At the Scent of Water (20 page)

“Sorry about that. I was just taking my corn bread out of the oven. I get a bit peckish in the afternoon.”

Annie turned in the direction of the voice and saw a very old woman, tall, thin, wearing a blue shirtwaist dress and Nike tennis shoes. She came through the doorway of the living quarters. She had white hair, short, fluffy, and curly. She beamed with delight, as if looking out and seeing a stranger was the most interesting thing that had happened to her in weeks.

Annie smiled, and her college days rushed back to her. For her senior journalism project she had done a documentary compiled of oral histories of the residents of these hills. Every other day or so she had taken off with her tape recorder and notebook to interview some old man or woman in a cabin or a nursing home. Oh, how they loved to talk, and for a few minutes both of them could forget they were sitting in Dew Meadow Manor and instead were back in the hollow, spinning wool beside a low burning fire or threading the loom and weaving. This place was a piece of history all by itself. She wondered how long it had stood here and guessed since the thirties.

“Can I help you find something?” the woman asked.

“My name is Annie Dalton,” she said. “Are you Mrs. Rogers?”

“Livin’ and breathin’,” she said smartly, and Annie couldn’t help but smile.

“Miss Harrison from the Historical Society said you might be able to answer a few questions for me.”

Mrs. Rogers looked surprised but nodded willingly enough. “Can it wait, though?” she asked. “My corn bread’s getting cold.”

****

“Thank you. That was delicious.” Annie stared down at the remains of the buttermilk and corn bread. She hadn’t meant to impose, but Mrs. Rogers had insisted she come into her kitchen, then had cut her a generous square of the golden corn bread and pulled a quart of buttermilk from the door of an ancient refrigerator. Annie remembered Grandma Mamie serving her the same thing, the sure cure for an empty stomach or an aching heart. Her grandmother had been a fine old woman, full of spark and vinegar and stubborn faith.

Theresa rarely spent the night with Grandma after the age of twelve. They were Annie’s times. Her special jaunts. She and Mamie would spin and talk and eat. Oh, Mamie was a fine one for the bedtime snack. Cold fried chicken or a biscuit toasted in the oven with butter and peach preserves. Buttermilk and corn bread. Or the ever-present ice cream. They would eat and talk and finally pray.

She wondered during those prayers. She remembered little of her grandfather but enough to know Mamie’s life hadn’t been easy. They were poor, and his temper was short, frayed from the never-ending strain of putting food on the table and clothes on the backs of their children.

She had spent many nights in Mamie’s back bedroom, lying on the squeaky iron bedstead, reading Mamie’s old black leather Bible and copies of the southern Baptist magazine, gazing at Mamie’s things on the dresser: her comb and brush, her round, wire-rimmed glasses, her hairpins. She would hear the dogs barking out in the distance and the train’s lonely whistle as it passed.

She looked across Mrs. Rogers’ kitchen now and could almost see Mamie’s tall figure in the shapeless gown, thin gray braid dangling down her back, preparing their snack. Wisdom would be handed out during those times. Hard, weighty rocks of faith, good for tethering flighty hearts.

She remembered the porch with the swing at the side, the row of ladder-backed rockers lined up, and she could see her uncles lounging, her grandmother moving among them, the glasses of sweating iced tea or cups of steaming coffee, could hear the sound of women’s voices coming from the kitchen, the clink of dishes and silverware, the clatter of pots, and the delicious smells wrapping around her heart, securing her firmly to this place, to these people.

She had eaten Mrs. Rogers’ corn bread with those memories circling in her mind and hadn’t protested very much when her hostess put another hot square on her plate. “Thank you. That was the best corn bread I’ve eaten in years,” she pronounced now.

“Well, you’re just as welcome as rain,” Mrs. Rogers said, and Annie smiled. It had been a long time since she’d heard that expression.

“I suppose you’re wondering what brings a perfect stranger to your door.”

Mrs. Rogers sat down in the ladder-backed chair, crossed her legs, and swung one foot. She had the look of someone who didn’t stay still for long. “I knew you’d come around to telling me eventually.”

Annie smiled again and reached for her purse. The picture was inside, carefully encased in tissue inside a paper bag. She pulled it out now, took off the wrapping, and handed it across the table. She watched Mrs. Rogers’ face light with recognition.

“Why that was my grandmother’s,” she said. “I remember seeing it in her house when I was a girl.”

