To Come and Go Like Magic (23 page)

“Can you run to the store for me, Chili?” Momma says.

“Run?” I’m so tired I don’t think I could run ten feet.

“You know what I mean.”

Jack and Lenny still have corn to gather and everybody else is too busy to “run” anywhere. Myra’s propped on her pillows in front of the television in a yellow top that’s too tight. Her belly looks like a balloon about to explode. Uncle Lu’s fishing and Aunt Rose is helping Momma cook. So I’m it.

Willie Bright goes with me to Brock’s store so he can get one of his dollars changed and buy something for his little brother and sister. Maybe candy.

I ask Mrs. Brock to slice the bacon extra thick. Momma likes to cut it in sections so the beans can soak up the juices from the chunks.

I’m standing at the meat slicer when I see Ginny and her sister, Mayme, come in the store. I know Ginny spots me the minute she rounds the counter, but she turns and keeps talking to Mayme like she doesn’t even know I’m there.

When Willie comes back with his bag of candy, we get in line to pay behind old Mr. Epperson, who’s talking loud, complaining about the price of corn. He can’t plant a garden anymore, he says, and he can’t keep paying these skyrocket prices. He’s on a fixed income, whatever that means. I want to tell him to go by our house and get some corn because we’ve got plenty, but
Mrs. Brock might get mad because that would lose them a sale, so I just keep quiet and wait.

“How’s your sister?” Ginny asks. She and Mayme have moved in line behind us with a box of white-sugar doughnuts and milk. They’re both wearing lipstick like they’re going someplace special, and Ginny’s had her hair cut and curled in the same style as Mayme’s. They look like twins ten years apart.

“She’s fine,” I say. I turn back around and see Will Epperson paying with quarters and dimes, taking his time.

“When’s that baby coming?” Ginny asks. She’s chewing bubble gum and doing the hair-twirling bit she always does with her finger. “Do you know yet?”

“Pretty soon,” I say. “September.”

“Aunt Chili …
. that sounds too weird,” says Ginny. She’s got lipstick on her teeth.

I don’t know what to say. I haven’t thought much about becoming an aunt. So far I’ve just thought of the baby as Myra’s, but it’s going to be one more added to the family. “I guess it’s okay,” I say. “Being an aunt is okay.”

“Well, I can’t wait for school to start,” says Ginny. “I’m
totally
bored.”

I nod even though I’m not anxious to go back to school. I like the summer. Ginny looks past me. “How
about you, Willie Bright Eyes? I heard you were getting held back.” She grins, looks from Willie to me and back to Willie. “Think you’ll ever make it to the eighth grade?”

I want to say something to support Willie, but the words won’t come. Maybe it’s because Mayme’s standing right behind Ginny, waiting to say something that’s even meaner. Or maybe I’m just a plain old coward.

Willie turns to face them with his shoulders straight and his hands in his pockets. “That’s the plan,” he says.

I inch ahead until my nose is right at the hunched-over part of old Mr. Epperson’s back. I can’t wait to get out of this line and go home.

When we finally start out the door, I turn around and see Ginny searching for something in her straw purse. It looks brand-new.

Willie’s walking with his head down.

“I’m sorry I didn’t …”

“Who cares,” he says.

Down Persimmon Tree Road we go with our bacon and candy. Willie Bright opens the bag and offers me some gumdrops. I choose three. Red, purple, and green. Strawberry, grape, and lime—my favorite flavors. Willie takes three for himself, all yellow lemon because the little kids don’t like lemon.

G
inseng …

Late August sunrise turns the sky from red to gold.

Uncle Lucius is dressed all in green, standing in the backyard with a bag and a hoe. He’s headed to the woods to hunt for ginseng. It can cure anything, Uncle Lu says. It’s the best medicine in the world.

I’ve seen him stop in the woods like he’s in a trance, bend down beneath the spicebush and goldenseal, and clear away the brush from the clusters of ginseng leaves with their tiny red berries. He drags his hoe gently around the fibers, like he’s operating on a baby, to get at the round, knobby roots that can cure anything. It’s as if my uncle can smell the seng or somehow feel its presence.

Patches of ginseng hide all over these mountains and most people walk right by and never notice a sprout. The Cherokee believe ginseng makes itself invisible to those unworthy of it, Uncle Lu says. But he always spots it. My great-grandma on Pop’s side was a Cherokee, so worthiness runs in the blood.

People in China will pay good money for ginseng. They’re desperate for it, according to Uncle Lu. They lay it out like gold on green-velvet cloths in the marketplace. I wonder what it would be like to travel the route of the seng, to go all the way to China on a copper-bottomed boat and know people at the other end were desperate to see you.

S
elling Candy …

The boys come to our house after football practice—Joe Ed, Calvin, and Darby. Jack’s new friends. They’re seniors and Jack’s just a sophomore, but the coach says he’s all-star material.

They sit at the kitchen table drinking Pepsi out of the bottle. Calvin pours a pack of peanuts in his bottle and crunches a mouthful every time he takes a drink.

“That family was rich,” Darby says. “They left her that big house.”

