Where the Heart Is (18 page)

Such stories gave Novalee goosebumps and bad dreams. She wouldn’t think of going to Rattlesnake in warm weather, but they were far enough into the cold season that she wasn’t worried about snakes.

After she parked the Toyota on the shoulder of Saw Mill Road, she took a flashlight from the car pocket, then climbed through a barbed wire fence enclosing a broad meadow smothered by an early morning fog.

A quarter-mile or so to the north, the flat land gave way, dropped ten or twelve feet to a low-water creek at the back of the meadow.

Novalee used a willow branch to measure the depth of the stream as she picked her way across the water on flat rocks and fallen trees.

At its deepest, it was little more than two feet. She was almost across when something slapped at the water just inches from her feet, sending drops splattering against her pant legs. She aimed the beam of light toward the sound, but whatever it was left behind only ripples.

Just across the creek, the land rose sharply. The fog thinned as she began to climb. Pine needles crunched under her feet, making snapping sounds that caused her to stop once and look back, half expecting to see something behind her.

When she heard a rooster crow in the distance, she looked up to see the sky reddening in the east, so she picked up her pace, determined to be on the top before sunrise.

She liked the feel of her Rollei, still in the case, brushing against her hip as it swung from the strap over her shoulder. For a few moments, she enjoyed the fantasy of being a war correspondent climbing a mountain to get shots of a battle in the valley on the other side, a scene she remembered from an old war movie.

Though the morning was cool, by the time she was halfway up the mountain, she shed her jacket and tied it around her waist. Not only was she hot, she was also winded, an indication, she was sure, that even at eighteen, she was already growing old.

She stopped to catch her breath, but when she realized she no longer needed the flashlight, that there was enough morning light to see by, she began to climb again, her own private race with the sun.

She knew she didn’t have much farther to go . . . could tell by looking down to the meadow below. Whenever Sister Husband talked about these hills and called them mountains, Novalee would tease and call them molehills. She had, after all, lived with the Appalachians in her backyard. She knew what real mountains were—the only thing about Tennessee she missed.

She could hear the sounds of mysteries darting out of her way Where the Heart Is

beneath the needles and dry leaves . . . insects, field mice, tree frogs

. . . but they moved too fast for her to see. Louder sounds from farther away—sounds of animals working through the trees and underbrush—were most likely squirrels and raccoons, but she liked to imagine they were deer.

When she broke through the last tree line before the top, she had a clear view of the ridge that stretched for more than a mile between the two hills. As she studied the last of the climb before her, trying to decide the best way to go, movement caught her eye, something running along the ridge, no more than a blur. Whatever she saw had appeared and disappeared so fast, she wasn’t sure she had seen anything at all, but her heart raced as she fumbled at the buckles on her camera case.

She had just removed the lens cover when she saw it again, racing across the clearing between an outcropping of rock and a stand of young pines. She looked down to adjust the focus on the camera, looked down for only a split second, but by the time she found the ridge again in the viewfinder, whatever it was had disappeared.

A deer, she thought, though the shape was not quite right. A coyote, maybe . . . or even a bobcat, but from her distance and in the half-light, she couldn’t be sure.

She had a decision to make. She could stay where she was, gamble that she might get some shots, deer or not, or she could give up and push hard for the top of the ridge so she could shoot the sunrise she came for. The decision was easy.

She scanned the ridge through the viewfinder, set the focus, found the angle she wanted and waited. Watched and waited until she saw it again . . . still running. She snapped, turned the crank, snapped again . . . watched it cross treeless ground, then saw what seemed impossible to see. So sure it wasn’t what she thought, she looked up, needed to see it with her eyes, as if the camera had distorted the sight. So she looked up, had to look at it directly because it wasn’t a deer—not coyote, not bobcat—but a boy. A naked boy running across Rattlesnake Ridge.

And at that moment the first rays of the sun just cleared the ridge to form a golden luminous arc and, in the middle of it, was a naked boy running . . . a lean brown boy named Benny Goodluck who was running like the wind.

THE FIRST CHRISTMAS Novalee could remember, she was five.

