The Lost Saints of Tennessee (6 page)

Nine

1955

By second grade, the Clayton School got a new teacher straight from the teacher's college and she took a liking to Carter. Miss
Weaver stayed after school three days a week to help him
learn his letters until, by the end of fifth grade, he could read. Not long books at first. Just the Dick and Jane readers. He still liked me reading to him best. But he learned to write, too. Proved that Memphis doctor about as wrong as he could be. Things went along fine for a while until our oldest sister Violet came home late one night with some news. Some bad news.

Three weeks later, on the night before Violet's wedding, Mother spoke to Carter and me about it. It seemed odd to have
Violet getting married. She was only four years older than
Carter and me. We were all still kids.

“Your sister's going to make you children uncles before you're thirteen,” she said, shaking her head and making a clucking noise with her tongue against her teeth, a noise she made only when one of us did something dumb. Violet was a year older than Mother was when she got pregnant with Vi. There was no comfort in knowing that history was repeating itself.

I kept quiet until she left the room. Then I told Carter being an uncle
could
be fun.

“If the baby's a boy, Carter, we could teach him to play basketball and stuff.”

“What about a girl?”

“Forget it. What are we going to teach a girl?”

The wedding day brought cold January rain. All of us kids got dressed up—shoe shines, baths the night before, new clothes. I'd been trying to explain to Carter why Violet was getting married. He and I were sitting in the rough old oak pews waiting for Vi to come down the aisle on Daddy's arm when he leaned over to me. My brother looked good that day with his hair slicked back and a blue tie on.

“Vi's not going to be living with us anymore, is she?”

“That's right. She's going to live in a small house up the road from us. With Louis.”

“And she's going to be a momma?”

“Around summertime.”

He nodded and then folded his hands in his lap, waiting for it all to begin.

After the ceremony, there was punch and wedding cake in the church hall. Daddy stood up and said how proud he was of Louis and Violet. Mother shot him a look like she was going to pitch a fit, but Daddy kept going.

“The Cooper family welcomes the Rydell family. Violet is our eldest child and I think it's always hardest to say the first good-bye to one of your children. But her mother and I—”

He stopped and smiled at Mother, who smiled back, even though it was a no-teeth-showing kind of smile.

“Lillian and I are happy to see the joining of our families.”

Violet looked pale, the whiteness of her dress reflected in her face. Mother had given her no rest about wearing white, said the dress should be red, but Daddy came to her rescue and Vi got white.

I watched her say hello to all the guests, shaking hands and hugging. She seemed happy enough. Worn out but happy.

Halfway through the wedding reception Daisy came up to me looking irritated, though this was nothing unusual.

“Have you seen Rosie?”

I shook my head.

“We're supposed to be watching her. Help me look.
Momma's going to kill us if she's lost.”

“She's eight now, for God's sake, Daisy. She can look out for herself.”

“Be quiet and help,” she said, pulling me along. We searched the hall and then the church. No Rosie. I don't know what made me go out back, by the creek, but it seemed like a place she might want to go. Crazy about water, Rosie would swim in anything she could—bathwater, creek water, lake water. Daisy and I walked toward the tall poplars lining the creek. When we were six feet from the edge, I heard Mother's voice. Daisy went to call out to her but I put a finger to my lips. My skin had that itchy feeling it got whenever something scary or bad might happen. We walked a little closer, still hidden from Mother by the trees.

She was sitting on a tree stump and Uncle Leroy sat beside her on the ground. We couldn't hear what they were saying and just as we were about to get close enough to be seen, Leroy got up on his knees and kissed Mother. I waited for her to pull away and slap him across the face, like women did in the movies, but she didn't. She kissed him back.

I had yet to put my lips on anybody who wasn't a relative, but I could tell it wasn't the first time Mother and Leroy had kissed. They did it easily, like it had happened a lot of times before. When it ended, Leroy pulled Mother close to his chest and she rested her head on it, like we'd seen her do with Daddy. Daisy's hand flew to her mouth and she turned around, running back to the church. I watched for a moment longer, still not quite convinced my eyes were seeing right. They kissed again, and when Leroy's hand moved to touch my mother's breast, I turned and ran back to the church, too.

We found Rosie hiding in the coat closet and yelled at her for disappearing. I never said anything to Mother about Leroy. What could I have said?
Mother, what the hell are you doing kissing Daddy's brother?
A child doesn't tell his mother how to act.

A few days after the wedding, Carter and I were playing basketball in the backyard when Daisy came out to hang laundry on the line. I went over to talk about Mother and Leroy.

