GodPretty in the Tobacco Field (7 page)

I
'd never owned anything as fancy as a yellow dress, but a snip of her apple-green one sewn to the left pocket of my quilt jacket reminded me Mama'd worn one just as pretty to his tent revivals. And when both my folks still had the starch to stand upright, Mama would swish those green skirts my way and teach me the Patsy Cline songs to sing to my sister. Her, always declaring when the child was born, the baby would have her favorite singer's name. I remembered Mama had insisted she could tell it was a girl early on by the way her belly hung.

I had been so excited that I'd paraded around, crooning those songs in my prettiest five-year-old voice so I could sing them real good for our Patsy—especially the “Walkin' After Midnight” song, Mama's favorite. And even after Daddy left, I kept singing.

The day Patsy was born, an old woman pulled me off the porch where I'd been waiting and rushed me into Mama's dark bedroom. Teary-eyed and looking more sleepy than usual, Mama'd cocked her head to the tiny bundle in her arms and made me promise I would always look after Patsy and sing sweet songs to her. She quoted a Bible verse about
giving joyful noises to the Lord,
asking me to quote it back, and then said, “Remember, the strongest prayers are in song.”

Seeing Mama's tears like that made me cry, too. And I'd hugged her and given my promise right away. Then the old woman shooed me from Mama's side, pushed me out before I had a chance to hold my sister.

A cord-cutting not unlike what Oretta had done minutes ago.

Weren't no time after Mama's passing when a small lady in a severe dark dress and veiled hat showed up and took me and my sister away to a big shadow-filled building called County Catholic Orphan Asylum.

Inside, the lady gave Patsy to someone else who disappeared with her. I'd screamed for my sister until the black-veiled lady ended up switching my legs till they burned.

They said Patsy died in her sleep the second night there. Gunnar came for me and took me to her and Mama's funeral.

At the graveyard, the preacher called upon prayer, then after a bit of quiet, talked about Mama and Patsy and more prayer. When he told the small crowd of folks to “fill the parting with joy,” I tried to sing loud, wildly crying, shouting Cline's melodies into the dirt for her and Patsy like she'd taught me—making the
joyful
noises and hoping to rouse them.

The preacher'd stopped the service and looked to my uncle. Gunnar hissed something and jerked on my shoulder. I tried to hush, but the song kept bubbling up inside.

My sister and Mama never heard, only a bobwhite that called back in low whistles. When it was over, Gunnar pointed to his truck and I lagged behind with the Cline song low in my chest, kicking up the clay and the bobwhite who'd burst into flight and carried it off for his own. I watched the gray-mottled bird lift its fat body into the sky until Gunnar yanked my arm and pulled me to his side. It was the last time I'd sung Patsy Cline.

After their funeral Gunnar dropped me back at the orphanage.

For two more weeks I lived with a bunch of other kids in the orphan asylum. I'd cried buckets until one day Gunnar came back.

“Is there no one else, Mr. Royal?” the same lady wearing the same black dress pushed.

I sat on the hard chair next to Gunnar inside a small office, swinging my nervous legs.

“I am someone, and the
only
one,” he answered.

She asked him lots more questions about church—religion— and faith healing. With each of Gunnar's answers, her mouth cramped until it looked like her stretched lips might crumble like bad bricks.

“We feel she should be baptized Catholic right away—the one and only true faith,” the woman said. “It's your duty and the only way to rid her of her parents' demons.”

Gunnar's jaw twitched on his reddening face. “No better than serpent faith. I'll raise her as I see fit,” he growled, “and not with your idol-worshiping statues, hoodoo candles, and Latin tongues!”

My knees slapped each other, hammered up and down. Faster and faster. The room got quiet; then the lady flattened her bone-white hands on the desk. She asked for “papers” the way Gunnar sometimes talked about having a title paper for an automobile trade. Without missing a beat, she'd grabbed a switch beside her chair, reached over, and lit my wild legs with it. Gunnar slammed his fist down on her desk and stormed out, leaving me bawling.

A long week would pass before he returned with some papers that he gave the lady in exchange for me.

I remembered being a little scared and curious about the tall man I'd only glimpsed a handful of times. But that day, I clutched his big hand, eager to escape the grim-looking lady.

Even though living with Gunnar had been a nightmare, those weeks inside the orphan asylum proved no fairy tale either. Still, I had to wonder if it might've been better if he'd left me.

Right away his big house struck me as too big for only him and me. Mama and Daddy had a small home with useful things that didn't have a particular place. Gunnar's house was high and mighty with stuff collecting a gray dusty death in darker spots. Flashes of fancy linens, silver and china in fancy floral wallpapered rooms that nodded a power over the visitor, but never got used. Worse was the firefly quiet, no radio, no song, supper chatter or laughter, just grunts and grumblings, his heavy footfall, and the clinking bourbon bottle. Wasn't but a week in his house when I'd started to miss the sound of the other orphan kids.

Picking up my step, I tried to put more distance between me and the Emerys.

I caught myself humming “Walkin' After Midnight” as I swept down the mountain's second switchback, pounded the verses down and around the next, and another, until I was helplessly screaming the chorus past the Emerys' shiny automobile and all the way to the bottom of Stump Mountain.

I couldn't stop now that I had it back. The song looped, grated the rawness inside me like the day I'd lost them forever and the graveyard bird had stolen the old song for good.

“ ‘
I'm always walkin' after midnight searching for you!
'” I barked on Royal land until hot tears bent me over, slapped at my rocking shoulders.

