Bloodroot Read online

  “Doug,” she shouted over the wind. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you,” I said.

  “What?” she said. “I can’t hear you!”

  “It’s true. You are a witch.”

  “I can’t hear you!” she shouted again.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  She tugged at my arm, smiling. “Come sit with me!”

  I didn’t move and Myra’s smile faltered. I thought a moment of sadness passed across her face, but looking back she was probably already too wrapped up in John Odom to care. Since that day, I’ve been thinking about the anger that took hold of me. I didn’t even know it was in there. Now I know it always was and always will be. But I could never have hurt Myra, or gone through with poisoning Wild Rose. I can’t turn my anger loose, even on a horse. I guess it will poison me instead, maybe for the rest of my life.

  BYRDIE

  Even with Myra there to love, them first few years after Clio died liked to done me in. I volunteered me and Macon to clean up the church and take care of the graveyard so I could at least stay close to her body. Saturdays we’d head down the mountain and while Macon scraped chewing gum off the bottoms of the pews I’d pull weeds from around the headstones with Myra crawling over the grass. Summer evenings I’d drag my lawn chair out of the truck bed and set in front of the graves of my children, watching lightning bugs rise out of the ground like sparks going up in the dark. They was all lined up together, small markers for the babies and a bigger one for Willis and a double headstone for Kenny and Clio. I’d think about their bones down yonder, scraps of the clothes I buried them in still clinging on, and try to feel close to what was left of them. But I couldn’t reach none of my children that way, no matter how long I set there. I couldn’t even picture their bones after a while. Macon wouldn’t come out to disturb me. He waited inside after he was done cleaning the church. I know he thought I was taking comfort, but for a long time being in the graveyard didn’t do me a bit of good. Then one evening I was listening to the tree frogs, thinking about heading back up the mountain, when I felt Myra’s hand on my arm. She was three years old, standing on the grave of one of her aunts that never even made it to her age. She was alive and solid and there with me. I took her fingers and studied them, rubbing over the dirty little fingernails with my thumb. She looked at the graves, decorated with the wild-flowers I had brung, and asked, “Is this Heaven, Granny?” I took a big breath of night air and drawed her close. “No, honey,” I said. “It’s not.” I buried my face in her neck and thought, You are.

  Me and Macon suffered a lot of heartbreak, but at least we had one another to lean on. I ain’t going to say it was always peaceful between us, but it was always loving, even when we fought each other. I never cared to fight. In school, I scrapped with boys and girls both. When me and Macon first got married we’d get mad and scrabble around in the floor, smacking each other and pulling hair and grinding our heads together like billy goats. To us, that was all part of being married. There wasn’t no hate in it.

  Once we got older we didn’t fight like that no more. Neither one of us had the stomach for it. We figured it was time to rest in our old age. We didn’t talk much either, but it wasn’t out of hatefulness. We just got to where we liked the quiet. We’d set back and watch Myra dart through the house, long red hair ribbon streaming out, chattering like a magpie and pretty as a doll. It was her time now, we’d done had our own.

  Macon didn’t show it, but he loved Myra from far off about as much as I did close up. He was always leaving gifts on her pillow, like that red ribbon she wore all the time. When she found it she took it right to the mirror and tied up her hair. Then she ran to find Macon smoking by the stove. He stood there pretending not to wait for her. She throwed herself at his legs and asked, “Am I pretty?” He stroked her head and said, “That red suits you, Myra Jean.” Times like that, I wanted to bust, seeing how much Macon loved to please our grandbaby. He’d stand in the kitchen door while I cooked supper and watch her play in the yard, letting in flies to pester me. In the summertime it was hotter than a firecracker in here, with grease popping and splattering on my arms. I’d finally get plumb ill and say, “Macon, let that youngun alone. How’s she ever going to grow up with you stifling her down?” But I never could get Macon to give that child rest. I knowed what it was. We’d lost so many, he was scared to let the last one left out of his sight. If Macon was out of the bed at night, I knowed he was standing over Myra watching her breathe.

