Seeing Things (9 page)
Authors: Patti Hill
Huck tapped his pipe on the back of his hand. A pile of spent tobacco hit the floor. If he'd shinned away from Widow Douglas for trying to “sivilize” him, surely he'd flee if I scolded him for messing Suzanne's rug. I kept silent on the subject, hoping his tobacco would disappear like the mud. This was all so new. I did the one thing that came most naturally to me: I kept talking.
“I failed miserably at running away myself. But then Pa wasn't coming after me with a hick'ry. My ma seriously wished he would. I was a sassy thing, always wanted the last word. I tasted more soap than I care to recount.”
Huck's eyes caught the light and his dimples deepened. That was all the encouragement I needed to continue.
“I hadn't thought about that night in years, not since before Evelyn died. You remember me telling you about my sister? She loved reminding me, and anyone who cared to listen, about what a foolish child I'd been. I was only ten years old and sick in love with a horse named Pete. The farmer had posted a âfor sale' sign on the pasture fence just outside the park. Did I tell you my pa was a park warden? You might compare him to the caretaker of a huge estate where people of any station could come and visit. He patrolled the Great Smoky Mountains for moonshiners and poachers. Ma sat up darning long into the night when he spent the night on the mountain. Well, that doesn't matter one bit about why I ran away, only that Pa didn't make a whole lot of money and feeding a saddle horse was completely out of the question.”
Huck leaned back, picked at the frayed edges of his pants at the knees. Bored?
“I concocted a plan Tom would be proud of.”
Huck rested his hand on his knee.
“Ma and Evelyn went visiting the new ranger's wife in the Greenbrier District with a basket of pie, jam, and pickles. Ma made the best pickles. As soon as they stepped off the porch, I packed a bag of Ma's bread and some cheese. Then I snitched a half dozen apples from the cellar for Pete and hid the bag under my bed. When the moon came up that night, I shimmied out the window and took off on foot down a game trail. Floating down a river, now that's the way to travel, but the West Prong of the Little Pigeon sluiced down the mountain, tumbling boulders and roaring like a train. Any raft I made would be toothpicks in minutes.
“I carried a flashlight and a whistle in case I came across any bears. We hadn't been at the park but a year, but I knew all the trails and roads like the back of my hand, at least the trails in the Sugarlands District. We lived in a dandy old farmhouse, where Evelyn and I could have had our own rooms but Ma made herself a quilting room. We would have shared a room anyway. I needed her snoring to lull me to sleep.”
Huck shifted his weight. I figured I'd better stick to the facts of the story.
“I found Pete standing out in his pasture, head hung low, switching flies in his sleep. He looked magnificent in the moonlight. Did I tell you he was a palomino? He was no Trigger, but I can't deny most of my affection for him paralleled my adoration of Roy Rogers. Evelyn and I fought over who'd marry Roy first, never mind he was already married to Dale Evans, that hussy.
“Pete whinnied as I approached and leaned into my hand under his mane. He looked a good deal bigger at night, I can tell you that. I left my bag with him while I went looking for a halter in the barn. Now mind you, I never considered myself a horse thief, and I think they still hanged horse thieves in Tennessee back in the 1940s. In my mind's eye, Pete needed rescuing from his days as a plow horse.
“Well, you've probably guessed the end of this story. As you say, I was a perfect saphead for thinking I could steal a horse. Pete went and ate all my bread and cheese and the apples while I hunted the halter I never found. There's one thing I always take care of, Huck, and that's my stomach. Not much has changed in that department. Pete ate clear through my schoolbag. My hopes of becoming the Queen of the West faded that night, along with any hope of hearing the end of my foolishness in my sister's lifetime.
“I threw the worthless bag in a creek. Just as I rounded the last curve toward home, Pa stepped out of the shadows and nearly scared me to death. He took my hand. We walked a good distance in silence before he asked me, âBirdie, had you forgotten the commandment,
Thou shalt not steal?'
Thou shalt not steal?'
“The moon lit Pa's face like a lantern. The shadows deepened the furrows of his forehead. I don't know how he knew where I'd been, but my heart nearly burst for the disappointment on his face. I said, âI reckon that old horse will be ready for the glue factory in a day or two.'”
“âThat's what I was thinking too, Birdie,' he said.
“He bought me a new schoolbag in Gatlinburg before Ma or Evelyn noticed it missing. I loved him extra hard for that. Well, that's it. Not much of an adventure, not compared to yours.”
Huck leaned back to suck his pipe and scratch himself like boys do.
“One thing I wondered, Huck. Did you understand you could never go back home, not to the widow or the judge, once you got them believing you were dead?”
I bit my lip to keep quiet, hoping Huck would get talkative. In the chapters Fletcher and I'd listened to that night, Huck floated down the river in a canoe he'd hived from the shore. He lay on his back to watch the night sky slide by. How I wanted that kind of freedom for Fletcher. A boy hungered for the chance to thumb his nose at probability now and again, even if he didn't know it.
Then a memory sat me bolt upright. Huck raised his eyebrows but otherwise seemed unperplexed by my sudden alertness.
“My son, Andy, the man who owns this house, he once ran away for three days. I liked to died of fright. Him and his father knocked heads over . . . I don't know what they argued about. Neither one talked about their fight, ever. I'd never seen Chuck so agitated, watching and waiting for Andy to return. The whole state of California, or what seemed like it, looked for Andy. Ends up he'd hiked to Tuolumne Meadows and set up camp. When the search-and-rescue folks hiked him out, the media flashed their cameras and poked microphones in Andy's face.”
I worried the mention of media and microphones might mystify Huck, but he blinked and scratched his chin. Still, I yammered on. The story shouldered its way into the present.