I thought about Mr. Stump slowly dying from the drinking same as my daddy.

I prayed for baby Eve to live.

I wondered if Lena would forever feel the cord-cutting like me, and where her angry fist would land someday, somewhere, on some other road out of here.

Lifting the hem of my dress, I fanned my hot face, wiped my eyes. Blinking, I caught a glimpse of rustling through the trees on the side. I straightened, shaded my eyes against the sun's glare, and spotted Carter Crockett's red ball cap bobbing, flashing against the leaves like a lightning bug.

Henny called out to me and came running from a thicket in the other direction. She latched hold of my arm. “What happened?” she asked, out of breath. “Tell me about the baby—”

I jerked away. “Not telling you nothing, miss mouth-of-the-south. You told your mama, and
I
got stuck with the cord-cutting! How could you?”

“Cord—what? I swear I didn't know she'd make ya stay like that. I knows how scared you is of birthing after your ma died of it and—”

“Shut up, Henny! You don't know nothing—NOTHING—slinking off just like your no-good daddy.”

Mr. Stump wasn't worth two hoots and I was beginning to wonder if Henny would ever be.

“I-I'm sorry.” Henny touched my shoulder.

I pushed her hand off. “I can't wait to get away from you and this damn town.” Fresh tears stung my eyes.

“C'mon,” she pleaded, “we's sisters—”

“Don't.” I pointed at her. “
Don't
talk about sisters when you weren't even there for your
own
.”

“Listen, Roo, I had to tell 'em.
Had to
. Sister—”

I narrowed my eyes.

“L-Lena said she'd run away. Run—”

“Like you did with that no-good Crockett today?”

She tossed a guilty glance over her shoulder. “It's true, Roo. Lena said she was fixin' to run off. Pa couldn't have her doing that, 'cause then the law'd be up there and ya know how the law is? So I thought if I told her how nice them baby-buyers was, ya know, that pretty fortune-teller, what all was on it . . . well, she'd see differently—”

“Well, Henny?” I said, scissoring my fingers in the air. “I'm predicting you ain't never gonna see your baby niece, Eve.
Ever!
”

“Roo . . .”

The Cline song punched in my chest, snuck back into my throat, vibrating the dangly grape that hung there. I took off as fast as I could, winding myself before it could roll off my tongue, ignoring her shouts close behind me.

When I spotted Rainey and Gunnar talking in the tobacco, I cut through the rows closest to the house and ducked inside to the bathroom. I couldn't let them see my face. And knowing about Rainey leaving would make it worse. Resting my hands on the sink, I bent my head and thoroughly damned the song, the day, and everyone in it.

I was still spotted and red-faced when Gunnar knocked on the door about ten minutes later. I reached for a cloth to dry my face, stopped and thought better of using my aunt's pink company's-coming towels. Using my arm, I wiped my eyes, and said, “A minute, Gunnar.”

“Hurry it up.”

“Okay.”

Not three seconds later he was back at the door. “
Hurry it
.”

I walked into the kitchen.

“You've wasted enough time at the Stumps',” he grumbled over his coffee cup.

“Wasted?”

He raised his brow slightly.

“I worked all morning helping the Stumps, Gunnar.”

He set down the cup and glared. “You
wasted
all morning on the Stumps.”

I squinted back at him. “I can't wait to get out of here.”

“You'll get back to your chores.”

“I broke my back toting water up the mountain and then I had to—”

He shot his hand into the air, and railed, “I've been breaking my back teaching you this land day and night so you can go to agriculture college in Lexington and take over one day.”

I flipped inside. He'd never told me . . . all this time acting like I was a work mule,
a stupid work mule
. “You've been working me to a death closer than my time, Gunnar. I can't even stop and draw a little, or read none—”

“
I
will assign your reading.”

“Done read every book on your shelf. Even the encyclopedia ones, twice. You get to read your
Old Judge Priest
books . . . many as you want, even.” Gunnar loved the old wisecracking Kentucky author, Irvin Cobb, who'd written the funny stories. And he'd collected almost every one of his sixty books, stacks of 'em. I knew when he was reading them in his room, too, because I'd catch him chuckling late at night when he said he was turning in early to brush up on
The Good Word
. In the morning, I'd make his bed and find one of Cobb's books shoved under a tossed blanket.

“Gunnar, I like to read funny stuff, too, different stuff, and my teacher said
all
reading makes you smart and—”

Pinking, Gunnar smacked the table with his open hand. “You'll not read trash and you'll not use good paper on trash.”

He slammed the jar of bitters down onto the table. And like always when his hands went smacking and thumping, I knew trouble was coming. I shrank back, and he grabbed my arm and shoved me into the kitchen chair.

I covered my jaws with my hands. “My . . . Gunnar, no, my jaws are still burning from the last time,” I said, shaking. “It'll eat a hole in my tongue—”

“Hope to God it'll nip the sass in it this time.”

“M-my teacher says my art is good, and I'm going to take it to the city one day—”

“Art . . . ?” he snickered, shaking his head. “Is that what you call those damn fortunes you make, all about who's going to kiss whom and far worse? You're going to end up like your snake-charmer pa if you're not careful.”

“I'm going to
end up
far away from you,” I lashed back.

I hated when he talked like that. My daddy weren't no snake charmer. He was a good preacher, folks had said, and despite Gunnar telling me he was a drunk.

My daddy was smart enough to make snakes lie down quiet. I pushed back the squeaking thoughts that said otherwise.
Why couldn't he have done the same with his demons?