Mystery of Drear House (3 page)

They stopped for lunch and to fill the tank with gas. They took the interstate down through Virginia. Near Fancy Gap they picked up the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway, which ran along the top of the mountains. Misty light and shrouds of rain hung over deep valleys. White patches of snow on the ancient range were swirled by fugitive winds. Thomas stared out the window, his hands turning and feeling the shape he was making in the white pine.

“Hope we get there soon. Hope the sun comes out.” He spoke tiredly, suddenly bored with the long drive, of thinking about things over and over again.

The sun did come out in long shafts of sunlight, illuminating the western Appalachians.

“Nothing like my mountains!” he said, laughing.

“Not quite your mountains, but almost,” his papa told him.

“When do we get to North Carolina?”

“Soon,” his papa said. And it wasn’t long after that that they crossed the state line. They headed southwest on the Blue Ridge Parkway, passing along between Sparta and Roaring Gap.

“Just another eighty miles or so,” his papa said. Not long, and they were entering the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Pisgah National Forest.

The very space, the air, somehow shaped by the bluish distance, was different from anything farther north or anything Thomas had ever known. The mountains took his breath away.

In no time they found the little valley nestled where it had always been. And Great-grandmother Rhetty Jeffers’s house the way it always was.

Wasn’t a
house,
like houses in Ohio. It was a mountain cabin, really, planted in the valley. The cabin was smack against a hill that rose to mountains. Great-grandmother called all of the Blue Ridge “my
hills
.” That way she made them fit her, made them her size so she could live with them, and they, with her.

They crossed a creek and wound down a lane that ended in front of the cabin.

There she was, standing by the lane, waiting for them: Great-grandmother Rhetty Laleete Jeffers.

S
HE WAS DWARFED BY
the cabin and the hill rising behind it. Great-grandmother Jeffers wasn’t more than four feet seven inches tall. The whole world and Thomas were taller.

Great-grandmother held herself tall, shoulders high. Her face was awash with happiness. She peered at Thomas and his papa as though trying to see above a sunrise. Her hair was swept up in a ball at the top of her head. Thomas was shocked to see that it had turned almost completely white.

“I
knew
it was you!” she exclaimed to them. She came forward gingerly, as though she were walking a tightrope. She wore a new coat and a dark blue dress and shoes to match. Her small, neat hands were clasped before her. “Heard the car winding ’round the hills. Great goodness, knew it was you, too!”

“Grandmother Rhetty!” Mr. Small exclaimed. He was out of the car, coming around the front. He folded her close. She felt breakable. Her arms, so thin. “You look well,” he said, gently patting her shoulder.

“Oh, I’m fine, ’cept for some slowness.”

Thomas came forward. “Great-grandmother Jeffers, hi!” he said.

“Well, Thomas, you come back.” He lowered his head to her shoulder as she folded him in. “Wasn’t expecting
you.
Now, I remember, your mama say on the telephone you’d be coming, too.” She kissed his cheek warmly. She hugged him tightly, then held him at arm’s length a moment to look him over. “Getting to be a big old boy! Missed you!”

“Uh-huh, missed you, too, Great-grandmother,” he said.

She looked far into his eyes. “So,” she murmured, “that Dies house, is it? You all had yourselves a something! I had my chicory roasting, don’t you know? It takes care.”

She believed that chicory had the power to ward off calamity. It must’ve, too, Thomas decided. For almost everything had turned out all right in the North.

Great-grandmother’s property came right up to the laneside. There sat her blue mailbox on its post as they turned in the yard. There wasn’t a walkway, just three or four stepping-stones, placed at points where the ground became soft after a hard rain.

Thomas took note of it all. That faded blue of the mailbox. It reminded him of something—that old gate of hers he used to paint. It was nowhere to be seen. Must’ve fallen down. He breathed deeply of the fresh country air. “Oh, it smells so good out here!” he said.

Great-grandmother Jeffers smiled. The smile was sad somehow. Then Thomas understood. He bowed his head.

“Not easy at all, leaving all this,” Great-grandmother Jeffers said softly.

“Will you see it again?” Thomas asked.

“Oh, I plan to see it again. I won’t get rid of it.”

“You didn’t sell it?” he said.

“I would never sell land like this,” she said.

“Well, that’s good. I thought you had.”

