by Tony Earley
“Bucky built that,” a voice said behind him.
Jim started at the voice, and again at the figure silhouetted by the white winter sunlight.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Chrissie said. She stepped into the building and off to the side, out of the glare.
“I thought you were somebody else,” Jim said.
She wasn’t wearing Bucky’s letter jacket any longer but had on the plaid cloth coat she normally wore to school.
“It was hanging by the door,” she said.
“What was?”
“Bucky’s letter jacket. It was hanging by the door and I just put it on when I came outside. I was in a hurry.”
“I didn’t notice.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Okay, I did. But how did you know what I was thinking?”
“It wasn’t hard. You wouldn’t make a very good liar.”
“So, what am I thinking now?”
Chrissie leaned forward and squinted slightly. “You’re thinking, ‘I don’t care what she wears. She can wear whatever coat she wants to.’”
“That’s pretty close,” he said. He enjoyed a passing but powerful urge to kick wood chips at her. “You didn’t tell me you and Bucky were getting married.”
“I’m not exactly Bucky’s — I mean, I wasn’t — Bucky’s fiancée.”
“What does that mean? ‘Not exactly’?”
“It means I kind of got promoted after Pearl Harbor.”
“Well, you live in a nice house now,” Jim said. “Congratulations.”
“You think I like living here?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“These poor people loved Bucky, Jim. Now they’re just about crazy.”
“I understand that part.”
“Mrs. Bucklaw says she wants me around because Bucky loved me, but she’s got me cooking and cleaning like a maid, except she ain’t paying me. And that’s about the sanest thing that’s going on. I can’t wait to get out of that house. It’s too sad and strange.”
“Did Bucky love you?”
“What? I don’t know. I guess. He said he did.”
“Did you love him?”
“I think we’ve already had this conversation.”
“Do you miss him?”
“I’m just real sad about everything. I’m afraid he suffered. I’m afraid he was trapped in a fire and he couldn’t get out and he knew what was happening. I can’t go to sleep for thinking about it. And I’m afraid he’s in the house. I’m afraid I’m going to see him coming in the door if I open my eyes. I know you hated him, Jim, but he didn’t deserve what happened to him.”
“No,” Jim said. “You’re right. He didn’t.”
Chrissie stepped closer. “He finished that canoe right before we moved back here. He said it took him almost a year.”
“It’s beautiful,” Jim said, meaning it. “I don’t think I could ever make anything like that.”
“He said he wanted to cover it in birch bark, but the only birch trees he could find up here were too scrawny.”
“Birch bark?”
“Bucky loved boats,” Chrissie said. “And he loved Indians.”
“Seems like I’ve heard that before.”
“Don’t be smart. There’s a whole shelf full of books about Indians in his room that he studied long before he ever laid eyes on me. He was one of those white boys who liked to run around in the woods wearing moccasins. Did you ever do that?”
“Not much,” Jim said. “I was usually a cowboy.”
“Because you like to win?”
“No, because I had a cowboy hat and a pony. Why did you call Bucky a white boy?”
“Because he was.”
“But you’re half white.”
“That depends on whether or not somebody’s asking me to mop.” Jim opened his mouth to speak, but Chrissie held up her hand. “I can tell you’re about to show your ignorance, Jim, and I’d just as soon you didn’t.”
“Your mama’s white,” Jim said.
“There. You went ahead and did it, anyway.”
“What did I say?”
“Lift up that end of the canoe,” Chrissie said. “We need to get these sawhorses to the house.”
They walked slowly along the farm road through the orchards. Jim carried the stacked sawhorses over his shoulder. Chrissie didn’t seem in a hurry to get back to the house. The morning was cold but calm, the sunlight weak but bright. It should have been a better day than it was.
“What’s been going on at school?” Chrissie asked.
“Everybody’s been talking about Bucky and the war. Horace Gentine and Buster Burnette have already joined the navy and gone off to basic training.”
