Bloodroot (2 page)

After Lou Ann died, Grandmaw and the great-aunts painted the doors and windowsills of the house haint blue to keep her mean old spirit out. Anytime that blue started to fade in the weather, they’d get out the paint can and freshen it up. Mammy said they kept it up until the last one of them, Myrtle, died at the age of ninety-two, after I had done married Macon a long time ago and moved off to Bloodroot Mountain.

DOUG

Daddy believes he knows that horse better than anybody, just because he loves her better. But nobody knows Wild Rose better than me, and sometimes I think I hate her. I’ve studied her for years now. Many times I’ve tried to enter her body, wishing to know how to enter Myra Lamb’s. I’ve stood at the fence and watched Wild Rose grazing on the mountain, a dark outline against the pale sky right before the sun is gone, and sent my soul across the rolling green searching for entry, maybe through the tear ducts of the blue glass eyes, maybe through the snuffling channels of the downy nose, or through the grass she rips from the earth and grinds between her big square teeth. Most of the time Wild Rose stands a few yards off with her head lowered, staring back at me. Her tail keeps moving, flicking off flies, but it’s me she’s concentrating on. She’s known for a while that I’m up to something, way before that stunt I tried to pull with the bloodroot last night, when I heard for sure that Myra got married. I guess I’ve wanted to poison Wild Rose for a long time, ever since the day I saw her standing beside the bloodroot patch.

She probably knows everything about me just by looking at my face. I bet she’s noticed how I don’t smile or talk much because of this front tooth, broken off and brown with rot. Daddy didn’t have the money to take us to the dentist when we were kids, and since I’ve been old enough, I haven’t gone. The truth is, this tooth embarrasses me, but I’d be more ashamed to have it fixed. My brothers would say I’m
trying to make myself pretty so I can get a girlfriend. A big part of me was glad when all six of them moved off one by one, four of them heading north to work in the factories, two of them fighting in Vietnam. For a long time there was just Mark and me, until he joined the service, too. The house is lonesome now, but at least I’m not the butt of all the jokes anymore.

My tooth got broken when I was seven. It happened one Saturday when Daddy and I went to Millertown after shoelaces. We headed out every week, whether we needed anything or not. Daddy talked more on those Saturday trips than the other six days of the week put together, whistling and tapping the truck’s steering wheel all the way down the mountain. Looking back, he needed that time away from the farm and all the worries that come with it. He’ll never leave Bloodroot Mountain because the Cotters have lived here for generations, but I wonder if he ever wants to dust his hands of this place and move on.

Millertown was the big city to me back then, before I went to Knoxville with Daddy once to buy a washing machine. Now I see it for what it really is, a country town with old houses and glass-sprinkled lots and the smokestacks of dirty-looking factories looming over everything. The buildings on Main Street are falling into disrepair but they still have character, with tall windows and painted brick and arched doorways. Even in 1963, when I was seven, not many people shopped there anymore. Once the Millertown Plaza was built, with a supermarket and a department store, the downtown seemed outdated. There was only Odom’s Hardware, the dime store, the drugstore, a shoe store, a television repair shop, and a shabby restaurant where roaches skittered along the backs of the torn vinyl booths. Some people still feel like Main Street is the heart of the town. There’s a society of blue-haired ladies dedicated to preserving what they call the historic district. Daddy still shopped there when I was small, because it was what he was used to. He’s always been set in his ways and it took a while for the Plaza to win him over.

The Saturday that my tooth got broken, we climbed into the truck and headed out as usual. Ordinarily Mark would have come along, but he was in trouble for misbehaving at church. Daddy and I had been to the dime store for shoelaces and were passing Odom’s Hardware on
our way to lunch when I saw a sign in the window advertising a junked car for sale. Daddy stopped to examine the sign and decided he wanted to take a look at the car. He claimed he might want it for parts. That’s the way he is. He goes all over the countryside dickering with other men just like himself, silent and gruff with greasy caps on their heads and plugs of tobacco tucked in their jaws. No matter how Mama fusses, he’ll drive from one end of Tennessee to the other collecting junk, or even out of state if he hears about a bargain. Half the time he brings back things we don’t need and can’t use. Once it was a box of hammers, and another time he hoisted an old unicycle out of the truck bed when he got home. Mama really threw a fit over that one.

