by Vicki Lane
And the hand had dug into the tender place once more so that Calven had, indeed, jumped, and let out a yelp too.
Calven rubbed his shoulder again. As quick as Mama and the other two had left, he had gone into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Just like he’d thought, there were round red marks where Pook’s fingers had dug in.
“Mother-f—” he caught himself in mid-phrase and switched to “Son of a bitch!” whispering in the hollow stillness of the bathroom. He reached into the cooler, pulled out a Mountain Dew, and held the cold can against the red places for a few minutes, then popped the top and took a deep drink. He leaned against the door thinking, remembering Pook’s parting words.
“You wouldn’t be having any ideas about hollering for someone to let you out, would you, Good Boy?”
The sunglasses had stared at him from the door where Pook stood, one hand on the knob, the other holding to Mama’s arm. Calven had started to say no, he didn’t have no reason to holler, but Pook hadn’t waited for an answer; he had just twisted Mama’s arm behind her back and give it a jerk till the tears sprung into her eyes and she made a little sound like a hurt kitten.
“Because if I come back and you ain’t here …” another jerk and he could see Mama bite her lips together to keep from crying out, “well, I reckon I’d have to make your mama pay for not teaching you to mind.”
“I ain’t gone do nothing but lay here and watch the TV,” Calven had said in a hurry. “Why’d I want to go off anyhow, back to school and that ol’ church twicet a week?” And he had pretended not to notice the tears running down his mama’s face but had clicked the remote to surf through the various channels, keeping his eyes on the glowing screen till he heard them leave.
“Son of a bitch!” Calven whispered again, leaning against the locked door and brushing at his eyes. He was shaking all over. That Pook guy looked like a stone killer—and those last few minutes had made it real clear that Mama was bad scared of him. Scared shitless, that’s what Papaw would say. Pook’s running things here, that’s for sure. What did he mean, he had a job for a smart boy? Does that mean it was his idea to get me from Dor’thy … not just Mama wanting me back?
The thought made his eyes water some more but he quickly wiped his forearm across them. The shaking had stopped and he could think now. So what do I do? If I try anything, he’s like to hurt Mama—maybe real bad. I reckon I just got to go along and see what happens. Keep my eyes open for a chance to get me and her away from him.
The memory of that hand tightening its icy grip on his shoulder, the quiet, insistent voice, and the hopeless look of terror in his mama’s eyes made him feel weak-kneed and swimmie-headed again. He swayed, putting a hand against the door for support.
Reckon Mama must have told him about me. The thought added to his unhappiness and he set it aside in favor of investigating the paper sack from the fast-food drive-through. He had eaten a couple of sausage biscuits earlier and they were making an uneasy lump in the pit of his stomach right now. Still, might as well see what there is.…
Two more sausage biscuits, two chicken biscuits, three containers of Tater Tots, and four fried apple pies. All cold and uninviting, but he took an exploratory bite of a fried pie anyway, then washed it down with the last of his Mountain Dew.
He glanced at his watch—8:51. First period was under way at school—Social Studies. Wonder if ol’ Heather thinks I’m sick—being as I laid out yesterday too. Wonder if any of them miss me.
At least you ain’t in school, he comforted himself. Flopping back on the bed, he clicked through the channels till he found a promising program—a rerun of an old cop show—and settling himself against the pillows his mama had fluffed up so careful, he thumbed up the volume and promptly fell asleep to the squealing of tires and the howling of sirens.
The day passed like that: dozing, watching TV, leafing through the Gideon Bible—though that quickly proved to be a bust as far as entertainment went—dozing some more. He was working his way through the Tater Tots and watching a kids’ after-school show of some sort when the remote control slipped from his hand and hit the floor by the bed.
Without taking his eyes from the screen, Calven leaned over and thrust out his arm, groping blindly for the remote. His fingers swept across the gritty surface of the carpet, back and forth till they touched the little plastic box. Still watching the action on the screen, which was getting pretty stupid, he had to admit, he brought up the box, aimed it at the screen, and mashed a button.
