by Pamela Morsi
Camryn nodded with vague agreement.
“I told her that we broke up,” Tree said. “I told her and DuJess and, of course, my dad. But I haven’t told anyone in school. It seems like…like it’s not the most earth-shattering news of the century. We’re teenagers. Nobody expects us to be together forever.”
That was exactly what Camryn expected, but not how she replied.
“Aunt Will believed in us.”
The bell rang out from the doorway entrance. The crowd around it began making their way inside. Tree showed no eagerness to follow.
“She still does,” he answered. Tree sighed heavily, his expression sad. “It’s not like I don’t still…still care about you. I can’t turn off my feelings like a faucet. And I want to have sex with you. You know that. I want it. But it’s not about having sex. It’s about moving to that next level. I don’t know if I’m ready to move to the next level. Maybe after basketball season or…I don’t know.”
“Basketball season?” Camryn shook her head incredulously. “I’m thinking about our whole lives and you’re stuck on basketball season.”
His expression hardened. The tenderness in his voice disappeared. “Yeah, I’m thinking about basketball season,” he said. “The whole school counts on me to be thinking about it. The coach, the team, the parents, the kids, everybody expects me to be focused and ready to play. I count on myself to bring my best to every game. And if you don’t get that, if you don’t value that, then you don’t get me, you don’t value me.”
He stepped back and looked at her up and down as if he’d never seen her before.
“We used to really have something, Cammy,” he said. “It was something that was about us. But lately everything is about you. You come walking up here, you see me talking and it never even occurs to you that you’re not the only thing I can think about, talk about, care about. It’s like you want to obliterate me and take me over to be some pod person. You’re going to have to grow up or I’m going to give up. Ball’s in your court.”
With that he headed toward the door.
Camryn turned to watch him take the steps two at a time in his long, athletic lope. She felt the tears welling in her eyes, but she wouldn’t give in to them. She was sick of crying.
He disappeared through the door as the second bell rang. He was going to be late for homeroom. That sort of thing normally concerned him. And she’d always been on time because he was. She didn’t have to be on time. She didn’t have to even go in. Breakups weren’t only about sadness, they were also about freedom.
Camryn retraced her steps across the parking lot. She got into the little blue car and drove away. She was dry-eyed, but her heart felt empty. She had no destination in mind, but a minute after she pulled onto the highway. She knew she didn’t want to go home.
That was what all of this had been about. Trying to find a way to get away from home. Tree had been that way. She did love him, she was pretty sure of that. But she’d also needed him to get out of here. The future that stretched before her was bleak. Staying with her mother, trying to eke out a living selling vitamin supplements to crabby, grizzled old farmers. On Saturday nights she’d put on a short, tight skirt and hang out at the honky-tonk in the hopes of catching the eye of some local loser who was probably drunk or cranked, married or all of the above. Memories of high school would be the big thing. And each and every one would recall that she had been Tree Baxley’s girl, but that he’d kicked her to the curb when he went on to better things.
The tears were back in her eyes, but they weren’t sad ones, but angry. She continued down the highway, imagining herself going anywhere, doing anything. If she could get a job, as a waitress maybe or at Walmart, then she could get away. But jobs were hard to come by these days. And even a good one would be at minimum wage. She couldn’t afford a place to live, let alone a car to get back and forth. She was stuck. She was totally stuck.
Maybe that thought was what had her turn into the approach to Onery Cabin. She quickly got a taste for why the little car was considered unacceptable for traversing the road. The grass between the ruts was in some places taller than her windshield. She couldn’t see all the holes and rocks. She hit high center twice. If she hadn’t been slowed down to a crawl, it would have probably ripped the muffler off.
It was clearly a mistake to go in this direction. She was very willing to turn around, but there was no wide spot, no opportunity. The cut through the trees was narrow. Her only option would be to put the car in Reverse and slowly back down the way she’d come. It was not a particularly pleasant proposal, so she hesitated, continuing to make slow forward progress in the hope that the road would suddenly, miraculously look better. Instead it got worse.
When she got to a steep, hairpin switchback with a ledge drop-off, she finally put the car in Park. If she drove up that, there would be no reversing.
Camryn got out of the car and walked up to the drop-off. It offered a fine view of the valley below and Squaw’s Trunk Mountain in the distance. Instead of appreciating the beauty, she angrily stomped her foot like a toddler in temper tantrum and, within the privacy of the rugged terrain, let off a string of curses that included every swearword she’d ever heard or read. She even threw in the weird Brit ones from the movies, bollocks and wanker and the one she’d learned in Spanish class, merde. None of it made her feel any better.
After her tirade, she looked back at the little blue car. It would take an hour or more to back it down the mountain. Not exactly the way she wanted to spend her morning. Determinedly she turned her gaze back up the road again and took off walking.
She made better time on foot than she had in the car, but walking allowed her more focus on her thoughts. Not exactly a welcome advantage. She tried making her mind go blank, but it wouldn’t work. Then she tried thinking about something else. Topic after topic led her right back to herself, her future and her messed-up thing with Tree. Finally she fixed on something that truly did distract her.
Aunt Will is dying. She could hear Tree’s words in memory as clearly as she had that morning.
