The Search for Belle Prater (8 page)

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Authors: Ruth White

BOOK: The Search for Belle Prater
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On
Saturday morning the radio weatherman predicted snow for the afternoon, so Grandpa was uneasy in his mind about starting up an isolated holler like Crooked Ridge without chains on the tires of his new car. By the time he’d drug the chains out of his storage shed, and Porter helped him put them on over the tires, it was close to eleven and the snow clouds were hovering.
Mama was down at the church house doing something or other, and Cassie had been with me since nine o’clock, waiting. We were both wearing our jeans that day, as well as heavy sweaters and boots. While we waited for Grandpa, I picked out a few songs on the piano that the Bluegrass Blues had done for us. I thought I did a pretty good job playing, but when Cassie and I tried to sing like Bonnie and the two Nancys, it was plain even to us that we should never try to make a living at it.
Woodrow couldn’t wait to get started. He wandered
in and then out of our house, restless but quiet. He was still in a dark mood, which surprised me. Normally, Woodrow did not stay down in the mouth for long.
Finally, Porter came in, stopped in the kitchen to wash his hands, and yelled to me and Cassie, “Okay, girls, Grandpa and Woodrow are ready and waiting for you.”
Cassie and I grabbed our coats, scarves, gloves, and hats and hurried out the door. Woodrow had laid down on the horn before we got to the car.
“Git a move on!” he hollered.
He was sitting in the front seat with Grandpa, so me and Cassie climbed into the rear.
“All right, you girls, listen up,” Grandpa said. “If road conditions get too bad up there at Crooked Ridge, we’re not gonna try to drive home in the dark. We’ll have to spend the night. Are y’all ready to do that?”
“You mean sleep in that place?” I said.
Over the top of the seat, Woodrow shot me the dirtiest look he had.
“I slept there for twelve years!” he said hotly. “I don’t reckon one night is gonna spoil your pretty looks!”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I protested weakly.
“Porter said if we’re not home by dark, he’ll call the bus station and leave a message there for your daddy,” Grandpa said to Cassie. “Is that gonna be all right?”
“Yeah,” Cassie said.
“Are you sure?” Grandpa persisted.
“I’m sure,” Cassie said. “Pap won’t worry about me as long as he knows what’s going on, and that I’m with y’all.”
“Is there anything up there to eat, Woodrow?” I said, because I was already hungry for lunch.
Woodrow didn’t answer, and I knew right then I had ruffled his feathers good.
“Granny fixed us a big old picnic basket full of stuff,” Grandpa said quickly. “It’s in the trunk. So, is everybody with us?”
“Yes,” Cassie and I said together.
I wanted to run into the house for my toothbrush and nightgown, but seeing the mood Woodrow was in, I didn’t dare.
As we hit the highway and picked up speed, the tire chains made quite a racket. Above the noise, Cassie and I kept up a constant stream of chatter. We were excited about driving to such an out-of-the-way place with a possible snowstorm coming. It was another adventure with Woodrow. But he rode all the way to the mouth of Crooked Ridge wordless and motionless, except for scratching his head a bit.
Once we got there, he said, “This is where you turn, Grandpa.”
“I know, I know,” Grandpa said. “I’m not senile yet, boy.”
The holler curled up and up between the mountains,
becoming more and more narrow and rocky as we went. I wondered what would happen if we were to meet a coal truck, because there was not room for even two cars to pass, much less a truck. But we didn’t meet anybody, so I didn’t find out. A light snow started, and Grandpa had to turn on his windshield wipers. Suddenly he pulled over to one side of the road and stopped the car. We were in front of the Prater house.
I had not been here many times in my life, and the last time was maybe two years before Aunt Belle disappeared. I had nearabout forgot how desolate and rundown the place was. It was a sorry sight.
A wisp of a memory came to me then. In the summer sun I saw me and Woodrow as little bitty kids, no more’n three or four, playing in the creek there behind the house while Mama and Aunt Belle picked blackberries on the bank. It was one of the few times Mama had taken me to see them, and it had been a right nice day.