We waited until after lunch to see about the car. Daddy took his time and had two cups of coffee. I drank a chocolate milkshake. Coming out of the restaurant, Main Street was deserted because everything closed early on Saturdays. It gave me an empty feeling. We got into the truck and went to a house with dark upper windows and old furniture setting on the porch. It might have been fancy if it hadn’t looked so rundown. When Daddy rang the bell, a man came out and said the car was in the backyard. He called Daddy by name as if they already knew each other, but I couldn’t place the man myself.

We went around the house and saw the car up on blocks in a thatch of weeds with its hood propped open. Daddy crossed the yard behind the man to have a closer look. I stood around with my hands in my pockets, wishing they’d get down to business. There were toys in the backyard, but no sign of the kids they belonged to. It was a sad place and I wanted to go home. I drifted to the edge of the yard and looked at the weedy lot next door. It was littered with junk and trash, almost like a dump. I lingered there for a while, daydreaming about nothing in particular. Then the back screen door of the house screeched open and slapped shut. I turned and saw a boy coming down the concrete steps with a basketball under his arm. He was bigger than me, tall with black hair and white skin. He dribbled the ball a couple of times on a bald spot of ground before noticing me. When he saw me standing at the edge of the yard, he stopped and looked me over with suspicious eyes. I didn’t know how to talk to other kids besides my
brothers, so I hoped he would go back to his dribbling. My heart sank when he walked over and spoke to me.

“Hey,” he said, and bounced the ball between us a couple of times.

“Hey.”

He stared at me for a minute, so hard I felt my ears turning red.

“You want to see something?” the boy asked finally.

“What?”

“A skeleton.”

I didn’t answer. I thought he was picking on me.

“Not a human skeleton, dummy. A dog one.”

“Oh.”

“You want to see it?”

“Where’s it at?”

“Over there.” He tilted his head toward the weedy lot.

“I guess.”

He tossed his basketball back into the yard and I watched it bounce a few times before it came to rest by a rusty swing set. To this day, I don’t know why I followed him. I had a bad feeling from the minute he sized me up with his mean black eyes. We walked into the weeds and as we got farther from the house I grew more and more nervous. I looked back over my shoulder at Daddy and the other man, bent under the car’s hood.

“I want to go back,” I told the boy.

“Come on. It’s right over here,” he said.

He took me by the arm and dragged me down a glass-littered path, past a heap of charred garbage and an old mattress spilling stuffing. Finally we came to the edge of the lot, where dark trees crowded close to a rickety board fence. I wanted to cry, but didn’t let myself. I could see the bones ahead, glimmering white in a mess of green vines. The boy steered me roughly by the shoulders until the skeleton was at my toes.

He wanted me to be afraid, but the dog bones weren’t so bad once I saw them close up. They were wound in a shroud of morning glories and the flowers made them almost beautiful. But it turned out a dead dog wasn’t the most interesting thing to be found in the weedy lot. When I knelt down to have a better look at the skeleton, something shiny caught my eye. Glittering in the weeds near the dog’s skull,
I saw the tip of a rock poking out of the earth like a headstone. Right away, I lost interest in the bones and reached out to touch the rock. Back then, Mark and I collected quartz. We called the shining chunks we found field diamonds, and this was the biggest one I’d ever seen.

The field diamond was half buried and wouldn’t budge at first. The boy knelt to see what I was doing and soon he was helping me dig out the rock with his fingers. I grew afraid that he would try to claim the treasure since he had done some of the work, so I was determined to be the one who pulled it free. I gave one last yank and suddenly I was holding the quartz in my hand. I brushed off the reddish dirt and we looked at it together, the boy leaning over my shoulder. I always wanted just one precious thing for myself. Ever since I could remember, Mark got everything with his clamoring mouth—more milk, more candy, more toys. He was two years older than me but he acted like a baby, always bellowing until he got his way. Most of the time, I would rather have done without than to be like him. But this once, I wanted the prize all to myself.

“Let me see it,” the boy said.

As soon as he spoke, I knew. He’d steal it and run off as Mark would have done, and I’d never see it again. As much as the boy intimidated me, I clamped my hand down on that dirty chunk of something special and said, “It’s mine.”

