Lost (29 page)

The aroma of breakfast, of side bacon and eggs, fried potatoes, fresh buttermilk biscuits, and the lovely tart scent of perked coffee—all overlaid with the faint hint of wood smoke in the room next to where she lay. The old kitchen held the ingrained aromas of smoked meat, of all the bounty of the land—potatoes and turnips and onions, the lingering residue of good home-cooked meals prepared and eaten there. It saturated everything, the wainscoting, the moldings, the fabric on the chairs.
It's like home
. Somehow on the battered waves of her unconsciousness, Leona had been brought here. She had come home.

The house sagged in the middle like a rickety ship. The walls were out of plumb. Pictures of stern ancestors in ornate chalk frames dangled away from the wall as if hovering there. The floor had buckled and banked. With a groan, massive oak wardrobes and dressers skittered forward now and then. Doors clicked open unexpectedly as much as the width of a body before they stopped. The house was settling, corner by creaking corner, into the ground.

That morning the door opened and the wonderful flavor of country breakfast flooded the room. Without wasting time, Vivian Turner went to the two radios stacked on top of each other and flipped a dial. The morning light revealed a mottle of brown spots edging her gray temples. She shoved her sweater sleeves up, put her hands on her hips to listen, and glanced at Leona. “Oh,” she said, “I'm glad you're awake. Now I won't worry about botherin' you. Don't want to miss my weatherman.” She turned the dial up a bit more. The battery radio hummed; static crackled; the polished voice became more and more distinct.

“…
Road crews continued to work round the clock last night and early this morning in an effort to clear the streets of our nation's capital as the worst blizzard in two decades battered the Eastern Seaboard. Record amounts of snow have fallen from North Carolina to New Jersey, only to be complicated by high winds. Cities and towns in hardest-hit Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland are reported to be without power. In some areas telephone service has been disrupted. Forecasters now predict another three to five inches of snow today in most areas before the storm moves out to sea
.”

“That's us,” Vivian said. “Snow ever' which way and no end in sight.”

Static hissed and snapped in the radio. “
Now from our local desk: Police report no progress in the suspected kidnapping of two Pennsylvania children
—” Vivian turned the dial and the staticky voice faded to nothing.

Aghast, Leona sat staring at the wooden cabinet of the radio. The announcer's voice went on reverberating in her mind like a recurring spasm. The contraction around her eyes and nostrils was slight, the whitening of her lips faint, but as she struggled for self-control she could almost feel her cheeks grow scarlet, as if she had been slapped very hard. Fearing the worst, she still had to face Vivian and see what effect the news had had.

Burning with guilt, Leona looked straight at Vivian, and the kind woman stared back, hard, for a moment. Does she know? Does she think it's me? Did the kids tell her?

Vivian frowned. “We saved what we could from your car.” She nodded toward the row of luggage near the foot of the bed. “I'm afraid we didn't get everything. Hardesty even walked back down there the next morning, but he didn't come up with much. He did get your keys. Thought you might want 'em. I hope you don't care, but I had them kids pick out their suitcases so they'd have something to wear.”

Fear again, raking Leona's nerves. Did they go through everything? “No,” Leona said, unable to look at her. “It's all right. Is my car—it's completely ruined, isn't it?”

“It's upside down on the creek bank. From the looks of things, you musta been flyin'.”

Leona nodded distractedly. “Yes. It got completely away from me.” She looked at the battered suitcases. Her fingers were shaking when she touched her forehead. “I'd like to get up and see the children. Why haven't they been in to see me?”

“Well, for one thing, they're still asleep. And furthermore I told 'em, I said, ‘You kids just stay outa here and leave Leona alone. She needs to lay up and heal herself.' But I'll leave the door open, if you want me to, so you can see that they're all right.” Then she was gone.

A wave of nausea rose in Leona's throat, followed by a flush of weakness. What does she know? They must have gone through my things. She knows my name. When she heard Vivian go upstairs to wake the children, she forced herself up in spite of the pain, slipped to the end of the bed and checked the briefcase. The bottles of medicine were smashed—they'd have to be thrown out, along with the newspaper clippings about Mamie—but the Browning and the money appeared to be undisturbed. At least, it appeared that they hadn't gone through it. She let her body sink backward on the bed, and slipped the briefcase down between the night table and the dust ruffle, to keep it safe from other hands. Turning her head on the pillow, she looked out the snowy window.

