Tomorrow River

Chapter Twenty-one

I’m on my way to E. J.’s by way of the stepping stones.

The creek is running fast. How tempting it is to wade in. Watch the emerging stars as I float downstream to finally get swept over the falls. Is that what Mama did? Did she feel so sad about her unhappy marriage that she threw herself in? That might be the reason why Papa has kept her passing so hush-hush. He wouldn’t want folks to know that his wife did away with herself rather than face one more day being married to him. That would embarrass him, and His Honor hates being embarrassed as much as he does being pitied.

It was the talk of the town when Mama’s fellow choir singer, Mrs. Clayton, put on her wedding dress, threw a rope around a barn rafter, climbed onto a milk can, and stepped off into eternity after her husband told her that he didn’t love her anymore. But Mrs. Clayton was childless and Mama had Woody and me to think about. No. She’d never do that. But if she did, in a moment of weakness, I’d understand. Nobody can get at your heart once it’s lying six feet under.

That makes me say out loud Mr. William Wordsworth’s poem that Mama cried over so often. “‘What though the radiance which was once so bright be now for ever taken from my sight, though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower, we will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.’”

I know I will not be able to “grieve not,” as he suggests, but I am determined to reach deep within myself to find “strength in what remains behind.” During those forlorn nights in the fort, I vowed to myself to discover the truth about Mama’s passing. Finding out what happened to her is the only way I’ve got left to respect her memory, to honor her.

The first and best place to start looking for answers, as always, begins and ends with my family.

Papa knows what happened to Mama, so that means Grampa and Blackie must know, too. His Honor is putty in their hands. But our grandmother? Since the Carmody men keep everything that’s important to themselves, Gramma Ruth Love might not know about Mama’s passing, unless she overhead them talking, which she probably has. Even though Grampa has her kowtowed, she doesn’t let that stop her from placing a drinking glass on walls to listen in on conversations or picking up the telephone extension in a very stealthy way. But if our grandmother knows about Mama’s passing, why hasn’t she told Woody and me?

Grampa probably caught her eavesdropping and forbid her to tell us. When she comes for Founders Weekend, I’ll get her out of his clutches the same way our mother used to. I’ll have her join us in Woody’s and my bedroom and ask her questions about our dearly departed. I’m sure she’ll confess to me that she’s known all along and just couldn’t stand to be the bearer of such bad news. And after we all get done crying together, she’ll say a Bible passage for her good friend and daughter-in-law. Probably that lying-down-in-green-pastures part.

Oh, Mama.

I want to be with you.

It would be so easy to let the creek water wash away this pain forever.

I better take the road way to E. J.’s.

Crickets are singing soprano and alto frogs are harmonizing. They’re romancing. I’ve made up my mind never to join that choir. You get swept away by love and before you know it, you’re married. And marriage rusts. No matter how hard you work to scrap it off and polish it up, it will never come back to its original shine. It’s not just Mama and Papa’s or Grampa and Gramma’s wedded unbliss that I’m thinking about. Look at Mary Jane Upton wandering around town half clothed, looking for her tomcat of a husband. And the ladies down at Filly’s beauty shop are all the time complaining about how their men chew with their mouths open and how lazy they are until it comes time for them to go hunting or fishing.

There’s only one exception to that marriage disaster that I know of. Dorry and Frank Tittle. This dirt-poor couple have got the Midas touch when it comes to love.

I was trying to be quiet as I came up their dirt drive, but the Tittles’ next-door neighbors, the Calhouns, raise hound dogs. They must’ve picked up my scent. They’re baying loud enough to make Mrs. Tittle come out onto the sagging porch of her ramshackle house with the new baby pressed to her breast. She is a plain woman with straight brunette hair that ends at her chin. She’s barefoot, but wearing a fancy white dress that was my mother’s, and I have to bite my cheek to keep from crying out. Mama couldn’t tell our father that she didn’t care for all the frilly outfits that he bought her. When Papa asked her, “Why aren’t you wearing the new frock? The one with the big bows?” Mama would say, “I’m sorry, dear. I can’t zip it. I must’ve gained a few pounds.” Then she’d bundle up those flouncy gowns and bring them over here.

“Shenny? That you?” Mrs. Tittle calls into the dark.

Stepping out of the shadows, I say, “Yes, ma’am. Sorry for disturbing you. How has Mr. Tittle been feelin’?” The sound of his hacking cough is coming out of the screened windows. E. J. told me when his daddy tries to rest, all the black sludge in his lungs wakes up.

