Requiem by Fire

by Wayne Caldwell

  “That’s fine, Son. Just rest.” Nell melded Mack’s glob with hers.

  “This looks creamy now, so get the scissors,” said Aunt Mary.

  They cut candy strips into pieces the size of the first joint of Mary’s index finger, and dropped them onto the slab.

  “Aunt Mary, can I have some?” asked Mack.

  “You don’t want to burn that sweet little mouth. It’ll be a few minutes yet.”

  They began to put the kitchen back together. “Not long after Hiram got this marble,” Mary said, “his mother—Granny Lib we called her—might go for two months without saying a single thing. Anyway. I forgot what I was going to say—oh, yes, one Christmas, must have been 1883, I was going to make butter mints. I didn’t have no oil of peppermint, but figured to use dried mint—we still grow spearmint by the springhouse. Well, I pulled what I thought was dried mint out of a pantry jar. I didn’t smell it, just threw it in and made the candy. I gave one to Granny Lib, and she gummed it a minute, spit it into her lap, and said ‘This tastes like hog manure.’ I’d put parsley in the candy! We had a big laugh over that. Here, Mack, it’s ready. They’re really chewy, so be careful. That candy pulls out a tooth, your mama won’t let you come see me again.”

  Mack, mouthing a wad of candy, asked Nell something. “Son, when you talk with your mouth full, you sound like you don’t have good sense. Do you need to go out back?”

  Mack nodded. His mother put his coat on him, and Mary opened the door and shooed Mack outside. “Nell, take these mints home with you. How’s Jim, by the way? I see him ride up the road but he doesn’t stop often enough to suit me.”

  “He’s busy, Aunt Mary. Says he has to string all that telephone line from down here to the Sterling fire lookout before the trees put out.” She sighed. “Don’t know what good it is. We can only use it in an emergency.”

  Mack came back inside. “Son, be a good boy. Go in the front room and tend to your sister, please.”

  Nell sighed as Mack left the room. “Aunt Mary, may I ask you something?”

  “Of course you can.”

  “Didn’t it drive you out of your mind having your husband gone so much?”

  Mary cut her eyes to Nell. “That’s been fifty years, so it’s hard to remember. But yes. You keep busy. If work fills your day, it’s easier.” She went to the pantry for two pint mason jars. “Also—and I ain’t ever told nobody this—you talk to him.”

  “You mean when he’s home.”

  Mary filled the jars with mints. “Well, then, too, but you talk to him when he’s gone, like he’s there with you. It helps.” She looked at Nell. “I take it you’re not as happy as you ought to be. Or at least not as happy as you thought you’d be.”

  “Well, Jim’s gone so much. Some days I don’t see him at all. And I don’t—except for the children—have that much to do around the house.”

  Mary pulled a chair beside Nell. “Child, it might ruffle your feathers, but I’m going to be blunt. You’re a town girl. There ain’t no sidewalks here for you to walk on, to the store or the moving pictures or the library. There’s just Cataloochee, church, and work.” She stared into Nell’s eyes. “I’d bet your mother didn’t teach you nothing about a garden, did she?”

  Nell shook her head.

  “Canning food?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Sewing?”

  “I embroider a little.”

  She took Nell’s free hand. “I got an idea. Jim makes a garden, right?”

  Nell nodded.

  “But he tends to it?”

  “Yes’m.”

  “Know which end of a hoe is the business end?”

  She nodded.

  “Know jimsonweed from a corn plant?”

  Nell bit her lower lip. “I never had to learn.”

  “Don’t cry, dear. Tell you what. Come every week this spring. I’ll learn you about a garden.”

  Nell nodded. “Thank you, Aunt Mary.”

  “Say no more about it. It’ll give me something to do besides sit here and quilt. We women got to stick together, don’t we?”

  Nell and her brood headed homeward, Mack and Little Elizabeth skipping, Nell thinking, I’ll help Aunt Mary garden, but I still have to get out of here. That’s creepy to talk to somebody who’s not there. How in the world can I convince Jim to leave?

