Ghost on Black Mountain (14 page)

Jack reached out to me, but I stepped back. “Go on with her. Get your fill.” They were mean words.

Jack and Aunt Ida went inside. I sat down on the edge of my garden. The ground was warm and moist. Through the front window I saw the ghost of Jack’s mama following him around the room. I wished with all my heart I could tell him what all I knew. When they came out, Aunt Ida went straight to the truck, but Jack walked over to see me. His mama followed right along. She smiled at me, but it was a pained smile, as if to say nothing ends, nothing gets settled.

“I want you to go with me tomorrow so we can look over the land, see if we can find some trace of him. He has lots of enemies. You could be in danger.”

I laughed. “You come in the morning. I’ll go then.”

Jack nodded. “You should have told me he beat you.”
Jack’s mama shook her head and walked back into the house.

“Why?” I spoke around the lump in my throat.

“Because.”

“So you could help me like you did the morning he came home and spoiled my trip?” I stared at him. “You come on back in the morning.” The hatred I felt drained out of my feet. The healing had begun.

He nodded.

Twenty-two

T
hat night a storm came like I knew it would. It was the kind of storm that showed up on the heels of warm air too early in the spring. Its power built in the sky and crashed through the heavens, shaking the foundation of the house. The mountain was telling me good-bye.

I found Hobbs’s old blue shirt and overalls. I stood in front of his shaving mirror, cutting my hair until it was right close to my head and stuck out like a boy’s. His cap pulled down on my head perfect. In the mirror was someone who looked Hobbs Pritchard in the eye and lived.

Merlin Hocket stood in the front room.

“He’s gone.”

“Yes, but just like you, I will never rest. Hobbs Pritchard will always be a haunting. I’ll never move past what him and this mountain did to me.” He turned and walked through the closed front door.

Right before dawn a fog rolled in, and I took out walking through the woods. I wasn’t a bit scared. I knew enough not to
walk off a cliff. It wouldn’t much matter if I did. I had my feed sack with two dresses tucked inside the bib of the baggy overalls. I left the others behind. The dresses I brought would be used for the baby clothes that I would need. I had two hundred dollars down the front of my shirt. That would do me for a while.

The fog was hard to see through, so I was on the road before I saw Jack’s truck making its way up to the house. I tucked my chin in my collar and looked straight ahead. I released a prayer to heaven. God was listening cause the truck never slowed down. When Jack got to the house, he’d find a nice fire burning in the fireplace, breakfast on the table, and a note saying I’d gone for an early morning walk to clear my thoughts. I wrote how much I loved Hobbs, and how I couldn’t live without him. Nellie was gone forever.

The last time I saw Black Mountain was in the side mirror of the Connors’ truck as Mrs. Connor and Shelly drove me down the mountain. The hawk I’d seen at the waterfall was circling in and out of the fog, a flash of wing, a sharp cry.

Part Two

Josie Clay

Twenty-three

I
f you want to know how Nellie Pritchard got herself into the mess she did, you got to know parts of my story. See, Nellie belonged to me, my only child. Sometimes I could have sworn we were one and the same, but at other times, we was on the opposite ends of the earth from each other. The good Lord knew I did my best to send her in the right direction just like my mama did me and her mama did her. It’s a weakness trying to keep our daughters from making the same mistakes. But I didn’t make one bit of difference. I didn’t stop one thing.

The day that nice young man Jack Allen came down from Black Mountain with Nellie’s letter in his hand brought the hardest day I ever looked into with my eyes open. The paper felt hot to touch. That was my warning. I tried not to show my fear, not to jump to conclusions. I thanked him and sent him on his way. I hadn’t heard a word, not one word, from Nellie since she called herself marrying Hobbs Pritchard.

Those few short sentences told me her future. We had come to this, me and her. I would have went to cry on Marge’s
shoulder, but she had passed on two months earlier. I told myself,
Josie, if you can pull off this one, you can do anything.
God never gave me more than I could handle, but I had to take issue with Nellie committing one of the worst sins in the Good Book. She might as well have held a gun to her own head. But doom was exactly what I saw in those tea leaves. She made her choice, and the part of me that is pure woman understood all the way to the bone. So, I packed up my clothes, got in my old Plymouth truck, and took out to meet her. I cursed myself the whole way for not marching up that mountain and putting Hobbs Pritchard in his place. I failed as her mama. Me and her daddy made our share of mistakes and brought a lot of history to our little family. I guess it could be said we passed on our habits, some good and some bad. We didn’t know no better. Just like everyone else, we were writing our lives as we went.

