by Vicki Lane
I shut my eyes and wait—and listen. Then I crack the Bible—open it and, eyes still shut, jab down my finger to see what message the Lord will send. When I un-squinch my eyes, I keep my finger on the verse, there at the bottom of the right-hand page, and straighten my spectacles. I can remember how my granny looked, doing the same thing, and figger I must look just like her.
Hit’s Zechariah 4:10. For who hath despised the day of small things?
I look up at the living room ceiling but I’m thinking far, far beyond the beadboard and the white paint and the spider guarding the web she’s just spun by the lightbulb. I’m thinking up into the clear blue sky, up to God’s own heaven, and I’m seeking an answer.
Title page from The Royal Path of Life
Chapter 34
The Burying Ground
Tuesday, May 1
(Birdie)
The hickory walking stick digs little holes in the hard red earth as I make my way along the path that snakes up the tree-covered slope. Black plastic garbage bags hanging over my left arm rustle and swish in time with the huffing sounds of my breath and the steady thump of my footfalls, and the lighter tap of the stick. All them different sounds working together … they put me in mind of the one-man band in the Fourth of July parade, away back when Luther was yet living. Me and him took Cletus in to Ransom for the rodeo and the parade and, law, he had him a time! That boy played one-man band for the rest of the summer, rigged out with an old juice harp and some of my pot lids and a cowbell he took off of old Pet. Golden memories.
This trail ain’t used but seldom now and it’s growed narrow with the grass and the weeds reaching out into it. Most folks heading up to the top take the road that runs by the river—twice as long but any vehicle at all can Cadillac right up to the end. Hunters comes this way now and again and I reckon deer and such use the trail. Right here it runs along a rusty barb wire fence that borders the upper edge of the old cornfield. The field’s going back to the wild too, like so much of these mountains. Where once there was corn growing, thick and tall and green, food for man and beast alike, now there’s young locust and poplar shooting up through the roses and blackberries. It’ll all be forest afore long, though I’ll not live to see it.
I spy the fire pinks in their old place by the leaning gray fence post and it lifts my heart to see them bright faces just a-smiling up at me like always at this time of year. They’re good as a calendar, the wild things are. Hummingbirds coming back mid-April, raspberries bearing fruit early June, and the fire pinks blooming just afore Decoration Day. Always has been so and I pray it always will.
The trail runs into the old woods now and in the cool shade beneath the new-leafed trees, there’s a world of those three-leafed flowers, the white and the pink too, making a pretty carpet over the ground. The branch is running bold after last night’s rain and all along its banks big old clumps of blue and light purple flowers look like lace against the solemn gray rocks. Over beyond the tumbling water, wild iris and larkspur climb the steep slope, reaching back into the trees far as the eye can see.
It is a sight on earth and that’s the truth. I stop and lean on my stick to breathe in the rich woodland smell. There’s some things don’t change, thank the Lord—that fine loamy smell of the dirt and the clean bite of the branch mint and how the water gurgles and sings as it goes hurrying down to the river. There’s the birds calling out—sounds like one of them’s saying Sweet, sweet, sweet, and there’s the wind stirring the trees—it’s all the good things of life itself and I pity the city folks who ain’t never been in a mountain cove come May time.
I stand there, breathing it all in. When you come to my age, you take your time with things you value, storing them up to remember. Who can say iffen I’ll still be able to climb this steep trail another spring? Thinking it could be the last time only makes it the sweeter and I mark it all down—the redbird and his mate, the hawk circling lazy overhead, the way the sun sifts through the new leaves like yellow meal through a sieve—always the same and yet, somehow, always new.
But I got to get on to the burying ground—Lord knows how much there’ll be to see to—so I take leave of all my old friends and head on up the road.
When I reach the clearing—my halfway mark—things ain’t much changed. The log barn’s roof is rusty but it’s been that way for many a year and there ain’t no tin blowed loose so far as I can see. Them old dark hemlocks is still there; the breeze that’s sprung up has them bending and swaying like ladies struck in grief, just a-weeping and wailing and throwing up their hands. The chimbley stands yet—the fellow who laid it knew what he was doing and that’s a fact—but it’s most hid by all them young locust trees. If I make it back next year, likely it’ll be plumb swallowed up and I’ll not see it at all.
