Slow Way Home

by Michael Morris

  When she walks towards the French doors in the back, the portraits leap out at me. Mac and his children are sitting on the beach all dressed in matching khakis. The lines on his face favor Uncle Cecil, and I wonder if he still feels the loss of his father. His wife is exactly what someone like Aunt Loraine would prescribe for a doctor’s spouse. In the portrait peeling skin on her tipped nose is held down with makeup, and her teeth are as white as the sand she is standing on. The other portrait is of Mary Madonna and her three boys. Her blonde hair is curled at the ends and drapes over her shoulder. Divorced, she now owns the largest bridal and formal outlet in the Carolinas. At least some things remain the same.

  The receptionist’s voice is a welcome distraction. “She asked if you could have a seat. She’s finishing up a closing.”

  The seat of the leather sofa is hot by the time Aunt Loraine bursts through the French doors with opened arms. Her face is tight, and only the lines on her neck give her age away.

  “Brandon, how are you? Oh, I see a little gray at the temples. You and Mac are both lightening up on top and I want you to cut it out. It’s making me feel old.” The cell phone in her suit pocket begins playing “Rhapsody in Blue,” and she holds up a finger. “This is Loraine…”

  While she discusses an escrow account, I move to the wall lined with photographs of her with every elected official in North Carolina. I wonder if she would believe me if I told her that Gina Strickland had willed a portion of her estate to me. The knowledge would only be a slight intrusion on the perfect world she’s carved for herself.

  “Come, come, come,” she says and snakes her hand under my arm.

  A white sofa and floral pillows make the spacious office seem like summer. “Now, I’m just going to redirect this phone to voice mail and sit and visit.” She punches numbers on the desk phone and tosses her hair back. “What did we do before voice mail?”

  This woman who had frightened me as a child suddenly seems a mere child herself, and I unzip my jacket.

  “So tell me. How are Nicole and the girls?”

  “Everyone is fine.”

  “And you’re still in Atlanta? Still working with computers or some sort…”

  “Still in Atlanta. Still have the software business.”

  She fans the polished nails across the suit jacket. “I know Nana is so proud of you. Why, we all are.”

  “Thanks. Yeah, speaking of Nana…”

  The cell phone begins to play the song again. “Hold that thought. This is Loraine…”

  As I leaf through the stack of magazines on the coffee table, a brochure for Hathaway Plantation slides out. An illustration shows homes with Williamsburg-style shingles and children riding bikes down the street. I wonder if the artist would have ever guessed the setting was once the strip of land where we rode our bikes around hog pens.

  “I’m so sorry. I don’t think some of these people could breathe if I didn’t tell them how.” She laughs in that nasal way I remember. The part of her that money couldn’t change. “Now what was I saying?”

  “Uhh, I think we were about to talk about Nana.”

  Her smile lowers, and she shakes her head. “You know I need to go by there and see her. Now tell me, how’s her hip? How long has it been since she broke it, five months at least…”

  “About a year now. She’s adjusting to the new place, but it’s hard. I can tell she’s lonely.”

  “Now, Brandon, you have nothing to feel guilty about. I know all of the owners of the nursing homes. You put her in the best, I’m here to tell you.”

  Another verse of the song plays on the cell phone, and she laughs right out loud. “Can you believe this? It just never stops. This is Loraine…”

  Scanning the photos on the wall, I notice one with Lars Hathaway, the developer of Hathaway Plantation. Aunt Loraine and her husband are guarding him on either side.

  Playing with the sapphire pendant, she shakes her head. “Mac was asking me just last week if I had gotten over there to see Nana. I keep intending to…well, you know how it is.”

  “Yeah, I guess it’s true what they say. You know, about the road to hell being paved with good intentions.”

  Releasing the pendant, she straightens her suit and tries to laugh. “Yeah, well. Now is this just a social call or…”

  Picking up the brochure for Hathaway Plantation, I lean forward. “I was just wondering, were you ever going to mention this to me?”