  I struggled with them same old demons. It was hard to let Myra loose when I wanted to keep her with me every minute. She was wild, but not as bad as her mama. Sometimes the schoolteacher would send home a note saying Myra wouldn’t set down at her desk. She’d stand up to do her lessons, or wander over to the window and stare out. But she settled down in the later grades. The most trouble we had out of Myra was when she took it in her head to climb to the top of the mountain. She’d slip off and Macon would have to go find her. He’d pepper her legs with a switch but she’d head right back out. Thank goodness she quit doing that, but she never did lose that old restless nature. She didn’t run off once she got bigger, but she’d set on the back steps and chew her fingernails to the bloody quick, looking off in the woods like she didn’t even know she was doing it. I’d feel like squalling, watching her gnaw at herself that way, because I knowed what it meant. Still, Myra was a good girl. She didn’t give me too much grief, but I made up plenty for myself to worry about. If I found a tick in her ear I’d mark the date on the calendar and watch her real close for that spotted fever I’d heard tell of. First sign of a sniffle and I’d have to go off somewhere and collect myself before I let Myra see my nerves all tore up. Only thing that got me through her childhood, with all them croups and stomach bugs and sore throats, was going to the good Lord daily in prayer.

  Sometimes Myra tried to tear away from me when I held her, but she’d always come back to be petted and loved on because she knowed how bad I needed to do it. But Macon showed his love in different ways than mine, like buying them trinkets to leave on her pillow and whittling things for her. He carved up a whole set of animals for her to play with, and brung her home I don’t know how many puppies and kittens over the years. I’d get mad enough to wring his neck when I’d see him carrying another mutt up the hill. Sometimes people would set out a dog or cat at the filling station just because they knowed he’d take it home if he found it hanging around the pumps looking hungry.

  In 1969, the summer Myra turned twelve, me and her left Macon working in the yard one day and walked up to the Cotters. Oleta Cotter had had female surgery and was laid up for several weeks, so me and Margaret Barnett took turns going up yonder to see about her. The Cotters live the furthest up the mountain and keep the most to theirselves. They don’t poke their nose in nobody’s business, but they’d give you the shirt off of their back if they knowed you was in trouble. I learnt that after Clio got killed. Oleta came down the mountain every day to cook for Macon and take care of Myra until I could stand to get out of the bed. That’s how come I didn’t care a bit to see to her worshing and make sure them boys was fed when she was laid up. It was hot that day and I had sweat dripping in my eyes by the time me and Myra got halfway up to the house. Them two youngest Cotter boys, Douglas and Mark, ran out of the woods to meet us like wild Indians. They stopped in the middle of the road plumb out of breath.

  “Hidee, Miss Lamb,” Mark said, pushing his shaggy hair out of his eyes. I don’t believe I ever seen them two that they didn’t need a haircut. Mark was the only one of them boys that’d talk. I don’t reckon I ever heard Douglas say a word. Myra said he knowed how to talk, he was just real quiet. Douglas was in Myra’s class and Mark was two years ahead of her. Both of them boys was struck on Myra and tried to court her all through school, but she never would go with either one of them. Mark and Douglas was nice-looking fellers, even when they was little, had big old brown eyes and gold hair, but I reckon they seemed like br
others to Myra. They was always into something. That day it wasn’t even dinnertime yet and looked like they’d already been rolling in mud. Myra always kept right up with them, climbing trees and shooting marbles and whatever else it was they done. Mark held out his BB gun to show Myra and said, “Let’s go shoot cans.” Then they tore off up the hill ahead of me like their britches was on fire.

  I took my time following them on towards the house. Bill and Oleta have a tiny little place with a stone foundation and a covered porch. Not too long ago Bill had put on some cheap gray cardboard siding, supposed to look like brick. He’d poured a cement walk up to the porch, too, but grass had growed over most of it. There was trees and bushes crowded against the house and a line of fence posts sticking up behind it where Bill kept a few cows.

