I couldn’t tell Uncle Tinsley or Liz about any of it, so I went to bed saying nothing. First thing next morning, I rode the Schwinn over to the Wyatts’ house to find out what had
happened to Joe. I never knocked anymore—Aunt Al insisted I come on in, seeing as I was family—and when I stepped inside, Joe was sitting at the kitchen table with Earl while Aunt Al
fried eggs in bacon fat. I wanted to hug Joe, but he was acting all nonchalant and offhand. The cops, he said, had confiscated his knife and given him a lecture about staying on the right side of
the law, but they didn’t have any evidence that he’d done anything wrong, so they let him go.
“I swear, you’d think those deputies would have better ways to spend their time than bringing in mill hill boys for carrying around whittling knives,” Aunt Al said.
“Bean, you want an egg?”
“Sure do,” I said. I sat down next to Joe. I felt giddy that we’d gotten away with the operation, though we couldn’t say anything in front of Aunt Al. Joe poured me a cup
of milk-with-coffee, and we just sat there grinning like a couple of crocodiles. Then Aunt Al passed me a crispy, glistening fat-fried egg.
We had finished breakfast and I was washing the plates at the sink, Aunt Al talking about how we might be in for our first snow of the season, when there was a hard knock on the door.
Joe went to answer it. Maddox was standing on the front step. It was a cold winter morning, but he wore no coat, just a hooded black sweatshirt with the hood pushed back. His hands were on his
hips, and he shoved his finger in Joe’s face. “I know it was you,” he said.
“You know what was me?”
“Don’t act all innocent with me, you little son of a bitch.”
“Please, none of that language in my house,” Aunt Al said. “What’s this all about?”
Maddox pushed past Joe, entered the house, and looked over at me. “Why am I not surprised to see you here?” he asked.
“She’s family,” Aunt Al said. “She has every right to be here. Now, please, what’s this all about?”
“I’ll tell you what this is about. It’s about criminal mischief and the wanton destruction of personal property. Your boy slashed my tires.”
“Did not,” Joe said.
“I know it was you,” Maddox said. “At first I couldn’t figure out who did it, but this morning a buddy on the force mentioned that the Wyatt boy had been picked up for
carrying a knife, and that he’d been in the company of one of the Holladay sisters at the time, and that’s when the light went on. It was you.”
“He says he didn’t do it,” Aunt Al said. “If you had any proof, you’d charge him.”
“Just because I don’t have proof doesn’t mean he didn’t do it,” Maddox said, “and doesn’t mean he won’t get what’s coming to him.”
Maddox’s voice brought Uncle Clarence into the kitchen. “What’s going on here?”
“Your boy needs a beating,” Maddox said. “Firstly, for slashing my tires. Secondly, for lying about it.”
“Is that true, son?” Uncle Clarence asked.
“He says he didn’t do it,” Aunt Al said.
“He didn’t do it,” I said. “He was with me last night. We were just riding around.”
“You were probably in on it,” Maddox said. He pointed at Aunt Al. “You work for the mill,” he said. He turned to Uncle Clarence. “And you take the mill’s
disability checks. People who work for the mill and take the mill’s money do what I say. And I say that boy needs a beating.”
Maddox and Uncle Clarence looked at each other for a long moment. Then Uncle Clarence walked out of the room. He came back carrying a leather belt.
“Oh, Clarence,” Aunt Al said. But she didn’t try to stop him.
“Outside,” Maddox said.
He led Joe and Uncle Clarence through the house and into the backyard. Joe was staring straight ahead saying nothing, like he’d done in the squad car. Aunt Al and I followed them outside.
In the vegetable garden, the dead vines of Uncle Clarence’s tomatoes were still tied to their stakes. Aunt Al clutched my arm when Uncle Clarence told Joe to bend over and grab his ankles,
and with Maddox standing by, Uncle Clarence began whaling Joe’s butt with the belt.
At the first blow, I felt the urge to rush over and grab Uncle Clarence’s arm. Aunt Al seemed to sense this, because she clutched me even tighter. Uncle Clarence whaled Joe over and over
again. Joe never said a word, and when Uncle Clarence finally stopped, Joe stood up. He didn’t look at anyone or say anything. Instead, he walked off into the woods, along the trail that led
to the chestnut tree.
