To Come and Go Like Magic (7 page)

Before I get through the introduction, Zeno Mayfield
starts making faces at me. I can tell when Miss Matlock is looking down to write her remarks because Zeno’s face switches from angel to pure demon. The others want to giggle, but they’re afraid to. I look over all their heads to the back of the room, where Willie Bright sits in the last row with his hands folded on his desk, listening. I pretend I’m talking to Willie, telling him all about Harriet Beecher Stowe as if she’s somebody I’d like for him to meet.

I dish out the facts and the theories. When Abe Lincoln met this woman, he said, “So you’re the little lady who started this great war.”

The girls look up as if called to attention, boys jiggle in their seats, Zeno frowns. I tell about
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
and how Mrs. Stowe wrote about geography and travel, too. I can’t see Miss Matlock behind me, but I imagine her looking pleased.

“I never heard of that woman,” Zeno says without even raising his hand.

“Quiet,” says Miss Matlock. “Wait until Miss Mahoney’s speech is finished.”

Speech?
The boys laugh and make jokes until the teacher has to get up and walk the room.

My mind leaps over Willie Bright’s head and through the gray lockers, across the mountains and rivers, all the way to the Civil War and back. Maybe my words take Willie there, too. He smiles at me the minute I’m done.

When the bell rings, Zeno Mayfield rushes up the aisle and hands me a note. It says:

I look on the back:

S
pring Floods and Rats of All Kinds …

Momma sets rat traps and puts out poison. The spring floods bring rats that eat their way into the cellar and the corncrib and the smokehouse.

For three days floodwater backs up and fills the meadow, and when it goes down, it leaves the riverbank a slippery mess. Crawdad castles collapse and the creatures get trapped in the mud. Every day they dig their way out with mud caked to their shelly bodies and leave trails in the wet earth as they make their way to the
water. Along the bank where the ground is especially steep and slimy, it’s easy to lose your footing and slide into the dirty river.

Myra says that must have been what happened to Jerry Wilson. He must have slipped and fell.

Two days ago Will Epperson and Little Clyde Cummings were fishing for catfish and found Jerry Wilson’s car in a thicket at the top of the riverbank. It was stuck in the undergrowth and the kudzu vine was already half way up the doors. He’d left a note on the front seat saying that he couldn’t stand to live in this world any longer. It didn’t say whether he just meant Mercy Hill or if he was talking about the whole planet. Myra won’t admit it, but it doesn’t sound like he slipped.

Pop shakes his head when we get the news, says this world has too many responsibilities for a man like Jerry Wilson, who didn’t want any. He doesn’t believe the sheriff’s report that says Myra’s no-good husband walked into the river and drowned and the floods came and washed away his footprints.

Momma and Myra cry and wring their hands and walk the floor, but Pop does not let go of one tear. He says he’ll believe the sheriff when he sees the body.

Every day the Mercy Hill Fire Department drags the river, searching for a body that’s been missing for ages,
but they don’t retrieve anything, not even a sock that belonged to Jerry Wilson. Pop says it’s because the rat’s not there. He’d bet his eyeteeth on it.

After jump-rope team practice, I go down to the river with Ginny and Priscilla to wait for the men to come back from their third search. Third time’s a charm, Aunt Rose says. This may be the day they find the body. The floodwater has receded and the river’s running calm and clear. New buds are popping open on the bushes and the birds are singing high up in the trees like nothing has happened. No matter what bad thing comes along, the world keeps on doing what it always does.

Overhead two airplanes make white streaks across the sky, one laid over the other like a big X, both flying south to Atlanta or Pensacola or maybe New Orleans, leaving their contrails across Kentucky. That’s what Lenny calls airplane smoke.
Contrails
.

In the marsh behind us little sulfur butterflies float up from the weeds like a swarm of bees and beat their yellow wings against the sky. We watch and wait.

It’s dusk when the men come back empty-handed.

“That body could be anywhere,” Will Epperson says. “It could have been swept all the way to the ocean by now.”

“Or to Denver or Sausalito,” Pop says.

“Huh?” The men look at Pop like he’s crazy.

E
ating Poke Salad …

We’re at the kitchen table eating poke salad greens that Aunt Rose picked this morning and cooked all day until the house now stinks to high heaven. Poke salad is poisonous if it’s not cooked right or long enough, but Aunt Rose is an expert. She watched my grandma cook the wild greens and learned how much grease to put in and how high to keep the fire going to kill the poison.

“Not much poke in the woods anymore,” Rose says. “Barely enough for a good mess.”

“Wonder what’s happening to it?” Momma twirls the greens around on her fork and takes a slippery bite.

“All this tromping up and down the hollows,” Rose says. “Going in, going out. Driving vehicles off the road and into the weeds.”

“The VISTAs,” I say. “Must be the VISTAs.” Everything bad that happens, happens because of the VISTA workers. The old mule paths and coal roads are now full of jeep cars driven by foreigners, mostly northerners
who don’t know one thing about hill people. That’s what Pop says.

