At the Scent of Water

by Linda Nichols

  I have been a careless mother. I can see that. It is perfectly clear to me now that it is too late to do anything to change it. I can see myself the way I passed most of my days, one tiny baby rooting at my neck, the other two frolicking around my knees, my apron stained, my hair askew, my mouth flapping to Bessie, to Cassie, to anyone who would listen as I hoed and swept and cooked and poured the soapy dishwater on the pole beans.

  Only one thing comforts me. They were happy babies, and happy sturdy toddlers, and happy brave boys. I can see them climbing the oaks and tossing down acorns and swinging far out over the river on that piece of rope they fastened to the high limb. I can see them splashing in that very pond, as unaware and careless as I was myself.

  Clayton says I should stop thinking about it. But how am I to do that? I think about it all the time. I don’t speak of them, though. Least of all to Clay. He blames me. He does not say so, of course, but I know. I can tell by the way he looks at me. By the way he doesn’t look at me. His eyes dart across mine, then slide away quickly, as if mine are pools that might close over his own head were he to come too close or look too deeply.

  I know that is why he left, though he would have rather died himself than say so. “I’m going to Charleston to work in the cotton warehouse,” he said after the crop was taken in. After winter had latched on and the trees were bare and the evenings long and quiet and just the two of us and little Sarah Jane the only ones in the empty house. “I’ll be back come planting time,” he promised.

  I believe him. Of course I do.

  Annie blinked her eyes and stared. A part of her wanted to hand this book back, to leave quickly and not return to this house. Another part of her was drawn by her unanswered questions. Did Clayton come back? Did he forgive her? She turned over her picture and read the name on the back again. Annie Wright Johnson. Did she remarry as an old woman? Or did Mr. Johnson come onto the scene after Mr. Wright’s overlong trip to the cotton warehouse?

  But really, she knew these questions, as absorbing as they might be, were trivialities. The real thing that had caught her heart was the first words she had read. I have been a careless mother, Annie had said, and oh, she herself knew that feeling. She touched the bumpy leather cover of the diary and wondered why that long-ago Annie had blamed herself for two children falling through the ice. Perhaps she did not want to know.

  “Here she is,” Mrs. Rogers said, handing her a picture.

  Annie looked at it closely. It was of a woman, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and three children. Two boys and a baby girl. All posed in front of a Christmas tree, a scraggly-looking pine, decorated with bits of paper and garlands made of cloth. She smiled, looking at those children. The boys were as much alike as to be twins, though she knew they were not. They were gap-toothed, freckled, happy-looking children, and the baby girl was rounded and bright, her full-moon face beaming as she clutched what looked to be a hand-stitched doll. Annie’s eyes rested on the figure of the woman, though. She sat behind them in a chair, leaning slightly forward. She wore a dark dress, a bit of lace pinned around her throat, fastened with a cameo brooch. Her dark hair was parted in the middle, swept down to cover her ears, then pinned up in the back. Her face shone. Her eyes danced. She looked merry and kind, and Annie’s heart felt tight and sick when she thought of what she knew of her affairs.

  “She was an Asheville society girl,” Mrs. Rogers said.

  Annie received the news with wonder. Somehow it did not fit in with her image of the woman who plowed and hoed and tossed soapy water onto the pole beans.

  “Her father wanted her to marry the local minister, but she took a position as the schoolteacher in Cade’s Cove and fell in love with a common man, a farmer who wanted to build a homestead up in the hills. She was young and didn’t have a notion what it was all going to mean. Here’s a letter she wrote to her sister.”

  Annie took the yellowed envelope and removed the folded papers.

  Dearest Clarissa,

  Papa says he will disown me if I marry Clay Wright and move to the hills. I told him Clay is not a bumpkin, but a property owner and a gentleman. Papa is not convinced. I don’t care what he says. I intend to do exactly as I please.

