The O. Henry Prize Stories 2014

by Laura Furman

  You remember waking to a stench of vinegar, ammonia, and stale tobacco smoke and seeing your mother in a nightgown, moving gingerly around the room. She clutched her right arm to her side, like she was holding something in, but reached out with her left hand to caress each doll and teddy bear. Watching with half-closed eyes, you envied them her touch, but when she turned her face toward you, you closed them all the way.

  You remember the path, warded by briar and thorn, that led from Quercus Rubra into the darkling forest.

  You remember the broad, black rock your Grandpa said was part of the Appalachian Bedrock and called the Lookout because Queen Alliquippa’s braves kept watch from there, and seeing him, at sunset, keeping watch there too.

  You remember the Majestic and the tools he used to tend it: spring-handled lid-lifter, wiry scraper, poker hooked and pointed like a halberd. He showed you how to rouse the fire—to shake the ashes from the embers, set the draft and damper, add a little kindling, and wait patiently for flame—and you shouldn’t try it yet, but one day you’d need to know.

  You remember the wood in a hodgepodge pile outside the kitchen door—bark-scabbed slabs, skewed oblongs, out-of-kilter cones with broken screw threads at the ends. Chunks of pin-mill scrap, your Grandpa said, cut to stove length so nothing went to waste, and he showed you how to carry them: elbows at right angles and tight to your sides, palms up, fingers crooked. Then he said, “Let’s load you up,” and began laying chunks across your arms. He said, Say When, but you didn’t know what Say When meant, and when he stopped loading you up the weight seemed more than you could bear. But he said, Take it step-by-step, and went beside you, steadying, and then ahead to do the opening and closing, and then he took the weight from you, chunk by chunk by chunk.

  You remember going up the winding, waxed wood stairs, balancing a bowl of steaming broth on a silver tray, setting it gently on the table outside her bedroom door, knocking softly, only once, and going down again.

  And you remember following him, at sunset, onto the Lookout, feeling it was wrong to let him keep watch alone. Only then you realized: maybe he wasn’t, because you saw his lips moving, like he was talking to someone, though he wasn’t making any sound. He laid his hand lightly on your head but didn’t look at you until the lowering sun touched the mountains to the west. Then he coughed and said, “See the river?”

  And you looked and saw a stream of gold flowing through the town and disappearing into the mountain to the east. And he said, “Rivers are lazy. Even famous rivers—the Euphrates, the Nile, the Congo, of course, but even the Mississippi; they all take the easy way. But not the Raystown Branch.”

  Then he told you how, a billion years ago, Africa encroached on North America and though the Appalachian Bedrock was the hardest rock on earth, it was forced to fold up into ranges of mountains, with ridges running north and south and sheer slopes facing east.

  “Geologists call it the Allegheny Front,” he said. “Two hundred miles long, two thousand feet high. When the first Europeans crossed the Susquehanna they saw it and called it the Great Wall and said there was no sense in going further. But some heard a Voice calling from beyond and looked for a way through.

  “The river’d made it for them. Instead of flowing north or south between the ranges, the Raystown Branch cut what geologists call water gaps, right through solid rock. It took a hundred million years, but the river got through.

  “Some Europeans came west through those gaps; a hundred miles against strong current. The gaps were there, but every passage was perilous, all boulders and whitewater, and somebody was always saying there was no sense in going further. But some still listened to the Voice and went on, and gradually they stopped being Europeans and became Americans, and eventually they reached the final gap.

  “That’s it, where the river disappears. They called it the Narrows because the banks were sheer and close. Some died trying to make that passage. Most didn’t even try. But a few got through.

  “And they found a beloved country, rich with game and fish and timber, and coal and hematite, and springs of healing water. So they cleared land and sowed crops, and built a town and a fort, and fought off the Indians and the French and the British, and put a scare into the Federals too.

  “Those were the Old Settlers. My ancestors, and your Grandmother’s, and your mother’s … and yours. They took their spirit from that river that went the hard way for a hundred million years. We take ours from them. And we’ll, by God, get through.”

