Bloodroot Read online

  Mark pitched his butt into the dark grass. “Shoot, I gave up on that’n a long time ago. If a man’s not crazy, he’ll finally get the picture.” Mark grinned and slapped me on the back. I pitched my butt with shaking fingers and followed him inside.

  The next day, for the last time, I went to see Mr. Barnett. He was in the garden pulling weeds. When he saw me he took off his cap and wiped the sweat from his brow. He didn’t ask what I was up to. We stood for a while in silence, looking toward the woods at the edge of the yard where we had walked together so many times. “You were wrong,” I told him at last. “She won’t ever come around.” Then my knees came unhinged and I sank down in the black dirt. Mr. Barnett knelt with me and hugged me tight. “You’re the one she ought to be with, Douglas,” he said. “You and me both know it’s the truth. But Myra’s got a choice. Everybody’s got a choice. She just made the wrong one.”

  A week or so later, I saw Myra and John Odom together. He was waiting for her in the school parking lot, leaning against his car. Girls stood around giggling about how pretty he was, but he looked like the devil to me. Long and lean, tall and dark as a shadow, eyes black as pits. It was like he reeled her across the parking lot by an invisible hook in her perfect lip. I was standing close enough to smell her hair as she walked by, but she didn’t even see me. He did an odd thing when she got to the car. He put his hand on the top of her head. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was like a stranger walking up and saddling Wild Rose, swinging up on her back, and riding off across the hills.

  John Odom was the one Myra was looking for all along. I guess somewhere there’s somebody that could ride Wild Rose, too. It was Mama who told me that Myra was married. Until I heard it, there was hope she might come back. But the minute the words left Mama’s mouth last night, I knew I was leaving. I haven’t decided where I’ll go, maybe Canada to escape the draft and the memory of her voice. This morning I walked out the back door at first light, duffel bag over my shoulder and a book Myra left behind in my hand. I dropped the book in the trash barrel to be burnt on my way to the pasture. I want the embers to disperse and the words to find her somewhere, in a house beside of the railroad tracks, according to Mama. I picture her standing in some sooty yard looking up at the moon, a flat world with no shine where the trees are black outlines, with a hint of smoke in her nostrils. I know it’s not true, but I want some sadness to enter her when she thinks of me and the mountain. I want her to suffer for my sake. Myra might get back one day up Bloodroot Mountain, but if she does I won’t be here.

  After I dropped the book into the trash barrel, I ducked under the fence and went across the pasture to where Wild Rose was grazing. Standing with my bag over my shoulder and bus-ticket money in the breast pocket of my shirt, I got closer to her than I’ve ever been. Now her breath snuffs out in white clouds as she sniffs of me. Maybe she’s letting me close because she knows it’s goodbye. I think she’s not mad about what happened out in the barn last night. I might have won her respect. Or maybe she smells my acceptance of the truth she’s tried to tell me all along. Some creatures are just meant to be left alone. They can’t be held on to, even if we love them more than anything.

  BYRDIE

  After Macon passed on, I vowed to give Myra some room to stretch her legs. That’s some of the reason I let John Odom court her when she got to be seventeen. She was the same age as Clio was when she ran off with Kenny Mayes, but Myra was different than her mama. I thought she had a better head on her shoulders. I know now I should have been more careful. But it was plain how Myra loved that man and there wasn’t no use fighting her. I didn’t want to lose my grand-baby so I let her go, and ended up losing her anyhow. But I don’t see what I could have done to hang on to her. She was bound and determined to have John Odom, same way I was to have Macon, and Clio was to have Kenny. If Macon was still living he would have went down to them tracks with a shotgun a long time ago and got her out of there. Matter of fact, he wouldn’t have let her go off with John Odom in the first place. Macon might have had it right all along, not letting Myra out of his sight. I guess sometimes a body just don’t know what to do.