Annie’s heart sank then, for she would have to give it back. She had thought of that, of course, but what she hadn’t realized was that she would mind doing it so much.

“I wondered what had become of her things,” Mrs. Rogers said.

“This one traveled a long way from home. I found it in an antique shop in Los Angeles.”

Mrs. Rogers gave her an amazed stare, then shook her head and swung her foot again gently. “Well, you don’t say.”

Annie nodded.

Mrs. Rogers turned it over and read the back. Her face softened. “Yes, that was her. Grandma was a godly woman. At least at the end when she wrote this.”

Annie sat up straighter. “Why do you say at the end?” she asked.

Mrs. Rogers shrugged. “She had a hard life. It took her a while to come to this.” She nodded down at the sentiment, and Annie read it again.
Earth Has No Sorrow That Heaven Cannot Heal
.
Annie Wright Johnson
.
Silver Falls, North Carolina, 1920
.

“Do you have time to tell me her story?” she asked.

Mrs. Rogers considered. “I could tell you a bit of it, and you could see a bit for yourself. I managed to save a few things from Imagene,” she said grimly.

“Imagene?”

“My daughter.” Her mouth became a tight line, and she shook her head. “When my mother died, Imagene and her cousins took charge of clearing out the house. She had trunks of these old things, and they got rid of most of them.” Annie could see grief on her face. “Said it wasn’t worth anything. Can you imagine?” she asked Annie, aggrieved.

“No. I can’t,” Annie answered truthfully, shaking her own head. “Of course, you have to keep this picture,” she offered gallantly. “It should belong to you.”

Mrs. Rogers considered for a minute, and Annie saw the light in her eyes at the prospect. But she finally shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said, handing it back. “I think you’re the one who’s supposed to have it,” and as Annie took it back in her hand, she felt a chill, for that is how she had felt herself. That it had traveled across years and miles and that it was no accident it had landed in her hands.

“We have the same name,” she pointed out, as if that fact had great significance. “And I’m from Gilead Springs. I just happened to be in Los Angeles, and there it was.” She wasn’t telling it right. There was no way her words could convey that sense of portent.

Mrs. Rogers eyes were knowing. “Well, isn’t that a coincidence.”

Annie looked back down at the picture silently.

“My grandmother was the schoolteacher up in Cade’s Cove until she married,” Mrs. Rogers said, and Annie’s interest piqued even more.

Cade’s Cove had been one of the oldest settlements in these mountains. The first white people had come in the 1820s. It had been a thriving community until the 1930s when the government had bought the land, relocated its citizens, along with five thousand people from surrounding communities, and formed the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. She supposed she was glad they had moved to save the forests from the sawmills, but it grieved her that so many people had lost their homes and memories. She had been up there in years past, strangely moved by the remnants of their lives.

“Did you ever live there?” she asked Mrs. Rogers.

“Yes, ma’am. My daddy had a homestead there until 1940.”

“I thought the Park was formed in ’34.”

“It was.” Mrs. Rogers smiled. “Daddy didn’t hold with the government taking away his land. He was the justice of the peace in the Cove, and he didn’t think it was right. He fought it. Went down to Asheville and hired himself a lawyer. Spent nearly every last dime he had, and he held out as long as he could. Finally, he ran out money. He sold the spread to the government and bought this store with what little they paid him.”

“It doesn’t seem right,” Annie said, the injustice of it striking her again.

“No. It doesn’t,” Mrs. Rogers agreed. “But it was all for the best.” She rose up then and disappeared, and Annie took a moment to look around her, trying to satisfy her interest without crossing the line from curious to nosy.

The kitchen was a mix of old and new. There was a drip coffeemaker and an electric mixer on the old Hoosier cupboard, and a new electric range stood beside a cast-iron stove and an equally ancient refrigerator. The floor was old green linoleum with red roses. The flowered pattern was worn, nail heads showing through from the floorboards underneath. The curtains were starched red gingham. The drop-leaf table at which she sat was covered with flowered oilcloth, and on it was a ceramic loaf of bread containing what Annie knew would be Scripture verses on small rectangles of cardboard. Everything felt friendly and warm, and she settled back in her chair, relaxed for the first time in days.

Mrs. Rogers reemerged from what must have been the bedroom. She was carrying a small cardboard box, and she set it on the floor beside Annie’s feet. Annie watched as she took out a leather-bound book, some of the pages loose, and set it on the table.

