Grace, Grits and Ghosts

by Susan Gabriel

  “Enjoy your walk,” I say to the elder couple, since it seems Scarlett and Rhett are out of luck.

  Before I leave, Scarlett winks like her southern vixen namesake and a bejeweled Rhett raises his head, his bow tie slightly askew, and a panting smile on his face. As the man lowers the curtain, Rhett’s smile fades and his eyes plead for rescue. I offer an apologetic look.

  Aren’t we all captured by love in one way or another? At least he has a nice set of wheels.

  The Secret Sense of Wildflower

  (a short story based on the novel)

  The church was sweltering. It was three o’clock on an August afternoon with not a hint of breeze. Preacher clutched a worn, black Bible and bellowed out the 23rd psalm like we were all half-deaf. Sweat formed in large half-moon circles under his arms. Droplets danced on his wide forehead as if the fires of hell nipped at his dusty black shoes. He was bald except for a thin, sagging crescent of dull brown hair that reached from one ear to the other, a temporary dam for the sweat, before it streamed down his neck.

  Poised to catch all the best gossip, I sat between Mama and my older sister, Meg. My other two sisters and our Aunt Sadie filled out the pew where our family always sat. It was our second funeral that year, and I stared at the wooden box containing Ruby Monroe. It smelled of new lumber and hardly seemed big enough for a girl my age. I worried that her legs were cramped up under her and that she didn’t have on shoes. The Monroe family was one of the poorest in Katy’s Ridge.

  Nobody was sure what killed Ruby, though rumors were as thick as molasses. If a person could die of misery, that would be my guess. But if anybody knew what really happened it would be my sister, Meg.

  As if reading my thoughts, Meg leaned forward and whispered to Mama, “Ruby hung herself.”

  Covering my mouth, I swallowed a gasp. I’d heard of criminals getting hung, but I’d never known anybody to do it to themselves. Especially somebody I’d just seen at Abbott’s store three days earlier. Ruby had stood in front of the counter barefooted, her feet muddy, counting out pennies to Mr. Abbott to buy a sack of flour. Her stomach stuck out, like poor people’s do when they don’t get enough to eat. I’d said hello and she gave me a quick nod before looking away.

  “They found Ruby swinging in an oak tree,” Meg whispered.

  My eyes widened.

  “That poor child,” Mama whispered back.

  I closed my eyes and pictured Ruby with her sad eyes and muddy feet, swinging by the neck from a tree she probably played in as a little girl. My stomach lurched and I had to remind myself to breathe.

  “God rest her soul,” Mama said.

  “God rest her soul,” Meg echoed.

  “God rest her soul,” I added to the chorus of whispers.

  “But that’s not the worst of it,” Meg began again. She kept an eye on Preacher so she could stop if he noticed she wasn’t listening.

  “What could be worse?” Mama asked.

  I wondered the same.

  “She was . . . in a family way,” Meg said in her softest voice.

  Mama looked over my head at Meg. She could say more with her eyes than a whole dictionary full of words.

  ‘In a family way’ meant Ruby’s stomach wasn’t just big from being hungry. Tears filled my eyes for Ruby Monroe and for her baby who would never see the light of day. Then questions crowded my mind. Why would Ruby do such a thing? How could she possibly be so desperate and scared? And who was the father of her baby? I’d never seen any boys around her. I knew only one thing for sure. If this had happened to me, I wouldn’t have to kill myself because Mama would do it for me.

  Mr. Monroe, Ruby’s father, lounged on the front row wearing a pair of torn overalls, his dirty hat staying on his head the whole time and no one willing to make him take it off. I’d never seen him in church, and he looked about as out of place as a mule in a kitchen. He took out his pocketknife, opened the blade swiftly with his thumb and scraped at the dirt caked on the bottom of his boots, letting the dirt fall onto the clean church floor.

  Johnny, Ruby’s older brother, slouched next to him, staring at the floor, his hair uncombed. His younger sister, Melody, leaned into Johnny’s arm. Her nose was always running and she looked younger than her years. I’d never known this family to have a mother in it. I’d heard tell she ran off.