Maddox clapped Uncle Clarence on the back and put an arm around him. “Just to show there’s no hard feelings,” he said, “let’s go have a beer.”
Uncle Clarence didn’t
much feel like having a beer with Maddox, so Maddox left. Uncle Clarence had a racking fit of coughing,
then when it was over, he put on his army cap and headed off to the veterans’ hall. I sat with Aunt Al and Earl in the kitchen. I had the sense that Aunt Al wanted me there.
No one said anything for a minute, and then Aunt Al spoke up. “What in tarnation did you two think you were doing?”
So she knew.
“It was all my fault,” I said. I explained how, ever since Liz filed the charges, Maddox had been throwing garbage on our yard and trying to mow us down with his car, and Liz was
hearing voices, so I felt we had to do something to fight back, and Joe was the only one who could help me.
“Honey, I understand the urge to get even,” she said, “but you all was throwing rocks at an angry bull.”
Aunt Al and I sat at the kitchen table for a while. I asked her about Liz’s voices, and Aunt Al said that she sometimes heard God talking to her and at other times the devil. When her
family lived in the mountains, all sorts of folk went around speaking in tongues, so maybe it was nothing more than that.
Then Ruth came home from teaching Sunday school. “Why all the long faces?” she asked.
“Your pa had to give Joe a hiding,” Aunt Al said.
“Maddox made him do it,” I added.
“Dad beat Joe because Mr. Maddox told him to?”
“Right out back,” I said.
“Mr. Maddox was here?” Ruth asked. “In our house?” She sat down at the table.
“Just a little while ago,” I said. I started explaining what had happened and when I finished, Ruth looked down and ran her fingers through her hair, like her head hurt.
“You know, I never told anyone why I stopped working for Maddox,” she said.
Aunt Al gave Ruth a startled look.
“He put the moves on me,” Ruth said. “He didn’t do what he did to Liz, but he cornered me and started pawing like crazy. I got away, but I sure was scared.”
“Honey,” Aunt Al said, “I asked you if anything had happened, and you told me no.”
Ruth had taken off her cat’s-eye glasses and was fidgeting with them. “I never wanted anyone to know.”
By then, it
was clear that Mom had pulled another one of her disappearing acts. Ever since we’d filed the charges, I’d
been calling her in New York, but the phone just rang and rang. I’d call early in the morning, in the middle of the afternoon, and late at night, but there was never an answer.
Finally, after four weeks passed, Mom called. She’d been at a spiritual retreat in the Catskills, she explained. The trip had been spur-of-the-moment with some new friends. She’d
tried to call before she left, but she couldn’t get through, probably because Tin had unplugged the phone. She’d stayed at the retreat longer than anticipated, and since the Buddhists
had no telephone, she hadn’t been able to call.
“It was all so good for my head,” she said. “I feel very balanced.” She started going on about how the Buddhists had taught her about her chi and how to center it, but I
cut her off.
“Mom, there’s been trouble,” I said. “This man attacked Liz. There’s going to be a trial.”
Mom let out a shriek. She demanded to know the details, and as I filled her in, she kept yelling things like “What?” “How dare he?” “My girls! My babies!” and
“I’ll kill him!” She was leaving immediately, she said, and would drive all night to get to Mayfield in the morning, adding, “This has shot my chi all to hell.”
Mom didn’t reach Byler by the time we left for school in the morning, but she had arrived when we returned, which was good because Uncle Tinsley had been able to explain
the legal details and Liz didn’t have to go through it all again. Mom hugged her. Liz didn’t want to let go, so Mom kept hugging her, stroking her hair, and saying,
“Everything’s going to be all right, baby. Momma’s here.”
Then Mom turned to hug me. I was surprised by how angry I felt at her. “Where have you been all this time?” I wanted to say. But I said nothing and hugged her back. Mom started
rubbing her face against my shoulder. I felt a little wetness, and I realized she was crying and trying to hide it. I wondered if Mom was really going to help us get through all this or if she was
just going to be one more person who needed reassurance.
When Liz told Mom how the other kids at school were treating her, Mom said Liz didn’t have to go anymore, at least until the trial was over. Mom would homeschool her.
