The Secret Sense of Wildflower (13 page)

Mama thanks him again for his kindness and squeezes me like I am not to repeat it. If she resents Mr. Blackstone at all for Daddy’s accident she doesn’t let on, although I heard her say to Daddy more than once that Mr. Blackstone is cheap and hasn’t hired enough men for all the logging that needs to get done.

Before he leaves, Mr. Blackstone shakes the tips of my fingers like he is afraid to touch my whole hand, which irritates me to no end. Before I have time to react, Mama shoots me a look that would stop a full grown mountain lion in its tracks. In the meantime, I do my best to ignore the body lying on the bed in the clothes Daddy would have burned if she let him.

“Where are your sisters?” Mama asks.

“I think Jo and Meg are in the kitchen,” I say. “And Amy’s keeping Aunt Chloe and Uncle John company.”

“Why don’t you go help Jo and Meg,” she says, releasing her arm from my waist.

Mama’s answer for everything that ails a person is hard work. For her, life is just one big chore with no end. Daddy always said she was stubborn as an ox, and she plowed to the end of the row of everything she did. He said we girls would be grateful for that trait someday. Though I don’t see how gratitude and working like an ox are related at all.

As I’m leaving, I glance at the old photograph Mama always keeps on her dresser. She never talks about her past. Her parents came over from Germany, but we’ve not heard one story about them. I’ve spent some time studying that photograph. The grandparents I never met are standing on a small rug out in a dirt yard, somewhere in Germany, dressed up in front of a Hansel and Gretel house. They look stern, not a bit of happiness on their faces. Aunt Chloe never talks about them either, but sometimes I hear Mama and Chloe talking in German together in the kitchen when they don’t think anybody else is listening.

Before leaving the room, I turn and look over at Daddy. I just keep thinking that any minute he will sit up and ask why all these people are in our house. When he hears the story of how we all thought he was dead, he’ll probably laugh so loud it can be heard in the next valley. Wishful thinking comes in handy if you want to keep reality from sinking in too fast.

My fantasy fades when I notice my father’s arms have been folded neatly across his chest. He could be sleeping except for that. Nobody sleeps that way. Maybe that’s why people do it. So mourners won’t go poking around on dead people expecting them to wake up.

The kitchen is crowded and busy like Thanksgiving dinner is being made. All sorts of food sits on the kitchen table that people have brought, but Jo and Meg are making more. Every burner on our old stove has something cooking, as well as the oven, and the kitchen is hot as Hades. Jo peels potatoes by the sink and still looks fresh, no matter how hot it is. It doesn’t seem fair sometimes that she can be so beautiful and the rest of us are so plain. What makes it all right is that Jo doesn’t seem to know how pretty she is.

“Where have you been?” Jo says to me in the doorway. “We were worried about you.”

I can tell she’s been crying. “I was down by the river,” I say. “I needed some time alone.”

“That’s what we figured,” she says. She dabs a tiny offering of sweat from her forehead onto her sleeve.

In contrast to Jo, Meg looks wilted as she slumps over the kitchen counter cutting dough into biscuits. Her face is still splotched like she has broken out in hives from all the sadness.

“Mama said I should help,” I say to Jo.

Sweat trickles down my back, all the way to the elastic in my underwear. I still have on my everyday school dress but nobody seems to care. Luckily, I found my shoes on the way home, so at least I’m not barefooted.

“You could mix the egg salad.” Jo points over to the countertop where a bowl waits.

“Why are we cooking so much food?” I ask.

“All these people have to eat something,” she says, sounding a little bit like Mama.

“But there’s tons of food already here,” I say.

“We might run out,” Jo says.

Aunt Sadie pulls me in for a hug as she makes tea at the stove. Her eyes look sad and I can tell she’s done her fair share of crying, too.

“How are you holding up, sweetheart?” she asks.

I shrug and she pulls me in for another hug. Unlike Aunt Chloe’s hugs, I don’t mind Sadie’s at all. She smells like molasses and I wonder if she’s been making one of her tonics because she often adds molasses to disguise the bitter taste of roots and whatnot.

Amy walks into the kitchen, finally free of Aunt Chloe and Uncle John. She stirs something on the stove and doesn’t talk to any of us. You never know what Amy is thinking or feeling because it never makes its way out of her mouth, you just have to guess. My guess is that Amy is as devastated as any of us. It’s just all bottled up inside. Amy and Mama are alike in that way. Except Amy isn’t as good as Mama at pretending nothing is wrong.