  There were two things I was afraid of. One was dying young, as Ruby had just done, the other was Johnny Monroe. Whenever I saw Johnny a creepy feeling crawled the length of my spine. Daddy used to say that fear was a friend that taught us that life wasn’t to be played with. Friends like that I could live without.

  At sixteen, Johnny was a good six inches taller than me, even slouched. Shreds of chewing tobacco were caked around the edges of his teeth. But the scariest thing was the look he got in his eyes whenever he saw me coming down the road. He was like a wildcat. Mountain people knew that anytime you came across a wildcat you didn’t look it in the eye or make any sudden moves. Every time I saw Johnny Monroe I slowed down and stared at the tops of my shoes.

  Sweat stuck my legs to the wooden bench as I thought of poor Ruby Monroe inside that box. Preacher’s voice echoed against the rafters as he told of God calling his children home when they least expected it. A trickle of sweat slid between my shoulder blades. If God decided to call me home anytime soon, I wasn’t going to answer.

  Preacher finished and wiped the perspiration from his face with a starched white handkerchief. In a flourish of wrong notes, Miss Mildred played Amazing Grace real slow on the old church organ. We all sang along, most of the congregation confident that Ruby Monroe was the wretch that needed saving and since she never came to church, she was out of luck.

  After the music stopped, the four McClure brothers went up front and lifted Ruby’s pine box. The youngest McClure boy grunted, as if the box weighed more than he expected. They balanced their load and we filed out of the church, following the box up the hill to the cemetery. In the distance a pile of fresh red dirt marked Ruby’s final resting place, a stone’s throw away from Daddy’s willow tree.

  Daddy had one of those markers in the graveyard where if you subtracted the years, you figured he was thirty-four when he died eleven months ago. Once a week I walked up the hill and lazed under the willow tree and told him about things going on in my life. He’d be sad to hear about Ruby.

  I was the only girl I knew who hung out in graveyards. But if you didn’t mind being around dead people, it had a beautiful view overlooking the river. Thick, old maples and oaks graced the hillside and the nearby stream emptied into the river at the bottom of the hill. In the distance stood the small, white Baptist church practically everybody in Katy’s Ridge attended. The large weeping willow grew in the center of the graveyard. Its leaves swept the ground when the wind blew like Mama swept the porch in the evenings. Last fall it had wept almond-shaped gold leaves on top of Daddy’s grave, and I knew he must have been smiling because he always said he’d struck gold when I was born.

  Daddy was the one who nicknamed me “Wildflower.” He said it fit me perfect since I’d sprung up here in the mountains like a wild trillium. Trilliums would take your breath away if you saw a patch of them. Daddy had a way with words, like a poet, and not just with me. He had made Mama smile all the time and could make her laugh so hard tears would stream out of her eyes. All us kids would stand around with our jaws dropped because to see Mama laugh was as rare as snow in August.

  Sometimes I wondered if Mama ever got mad at him for going away. I know I did. After the sadness gnawed me numb, I got pissed as a rattlesnake that he hadn’t been more careful at the sawmill. All it had taken was that one mistake to leave us all alone to fend for ourselves.

  The melody of Amazing Grace played in my head as we followed Ruby Monroe’s pine box up the hill. Aunt Sadie squeezed my hand like she remembered the last time we had climbed this hill together. Aunt Sadie was Daddy’s sister. She had a long braid of silver hair that she sat on if she wasn’t careful. I had a s
ecret sense she knew exactly what I was feeling. The secret sense, according to Aunt Sadie, was a nudge from somewhere deep inside that told you things you wouldn’t ordinarily know. She said it was how one heart talked to another. You could be as stupid as all get out, but your secret sense was always wise.

  Aunt Sadie was full of ideas that most people didn’t cater to. Not to mention she had never married, which made some people nervous, and she wore a man’s hat nearly everywhere she went. She kept to herself most of the time and collected herbs and roots from all over the mountains to make her remedies. People came from all over to have her doctor them with red clover blossoms and honey to cure their whooping cough or to get catnip mint to soothe their colicky babies. She also made the best blackberry wine in three counties.

  A fine, misty rain started to fall. The McClure brothers lowered Ruby’s box into the hole with two ropes. Preacher got out his Bible again.