“She’s rented it, Thomas,” his papa said.

She took hold of Thomas’s arm for support but stood her ground. She was not yet ready to give up the view. It was her pride and joy.

“And you never minded staying out here all by yourself?” Mr. Small was saying, marveling. He loved the mountains, but he had always been ready to leave them when he had to. College. Work. Advancement.

Great-grandmother pursed her lips and said, “You know, after supper, couple times a week, I walk on over there to the Beau Chesters, my old friends.”

Thomas remembered them.

“Silva make a pie every so often, from apples she picks just in season and keeps in the cellar,” Great-grandmother went on. “That pie’s most still warm by the time I get there. We set down and have it. Then Beau and me, we walk to a mountain. Silva can’t walk these days, but she don’t mind we do. And we climb some of the mountain, me and Beau.”

She nodded eagerly. “Me, holding Beau’s arm, and not a word need be spoken between us. Two old folks! It won’t even matter to us if we can’t make it back one time. Because of what you can see after supper! What you can just see!”

That made Mr. Small laugh outright in amazement. Here was his grandmother, near ninety, and she still could climb a mountain in order to see the beauty around her. “Then you walk back here after that?” Mr. Small asked.

She shook her head. “Silva ride me back in the pickup. We go slow, and we talk. And the night is falling,” Great-grandmother said. “Silva puttin’ on the lights. I most wait for that part, coming back.”

“When she puts on the headlights?” Thomas asked.

Great-grandmother Jeffers gave him a long look as though there were but the two of them, the way they had been together months ago. “It’s what gets caught in the headbeams,” she said, spoken gently. “Ghosts rise at dusk.”

“Grandmother,” Mr. Small said.

“I—I know that,” Thomas said. He realized he did believe that. The Indian maiden! He knew dusk to be a time of caution, when what was supernatural could enter the mind.

Mr. Small cleared his throat as if to change the subject. Not knowing what to say, he remained silent. They stood there, surveying the cabin and the hill that rose sharply behind it. Beyond the hill, mountain faces and folds stood out from the silence as bold as thunder.

Words couldn’t describe mountains planted forever just there, Thomas thought. It came to him that mountains had a talent for size, hugeness, just as he did for whittling. He smiled, daring to compare himself to them. Mountains were carved out of nature, as he carved from what was natural. Not too different, that mountain and me, he thought.

Thomas realized he was holding something. It was the carving. He’d had it in his hand the whole time. It was finished, and he hadn’t realized.

“Great-grandmother, here,” he said, and gave it to her for a present.

“Well, I’ll be!” she said, taking it. “Who is it? Mr. Dies Drear?”

“No, it’s a boy like me,” he said. “Name of M. C. Darrow, called Macky.”

“M. C. Darrow. Macky,” she said. “Well, I’ll be. He’s your friend?”

“He’s ... a big boy,” Thomas said.

She turned the carving over in her hands, feeling it and smoothing her fingers along its facets. “Heard about Darrows from your mother,” she said.

Thomas nodded. “They’re the ones caused us trouble,” he murmured.

Great-grandmother Jeffers and Thomas both stared at the carving as she turned it over and around. It was a perfect rendering of Macky’s head in miniature. “It’s a fine portrait, I can just tell,” she told her great-grandson. “Thank you, Thomas. I will cherish it,” she said. “And I want to meet this Macky and his family one time.”

“You do?” Thomas said. He stared at her, an idea dawning.

“Of course, I do,” she said.

“That might prove difficult,” Mr. Small said.

Great-grandmother smiled sweetly. “And I want to hear all about everything on the way to the North.”

She slid the carving into her coat pocket and put her arm around her great-grandson. “Let’s go on inside now,” she told him. “I got everything ready.”

Inside, it was the same place of old. Thomas had played here, slept here, so many times. Things were pulled apart now, but the house was still what he remembered. Great-grandmother had a few boxes full of things. She had furniture, bedding, and her mattress all ready to go. She had her best clothes on hangers, lying on the settee. There were two suitcases and a lamp she couldn’t part with. His papa started taking her brass bedstead apart. After that was done, they loaded everything in the U-haul.

Great-grandmother Jeffers would take all the items that were special to her, such as the framed photographs she had kept for more than half a century. And she took her senior’s walker, as she called it, which was a three-sided lightweight aluminum support. She used it to lean on when she had to.

