Bloodroot Read online

  DOUG

  In the winter right before I turned twelve, Myra got chicken pox and stayed home from school for a week. At recess I sat by the chain-link fence at the back of the playground poking sticks and brown weeds through the diamonds into the churchyard grass on the other side, my fingers stiff with cold. I looked at the graves and thought of climbing over to lie on top of one where it was quiet and still, away from the thud of basketballs and the screams of my bundled up classmates lunging under the net, white bursts of breath pluming out of their hoods. Without Myra, they intimidated me a little, even though we were all the same. Before the new high school was built, in 1970, kids of all ages from across the county were bused in to Slop Creek where the red brick school building stood beside a Methodist church at the end of a dusty dirt road. We were mostly the children of farmers and I guess I should have related to them. But it wasn’t just my classmates I couldn’t get used to. Myra and I hated everything about school. In first grade, we were always in trouble for hiding. We’d slip into the janitor’s closet, eyes stinging from the bleachy mop water. Once we ran into the field behind the school with the teacher calling after us. We went deep into the high weeds, laughter making us breathless. When the teacher found us she paddled us both, two licks. I was miserable without Myra, half mad at her for being sick. I drew up my knees and tried to be invisible but it didn’t work. A girl from my class named Tina Cutshaw saw me and walked over.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  I didn’t look up at her face. I already knew it, pale with slit eyes and a fuzzy ring of dun-colored hair. She sat in the desk next to mine staring at me all day. I looked at her shoes instead, mud-crusted brogans with the laces untied. They were probably hand-me-downs from her brother, a bone-thin boy who was always throwing up. There was a rumor that he needed surgery on his stomach but their parents couldn’t afford it. Tina’s father drew a disability check and her mother had run off with another man. I didn’t answer her. I waited for her to go away, but she sat down in the grass close to me. I scooted over. When she breathed through her mouth I could smell her rotten teeth.

  “Where’s your girlfriend?” she asked.

  My heart leapt to hear Myra called my girlfriend. I thought at first she was making fun of me, but I glanced at her eyes and they were serious. Maybe Tina Cutshaw wasn’t so bad. I poked a twig through the fence. “She’s got the chicken pox,” I said.

  Tina was silent for a minute but I could still feel her watching me. It made my skin crawl. “You oughtn’t to mess with that girl,” she said finally. She plucked a thistle and twirled its stalk between her thumb and forefinger. Part of me wanted to ask what she was talking about, but I didn’t. I glanced at her dirty face. She grinned and tickled herself under the chin with the thistle’s prickly head. “Don’t you know about her people? My mamaw said they’re witches. You better watch out. She’ll put a hex on you.”

  I turned away from Tina Cutshaw and stared through the chain link at the silent graves, wishing for her to disappear. I could feel my ears reddening.

  “It’s true,” she said. “Mamaw told me. If you keep hanging around with that girl, you’ll be cursed the rest of your life. All kinds of bad things will happen to you.”

  I should have got up and walked off but somehow I couldn’t move. Then I felt a touch under my chin, a sly tickling. I jerked away and she dropped the thistle in my lap. I pressed my face into the chain link so hard that my cheeks and forehead hurt. “What’s wrong, Doug?” Tina Cutshaw asked. “I can be your girlfriend if you want.”

  After school I walked down the mountain to see Mr. Barnett, chest tightening as I passed the house where I knew Myra was sick in bed. I found Mr. Barnett hammering on his roof, where a storm had blown off some shingles. I waited on the porch until he came down, trying not to think about Tina Cutshaw and the prickle of her thistle’s head.

  “What do you say, Douglas?” Mr. Barnett said, coming around the house with his hammer. He stopped grinning when he saw my face. “Lord have mercy, boy. You look like you done lost your best friend.” I stared down at my shoes, not ready yet to talk.

  He left the hammer on the steps and I followed him across the yard, hands stuffed deep in my coat pockets against the cold. Halfway up the slope, when I still hadn’t spoken, Mr. Barnett asked what was on my mind. “Something happened at school,” I said. I told him about Tina Cutshaw all in a rush, barely stopping to pause for breath. When I was finished, light-headed and dizzy, I waited for him to say it was nonsense. He moved silently under the winter trees, eyes tracking a red bird, until I began to think he wouldn’t respond at all. Then he startled me by saying, “I figured you’d hear it sooner or later. That talk’s been going around ever since Byrdie came here from Chick-weed Holler.” I stopped and stared but he walked on without me. I hurried to catch up.

