Bloodroot Page 10

  Ever since I seen Myra that way, it seems to me I can hear my grandbaby moaning outside in the dark. It’s like when I heard that train whistle blowing the night Clio got killed. I’ve thought many times of putting the law on John Odom, but I don’t know what to accuse him of. Far as I know, he ain’t been beating on her. I never seen no bruises. But like I told Hacky that day in the truck, there’s other ways a woman can get beat up on. All I can do right now is to pray for Myra, that she gets herself out of this fix someway. I might not be around much longer to help her out of it. I’m heading toward seventy-seven years old next month and I’m tired. The doctor says I’ve got congestive heart failure. Here lately just walking around the house wears me out. My eyes has got so weak these old glasses don’t do me much good no more. It’s hard to believe, but a time will come when I won’t be in this house on the mountain. I made Hacky promise to look after Myra if anything happens to me and he said he would. He said he’s always stood by me and Macon and our younguns, and he don’t aim to quit now. That made me feel some better, but I still don’t know how to get my grandbaby away from that devil John Odom.

  So all my kids are dead and gone and Myra might be lost forever. People probably wonders how I kept from losing my mind. Seeing one youngun go before you, much less five, is enough to ruin any mammy. I reckon I am ruint in a way. I can’t think straight no more. I forget the names of the craziest things, like flowers and biscuits and chairs. And you know I’ve buried five children and seen their dead bodies, watched them get sicker and sicker and not been able to help them a’tall, but the picture that vexes my mind the most is Myra when she opened the door of that house by the tracks. That’s the thing that’s done broke my heart in two, because she’s the one that saved me after all them others was gone. She’s how come me and Macon to get out of the bed all of them years. Myra’s the one I love the best of all, it don’t matter that I never bore her. She was mine anyhow.

  JOHNNY ODOM

  AND

  LAURA ODOM BLEVINS

  JOHNNY

  I spent a long time trying to forget the first eight years of my life. For some it might be easy to shake loose their earliest memories, but not for me. No matter how hard I tried, there was always some reminder of childhood. Today it was seeing my mama’s blue eyes on a baby I was holding for the first time. Over the years there have been other things that took me back, the smells of loam and moss and ferny ground, the taste of ice-cold water. It’s been a while, though, since I saw the mountain outside of memory.

  In 1990, when I was fourteen, I went up Bloodroot Mountain again after six years gone. It was a long walk, with Marshall Lunsford behind me and neither one of us saying a word. The mountain looked different than when I was small. A sawmill had carved a bald place in the land and the road was paved where it used to be dirt, but I knew we were getting close when we passed Mr. Barnett’s. His house was nearly buried behind a briar thicket, just a rusty roof with a stub of chimney poking out of the tangled green. The flag was up on his mailbox and the same dented truck parked in the weeds, glinting in what was left of the sun. He was probably too old to drive it anymore. I wondered if he would come out and if he would still know me, but his place was quiet and still.

  We kept climbing and it was almost dark by the time we made it to the witch’s house. That’s what Marshall called it. “There’s a witch’s house up yonder,” he said. He caught up and stood panting in the road, head down and eyes shifting toward every sound, but looking up at the house I forgot about Marshall and only remembered. Behind the posts of a ruined fence the creek branch rushed downhill over chunks of rock, between thorny vines and flowering bushes. The trees were parted just enough for me to see it up there, like a toy I could hold in both hands, a dirty white box with black window holes and the roof a flake of blood. It did look like a witch’s house, a haunted place, the hill leading up to it bumpy with stumps and boulders. I could see a cross of fallen trees in the yard and a weathered barn where nothing lived but the smell of hay and animals.

  Something splashed in the creek and Marshall jumped. “We better get on before it’s too dark to see the road,” he said.

  “You can go by yourself if you want to.”

  Marshall grew quiet, shuffled his feet. “They say she killed a man.”

  “Is that so?”

  Back then, I could have told him I’d guarantee she killed a man. I could have told him the witch was my mama, too, but I kept my mouth shut. I looked at the house and wanted to burn it to the ground, or run up there and find her axe still lodged in a stump and chop the whole place to pieces, barn and all. But first I would tear through the rooms to see what was left, scour the lot for any trace of her and Laura and me, a stray bobby pin or a lost shirt button or a length of fishing line, anything to prove we lived for a time between those trees, with that mountain under our feet and that creek water rushing over us. Then I would burn the whole place down and dance in the light of the flames.