  “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” he said, tossing a clump of red dirt into the hole.

  The dirt hit Ruby’s coffin with a dull thud and Mama turned her head away and glanced off into the distance at Daddy’s grave. As far as I knew, she hadn’t visited his grave once since he died. I wanted to take her by the hand and lead her there and show her how beautiful it was. But when her eyes got ominous and gray, it was best to leave her alone. Meanwhile, the rain grew harder and thunder rumbled in the distance, as we said our final goodbyes to Ruby Monroe.

  Later that day I went to change out of my Sunday clothes while Mama made supper. When I returned to the kitchen, a large bowl of pinto beans sat on the table next to an iron skillet of cornbread. The skillet rested on folded dishrags so it wouldn’t burn the wood. Next to the cornbread was a big plate of sliced tomatoes that Mama grew out in the side yard. After we said grace, I speared three slices with my fork and put them on my plate. We ate like this a lot since Daddy died. Mama could make even a bowl of pinto beans taste like a feast. Mixed in with the beans were pieces of ham, sweet onion and turnip greens.

  Jo and Amy, my two older sisters were married and lived right down the road from our house. Meg, my closest sister in age, graduated from high school but still lived at home and worked at the Woolworth’s store in Rocky Bluff, thirty minutes away. I liked having Meg around. She smoothed things out between Mama and me. Since Daddy died, even on our best days, we were like vinegar and soda, always reacting. When Meg wasn’t there, Mama and I did our level best to avoid each other.

  Little Women was Mama’s favorite book. A worn copy of it rested on her dresser next to the Bible. I was named after the lady who wrote it, Louisa May Alcott. Destiny must have rewarded Mama for her devotion because she gave Daddy four daughters, just like the March family. My older sisters, Amy, Jo, and Meg, were each named after somebody in the book. Another sister, Beth, died two days after she was born. That explained how I ended up with the name Louisa May. All the good names were already taken.

  “Tell me the latest gossip from the Woolworth’s,” Mama said to Meg, resting her chin in her hand. Hearing about other people’s troubles seemed to distract her from her own. While Mama soaked in the idle chatter, I sneaked a third piece of cornbread, thankfully missing her speech on gluttony. When she got riled up, Mama could sound just like Preacher.

  “Don’t you have something to do?” Mama said to me. She didn’t wait for an answer.

  I cleared the table and took the dishes to the sink to wash, a job I’d inherited after Amy left home. It was a chore I didn’t mind since I could let my mind wander while I stood at the kitchen sink. Pondering came natural to me. I could sit and be entertained by my thoughts for enormous amounts of time. Mama called this just being lazy.

  After I scraped the leftovers into a rusty pie tin, I took it out back to feed the stray cats that lived under our house. Daddy started this tradition, but Mama didn’t like it.

  “Your daddy was just too soft hearted with those cats,” she said. “If he’d had his way about it, he would have attracted every stray cat in the state of Tennessee.”

  “Yes, Mama.” She said the same thing every night.

  “Well, you’re lucky I don’t drown them all.”

  This threat was new and she looked at me as if wanting to register the level of my shock. But I felt too tired to fight, and didn’t let my face tell her anything. Not all the cats stayed after Daddy died. But the ones that did ran from Mama every time they saw her. Even cats could sense when they weren’t wanted.

  A new kitten showed up the day Ruby died. Small and orange, he didn’t mind being touched. As I sat on the steps, he finished the little bits of food the other cats let him have and then weaved between my ankles.

  “If you see Mama coming with a bucket, you run, okay?” I rubbed his whiskers and he soaked up my attention with a raspy purr.

  Even though I was full of Mama’s cornbread and beans, I felt empty when I thought about Daddy being in the graveyard instead of here on the back porch. Evenings were the worst because we used to sit together and he’d read stories to me or talk about how our people came over from other countries. Leaning against a post, I closed my eyes to remember the sound of his voice. I worried sometimes that I’d forget it and that my memories would go mute.

  I left the back porch, passed Mama and Meg still in the kitchen and sat in the rocker in the living room near the wood stove Daddy bought from the Sears & Roebuck catalog when I was seven. Daddy’s banjo—missing one string he didn’t have time to replace—leaned against the wall nearby, right where he left it. Daddy used to sing country songs that told stories about people. His voice had been deep and rich and wrapped around me like one of Mama’s softest quilts.

