The year She Fell

by Rasley, Alicia

  I shook my head.

  “You should ask your mother.”

  This time I didn’t even bother to shake my head.

  He said, “Look, that’s all I know. You could call the county clerk down in Webster.”

  “Thank you.” I rose and left. Out on the street, I hesitated, then walked down to the Chevy dealer, the only place in town that rented out cars.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  As the convent nurse, I had to keep my driver’s license current in case I needed to take a sister to the hospital. I didn’t have a credit card, of course, but I was a Wakefield, so the rental agency gave me a car without a demur. The clerk insisted I also rent a cell phone, in case I got lost. “Just call back here, Sister, and we’ll tell you how to get wherever you want to go.”

  That reassurance didn’t help me much. I didn’t know where I wanted to go, and anyway, I doubted the cell phone would work deep into the mountains anyway. But I followed the map the clerk had given me, and in a couple hours I was crossing into Webster County.

  I stopped the car in the parking lot of an abandoned store, and looked up at the broken plastic Jenkins’ Food sign. Above it was the rounded ridge of the mountains, cutting off the afternoon sun. Rankin was halfway up the road that wound along the slope, and there I hoped I’d find more information about the Prices. Brian might use the Internet, but I’d grown up in West Virginia, and I figured that most people in the mountains would never show up on any Internet search. Better to ask those who knew.

  First, while I could still get a signal, I called home. I hoped I’d just get the answering machine, but Laura answered. She had me on the defensive immediately with her news that Brian had been using me to get at our family, and to get at Ellen’s husband Tom. I sat there in my rental car, feeling sick, as she accused me of helping him. If I had, it was inadvertent, but she didn’t care. And I supposed I couldn’t blame her. He’d gotten under my defenses. I was, after all, the most private of people, yet I’d told him things about me and the family that I’d never have told anyone else. He’d played me.

  But I almost understood. He wanted so badly to know who he was, where he came from. And Tom had rejected him, refused to tell Brian what he needed to know. Not that Tom deserved what Brian did to him. But it was dangerous to deal with such primal questions.

  After I hung up, I sat in the barren parking lot with the cell phone;. I should leave here. Go home. Forget the quest that Brian started me on. Help Ellen—

  But even as I thought that, I knew I was lying to myself. I couldn’t help Ellen. I was just trying to avoid finishing what I’d started. The looming mountains were spooking me as much as Brian’s deception.

  So I put the car into gear and started up the mountain.

  They were all strange up here on the mountain, strange like the people in the forests of Romania, where I’d served for two years. Insulated and isolated, suspicious and superstitious. The man at the Rankin store said he wasn’t sure if there were any Prices still around. All he would do was point up at the dirt road, and tell me about the lumber trails branching off, and the cabins hidden away in the hollows. Used to be Prices up there, he said.

  There was a logging trail, or a mining road, every mile or so, up the mountain. I was starting to worry that I’d done real damage to the rental car, so I finally turned off onto one relatively unrutted lane and headed for the cabin at the end. It sat in a clearing, the forest behind it, an old cabin, but with new windows that glinted in the sun. Scattered about in the long grass were neat piles of wood— felled tree trunk and thick branches, still barked.

  I stopped the car a hundred yards from the house and sat there for a minute, hearing the birds call in the woods. I’d just ask for directions, I told myself. I’d press the horn and wait for someone to come out.

  No. That was rude. People in the mountains took exception to such things. I’d go up to the door and knock and then back off a few feet, ready to run if I had to.

  I took a deep breath, got out of the car, and walked towards the quiet cabin.

  But I’d gotten only halfway when I heard something behind me— a growl. I turned and saw something silvery-gray, with eyes that glowed yellow. A wolf, only I thought it must have been bred with a big dog, because it had patches of dark on its coat and ears that flopped. And it wasn’t scared of humans, the way a wolf should be.