  CHAPTER 20

  My Heart’s True Love

  The maple trunk, lined with red cedar, held bedclothes, lacework, mementos. Some quilts had been pieced by Hiram’s paternal grandmother, whose first name had become a matter of dispute. Some remembered Elsie, others Elsa, still others Elspeth. In Aunt Mary’s view, the last was preposterous—a woman not rich enough to possess a middle name would never have been saddled with such as that.

  Elsie had been a daughter of a tribe of Browns, whites who’d intermarried with Cherokees, which explained her son Levi’s and grandson Hiram’s cheekbones. Anyone who knew Elsie’s family agreed she had “married up” when she’d latched on to Old Jimmie, patriarch of the Cataloochee Carters.

  The Carters claimed English ancestry, but Aunt Mary, Howell on her father’s side, Davis on the distaff, knew Scotch Irish when she saw it. She married Hiram Carter anyway, despite—or perhaps because of—his quick temper and ability to squeeze the buffalo off a nickel.

  Elsie’s son Levi had built the trunk before the Civil War, and her grandson Hiram had lined it the year he’d married Mary. A simple box with a beveled top, as deep as a coffin and half as long. Two bradded leather straps had long since dry-rotted from its ends. The top had been smoothed first by Levi’s plane, then, after it was hauled upstairs, by children, rainbound indoors, sitting on the trunk and pretending to drive a stagecoach full of treasure.

  News, after being read and discussed, usually papered bedroom walls, but sections saved in the trunk announced such events as the archduke’s assassination and the World Series scandal. The trunk also held heirlooms—letters from long dead family, Hiram’s seventh-grade certificate, a china cup Mary had scrimped to buy for her first, stillborn, child.

  Aunt Mary had asked Manson and Thomas to carry the trunk down to the hall last week, with a mind to clean it out or at least see what lay therein. A pack rat, Mary for years had had the luxury of a large room in which odd stuff could be stowed. She was, near the beginning of her eighth decade, taking inventory. Not that she wanted to get rid of anything, but she saw the writing on the wall—the park would prevail, despite everything. Besides, Hiram said they ought to move.

  He visited often these days, which both delighted and confused her. She loved seeing him, but her faith said no one had risen from the dead except Lazarus for a while, and Jesus for all time. She believed at the last day Christ would call the quick and the dead—everyone, not a solitary Haywood County Carter. But staring faith in the eye was Hiram’s presence, as solid to her as a chinquapin.

  Perhaps he was preparing her to step into the next life, for which she was ready. On the other hand, maybe she was as crazy as a bedbug. She could not say which. But if keeping her wits meant Hiram would return to wherever he had been, she didn’t want to get better.

  She had not told her sons, who were solidly at home in this world of cantaloupes, crows, and cow manure. If they ever prayed outside of church or table grace, it was a farmer’s simple plea for rain—or for it to stop. They would be quite happy for Hiram to stay in his grave.

  She pulled two kitchen chairs in front of the trunk. Sitting in one, its familiar creak merging with the sound of the hall clock, she checked the time: one-ten. Almost three hours before beginning supper.

  The topmost item was a log cabin quilt Elsie Brown Carter had pieced. Mary, thinking to ease Hiram’s departure, had brought it down to cover him when he lay dying. So five years ago was the last time this trunk was opened, she thought, as she unfolded the bedcover on the floor. Next came a red and white crazy quilt inherited from Hiram’s mother, one edge mouse-gnawed years ago. Then a layer of newspaper, so
me full sections, others just a couple of pages. Between two papers—one declaring that an electoral commission had favored Hayes over Tilden, the other trumpeting McKinley being shot by a foreigner with an owlhead pistol—lay a red scarf.

  She took a sharp breath. “Oh, would you look at that?”

  “Mary Belle, you wore that when first we met.”

  She smiled at her husband in the other chair. “Oh, do you remember that day?”

  “Tell it again.”

  “Mama’d started cleaning Cove Creek church Wednesdays before prayer meeting, right after Papa died, in 1879. Mama swept and dusted. They didn’t pay her, but she took satisfaction from it and I guess it kept her mind off her grief. Summers, and when school was out, I went with her. Church wasn’t big, we cleaned it top to bottom in an afternoon. Soon as I spied you starting up the mountain in that wagon, your coal-black eyes shining, I can’t describe the feeling inside me—but then and there I meant to have you.

