
I said, turning to leave.
“If
he finds it, I’ll have him bring it over tonight,” Leela
said. “And, Maizee, if you change your mind about
that haircut, it won’t take me longer an ‘our to fix
you up real pretty. Lots of new mamas cut their hair short. It’s easier to take
care of.”
I
smiled and give Leela a kiss on the cheek. “Yes, ma’am.”
__________
Doc
knocked on the door soon as I’d gotten the table cleared.
“I
ain’t interrupting supper am I?” Doc asked. He was holding a box under his left
arm.
“No,
sir,” Zeb said, greeting him. “C’mon
on in. We’re finished. Here let
me take that.” Doc passed the box over
to Zeb who sat it down on the floor by the davenport.
“Leela said you was needing this
box of your things, Maizee.”
“I
appreciate you carrying it all the way over here, Doc, but you didn’t have to
do that. I could’ve come back up to the house to get it.”
“It
weren’t no problem,” he said, taking out a
handkerchief and wiping his upper lip. “I hope it’s got what you were looking
for.”
____________
Hitty was wrapped in an embroidered pillowcase and stuck at
the bottom of the box. I couldn’t remember exactly when I’d packed her away,
but I believe it was that same year that Kade Mashburn kissed me. I remembered that because I figured any
girl old enough to be kissed was too old to be fooling with dolls any more.
“What
is that?” Zeb asked when I slipped Hitty from the pillowcase.
“A wooden doll.”
“Where’d
you get her?”
“I
had a girlfriend, Eudie, from when I went to school
uptown. Her brother made us both one the year Mama died.”
Hitty didn’t look any worse for the wear. Her blue dress
was a little faded and she smelled musty, but there wasn’t a drawn-on-hair
out-of-place. Her book, the one I’d borrowed from the school library, was
stuffed in a corner of the box, underneath the pillowcase. I never had taken it
back to the school. I opened it up to the middle, the part where Amos said, “I
swear that doll acts plumb witched away to me.”
Zeb took Hitty from my hands and
turned her over in his. “I can make you a real nice doll, if you like.”
“No,”
I said. “I don’t want another doll. This one is special.”
“Special in what way?” Zeb asked.
“She’s
carved from witchwood – mountain ash,” I replied.
“I’ll
make you one from hickory or pine, or even chestnut. I’ll even make you one
with legs and arms that move.”
“I
done told you I don’t want another doll, Zeb. The old
people say that witchwood wards off evil spirits.” I
yanked Hitty back from Zeb
and held her up against my heart, as if she was some sort of protective
crucifix.
______________
I
never knew for sure if it was Hitty that chased ‘em off or the pleading I done with God, but that following
spring, when the wild dogwoods bloomed pink and white, the voices stopped all
their ugly chattering, and life returned to the way it had been before they
came. I was thankful for it.
Zeb never made mention of my odd ways, never made me shamed
for not bathing, for talking out-of-my-head. But I think we both worried in
silence about what would happen if I got pregnant again. Would it get worse
next time?
Spring
had long been one of my favorite times of years, even after Mama dropped dead
under the lilacs. It’s an eager time. Wobbly-legged calves chasing after
drooping udders. Golden daffodils marching one-by-one under
the morning sun. Everybody seems to be anticipating something – company
coming or Gabriel’s trumpet.
Me
and Zeb were jes’ eager to
see an end to the long winter. Rain had been so sickly. A bad fever had come
upon him and he liked to have died, but Burdy saved
him with some of her roots and her healing powers.
By
Easter, Rain was crawling, and by the first day of summer he was walking on his
own, with legs steady as a mountain goat’s. He was a climber. He’d climb up the
back of the davenport, or the kitchen chairs. One time after Sunday services,
Rain climbed up the altar, then into Preacher’s chair and stood there pointing
and jabbering like he was giving a sermon.
Me
and Zeb thought he hung the moon, ‘course, but it
seemed to us that nearly everyone in Goshen Bend felt the same way ‘bout Rain.
