In This Mountain (30 page)

Hope Winchester climbed the wooden stepladder and, poised on the third rung, cleaned the topmost interior of the bookstore display window with a solution of vinegar and water.

She had considered asking George Gaynor to do the job, since he was so much taller and wouldn’t have to stand on tiptoe as she was doing. But she couldn’t ask a Ph.D. to perform a menial task like washing windows.

She was careful not to splash any of the smelly solution onto the display below, which featured stacks of
Foggy Mountain Breakdown
by Sharyn McCrumb, and other books set in the southern highlands. So far, the third annual Mountain Month at Happy Endings had enjoyed only mild success, even in view of the ten percent discount for every book containing the word
mountain
in its title. People could get ten percent off anything, anywhere, she concluded. She proposed that next year they offer fifteen percent. In her opinion, fifteen percent was when people started to pay attention.

She raised the squirt bottle with her right hand and fired the solution toward the window, then turned slightly to wipe it down with the paper towel in her left hand.

It seemed as if she were falling in slow motion, like a feather, or perhaps some great hand held her gently, guiding her down and breaking her fall to the floor of the display window, where she landed on an arrangement of Charles Frazier’s
Cold Mountain
in paperback.

“I declare!” said the Woolen Shop’s Minnie Lomax, who was on her way to the post office. “That is the most
interesting
window display. Very modern. A mannequin lying on books.” She knew Hope Winchester liked to try different things; she had once put a fake cat on a footstool, which caused half the population to stand in front of the window waiting for the cat to move. Though impressively lifelike, it never did, of course, which made some people feel foolish.

Adjusting her bifocals and walking on, Minnie deemed the current display “too New York for this town!” a criticism she proclaimed aloud, albeit to herself, as she waited for the light to change.

“Hope!”

She saw George Gaynor bending over her, instructing her to do something.

“Hope!”
he said again, looking anxious.

Why should she hope any longer? She was an old maid who would never marry, who made clumsy, foolish mistakes in front of handsome men, and who had fallen off a ladder. She was so disgusted with herself that she didn’t even try to move or get up. She felt no pain, only a certain breathlessness, as if the wind had gone out of her altogether. She wanted nothing more than to lie here, to close her eyes and somehow get the whole thing over with. She was mildly disappointed that she hadn’t died in the fall.

“Are you hurt?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“I’ve had some medical training. I’m going to lift you very gently. Easy, now.”

His face was close to hers. What if she had bad breath? She drew her head away sharply.

“Have I hurt you?”

“No!”

He raised her to a sitting position. “There. How does that feel?”

“Wonderful!” she said, without meaning to. “That is,
fine
! Just fine, thank you.” She supposed she would have to get up now, and go on with her life; she couldn’t just lie in the window with a gaggle of small children staring at her. She spied Miss Tomlinson waving at her with one hand, while holding on to a string grasped by each of her day care brood.

Are…you…all right?
mouthed Miss Tomlinson.

Yes
, Hope mouthed back.

“How does your back feel?” asked George.

“Good! Great! I’m just a little…addled, I think.”

“Shall I help you stand?”

She nodded.

His long, slender fingers touched hers, and then his hands gripped her own and were pulling her up, up, up…

When she came to her feet, she felt strong and tall—easily as tall as George Gaynor.

“There!” he said, smiling. “Thank God you weren’t hurt.”

“I was only standing on the third rung,” she said, dazzled suddenly by an extraordinary happiness.

“I bet I know why Sammy don’t want to see Mama.”

“Why?”

“’Cause he hates her for givin’ him away.”

Jessie announced her opinion to Poo, who sat between herself and Dooley in the backseat of the Mustang on their way down the mountain.

“But Mama says our daddy run off with ’im.”

“Yeah, but Mama didn’t run after our daddy to get Sammy back.”

“Oh,” said Poo.

Jessie took a comb from her plastic purse and pulled it through her long hair. “Me an’ Sammy were lost.”

“But now you’re found,” said Dooley.

“I wadn’t ever lost,” said Poo. “I was always with Mama.”

Jessie frowned. “Because you’re her pet.”

“I ain’t her pet, she likes us all th’ same.”

“No, she don’t.”