“I heard about it.”
“We had assembly and prayer meeting every morning for Bucky because they didn’t know if he was dead or not. At first it was just preachers coming in, but then kids started asking Mr. Dunlap if they could pray. The day school let out for Christmas, second period was almost over before everybody finished. There’s a kid in the fifth grade who says he’s called to preach, and I thought they were going to have to drag him off the stage.”
“Did you pray for him?”
“No. I mean, not out loud. Everybody was looking at me to see if I would do it.”
“But you did pray for him?”
“Yes,” Jim said. “When I was by myself. After you told me that day why you couldn’t go out with me, I started wishing that Bucky would die.”
“Oh, no.”
“And Pearl Harbor Day, before we heard, I was down at the river with Dennis Deane shooting my rifle, and I pretended to shoot him.”
“That’s awful, Jim.”
“I know it is,” Jim said. “I’ve been praying about it, but I don’t feel much better.”
“Maybe we’ll all feel better one of these days.”
“Maybe.” He moved the sawhorses to the other shoulder. “Tell me something. I know you believe in spirits, but do you believe in ghosts?”
“Sometimes spirits can be ghosts,” Chrissie said carefully. “And sometimes they’re just spirits.”
“What would you say if I told you I think I saw Bucky last night?”
Chrissie didn’t stop walking, but Jim heard her inhale sharply. “I think I heard him coming up the stairs, but I was too scared to look,” she said. “When did you see him?”
“Coming up here. I guess I went to sleep in the truck, and I dreamed he was running up the mountain behind us.”
“Did he say anything?”
“He told me to stay away from you.”
The corners of Chrissie’s mouth flinched upward. “Well, that sounds like him.”
“He said there was a ladder in the well. Does that mean anything to you?”
“The Bucklaws have got a pump, so I don’t know if there’s a ladder down in the well or not. I ain’t going to slide the slab back and look, though.”
“If Bucky had made it home, what do you think you would have done?”
“I don’t know. I guess I would have married him,” she said.
Jim thought then of Bucky guiding his red canoe down the river. It was warm, Indian summer, the woods yellow. Chrissie sat in the bow. Jim stood on the flat rock. The water was green and smooth. The canoe was going very fast. Bucky was taking her away from him forever. Hey, Bucky. Over here.
“I can’t believe you,” he said.
“Don’t you start on me, Jim. Not today.”
“I can’t believe you would marry somebody you didn’t love.”
“I keep telling you, you don’t know anything about me.”
“I know about Injun Joe,” he said. “I know he robbed a bank and shot a cop and you don’t even know where he is.”
Chrissie stopped and wheeled on Jim. She was crying now. “What did you just call my daddy?” she asked.
He watched a tear drop onto the front of her coat and sink darkly into the wool. He felt as if he had strayed too far in f
ront of the line during a rabbit hunt. If he flushed a rabbit now, somebody was going to shoot him.
“Injun Joe,” he said.
And there went the rabbit.
“That’s it, Jim Glass,” she said. “That’s it. You just settled everything.”
“Oh, yeah? Then, why did you even come down here just now?”
Chrissie pointed back the way they had come. “Look down there.”
Bucky’s German shepherds stood about twenty paces behind them, ears up, one in each track of the farm road. They were staring straight at Jim.
“I should have let them eat you,” Chrissie said.