  “Didn’t know how old you were, but I was sixteen going on twenty-five and didn’t care. A body could set a clock by you. Every Wednesday you drove by at three. ‘Well,’ I said to myself, ‘I’m going to meet that pretty man,’ so I brought this very red scarf, and snuck away from Mama, and wore it just so.” She folded it into a triangle and tied it under her chin.

  Hiram grinned. “Redbird in the sun.”

  “When you stopped, my heart liked to jumped clean up in my throat, because you was older than my married brothers, and I was scared you’d think me nothing but a silly girl. You asked if your mules might drink, and I said there was water enough in the creek. You laughed like that was the funniest thing. Asked my name, you did, and repeated ‘Mary Amelia Howell’ seven times, like a poem. Looked me up and down, like your eyes were licking stripes off a stick of barber-pole candy.

  “Well, I was scared, because I didn’t think Mama would let an older man come courting. I didn’t know a thing about you, so I started asking questions.”

  He laughed. “The green wood smiled.”

  “I said you better go before Mama catches us. Talk about slap full of contraries—I didn’t want you ever to leave, but didn’t want you to stay, either. I thought you’d never tell them mules to get up.

  “I skipped back to the church, where Mama was trying to look busy, but I caught her wiping her cheek with the back of her hand. I asked what was the matter, and she said, ‘You know good and well what,’ and I played dumb, but she wheeled and let me have it. ‘What do you mean talking to that old man?’ kind of spitting out those last words. I told her you was Levi Carter’s son. A Cataloochee Carter.

  “Sir, her face looked same as if I’d said the moon was purple. I’ll never forget what she said: ‘Well, some Carters are all right, but some’s pretty bad likker sots.’ I vowed you weren’t that kind. Then she cried, and I put my arm around her, and she said I wouldn’t understand till I had a girl of my own. It was days before she said I could see you. Never was so nervous in my life.”

  Hiram nodded. “My heart’s true love.”

  “She sat me down. ‘You still want to see that Hiram Carter?’ I bit my lip and gave a little nod. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said. ‘Will you promise one thing?’ she asked. I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Always remember your mother.’ Well, I gave a little laugh. ‘How could I forget my own dear mother?’ I said. ‘Listen, child,’ she said, ‘your mother is with you, unto death and past, so if this man doesn’t suit you, stay with me—if you marry and he no longer takes care of you, come back. I am your constant friend.’ We hugged and had a good cry. Then I was about to bust to tell you.”

  “Climbed we the hill together.”

  “That we did.”

  • • •

  Manson, sharpening his hoe, turned toward the noise of the preacher’s Model A. Reverend Will Smith liked to come to Cataloochee before a Sunday service and visit. Years ago he’d arrive Wednesdays, but lately so few parishioners were left he drove in Saturdays. Manson leaned the hoe against the fence and wiped his forehead.

  “Preacher, good to see you,” he said as they shook hands. “Mama’ll be proud you’re here. Thomas’s checking livestock at Levi Marion’s old place.”

  “Yes, I visited on the way up. I hope you’re doing as well as your brother. By the way, he said your mother’s not as… good as she has been.”

  “Her wits is woolgathering, Preacher. She talks to herself, but her kind’s not normal. I mean, heck, I do it all the time myself. It’s just that…”

  “What, son?”

  He made sure no one was within earshot. “She acts for the world like she’s talking to somebody. And, don’t let on I said it, but it’s Papa. I’ve heard her. Gives me the willies.”

  “Is she otherwise all right?”

  “I reckon. She doesn’t complain any more than the rest of us.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Let’s see, this is 1931, so she’ll be seventy come October.”

  “I’m no physician, but hardening of the arteries can cut off blood to your brain. Have you asked Dr. Bennett?”

  “Me and Thomas has mentioned it, but we haven’t done anything.”

  “I’d suggest that, and soon. Is she inside?”

  “Sure, Preacher. She’d love to see you.”

  When the porch boards creaked, Manson stopped and put up his hand like he was riding point. “Look, Preacher, she’s pulled him up a chair,” he whispered.

