What I Came to Tell You (18 page)

“Amen,” everyone said, including Grover.

Emma Lee smiled at Grover, like she’d felt what he’d felt. Everyone was smiling, like they’d all felt it. Something about Jessie’s blessing had lifted something from all of them.

“Can y’all
please
pass the crescent rolls?” Sudie asked, sounding desperate.

The wind howled in the chimney a long time, the lights flickered and then they heard a slow huge crash, a kind of thunderous tearing sound, like the earth itself was being torn out from under them. The house shook and dishes rattled. Stories Grover
had read in the paper about earthquakes and tsunamis in far-off places flashed through his mind. The lights flickered some more, went off, came back on, then went off for good.

People had come out, some with their flashlights, to look at the huge tree that had fallen across the street and darkened the neighborhood. Jessie said it was a tulip poplar. Its roots had pulled up out of the ground in a perfect rectangle. The hole reminded Grover of the neat graves Charles dug with his backhoe. After parents had made sure there were no fallen wires, neighborhood kids climbed onto the tree as if onto a fallen giant. Sudie and Clay joined them, disappearing into the maze of limbs. Grover walked up its great trunk, stepping on limbs that only an hour before had been forty feet in the air. Somewhere in that labyrinth of limbs, a hand took Grover’s and pulled him up. It was Emma Lee. She pulled him onto a big limb where she was standing.

“Look.” She lifted her eyes to the sky. Stars had poured into the space where the tree had stood.

Grover looked at her but she was still looking up. It went through his mind to tell her he’d stood outside her window. He opened his mouth but what came out was “Clay told me about how your father died on Thanksgiving.”

She looked at him, then back up the sky.

“And how you light a candle for him.”

“He’s such a blabbermouth,” Emma Lee snapped.

“You were the one who told me we can’t keep the dead to ourselves.”

She looked back up at the sky and her face softened. After a minute, she pointed to a very bright star. “That’s the Dog Star. I know that much.”

Back inside, their father had lighted candles around the living room and kitchen. They finished their Thanksgiving meal by candlelight and moved into the den to eat dessert. He opened the doors to the woodstove so that it lit up the room. He refilled Leila’s wineglass and his own.

“I forgot to get Merlin in tonight,” Jessie said, sipping from a mug of hot tea.

“Will he be all right in the snow?” Clay asked.

“He’ll find him a warm place to curl up or slip into somebody’s house.” Grover watched Emma Lee, who’d already finished her pecan pie and picked up her book again, sitting close by the stove to read.

“Leila,” Jessie said, “they won’t be getting our power back on tonight, and all y’all have is that electric baseboard heat. I have a kerosene heater I could bring over.”

“We’ll be fine,” Leila said. “We’re mountain people.”

“Why doesn’t everyone spend the night?” their father said. “We’ve got the woodstove to keep us warm.”

Grover looked at his father. He was so different these days. It would’ve been their mother who suggested everyone stay over. More and more, Grover’d gotten the feeling that his father was trying to do what his mother would’ve wanted him to.

“I’ll be okay.” Jessie looked at Leila. “I’m worried about y’all.”

“Please stay.” Sudie put her hands together. “It’ll be like an indoor camping trip.”

“Let’s spend the night, Mama,” Clay said.

“We don’t want to put you out,” Leila said.

“Clay can sleep in Grover’s room and Emma Lee in Sudie’s,” their father said. “And you can sleep in the guest room.”

Emma Lee whispered something into her mother’s ear.

“Sweetheart,” Leila said, “I think it’ll be all right not to light it one night.”

“No, it won’t,” Emma Lee said under her breath. “Especially not tonight.”

Leila sighed. “Honey, please …”

“Not tonight,” Emma Lee said again.

“Emma Lee,” her mother said, “our house will be colder than a meat locker.”

“But, Mama …”

“That’s enough, Emma Lee!” Leila said sternly.

Emma Lee went back to where she’d been sitting, picked up her book, but didn’t open it. She stared into the fire with a kind of look like she’d made up her mind about something, then opened her book.

Grover had told Clay he’d be happy to sleep on the floor in the sleeping bag.

“I like sleeping bags,” Clay’d said, wriggling down inside it. “Reminds me of the couple of times me and Daddy camped.”

Their father had put a candle in Grover’s room, telling him to be sure and blow it out before he went to bed.

“I like your room,” Clay said, glancing out Grover’s window, where they could make out the ribs of the bamboo by the flickering candlelight. “Feels like we’re in the middle of a canebrake.” He eyed the bamboo critically. “Some of that needs pruning. I’ve got a new pair of loppers.…” He yawned and scooted down into his bag and turned on his side, facing away from Grover.

“Grover?” he said, turning halfway back.

“Yeah?”

“Just so you know.” His eyes met Grover’s for a second, then he turned away again. “My sister likes you.” He scooted down into his sleeping bag.

Grover felt a tightness in his throat. “She said that?”

“With Emma Lee, it’s what she doesn’t say that you need to listen to.” Clay yawned. “She talks to me about most things but she hasn’t said one word about you.”

Grover lay there, thinking that one over. After a while, he said, “Clay?”

He didn’t answer. Grover got out of bed and leaned over him. He was already asleep. Grover gave him a little shake, but he groaned and turned over. Grover climbed back into bed, blowing the candle out on his dresser.