I recalled the water sparkling in the sunshine, and me and Woodrow trying to catch the glitter in our hands. The pebbles were round and firm under our baby toes.
Returning to the present moment, I saw that the seasons had turned it into a different place. For one thing, the creek was froze around the edges, and you’d have to be crazy to stick your toes in there. Also, the gray hills, towering steep and rugged all around us, showed no trace of that long-ago summer’s green.
The snow was coming down harder. When we got out of Grandpa’s car, I was struck by the quiet. We coulda a been the last people living in the world.
Woodrow’s face took on no particular expression, but I saw him swallow hard. It was the first time he had returned to this place where he had spent his childhood with his mama.
“I’ll start a fire,” Grandpa said lightheartedly, and slapped Woodrow’s shoulder playfully, trying to cheer him up, I reckoned. “You think there’s any firewood in there?”
Woodrow didn’t answer. He stepped up on the low porch, and the rest of us followed. He gave the door a push, and it kinda fell open. One of the hinges was barely there. I could remember nothing about the interior of the cabin, and I wondered if I had ever been inside.
“It ain’t changed a lot,” Woodrow said, as he gazed into the darkness.
I peeped in but couldn’t see much. The room was in shadows. Hesitantly, we went inside. I could see a window at each end of the room, but they did not give much light. Automatically, I reached for a light switch, but there was none.
“Where’s the light switch?” I asked Woodrow.
He walked to the center of the room and yanked a cord, but nothing happened.
“I shoulda knowed it,” he said sourly. “Daddy didn’t pay the juice bill.”
I shivered. I hadn’t counted on spending the day—and possibly the night—in a place with no electricity. After all, this was the middle of the twentieth century!
“Got any lanterns?” Grandpa said.
“There may be one up in the loft,” Woodrow said.
When my eyes were adjusted to the dimness, I could see a big stone fireplace along the wall by the front door, a ratty couch before it, two armchairs, and various other pieces of worn-out furniture. It was a dismal, melancholy room.
On the end wall to our left was a coal cookstove, and behind it the wall was papered with pages from a Sears and Roebuck catalog. There were two tall gray porcelain cabinets for dishes and things, and a wooden table with four chairs. Near it was a washstand that held a water bucket, a dipper, and a wash pan. A dirty green towel was hanging from a rack on the side of it.
On the wall facing us as we went in, there was a doorway that led into the one bedroom. Right beside it was a homemade ladder that went into the loft. I looked up there and saw a gate at the top of the ladder. The loft had never been finished proper, and it was more like a balcony than a real room. It had a plank fence across the front of it. I knew Woodrow had slept up there.
At that moment Woodrow was climbing up the ladder
in search of a lantern. I watched him open the gate onto a braided rug covering a plain board floor. The loft was tiny, barely deep enough for a straw-tick mattress against the wall, and a small chifforobe at the end, where Woodrow had no doubt kept his belongings.
Tucked into the roof, where it slanted over the bed, there was a small round window like ones I had seen on ships in the movies. It was the one touch of charm in this bleak place.
Woodrow climbed down the ladder with a kerosene lamp dangling from his arm. He carried it to one of the cabinets, fumbled around in a drawer for matches, lit the lamp, and set it on the table. The room’s dark shadows melted.
“There orta be enough firewood here to start with,” Woodrow said, and pointed to a large covered box beside the fireplace. “And some kindlin’ and paper.”
Cassie and I huddled together on the couch while Grandpa and Woodrow got a blazing fire roaring up the chimney. The room took on a more friendly atmosphere right away. We got out of our overcoats, gloves, and hats, and studied the room.
You could imagine it was much nicer when Aunt Belle was here to take care of it. There were pictures hanging on the walls, alongside homemade crafts, probably created by Aunt Belle. Some of Woodrow’s early childhood art was tacked to a board across the top of the bedroom
door. We went in there and found a heating stove. It was more cheerful than the main room.