And there’s them ol’ boxwoods. Taller than last year and still smelling of cat piss. Reckon how long they’ve been there—planted long before my time, them and the old apples beyond. I mind how me and Luther and Cletus used to come up here in the fall of the year and fill our pokes with them apples—York Imperial, the best keepers there is, though somehow they never tasted sweet to me. Law, how gnarled and twisty those old branches is. But there’s fruit setting on them and there’ll be apples yet another year.
I lean down to peer at the bare space beneath the boxwoods, remembering. The smell is stronger still and I wonder if there’s a fox or some such denning under there. But I reckon it’s just the boxwoods’ own nasty smell, clinging to the greenery.
Whyever You come to make them bushes smell like an ol’ tomcat’s been a-spraying ’em, I do not understand, Lord. Was it me, I believe I’d a found a nicer scent. Reckon hit’s just another one of them mysterious ways of Yourn like Preacher’s always talking about.
I look beyond the chimbley to where there’s a trace of a path into the hemlocks. I remember … I remember … and my eyes follow where my feet must not go. The way to the Little Things, that girl called it. And all at once I am lost in thoughts buzzing round my head like a swarm of angry bees, drowning out the birds’ songs and all my fine intentions.
Then I recollect myself and turn away to follow the upward trail into the old fields. Let it go. After all these years, can’t you let it go? The words are like a drumbeat and my steps fall into time with them, marking out the sound. Let-it-go. Let-it-go.
Black clouds is gathering over the old fields and the dark smell of coming rain is growing strong but still I climb, step by slow step, up to the burying ground high on the hogback ridge. The beat of the words carries me on and I am speaking them without paying them any mind. They are a wound-up clock, going of their own accord. Let-it-go. Let-it-go.
When I gain the ridge, I stop to catch my breath and count the familiar markers—all sorts and all ages sprinkled over the easy crest of the ridge. When I’m rested, I pass by the granite markers, from the past forty or fifty years. They are all right fancy, deep-carved with names, dates, and Bible verses. Luther and Cletus and the angels is here—one stone for me and Luther and one each for Cletus and the angels. And there’s all the worn-out flowers I come to gather up, some blown and scattered by the wind across the ridgetop, some still planted in the dirt of the graves, but faded to ugly now.
I get up this way several times in the year to tend my graves—I’ll clear away the Decoration Day flowers long about August and put sunflowers on each grave—big cheerful things—and though they’re plastic, they look so real I’ve seen the birds light on them. Then, come December, I’ll bring poinsettias for Christmas—red for Cletus and Luther and white for the angels. I don’t let my family graves look as sorry as some of them up here. But, law, so many folks lives away now and can’t get back but once a year for Decoration Day, and sometimes not even that.
The oldest ones are over here up at the top of the ridge—no fancy headstones, just homemade sand concrete markers and these white-painted slabs. The best folks could do, I reckon. Ol’ Chester Honeycutt’s stone is leaning way to one side; I’ll
ask Bernice’s boy to straighten it when he comes to mow. There’s many an unmarked grave here too—but those dead lie as quiet as the rest. I’ll give every one of them a flower come Decoration Day.
The church people sometimes looks at me kindly funny when they sees me go to jabbing them plastic flowers all around in the grass. “Birdie honey,” one asked, “don’t you want me to help you find where your family lays?” Thought I was growing simple in my old age. But she didn’t mean nothing by it, just trying to be helpful. She don’t know how I can hear those who was laid there. Yes, even though their bodies has gone to earth and their bones has crumbled away, they still whisper to me, thankful to be remembered.
I pick my way through the unmarked graves—past Mafra Myrene and her man Josephus, William Roberts and Little Loy, Geneva—oh, my, now there’s a story—and stop to pick up a Mountain Dew can someone’s left right at the head of where Old Otho lay. Some folks is awful trashy but I reckon they don’t know no better.