  Bill gets rid of his cows every few years, until he takes a notion to buy up some more, but he never does get tired of that horse he bought from a man in Dalton, Georgia. I swear that’s the orneriest creature I ever seen, but Bill loves her like somebody. Now, she’s beautiful, I can’t deny that, and you can see her spirit burning like fire in them blue eyes. She’s a paint mare, and the first time I seen them eyes I liked to jumped out of my skin. I never knowed a horse could have eyes like that. They was just like Myra’s, and that might be why my grandbaby was so fixed on her from the beginning. I knowed that was why she always wanted to go up to the Cotters’ with me, to see Wild Rose. That’s the name the horse had when Bill bought her, and it suits her. His old fence never could keep her in. I don’t know how many times Rose came tearing down the mountain with her tail up, trampling through our garden and leaving manure in the yard. Sometimes I wondered if she was looking for Myra. It was eerie seeing them together. Myra would stand at the fence and Wild Rose kept her distance, but she’d stare Myra straight in the eye, neither one of them moving a muscle. Then Rose’d take off like she was spooked across the hills. Wild as Myra was, I guess in a way them two was sisters.

  When I got up to the house I could hear Douglas and Mark and Myra at the barn calling for Wild Rose, but I couldn’t see them. As I was walking up on the porch Bill Cotter opened the front door and came out. I said, “Hidee, Bill.” He tipped his cap at me and went on down the steps to his truck. Bill don’t say much, but he’s a good man.

  I went in the front room and seen the linoleum needed mopping. Bill or them boys had tracked mud in. Oleta was laying on the couch and her head nearly wringing wet with sweat. Poor thing looked like she was roasting so I opened some windows for her.

  “Where’s that Bill headed off to?” I asked, gathering up some pieces of newspaper he’d left by his chair.

  “Laws, I don’t know. He don’t never tell me nothing. Why, he don’t even tell me bye no more when he leaves the house. Does Macon do you thataway?”

  “Well,” I said, but Oleta was done off on another subject before I could answer.

  There was quite a bit needed doing. I swept and mopped and put a pot of beans on the stove. As I was tidying up, somehow or other I got to feeling funny. I got to studying on what Oleta asked, did Macon do me that way. I reckon the answer would have been yes if she had give me time. He’d head out for work every morning without saying a word, but he didn’t need to. We knowed each other so good after all them years of marriage, there wasn’t no use in saying much. I’d fix his dinner and put it in his bucket and we’d drink us a cup of coffee beside of the stove, then he’d get up and leave. I didn’t see nothing wrong with it, but the way Oleta said it sounded bad. I tried to remember if I said goodbye to Macon when me and Myra left the house that morning. The whole time I was worshing Oleta’s breakfast dishes and sweeping off the back stoop I was retracing my steps, trying to decide if I told Macon bye. In my head I was waking up before first light, Macon already setting on his side of the bed getting his boots on. I was walking across the dewy grass toward the barn to gather eggs. I was frying the eggs in my old iron skillet and calling for Myra to get up before she slept the day away. I was eating breakfast in the kitchen by myself because Macon and Myra was done before I ever set down. I was bringing in some tomatoes before they rotted on the vine. I was telling Myra if she wanted to walk up to the Cotters’ with me she better come on. I was passing Macon on my way down the hill with Myra as he was headed for the barn. “Did you see them dadburn Japanese beetles on my rosebush?” I asked him. “I was fixing to spray,” he said. That was it. I never did say bye. I reckon he knowed where I was going, because he probably heard me holler at Myra, but I started feeling bad just the same.

  The longer I was at the Cotters’, the more anxious I got to get back to the house. I allowed to Oleta I better get on home and fix Macon a bite of supper. I had to stand in the yard and holler for Myra a long time, until she finally came out of the woods looking like she’d rolled in the mud with them Cotter boys, sticks and leaves stuck in her hair. I thought how I’d have to check her head for ticks before she went to bed that night.