  “What? Well, it’s just a new venture we’re trying.” When the cell phone comes to life again, I snatch it from the coffee table and press the off button.

  “Brandon, I am expecting an important call. What’s gotten into you?”

  “I guess I’ve had a splinter for the past thirty years and it’s finally festered is all.”

  When I stand, she slides to the edge of the chair, seemingly nervous that the past may start boiling over into her orderly life.

  “I don’t know what bothers me more. The fact that you’re trying to turn our farm into an amusement park of two-story homes or that you don’t even bother to consider that I might care.”

  “Brandon, with all due respect. That farm was mine to sell to Lars without your permission. Let’s remember that I’m the one who had to pay the mortgage when Nana and Poppy chose to run off with you.”

  “You never gave them the chance. Not one damn chance to buy it back!”

  “Would you hush that yelling. Now, I will talk to you, but only if you act like you’ve got some sense.”

  “Don’t worry about everybody knowing. People already know. You know how the game works.”

  She continues to shake her head. “You’ve absolutely gone and lost your mind. Speak in English please. I can’t understand riddles.”

  “Lars Hathaway. A friend of mine plays on his tennis team. He told me months ago about all this. So you know what I did? I just turned around and bought the land back from Lars.”

  “What?” The squeal is back to the Aunt Loraine I remember.

  “You can’t do that. They’re already building.”

  “I hired the lawyers. The section of land I’m buying was grandfathered out of the city years ago. So it’s not zoned.”

  “I just talked to Lars this morning. Besides, where did you get the money to…”

  “I’ve got the deed. It’s done.”

  While she searches me with her eyes, I feel the discomfort of standing on the iron steps of her trailer all over again.

  “Oh, well. We’ll just keep selling those lots and stacking them up behind your run-down shack. It’s just one section anyway. It won’t hurt us one bit.”

  “You’re right, it’s just one little section. But I tell you what. Next week I’m getting the biggest trailer I can find. Then I’m loading that thing up with as many hogs that will fit in it. Then we’ll put up a fence and start unloading. By the time it’s over, the stench will be worse than you ever remembered.”

  “Okay, I see where this is heading. How much do you want for it?”

  “You just don’t get it.”

  “Look, I don’t have time for your sanctimonious attitude. I did the best I knew how to do. I took care of Cecil until the day he died. I tried…”

  “You never tried as far as we were concerned.”

  “What’s all this about? That I didn’t let them buy the farm back? Look, I needed the investment. I had a vegetable for a husband. No income. It was all I could do to make ends…”

  “Here we go. I guess you’re forgetting about the money from the lawsuit. Or about how you tucked Uncle Cecil away?”

  “You know, that’s it. Brandon, you need to leave now.”

  When I get to the French doors, her voice whines for the last time. “Is all this really about your mama? Some sort of little exorcism you’re performing at my expense?”

  “No, Loraine. It’s all about wash day.”

  She’s sitting in the cafeteria listening to a gospel quartet sing from a miniature stereo. Cardboard Valentines bl
are from the white wall as if they are blots of wet red paint. Her face is gaunt, but the green eyes remain the same. A black woman glides past me in a wheelchair, and when I move, those eyes fall on me.

  Clenching both fists, Nana giggles right out loud. By the time I reach her, the smell of rubbing alcohol and steamed cabbage reminds me this is not her home. “Get over here and give me a hug,” she says. “I thought you were coming Thursday.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Today is Thursday.”

  “Lordy me. In this place I’m doing good to keep my name straight.”

  “Are you about ready to go get a milkshake?”

  With the walker stashed in the backseat of the car, I listen to her talk about the kindergarten class that distributed Valentine candy and the latest quilting-club member who died. “You remember Amanda, the one from Morgantown? Her funeral was yesterday. They tell me she wanted to be cremated. I can hardly stand such a notion. When it comes my time, don’t be doing me like that.”

  “Well, you better not leave anytime soon.”