“Give it,” the boy said. His voice was calm enough but I can still see the awful look on his face. My guts turned to jelly. I should have given it to him, but I couldn’t bring myself to. He tried to pry open my fingers but I tore my fist away and ran. I heard him chasing and before I knew what was happening, the boy had knocked me down. My head bounced off the ground like his basketball had done and all the wind wheezed out of my lungs. I barely noticed how bad it hurt. All I felt was the rock flying out of my hands. I rolled over and tried to find it in the weeds, but the boy had already snatched it up.

He could have taken it then and left me alone. I was too scared to fight. I would have given it to him. But the boy wasn’t satisfied to steal my rock. He straddled me and I saw something crazy in his eyes, something more than meanness. He drew back with the chunk of quartz and brought it down on my mouth. There was a bright flash of
pain and I must have screamed because our daddies came running. It took them forever to reach us.

The boy told them I fell and hit my mouth on a rock. I didn’t contradict his story, mostly because my smashed mouth hurt too much to talk. I don’t know if Daddy and the other man believed him or not. They seemed more concerned with the blood wetting my shirt. I didn’t realize until we were in the car on the way to the doctor’s that my new front tooth was broken. Maybe that’s when I knew, somewhere inside, that I wasn’t meant to have a wild, precious thing like that field diamond all for myself. And even if I could buy it, as Daddy bought Wild Rose years later, it would never really be mine.

BYRDIE

I wish I could remember Chickweed Holler better, but some things happened there I’ll never forget. I liked going dowsing with Myrtle. Sometimes if she traveled on foot to a place not too far, I could leave the holler for a while and see somewhere new. The soles of my feet used to itch at night and Myrtle claimed it meant my feet would walk one day on foreign ground. That’s how come she took me. She thought I ort to travel. One time Mammy let me go to the next county with Myrtle and we had to camp overnight. Mammy was worried but Myrtle said, “Why, we’ll have a big time.”

When the sun went down we stopped to rest under a lonely tree in a wide open field. All day long we had walked and talked. Myrtle was good to ask questions to, because she talked to everybody just the same, didn’t matter what their age was. The whole day it was just like Myrtle told Mammy. We was having a big time. But when we settled down for the night in that long, lonesome field, not a house in sight for miles, I started missing Grandmaw and Mammy. Myrtle must have seen I was fixing to cry. She said, “Come on now, little birdie. Let’s build us a fire. I brung some chestnuts for us to roast.” The idea of roasted chestnuts worked to cheer me up some, and gathering branches took my mind off being homesick. Pretty soon we had a good fire going. We set looking into the flames as the dark came creeping over the field grass. It was hard to look away from the light of it, even though it hurt my eyes. After while Myrtle went to fishing
around in her dress pocket. I thought she had the chestnuts in there, but she pulled out a little sprig of something leafy instead. She held it up for me to see in the firelight.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“This is my favorite herb,” she said. “Do you know why?” When she grinned her mouth stretched tight across her toothless gums. Her eyes reflected the flames back at me and I felt a little bit scared of her. I wanted my mammy more than ever.

“It’s called myrtle, like my name.”

“Oh,” I said. “Where’s the chestnuts?”

“Just a minute, little birdie. I want to show you something. If you throw this myrtle in the fire, the face of the one you’re bound to marry will rise out of the smoke.”

I just blinked at her at first. I didn’t want to see a face in the smoke, but I didn’t want to disappoint my great-aunt Myrtle, either. She was always bragging about how big and smart I was. She held out the sprig and after a minute I took it. I looked at the flames and they put me in mind of orange snakes dancing. My heart went to flying. I throwed that myrtle in the fire before I could chicken out of it and the fire dwindled down to just about nothing. Me and Myrtle both watched like we was under a spell, waiting for something to happen. Directly the smoke came rising up, slow and thick and black. At first I couldn’t make nothing out, but then I started seeing it. There was a pair of black eyes looking out at me. I wanted to back away from the fire but my legs wasn’t no use anymore. Then a straight nose and a fine mouth and some waving locks of coal black hair formed out of the smoke. I got so scared I couldn’t breathe. When I finally found my legs I scrambled away from that fire and ran. I yanked down my bloomers and squatted to make water in the grass before I wet all over myself. Myrtle came to check on me and I tried not to cry as we walked back to the fire. She didn’t say nothing but I knowed she felt bad for scaring me that way. She pulled me close and held me against her before we bedded down for the night. I forgot about that face until years later, after I seen John Odom for the first time. It wasn’t my own future husband’s face that came swimming up out of the fire to look at me. It was my granddaughter, Myra’s.