Bloodroot Read online

  The Saturday that my tooth got broken, we climbed into the truck and headed out as usual. Ordinarily Mark would have come along, but he was in trouble for misbehaving at church. Daddy and I had been to the dime store for shoelaces and were passing Odom’s Hardware on our way to lunch when I saw a sign in the window advertising a junked car for sale. Daddy stopped to examine the sign and decided he wanted to take a look at the car. He claimed he might want it for parts. That’s the way he is. He goes all over the countryside dickering with other men just like himself, silent and gruff with greasy caps on their heads and plugs of tobacco tucked in their jaws. No matter how Mama fusses, he’ll drive from one end of Tennessee to the other collecting junk, or even out of state if he hears about a bargain. Half the time he brings back things we don’t need and can’t use. Once it was a box of hammers, and another time he hoisted an old unicycle out of the truck bed when he got home. Mama really threw a fit over that one.

  We waited until after lunch to see about the car. Daddy took his time and had two cups of coffee. I drank a chocolate milkshake. Coming out of the restaurant, Main Street was deserted because everything closed early on Saturdays. It gave me an empty feeling. We got into the truck and went to a house with dark upper windows and old furniture setting on the porch. It might have been fancy if it hadn’t looked so rundown. When Daddy rang the bell, a man came out and said the car was in the backyard. He called Daddy by name as if they already knew each other, but I couldn’t place the man myself.

  We went around the house and saw the car up on blocks in a thatch of weeds with its hood propped open. Daddy crossed the yard behind the man to have a closer look. I stood around with my hands in my pockets, wishing they’d get down to business. There were toys in the backyard, but no sign of the kids they belonged to. It was a sad place and I wanted to go home. I drifted to the edge of the yard and looked at the weedy lot next door. It was littered with junk and trash, almost like a dump. I lingered there for a while, daydreaming about nothing in particular. Then the back screen door of the house screeched open and slapped shut. I turned and saw a boy coming down the concrete steps with a basketball under his arm. He was bigger than me, tall with black hair and white skin. He dribbled the ball a couple of times on a bald spot of ground before noticing me. When he saw me standing at the edge of the yard, he stopped and looked me over with suspicious eyes. I didn’t know how to talk to other kids besides my brothers, so I hoped he would go back to his dribbling. My heart sank when he walked over and spoke to me.

  “Hey,” he said, and bounced the ball between us a couple of times.

  “Hey.”

  He stared at me for a minute, so hard I felt my ears turning red.

  “You want to see something?” the boy asked finally.

  “What?”

  “A skeleton.”

  I didn’t answer. I thought he was picking on me.

  “Not a human skeleton, dummy. A dog one.”

  “Oh.”

  “You want to see it?”

  “Where’s it at?”

  “Over there.” He tilted his head toward the weedy lot.

  “I guess.”

  He tossed his basketball back into the yard and I watched it bounce a few times before it came to rest by a rusty swing set. To this day, I don’t know why I followed him. I had a bad feeling from the minute he sized me up with his mean black eyes. We walked into the weeds and as we got farther from the house I grew more and more nervous. I looked back over my shoulder at Daddy and the other man, bent under the car’s hood.

  “I want to go back,” I told the boy.

  “Come on. It’s right over here,” he said.

  He took me by the arm and dragged me down a glass-littered path, past a heap of charred garbage and an old mattress spilling stuffing. Finally we came to the edge of the lot, where dark trees crowded close to a rickety board fence. I wanted to cry, but didn’t let myself. I could see the bones ahead, glimmering white in a mess of green vines. The boy steered me roughly by the shoulders until the skeleton was at my toes.

  He wanted me to be afraid, but the dog bones weren’t so bad once I saw them close up. They were wound in a shroud of morning glories and the flowers made them almost beautiful. But it turned out a dead dog wasn’t the most interesting thing to be found in the weedy lot. When I knelt down to have a better look at the skeleton, something shiny caught my eye. Glittering in the weeds near the dog’s skull, I saw the tip of a rock poking out of the earth like a headstone. Right away, I lost interest in the bones and reached out to touch the rock. Back then, Mark and I collected quartz. We called the shining chunks we found field diamonds, and this was the biggest one I’d ever seen.