  “I got to studying about it last night. You know, I’m proving there is such a thing as living too long.”

  By the time we pass the turnoff for Dairy Queen, she knows. “Where are we off to?”

  Pretending not to hear, I continue straight down the highway that runs north of town.

  “Son, I’d just as soon not go out there. There’s not a thing in the world I can do to change it, so I just choose not to study it.” She looks across the land at freshly stripped pines and hardwoods stacked on red clay.

  When we stop the car, she’s still staring straight ahead as I pull the paper from my coat. Her bony fingers hold the document inches from her glasses.

  “Nana, it’s the deed. I couldn’t get it all, but I managed to save the old place. I was inside earlier this morning. It needs a ton of work. I think the kitchen floor’s rotten and the porch is caved…”

  Before I can finish preparing her for reality, the car door opens and she steps ahead. Sprinting up behind her, I hold out the walker, but she ignores the offer. Her arms halfway stretch out as if to provide balance to her toddler-sized steps, but the eyes remain determined. Does she understand? Has the place with screaming patients and Valentine decorations made for children stomped out the solid places of her mind for good? Her steps are uneasy, as if walking through a minefield. The wind lifts the edge of her plastic bonnet, but she never seems to notice.

  She grips the edge of the porch railing to steady herself. Next to a gap in the wood are the crude numbers, 1918. Her crooked finger reaches up and traces each number as if it was in Braille. When she speaks, her voice cracks as easily as the steps that lead into the house. “My daddy was a sharecropper. Mama always claimed working so hard for the down payment on this place drove him to a early grave. Daddy used to tell us kids we had Carolina clay running through our veins.”

  She cups her hands and offers the story up like a prayer. Words of sacrifice and survival pour into the scorched places that the world and weather have left maimed. Even though I know each sentence as well as a child can recite a favorite bedtime story, I listen as if hearing it for first time. Picking at splintered wood on the porch rail, I lift a piece and tuck it inside my shirt pocket. Nana searches the roof and porch as if a piece of the structure will lift her back to the past, and all at once I miss the boy who once could make himself shrink away in time. We are quiet as a roar from a nearby dump truck tempts us to look away and acknowledge the modern-day changes.

  In the car she just pats my arm. “Son, you’re my world.”

  At the edge of the highway, minivans and European cars thicken the road. In the rearview mirror the homes of Hathaway Plantation sparkle in the sun. Pieces of the roofline glisten like diamonds yet to be mined, and a flag on the model home flaps in the wind at full staff.

  It is then that the need to protect overtakes me. “You’ve got so many people who love you,” I say.

  Her hands are as beaten as the porch floor and stay obediently folded in her lap. She stares straight ahead, almost resigned to the future, never seeming to notice that I am heading in the opposite direction of the nursing home. We just keep driving down a highway that now seems like a trail of untamed wilderness.

  As I grip the steering wheel, my shirt stretches across the chest. The splintered wood from the porch rail presses against me until it’s almost an extension of my being, much like a birthmark or a scar. A discolored piece of jagged wood that is a souvenir of the boy I was as much as it is a compass for the man I want to become.

  Acknowledgments

  As always, I am grateful for the never-ending encouragement and support that I receive from Melanie. She’s not only an outstanding “first” editor for my work but also a wonderful wife and best friend.

  The idea for Slow Way Home came before I wrote my first novel. During a business trip to Fort Lauderdale I passed an RV park packed so tight with campers that they were nearly on top of one another. My first thought was that someone could get lost in such an environment and then the image of an older couple and a young boy came to mind. If it had not been for the guidance of Judge Shelley Desvousges this story would still be floating around in my head. She led me through a legal maze of custody hearings and federal versus state law in such a way that even I could make sense of it. With that said, any and all mistakes are mine. I’m also grateful for the legislative clarification I received from my friend Jack Graham.

