Blue Willow

by Deborah Smith

  Artemas handed the rifle back to James, then cleared his throat and sat down in the center of his huddled, crying siblings. “I don’t get to do what I want. None of us do, okay? But we have to stick together, no matter what. We have to take care of each other. All right? Be quiet. We’re not going to let anybody see us cry. We’re going to be better than they are.”

  Elizabeth, Cassandra, and Michael snuffled and nodded. Julia jerked at a tuft of her ragged blond hair. James saluted. Artemas led them back to the house. He vowed to be the best, the strongest, the most powerful, and the most noble. He would eclipse his parents’ dark legacy until there was only a faint outline of their ugliness around him and his brothers and sisters.

  Mama and Daddy had more money now; there was a shiny black wall phone on the kitchen wall, and they’d bought a special glass cabinet to display Artemas’s teapot. Grandma had died a year ago, and now the room she and Lily had shared was Lily’s alone, with a bright white bedstead and matching dresser and desk, and bookcases filled with books on one wall. The other walls were covered in paper printed with trees and flowers. Lily had picked it out because it made her think of being outdoors.

  But she missed Grandma terribly. And she missed being a farmer. Mama and Daddy had more money, but they weren’t free anymore, and Lily knew it.

  A farmer was free. A farmer had to answer only to the land, Daddy said, and the land was a partner, not a boss. But a farmer with only one hand wasn’t equal to the land, so Mama and Daddy took jobs at a pet-food plant. They came home each night looking tired and smelling like hot cereal. Sometimes the foreman let them bring home burst bags of feed, for Sassy and the four cats. It all seemed ugly and like welfare to Lily, but she’d never hurt their feelings by saying so.

  The afternoons Lily had spent roaming the woods and fields with Sassy were over. After school each day she slunk unhappily off the bus at Aunt Maude’s grand white gingerbread house in town, and the only rambling she could do there was in the yards and rose garden out back. Not that Aunt Maude let her ramble much.

  Aunt Maude said Lily’s mind could wander like an Indian, but her fanny had to stay at the kitchen table, doing homework. And when the homework was done, Aunt Maude read to Lily from encyclopedias or the latest issue of Newsweek, or made Lily read out loud from books in Aunt Maude’s library The reading was fun, because Lily loved books, and Aunt Maude approved of that.

  And even if it was no fun to be trapped in town, Lily began to take Aunt Maude’s favorite saying to heart, once she figured out what it meant. The only helpless female is an ignorant one.

  Maude Johnson MacKenzie Butler was a general in a girdle, Daddy said. She owned half the buildings around the town square and ran for mayor every two years. Most times, she won. She wasn’t kin to Lily by blood, because she was a MacKenzie from marrying Daddy’s much older brother, Lawrence, and Daddy said Lawrence had gotten blown up by a mine in Korea before he and Aunt Maude had any children.

  Aunt Maude married Mr. Wesley Butler not long after, and they had twin boys, who were freshmen at the University of Georgia now. Wesley must be a lot older than Aunt Maude, because he had thin all-gray hair and hers was a big brown helmet with little sprinkles of gray at the sides. Uncle Wesley used to own grocery stores, but now he went fishing and hunting all the time, so Lily rarely saw him.

  Sometimes Aunt Maude’s two sisters drove up from Atlanta to visit, and then things livened up, because Little Sis—who was married to an important man who worked in a bank and had two girls in college—wore love beads and read palms, and Big Sis—who was a widow, with grandchildren Lily’s age—spit chewing tobacco and worked as a volunteer for something called the Republican party.

  So when Aunt Maude and her sisters got together, there was a lot of palm reading and spitting and arguments about whether or not the country was going to hell. Lily loved it.

  Lily was spending Saturday at Aunt Maudes. Mama and Daddy had been called to work overtime at the plant. Springtime was in full bloom, putting clouds of white on the dogwoods and red on the giant azaleas along Aunt Maude’s front walk. Aunt Maude and the sisters were in the parlor, sipping whiskey and fussing at each other.

  Lily sat on the front steps by the sidewalk, letting Sassy lick chocolate-cupcake icing from her knees. Her knees were always skinned from climbing the willows at home or falling off the old bicycle Daddy had bought secondhand for her eighth birthday. Sassy’s tongue felt good on them. Lily curled her bare toes under Sassy and rubbed her stomach, which Sassy liked.