  “Back when Byrdie and her mama first came to Piney Grove to worship, there was an old busybody in the congregation by the name of Ethel Cox. She had something ill to say about everybody. My mama was in charge of organizing the bake sale that year and she held a meeting at our house. Well, there wasn’t much talk about a bake sale that night. It was stuffy so Mama had opened the windows. I stood outside smoking and heard the whole thing. Big old Ethel got up and said, ‘Before we get started, there’s something important that ort to be addressed.’ She was always trying to sound proper. I peeped in and seen her standing in front of one of the chairs Mama had arranged in a circle, big as a Sherman tank in that flowered dress she wore all the time. She said, ‘I’m talking about that Pinkston woman and her girl that’s been coming to Sunday morning services. I thought I knew that woman the minute I seen her. I got to talking with my second cousin that lives in Chickweed Holler where the Pinkstons come from, and I figured it out.’ Then she took a big pause. The other ladies was getting restless. It was hot and they was fanning theirselves with paper fans Mama got from the funeral home. I could tell they wished Ethel would get on with it. Ethel said, ‘That woman’s mother is Ruth Bell, one of the Chickweed Holler witches.’ I knowed she expected everybody to gasp and carry on, but they just looked at her like she was crazy. She said, ‘Ain’t you all ever heard of the Chickweed Holler witches?’ Her fat cheeks was turning red. Mama asked her what in the world she was talking about. She never could stand Ethel Cox. Ethel said, ‘The women of that family has been practicing witchcraft up in them hills since time out of mind. I been hearing stories about them all of my life.’ Mama said, ‘Now, Ethel, you know there ain’t no such thing as witchcraft.’ Ethel looked mad enough to spit. She pushed her glasses up on her nose and said, ‘Well, them Bell women thinks there is. They’re up yonder making love potions and casting spells, and who knows what all. We can’t have people like that joining our church.’ Then Mama got Ethel’s goat real good. She said, ‘If what you say is the truth, it sounds like they need to be in church just about as bad as you do.’ I believe Ethel would’ve choked Mama dead on the spot if she could have got away with it. She stood there for another minute red in the face, mouth working like a fish on dry land, trying to think of something else to say, before she finally set back down. If it hadn’t been for Mama, Ethel Cox might have got her way and run Byrdie off.”

  He fell silent and we walked on for a while, our shadows long on the frozen ground. I listened to the wind stirring through the trees. It sounded like an incantation. “Mr. Barnett,” I said at last. He glanced at me and kept on walking. “Do you believe it?”

  He seemed to think it over, maybe deciding if he should go on. “I never did buy that talk about witches,” he said. “But sometimes I thought about it. Like one time I walked up the hill to take Byrdie and Macon a cake Margaret made and seen Myra sleeping under a tree. She was just a little bitty thing then, must have got tuckered out playing and laid down right yonder in the shade to take a nap. I walked up to make sure she was all right before I went in the house. That’s when I seen the butterflies. They was lit all over her arms and legs and in her hair. T
here was even two or three on her face, all sizes and colors with their wings opening and closing. I shut my eyes, thinking I might be seeing things. But when I opened them up, all of the butterflies was still there and Myra still sleeping away. She looked like a child out of a fairy story. For some reason, I was scared to death. Directly Myra opened her eyes and blinked at me. I kept still and held my breath to see what she would do. It took her a second to notice anything was unusual. Then she raised up her arms and said, ‘Look, Mr. Barnett. Look at the birds.’ I never told anybody this story except for you, Douglas. Sometimes I wonder if I dreamed it.”

  There was nothing else to say after that. We walked out of the woods and parted without a goodbye. Dark was already falling across the mountain as I headed home. I was late for supper but I stopped in the road for a while anyway to look up at Myra’s house. The front windows glowed and there was smoke rising out of the chimney. I tried to send her a message in case mind reading was one of her powers. I love you, I shouted without words across the rushing creek and the rocky ground and through the walls that kept me out. Then I moved on, feeling empty and lonesome and like someone cursed.

