The Memory Thief

by Rachel Keener

  I spent my first few days shaking snow globes as I explored each shop slowly. I even ate at a restaurant once, instead of sticking to my plan of cheap foods like chips and coke. And at night I walked the path marked Scenic and settled under the trees close to the overlook. There I could see dozens of lights, tiny sparks of homes and businesses on the earth below. I named them all. Grouped them together and searched for pictures.

  But the mountains were cooler than I had planned. I was closer to the sun by miles, but the night winds were something even whiskey could not defeat. Soon I grew tired of washing up in store bathrooms. The store workers were tired of it, too. I saw how they glanced at each other when I walked in again to shake a snow globe, use the bathroom, count the money in my pockets, and consider buying a big fleece blanket. But I always bought snack cakes and beef jerky instead. No amount of cold, no shiver of my skin, could be worse than an empty belly.

  Besides losing Janie, the pain of a hungry belly is what I remember most about her running away. The night before she left, I found her cussing about how her jeans didn’t fit right anymore. I looked at her, saw the strain of her belly against the waistband. Saw the black bra she ripped off, cussed again that it was so tight it hurt.

  “What you lookin’ at?” she said, rolling her eyes. “You a Holy Roller too? You wait. Give or take a few years, you’ll be standin’ same as me.”

  There was a boy. There was always a boy around Janie. But one had a plan for her. Recognized her special talents. He’d park outside all the big farmhouses in East Tennessee while Janie snuck inside. She filled his trunk with engraved things. Silver carved up with family names. The treasure of tobacco kings.

  She put a good-bye letter under my pillow, then left with him forever.

  Momma and Daddy had no plans to follow her. Till Momma discovered Daddy’s paycheck was missing. They cussed her, the baby in her belly, the farmhand she was running away with. And then they taught me the words family emergency and left me alone for days.

  With them gone, I liked Black Snake trailer even less. That night I dragged my baby blanket out to the bacca for the company it offered, rather than the safety. And I returned the next night. And the next.

  Groceries were our luxury. Only after gas money, car repairs, cigarettes, and whiskey did we buy food. The cheapest, since there was little money left. Cornflakes, macaroni, cans of ground-up potted meat that Momma liked to pretend was ham salad.

  If it had been winter, I would’ve been fine. With my government breakfast and lunch pass, I kept a stock of smuggled snacks stashed in odd places around the farm. But that stash always ran dry by mid-June.

  I thought of breaking every Swarm rule and knocking on the farmhouse door. Maybe even stepping inside as I cried about how we were out of food. But I couldn’t risk somebody finding out I was alone, giving me over to the State to be raised by Lord Knows Who.

  One night when the whiskey was gone, I couldn’t sleep for hunger pains. I reached for a bacca leaf. Smelled it. It was a scent that changed with time. Started with the dirt smell of new fields. Moved to the fruit of ripe bacca. Ended with cans of spit, smelling like apple cider with the punch of whiskey.

  I took a bite, spit on the ground like I’d seen Daddy do thousands of times. Took some more to chew. Ignored the fire in my mouth and tucked it in my bottom lip, like a seasoned farmhand. Spat and took more to chew. The fields started to blur. My head felt heavy, and I liked it. The easy drunk. Like fields of whiskey were growing all around me. I reached for more and sometimes forgot to spit. My hands shook so that I couldn’t find the leaves anymore. My head was so heavy I couldn’t lift it from the dirt. I was beyond drunk. Vomiting in the dirt. Over and over till my fists punched the ground, sick from the fight of it all.

  I woke up to the sound of Daddy’s car the next morning. Laid in the bacca while they sat on the hood and smoked. They giggled about the look on Janie’s face when the cops showed up. They joked about the way Janie tried to run when the cops opened the trunk. Saw it full of family guns and silver from all the big local farms. Momma and Daddy sat in that green car, not twenty feet over from Janie, and waved as she was handcuffed. They called out Hello like any good parent would. They called out that she’d deliver her baby in jail.

