C.E. Murphy - Mountain Echoes

“Okay.” If Dad could haul us through three or four centuries, there was no reason Renee and I couldn’t do the fine-tuning. I expressed the thought to her and she hummed, an unexpectedly sweet sound that I took as agreement. I wrapped us all in another shield, feeling it tremble. Dad had taken a lot of power out of me when he’d cleansed the valley. I didn’t begrudge what he’d done, but if I’d known it was coming I’d have protected myself better. And Aidan.

I put that thought aside. It wasn’t going to do any good. Instead I thought about—well, not quite home. I thought about Petite, parked there on the mountain pull-out. Thought about her solid steel presence there, a new presence: she hadn’t been in the Carolina mountains in thirteen years. She was an equally fixed and mobile point, which seemed appropriate for a time-travel focus. I breathed, “Okay,” again, and time spun out around us.

At first we stayed where we were, the valley subtly changing shape around us. Then it began changing more rapidly, and then I had the rushing sensation of great speed, like we were tearing down long highways with Petite’s windowsted time s rolled down and Jim Steinman’s “Nowhere Fast” blasting on the radio. The idea of that road pulled us south, carrying us back through the mountains until we were in the right place, closing in on the right time. Petite was a ghost in my mind, not there yet, but strengthening.

Time stuttered, stopped, and spat us onto my grandmother’s front lawn.

The lawn was scraggly with bluegrass, and the house it fronted needed some TLC. Ranch-style and too small to boast many rooms, it did have a big inviting front porch and a long porch swing with faded lemon-yellow cushions. Hills rose up about forty feet behind the place, the back door obviously opening up into the mountains. A hard-packed dirt driveway boasted a huge old powder-blue Pontiac.

A little girl toddled out of the house and climbed into the porch swing. Hairs rose on my arms and nape as the familiar squeak made the child smile and swing more enthusiastically. Then she tumbled out and jumped down the steps one at a time, counting and providing sound effects as she went, “One! Bang. Two! Bang. Three! Bang.” At the bottom she said, “Bang!” one more time for good measure, then ran across the lawn, through my legs, and skidded to a stop a few feet beyond me. I wobbled, feeling like someone had walked on my grave. She turned around, eyed me, or certainly appeared to, then turned away again and picked up a bug from the grass. “Hello, ladybug. Hello. I’m Joanie. Hello, ladybug. I love you!”

Morrison said, “Walker?” incredulously. It was amazing how much meaning he could invest one word with. I swallowed and didn’t answer.

A woman I didn’t actively remember came onto the porch and leaned against a rail, smiling at the mini-me expressing fondness to a ladybug. The woman wore bell-bottom jeans over bare feet, and a homemade cotton tunic with an embroidered slash at the collar. She was tall and striking, if not exactly pretty, and she wore her black hair in twin braids. Dad whispered, “Ma,” and with heart-sinking dread I knew when we were.

My father, twenty-five years younger and shockingly handsome, came out behind my grandmother and leaned against another porch rail, watching three-year-old Joanne with the same fondness my grandmother showed. He was eating cookies. I looked back at my small self. She had chocolate smears on her hands and mouth, and an ant working its way up her leg in search of the sugar.

“The Jones house has been empty a few years,” my grandmother said. We all looked at her again. Dad-the-younger hitched himself onto the rail, one leg dangling, the other bare foot planted on the soft old wood. My mother had said he was beautiful when he was young. I, blinkered by a child’s blinders, had had no idea how right she was. His long hair was loose and he was wearing jeans and a cut-up T-shirt that showed off smooth brown arms. If catalogs had featured Native models in that era, he would have been world-famous. No wonder Mom had fallen for him.

At the moment he looked mildly amused. “You don’t want us underfoot here?”

My grandmother’s eyebrows rose. “You left when you were seventeen, Joe. I didn’t think you were in any hurry to be back under my roof.”

That was the same age I’d left the Qualla. I hadn’t known Dad had left early, too. I glanced at the now-him, but he was watching his mother with open pain on his still-handsome features.

“You’re both welcome here as much ted glaas you like, of course,” Grandmother said, and Dad flashed a bright grin.

“Nah, you’re right, Ma. We’d be better off in the Jones’s place. How much work does it need?”

“As much as anything that’s been empty awhile. Won’t cost much, though. There’s not much good growing soil around them. Too much tobacco sucking up the nutrients. You’re really thinking of staying, then?” She kept it under wraps, but there was a bright note of hope in her voice. “She has so much potential, Joe. We could teach her so much if you stayed here.”

“No, Ma. I told you before. Shell left her with me to keep her out of sight. Teaching her is too risky, no matter how much potential she’s got. I’m supposed to be keeping her safe, not putting her in the line of fire.”

My grandmother clucked her tongue. “That’s nonsense. I know that Irish girl turned your head, but there are no monsters in the dark, Joe. Sorcerers are stories to frighten children with. No one is hunting Joanie.”

“Maybe you’re right, but I promised Shell I’d keep her safe, and this is the best way I can see to do it. If she’s right, then if Joanie hasn’t been initiated as a shaman there’s no reason for anything to come after her.”

I closed my eyes, impotent anger throbbing in my temples. I was sure Dad had meant well, but surely anybody who’d seen Star Wars knew that hiding the truth never turned out well for anyone. My entire life might have been different if he’d listened to my grandmother.

She, with the patience of a woman who figured she was in the first skirmishes of a protracted war, let it go. “Well, tell you what. I’ve got to go see Carrie this morning, but you and Joanie can stay here and eat all the cookies, and I’ll get the keys to the Jones place from the real-estate agent while I’m in town. I’ll pick you up after lunch and we can go take a look at it, see what you think.”

Dad, my Dad, the now-Dad standing next to me on the lawn, whispered, “No, Ma. Stay home,” but the one on the porch smiled and nodded. “Sounds fine, Ma. Tell Carrie hello.”

“She wants you and Joanie to come see her.”

“She wants Joanie to come see her,” Dad corrected cheerfully enough. “Nobody cares about me now.”

My grandmother smiled. “That’s what happens when you have kids.”

“Tell her we’ll come down in a couple days. I want to get the mountains back under my skin for a while.”

Grandmother hesitated on the steps, looking back at Dad when he said that. “I’ll never understand why you left, Joe, not if the mountains call you back so strongly.”

Dad put his fist just beneath his breastbone. “Had to, Ma. It was pulling me.”

My heart missed a beat at the familiarity of that gesture, and of that feeling. The same sensation had been dragging me through magical mishaps for the past fifteen months. I’d had no idea Dad had felt it, too. There was so damned much I didn’t know.

Grandmother nodded and left, the Pontiac’s massive engine roaring down the mountains. I guessed my father and I had come by our love of classic cars honestly. Dad turned, watching her go long after the car was out of sight, then gave me a hard look. “What are we doing here, Joanne?”