She probably knows everything about me just by looking at my face. I bet she’s noticed how I don’t smile or talk much because of this front tooth, broken off and brown with rot. Daddy didn’t have the money to take us to the dentist when we were kids, and since I’ve been old enough, I haven’t gone. The truth is, this tooth embarrasses me, but I’d be more ashamed to have it fixed. My brothers would say I’m trying to make myself pretty so I can get a girlfriend. A big part of me was glad when all six of them moved off one by one, four of them heading north to work in the factories, two of them fighting in Vietnam. For a long time there was just Mark and me, until he joined the service, too. The house is lonesome now, but at least I’m not the butt of all the jokes anymore.
My tooth got broken when I was seven. It happened one Saturday when Daddy and I went to Millertown after shoelaces. We headed out every week, whether we needed anything or not. Daddy talked more on those Saturday trips than the other six days of the week put together, whistling and tapping the truck’s steering wheel all the way down the mountain. Looking back, he needed that time away from the farm and all the worries that come with it. He’ll never leave Bloodroot Mountain because the Cotters have lived here for generations, but I wonder if he ever wants to dust his hands of this place and move on.
Millertown was the big city to me back then, before I went to Knoxville with Daddy once to buy a washing machine. Now I see it for what it really is, a country town with old houses and glass-sprinkled lots and the smokestacks of dirty-looking factories looming over everything. The buildings on Main Street are falling into disrepair but they still have character, with tall windows and painted brick and arched doorways. Even in 1963, when I was seven, not many people shopped there anymore. Once the Millertown Plaza was built, with a supermarket and a department store, the downtown seemed outdated. There was only Odom’s Hardware, the dime store, the drugstore, a shoe store, a television repair shop, and a shabby restaurant where roaches skittered along the backs of the torn vinyl booths. Some people still feel like Main Street is the heart of the town. There’s a society of blue-haired ladies dedicated to preserving what they call the historic district. Daddy still shopped there when I was small, because it was what he was used to. He’s always been set in his ways and it took a while for the Plaza to win him over.
The Saturday that my tooth got broken, we climbed into the truck and headed out as usual. Ordinarily Mark would have come along, but he was in trouble for misbehaving at church. Daddy and I had been to the dime store for shoelaces and were passing Odom’s Hardware on our way to lunch when I saw a sign in the window advertising a junked car for sale. Daddy stopped to examine the sign and decided he wanted to take a look at the car. He claimed he might want it for parts. That’s the way he is. He goes all over the countryside dickering with other men just like himself, silent and gruff with greasy caps on their heads and plugs of tobacco tucked in their jaws. No matter how Mama fusses, he’ll drive from one end of Tennessee to the other collecting junk, or even out of state if he hears about a bargain. Half the time he brings back things we don’t need and can’t use. Once it was a box of hammers, and another time he hoisted an old unicycle out of the truck bed when he got home. Mama really threw a fit over that one.
We waited until after lunch to see about the car. Daddy took his time and had two cups of coffee. I drank a chocolate milkshake. Coming out of the restaurant, Main Street was deserted because everything closed early on Saturdays. It gave me an empty feeling. We got into the truck and went to a house with dark upper windows and old furniture setting on the porch. It might have been fancy if it hadn’t looked so rundown. When Daddy rang the bell, a man came out and said the car was in the backyard. He called Daddy by name as if they already knew each other, but I couldn’t place the man myself.
We went around the house and saw the car up on blocks in a thatch of weeds with its hood propped open. Daddy crossed the yard behind the man to have a closer look. I stood around with my hands in my pockets, wishing they’d get down to business. There were toys in the backyard, but no sign of the kids they belonged to. It was a sad place and I wanted to go home. I drifted to the edge of the yard and looked at the weedy lot next door. It was littered with junk and trash, almost like a dump. I lingered there for a while, daydreaming about nothing in particular. Then the back screen door of the house screeched open and slapped shut. I turned and saw a boy coming down the concrete steps with a basketball under his arm. He was bigger than me, tall with black hair and white skin. He dribbled the ball a couple of times on a bald spot of ground before noticing me. When he saw me standing at the edge of the yard, he stopped and looked me over with suspicious eyes. I didn’t know how to talk to other kids besides my brothers, so I hoped he would go back to his dribbling. My heart sank when he walked over and spoke to me.
“Hey,” he said, and bounced the ball between us a couple of times.
“Hey.”
He stared at me for a minute, so hard I felt my ears turning red.
“You want to see something?” the boy asked finally.
“What?”
“A skeleton.”
I didn’t answer. I thought he was picking on me.
“Not a human skeleton, dummy. A dog one.”
“Oh.”
“You want to see it?”
“Where’s it at?”
“Over there.” He tilted his head toward the weedy lot.
“I guess.”
He tossed his basketball back into the yard and I watched it bounce a few times before it came to rest by a rusty swing set. To this day, I don’t know why I followed him. I had a bad feeling from the minute he sized me up with his mean black eyes. We walked into the weeds and as we got farther from the house I grew more and more nervous. I looked back over my shoulder at Daddy and the other man, bent under the car’s hood.
“I want to go back,” I told the boy.
“Come on. It’s right over here,” he said.
He took me by the arm and dragged me down a glass-littered path, past a heap of charred garbage and an old mattress spilling stuffing. Finally we came to the edge of the lot, where dark trees crowded close to a rickety board fence. I wanted to cry, but didn’t let myself. I could see the bones ahead, glimmering white in a mess of green vines. The boy steered me roughly by the shoulders until the skeleton was at my toes.
He wanted me to be afraid, but the dog bones weren’t so bad once I saw them close up. They were wound in a shroud of morning glories and the flowers made them almost beautiful. But it turned out a dead dog wasn’t the most interesting thing to be found in the weedy lot. When I knelt down to have a better look at the skeleton, something shiny caught my eye. Glittering in the weeds near the dog’s skull, I saw the tip of a rock poking out of the earth like a headstone. Right away, I lost interest in the bones and reached out to touch the rock. Back then, Mark and I collected quartz. We called the shining chunks we found field diamonds, and this was the biggest one I’d ever seen.