Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe

by Jo Watson Hackl

  Tidy. That was it. No tumbled-down pillars. No weeds. Neat tea olive trees hugged the corners of the graveyard.

  Our family’s plot lay in the right corner. Two pieces of laminated paper taped to a plywood board laid out Grandma’s life. Beulah McLaurin Upchurch. Beloved wife. Hardworking mother. Faithful recording secretary for the Deerfield Homemakers Club.

  A Bible verse was printed in smaller letters: May the Lord watch between you and me when we are absent one from the other. Genesis 31:49. Grandma’s favorite verse. The last words she ever said to Mama as Grandma typed them out on the paper for that temporary sign.

  Soon as Grandma told Mama that the cancer had come back, that there wasn’t any hope, Mama and Daddy stopped spending ten-dollar bills. Mama put every ten-dollar bill they came across in a Mason jar on the kitchen counter. She liked to have her money where she could see it. She got me to count out the bills every Friday morning at the kitchen table. She sat across from me, a copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex on the Flight of Birds propped open beside her, doing drawing after drawing of birds and headstone designs. Later, after she welded little models of the headstone parts, she sat there and tested them to make sure they lined up just right to catch the morning light.

  At first, Grandma said Mama’s way of saving was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. But right after Mama passed the three-hundred-dollar mark, Grandma decided to join in. Grandma used twenty-dollar bills, not ten-dollar bills. She said she had some catching up to do, but me and Mama both knew better.

  I know it sounds crazy for Grandma to compete with her own daughter to save up for her headstone, but Grandma’s two favorite things outside of Bible verses, church meetings, and mysteries were planning ahead and being tight with money. I think she was happy to see Mama doing a little bit of both. Me, I was just happy to see them pulling together for once.

  Grandma would make things right. She could fix everything from toilets to tractors. She was the one who always held Mama together. She’d bring my mama back here and make her stay for good.

  I pictured Mama standing on this very spot, her face breaking out in that birthday smile of hers, soon as she caught sight of me.

  “Look, Grandma.” I held out the doogaloo. “I know you always thought Mama made up the Bird Room, but Mama’s not going to stop leaving until she proves it’s real.” I told Grandma about figuring out about the doogaloo, about Charlene, about getting left in Thelma’s, and about the tree house. “But I don’t know where to look. If I ever needed your help, Grandma, I need it now.”

  Right that instant, a big red cardinal landed on the fence post and let out with his chit-chit call. “Hope is the thing with feathers.” Mama said that every time she saw a cardinal. “Emily Dickinson wrote that in a poem.” She said that every time, too. Mama called cardinals good-luck birds because they’re easy to find when you need a smidgen of beauty. They’re kin to tanagers but don’t fly off to South America for the winter.

  I didn’t know if cardinals really were good-luck birds, but, seeing the red and the bright just then, it was about as close to good luck as I was likely to get out in these woods. I took it as a sign from Grandma. She’d help.

  I started back to looking. I hadn’t found anything on the sidewalks. Maybe there was something in this graveyard. It was the oldest thing in these woods.

  I crouched at every grave.

  Roger Earle Jason. A chain with three links. Beloved husband and father.

  Tucker Grady Parker. A dove. Departed this earth too young.

  One concrete tombstone had a rusted bed frame around it. No name, just initials—S.W. A dark, flat rock with a barely there carving was propped against it. The rock didn’t match the color of the tombstone. I picked it up.

  Wait. If I squinted real hard, the carving almost looked like a feather.

  Could it be part of the clue trail Mr. Bob had told Mama about?

  Whatever it was, it looked worn, like it had been sitting here all these years, just waiting for me to find it.

  I looked closer. Was that writing below the feathery lines?

  I turned it every which-a-way, but I couldn’t read it. It looked to be in another language or some kind of code.

  All of a sudden, it struck me—in a funny way, it made sense. If this rock really was part of Mama’s clue trail, it wouldn’t be easy to read. I’d have to solve it.