She didn't know what she expected to see outside, but her sense of foreboding was bottomless, and one thing was certain—out there somewhere, perhaps not very far away, the police were looking for them right now. And someone else was, too. Someone else.

Throughout that first slow day of wakefulness, Leona listened to the children in the kitchen, catching glimpses of them and picking out their voices. “That's mine,” Walter said. “No, she gave it to me. She said I could have it.” Patsy's chatter. “Give it to me, then,” Vee said. “If you're gonna fight over an old dress sash, I'll just put it up.” Then Walter said, sulking, “But I need it for my sword.” Twice Leona heard another child's voice and thought it must be Mamie, but she couldn't be certain. The children called the tall, gaunt woman Aunt Vee. She took care of things: settled their disputes, soothed their ruffled feathers, fed them, tucked them in at night. She was coarse-acting and coarse-talking and usually she wore men's clothes—work shirts and bib overalls and frayed sweaters. She was strict but kind with them. There was another voice, too, scratchy and tremulous but quieter, harder to hear.

It was toward evening before Leona really allowed herself a respite from her tension and fear. She opened her eyes to a pure, harmonious peace. The house seemed empty and vast, an infinite well of tiny noises: the fire still burned in the stove near her bed, a clock ticked quietly. She could no longer hear the children, but through the window she could see them dashing about in the snow. Her head was clear; she realized she felt very little pain in her body. What a luxury it was to allow herself to bask in this lull of deep comfort and tranquillity.

The storm had abated; against the darkening sky, the snow-fields glowed like a luminous, depthless pearl. For the first time, Leona began to assimilate exactly where she was, situating the house in relation to the sheds and outbuildings and the more distant, snow-shrouded barn. Into the view framed by the window came Vivian, carrying a large basket. Dressed in her thick winter clothes, she paused, spoke over her shoulder, and a man came into the frame behind her. They took different paths: Vivian went into a shed with the children trailing after her, and the man stooped at the woodpile just beyond the weathered picket fence. That must be Hardesty, Leona thought.

Even wrapped up for the raw cold, he presented an image of vitality and good health. That was her initial impression of him—how vigorous he looked. He seemed unaffected by the weather, moving about through the snow with easy unconcern.

Immediately, he launched into his task, setting the logs on the low stump, then straightening and lifting the axe and driving it down into the wood. Although it was muffled by the window glass, she could hear the dull crack of the axe as it met its mark, the splintering of the wood. His actions seemed to be a natural extension of the cold weather, the glowing dusk. Again and again, he brought the axe down, the air ringing with the recurrent crack. How perfect, she thought.

There was a hard, rough elegance about him. He hung his coat and hat on the fence palings, then wiped his forehead with his shirt sleeve, unaware of her, unaware of himself. She guessed him to be about her age, but from some angles he looked older and, she thought, dignified in his own way. His lack of self-consciousness appealed to her. He shifted his shoulders lightly and glanced into the woods, watchful; then his vitality rose and he went back to work. She could see his shoulders shift, pressing into his shirt when he swung the axe. An ordinary action for him, but she found it almost hypnotic. Occasional breezes stirred up whirling ghosts of frost, and when they settled he was there; she was transfixed by him, drawn to him. The heave of his shoulders became a continuous natural rhythm in the air.

Eventually, Vivian and the children reappeared, coming toward the house. He gathered an armload of kindling and joined them. Leona heard the kitchen door close behind them—he was speaking to Vivian. The timbre of his voice sounded out of place in the house.

All at once, his voice grew closer. He's coming in here, Leona thought. She quickly pushed herself up and a sharp pain beat inside her head. She tried to straighten the bodice of her gown, but before she had time to do much of anything, he came through the doorway and handed her a cup of steaming coffee. “You should have something,” he said. “A little coffee won't hurt you.”

She was so unaccustomed to having anything brought to her by a man that it rendered her speechless for a moment. How kind, she thought. “How nice of you,” she said. She tried to look at him, but the room was as gloomy as the evening outside, and the pain in her head made it difficult. Perhaps mistaking her hesitation for reluctance, he had withdrawn to the doorway, holding his hat in his hand.

