Wiley Cash - A Land More Kind Than Home

I stepped into the front room in my bare feet and my gown, and I called out, “Who is it?”

“Lord have mercy, Addie, it’s me,” the little voice behind the door said. “Now open this door before I’m froze solid.”

I recognized that voice, and I opened the door and the wind just about knocked me down, and here came the snow blowing in with it. Gerty Norman was out there standing in her dead husband’s waders with one of her son’s work coats swallowing her up. I could barely see her eyes peeking out from where she’d wrapped a scarf tight around her face and pulled a man’s winter cap down low on her head.

“Is that you, Gerty?” I asked.

“Who in the world do you think it is?” she said through her scarf. She stomped right past me on her way inside the house with that snow falling off the tread of them heavy waders.

“What would make you want to walk down here in this weather at this time of night?” I asked her. She was slow getting that scarf unwound from over her mouth, and I could see that her cheeks were bright red apples against her face. Her eyes were teary from the cold. When she finally unwound that scarf and took off her cap, her body gave her a good shiver.

“It’s Julie Hall,” she said. “It’s time, and Ben’s truck can’t get her down the mountain. They tried calling Doc Winthrop, but they couldn’t get ahold of him. They tried calling you too, but I reckon your phone’s out with this weather.”

“Winthrop’s probably drunk and laying up in the bed by now,” I told her. “There ain’t no way that man’s heading up Gunter Mountain tonight. Not in this snow.”

“Ben asked if you might could see her through, at least until this weather lets up and they can get down the mountain to the hospital. I told him I’d come down here and ask you, but I let him know it’s pretty nasty down here too.”

Don’t you know I stood there and watched those little red apples disappear from her cheeks and listened to the wind whipping that snow around while I thought about how warm my bed in the next room was.

“Ronnie might can get you up there,” she said. “His truck’s got them big old tires on it, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he could drive you clear up that mountain.”

I can say I thought about it awfully hard. “I reckon I’ll go,” I finally said. “Just let me get me some clothes on.” I turned to go back toward the bedroom and she followed me, and then she walked into the kitchen and went right up to the stove and took those heavy mittens off and held out her hands to warm them. I’d fed the fire before I went to bed, and when she opened the grate I could see them flames just a-hissing and popping in there. I stopped and looked back at her.

“Watch yourself in them waders,” I said. “That rubber will melt on both you and my floors too.” I knew she was frozen through and couldn’t rightly feel how hot that fire was on her.

“I know,” she said, but she sure didn’t back away from it.

“Gerty!” I said. She muttered something under her breath about being scolded and made a fuss of stepping back just to rile me.

I went into the bedroom and put on my wool stockings and pulled on two sweaters over my gown. My heavy coat was hanging on the bedpost, and I pulled that on too. I found my gloves and boots and my hat and carried them into the kitchen so I could sit down and put them on at the table. When I walked back in the kitchen, there was Gerty right up against that stove again. I decided that if she wanted to set herself on fire, why, I’d just go ahead and let her.

WE OPENED THE DOOR AND STEPPED OUTSIDE, AND THAT WIND almost knocked me over again and the snow was just blowing around all over the place. Me and Gerty set out trudging the half mile up the road to her house. It was a climb, I can tell you that. And here we were, two old women out in the snow holding on to each other for dear life and slipping and sliding right along like little kids on roller skates.

“Lord, Gerty,” I said, “how’d you make it down this hill by yourself?”

“I just done it,” she said.

“You think Ronnie can get up that mountain in this mess?”

“I’m sure he can.”

“What did he say?”

“I ain’t woke him yet.”

Well, I just about laid down and died right there. I stopped right in my tracks, but Gerty just kept on walking. I hollered after her. “You’re telling me I’m climbing up this hill to get in a truck that you don’t even know can get up Gunter, with a driver that ain’t even woke yet?”

“That’s what I’m telling you,” she hollered back.

“Why didn’t you wake him up and ask him if his truck could make it?”

She stopped then and turned around. I could barely see her through the snow.

“Because you know you’re heading up that mountain anyways,” she said. I knew she had herself a point there, so I didn’t say nothing else about it.

Ronnie had his truck pulled into his daddy’s old garage by the house, and I told Gerty I’d be in there waiting on her to get Ronnie out of bed. I bet I sat there ten minutes. I thought I’d be frostbit for sure before that boy got out there with the key to turn that engine over and get that heater running. I saw the light come on in his room, and I pictured Gerty in the house standing by his bed.

“Get up now, Ronnie,” she was probably saying, real soft. She babied that boy, much more than I would’ve if I’d had any of my own. “Get up, Ronnie. Miss Lyle’s out there getting frostbitten and might be dead before your feet hit the floor.” That’s what I would have told him, but like I said, he weren’t mine.

But here he came after a while. I turned my head and saw him stumbling out to the garage through the snow like the walking dead. A big boy, bigger than his daddy was for sure. He had on his coveralls and had pulled his coat over them. He wasn’t wearing a hat, and when he opened the door and got into the truck the snow stuck in his hair like popcorn.

“Good morning, sunshine,” I said once he got settled.

“Hey, Miss Lyle,” he said, like a man more dead than alive.

BUT GOOD LORD, IF THAT WEREN’T A DRIVE. THAT BOY WHITE-knuckled at the steering wheel and me praying to all the angels in Heaven that we wouldn’t skid off the road into the creek or the woods or somebody’s yard. Anybody who saw us from their windows would have thought we were a couple of daredevil kids out tempting Mother Nature.

That whole drive I sat there looking out at those heavy snowflakes pounding the windshield and thought about Ben and Julie up there in that house all by themselves with their first baby on the way. I never knew Julie’s people, and Ben’s mama had run off years ago and I can’t say I remember her too well. Those kids had them only one daddy between the two of them and him a sorry, disappeared drunk at that.

Julie was just a beautiful girl with that curly blond hair and that fair skin. It’s a hard thing to come across skin that fair up in these parts with folks spending so much time working outdoors. But hers was as fair as a baby’s, and I figured Ben never let her turn her hand over back then because he loved her so much. He was a good boy, hadn’t taken to drinking yet and didn’t have quite that same meanness running through him like his daddy did. His daddy was just an awfully mean man. After his wife had run off, I figure whatever meanness he’d had left over he took out on Ben; but they shared their ways just the same.

The worst beating I ever heard of Ben’s daddy putting on him was after one of them women down in Hot Springs called him up and told him Ben had been down there to see her. I ain’t saying that I hold with that kind of women, but you can’t help knowing who you know and hearing what you hear. How she knew how to get ahold of Jimmy Hall to tell him about his own son I can’t say, but I figure it’s pretty easy to hit upon. Ben was still in high school then and a good-sized boy, a football-playing boy. He even played him a year or two up at Western Carolina. But none of that kept his daddy from working him over for holding with folks like Miss Lillian down in Hot Springs. You’d have thought his daddy hadn’t never heard of a boy doing such a thing, but all the folks I know around here thought better than that. They knew Jimmy Hall had always known plenty about those types of women.