  The field diamond was half buried and wouldn’t budge at first. The boy knelt to see what I was doing and soon he was helping me dig out the rock with his fingers. I grew afraid that he would try to claim the treasure since he had done some of the work, so I was determined to be the one who pulled it free. I gave one last yank and suddenly I was holding the quartz in my hand. I brushed off the reddish dirt and we looked at it together, the boy leaning over my shoulder. I always wanted just one precious thing for myself. Ever since I could remember, Mark got everything with his clamoring mouth—more milk, more candy, more toys. He was two years older than me but he acted like a baby, always bellowing until he got his way. Most of the time, I would rather have done without than to be like him. But this once, I wanted the prize all to myself.

  “Let me see it,” the boy said.

  As soon as he spoke, I knew. He’d steal it and run off as Mark would have done, and I’d never see it again. As much as the boy intimidated me, I clamped my hand down on that dirty chunk of something special and said, “It’s mine.”

  “Give it,” the boy said. His voice was calm enough but I can still see the awful look on his face. My guts turned to jelly. I should have given it to him, but I couldn’t bring myself to. He tried to pry open my fingers but I tore my fist away and ran. I heard him chasing and before I knew what was happening, the boy had knocked me down. My head bounced off the ground like his basketball had done and all the wind wheezed out of my lungs. I barely noticed how bad it hurt. All I felt was the rock flying out of my hands. I rolled over and tried to find it in the weeds, but the boy had already snatched it up.

  He could have taken it then and left me alone. I was too scared to fight. I would have given it to him. But the boy wasn’t satisfied to steal my rock. He straddled me and I saw something crazy in his eyes, something more than meanness. He drew back with the chunk of quartz and brought it down on my mouth. There was a bright flash of pain and I must have screamed because our daddies came running. It took them forever to reach us.

  The boy told them I fell and hit my mouth on a rock. I didn’t contradict his story, mostly because my smashed mouth hurt too much to talk. I don’t know if Daddy and the other man believed him or not. They seemed more concerned with the blood wetting my shirt. I didn’t realize until we were in the car on the way to the doctor’s that my new front tooth was broken. Maybe that’s when I knew, somewhere inside, that I wasn’t meant to have a wild, precious thing like that field diamond all for myself. And even if I could buy it, as Daddy bought Wild Rose years later, it would never really be mine.

  BYRDIE

  I wish I could remember Chickweed Holler better, but some things happened there I’ll never forget. I liked going dowsing with Myrtle. Sometimes if she traveled on foot to a place not too far, I could leave the holler for a while and see somewhere new. The soles of my feet used to itch at night and Myrtle claimed it meant my feet would walk one day on foreign ground. That’s how come she took me. She thought I ort to travel. One time Mammy let me go to the next county with Myrtle and we had to camp overnight. Mammy was worried but Myrtle said, “Why, we’ll have a big time.”

  When the sun went down we stopped to rest under a lonely tree in a wide open field. All day long we had walked and talked. Myrtle was good to ask questions to, because she t
alked to everybody just the same, didn’t matter what their age was. The whole day it was just like Myrtle told Mammy. We was having a big time. But when we settled down for the night in that long, lonesome field, not a house in sight for miles, I started missing Grandmaw and Mammy. Myrtle must have seen I was fixing to cry. She said, “Come on now, little birdie. Let’s build us a fire. I brung some chestnuts for us to roast.” The idea of roasted chestnuts worked to cheer me up some, and gathering branches took my mind off being homesick. Pretty soon we had a good fire going. We set looking into the flames as the dark came creeping over the field grass. It was hard to look away from the light of it, even though it hurt my eyes. After while Myrtle went to fishing around in her dress pocket. I thought she had the chestnuts in there, but she pulled out a little sprig of something leafy instead. She held it up for me to see in the firelight.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “This is my favorite herb,” she said. “Do you know why?” When she grinned her mouth stretched tight across her toothless gums. Her eyes reflected the flames back at me and I felt a little bit scared of her. I wanted my mammy more than ever.

