A Land More Kind Than Home (23 page)

I didn't know just where I was at first, but the sun had sunk down below the hill that I was walking toward, and the whole country out there was just as quiet as it could be. It was then, with my back to the river, that I got the sense that somebody was following me, that somebody was right there on my heels going up that hill right along behind me. I stopped walking, and I turned around and I could hear my robe dragging over the grass and I could feel my bare feet stepping on that wet cotton hem. When I looked behind me, there was Jesus. He had on him a blue robe that was as dark as pitch where it was soaked through from the waist down, and I knew he'd been all the way out there in that water just waiting on me, and somehow or another I'd decided not to go out and meet him.

I knew it was Jesus sure enough because he looked just like they always said he would: olive skin, soft brown eyes, light brown hair. But in my dream he was much older than what you might find in a picture Bible or in the paintings that might be hanging up in a church. In my dream he was much older than they let him live to be. I could see the years around his eyes and his beard had patches of gray and white in it, and when he walked toward me from the river he had a little hitch in his step like his hip or his leg was hurting him and giving him a little bit of trouble. I just stood there watching him, and when he got within earshot, he hollered out to me.

“Why'd you stop walking?” he asked.

“Because,” I told him. “I didn't know you were back there.”

“Yes, you did,” he said. “You just forgot. But go on, I'm following you now.” I just stood there not knowing what to say, and Jesus waved his hand like he was shooing me away. “Go on,” he said. “It's all right. I told you, I'm following you.”

I turned around and faced that hill again, and when I did I felt something heavy in my hands. I looked down and saw that I was holding a plate with a napkin over it that was wet with grease, and when I lifted that napkin I saw that it covered a heap of hot fried chicken. All of a sudden I felt somebody walk past me, and when I looked up I saw it was a woman in a long white robe just like the one I had on, and when I looked her in the face I felt like she was somebody I might've known once upon a time. She held a plate in her hands too, and beside her was a man with a guitar strapped over his shoulder and he held a tambourine in one hand and a jug of something in the other. When I looked around that bottomland, I saw it was plum full of people in robes carrying food and instruments up the grassy hillside in the growing dark, not a one of them saying a word, not a one of them making a noise. They looked just like ghosts or haints, and then it struck me that they might just be angels. Jesus walked right up beside me, and we stood there watching them walk past us and on ahead of us, and I could feel that fried chicken cooling under that napkin and that plate was growing cold against my fingers.

“Go on,” Jesus said again. “I'm right here behind you.”

I set off walking up the hill even though I knew I wouldn't ever be able to catch up with all them folks, but I knew it didn't matter because we were going to a Decoration Day and I knew they'd have the food set out and the hymns going and the sweet tea poured when I met them at the top of that hill. I looked up there where some of the people were already starting to crest the hill, and there was a woman facing me, and when I looked close I saw it was my great-aunt and she was looking down at me and smiling like she was waiting for me and might just be willing to wait there forever. She didn't look like the tiny, shrunken thing I'd found by that cold fireplace. She looked straight and strong and shiny like a new silver dollar. I knew that I was going to wake up before I got to the top of that hill where she was waiting. Jesus must've known it too, for I felt his graying beard against my cheek and I could hear his breath in my ear where he walked right along beside me.

“Look at her, Addie,” he whispered. “That's what immortality looks like.”

I
HEARD THAT MAN AND WOMAN FROM DOWN THE MOUNTAIN DRIVING
their wagon out there in the road early that next morning, and I stepped out the door and saw him leading a big brown mare up the hill by the reins. A cart was bumping along behind her, and the coffin he'd made was resting up on top. It wasn't too much more than a rectangular box made from a few old boards, but I can tell you that I was glad to have it.

“Thank y'all for coming,” I said when they stopped in the road in front of the cabin.

“It ain't nothing,” the man said.

“We're glad we could help,” the woman said. He unloaded that box, and I helped him carry it inside where I'd laid my great-aunt out on the bed.

“I'll leave this to y'all,” he said, and he walked past us back outside. The woman helped me lift my great-aunt into the box, and I straightened her dress and smoothed it out. She was so light it was like lifting a little child. I'd unplaited her hair the night before and combed it out the best I could, but it didn't look like her. It was like we were loading up somebody I didn't know to carry them up the hill to the graveyard, and I expected my great-aunt to walk in the door any minute.

“Addie,” she'd say, “what in the world?”

The woman and I stood there looking down at her where she laid in that box. It was quiet inside there, and I could hear the horse's feet shuffling in the dirt road outside.

“We should leave it open until we get up there,” the woman said. “Odus will nail it shut then.” She went outside, and I could hear her out there in the road talking to the man. He opened the door and stepped inside.

I helped him carry the coffin out to the cart, and when the sun hit her face I saw for the first time just how bad she looked. Her skin was so white you could almost see through it. He fastened the coffin down on the back of that cart, and the three of us followed the road up the mountain to the graveyard. Once we got up there I helped him unload her, and the woman got the ropes they'd brought to lower her down into the hole I'd dug the day before. The man had brought along a hammer and a little sack of nails for closing down the lid.

He pulled the lid off the sled and he sat it over the top of the coffin, and then he got down on his knees and started hammering it shut. Every time that hammer hit, it echoed up through those oaks with a report that seemed like it would carry forever—a sound like a rifle blast ringing out over the mountains. When he finished, we lowered her down with the ropes, him on one side of the grave and me and his wife on the other. Once we finished, we just stood there looking down into that hole.