Nothing happened.
Puzzled, he mashed it again, and then turned the device over in his hand to make sure he had the right button. His mouth dropped open.
He was holding a cellphone, one of those old kinds that didn’t flip shut—a dinosaur of a cellphone no kid anywhere would want to be seen with. Paying attention now, he hung his head over the edge of the bed—there was the remote, on its side, way back almost touching the wall near the headboard. This phone had been just under the edge of the bed—here on the side close to the window.
Marveling, Calven mashed the button and the little screen lit up. He stared at it, wondering if he dared …
Then, out in the hallway came the sound of footsteps and low voices talking quick. Instantly, Calven slid off the bed and hurtled into the bathroom, locking the door behind him.
Page from The Royal Path
∼*∼Mother∼*∼
It is true to nature, although it be expressed in a figurative form, that a mother is both the morning and evening star of life. The light of her eyes is always the first to rise, and often the last to set on a man’s day of trial.…
Heaven has imprinted in the mother’s face something beyond this world, something which claims kindred with the skies—the angelic smile, the tender look, the waking watchful eye.…
Mother! Ecstatic sound so twined round our hearts that they must cease to throb ere we forget it! ’tis our first love; ’tis part of religion. Nature has set the mother upon such a pinnacle, that our infant eyes and arms are first uplifted to it; we cling to it in manhood; we almost worship it in old age.…
Oh! there is an enduring tenderness in the love of a mother to her son that transcends all other affections of the heart. It is neither to be chilled by selfishness, nor daunted by danger, nor weakened by worthlessness, nor stifled by ingratitude. She will sacrifice every comfort to his convenience; she will sacrifice every pleasure to his enjoyment.…
Chapter 39
Memories
Wednesday, May 2
(Birdie)
I am uneasy in my mind about that child Calven. There’s something don’t set right about Prin coming for him like she done. I have a feeling, too, about those fellers that Dorothy said was with Prin … a bad feeling … but that won’t make no nevermind to them Social Services folks Dorothy was talking to this morning. No, an old woman and her feelings don’t mean dookie to young folks. They mostly stop seeing or hearing us once our hair goes to graying and our bosoms sag.
I set in to washing the breakfast dishes, and when they are in the drainer, I take the skillet and wipe it out good with the paper poke I drained the bacon on. I put the leftover biscuits and bacon on a clean plate and cover it with a dishtowel, then set it aside. Sometimes, when your mind’s all distracted and running ever which way, just the doing of common everyday chores can calm a body down right good.
Poor Dorothy—that boy has come to mean the world to her. Not many women up in their seventies would take on a rank young thing like Calven and have the grit to make a decent boy of him. I have never seen her so done up—I can tell how upset she is by the way the country has crept back into her talking. All them years working in Asheville at fancy retirement homes has changed her way of talking to where she almost sounds like someone from away. “Getting above her raising,” I once heard someone say of Dorothy. But it ain’t so.
I am sweeping the kitchen floor when Dorothy calls to say that she’s talked to her sister and that Mag didn’t have no id
ea that Prin was back. Or so she wants you to think, I say to myself, not trusting Mag to speak the truth no more than I’d trust a cat with a baby bird. Nor has Dorothy heard aught from the boy, so once Dorothy has said her say, I don’t wait no longer but call over to Tennessee to Belvy’s house.
It is her daughter-in-law what answers, a sweet-sounding somebody, and she says that Belvy is visiting a sick neighbor. “I’ll go get her long about three. Then she takes her nap, so’s to be ready for church tonight … but I kin tell her you called.…”
Law, but it is welcome relief to hear they are holding church tonight. Praise You, Lord, I think. Now, if You could see Your way to sending an Anointing …
“Thank you kindly,” I tell Belvy’s daughter-in-law. “If you don’t care, just tell her that Birdie is coming to church tonight and hoping for a message—she’ll know who I am. Tell her I need to find a lost boy, name of Calven. And tell her … tell her I’m still trying to keep my promise. She’ll know about that too.”