  “For real, Johnny, let’s go,” Marshall whined, and it was like a spell was broken. I didn’t need to look anymore. I had seen it one more time. I turned to go with Marshall but he was frozen in the middle of the road, staring into the woods across from the house with his mouth hanging open. Between the crowded trunks there was a greenish glow, a faint ghost light hovering close to the ground. “It’s her spirit,” Marshall whispered. Then he took off running down the mountain, shoes slapping hard on the pavement. I knew it was foxfire but I stood there for a long time anyway, looking into the trees.

  LAURA

  I had some friends up on the mountain. Sun shined down through the leaves and made fairies for me to play with. I didn’t get sad whenever Johnny went off roaming because when the wind blowed them fairies came alive. If I laid on the ground they darted across my body like minnows in the creek. I miss them now when nighttime comes. I’m a grown woman with a child of my own but I still get lonesome in the dark. I try to remember good things, like how Mama was before she changed. I think about that time she was scaling fish. She dropped a bluegill back in the bucket and held my face in her slimy hands. I walked around the rest of the day wearing that slime on my cheeks. I felt touched by some magic creature, like a mermaid out of one of Johnny’s storybooks.

  Once I watched Mama take a bath in the creek when the sun was orange, naked breasts and fuzzy legs and a swarm of gnats around her head. I stood on tiptoe and reached out to touch her long, black hair. It poured down her arms like oil. When she bent to lift me I was draped in it. One time she made us blackberry cobbler. We walked to the Barnetts’ after sugar and I rode on her hip. When I asked Johnny about it later, he said it never happened. He pretended not to remember Mama before she was different. But I can still see our teeth and tongues stained dark with juice. I tried to remember for him, how she turned the radio loud and danced us around, and the chocolate cake she made when we turned six. I reminded Johnny of those things, but he always said I dreamed them.

  He didn’t even remember the day we walked down the mountain picking up cans and seen a school bus. There was a child’s face in the window and I asked Mama where they was going. She said they was going to school. Johnny wanted to go with them but Mama said she could teach us all we needed to know. Later she showed us how to read with her finger moving underneath the words. I forgot fast but Johnny loved the storybooks. He read them over and over. She taught us other things, too, like how to dig up the ginseng we sold to a fat man down the mountain, and how to can what we growed. There was hot days in the kitchen washing jars and standing over pots. I liked canning but Johnny didn’t. He wanted to be outside hunting. Mama showed us how to kill rabbits and squirrels and possums with her granddaddy’s rifle. I was no good but Johnny could shoot and him just a little boy. Once he got a deer and we had the meat for a long time.

  When she quit paying attention to us, I missed her bad. I thought I must have got too big to fit in her lap. If I tried to climb up she didn’t put her arms around me. Pretty soon I gave
up. I still loved her, though. I know Johnny loved her, too. But he got mad when she took herself away. One time he hacked down her little patch of corn with a stick but it didn’t do any good. It was like she didn’t notice. Then he set her scarf on fire, a lacy one that hung on her bedpost and used to belong to her granny. He took it out in the grass and held a match to it. Mama went out to stand with him and they watched it burn together. When the fire dwindled down to ashes she walked away and left him there. I went to him but he jerked away. Pretty soon Johnny gave up like I did.

  I know why Johnny didn’t want to remember the good things. Once she started acting different, it was easier to remember the bad. But even in them last two years there was nice times. I got to share her bed whenever I found her there. I’d wind myself in her hair and curl up in the littlest knot I could make against her back. One morning she turned over before I crept off. We stared at each other and I seen all the shades of blue in her eyes. I understood how she loved me the only way she could. If Johnny was ever that close to Mama’s face, smelling her skin and feeling her warmness, he might have been different. I wish I could remember what it was like inside of her. I picture her belly like a moon and me and Johnny living in it. The three of us was a family then, bound up together in her skin. Them nine months is why it don’t matter where we go or what the years turn us into. We’ll always love each other. For a while, we was all part of one body.