She offered to homeschool me, too, but I took a pass. Most of the kids had stopped giving me a hard time, and besides, the last thing I wanted to do was sit around Mayfield all day, brooding
about Maddox, listening to Mom explain the world as she saw it, and reading a bunch of depressing poetry by Edgar Allan Poe, who had replaced Lewis Carroll as Liz’s favorite writer. I needed
to be out and about.
Since Liz and I had gone back to sharing a bedroom, Mom moved into the other room in the bird wing, the one that had been her playroom when she was growing up. When she told the Byler High
authorities that she would take over Liz’s education for the time being, they were happy to oblige, since the upcoming trial had caused nothing but tension at school. Mom avoided getting into
arguments with Uncle Tinsley and spent the days with Liz, the two of them writing in journals and talking about survival, transcendence, and life energy, all the subjects Mom had been exploring
during her spiritual retreat. Liz clung to Mom and to her words, and Mom clearly enjoyed being clung to. They composed poetry together and finished each other’s sentences. Mom had brought her
two favorite guitars with her—the Zemaitis and the honey-colored Martin—and she gave the Martin to Liz, promising her she would never criticize her playing no matter what rules Liz
broke.
I had been ticked off at Mom when she first showed up, but she seemed to be rising to the occasion. Liz told her about the voices she kept hearing. She was hearing them more often and they were
getting scarier. “If the voices are real, I’m in trouble,” Liz said. “If they’re not real, I’m in bigger trouble.” I was afraid Mom would drag her off to a
psychiatrist, who would send her to a nut house, but instead Mom said Liz shouldn’t fear the voices. That was how the mind and the soul talked to each other, she said. When you argued with
yourself, those were voices. When your conscience told you something was a bad idea, that was a voice. When the muse whispered lyrics in your ear, it was a voice. Everyone heard voices, Mom said.
Some of us just heard those voices more clearly than others. Liz should listen to the voices, channel them, and turn them into art, poetry, and music. “Don’t be afraid of your dark
places,” Mom told her. “If you can shine a light on them, you’ll find treasure there.”
Mom had never
made a big deal out of Christmas, telling us every year that it was a pagan holiday the Christians had co-opted, that
Christ was actually born in the spring. Uncle Tinsley said he had ignored it ever since Martha died, but when school let out for Christmas break, he told us that because this was the first family
gathering at Mayfield in years, we should do something to acknowledge the holiday. Uncle Tinsley and I found a small, perfectly shaped cedar in the hedgerow along the upper pasture. We chopped it
down, dragged it back to the house, and decorated it with the Holladay family collection of fragile antique ornaments, some of them, Uncle Tinsley said, dating back to the 1880s.
We avoided talking about the trial, Mom and Uncle Tinsley made a point of getting along, and on Christmas Day, instead of giving each other presents, Mom decided we should all put on
performances. She sang several numbers from “Finding the Magic”—and, in fact, she didn’t want to stop, saying, “Okay, if you insist, I’ll do one more.” Liz
recited Poe’s poem “The Bells,” which, despite its title, wasn’t very Christmasy and, in fact, was really dark. I read my Negrophobia Essay, this time remembering to use
Uncle Tinsley’s pregnant pauses. That prompted Mom to joke that Uncle Tinsley should dig out the old Confederate sword that the Holladays had been handing down for generations and give it to
me because I was really getting in touch with my Southern roots.
“All the Confederate stuff around this town gives me the heebiejeebies,” Liz said. “One of the houses on the hill actually flies that flag.”
“It’s not about slavery,” Uncle Tinsley said. “It’s about tradition and pride.”
“Not if you’re a black person,” Mom said.
“Hey, Uncle Tinsley,” I said, “maybe, for your performance, you can play the piano.”
He shook his head. “Martha and I used to play together,” he said. “But I don’t play anymore.” He stood up. “My performance will be in the kitchen.” For
dinner, he was going to make squash casserole, from the old Holladay family recipe, and roast loin of venison with mushrooms, onions, turnips, and apples.
It was dark by the time dinner was ready. While Liz and I set the table, Mom found a bottle of wine in the basement. She poured glasses for herself and Uncle Tinsley, half a glass for Liz, and a
quarter for me. Back in California, Mom liked to drink a little wine in the evening. She’d let me have sips before, but this was the first time she’d given me my own glass.
Uncle Tinsley said his short prayer, thanking God for the bountiful feast before us, then raised his glass. “To the Holladays.”