  It growled again, deep in its throat. If I ran—

  Then I heard a man say, “Stay still.” He was right behind me, then right up against me, and I could feel his breath on my neck, his calloused hands on my arms, as he pressed up against my back. It was the closest I’d ever been to a man. Ever. I didn’t know that was the way men felt— hard and big and threatening and protective. I didn’t want to know it either. I started to pull away, but then the wolf-dog’s growl started low again, and the man tightened his grip around me. “Just wait.”

  He shoved me in the direction of my car and we walked in a way that must have looked, and certainly felt, peculiar— pressed together like a pair of sack-racers at the county fair. When we got to the car, he pulled open the door and pushed me inside.

  He slammed the door and walked purposefully away, back to the cabin on the edge of the woods. I could see him better now. He was a big man, like one of those bodybuilders on TV, with a dark stubble of beard and unruly hair, and biceps bulging out under the sleeves of his faded blue t-shirt. I sat there in the car with the window rolled up, sweating and scared, staring at the wolf-dog a dozen yards away. He was staring back at me. Neither of us gave in and left.

  A minute later the man emerged with a shotgun. Before I had time to cry out he discharged it, not at the wolf but in front, scattering shot and dirt. The wolf hesitated for just a moment, looking at me, then ran back into the woods.

  Setting the gun against a tree, the man came back and opened my car door.

  I couldn’t breathe. I remembered, back in nursing school, some psychology study on the effects of adrenaline on the emotions—people coming off a roller coaster at a theme park were asked for directions by “an attractive member of the opposite sex”, as the researcher put it coyly. A high proportion of the roller coaster riders, it was reported, felt heightened attraction and sexual interest, due to the adrenaline rush of the dangerous ride.

  Adrenaline. That would account for the trembling in my limbs, the inability to breathe, the sudden wonderment— this is what Ellen and Laura meant. This was . . . desire.

  Danger. Adrenaline. A man. That was all it was, a combustible combination of chemical factors. And I looked in his dark eyes and knew he felt it too, and for the first time in my life I knew that real unity was possible, right there in the tangled grass next to my car.

  But even as his hand closed on my wrist and pulled me from my car seat, I remembered it all—my past and my plan and myself. This wasn’t what I was seeking, this hot bright claim. And just as his mouth closed on mine, I got my hands up between us and shoved at his broad chest.

  I had just a second’s taste of him—it was so alien, so sweet and dangerous, that taste.

  With a rough laugh, he released me. His hands dropped from my arms, his body pulled away. My blouse felt damp there, where we’d been joined, but I didn’t know if it was his sweat or mine.

  “It’s not safe here for you,” he said. His voice was rough too, but it was a town voice— educated, at least a bit, not the sullen half-words of the mountain folk. “You better get on back to town.” He walked away, back towards his cabin.

  “Wait!”

  He turned, and I saw the light in his eye, his arrogant stance. He thought— he thought I was going to let him. Let him take me, there on the unmown grass. I had to speak quickly, before — before I felt that again, or felt it enough.

  “I’m looking for a house. It’s supposed to be off the dirt road, but I haven’t seen the name on any mailbox.”

  “Who you looking for?”

  “The Prices.”

  And then the hea
t in his eyes gave way to wariness. “What do you want with them?”

  “Someone down in Rankin told me they live up here. I—I used to know them.”

  He studied me now. After a moment, he shook his head. “Don’t know you.”

  “I know.” I was impatient now, angry at him, angry at myself, for that moment when we might have—“I said, I’m looking for the Prices.”

  “I’m the only one around here. And I don’t know you. Now goddamnit, get back to town. I got to get hold of that wolf and take him back up the mountain a ways.”

  I felt behind me for the car. The metal under my hand was hot from the sun, but I leaned back anyway. He was the only one around here . . . “What is your name?”

  He gave me an annoyed glance as he picked up his gun. “Price. Mitch Price.”

  And then he walked away, back to his cabin, without a glance back at me.