  I had me a good garden last spring, when John Odom first started coming around. I always plant by the signs. Things that grows in the ground like taters I do on the dark nights of the moon, and things that grows on top of the ground I plant on the light nights. Last year I growed the best sweet corn I ever put in my mouth. I’d planted it earlier than usual and it was real warm weather, so the corn was already high. I was out yonder gathering it in, had my tin tub about half full, when I heard car doors slamming shut. I already knowed Myra was struck on somebody because she told me. She wasn’t one to keep secrets like her mama done. Ever since I knowed it, I’d been dreading the day she’d bring some old boy up Bloodroot Mountain for me to see, and now the day had come.

  I didn’t go around the house to meet him and her. I just closed my eyes for a minute, so fagged out it seemed like I couldn’t stand up. I figured it was going to be like it was with Kenny and Clio, and I didn’t know if I could take it this time. I should have knowed to expect more out of my grandbaby. She came around the house pulling John along by the hand. I turned around holding a good ear of corn, the silky tassel hanging down. It was just about sunset and John Odom was the prettiest thing I ever seen, walking across the yard towards me with the light in his eyes. The devil can fool a body that way. Looked like a movie star, with that shiny black hair and them good white teeth. I had feelings standing with him in that garden that I thought was dead in me a long time ago. That’s how the devil works. I knowed right then there wouldn’t be no fighting him and Myra. Neither one of us could have resisted him. I can’t blame her. I fell for it, too.

  Myra showed him off to me like a prize she’d won. “Granny, this is John. You know his daddy, Frankie, that owns Odom’s Hardware.”

  “Why, is that your daddy?” I said. “Me and Macon done a lot of business with him down through the years.” I hate to admit it, but it crossed my mind that Myra had snagged a good one. I figured she’d be set if she married into the Odoms. I thought when Frankie Odom passed on that store would fall to his boys and she’d be taken care of.

  John Odom reached out for my hand. I dropped the corn in the tub and wiped dirt on my apron. His hand was so clean and white, I didn’t want to sully it.

  “Daddy speaks well of you and Mr. Lamb. Said you all was good people.”

  “Well. We always tried to be.”

  John looked down in the tub at my feet. “You got an awful good-looking crop of corn this year, Mrs. Lamb.” He reached out and plucked an ear, held it in his hands. “I like the smell of a garden,” he said, turning to Myra, “don’t you?” She took an ear herself and said, “Let me and John help you get this in, Granny.”

  I started to tell them to go on and have a good time, but I didn’t want them to leave me. All of a sudden I felt old and lonesome. It was good to have them working alongside me, the evening sun pouring between the cornstalks and the smell of garden dirt, even the smell of sweat. It had been a long time since I smelled a man’s sweat.

  When the tub was full, me and John Odom went to pick it up at the same time. We bumped heads and got tickled. When we looked at each other across that tin tub, there was something about his black eyes that bothered me. I tried to ignore it. I wanted him to be good for Myra. But I should have listened to that small voice inside of me.

  Next evening I came upon Myra setting on the steps as I was headed from the barn with a bucket of eggs. “Where you been, little lady?” I asked, gumming my snuff.

  “For a walk.”

  I looked at her for a long time with my hand on my hip. I could tell her whole self was yearning toward town and the hardware store where John Odom was working. I put my bucket down and she made room for me to sit. I touched her cheek with my finger. Next to the smoothness of her young skin, I seen how old and crooked it was. When she turned to me I searched her eyes for the words it see
med like she couldn’t find.

  “Your face is hot,” I said. “Reckon you’ve caught a cold?”

  “No. I’m just sitting here thinking.”

  “What about?”

  “Something I got to tell you.”

  “All right,” I said. But I wished she wouldn’t say anything. I looked out across the yard at the shadows gathering under the apple tree.

  “Me and John are getting married.”

  “Well. I figured you would.”

  She smiled and leaned into my shoulder. “How’d you figure?”

  “Honey, you look about as lovesick as anybody I ever seen, except maybe for me when I first laid eyes on your granddaddy.”

