Amy Greene - Bloodroot

She came back in the middle of the night, but it never was the same. Them few weeks she stayed on at the house it was like she was checking in and out of a motel. But to tell the truth, she was happier than I ever seen her. Her eyes was bright and she was taking better care of herself, all of that long hair clean and glossy around her shoulders. Then one Saturday Kenny Mayes came to the door to get Clio instead of blowing the horn for her. I’d done figured out something was up, because Clio had hovered around all morning acting skittish. Besides that, she’d took it on herself to make a cake and she hated to cook. It was about noontime that Kenny knocked and Clio wanted me to open it. “Go on, Mama,” she said. I went to the front of the house with a heavy heart because I knowed what was coming. I opened the door and there he stood, with a big old mealy-mouthed grin. I can’t say he was handsome, but his eyes was blue as the springtime sky.

“Hidee,” he said.

Clio went to him and pulled him in the front room. “Mama, this here’s Kenny Mayes,” she said. It looked like her cheeks was on fire.

“Clio said I ought to bring you something,” Kenny said. He fished around in his britches pocket and dug out a string of dime store beads with the tag still hanging off of them. I never wore such a thing in all my life, and didn’t aim to start. I took them beads and laid them on the table beside of Macon’s chair.

“Take you a seat, Kenny,” Clio said. “I’ll go get us a piece of cake to eat so you and Mama can get acquainted.”

Kenny flopped down on the loveseat with them gangly legs sprawled out and his arm slung across the back like he owned the place. I didn’t make no effort to talk, but he didn’t seem bashful about it. “It’s right pretty up here,” he said, looking out the window we’d just got fixed, at the blooming trees and the mowed green hill rolling down to the creek branch. “But it kindly stinks, don’t it? Must be the hog lot.”

We didn’t keep hogs no more, but I didn’t say it. I kept my mouth shut. Macon was gone since he worked every other Saturday at the filling station trying to earn an extra dollar, so the house was quiet besides Clio clattering around in the kitchen.

“Well,” Kenny said when Clio came in with the cake on one of my tole trays. “I aim to take good care of Clio, Miss Lamb, so you ain’t got a thing to worry about.”

“Dangit, Kenny,” Clio said, handing me a saucer of chocolate cake and a fork to eat it with. “I ain’t told her yet. We was supposed to do it together.”

“Shoot, I forgot,” Kenny said, and grinned at me.

Clio set down beside of Kenny on the loveseat. He shoveled in cake, crumbs falling all over the floor for me to clean up later. “Me and Kenny’s getting married,” she said. Her voice cracked some like she might be nervous, but she still sounded sassy as ever. “I didn’t want to tell it in front of Daddy cause I figured he’d pitch a fit.”

“When?” I asked.

“Well … I figured I’d go ahead and settle in this evening over at Kenny’s mama’s house. Then I reckon we’ll go on down to the courthouse Monday morning.”

“What are you telling me for?” I asked. She looked surprised. I couldn’t help but speak my mind. Them was the first words I’d said since that old weasel came to the door, and I didn’t aim to pussyfoot around. “Why didn’t y’uns just run off and do it?”

Clio couldn’t think of nothing to say for a minute. “I don’t know, Mama. It didn’t seem right, I guess.”

I headed for the kitchen with my piece of cake, to rake it in the trash. “Well, I reckon I ort to be thankful for that,” I said. I went back and stood in the front room doorway. “Y’uns best be getting along.” Clio hadn’t took but a few bites of her cake, and Kenny stuffed the rest of his in fast. “You can come back and get your things later.”

“Mama …”

“It’s what you been aiming to do since the day you was born. Might as well get it over with.”

“Now, I never meant to hurt your feelings, Mama….”

“I’ll put your clothes in a bag, if you’d rather do it that way, and send them down with Macon when he goes in to work Monday morning.”

“That’ll be all right,” Clio said. She put down her saucer hard on the end table. The dirty fork rattled off and fell on the floor. “I done got my things packed.”

She stood up and we looked at each other. Her eyes was cold as that snow she hated. She stomped off to the bedroom and left me and Kenny Mayes by ourselves.

“That sure was some good cake,” he said.

“Clio made it,” I told him.

“Well, then,” he leant over and whispered at me, “somebody’s going to have to learn that girl to cook, if she’s fixing to be my wife.” He winked and laughed like a mule. Then Clio came stomping in with her traveling case and took him by the arm.

“Come on, Kenny,” she said, and they left without saying goodbye. I sunk down in Macon’s chair feeling like somebody had laid a rock on my heart. I seen them beads on the end table and it was too much to bear. I snatched them old things up, like a string of shiny black snake’s eyes, and took them and throwed them in the kitchen garbage. Then I leant over the sink and squalled for a long time because my last living youngun was gone.

Clio left with Kenny Mayes when she wasn’t but seventeen. If he ever seen her act crazy like she did that day she busted out the window, he never let on to me. But Clio didn’t ever love this place like me and Myra do. I believe she needed off of this mountain, because she perked up once Kenny took her away from me. Now, Myra’s John Odom had me fooled at first, but I knowed Kenny Mayes was no count from the start. He didn’t beat on Clio or nothing like that, but he was shiftless. She had to keep them both up, working on the assembly line at one of them factories in Millertown. I know she had to been tired of it, standing on her feet all day, but she was too stubborn to let on.

Myra was better off not knowing her daddy. I didn’t tell her nothing about Kenny, not even good stories, like how he always tried to buy me and Macon something nice at Christmas. When he was working he liked to treat Clio, too. He’d buy her perfume and take her out to the restaurants. He’d blow every penny he made, but I reckon he meant well. Course there wasn’t no use telling Myra about her daddy’s mean streak, either, how he liked to scare Clio driving. He’d laugh fit to split, her holding on to the dash and me stomping the brakes in the backseat, them few times I let him take me to the store. I quit going with him after I learnt better, that heathern. Then him and Clio got hit and killed by a train. Nobody knows for sure how it happened, if the car quit or he tried to beat the train or what, but I’d bet anything he was trying to scare Clio like he did.

Something queer happened the night Kenny and Clio got killed. I was taking care of Myra again. I never would say it out loud, but I don’t believe Clio was cut out to be a mama. She never meant to be expecting in the first place, and she was always leaving the baby with me. I had rocked Myra to sleep and fell off to sleep myself with her on my shoulder. I was stiff as a board from setting so long in that chair and I was fixing to get up and take Myra to bed with me when I heard a train whistle off down the mountain. I had the windows open to catch the breeze and that noise made the hair stand up on my arms. I thought, how in the world am I hearing this? Them train tracks is plumb in town. I put my hand on Myra’s little back to feel it going up and down. The house was quiet and dark besides the light of the moon. I don’t know if I was ever more blue in my life, it was the awfulest feeling you could think of. The next morning Bill Cotter knocked on the front door and said Clio had got killed on the train tracks in Millertown. He was a volunteer fireman and helped them pry her and Kenny loose from the car. It liked to killed me to hear it, my last child was gone, but I can’t say I was surprised. Clio died on them same tracks that runs by where Myra lives right now, with that devilish John Odom.