Dogwood (5 page)

I remember the first day I saw Will. It was sixth grade, back when that was the top rung of elementary school. My family had moved a few miles east from the country to town. Wild, wonderful Dogwood, the gateway to the end of the world. No stoplight. One grocery store. Two gas stations directly across from each other on Route 60. The water treatment plant that sent a haze over the town.

I wore shiny shoes with buckles, socks to the knees, a ribbon in my hair, and a dress I held down during recess. I was trying hard to fit in with the others, but my clothes set me apart. Most girls wore jeans or shorts. I was so happy in that outfit, so secure and full of joy. Others stole the joy, and I returned home determined to mute my beauty as much as possible.

The instant Will walked through the door of the classroom, my face flushed. He had an air of confidence that none of the others had. A gentleness. An awareness of others. His body already lanky, his fingers already calloused and hardened by farm work, he glided into his chair instead of collapsing like the others.

Will wasn’t what anyone would call handsome, at least the way it was defined back then. There were slight imperfections:
his hair was too short, his clothes not in style—a product of life on a farm—and his ears were a bit large. He looked like Alfred E. Neuman without the overbite or goofy face.

But there was something about him that transcended outward definition or judgment. An innate sense of himself. He was the kind of boy who carried dreams in his torn back pocket—dreams others could never hope to see. Other boys fixated on pocketknives and bicycles and minibikes, but Will traded in the future. Whether that future was far away from the steep hills that locked the town in its own shadowy world or just down the road, I couldn’t tell. But I had no doubt, even in the sixth grade, that Will Hatfield would grab freedom by the throat and one day travel far. I could tell by the way he thumbed through his math book. I could tell by the excitement in his eyes when we studied science or art or English.

The teachers could tell it as well, and he endeared himself to them by remembering their birthdays and actually completing his homework.

I studied his shy movements around the other girls. He seemed at home on the baseball diamond, not bossing kids around or yelling at inept play but quietly, confidently attacking the game. He ran the bases of my dreams—he still does—his jeans sagging rounding second, tufts of dust pluming from the base paths, perfectly tucking his left leg under his right and sliding under the tag at third.

He looked at me that first day and flashed a smile—and took my breath away. He didn’t look again all day. When the teacher, an ancient woman with black cat-eye glasses, called on him to read, I followed along on the page. His voice was strong and deep, and the only flaw I found in it was the high-pitched, cackling laugh. When he thought something was funny, everybody knew it. He’d throw his head back and laugh with abandon. Other kids made fun of it, even imitated him, but he either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

Two days later, the class bursting at the seams, the principal appeared with a piece of paper and read the names of those who would journey to the new building. An extra class with a younger teacher. Mine was not on the list. His was. It was our first separation but not the last.

Sometimes I saw Will on the playground or in the field, but our paths rarely crossed. He rode the bus, miles back into the hills. I lived three blocks from school. I ate hot lunch or walked home to eat with my mother. He brought a brown paper sack and ate outside between innings, except when it rained and he sat on the steps outside the gym under the eaves.

Though Will seemed mostly disinterested in me, I caught him stealing glances. During games, class performances, or in gym class, which we shared, I saw him look my way and smile.

I thought of passing a note, but that seemed too forward. Maybe I could tell a friend who could tell one of his friends, but that seemed too desperate.

Our silence lasted until the spelling bee. I found myself one row ahead of him, a chair to the left, and saw him in my peripheral vision if I turned my head slightly to the right. Each time I did, he was looking at me, studying my hair, my back, my dress. It would have been even more exhilarating if I hadn’t been so competitive. Spelling was my thing. I had a natural sense of words and how they were correctly used, put together. In first grade I could hear a word and figure out how to spell it.

And this crowd wasn’t exactly much competition. I had memorized forward and backward the list of words the
Herald-Dispatch
gave out to contestants, knew every word and pronunciation and the origins of most. In the first round, six of the thirty-four participants misspelled their words, and everyone moved to fill in their seats.