Folks were all the time offering to keep him, although, the only ones we ever
left him with was Leela-Ma, Doc or Burdy.
Once
Rain got able enough to run, he’d chase after Zeb
whenever he went. Rain did not like seeing his daddy go off. Zeb had quit working for Shug and
was working upriver at the sawmill. I know Zeb didn’t like seeing the timber cut from the woods he’d
loved so well, but he said he had a family to care for now and the mill was
paying 20 cents a day.
Zeb would come home bone-weary, but he’d muster up the
energy to take Rain fishing up at Haw
Lake, or hiking up to the
meadow. Oftentimes after supper, Zeb would spread a
blanket out on the lawn and sit with Rain, rolling a ball back and forth
between them while I cleaned the dishes. I’d watch ‘em
from the window over the sink. As soon as I was done, I’d go out and join ‘em. Zeb was all the time talking
and wishing, wishing and talking. He
wanted in the worst way to build his own home.
“I’ve always wanted a log house,” he said, one
evening as we were sitting watching Rain run barefoot through the clover.
“Would you like that?”
“Could
I have a room for sewing and reading?”
“Sure.”
“And
a window that stretches from the floor to the ceiling in our bedroom?”
“Well,
I don’t know about that. I don’t want all the neighbors looking in on us,” Zeb said, giving me one of his pie-eating grins. He was laying with his head in my lap, chewing on a blade of grass.
“Okay,”
I said, running the back of my hand over the rough stubble on his cheek. “How about the living room? Can we have a big window there
and a stone fireplace?”
“Whoa,
Nellie,” Zeb said. “Where’d you come up with that
champagne taste of yours? Remember we’re on a beer allowance.”
“I
declare! And all this time I’ve been mistaking you for Prince Charming!”
Shortly
after that evening, Zeb talked Shug
into promising us five acres of land over near Haw Lake.
The deal was we wouldn’t build nothing on it till it
was all paid for. By December, Zeb had managed to
give Shug a down payment of 25 cents.
__________
We
didn’t get much news on the mountain, except what somebody else brung in. Few folks had radios. Burdy
owned one of the only ones in Goshen Bend. After she heared
about the Japs dropping them bombs on Pearl Harbor she run over to the house and told me and Zeb.
The
next day everybody on the mountain was talking about it. On Thursday the news
came that Sheriff Duncan’s boy Matt, the
one that married Charma True, had been onboard the
U.S.S. West Virginia when bombs struck it. Matt was alive but badly burned, and
in need of a lot of prayers, and maybe a miracle or two.
When
we got the news about Matt Duncan, I believe that’s when Zeb
decided he was going to join up. I knew there was no use in arguing with him
about it. Leela always said a man’s got to do what a
man’s got to do. Besides Zeb didn’t tell what he’d
done till after he’d gone and done it. I was thankful at least that he wouldn’t
be leaving me and Rain till after Christmas. If I had known it would be our
last Christmas together, I don’t know if I’d done anything differently.
Money
had always been scarce on the mountain, most everything we had we grew, made
ourselves, or traded somebody else for it. Burdy
hated canning so I’d traded her 12 quarts of beans for Tibbis’s
bone-handled pocketknife. I felt awful, her giving way something so personal
like that, but Burdy insisted. She said it weren’t of
any use to Tibbis no more, and that it had been more
for decoration than for use, anyhow. She had her a
good knife, and she pulled it from her apron pocket to show me. “Got it from my
daddy,” Burdy said. “It’s not as purty
as the one Tibbis carried, but you can see for
yourself it’s been well-abused.” I
figured if I hadn’t given the knife to Zeb, Burdy would’ve.
I
kept it hidden in a sock in my dresser ‘till Christmas morn. Rising up before
light to fix breakfast, I tossed a couple of sticks of wood in the stove and
let it heat up while I made biscuits. As I worked I could hear the steady swell
of Zeb and Rain’s breathing. If it hadn’t been for
Rain’s breath being more shallow than his daddy’s, it
would’ve sounded like one fellow sleeping instead of two. Most nights Rain
slept curled up between me and Zeb. Sometimes, after
he fell asleep, we’d move him to the davenport so we could have the bed to
ourselves.
