The Secret Sense of Wildflower

by Susan Gabriel

  After we drain the last little bit of sugar out of the bottom of our glasses, Mary Jane and I walk to Daniel’s house again. We enter the kitchen where Jo is frying okra on the stove and fanning herself with a folded up copy of the Rocky Bluff newspaper.

  “I’m going to take a walk with the girls,” Daniel says to Jo.

  “That’s fine,” she says, looking radiant even while sweating.

  Daniel put his arms around Jo, pats her stomach, and then kisses her on the cheek. Mary Jane smiles as though Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers have just started dancing in the kitchen. I roll my eyes and hope Mary Jane doesn’t come down with the swoons like Meg. Then I’ll be the only one left with any sense.

  We leave the house with Daniel and when we get to the crossroads, Johnny is nowhere to be seen. For a few seconds I’m disappointed that I won’t get to witness a showdown between Daniel and Johnny. It’s not like Johnny to have the good sense to leave after saying the things he did.

  “Let’s pay a visit to his house,” Daniel says.

  I’ve never set foot near Johnny’s house but Daniel seems to know where it is. We follow the main road another hundred yards and then take a narrow path through the woods littered with trash and broken liquor bottles. Kudzu vines cover the trees making a shroud of shade. We walk deeper and deeper into the woods and I start to remember every fairy tale I’ve ever read where people get lost in the woods and thrown into ovens or eaten by wolves. When we finally reach the Monroe’s house, it isn’t even a house, but more like a shack.

  As we approach, Daniel calls out, “Is anybody home?”

  I can’t imagine living anywhere so small and dirty. This house makes ours look like a mansion. A stand of hardwoods surround the shack and make it look even smaller. An oak stands close to the house. One that’s young enough that its lower branches can still be climbed. I think of Ruby and imagine the scene I heard Amy and Mama describe in the kitchen a few weeks before. A shudder crawls up my spine.

  A crooked porch is attached to the cabin and one of the steps is missing. Wads of yellowed newspaper fill cracks between the boards of the shack. A faded, torn curtain moves from behind the window. Pieces of a face appear: an eye, a cheek. The door opens slowly and catches on a swollen floorboard. The girl peers out.

  “Hello, Miss Melody,” Daniel says.

  “Hello, Mr. Daniel,” she says, her words soft. Warily, the girl steps outside, her skin so white it appears to have never seen the sun. Her gaze briefly rests on me and Mary Jane before flitting off like a butterfly lifting from a flower. She brushes a few pieces of stringy hair with her hand, as if her unexpected company warrants a better appearance.

  “We’re looking for your brother,” Daniel says to her.

  “Oh,” she says. Her eyes shift from left to right and then back to center as if danger could be lurking anywhere.

  The look in Melody’s eyes reminds me of something I’ve seen before. The cries of the trapped fox fill my memory, a fox Daddy and I found one time up on the mountain above our house. It was caught in a metal trap. It took forever for Daddy to free it and I covered my ears to try to block out the animal’s cries. Finally he covered its head with his flannel coat so it wouldn’t bite him and he used his knife to pry the trap open. The fox limped away, its paw nearly severed, leaving a trail of blood behind. Melody’s eyes remind me of the fox’s eyes.

  Rumors around Katy’s Ridge have Melody not right in the head. But from what I can tell she’d be perfectly fine if life was gentler with her. I can’t imagine what’s it like to have a brother like Johnny and I wonder if she misses her sister, Ruby. If I lost one of my sisters, I don’t think I would ever recover. I even miss baby Beth, who died when she was two days old, and I never set eyes on her.

  Up the hill behind the house, the outhouse door opens with a loud squeak and Johnny steps out. He pulls up his pants and smells his fingers. Just when I thought Johnny Monroe couldn’t get more disgusting, he just did. He stops when he sees us, like a crook caught with the goods in his hands. Melody lowers her head and closes the door softly, as if a sleeping baby rests inside.

  In the distance, Johnny takes a plug of chewing tobacco from his pocket and sticks it in his mouth. He shuffles toward us and works the chew with his mouth wide open. Then he grabs a tin can lying in a junk pile among pieces of plows and broken tools along with discarded scraps of wood and pieces of rusted animal traps.