  As she read, Annie smiled. No one had opposed her marriage to Sam, but she could imagine herself making the same kind of pronouncement. She looked down to the table and took another glance at the woman in the photograph. At the merry eyes and curving mouth. Yes. She could imagine those eyes turning to steel and the mouth to a determined line.

  Papa says he will not have his grandchildren running wild like jackrabbits, and I told him my children shall do as they please. That I, for one, will not force my views on them or barter them as if they were a piece of property to be traded, a cow or a mule to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. He said his arrangement of my betrothal to the reverend is merely a suggestion, not an order. I told him I will choose whom I will marry, but after I spoke I saw his eyes. They looked so sad and hurt that I am sorry now that I spoke so rashly. But still, must I marry someone I do not care for in the least? The reverend is nearly twenty-eight-years old, and I am only eighteen. I should have to become an old woman long before my time were I to marry him. Besides, I do not care for the prospect of being a minister’s wife, having people underfoot every hour of the day and night. I believe I shall enjoy life in the beautiful hills. I shall plant a garden and learn to cook.

  I have decided I will order a bolt of white lawn with blue-sprigged flowers, which I saw in the catalog at Fancy’s. I will have it made into my wedding dress.

  Annie glanced down. The rest of the letter was about what shoes she would wear and which earrings and necklace and hat would best complement her eyes. She smiled, then shook her head sadly as she remembered the end of the story.

  “She had a lot of growing up to do,” Mrs. Rogers observed. “I don’t expect she had any idea of what she was getting into. I don’t suppose any of us do, though. My mother said as true a thing as I’ve ever heard. ‘You don’t ever know a man until you actually marry him.’ ”

  Annie smiled, then looked down at the leather Bible Mrs. Rogers had brought out along with the diary and letters. “May I?”

  “Go ahead,” Mrs. Rogers invited.

  She picked it up and held it gently, the old black leather molding itself to her hand. The cover was scarred and nicked around the edges, the black worn to brown on each side of the spine. Holy Bible. Scofield Reference Edition. Annie Wright Johnson was stamped on the front in barely readable gold letters. She opened the cover carefully. The spine was split. The ivory page was covered with last century’s flowing script, the same as the writing on the back of the picture, only older, spikier. The five crowns, she had written, with references beside each one. Crown of glory. Crown incorruptible. Crown of life. Crown of rejoicing. Crown of righteousness.

  Annie leafed past the tissue-thin pages. Genesis. Circling and underlining on the very first sentence. In the beginning God created. She turned the pages, scanning and reading, noting the wavery underlining, the spidery notes. The pages were worn even thinner than they’d been to begin with. She leafed through them slowly. Through Numbers where the other Annie had underlined If the Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it to us; a land which floweth with milk and honey.

  Job. Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.

  Ruth. And he shall be unto thee a restorer of thy life, and a nourisher of thine old age.

  Psalms. For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee.

  She stared into the quietness of the kitchen, an
d when she came to herself, she realized Mrs. Rogers was watching her quietly, compassion in her eyes. “Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal,” she said gently.

  Annie blinked and did not answer. They were silent for a minute or two.

  “Who are you, Miss Annie Dalton?” Mrs. Rogers finally asked quietly. “I’ve been doing all the talking. It’s your turn.”

  And when Annie answered, she surprised herself, for she did not say the usual things. “My people are from these hills,” she said. “My great-great-grandfather was a circuit-riding preacher and my great-great-grandmother was the midwife who delivered all the babies around Gilead Springs.”

  “The granny!” Mrs. Rogers exclaimed.

  “That’s right,” Annie smiled. “I don’t know who I take after. Him, I suppose, for I travel a lot, and though I’ve never delivered a baby, I have given birth to one.”

  Mrs. Rogers listened quietly and did not interrupt her with questions.

  “I suppose the things I loved best of all in this world were planting things and watching them grow and shearing sheep and spinning and then weaving those threads together to make something that wasn’t there before.”

  “Loved?”