Camryn hasted her steps. She didn’t want it to be true. She couldn’t lose Aunt Will. She had always been there, always loved her, always eager to take her side when she needed it. Life on the mountain would be worse than worst without her.
Doctors can be wrong, she assured herself. And even if they weren’t wrong, prayer could trump medicine. Camryn tried praying, but once she got past “don’t let Aunt Will die” she couldn’t think of what else to say. Of course everybody had to die, especially old people. But Camryn wanted them to die after she’d left. Even to her own brain that sounded selfish. Tree was right, she really was all about herself, but she couldn’t seem to stop. She decided to stick that in the prayer. “Make me not so selfish.” Then she realized that sticking a request for herself in the middle of her prayer for Aunt Will was like the definition of selfish. So she changed it up a bit. “Please let Aunt Will live so that she can see me becoming less selfish.” That seemed better. And the logic of it even made her hopeful.
By the time the cabin was in sight all her angry cursing and negative desperation was behind her. Aunt Will would know what she should do.
28
Jesse had no regrets about her choice to stay on the mountain and take care of Aunt Will. But Monday morning dawned with a bad case of opening-night jitters. It was one thing when Piney was with her or was expected the next day to take on the mantle of caregiver. It was quite another to see a whole lonely week stretching out before her without any idea what it might require. She was honest enough with herself to be intimidated.
But as she accomplished her chores, taking care of the farm animals, if not efficiently, at least better than one would expect of a city girl, she took heart. If in little more than a week she could learn to milk a cow, slop hogs and feed chickens—including Arthur the rooster, whom she didn’t like—how long could it take to be able to do things for Aunt Will, whom she loved? Being on your own
with a big responsibility was what classroom teaching was all about. Those were good skills to keep in mind.
Surprisingly, the morning’s aloneness was short-lived. Camryn came walking in at midmorning.
“Are you still grounded from school?” Jesse asked.
The teenager shook her head. “No, today I’m skipping. I needed to see Aunt Will.”
The girl appeared genuinely concerned about the old woman’s health.
“I don’t remember to pray much, except when I’m in church,” she confessed when she saw Aunt Will. “But I’m going to remember to pray for you.”
Aunt Will smiled with appreciation.
“Now, you know, Cammy, people do die no matter what we want, no matter what we pray. It’s the nature of things for the old to pass on. It’s not scary. It’s just the next step. I’m ready. You need to be, too.”
The two sat across from each other in the chairs in front of the fire. Jesse didn’t want to eavesdrop, but there was nowhere else to be, except outside. She’d been doing chores all morning and eagerly returned to the cabin to warm up. So she puttered in the kitchen unnecessarily and tried to ignore the conversation that she could hear so clearly.
“I understand that,” Camryn answered her. “But it’s like…it’s like I still need you, Aunt Will. I don’t know how to get through the next part of my life. I need you to live at least until I get the future kind of settled.”
Aunt Will chuckled. “Oh, Cammy,” she said. “That’s the thing about the future, it’s never settled. We make all our plans and sort it all out. But there is no doing that. Not for you or me or any of us.”
“Well, yeah, we all might be hit by a meteor tomorrow,” she said. “But I mean figuring out what I’m going to do with my life. High school is going to be over and I need…I need to do something.”
“What do you want to do?” Aunt Will asked.
“Uh…well, I thought I’d marry Tree and we’d move to wherever he goes to college.”
“I supposed that is a plan of sorts,” Aunt Will replied. “But to my thinking, the best plans are ones that don’t require somebody else’s cooperation. I mean, folks are good to help when they are of a mind to. But sometimes there is simply no help coming.”
“Yeah, I kind of figured that out,” Camryn said. “I don’t want to be stuck here, working for my mom forever. But it doesn’t seem like there is any way out of it. It doesn’t matter if I’d want college or only a job. It costs money to leave the mountain and money to live and I don’t have any or any way to get some.”
Aunt Will nodded sympathetically. She was thoughtful for a long moment.
“I knew a girl once that got stuck in these mountains,” she said. “She wasn’t the same as you, but she was sure stuck.” The old woman glanced up. “DuJess, you come drag up a chair here. This is a story that might be of some help to you, as well.”
Dutifully Jesse moved one of the kitchen chairs to fireside. If Camryn resented her butting into a private conference, she didn’t indicate it in any way.
“This girl,” Aunt Will began. “This girl, Lord Almighty, what a crazy, silly girl.”
“Is this about Granny Meg? The one who poisoned the piccalli?”
“No, no. Granny Meg was a character for sure, but this girl was dumb as a stovepipe about the world and foolish enough to think she had it on a string. Or at least that’s what Lilly June used to say about her.”
“Lilly June? The dog?”
“My classmate at school. I named the dog after her.”
“Oh.”
“So when the girl was about your age, in fact she might have been your age exactly, she decided that she was in love. And he was a right fine fellow. Good-looking, smart and a hard worker. All us girls around here thought so. Exactly what a gal would need for a husband. So she set her cap for him and warned the rest off.”
Aunt Will smiled and then shook her head.