  It brought to mind Daddy’s words: “General store and museum.” Maybe the rock was like something you’d find in a museum, something it took time to decipher. I’d work on it back at base camp with Charlene.

  I felt sort of fizzy. I’d found a real clue! “Thanks, Grandma.”

  My stomach picked right that minute to start putting out a racket. I needed to go back and eat some more jerky.

  But what if I ran out of food before Mama came back?

  I thought about the church potluck lunch we always had after the service. I could be there now, eating three kinds of fried chicken, deviled eggs, potato salad, and all the carrot cake I could carry.

  I couldn’t give up now. I had to find food to keep me going for more clue finding.

  I looked for the two plants I could remember that Daddy’s book said I could eat—chickweed and greenbrier vines. I didn’t find neither one.

  Then I saw the tracks—three triangle lines with dots in the middle, the dirt scuffed up around them.

  Turkey. Daddy’d taught me about their tracks.

  Those turkeys must have been scratching for food. There had to be something to eat close by. But all I saw was a bunch of wild bamboo.

  Something clicked inside my brain.

  Bamboo! Mama loved to eat at Weidmann’s Restaurant in Meridian. Their spring rolls had bamboo shoots inside them, and we always ate the rolls with peanut butter dipping sauce.

  Maybe I could eat this.

  But what we ate in the restaurant didn’t look anything like what I saw growing in front of me.

  I thought about it. Didn’t “shoots” mean new sprouts? That had to mean they were just coming out of the ground, right?

  When I studied the dirt, I saw little cones sticking up. The shoots! I sliced off the low cones with Daddy’s pocketknife and peeled back the papery purple leaves. The white inside looked close to what I’d had in that restaurant. I touched it to my tongue.

  It tasted raw, sort of like straw. If I cooked and sliced it like in the restaurant, it’d probably taste better.

  I sliced off more shoots, enough to fill two pockets.

  Another clump of bamboo bunched up around a pin oak tree. I pushed it aside, looking for sprouts.

  An unblinking wood eye stared straight back at me.

  The eye peered out from a thick tangle of vines.

  Underneath, a feather pattern was etched in the tree bark. A feather, like on my rock!

  I started clawing back vines.

  A beak. A bird.

  A great big wide tanager eye looked me full in the face. I could tell it was a tanager by the short, rounded bill and by the way the carvings turned tighter and darker on the wings and tail.

  Mama’s tanager!

  It was real and it was right here with me in these woods. Another clue!

  The tanager curved around half the tree, its wings spread out like it was about to fly off. The carved part was dried out and crusted, and the tree bark had grown back over the edges. This carving was old, probably as old as the room my mama had seen.

  A thousand thoughts swooped at me, but this was the biggest one—Mama hadn’t been imagining things. I was following a clue trail: the feather in the rock and now two tanagers—on the doogaloo and this tree. There had to be another tanager—on the walls of Mama’s Bird Room.

  I couldn’t wait to see Mama’s face when I showed this to her.

  I pulled more vines and my breath caug
ht. A carved star was just under the tanager’s beak, with slanty letters below:

  WORTHY #3

  I thought back to Mama’s story of the Bird Room. I couldn’t remember anything about a Worthy #3.

  Ripples raced through my head. Had Mama seen this carving?

  No, or she’d have told me.

  Had Daddy?

  No, or he would have brought me and Mama to see it.

  It was up to me to figure out how this tree was linked to the Bird Room.

  And if there was a Worthy #3, there had to be a Worthy #1 and a Worthy #2.

  Right?

  I pranced down the sidewalks, patting my bulging pockets and rubbing my fingers across that rock.

  I figured I deserved a celebration lunch. I couldn’t wait to dig into the jerky, an apple, and some bamboo shoots dipped in peanut butter. Maybe just one little nibble of chocolate off the end of my candy bar.

