Bloodroot (13 page)

JOHNNY

Some of what happened on Bloodroot Mountain has grown foggy in my mind, but most of it I remember well. For a long time, my twin
sister Laura and I didn’t know to fear anything. We’d play in bat caves and climb the highest trees and let spiders walk up our arms. Once, a bear came lumbering through as we knelt in the pine needles searching for arrowheads. It stopped a few yards from us and sniffed the air before moving on. We must have smelled familiar. Our mama always said we had inherited a way with animals.

I’ll never forget how she cried when I saved Mr. Barnett’s dog, Whitey. It was the fall Laura and I turned five and we had gone down to the Barnetts’ with our mama to trade apples for a bag of cornmeal. While she was in the house with Mrs. Barnett, Laura and I stood watching Mr. Barnett work on his truck, the three of us bent together under the hood. There was a sudden commotion in the woods and I could tell right away that it was Whitey, yelping over a din of wild barking and growling. Mr. Barnett dropped his wrench and Laura and I went running with him into the trees. Whitey was lying on her back in the middle of a dog pack, all of them fighting her. People in Polk County let their dogs roam loose and they ran together sometimes, causing trouble all over the mountain.

Mr. Barnett lunged at the dogs to scare them off, but they weren’t afraid. He threw a rock but that didn’t work either. I knew those dogs meant to kill Whitey. I could hear Laura crying over the racket, eyes squeezed shut and hands clamped over her ears. While Mr. Barnett looked for something else to throw, I walked without thinking toward the fighting dogs. Mr. Barnett yelled for me to get back but it was too late. He ran to dive in and save me, but I didn’t need his help. The dogs scattered to make a path for me as if someone had fired a shotgun. They slinked off, leaving Whitey shivering and bleeding on the leaves. Then the woods were quiet. Mr. Barnett stood frozen as I knelt beside Whitey and picked her up in my arms. She was so big and heavy that I could hardly rise up with her. That’s when I saw my mama standing at the edge of the trees with tears running down her face. I still don’t know if she was crying out of pride or sadness.

Laura and I were always bringing animals into the house. Once we found a nest of baby skunks in a brush pile and it was the only thing our mama didn’t let us keep. Anything else we could catch, we could bring inside. Once it was a red-eyed terrapin that crawled all over the house until one day it just wasn’t there anymore. I don’t know if it found a way out or if my mama set it free. She let us keep the animals
but it troubled her. She said wild things belonged outside and not to forget their true nature. I should have listened to her. One summer morning, when I was seven, I got too brave. Rain had been pouring for two days straight and the sun had come back out hot and bright. The yard was soggy and rainwater splashed up my legs when Laura and I ran into the trees. I can still see her stopping to balance on a mossy log, the dark shawl of her hair parted down the middle and sunburn tracing the bridge of her nose. Even though we were born five minutes apart, we didn’t look alike besides our black hair and eyes. Laura was plainer than our mama but had the same long face and high forehead, features I didn’t inherit.

I chased after her, flushing rabbits out of the brush and sending frogs plopping into the creek. We knew where we were going without saying anything. Further up the mountain there were two big tables of rock in a clearing, one slab like a step leading down to the other, jutting high over the bluff. Both were scabby with lichens and scattered with piles of damp leaves. Sometimes I would read to Laura up there, but she couldn’t be still for long, so that rock step became my spot to sit and think.

On the way up to the rock something caught Laura’s eye in the woods, prisms of light filtering down through the trees. The way they moved along the ground when the wind blew, she always ran off after them, arms outstretched and head thrown back to let them play across her face. I didn’t like her drifting too far out of sight, but when I wanted my twin I could call her back without words. I didn’t question how it was possible. I remembered a time when we were smaller that we didn’t need to speak at all. I could read the set of her mouth and the line of her shoulders and know what she wanted to say.

I went on to the rock, but when I stepped into the clearing I stopped in my tracks. In the place where I usually sat there was a snake. I walked closer for a better look. He wasn’t long but he was fat, a lazy S shape soaking up the heat. I had seen snakes before but this was the prettiest, sun shining on his banded back, patterned with rounded spots. When I hunkered down, he lifted the coppery-red triangle of his head. My heart thudded. I stretched out on my belly to look him in the face. Staring into his eyes, it seemed he knew everything about me. I thought if he could speak, he would call me by name.