  We both got quiet. I knowed what I wanted to do. I wanted to give Myra her granddaddy’s ring, but I hesitated. Sometimes I still worry it’s what caused this whole blamed mess. Stealing was the worst thing I ever done and for most of my life taking that ring had been my secret. Now I had to tell on myself, because I couldn’t give it to Myra without warning her what came with it. But it felt right for her to have. I seen how deep in love she was. I got up before I could chicken out and said, “Set still here a minute.”

  I went inside, the kitchen door slapping behind me, and came back out carrying the box Macon had carved. Myra had never seen it before, but she must have knowed right off it was her granddaddy’s work. I could tell by the way her eyes lit up. Then she got real solemn and traced the bloodroot flower on the lid with her fingertip.

  “Open it up,” I said. The wedding ring was inside. I’d seen it many times but it looked different off of Macon’s finger, like a living thing, a beating heart. “I want you to give it to John,” I said. Myra looked up at me with her blue eyes. She opened her mouth to talk but no words came out. She settled her head on my chest and I stroked her hair for a while, the red ribbon Macon bought her a long time ago flowing through my fingers.

  “Now I’ve got to tell you a shameful thing,” I finally said. Myra raised her head and I was nervous, because if my grandbaby was to think less of me I didn’t know what I’d do. “I stole this here ring off of a woman I worked for.” I studied Myra’s face close but there was no change in it that I could see. “I never believed I could do a thing like that. But I loved your granddaddy in such a hard way, I didn’t know up from down.”

  She just kept looking at me. I couldn’t tell how she was taking it.

  “That ain’t no excuse,” I went on. “It’s something I’ll have to answer for on Judgment Day. I’m just saying love can be too deep. It’ll make you do crazy things.”

  Myra smiled at me then in a way that made my belly sink down to my feet. “Don’t be sorry, Granny,” she said. “You don’t have to explain. I know why you did it.”

  All of a sudden I wanted to snatch Macon’s ring back and my blessing, too. I wondered what she had already done in the name of that deep down love.

  It was two weeks later, in June of last year, that Myra and John Odom got married. They was in too big of a hurry for a church wedding, so they went down to the preacher’s house and got married in his kitchen without telling me about it until the next day. I hated for Myra to leave me, but I was relieved at least she was marrying into some money. Macon had done well enough for us and we never went hungry, but it was a struggle sometimes. I wondered if Myra was ashamed, going to school with other boys and girls that had more than we did. I knowed Odom’s Hardware hadn’t got as much business after the Plaza was built, but it seemed from the look of things that Frankie and his sons was still making a good living. That’s part of how come I was so surprised when I seen the house he had Myra in. I rode down yonder with them before they moved in their furniture and I guess it showed plain on my face what I thought of the place. Right off, Myra went to making excuses. She said times was lean at the hardware store and Frankie couldn’t afford to pay his boys as much as he used to. But I still believe John Odom could have done better by my grandbaby than that old dump by the railroad tracks. It had rained the night before and the yard was pure mud, with no trees or flowers. Soon as we stepped out of the car a train went by, big and fast enough to rattle the ground. It was all I could do to keep from squalling, thinking of Myra living in a hole like that.

  Back at home without my grandbaby, the mountain looked different to me. The woods was dark and sometimes it seemed like they was creeping up closer to the house. At least when Myra and John first got married they’d come and eat dinner with me every Sunday after church. They’d set across the table and look at each other until it just about made my face red. Sometimes I’d get jealous over how much they loved one another. I’d get sad thinking about how my own youth was gone and my loving days was over.

  It wasn’t long, though, before I seen John Odom turning quiet. Wouldn’t hardly look up from his plate, and every once in a while, if me and Myra got to laughing and carrying on, sharing a little bit of gossip, he’d shoot us the evilest look anybody’s ever seen. It made me uneasy, but to tell the truth, I was still trying to ignore it. Like I said, I wanted him to be everything Myra thought he was, for her sake and mine both.

  Then John stopped coming to church and Myra would be there by herself. She’d slip in and set on the back pew. I could tell she was troubled. One afternoon she came up to the house looking peaked and her hands shaking. She tried to help me worsh the dishes and they kept slipping back down in the sink. Finally I said, “What is it, honey?”

  She said, “John’s started drinking beer.”