E. J.’s mama says, “Mr. Tittle is doin’ just…”

She’s about to tell me that her husband is good and fine. I save her from committing a venial sin by saying, “Lovely evening, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Tittle doesn’t lift her eyes and she doesn’t ask me what I’m doing here. She knows I’ve come for her boy. When Baby Fay starts whimpering, she jiggles her gently. Coos that song that only mothers seem to know.

“Well, night then,” I have a hard time saying.

After she goes back into the house, all I want to do is chase after her, crawl into her arms, and have her rock me like I’m her baby, too. The empty space where Mama used to be is weighing so heavy on my heart… it takes all I got to put one foot in front of another.

I find E. J. setting rabbit traps out back. He always does about this time of night.

“Hey,” I call to him.

He knocks over his red lantern when he jumps to his feet. “Hey.”

This is not the first nor do I imagine it will be the last time I come over here for his help.

I right the lantern and say, “Get your shoes on.”

“What’s goin’ on? Is it Woody?” he asks, alarmed as he reaches for his sneakers that are next to him on the log. “Has she run off again?”

“No, no, she’s all right.” I cross myself in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost to guarantee that she is.

E. J. points and says, “That’s a nice ring. Where’d ya get it?” I bet he’s thinking something like it would make a nice engagement present for Woody when the time comes.

I sit next to him and hold the mother-of-pearl in front of my face. “Clive told me I could have it after he died.” The ring really is gorgeous. It even smells good. Like the ocean. “I took it from his place when I went and got Ivory.”

E. J. gives me a smile and a nod. He knows that my bark is worse than my bite. Having that dog by Woody’s side will calm her down better than almost anything.

I watch as he laces up the high tops he got at the church rummage sale. They’re royal blue and two sizes too big. “Thanks for bringin’ the berries up to the fort. I coulda done without the song, though. Can’t for the life of me understand why Woody liked it so much.”

He grins.

“Our mother’s dead,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says, not looking up. “I suspected she might be.”

“Really? Why’s that?” I ask somewhat eagerly. The Tittle place is so close to ours and E. J.’s always running around in the woods and going back and forth across the creek searching for something good to eat. Could he have seen what happened to Mama and just been too nervous to tell me?

He says, “When she didn’t come back for such a long time… she wasn’t the kind of person who would just up and leave her babies. She just wasn’t.” Mama was always kind to E. J. Paid him too much money to do odd jobs around Lilyfield and gave him plates of her pecan fudge to take home to his other two sisters, who thought it was delicious because they’re not very picky eaters. “My mama thinks so, too. She told me that if she could, Miss Evie would’ve come home by now. That had to mean that she couldn’t. That she was… ya know.”

I pick up a rock and toss it hard as I can towards the creek. “Ya coulda told me that you were thinkin’ that way.”

E. J. picks up a rock, too, but doesn’t throw it. Just runs it through his fingers. “I thought… ya seemed so sure that she was still alive and… you’re so much smarter than me.” He’s embarrassed that he had to drop out of school last year to work hard for his family. “How did you find out about her… um…”

I look over to Lilyfield. Even though Papa told me that things were going to be different from now on, out of habit my skin crawls when I think about Woody all by her lonesome up in the fort. “His Honor told me.”

“Has she been passed for a long time or did they just… did your father tell ya how your mama-?”

“She…” The pain of going over this is gumming up my mouth, but I got to tell him. E. J.’s stood by us through thick and thin. “She’s been gone for almost a year. She died on carnival night last year.”

“How?” he asks, stunned.

I’m not sure if I should tell him this part, but I do. “His Honor didn’t tell me how, but Woody saw what happened. She’s known the whole time that Mama’s dead.”

He hops off the log. “Did she say something to you?”

“Don’t be stupid. I’d tell you if she did,” I say, before he goes completely bonkers. He misses her talking as bad as I do. Their long chats about their future together. They want to get married at Lee Chapel and have enough kids to make up a baseball team.

From the house, we can hear Mrs. Tittle humming a lullaby to the baby. I speak up about why I’ve come. “You know how Woody’s all the time makin’ those scary drawings?”

“I don’t think they’re scary.”

“They’re scary as hell and you know it.”

“I don’t-” He stops when I give him a you’ve-got-to-be-kiddin’-me look. “Fine,” he says. “What about ’em?”

“There’s this one… have you seen it? It’s of Mama and there’s somebody else, too. She got real agitated today when she showed it to me. I think it has something to do with what she saw that night, but I can’t figure out what.”

