Every morning I’d unlock the back door and let myself in the house. Usually I’d get to work while Barbara Cochran was still asleep, but that day she came down the stairs wrapped in her pink chenille bathrobe and said, “Byrdie, honey, would you mind to clean the oven this time? I’ve got people coming in from North Carolina for the weekend.” She always talked to me real sweet, the same way she spoke to her little house dog.
She bustled around all morning and didn’t even eat the breakfast I fixed. Around ten o’clock she lit out for the beauty shop. I was straightening up her room and seen she’d left her jewelry box open, all in a fizz getting ready for her company. That silver box was always setting on her dressing table and I’d run the feather duster over it without thinking twice about what was inside. I was a God-fearing girl and Barbara Cochran never had any reason to mistrust me before. But I’d slipped in the back door that morning with Macon Lamb on my mind. We was running off to get married. Pap didn’t want to let me go being just fifteen, but I couldn’t wait no longer to be Macon’s wife. It was all I could do to concentrate on my chores. The only reason I went to work at all that day was to collect my pay. She left it every Friday on the kitchen table under a candlestick.
I was fixing to close the jewelry box back when that ring caught my eye. It was a man’s ring and what it was doing in a woman’s box I’ll never know. It sure didn’t look like anything Bucky would wear. I don’t know the history of that ring either, or what it meant to Barbara Cochran, but it must not have been much because I don’t believe she ever even noticed it was missing. She never asked me one thing about it. Granted I never did go back to work for Barbara Cochran because Macon was the old-fashioned kind that thinks a woman should keep her place at home, but I did run into her in town a few times over the years. She was just the same as ever, talking to me like she might scratch me behind the ears any minute.
I seen the ring in that tangle of riches and it seemed too dark of a red to be ruby. Might have been garnet, I still don’t know for sure. It was like them blood-colored drops of root sap Macon showed me up on the mountain, a cluster of precious stones the shade of the love that was running all through me dark and deep. I snatched it up before I even thought, like my hand had a mind of its own. I stuffed it in the sole of my shoe and walked on it the whole time I was cleaning Barbara Cochran’s house. End of the day I took my pay out from under the candlestick and left a note in its place, saying I wouldn’t be back to work no more, as I was getting married to Macon Lamb.
I left the Cochran place and limped on that bloodred ring all the way to the cornfield where me and Macon agreed to meet, holding back tears of pain. I reckon I felt too guilty to carry it in my hand. I went fast down the third row of corn like we planned, stopping just long enough to kick off my shoes and take out the ring. I must have sounded like a storm rustling through the corn because Macon was grinning when he stepped out, head and shoulders spangled by the sun falling down through the stalks. When we kissed all of them long, skinny green bodies was like an audience for us. Then I pulled back, heart working overtime, and asked him to hold out his hand. He did and I dropped the ring into it. He opened his eyes and whistled at the beauty in his palm. He studied it closer and said, “Where in the world did you get a thing like this?” and I blurted out, “That old Barbry Cochran gave it to me for a wedding present.” My face was so hot I know it had to been red as fire but he never questioned me, even though it didn’t make a lick of sense given the kind of person we both knowed Barbara Cochran was. I hope he always figured I took
that ring and just didn’t say nothing because he wanted to keep it as much as me. I could tell he felt like I did about them red stones. I’d like to believe we was in it together and I had no secrets from him. The guilt of stealing that ring devils me to this day, but back yonder in the cornfield, when Macon tried it on his finger, I didn’t feel as bad. It fit so good, seemed like it had finally been give back to its rightful owner.
DOUG
When school let out the summer of my fourteenth year, it was like being turned loose from prison. All three of us were in high spirits when we got off the bus at the foot of the mountain, laughing and running most of the way up the dusty road. Mark and I waited outside as Myra stopped to ask her granny if she could visit Wild Rose before supper. She came out smiling, cheeks flushed and hair blowing back as she ran to us.
We were panting by the time we made it to our house but Mark wouldn’t let us go in for a drink of water. He said, “I got something better in the chicken coop.” I followed Mark and Myra out to the tree line where the old coop leaned next to the wire fence. Mark had to wrestle the door open and the stink hit us right away. Daddy used to store junk in there but the smell of chicken droppings was still musty and strong. We climbed over the rusted tools and tractor parts and broken dishes and made a place to sit in one corner. Mark reached between some boxes and pulled out a jar of sloshing liquid.
