Chapter 13
THE HIDING
On Monday, after a full day of calls around the county, I followed Pops up the pulldown stairs into the attic to find his old fishing tent for Buzzy’s sleepover. “Haven’t used it since Glaston Lake last summer,” he said. “Put Lo and Chester to shame, me catching everything.” He turned on the top step and whispered, “I’ve got a honey hole away from camp where the big boys linger. We probably would have starved to death if I hadn’t.”
“Come on, Pops. You guys would have just hiked back to town or something. You wouldn’t have starved.”
Pops stopped, caught his breath, put his hand on my shoulder, and leaned in. “Son, Chester would’ve happily starved rather than admit to Hivey’s that he couldn’t catch a dang fish. He’s a humble man, except when it comes to his fishing. Now, let see where I put the tent.”
We were both in the attic now. The air was thick with dust and heat and the history that seemed to be seeping out of the trunks, valises, and boxes stacked neatly against the gable walls. Old slip-covered furniture, brushed tan by dust, was pushed up against the inside slope of the roof—shapes of dining room chairs, a desk, a table on its side, two matching bookcases, all seemed to be sad old ghosts pining for the opportunity to live once again. In the middle of the room, standing vigil over all the timeworn history, was a large, dark oak wardrobe—the only piece in the attic without a cover. As I moved closer, I could see the intricacies of its woodwork—feet fashioned into eagle claws clutching balls. Each claw became a spiral twist of rose vines, which grew flowers and leaves all the way to the top of the wardrobe, where they curled into a bouquet arch at the top. One side of the wardrobe was a carved relief of a mountain ridge and valley, a rising sun sending beams out of a cloudless sky. The other side was a crescent moon and a star-filled sky over the same slumbering dale. On the doors was a family crest, a coat of arms in four quadrants: a lion on haunches, a stand of tall trees, a bunching of wheat and corn, and a man at a plow. Over top of the doors under the rose bouquet was a beautiful hollow with a waterfall at one end, a small barn in the middle, and a cabin on the right. Beyond the house were tiny fields of corn, then mountainside. Pops was behind me now. “That’s Jukes Hollow, where I was born.”
“Is there really a waterfall up there? Mom said there was.”
“Indeed. It empties into the best swimming hole in eastern Kentucky.” Then Pops chuckled. “We were the only hollow folk with an in-ground pool.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“That it is. One of the most beautiful places on this earth. And I’ve seen some nice places in my travels.” Pops reached up and brushed a few dust specks from the arch at the top.
“He was something, my dad was—a big drum-chested man and stubborn as hell. But when he laughed, which was often, it was like a roll of thunder.” The memory made Pops smile.
“When did he die?”
“In thirty-six trying to organize the mines—ours was one of the last in Kentucky to unionize, and William Beecher Boyd, the owner, was hell-bent to stop it, so he had my daddy killed.”
“Wait a second.” I put my hands up as if to take better hold of this new information. “You mean that Bubba Boyd man… his father killed your father?”
“Well, he didn’t kill him directly, but he had him killed, yes. One of his men planted a huge bomb in the union office, and Dad was meeting there to plan the strike. He died along with seven others.”
I finally started to understand the bad blood between Bubba Boyd and Pops—the history was all falling into place for me.
“Did you make this?” I asked after a while, staring at the workmanship and detail of the armoire.
“No, my talents are elsewhere. Jeb carved it for your grandmother as a wedding present. Did it all by hand—we didn’t have much in the way of power tools in the hollow. Quite a piece, isn’t it?” He ran his hand across the top and sides like he was assessing the workmanship for the first time. Amid all the dust in the attic, the wardrobe was sparkling clean, as if Jeb had just delivered it for their wedding.
Pops pulled lightly on the double doors. They swung open silently. Inside was a row of dresses, hung neatly on wooden hangers. Bright blues and reds and yellows that made the rest of the dingy attic seem like sepia tone. He gently picked a speck of dust off the red dress and moved the blue one another a few inches to the right to give it more breathing space. He was elsewhere now, running his hand lightly across the shoulders of the dresses, lost in the memory of a time and of the person who once filled them. Seeing her dresses made my grandmother seem so real that I could almost remember her too: walking to church on an Easter Sunday in the bright blue dress, chestnut hair tied back with a wide ribbon and Pops stealing glances at her, marveling all the while at his great fortune. And I could almost see her alive today, at the stove downstairs baking something delicious and saving me the batter-filled spoon. I could almost hear what she would say to my mother to put things right—to make the withering heartbreak of losing Josh just a little easier to bear. But deep inside me I knew that those words had yet to be invented.