“Doesn’t,” said Dooley, clenching his jaw.

“Yeah, she does, ’cause you’re th’ only one she didn’t give away or let somebody run off with.”

“She loves us all th’ same,” said Poo. “Exactly th’ same.”

Jessie dug into her purse and pulled out a compact. “I wonder if Sammy looks like us.”

“He does!” Father Tim peered into the rearview mirror at the talkative and opinionated Jessie, the peacemaking Poo, and Dooley, who looked unseeing out the window. “When Miss Pringle saw Sammy, she thought he was Dooley.”

Dooley shot a brief but irritable glance into the rearview mirror. Clearly he didn’t agree that the boy with a ponytail might be confused with himself.

Jessie sat forward and questioned the front seat. “Do y’all think me an’ Poo an’ Dooley look alike?”

“Peas in a pod,” said Father Tim.

Buck laughed. “The only way I can tell you from Poo, is Poo don’t wear a skirt to school.”

“How can you tell Poo from Dooley?”

“Dooley’s a couple heads taller,” said Buck.

Jessie sat back, surveyed herself in the mirror of the compact, then studied her younger brother. “Poo is much, much uglier than me,” she announced.

“You’re a big, fat dope,” said Poo.

Lon Burtie’s place was a 1950s Amoco station set on a slab of cracked asphalt.

Lon greeted them at the door. “It ain’t much,” he said, extending his hand. “But come on in, an’ welcome.”

They entered a small, concrete-floored room with a wall of empty shelves. A vintage snack-vending machine stood in the corner.

“Y’all come on back, I don’t live up here in th’ front.”

“I’m scared,” Jessie whispered to Buck.

He took her hand. “What’s there to be scared about?”

“I don’t know, but I’m shakin’, so I must be scared.”

“You’re excited,” said her stepfather. “There’s a difference.”

Jessie looked sober. “Maybe sometimes,” she said, “but not every time.”

When they entered the room, Sammy sat in a chair opposite a television set. He stood instantly, looking anxious.

“Better turn this thing off,” said Lon. He walked to the table next to Sammy and picked up the remote. The screen went black and Lon nodded to the group. “Y’all sit down. This is where I hang out, it was th’ grease rack back when Amoco had it.”

Sammy cleared his throat. “H-h-hey,” he said.

Jessie burst into tears, clinging to Buck’s arm.

Buck’s hand was gentle on her shoulder, guiding her toward Sammy. “You an’ Poo come say hey to your brother.”

Sammy moved stiffly toward them; Father Tim watched the scene unfold in a kind of slow motion.

Jessie approached Sammy with caution, as did Poo. The room was strangely quiet. Dooley remained by the door, his face tense.

Suddenly Poo sprinted toward Sammy, arms outstretched, sobbing. “Hey, Sammy! Hey, Sammy!”

Poo and Jessie reached their brother at the same time, where some awkward connection of feet knocked Sammy to the floor. The three went down in a pile, Jessie shrieking with excitement.

Father Tim watched Dooley go to his brother and hold out his hands and help him to his feet. They looked at each other for a moment, then embraced, silent and weeping.

“I’m goin’ to cook for you, Sammy!” Jessie pulled on Sammy’s T-shirt. “Every mornin’ before school, I’ll cook you eggs an’ you can have all th’ money I been savin’.”

“I got a new baseball bat, Sammy, it’s th’ best bat you ever seen, you can use it if you want to.”

Lon Burtie wiped his eyes on his bare arm.

Buck drew a bandanna from his jeans pocket.

Father Tim turned and looked away, his heart nearly bursting with joy and sorrow intermingled.

“Sammy wants to show us his garden, may I take the car?”

“How far is it?”

“A couple of miles.”

“What about…?” He didn’t want to say
your father.

“He’s not there, he won’t be there all day.”

“Good.” Father Tim reached into his pocket and handed the key to Dooley. He had never before seen the boy’s face so radiant. The power of love was transforming; God had known that all along.

“I learned to drink this stuff in Nam,” Lon said as he poured tea into three mugs.

“They wouldn’t take me.” Buck looked at the floor, then up again.

“What branch?”