Aunt Sadie fills the pitcher with tea to take back to the living room. She put sprigs of mint in it that float on the top. I want to ask her if Daddy can still see us and hear us, or if he is somewhere in heaven cut off from the rest of us here. I trust Aunt Sadie to tell me the truth. But she is gone before I can ask.

I mash the boiled eggs with a fork and remember how much I hate cooking. I’d rather be doing a hundred other things, most of which are outdoors. I don’t mind eating, though. Daddy and I both love to eat. I keep thinking of him lying there in their bed and wonder if Doc Lester even knows how to take a proper pulse. For all we know Daddy just passed out and nobody thought to wake him.

Miss Mildred comes into the kitchen, fanning herself with a piece of music she pulled from her purse.

“I’ll play something real pretty for your daddy at the service tomorrow,” Miss Mildred says to Jo.

“Thank you, Miss Mildred,” Jo says. She glances over at me, her eyes wide. We both know Miss Mildred’s best intentions don’t always play out.

Daddy’s favorite hymn was
Amazing Grace
. It wasn’t unusual for him to go around all day on a Saturday singing that song over and over again while he helped Mama. He always liked the church hymns where somebody was lost, then got found. Unlike the people in those hymns, I’ve never known him to get lost. He knows every nook and cranny of Katy’s Ridge and he could tell you the name of every tree, wildflower, bird or animal because he studied them in a book. He probably could have been a professor at a big college if he wanted to, but Daddy found himself here in Katy’s Ridge and made the best of it.

While I mash eggs with a fork, odd thoughts pop into my mind, like I hope Daddy won’t have to wait in line in heaven like the one time we went to the picture show in Rocky Bluff. A war is going on overseas and I wonder how God deals with a whole bunch of people showing up at heaven’s gate all at once.

“When will they move him to the church?” I ask Miss Mildred, since she seems to be the only one talking about what will happen next.

“Probably first thing in the morning,” she whispers, like it is a secret.

I’ve only been to one other funeral that I remember—old Mr. Williams, who was cranky all the time and walked with a cane. Nobody liked him. He complained about everything under the sun, and if he didn’t like something about you he’d tell you right to your face. He called me
Miss Wiggle Worm
when I was a little girl, because I didn’t sit still enough in church. On this subject, Mama probably agreed. People paid their respects to Mr. Williams, yet even his widow walked lighter after he was gone.

At his funeral, Preacher said that Mr. Williams had gone on to the
Great Beyond
, this being one of Preacher’s favorite sayings, and he kept pointing to a crack in the ceiling of the church like the crack was a pipeline into heaven. This proved God’s goodness, as far as I was concerned, if he let crotchety Mr. Williams into heaven.

Daddy’s death feels worlds different. People whisper and watch us, as if they secretly wonder what our family did to deserve such bad luck. The whispers stop whenever me or my sisters or Mama come into the room.

“Louisa May, watch what you’re doing,” Jo says.

Pieces of egg fall on the kitchen table and I apologize and shove the egg back into the bowl.

“Maybe you should go outside for awhile.” Jo twists her hair up in the back as if to let in cooler air, and then lets it drop.

I agree and go outside. As the youngest McAllister, I am often treated like the baby of the family. Even though last summer I took on some of Daddy’s lankiness and height, this hasn’t translated into my family seeing me at all different.

On the porch a different bunch are standing, people from Katy’s Ridge I don’t see for months at a time. It's hot for October, more like mid-July, but now the breeze is cooler, like the breeze from the river has finally made it up here.

A chill goes through me just thinking about what winter will be like without Daddy here to get us ready for it. He splits and gets in the wood and bundles us up for school and fixes our snowshoes whenever the snow is too deep for regular shoes. To avoid the sadness that comes with it, I shake these thoughts away like snow from a tree branch.

Almost everybody in Katy’s Ridge is here in my front yard. Horatio Sector and his wife and their kids stand away from everybody else, in a little huddle. Nobody pays them no mind. The worst you can do to people is to pretend they don’t exist. But the Sectors are friends of Daddy’s that have come to pay their respects. I let the others stare and walk over to them like Daddy would have done.

