Amy Greene - Bloodroot

When I looked toward the church again, Granny and the Barnetts were finally heading for the truck. I jumped up and ran fast enough to beat them. I leapt over the side of the truck bed into the straw and dirt, dress billowing up. I rode home hugging myself against the keen spring wind, knowing I was late and John was waiting for me. As soon as Mr. Barnett let us out at the house, I vaulted over the side of the truck and took off. I heard Granny saying to the Barnetts, “Lord, I don’t know what’s got into that girl.”

I ran all the way to the springhouse with a stitch in my side, but I couldn’t slow down. It seemed I could already taste his lips, cold from the water he would drink from his palm. I only stopped running when the block hut came into view on a rise above me. When someone stood up out of the bushes on the opposite side of the spring where he had been squatting, I expected it to be John. But I saw the fair hair and the long, skinny legs and the smile I had carried all the way up the mountain wilted. It was Mark Cotter, holding a cane fishing pole in one hand and a string of fish in the other. For a moment we were both too startled to speak. The woods were quiet and still besides the wasps hovering in and out of the springhouse opening. Then he grinned in his lazy way. “Look who it is,” he said. “I ain’t seen you in a long time.” He came down the slope and splashed across the creek to where I stood. I scanned the trees, heart thudding in my ears, hoping his brother hadn’t come with him. “You found my good fishing hole,” he said, standing so close I could smell the salt of his sweat. “Don’t tell nobody and I’ll give you a bluegill.” He held up the string of dripping fish, rainbows shining on their scales.

“That’s all right,” I said, forcing a smile. “I won’t tell.” It was true, Mark and I hadn’t seen each other in a long time. He had become a man since I saw him last. It was more than the scruffy beard he had grown. There was something wiser about his eyes.

“I hope you know you’ve done broke my little brother’s heart,” he said after an awkward silence. “He’s been moping around the house like a sick puppy dog.”

I shifted from foot to foot, wondering how to get rid of him before John came along. “I’ve been meaning to walk up the hill and see Wild Rose.”

Mark shook his head. “Shoot, you’d be just as likely to see her out here running the woods. They never made a fence that could hold that horse.”

There was another silence. I glanced nervously at the pole leaning across his shoulder. “Looks like you’re on your way to the house. Tell Doug hello for me, okay?”

Mark grinned again, but not with his eyes. “What are you doing up here anyway?”

“Nothing. Just taking a walk.”

“Why don’t you set down here and watch me catch a fish?”

“I better not,” I said, looking down at my dress. “I’ve got my church clothes on.”

He held his hand in front of my face, black with soil from baiting hooks. “Since when was you scared of a little dirt?” He lowered his cane pole to the ground. “Here,” he said. “You can blame it on me.” He reached out and took hold of my arm, fingerprinting the sleeve of my dress. I tried to twist away but he wouldn’t let go. I was surprised to see a flash of anger in his eyes. I had never thought he might have wanted me as much as his brother did. That’s when I heard John’s footsteps coming up the slope behind us.

“What’s going on here?” he said. I turned around and the look on his face made my stomach lurch. His eyes seemed almost inhuman, mean and glittering black like a crow’s. I had the urge to take off running for home as fast as my legs would go.

“Who the hell are you?” Mark said.

John stepped between Mark and me. “You better move that hand.”

“It’s okay,” I said, but neither one of them seemed to hear.

Mark let go of my arm. “Watch it, buddy. This is my daddy’s land.”

“I don’t care whose land it is,” John said. “You don’t touch her.”

Mark’s face flushed a deep, ugly red. “She’s on my daddy’s property, too. I reckon I can do whatever I want to with her.”

Before I knew what was happening, John had Mark Cotter by the throat. The string of bluegill slid onto the mud at our feet alongside the fishing pole. “You better get on away from here,” John said through clenched teeth.

After what seemed a lifetime, he turned Mark loose. Mark stood still for a moment gasping for breath, rubbing at his throat where John’s fingerprints were fading. Tears of humiliation stood in his eyes. He looked at me in an accusatory way, as if I were the one to blame. Then he backed off and blundered into the trees, swatting vines and branches out of his path. I looked at the fish he had caught, left behind on the ground to rot in the sun, and felt a wave of pity for him so overwhelming I had to sit down on the bank. John watched Mark until he was gone and then lowered himself beside me.

“You didn’t have to hurt him,” I said, near tears myself. “He’s my neighbor.”

John put his arm around me and pulled me close. “I’m jealous-hearted, Myra. I don’t like nobody else touching you. I don’t even like your granny having you all to herself. It don’t seem right for her to be with you more than I am.” He took hold of my chin and tipped my face up to look at him. “I want to marry you,” he said, growing solemn. “But if you’re going to be with me, you belong to me. I can’t have it no other way.”

My heart leapt, what he had done to Mark forgotten. I stared at him, unable to speak. “I belong to you,” I said after a moment. “But it works both ways. I’m jealous-hearted, too. If we get married, you can’t have another woman for as long as we live.”

John leaned over and touched his nose to mine. “Hell, that’s easy,” he said. “You’ve done ruined me. I can’t even stand to think about nobody else.”

Looking back, we would have said anything to possess one another. If we had known we were making promises we couldn’t keep, it wouldn’t have mattered to us.

For two weeks, I walked around with my steps unburdened and light. I didn’t wonder anymore whether John was seeing Ellen Hamilton or any other woman behind my back. But soon after he proposed, just like that night a banshee wind came screaming down Main Street, I had another glimpse of the darkness to come. Near the middle of June, John picked me up and drove me down the mountain to a part of Millertown I’d never seen.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Will you quit asking me that? I said it’s a surprise.” He smiled, white teeth flashing. He twisted at the radio knobs as we passed pawnshops and seedy restaurants and then the junkyard, big hunks of car metal twinkling in the hot summer sun.

“I hate surprises,” I said, studying his profile. It took a second to realize he was turning into a lot by the railroad tracks, gravel crunching under the tires. I looked out the windshield at the tiny, peeling box of a house, the streetlight high on a pole, power lines hanging like black snakes stretched across the yard. I turned to him and waited, thinking he had pulled over to kiss me as he did sometimes, fingers wrestling through my hair.

“What do you think?” he asked, eyes bright.

“About what?”

“The house, goose. I rented us a place.”

I blinked hard, my chest going tight.

“Come on,” he said, getting out of the car. He dug in his pants pocket and produced a greasy-looking key dangling from a dull silver hoop. I stared out the windshield, mouth open. He laughed. “I got you good, didn’t I?”

He came around to open the passenger door and pulled me out, still laughing at my expression. “Let’s look inside. I ain’t even seen it yet. There was a man came in the store, said he had a place for rent cheap if we knew anybody. I said, as a matter of fact I do know somebody and you’re looking at him. He didn’t even ask for a deposit.”