  “It’s called myrtle, like my name.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Where’s the chestnuts?”

  “Just a minute, little birdie. I want to show you something. If you throw this myrtle in the fire, the face of the one you’re bound to marry will rise out of the smoke.”

  I just blinked at her at first. I didn’t want to see a face in the smoke, but I didn’t want to disappoint my great-aunt Myrtle, either. She was always bragging about how big and smart I was. She held out the sprig and after a minute I took it. I looked at the flames and they put me in mind of orange snakes dancing. My heart went to flying. I throwed that myrtle in the fire before I could chicken out of it and the fire dwindled down to just about nothing. Me and Myrtle both watched like we was under a spell, waiting for something to happen. Directly the smoke came rising up, slow and thick and black. At first I couldn’t make nothing out, but then I started seeing it. There was a pair of black eyes looking out at me. I wanted to back away from the fire but my legs wasn’t no use anymore. Then a straight nose and a fine mouth and some waving locks of coal black hair formed out of the smoke. I got so scared I couldn’t breathe. When I finally found my legs I scrambled away from that fire and ran. I yanked down my bloomers and squatted to make water in the grass before I wet all over myself. Myrtle came to check on me and I tried not to cry as we walked back to the fire. She didn’t say nothing but I knowed she felt bad for scaring me that way. She pulled me close and held me against her before we bedded down for the night. I forgot about that face until years later, after I seen John Odom for the first time. It wasn’t my own future husband’s face that came swimming up out of the fire to look at me. It was my granddaughter, Myra’s.

  * * *

  DOUG

  I was twelve when Wild Rose came home in a trailer. Daddy opened the door and she burst out like a thunderstorm. I stood back in awe of such a powerful creature of God. It was easy to see that He had made her with love, carving out her velvet nostrils with His most delicate tool, sculpting every muscle under that shining hide. The way Daddy was always dragging something home, I wasn’t surprised when he told us he’d found a horse. He said he’d wanted a paint horse with blue eyes ever since he was a boy. One day he went to see about a tractor a man had cheap in Dalton, Georgia, and found Wild Rose instead. What surprised me was how crazy Daddy was over that horse right from the start. He would stand at the fence for hours just watching her graze. It must have been love at first sight. One morning I looked out the kitchen window and saw them together in the pasture. I was up early and the ground was still stiff with frost. I took my coffee and sat on the back steps watching as Daddy tried to ride Wild Rose. For a minute, she even let him put the saddle on. He crept up to her side, one foot in the stirrup, and hauled himself onto her back. The instant the horse felt Daddy’s weight, she threw him. He landed so hard, it seemed I heard the thud of his body hitting the ground from several yards off. I wanted to go see if he was all right, but I knew his pride would be hurting.

  Thinking about Wild Rose coming home in a trailer reminds me of the first time I saw Myra, dropping out of a tree behind the church house at the homecoming dinner. Her dress flew up like a parachute, tiny legs waving and black hair floating out behind her. Myra had been around my whole life, because the Lambs lived down the mountain and went to our church, but that was the first time I took notice of her. Myra didn’t cry when she landed, but Mr. Lamb rushed to her side, dropping his paper plate and splattering food everywhere. He spanked her in front of the whole congregation and I didn’t blame him. He was scared. It was only natural to be protective of something so precious. I knew the feeling myself, even as a small boy. You took extra care of your special things. That’s how I thought of Myra, as something extra special and wild. The wild part was scary to Mr. Lamb and me both, because it meant we were always in danger of losing her.

  From the day she dropped out of that tree behind the church, I thought about Myra all the time. I followed her around school once first grade started, even though I was too backward to make friends with any of the other kids. Naturally, once Mark realized how I felt about Myra, he decided he wanted her, too. He set about stealing her attention every chance he got, making her laugh by pulling faces and burping in the library.