Slowly the snake began to coil, scales undulating like magic. I wanted to show Laura, because back then my sister and I shared everything. “Laura, come and see!” I shouted, reaching out for the snake. Just as Laura came into the clearing, he shot up and bit me on the back of the hand. I saw the plush pink lining of his throat, the thin black line of his tongue. Then I felt the pain, hot and fiery, shooting up my arm. I was surprised, but I didn’t feel betrayed. I should have known that he was untouchable.

I woke the next day with a headache, hand bloated and bruised nearly black. The stiffness worked its way up my arm to the shoulder and the throbbing lasted for weeks, but it wasn’t all that bad. I couldn’t find the words to tell Laura, but there was something good about it, driving out the other aches inside that vexed me all the time. When I got better I thought that copperhead might have turned me into what he was, like vampires and werewolves do. The idea didn’t trouble me. I almost wished it would happen.

LAURA

I’ve had a long time to think about what made Mama how she was. I know now she never was like other mamas, but them last two years with her was harder. I figure it had something to do with that day in town when me and Johnny was six. It was the only time we ever left the mountain with her. We’d walk to the bottom of it selling ginseng, but she always made us hide in the weeds. The fat man leaned over the rail of his porch and counted the money down into her hand. She never set foot on his steps that I can remember. Sometimes we rode up and down the dirt road in the back of Mr. Barnett’s truck with the wind in our hair, but she wouldn’t let him take us anywhere else. I never wanted to go off the mountain anyway. I seen Mama’s fear of whatever was down there. I figured out she was trying to hide us from something dangerous. Johnny probably did, too. But he was different than me. He always wondered what else there was to see.

It took until we was six for Mama to give in. The leaves had fell and she was building fires in the stove. That meant it was time for Mr. Barnett to go to the co-op. Mama gave him money and he brung things back for us. Mr. Barnett was our good friend. Mama didn’t talk
to him much, but I could tell he didn’t make her nervous. Not like that Cotter man we bought fresh milk from up the mountain. His wife would stand at the door with her arms crossed and look down at our dirty feet. Mama would hand over the money and take the milk fast as she could. Mostly we had powdered milk. That’s one thing she bought before winter. Powdered milk, flour, sugar, and cornmeal in big sacks. That year, when it was time for Mr. Barnett to go to the co-op, Johnny begged Mama for us to go with him. She said no at first but he started to cry. Worried as Mama was, she loved Johnny more. I believe it hurt her to deny him anything he wanted so bad.

Mama wouldn’t let us go by ourselves with Mr. Barnett so we all piled in the truck together, me and Johnny crowded between Mr. Barnett and Mama. Mr. Barnett smelled like liniment and dampish flannel. I liked riding in his truck with the heater blowing on my face. Mr. Barnett must have seen Mama shaking. He said, “You remember where the co-op is, honey. It’s in Slop Creek, not all the way to town. They won’t be many there this time of morning.” He put his big hand on top of my head. “These younguns need to see a little piece of the countryside anyhow. Don’t you?” I nodded, even though I didn’t really think so. I was nervous when Mr. Barnett first turned his truck right at the bottom of the mountain, but after a while I got excited. There was long fields with pinwheels of hay and silos and bridges over rolling water. I looked out the back window and seen the mountain getting left behind. But I still felt safe. Johnny and Mama was with me.

Then we was at the co-op and it was the most people I ever seen in one place. I stood still with Johnny, watching the men with caps and coveralls on, buying things for their farms. The lights there was a dirty color and sometimes they buzzed and blinked. There was heavy sacks stacked nearly to the ceiling and people rolled them out on long carts. I stayed close to Mama’s legs. After she paid, Mr. Barnett bought me and Johnny a bag of candy. We stood in the parking lot sucking peppermint while he helped Mama load the truck. A man got out of the car beside us and stopped to light a cigarette. When he seen Mama his eyebrows flew up. Then they growed together like he was angry.

“Hey there,” he said to Mama. I felt Johnny’s body get stiff beside me. Mama put a sack of flour in the truck like she didn’t hear.

“I said hey there, gal.” The man’s voice was loud and ugly. “You going to let on like you don’t know me?” Mama lifted her face then
and looked at him. The red spots went out of her cheeks. “It’s been a long time,” the man said, “but I knowed it was you the minute I seen all that damn hair.”

