But that was the main highway. State Route 14 ran south-east towards Elizabeth. Uncle Luke's car seemed to hit every hole in the road, and the road had plenty to hit. Beckie's teeth went together with a sharp click at one of the bad ones—Uncle Luke's shocks were shot, too, if he had any. The rifles under Beckie's feet shifted with a metallic clatter.
"What's that?" Gran ears weren't the greatest, even with a hearing aid, but she noticed the noise.
"It's nothin'," Uncle Luke said.
"I swear I heard a rattle." Gran didn't know when to leave well enough—or bad enough—alone.
"It's nothin', I told you!" This time, Uncle Luke all but shouted it. Gran wasn't much good at taking a hint, but she did now. Beckie breathed a little easier—only a little, but even that felt good. The guns were bad enough. She didn't want a quarrel in the car, too.
They drove past Bloody Hollow—a nice, cheery name for a place, and one that fit too well with what lay under the gray blanket—and Elizabeth Hill before they got to Elizabeth itself. The little town lay on the south bank of a loop of the Kanawha River. A sign at the edge said, WELCOME TO ELIZABETH, SEAT OF WIRT COUNTY. POPULATION (2092)—1,316.
To Beckie, it looked like the smallest, most godforsaken place in the world. Then Gran said, "My goodness, how town has grown! There weren't even a thousand people here when I was born." So it all depended on your point of view.
Uncle Luke gave his: "Lord, what a miserable dump." Beckie didn't like agreeing with him on anything. He was so sour, he made Gran seem sweet by comparison, which wasn't easy. But she would have had a hard time telling him he was wrong.
The county courthouse was smaller and dumpier than a lot of hamburger joints Beckie had seen. It was made of brown bricks that looked a million years old. They would have told her she was a long way from home all by themselves. Because of earthquakes, hardly anybody built with brick in California. The courthouse sat at the corner of Route 14 and a narrow street named—logically enough—Court. Uncle Luke stopped the Honda right by the courthouse. He hit the button that popped the trunk. "You guys get out here," he announced.
"What?" Gran sounded ticked. "I reckoned you'd take me all the way to Ethel's place." She never said reckoned in California. Funny words were coming back to her along with her accent.
"Well, then, you reckoned wrong," Uncle Luke said flatly. "You won't get lost, and you won't get tired. This place isn't big enough for that." No matter how snotty he was, he was right again.
"How will we get back?" Beckie asked.
"Not my worry," he said. "Bound to be a bus or something. Come on—hop out. Time's a-wasting."
Beckie almost jumped out of the car. She didn't want to stay near those assault rifles a second longer than she had to. Gran moved slower, not just because she was old but because she was giving Uncle Luke a piece of her mind. Beckie got their suitcases out of the trunk. "The nerve of that man!" Gran fumed as she finally joined Beckie on the sidewalk. The Honda zoomed away. Wherever Uncle Luke was going, he was in a bigger hurry to get there than he had been to come here.
"Gran," Beckie said quietly, "he had guns in the back of the car."
"Maybe he's going hunting after he dropped us off. Maybe that's why he was in such a rush."
"Not unless whatever he's hunting walks on two legs. They weren't just rifles. They were the kind of guns you see on the news, where the person who's got one just did something horrible with it," Beckie said.
"Don't be silly," Gran said. "Luke wouldn't do anything like that."
How do you know? Beckie wouldn't have put anything past the man who wasn't her real relative. But she didn't argue with Gran. She didn't see the point. She wouldn't change her grandmother's mind—nothing this side of a nuke could do that. And she couldn't prove anything now, no matter what she thought.
Gran was looking around with wonder on her usually sour face. "All these places I haven't seen for so long," she murmured. "There's Zollicoffer's drug store. And look." She pointed to a hill off to the southwest, not far out of town. "That there's Jephany Knob."
"Oh, boy," Beckie said in a hollow voice. She was looking around, too. The courthouse had a brass memorial plaque fastened to the side. WIRT COUNTY'S HEROIC DEAD, it said. There were names from the War of 1812, the War of 1833, the First Ohio-Virginia War, the Three States' War, the First Black Insurrection, the Great War, the Second Black Insurrection, the Atlantic War, the Florida Intervention, and all the other rights Virginia had got into over the past three centuries. Wirt County couldn't have a whole lot of people—all of Virginia put together had fewer people than Los Angeles County. But the men here weren't shy about going to war.
While Gran and Beckie looked around, people from Elizabeth were looking at them. Beckie needed a moment to realize that. She needed another moment to realize they weren't friendly looks—not even a little bit. We're strangers, she thought. Everybody here knew everybody else. How often did Elizabeth see strangers? And what did it do to them when it did?
In Los Angeles, you were lucky if you knew your neighbors. Your friends were more likely to be the people you went to school with or, if you were a grown-up, worked with. It wasn't like that here. POPULATION—1,316. How long had these people been gossiping about one another and feuding with one another? Since the town was founded, whenever that was. A long time ago—Beckie was positive of that.
A woman a little younger than Gran came up to them. She was wearing a frumpy print dress. Well, it would have been frumpy in California, anyhow. For all Beckie knew, it was the height of style in western Virginia. Hesitantly, the woman said, "You're Myrtle Collins, isn't that right?"
"I sure am," Gran answered. Collins had to be her maiden name. Beckie wasn't sure she'd ever heard it before. Gran went on, "Are you Violet Brown?"
"No, I'm Daisy," the local woman said. "Daisy Springer nowadays. You went to school with Violet, and you came over to the house all the time." She smiled. "I was the kid sister who made trouble."
"Oh, were you ever!" Gran said. She started talking about stuff that had happened a long, long time ago. She didn't introduce Beckie to Daisy Brown—no, Springer—or anything. She might have forgotten Beckie was along at all. She'd fallen back into her own early days, and nothing else mattered.
A man came by sweeping the sidewalk with a push broom. You wouldn't see anything like that in L.A.—everybody there used blowers. The man was black, the first black Beckie had seen in Elizabeth. He had what looked like the crummiest job in town. Things were like that all over the Southeast—except in Mississippi, where blacks were on top and persecuted whites instead of the other way around.
"Gran—" Beckie said after a while. Her grandmother stood right there next to her, but didn't hear a thing. It wasn't just because Gran was going deaf, either. She was off in another place—no, in another time. She and Daisy Springer were reliving the days when they were both kids. They were talking about people Beckie'd never heard of. Even if she had heard of them, she wouldn't have cared about them, not one bit.
"And do you recollect the time Hattie Williamson's dog—" Gran started yet another story.
"Gran—" Beckie tried again. She'd never heard her grandmother say recollect, either.
Gran still didn't remember—or recollect—that she was alive. She'd forgotten Beckie existed, or thaLmost of the forty years and more since she moved away from Elizabeth had ever happened. Will I act that way when I get old? Beckie wondered. She hoped not, anyway.
Even if Gran had forgotten about her, Daisy Springer still knew she was there. "This'll be your granddaughter, Myrt?" the local woman asked. That made Beckie blink one more time. Myrt? She couldn't imagine anybody ever calling Gran by a name like that. It was like calling the Rock of Gibraltar Rockie.