  Lily wiped chocolate-smeared fingers on her T-shirt, then drew a handful of dry dog food from the front pocket of her cutoffs. Somewhere in the distance she heard a car coming up the side street that turned onto Aunt Maude’s. She ignored it, because people drove slow in the neighborhoods. There were more and more cars on the main streets, and they went too fast, but Mama said those cars were driven by fools, not local folks.

  “Here you go,” she told Sassy, scattering the round chunks on the sidewalk. Sassy went over to them and neatly swallowed each one. A few had rolled off the curb. She ambled into the street and began picking them from the gutter, her yellow tail wagging contentedly.

  The car’s engine became a powerful rumble. The vehicle had turned onto Aunt Maude’s street.

  Lily propped her elbows on her knees and idly watched Sassy roll the last piece of dog food out of the gutter with her nose and catch it on her tongue. Suddenly the car swooped by. The front bumper caught Sassy in the side and tossed her. Sassy gave a high-pitched yelp, like a scream.

  Lily leaped to her feet, staring in openmouthed horror as Sassy landed in a heap in the road. The car angled around her and slid to a stop. It was a big red mirror-shiny car with dark windows. Lily ran to Sassy, who raised her head and tried to drag herself with her front legs.

  Falling to her knees beside her, Lily stroked her muzzle and called her name. She heard the car’s door open. “You oughta keep your dog out of the road!” a man yelled. Lily looked over at him. He had on a red coat with a patch sewn over the breast pocket. She knew what he was, then, because Daddy had pointed out people like him lots of times. He was a real-estate man with one of the big Atlanta companies, the ones Aunt Maude and Daddy blamed for coming up here and making the land cost more because they sold it to rich people, the kind who came into the grocery store asking for some kind of French water in bottles.

  “Your dog shouldn’t have been in the road,” the man said again, with a nasty look on his face. “It’s not my fault I hit the thing.”

  “She’s not a thing, she’s Sassy.” Lily yelled. “And you’re a damned reeler-state agent!”

  He snorted and got back in his car, slamming the door. Lily looked around furiously, grabbed a rock from the gutter, vaulted to her feet, and threw it with an aim much respected in MacKenzie’s girls’ softball league.

  It struck the passenger door on her side of the car. The man bolted out and began yelling at her. Sassy writhed and whimpered on the pavement. Lily got another rock and hurled it. It caught the man on one cheek.

  Aunt Maude and the sisters came running out of the house. “This goddamned brat almost put my eye out!” the man bellowed. Lily sat down in the road and, her hands shaking, cuddled Sassy’s head. It felt heavy and limp. Sassy’s eyes looked empty. Looking into them was like staring into a windowpane and seeing only yourself. She wasn’t moving anymore. Her bad ear, the one the bobcat had chewed on, hung the way the flag at school did when there wasn’t any wind.

  Aunt Maude clamped a hand on Lily’s shoulder. “What happened?”

  “He hit Sassy. And then he said it was her fault, for being in the street. He called her a thing.”

  “This wild little white-trash kid ought to be in a cage!” the man said, jabbing a finger at Lily.

  Big Sis hawked a stream of tobacco juice on the car’s hood. Little Sis bolted over to the car, grabbed the radio antenna, and bent it double. Aunt Maude advanced around the car with a deadly look on her face. “
You get your fat, red-coated, piss-headed self into that car before I call the sheriff,” she said. “Because he’s a cousin of mine, and he doesn’t think much of shit-birds like you.”

  “You’re all crazy, you hillbilly bitches!”

  Little Sis lifted a foot clad in hard platform shoes and began kicking dents in the shiny front fender. “Your karma is bad,” she said, still kicking. Big Sis opened the passenger door and spit onto the seat.

  “The longer you stay,” Aunt Maude said evenly, “the more hell you’ll catch.”

  The man clamped his mouth shut, got into his car, and roared away.

  The street was suddenly silent, except for the hushed murmur of Lily’s sobs. Aunt Maude and the sisters squatted around her and Sassy. Aunt Maude put a hand under Sassy’s chest and the other over her nose. After a second she said softly, “Sassy’s gone to sleep, honey.”