She started to ease around to sit up. “Stay where you are,” he said. “I'm just glad to see you're feeling better. We've been through quite a lot together, you and me.” A grin widened his cheeks.

“You must be Mark Hardesty. Vivian's neighbor.”

“That's right,” he said. “And you're Leona. We know that much.”

“I've wanted to say thank you,” she said. “You came to get me, didn't you? With Vivian?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said, shifting to formality. “But don't feel obligated. I was glad to do it.” He rubbed his chin with the back of his hand as if he hadn't shaved. He's almost shy, she thought, but she was flattered by his concern and his old-fashioned manners. Then he did look at her clear and straight with his dark eyes, and there was a trace of something in them as if he were about to speak. But the moment was left incomplete. With an excuse he turned to go. And yet the opening gesture he had made with the coffee lingered in her thoughts long after Vivian had brought in her supper tray.

Outside, the pale blue peripheries of earth and sky blurred and the wind-forsaken house seemed to drift above the slow turning of the planet as if all time had been erased, all past mistakes and sins and fears removed. Through that strange evening light, a procession entered the living room, the children still in their play clothes, chicken feathers dangling from headbands, a shoe-tongue pirate's eye patch worn flipped up on Walter's forehead. Mamie led them, carrying the lighted lamp with little scooting steps, the chimney clattering in its holder. Patsy looked at Leona. “We're a parade,” she said.

“Yes,” Leona answered. “I can see you are.”

Behind them came a small old woman, not much more than four feet tall, and she walked with a gold-handled cane. Her head was so tiny it looked shrunken; the bones of her face seemed to show through her skin.

The children called her Funny Grandma because she made them feel
funny
, they said. That was all the explanation they gave. In the days that followed, Leona told them, “I'm not so sure that's a nice name to give somebody. Why do you call her that? Because she makes you laugh?”

“Sometimes she does,” Walter said.

“Sometimes she scares us,” Patsy put in, and made herself shudder.

“How does she scare you?”

“Well … she does weird stuff.”

Funny Grandma smelled faintly of mothballs and lavender perfume, but it was her eyes and mouth that told her age. Enlarged behind cheap octagonal glasses—which she wore now and then—her eyes were sunk in her head. Her mouth was empty; where teeth had been, her lips drew together into a tight little knot like the end of a drawstring tobacco sack. After she was seated in a rocking chair, her hands unfolded from her lap, and they were large thorny hands on frail stems, shaped, Leona thought, by years of manual labor.

The night closed down around the old house like an enormous black tent. The children listened to the radio and played the simple card games Aunt Vee had taught them: War and Crazy Eights. When the dishes were done, Aunt Vee joined them, sitting beside her mother to talk and rest, her hands inflamed and still smelling of Oxydol soap powder. It was a quiet time, a soft murmur of voices, the trickling ebb of radio programs.

A more eloquent language was spoken then, the women's voices becoming intimate, remembering their lives and the lives of those around them in a thread of memory that was never broken, but was picked up again and again each evening. “Now, Bessie Silk married Clarence Hargis,” the old woman said. “Yes,” said Aunt Vee, “and that was the sorriest day of her life. Never again owned a moment's peace. When her second boy was killed—Oh, what was his name?”

“Jacob … twarn't it?” Their talk seemed imbued with the mystery, the awesome wonder and capriciousness of life.

“
From Hollywood, International Sterling presents the
‘
Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet
,'
starring America's favorite young couple, Ozzie. Nelson and Harriet Hilliard
.”

It touched Leona to see how delicate and patient the children were with the old woman. They dealt hands of cards for her, which she held obediently in her gnarled clasp or fumbled in her skirts. “Funny Grandma,” Walter scolded playfully, “you dropped your cards
again
. I'll get 'em for you.” Then, while the two older women listened to Ozzie and Harriet, chatting intermittently, Patsy stood next to the rocker and drew ticktacktoe games on a small school slate. She and the old woman took turns with the bit of chalk, drawing the X's and O's. “Draw an X,” Patsy reminded her. And the palsied hand descended to the board. The radio program changed.