In the quiet, Sadie says low, “Him a big baby. I don’t need me two babies.”
My jaw drops, and Birdie claps and does a little jig. Sadie giggles and covers her mouth with her hands. Laughing, Birdie walks out the door and mumbles chants with outstretched arms and twitchy fingers. We watch little boy Roy back step, and slip and stumble, and his ignorance chases him over the ridge where the weak morning sun breaks through soggy clouds.
Sadie Blue still stands straight with her legs planted wonderfully strong, a warrior newly born. I take a step to hug her, and she grabs her belly, doubles over, and cries out Oh Lord! and instantly a tiny creature falls between her legs in a swoosh of crimson that splats on the wooden floor just as Birdie steps back inside. The old woman scoops up the lost hope in one hand and puts it in the empty bag that held healing herbs. Jerome grabs the bag, clutches the remains of a lost soul, and scuttles off into the wet woods.
Emptiness fills the cabin. It stretches thin around Sadie, Birdie, and me, three women who look for the why wrapped in grief that numbs us. Hope propelled the last day’s efforts but now it evaporates.
All for nothing.
All for everything that matters.
Birdie finds purpose first and reaches for a clean rag. She dips it in the pan of warm water and wrings it out in hands as gnarled as tree roots holding tight to this mountain place. She kneels on swollen knees beside young Sadie Blue and washes away traces of her loss.
I get on my hands and knees and scrub the blood off the floor.
Tattler Swann
Like most folks round here, I live on Bentwood Mountain near Baines Creek all my days, and I scrape out a living in the backwoods that suits me fine. I don’t need schooling or messing with a jumble of letters and numbers like that fancy teacher from the valley pushes. Mama says Preacher Eli’s been by a time or two hoping to change my wandering ways, but I ain’t buying what he’s selling. He’s good-hearted. Even had me try my hand at building a chicken coop for Miz Marris that still stands, but the building life don’t take like fishing and hunting do. Truth is, this mountain and Birdie Rocas and them crows she hangs with be teacher enough. My mama Dottie’s smarts fills in some more. Then there’s my friend, Jerome Biddle.
Jerome Biddle lives at the lonely side of Good Luck Pass in a trailer that leans to the left. That don’t bother him none cause his right leg is shorter than the other by two inches. He looks strangely upright when he stands in his little house or walks the right side of the mountain. But he looks off-kilter in the valley where land is flat and people normal.
Nothing’s normal bout Jerome Biddle.
Not a single hair grows on his flat, spotted head, and his beard’s a foot long, matted with leaves and bits of bone and bird feathers, and it flutters in the breeze. His leather skin is seasoned dark like a Injun’s. His blue eyes washed out like a winter sky. You never know if Jerome Biddle looks at you or through you. He don’t mind looking odd, but it scares the bejeezus outta me when I come up on him in the woods. I be hunting or fishing or checking traps and find Jerome Biddle standing so still he’s like a tree trunk.
I say, “Jerome Biddle, why you standing like that? You got nothing better to do?”
And the odd man answers real careful so only his mouth moves and words slide sideways through the crack of his lips. “I plant this tree to tie me to eternity.”
Or he says, “I listen to the moaning of time and take it to the borderline.”
Jerome Biddle calls his self a poet. I say he speaks in riddles, and stuff like that don’t do a body good. I know what I talk bout cause Saturday brings trouble neither of us is ready for—least of all Jerome Biddle.
The river is worrisome high after six days rain. My lucky fishing spot on the riverbank is underwater, and I finally take to scooting out on a sycamore tree felled over thick water and drop a line. I know no fish will likely pay attention to my worm in the churning water. I’m more gambler than Mama likes. Plus I got me a streak of lazy. She sometime says, “Tattler Swann, you waste more time than is good for a soul that’s gotta feed and clothe his self.”
I say with a smile that always turns her soft, “Mama, don’t worry none. Life’s too short to work all day. I got time enough to do the necessary.”
So, Saturday late afternoon, I sit on a tree that fell across water rushing so loud I can’t hear nothing but the rushing. While I dangle a fishing line with weak hope in the strong-willed water, I look and spy Jerome Biddle downstream two hundred paces on the rocky bank. The man’s got a burlap sack throwed over his crooked shoulder, and the bottom of the poke looks bloody. Black blood drips down his shirttail, down the back of his pants, and into the heels of his moccasins. He looks back to the woods like something fearful is coming. He’s crying, too, wiping his nose on his raggedy sleeve. I forget fishing and turn curious bout my friend’s blubbering and that bloody sack.
So I scoot back cross the log to the bank and think to follow Jerome when I hear over the water’s din coonhounds coming along the ridge, hot on a trail. They make a racket, and I can tell them owners hold tight to the leashes to keep em from running free just yet. I look back downstream and see Jerome Biddle, chest high in the tangled river, battling the current. He holds tight to the poke that’s mostly underwater now. He works his way round a big boulder with a crack in the side, then ducks down and don’t come up.
My friend crawled into the rock the weight of water and time wore out hollow. It’s got air enough on a regular day to last for a good while, cept this won’t no regular day with the water high. The seed of worry gets planted in the back of my mind. Few folk know the hiding spot cept me and Jerome Biddle and the Stoner boys from Rock Hall who hid from revenuers one night and caused a bunch of head scratching.
I look back up the hill as three men and a pack of dogs swoop down my way. I still clutch my fishing pole when the strangers slap up against my space with their sweaty heat.
Boss Man carries a rifle on his shoulder, a wad of chew in his cheek, and a mean edge. He looks vaguely like my daddy I see once when he come by the house to see Mama. She blocked the door and won’t let him in, but he was coming in anyway till he caught sight of me and stopped. Raised his eyebrow at my five-year-old self. Stared at me and saw responsibility he can’t handle and ownership he won’t claim. He turned round and marched off that porch without a glance back or a fare-the-well.
Without looking my way, Mama held out one arm, and I walked into her comfort and leaned into her warm side while she leaned into the hard doorframe. We watched the man cross the yard and head down the road. I remember him chewing tobacco and his jaw working. His hair was clipped short enough to see his scalp. His ears stuck out like mine. Most of all, I remember his mean edge.
“That’s your daddy, Tattler. You won’t never see him again.”