She and Momma Nell were living in a trailer not far from the Clinch River with a red-headed man called Pike. The trailer set down in a bog that sucked at tricycle wheels and dog paws even without rain. But after three days and nights of it, mailboxes and fences had nearly disappeared.

On Christmas Eve, sometime after midnight, the rain washed out an earthen dam at Sharp’s Chapel, a half-mile away. Momma Nell and Pike were gone, had been gone for two days and nights, and Novalee was asleep when the water started rising. The next morning when she crawled out of bed, their scrawny aluminum Christmas tree and two lengths of red plastic garland floated down the hallway toward her like spiny sea creatures adrift in strange seas.

Novalee couldn’t remember much about other Christmas mornings.

The first few years after Momma Nell left with Fred, the years of foster homes and state homes and Baptist homes, she had asked department store Santas to bring her Mickey Mouse watches and puppies, drum sets and Momma Nell, but it didn’t take long to discover that Santas didn’t come to Tennessee on Christmas mornings and mommas didn’t either.

But this Christmas, the first one for Americus, was going to be different. This one was going to be perfect, just like the pictures in magazines . . . gifts tied in silver ribbon, a turkey and pumpkin pies, candy canes, mistletoe . . . and the most perfect Christmas tree in Oklahoma.

The second Saturday in December, Novalee loaded Americus and Forney into the pickup and headed to the lake. They walked “eight thousand meters over savage terrain and uninhabitable topography,”

according to Forney, and looked at “three hundred dog-eared, bald-topped, anti-gogglin, butt-heavy trees,” according to Novalee. So, with Americus beginning to sniffle and Forney complaining about a bruised metatarsus, Novalee called off the search and they went home empty-handed.

The next Saturday, Americus got a reprieve because of a cold, but Forney was dragged out at just after six and they went at it again.

“Perhaps we should take a different approach today,” Forney said.

“I think we’ll start north of Shiner Creek.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.”

“We can work our way around to the bridge.”

“I mean let’s start with a list.” Forney pulled a small notebook and a pencil from his pocket. “A list of specifications.”

“We could go out to Catfish Bay.”

“A statement of particulars.”

“Or Cemetery Road, toward the interstate.”

“For instance,” Forney said, opening the notebook. “What about height? Over four feet? Under six?”

“Sister said she saw a stand of pines at Garners Point.”

“Genus.” Forney licked the pencil lead. “Homolepis? Veitchi?

Cephalonica? ”

Novalee slowed, then steered the Toyota onto the shoulder of the road. “If you’ll get the shovel, I’ll—”

“A statement of particulars, Novalee,” Forney cried out in desperation.

“Oh, Forney,” she said, her tone patient, her explanation logical,

“I’ll know it when I see it.”

Forney groaned, Novalee grinned—and they crawled out of the pickup.

“Come on, Forney.”

“Novalee, it’s a parasite.”

“But it’s a tradition.”

“It’s a parasite! And you expect people to stand under it and kiss?”

“Yes! That’s what people do with mistletoe.”

“Why not hang up some kudzu . . . or maybe some bagworms.”

“Please?”

“Novalee, that tree’s forty feet tall.”

“It is not! Thirty, maybe.”

“I didn’t even climb trees when I was a kid.”

“What’s wrong, Forney? You too old?”

She had him then. Grumbling, he jumped, grabbed a branch above his head, then pulled himself up with a strength that surprised her.

She had never asked him his age. Hadn’t even guessed. But sometimes when she was reading, she’d look up, unexpectedly, and find him watching her. And in that second just before he would look away to pretend he hadn’t seen her, he would look boyish . . .

embarrassed and shy. At other times, in the shadows of the library, when sharp sounds from upstairs caused him to look up, lines cutting across his forehead, something dark behind his eyes, he would look suddenly weary and old . . . older than Novalee wanted him to be.

A branch cracked and pieces of bark showered down on Novalee.

“Forney, be careful!”

“I used to have nightmares about this kind of thing. I’d be stuck at the top of a skyscraper or a mountain—or in a fifty-foot oak tree.”

“That tree’s growing, isn’t it?”

Forney was halfway up, moving cautiously, staying close to the trunk.

“Hey,” Novalee called, “there’s a dead branch right over your left shoulder. Looks like crown gall got it. Why don’t you pull that down.”