“Here’s some slack coal,” Grandpa said, peeping into a coal bucket by the stove. “I’ll get us a fire started in here, too.”
Woodrow removed some well-worn quilts and pillows from a wardrobe, carried them out into the main room, and spread them on the floor in front of the fireplace.
“This is where I usta do my homework,” he said, and plopped himself down.
“Like old Abe Lincoln himself,” I commented.
It was just something to say, but once again Woodrow bristled and stabbed me with an icy glare. Was he going to take everything as an insult?
“Well, you see how old Abe turned out,” Cassie said brightly, trying to lighten him up.
Grandpa found a screwdriver and fixed the hinge on the front door so that it closed and opened proper. After that, he drew up a bucket of water from the well outside, and Woodrow hauled in the picnic basket.
“I guess we better go out and fetch some more firewood, Woodrow,” Grandpa said. “This here won’t last long.”
So the two of them went up on the hillside into the woods, which by that time were covered with a powdery snow, and Cassie and I set about making a picnic lunch on the kitchen table. Granny had fixed fried chicken, biscuits,
potato salad, green beans, apple fritters, and iced tea in a jug. It was enough food for ten people.
We found plates, glasses, and forks in the cabinets, but no napkins.
“I’m not gonna ask Woodrow if there’s napkins,” I said. “He’s liable to knock my head off.”
Cassie chuckled.
If Woodrow didn’t change his ways, I thought, he would be the subject of my next New Year’s Revelation. I could see myself standing up in front of the family in the living room, saying, “The thing I want to get off my chest is about Woodrow. No matter who or what he’s mad at, he takes it out on me, and I’m sick and tired of it!”
That would fix him. I wondered if I could wait a whole year.
The snow was coming down fast and furious, and it took Woodrow and Grandpa an hour to find enough firewood. Most of it they piled in and around the woodbox, and the rest they stacked on the front porch. Only then were they ready to eat. Cassie and I were drooling by that time.
We gathered at the table, said the blessing, and filled our plates. Then we settled on the quilts before the fire, which crackled and flickered, making the room seem almost cheerful.
It was going to be quite the storm. You couldn’t call it
a blizzard, because we didn’t have such things in our part of the country, but the wind had picked up considerable. I could hear it shooshing around the corners of the cabin, and I walked to one of the windows to look out at the wild white flurries.
I could barely make out the road, which wound up between the hills like a clean, white ribbon. There were no tire tracks on it, and I realized that we had not heard a vehicle going up or down the holler since we got here. Yeah, this was a desolate place all right, and it was going to be a long night if we had to stay, which was a real possibility.
I sat down again and stole a peek at Grandpa and Woodrow, who appeared unconcerned. Woodrow seemed like a small replica of Grandpa as they shoveled in their food, washed it down with tea, and wiped their mouths on their shirtsleeves, almost in unison. To a stranger Woodrow coulda passed for Grandpa’s own boy.
In the 1890s Grandpa had been a boy his own self, growing up on the top of Wiley Mountain, which was about as far out in the sticks as you could get. He had an old-timey, backwoods upbringing, but he always talked about it with warm looks on his face, like he’d go back if he could. So this was a return to childhood for him.
Right then Grandpa said, “Listen to that wind!” He grinned. “That’s a real snowstorm out there.”
Woodrow smiled in spite of himself. A person has to
work hard at staying in a lousy mood when he’s having such a good time, I thought.
Drek’ly, Grandpa set his plate aside, rubbed his belly, and belched. Woodrow did the same. I figured if they’d had cigars, they’d a’ lit ’em up right then and there, and settled back for a contented smoke, like Grandpa sometimes did at home.
Yeah, they were both in their element. That was it. They were roughing it like the old-timers did, and they didn’t have to worry about good manners or appearances or anything else.

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