Through the fourth round there were only ten of us left. In the fifth round, four more dropped out and Will took his place
beside me. I glanced at him, smiled, and focused on the teacher pronouncing the words.

“
Conscience
,” the teacher said.

It was the easiest word in the book. Just add
con
with
science
. “C-o-n-s-c-i-e-n-c-e.”

“Correct.”

Everyone clapped. Then it was Will’s turn.

“Your word is
rhythm
,” the teacher said.

Sweat formed on the back of his neck, and he pulled his right arm close to his body with his left hand. He seemed almost wounded. “R-h-y-t-h-m.”

The audience applauded until it was just the two of us. Chairs were removed and we stood together, closer than we’d ever been before.

“I’m sure you’re going to win,” I said, smiling. Confident.

Will leaned over and whispered something I couldn’t make out over the applause. “What did you say?” But the audience was quiet now, and I focused on the teacher.

I spelled
congratulate
correctly and stepped back.

He smiled at me.

“
Belfry
,” the teacher said. “Where the bells are.”

“B-e-l-l-f-r-y.”

A tinny bell rang.

I spelled
proclamation
correctly and the crowd applauded.

Will didn’t slump his shoulders or shove his hands into his pockets. He simply reached out a hand. I offered one in return and he squeezed it gently. “You’re really good,” he said. “You deserved to win.”

“You’ll beat me next time,” I said.

After school, as I walked home savoring the pleasure of the medal I wore on my sweater, I heard someone behind me in the tall grass.
I turned, saw Will’s face, and my heart fluttered. “I thought you rode the bus.”

“Need the exercise.”

I knew that wasn’t true. He would have to walk several miles to get home this way. “You can still catch your bus.”

Will shrugged. “Not today.”

He caught up with me and we walked side by side past the baseball field, the rusted backstop, and down toward the creek that led to the road. Water lapped over rocks and trickled through the town, and I wondered where the water would stop flowing, if it would find the Mud River and then the Ohio and eventually the Mississippi. Then the ocean. Our lives are like that, filled with thoughts that swim like minnows.

“You knew how to spell
belfry
,” I said.

He stopped and picked up a stick, broke it, and handed me half.

I didn’t know what to do, so I held it and looked at his eyes. There was something there, something I didn’t see in any other sixth grader.

“Got mixed up when the teacher said it was where the bells are,” he said.

“No way. You missed on purpose.”

Will climbed the steep bank, holding out a hand for me. He moved effortlessly, gliding, his legs as strong as fence posts. “Come on. I’ll race you.”

“I can’t race in these shoes,” I said.

He cackled. “No, with these. Throw yours in.”

We tossed the sticks in, and they landed in a quiet pool near the metal drain underneath the road. The sticks swirled in the circling water, touching each other slightly, then slowly moved toward the rippling water and rocks.

“I’m going to beat you twice today.” I giggled and clapped.

He laughed and we watched the water draw our boats away,
past the sandbar, skittering over rocks and chugging out of sight.

He grabbed my hand and started down the hill. “Following them is the most fun.”

But we had been so engrossed in what was before us that we didn’t hear footsteps behind us.

“Karin?” my mother called. “You come on home now.”

I turned, embarrassed. My cheeks flushed and something inside said I was bad, disobedient. Or maybe that
he
was bad. I grabbed my books from the dirt and hugged them tight. “Mama, I won the spelling bee today!”

She gathered me in and we walked home. I beamed, showing her the medal, and she fawned over it. When we reached the driveway, Mama looked back and stared. I had seen that look many times before. Once in a store in Charleston when I walked too close to some glass figurines. Eyes that communicated what words never could.

Stay away from my daughter, trash,
she seemed to say.