“Do you want to say something?” the woman asked me.

“I don't figure there's much to be said now,” I told her. Besides, I knew that what I'd wanted to say to my great-aunt I'd already said to myself, and if she was listening up there she'd have heard it just the same.

After finding her dead and alone, I told myself I wasn't going to die in a drafty cabin with nobody to find me but the critters and maybe some snooping kids. I thought,
Addie, it ain't no way to live up on this mountain alone for the rest of your life; you need to get down to where folks are
, and so I up and left, and I've lived just outside Marshall since '20. I reckon that's been along about sixty-odd years.

B
UT
I
WASN
'
T GOING TO TELL THE SHERIFF ANY OF THAT
story because it had no bearing on whatever truth he needed to find. The story he wanted was the story of Christopher inside that church, and that was a story I just couldn't give him. But if he'd have taken the time, I could've told the sheriff about the very moment Christopher's story started, and maybe from there he could have followed it to see how it changed Ben and Julie, how it changed their marriage, and how they ended up where they were.

On the night he was born I laid there in my bed and listened for that noise again, that same noise that sounded like a voice coming from somewhere inside the house. I held my breath and bent my ear, and just when I was ready to blame it on fancy I heard it just as plain as day.

“Who's there?” I called out and waited. I heard that wind driving outside and the patter of that snow against the windows, and then a little voice was signaling me from the front door. I could barely hear it over the wind and the snow, but when I was sure I'd heard it I popped up out of the bed, and how dark that night was with me shuffling across the floor and turning on the switch on the lamp and the light filling up the bedroom and part of the hall.

I stepped into the front room in my bare feet and my gown, and I called out, “Who is it?”

“Lord have mercy, Addie, it's me,” the little voice behind the door said. “Now open this door before I'm froze solid.”

I recognized that voice, and I opened the door and the wind just about knocked me down, and here came the snow blowing in with it. Gerty Norman was out there standing in her dead husband's waders with one of her son's work coats swallowing her up. I could barely see her eyes peeking out from where she'd wrapped a scarf tight around her face and pulled a man's winter cap down low on her head.

“Is that you, Gerty?” I asked.

“Who in the world do you think it is?” she said through her scarf. She stomped right past me on her way inside the house with that snow falling off the tread of them heavy waders.

“What would make you want to walk down here in this weather at this time of night?” I asked her. She was slow getting that scarf unwound from over her mouth, and I could see that her cheeks were bright red apples against her face. Her eyes were teary from the cold. When she finally unwound that scarf and took off her cap, her body gave her a good shiver.

“It's Julie Hall,” she said. “It's time, and Ben's truck can't get her down the mountain. They tried calling Doc Winthrop, but they couldn't get ahold of him. They tried calling you too, but I reckon your phone's out with this weather.”

“Winthrop's probably drunk and laying up in the bed by now,” I told her. “There ain't no way that man's heading up Gunter Mountain tonight. Not in this snow.”

“Ben asked if you might could see her through, at least until this weather lets up and they can get down the mountain to the hospital. I told him I'd come down here and ask you, but I let him know it's pretty nasty down here too.”

Don't you know I stood there and watched those little red apples disappear from her cheeks and listened to the wind whipping that snow around while I thought about how warm my bed in the next room was.

“Ronnie might can get you up there,” she said. “His truck's got them big old tires on it, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he could drive you clear up that mountain.”

I can say I thought about it awfully hard. “I reckon I'll go,” I finally said. “Just let me get me some clothes on.” I turned to go back toward the bedroom and she followed me, and then she walked into the kitchen and went right up to the stove and took those heavy mittens off and held out her hands to warm them. I'd fed the fire before I went to bed, and when she opened the grate I could see them flames just a-hissing and popping in there. I stopped and looked back at her.

“Watch yourself in them waders,” I said. “That rubber will melt on both you and my floors too.” I knew she was frozen through and couldn't rightly feel how hot that fire was on her.

“I know,” she said, but she sure didn't back away from it.

“Gerty!” I said. She muttered something under her breath about being scolded and made a fuss of stepping back just to rile me.

I went into the bedroom and put on my wool stockings and pulled on two sweaters over my gown. My heavy coat was hanging on the bedpost, and I pulled that on too. I found my gloves and boots and my hat and carried them into the kitchen so I could sit down and put them on at the table. When I walked back in the kitchen, there was Gerty right up against that stove again. I decided that if she wanted to set herself on fire, why, I'd just go ahead and let her.

W
E OPENED THE DOOR AND STEPPED OUTSIDE, AND THAT WIND
almost knocked me over again and the snow was just blowing around all over the place. Me and Gerty set out trudging the half mile up the road to her house. It was a climb, I can tell you that. And here we were, two old women out in the snow holding on to each other for dear life and slipping and sliding right along like little kids on roller skates.

“Lord, Gerty,” I said, “how'd you make it down this hill by yourself?”

“I just done it,” she said.

“You think Ronnie can get up that mountain in this mess?”

“I'm sure he can.”

“What did he say?”

“I ain't woke him yet.”

Well, I just about laid down and died right there. I stopped right in my tracks, but Gerty just kept on walking. I hollered after her. “You're telling me I'm climbing up this hill to get in a truck that you don't even know can get up Gunter, with a driver that ain't even woke yet?”

“That's what I'm telling you,” she hollered back.

“Why didn't you wake him up and ask him if his truck could make it?”

She stopped then and turned around. I could barely see her through the snow.