At the Scent of Water

by Linda Nichols

  * * *

  There was no rain. That was the first thing she noticed, the first thing that was different from where she had come. And it was hot, though it would be cooler up in the mountains. The mountains. Just thinking about them caused her pulse to quicken. For now that she had allowed herself to think about home, to actually come this close, it was like an aching in her bones. She had heard her father say once that no one who really belongs to the mountains ever leaves them. “You’ll come back,” he had promised her, and she remembered his words now.

  She exited the airport and entered the highway. She drove around a little hill, and boom—there they were, the bumpy line of blue haze rising up at the horizon. Pisgah National Forest was to the west. The Smokies to the northeast and the Blue Ridge to the north. She was surrounded on three sides by mountains and tucked in around their feet were the farms, hollows, and tree-covered hills she remembered. She drove, soaking it all in.

  The asphalt sparkled with mica. The concrete was white with streaks of red dirt. Every now and then she saw a mobile home or a tidy spread set in an achingly beautiful nest of dogwoods and rhododendron. Hills rose up on both sides of the road, as if someone had cut a slice through them. She passed a Southern Convenience Express store advertising Krispy Kreme doughnuts, furniture outlets, fabric outlets, a stand of pine trees draped with kudzu vines, oaks with last year’s brown leaves rippling in the breeze, a white-steepled church. She crossed over the French Broad River. It was muddy, sluggish, and very low.

  As she turned onto the Billy Graham Freeway and thought of Elijah again, she felt another jolt of compassion for him. How strange it must be to come back to your hometown after forty-five years away. If she felt like an expatriate, how must he feel? What was he thinking about the crowds? The traffic? The noise? The relentless assault on the senses?

  She passed a white farmhouse with a rusted metal water tank surrounded by fields of cabbage and corn and, farther back, pine thickets and apple orchards. She wondered how the drought was affecting them, wondered whether the farmers were allowed to irrigate or if they would lose this year’s crop as they had last year’s and the year’s before. As she passed the first Waffle House, she smiled and had a sudden image of sticky tables, red, yellow, and blue plastic menus with the cheerful pictures of delicious food, and she thought of her papa. How he breakfasted there before he made his hospital rounds.

  She passed the Mountain Livestock and Cattle Sales, gazed at the muddy river bottom that should have been rushing water, clumps of tall grass, graceful oaks. A BellSouth truck passed her going the other way, and the driver lifted his hand in greeting. The Gospel Truth Holiness Tabernacle was having a revival tonight and the rest of the week, she saw. Someone had left a rusted tractor beside the road. She glimpsed the lovely soft blossoms of laurel and rhododendron. She drank in the sights like a draught of cold water.

  Asheville was a beautiful city, almost glowing in the evening light. She drove slowly, suddenly not anxious to go home now that she was close. She followed the sign for historic downtown and inspected the progress that had taken place. It was thriving and full of tourists. She made a swing past Thomas Wolfe’s boardinghouse before she circled back around and found Highway 19 and headed toward Maggie Valley, Waynesville, Silver Falls, and Gilead Springs.

  She arrived at Gilead Springs around five, drove slowly past the Victorian houses, the funeral home with the rockers on the porch. Turning onto Main Street, she passed the courthouse, the visitor’s center, the small clinic, and she smiled, thinking of Ricky Truelove. He was in there, seeing patients, or perhaps at the small hospital, greeting Gilead Springs’ newest resident. She passed the John Deere store on the edge of town, strategically positioned directly across the road from the Massey Ferguson dealer. She smiled and drove by the old brick railway depot, now the First National Bank and Trust.

  The Peacock Crossing sign beside the road told her the Jemisons still kept peafowl. Soon the houses were spaced farther apart, and instead of Victorians there were old white farmhouses, clapboard, with screened porches and fenced fields, a few new brick ranch houses, a few tidy boxes of brick, all with wide sweeping lawns. Signs invited visitors to follow winding roads to cabins and bed-and-breakfasts. After a bit the blacktop gave way to gravel. Oaks leaned over the roads, and pines stayed just a step behind them, already lush, wild, almost meeting in the middle, anxious to take back their land. Turn your back on things, and they reverted to wildness. Take your eyes away for a second, and all traces where you had been would be gone.

