What I Came to Tell You (21 page)

Toward the end of the tour, when his father had taken Grover’s class down to the kitchen to the woodstove where Julia Wolfe had made meals for her boarders, he told them something Grover had never heard before. His father said Wolfe had been hated by some of the people of Asheville for the way he’d
depicted them in
Look Homeward, Angel
. But when it became a best seller, some of the townspeople he hadn’t written about were upset for not being included.

“Wolfe couldn’t win for losing,” his father said, looking more animated than Grover had seen him in a long time. It occurred to Grover that the Wolfe house was probably as important to his father as the Bamboo Forest was to him.

At the end of the tour, Grover’s class ended up back in the main room of the house, where Little Bit and her staff served cider and cookies. Grover had never seen the house so packed. Crowds made him lonely.

Grover went off by himself and read the exhibits, taking his time, and paying attention to Wolfe’s life in a way he never had before. Emma Lee would’ve approved. Just a few days after the fire, he and Sudie had come home from school to find a U-Haul driven by Leila’s long-haired brother, and the Roundtrees’ old van driven by Leila, pulling out of their driveway. After they were out of sight, Grover couldn’t stand to do anything but go over to the Bamboo Forest, clear away what was left of the snow from the tapestry and work alone until the sun set. And having forgotten his flashlights, he worked on into the dark, like a blind man, weaving things together by nothing but feel.

T
he tires squealed around the sharp curves as their father whipped the car back and forth up Highway 19. With every mile they drove, the road grew windier and the mountainsides inched closer. Grover was sure he could roll down his window and touch the striations in the rock. The road opened up to empty fields and pastures with cows that stood on hills in a way that made them look like two legs were shorter than the others.

It was Saturday morning and their father had announced that they were going to get a Christmas tree. Sudie and Grover had assumed, with their mother no longer alive, that they’d buy their tree at the Asheville Farmers Market. They’d been surprised that they’d stopped to pick up Jessie just to drive over to the Farmers Market. They’d been even more surprised when their father aimed the car north, up Interstate 26 toward Mitchell County.

Grover and Sudie had been excited when they realized
where their father was taking them. But the farther they drove, the quieter everyone had gotten. Until, at one point, Grover looked over and saw Sudie wasn’t smiling anymore. Up front their father and Jessie had stopped talking. Maybe this trip wasn’t such a good idea.

They had left I-26 and now drove down into a brown rolling valley and passed through a collection of drugstores, fast-food places, convenience stores and grocery stores that made up the edge of Burnsville. They left all that behind and headed east toward Spruce Pine. Grover noticed orderly rows of miniature green triangles that seemed to march over the wintry brown mountainsides.

“They call the Fraser fir the Cadillac of Christmas trees,” Jessie said, looking up at the mountainsides. “Christmas tree farming is backbreaking work in the summers—trimming, keeping the weeds down and doing all that while making sure you don’t step on a snake.”

“Do the snakes ever get up into the trees?” Grover asked.

“They’re mostly hibernating in the ground by the time they cut the trees, but one warm winter there was an article in the
Asheville Citizen-Times
about a family finding a copperhead curled up among the presents on Christmas morning.”

Sudie just stared out the window.

Grover pressed his hand against the window. It was always colder up here.

“There!” Sudie slapped the window, pointing at a hand-painted sign.

GUDGER’S CHRISTMAS TREES
Two Miles Ahead on the Left

(You pick. We cut.)

They pulled into the long drive that led up to a little brick ranch house above a steep hillside of Christmas trees. When they reached the top and got out of the car, they were met by a young man, maybe twenty years old, who sat on a four-wheeler.

“Where’s Mr. Gudger?” their father asked.

“Pappap died in August,” the young man said, then spit off to the side. “Had a good life. Most people had no idea the man was ninety-two years old.”

“Ninety-two?” their father said. Grover remembered how Mr. Gudger scrambled around the hillsides, cutting trees or climbing onto cars, tying trees.

“When you find one,” the young man said, “give a holler.” There was a quiet friendliness in the way he talked that reminded Grover of Mr. Gudger.

As the four of them walked down into the fir trees, Sudie frowned and said in a shaky voice, “That’s sad about Mr. Gudger.”

They heard a chain saw start up on the other side of the hill.

“Mr. Gudger had a good life,” Sudie said, the frown fading. She said it like enough was enough, and she’d decided not to feel sad about Mr. Gudger. The four of them walked down the hillside, wandering off between the trees. After a while Grover heard Sudie call, “This is it!”

He found her standing in front of a tremendous, bushy tree.

“Lord have mercy,” Jessie said, coming up to them.

“Y’all can’t be serious,” their father said. He walked around the tree. “I’m not even sure that’ll fit in the house.”

Sudie took Grover’s arm. “We like it.”

Their father looked at Jessie. “Can you talk some sense into these two?”

“Y’all do have high ceilings, and if need be I can trim the bottom with my chain saw.”

“Thank you, Daddy,” Sudie said, hugging their father.

“Thanks a lot,” their father said to Jessie.

“We better check it for copperheads, though,” Sudie said.

“Too cold of a winter for ’em,” Jessie said.

The tree was so big it covered up the four-wheeler. From where Grover and Sudie stood, it looked like the tree was rolling up the hill under its own power. The grandson spent another half hour tying the tree to their car. “You don’t want this baby rolling off on the highway.”

