Child of the Mountains

11





It’s about that last trip to Ohio.




SUNDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1953

“Lydia, come here and look out this window at what your fool of an uncle is doing, and on the Lord’s day, too!” Aunt Ethel Mae said.

Uncle William held his jacket tight around him with one hand. He dipped a rag in a bucket of soapy water and washed his car with the other hand.

“Honestly,” Aunt Ethel Mae said. “I think he loves that car more than he loves me.”

I didn’t say nothing, but I figured she might be right about that. Uncle William won that car in a poker game. He said it was the luckiest night of his life. By Aunt Ethel Mae’s account, it should have been the night he married her.

Anyways, I still can’t believe that he taught Mama to drive his car and let her take it clean up to Ohio. Mama used to tell me that some people say love but don’t do love. Other people do love but get all flustered about saying love. She said she’d a heap rather have a doer than a sayer in her life. I guess Uncle William is the doer type.

I felt real glad Mama knowed how to drive, that last time we had to go pick up BJ. Doc Smythson comed by the house early one Saturday morning when BJ was cooped up in the hospital again. He had something to tell Mama about in private. “Lydia, would you hang up the wet clothes on the line for me?” Mama said. “It looks like it’s going to be a sunny day.”

I got my coat on, grabbed the basket full of clothes Mama had washed out, and went to the back door. I opened and closed it, but I didn’t go out. I stood real still and listened hard.

I heard Doc say, “It won’t be much longer now. I got a call from his doctor in Ohio. I think you and Lydia should get up to see him if you can.”

“They never let Lydia in to see him because she’s not thirteen. Will they let us bring him home?” Mama asked.

“No,” Doc said. “That was part of the agreement that you signed. He’ll have to stay in the hospital until the end. They want to treat him as long as possible. It’s important for their study.”

I bit my lip, trying to fight the tears. I could tell Mama fought her tears, too.

“That blasted study,” Mama said.

“I know,” Doc said. “I regret ever telling you about it. I never thought it would turn out like this.”

“We always knowed you just tried to help. It ain’t your fault,” Mama said. “Thank you for coming by. Could you call the company store near William’s house and ask them to tell him we need the car—that we’ve decided to go see BJ? Let me tell him how sick BJ is.”

“Of course I will,” Doc said. “You all take care now.” I heard the door close. I runned into the living room.

“Mama, please. We have to bring BJ home. We can’t leave him up there.”

“Oh, Lydia,” Mama said. “I’m so sorry you heard that. I wanted to be the one to tell you when the time come.”

“Mama, we have to bring him home,” I said again.

“Lydia, we can’t. The doctors be helping him more than we can.”

I couldn’t give up. “Ain’t no medicine going to make him well now, Mama. That’s what Doc Smythson said. They can’t give him what he needs most. You and me. He has to have his kin. We have to bring him home. We have to.” I started up crying.

Mama wrapped her arms around me and stroked my hair. I held her tight. When I finally stopped sobbing, she wiped my face with her apron. Then she looked deep into my eyes and sighed. “Yes, of course we need to bring him home, Lydia. Go get some quilts and a pillow. We’re going to bring your brother back with us.” She carried the big oxygen tank and mask that BJ had been using afore he went to the hospital that last time. We laid them things beside the door, waiting for Uncle William.

Uncle William dropped off the car. His friend had followed him. They was going fishing. I was real glad Mama didn’t have to drive Uncle William home.

Mama didn’t tell Uncle William how bad BJ was when he asked iffen he should go, too. She didn’t want him to get in no trouble.

We packed up the car as fast as we could after he left. Mama and me made us a plan on the way up. She said them nurses had their hands full on account of a polio epidemic, so it shouldn’t be too hard to sneak BJ out. I was going to be the decoy.

When we got to the hospital, Mama sure was right about all them kids being sick. They had beds stacked right up next to each other and even in the halls. Mama had been in so many different rooms to see BJ that she knowed the hospital inside and out. We took some back stairs to get to BJ’s ward. Then me and Mama split up.

My job was to keep the nurses on the floor a-staring at me. I went to the far end, away from BJ’s ward. I shouted out, “Ain’t somebody able to tell me how to find my sister?”

The nurses at the station all looked at me. I saw Mama slip from the stairway at the other end of the hall into BJ’s room.

A nurse come running out of one of the rooms. “Be quiet, young lady,” she said. “This is a hospital. How old are you?”

“I turned eleven two months ago,” I told her. That weren’t no fib.

“You are too young to be up here. Where is your mother?”

“I don’t know. I got lost. She went to visit my sister. She told me to stay in that room where you wait for people, but I want to see my sister.”

“You might be carrying germs that will make these children sicker than they already are. You need to go back to the waiting room and stay until she comes to get you.”

“I ain’t sick,” I said. “I feel just fine.” That were almost true. The only sick I felt was a knot in my stomach, worrying about BJ.

The nurse’s face got all red. She remembered me of a teapot that needed to let off steam. “Leave right now,” she said with her teeth tight together. She put her hands on her hips and stared down at me. Them other nurses stared at me, too.