  Johnny stops when he sees us. The three of us face him, our own version of David facing Goliath. I wish I’d thought to bring the slingshot Daddy made me. I’d aim right for the center of Johnny’s forehead and let it rip.

  When Johnny gets close enough that we can read the “cling peaches” on his tin can, he stops and spits a big wad of tobacco juice three inches from Daniel’s boot. Johnny smiles, as if impressed with his own skill.

  Daniel stays calm, with the exception of one fist that he balls up like he’s ready to use it.

  We stand under the oak tree and I wonder if Ruby is looking down on us. A vibration starts in my chest and I have the secret sense that Ruby wants me to know what happened to her.

  “Johnny, I want you to leave these girls alone,” Daniel says. His voice carries like he is God speaking from Mt. Sinai.

  “I ain’t doing nothin’ to those girls,” Johnny says. He squirts a mouthful of tobacco juice toward the peach can and misses. He snarls, like it is his first miss in years. The lemonade I had earlier turns sour in my stomach. I’ve spent so much time looking at my shoes, I haven’t taken in the full picture of Johnny. His clothes are covered with a month’s worth of dirt. His face is dirty, too. And someone must have used a dull kitchen knife to cut his hair because none of it matches up. When the wind kicks up we smell the stink of sour, dirty clothes and days-old sweat.

  “I know you, Johnny,” Daniel says. “I’m telling you right now, you leave these girls alone or I’ll come after you. You hear me?”

  Johnny spits again, but this time off to the side.

  Daniel narrows his eyes to make good his threat.

  “I hear you,” Johnny says finally. His smile reveals two missing teeth, tobacco resting in the crevices.

  Mary Jane and I follow Daniel down the path. I glance at the oak tree one last time and the vibration in my chest flutters again, as if Ruby is proud of us for standing up to her brother.

  “He won’t be any more trouble,” Daniel says to us. “That boy’s all bark and no bite.”

  I hope Daniel’s right. “Why is he so mean?” I ask. Meanness and goodness are a mystery to me. It seems that everybody has a little of both.

  Daniel holds back a large sticker bush from the path so Mary Jane and I can pass.

  “It’s hard to say what makes a person mean,” he says. “For one thing, I don’t think anybody’s cared for that boy a single day of his life.”

  We step over piles of garbage thrown on the path. A rustle in the underbrush startles us and Mary Jane grabs my hand. Mr. Monroe approaches, cleaning the barrel of his shotgun with a dirty rag.

  “Something I can do for you folks?” Mr. Monroe asks. Arthur Monroe makes Johnny look clean cut.

  “It’s taken care of,” Daniel says.

  “What’s that boy done now?” he asks. He spits in the vines next to him. Spitting must run in this family, like meanness does. Except that Ruby and Melody don’t seem mean at all.

  “Johnny’s been bothering the girls,” Daniel says. “But I think we came to an understanding.”

  “Johnny does have a way with the girls.” Old man Monroe grins and scratches a week’s worth of whiskers on his dirty face and then looks over at me. “This one’s growing up nice, ain’t she,” he adds. He gives me a wink.

  I snap my head in the other direction and try not to gag. Daniel takes my hand and I take Mary Jane’s.

  “We’ll be going now,” Daniel says. “Like I said, your boy and I have come to an understanding. I trust there won’t be any more trouble.”

  “Well if there
is, you just let me know, and I’ll knock the shit out of him,” Mr. Monroe says. “That’s all that boy understands, anyway.”

  Mr. Monroe blows his nose on the same dirty rag he used to clean his gun and shoves it into his back pocket. He walks away and staggers against a pine before righting himself.

  We go in the opposite direction, moving quickly through the brush. When we reach the road I breathe deep, relieved to be out of the woods and away from Arthur and Johnny Monroe. But something tells me I may never get away from them.

  “I feel sorry for that Melody girl,” Mary Jane says, her voice just above a whisper.

  “She’s got it rough,” Daniel says. “Maybe she could help Jo out after the baby comes. We can’t pay her much, but at least it would get her out of that house.”

  I like the idea of getting to know Melody better, as long as her brother isn’t anywhere around or her father.