  She passed Sam’s parents’ home, felt a lurch of pain at the sight of the familiar red mailbox with the rooster painted on. The ridges rose and fell, and then she was there at her father’s house.

  She parked the car at the bottom of the hill, for she knew that how you get to a place is as important as the place itself. She got out and walked slowly up the hill.

  Brushing her hand across the branches of the laurels, she passed the sheep pasture, and amazingly, a few familiar faces greeted her. They were her own sheep, and she was surprised they were still alive. Sam must have given them to Diane after she had left.

  “Hey there, Gussy,” she said. “Sweet Thing! Come here.”

  They looked up, trotted toward her, and nuzzled her hand.

  My sheep hear my voice, Someone whispered.

  She withdrew her hand, almost in fright, but Gussy and Sweet Thing only stared back at her with black marble eyes, their silly bald faces wearing perpetually puzzled expressions.

  She walked on, stopping briefly when she reached the lookout. The valley spread itself out before her. The creek dribbled where it once had splashed down over ancient rocks. A few cows stood in clumps in the lower pasture. She could see her stepmother’s corn and cabbage fields.

  Glancing toward the house, she noticed Papa’s car was gone, but that did not surprise her. The small office he had built adjacent to their home was only where he stored his charts and equipment. Oh, a few patients came every day, but mostly he went to them. She believed it was part of the allure his profession held for him, that wandering all over the countryside.

  She stood quietly, making no sound to give away her presence, and as she came closer, she saw Diane on the porch, spinning in the late afternoon sun. She was a little plumper, but then she’d always liked her biscuits and jelly. She’d cut her hair to shoulder length, but it was still mostly brown with a little touch of gray around her face. She wore dungarees, a short-sleeved chambray shirt, a man’s watch, her work boots, still caked with mud, and Annie guessed that she had been in the midst of some other job when the wheel had lured her.

  Fate intervened. Whip, their border collie sheep dog, came bounding up from the pasture and spotted her. He barked and streaked toward her, all four feet leaving the ground in a flurry of greeting. She petted him and allowed his sloppy kisses. When she looked up, Diane was looking her way, shading her eyes against the setting sun. After a moment Annie saw a slow smile spread over her face.

  “Well,” Diane said, her full face breaking into a smile. “Look what the cat drug in.”

  “Yep,” Annie said, and that was that. Even if she had wanted more, the Dalton women, whether so by birth or marriage, were not silly or prone to meaningless chatter.

  “You picked a fine time to come back,” Diane said, and Annie hoped that was the only mention her stepmother would make of her affairs.

  “I’m not staying long,” Annie said, her voice sounding harder than she had meant it to.

  “Stay as long as you want,” Diane replied. She gave Annie an appraising look but said nothing, asked no questions, and that was more than fine with Annie. She would have enough questions to answer. Whether Diane was silent out of respect for her privacy or because she simply didn’t care to involve herself in her affairs, Annie was grateful.

  She sat down on the step and focused her mind on the spinning, watched Diane draft out the fluffy cotton-candy wool into yarn. Her hands moved skillfully, and Annie
remembered the satisfaction of seeing the thick hank of sheep’s wool become something usable and strong. She pressed everything else out of her mind. They were too many and too hard for her. She couldn’t think about them now.

  “Your papa’s due home soon,” Diane said, turning away from the wheel and letting the yarn go slack. “I need to start supper.”

  “Don’t let me keep you.”

  Diane shrugged and gave Annie a shrewd look. “I need to get this roving spun. It’s a special order, and I ought to have it finished by tomorrow. Care to lend a hand?”

  An attempt at sly cunning and a complete failure, as were any attempts either of them had ever made at subtlety. Annie knew Diane had seen the longing in her eyes as she watched her at the wheel. She was being kind.

  “I could give it a try,” she said. “I suppose I remember how.”