  “Still do, I guess. But now I weave mostly words. I’m a writer. For a newspaper. I’ll be moving to Los Angeles to work there.”

  “Not much shearing and spinning there,” Mrs. Rogers observed dryly.

  “No. I guess not,” Annie said, remembering the high concrete towers, the graffiti and the razor wire, the dry, flat expanse of freeways. “But everything’s changed here,” she said, as if to defend her decision.

  “Life is nothing but changes,” Mrs. Rogers agreed.

  “I want it to be the way it was,” Annie said, and the yearning she heard in her voice embarrassed her.

  Mrs. Rogers looked at her with compassion and had her mouth open to answer when the bell on the door jingled.

  “I’d better get home,” Annie said. “They’ll be wondering what happened to me.”

  “Stay and set awhile longer,” Mrs. Rogers urged. “This won’t take but a minute. Don’t you want to know what happened to her?”

  “I’d better go,” Annie repeated.

  “Well.” The mountain phrase of acceptance.

  “Thank you for the meal.”

  “You’ll come see me again,” she said, and it was more of a prediction than an invitation.

  “Thank you,” Annie said. “I’d like that.” No promises.

  They walked out into the shop together. An old man with overalls was looking into the Red Man Tobacco bin with disappointment.

  “I don’t keep tobbaca nor alcohol,” Mrs. Rogers said briskly. “Have some bubble gum or soda pop instead.”

  He went off muttering, and Mrs. Rogers gave Annie a wide smile as she waved good-bye.

  Twenty

  It was nearly nine that evening by the time Carl finished his hospital rounds and nearly ten by the time he did his charting and drove back home. Inez Williams was doing better after her stroke. Ready to be transferred to a rehabilitation center. Evelyn Groves was having a bad turn with her congestive heart failure. He’d changed her medication again and admitted her so they could keep an eye on her. The orthopedic surgeon had done a good job on the Turner boy’s broken femur. He’d be going home tomorrow, most likely.

  He had had a long busy day. In the morning he had made house calls, then come back to the office in the afternoon for his free clinic. There were too many of them, but what was he supposed to do? Send home the baby with the ear infection? The young woman with tonsillitis? The little boy with the broken arm? He had stayed, of course, not turning any of them away, then had gone to the hospital to make his rounds.

  He was tired. And, uncharacteristically, he had not eaten since breakfast. Pearlie’s Country Buffet, his favorite supper place, was closed. He’d thought about stopping at the Burger Barn on his way by but decided against it. His stomach was vaguely upset. He pulled his old car into the drive behind Annie’s rental car, went into his office, and returned the most urgent telephone calls. His examination room was a mess where he had put a cast on the child when he returned with the X rays confirming the fracture, but he was too tired to clean it up now. It could wait until tomorrow.

  He went inside the house. It was silent and dark except for a light in the kitchen. Diane was asleep, no doubt, and Annie must have gone to her room. He wouldn’t disturb her.

  He went into the living room, sat down, and watched the news. The little girl was still holding on. He sighed, then got up and went into the kitchen to take an antacid. He drank a glass of milk and saw that Diane had left chicken breasts and stuffing for him on a covered plate in the refrigerator, but the thought of eating them made him nauseated. He prayed for Sam and Annie, then read his Bible for a few minutes but found it hard to concentrate. Finally he went upstairs, climbed into bed beside Diane, who nestled closer but never really woke. He slept restlessly until two o’clock when he awakened. The nausea was worse and his chest was tight and painful. He was sweating.

  “What is it, Carl?” It was Diane, sitting up and looking worried.

  “I’m having a heart attack,” he said, and the thought flashed across his mind that he should have listened to Diane when she fussed at him to take better care of himself. The pain grew much worse. He couldn’t breathe. There was a big commotion then. Diane was out of bed beside him, shouting Annie’s name, and then there was Annie at the bedroom door in her nightgown.

  “Call 9-1-1,” Diane shouted, and the last thing he saw was Annie’s face, shocked and alarmed, as she reached for the telephone and called for help.

