Gap Creek (37 page)

“But what comes after that will be more time,” I said.

The baby cried a little cry. It was a cry small as a bird might make. It was small as the memory of a cry. She was crying and I couldn’t feed her.

• • •

“YOU ARE WALKING on sacred ground,” the voice in the pines called to me.

“I’m walking barefoot,” I said.

“Only a few more steps,” the voice called. But it was now further up the trail. The voice was in the shadows under the pine trees. The pines had purple and green shadows. The grassy path wound deeper into the trees.

Now it was like there was music coming out of everything I looked at. The glowing grass under my feet had its own music, and the shadows blowed out deep organ music. I knowed the music was in my head, but it was seeing the wonderful world of grass and pine grove that made me think the music. There was music coming from under the ground so deep it hurt my bones and stirred through my guts. Everything had a different voice, but the voices all harmonized like a congregation at church.

“Julie,” the voice called as I stepped into the alcove among the pine trees. It was a little dancing yard, a little cove. I looked for Papa’s figure, but there was nobody there. The woods was lit with the evening sun, but I didn’t see nobody. It was the kind of place where you expected to see a burning bush. I walked over the soft grass as easy as gliding.

“Papa,” I called to the path going up the hill. There was nobody in sight among the pines, and nobody answered. But I thought I heard somebody speak, or maybe it was a dove calling. I stepped up the path knowing there was somebody waiting, for I had heard the voice call my name. The music was in my head, but the voice come from the pine trees. “Papa,” I called again. But when I come around a turn in the path there was nobody there. “Please, Jesus,” I whispered, “let me talk to Papa.”

“Julie,” the voice said again, and it sounded close by but above me. I hurried up the grassy trail and seen the top of the hill was bare. It was covered with grass and a bright, white cloud hung so
close it appeared to lean against the top of the hill. It looked like I could step from the path right onto the shining cloud.

“Papa,” I called. But I didn’t see anybody on top of the hill. There was just me and the sky and the white cloud.

“Julie,” the voice said behind me. I turned, and where there hadn’t been anybody before stood a young man that looked a little bit like Papa. He had a reddish blond beard and hair. He was wearing a white shirt and he had slender shoulders and the whitest skin you ever seen.

“Don’t you know me?” he said.

“I think I know you,” I said.

I was standing on the top of the world and there was nobody there but him and me and the shining cloud almost at my elbow.

“I have come to show you my love,” he said.

“Why have you come to me?” I said. I felt how shameful I was. I hadn’t even been able to nurse my baby.

“Because you have shown the truest love,” Papa said.

“How?” I said. My knees was shaking.

“Because you have loved others more than yourself,” he said.

“I done what I had to,” I said.

“You are one of the blessed,” he said.

“What kind of dream am I dreaming?” I said.

But Papa didn’t answer. He turned and walked further up the grassy hill. I was afraid he might just melt away into the light. He looked so slim and starved. I was afraid he would vanish before I could find out why he had come to me.

There was things I wanted to ask Papa, things I would never get a chance to ask again. “Will I live?” I said.

“I have come to tell you, you will live,” Papa said. “You will live and you will continue to work and to love.”

“That sounds simple,” I said. “Simple and hard.” They was two words that fit my life, the life I had lived. Ever since I could remember
the work had been hard, work I often hated. I looked for Papa, but he wasn’t on top of the hill. I looked behind me, but there was nothing but pine trees and grass there. The cloud had floated away and hung far out over the valley.

“I wanted to ask if the baby will live,” I called. But there was only the whisper of air around me.

I stood on the hill until the light begun to fade. Far to the edge of the world I thought I seen a star come out like a crystal. It was time for me to start back down the hill.

I HEARD THE baby crying in the living room.

“I’ll put some extra wood on the fire,” Hank said.

“It’s near bedtime,” I said.

“Never mind what time it is,” Hank said. “I’m going to make some more tea for the baby.”

“What kind of tea?” I said.

“I’m going to put a little camomile in it,” Hank said, “to help the baby sleep. To hush it up from crying.”