“Army. I was a machine gunner’s mate, E-4. We flew Hueys in and out of th’ war zone, a big ’copter that transported men and artillery.”

In a moment of uncomfortable silence, the only sound came from two fans moving the close, humid air.

“I thought I might never get over bein’ there, but I had to, it was eatin’ me alive. The stuff goin’ down in Nam was hard enough to deal with…then we came home and had to deal with what was goin’ down in here.” He made a fist and hit his head with a quick, ironic gesture.

“I’m sorry,” Father Tim said.

“Yeah, well, I can talk about it a little now. Only thing is, there’s not many to talk to ’cept Sammy.” Lon grinned. “He’s a good boy, I’m glad you found ’im. But you don’t want to cross ’im, he’s got ’is daddy’s temper.”

Buck blew on his steaming tea. “We don’t know how to go about this, exactly, we’re tryin’ not to step in anything. I don’t know if he might like to, you know, come live with us.”

Lon shrugged. “Sammy feels responsible for ’is daddy, he does everything but wipe ’is rear end. Buys ’is liquor, puts food on th’ table, hoofs to town when I can’t take ’im, washes th’ bedsheets his old man pukes on. Clyde Barlowe is one sorry sonofagun. For a fact, about as sorry as they come.”

“We assume it’s true about Barlowe bein’ gone today. I wouldn’t want th’ kids to get in any trouble.”

“It’s all right, he hightailed it up to Virginia with Cate Turner, one of his drinkin’ buddies.”

Cate Turner. Lace Harper’s father. Father Tim was glad there’d never be any reason to mention this to her. “When will he get back, do you know?” Maybe they could take Sammy up the mountain for a day….

“He’ll get back tonight, they go across th’ state line to buy lottery tickets. He’ll come home blasted out of his gourd and stay that way for four or five days.”

“He needs help,” said Buck. “I was bad to drink myself.”

“Us ol’ liquor heads, you line us up, we’d go around th’ world more’n a few times.”

“What can we do?” asked Buck. “For now? For th’ short haul?”

Lon shook his head. “I don’t know what to tell you. I offered Sammy a place over here, but he wouldn’t leave Clyde.”

“We don’t want to force anything,” said Buck. “But…”

“If you ran this deal through a social service agency, you could get Sammy out. The question is, would he be willin’ to go?”

“What’s this Jaybird Johnson business?” asked Father Tim.

“I think Clyde prob’ly stole somebody’s ID, I don’t have all th’ details on that.”

“How much schooling has Sammy had, do you have any idea?”

“I’ve known him since he was around seven, eight years old. Not much schoolin’, I can tell you for sure. He don’t like sittin’ in a classroom, they’ve held ’im back two grades. But he’s got a keen mind, very keen. You saw his garden, he took to doin’ that like a pig takes to slop, it’s natural to him. On th’ other hand, he can shoot the hair off any pool player you want to name. That’s natural, too; it’s an odd combination. I believe he could do ’most anything he set his mind to, but stayin’ around here, he’ll never amount to nothin’.” Lon shrugged. “I don’t much care to stay around here myself, but…”

“But what?” asked Father Tim.

Lon gave a short, cackling laugh. “But I ain’t plannin’ to amount to nothin’, so why bother to leave?”

“An old preacher in Mississippi once said, ‘God don’t make junk.’ I’m sure you amount to more than you let on.” Father Tim smiled.

“You have a trade?”

“I paint houses. I got a truck, a couple of ladders, I keep busy. Th’ whole deal is to show up on time, do your work, stay sober, an’ clean up after yourself.”

“Good plan.”

“You might say my sideline keeps me goin’.”

“What’s that?” asked Buck.

“While th’ kids are over at Clyde’s, I’d like to show you—I don’t get much of a chance to, you know, show it to anybody.”

“Please!” said Father Tim. “Lead on.”

Lon took them across the large, sparsely furnished room to a door.

“This was th’ head.”

“That’s OK,” said Buck, “I don’t need to go. How ’bout you, Father?”

“
Was
th’ head,” said Lon. Father Tim thought their graying, fiftyish host was a surprisingly handsome man when he smiled. Lon opened the door and stood back.

Father Tim drew in his breath. “Good heavens!”