  BYRDIE

  I never will forget the first time Macon took me up Bloodroot Mountain. It was the spring of 1913, not long after that day we hid Easter eggs. He lived up here and took care of his pap that had a stroke and his two sisters after their mammy died. We had to take a mule and cart, because there wasn’t no roads back then. There was just a dirt track that you could ride a horse or mule on. It was getting to be afternoon and the sun glared in our eyes all the way up the mountain. Shadows fell across the road and I was nervous. Mammy hadn’t wanted to let me go but I had begged Pap. Now I was having second thoughts. It seemed like Macon was taking me off to some hainted place. I pictured all kinds of creatures hiding in them woods, but they was pretty even though they was thick. The creek was pretty, too, rushing down off the mountain alongside the track. I tried to sit back and enjoy the ride but every time I looked down my belly sunk. It was a long ways to the valley below. By the time we got up here I was about half sick. Then we rounded a curve and glimpsed the house up on a hill with a little barn off to the side, the sky bright blue over top of its red tin roof. The sun was shining down on it through the trees, the edges of the leaves tinged with gold. It looked so nice my heart fluttered.

  Right when I thought we’d never make it, we started up the path to the house. Macon said, “Yonder it is.” From the minute I seen this place, I knowed I was home. Macon and his sisters had kept it up good. The paint on the house looked fresh and the tin roof had a pretty sheen to it. The barn looked new and there was hogs in the lot. There was flowers of every color and birdhouses in the trees. I didn’t know it yet, but Macon had built them hisself. When we got out of the cart, Macon’s sisters came to meet us, both of them quite a bit younger than him. They looked alike, skinny little things named Becky and Jane. I couldn’t wait to get ahold of them younguns and fatten them up.

  Walking across the yard, Becky said, “I got some beans, but they ain’t soft yet.”

  Macon asked me, “Why don’t we take a walk before supper?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “These ain’t walking shoes.”

  “Surely a country gal like you’s had a few blisters. I believe you’ll be all right.”

  Macon took ahold of my hand and led me behind the house, dragging me up through the trees until I was just about give out. He was laughing at me by the time we got there. It took forever and I was starved. I figured dinner was already on the table.

  “You crazy thing,” I said to Macon. He pulled me close and kissed me hard.

  “Looky here,” he said, pointing at the ground. He was panting, just about out of wind his own self. “This here’s why they call it Bloodroot Mountain.”

  “What is?”

  Macon knelt and pulled me down with him. “These here flowers.” He rubbed a white petal with his finger and that tenderness made my heart ache. Then he started to dig around the flower with his hands. I didn’t know what he was doing, but I didn’t want to ask. It was so quiet, except for the sounds of mountain woods. It felt like a ceremony, like we was in church down there on our knees. Macon pulled the flower out of the ground and held it in his hands where I could see the root. It was fleshy and about as thick as a finger, looked like part of a human being. I got cold chills all over. Something came whispering through the trees, sounded like voices or a long breath. Just like that day in the churchyard, I smelled Macon, the musk of his whiskers, the clean of his clothes. Then he fished out his knife and cut the root in two pieces. When I seen that blood seeping out it was like everything slowed down. Home rushed through my mind, thoughts of Mammy and Pap and my childhood days in Chickweed Holler. It seemed like my whole life was leading up to this very minute. I had a bad urge to turn around and run fast as I could back down the mountain, but then Macon looked at me and his birthmark darkened like it did when he got excited about anything. I thought of Myrtle saying I’d walk one day on foreign ground and decided this was as foreign a ground as my feet would touch. From then on the soles of them quit itching. I made my choice and that was it. Macon was my home and far as I was concerned any wedding we had was just for show. I’d done cleaved myself to him right yonder under the trees, kneeling over that bloodroot flower. Looking at its red root sap, I was overcome with something that felt like the Holy Ghost. I seen all the generations that would come out of me and Macon. I seen our blood mixed up together, shining there in the gloomy light.

  DOUG

  The Sunday after Daddy brought Wild Rose home, Mark whispered to Myra during preaching, “We got a horse.” Mama whipped around and shot him a look, so he hushed. Myra didn’t seem that interested, but after the service she was bored enough to come with us up the mountain to see Wild Rose. Walking to the fence, I had an uneasy feeling. I could sense Myra moving away from me. I wanted to grab hold of the floating skein of her hair as if we were in a cave and might get lost from each other. But I hung back as Mark led her on, calling for the horse with a handful of sweet corn.

