Amy Greene - Bloodroot

She said, “John’s started drinking beer.”

“Well,” I said, trying to make me and her both feel better, “I never knowed a young man that wouldn’t take a nip every once in a while.”

“I don’t know, Granny,” she said, and wouldn’t look at me no more.

By November, Myra had quit coming up Bloodroot Mountain altogether. I cooked a ham for Christmas dinner but she never showed up. I set by myself beside of the tree Hacky Barnett drug in and put up for me, worried sick. Her and John Odom didn’t have no phone in that house by the tracks, and me and Macon never had one put in either, so I didn’t know what in the world happened to her. I had Hacky to drive me down yonder but seeing her didn’t make me feel no better. She acted spooked, kept looking at the door the whole time like she was afraid somebody was coming. We tried to talk but seemed like she couldn’t concentrate enough to carry on a conversation. I wept all the way back home and Hacky tried to comfort me by letting on like it wasn’t all that bad. He patted my shoulder and said, “She looks all right, Byrdie. There ain’t no places on her.” But I said, “Hacky, the places might be on the inside.” He didn’t have no argument for that.

Then two months passed without seeing Myra because Margaret Barnett fell off the porch and twisted her back. Hacky’s had a time taking care of her, and I hated to ask him to drive me to town. I thought of asking Bill Cotter, but since his boys are gone it’s all he can do to keep the farm running. This morning I couldn’t stand it no longer and asked Hacky to take me to Myra right away. We didn’t talk in the truck. I guess we both had a lot on our minds. We pulled up in front of the house under a big black storm cloud. It had been spitting ice rain off and on all morning and it was a mess trying to get across that old yard. I climbed up on the stoop huffing and puffing and when I finally did get situated to knock on the door, it took Myra a long time to open it. Soon as she seen me, her mouth fell open. I was shocked myself, to see my grandbaby in such a shape. She was skinny as a rail and looked like she hadn’t combed her hair in a month of Sundays.

“Granny,” she said.

She walked into my arms and we stood there for a long time with tears in our eyes. Finally I heard Hacky clearing his throat behind me. We went on in the house and I never seen such a clutter. I taught Myra better than that, but I reckon she just didn’t have no gumption left in her. She cleared a place on the couch for us. Hacky set there the whole time holding his cap with his ears red, looking like he’d rather be anyplace else.

I told Myra, “I would have come sooner but you know I ain’t got no way around.”

“Have you been getting your medicines?” she asked. I could tell she was worried about me as much as I was about her.

I said, “Hacky runs to the drugstore for me. Him and Margaret’s been so good to me. I don’t know what I would have done.”

Myra smiled at Hacky and looked sad at the same time. I know she wants to be the one taking care of me. That might be why John Odom’s got her trapped someway.

“Honey, why don’t you come home with me?” I begged her. I hadn’t been meaning to say nothing but it just came out. “Don’t let him do you this way.”

“I can’t, Granny,” she said. “I made my bed.” About that time we heard a car out in the driveway and Myra’s eyes got big. It was nearly twelve o’clock and John Odom had come home for dinner. He busted in like an old bull and it was a sight how he had changed in such a short time. His hair was still black and shiny as ever, but he had a gut hanging over his belt buckle and bags underneath his eyes. I could tell Myra was scared to death of what he might do because me and Hacky was there. I wondered myself how he was going to act, but he just looked around at me and Hacky right hateful and didn’t say a word to us. He pitched his car keys on the end table beside of Myra’s chair and knocked off a bunch of clutter. It made a loud racket and she flinched like he’d shot at her. “Fix me something to eat,” he said to Myra. Then he stomped off to the bathroom. Directly Hacky said, without looking at me, “We better get on up the mountain, Byrdie.”

“No, wait here for a minute,” Myra whispered. She dashed off and I could hear her rummaging in the hallway. She was back quick as lightning and I couldn’t make out what she had in her hands at first. When she got close I seen she had that box Macon whittled for her. She leant over where I was setting on the couch and put it in my dress pocket. “I want you to keep it safe for me, Granny,” she said. “This is no place for it.”

Ever since I seen Myra that way, it seems to me I can hear my grandbaby moaning outside in the dark. It’s like when I heard that train whistle blowing the night Clio got killed. I’ve thought many times of putting the law on John Odom, but I don’t know what to accuse him of. Far as I know, he ain’t been beating on her. I never seen no bruises. But like I told Hacky that day in the truck, there’s other ways a woman can get beat up on. All I can do right now is to pray for Myra, that she gets herself out of this fix someway. I might not be around much longer to help her out of it. I’m heading toward seventy-seven years old next month and I’m tired. The doctor says I’ve got congestive heart failure. Here lately just walking around the house wears me out. My eyes has got so weak these old glasses don’t do me much good no more. It’s hard to believe, but a time will come when I won’t be in this house on the mountain. I made Hacky promise to look after Myra if anything happens to me and he said he would. He said he’s always stood by me and Macon and our younguns, and he don’t aim to quit now. That made me feel some better, but I still don’t know how to get my grandbaby away from that devil John Odom.

So all my kids are dead and gone and Myra might be lost forever. People probably wonders how I kept from losing my mind. Seeing one youngun go before you, much less five, is enough to ruin any mammy. I reckon I am ruint in a way. I can’t think straight no more. I forget the names of the craziest things, like flowers and biscuits and chairs. And you know I’ve buried five children and seen their dead bodies, watched them get sicker and sicker and not been able to help them a’tall, but the picture that vexes my mind the most is Myra when she opened the door of that house by the tracks. That’s the thing that’s done broke my heart in two, because she’s the one that saved me after all them others was gone. She’s how come me and Macon to get out of the bed all of them years. Myra’s the one I love the best of all, it don’t matter that I never bore her. She was mine anyhow.

I spent a long time trying to forget the first eight years of my life. For some it might be easy to shake loose their earliest memories, but not for me. No matter how hard I tried, there was always some reminder of childhood. Today it was seeing my mama’s blue eyes on a baby I was holding for the first time. Over the years there have been other things that took me back, the smells of loam and moss and ferny ground, the taste of ice-cold water. It’s been a while, though, since I saw the mountain outside of memory.

In 1990, when I was fourteen, I went up Bloodroot Mountain again after six years gone. It was a long walk, with Marshall Lunsford behind me and neither one of us saying a word. The mountain looked different than when I was small. A sawmill had carved a bald place in the land and the road was paved where it used to be dirt, but I knew we were getting close when we passed Mr. Barnett’s. His house was nearly buried behind a briar thicket, just a rusty roof with a stub of chimney poking out of the tangled green. The flag was up on his mailbox and the same dented truck parked in the weeds, glinting in what was left of the sun. He was probably too old to drive it anymore. I wondered if he would come out and if he would still know me, but his place was quiet and still.