  Now you remember your mother coming barefoot down the stairs, in her nightgown, hair a-tangle, shouting it should be her taking you, and stumbling, and your Grandpa catching her and saying, in his calm voice, Rest easy, he guessed he still had pull enough to get a boy into fifth grade, she should stay in until she was feeling better. Then she said, “You mean looking, don’t you?” and pushed him away and knelt to tuck your alligator shirt into your khakis, and told you to be brave but all you looked at were black wingtips, gray Hush Puppies, and her pale pink toes.

  • • •

  You remember your Grandpa parking the Patrician beneath a flap, flap, flapping flag, and telling you your ancestors were Old Settlers so you belonged in Raystown and didn’t have to give account to anybody. “It’s nothing you need be ashamed of,” he said, “but folks here love to mind other folks’ business, especially People Like Us.” Then suddenly somehow you were in the Goddamn Rambler, waking to a toll booth’s glare, hearing a man say, “Two dollars,” and your mother saying she didn’t have any money, but she’d see he got it later. And he said, “Who do you think you are?” and she said, Please, and a man’s name, and he said her name, like a question, and she said, Yes, but turned her head when he leaned down to look, and he wouldn’t raise the gate until she let him see her face.

  You remember the peppermint-breathed principal who kept calling your Grandpa Your Honor, and the white-capped nurse who poked your hair with a toothpick because she said there was no telling where you’d been, and waiting beside Smokey Bear, who said ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FOREST FIRES, until a teacher with hair like Brillo took you to her classroom, asking questions as you went, and the boys who laughed at your Hush Puppies and the girls who giggled, at what, you never knew, and hot dogs dipped in ketchup for lunch, which they called dinner, and getting picked last at recess, and being called a liar when you said you’d seen the ocean, and the teacher telling you not to brag, even if it was true, and pretending not to know answers already, and the beep they called a bell, and your Grandpa in the Patrician, parked beneath the flapping flag.

  You remember him waiting every day, glasses propped up on his forehead and a book in hand, or head drooping, but not sleeping, just resting his eyes, he said. Some days he’d say he needed you to help him run errands, and you’d walk together past the house where George Washington had slept and the church that was where the jail Davy Lewis escaped from twice used to be, to the Post Office, where you’d look at WANTED posters while he got mail from the box, and to the First National, where he’d sign papers while a lady who looked old but wasn’t would ply you with horehound slugs and questions until you’d get mad and go make the revolving door go whupwhupwhup, and to the graveyard where the Old Settlers were buried, and your Grandmother too, God rest her.

  Other days he’d drive south on Richard, past Juliana and the Inn at Anderson’s Springs to where it turned into Route 220, and tell you how, way back when, he’d had a Buick roadster—canary yellow, black rag top, rumble seat, ninety horses—that went like a bat out of … a cave, and when he was courting your Grandmother he’d drive her out this way because the road ran straight and near-level all the way to Mason & Dixon’s Line so he could open ’er up, and she loved the speed, even though she wouldn’t learn to drive, but she’d pretend she didn’t like the top down because the wind blew her hair all wild, but eventually she’d throw her head back and close her eyes and let the wind have its way. Then he’d say, “Let’s see what she’ll do,” and the white line wo
uld blur solid, and the Patrician would come up from behind semis and whip around so fast you’d barely hear the bellowing.

  Other days he’d go left on Forbes Road and when it turned into Route 30, he’d tell you how Forbes didn’t have a thing to do with it, George Washington either, it was the Old Settlers who transformed an old Indian trail into a road for caissons and Conestogas so Colonel Armstrong could run the French out of Pittsburgh and pioneers could reach Ohio, and Republicans who named it the Lincoln Highway and paved it so it could carry Tin Lizzies across the Plains and the Rockies and clean to the Pacific, only then the Doggone Democrats gave the highways numbers, and the people too.

  Then you’d feel the land rise beneath you, and the arch-necked bird would fly, and you’d see the hotel shaped like a ship on the mountain’s brow. He’d give you nickels for the telescope so you could get the lay of the land and SEE 3 STATES AND 7 COUNTIES and the ridges like ocean waves, their hues modulating in the distance—green, green-blue, cadet blue—and blending into periwinkle sky.