It wasn’t until I was inside that I looked at the road through the front window. Will had turned to walk the dusty road home. At the top of the hill, he veered left and cut through a field. He would have to traverse a few of them and cross the creek as well. His missing the word angered me, as if he had snatched my victory and was getting satisfaction out of it by following me home.

I went to sleep that night thinking of the bobbing, floating sticks and how they were like our lives. Carried along by a current bigger than either of us, oblivious to the obstacles ahead.

I rolled down the passenger-side window and let the wind blow through the car, fluttering my hair. It gave me a sense of freedom I hadn’t felt in a long time. Kids in car seats don’t like strong wind nor do husbands with receding hairlines.

In one long conversation we’d had on the lawn, Ruthie, through her genial poking and prodding of the soul, helped me see how much I had become a prisoner of small things. ChapStick. Tic Tacs. A favorite pen. A television program I simply couldn’t miss. Air-conditioning.

“You can measure your life by the things that control you. People’s reactions, for instance,” she said.

At that moment in the car, I did not care a bit about my hair, the way my blouse flapped in the breeze, or that we looked like such an unusual pair. Ruthie sensed it, I think, and smiled as she rolled her window down. It made me think of the tune “I’ll Fly Away,” because that’s what I thought her hair would do.

“How does it feel?” Ruthie said.

“Amazing,” I said. “Free. I get so caught up with what to pack in the kids’ lunches each day when they usually just throw the whole thing away. Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?”

“Just relax for a while. I packed us a nice lunch. But we do need something to drink, and I see the gas gauge is a little low.”

The Exxon station was just ahead, and Ruthie pulled up beside an empty pump. I got out and started the pump while she headed for the convenience store. She asked what I wanted to drink and I told her.

“I’ll pay for the gas,” she yelled over her shoulder.

I pressed the right buttons, and the pump numbers sped by. I collected some trash out of the backseat. The garbage can was full. A few ambitious bees flew sorties around a Dairy Queen cup, reminding me of the hornet’s nest when I was a kid.

“The can over here is empty, ma’am,” someone said behind me. “I can take that for you.”

It was a thin man in a gray shirt, his hands and fingernails dark and grimy. He reached for my trash, and something passed between us, a recognition.

“Karin? Is that you?”

I handed him the trash. “Yes. I’m sorry; do I know you?”

“Arron Spurlock. You used to—”

“Arron?” I gasped.

“You used to babysit my little sisters, Doris Jean and Judy.” He touched my shoulder and smiled as wide as the New River Gorge.

Being the oldest, Arron should have been named after his father and grandfather. In some families, names are passed down like old socks and whoever seems to fit them best keeps them. But Arron’s mother was the biggest Elvis fan on the planet, and though she had trouble with her spelling, she named him Arron Pressley Spurlock. He had become “Elvis” for obvious reasons.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” I said, looking from head to toe. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you. You sure have grown up.”

“Yes, ma’am, I guess so.” He looked at me curiously, as if
becoming a mother or the wife of the local pastor was as foreign to him as Thai food.

“What is it?”

Arron waved a McDonald’s bag and smiled. “It’s nothing. I just didn’t expect to see you here. I’m glad I did.”

“How are your parents? They well?”

“Tolerable, I guess. At least my mom. She has pleurisy, so it keeps her inside most of the time. Dad passed a few years ago.”

“Arron, I’m so sorry. I hadn’t heard.”

“Well, he had the black lung.”

“And your sisters?”

He rolled his eyes. “She’s still Doris Jean. Always will be, I guess. Judy’s married and moved to Akron with her husband. She has a couple of kids now.”

Ruthie came out of the store carrying a plastic bag that weighed more than she did. She listed to the right, and I was surprised she didn’t tip over. I introduced Arron, and Ruthie smiled and shook his hand. He wiped his hands on his pants twice before clasping hers, but she didn’t seem to mind.

“Let me help you put those things in your car,” he said, opening the back door and taking the plastic bag.

“They don’t make any like you in a slightly older model, do they?” Ruthie said.