“Don't bother me, Zeke.”

“Listen, I just want to ask you about . . . you know, the creek thing.”

She whipped out a bedsheet, making a loud crack in the air as she did, and pinned the sheet to the line. The rains had stopped and the sun shone stronger than it had in months. Daisy wanted to get the wash hung as quickly as she could in case the weather decided to turn cold again.

“Don't know what you're talking about.”

“What do you mean you don't know what I'm talking about? Come
on.
You know.”

She ignored me. I stationed myself between her and the clothesline, forcing her to look at me.

“You're lying,” I said.

“I'm busy, Ezekiel. Go bother your brother.”

I never have figured out how people think something's not happening if they're not talking about it. It's happening all the same.

We ate a lot of beans that spring. Pole beans. Green beans.
Butter beans. The price of cotton had started to fall and our father knew the time was coming when he wouldn't be able to cover the house note. The state put out a call for strong men to work on the highways that summer, so Daddy signed up and was gone almost two months. I asked Mother one night if she missed him when he was gone.

“Of course I do, Zeke,” she said, looking up from the sewing in her lap. “Don't you?”

“You don't act like it sometimes,” I said. This was as bold as I could be without coming right out and accusing her of messing around.

Her needle paused in midair over the faded pink dress she was mending.

Mother stared at me for a moment before speaking. I wanted her to see what I knew.
Willed
her to see the knowledge on my face of what had happened at the creek.

“I love your father very much, Ezekiel. If I don't act like it sometimes, it's only because I'm tired and it's hard when he's gone. Understand?”

She reached out to touch my arm but I turned on my heel and left, unconvinced.

When Daddy was gone, Uncle Leroy came by every
night to check on us and I couldn't stand the sight of him. He performed his usual hello by grabbing me by the scruff of the neck, holding on until I begged him to let go. Not once that summer did I beg. I stayed silent until he'd get antsy.

“What's the matter with you, boy? Getting too big for your uncle to be carrying on with you? You a big man now?”

“No, sir,” I'd say, hands curled into fists at my side, aching to hit.

Ten

1985

The morning dawns hazy and warm. Today is the tenth an
niversary of my brother's death. I say a prayer for him. For
myself. For the place calling to me now, a place where more good things seem possible than bad.

By six thirty, I clear out of the motel room and throw my bag in the back of the truck. Tucker stands in the doorway, glancing between the truck and the room. He has gotten comfortable again at the Logland Inn after his stay at the pet clinic.

“In the truck, Tuck. Come on.”

With one last look at the bed, he hobbles out and accepts help up. “I'll get us both a sausage biscuit on the way out of town. How 'bout that? You want bacon, too? Today you can have bacon.”

His tail twitches. Bacon it will be.

Gina stands at the McDonald's drive-through window. A thick coating of lipstick the color of cotton candy makes her look younger than she is. I let her know I won't be stopping by tomorrow or the next day. Don't want her worrying. Her hand rests on the window ledge—the fingernails are chewed
down to raw, fleshy stubs. Another customer calls to her
through the speaker.

“Just a minute, please,” she says into the microphone, then turns back to me. “I'm glad everything went okay with the dog. Wish I was on my way out of here, too.”

Her look tells me she knows she will never go anywhere but where she is. I consider telling her to hop in. We could get out of Pigeon Forge together. She hands over the bag of food.

The car behind me honks. I put the shift lever in drive and wave as her image fades in the rearview mirror.

Before Rosie got on the road back to Nashville yesterday, she told me Mother has lung cancer. Mother has been smoking two packs a day as far back as I can remember. Lucky Strikes. Nothing else.

“Do you know what the average life expectancy is for lung cancer?” Rosie said. “Less than a year.”

How could our strong mother have cancer? I felt a tug back to Clayton. She would need our help. But Vi was there. And Daisy. Surgery was the recommended treatment. Before they would operate, though, Mother had to fully recover from the pneumonia. The doctors said she was “lucky” the illness had brought her into the ER, where the chest X-ray revealed a shadow on her left lung.

I told Rosie I was sorry about the news but I couldn't go back to Clayton. Not yet.
It's a matter of life or death,
I added silently, sure she wouldn't appreciate the sentiment. If things got really serious, I promised my baby sister I'd come home.

The fastest way to Virginia is to head north and take Interstate 81, but the thought of being boxed in by semis for hours makes scenic win over speed. The southern route takes Highway 441 south to Gatlinburg, crisscrossing through the bottom of Tennessee on 321, tracing the northern boundary of Great Smoky National Park, and finally meeting up with I-81 close to the Virginia border. The truck will have to make it through the Smokies and a piece of the Appalachians.