  JOHNNY

  Some of what happened on Bloodroot Mountain has grown foggy in my mind, but most of it I remember well. For a long time, my twin sister Laura and I didn’t know to fear anything. We’d play in bat caves and climb the highest trees and let spiders walk up our arms. Once, a bear came lumbering through as we knelt in the pine needles searching for arrowheads. It stopped a few yards from us and sniffed the air before moving on. We must have smelled familiar. Our mama always said we had inherited a way with animals.

  I’ll never forget how she cried when I saved Mr. Barnett’s dog, Whitey. It was the fall Laura and I turned five and we had gone down to the Barnetts’ with our mama to trade apples for a bag of cornmeal. While she was in the house with Mrs. Barnett, Laura and I stood watching Mr. Barnett work on his truck, the three of us bent together under the hood. There was a sudden commotion in the woods and I could tell right away that it was Whitey, yelping over a din of wild barking and growling. Mr. Barnett dropped his wrench and Laura and I went running with him into the trees. Whitey was lying on her back in the middle of a dog pack, all of them fighting her. People in Polk County let their dogs roam loose and they ran together sometimes, causing trouble all over the mountain.

  Mr. Barnett lunged at the dogs to scare them off, but they weren’t afraid. He threw a rock but that didn’t work either. I knew those dogs meant to kill Whitey. I could hear Laura crying over the racket, eyes squeezed shut and hands clamped over her ears. While Mr. Barnett looked for something else to throw, I walked without thinking toward the fighting dogs. Mr. Barnett yelled for me to get back but it was too late. He ran to dive in and save me, but I didn’t need his help. The dogs scattered to make a path for me as if someone had fired a shotgun. They slinked off, leaving Whitey shivering and bleeding on the leaves. Then the woods were quiet. Mr. Barnett stood frozen as I knelt beside Whitey and picked her up in my arms. She was so big and heavy that I could hardly rise up with her. That’s when I saw my mama standing at the edge of the trees with tears running down her face. I still don’t know if she was crying out of pride or sadness.

  Laura and I were always bringing animals into the house. Once we found a nest of baby skunks in a brush pile and it was the only thing our mama didn’t let us keep. Anything else we could catch, we could bring inside. Once it was a red-eyed terrapin that crawled all over the house until one day it just wasn’t there anymore. I don’t know if it found a way out or if my mama set it free. She let us keep the animals but it troubled her. She said wild things belonged outside and not to forget their true nature. I should have listened to her. One summer morning, when I was seven, I got too brave. Rain had been pouring for two days straight and the sun had come back out hot and bright. The yard was soggy and rainwater splashed up my legs when Laura and I ran into the trees. I can still see her stopping to balance on a mossy log, the dark shawl of her hair parted down the middle and sunburn tracing the bridge of her nose. Even though we were born five minutes apart, we didn’t look alike besides our black hair and eyes. Laura was plainer than our mama but had the same long face and high forehead, features I didn’t inherit.

  I chased after her, flushing rabbits out of the brush and sending frogs plopping into the creek. We knew where we were going without saying anything. Further up the mountain there were two big tables of rock in a clearing, one slab like a step leading down to the other, jutting high over the bluff. Both were scabby with lichens and scattered with piles of damp leaves. Sometimes I would read to Laura up there, but she couldn’t be still for long, so that rock step became my spot to sit and think.

  On the way up to the rock something caught Laura’s eye in the woods, prisms of light filtering down through the trees. The way they moved along the ground when the wind blew, she always ran off after them, arms outstretched and head thrown back to let them play across her face. I didn’t like her drifting too far out of sight, but when I wanted my twin I could call her back without words. I didn’t question how it was possible. I remembered a time when we were smaller that we didn’t need to speak at all. I could read the set of her mouth and the line of her shoulders and know what she wanted to say.

  I went on to the rock, but when I stepped into the clearing I stopped in my tracks. In the place where I usually sat there was a snake. I walked closer for a better look. He wasn’t long but he was fat, a lazy S shape soaking up the heat. I had seen snakes before but this was the prettiest, sun shining on his banded back, patterned with rounded spots. When I hunkered down, he lifted the coppery-red triangle of his head. My heart thudded. I stretched out on my belly to look him in the face. Staring into his eyes, it seemed he knew everything about me. I thought if he could speak, he would call me by name.