She flipped it open, and a yellowed newspaper clipping fell out onto the floor. Annie picked it up and read the headline before handing it back.

“Brothers Die After Falling Into Icy Pond,” it said,
Asheville Tribune,
dated January 15, 1905. Annie’s heart thudded and was suddenly cold.

“Go ahead,” Mrs. Rogers said, handing it back to her. “This was her sorrow.”

Annie read the yellowed clipping.

Friends in Swain and Cherokee counties will learn with regret of the deaths of Henry Clark Wright and Robert Francis Wright in Swain County last week. The lads were attempting to cross an icy pond when one brother fell through the ice. The other drowned while trying to save him, as reported by several gentlemen who were passing by and attempted rescue. Henry Wright was seven years of age and Robert Wright five years of age. They leave behind their mother, Annie Dorothea Billington Wright, formerly of Asheville, their father, Clayton Andrew Wright, of Buncombe County, and a sister, Sarah Jane Wright. The sympathies of the entire community are with the grieving family.

Annie stared at the page, then handed it slowly back to Mrs. Rogers.

“That’s terrible,” she said. “I don’t know how she ever got over it.”

“It was a long road back,” Mrs. Rogers said, and she handed Annie the bumpy-grained leather book. “She wrote her thoughts down in this.”

Annie took the diary from her, opened it, and began reading. The words jarred her, their meaning so incongruous with their lovely appearance. Her eyes fell to the middle of the page, to the words that had drawn her eye.

I have been a careless mother. I can see that. It is perfectly clear to me now that it is too late to do anything to change it. I can see myself the way I passed most of my days, one tiny baby rooting at my neck, the other two frolicking around my knees, my apron stained, my hair askew, my mouth flapping to Bessie, to Cassie, to anyone who would listen as I hoed and swept and cooked and poured the soapy dishwater on the pole beans.

Only one thing comforts me. They were happy babies, and happy sturdy toddlers, and happy brave boys. I can see them climbing the oaks and tossing down acorns and swinging far out over the river on that piece of rope they fastened to the high limb. I can see them splashing in that very pond, as unaware and careless as I was myself.

Clayton says I should stop thinking about it. But how am I to do that? I think about it all the time. I don’t speak of them, though. Least of all to Clay. He blames me. He does not say so, of course, but I know. I can tell by the way he looks at me. By the way he doesn’t look at me. His eyes dart across mine, then slide away quickly, as if mine are pools that might close over his own head were he to come too close or look too deeply.

I know that is why he left, though he would have rather died himself than say so. “I’m going to Charleston to work in the cotton warehouse,” he said after the crop was taken in. After winter had latched on and the trees were bare and the evenings long and quiet and just the two of us and little Sarah Jane the only ones in the empty house. “I’ll be back come planting time,” he promised.

I believe him. Of course I do.

Annie blinked her eyes and stared. A part of her wanted to hand this book back, to leave quickly and not return to this house. Another part of her was drawn by her unanswered questions. Did Clayton come back? Did he forgive her? She turned over her picture and read the name on the back again. Annie Wright
Johnson
. Did she remarry as an old woman? Or did Mr. Johnson come onto the scene after Mr. Wright’s overlong trip to the cotton warehouse?

But really, she knew these questions, as absorbing as they might be, were trivialities. The real thing that had caught her heart was the first words she had read.
I have been a careless mother,
Annie had said, and oh, she herself knew that feeling. She touched the bumpy leather cover of the diary and wondered why that long-ago Annie had blamed herself for two children falling through the ice. Perhaps she did not want to know.

“Here she is,” Mrs. Rogers said, handing her a picture.

Annie looked at it closely. It was of a woman, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and three children. Two boys and a baby girl. All posed in front of a Christmas tree, a scraggly-looking pine, decorated with bits of paper and garlands made of cloth. She smiled, looking at those children. The boys were as much alike as to be twins, though she knew they were not. They were gap-toothed, freckled, happy-looking children, and the baby girl was rounded and bright, her full-moon face beaming as she clutched what looked to be a hand-stitched doll. Annie’s eyes rested on the figure of the woman, though. She sat behind them in a chair, leaning slightly forward. She wore a dark dress, a bit of lace pinned around her throat, fastened with a cameo brooch. Her dark hair was parted in the middle, swept down to cover her ears, then pinned up in the back. Her face shone. Her eyes danced. She looked merry and kind, and Annie’s heart felt tight and sick when she thought of what she knew of her affairs.