The last time I went to Virginia I was eighteen. Navigating was left to the train engineer. As the familiar hills of Tennessee disappeared out the window, it hit me that I'd left home, left my brother and my girlfriend, to live with a relative I'd never met, in a state I'd never set foot in, to attend a university where I wouldn't know a single person. Today, I'm just as scared. Scared of what I'll find there. Scared they'll tell me to turn around and go home. More scared nothing will be better there, either. And then what? Codeine take two?

The sound of Dolly Parton's voice croons out at me from the truck's radio. She's singing about if teardrops were pennies and heartaches were gold. After climbing steadily on Highway 321, I turn in to a scenic pullout. Dad used to stop at every one of them on family car trips. Said it broke up the drive. Mother didn't have time for them.

“Carter, we're running late,” she'd say. “We don't need to be reading signs and looking at things.” Daddy would just wave a hand at her and let all of us kids pile out and look.

My truck is the only vehicle in the parking lot. From the bottom of the duffel bag, I dig out the good-bye notes written back at the Logland Inn. The noise of the truck door slamming stops a woodpecker's
rat-a-tat-tat
on a nearby birch. Tucker goes off to the bushes to do his business. The strong smell of damp earth mixed with crushed pine needles releases under my feet as I walk.

The September morning cloaks the mountains in mist. The sign says the Cherokees called this region
Shaconage,
which means “place of blue smoke.” Looking out across the forest of beech and birch with Fraser fir and red spruce up higher, the Cherokees got it right. A haze hangs in the lightest hue of a robin's egg and dances like gossamer above it all. The view appears so fragile that if I turn my back it may all disappear, evaporating into the mist.

Carter should be here to see this. He would have said,
Let's move right here, make a camp and hunt for our food. Like
Huck and Jim did.
During the summer we turned twelve, we worked our way through the
Adventures of Tom Sawyer
and the
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
At night I read to Carter in our bed by flashlight, and by day we'd collapse under the shade of the biggest oak tree we could find and read until Mother called us in for dinner.

Maybe I should have become a park ranger and gotten us a little cabin in the woods where Carter wouldn't have had to deal with many people. I could have taken Jackie and the girls. My brother might still be alive if I'd done that.

It seems like the wanting to see him or tell him about my day should be done. Ten years is a while. Jackie says you never stop missing someone you love. This is the most depressing thing I've ever heard and I hope to God she is wrong.

But Jackie is rarely wrong. Marrying Curtis Baxter was a mistake. She thinks he can give her what I couldn't, which, according to her, is the love and attention she deserves. But what she thinks is love is no more than Curtis wanting to add one more precious thing to his collection of Mustangs and vintage Smith & Wessons.

I tear the three notes into pieces, throwing them over the edge. It isn't clear to me whether I will try the final exit route again. It won't be today. And I'm pretty sure it won't be tomorrow. The wind grabs hold and carries them out toward the mountains, pieces of confetti dancing snowlike among the trees.

A pristine Cadillac pulls in beside my truck and a man wearing a long-sleeved shirt and pants with suspenders gets out. He blows his nose with a red bandana pulled from a back pocket.

I nod hello as I walk back to the truck, ready to move on.

“Hell of a view, isn't it?” he says.

My hand stops over the door handle. “Yes, sir. It's a fine view.”

“Where you headed?” Before I can respond he continues. “I'm Washington, DC–bound. Taking the long way round to get there. Wife died three months ago. God rest her soul. I'm ready to see the country. Know what I mean?”

What must it be like to be eighty-something and starting out the rest of your life alone? Maybe not much different from being almost forty-three and alone. Only the prospect of fewer years of solitude waiting for you.

“Look at me forgetting my manners.” He reaches out a hand. “Grayson L. Kenilworth. The second.” He winks. “Might as well tell you all my secrets.”

We shake hands. A semi barrels past in the northbound lanes.

“Son of a bitch, those suckers are loud.” Mr. Kenilworth shakes his head as if trying to clear out the sound. He looks heavenward. “Mrs. Kenilworth didn't approve of swearing. But we won't tell, right?”

He asks again where I'm headed. I wait a few seconds before replying, wanting to make sure he's done talking first.

“Virginia. Outside Charlottesville. Little place called
Bailey.”

“I know Bailey. Sure do. Pretty country out there.” A fly lands on Mr. Kenilworth's large left ear and he swats at it.

“Bailey is old Virginia. Wouldn't figure you for the foxhunting type,” he says. “And I mean that as a compliment, son.”