  It took me a minute to get going, and by that time he’d disappeared indoors. But slowly I crossed the yard to the front porch. To the left of the house was a lean-to, and even from here I could recognize the carved wooden statues underneath, a half-dozen of them covered in clear plastic, all of them variations of the Blessed Virgin.

  Surely there were no Catholics back here. Snake-handlers, yes. Maybe the Mitch I remembered, the one who quit going to church right after his confirmation, had found his faith again.

  I knocked on the door and waited, and eventually he opened it and stood there, his face closed and grim. He didn’t want to let me in, but he could hardly send me away. Mountain hospitality was a complicated matter, but he’d introduced himself, and so I was due a minute or two.

  So with ill grace, he stepped back from the door and let me pass into the clean-swept, almost barren front room. “What do you want?”

  It was hard, after—after what happened, to say the words. “My name is Theresa Wakefield.”

  He barely responded, and for a second I thought I would have to explain. But then his eyes narrowed enough that I knew the name had struck a chord with him. But still he did not speak.

  Finally I said, “I was adopted when I was six. Before that, my name was—”

  “I know what your name was.” He stared at me for a moment, then abruptly turned away, heading into the next room.

  Slowly I followed and stood in the doorway. It had once been a bedroom— there was still a cot pushed against the wall, neatly made— but now it was a workroom, flooded with light filtering through the motes of sawdust. Along the wall were four more Virgins, each in a different pose, all in rich burnished hardwood. They were beautiful, austere, traditional. They did not look as if human hands had crafted them. But as I thought that, he took hold of the unfinished work on the table, just grabbed her by the shoulder, and picked up a carving knife. It was no more than a shape at this point, but he must have had a picture of her in his head, because he applied the knife to the mantle area with gentle, ruthless assurance. It was going to be a Madonna, only there was no place on her lap for a child. Mary after the crucifixion.

  He wasn’t even looking at me. So I had to speak, and it was not easy, after a year of cloistered life, to start a conversation. “I wanted to find my family.”

  “Why?”

  The question came sharply, but he never looked over at me. “Because—” It shouldn’t be so hard to explain. I’d rehearsed this with Brian, but the script seemed inadequate, and the truth was —I didn’t know. Twenty years I’d waited. Why now? I’d met this boy who was looking for his family, and I decided to keep him company?

  No. Because I needed to know. Because the prioress was right. I was running from something and I couldn’t choose my future until I faced my past.

  Because the family I had didn’t feel like a family. Because Mother was sick and she would die someday and I would be alone.

  “Because it’s time,” I finally said.

  Now he looked at me. He regarded me for a long time, and I thought he must be remembering the moment near my car. But he must have concluded, as I did, that it was best to put such an awkward moment away. This was all new, and required renewed focus. “Terri,” he said. He wasn’t addressing me, really, just repeating the name as if he had to remind himself. “What do you want?”

  I couldn’t remember any of the little speech about reconnecting. So I said, “I just wanted to see my family.”

  He glanced around the workroom, as if someone might be hiding among the wooden statues. “I’m the only one here.”

  “I can see that.” I took a deep breath to smooth out my tone. “I thought you could give me their phone numbers.”

  “Everyone’s dead.”

  I stared at him. But he’d gone back to carving his Madonna, his knife scraping gently at her shoulder. The scratch of his knife was rhythmic and low. He looked medieval there, a big man, bent over his craft, the sun dusting his shoulders with light. I had come such a long way— oh, not in distance, but in spirit, and there was nothing here but a man who wouldn’t even look at me. “Your—our parents?”

  “Dad died a few years after you left. Mom—she had cancer. Lingered for awhile. Died, after a couple years.”

  “But Ronnie?”

  He looked up, just for a second, before he went back to his work. “Yeah.”

  “They’re all—” I could finish, so he finished for me, hard, quick.

  “Dead. Yeah. Bad time.”

  I whispered, “Bad time . . . after I left?”