  Others offered early comments on the manuscript or promotional help that led me to this point. I appreciate the support that I’ve received from each one of them: Tina Baker, Sonny Brewer, Megan Brier, Stacey Howell, Marsha Marks, Robert Segedy, Karin and Keifer Wilson, and Betty Joe Wolff. Special thanks to my in-laws, Tom and Dixie Sanderson, who shuttled me to many book signings and yet still remain just as enthusiastic.

  Thank you, Laurie Liss, for your advice and advocacy as my agent. Your talent and persistence are motivating.

  I also appreciate the talent and kindness of my editor, Renée Sedliar. Renée, everyone should be so fortunate to have an editor as qualified and nice as you.

  To my parents, Larry and Elaine Stroud, I am grateful for your love and ongoing support. It doesn’t seem that long ago when all of this was simply talk fit for air castles.

  To my grandfather, Curtis Whitfield, thank you for your love and stories. No one makes oral history come to life the way you do. And finally I acknowledge the impact my grandmother had on my life. Audrey Whitfield gave me an unconditional love that only God Himself can surpass. She graced this world for seventy-two years but her love and wisdom live on in the lives she touched.

  It is estimated that 2.5 million grandparents are raising grandchildren in the United States. Most are doing so with little or no financial support. I thank them for taking responsibility for the future and offer my humble gratitude.

  About the Author

  MICHAEL MORRIS is the author of the acclaimed novel A Place Called Wiregrass, winner of the 2003 Christy Award for Best First Novel, and a contributor to the short-story collection Stories from the Blue Moon Café. He lives with his wife, Melanie, in Alabama.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Praise for Slow Way Home:

  “The reader may hear echoes of Harper Lee in his focus on racial conflict, or of Flannery O’Connor’s Southern grotesques…or even of Huck Finn…. But Morris has his own voice and his own story, and he tells it with uncommon skill and compassion.”

  —Washington Post

  “A compulsively readable novel with many fine passages on the importance of home and the comforts of faith.”

  —Booklist

  “Eight-year-old Brandon Willard may well be one of the most endearing novel narrators since young Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird…. There is much to be lauded about Slow Way Home. It is a story about dysfunction and destiny, family and friendship, redemption and reconciliation—and more
than a few moments of pure grace. Michael Morris has told a great story, but also to his credit, he has told it masterfully.’

  —Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal

  “Pain, joy, anger, and love suffuse Michael Morris’s moving novel Slow Way Home, in which a young boy narrates his turbulent journey toward the defining moment in his life…. Morris excels in creating the child’s voice: Brandon’s attempts to comprehend his teetering world are realistic and, at times, absolutely heart-rending…. Morris’ debut novel, A Place Called Wiregrass, was a BookSense pick, and in this second effort, he has again crafted an inspiring portrait of a true survivor.”

  —Bookpage

  “In Slow Way Home, Michael Morris has written a lyric pavane for a lost mother and a destroyed youth. With almost perfect pitch, he captures the rhythms of childhood and the tempo of slow maturation.

  —New Orleans Times-Picayune

  “Alabama writer Michael Morris is someone to watch…. When I picked up Slow Way Home, I thought I’d get a charming, Southern, coming-of-age story. This book is much more than that. It’s also courageous and heartbreaking and moving in a way I didn’t expect…Morris gets it right—from the clothes to the politics to the people.”

  —Birmingham News

  “A heartwarming story about family sacrifice.”

  —Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “Morris…has a wonderful ear for the vernacular of the South.”

  —St. Petersburg (Florida) Times

  “[E]motional and fast-paced…. The social issues covered make this an intelligent book for debate…. Michael Morris has written another empowering story of a young person escaping a dangerous environment and his journey to self-discovery and love.”

  —Southern Scribe

  “[A] tour de force…told in a Southern style that invites readers in and asks them to stay awhile.”

  —Gadsden Alabama Times

  “Slow Way Home is a warm, witty, fresh, and innovative novel. At once touching and funny, it is the story of a family on a journey of discovery and truth. Hang on, buckle up, and enjoy the ride.”