  “I couldn’t believe she wasn’t even wearing shoes,” Mary Jane says, like there isn’t anything more disgraceful. Whenever I see the part of Mary Jane that is like her mother, I try to ignore it, otherwise I might question why we’re friends.

  “And poor Ruby,” Mary Jane continues. “Accidentally killing herself. Have you ever heard of something so awful?”

  “She’s in a better place,” I say, sounding too much like Preacher. But in the back of my mind I’m thinking that what happened to Ruby was no accident.

  “Any place would be a better place than that old shack,” Mary Jane says.

  Mary Jane doesn’t even know the part about Ruby going to have a baby and for some reason I feel protective of Ruby’s secret.

  We reach the crossroads where Mary Jane and I will turn to go to her house.

  “I’d better get back. Jo’s probably got the okra ready,” Daniel says. “You all promise to tell me if there are any more problems?”

  “Promise,” I say.

  “Promise,” Mary Jane echoes.

  When Mary Jane and I sit down to dinner at her house we don’t mention a word about the Monroes.

  “Welcome, Louisa May,” Mary Jane’s father says and then sets out to say the longest prayer in history. I am certain the mashed potatoes will be as cold as buttermilk by the time he finishes and I am right.

  We have roast beef, something we eat rarely at my house, but the meat is tough and by the end of supper my jaws hurt from all the chewing. What a waste, I think. Mama could have done a much better job with the meal. The mashed potatoes have huge lumps in them and the peas taste scalded. But the plates we eat off of don’t have a single chip.

  Mary Jane’s father has a wooden leg attached at the knee. He took it off and showed it to me once and I studied it for a long time. His knee looked like the nub of an elbow and hung there like a hunk of sausage in the window of Sweeny’s store, which Mary Jane’s father owns. He lost his leg in a tractor accident when he was eighteen and then gave up farming to open the store in Katy’s Ridge. He told me once that his actual severed leg is buried in his mother’s back yard in Arkansas, right next to all their dead pets. For some reason a leg buried among cats, dogs, and rabbits gives me the creeps a lot more than any graveyard.

  Mary Jane’s brother, Victor, is two years older than me and has all his arms and legs. He works for Mary Jane’s father at the grocery store, located on the road to Rocky Bluff. We go there to get bubble gum sometimes and Victor always throws in an extra piece for me. Victor is as close to having a brother as I’ve ever come. He respects nature, like Daddy taught me, and won’t squash a mosquito unless he has to, figuring they have as much right to be alive as any of us.

  We used to catch lightning bugs together—me, Mary Jane and Victor—and we’d fill a Mason jar with holes cut in the top. But Victor always made us let them go after we counted them. Tonight, something’s different and Victor avoids looking at me in the eyes like he’s all of a sudden become shy. He talks to his father about business and keeps looking over like he’s trying to impress me with how much he knows about running a store.

  Meanwhile, all through supper, Mary Jane’s father scratches his wooden leg like it itches. He’d probably unscrew the thing and use it to serve up the cold, lumpy mashed potatoes if he thought it would get a laugh.

  Before dark, Meg and Mama show up at Mary Jane’s to walk me home. Even though the Sweeney’s have everything they could possibly want or need, Mama brings Mary Jane’s mother two jars of her canned tomatoes and a small quilt piece she sewed to put hot things on the dinner table.

  Our family has a habit of walking in the evenings when the weather is nice. Daddy always said it helped supper digest. But when we walk these days, there’s a big hole where Daddy usually stood and I think we all feel it.

  No one stands at the crossroads when we walk by. I think of Melody, living in a shack next to the oak tree where her sister Ruby died. I wouldn’t wish that life on anybody.

  Daddy would say the Monroes deserve our pity. We don’t have much, but we are rich compared to them. We are not to judge people who are going through hard times. He was big on being a good person. But people like Johnny make being a good person much harder than it sounds.

  The sun has long gone behind the mountain and the moon is rising. Shadows of trees blend with the darkness. Crickets sing their chorus, their music surrounding us.

  Meg locks her arm in Mama’s. Meg is good at getting Mama’s attention in a way that Mama doesn’t mind. The moonlight serves as a lantern as we walk in silence, our footsteps shuffling in the dirt. We find our way home in total darkness and it’s as if our feet have memorized the path.

