Cast a Road Before Me (7 page)

I just wanted to go home. I also wanted to tell Blair Riddum off. She glanced at me as we stopped at the light on the corner of Minton and Main. “Lee’s a good man,” she said, as if I’d spoken against him. “Probably five, six years older’n you. He was livin’ in Albertsville till last year, when his mama had that fall. Came back here to take care a her. Blair Riddum snapped him right up for the mill, strong as he is. And in just that short a time, he’s become a real leader down there; that’s what your uncle says.”

I watched the post office glide by through her window. Two elderly men were sitting on the bench out front under the shade of an oak. “I don’t like Uncle Frank being caught between the men and his boss.”

She nodded. “I still think things’ll work out somehow. We’re prayin’ mighty hard, you know. Have been ever since the troubles began. Besides, you know how it is here. People hash out their problems and get on with their business.”

I rested my cheek against a fist and closed my eyes, hoping she was right.

Looking back on it, I’d say the die between Lee Harding and me was cast that warm June afternoon. He was wearing worn jeans and a blue short-sleeved work shirt as his oversized hand held open his screen door. Seeing me behind my aunt, he remolded his expression from distraction to pleasure. “Come in,” he said as a phone began to ring.

Giving no recognition to the auspicious timing of our arrival, Aunt Eva waved him to answer it and leaned over to peck his mother on the cheek. “Now don’t get up,” she clucked, inquiring with forced cheerfulness about Wilma Harding’s hip and insisting that the woman soon would be running around the block. Miss Wilma was tall and stocky, iron gray hair pulled to the nape of her neck. Her eyes were dark, like Lee’s. A black metal cane leaned against her chair. She had a no-nonsense air about her, a radiating strength that made her seem larger than life. When I was younger, I’d found her intimidating.

Lee’s sister, Connie, waddled in, one hand self-consciously resting on her huge abdomen. She, too, was big-built, with long black hair and brown eyes. Her skin was tanned, her cheeks rouged with heat. I had not seen her in a few years and had known her only nominally in high school. “Hi, Connie,” I said, taking her hand. “It’s so good to see you again. I brought you a little something for the baby.”

“Oh,” she exclaimed, her eyes moistening. “You shouldn’t have.”

I glanced meaningfully at her stomach with a grin. “Looks like it’s about time you were gathering things.”

“Guess you’re right.” Her gaze fell to the floor. I stood before her awkwardly, wondering if I’d offended her.

“Come, Connie,” her mother prompted. “Sit down and open your gift.”

With a shy glance at me, Connie huffed to the couch and fell into it gracelessly. We all watched as she opened the present, being careful to save the paper. I could hear Lee’s low voice from around the corner.

“Thank you so much,” she said softly, holding up the sleeper for her mother to see. “It’s so cute—” Her words cut off abruptly, and she gazed at the sleeper, rubbing it with a thumb. We all waited for her to continue. When she didn’t, Aunt Eva, Miss Wilma, and I exchanged glances and stilted smiles.

Fortunately, Aunt Eva found something to say. As she and Miss Wilma chatted, I listened half-heartedly. Looking around the simply furnished Harding house, I felt a twinge of guilt at my self-preoccupation in regard to the problems at the sawmill. The morning’s disappointment merely threatened my quiet summer, but their livelihood depended on Lee’s paycheck. Both Miss Wilma and Connie could barely move. What’s more, they both were alone in their own way, one widowed, one abandoned. Given the circumstances, I thought, the bundle of unborn life sending a flush to Connie’s pudgy cheeks could be more a source of fear than joy.

Lee had snatched up the phone and carried it into the kitchen, its long cord trailing to an outlet beside the chair in which I sat. His muffled voice continued to drone through the wall. “He’s been on that phone ever since Thomas called,” his mother was saying to Aunt Eva. “Phones ringin’, tongues flyin’ all over town. Somehow he’s got hisself smack in the middle. But that was always Lee. Tryin’ to fix everything, you know.” She looked pointedly at me. “Speakin’ a fixin’, he’ll have to show you out yonder. Another month or so and he’ll have the addition for Connie and the baby done. We kept tellin’ him, ‘you don’t got to do that,’ but he insisted, sayin’ a child’s got to have room to grow.”

I glanced at Aunt Eva, but she was the picture of innocence. All the same, I saw right through their none-too-subtle scheming. When Lee reappeared with the phone cradled in his palm, his mother flicked a casual hand in my direction. “Our guest would like to see your handiwork; why don’t ya show her.”