  We had to cross the first hill to find Wild Rose, and Mark and Myra took off chasing each other. She was giggling and out of breath, the belt of her green dress dragging the ground like a dead garter snake. When Mark was around I usually found myself tagging along behind them. I ran to keep Myra in my sight. She skidded to a stop when she saw Wild Rose grazing on the next hill. Mark tripped and went sprawling, the corn flying out of his hand. “Shoot,” he said, still laughing. He tried to look up Myra’s dress as she stood there awestruck. Wild Rose lifted her head and looked at us. I thought she would take off as she always did when people came close to her. But it was different this time. She lengthened her neck toward us and sniffed the air, then walked slowly to where we stood, muscles working under her velvet hide. Even Mark got quiet. The horse kept coming until she stood in front of Myra, close but still out of reach. I wanted to shout or clap my hands, anything to drive Wild Rose away, but I couldn’t move.

  “She’s got blue eyes,” Myra said.

  “She’s a paint horse,” Mark said, trying to recover a few kernels of corn. “They got eyes like that sometimes.”

  “They look like yours,” I said. I don’t know if Myra heard me. Her fingers were trembling at her sides, eager to touch the horse’s white-streaked nose. Wild Rose stared at Myra, hide twitching. When Myra finally reached out her hand, the horse got spooked and galloped away. Myra stared after her for a long time. Like Daddy, she was smitten. But I knew she loved Wild Rose for a different reason than Daddy did. Daddy loved her because she was something different than he was. Myra loved Wild Rose because they were the same. I guess it doesn’t matter why, but both of them loved her better than they loved me. I moved closer to Myra as we stood in the pasture, trying to claim her back somehow.

  “That horse is crazy,” Mark said, getting to his feet and knocking clods of dirt from the knees of his good pants. “Ain’t no use fooli
ng with her.”

  BYRDIE

  If I think too much about John Odom wearing that ring I get mad enough to bite nails in two. The first time I seen it was at the Cochrans’ house the day me and Macon snuck off to get married. I used to walk all the way over yonder to work with my big ears hid under a headscarf. I had to start out when it was still dark if I meant to get there in time to fix the breakfast. Most times I’d show up on the doorstep already wore out.

  That dairy farm they lived on stunk to high heaven, but you’d never know it by the way Barbara Cochran put on airs. Bucky was the biggest farmer in three counties and they was the richest people I knowed. Bucky came from money to start with, before he ever decided to farm. His pap was a doctor and I always heard Bucky was a disappointment because he didn’t get none of the family brains. Used to be the church’d hold baptisms over at Slop Creek, which runs down off the mountain and through Piney Grove, but they had to quit after Bucky came in with his spotted heifers and dirtied up the water. Now them boys of his has built chicken houses that’d knock you down in the summertime. I swear I can smell them all the way up here. That’s how them Cochrans are. It don’t matter to them about their neighbors, as long as they’re raking in the money.

  Every morning I’d unlock the back door and let myself in the house. Usually I’d get to work while Barbara Cochran was still asleep, but that day she came down the stairs wrapped in her pink chenille bathrobe and said, “Byrdie, honey, would you mind to clean the oven this time? I’ve got people coming in from North Carolina for the weekend.” She always talked to me real sweet, the same way she spoke to her little house dog.

  She bustled around all morning and didn’t even eat the breakfast I fixed. Around ten o’clock she lit out for the beauty shop. I was straightening up her room and seen she’d left her jewelry box open, all in a fizz getting ready for her company. That silver box was always setting on her dressing table and I’d run the feather duster over it without thinking twice about what was inside. I was a God-fearing girl and Barbara Cochran never had any reason to mistrust me before. But I’d slipped in the back door that morning with Macon Lamb on my mind. We was running off to get married. Pap didn’t want to let me go being just fifteen, but I couldn’t wait no longer to be Macon’s wife. It was all I could do to concentrate on my chores. The only reason I went to work at all that day was to collect my pay. She left it every Friday on the kitchen table under a candlestick.