  I watched them from the bacca as they slapped each other high five. “You see the look on her face?” Daddy asked, while Momma giggled. My fists found the ground again. Punched silently over and over. Sick from the fight of it all.

  After that summer, though, I knew the rules of hunger. About spacing out food, never eating until I was completely full. Always hiding a bit more than I thought I might need. It carried me through many weeks of empty cabinets. And gave me the courage to get through cold nights on your mountain. In a way, that cold, that fear of hunger, was a good thing. It reminded me of the whole reason I was there. During the day I’d get caught up looking down on a small earth below. Imagined I could burn it down, too. But at night the chill that covered the mountain reminded me I was small. Warned me that winter was coming. I laid awake and made survival plans. Drawn with lines that went up and up and up. Like a map of the mountain.

  Our last name was Ray. I knew that much. I went to a store and swapped a five-dollar bill out for quarters. Then I found a pay phone with the phone book still attached. I snuck back at night, when the streets were quiet and peaceful, and started making my calls.

  Ray is a common name. And there were many ways to spell it. Ray, Rae, Reigh… I counted a possibility of thirty-six phone calls. Put a mark by the first one, dropped a quarter in the slot and dialed the numbers with my trembling hand.

  “Hello?” a sleepy voice answered.

  I stayed silent.

  “It’s too late for pranks—”

  “Wait.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Angel Ray.”

  “I think you’ve got the wrong number.”

  “I’m lookin’ for my family. I found your name, Eva Ray, and I thought—”

  “This isn’t a family home, honey. It’s an upholstery business. Eva was my great-grandmother. Ray is my dog. Sorry. Hope you find them.”

  I made six calls each night. A few times, the people that answered were friendly. They’d chat about how good it was that I wanted to find my family. How sad it was I lost them. Most of the time, though, people just hung up on me. I kept calling. Down the list I moved, night after night. And I cursed the tears that filled my eyes after each hang-up.

  There were six numbers left to call the night the lovers came to the overlook. It had happened before once, during the day. I had been dozing under a tree and woke up to the sound of them laughing. I opened my eyes to see a young couple, not much older than me. They were rich. With their clean jeans and tucked-in shirts. Tennis shoes that looked brand new and so comfortable. And the jackets they wore, not heavy enough for winter, but perfect for a windy mountain day.

  I looked down at myself. My dirty cutoffs and sweatshirt. Beef jerky wrappers scattered around me. A whiskey bottle in my hand.

  “You livin’ here?” the girl asked, shaking her head. “Cops could show you where a shelter is. His daddy’s one, maybe he could take you…”

  I ran away. And avoided the overlook during the day. But one night the lovers returned. I heard them kissing and giggling. I grabbed my things and edged deeper into the woods. Until I couldn’t hear them anymore. Until I saw the moon shining down on a big old sycamore and felt home all around me.

  Sometime during the night the rain came. I scrambled to my feet and started to walk back toward the scenic path. I wanted to return to town and sit beneath an awning for the night. Soon it was pouring, and I had to hold my hand over my eyes to see clearly. I kept walking straight, the same way I had come. But I was numb with cold. Numb to how long I had really been walking. And to how far away the path suddenly seemed.

  The rain stopped before dawn. But there were no lovers’ giggles. And no passing cars. All I heard was the drip drip of leftover
water falling from the trees. I laid on a pile of wet leaves and waited for the sun to rise and show me the way.

  When morning came, I retraced my steps until I returned to the big sycamore.

  Only this tree, with its matching wide leaves and shaggy bark, had lichen growing down the side. A grayish green mat. And I didn’t remember lichen from before.

  I felt panic as the wind suddenly blew stronger, like before rain. I learned something important that day, as the last bit of leaves fell from the trees and the animals scurried for food. Winter comes early in the mountains. It never measures itself by months or weeks. It comes whenever it wants.

  I also learned that Mr. Swarm was right about something else. The mountains are full of giant sycamores. I went from tree to tree, my eyes always searching for wide sharp-tipped leaves and shaggy bark. Whenever I found one, I rested beneath it. Marked it with a broken branch so that I would know if I returned. I never did; each tree I came to was new. And though panic grew inside me, so did awe. I ran my hands across the hurting bark, and wondered if I was the first in years, maybe decades or even a century, to lay eyes on those great trees. We were so far from the scenic path. So lost on the mountain.