  Slowly the snake began to coil, scales undulating like magic. I wanted to show Laura, because back then my sister and I shared everything. “Laura, come and see!” I shouted, reaching out for the snake. Just as Laura came into the clearing, he shot up and bit me on the back of the hand. I saw the plush pink lining of his throat, the thin black line of his tongue. Then I felt the pain, hot and fiery, shooting up my arm. I was surprised, but I didn’t feel betrayed. I should have known that he was untouchable.

  I woke the next day with a headache, hand bloated and bruised nearly black. The stiffness worked its way up my arm to the shoulder and the throbbing lasted for weeks, but it wasn’t all that bad. I couldn’t find the words to tell Laura, but there was something good about it, driving out the other aches inside that vexed me all the time. When I got better I thought that copperhead might have turned me into what he was, like vampires and werewolves do. The idea didn’t trouble me. I almost wished it would happen.

  LAURA

  I’ve had a long time to think about what made Mama how she was. I know now she never was like other mamas, but them last two years with her was harder. I figure it had something to do with that day in town when me and Johnny was six. It was the only time we ever left the mountain with her. We’d walk to the bottom of it selling ginseng, but she always made us hide in the weeds. The fat man leaned over the rail of his porch and counted the money down into her hand. She never set foot on his steps that I can remember. Sometimes we rode up and down the dirt road in the back of Mr. Barnett’s truck with the wind in our hair, but she wouldn’t let him take us anywhere else. I never wanted to go off the mountain anyway. I seen Mama’s fear of whatever was down there. I figured out she was trying to hide us from something dangerous. Johnny probably did, too. But he was different than me. He always wondered what else there was to see.

  It took until we was six for Mama
to give in. The leaves had fell and she was building fires in the stove. That meant it was time for Mr. Barnett to go to the co-op. Mama gave him money and he brung things back for us. Mr. Barnett was our good friend. Mama didn’t talk to him much, but I could tell he didn’t make her nervous. Not like that Cotter man we bought fresh milk from up the mountain. His wife would stand at the door with her arms crossed and look down at our dirty feet. Mama would hand over the money and take the milk fast as she could. Mostly we had powdered milk. That’s one thing she bought before winter. Powdered milk, flour, sugar, and cornmeal in big sacks. That year, when it was time for Mr. Barnett to go to the co-op, Johnny begged Mama for us to go with him. She said no at first but he started to cry. Worried as Mama was, she loved Johnny more. I believe it hurt her to deny him anything he wanted so bad.

  Mama wouldn’t let us go by ourselves with Mr. Barnett so we all piled in the truck together, me and Johnny crowded between Mr. Barnett and Mama. Mr. Barnett smelled like liniment and dampish flannel. I liked riding in his truck with the heater blowing on my face. Mr. Barnett must have seen Mama shaking. He said, “You remember where the co-op is, honey. It’s in Slop Creek, not all the way to town. They won’t be many there this time of morning.” He put his big hand on top of my head. “These younguns need to see a little piece of the countryside anyhow. Don’t you?” I nodded, even though I didn’t really think so. I was nervous when Mr. Barnett first turned his truck right at the bottom of the mountain, but after a while I got excited. There was long fields with pinwheels of hay and silos and bridges over rolling water. I looked out the back window and seen the mountain getting left behind. But I still felt safe. Johnny and Mama was with me.

  Then we was at the co-op and it was the most people I ever seen in one place. I stood still with Johnny, watching the men with caps and coveralls on, buying things for their farms. The lights there was a dirty color and sometimes they buzzed and blinked. There was heavy sacks stacked nearly to the ceiling and people rolled them out on long carts. I stayed close to Mama’s legs. After she paid, Mr. Barnett bought me and Johnny a bag of candy. We stood in the parking lot sucking peppermint while he helped Mama load the truck. A man got out of the car beside us and stopped to light a cigarette. When he seen Mama his eyebrows flew up. Then they growed together like he was angry.