“Now, I think he loved her. And she sure thought he did. But he didn’t like the idea of being a husband. There was a war on and all the young men were gone, all the boys itching to be in it. He was a-raring to get out there and do some killing, just like the rest of them.”
“Where was the war?” Camryn asked.
“Everywhere,” Aunt Will answered. “World War Two, they called it.”
“Oh, yeah, we studied that last year, second semester.”
The old woman smiled again. “Then you probably know more about it than I do. I didn’t leave the mountain for the duration.”
Jesse felt somehow surprised. She’d seen a million WWII movies and in none of them did anyone stay home.
“So the boy wanted to be a soldier,” she continued. “But the girl thought she was so smart, she’d keep him close. Then one morning, the boy’s uncle Cotton showed up at her door with a piece of paper. The boy had gone to town and joined up without so much as a kiss goodbye, just a sad little note.”
“Well, that’s crap,” Camryn said. “Did the girl go after him? That’s what I would have done. And when I found him, I’d slap his face and tell him, ‘You don’t break up with me, I break up with you!’”
Aunt Will chuckled. “I think you’ve got more gumption than this foolish girl. She couldn’t even think of where to go or how to find him. She lay around and cried herself silly for a month or two. Then one Sunday she wasn’t at church and her parents said that she’d gone to stay with relatives back east.”
The old woman’s tone was skeptical.
“So, she’d really gone off to find the guy,” Camryn suggested.
“No,” Aunt Will said. “She didn’t leave the mountain at all. She went into hiding.”
“Hiding?” Both Jesse and Camryn spoke the question.
She nodded. “In the weeks after, the girl’s mama started wearing baggy loose clothes. Then she’s quietly telling her female friends and relations that she’s on the nest.”
“The nest?”
“Pregnant,” Jesse translated.
Aunt Will nodded. “That’s what she was saying. She was forty at least and had been barren as a fence post for fifteen years. Folks was astounded.”
Jesse knew several fortysomething women who’d given birth. It didn’t seem that much out of the norm. Maybe things were different back when there was little health care on the mountain.
“She had the baby alone at home, not even calling on the midwife one time. And she and her husband seemed unwelcoming to visitors. Then the girl came home from her ‘trip’ and she had that baby in her arms night and day. Rumors began to circulate. Somebody even swore they saw the girl with the babe suckling at her breast.”
“It was the girl’s baby?” Camryn looked genuinely shocked. “I didn’t think women did that back then?”
“Cammy, there’s always been gals that made gravy before the meat was cooked. Always was, always will be. Still, folks were less forgiving in those days. And neither the girl, nor her family could say the truth. Not unless they wanted to pick up kit and caboodle and move elsewhere.”
“But people knew it anyway,” Jesse said.
“They thought it. And folks said it. They believed it belonged to the girl and her soldier. But nobody knew for sure. And the family never owned up. She never told.”
“Did she get back together with her guy?” Camryn asked. “I mean after the war, did he come back and get her? Marry her and claim the baby?”
Aunt Will looked longingly at the eager teenager’s face. “It was a long time ago,” she said. “I’m sure the truth came out eventually. It always does. But that’s not the point of my story.”
“Okay, so what’s the point of the story? Don’t get pregnant? My mom already tells me that.”
“No, Cammy,” Aunt Will said, tsking a bit. “The point of the story is that only the very foolish try to control other people. It’s hard enough, with your hands free, to dodge what life throws at you. It’s impossible if you’re tending to a puppet on a string.”
Camryn sighed hea
vily.
“You think you’re stuck,” Aunt Will said. “But you’re thinking wrong. You are young and smart and resourceful. You’re also pretty, when you fix up and don’t wear so much black.”
Camryn opened her mouth to protest. Aunt Will waved her off.
“I’ll tell you a secret about the men in this world. They like young pretty girls, but when pretty teams up with smart and resourceful, it’s more than an elixir, it’s nearly a dad-blamed aphrodisiac.”
The teenager’s jaw dropped open in shock.
“Ask DuJess if you don’t believe me.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” Aunt Will said quickly. “You’ve got to make up your own mind, form your own plan and get on with what you want in life. When you do that, you’ll have your pick of men. Tree or some city fellow or a lug-head from the next mountain, it’ll be your choice. But as long as you need a man more than he needs you, then you’ll always be stuck. Now, DuJess, fix us a bite to eat, if you would. I know it’s early, but I’m getting tired and I want some lunch before I lay down.” As Jesse got up, Aunt Will directed her words to Camryn once more. “This afternoon, you and DuJess sit down with a pencil and paper and work out a plan.”
“A plan?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Aunt Will said. “It’s high time you figured out what you want to do with your life. DuJess can help you. She’s a teacher, she knows all about that kind of thing.”
Jesse might have guffawed, but in her new role of doing whatever Aunt Will needed, she put on a brave face and smiled.
Camryn helped her get a meal on the table. The conversation was lighthearted, but lunch couldn’t have lingered much longer. By the end of a whole morning being up, Aunt Will was unsteady on her feet again. She chose her bed over the chair. Once she was tucked in, she asked Jesse to let the old dog sleep next to the fire.
“I’m off my routine, but I don’t see why she needs to be.”