“Who?” I ask. I’m washing dried pinto beans in the sink so Momma can soak them overnight.

“That old crazy woman who lives down the road,” Jack says.

“Old Miss Matlock,” says Calvin.

“They weren’t rich,” Joe Ed says.

“Rich for Mercy Hill,” says Darby.

“I still don’t think we ought to go to that house,” says Joe Ed. “I don’t care if she
is
rich.”

“Why would you go to her house?” I turn around and face the boys.

“We’re selling candy bars for the football team,” Jack says. “We need to sell forty boxes by the time the season starts.”

“My pop says she’s lived around the world,” Calvin says.

“That old woman?” Joe Ed snickers. “I’ll bet she’s never been out of Kentucky.” They all laugh.

“Honest,” Calvin says. “It’s the truth. She ran off when she was young. That’s what Pop told me.”

“How does he know?” I ask.

“Go play, Chileda.” Jack tries to sound bossy.

“Momma told me to fix the beans,” I say, throwing him a look that could melt a rock.

“Pop knows,” Calvin says. “He remembers.”

“Didn’t she run off with some man?” Darby asks. “I heard that she took off with some professor and didn’t come home for fifty years.”

“Forty,” says Calvin. “It was forty years.”

“I’d never run off from home,” says Joe Ed. “Mercy
Hill, Kentucky, is God’s country!” He leans back in the kitchen chair until it touches the wall and his legs are dangling. Joe Ed is small for a football player and the coach never puts him in to play. Three years he’s been carrying water to the players at time-out. Still, he thinks this place is the center of the universe.

“I might run off if the right girl came along,” says Darby. “How about you, Chili? You wanna run away with me?”

The mixing bowl slips and I let some of the hard, dry beans go down the sink. If it stops up again, Momma will throw a fit.

“Darby!” Jack scolds his friend, and they all start laughing. “Chili’s just a kid,” Jack says. “She still plays with dolls.”

“I do not!” I slam the lid on the bean pot.

When the boys get up to leave, Darby looks at me and winks. He has shiny black hair and dimples.

The four of them head down Persimmon Tree Road with a box full of chocolate bars to sell. Calvin hoists the box onto one shoulder and leads the way.

Miss Matlock never mentioned running away with a professor. She once told Willie and me that she had blanks in her mind, long spaces of time with nothing. The professor must be inside one of those blanks.

Uncle Lucius trots into the kitchen with his empty
fishing bucket and pole. Some days he’s all there, and some days he’s all gone. It’s a hit-or-miss situation.

“Uncle Lu,” I say, hoping this is a good day, “didn’t you know Miss Matlock when you were young?”

“Oh yes,” he says. “She ran away to see the world.”

“With some professor, right?”

“Nope. He was a vacuum-cleaner salesman.”

“No, no, Uncle Lu. That was Aunt Gretchen, for goodness’ sakes.”

Lucius stops in his tracks. “I do love Gretchen,” he says.

“But what about Miss Matlock?” I say. “What do you know about her?”

“I don’t love
her,”
he says. “I know that much.”

It’s useless. I give up and go out on the front porch and sit in the swing.

In a while Aunt Rose comes and makes chicken and dumplings for supper so Momma won’t have to cook after working all day. Myra gets back from Jellico Springs and waddles around the house smiling like she’s got a secret. Nearly every day now she takes off to her house in Jellico Springs by herself to put up wallpaper or hang mobiles or organize the baby’s chest of drawers, and then she comes back to our house to eat and sleep. She hums a lot to herself but doesn’t write much in her poem book anymore.

It’s almost suppertime when Jack gets back home. He crunches the empty candy box and throws it in the big trash can by the side of the house.

“We sold everything,” he says. “That old crazy woman bought our last five boxes!”

When we start into the house, Uncle Lu and Lenny come traipsing through the living room. Uncle Lu’s still carrying his fishing pole and Lenny has his bait bucket.

A few minutes later I look out the window and see them standing at the far end of the porch, where the sun’s going down in a red sky above the mountains. Lenny holds the silver bait bucket while Uncle Lu casts his line into the jasmine bushes and catches blossoms.

B
ad Luck and Promises …

“The Matlock family got rich off the backs of miners,” Rose says.

We’re in the kitchen breaking green beans to can. The house is quiet, everyone gone in a different direction except the two of us. No one to say
Change the subject
.

“What do you mean, Aunt Rose?”

“Matlocks owned all the coal mines around here,” she says. “They were a proud family, thought they were better than anybody else.” She shakes her head. “Terrible stingy with their money, too.”

Aunt Rose is a gossip. Can I believe everything she says?

“How do you know that?” I ask.

“I know,” she says. “I know plenty more than I ought to be telling.”

One minute I want her to tell me everything she knows about the Matlocks, and the next I’m not sure I want to hear another word. I want to be like Miss Matlock someday. I want to be someone who has been places and done things and lived out dreams. Still …

I remind Aunt Rose about that day last spring after Willie’s grandmother died, when we were eating dinner and she said the Brights would have had money if old Mr. Matlock had paid Helena’s pap what he owed him.

“What was that all about?” I ask her now.