“That bunch is just down here to get their faces on the television set,” Rose says.

“Aren’t they supposed to be helping the poor people?” I ask.

“Sometimes,” says Pop. “But sometimes they make matters worse.”

“Worse?” I’m wondering how the poor in these hills could get any worse off.

“A man can take everything you’ve got,” says Pop. “But you’ve got to hold on to your pride.” These city people are taking away all the pride, he says, making hill folks feel sorry for themselves and thinking they don’t have a thing to offer this world.

“Do they?” Jack asks.

“Everybody has something to offer,” says Rose.

“A few people do need the help,” Pop says. “But this aid money’s making the others as lazy as bess bugs.”

“What’s a bess bug?”

“Chileda, you ask too many questions,” Pop says.

Momma picks up the mashed potatoes and passes the bowl.

“I saw Yellow Creek on the news last week,” she says. “And what they showed was about as far from the truth as you can get.”

“They pick out the worst shacks in the county,” Pop says, “and they find some poor ignorant man or woman and ask them a bunch of stupid questions.”

“The whole world will think we all live that way,” Momma says.

“Who cares what they think?” says Lenny.

“It’s a plain insult,” Pop says. “Would they pick some slum in New York City and put it on television and say, ‘THIS is New York’?”

“Maybe not,” I say.

“Well,” says Aunt Rose, “I wouldn’t take one penny of free money. Not one red cent.”

“A few people do need it,” Pop says again. “You have to remember that.”

“Who?” says Rose. “Who needs it?”

“That Bright family,” says Pop. “They’d starve without it.”

Rose shakes her fork at Pop. “If old man Matlock had paid Helena’s pap like he should have back in the day, the Brights wouldn’t want for nothing now.”

“Who was old man Matlock?” I ask. And I’m thinking: Who is Helena and does this have anything to do with Miss Matlock or is it another Matlock?

“Change the subject,” says Pop. “It’s time to change the subject.”

“But I didn’t get my question …”

Pop looks over at me. “Have you memorized your Bible books?” he asks.

“Almost.”

“See how many you can name now.” He looks hard at me and I know my question will not be answered. Not now. Probably not ever.

“Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Ruth, First Samuel …”

“You forgot Judges.”

“Judges?”

“Judges comes between Joshua and Ruth,” Pop says. “Order’s important.”

“Miss Perkins says order doesn’t matter that much.”

“What kind of teaching is that?” Aunt Rose shakes her head. “That’s just not right.”

T
iming …

I stand on the Brights’ porch with a Tupperware full of yesterday’s leftover poke salad. The old grandmother opens the screen door and peers up at me for what seems like a million years.

“It’s just that Mahoney girl!” she calls back over her shoulder, and waves me inside.

I follow her through the living room and down the hallway to the kitchen, her walking cane tapping sharply on the bare floor. The house smells of mildew and burning wood. In winter the floors are cold, Willie says, and ice forms on the window panes so you can’t see out in the mornings.

The two little kids are sitting at the kitchen table eating chocolate fudge from a pan that looks like it’s just come off the stove.

“Don’t eat it all!” The old woman cracks her cane against a table leg, causing the little girl to jump and drop her spoon. “They won’t even let that candy get hard,” she barks.

Willie’s momma is ironing clothes by the stove, and she looks up at me and smiles. Behind her the wall is covered with glossy magazine pictures and advertisements stuck up with straight pins like the ones Aunt Rose uses for sewing—colored pictures of
Family Circle
cakes and pies and
Good Housekeeping
gardens. “Where’s Willie?” I ask, handing the greens to the old woman.

“Got his nose in a book,” she says, pointing to the window.

I look out and see Willie sitting under a maple tree in the backyard. He doesn’t look up and I’m glad. Every time we have leftover food that’s too good to throw away or feed to the dogs, Momma has me bring it to the Brights.
Mrs. Bright and the old grandma always say they’re glad to get it, but I wonder how Willie feels. I wonder how I would feel if Willie brought food to our house?

The air is full of questions. I think about the story Pop wouldn’t let Aunt Rose tell at the table, about someone named Helena and some old man Matlock not paying somebody and that having something to do with the Brights being poor. Maybe Pop didn’t let Aunt Rose finish because it was just gossip. After all, there are lots of poor people in Mercy Hill. And there are lots of people like us who have a car and a television that works and money in the bank for an emergency. As long as it’s just one emergency, Pop says, and not a big one. We’re lucky, Momma always says, but Pop says luck is something you make.

“Go on out and say hello to Willie,” Mrs. Bright says. She lifts up the iron and lets the steam hiss from it.

“That’s okay,” I say. “Momma said I had to come straight back for supper.”

I’d just as soon Willie didn’t know I was here. Maybe he doesn’t even like poke salad greens.

In a snap I’m out the front door and on my way, taking my questions about the Matlocks and the Brights back home with me. Maybe I’ll ask Aunt Rose sometime when nobody’s around and enough time has passed that she can’t remember Pop not wanting her to tell the story. Timing is important. Timing is everything.