“I hardly knew my own son. Dark whiskers bristled his chin and sideburns. A few nights in the wilderness had transformed him.” My eyes burned with tears. “Things changed after that. Chuck only spoke to Andy to bark orders. Andy turned sullen, started running with a tough crowd, or what we thought was a tough crowd. They were Boy Scouts compared to the kids Fletcher comes across every day.” I blew my nose. “Andy slept in our house, but he lived a million miles away. We bailed him out of jail once, but Chuck wouldn't do it a second time. Andy stayed in that cell for ten days and nights. I didn't sleep a wink, laid awake praying but mostly scheming ways to raise bail. Top on my list was selling Chuck's snowmobile. In the end, I didn't do anything, and I've lived to regret my paralysis to this day.” I pounded the bed with my fist. “With Fletcher, things will be different.”
Huck sat up straighter.
“Don't go getting provoked on account of a grandmother's passion. As I remember, you had plenty of people on your side. The judge and the widow fought hard for you . . . and they prayed for you, didn't they? While folks were out looking for your remainders, you figured prayer out for yourself. I know you did. The bread floated straight to you on Jackson Island. The widow and parson had prayed, and God listened. The bread found you, and you made a good breakfast of it. There's something to prayer, all right.”
Although my watch read three o'clock in the morning by this time, the Sunday school teacher in me came alert. “Huck, Jesus prefers hearing from sinners. You ought to give prayer another try.”
He leaned forward. “There ain't no doubt but there is something to the notion of prayerâ”
At the sound of his voiceâwell it was if someone had pulled the drain and I was a bathtub full of warm water, now suddenly empty and cool. He didn't take notice.
“That is, there's something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays, but it don't work for me, and I reckon prayin' don't work for only just the right kind of person.”
Huck exited my world as weightlessly as he had trafficked into it. But his words remained, illusionary, sliding in and out of what was real and what was hoped for. Perhaps I only remembered his words from the story. But the longer I lay in the dark, the harder it became to dismiss the timbre of Huck's voice, the playfulness mixed with sadness. I stared toward what I'd come to think of as his recliner for a long time, willing him to return to confirm or deny his words. When he didn't, I wrestled with the kinds of accusations you might expect from someone approaching a certain age where vulnerabilities of the cognitive kind become more probable: You're crazy. You must stop watching television. You haven't been taking your vitamins. Your Aunt Terzie called the sheriff regularly to report zebras grazing among the cows. Chuck gave you a crossword puzzle book, and you never even tried.
Bee stretched and rolled onto my side of the bed without missing a snore. “And you consider yourself a faithful companion? You can forget about any surprises in your food bowl in the morning,” I said, playing with a silky ear.
To silence the incriminations, I moved out to the great room, a room with a television as big as a bus and lots of leather and wood over a deeply piled rug. Maybe TCM was playing a Jimmy Stewart movie, or almost as good, a Cary Grant flick. I settled into a recliner that cradled my back with kindness and turned on a lamp to study the television remote. The thing weighed three pounds but was equipped with the teeny-tiniest buttons imaginable. Thwarted, I clicked off the lamp to blink into the darkness. My mind swam with conflicting thoughts. I composed tirades to hurl at my son over his unfair treatment of Fletcher, and then I nearly crawled up the stairs for a chance to hold Andy to my breast.
I needed clarity.
Chapter 10
“I'm going to church.”
More a cry for independence than a statement of fact, I stood before the Wainwright family, each with a section of the Sunday paper spread before them. Fletcher looked up from what I supposed to be the box scores sprawled across the coffee table. Andy let his section collapse in his lap. Suzanne returned a powdery pastry to a plate. The scene was downright Rockwellian. Honestly, the temptation to trade my Bible for the funny papers nearly toppled my resolve. This was the first time in all the days I'd been in the Wainwrights' home that they all sat in the same roomâno small miracle.
Andy stood up. “I'm sorry, Ma. I should have remembered. Give me a minute and I'll drive you.”
“Sit down. There's a church a couple blocks away. I'm getting my technique down. Next week, I may enter a marathon.” I didn't dare tell him I would need an hour to get there with all the rest stops I'd take.
Fletcher folded the sports page. “Are you talking about the Jackson Park Church? I'll go with you, Grandma.”
If Dick Clark announced Andy Williams's “Moon River” had topped the charts, I couldn't have been more surprised or delighted. I'd prayed for Fletcher since he'd swam in his mother's womb. I won't apologize. I claimed his precious soul for Jesus, and now he'd offered to escort me to church. My heart thrummed the strains of the “Hallelujah Chorus.”
I said to Andy, “There now, you don't have to worry about me. I'll walk with Fletcher.”
Suzanne cleared her throat. Andy stood stock-still. Shifting the fog a bit, I saw Fletcher's offer had caught Andy off guard. I hadn't seen his jaw dropped that low since I'd asked him if he knew the facts of life. “You've never shown any interest in church,” he said to his son.
“Grandma shouldn't go alone.”
“I'm not so sure about this,” said Suzanne, creasing the newspaper sharply in half. “I'd hate to see Fletcher caught up in something that would compromise him intellectually. What's the point?”
Andy took a breath, but I beat him at the conversational draw. Let the record show, I spoke matter-of-factly, although my heart raced feverishly. “I go to church because I'm as dumb as an ox, charging through life angry and scared. Church is the place where my heart gets back on track. I'm reminded what's important about life and eternity. I arrive feeling like the world is crumbling under my feet and leave knowing I stand on a Rock.” You can bet I was glad I'd read Psalm 73 that morning.
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