February 8, 1942
Lynn’s Mountain, NC
Dear Zeno,
Well, it is a new year here as it is there, and I hope it is better than the last one, although it does not seem that the war news will be good anytime soon and you have to wonder what is happening in the world. I know you must not consider getting a letter from me to be good news either, as it hasn’t been in the past, nor have telegrams, and if you think I am writing to you today to ask you for something, then you are right, I’m afraid. Here it is. I have heard that Mr. Harris is going to be looking for somebody to cook and clean at his hotel, and I am writing to see if you would put in a good word for me for the job, as I need it. (You know for yourself that I am a good cook! And I’m still not afraid to work.) We are nothing more than a hardship and a worry up here on Mama and Daddy, who do not have anything other than the scraps the Bucklaws throw them, and besides, I need to get Chrissie away from Mrs. B. because she has not been right since Pearl Harbor and especially since the funeral and she is treating Chrissie like her daughter, but if Mrs. B. had a daughter, she wouldn’t make her cook and clean all the time and not pay her. She has got her sleeping in the little room across the hall from Bucky’s room and Chrissie does not get a wink of sleep because she says she hears Bucky going up and down the stairs in the dark all night, and I know you don’t believe in spooks but I’m not going to say she is wrong, because many places on this mountain are haunted, as I know you have heard, because you hated riding that mule down the mountain in the dark! I am afraid that they are going to take her away from me. That is why I want to be a cook in the hotel. I have to figure that we will not see Joe again, and if he is not dead already, then they will sentence him to life in prison in Oklahoma for what he did when they catch him, which they will sooner or later, and now I have to figure out how to take care of the two of us without making her feel bad for taking more charity than we have already took. I am not asking you for charity this time, though, only a kind word in passing between two business men in the same town. (I know that your Jim used to go with Mr. Harris’ Norma, so I hope he is not feuding with you!) I know you must think I am like an old dog following you around who you cannot run off even if you throw a stick and a rock at it, but I hope this is the last time I will ever have to ask you for anything or anybody else. Cooking and cleaning in a hotel for traveling men is not the job I would have picked out for myself but I made my bed a long time ago when I was young and silly and now I have to lie in it. (That sounds like a joke because I would be making up beds in the hotel but I did not mean for it to be!) It is honest work and Chrissie can stay with me in the cook’s room and help me in the kitchen but not upstairs, as I will not let her go there or in the dining room or out on the porch, and I will be able to take care of us, and that is all I want anymore in this life and it is enough. Thank you for anything you might say to Mr. Harris about me, and if you don’t choose to, I already understand because I know I don’t deserve it, but Chrissie does. If I get the job and see you on the street I will say howdy but that is all, so you don’t have to worry about that. I am as always
Fondly,
Nancy McAbee Steppe
The Girl on the Bridge
THE FIRST Sunday in March, Mama and Norma decided to give the quilt and a basket of food to Dennis Deane and Ellie Something as a housewarming present. Mama asked Jim to carry them over to Allendale, but Jim didn’t want to go. Sure, he wanted to see the mill where Dennis Deane worked and catch up on things, but he didn’t want to get anywhere near Ellie Something. She might be showing by now, and just the thought of her being pregnant made his face hot. He had never talked to a pregnant girl before, not that he knew about, and he had no idea where he was supposed to look. How could you possibly be in a room with a pregnant girl and not look? And he also remembered Dennis Deane telling him years ago that when girls got pregnant their breasts grew gigantic. If, by some miracle, he managed to avoid looking at Ellie Something’s big belly, he figured there was no way in the world he could also avoid looking at her big breasts.
Ultimately, he went along just for the chance to drive his car. Once the war started, Jim had had no choice but to park the Major. He wasn’t happy about it, of course, but saw no way to circumvent it, or even complain about it, without seeming small. The last thing in the world he needed was for someone to see him driving around and throw Bucky’s sacrifice in his face. Jim already had enough problems.
While Chrissie now spent weeknights with her mother at the hotel, and he occasionally saw her around town, the unwritten rules against speaking to her seemed only to have grown more restrictive since Bucky’s death. The simple fact that he had even wanted to date the so-called fiancée of the fallen hero had somehow called his patriotism into question; somehow once being lined up against Bucky had automatically made him for the Japanese. So he had dropped the key to the Major into Uncle Zeno’s hand without complaint. There was a war on, after all, and he couldn’t drive without gasoline, simple as that. But Mama, who never went anywhere, had registered for her ration — just in case of emergency, she said, and giving a quilt to Dennis Deane and Ellie Something apparently qualified. Allendale was a fifteen- or sixteen-mile round-trip and Jim was tired of walking or riding a mule everywhere he went. So he agreed to drive. Mama sprang for two gallons of gas.