I felt how warm and damp the sheet was around me. The quilt pressed down its warmth close to my sweaty skin. I reached a hand from under the covers and touched my forehead. My skin was wet with sweat, and cool. But I could smell the sickness on my hand, the smell of old flesh that has been cooked by fever and needs scrubbing. I was dripping with sweat.

Thirteen

Hank did go after Ma Richards after my fever went down and Ma Richards helped me take care of the baby while I was getting my strength back.

Ma Richards complained, but she helped me with little Delia like she was her own baby. I’ll have to give Ma that. But it didn’t do no good. The child had been born too early. She was too little to be able to live on cow’s milk and sugar water and the gruel Ma Richards made. It broke my heart to see how tiny Delia was and how she wouldn’t gain any weight. Her fingers and toes was tinier than match heads. Her little arms was the size of my fingers. Taking care of Delia wasn’t like taking care of another sick baby, where you hold it and rock it, and give it tonic and warm milk. Delia was so tiny you didn’t dare hold her upright. She was so weak you didn’t want to move her no more than you had to. And she was so delicate you was afraid you’d break her skin or arm just by taking her up.

“The Lord will let this baby live,” I said, “if it’s his will.”

“The Lord has his own plans for people,” Ma Richards said, in her way that always irritated me.

“But we can still ask for what we want,” I said.

“We can ask,” Ma said. “But that don’t mean the Lord has to answer.”

I had been feeling better about Ma Richards as I got stronger. But maybe because I had decided to like Ma more, my guard was down. Before, I had been extra careful whenever she was around and held myself back because I disliked her so much. Now anger rose right out of my guts and filled my mouth.

“I guess you know all the Lord’s secrets,” I said. I sounded like Mama when she was mad. It just come out and I didn’t try to stop it.

Ma Richards was folding diapers on the kitchen table. She stopped and looked at me. She wasn’t used to people talking back to her. She certainly wasn’t used to me talking back to her.

“I try to tell the truth,” Ma said.

“Why should the Lord show you the truth more than anybody else?” I said. I could feel a shadow in the air around me, like the daylight was haunted. I had never gone so far quarreling with anybody, except maybe Lou. But I didn’t want to stop myself until I’d gone farther still. It felt good to talk angry.

“I’ve learned a few things in my years,” Ma said. “And one of the things I’ve learned is how foolish the young can be when they won’t take advice.”

“The only advice you want to give is to run things,” I said. I had gone that far; I might as well go on farther.

Ma Richards went back to folding diapers. She finished one and started folding another. There was a grin on her face, like she had been waiting a long time for a fuss and nobody had obliged her. “Throwing off on me won’t make the baby no better,” Ma said.

“You don’t care what happens, as long as you can be the queen bee,” I said. My voice was shriller than I wanted it to be.

“I care enough to come down here and work day and night to take care of you,” Ma said.

I wanted to drive her out of the kitchen. I wanted to fold the diapers
myself. I grabbed a diaper off the pile and started to fold it. Hank was out at the barn and I didn’t want him to hear me quarreling with Ma Richards.

“You don’t think nobody knows how to do anything but you,” I said. Now that my tongue was loose it just seemed to go of its own accord.

“What is wrong with you, Julie?” Ma said. “You must be out of your head.”

“I believe in respecting old people,” I said. “But I never run into anybody like you before.”

“Hank don’t seem to mind the kind of person I am,” Ma Richards said.

“You’ve been bossing him around all his life,” I said. “He’s a good man or he wouldn’t have put up with it.” I figured I might as well tell the truth while I was at it. “You are the cause of most of his troubles.”

“What troubles?” Ma said.

“The way he gets discouraged, and can’t find a job,” I said.

“Now you want to blame me for the way the world is?” Ma said.

“I blame you for the way Hank’s world is,” I said.

“You have got on a high horse all of a sudden,” Ma said.

She reached for another diaper to fold, but I picked it up before she could touch it. “You’re not used to people telling you the truth,” I said.

“I ain’t done nothing to be ashamed of,” Ma said, “at least nothing to you.”

“I don’t care what you do to me,” I said. “It’s the way you run over Hank that riles me.”

“Hank has told you that?” Ma said.