“Novalee, tree surgeon was not one of my career choices.”

“What was?”

“Ventriloquist. Shepherd.”

“Librarian.”

“I never wanted to be a librarian.”

“Really?”

“I wanted to be a teacher.” Forney snapped the dead branch off, then looked down to make sure it would fall clear of Novalee. “History teacher. But I never finished college.”

“Why not?”

“Well, when my father died, I came back home. By then, my sister was . . . too sick, so I stayed.”

“Forney, what happened to your sister?”

“Oh, I’m not sure. She was twenty when I was born, so I was just a kid when she . . . when she started drinking. I was ten, I guess, when Where the Heart Is

my father sent her away the first time. To a sanatorium somewhere in the East . . .”

Forney was close enough to the mistletoe that, by stretching, he could almost reach it.

“Then, just after I went off to school, he sent her away again, a place in Illinois. By then, I knew she was an alcoholic, but we never used that term in our house. My sister had ‘an indelicate condition.’”

Forney tore loose a handful of mistletoe and let it fall.

“Anyway, when my father died, my sister asked me never to send her away again.”

“Forney, will she ever . . . do you think . . .”

“Here comes the last of it,” he said as he yanked the rest of the mistletoe from the top of the tree and flung it to the ground.

They stopped for lunch when they reached the bridge. Novalee had fixed bologna sandwiches and a jar of Kool-Aid, but she’d forgotten the paper cups, so they shared the jar.

“Hope you like mustard. We were out of mayonnaise.”

“Anything to keep up my strength.” Forney rubbed at a sore knee. “This quest of yours for the perfect tree might kill me.”

“We’ll find it. Just be patient.”

“Patient?” Forney looked at his watch. “You know how long we’ve been at this?”

“We just haven’t seen it yet.”

“I thought that spruce looked nice. The one with—”

“The one with a bare spot halfway up the trunk?”

“Well, the cedar . . .”

“Too short.”

“Novalee, what is it about this tree? Tell me.”

“I never had a real tree before.”

“What do you mean ‘a real tree’?”

“Real. Living. Not dead, not plastic, not cardboard.”

Forney smiled then at an old memory. “When I was in grade school, third, maybe fourth grade, we made Christmas trees out of egg cartons.

Ugliest things. I cried because my father wouldn’t let me put one on our mantel.”

“One year when I was in the McMinn County Home, we made a tree out of coat hangers and aluminum foil.”

“It’s a wonder you weren’t struck by lightning.”

Novalee said, “I’ll tell you about the funniest tree I ever had.” She took a drink from the Kool-Aid jar, then handed it to Forney. “I was eight, living with Grandma Burgess, and—”

“You’ve never mentioned your grandmother before.”

“Oh, she wasn’t my real grandma. I don’t know if I ever had a real grandma. Anyway, the way I came to live with her was that right after Momma Nell went away, I stayed with a family there in the trailer park—three girls about my age, and Virgie, their mother. She’d been real nice to me, let me stay for supper a few times and took me with them to a movie once. So when Momma Nell left, I lived with them for the rest of the school year.

“But then, Virgie got transferred to Memphis, so she moved me in with her grandmother, Grandma Burgess. She had a little silver trailer out on the edge of town. Kept chickens and a cow, had a garden. Sort of like a farm.”

Novalee reached into the picnic sack and pulled out another sandwich. “I brought you two.”

“Thanks.” Forney took the sandwich, then handed Novalee the Kool-Aid jar. “So how long were you with her?”

“Couple of years. It wasn’t a bad place to live, and Grandma Burgess was a sweet old woman, but she had spells, so—”

“Spells? What do you mean?”

“Well, she just didn’t always know what was going on. Like, she’d take off all her clothes, then go out to milk the cow. Sometimes, she’d eat chicken feed, stuff like that.”

Forney shook his head.

“She got a check of some kind every month, but once in a while, she’d have one of her spells—cash her check, then give the money away . . . or she’d buy something crazy. Once she bought a trampoline

. . . just all kinds of weird things. A trumpet. A wedding dress. She’d hate it later, when she came to her senses, but . . .