  Lily drew a breath. “No,” she answered as calmly as she could. “She’s dead. She’s dead, and it isn’t fair. That man took her away, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  Little Sis pulled a long string of her wooden love beads from under her scoop-necked blouse then put them around Lily’s neck. “You fought back, little war-woman. That’s what you did about it.”

  Big Sis patted Lily’s cheek with a cool, blue-veined hand. “Sometimes that’s all the victory you get—the knowledge that you fought back.”

  Aunt Maude added, “But that’s a great victory.”

  Lily bent her head to Sassy’s and slid her arms around the dog’s soft, quiet body. “Then I’ll always fight back,” she whispered.

  When Mama and Daddy came to get her and found out what had happened, they cried over Sassy. Next to the time when they’d cried over Grandpa MacKenzie’s death, it was the most frightening thing Lily had ever seen. The grown people she loved and trusted more than anyone else were just as helpless as she was. She would have to fight back for them too.

  They put Sassy in the back of the truck and took her home. After Daddy pulled in the yard under the deepening shade of the willows, Lily asked in a small voice, “Can we bury her next to our people? She always liked people better than she liked other dogs.”

  She was breathless with the bravery of her question. The family graveyard was sacred; Elspeth, the first MacKenzie, was buried there, and the baby she’d had with Old Artemas, and Elspeth’s sons, their wives, and too many other MacKenzies to remember. MacKenzies weren’t buried there anymore; it just wasn’t done that way in modern times, Mama had explained once. The last few, including Grandpa and Grandma, were at the Methodist church’s graveyard in town.

  “I think old Sassy was special,” Mama said, giving Daddy one of the sideways, prodding looks she used when she wanted him to agree with her. Daddy thought for a minute, then nodded.

  They put Sassy on a piece of plywood and carried her over the creek. Lily dragged a shovel in each hand. A dusty foot trail wound around the edge of the cornfield there. Beyond the creek, where the field ended, the land rose up into the hills that climbed toward the distant blue peak of Victory Mountain. The MacKenzie graveyard was in a little hollow at the base of a hill, as if the hill were holding it carefully in its lap.

  They opened the gate of the black iron fence and carried Sassy to a corner. Faded old gravestones seemed to stand guard, some tall and grand, others that looked like no more than melting, oddly shaped rocks.

  Daddy pulled her against his warm, broad chest and spoke to her a long time, telling her how God wanted hurt things to be at rest, and how it took strength to do what was right, not just what was easy. She listened through a haze of heartache, one thought settling in her mind. Do what was right, not just what was easiest.

  When he finished, she got down on the ground and kissed Sassy’s nose. Sobbing, Lily ran to Mama and buried her face in her middle, clinging to her inside the circle of Mama’s petting hands.

  They sat down around her while Lily stroked her un-moving side. Mama said a little prayer and helped Daddy dig a grave. When Sassy’s limp, broken body lay in the bottom of it, Lily stretched out on her stomach and placed leaves over Sassy’s face.

  Silent tears ran down her cheeks as she watched Sassy’s much-loved yellow form disappear under soft shovelfuls of dirt.

  That evening she lay despondently in her bed, thinking about Grandma and Sassy, and how strange and lonely life became as a person grew up. “Look what came in the mail,” Mama said from the doorway. She brought a small brown package to Lily and laid it beside her huddled body. “It’s from Artemas.”

  Lily bolted upright. How did he know exactly when she needed him? It must be mage, just like the blue willows.

  Mama opened the package. “ ‘Dear Lily’ ” she read “ ‘I have a part-time job in the warehouse near the academy. I saw this in a shop and thought of our bear story. Love, Artemas.’ ”

  It was the longest letter he’d ever written. Lily looked at the small stuffed bear Mama took from its wrapping. She reached for it with a burst of welcome and hugged it to her chest. “See how good things show up just when you’re feeling awful?” Mama said softly.

  Lily wrote back to him that night, the bear cuddled in her lap. I wish you would come back. I still miss you. She tore that up, thinking. Do what’s right, not what’s easiest, and wrote instead, I am grown up now. I am learning how to fight. You do that too. Nobody can hurt you and me then, okay? Thank you for the bear. Lily. P.S. It told me to say it loves you a lot.