  Rustling came from the direction of the tree house. Squirrels. They were probably thinking about lunch, too. We could have one big picnic in our tree.

  But the closer I got to the tree house, the louder the ruckus.

  Snarls and banging. Thumps from something bigger than any squirrel.

  Saliva growls filled the air.

  My throat went tight.

  Charlene was in the tree house all by herself.

  I ran.

  A great big raccoon scurried down our ladder, dragging a strand of jerky. Two other raccoons chattered behind, holding something in their mouths.

  They had my food!

  I tore after them, into bushes, through straw grass, pines, and briars.

  The raccoons disappeared behind thick blackberry brambles. No sign of them.

  I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want to see.

  But I’d left Charlene all alone.

  I climbed the ladder and pulled back the lid to her box.

  Charlene was jumping up against the sides like she’d been trying to fight the raccoons off.

  I picked her up and stroked her across the back. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  Her antennae smoothed down. My heartbeat started to slow.

  Then I saw.

  Mama’s paper was knocked off the shelf, next to the pencil and sharpener. They were all scratched up. My pine-branch blanket looked like it’d been pawed through. Wet, raggedy wrappers littered the floor. The apples were gone. And the jerky. And the Little Debbies.

  My matches were chewed into tiny, useless bits.

  My eyes darted around. The only food left was the peanut butter, the jar battered from where the raccoons had tried to break into it.

  My candy bar—there wasn’t even one lick of chocolate left on the bit-up wrapper.

  My emergency candy bar was gone.

  Still, my eyes kept searching. At first my brain didn’t register what else I was looking for.

  Then I knew.

  Daddy’s book!

  Maybe the raccoons had just knocked it out of the tree house. I slid Charlene back into her box, climbed down the ladder, and combed through the bushes.

  A flash of color shined through the brittle stems. It will all be okay. I have the book.

  I snatched it up.

  The cover was still attached. And so was the spine. And a few pages at the back about fish traps and cleaning fish. But the heart of it, the part with Daddy’s notes, the part telling what plants could feed you, what plants could kill you, it was all gone—chewed up and shredded, just like everything else I thought we could live on.

  “Sometimes you have to make do with what you have,” Daddy said last summer. “Did you know you can make fire out of water? Let’s try that. It’ll get our mind off things.” Daddy’s book was lying beside him in our backyard. He took a plastic bag of water, pressed out the air, angled the bag into a cone, and tilted it in the sun. I squatted next to him, trying to pay attention. It had been a week since Grandma died, and Mama still hadn’t said one word in my direction.

  The bag flashed in the sun over a tinder pile Daddy had made from dryer lint, old Christmas candles, and dry grass.

  “You try.” Daddy turned my hand. The sunlight focused thick and thin, thick and thin.

  A sharp beam shot out of the side of the bag and landed on the tinder.

  Smoke curled up.

  Daddy breathed steady breaths until a bright flame appeared. He fed it twigs, then branches.

  “Did I ever tell you how I got your mama to marry me?”

  I shook my head. I’d heard the story before, but I loved hearing him tell it.

  Daddy leaned back. “First time I ever saw your mother, she was holding a blowtorch, about to weld a car axle, four pieces of angle iron, and eighteen yard-sale spoons into a sunflower sculpture.” Daddy warmed his hands near the fire. “She had an eye like nobody else I’d ever met. I signed up for a photography class taught by a drunk man out of the back of his pickup truck just so I could be around her. I took up bird-watching. I took up poetry.” He shot me a look. “Your mama ran circles around me. She had a documented sighting of a red-cockaded woodpecker. She read Faulkner. And while I was trying to get the hang of shutter speeds, your mama was off taking close-ups of butterfly wings. You know”—he stretched out a leg—“I asked your mama six times to marry me before she finally said yes. I tried everything. I got down on one knee. I promised I’d build this house, just where she wanted.” He pointed at the logs stretching across our back porch. “I even bought this hat.” He tilted the brim of his Stetson. “You know how your mama has a weakness for a man wearing the right kind of hat. Still, she put me off, said she wasn’t ready. Said I wasn’t ready.”