  “Well,” I said, trying to make me and her both feel better, “I never knowed a young man that wouldn’t take a nip every once in a while.”

  “I don’t know, Granny,” she said, and wouldn’t look at me no more.

  By November, Myra had quit coming up Bloodroot Mountain altogether. I cooked a ham for Christmas dinner but she never showed up. I set by myself beside of the tree Hacky Barnett drug in and put up for me, worried sick. Her and John Odom didn’t have no phone in that house by the tracks, and me and Macon never had one put in either, so I didn’t know what in the world happened to her. I had Hacky to drive me down yonder but seeing her didn’t make me feel no better. She acted spooked, kept looking at the door the whole time like she was afraid somebody was coming. We tried to talk but seemed like she couldn’t concentrate enough to carry on a conversation. I wept all the way back home and Hacky tried to comfort me by letting on like it wasn’t all that bad. He patted my shoulder and said, “She looks all right, Byrdie. There ain’t no places on her.” But I said, “Hacky, the places might be on the inside.” He didn’t have no argument for that.

  Then two months passed without seeing Myra because Margaret Barnett fell off the porch and twisted her back. Hacky’s had a time taking care of her, and I hated to ask him to drive me to town. I thought of asking Bill Cotter, but since his boys are gone it’s all he can do to keep the farm running. This morning I couldn’t stand it no longer and asked Hacky to take me to Myra right away. We didn’t talk in the truck. I guess we both had a lot on our minds. We pulled up in front of the house under a big black storm cloud. It had been spitting ice rain off and on all morning and it was a mess trying to get across that old yard. I climbed up on the stoop huffing and puffing and when I finally did get situated to knock on the door, it took Myra a long time to open it. Soon as she seen me, her mouth fell open. I was shocked myself, to see my grandbaby in such a shape. She was skinny as a rail and looked like she hadn’t combed her hair in a month of Sundays.

  “Granny,” she said.

  She walked into my arms and we stood there for a long time with tears in our eyes. Finally I heard Hacky clearing his throat behind me. We went on in the house and I never seen such a clutter. I taught Myra better than that, but I reckon she just didn’t have no gumption left in her. She cleared a place on the couch for us. Hacky set there the whole time holding his cap with his ears red, looking like he’d rather be anyplace else.

  I told Myra, “I would have come sooner but you know I a
in’t got no way around.”

  “Have you been getting your medicines?” she asked. I could tell she was worried about me as much as I was about her.

  I said, “Hacky runs to the drugstore for me. Him and Margaret’s been so good to me. I don’t know what I would have done.”

  Myra smiled at Hacky and looked sad at the same time. I know she wants to be the one taking care of me. That might be why John Odom’s got her trapped someway.

  “Honey, why don’t you come home with me?” I begged her. I hadn’t been meaning to say nothing but it just came out. “Don’t let him do you this way.”

  “I can’t, Granny,” she said. “I made my bed.” About that time we heard a car out in the driveway and Myra’s eyes got big. It was nearly twelve o’clock and John Odom had come home for dinner. He busted in like an old bull and it was a sight how he had changed in such a short time. His hair was still black and shiny as ever, but he had a gut hanging over his belt buckle and bags underneath his eyes. I could tell Myra was scared to death of what he might do because me and Hacky was there. I wondered myself how he was going to act, but he just looked around at me and Hacky right hateful and didn’t say a word to us. He pitched his car keys on the end table beside of Myra’s chair and knocked off a bunch of clutter. It made a loud racket and she flinched like he’d shot at her. “Fix me something to eat,” he said to Myra. Then he stomped off to the bathroom. Directly Hacky said, without looking at me, “We better get on up the mountain, Byrdie.”

  “No, wait here for a minute,” Myra whispered. She dashed off and I could hear her rummaging in the hallway. She was back quick as lightning and I couldn’t make out what she had in her hands at first. When she got close I seen she had that box Macon whittled for her. She leant over where I was setting on the couch and put it in my dress pocket. “I want you to keep it safe for me, Granny,” she said. “This is no place for it.”