  Quiet as a ghost, so Mama wouldn’t get mad, I picked up Daddy’s old banjo and returned to the rocker where he always sat to play. I pretended to pick at the strings and threw back my head like he used to. I hummed the words of Down in the Valley, Valley so low. At that moment the ache I felt in my stomach moved up to the center of my chest and my breathing caught in my throat. I didn’t understand why anybody had to die, especially when they were young.

  I sat there until the sun and shadows on the wall faded to darkness. When I got up from the rocking chair, I was careful not to let the chair’s feet crackle on the wooden floor and put Daddy’s banjo back in its spot where the dust kept the shape of it, so Mama wouldn’t know I’d touched it.

  “What are you doing here in the dark?” Mama asked.

  Most of the things Mama said to me were either orders or questions, neither of which ever required an answer. I shrugged and shuffled to the bedroom I shared with Meg who was already snoring like a sailor.

  After I put on my nightgown, I couldn’t quit thinking about Ruby and Daddy. I walked down the hall toward Mama’s room and found her sitting on the edge of the bed brushing her hair. Her hair reached midway down her back and was the color of spun honey. It was much prettier down instead of up in the tight bun she wore during the day.

  “Can I sleep with you?” I asked. She looked at me kind of surprised, like the day I told her I had changed my name to Wildflower.

  For a second her face softened and I imagined her pulling back the covers on Daddy’s side of the bed while I jumped in. But then she said, “Don’t be silly, Louisa May. You’re practically grown up.”

  Her words stung like the bee I’d stepped on once, while barefooted in a patch of clover. I wanted to kick myself for even asking. Mama had changed since Daddy died, and I kept waiting on her to change back.

  I returned to the bed I shared with Meg and climbed under the sheets. Out of pure meanness, I poked her in the ribs with my elbow until she slapped at me and told me to quit. Lying there in the dark, I counted backwards from a hundred by threes and tried not to think about Ruby Monroe in that cramped pine box under the ground. Or the fact that Daddy would never be coming home. Or my deepest, darkest, secret wish, wrapped tight in the covers of shame: that Mama had died instead of Daddy.

  Other Books by Susan Gabriel
r />   "A quietly powerful story, at times harrowing, but ultimately a joy to read.”

  --- Kirkus Reviews, starred review (for books of remarkable merit)

  Named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2012.

  Set in 1940s Appalachia, The Secret Sense of Wildflower tells the story of Louisa May “Wildflower” McAllister whose life has been shaped around the recent death of her beloved father in a sawmill accident. While her mother hardens in her grief, Wildflower and her three sisters must cope with their loss themselves, as well as with the demands of daily survival. Despite these hardships, Wildflower has a resilience that is forged with humor, a love of the land, and an endless supply of questions to God. When Johnny Monroe, the town’s teenage ne’er-do-well, sets his sights on Wildflower, she must draw on the strength of her relations, both living and dead, to deal with his threat.

  With prose as lush and colorful as the American South, The Secret Sense of Wildflower is a powerful and poignant southern novel, brimming with energy and angst, humor and hope.

  Praise for The Secret Sense of Wildflower

  "Louisa May immerses us in her world with astute observations and wonderfully turned phrases, with nary a cliché to be found. She could be an adolescent Scout Finch, had Scout's father died unexpectedly and her life taken a bad turn...By necessity, Louisa May grows up quickly, but by her secret sense, she also understands forgiveness. A quietly powerful story, at times harrowing but ultimately a joy to read." – Kirkus Reviews

  “A soulful narrative to keep the reader emotionally charged and invested. The Secret Sense of Wildflower is eloquent and moving tale chock-filled with themes of inner strength, family and love." – Maya Fleischmann, indiereader.com

  “I've never read a story as dramatically understated that sings so powerfully and honestly about the sense of life that stands in tribute to bravery as Susan Gabriel's, The Secret Sense of Wildflower…When fiction sings, we must applaud.” – T. T. Thomas, author of A Delicate Refusal