  I should have been more prepared. I’d spent years of my life searching out hundreds of bacca acres. Learning how paths doubled back without warning, or eventually emptied out by old barns or broke-down tractors turned over in ditches. I’d spent years not being lost in a place where any other child would be. Anytime I needed a map, a way to track myself in the bacca, I’d jump to see which mountains fenced me in. If my eyes saw a flash of the close green ones, then I knew I was in the west fields. If the mountains were a faraway blue, I knew I was close to Black Snake trailer.

  But standing on the mountain was a whole different thing. I had risen above fences. So I drew crooked lines and circles, one after the other, between the sycamores. I looked to the sky for help. But stars were replaced by clouds. Old ones moved away with the wind. And new shapes formed above me each morning.

  Days passed, and I tried to circle back again, always feeling that I had just missed the path. As food ran low, I watched the squirrels eat acorns and felt jealous. It rained again. Too tired to walk, I sat and shivered through it. Let the rain soak me as I dreamed of the overlook. Not so I could find my way to the stores, shake a snow globe, and get warm. And not so I could trace pictures of lights in the dark. I dreamed of the overlook and what it would feel like to step over the stone wall. I dreamed of clouds, and how good, how soft, they would feel as I sailed through them.

  Maybe I was only half awake, or maybe I was dying, but soon my thoughts no longer came as ideas. I didn’t make plans. I didn’t whisper wishes. I only saw visions.

  Like Momma’s gun, the handle the color of red maple, laying in a stack of wet leaves. I reached for it, pretended to turn it over and over in my hands. It was sexy. Like Momma leaned against that car. Like me on top of a biscuit counter.

  I saw Janie, too, after she ran away. I saw the look on her face, the look that made Momma giggle, when the cops showed up. I turned into the bark of the sycamore and sobbed. Yelled I’m sorry to Janie. She always hated it so much when I cried. “You’ve gotta be tougher,” she used to say with her strong gritty voice. “Can’t run very fast if you’re always cryin’.”

  I reached into my back pocket, where I kept my strength—a little red ring of plastic. I closed my fist round it, until I almost felt warm again. Until I felt my tears dry up and knew that Janie would be proud.

  I earned that red ring the hard way on the day the milk spilled. The day I learned Momma and Daddy could hurt me. But they never owned me.

  Daddy’s car had died. He had tried to get it running all week. It would start at first, sputter, then die. But by the end of the week, when he turned the key there was only a click. And then nothing.

  “I could fix this with some money,” Daddy yelled. “Woman, git the money. It’s ours by rights.”

  Momma sat on the couch, nodding. “What you reckon I oughta ask for? Fifteen?”

  “We could buy a whole new one and a motorbike, too.” He smiled.

  “How will I git there?”

  “If I can git it runnin’, will you go?”

  He pawned her gun, promised to buy it back with the money she’d bring home. Bought just enough parts and gas to rig it to Carolina. I remember the day she left. How she kissed me on the forehead. How I jerked back in surprise, and then hated myself because I did.

  “I’m gonna tell ’em she’s sick and dyin’,” Momma said, as she pulled away.

  Daddy smiled. “Be back in two days, baby.”

  It took four days, and Daddy paced and yelled and pointed his finger at me like I’d done something to keep Momma away. The day she came home, I was laying in the bacca wondering whether we’d make the farmhand picnic. Every year right before the harvest and auctions, the Swarms held a picnic under the sycamore. The tables would be loaded with chicken and ham, all kinds of pie. It was as close to Christmas as our family ever came.

  I heard the car pull up, got as close to Black Snake trailer as I could without being seen.

  “Woman, where the hell you been?”

  “Weren’t there,” she said, her hands raised, palms up.

  “You go to Lizbeth’s?”

  “She wouldn’t even open the door for me. I scrubbed that woman’s toilets on my hands and knees, and she acted like she never knew me.”