  “Come on, then,” Diane invited, and before Annie could respond, she’d turned to go inside and was unlacing her boots. “Don’t forget to take your shoes off before you come in. I’ve got new carpet, and I don’t want it dirtied.” Two clumps as her own boots hit the porch. Then she was gone.

  Annie climbed the porch steps, sat down, picked up the roving, and put her foot on the treadle. She pressed. The wheel slowly turned. Whip settled at her feet, thumped his tail up and down once in contentment, then rested his head on his paws. She put her mind aside and watched as the sun set over the ridge, casting a rosy glow on the hills and valleys. She turned her eyes back to the carded fleece. She picked out a small piece of hay, drafted the wool back and allowed the twist to advance to her hand, watching it change from wool to yarn. She pulled and twisted, her fingers remembering. She spun, her feet and hands finding an easy rhythm.

  Sixteen

  Elijah rode along in Pastor Ralph Lindsey’s car, taking in his surroundings with a mixture of bewilderment and wonder. He supposed there was something else mixed in, too. Sadness, for it was becoming abundantly clear to him that the home he had left was not the one to which he had returned. If he hadn’t known it by the knots of freeways, the sprawl of buildings and stores, the incessant buzzing of traffic as he passed through Asheville, he knew it when they drove through Silver Falls.

  Reverend Lindsey exited the two-lane highway and drove several miles to the city limits of his old hometown, a courtesy to him, he was sure, for their destination was farther out. They drove through a gauntlet of strip malls and fast-food restaurants, and Elijah felt the sadness catch hold of him then. The awareness dawned that everything he remembered was gone. There was no one left here who had loved or known him. No one who even remembered him. Even this pastor was a friend of an acquaintance, doing his Christian duty to find lodging for a servant of the Lord.

  “Where was your house?” Ralph Lindsey asked, and Elijah felt bewilderment, for to tell the truth, he had no idea where he was. He looked around for a landmark, something familiar to anchor him. Pastor Lindsey drove slowly in the direction of the town square, and there Elijah regained a little of his confidence.

  “All right,” he said. “I remember this. Turn left there just past the courthouse.” Pastor Lindsey did, then followed Elijah’s directions. They drove to the end of the road, and Elijah knew he had passed it by. Reverend Lindsey turned the car around, and on the way back Elijah pointed, and the car pulled toward the ditch.

  “That must be it there,” he said quietly and pointed toward the weed-choked field and a single-wide trailer. The doorstep was littered with trash, and a pit bull was tied to a stake in the ground by the driveway.

  “This was my grandmother’s place,” he said. “There was a big old house there underneath the pines. White clapboard and a porch with a swing.” He stared. His heart felt bleak.

  “Where did your own family live?” the pastor asked.

  “On down a little farther and a mile or so off to the east,” he said.

  “Do you want to see it?” he asked gingerly.

  “May as well. We’re here.” He nodded grimly, stoic. Without a word the pastor drove down the road, as if he knew what Elijah must be feeling. Elijah’s heart ached as they drew near, for at the end of the road where his boyhood home had been were thirty or so spec houses made of particle board and vinyl siding, surrounded by tiny patches of newly seeded lawn and spindly trees.

  He said little on the rest of the drive, just stared out the window, and Reverend Lindsey let him be.

  He forced himself to sit up and take charge of his emotions as they passed through Gilead Springs. The lodgings the pastor had arranged for him were on the other side of town, and it wouldn’t do to arrive full of self-pity and complaint. They passed the courthouse and the library, and for a moment Elijah felt cheered. This was more what he remembered. In this place, at least, he felt a sense of familiarity. They passed the Pentecostal Holiness church on the corner, and he remembered going to a revival meeting there. A flood of memories rushed back at him, for he had come to Gilead Springs often for a time. He had had business of the heart, he remembered with a bittersweet smile, and he wondered what had become of her.

  They passed through downtown, came to the railway crossing, then veered off to the right onto Piney Creek Road. They drove and drove, farther up into the hills, finally slowing when they came to a red mailbox with a rooster painted on it. Pastor Lindsey turned into the long driveway and drove toward the house, then ground to a halt in the gravel, a cloud of dust rising.

