A week or so later, I saw Myra and John Odom together. He was waiting for her in the school parking lot, leaning against his car. Girls stood around giggling about how pretty he was, but he looked like the devil to me. Long and lean, tall and dark as a shadow, eyes black as pits. It was like he reeled her across the parking lot by an invisible hook in her perfect lip. I was standing close enough to smell her hair as she walked by, but she didn’t even see me. He did an odd thing when she got to the car. He put his hand on the top of her head. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was like a stranger walking up and saddling Wild Rose, swinging up on her back, and riding off across the hills.
John Odom was the one Myra was looking for all along. I guess somewhere there’s somebody that could ride Wild Rose, too. It was Mama who told me that Myra was married. Until I heard it, there was hope she might come back. But the minute the words left Mama’s mouth last night, I knew I was leaving. I haven’t decided where I’ll go, maybe Canada to escape the draft and the memory of her voice. This morning I walked out the back door at first light, duffel bag over my shoulder and a book Myra left behind in my hand. I dropped the book in the trash barrel to be burnt on my way to the pasture. I want the embers to disperse and the words to find her somewhere, in a house beside of the railroad tracks, according to Mama. I picture her standing in some sooty yard looking up at the moon, a flat world with no shine where the trees are black outlines, with a hint of smoke in her nostrils. I know it’s not true, but I want some sadness to enter her when she thinks of me and the mountain. I want her to suffer for my sake. Myra might get back one day up Bloodroot Mountain, but if she does I won’t be here.
After I dropped the book into the trash barrel, I ducked under the fence and went across the pasture to where Wild Rose was grazing. Standing with my bag over my shoulder and bus-ticket money in the breast pocket of my shirt, I got closer to her than I’ve ever been. Now her breath snuffs out in white clouds as she sniffs of me. Maybe she’s letting me close because she knows it’s goodbye. I think she’s not mad about what happened out in the barn last night. I might have won her respect. Or maybe she smells my acceptance of the truth she’s tried to tell me all along. Some creatures are just meant to be left alone. They can’t be held on to, even if we love them more than anything.
BYRDIE
After Macon passed on, I vowed to give Myra some room to stretch her legs. That’s some of the reason I let John Odom court her when she got to be seventeen. She was the same age as Clio was when she ran off with Kenny Mayes, but Myra was different than her mama. I thought she had a better head on her shoulders. I know now I should have been more careful. But it was plain how Myra loved that man and there wasn’t no use fighting her. I didn’t want to lose my grand-baby so I let her go, and ended up losing her anyhow. But I don’t see what I could have done to hang on to her. She was bound and determined to have John Odom, same way I was to have Macon, and Clio was to have Kenny. If Macon was still living he would have went down to them tracks with a shotgun a long time ago and got her out of there. Matter of fact, he wouldn’t have let her go off with John Odom in the first place. Macon might have had it right all along, not letting Myra out of his sight. I guess sometimes a body just don’t know what to do.
I had me a good garden last spring, when John Odom first started coming around. I always plant by the signs. Things that grows in the ground like taters I do on the dark nights of the moon, and things that grows on top of the ground I plant on the light nights. Last year I growed the best sweet corn I ever put in my mouth. I’d planted it earlier than usual and it was real warm weather, so the corn was already high. I was out yonder gathering it in, had my tin tub about half full, when I heard car doors slamming shut. I already knowed Myra was struck on somebody because she told me. She wasn’t one to keep secrets like her mama done. Ever since I knowed it, I’d been dreading the day she’d bring some old boy up Bloodroot Mountain for me to see, and now the day had come.
I didn’t go around the house to meet him and her. I just closed my eyes for a minute, so fagged out it seemed like I couldn’t stand up. I figured it was going to be like it was with Kenny and Clio, and I didn’t know if I could take it this time. I should have knowed to expect more out of my grandbaby. She came around the house pulling John along by the hand. I turned around holding a good ear of corn, the silky tassel hanging down. It was just about sunset and John Odom was the prettiest thing I ever seen, walking across the yard towards me with the light in his eyes. The devil can fool a body that way. Looked like a movie star, with that shiny black hair and them good white teeth. I had feelings standing with him in that garden that I thought was dead in me a long time ago. That’s how the devil works. I knowed right then there wouldn’t be no fighting him and Myra. Neither one of us could have resisted him. I can’t blame her. I fell for it, too.
Myra showed him off to me like a prize she’d won. “Granny, this is John. You know his daddy, Frankie, that owns Odom’s Hardware.”
“Why, is that your daddy?” I said. “Me and Macon done a lot of business with him down through the years.” I hate to admit it, but it crossed my mind that Myra had snagged a good one. I figured she’d be set if she married into the Odoms. I thought when Frankie Odom passed on that store would fall to his boys and she’d be taken care of.
John Odom reached out for my hand. I dropped the corn in the tub and wiped dirt on my apron. His hand was so clean and white, I didn’t want to sully it.
“Daddy speaks well of you and Mr. Lamb. Said you all was good people.”
“Well. We always tried to be.”
John looked down in the tub at my feet. “You got an awful good-looking crop of corn this year, Mrs. Lamb.” He reached out and plucked an ear, held it in his hands. “I like the smell of a garden,” he said, turning to Myra, “don’t you?” She took an ear herself and said, “Let me and John help you get this in, Granny.”
I started to tell them to go on and have a good time, but I didn’t want them to leave me. All of a sudden I felt old and lonesome. It was good to have them working alongside me, the evening sun pouring between the cornstalks and the smell of garden dirt, even the smell of sweat. It had been a long time since I smelled a man’s sweat.
When the tub was full, me and John Odom went to pick it up at the same time. We bumped heads and got tickled. When we looked at each other across that tin tub, there was something about his black eyes that bothered me. I tried to ignore it. I wanted him to be good for Myra. But I should have listened to that small voice inside of me.
Next evening I came upon Myra setting on the steps as I was headed from the barn with a bucket of eggs. “Where you been, little lady?” I asked, gumming my snuff.
“For a walk.”
I looked at her for a long time with my hand on my hip. I could tell her whole self was yearning toward town and the hardware store where John Odom was working. I put my bucket down and she made room for me to sit. I touched her cheek with my finger. Next to the smoothness of her young skin, I seen how old and crooked it was. When she turned to me I searched her eyes for the words it seemed like she couldn’t find.
“Your face is hot,” I said. “Reckon you’ve caught a cold?”
“No. I’m just sitting here thinking.”
“What about?”
“Something I got to tell you.”
“All right,” I said. But I wished she wouldn’t say anything. I looked out across the yard at the shadows gathering under the apple tree.