While
the biscuits cooked, I set the table with the Hillbilly Chinese dishes and some
red napkins. I sprinkled a pinch or two of flour over a bowl of pine cones, and
put it in the center of the table. They
looked like I’d carried them in from a snow. I took the knife, still wrapped in
the sock, and put it on Zeb’s plate. Then I scrambled
up the eggs Leela had given me and made some milk
gravy.
Soon
as I got everything was nearly ready, I stood in the doorway to our bedroom and
sang out: “Merry Christmas sleepy heads! Wake up!” Zeb rubbed his eyes
and smiled at me, but Rain didn’t stir at all. The fever that nearly robbed him
of his life had left him hard of hearing. Shortly after Rain’s first birthday, Burdy said she feared he couldn’t hear a thing but I didn’t
believe it. Jes’ because Rain didn’t talk didn’t mean
he couldn’t hear. He seemed to understand me fine, long as I was speaking
directly at him.
I
didn’t know then that others can see things about our children that our brains
refuse to consider. Things too awful to mention in daylight,
because even if children fall deaf, demons never do. They are always lurking around, waiting for
us to speak the wrong thing, to give them permission to pounce. I wasn’t about
to be the one to give some demon the word.
Zeb left Rain sleeping, yanked on his breeches and pulled
on a shirt. I was getting a jar of jam from the cupboard when Zeb wrapped his arms around my waist and snuggled up to me
from behind. Burrowing his head up against mine, he said, “Merry Christmas, Maizee Delight, Child of Light.”
I
turned around and hugged him tight. “Morning, Mr. Hurd.” Zeb pressed his
lips to mine and kissed me warmly. Zeb had soft, full
lips and searching hands that could make my belly flop.
“It
looks like the angels have been kissing you already this morning,” he said,
running one hand down the curve of my spine and wiping a smidge of flour from
my cheek with the other.
“You
want your present now or later?” I asked.
“Depends
on what it is,” Zeb said, giving my backside a quick
squeeze.
“Go on, sit down, ‘fore this food grows cold.”
Zeb picked up the sock before he pulled out his chair.
“Is
this my sock full of coal?”
“Might be.”
Reaching
into the sock, Zeb pulled out the bone-handled
pocketknife. He turned it over in his palm, flicked open one of three silver
blades as his jaw went slack. “My gawd,
Maizee. This is a dandy knife.”
“Do
you like it?” I knew he’d love it, but I longed to hear him say it again.
“I
think it’s the finest knives I’ve ever held,” he said. “Where did you find it?”
“Burdy,” I said. “It used to belong to Tibbis.
I traded her some beans for it.”
Zeb held the knife up to his face and studied his
reflection in the blade. He run his thumb over the
sharp edge.
“She
said Tibbis didn’t use it much. She weren’t sure
where he come acrost it. But I think if I hadn’t give it to you, she would’ve give it to you herself. Burdy said you’d be needing this
when you go off to Georgia.”
Soon
as I mentioned his leaving, I wished I hadn’t. A hardness cross’t over Zeb’s brown eyes.
Last week word come to the mountain that Matt Duncan
was doing poorly. He was battling some infection. We didn’t speak any more of Zeb’s leaving that day but the knowing of it weighed on us
like guilt on a saint.
__________
Zeb left for basic training in Fort Benning, Georgia the second day of January,
a Friday. On the third day of the New Year, it snowed on the mountain. I got
up, put another couple of pieces of wood in the stove and checked the
thermometer. It was 28 degrees outside.
I crawled back under the covers and snuggled up next to Rain.
I
had not cried a drop when Zeb said good-bye. Silence
is the only way I know’d to handle hard things. Me and Zeb spent our last night
together, sitting on the davenport, listening to the wood crackle in the stove,
not saying nothing. I cain’t say what Zeb was thinking but I kept pondering on that day when Mr. Drennan, the ferry master, took me away from my daddy and brung me to Goshen Bend. I never did return to the house
where Momma raised me, and I only saw my daddy once after that.