Arron blushed. “No, ma’am, but I got a few uncles.”

“Maybe I should meet them.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He shut the door and stood back, nervously looking at the two of us. “So where are you lovely ladies heading today?”

I answered before Ruthie could open her wrinkled mouth. “We’ve planned a day trip to Clarkston. It was Ruthie’s idea.”

At the word
Clarkston
, Arron looked like I had said Auschwitz or Hiroshima. “That’s about four hours from here, isn’t it?” he said, quickly recovering.

“Not the way we drive,” Ruthie said. “Three and a half at the most as long as the smokies don’t get us.”

There was an awkward silence, and Arron glanced at his watch, then at the tinted front window of the store. “Well, I better be getting back to work.” He touched the brim of his hat. “Nice to see you again, Karin.”

We were a mile down the road, almost ready to hit the interstate, when Ruthie asked about Arron’s family. I told her about Mr. Spurlock and how mystified I was that my mother hadn’t given the news. “She usually tells me about every birth and death in the county, or I see it in the paper.”

“Maybe she did and you just forgot,” Ruthie said. “You were probably busy with those babies of yours. The whole world could have exploded when I was in the middle of my pregnancies and I wouldn’t have known it.”

She was right. I seemed to have the ability to focus fully on one thing, to narrow my life to certain tasks. At times I had to turn the radio off just to do the dishes. “Do you think that’s why I have such a difficult time sleeping?” I said after we turned onto the interstate. “I focus on one thing and can’t let it go until I’m finished?”

Ruthie shrugged. “That’s one way we cope with life. Makes it a little easier, I guess. Breaking it down to bite-size portions. You could have a lot worse things, if you ask me.” She opened her purse and pulled out a PayDay. I pulled the wrapper off for her, peanuts dropping on the front seat, and she picked at them like a bird taking communion. “One of life’s little pleasures. You want half?”

I shook my head and marveled that like a child she could take such delight in the candy bar. The night before, Darin had run into the kitchen and hugged his father. “I got new toothpaste!” he yelled. You would have thought he’d just won a trip to some exotic island. Later, he begged and whined, “But, Mom, I’m hungry for brushing my teeth!”

“You get much sleep last night?” Ruthie said as she chomped, the nougat sticking to her uppers and making her sound like some cartoon character.

I watched cars speed around us as Ruthie stayed about 20 mph under the speed limit. “No, I spent the night with a quotation book and Max Lucado.”

“Don’t tell his wife.”

I laughed. “You know what I mean. I get so tired that my eyes droop. I feel like I can’t stay awake another second, and then suddenly I’m awake and all I can think about is falling asleep again. By then, it’s over. I’ve lost the battle and have to do something else.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone yet who’s died of lack of sleep. Do you have a lock on that closet door of yours so nobody can walk in on you?”

“When it’s really bad, I’ll lock it, but most of the time I want to be available in case the kids get up and wander. That’s one good thing about it. I’m always available.”

“Your husband ever stay up with you?”

“He’s such a heavy sleeper. I don’t think he understands. It’s like trying to explain the ocean to someone who’s never seen it. How can you describe something so immense? or the way the sand feels?”

We eased into a rhythm of driving and talking and silence. I tried the radio once, an AM station giving the news about a highway fund being blocked at the capitol. The former governor was under suspicion of fraud. An investigation into three robberies at gentlemen’s clubs in the valley.

Our tires hummed on the road and provided the soundtrack for our trip, background music for the conversation. As we passed another of the seemingly endless patches of green trees coming to life, Ruthie began singing. I thought I had experienced it all until I heard her blast out “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

I joined in, which is what you have to do as a native of the Mountain State. Some people stand at the singing of the “Hallelujah Chorus.” West Virginians stand, at least in their hearts, at the singing of “Country Roads.” I remember the first time I heard it on a radio station, though the song seemed like it had always been there.

