Amy Greene - Bloodroot

BYRDIE

I never will forget the first time Macon took me up Bloodroot Mountain. It was the spring of 1913, not long after that day we hid Easter eggs. He lived up here and took care of his pap that had a stroke and his two sisters after their mammy died. We had to take a mule and cart, because there wasn’t no roads back then. There was just a dirt track that you could ride a horse or mule on. It was getting to be afternoon and the sun glared in our eyes all the way up the mountain. Shadows fell across the road and I was nervous. Mammy hadn’t wanted to let me go but I had begged Pap. Now I was having second thoughts. It seemed like Macon was taking me off to some hainted place. I pictured all kinds of creatures hiding in them woods, but they was pretty even though they was thick. The creek was pretty, too, rushing down off the mountain alongside the track. I tried to sit back and enjoy the ride but every time I looked down my belly sunk. It was a long ways to the valley below. By the time we got up here I was about half sick. Then we rounded a curve and glimpsed the house up on a hill with a little barn off to the side, the sky bright blue over top of its red tin roof. The sun was shining down on it through the trees, the edges of the leaves tinged with gold. It looked so nice my heart fluttered.

Right when I thought we’d never make it, we started up the path to the house. Macon said, “Yonder it is.” From the minute I seen this place, I knowed I was home. Macon and his sisters had kept it up good. The paint on the house looked fresh and the tin roof had a pretty sheen to it. The barn looked new and there was hogs in the lot. There was flowers of every color and birdhouses in the trees. I didn’t know it yet, but Macon had built them hisself. When we got out of the cart, Macon’s sisters came to meet us, both of them quite a bit younger than him. They looked alike, skinny little things named Becky and Jane. I couldn’t wait to get ahold of them younguns and fatten them up.

Walking across the yard, Becky said, “I got some beans, but they ain’t soft yet.”

Macon asked me, “Why don’t we take a walk before supper?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “These ain’t walking shoes.”

“Surely a country gal like you’s had a few blisters. I believe you’ll be all right.”

Macon took ahold of my hand and led me behind the house, dragging me up through the trees until I was just about give out. He was laughing at me by the time we got there. It took forever and I was starved. I figured dinner was already on the table.

“You crazy thing,” I said to Macon. He pulled me close and kissed me hard.

“Looky here,” he said, pointing at the ground. He was panting, just about out of wind his own self. “This here’s why they call it Bloodroot Mountain.”

“What is?”

Macon knelt and pulled me down with him. “These here flowers.” He rubbed a white petal with his finger and that tenderness made my heart ache. Then he started to dig around the flower with his hands. I didn’t know what he was doing, but I didn’t want to ask. It was so quiet, except for the sounds of mountain woods. It felt like a ceremony, like we was in church down there on our knees. Macon pulled the flower out of the ground and held it in his hands where I could see the root. It was fleshy and about as thick as a finger, looked like part of a human being. I got cold chills all over. Something came whispering through the trees, sounded like voices or a long breath. Just like that day in the churchyard, I smelled Macon, the musk of his whiskers, the clean of his clothes. Then he fished out his knife and cut the root in two pieces. When I seen that blood seeping out it was like everything slowed down. Home rushed through my mind, thoughts of Mammy and Pap and my childhood days in Chickweed Holler. It seemed like my whole life was leading up to this very minute. I had a bad urge to turn around and run fast as I could back down the mountain, but then Macon looked at me and his birthmark darkened like it did when he got excited about anything. I thought of Myrtle saying I’d walk one day on foreign ground and decided this was as foreign a ground as my feet would touch. From then on the soles of them quit itching. I made my choice and that was it. Macon was my home and far as I was concerned any wedding we had was just for show. I’d done cleaved myself to him right yonder under the trees, kneeling over that bloodroot flower. Looking at its red root sap, I was overcome with something that felt like the Holy Ghost. I seen all the generations that would come out of me and Macon. I seen our blood mixed up together, shining there in the gloomy light.

DOUG

The Sunday after Daddy brought Wild Rose home, Mark whispered to Myra during preaching, “We got a horse.” Mama whipped around and shot him a look, so he hushed. Myra didn’t seem that interested, but after the service she was bored enough to come with us up the mountain to see Wild Rose. Walking to the fence, I had an uneasy feeling. I could sense Myra moving away from me. I wanted to grab hold of the floating skein of her hair as if we were in a cave and might get lost from each other. But I hung back as Mark led her on, calling for the horse with a handful of sweet corn.

We had to cross the first hill to find Wild Rose, and Mark and Myra took off chasing each other. She was giggling and out of breath, the belt of her green dress dragging the ground like a dead garter snake. When Mark was around I usually found myself tagging along behind them. I ran to keep Myra in my sight. She skidded to a stop when she saw Wild Rose grazing on the next hill. Mark tripped and went sprawling, the corn flying out of his hand. “Shoot,” he said, still laughing. He tried to look up Myra’s dress as she stood there awestruck. Wild Rose lifted her head and looked at us. I thought she would take off as she always did when people came close to her. But it was different this time. She lengthened her neck toward us and sniffed the air, then walked slowly to where we stood, muscles working under her velvet hide. Even Mark got quiet. The horse kept coming until she stood in front of Myra, close but still out of reach. I wanted to shout or clap my hands, anything to drive Wild Rose away, but I couldn’t move.

“She’s got blue eyes,” Myra said.

“She’s a paint horse,” Mark said, trying to recover a few kernels of corn. “They got eyes like that sometimes.”

“They look like yours,” I said. I don’t know if Myra heard me. Her fingers were trembling at her sides, eager to touch the horse’s white-streaked nose. Wild Rose stared at Myra, hide twitching. When Myra finally reached out her hand, the horse got spooked and galloped away. Myra stared after her for a long time. Like Daddy, she was smitten. But I knew she loved Wild Rose for a different reason than Daddy did. Daddy loved her because she was something different than he was. Myra loved Wild Rose because they were the same. I guess it doesn’t matter why, but both of them loved her better than they loved me. I moved closer to Myra as we stood in the pasture, trying to claim her back somehow.

“That horse is crazy,” Mark said, getting to his feet and knocking clods of dirt from the knees of his good pants. “Ain’t no use fooling with her.”

BYRDIE

If I think too much about John Odom wearing that ring I get mad enough to bite nails in two. The first time I seen it was at the Cochrans’ house the day me and Macon snuck off to get married. I used to walk all the way over yonder to work with my big ears hid under a headscarf. I had to start out when it was still dark if I meant to get there in time to fix the breakfast. Most times I’d show up on the doorstep already wore out.

That dairy farm they lived on stunk to high heaven, but you’d never know it by the way Barbara Cochran put on airs. Bucky was the biggest farmer in three counties and they was the richest people I knowed. Bucky came from money to start with, before he ever decided to farm. His pap was a doctor and I always heard Bucky was a disappointment because he didn’t get none of the family brains. Used to be the church’d hold baptisms over at Slop Creek, which runs down off the mountain and through Piney Grove, but they had to quit after Bucky came in with his spotted heifers and dirtied up the water. Now them boys of his has built chicken houses that’d knock you down in the summertime. I swear I can smell them all the way up here. That’s how them Cochrans are. It don’t matter to them about their neighbors, as long as they’re raking in the money.