E. J. looks off into the woods. “Sometimes when ya hunt, no matter how hard ya chase after something you can’t get a bead on it. That’s when you got to be patient and wait ’til it circles back to ya.”

“You know better than that,” I say.

Of course, he doesn’t disagree. Patience is not my long suit. “Will you help me find out what happened to our mother? You know, how she died and where she’s buried?”

E. J. screws up his face. He must be thinking along the same lines that I am. It’s one thing to go looking for a long-lost mother but an entirely different ball of wax trying to figure out how she died. That’s a much, much sadder chore.

Seeing how he’s waffling, I tell him, “Woody can’t tell us what she saw, so we got to find out on our own so we can share the burden with her.” I can see that E. J.’s mostly going along with that. I have inherited His Honor’s persuading personality. “Once she has somebody to share that secret with, she’ll feel so much better.” I smile before I present my closing argument. “I bet she’ll even start talkin’ love and marriage again.”

E. J. squares his cap, which I have always believed is the font of his bravery, and says, “What’s the new plan?” He throws caution to the wind and doesn’t care where it lands when that coon sits on his head.

“New plan?” I haven’t thought this through. I don’t have any idea what to do next, other than talk to Gramma or persuade Woody to tell me what she saw that night back in the clearing.

“Well, I could… maybe we should… oh, E. J… Mama… she’s… never comin’ home.”

He saves me from collapsing onto the ground by taking me into his arms. Lets me cry on his shoulder beneath the twilight sky.

“Shen?” E. J. says, once I get my sniveling under control. “I know you’ve been wantin’ to talk to Vera. We could head over to the drugstore.”

I scrub the sad off my face with the bottom of my T-shirt and say, “Ya only want to go to Slidell’s ’cause you know Vera’s gonna give you a free brown cow. Do you have no shame?” This is my way of thanking him for coming up with a good idea. Vera Ledbetter was a good friend to Mama. I have already thoroughly questioned her about our mother’s vanishing. She didn’t have much to offer then, so she probably won’t have nothing more to add to my understanding of how Mama died. But she does make a mean brown cow and gives me free Rolaids whenever we stop by. And I promised Woody chow. One of Vera’s scrumptious egg salad sandwiches would do my sister a world of good. When we were hugging during our mourning days, I could’ve played her ribs the way Beezy’s favorite musician, Mr. Lionel Hampton, plays his vibraphone.

“We’ve got to be quick about it. I don’t want to leave Woody alone too long,” I say, looking down at my wrist to check the time out of habit. It’s two freckles past a hair. That’s something else I need to take care of. Getting Mama’s watch back from my uncle tonight. “We also need to make a stop at What Goes Around Comes Around.”

E. J. asks, “What for?”

“I’m gonna get Woody one of Mama’s scarves. Papa rip-I mean, I accidentally lost the one she had.” Getting her that scarf is not a completely unselfish act. I figure she might tell me what she saw the night Mama died if she’s got some of that chiffon wrapped around her neck. Later tonight, when she’s got a full stomach and is surrounded by all that soft, she’ll be prime for the picking. If that doesn’t work, I’m going to have to get strict with her. Absolutely no almond cream rubs until she coughs up that information.

I stand up and dust off my bottom. “Ready?”

E. J. looks around for my lunch box. “Did ya bring the disguises?” We always wear them if we have to sneak into the busy part of town. I have a black-haired wig from the year Mama got this idea that she and Woody and I would go trick-or-treating on Halloween as the three witches from Macbeth. E. J. wore the leftover beard I have from when I played one of the wise men in the church Christmas pageant.

“We don’t need the disguises anymore. Papa says it’s all right for Woody and me to go into town again.”

E. J. gives me a squinty look. I’m sure he must be curious why all of a sudden we’re being allowed to roam free, but just like everybody else around here, he knows better than to go prying into Carmody family business.

I extend my hand, he grasps it, and we turn towards the fastest way to get to town.

We’re about a quarter up this side of Honeysuckle Hill when he says, “It’s a good night for the race, wouldn’t ya say?”

Bless his homely heart. He’s trying to cheer me up by telling me the Bazooka joke the same way I always do when he’s down in the dumps. “And which race might that be, E. J.?” I say, playing dumb the same way he always does.

He can barely contain himself. “Why, that would be the human one, Shenny.”

I am so surprised by what escapes out of my mouth. I don’t know if it’s relief from not having to search for my mama anymore or the comfort of having a steadfast mountain man by my side who’s going to help me find out how she died. It’s the first time I’ve laughed in a coon’s age.