At the yon edge of the mown ground where just a narrow strip of tall grass and weeds borders the woods, the old growth begins. There’s poplar, oak, and beech, their trunks thick with years but their new leaves shiny bright. What I’m seeking after lies under the biggest oak. I use my walking stick to push the long grass to one side and there it is—whitewashed concrete, set flat and almost hid by the weeds and wildflowers.
I kneel down with my old knees creaking and complaining and brush it clean. Though the date and the name are burned on my heart, it’s fitting that I make sure they’re still here. Beneath the dead leaves and dirt, the numbers and letters are like always: at the top * 1939 * and under that, just the single lonely word, the last letter a little lower than the rest, like as if Luther’s hand had tired and let the T run down hill. Just the name—Least.
The tears spring up, like they always do, as I pull myself back to my feet and stand studying the marker. I lean on my stick and think of that girl and what she done … and all that followed. Many a year, law, yes, many a year. But it had to be done … it had to …
I am far away, back in the long ago, when I hear the sound of Dorothy’s voice, chattering like a squirrel. She is somewheres down the hill where there’s a place to park the vehicles but she’s getting closer every second. I wipe my face on the sleeve of Cletus’s old shirt that I have over my housedress, and with my stick I push the hank of grass to cover the little marker. When I’m sure it can’t be seen, I make my way back amongst the graves and set in to picking up the old wore-out flowers and putting them in my garbage bag.
The sound is getting closer but I can’t hear any other voice and I wonder who it is she’s talking to. Maybe worried as she is, she’s kept the young un out of school. I can’t make out the words but it sounds like she’s right upset about something. When there’s something amiss, Dorothy will run on like the radio, just arguing with herself if there ain’t no one else around. And even if there is, she don’t leave no room for answering.
A light rain begins to fall and I stretch out my hand to catch the drops. Dorothy’s voice floats up the hill, every word plain now. She is carrying on like one thing—a big long flow of words and then she stops to breathe hard and then she starts up again.
“Well, I hope to goodness she’s up here … her truck down at the house and the door unlocked … what if someone’s carried her off … I reckon I got carrying-off on my mind.… Course, she could of decided to walk—always has been a fool for the woods … With that steep climb and her eighty-five this October—and not so spry as she once was—but will she listen? I told her to let me do it—all them old wreaths and such to gather up and get shed of and the graves to brush off to be ready for Decoration Day.
“Oh, now you’re coming in stronger, the higher I climb. Down where I parked the car, there wasn’t no reception at all, I reckon on account of the hills. But this is working just fine. I can hear you real good.
“And if it isn’t trying to rain! Well, I reckon it’ll pass off right quick. I swear to goodness I don’t know what gets into Birdie sometimes.…”
I watch and wait and here comes Dorothy, in them ugly brown double-knit pants with the flowered loose top like she always wears, just a-puffing and fussing as she comes into sight. And she’s talking into one of them mobile phones she’s got up to her ear, just like all the folks you see driving their cars and yacking into their little phones like they had something important to say or straggling round the grocery store with that thing up against their ear telling everwho it is on the other end, “I’m by the cereal now … now I’m at the dairy case.”
When she sees me, Dorothy cuts off her conversation right quick and slips the phone into her pocket. Then afore I can say a word, she lights into me.
“Birdie Gentry, what in the world are you doing, standing out in the rain like that? Let’s us go set in my vehicle till it stops. And why in the world didn’t you bring your truck and come by the road ‘stead of walking all the long way up that steep path and through the fields. I declare—”
Of itself, my hand reaches out and marks a protecting sign in the rain that lays on Dorothy’s plump cheek. Law, when was the last time I done that? Seems like being up here is bringing old times close again—the good and the bad alike.
“My granny always said that it was a fine thing to get wet in the first rain of May—that it would keep a body healthy all the year,” I say and cock my head and give Dorothy a big old smile. “If I got another year.”