One of the worst things I ever done in my whole life was hurt my mama by going against her wishes. She always wanted something better for me than she had for herself. Ain’t that the way of a mama? She gave me her own dream of getting a decent education. Me? I thought that was pie in the sky. Girls didn’t go to college. Most of the time they didn’t even finish high school before they up and married a man picked out for them. Shoot, women weren’t even allowed to vote. How could any of us be something big like a doctor or a judge? Mama told me from the start that if I married, I wasn’t going to see anything but struggles. Did I listen? Shoot no. The day I saw Owen Clay standing in front of the church congregation, smiling his toothy grin, I fell in love with him. As if I knew what love was. In front of me stood what I wanted more than anything, and I figured if he had any wrongs, I could iron them right out like a wrinkled dress shirt. Lord, that’s the worst thing a woman can do, love
a man so much she can’t see reason. It’s a disease we women have carried in our blood since Eve. Cause wasn’t it Eve that got blamed for that mess in the garden? Mind you, she was dumb. I’m not arguing one minute about that. But what did she have to go on? She didn’t have no mama or daddy to blame for being bad examples. She got roped into sin by a smooth-talking serpent. Sometimes I wonder if Satan didn’t reveal himself in the flesh. And don’t you know he had the most beautiful eyes to stare into. It’s them eyes that get us women each and every time. Anyway, I figured Adam put Eve up to that apple-eating incident. Don’t you know she went home after talking to the snake and told Adam what was said? I can hear him now: “Eve, I bet that snake knows what he’s talking about. Why don’t you go on over there and pick us a couple of apples? I got a backache.”

Nobody held a gun to Adam’s head and made him eat the dern thing. But you wouldn’t know it from the way the preachers tell the story. Lord no. I bet if a woman could stand in the pulpit for one hour, she’d set the congregation straight. But women didn’t have no voice in the church when I was coming up.

I married Owen in 1918 on a sunny April day. He was a good husband, but I’m not going to lie, he had his ways. He had no tolerance for my talking. I learned to keep my chattering down. He also didn’t see one reason for me to have any money of my own. I found that out the hard way.

“Look here, Owen, what Daddy gave us for marrying. I bet we could buy a house.” I fanned the bills out in my hand. A dark look flew over Owen’s face. Then I saw white. He hit me three times before I let him have the money. Now, don’t get the wrong idea. Owen wasn’t a wife beater. He only hit me one other time, when Nellie was eight, and he was drunker than a coot. That one don’t count.

A week after he took my money I stood in the kitchen
stirring navy beans and baking cornbread. I thought we could crumble the cornbread into sweet milk. Lordy, that was a treat to me. Owen worked at the stone quarry and made a decent living. We had us a little rented house near the church.

His old Buick had a ticking in the engine that nearly drove him crazy but he couldn’t ever make it stop. When he turned down the road coming home from work, I’d hear
tick, tick, tick.
I’d run my hand through my hair and practice my smile.

Owen was early on that afternoon. When he came in the door with a big smile, I caught my breath. He was pretty to look at when his face was lit up.

“Come here, girl.” He wrapped his big hands around my waist and lifted me into the air. “I got you a surprise.” He sat me down on the floor again.

I giggled, caught up in his happiness.

He held a big key in front of me. “I bought you something today.”

My stomach churned and sweat broke out on the back of my neck.

“Aren’t you even going to act happy?”

“What’s that key for?” I turned on my big fake smile.

“Come on and I’ll show you.” He pulled me by the hand.

I still had my apron on, but I didn’t raise one word to him.

We drove and drove through the streets of Asheville. Almost like he didn’t know where he was. A couple of times I held my breath because he went down streets with big fancy houses, but then he turned onto Settle Road. All the houses were four-room boxes, sitting next to the tracks. He stopped in front of one with peeling yellow paint. Surely I could give it a new paint job and plant some flowers out front.

Owen slid the skeleton key into the key hole, wiggled it, and then turned. “This is our new home, sweetie. We’re going to have our babies here.”

I managed not to scream. “This looks real nice, Owen.” A mouse scurried across the kitchen floor.

“See, we got us a big window in the living room.” He beamed.

I wasn’t sure what we were supposed to be looking at through that fancy window. More little run-down box houses or a train coming through, I guessed. “Mama’s chair will be perfect there.” I pointed to a corner. Mama had given me a green upholstered high-back chair. “The room will be real pretty.” This was the thing. Daddy gave us enough money to buy a big fancy house. But I couldn’t ask no questions. Women didn’t get involved with the buying and selling. Owen probably spent it on drinking anyway.

We made a handsome couple, Owen and me. He was tall, dark, and had deep brown eyes that convinced me he was always right. Next to him, I was small and quiet in a pretty but simple kind of way.

“I wish my mama had lived to see this house. It’s not as fancy as our house in Darien, but it’s ours.” He grinned.

I got a tiny glimpse of the man I married, the man I had to find peace and make a life with.

Twenty-four