There’s something peaceful and melancholy about the way the words and the music coalesce, like the dirt roads that crisscross my state, that wind through the hills and rocks and trees and make their dusty way home. West Virginia has a soul that remains untouched by the outside world. No matter how many chain stores and restaurants try to take up residence, they seem strangely out of place. There are parts of the state where it seems no human being has set foot. Arrowheads still wash up on creek banks, remnants of life burrowing deep into the land. Take a lungful of air, especially in the spring, and you take in a fecund aroma of history. This is not the tidal plain smell of shrimp and salt water but an ambrosial aroma of manure and wet, fertile ground waiting for someone to turn it over and plant. The ground screams to be worked by farmers, yearns for the violation of the till and plow. To have seeds planted deeply in verdant soil.

Most people know West Virginia from news stories of tragedy. The torch the state holds is alcoholism and the lottery, and those who take but a cursory look will see only the vacant stares of children from a front porch littered with washing machines and spare tires. A bad Foxworthy joke. A redneck, hillbilly, barefoot, incestuous, drunk, blaze orange, country music, cigarettes-rolled-in-your-shirtsleeve, tobacco-chewing, NASCAR-loving cutout.

The Deep South has its poster children of Confederate flag-wavers and men in white sheets. West Virginia, since its inception a state not allied with the South, carries its emblems on its sleeve, the curving, unending back roads that seem to lead nowhere to those on the outside.

But not every road has an end.

A state defined by its political divisions—a Democrat, union stronghold for economic reasons, but flag-waving, committed to any war our country decides to fight.

Some think of West Virginia as a place they need to escape. But most people here, if they have a steady job, a good church, and a satellite dish, wonder why anyone would want to leave.

“You thinking about him?” Ruthie said, snapping me from my self-induced trance.

I told her my thoughts about our state, the people, the past, and the future. I should have known Ruthie was more concerned about the present.

“What’s your heart telling you right now?” she asked.

“That what we’re about to do is scaring me half to death. When I think of actually
seeing
Will again after all this time . . .”

“You told me about him watching out for you once. Were there other times he helped you?”

“I suppose there were. I think he was always watching out for me.”

“And you were attracted to him?”

“Yes and no. He seemed safe. He had a certain promise when he was younger, but as I compared him with others in high school, he seemed more like the kind of guy you went for if you wanted two kids and a trailer. You know? I measured people by what kind of chances they’d take, how far I thought they’d get out of the hollow.”

“He didn’t look like he’d move far?”

“Right. We talked once on a school trip—he drove his dad’s car and I didn’t want to ride the bus. He wouldn’t turn on the radio. He wanted to talk.”

“What did he want to talk about?”

“Plans after high school. College, that kind of thing. I said I wanted to go as far away as possible.”

“To get away from your parents?”

“From everything this town had done to me. Stifled me. Held me back.”

“Isn’t it interesting this is where you wound up?” Ruthie said. “Do you see it differently now?”

I checked the side mirror at the cars in a line behind us. “It’s ironic that I’d end up in a church I hated as a kid, yes. It’s ironic I’m fighting the same type of ladies I remember my mother fighting. But I kind of feel like I’ve come full circle and I’m not afraid to . . .”

“Face the truth?” Ruthie said quickly.

I looked in the mirror again.

Ruthie craned her neck. “What is it? What do you see?”

“There’s a dark car hanging back a few hundred yards. I thought I saw a car like that at the Exxon station—around the side.”

“You sure you just don’t want to answer my questions?”

I smiled and watched her give the gas pedal a slight touch.

Ruthie ran her hands across her knees, knocking peanut crumbs to the floor. “Are you afraid you’ll still have feelings for him?”

I glanced at her and frowned. “I have children. I have a good husband. And my rear end is widening. Oh, and I’ve made a promise to be faithful. You know, as much as the rest of the world says it doesn’t, that still means something. I don’t care if I had so many feelings my toes curl—it doesn’t change the facts or my choices.”