  Back when Daddy used to walk with us he would hold my hand. I’d be on one side while Mama was on the other. He held Mama’s hand a lot, too, like they were still courting. Sometimes he would light his pipe and it would be so dark all we could see was the little bowl of fire kept alive by his breath. He knew the path up the hill to our house better than any of us and he would lead the way, guiding our steps to avoid every rock and root.

  Jasmine grows along the path and in summer our noses tell us when we are close to home. I imagine Daddy’s footsteps joining ours, him leading the way through the darkness, the smell of sweet tobacco mingling with the smell of jasmine.

  About halfway up the hill I shiver, even though it isn’t the least bit cold, and wrap my arms around myself. I sense someone watching us in the dark. I immediately think of Johnny and I am about to say something to Meg and Mama when I trip and fall to the ground. A hand jerks me up.

  “Don’t be clumsy, Louisa May,” Mama says. Her grasp pinches my skin and I pull away.

  “Are you okay?” Meg asks in the darkness.

  “I’m fine,” I say. My embarrassment chases away any remaining creepy feelings and I brush the dirt from my hands and knees, missing Daddy more than ever.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The next morning, the screen door slaps at my heels as I walk out on the front porch and a knot twists in my stomach. I have had the secret sense more often the last few days. It starts as a vibration in my chest and then extends to my fingertips like a mild charge of electricity. I pause, remembering a similar feeling the day Daddy died.

  “Where you headed, Louisa May?” Mama says from behind me. I jump before I can stop myself.

  “Why don’t you call me by my real name and maybe I’ll tell you,” I say. The words come out more hateful than I intend.

  “Wildflower…” she says. Her patience is as ragged as Daddy’s favorite shirt I keep digging out of the rag bin because she keeps throwing it away.

  “I’m not a child, Mama. You don’t have to know every single place I go.” Although I’m convinced she knows exactly where I’m going and that’s the whole point of asking me. She just wants me to say it. It is the anniversary of Daddy’s accident and I’ve been thinking about it all morning. Even if everybody else acts like they’ve forgotten him, nothing can keep me from going to the graveyard today to pay my respects.

  “I’m going to the river,”
I say, which is a lie. Then I’m down the path before she can stop me.

  “Be careful,” she yells after me, like she used to say to Daddy every morning he left for the sawmill.

  “I will,” I yell back, which was always Daddy’s answer, too.

  Leaves from the poplar trees dot the ground like stars. The poplars are the first to know that fall is coming and the first to drop their leaves. Winter will follow, a hard time in the mountains. Visiting the outhouse with a foot of snow on the ground isn’t something anybody looks forward to.

  At the crossroads I look out for Johnny, but he isn’t around. Daniel’s talk must have worked. I take my shortcut, complete with ritual to cross the stream, and minutes later enter the gate in the back of the graveyard. The more I come this way the faster it takes. As I close the gate, my fingers tingle with the electricity of the secret sense. For several seconds I stand without moving, wondering if this means I should turn back.

  But it’s the anniversary, I say to myself, Daddy would want me to be with him. I convince myself to keep going.

  When I approach his marker something looks different. The knot in my gut twists tighter, a tingling premonition that something isn’t right. Then I see it. A Mason jar, full of clear liquid, lies next to one of the tree roots. The grass is torn up like somebody has stomped around on the grave. I walk closer, feeling like the ground might cave in under me. Daddy’s tombstone is streaked with a brown, muddy slash from one end to the other. An empty can is tossed a few feet away on the ground.

  I kick the peach can down the hill with all my might. “I hate you, Johnny Monroe!” I yell. A faint echo bounces off a nearby hill.

  Tobacco juice spews out in wide, brown arches as the can thumps end over end down the hill toward the river. My anger comes out in tears, which makes me even madder. I yank a handful of willow leaves from the branch closest to me and scrub the stinking tobacco juice off of my father’s name. The leaves are too small to do the job so I run up the hill and get poplar and maple leaves which are bigger. After spitting on the leaves, I frantically rub at the brown juice on Daddy’s marker. My knuckles get bruised and bloodied against the stone. I can’t believe that even Johnny Monroe would do such a vile thing to the memory of a dead person.