“Uh, sure,” he said. His mother’s intentions were equally obvious to him, and, sensing his embarrassment, I hesitated.

Aunt Eva shot me a look. “Well, go on, you two.” Then, with purpose, she turned her back on me, asking Miss Wilma about the neighbor’s gall bladder operation, and what would that woman and her husband do if things went poorly at the mill. Smiling weakly at Lee, I allowed myself to be ushered out of the room.

Holding my elbows, I walked with him through Connie’s small bedroom, feeling awkward at the ambient intimacy. The room was cluttered with clothes, cloth diapers, and a few bright toys, awaiting small hands. “Crowded, huh.” Lee pointed to an unpainted door, still smelling of freshly cut wood. “I’m addin’ on here.” I muttered my approval. “It’ll lead to a nursery and a playroom. I got the frame up but it’s not Sheetrocked yet.” He opened the door and we stepped into sunlight, Aunt Eva’s chatter fading away. “Mama’s excited ‘bout a grandbaby,” he smiled, “but like most older folk, she needs her quiet. This should keep both her and Connie happy.”

“I’m sure it will.” I leaned against the bare frame and looked around, searching for something else to say. Lee found a hammer on the floor and tossed it into a cardboard box.

“How long you stayin’ in town?”

“Till the first of August.”

“What then?”

I told him my plans.

He scooted the box with his foot, kicking up dust. “I’ll bet you’re sorry you came back to Bradleyville.”

His perception surprised me. “No. Not sorry for me. Just … sorry for all the trouble people are facing.”

“Yeah. Well.” In the distance, I heard the phone ring. Lee dragged a hand across his forehead and smiled at me ruefully. The barest of dimples shadowed his right cheek. “I’ll let Mom get that.”

“My uncle doesn’t even know how the meeting turned out. He’s still not home yet.”

“Yeah, he is. That was him callin’ when you arrived. I told him y’all were here.”

“Oh! What does he say? What do
you
say?”

He watched a robin land on a nearby phone wire, cocking its head at us with curiosity. “I say ‘no’ doesn’t mean forever. We got to keep dialogue open with Riddum and at the same time keep tempers in check. Includin’ mine. It’s not just the money anymore; it’s the way he treats us. If he showed us more respect, maybe we could handle the lack of a raise. For the second time.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Things could get ugly.”

“Is that what you want?”

Irritation flitted across his face. “‘Course it’s not what I want. It’s not what anyone wants. But I got a lot to think about. My mother and sister on one hand and a bunch a angry men on the other.”

A protectiveness for my own family rose within me. “What about my uncle caught in the middle? He’s your manager, but he’s friends with you all. He doesn’t need to be dragged into trouble. In five years he could be retiring, and he’ll need his pension.”

Lee’s gaze was steady. “I’ll do everything I can,” he said in measured tone, “to keep from
draggin’
Frank into trouble. Okay?”

I started to apologize for my unaccountable rudeness, but the words wouldn’t come. Fact was, Uncle Frank
did
have more to lose than Lee. At his age, he’d have a much harder time finding another job. “Okay then.” My voice was not as contrite as I would have hoped.

The phone rang again. I pictured his mother answering while exchanging a wink with Aunt Eva over our taking so long. Lee let
out a long breath. “I suppose we oughta get back. Sounds like I got more talkin’ to do.”

“Good luck,” I smiled. We stepped back into the house.

On the short trip home, Aunt Eva asked me no less than three times what I thought of Lee Harding.

T
he Bradleyville I knew had been so predictable. Summer’s hot humidity usually descended in June, and by July it was a smothering woolen blanket. Luckier folks had an air conditioner set in one central house window that struggled to blow cooler air into back bedrooms. Most of the businesses downtown were air-conditioned except for the Laundromat, whose machines emanated heat of their own. When I was in high school, Bradleyville summers had beat a steady, torpid rhythm: old folks jawing in chairs under the Tull’s Drugstore awning, kids at play, men working the sawmill, mothers choosing ice cream with their little ones at the IGA.