Tucker wanders into view, eliciting a laugh from Mr. Kenilworth. “That's surely not a hunting dog. No way, no how.”

The dog ignores him and stands by my side, unsure. The man is right about Bailey. From what I remember, every­body on Tall Oaks Road owned enough horses to run their own Kentucky Derby. Cousin Georgia and Osborne were two of the few residents who didn't participate in the hunt. They got up on horses only when they wanted to explore the farm. Cousin Georgia said she could think of no bigger waste of time than chasing a poor fox like mad through the trees with a bunch of half-drunk snobs who thought they were better than everybody else because their great-great-great-great-­grandfather settled Jamestown.

“I've got family out there. Cousins.”

“Horsey types?”

I shake my head. “They've got a farm. It's a working farm. At least it was when I was last there.”

“When was that, son?”

“Nineteen sixty.”

He lets out a sound that is either a belch or a laugh. Or both. “Nineteen sixty? You've got some catching up to do once you get there, don't you?”

At five minutes after nine o'clock, we pull into a Motel 6 outside of Charlottesville. By the time I settle in the room, it's too late to call Cousin Georgia. I grab the fat phone book off the nightstand and search for her number. It doesn't take long to find Osborne Lacey. The last time I spoke to either one of them was after Louisa was born. They sent a baby outfit, and after weeks of Jackie nagging me, I called Georgia to say thank you. She kept saying I should bring the family out for a visit. Told me she and Osborne still thought about me every time they passed by my old room. We never went, though. Too busy mostly, but I also think I wasn't ready to go back. Lacey Farms marked the spot for what life had been like before—when the University of Virginia was my future—and what came after.

Thunderstorms move in and make trouble all night. Scared to death of them since he was a puppy, Tucker leans himself against me the whole night and whimpers nonstop. Sleep never quite comes for either of us, so when the sun touches the room's dingy brown curtains, I go ahead and get up. Outside, the only sign of the night's weather is a few random tree branches scattered across the parking lot. By six thirty I'm showered and shaved. If Cousin Georgia keeps the same hours she used to, she should be up. But I don't want to risk waking her or Osborne, so I eat breakfast at the Waffle House next door. The coffee is scalding hot, and the biscuits and gravy make my stomach cramp up. Afterward, I walk back and forth in front of the motel room door trying to settle my insides and get calm enough to walk in there and call.
This is a bad idea. Maybe she's died. Maybe Osborne's died. If they aren't dead, the last thing two old people need is a shiftless relative and a stinky dog on their doorstep.

Tucker yawns and licks the biscuit crumbs from his chops. My legs will not walk inside the room to make the call. I climb back in the truck. Smoke my fifth cigarette of the day. Watch people come out of their rooms, some still dressed in pajamas, looking tired and hopeless. One guy walks out in his boxers, scratches his balls, and yells back toward the open door of his room.

“Bitch, you better get out here and clean out this car before I leave your ass.”

The dog and I trade a look.
Fuck.

I call at straight-up nine o'clock. She answers after the second ring.

“Cousin Georgia, this is Zeke Cooper.”

“Excuse me?”

She's forgotten who I am. Jesus.

“Cooper, Cousin Georgia. From Tennessee.”

A pause. “Cooper?”

“Yes, ma'am.” I speak louder. “Ezekiel Cooper, ma'am.”

“Oh,” she says.

Uh oh,
I think. “It's Zeke, Cousin Georgia. From Clayton. My mother's Lillian Parker Cooper.”

There is an intake of breath. “Oh, Ezekiel. Forgive me. Of course. How are you?”

I clear my throat before telling her I'm in Charlottesville.

“Charlottesville?” She sounds confused and tired, not at all like the energetic woman I remember. She yells for Osborne to come quick. “When are you going to come see us?”

“Whenever it's all right for me to stop by.”

“Anytime's fine by us, Ezekiel. It's been a while, hasn't it?”

“Yes, ma'am. Too long.”

She asks if the girls are with me.

“No, they're back home with their mother,” I say.

“That's too bad. Another time.”

“I'd be happy to drive over right now, if you and Osborne are home.”

His heavy footsteps near the phone. He mutters something to Georgia about losing her mind before Georgia hands the phone over to him.

“Hello?” Osborne's deep voice rumbles. “Ezekiel?”

“Yes, sir. This is Ezekiel.”

He asks if I need a ride. I thank him but say I've got the truck.

“You get on over here, then. We're going out on the front porch right now to wait for you.”

The phone clicks off.