While Mr. Gudger’s grandson secured it to the car, Mrs. Gudger invited them into her kitchen for hot chocolate and homemade cookies. She had them sit at her table while she served them. Grover worried she’d say something about their mother not being there, but, even after all these years of them coming here, it didn’t seem she remembered them exactly.

While they sipped their hot chocolate, Jessie started telling a story about working at a Christmas tree farm and coming across a moonshine still. Their father went over to Mrs. Gudger, who
stood at the stove, and told her he was sorry to hear about her husband.

“Married sixty-seven years,” she said, stirring a pot of hot chocolate. “Losing Henry took the fun out of it.” Then she lowered her voice. “But you, you’re a young fellow and need to get right back on that horse.”

“Ma’am?” their father said.

“I read about your wife in the paper last spring,” the old woman said. “I’m real sorry.” Then she said, “But those kids need a mama.”

Their father looked shaken when he came back to the table, but Sudie was caught up in Jessie’s story.

“The moonshiner gave me two quarts of moonshine to keep quiet,” Jessie said.

“Did you drink it?” Sudie asked.

Jessie looked at their father. “Me and your parents.”

“I’ve never had such a headache,” their father said.

“I was sick for two days,” Jessie said.

“It didn’t faze Caroline,” their father added.

“She sure could hold her liquor,” Jessie said.

When they left, Mrs. Gudger came from behind the stove and gave Grover and Sudie big hugs, and Grover knew she’d remembered them down to their very core.

“You come back next year,” she said. “I plan to be around a while longer. Figure I’d let Henry fend for himself up in Paradise. Man can’t even scramble an egg. He’ll appreciate me all over again when I do finally show.”

“Aren’t we headed the wrong way?” Sudie asked.

They’d turned east toward Spruce Pine rather than west back toward Asheville.

“I thought we’d have lunch at that little diner,” their father said.

Their father drove slow. Even on its side the tree added four feet of height to the car. Jessie said it was a good thing it wasn’t a windy day or it’d blow the car right over. A long line of cars and trucks had bunched up behind them, stretching as far back as they could see.

On the edge of Spruce Pine, they passed a turnoff and a sign said Spruce Pine Hospital. “Isn’t that where Leila used to work?” their father asked Jessie.

Their father kept his eye on the hospital as they passed. Grover wondered if Leila being up here had played a part in him deciding to come up here to get a tree. Maybe this trip hadn’t been as much for Sudie and him as he’d thought.

They passed the one grocery store in town, crossing over an old stone bridge that looked to Grover like something Druids might have built.

“That’s the Toe River,” Jessie said as they crossed the bridge. “Named after an Indian princess who drowned. They say she was fleeing her angry father.”

“Why was her father so mad?” Sudie asked.

“She had a boyfriend he wasn’t all that crazy about,” Jessie said.

Their father drove them around downtown Spruce Pine. A couple of blocks of old rock-faced buildings. Baker’s Motel and Restaurant, a motel with a blinking vacancy sign. Spruce Pine had two main streets, and because it was situated on the side of a mountain, one street, the one that ran beside the railroad tracks, was a lot lower than the other. The street signs said Spruce Street and Locust Street, but Jessie said people called them Upper Street and Lower Street.

They passed a few clothing shops, a rock and gem shop, a drugstore, a music store and a Hallmark Cards store. It wasn’t downtown Asheville but even so, there were a good many people walking around. Several of them stopped and watched when they drove by.

“Seems the Sequoia we have strapped to our roof is attracting some attention,” their father said.

At the Upper Street Café, they all ordered BLTs and iced tea, except Jessie got coffee. Every time the waitress, a girl Grover guessed to be in high school, opened her mouth she sounded like Emma Lee.

“Can I bring you anything else?” she’d asked when they were done. She put the check beside their father’s plate and as she turned she winked at Grover. He was still blushing when they got out to the car.

“That’s some tree,” a boy said, who was standing outside a women’s clothing store, holding the leash of a black furry dog. “My mama’s in there, shopping.” The boy sounded exactly like Clay. Everybody up here sounded like a Roundtree.

Sudie bent down and petted the dog.

“The vet says he’s part chow and part anybody’s guess,” the boy said.

“Do you know Clay Roundtree?” Sudie asked.

“Me and Clay were in the same grade at Bakersville Elementary till he moved. Good soccer player. They just moved back. Reckon he’ll be starting back to school. They live up on the Roan with Mrs. Sparks.”

Back in the car, their father began to veer back over the stone bridge that led to the highway, but the light turned red. Grover looked at his father staring up at the traffic light. “Wonder how the Roundtrees are doing?” Grover said, looking out his window.

“Me too,” Sudie said.

“Bakersville isn’t far,” Jessie said. “And the Roan is just beyond it.”

“If y’all want to visit them that bad,” their father said, trying to sound casual, “we have a little time.” The light turned green, and instead of going over the bridge, he turned right onto a road with a sign that said
Hwy 226
and another sign that said
Bakersville nine miles
.

Bakersville was smaller and lonelier than Spruce Pine.

“There’s one problem,” their father said as they passed an old building Jessie said used to be the courthouse. “We don’t know where they live.”

“They live on Roan Mountain,” Sudie said.