“White Lightning,” he said.
Myra covered her mouth, eyes wide. “Where’d you get that?”
“This old boy at school, Buddy Roach. His daddy makes it.”
“You better hope Mama never finds it,” I said.
Mark grinned and held the dirt-smeared jar up to the light falling through the chicken wire. “I believe I can outrun her,” he said, and took a long swig. He squeezed his eyes shut and coughed and wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. Myra laughed and clapped her hands. I twisted my head away, burning with jealousy.
Mark was laughing, too, trying to catch his breath, eyes streaming water. Then he held out the jar to Myra. “I dare you,” he said. “Just one sup.”
My back stiffened. I wanted to reach out and grab her wrist as she took the jar, halting it on the way to her lips, but my dread of being mocked won out. I knew Mark would tell me not to be a chicken and Myra would probably think less of me, too. I saw how she was looking at him. Even if she liked me best, it was my brother she admired.
At first she thrust the jar back at Mark, spluttering and choking, but he handed it back to her. “First drink always burns going down,” he said. “You’ll get used to it.”
He was right. We passed the jar around a few times and the more we drank, the easier the fiery liquid went down and settled in my stomach, radiating heat. I kept watching Myra and before long her face looked different to me, cheeks and eyes bright in a way I didn’t like. After a few drinks the world tilted each time I moved, but I didn’t refuse the jar when it came to me. Myra and Mark seemed to find everything funny. Pretty soon they were laughing at nothing, looking at each other and busting out in foolish giggles. Moonshine didn’t have the same effect on me. I just felt dizzy and green around the gills. I was about to pretend I heard somebody coming, anything to get out of the stinking heat of the chicken coop, when Myra said, “I want to go somewhere.”
Mark took another long swig from the jar. “There ain’t nowhere to go,” he said. “That’s the trouble with being stuck up here on top of a mountain.”
“This isn’t the top of it,” Myra said. “Granddaddy went to the top and he said you could see all the way to town.” Her words sounded slurry. I took the jar from Mark and forced myself to drink, even though I was heading fast toward being sick.
“It’s not that high,” I said. Myra wobbled getting to her feet. She stood there swaying in the slick-bottomed shoes she’d worn to school, not made at all for climbing.
“My daddy’s been, too,” Mark said. “He claims there’s a field up yonder.”
Myra’s eyes lit up. “There’s a field? Maybe that’s where Wild Rose goes when she gets loose.” I could picture Rose grazing, long neck bent, in my great-grandfather’s mountaintop paradise. I knew Myra would never rest until she saw it.
“Let’s go up there,” she said.
Mark tried to get up and they both laughed when he tripped over the rusty tines of a rake and nearly fell back down again. “I will if you will,” he said.
I couldn’t keep quiet anymore. “Don’t you remember what happened to Daddy?” I asked Mark, trying to sound calmer than I felt. “It’s too steep of a climb.”
Then Myra said something that cut me to the bone. “Why do you have to be such a baby all the time?” I could feel the blood draining out of my face.
Mark slapped me hard on the back and I almost tipped over. My head was swimming. “Buck up, private,” he said. “Have some gumption about you.”
Myra narrowed her eyes at me, as if they were having trouble focusing. “If he’s too yellow,” she said, “we’ll just do it without him.”
I stood there for a minute unable to speak, hating both of them, until Mark said, “If we’re going we better head out, so we can make it back before supper.” I could have told him there was no way we’d be back before supper. We were guaranteeing ourselves a whipping, but I kept quiet. I moved to let them pass and then followed them out of the chicken coop into the sun. We looked over our shoulders as we ducked under the fence, Mark holding the barbed strands apart for Myra, and disappeared into the thick pine trees that marked the beginning of our woods. Mark and Myra stumbled ahead, half leaning on each other, and I wanted to knock their heads together. I thought of turning back and telling Daddy what they were up to, but in the end I stayed my course.
The climb was easy at first. There was a footpath worn up through the trees, but I didn’t feel any better about the fix I was in. It didn’t help how the moonshine sloshed back and forth in my stomach. Several times I had to stop with my hands on my knees until a dizzy spell passed. At first Mark and Myra pretended they were still having fun. I tensed up each time she slid on loose rocks but Mark would get behind her and push, tickling her ribs under her blouse. It wasn’t long, though, before their giddiness wore off.