“He didn’t need to,” I said. “I’ve got eyes in my head.”

“Some women get afraid they can’t hold a man, and that makes them mean,” Ma said. “I reckon you’re one of them.”

Tears come to my eyes. I couldn’t help it. Suddenly everything in the room blurred and melted. It seemed Ma was smirking at me. “I just wish you would mind your own devilment,” I said.

“It’s a common weakness to blame other people for our own shortcomings,” Ma said and laughed a dry laugh.

“You’re mighty used to having the last word,” I said, my voice rising toward a scream.

“Maybe that bothers you because you’re afraid of everything,” Ma said.

“It’s my house!” I screamed. But even as I screamed I wished I hadn’t done it. I had gone too far. I felt like Ma had tricked me into getting mad and screaming at her. Even though she had helped with the baby while I was recovering, she had tricked me into losing my temper.

“Julie, I don’t know what’s got into you,” Ma said. But she said it like it was for somebody else’s benefit. I guessed that Hank must have come into the kitchen while I was screaming. I turned around and there he stood in the door with a look of surprise. Even with my tears stretching and swelling everything, I could see the fear on his face.

“What’s wrong?” Hank said, like he was short of breath.

“Julie is upset,” Ma said.

“I have a right to be upset,” I said. But I wished I hadn’t. For it wouldn’t do no good to try to set Hank against Ma. He would never turn against her, and she would make it look like the quarrel was all my fault.

“Has the baby got worse?” Hank said.

“I’ve done everything I could to help,” Ma Richards said.

I seen what a mistake it had been to let myself go. But there was one last breath of rage left in me. “You’ve done everything you could to make me look bad,” I said to Ma.

“I’ve done everything I could to help you,” Ma said. She has beat me by sounding meek, I thought.

Hank looked at Ma and he looked at me. He stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder, and he put his other hand on Ma’s shoulder. “Let’s get right down on our knees and pray about this,” he said. “We’re a family and we’ve got to live like a family.”

The fizz and bite of rage was going out of me. The boldness that had took over my tongue melted away. I sunk down on my knees to the kitchen floor, and Hank put his arm around me and his other arm around Ma Richards.

“Lord, help us to love each other,” Hank said. “Teach us to put aside our spites and grudges, our slights and hurt feelings. Teach us to put away our vanity and our pride. Help us to be the decent people we are deep inside.” He pulled me closer on the left side and Ma closer on the right. I couldn’t look Ma in the face, and I don’t reckon she could bear to look me in the face either. I stared down at the floor.

“I want you all to kiss each other,” Hank said.

I didn’t make a move and I didn’t say nothing. I reckon my lip was trembling.

“We’re going to have to get beyond this,” Hank said. “There’s no hope for a family that quarrels all the time.” I had never heard Hank talk so dignified and wise. It was usually him losing his temper and me holding mine. But here he was sounding like a deacon that led in prayer and was the head of the family. His calm moved me more than anything else had. I felt proud that he was a man I could rely on and trust. He was not only the father of my baby, who had took care of the baby, but he could show me what to do when I got all worked up and beside myself with disappointment and resentment. It was like Hank had got a lot older.

I reached over and put my arms around Ma Richards’s bony shoulders and kissed her on the cheek. Another sob rose and broke in my throat. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“I love you, Julie,” she said, and I seen the tears streaming down
Ma’s wrinkled face. I felt she meant it, that she was telling the truth. There was no sass and no edge in her voice.

I sobbed again and snuffed up my nose and wiped my eyes. My cheeks was wet like I had been out in the rain. I felt wrung out inside, but scrubbed and sweetened too. The world was firm again. That’s when I heard little Delia crying the faintest cry.

“I’ll go see about her,” Ma Richards said.

“I’ll go too,” I said.

THE BABY WAS getting weaker instead of growing. It appeared she was losing weight. Her skin was so white it looked clear. Blue veins showed through like ink marks under her skin.

“She’s awful weak,” I said.

“Bless her little heart,” Ma said.

“Ain’t there no medicine for an early baby?” I said.

“The doctor just said to give her milk and sugar and a little barley water,” Hank said.