Mama stared. It was like she couldn’t move. Mr. Barnett put down his dog feed and stepped toward the man. I knowed Mr. Barnett would protect Mama.

“What’s wrong, Myra?” the man asked. The way he grinned at her made me feel funny. “Do I look too much like my brother?” Mama didn’t say anything. He turned his mean eyes on me and Johnny, like he just noticed us. His face got white as Mama’s. “What’s this?” he said in a different voice. “Are these your younguns?”

“Get on in the truck, honey,” Mr. Barnett said to Mama. Then he looked at me and Johnny and said, “Y’uns, too.”

“If I recall, you was a churchgoing girl, Myra,” the man said. He stepped toward the truck and it was like Mama woke up from a dream. She opened the passenger door and got in fast, just as me and Johnny was climbing in the driver’s side. Mr. Barnett said, “Watch it there, feller,” but the man kept on coming. I squeezed close to Mama. She was pressed up against the window staring straight ahead.

“You ever read that part in the Bible,” the man asked as Mr. Barnett got in behind the wheel, “that says your sins will find you out?” Mr. Barnett pulled the door shut but I could still hear the man’s voice. “I know what you done!” he hollered, slapping the hood as Mr. Barnett backed out of the parking lot. “I know what you done to my brother!”

Looking back, it don’t make sense about that man being at the co-op the first time Mama ever let us off the mountain. She probably figured it was the Lord punishing her, but I don’t think He works that way. Sometimes the world is just hard to understand. I don’t believe it was seeing that man that ruint Mama. I think it was her worst fear coming true, of that man seeing Johnny and me. On the way back from the co-op she whispered, “I knew better.” It was the last words she spoke for a long time. After that, I never wanted to leave the mountain again. I seen what she had tried to hide us from.

JOHNNY

In the early spring of my eighth year, I ended up with ringworm. We kept a few chickens and Whitey had puppies, but wherever the fungus
came from it was ugly, traveling up my leg in big scabby loops that looked like burns. That morning while my mama was sewing a rip in Laura’s dress, she happened to glance up and notice. It was one of those days she would come to life and see what needed replacing in the pantry and picking in the garden and what needed to be washed. Those were the times she would silently note the holes in our shoes, slip off for a day or so, and come back with new things in a brown paper sack for us to take whenever we found them. Laura and I seldom got sick or hurt in those last two years on Bloodroot Mountain, but when we did we looked after ourselves. She never made mention of my copperhead bite, as if she didn’t even notice how bad off I was. It was up to me to get better alone. Later that same year, when Laura ate the wrong berries and got sick to her stomach, I was the one who took care of her. But for some reason, my mama happened to see the ringworm that morning and it must have reminded her of the way her granny used to cure ailments like mine.

She finished sewing Laura’s ripped dress and slipped it back over my sister’s head. We followed her out the back door and up behind the house where the mountain was steeper and wilder. It was hard to keep up with her, ducking under branches and climbing over fallen trees. Now and again her hair would get hung on a twig or bush and she would push on without caring. I tried to help Laura along and we both slipped a few times on the wet, slimy rocks. More than once we came across swampy puddles and trickles of ice-cold water running down the mountain because it was early spring and the woods were thawing out. By the time we reached the spot on a slope where she wanted to stop, we were all three briar-scratched and muddy. There were shreds of low fog and the air was colder so far up the mountain. It hurt my throat to breathe, but it tasted sweet.

Our mama pointed to a scattering of white flowers along the ground, peeking up through a leftover litter of winter’s dead leaves. She got down on her knees and dug one up with a trowel she had brought in her dress pocket, then held up the root for us to see. It was thick and fleshy, like a finger under a mess of thin, wiry hair. She snapped it with her long, strong hands and I was scared when I saw the red sap because it looked like splattered blood. I didn’t know much better than to think she had wounded a living thing, made a
sacrifice for my ringworm. “The Cotter boys used to gather up this bloodroot and sell it,” she said. “But it might die out if we take too much. Granny used bloodroot to treat everything. Warts, headaches, sore throats. When Granddaddy’s gums would bleed she’d put it in his toothpaste. You know he still had most of his teeth when he died, and him an old man. Granny said, too, the Indian warriors used to paint their faces with it.”