“Thanks for coming,” I say to Mr. Sector, who holds their youngest boy’s hand.

“Your father was a good man, Miss Wildflower,” he says.

Mr. Sector is part Cherokee, though he is dark enough to be whole. He and his family live downriver of Katy’s Ridge and keep to themselves. People aren’t that friendly to him or his family except for Daddy. I walk down with Daddy sometimes to buy honey off of Mr. Sector and they will sit and talk away most of the afternoon. Mr. Sector is married to a white woman named June and they have a bunch of children. None of them come to school, but even the youngest child can read as well as me. They read Cherokee, too, which I hope to learn someday.

Nobody can figure out why Mr. Sector’s cornfield is always about a foot taller than other people’s. His bees make a ton more honey, too. Some people say that June Sector is a witch, but I think ignorant people say whatever they think will be the most hurtful. June has blond hair and the children are a mixture of the two of them. Some have blue eyes, some have black, and their skin ranges in tone from golden honey to almost white.

Mr. Sector hands me a small leather pouch with something inside. I pull out a stone the size of a half-dollar that glimmers red from the torches burning in the yard.

“It’s beautiful,” I say.

“It’s a ruby,” Mr. Sector says. “I found it myself.”

“I’ll make sure Mama gets it,” I say and thank him.

“No, miss,” he hesitates, “it’s for you.”

I look up at him like he must have made a mistake.

“You and Mister Joseph were very close. This is to help fill the empty space in your heart.”

Though it’s nearly impossible, I hold back my tears and shake his hand. Some of the men turn to watch, as if touching an Indian’s hand is breaking the law and I might get arrested.

“Mister Joseph was very kind to us,” Jane Sector says.

I thank her and shake her hand, as well. Then I excuse myself and go over to sit on the porch steps. The heaviness of the evening makes me tired and I want to cry. The whole community is grieving for Daddy, but I’m not so sure I want to share him this way.

Max moves to the dirt next to Mama’s flowerbeds and when I go over to pet him he licks my hand. Kids I know are in the crowd but they look away and step into the shadows, talking amongst themselves. By the light of one of the torches I can see Johnny Monroe and his sisters with big plates of food standing next to their father, Arthur Monroe. It would be just like the Monroes to come just for the food. They mainly keep to themselves, but in a different way than the Sectors. The people in Katy’s Ridge hate the Sectors because Mr. Sector is an Indian and different. But Arthur Monroe doesn’t just hate the Sectors, he hates everybody.

Ruby Monroe looks sad tonight, but she always looks sad. Johnny stands between Ruby and his younger sister, Melody. Their clothes are dirty and they look as though they haven’t bathed in days.

Moments later Mary Jane and her brother Victor come up the hill with their parents. It feels like a hundred years since I’ve seen Mary Jane, even though it was earlier that day. Her mother speaks first, telling me how sorry she is about my father. Then her parents walk inside and Mary Jane and Victor stay outside with me. The three of us stand there for a while, like we don’t know what to say. Victor draws marks in the dirt with his shoe and keeps his hands in his pockets. His hair looks wet, like he washed it right before he came. Victor is one of Max’s favorite people and old Max jumps up on him and pushes at him with his nose.

“He likes you,” I say.

“Everybody likes Victor,” Mary Jane says.

“It’s a curse,” Victor says and smiles.

It is good to see a smile amongst all these sad faces, but Victor looks embarrassed by it and stops. He plays some with Max.

“We’re going out back, big brother,” Mary Jane says.

“Okay,” he says, grabbing a stick to throw to Max.

Mary Jane tugs at my dress sleeve and we walk around to the back porch. People have gathered on the back porch, too. Some are standing, some sitting, and not a single stray cat in sight. They probably won’t come out from under the house for days after this.

We take one of the lanterns off the end of the porch and go up past the outhouse to sit on a boulder Mary Jane and I used to play on when we were little. I steady the lantern, making sure it won’t fall off and leave us sitting in the dark. When we were younger, we used to pretend this boulder was the broad back of a humped back whale. We sailed out to sea in our imaginations, sailing the waters of oceans far away. I wish I could do that now for real. I want to be a thousand, maybe even a million miles away from what has happened. I need time to think, to get this right in my mind, without a lot of people around.