  Other days he’d drive on rough, recondite roads—Pinchots, he called them—that snaked through gloomed forests before bursting into sunlit coves. Sometimes he’d stop at farms cacophonous with bark and squawk to haggle with white-capped women for scrapple, head cheese, and liver pudding, or at stores sided with rusty signs—HIRES, NEHI, UPPER 10—in slumberous five-house towns, to growl about the Doggone Democrats with gaunt, knob-knuckled men. But generally on those days he just drove, past cattle-clotted pastures, close-filed fields, red tractors, black barns billboarded blue-white-yellow CHEW MAIL POUCH, white churches flanked by gray gravestones. And he taught you the names of every kind of kine and swine and crop, and told you who owned what and always voted how, but said since you weren’t running for anything yet, you didn’t need to know where the bodies were buried.

  And some days he’d go right at the light and out the East End, past the trailer park, the junkyard, the blue-and-white Scenicruisers parked aslant beside the Greyhound Post House, the green combines ranked before the John Deere dealership, and then you’d see the river on your left, frothed by rocky confrontations before disappearing into the mountain ahead.

  Then it would seem the mountain parted and on either side you’d see sinusoid stripes—brown, tan, purple, pink, the insides of the earth. Then the road would swing out into the empty air, but you’d hear his voice telling you how engineers, smart fellas out in Pittsburgh, invented a new kind of bridge to get a highway through the Narrows, and rest easy.

  After that the road descended to the river’s bank, and through a green gauze of weeping willows you’d see the river again, tranquil now, its surface only occasionally V’d by hidden obstructions, and he’d drive slow and talk about how your Grandmother, God rest her, loved River Road, and how he should have brought her here more often, and how he hoped that when you got to be a man you wouldn’t always be rushing no place good for no good reason, and then wouldn’t say another word all the way to Juniata Crossing. And you’d long to tell him, in that silence, how you’d failed your mother, but you knew he’d tell you it was nothing you need be ashamed of. Only it was.

  But you remember the day you came through the kitchen door and saw her at the white electric range, stirring something steaming in the white-and-blue speckled pot. You saw her face, lumpish, yellow-green, but made your eyes stay open, and when she smiled at you with her mangled mouth you made your mouth smile back. Then your Grandpa came in behind you and she said supper would be boeuf sans bourguignon and he said pork made better stew and the range ran up his light bill and she said, “Quit growling, you old bear,” and he just laughed.

  You remember your mother stowing dolls and teddy bears in the humpbacked trunk and saying she’d make you new curtains; this was your room now.

  You remember cheer-upcheer-a-leecheer-ee-o and a robin redbreast hopping on the lawn.

  You remember asking could you walk to school like the other boys and your Grandpa saying he didn’t see why not, it was all downhill, mostly.

  You remember doing homework at the kitchen table, and her checking your grammar and spelling and him your arithmetic.

  You remember her reading to you like she did when you were little—tales of ladies and their knights, in French, with consecutive interpretation.

  You remember boys with a football in the Public Squares, and your Grandpa telling you, Go play, he didn’t need help running errands every day, and you said, “You’ll still need help some days, won’t you?” and he ruffled your hair and gave you fifty cents walking-around money.

  You remember the rules of what they called Rough Touch: two hands below the shoulders, no tackling, but shoving was okay. Some boys said you shoved too hard, but when they chose up for another game you got picked third.

  You remember your mother saying you had to learn to use the Lexicon because words were both tools and weapons and the difference between the right one and the almost-right one was like lightning and a lightning bug, and when you said the lectern was higher than you could reach she showed you the step stool hidden underneath.

  You remember tying up your brogans, braving briar and thorn and entering the forest, going step-by-step along the path until it forked. Then you turned back because by then you knew the Lost Children got found dead.