Buck removed his ball cap. “Man!”

“This is my garden. Walk in.”

The room was fairly sizable. Where toilet stalls had been, the walls on three sides were lined with shelves containing potted orchids of varying colors and petal shapes. Orchids also sat in pots on shelves above a washbasin, and clung to a wire screen, their roots trailing into the air. A rattan blind was raised over a small window admitting light from the south.

“Some of these plants are pretty old, I bought ’em after I came back from Da Nang. This’n right here, it’s
Paphiopedilum delenatii
, I brought it out of Nam in a duffel bag, wrapped bare root in my underwear. For a long time people thought it was extinct, it would’ve been worth ten, fifteen thousand bucks back then.”

Buck whistled softly.

“It’d probably bring about as much today, but I wouldn’t part with it, no way.”

“Are they all out of Nam?”

“They come from all over. These here originated in th’ Philippines, this one in India, over there, th’ dark pink, that’s a South American variety.”

“Marvelous!” said Father Tim.

“It’s good an’ humid down here by th’ river, they like that.”

“How’d you get started doin’ this?” Buck wanted to know.

“Th’ whole thing started with a man named…”—Lon cleared his throat, suddenly moved—“Tran van Hoi. We met in the mountains, where he lived with his family in a little hut. He was the enemy, accordin’ to th’ U.S., but he was…the best friend I ever had.”

Lon wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand, unashamed. “I took most of my R and R time in th’ jungle, just lookin’ at th’ beauty. I was never afraid of th’ jungle, I grew up in th’ woods around here before it was timbered off and strip-malled. Tran taught me about orchids, they say there’s twenty-five hundred different kinds just in Nam.”

“Words fail,” said Father Tim.

“Yeah, well, I wish everybody who pulled time over there could have somethin’ like this. It’s what’s kept me from losin’ it completely. See these halogen deals I installed? Th’ light fakes ’em out, they don’t have a clue they’re growin’ in a Amoco station outside of Holding, North Ca’lina.”

Lon grinned. “You might say electricity’s my only vice since I laid off weed an’ alcohol.”

“This is great,” said Buck. “Just great!”

“A day of miracles!” said Father Tim.

Four miracles down, and one—at least—to go.

Hope Winchester sat on the stool at the cash register, a book closed in her lap, and tried to understand what had happened when she fell.

She had gone down in a state of perplexity and anguish, and had been lifted up in a state of…it was important to find just the right word…in a state of happiness. She had always been leery of that word, and avoided using it. But happiness seemed to be what she had experienced—happiness and liberty.

Liberty!

She had never felt free in her life, until after the fall. To put it another way, she had gone down bearing a heavy weight and come up light and diaphanous, like the wings of a moth.

Even her mother had noticed something different when they talked on the phone the other day. Her mother, who was in constant pain, seemed to forget the pain for a change and concentrate on her daughter, a hundred miles to the north. “You sound good,” her mother said. “You sound different.” And then, at the end, she said, “You must be happy. I hope you’ll get on the bus and come let your sister and me see you looking happy.”

Though she was sitting in the way she usually sat on this odd and disagreeable stool—tight in the shoulders and along her spine, having nothing to lean her back upon—in her mind she was dancing, her face to the sun.

“That’s a beautiful smile you’re wearing today,” said George, coming in from the mailroom.

“Thank you,” she said. She noticed that she didn’t roll herself into a ball inside, nor was her heart racing. She’d said thank you in the most natural way in the world, which was part of the miracle of transformation she’d just been contemplating.

“By the way, if you ever need help for any reason, you can call me at Miss Pringle’s. I know you had trouble with the plumbing the other evening.”

“I appreciate it. I do.” The toilet had run over just as she was getting ready to lock up, and a plumber had to be summoned from Wesley.

“Coffee this morning?”

“Yes!” she said, still smiling. She didn’t try to pay him, for he would never take it. “I’d love coffee.”

“The usual way,” he said. It was not a question.

“Yes.” Her eyes met his, and she felt no fear, no fear at all. She didn’t shrink or recoil or wish to hide her head beneath the sales counter. “Thank you.”

“Back in ten.” Now he was smiling, too. “Hold down the fort,” he said, closing the door behind him.