  Five

  The fist landed between James’s shoulder blades as he left Evertide’s gym through a rear door of the locker rooms. It drove the breath from him in a painful burst. He staggered and fell to his knees on the sidewalk. A second blow struck his temple. He sprawled to his side, dazed, dimly aware of puddled rainwater seeping into his khaki trousers and the cold, rough concrete stinging the palms of his hands.

  “You’re not tough enough to start on the varsity squad,” a voice taunted. A different one added, “You screwed me out of my place in the lineup, you shithead.”

  James’s thoughts swam in dizzy confusion, but he recognized the voices. They belonged to junior classmen, a year older than James. But not better on the basketball court. Not taller, or faster. Not more determined. No one was more determined.

  He tried to get up, but a sneakered foot lashed his side, sending shock waves of pain through his rib cage. He gasped for breath. Through half-shut eyes he saw their feet in front of him. His pulse roared in his ears. But then dark, brilliant fury began to clear his mind. Wait, it said. Think.

  They began a round of taunts.

  “You don’t belong here, Colebrook. You and the rest of your family aren’t good enough to be at Evertide. Why don’t you go to public school, with the niggers and the wops?”

  “Your father got kicked out of the country club. They couldn’t get him to pay his bills. My father said he’s a cheat. You’re a fucking cheat too.”

  “We heard you’re screwing one of the senior girls, Colebrook. You’re out of your league.”

  “Takes after his old man.”

  “Your mother’s a whore. Can’t keep her legs together. Everybody knows that.”

  Adrenaline ran through James’s muscles like an electric charge. He vaulted upward, catching one of the boys in the stomach with his head. He reveled in the boy’s yell of pain and the way his body tumbled backward.

  Instantly James swung toward the other one and rammed a knee into his groin. The boy doubled over. James slammed his fist upward and felt the victorious crunch against his knuckles. Blood cascaded from the older boy’s nose, and his legs collapsed.

  The other one had gotten to his feet again. He rushed James, who sidestepped him. James caught him by the hair and smashed a fist into his temple. He fell face-forward, groaning.

  James stood over them, feet braced apart, fists raised. Waiting calmly. He knew why Grandmother had sent Artemas away to military school and why Uncle Charles wanted to keep him there. Artemas was a threat—t
he eldest son of the eldest son, the wise and strong exiled prince, already a better man than either Uncle Charles and Father would ever be. James loved his brother and paid homage to him like a medieval baron in the history books that James consumed with fervent interest.

  Artemas would be this family’s king. But James was preparing to be its minister of war.

  “They said you started it,” the headmaster told James. James stood rigidly among the office’s rich antiques and brocaded walls. “They’re lying,” he replied calmly.

  The headmaster, a small, effete man, flipped through James’s records. “You’re a good student, an excellent athlete—but you have your family’s predisposition toward irresponsible behavior. There have been fights and confrontations between other students and every one of your siblings.”

  “We’re only defending ourselves.”

  The headmaster threw the file on his desk. His eyes narrowed. “You left one of those boys with a broken nose and the other with a concussion. Yet your only injuries are a few bruises.”

  “I’m smarter than they are.”

  “Or just inherently vicious.” The man pounded his desktop. “I want to know every word that was exchanged. And I want you to admit that you started it.”

  “No.”

  “I could suspend you. I could have you and your whole defensive little tribe of brothers and sisters suspended.”

  “You won’t. My grandmother has connections. Senator DeWitt arranged for us to enroll here. You won’t do anything to upset the senator.”

  The man’s face turned pink with helpless fury. James smiled.

  The others showed up in the entrance hall that afternoon. The buildings for the younger grades were across campus. The four of them were out of breath from the long, illicit trek. James stood in the center of the lobby, where he’d been ordered to stay. They surrounded him: Cass, a roly-poly sentry with food stains on the blazer of her uniform; Michael, pale, thin, but rigid with dignity; Elizabeth, a dainty, terrified-looking accomplice; and seven-year-old Julia staring up at him with solemn love while she chewed the end of her braided hair. “Go back to class,” James commanded, staring straight ahead.