“I just can’t part with em.” Pops sighed to himself as much as to me. He put one hand on each of the doors and stood there for a moment, eyes filling up, staring into the wardrobe as if reading an instruction manual on exactly how to close it. After a time he eased the doors shut, ever so gently, so that movement of the attic air wouldn’t strain the creases from her last ironing.
We walked over to a corner piled with fishing rods, discarded creels, an old baseball bat, and various retired sporting equipment: Pops’ high school football helmet, an ancient leather fielder’s glove with none of the fingers linked. I tried to put it on, but the leather was unforgiving. Pops began digging in boxes and trunks, and I wandered over to a light-blue and yellow trunk with ARP written in gold lettering under the hasp. Inside was my mother’s high school career. Her yearbook from senior year, a prom picture, sheaves of A-plus papers, class president certificate, first copy of the school newspaper she started, founding president of the Student Volunteers. All of her teenage accomplishments compiled before me like an old newsreel. I had never thought of her as a kid, or a teenager; she was only a mom to me. And now with her half-broken from grief and guilt, it seemed like that high school girl, so full of promise and purpose, was from some other planet. I closed the trunk.
Pops moved to a large green box and opened it. “Here we are.” He pulled out a brown ball of nylon and tossed it to me. I caught it with both hands. It smelled of old grass clippings, smelled of rain.
We set the tent up in the backyard and after dinner waited on the porch for Buzzy. Pops was twirling his first sour mash of the night and I was breaking a twig into small pieces and flicking them out into the yard. “What if he doesn’t come?” I complained. I was eager to see Buzzy again—eager for some teenage company and conversation. Each time we got together seemed easier than the last, as if the shared adventures of summer were fusing us into blood kin.
“He’ll come,” Pops assured me.
“Maybe his grandfather has work for him or something.” After years of my father’s no-shows, expectation management had become second nature for me.
“He’ll come… it’s no small walk from his hollow, you know.”
The worry in my stomach that Buzzy wouldn’t show for the campout reached a boiling point. “He probably had to stay home and do extra chores,” I said to no one in particular.
“He’ll—”
“Dr. Peebles!” a voice yelled from the dark street. I recognized it as Buzzy’s. We both stood and turned to it.
He was bolting down Chisold empty-handed. Running as if chased by a pack of pit bulls. Pops was on the bottom step as Buzzy threw the front gate open.
“He’s hurt real bad, Dr. Peebles. You gotta get someone quick.”
“Who, son?”
Buzzy was bent over, hands on his knees, gasping for breath. He threw up.
Audy Rae came out from the kitchen.
“Who’s hurt, son?” Pops asked urgently.
“Mr. Paul… out backa… his place.” He panted. He leaned over and heaved again.
Pops looked up to Audy Rae, who immediately disappeared into the house.
“You boys wait right here,” he said and took off running toward downtown. Buzzy stood up and looked at me; we both ran after Pops. He was thirty steps ahead of us as we chased him past the stop sign at Chisold and Watford, past the spray of double-wides on Madison, past the bank on Main. In a flash we were at the row of shops—Hivey’s, Smith’s, and Ms. Janey’s on the end. Pops dashed down Green Street, paused, then disappeared into the alley behind the shops.
Mr. Paul was lying on his side, curled into the fetal position, a spreading pool of blood at his head—white fluid oozing out of his ear. His head had an abnormal shape to it, like a reject melon. His slight breathing came out as a gurgle, and his face was a mass of blood and cartilage. A piece of bone stuck out of his nose. One eye socket was smashed in. His other eye was staring off at an odd angle.
Pops worked furiously, checking his pulse, clearing blood and matter from his mouth so he could breathe. On the concrete, in the bloody pool, were seven small white stones; it took me several seconds to realize that they were Mr. Paul’s teeth. At his head were Buzzy’s bedroll and a cloth bag of belongings. I moved around and picked them up to get them out of the way.