Thomas and his papa worked fast and hard, going in and out of the house, back and forth. It was a strenuous exercise. I’m not any little kid, not anymore, Thomas thought. It felt good to be big and strong.

Then, all at once, they were finished. Thomas brushed his hands off. “That’s all,” he said.

Great-grandmother Jeffers nodded. “That’s all that I’m taking,” she said.

“It about filled the U-haul up, too,” Thomas said.

She crossed the room and opened the door. She stood there, waiting for Thomas and Mr. Small to go out of the house. She meant to close the door herself on all that had been. She stood there, so tiny in her old cabin. And yet she was made large by this last moment’s recollection of a lifetime.

“S
EE”
T
HOMAS SAID, EXCITEDLY
. “It just goes up and up. Very high up. Straight up.”

It was dark out by the time they got home. They’d had a long and pleasant ride. Thomas talked all the way, telling Great-grandmother everything.

She had fallen asleep once, just a light dozing. She didn’t think she had missed much. Darrow people with river names. The mother, an invalid. She’d heard that much. She recognized no division among peoples; no enemies. Problems were solved through clear understanding. This one felt one way; that one, another. It was the way with folks. No need to take sides.

“Well, what do you think?” Thomas asked her.

“About what?” she said back, teasing him. She knew what he meant. She chuckled and patted his knee. The car headlights gave them a fine view as they climbed the snow-covered driveway up to the house.

“Thomas, it’s a grand old house,” she said, finally, as they took her by the arms and gently helped her from the car.

Thomas grinned. “Wait until you see everything,” he told her, guiding her to the porch. “These veranda steps have the tunnel to the kitchen under them.”

“So these are the ones,” she said, and watched her feet as she climbed up.

The front door swung open. There stood Mrs. Small and the twins.

Great-grandmother Jeffers hollered when she saw her granddaughter-in-law. “Goodness! Goodness! Martha, it’s been too long.”

“Oh, Grandmother Rhetty!” Martha Small said. They hugged and kissed, laughing and nearly crying. Great-grandmother Jeffers patted her granddaughter-in-law as she patted everyone whom she loved.

Billy and Buster peeked around Mrs. Small with solemn eyes.

“Hello, babies!” Great-grandmother Jeffers exclaimed, bending low to hug the boys. “Which one is which one?” she said, not expecting an answer. The twins backed away from her, and she followed, right into the large entranceway.

“Look at us, standing here with the door wide open,” Martha Small said. “Brrr! It’s turning cold.”

“Turnin’ cold,” the boys said in unison.

Great-grandmother studied them, amused. “Do they do that?” she asked. “Say the same thing at the same time?”

“They do it a lot,” Thomas said.

“Don’t you remember your grandma?” Great-grandmother Jeffers said to the boys. “The piney woods and my cabin? Remember how you loved my cotton patch? Hmm? Boys will be boys!”

It was Billy who first grinned from ear to ear. “Boys be boys!” he and his brother said.

Great-grandmother Jeffers opened her pocketbook and rummaged around in it until she found the ball of cotton she had brought in a silk handkerchief. She carried it as a good-luck charm.

It was Buster who reached for it and crushed its softness against his cheek. His eyes lit up. Both boys giggled. Quickly they came into Great-grandmother Jeffers’s outstretched arms. “Gray-grahma!” they exclaimed, snuggling in.

“Yes, indeedy,” she said, “and big as life! You remember
me.”

They remembered.

It took time getting her coat off, getting her situated in the parlor, getting her warmed up and relaxed after such a long, stiffening ride. Great-grandmother Jeffers smoothed her hair back and looked around the long room at the floor-to-ceiling windows. “Who’s going to clean such windows? Is that why you wanted me here?” she said.

They all laughed at that.

After a while they went into the kitchen.

“I knew I smelled fresh paint,” Thomas said. “Look at that!”

The kitchen was painted the warmest yellow. “Looks just like spring!” Great-grandmother Jeffers said, beaming.

“I did it,” Martha Small said proudly. “Mr. Pluto mixed the paint for me and set up my ladder.”

“Bet you could get a good hourly wage for work like this, if you wanted,” Mr. Small said, joking.