  Through the screen door they saw Mary, talking softly to some unseen presence, tuck a red scarf into a newspaper. She looked straight at the spot Hiram’s face would have occupied had he sat there. She smiled, spoke, and pulled out a paper with the headline: FLOOD KILLS MANY IN WNC. Manson coughed and began to open the screen door.

  Startled, her face ran from tender smile through confusion to hospitality in about two seconds. She finally said, “Law, me, it’s Reverend Smith!” in a perfectly normal tone. “I was about to tell,” she said, and stopped to scratch the side of her nose, “the Cataloochee news the very day this paper came out. I’ll never forget it—the day Henry Sutton’s mule turned up dead. But it’ll keep. It’s mighty fine to see you, Preacher. I’ll fix you a glass of milk and a piece of cake.”

  “Who were you about to tell, Mama?”

  She looked at the empty chair. “Why, did I say ‘tell’? I meant ‘remember.’ Don’t pay no attention to a foolish old woman.”

  “Mama, who’s that other chair for?”

  “Nobody, silly. It’s in case I want to keep these things off the floor.”

  Smith put his hand on Aunt Mary’s shoulder. “Cake and milk sounds just right.”

  “You men go in the front room and I’ll rustle it up.” When they left, she put her hand out to Hiram, gone like a ghost. But the chair seat felt as warm as a husband’s love.

  Dr. Lucius Bennett, second son of Old Man Bennett and brother to Old Man Bennett junior, doctored like Will Smith preached—kept an office in Waynesville, but every other week set up shop in a different precinct Thursdays and Fridays, prescribing, setting bones, suturing elbows.

  He seemed not to care whether he was paid, as long as his appetite was satisfied. Folks gave him money if they had it, chickens or butter when they did not. He was welcome at any table in the county—and gained a considerable belly therefrom.

  Bennett came to Cataloochee on Thursday, June 6, to set up a makeshift office at Aunt Mary’s. Manson pulled him aside before dinner and outlined his concerns about his mother, emphasizing Preacher Smith’s suggestion.

  “What do you think, Doc?”

  “You know, Manson, I heard Will Smith preach once, and wasn’t impressed. But from what you say, he might be a better doctor than preacher. Hardening of the arteries is a big umbrella, but it’s been known to make old people daffy. See, arteries begin pliable and soft, but when they ossify, whatever organ they supply is shortchanged.”

  “What’s that word, Doc?”

  “What word—oh, ‘ossify,’ it means ‘harden.’
Sometimes blood vessels age to a texture like cartilage. When that happens, especially in the carotids—they’re here in your neck—that restricts oxygen to the brain. That can make you forgetful, or take to wandering.” He rolled down his sleeves. “Of course, it could be something else. I’ll look at her, if she’ll let me, and we’ll see.”

  “Then you don’t think she’s losing her mind?”

  “I didn’t say that, Manson, but don’t worry—if she isn’t about to set the house on fire or walk up the middle of the creek, we’ve time to figure this out.”

  Dinner with the family was a feast featuring bear roast and rhubarb and strawberry pie. No one showed up after dinner with a medical complaint, so the doctor sat on the porch until Aunt Mary finished the dishes and came out, fanning herself with her apron.

  They rocked, watching crows follow the ridge. Finally Bennett broke the silence.

  “Mary, why don’t you let me examine you? It stays this quiet, I might lose my touch.”

  She stopped rocking and looked at him sideways. “You want to examine somebody, try Jim Hawkins’s wife, Nell.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “You tell me. Got a handsome husband and two pretty young’uns. Lives for free in a big house in the prettiest place in the world. Yet she’s broody as an old hen.”

  “I generally need permission before I check people’s health.”

  “I saw you talking to Manson. Did he give you my permission?”

  “Oh, Mary, we were just talking. You know, you get to a certain age, you ought to have your blood pressure taken often enough to get a jump on potential problems.”

  “Have my sons told you the old woman’s losing her mind?”

  “Haven’t said a thing. I just like you, and don’t want to do without your good cooking.”

  “Well, long as I don’t have to take clothes off in front of God and everybody, it’s all right.”

  “Good. Let’s read your blood pressure.” After a thorough questioning, he slid his instruments into the bag. “Do you take any aspirin, patent medicine, whatever?”