  And you remember birds flocking by hundreds in Quercus Rubra’s limbs, chattering sunrise to sunset, sometimes after dark. Stump speeches and midnight caucuses, your Grandpa said; the prothonotary warblers advocating Costa Rica, the robins lobbying for Lauderdale, the orioles proposing Mexico. Your mother said one day you’d look and they’d be gone, and it would mean the end of summer and that always made her sad, but you kept watch and saw it when they rose and flew away together, and it didn’t seem sad at all.

  Now you remember the dump truck. Just a sound when you first heard it, like the Goddamn Rambler’s cough and sputter, only in a lower register. You were at the woodpile, loading yourself up, and looked and saw it as it inched over the crest: white grille pitted with raw sienna rust, pewter air horn tarnished brown, red cab splotched with gray, steel dump bed battered, spattered, corroded to huelessness.

  It shuddered, screeched to a stop, sat wheezing awhile, then clanked, coughed, and backed its corrugated hind end wearily into the driveway, stopping only feet from you. Then the cab door opened and a man jumped down.

  He wore a kind of uniform—cap, shirt, trousers of forest green—brogans of Indian red, gray gloves that flared at the wrist. His face was brown and rough, like a walnut. His jaw bulged as he chewed—on what, you dared not wonder. He unchained the tailgate, pulled down a blue handle, then said, without looking at you, “You wanta move from there.”

  You moved; meanwhile he worked a thin red lever, the dump bed rose in fits and starts, and then the tailgate lifted, and chunks came tumbling out. In a minute it was over; he got back into the cab, the truck eased forward, and the tailgate swung-and-banged, swung-and-banged. Then he got out again and worked the red lever and the dump bed stuttered down.

  He pushed up the blue handle, rechained the tailgate, then strode past you to the kitchen door, smelling of sweat and Juicy Fruit. He knocked twice, and still without looking at you said, “You live here now?” and you said, “This is my Grandpa’s house,” and he said, “That, I know.”

  Then your Grandpa was in the doorway saying, “Thanks, Joe. Same price?” and the man said, “For now, Judge, but it’s gonna go up soon. You want another load beforehand? I pick up Saturdays, forenoon,” and your Grandpa said, “Well, I don’t …,” and then your mother came slipping past him with a dip of shoulder and twirl of hip.

  Her steps were like a dancer’s, swift and light, and she wore makeup that almost hid the bruises, and her voice was like a singer’s when she said, “Hello, Joe. Whadaya know?” Then she held out her hand. And he said, “Jewels,” and pulled off his glove and took her hand in his, but they didn’t shake, they just smiled until your Grandpa stepped between them with money in
his hand.

  You remember asking, over supper, who that man was, and your Grandpa saying he was just a colored fella who hauled sand, gravel, chunks, and manure, most likely, in a thirdhand piece of truck, and your mother putting her fork down and saying his name was Joe Wisdom, and they’d been friends in high school. And you asked, “Was he your boyfriend?” and your Grandpa choked on his Salisbury steak.

  But later, when he came to check your long division, he said he’d meant no disrespect to Joe Wisdom, who worked hard and stayed sober and came from respectable folk. Then he told you how, way back when, colored people came over from Africa to be free, but below Mason & Dixon’s Line white men made them slaves, only one white man, named Wisdom, went camping and caught Methodism and wanted to let his colored people go for fear of boils and blains, but other white men wouldn’t let him unless he sent them back to Africa. Then Wisdom came to take the waters at Anderson’s Springs and found out about Raystown, and bought twelve hundred acres eight miles west and sent his colored people there, and they all took his last name, and called it Wisdom’s Notch. Then other colored people started running away from slavery and coming north across the Line, and folks in Raystown would send them to Wisdom’s Notch, where they could hide and be safe until Abe Lincoln freed them.

  You liked that story so you asked if one day he’d drive to Wisdom’s Notch, and he said, “We’ll see,” and you heard your mother cough, and later, when you were in bed, say, “Daddy, if you’re going to tell him stories, tell him the whole story,” and he said, “Are you sure you want him hearing the whole story?” and you knew he did leave things out sometimes, so when she came to tuck you in you asked what the whole story was.