“I wasn’t tryin’ to be a smart mouth, there, Teardrop. Uncle Teardrop.”
“It don’t seem like you’ve got to try none, girl, smarty-mouth shit just flies out your yap anytime your yap falls open.” He walked to the window that overlooked the side yard. Sonny and Harold chased each other around in circles, flinging snowballs while yelling fantastic threats back and forth. Teardrop stood with his arms crossed and studied their play like he was scouting the boys for the future. He was silent long enough for the quiet to become worrisome to Ree, then said, “He’s faster’n Blond Milton ever was. He hits stuff he throws at, too. Blond Milton, he always was strong as stink but he threw rocks’n balls’n shit about like an ol’ granny would without her glasses on, and he never could swim real swift or play horseshoes worth a damn or whatever. He wasn’t coordinated as Sonny is already at any of that. Course, the man has proved he’ll shoot anybody he wants, and not everybody will.” He leaned to the window as he watched the boys a moment longer, eyes following them as they moved, until he eventually grunted once, shrugged his shoulders. “Harold, though. Harold better like guns.” He pulled away from the window and turned about. “The law found Jessup’s car out at Gullett Lake this mornin’. Somebody set it on fire last night, burnt it down to nothin’ almost.”
“Was…?”
“He wasn’t in it.”
Late-morning shadows worked patterns across the scarred wooden floor, patterns underfoot shifting angle and design at the pace of the sun crossing the sky. Mom’s eyes fell closed as though she’d heard and she began to hum a short snatch of flat music that nearly brought a song to mind. Teardrop’s green truck was down in the yard and the boys ran around it hurling dripping snowballs at each other. Ree felt a low vibration become electric in the jelly between her bones and heart, and said, “He’s gone, ain’t he?”
“This is for you-all.” Teardrop took a flat square of folded dollars from inside his jacket and tossed it to the couch. “His court day was this mornin’ and he didn’t show.” He flung his arm out, gesturing vaguely toward the land up the hill behind the house. “I’d sell off that Bromont timber now while you can.”
“No, huh-uh. I won’t be doin’ nothin’ like that.”
“That’s the very first thing they’ll do once they’ve took this place from under you-all, girl. Go up’n cut them woods down to nubs.” He stepped to stand before her and put a hand beneath her chin, raised her eyes to meet his. “Might as well have the dough to spend on your own.” He stood back, plucked a bag of crank from the smoke pocket on his shirt, scooped a load with a long fingernail and snorted, snorted again. He twisted his neck while rubbing his nose and the black dots in his eyes burst wider and darker. He held the bag to Ree. “You got the taste for it yet?”
“Hell, no.”
“Suit yourself, little girl.” He rolled the bag, put the crank away, turned in a circle to inhale the room, stopped suddenly to stare directly at Mom, humming with her eyes closed. He squinted and listened to her disjointed song awhile before turning from her. “She ain’t moved since I was here in April.” He walked to the front door and opened it, then turned to look at Mom again. “This floor, here? I remember when this floor here used to get to jumpin’ like a fuckin’ bunny from all the dancin’. Everybody dancin’ around all night, stoned out of their minds—and it always was the happy kind of stoned back then.”
Ree held the door open and leaned against the jamb to see him leave. She felt blue and ruined, as adrift and puny as an ash flake caught in a tossing wind. Teardrop started his green truck and gunned the engine until it roared, then turned around to head out. The boys stood together beside the rut road to watch him go by, stood a little bit scared and very still, their arms hanging at their sides, faces empty of any telling expression. Uncle Teardrop eased the truck slowly, slowly alongside them, stared at them intently without a word of greeting or gesture of recognition, and with no change in speed drove out of sight.
21
MOM STOOD when asked and Ree dressed her in a white winter coat that was puffy and slick and a yellow stocking hat that had a floppy yellow ball knit at the peak. Ree opened the side door and ushered her outside into the yard. Mom seldom left the house and her face looked anxious. She stepped uncertainly onto the thin snow, first tapping about with a toe before letting her heel come down. Ree held her by the elbow and led her to the steep trail on the north slope. The sun was dropping behind the far ridges, and in such light ice on the trail looked like spilled milk frozen hard.
After each step up the trail Mom would pause and lean back on Ree until Ree boosted her forward again. The routine acquired a working rhythm when Ree began boosting Mom along in that brief second before her pause could become a lean. Brittle ice snapped as boots fell and toes pressed forward. Mom’s breath washed back in gusts to break across Ree’s face. The warmth and flavor of Mom’s breath held sweetness and opened memories. Mom before she was all the way crazy, lolling with Ree on a blanket between the pines, telling windy tales of whiffle-birds, the galoopus, the bingbuffer, and other Ozark creatures seldom seen in these woods but known for generations to live there. The whiffle-bird, a jolly feathered mystery just waiting to be born from shadows hatching to spark aloft quick as thought and fly backwards like a riddle across the sky, or the galoopus that might come roost deep down your well and lay perfectly square eggs of stiff yellow taffy inside your water bucket, or the taunting spooky bingbuffer that would creep close on the darkest of dark stormy nights to flex a huge hinged tail and peg rocks banging against your house while you pulled the blankets over your head and waited for the sun. Mom’s words had tickled and her close breaths had soothed.
At the crest they began to walk gingerly through the Bromont acres. Ree linked arms with Mom and steered a course between stout trunks, carefully stepping over thick roots and blurs of ice. They walked near the rim of the knob and could see distant spots in the valley while heavy trees loomed over their shoulders. A band of crows sat on limbs high above and gabbed as the women passed below. The knob was bare slab rock in some spots, and the slab rocks were yet too slickery to walk across. Ree moved between gray slabs, squeezing with her arm to prompt Mom in one direction or another. At a breakneck bluff above a wet-weather creek they paused to stare to the next knob over, where the first Bromont house had been built. The walls and such had been carted away long ago but the square rock foundation still gave a base of ordered shapeliness to the barrage of runt oak and creeper vines that had overgrown the place.
Ree turned to walk along the north slope and up into the pines. Mom tripped on a root and slipped to her knees, and her expression jolted almost alert. She said, “How long has this snow been here?”
“Days and days now.”
“I saw when it came.”
Beneath the pines the ground was kept clear by falling needles, a soft carpet of browned needles spread under the low branches, a natural rumpus space for short scampering youngsters. The pines could easily be imagined into a castle or a sailing ship or serve merely as an ideal picnic spot. The trees broke any wind that came and lent a good scent to any season.
Mom held on to a branch and paused. “This is where I used to play.”
“Me, too.”
“Plus Bernadette.”
Ree pulled Mom snug to her side, walked between the pines, the sharp needles and swishing branches, then downhill and across the wet-weather creek to the next wooded mound. There were footprints in the snow, raccoons and rabbits and a pair of coyotes that had prowled near for a sniff. Ree pulled Mom along uphill into the dense hardwood. Many pauses were required, and deep sucks of air, before the crest was reached. The trees were large and august and faithful. A huge oak stump sawed level made a sitting place overlooking the valley. The stump had become frayed and squishy from rot but made a wide pleasant seat.