Chapter 35
On the Path
Tuesday, May 1
(Calven)
The boy paused on the path and looked down the slope to the swift-running branch, then, after a moment’s consideration, arched a gob of spittle toward the water. It fell short by several feet and he snorted in disgust. Pulling off his blue Carolina ball cap, Calven bent the bill into an even tighter inward curve, then settled the cap back on his head. This done, he hawked experimentally but could find nothing worth spitting. Giving it up, he glanced at his watch and grinned.
Yeah, boy! Two-fifteen and right now I’m missing English class. Too bad ol’ Dor’thy didn’t get the notion for me to lay out of school yesterday—then I wouldn’t have had to do that stupid oral report. Ol’ Prune-face Hooper like to bust a gut when I said my piece about visiting Papaw in jail. Shitfire, I just done what she told us—interview an older relative and tell what all you learnt from ’em. I reckon I learned a lot from Papaw Roy—how to make a shank and how not to let anyone—
The clattering wing beats of a pileated woodpecker near at hand startled Calven from the pleasant recollection of his latest successful challenge to authority. He turned to watch the great black and white bird rise from a pockmarked, rotting tree and flap slowly away till it was lost to sight in the forest canopy.
Son, that is one big bird! Pile-ated peckerwood. Dor’thy showed me in that bird book she brung home. She said some calls it the Lord God Almighty bird for when it jumps up like that, making all that racket, that’s what folks just naturally holler out.
“Lord God Almighty!” the boy shouted over the sound of the rushing water. Then, with a quick glance up and down the path and in a slightly lowered tone, he added, “Shee-it fire!” In the distance, the woodpecker’s beak sounded an answering rat-a-tat-tat on another tree.
Wonder could you tame one of them things? Get it to set on your shoulder, maybe teach it to attack like them hawks in that movie I saw one time? Son, them peckerwoods look near as big and mean as one of them ol’ dinosaur birds, them pterydactyls we studied about in science last month.
A rich green clump of mint growing at the water’s edge caught the boy’s eye and he edged cautiously down the steep bank. Plucking several stems, he put one in his mouth and chewed reflectively on it as he studied the streams of water hurrying over the mossy rocks. They might be crawdads in there.… Wonder what ol’ Prune-face’d do was I to—
With a reluctant shake of his head, he put the half-formed idea aside. Naw, I better get a
long. I promised ol’ Dor’thy I’d come right on and help with the cleanup iffen she let me walk through the woods ‘stead of riding in the car with her.
Making his way back up the slope to the path, he resumed his climb. Dor’thy said I couldn’t get lost long as I stayed to the path and kept going up—said I’d come to an old barn and a chimbley standing on an open spot about halfway to the cemetery.
After a few more minutes of walking, he spotted them—on the left in a clearing, just as Dorothy had described. “But don’t you go fooling around in that barn, you hear me, Calven? That ol’ roof might fall in on you. And stay clear of that chimbley—they’s bound to be copperheads hiding in the rocks.”
His aunt had hesitated, evidently regretting having given her permission. “I don’t know; maybe you best ride up with me …” Her voice trailed off, leaving room for negotiation, and she had relented when he gave his word, promising to stay away from the barn and the chimney.
Ol’ Dor’thy probably thinks this place’s haunted. The thought produced a small, pleasant tingle that lifted the hairs on his forearms. He stood at the edge of the path and studied the remains of the abandoned farm, wondering how near he could approach without breaking his solemn promise.
His eyes narrowed. Wasn’t that a kind of a trail leading from the chimney up into those dark trees? If he followed it just a little, he could say without lying that he had stayed on the path, was she to ask him. And most likely she would.
He’d learned his Aunt Dorothy’s ways pretty good—had to. That was what made it easier to live with a person—knowing their ways—as long as those ways didn’t change unexpectedly—in the middle of a sentence, sometimes, like his mama when she was using crystal meth. He wondered if there’d ever been a time when Mama hadn’t been kind of scary—even back when he was real little, she’d dance him around the trailer one minute, calling him dumb stuff like her little man and her love bunny, and then the next minute she’d be crying and hollering and throwing things and she’d light outta there and not come back for days.