I hang up the phone and think about my old friend and what I have come to see is her special Gift. When Belvy gets touched by the Spirit—what her church calls an Anointing—she speaks prophecy and can tell where missing people or things is. Though sometimes it’s like a riddle … or reading the Bible; you have to kindly untangle the words to get at their meaning.
If Belvy will help us, then maybe Dorothy will leave off trying to get me to go back on my promise to Luther and use the Gifts—the old ways.
I call Dorothy’s number and she answers even before I hear the first ring. The eager hunger in her voice strikes to my heart and I say quick-like, “It’s just me, Dor’thy. If you don’t mind doing the driving, we can go over to Tennessee this very night. Belvy’s church is meeting and if she gets an Anointing, maybe she can tell us where Calven is.”
Dorothy don’t answer right off and I think maybe she hasn’t heard me. But then she says, kind of slow, “I thought maybe … if you just asked her, she could tell you … right over the telephone. Do we have to be there in the church for it to work?”
I know why she don’t want to go but I just say, “I believe that we do, for good manners’ sake—it’s asking a lot of Belvy; whenever she receives the Spirit, it purely wears her out. The least we can do is to drive over to Tennessee and be there with her. She ain’t a young woman, you know.”
I hear Dorothy draw a deep breath and then she says, “It ain’t the drive I’m dreading.”
The whole day is before me—Dorothy has said she will come after me around five. The service don’t start till seven but, even so, it’s a good ways over to Cocke County and most of it on narrow winding roads. I hope we can take our time—sometimes Dorothy drives like she’s hauling blockade liquor and the law is after her.
I am fidgeting like one thing and can’t seem to settle down, so I call Pup and we set off for a little walk down the hard road. This time of day there’s not like to be many cars passing, and after climbing up to the graveyard yesterday, I’m content to walk on the pavement where it is easy going and mostly level. Pup is cutting a shine and when he comes upon a stick laying by the side of the road, nothing will do but I must throw it for him.
I throw like the old woman that I am, not able to sail it through the air like I one time could, but Pup is happy to run after it again and again. At last he tires of the game and goes and lays in the branch to cool off.
Leaving him to waller, I walk on a little ways, then stop to rest by the mailbox at the old Ferman place. There is some nice folks from away has bought the place and are fixing up the house. They have a new mailbox with a cow painted on it and it is set in an old milk can. Law, how the memories come flooding back … back when me and Luther kept three cows.
That was when most everybody kept several cows and sold the extra milk. We had cans just like this one and would leave our full cans of milk at the mailboxes on Tuesdays and Fridays. Old Cameron Ridder had the contract to collect them, then haul them to the Pet Milk plant in Asheville. I remember how shocked they all was to find out that old Cam—and him a neighbor and a deacon in the church—was dipping a little milk from each can and putting it in with his—not much, but it added up to where he was getting paid for milking one more cow than he owned.
Luther took it hard, being a trusting sort of fellow. But then him and Odus and some of the other men went and talked to Cameron Ridder. They must have been right persuasive for he made good on what he’d taken and didn’t try such tricks again.
I walk on a little ways, remembering the next Sunday, after ever one knowed how he’d been stealing from his neighbors—how old Cam, he got up and said a piece about Jesus and the thief that was crucified with Him and how that thief went to Heaven. And how after that didn’t no one treat Cam any different, for like the preacher said, we are all of us lost sheep who have strayed and sinned and we all must hope for mercy at the Day of Judgment. And I knew that was so then, as I know it now.
We got us a new milk collector though.
I eat a bacon biscuit and some applesauce for my dinner and then I stretch out on the recliner to take a little rest and watch my stories on the TV. There is a fellow in one of the commercials who always puts me in mind of Cletus, though he talks so fast you can’t hardly understand him and Cletus was slow-talking—when he talked at all.