The terrain wasn’t very rugged but it labored straight up through trees so tall we couldn’t see their tops even when we craned our necks.
After we had walked for what seemed like hours, sweating and pale and thirsty, the footpath began to disappear under a scrawl of twisted roots and ferns. I was so sick-feeling, it took every ounce of my will not to give up and sit down. At some point Mark must have realized it was still a long way to the top. I could see our predicament dawning on his face. Now he would be the baby if he suggested turning back. I was heartened a little to see my brother getting his comeuppance, and relieved that the climb wasn’t as dangerous as we had been told.
But just when I began to think Daddy had exaggerated, we came to a place where it seemed the mountain’s rock core had erupted through the pebbled dirt surface of the slope and heaved it almost in two, each side studded with scrubby bushes and tall, thin trees jutting at angles across the divide. It was still daylight and not much cooler in spite of the elevation but there was fog up ahead, curling close to the ground and clinging to the tree trunks. We all stopped and Mark and I exchanged nervous glances. I knew he wanted me to be the yellow baby she had called me, to let on like he was only turning back to appease his cowardly little brother, but he wasn’t going to get away with it. Then Myra started climbing again, maybe imagining Wild Rose grazing in a mountaintop meadow, or maybe just being stubborn. We had no choice but to go on behind her.
I mustered what little strength I had left and pushed myself upward, arms heavy and tongue dry and the rancid taste of moonshine still thick in the back of my throat. The incline was almost vertical and it was a struggle to keep my balance on the rocks. I bit my lip, shaking with exhaustion, trying to see through the sweat in my eyes. When I glanced up, I realized that Myra was out of sight. She had disappeared into the fog and Mark wasn’t far behind. There was nothing between the leaning trees but blank sky and the mist that had risen up to claim her. I went cold with dread and scrambled to catch up with them. That’s when I began to lose my hold, fingernails clawing for purchase in the crumbling dirt. In those slow seconds before dropping, heavy and helpless like in a dream of falling, I turned my head to the side and saw another outcropping. Some of the pines there were broken off with their tops bowing down. Between the rise I clung to and the mountain’s other jagged face a buzzard was circling. Then my arms and legs gave out and I was flailing backward, hands
searching in vain for something to grab. The tumble down was fast, a blur of ground and sky, before my head cracked on a stone.
Mark said later I wasn’t out for long because my eyes were open when they got to me. The first thing I remember is Myra bending close and I was glad to see that she was sorry. She never said so but she didn’t have to, the guilt was all over her face. Mark helped me up and my head hurt so bad that I almost passed out again. It felt like a bowling ball on the end of my neck. They dusted me off and examined my scrapes and cuts before we started down. I’ll never forget how Myra looked back over her shoulder into the fog. That night I was so dizzy and sick that I stumbled out of bed and threw up twice. Afterward I lay in my room, head pounding and backside raw from Daddy’s belt, thinking about what Tina Cutshaw had said in fifth grade, that bad things would happen to me if I kept on loving Myra. I guess I knew even back then how things would turn out.
BYRDIE
The summer after we got married, Macon took me home to Blood-root Mountain and I been here ever since. Them was good years when I first came here to live. I’d set on the back steps looking off through the trees, breaking beans or shucking corn, or weaving me a rug for the floors. Sometimes a wind would come along smelling so sweet, like creek bank mud and pine needles and rainy weather. It’d lift my hair off of my shoulders and kiss my forehead the same way Macon did at night, and I’d know for sure I belonged here. But I did get homesick sometimes. I missed Mammy and Pap and our cabin in Piney Grove. They was less than five miles from the foot of the mountain and we still seen each other at church, but it was hard to be away from them during the week. Sunday afternoons Mammy would cook dinner for me and Macon and as much as I loved our house on the mountain, I’d wish sometimes to crawl in my feather bed up in the loft and sleep the day away. I was jealous of my time with Mammy and Pap and it was irksome when our Sunday dinners got interrupted. Word had got around about Pap’s gift for healing and many Sundays there’d be a knock on the kitchen door. He’d get up from dinner and somebody would be standing at the back steps with a baby on their
hip. Pap would take the baby around the cabin, I guess for some privacy, and cure its thresh like he done mine. Then he’d come back in and set down at the table like nothing ever happened. Just being around Pap for a little while would set everything right with me and I’d head back up the mountain with Macon, happy as a lark again.