I felt afeared of them, but I knowed Mama needed more time. “I’m all twisted around,” I told them real loud with my fingers crossed behind my back. “Can you all help me find how to get back to that room to wait?”

“Oh, all right,” that one nurse said. She took my hand like I was three years old and led me to the elevator. “Can you read the numbers?”

“I ain’t got much book learning,” I fibbed again with my fingers still crossed. “I expect you’ll have to help me.”

She sighed and pushed the down button and waited with me for the elevator. When the door opened, she shoved me inside and pushed the button with the number 1 on it. When the elevator door closed, I smiled me a big smile. I had tricked them nurses real good.

I got offen the elevator on the main floor and walked to the parking lot. Mama waved at me from the car. When I got there, Mama had tucked BJ in the backseat, all wrapped up with Gran’s sunshine quilt and the oxygen tank hissing air into the mask on his face. When I got in the front seat, BJ pulled up his mask and said real soft and scratchy, “Hey, Lyddie. I hear you’re going to win next year’s liar’s contest at the county fair.”

We all laughed, until we saw some nurses run out of the hospital’s front door and look around the parking lot. Mama told me to get down on the floor. Then she drove out of there so fast that the tires squealed.

BJ slept the whole way home. He breathed real slow, sucking air from the tank. Mama and I sang hymns to try and make ourselves feel better.

It was getting on toward evening when Mama drove Uncle William’s car into our yard. “BJ, we’re home,” I said. Mama opened the back door and scooped him up with the quilt still wrapped around him. She cradled him to her like a newborn as we walked to the porch, the only noise being BJ’s raspy breathing. I stayed a step behind her, carrying that big tank so BJ didn’t have to take off his mask.

“It’s warm this evening. Let’s just stay here, Lydia,” Mama said as she sat in the rocking chair, still holding BJ close. I put the oxygen tank beside her. Then I pulled the other rocker up next to her, leaned my head against her shoulder, and reached under the quilt for BJ’s hand.

With BJ all wrapped up in Gran’s sunshine quilt, we sat in the chairs Daddy made. I felt like we was all there together, a family again—Gran and Daddy with us in spirit. God fired up the sky with blues and pinks and yellows like He was a-telling us we had done the right thing, and He was a-welcoming BJ to Heaven. God kissed us with a soft breeze.

BJ opened his eyes after a time. He pointed toward his mask, and Mama pulled it up a little. “I’m home,” he said.

“Yes, baby.” Mama stroked his hair back from his face. “We’re all where we belong.”

BJ smiled and I felt a little squeeze on my hand. He pulled the mask up with his other hand. “I saw Gran, Mama,” he said. “She looked all shiny like an angel. She said to tell you it would all work out in the end. I’m going to be with her soon.”

“I know, BJ. And you give her a big hug for your sister and me.” Mama didn’t have no tears in her eyes. She smiled at BJ as she stroked his hair.

I wished I could figure out how she got so strong. I couldn’t hold back no more, and I started sobbing into Mama’s shoulder. BJ let go of my hand. I looked at him, afeared that he had done gone and left me. I balled my hand up in a fist.

And then I felt BJ lay his flat hand over mine. “Paper covers rock,” he whispered. “I win.” He grinned at me. He said it with the mask on, but I didn’t have no trouble figuring out what he said, even though it sounded like he was talking from the bottom of a well.

I grinned back through my tears. “That’s not fair,” I told him. “You cheated.”

“Sing to me, Lyddie,” BJ said. He closed his eyes again.

Somehow I conjured up my voice. I felt shaky at first, but then BJ’s favorite hymn carried me to a different place. Mama joined in.

“There were ninety and nine that safely lay



In the shelter of the fold.



But one was out on the hills far away,



Far off from the gates of gold.



Away on the mountains wild and bare.



Away from the tender Shepherd’s care.



‘Lord, Thou hast here Thy ninety and nine;



Are they not enough for Thee?’



But the Shepherd made answer: ‘This of Mine



Has wandered away from Me.’



Out in the desert He heard its cry,



Sick and helpless and ready to die.



All through the mountains, thunder riven



And up from the rocky steep,



There arose a glad cry to the gate of Heaven,



‘Rejoice! I have found My sheep!’



And the angels echoed around the throne,



‘Rejoice, for the Lord brings back His own!’ ”



I ain’t sure when BJ’s breathing stopped. But when I looked at him after I finished the song, he was gone. He looked real peaceful. The yucky stuff that had made him so sick oozed out of the side of his mouth. My little brother was finally free of that terrible, awful poison. Mama took off the mask. He would never need it again.

I thought I would feel all empty inside when BJ left us, but I declare I heard him whisper in my ear, “Tag, you’re it.” I knowed right then and there that my BJ was never ever going to be far from me.

“You rest real good,” Mama said, and she kissed him on the cheek. She took BJ’s magic penny out of his pocket and closed his hand around it.

Later that day, the sheriff took my mama away.