  “Sure. I suppose. When we moved away, anyway. Same year you left. It all went to shit.” He wiped the knife on a leather strap hung off his belt, and finally gave me another glance. “Dad just got worse and died. And Mom. She was always depressed. Ronnie went to reform school. He wasn’t a bad kid. But he just wasn’t interested in much of anything. Drugs. That’s all.”

  “Why didn’t you contact me? Didn’t you know where I was?”

  He shrugged. “Sure. More or less. We knew Mom’s rich boss had taken you. Bought you. That’s what Ronnie always said.”

  “That’s not true. Mother didn’t—”

  “Yeah, I know. I kept trying to tell Ronnie that if you’d been paid for, we wouldn’t have been poor anymore.”

  He sounded cold and cynical and dismissive. I struggled to save whatever connection we’d established. “But you could have contacted me. Why didn’t you?”

  “Mom wouldn’t let us. She told us to leave you alone. Let you live your good life. She’d given you up so you’d have a good life. She kept saying that. A good life with your new family.” He palmed the knife and used his finger to brush away some sawdust on the curve of the statue’s arm. “She always said that.” Matter-of-factly, he added, “We’d have ruined it, you see. Your good life. So we had to stay away.”

  I sat there at his oak table, staring hard at his abandoned Madonna. There was so much lost—so many years. “But when—” I couldn’t call her Mother. “When she was dying. You didn’t call me.”

  “She wouldn’t let us. She was happy in the end, thinking of you in your good life.” He turned back to his statue, his knife in hand. “And afterwards—well, what was the point?”

  “But you and Ronnie—”

  “Look. We honored her wishes. She didn’t want us disrupting things for you.” He paused and then added, “And we would have. White trash, you know.”

  “You aren’t—”

  “Give it up. It’s not like the words matter.”

  He was implacable, standing next to that half-formed statue, refusing to look at me. It seemed almost impossible, that this family had an entire existence and I didn’t know. That he had been hating me like this and I didn’t know. I didn’t know. There was the emptiness that had frightened me, that had sent me searching. And now I found only more emptiness to fill it.

  “Tell me,” I whispered. “Where was she when she died?”

  He glanced back towards me. Not at me. “Charleston. South Charleston.”

  “When?”

  “Ten, eleven
years ago.”

  Eleven years ago. My hope that I’d been away doing mission work in Romania then faded. That was several years before I’d entered the convent. I’d started nursing school in Morgantown that year. If there had been an obituary, I had missed it.

  “What about Ronnie?”

  Now Mitch turned and looked at a closed door, across the little living room. “Last year. He died here.”

  “How?”

  He didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said, quietly, “He was clean. That’s why I brought him here, to get him away from all that. But he’d wrecked his health. One morning his heart gave out. He didn’t wake up.” He shook his head. “They’re all buried together. Mom’s family plot, down in Paulsen.”

  It seemed impossible that all this happened and I didn’t know. But I’d spent most of twenty years trying not to remember. “You weren’t alone, were you?”

  “Nah. My uncles and two cousins came to the burial. It was okay.”

  “Will you show me?”

  He glanced again at the closed door, and then, finally, he looked square at me. “No. I’m not going down there. But I’ll give you directions.”

  I didn’t want to go alone. Not this time. I was always alone, somehow. So was he, I thought, now. But he didn’t have to be. “Why can’t you come with me?”

  He shrugged and looked away. “I don’t go down the mountain much anymore. Just as far as Rankin to ship the carvings, and get supplies. No real need to go down the rest of the way.”

  “But—”

  “No. I’ve seen enough family graves to last me a lifetime. They can cremate me. Just let me blow away.”

  I tried once more to convince him to come with me, but something flickered on his face—panic. And I stopped. He didn’t want to leave here. He had his reasons.

  I rose and picked up my bag. It couldn’t end here, could it? But what could I say to this silent man, up here with his wooden saints and his memories? “Your carvings are lovely. Where do you sell them?”

  “Churches. Rich Catholic people. The Wheeling archdiocese commissioned this one, for a grotto outside the bishop’s office. I don’t know what it’s going to look like after a couple winters outdoors.”