  Since I’d turned seventy-one, I didn’t get around as good as I used to. I was wore out by the time we got home, but Myra never ran out of wind. She took off for the house soon as we made it up the hill and beat me to the door by a mile. She went on in while I was still dragging across the yard. I seen where Macon had done a little bit of weeding around the steps and there was a mess of wood shavings in the grass, too, so I knowed he must have been whittling. He was getting on in years hisself, nearly eighty by then, and couldn’t take the sun for long at a time. He’d take a break and set down if he got too hot working in the yard, but Macon never could stand for his hands to be idle.

  I didn’t think nothing of it and went on in the house. First thing I seen was Myra, standing in the middle of the floor with her back to me, hair ribbon hanging crooked where she’d been playing. It took me a minute to see she was looking at Macon. He was slumped over in his chair, the same way he took a nap of the evenings, but it still didn’t hit me that something was wrong. I reckon I was so hot and weary my head was addled.

  “What in the world are you doing?” I asked Myra.

  She turned around and I never will forget the look in her eyes. She said, “Is Granddaddy sleeping?”

  That’s when I knowed. I walked over to his chair and seen how still he was. “No,” I said to Myra. “He ain’t asleep.” I ran my finger across that island birthmark one more time. Then I sent Myra down to the Barnetts’ for Hacky to get word to the coroner. I hated for her to have to do it alone, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave Macon’s side.

  I was setting at Macon’s feet waiting for the people to come when I noticed this little wood box, about the size of my hand. It was on a piece of newspaper on the end table beside of his chair, looked like the varnish was still tacky on it. He must have been working on it for a while out in the barn when I thought he was making another bird-house. Once I seen it I smelled the varnish, but I hadn’t even noticed it until then. The lid was laying separate and it was the prettiest piece of carving I ever seen. It was carved with a bloodroot flower, all by itself. I could tell he’d took time with every petal and every vein in the leaves. I figure he made it for Myra’s birthday to hold her trinkets, and meant to hide it someplace once the varnish dried. Then he’d leave it on her pillow without saying nothing and stand off somewhere waiting for her to find it.

  I knowed what it meant that he would give Myra that bloodroot flower. I knowed everything he was trying to say to her. I took Macon’s hand and wet it with my tears, wishing I never left him alone that day. After all me and Macon went through together, for him to die by hisself broke my heart. It took a little bit of work to pull that bloodred ring off of his poor old finger, stained black with the oil of all them engines he’d fiddled with down through the years. His knuckles had swole with arthritis as he got older. But then it was in my palm, like I dropped it in his that day in the cornfield. I put the ring in that fine box he whittled like it was a casket, the last thing he ever done. I took the box and Macon’s whittling knife to the back bedroom,
where me and him had started sleeping after Clio got killed by that train so we could feel closer to her. I made a cut in the mattress and hid the box before anybody came to see about Macon’s body. I didn’t want Myra to have it before she knowed how to appreciate it. She was too young to understand the preciousness of that bloodroot flower, no matter how pretty it was, and I didn’t know how to tell her. I slept on top of that ring for four years, until the day I gave it to Myra for that snake John Odom. Now I’d do just about anything to have it back.

  DOUG

  Myra and I didn’t talk again after that day I found her crouched on the rock. She stopped riding the bus and I knew it was about that tall boy Mark claimed he had seen her with. One night near graduation, Mama and Daddy were talking over supper about how Frankie Odom’s son was struck on Myra. They said he’d been taking her to and from school and coming up the mountain to get her every Saturday night. I recognized the name Odom from a long time ago. We used to stop in at Odom’s Hardware when I was small, but Daddy had stopped trading there after Odom raised his prices. I looked across the table at Mark, his cheeks fat with mashed potatoes. He had lost interest in Myra. All he thought about was joining the service and fighting in Vietnam. I wondered how he could eat when my stomach felt like a cauldron of acid. I guess in my heart of hearts I knew he didn’t love her, but I never thought how quickly he’d move on.

  After supper we stood having a smoke out behind the barn, hiding even though we were grown, because we didn’t want to hear Mama’s mouth.

  “What do you think about Myra and that Odom boy?” I asked, trying to be casual.