  Twenty-one

  Annie drove, if you could call it that. She swooped and swerved wildly, going much faster than she should in order to keep up with the aid car. Diane was wishing she’d insisted on driving herself, but, actually, she wasn’t in any shape. Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely dial the cell phone. She waited as the telephone rang and rang and finally a sleepy-voiced Mary Truelove answered. Diane stated the situation in a sentence. “Carl’s having a heart attack. I need to talk to Sam.” Diane glanced aside at Annie, but she looked just as anxious as Diane was to have some expert guidance.

  Mary, her responses apparently still acute from years as a doctor’s wife, wasted no time with questions. “I’ll get him,” she said quickly, and within another thirty seconds Diane had Sam’s reassuring voice on the other end of the line.

  “Where are they headed, Diane?” Sam asked.

  “Asheville. To the heart center there. They decided it would be better to go straight there than to the hospital in town.”

  “What’s his condition?”

  “Conscious. They said he was stabilized.”

  “How far out are you?”

  Diane cringed to answer the question. Gilead Springs was thirty-five miles from Asheville. “Another twenty minutes,” she answered. “Fifteen at the rate we’re going. Annie, keep your eyes on the road,” she rebuked sharply, and Annie cut her eyes and the wheel back to the road, and the car swooped its way back into its own lane.

  “Does he have a cardiologist?” Sam asked.

  “Of course not. I can’t get him to do anything, Sam. You should know that.”

  “All right. I’m on my way. I’ll make a call or two on the road and see who I can scare up to come and see him. The doctors there are probably great, but I’ll feel better with someone I know. We’ll get him stabilized tonight, and tomorrow morning we can decide whether to transfer him to Knoxville or Winston-Salem.”

  Tomorrow. He had said tomorrow. He had heard the worst and thought that Carl would be around to be the subject of their deliberations in the morning. “Thank you, Sam.” Diane felt her heart rush toward him in gratitude.

  “I’ll see you soon, Diane.”

  She ended the call, then covered her mouth with her hand and stared out the window, unblinking. Carl was older than she was. She had known there was alw
ays this chance. That was why she nagged him so much to take care of himself, because the thought of living her life without him was unbearable. She would not think of it. She turned her eyes back onto the road before them, onto the taillights of the screaming aid unit, which Annie was doing a very nice job of keeping up with.

  “Is he coming?” Annie asked after a moment, her pretty flecked eyes filled with worry.

  Diane nodded.

  “Good,” Annie answered.

  “Keep your eyes on the road,” Diane remonstrated, and Annie, for once, did as she was told without arguing.

  ****

  They let Diane go back to the treatment room, and Annie was shown a seat in the waiting room. Of course. Diane was Dad’s wife. Annie sat down and stared at the generic artwork on the walls, the out-of-date magazines, and the droning television. She tried not to remember the other time she had been in a hospital waiting room. She rubbed her temples, the bridge of her nose. She could feel a headache beginning far behind her eyes.

  Ten minutes, maybe twenty, and then he was there. She heard the automatic doors open and saw him before he saw her. He was dressed in his doctor clothes. All but the tie. He went to the reception desk and spoke to the nurse. She nodded, then pressed the button to admit him to the inner sanctum. He disappeared, and Annie spent another few moments staring at the television. He came out after fifteen minutes or so and came toward her. When he got close, she could see his eyes were red from lack of sleep, his face exhausted. He had a stubble.

  “You can go in,” he said.

  She nodded wordlessly and went through the doors he had exited. Papa was horribly pale. His eyes were closed. There were five attendants in the room in varying states of hurry. Diane stood frozen at his head, her hand on his brow, her eyes on his still face.

  They were getting ready to move him, reconfiguring the wires and bags, folding sheets out of the way of wheels, piling charts on top of his legs.

  “A quick good-bye, and then he’s on his way to the cath lab,” the nurse said.