  When Mark and I were old enough to go off by ourselves, we walked down the mountain to play with Myra as often as we could. She liked to wear dresses in warm weather, even though she was a tomboy, because she couldn’t stand for her legs to be confined. I guess it was easier for her to run away from us with a floppy dress on. Sometimes she disappeared into the woods at the end of the day without a word and we learned not to look for her. She always came back out to play again. The three of us spent nearly every weekend shooting tin cans with my BB gun and catching grasshoppers and wrestling in the mud if we got mad at each other. Myra jumped on my back and bit me once because I beat her at a game of marbles. She was a spoiled brat, but I didn’t mind. I was her fool from the minute she jumped out of that churchyard tree.

  It was best when we ran off alone together. I followed her places where Mark wouldn’t go, into dripping caves littered with bones and hollow logs squirming with sow bugs. I wasn’t afraid when I was with her. We played all over the woods, not concerned about trespassing. My family and the Lambs and the Barnetts were the only ones living near the top of Bloodroot Mountain. The women shared their gardens and wherever the hunting was good a neighbor was welcome to shoot what he could. Fences were meant for keeping livestock in and strangers out, not for each other.

  Bloodroot Mountain is small as far as mountains go. Daddy says it’s not even a thousand feet at the summit, but as a child it was the whole world to me. I knew that at the bottom of the mountain, a little over twelve miles down winding roads, through farming communities like Piney Grove and Slop Creek and Valley Home, there was Millertown, and about sixty miles beyond that was Chickweed Holler, where Myra’s granny came from. I had traveled that far with Daddy and seen the lay of the land, long stretches of corn and high grass, bridges over foaming waters, and white farmhouses scattered on hills. But the minute I got back home, with none of those places visible through the trees, I forgot about them. There was only Bloodroot Mountain and I didn’t mind because Myra was up here with me. The whole mountain belonged to us and we knew its terrain like our own bodies, every scar and cleft and fold.

  But one fall morning, when I was ten, the three of us found something we hadn’t seen before. It was an abandoned cistern high on the slope behind the Barnetts’ house, half covered in dead vines. Myra pulled back the growth to reveal a stone opening edged with moss. Bright leaves floated on the surface of the murky water collected inside. I held my breath as Myra knelt to look closer. I’d heard tales of children drowning in wells and cisterns. Suddenly the trees I had lived under all my life seemed like giants peering
over our shoulders, some so tall a grown man couldn’t have reached the lowest branches. I looked back toward Mr. Barnett’s house, a swatch of dingy white peeking up through the skinny trunks. It seemed so far below us, like there were no grown-ups around for miles.

  “Oh,” Myra said. “Poor little thing.”

  Mark crouched beside Myra and I took a step forward, not wanting her to think Mark was braver than me. I leaned over and saw a baby chimney swift floating among the leaves. I swallowed hard and inched a little closer.

  “Must have fell out of a nest,” Mark said, glancing into the trees overhead.

  “Chimney swifts don’t live in trees,” Myra said. “Look, there’s a nest in here.”

  When she pointed I saw an empty cradle of straw in the shadows below the cistern’s opening. It made the bird’s death even sadder somehow, that its corpse had been left behind. I lowered myself beside Myra, the earth cold under my knees. I couldn’t look away from the dark clump of feathers, the tiny, sealed-shut eyes. We peered into the cistern for a long time, like mourners at a graveside. I didn’t notice until it was almost too late how far over Myra was leaning, her top half nearly lost in the dank gloom. Then we heard the crack of twigs and the thrash of fallen leaves. Before I had time to wonder who was coming, a big hand hauled Myra away from the cistern’s stone mouth by the back of her dress. Mark and I scrambled to our feet, eyes wide. It was Haskell Barnett standing there with a crease between his bushy eyebrows, leaning on the handle of his axe.