  Elijah and the pastor got out from the car. They retrieved Elijah’s suitcase, and then the front door opened and someone came out onto the screened porch. Elijah squinted to make out the details but didn’t see much until she opened the screen door and stepped out into the yard. She was a woman, younger than he was, though not by much, and had blond hair gone to silver, swept away from a sweet, soft face, and his heart gave a catch, for there was something familiar about her. She shaded her eyes and looked toward them, and as she walked closer, he watched her expression change from polite greeting to shock. Her hand went to her heart, and her mouth dropped open slightly. His own heart missed a beat or two as her features matched up with the image in his memory.

  “Elijah?” she asked, wonder in her voice and eyes.

  “Mary Ellen Anderson,” he said, his voice full of awe.

  “You’re the retired missionary from Africa?” she asked incredulously.

  He nodded. “And you’re the lady with the guesthouse.”

  “Well, mercy me.” She gave her head a small shake and stared at him, eyes still wide, and he thought to himself that she was still the prettiest girl in five counties. He had a sharp moment of regret as he wondered what his life would have been like if he had married her, as they had once planned, instead of going to the mission field. He rebuked himself quickly, for she had no doubt gone on and married someone else. They had both made choices, though standing here looking at her now, it seemed just yesterday that he had told her good-bye.

  She extended a hand to him, and he noticed it was trembling slightly when he took it. With her next words the situation became even more amazing. His conversation with the girl on the plane came rushing back, and he had the feeling that he had been placed here rather than bumbled in. “It’s not Anderson anymore,” she corrected him. “It’s Truelove. Mary Truelove.”

  * * *

  “Come on over to the house when you’re settled,” Mary had told him.

  Elijah looked around the guesthouse now and stowed his things away. Neither activity took long. The cottage contained a bathroom, a tiny bedroom, and a sitting room with a stovetop and a small refrigerator tucked in one corner. He opened the cupboards. They were stocked with dishes and a few pots and pans. He looked in the refrigerator. There was a half gallon of milk, a dozen eggs, a package of bacon, a gallon jar of water. A loaf of bread sat on the counter beside a tin of coffee.

  Mary Ellen was a thoughtful woman, always had been, though he felt an ironic slice of pain that it was her particular hospitality he was enjoying. The thought flashed a
cross his mind that it rubbed salt into his wound of loneliness, but he steadfastly rejected those thoughts. He knew where they came from.

  “No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age,” he said aloud, “and in the age to come eternal life.” It was true, he assured himself, though he still felt the brush of loneliness and sorrow.

  He walked into the bedroom and sat down on the bed. He rubbed his head, then let his hands hang down limp at his sides. What had he expected? he asked himself. That time had frozen? Did he think the world, with its satellite dishes and shopping malls, would have stopped at the Haywood county line out of consideration for his memories? Had he thought the people he had once loved would have frozen, as well, waiting for him to return and take them up again?

  Things had changed. People had gone on.

  Oh, but it was hard to believe. And it was hard to see. The church his family had attended when he was a boy was gone. There’d been a Rite Aid drugstore in its place. The Main Street he remembered was forlorn and forsaken, surrounded by Burger King and Pizza Hut. Both houses were gone, and he remembered his mother writing to say she was selling them. When had that been? he asked himself, and after a little calculation he decided it had been 1970, just before she’d died, and after that his sister had forwarded him his share of the money, which he had used to stock the clinic in Sudan.

  He asked himself why he had come back here, and suddenly he remembered his letter to the mission board with a surge of hope. Perhaps there would be a telephone call, a letter, a hearty welcome back. Perhaps he would return to Africa soon, and he pushed aside the nagging thought that were he to do so, he might be running away from his assignment this time rather than toward it. Besides, they had younger men to do what he had done, and now that his health was unreliable, he might be considered a liability rather than an asset. He shook his head once again and refused to give in to self-pity. The Lord had blessed him and even now was providing for his needs, perhaps in ways of which he was unaware.