Jim checked the Major’s oil and the air pressure in the tires, and he parked the car in front of the house. He thought about leaving the motor running, because it had been slow to start, but figured that at least one of the uncles would get all over him for wasting gasoline. So he cut the engine and went inside, where he found Mama and Norma working furiously on the quilt, which they had unwrapped and spread out on Mama’s bed.
Mama, looking down her nose through her sewing glasses, was busy with her seam ripper, removing the scrap of blue chambray that had once belonged to the shirt owned by Jim’s father, while Norma, perched on the side of the bed, whipped two small doorways onto a replacement piece cut from one of Uncle Zeno’s red bandanas. Norma looked up and smiled brightly when Jim walked in. He was glad she didn’t hate him anymore. He still didn’t want to marry her, and never would, but at least now he hoped he would always know her. Mama simply looked sheepish.
“Oh, Norma,” she said. “I am so sorry about this. I hope you don’t mind me ripping this out.” She lifted the piece of chambray away from the quilt and waved it feebly. “And look at it. It’s just a scrap. I feel silly.”
Norma hopped down from the bed and handed Mama the new red wall of the house. “There’s nothing to feel silly about, Elizabeth,” she said. “I know what that shirt meant to you.”
Jim’s nose wrinkled involuntarily, the way it always did when he heard Norma call Mama “Elizabeth.” The uncles, and virtually everyone else in town, called her Cissy. Only Norma used Mama’s given name.
Mama pinned the new piece against the dark blue background and tilted her head. “It’s already a bit faded,” she said. “It makes the neighborhood look a little trashy, but I guess it will have to do.”
She and Norma threaded needles and, working shoulder to shoulder, began stitching the house back together. “It’s funny I’m being so ungenerous about that piece,” Mama said. “Jim, my husband, would have given us the shirt if we’d asked for it.”
“Mmm?” Norma said. She was holding a straight pin betwee
n her lips.
“He was a kind boy,” Mama said. “It seems so strange to me now to realize that he was only a boy the whole time I knew him. He was only twenty-three when he died.”
Norma took the pin out of her mouth and jammed it into the cushion. “What else was he like?” she asked.
Mama glanced up and stared out the window, her needle poised in midair, the white thread taut beneath it, as if she was expecting her husband any minute.
“He was quiet,” she said. “A little shy. He had a lovely singing voice, but you had to stand close to him to hear it. Not like my brothers — they’re vain as peacocks about their singing and try to outdo each other until you can’t hear anything else — but just a pretty voice, the kind that’s pleasant to listen to in the evening. He sang all those old sad mountain songs that go on forever, like ‘Barbie Allen.’ ”
“That sounds nice,” Norma said.
“I don’t know if I appreciated it enough at the time,” said Mama. “He never sang directly to me, of course. He would have found that too embarrassing. But he would sing when he knew I could hear him, and I wouldn’t let on that I had listened.”
Norma raised her eyebrows at Jim, but Jim pretended he didn’t see her.
“And on Sunday afternoons, especially cold ones like today — this was after we were married and lived in that little tenant house — he would make me pies. His mother was sick a lot when he was little, and he learned how to cook for her. He made better biscuits than I did. He didn’t use as much baking soda. My biscuits are pretty to look at, fluffy and all, but I’ve always suspected they were a little bitter.”
“I like your biscuits,” Norma said. “Mine are too hard and they tend to burn on the bottom.”
“Poor boy,” Mama said. “The uncles kidded him unmercifully about those pies.”
Jim rattled the change in his pocket. “Are y’all ready to go?” he asked.