Oh, there is still such a hole in my heart where my Cletus was! Of course I miss Luther but having a child to die is just plumb out of the way things should go. Don’t matter that I had lost so many before—Cletus was the one I had the longest and losing him was the hardest—I won’t never get used to it.
I look in my Bible for the picture of my boy that I like to keep by me. It was getting near wore out and my neighbor Lizzie Beth took it and made a copy and set it in plastic so’s I can handle it all I want. I study it close and like always the sight of his sweet smile revives my spirits. He was a light in my life—a joy unlooked for after so many sorrows.
And as I think that, I think of Dorothy and how Calven has been a light for her—and now he’s gone.
It ain’t an easy feeling. At least I know that my boy is with Jesus and that is some consolation. I don’t have to worry what will become of him. But Dorothy though …
The folks on the TV are fussing at one another and it looks like the wedding between Zack and Loring is put off again. I have missed what happened to cause it but I don’t care. Somehow, without meaning to, I have made up my mind to see this through with Dorothy, come what may.
As I am putting Cletus’s picture back in the Bible, some of the clippings I have saved between the pages fall on my lap. I look at them—there is the pieces in the paper about Cletus and there is the one about the little girl who disappeared. And there is some others I have to look at both sides and still I can’t make out why I come to save them.
In amongst all these there is a faded red ticket and it most takes my breath away to see it. Whatever is that doing in the Bible? I think, and then I remember what Mr. Aaron said when he give it to me. “If ever you have need for help—”
The ring of the telephone breaks in on my thoughts and I grab it up, knowing it’s Dorothy. I have a feeling all at once that she’s heard from Calven.
“Birdie, he called!” She is most out of breath but she sets in a-gabbling. “He called and he was talking real fast. He didn’t know where he was, a motel on the edge of some little town. He told me he’d been in the back of that big van and couldn’t see nothing much but he thought they’d gone through Asheville and traveled east for about an hour. He said he was locked in and he’d found a cellphone and that he’d get in trouble if they knew he’d called and we shouldn’t on any account try to call him back. And then he said he was all right but he was afraid for his mama’s sake and then he said …”
At last she stops. I can hear her drawing in a deep breath and letting it out with a little sobbing sound.
“Birdie,” she says. Her voice is all a-tremble. “Calven told me he had to hang up quic
k because a spook was coming.”
Chapter 40
With Signs Following
Wednesday, May 2
(Dorothy)
Dear Lord, what have I got myself into? I don’t like snakes—never have, never will. What am I doing, going to where people pick them up and wave them around? Nasty, slimy snakes. Nasty, slimy, poisonous snakes. In church, of all places. And Birdie setting there just as calm …
Dorothy’s Ford swung through a dizzying series of switchbacks that she negotiated almost unconsciously. Her mind was elsewhere. Poisonous snakes. Poisonous snakes in church … Whyever I had to go and ask Birdie …
The tires shuddered as they hit loose gravel on the shoulder, and Dorothy, averting her eyes from the steep drop-off, guided the car back onto the pavement.
“Belvy belongs to a Signs-Following Holiness Church,” Miss Birdie had explained as they had set out for the drive through Hot Springs into Cocke County. “They go by a verse in the Bible …” and Birdie had begun to leaf through the well-worn book that rested on her lap. “Hit’s in Mark …” The wrinkled old hands had made their familiar way through the pages. “… right here at the sixteenth verse. ‘And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.’ ”
Now Birdie was staring out the window, enjoying the scenery, as calm and relaxed as if she attended snake-handling services every day. Dorothy’s hands gripped the steering wheel, her knuckles showing white. “So Aunt Belvy was neighbor to you at one time.”
“Used to be she was.” Birdie nodded in agreement. “But when their church moved over to Tennessee, Belvy and her folks went too. Hit’s twenty years and more she’s been over there.”
