Amy Greene: Bloodroot

“What makes you think he’ll help us?” Mammy asked.

“Why, Clifford’s always been a good neighbor,” Grandmaw said.

He was out on the yard splitting wood when me and Mammy and Grandmaw came up. He took off his hat when he seen us. My mouth hurt too bad to think about much but I took note of the fine figure Clifford cut when he stood up straight. He was long and tall with strong brown arms. I could see his muscles with the sleeves of his shirt rolled up. When we got close my nerves went away because of how kind his face was.

“Hello there, Clifford,” Grandmaw said.

“Hidee, Miss Ruth,” he said.

Then he nodded to Mammy. His face and ears turned red.

“How are you making it, Clifford?” Mammy said. “It’s been a long time since we was in school together.” She smiled and I pictured her as a girl. It crossed my mind that Clifford might think she was pretty. It made me feel funny to think of my mammy as a woman and not just the one who bore me. I wasn’t used to seeing her around men her own age. My daddy died when I was a baby, so I didn’t remember them being together.

“This’n here’s got the thresh,” Grandmaw said, and set me out in front of him by the shoulders. “I was hoping we could trouble you to help us out.”

The way Clifford looked at Mammy, I knowed he wouldn’t refuse her anything. Then he looked down and studied me real good. I felt a warmness spreading in my heart like I never knowed before. He had the kindest eyes I ever seen. He seemed familiar someway. I had the queerest thought that he was my daddy, even though I knowed my daddy was dead. He knelt down before me so our faces was close. I could smell his sweat where he’d been working in the heat. I stood still as I could, waiting to see what would happen. He took hold of my face so gentle, and it was like I always needed to be touched that way by a man’s fingers, after all them years being raised by women.

“Open your mouth, Byrdie,” Mammy said. Her voice was thick and fuzzy, like it sounded when she woke up in the mornings. It seemed to me like the world had quit turning and Mammy must have felt it, too. I did as she said and Clifford leaned in to cover my lips with his own. He blowed warm wind in my mouth and down my swelled-up throat. I could feel my lungs filling up with it. It was such a relief someway that I wanted to squall. He pulled back from me, still holding my face, and we looked for a while in each other’s eyes. It seemed like even the birds in the trees had quit making noise. Then Grandmaw said, “Well, that ort to do it.” I looked up at her and Mammy standing over us. Mammy’s face was white as a sheet. She was staring at Clifford with something like worship in her eyes. She’d felt the power of what he done the same as I did.

“Why don’t you come up and eat supper with us tonight?” Mammy asked. Her voice still sounded far off. “It’s the least we can do to thank ye.”

“Maybe tomorrow night,” Clifford said, and I could tell Mammy was disappointed. She probably figured he never would come.

Sure enough, the next day when I got out of the bed my thresh had cleared up. I was feeling better, setting out on the porch playing with a doll, when I looked up and seen Clifford coming. He waved his hat and I ran to tell Grandmaw and Mammy.

“Well, I’ll be,” Grandmaw said. “I never dreamt he’d turn up.” It was true Clifford was backward, but he was so struck on Mammy he couldn’t resist her. Pretty soon he was coming to supper just about every night, and bringing me and Mammy presents. He took us to town and the fair and all kinds of places. I got to where I loved that man just about better than anything, and so did Mammy. When he asked Mammy to be his wife a few months later, I reckon I was more tickled than she was. I got to wear baby’s breath in my hair to the wedding. After the knot was tied, I figured I had a new daddy. I started calling Clifford “Pap,” and all of us was happy.

DOUG

Besides Myra, Haskell Barnett was my only friend. After he pulled Myra away from that cistern, we were allies in my mind. The Barnetts’ grown children had moved up north and they were lonesome for the sound of small voices, so they treated Myra and me like their own flesh and blood. We loved playing at their house. Mrs. Barnett was always baking and Mr. Barnett showed us how to build forts and shoot with slingshots. Mark stopped visiting once he got older, but Myra and I still went there even after we were grown. Sometimes Myra and Mrs. Barnett embroidered or cooked together while I helped Mr. Barnett with the outside chores. He paid me but he didn’t have to. It was nice being alone with him. He was quiet when I needed him to be, but he also told good stories.

When I was eleven, we took our first walk together. All afternoon I had handed him tools as he worked under his truck, until he slid out into the springtime sun and said, “I need to stretch my legs. You want to come with me?” We went far up the mountain, but not to the top because the way was too rugged and steep. Not even Daddy ventured to the summit anymore, after breaking his leg as a boy. Daddy said there was a grassy bald on top of Bloodroot Mountain where his grandfather used to drive his cattle to. It was a dangerous trip but the high mountain grass was better for the cows and it was cooler up there in summer. Walking with Mr. Barnett, I wondered if my greatgrandfather’s motivations had less to do with his cows and more to do with spending time alone where it was quiet, away from his duties on the farm. I thought about Daddy’s story, how one day he decided to see the top, even after he’d been forbidden. He fell trying to scale the steep cliffs and lay for a day and a night before he was found. He claimed to have seen some frightening things while he was lying up there but wouldn’t say what, only that if I ever went farther than the big rock over the bluff, he’d skin me alive. I never would have risked it, but sometimes I dreamed of my great-grandfather driving his cows up those rocky slopes to reach a meadow that must have been like paradise to him.

The woods looked different walking with Mr. Barnett than when I was alone. At the time the change was hard to understand, but looking back I see why. It was because he still observed the mountain with wonder, even though he knew it better than I did. As we passed through dark patches of shade into clearings like rooms of light, he paused to touch ridges of fungus growing on bark, stopped to catch a moth and study its wings, bent to pick up an arrowhead. When I was with him I saw it too, how magical everything was.

We came to a place where the cottonwoods were thick, shedding their seeds in drifting white tufts. Small clouds floated all around us like something from a dream, lighting on Mr. Barnett’s shoulders and the top of his head, where the graying hair was still matted down from his cap. We stood watching for a while, faces lifted to the sun. “Look, Douglas,” he said. “How pretty it is. Makes me think about the Lord.”

His words made my arms prickle with goosebumps. I understood what he meant so well that, after a few seconds of holding my breath, I couldn’t resist telling him my secret. “That’s how I feel about Myra,” I said, closing my eyes so I didn’t have to see his face. “She makes me think about Jesus.” I expected him to laugh, but he didn’t. He put his hand on my shoulder. He must have already known. From then on, we took walks together at least once a week. The only thing I couldn’t tell Myra was how much I loved her, so I told Mr. Barnett all about it instead. He never said I was too young to be in love, even though I was only eleven. When I told him how I felt about Myra, he believed me.

I didn’t expect before I started talking how much there was to tell, but Mr. Barnett didn’t mind. He knew I needed our walks and he made time for them. I poured my heart out to him a thousand times over the years, not bothering in those cool autumn evenings or snow-dusted mornings or shade-speckled summer afternoons to cover my broken tooth. He didn’t look at me anyway. That’s what made it so easy to talk to him when I could barely say two words to anyone else but Myra. It was how he reached out to touch a leaf with a worm inching across it, how he bent to examine a hoof mark or paw print, how he plucked a persimmon and popped it into his mouth, as if he wasn’t listening. But he always was. “She’ll come around, Douglas,” he’d say. “One of these days.”