LAURA
I told Clint things on the bus, too. He’s the only one I ever told what happened to Mama. It was hard to say out loud. I told him about the mountain and our old house up there. The only thing I didn’t tell him about was Mama’s box with a finger bone inside. I’d look out the bus window and talk about how I wanted to go back. I told Clint first I’d visit the Barnetts and their dog, Whitey, and thank them for being so good to me and Johnny and Mama. Then I’d go in the house and lay in Mama’s bed, like she used to let me of the mornings. After that I’d wade in the creek and try to catch minnows like me and Johnny used to do. I’d climb up to Johnny’s rock where he got snake bit and look off down the bluff. Then I’d go high enough to find that white ghost flower and show Clint how it bled. One time he asked, “What about your mama?” I didn’t understand. He said, “Don’t you want to go visit her in Nashville?” I wanted to answer but I didn’t know how to say I’d got to where I’d just as soon see her dead than to see her locked up. I believe he felt bad for asking. I knowed he didn’t mean anything by it. He never brung it up again.
Clint understood how bad I missed the mountain. He said, “Soon as I get me a car, I’m driving you there.” I knowed he was saving up money from his job. Going home seemed like something way off in the future that might never happen. Then one day Clint came to me grinning after school. It was spring already, close to the end of my freshman year. He led me out to the parking lot and there it was, a long green car with a busted place on the windshield. First thing Clint said was, “Now I can take you home.” I knowed he wasn’t talking about Larry and Pauline’s house. I hugged Clint tight and felt like crying, but not with happy tears. My heart was beating loud in my ears.
That Saturday I told Pauline I was going to the library to write a paper for school. I hated to lie, but she never would have let me go off with a boy. I walked to the end of the street. It was a nice day. The neighbor kids was out playing with water guns. I ought to felt good, but I was scared. When I got in Clint’s car, he pulled me across the seat and kissed me. Then he leaned back and looked me over. “What’s wrong, baby?” he asked, starting up the car. It was loud and the exhaust just about made me sick. I couldn’t say anything. When we got to the stop sign, Clint asked, “Which way?” I started getting even more tore up. I never thought about it before, but I couldn’t remember how to get there. I was just eight when I got took away. Clint must have seen the worry on my face. He said, “That’s all right. We’ll just head for the country until you see something you know.”
We drove for a long time, past the city limits. We went down the two-lane highway, through Valley Home and Slop Creek. I had lived in them places. I should have knowed my way around. The mountains got closer but nothing looked familiar. I set against the door twisting my hands. Every once in a while Clint would pat my knee. “See anything you know?” he’d ask, and I’d shake my head. Finally when we got to Piney Grove he said, “Let me pull over here to this store and ask somebody.” It seemed like he was in there a long time. I kept looking at the mountains, getting hotter and sicker.
I don’t know how long I set there until Clint came back. He opened the door and grinned at me. “That feller said we ain’t got far. Just hang a right here at the corner and keep going about five miles, then hang another right and I reckon that road goes straight up the mountain. Won’t be long.” He rubbed the back of my hair and I tried to smile, but my belly was hurting. I needed to use the toilet but I didn’t want to get out of the car.
After Clint took that first right, it seemed like we was driving forever. It was the crookedest road I ever saw. There was thick trees on either side and a lot of dead groundhogs and possums along the ditch. I wanted to be happier about going home, but I kept seeing Mama in my head, how she pulled out her hair and slobbered and screamed like a wildcat when she was fighting them people. I don’t know how long it was before we came to that second right, and a sign that said “Bloodroot Mt. Road.” Beside of the turn there was an old white house with a man in the yard fixing his truck. He looked up when we slowed down. He had a long, stringy beard and mean eyes. He didn’t wave back when Clint lifted his hand. I had a bad feeling. Clint turned onto the road and it looked like new blacktop. The road to our house was dirt, that much I remembered for sure.
We started the climb up and Clint’s car was laboring. Leaf shadows fell across the road and right away I knowed something was wrong. First I seen a trailer set back in the hill, so new it didn’t have any underpinning. The trees had been cleared to make room for it. Big muddy gashes had been cut in the ground for a driveway. On the other side of the road there was a house under construction. Men without shirts was hammering on the roof. There was a yellow machine parked in the mud beside a heap of dirt. Then there was a long stretch of bald land with just a few scattered tree stumps here and there. Cold started spreading over me. It was like we had took a wrong turn into some hainted place.
“This ain’t it,” I said to Clint.
“Huh?”
“This ain’t the right mountain.”
“Baby, it said so on the sign.”
“Sign must be mixed up,” I said. I didn’t want the tears to come out but what I was seeing didn’t look a thing like home. The mountain I came from was wilder than this.
“This ain’t it,” I said again. I couldn’t hold back the crying any longer.
“It’s got to be,” Clint said, real quiet.
“But it ain’t!” I hollered. I couldn’t hardly see out the window through my tears. We was passing a place that seemed like the Barnetts’, only it was growed up with briars and weeds. It couldn’t have been the same house or the same land, rundown as it was.
“Stop the car, Clint!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, so hard it hurt my throat. “Stop the car and turn around!”
Clint didn’t hardly know what to do. “Okay, okay,” he said, looking over at me with big eyes. “Just quit that squalling, honey. You’re fixing to make yeself sick.”
He backed into the driveway of the place that looked something like the Barnetts’. I cried even harder, thinking he meant to take me there. When he seen how worried I was, he turned the car around and drove off so fast the wheels slung gravel everywhere.
Before long Clint had to pull over for gas, at the same store where he got them bad directions. While he was pumping gas I thought of my real home. I felt better when I closed my eyes and seen it how it really looked, cool and green and wild with no trailers and no muddy gashes in the land, no chopped-down trees and scruffy bald patches, no half-built houses peeking out of the trees with satellite dishes on their roofs.
When Clint went in to pay, I watched him walk across the parking lot. Just looking at him, tall and lanky with all that sunny hair, made me feel safe. He came back and opened the door real careful, like he was afraid of what he might find. He poked his head in and looked me over, trying to judge what kind of shape I was in. He tossed something wrapped in plastic across the seat and it landed in my lap. It was chocolate cupcakes with cream in the middle. He knowed how much I liked them. I smiled and tore them open. He squinted at me to see if I was okay before he got in the car. I pulled him close and hugged him tight. I don’t believe I ever loved anybody that much, even Johnny. I scooted next to him. We set in the parking lot of that store while I ate my cupcakes. We never did talk any more about going home. I reckon I was scared we’d get lost again.