But the week following “Riddum’s No,” as it was quickly dubbed, seemed anything but predictable. On one level, life went on. The Baptist church had their first summer potluck. The hardware store announced a sale on small tools. Mothers changed their babies’ diapers on the Laundromat’s long folding table as clothes rumbled dry. Thomas and his two cronies, Jake Lewellyn and Hank Jenkins, lounged daily in their respective chairs outside Tull’s, sipping on shakes. Women still canned vegetables and
fruits; and children, oblivious to the heat, still played kickball on the school playground. Yet beneath the rhythm of everyday life beat a steady, vague dread, like the sound of distant warning drums. I was deeply affected and skittish. If I had known then what was to come, I never would have stayed.

Aunt Eva and Uncle Frank continued to pray for a quick resolution. Sometimes I prayed also—to my guardian angel. Since my dream, I had come to think of my mother as my special intercessor to God.

To keep my mind off the mill situation, I prepared for my move to Cincinnati with dogged intent. Twice, I drove to Albertsville’s large fabric store to choose patterns and fabric for my career dresses. As I sewed, I mentally arranged my mother’s old bedroom furniture, which was now mine, in my new apartment. Her bedroom had been a light blue. I’d already asked the manager for permission to paint mine the same color. I also wrote Brenda Todd at the Center, telling her details of my graduation and how I looked forward to seeing her. She wrote back, exclaiming over the huge, gleaming kitchen stove that had recently been donated. “You won’t believe how much soup we can cook at once!” she added. She told me of two new families in particular who were there—the Westons, whose little boy was crippled with spina bifida, and the Hedingers, who had four children and no skills for employment. My heart went out to them all.

I also talked a couple of times on the phone with Edna Slate, the social worker I was to replace on September first. She was leaving the department to have her baby and did not plan to return. “Be prepared to work hard,” she warned me. “You’re starting August fifteenth; that only gives me two weeks to get you up to speed. I’m carrying a huge case load, and you’ll have to become familiar with them all in that space of time.” I knew that meant becoming acquainted with more misery. Children without parents, children abused, families in crisis. Sometimes my mind reeled, just thinking about it all. There was so much misery in the world. I
knew I was to follow in my mother’s footsteps and do my part, but whatever I could do seemed so minute. I’d find myself thinking in such terms, then try to shake myself out of it. I hadn’t even started working or volunteering yet, and already I felt overwhelmed. No wonder my mother had said she could never do enough. I was beginning to understand the look of despair that had crossed her face as she drove away from me that Saturday.

As I busily planned my life “after Bradleyville,” I tried not to think too much about the sawmill. That problem was too close to home, too frightening, and I didn’t want to be caught up in it. Through Hope Center or my job, I was ready to deal with the hopelessness of men who’d lost their employment. But I couldn’t begin to imagine half the families in Bradleyville facing the same terrible issue.

Meanwhile, all around me, the town rumbled.

A course-changing event in one’s life, as I well knew, could happen in the space of minutes. Or it could form slowly, a primitive webbing splaying into fingers of discontent, a minuscule trail hardening into the sinewed spine of resentment. So it was with the mill workers as the heat-soaked days after “Riddum’s No” marched on. Blair Riddum had added insult to injury by telling Thomas that his employees were lazy and were to blame for the “poor annual earnings.” Each day when Uncle Frank dragged home, reeking of sawdust and the malcontent of men, Aunt Eva and I heard the latest. At first the men vowed to work harder, hoping still to win Riddum over. But when teeth-gritting labor gave way to further unsafe practices and no softening of Riddum’s ways, the men’s resolve dwindled.

Like the rest of the town, I couldn’t help slowing down on my way to Albertsville for a narrow-eyed glance down the long driveway leading to Blair Riddum’s newly remodeled house.

Midway through June, mill employees, cleaned up and suppered, began to gather at our home to vent their frustrations. Lee Harding was always among them. Uncle Frank, with his wide-browed
face that radiated honesty and good sense, would listen attentively, displaying concern while calming bubbling reactions. Lee, too, I was pleased to hear, advocated constraint. There was a sense among the men—and the whole town, for that matter—that
something
would give, for like soup simmering in a too-small pot, a boil-over was inevitable. Everyone still prayed that Blair Riddum would back off his criticism and sanction a raise. Even a token one would soothe many ruffled feathers.

During those meetings Aunt Eva would serve cake or cookies and iced tea. Bustling about refilling glasses and plates afforded her presence the perfect
raison d’être
. I selfishly sat in my bedroom, telling myself I didn’t want to hear it, but with the door wide open. Like it or not, for Uncle Frank’s sake I wanted to make sure Lee kept his promise. A few times I’d answered the door when he had arrived, and we’d eyed each other until he nodded in response to my unspoken reminder.