  “So, what’d you do?”

  He cut his eyes toward the thick stand of trees where the land sloped down. “I did what my daddy did before me. Woods Time.”

  “But Grandpa was just trying to prove to himself he had what it took to support a wife before he went off and joined the army.” I’d heard that story, too. “You already had a good job.”

  Daddy drew his mouth tight. “True,” he said. “But I think I needed to learn what the woods had to teach me. When you’re around other people, it’s easy to get caught up in everything and everybody around you. Out in the woods, it’s just you. And if you’re going to last any time out in the woods, you’d better get comfortable with whoever it is you are.”

  His eyes shifted toward the window. “I think your mama could tell there was something different about me when I got back. Woods Time made me think about what’s important. I realized how your mama always notices things other people pass over, like those butterfly wings. She pays attention. And I figured if I was going to be able to be a good husband, I’d better start paying attention, too. Woods Time made me figure out how important the Bird Room was to your mama. Right off, I told her I believed her. She didn’t even wait for me to ask her to marry me again.” He leaned close. “She asked me.”

  “Can you show me how to do a Woods Time sometime?”

  He laid his big, warm hand on my shoulder and scribbled something in his book. “Sure thing, honey. Whenever you’re ready.”

  * * *

  Now I clutched the plastic bag that had held Daddy’s book and squatted over the clearest patch of sunlight I could find near the basement fireplace. I prayed that bag would help me make a fire to keep me and Charlene warm and boil our water. Tilting the bag over a little bed of dried-up grass, leaves, and twigs, I studied the clouds above me and waited for the warm beam of light.

  No beam.

  I couldn’t do this without Daddy.

  Everything inside me sagged. I was already tired from tromping through the woods all afternoon looking for more bamboo shoots so I could make the peanut butter last longer. My stomach rumbled. I recollected the way that Little Debbie cake tingled on my tongue the
night before, and that made it all the worse.

  From the direction of the tree house, though, I heard Charlene’s chirping.

  She was out here with me.

  I tried to go over every little step in my head.

  “I’ve got the bag.” I’d skimmed clear water from the top of the creek for it.

  “But no tinder like the lint and candle wax Daddy used.” Even Aunt Belinda’s greasy lip balm would have come in handy now. “What else?”

  I sprinkled dried leaves and grass on the twigs. Holding my breath, I turned the bag. A thin slice of sunlight flashed, then disappeared.

  I tried again.

  Another beam, thicker this time.

  I focused it. Smoke wavered out of the tinder pile.

  A flame flickered, smaller than a wish.

  I gave it a jerky breath.

  The smoke trailed out, leaving behind nothing but black leaf-skeleton bits.

  The sun was getting lower. I scooched over to chase the sunlight.

  Why hadn’t I put even one match in my pocket to keep it safe?

  I got some fresh water, new dried-out leaves and grass and twigs, and tried again.

  Maybe it was too cold out.

  I reshifted the plastic and waited for the ray. This time, I focused it on the dried grass.

  After forever, it started smoking.

  The fire fizzled out.

  I scrambled around for a backup plan. Something else I could try.

  From the tree stand, Charlene chirped. Don’t give up. We’d come this far. We’d found the feather rock. We’d found the tanager tree.

  I jammed my hands into my jeans pockets to warm them up before I tried again.

  My right finger hit something—the fluff from Aunt Belinda’s dryer.

  Lint! Thick, glorious dryer lint!

  I scraped every bit out of all five pockets of my jeans and the six pockets of Daddy’s jacket. Stretching that lint, I kneaded it, whispered to it, and spread it out flat.

  I wrapped the lint over the driest grass and willow twigs and leaves I could find, laid them on a piece of flat pine-tree bark, and tried to catch the light.