  “So that’s it, then,” Daddy said. He sat down on the hood of the car, his head in his hands.

  “Lizbeth told me where they used to live. I went there, then went next door and told ’em I was lookin’ for the Holy Roller family. They said they moved years ago, but a few months after the man called ’em. Sent ’em a check to ship an old bike. He’d given it away, but wanted it back again. Said somethin’ bout bikin’ in the mountains come fall.”

  “Where’d they send the bike?”

  She shrugged her shoulders, pointed to the mountains in the distance, whispered, “Somewhere near Boone.”

  We went to the farmhand picnic. Daddy wore his nice jeans, the ones that didn’t have a Skoal ring burned into the back pocket. He shaved his face and slicked his hair back with water. Momma wore a see-through sundress. It was white cotton and she made sure her bra and panties were a matching hot pink. I wore cutoffs, tried to knot up my shirt but couldn’t get the tie to stay. So I pulled the collar open a bit, to make sure everyone knew I was finally wearing a bra.

  We sat six to a table. Me and Momma and another farm-hand wife on one side. Daddy, a farmhand, and another little girl on the other. The Swarms were busy passing platters of chicken and biscuits. Plates of corn on the cob. Mrs. Swarm brought a half gallon of milk and a pitcher of sweet tea to our table. She blessed the food and we all started to eat.

  “Car won’t ever be fixed now,” Daddy said through gritted teeth.

  “You seen that sycamore, Daddy? I bet it’s growed another foot.”

  “I bet this trip killed it for good, too,” he continued. “Hundreds of miles on a half-dead car. All for nothin’.”

  “Well, if we had done it my way,” Momma said, “we wouldn’t be in this mess. We could’ve bought somethin’ that wouldn’t die. We could’ve bought land. Or our own business. But no, you had to buy somethin’ that would wear out. Somethin’ that you could show off and be the big man. How’s it feel now? We ain’t got nothin’. No money. No car. Just her.”

  Daddy raised his arms to stretch, like he was shaking her words off. But I could tell from the flush on his face that he felt every word. He looked at me. Reached across the table for my glass of milk.

  Something hit me. And as I blinked wet eyes, I saw milk dripping onto my T-shirt. I cried, “Momma.” But in an instant, forks returned to plates. Daddy started talking to the other farmhand about the differences in tractors. Their speeds, digging strength. Others started passing plates for seconds, laughing about how there’d be no room for dessert. I sat sto
ne still, my face covered in milk and tears.

  I didn’t know if it was real. No one else seemed to think so. But then I remembered the shock in their eyes. How the little girl across from me gasped. How her momma shushed her. And I remembered how Momma’s head turned away, to stare at mountains when I cried out for her.

  I reached my hand up and touched the sticky wetness.

  “Why Angel, you’ve spilled your milk all over you, sweetheart. Let me get you somethin’ to clean up with,” Mrs. Swarm said.

  I felt her apron, warm from the heat of her body, as it wiped across my face.

  “Just a little milk. No big deal. Nothin’ to cry so hard over. I got more,” she whispered.

  I reached out and grabbed that plastic red milk cap. Held it, tight and sweaty in my palm, until the picnic ended. When Momma got drunk later that night and sobbed out the details, about five thousand dollars and the pregnant preacher’s wife, it felt familiar. More like an echo than a memory. Like something I had spoken long before, returning again with Momma’s voice.

  That night my hurting heart clenched tight. Till it was more like a fist than anything else. I kept that milk cap underneath my mattress so that all I’d have to do at night was reach my hand down and feel it. And I tucked it in my pocket before I burned Black Snake trailer.

  But lost on that winter mountain, I knew I had made it as far as I was going to go. In the end, though, I was finally Somewhere near Boone. And if I blinked my tired eyes just the right way, I could almost see you, sitting there in those wet leaves.

  I held the milk cap out. “This is a piece of a war,” I whispered. “A hard one, fought inside me. One that finally ended with the truth that I belong to someone else. You. With your starry hair streaming behind you in a Tennessee sky. You can make the very stars reach out for me.”