____________
Daddy showed up at Doc and Leela-Ma’s
one afternoon in late June, the second
summer
I lived at Goshen Bend. I was in the garden, hoeing weeds, when I heard the
crunching of boots on dry dirt and rocks. We hadn’t had a rain since May. Soon
as I seen him, I know’d it was Daddy. I dropped the
hoe between the tomatoes and case beans, and run into the house. Leela-Ma leaned over the table, cutting fabric. Startled by
the door slamming behind me, she looked up.
“What’s wrong
with you?” she asked. “You look as though you’ve seen last-day
locust
swarming.”
“I have. Daddy’s coming up the road.” I broke into a
nervous sweat all up
underneath my arms and on the bottoms of my feet.
“Mercy
sakes,” Leela-Ma said, putting her pinking shears
aside. “That ain’t nothing to get all worked up over.”
I
would never talk back but it was clear Leela-Ma
didn’t understand. My momma wasn’t cold in the ground before Daddy decided to git rid of me. I hadn’t seen hide nor
hair of him for over a year, and now he comes trodding
up to Goshen Bend pretty-as-you-please. I featured I had plenty to git worked up over. What if he was coming to carry me back
to town?
I
should’ve known better. Daddy didn’t
want me to come back home, which was fine with me, since I had no intentions of
leaving Goshen Bend even if he did. He come by to tell
us he was leaving, and to bring me some of Momma’s things.
“I
thought Maizee might like to have these,” he said,
passing a poke to Leela-Ma. “I ain’t got no use for them.”
I
was standing inside the door, more than a screen separating us.
“Maizee, ain’t you gonna come
outside and speak to your daddy?” Leela-Ma asked.
“Aw,
she don’t have to if she don’t want,” Daddy said.
Opening
the screen, I sidled up next to Leela-Ma. Daddy
studied me.
“I
believe you’ve grown a foot,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ve
not give your aunt and uncle any trouble, have you?”
I
shook my head.
“She’s
been a big help to me,” Leela said. “He’ps me in the garden and the kitchen.
Does whatever she’s asked, and is always so polite. Nan
would be proud.”
When
Leela mentioned Momma’s name, Daddy bit down hard. I seen his jaw flinch.
“Well,”
he said. “That’s good to hear. I’m glad she ain’t been no
trouble.” Daddy spoke around me, as if I
wasn’t his own blood kin standing directly in front of him. He lowered his eyes,
fiddled with his hat.
“I
come to tell you I’m moving,” he said. “I got my things packed and heading out
in the morning.”
Leela tipped on the back of her heels like she knocked a
thigh and hurt it.
“Where you headed?”
“Crossville. I’ve got me a job with the county.” Then,
looking straight at me, Daddy asked, “You been reading that bible of your
momma’s I give you?”
“Yes, sir. Every day.”
“Well,”
he said. “Good. Your momma would be proud.”
I
wanted to ask Daddy what could I do that would make him proud. What should I
have done to keep him from sending me away? What could I do to keep him from
leaving me altogether? But I didn’t. Sadness clung to Daddy like dust from River Road. There
wasn’t no point in asking him why. I already knew the
answer – nothing. There was nothing I could’ve done to keep him from sending me
away, to keep him from leaving me now.
__________
It
was the same with Zeb. Nothing I did or said would’ve
kept him home. Leela was right – a man’s got to do
what a man’s got to do. And so does a
woman.
That’s
why I didn’t cry when Daddy patted my head and told me, “So long, Maizee. Be a good girl.”
And
it’s why I didn’t weep when Zeb hugged me and
whispered, “Promise you’ll meet me ‘neath the
chestnut tree come summer.”
“I
promise,” I said, and kissed him goodbye.
But
laying in the bed next to my silent child on that cold January morning, I
cried, and cried and cried. Then, I feel asleep to a chorus of voices rising up
from the river, “Maizee! Maizee!”