He heard laughter in the living room. Jessie had gone home,
but their father and Leila had stayed up. As his eyes grew used to the dark, Grover could see outside his window how the bamboo swayed in the wind. He listened to the rustling for a while. Was it the wind? Or was someone outside? Or some thing? In this weather? His heart stopped when a masked face hovered in the window, looking in. He almost cried out. It took a minute to see that the face belonged to a raccoon. Maybe the fall of the great tree had disturbed his nest. With paws pressed against the glass, the raccoon boldly studied Grover’s room, then seeming satisfied, lumbered back into the bamboo.

Grover woke late in the night. He’d heard something. He didn’t see the raccoon in the window. Clay quietly snored. Grover pressed the little light on his watch that showed the time. One in the morning. He heard the creak of floorboards. Grover pulled on his pants and walked out to the living room. The main room was still pretty warm. Their father had filled the woodstove and turned the damper down.

He heard the front door shut. Looking out the window, he saw Emma Lee in her coat, walking down their walk. Grover grabbed his coat and went out the front door, careful to shut it quietly behind him.

“Hey, Emma Lee!” he called.

Emma Lee turned around and hissed, “You’re going to wake them up!”

“Where you going?” he whispered.

“I have something I need to do.”

“Can I come?”

“Go back inside before somebody misses us,” she said.

The wind had stopped. A full moon was out, showing the great tree sprawled across the road.

“I’ll be back soon,” she said.

“Why can’t I go with you, then?”

“Keep your voice down,” she said.

Emma Lee’s house was pitch-black dark. Grover still had the flashlights he’d been carrying in his coat from working in the Bamboo Forest. He handed one to Emma Lee.

“It’s freezing in here,” Grover said. He’d never been in their house. As he shined his flashlight around he saw in the hall a real weaving of what looked like mountains going on forever. “What’s that?” Grover asked. He’d never seen anything quite like it.

“Nanna’s,” she said, heading into the front room.

“Your grandmother weaves?”

“She has a big old loom,” Emma Lee said from the front room.

He saw another weaving farther down the hall—of a cabin on a mountainside. He walked into the kitchen and saw a weaving over the sink—cows in a pasture. Everywhere he shined his flashlight was a weaving. There were weavings of sunflowers, of mountain laurel in bloom, of creeks, waterfalls and one of a bridge spanning a river.

Grover came up next to Emma Lee, who stood at the front window, looking out on the moonlit street. He’d never seen his house from over here. The overgrown grass and bushes looked
like a snow-covered jungle, and the old dark house rising behind it looked neglected, like the sadness of the past year had seeped through the walls and out into the yard.

Emma Lee struck a match against the side of a box of kitchen matches and lit the big candle. Grover remembered with a start last night standing just outside the window, looking in at her. She pulled up a chair and sat in front of the candle.

“Now what?” Grover asked.

“That’s it,” she said.

“You came all the way over here to light this candle?”

She stared into the flame.

He shivered. “Well, now that it’s lit, can we go back?”

“I’m staying.” She folded her arms and watched the candle.

Grover pulled up a chair and sat beside her.

“Suit yourself,” she said.

After a while, Grover said, “It’s cold in here.”

“I’ll get us some blankets,” she said.

As he watched her light disappear down the hall, he pointed his flashlight at the weaving of the family on the wall. He reached into his coat pocket for his sketchbook. As he sketched by the light of his flashlight, he saw the notes he’d taken from Sam earlier that day in the cemetery.

She came back in, carrying blankets, gave him one, then she wrapped herself in the other. In the flickering candlelight, she looked like an Indian princess sitting in front of a campfire. Candlelight, thought Grover, made the world look old.

He tucked the notebook back into his coat pocket, looked
out at the night, then back at her. He cleared his throat. “How’s it going?”

Emma Lee looked at him.

“What have you been doing lately?”

Emma Lee frowned. “You’re acting very weird all of the sudden.”

“I’m making small talk,” he said. “I’ve been told girls like to have conversations first.”

“Before what? Grover, what are you getting at?”

“Forget it.” He sighed. “I was trying to ask you to go to the Christmas Waltz. I was
told
girls like conversation before they’re asked things.”

“Maybe some girls,” she said.

“I’m hopeless when it comes to girls.” He kept staring at the candle.

“With this girl you’re not,” she said.

Grover looked at her. “You’ll go with me?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Oh,” he said.

They both jumped when they heard a sudden strange crying. Merlin was outside on the ledge, staring in at them.

“Maybe we ought to let him in,” Emma Lee said. “He might be cold.”

“But Clay said your mama said …”

“I know.”

Merlin jumped from the windowsill and disappeared.

Grover sat with Emma Lee for a while longer, staring at
the candle and occasionally looking at her, finding it hard to believe that not only had he asked her but she’d said yes. After a while, Grover felt his eyelids get heavy and he said he was going back to the house. Emma Lee said she’d come in a little while. When Grover opened the front door, something streaked past him into the house. He chased after the cat, back into the front room, where Merlin was already in Emma Lee’s lap.

“You want me to put him out?” Grover asked.

She shook her head, petting the cat and yawning.

Grover had started out when Emma Lee spoke, “Thanks,” she said.

“For what?”

“Everything.”

Grover walked home through the deep snow. He didn’t like the feeling of her thanking him for
Everything
. Like she was saying good-bye. He looked back to see her still in the window. Once inside his house, he slowly closed the door behind him so he wouldn’t make a sound. Biscuit pranced up to him, sniffing him like he smelled the Roundtrees’ house. “Go on!” he whispered. Lowering his head, the dog walked back toward Sudie’s room.