Running off to Illinois don’t mean I got away from the place and the people I came from, though. It ought to be easy here where it’s cold and the sky is like a blank slate. But something, maybe God, won’t let me forget. I could avoid the mirror. I could wear a glove, but I’ve learned the past would still find me. Like what happened today. The foreigner I work for subscribes to the national newspapers. Every morning I make a pot of coffee and read the paper in my office behind the curtains. I have to keep up with the world someway, since I don’t get out much. I opened the newspaper and saw a face I knew, even though I only laid eyes on it once. Right there above a black-and-white picture I saw my own last name. My hand shook so bad I sloshed coffee on my lap. Hollis told me a long time ago Myra had twin babies. I didn’t know what to think when I heard it. Back then, I hoped they wasn’t mine. Now the boy has won a prize for a book he wrote. If he was mine, I’d be proud. But I could never get in touch with them. They wouldn’t want to look at me and see on my face how bad it was between me and their mother. Besides that, if they are mine, it’s sad how they came into the world. Best thing for me to do is let them alone, like I should have done Myra.
All day I’ve been nervous after seeing my name in the newspaper. Maybe God’s trying to tell me that a man can’t run away from who he is and where he comes from. It’s like when that man came here looking for me once, about ten years after Myra took off. There was an ice storm coming and I was out salting the parking lot. The sky over the motel looked like sheet metal. He came walking across the highway from over at the truck stop. He could have used a haircut and a shave, had on a tatty old coat and a flannel shirt with holes in it. The heels of his boots was run down, like they’d seen a lot of traveling. He headed straight for me. I knew by the way he stared me down that he wasn’t looking for a room. I quit salting and we stood there sizing each other up. I figured he was caught off guard by my face, but that didn’t seem like all it was. I didn’t ask what I could help him with. I waited for him to talk first.
“I been working on the bank building they’re putting up downtown,” he said finally. I seen he had a rotten front tooth. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him.
“So what?”
“I heard from the men there’s somebody works here by the name of John Odom.”
I got to feeling dizzy-headed. I could tell where he was from by the way he talked.
“What if there is?”
“Is that you?”
“Who’s asking?”
“Doug Cotter. I believe we come from the same neck of the woods. You ever been to a place called Bloodroot Mountain?” I saw in his eyes that he knew I had been. He took a step toward me. He was tall. I didn’t know if I could take him or not.
“Well, what in the hell do you want?” I asked, trying not to show my nerves.
He looked me over again, seemed like he was thinking. Then he said, “I came here meaning to put you in the hospital. But it looks like somebody beat me to it.”
I forced myself to laugh. “What, did Myra send you here to finish the job?”
His eyes changed when he heard her name. It took him a second to collect his cool. Then he smiled in a way that hid his rotten tooth. He looked toward the truck stop where he came from. “Why don’t you let me buy you a cup of coffee?”
I went on across the highway with him. He didn’t seem to want a fight anymore. We sat at the counter and I ordered pie to go with my coffee, since he was paying. We both got quiet. I didn’t want to talk first but I couldn’t help it. The ice had started ticking on the window of the truck stop. I looked at the weather instead of his face. “I guess Myra left her mark on you, too,” I said. “Not on the outside, but I can still see it.” I looked back at him. My jaw had started aching. “Have you seen her?”
He shook his head and looked down into his coffee cup. “No. But I know where she is. Mental hospital over in Nashville. I thought you put her there, but now I don’t know.” I had already been told where Myra was. Before Hollis died, he kept me informed. But I wondered how she was surviving in a place like that, as bad as she’d hated being cooped up. “They auctioned off her house on the mountain,” he said. “My brother bid on it.” He smiled in his odd way. “I guess she left her mark on him, too.”
“What is it that woman does to people?” I said. All of a sudden the pie didn’t look good to me anymore. I dropped my fork on the plate.
“It’s funny you would ask that.” He looked out at the ice rain with me. “I’ve always thought I was cursed for loving Myra. Everywhere I go, bad luck follows me.”
I shook my head. “You and me both.”
“I don’t know.” He turned back to me. “I feel different now that I’ve seen you.”
“Why’s that?”
“There’s nothing supernatural about what she did to your face, is there? It’s not right, what we’ve put on her. She’s made out of flesh and blood, just like anybody else.”
I forced myself to laugh again. “Glad to be of service, buddy.”
He hung his head for a minute, like he was wore out. “I’m trying as hard as I can to forget about her,” he said. “But sometimes I still think I’d give anything to have her.”
Then he got up and paid the bill and left the truck stop. I never saw him again. Whenever I passed the new bank building downtown I didn’t look over there. I didn’t want to think about Myra anymore. I doubt he ever did manage to forget about her. I got to mulling over the things he said and wondering myself if I’d ever really get over her. Sometimes it seemed like she was crying out to me when winter storms came. I’d cover my ears to drown out her screams, begging me to rescue her from that old asylum. It drove me out one night into the snow and I fell on the ice in the parking lot. I thought I was dying of a heart attack and maybe I was having one, because the weight on my chest was so bad I couldn’t get up. I laid out yonder freezing for a long time, and all I could think was if I died right then I’d never see her again. I knew someday I had to find her.
But I didn’t go see her until Hollis had that aneurysm in 1996. I took a week off of work at the motel and went to Millertown to visit his grave. I knew it was time to look for Myra, too, while I was back down south. By then I didn’t want revenge for what she did to me, even though seeing her locked up would be the next thing to seeing her in hell. All I wanted from Myra was to look in her eyes one more time before I died.
It turned out I had to stay around Nashville longer than I meant to, since there was only certain visiting days. When it finally came time to see her, my guts was churning all the way up the road to the asylum. There was stone pillars marking the entrance and behind them I saw the shape of the building through a piece of woods. At first it looked like a big brick mansion, but closer up I saw how old and shabby it was, one or two trees shading a little patch of grass in front of the door. The parking lot was half empty, like the patients didn’t get many visitors. I could see why. I knew as soon as I passed through the steel doors it wasn’t a place I wanted to hang around long. It stunk like piss and bleach and I nearly gagged just walking to the nurse’s booth. When I went up the stairs to the third floor, there was crazy people everywhere. It was a din of shouting and laughing and crying and begging. One woman was slumped against the wall with her hair hanging in her face and I had to step over her legs on my way down the hall. Another one kept asking if I had brought her cigarettes. I liked to never shook her off of my arm.