Bloodroot (23 page)

“What’s that book you have?” I asked, buying some time to collect myself.

She looked at her hand. “Oh,” she said. “I have a friend by the name of Ford Hendrix who travels all over the place hunting old books. The ones he doesn’t keep, he brings to me.” She paused, maybe deciding if I was dangerous. I must have passed inspection because she smiled at me again. “I’ve got more upstairs if you’re interested.”

I thanked her then excused myself and hurried up the stairs. At the end of a narrow hall there was a room with books shelved from floor to ceiling. I ran my fingers over the spines, closed my eyes and took in
the good smell. There were no others like those I found in the woods, but if I hadn’t been broke I would have bought one anyway.

I went quietly back downstairs, meaning to sneak out, but a square of door in a nook behind the stairwell caught my eye. It looked inviting with light falling through its cracks. I glanced over my shoulder as I turned the knob, feeling like an intruder even though the shop was a public place, and stepped out into the sun. There was a deck with garden furniture and more topiaries in pots. At the edges of the property a tall wood fence blocked out the neighboring duplex on one side and hid an overgrown lot behind it. I stood there among the plants, pots crowded under glass hothouses and bell jars, ivy and fern leaves trailing everywhere, and had a moment of disbelief that I was free. I would never see my cell at Polk County again. I needed to think about finding work and a place to stay, but the deck was so peaceful, I couldn’t resist sitting down for a while in one of the flaking wicker chairs. My whole body sagged, my arms and legs going limp with exhaustion. I hadn’t realized how bone tired I was, not just from that morning at the Odom house, but over the past four years locked up in prison. I looked at my duffel bag resting on my lap and thought of my notebook inside. If I could clear my head, maybe it would come to me what to do next. I took out the notebook and a pen, but after only a few lines my eyelids grew heavy. A cool wind stirred through the plants and blew over me like a spell from a fairy tale. I felt my fingers loosening on the pen as I nodded off. I don’t know how long I dozed before Imogene’s voice jerked me suddenly awake, the notebook sliding off my lap and landing at my feet.

“Didn’t find one you liked?” she asked, standing in the doorway behind me.

I jumped up as if I’d been caught stealing. “Not this time,” I said.

Imogene smiled. “Well, my friend said he’d probably be by sometime today with another load of books. You ought to come back later and see what he brings.”

I had no intention of going back. But when I left the shop, I still didn’t know where I was headed. I could have tried to find Laura, but I wasn’t ready to see her yet. It would have been like facing up to all I had done and seen since we were together last. I thought of the Law-sons, who had been good to me when I lived with them. Not far down
the street from Imogene’s, I saw a phone booth outside a convenience store. I hesitated and then went inside to buy cigarettes first, a habit I’d picked up at the detention center. There was a long line at the counter and the cashier was slow. I stood under the buzzing fluorescents shifting from foot to foot, something nagging at me. After paying for the cigarettes, I walked out to the phone booth, tucking the pack into my breast pocket.

I was looking up the Lawsons’ number when it hit me that I’d left my notebook behind. I froze, dropping the phone book to dangle at the end of its cord. I ran all the way back to Imogene’s with my heart threatening to give out on me. When I got there, throat raw and side aching, I barely registered the red truck parked at the curb. I didn’t bother to go inside the shop. I went around the house to where the garden deck was, praying the notebook would still be where I’d left it. I stopped in my tracks on the bottom step. There was a man sitting in the wicker chair, with long white hair under a greasy baseball cap. He was holding the notebook in his hands, so absorbed in his reading that he didn’t notice me. It took a second to comprehend what I was seeing. Then I crossed the deck in a few leaping steps, knocking over a flower pot, and snatched the notebook away from him. The man stared at me with wild eyes. I was assaulted by the stink of his sweat.

“Hey, sorry,” he said, holding up his hands as if to prove they were empty. I saw that his ring finger was missing, a smooth, pink nub where it should have been. I backed off a few paces. “I assume that belongs to you,” he said. Standing, he was a striking figure in spite of his dirtiness, tall with broad shoulders and a sunken belly. His hair was white but his face was smooth. It was impossible to guess how old he was.

“You should mind your own business,” I said over the thud of my heart.

“I know, I know,” the man said. “But I had a good reason.”

I looked down at the notebook, gripping it so tightly my fingertips were purple. Slowly, it sank in that someone had read the words between the covers. “You had a good reason,” I repeated. I thought of lunging at him again, but the image of that smooth, pink nub on his hand held me back. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“It’ll take some time to explain.”

“Explain what?”

“I needed to read your poems.”

I stared at him blankly, unable to speak.

The man grinned, teeth bright in his sun-browned face, and stepped toward me. I tensed, prepared to fight. “Listen, are you hungry?” he asked.

“What?”

“Let me buy you a hamburger and I’ll tell you all about it.” He thrust out his hand but I didn’t take it. “Name’s Ford Hendrix.”

“Do you know me somehow?”

“You could say so.”

My mouth went dry. I looked at his damaged left hand, now dropped at his side, and back at his bloodshot eyes. “What do you want with me?”

“I want to help you, that’s all.”

“What makes you think I need helping?”

“I had a vision,” he said. “You were in it.”

I stood gaping at him for a long time, wondering if it was pos sible that I was having a dream. Then I followed him like a sleepwalker to his truck, because he had read my poems. He knew me better than anyone else on earth now, even Laura. But there was another reason I went. It was the missing ring finger. I needed to know how he lost it.

We didn’t speak as he drove with the windows down, bits of trash whirling everywhere. I couldn’t have carried on a conversation if he’d tried to talk. I still wasn’t sure if all that had happened since I’d left the detention center that morning was real or one long hallucination. He took me to a bar and grill on the outskirts of town and we went inside where it was dim and hot. He stood at the counter and ordered cheeseburgers from a man in a stained apron. Two men drinking coffee by the window nodded as we passed. We sat down and stared at each other across the table. A fly buzzed between us.

“You say you had a vision about me.”

“Yes.”

“What does that mean?”

“I take after my grandfather. People called him the Prophet of Oak Ridge.”

“So you’re a prophet?”

Ford grinned like all of this was funny. “I was born fifteen years after he died, but my mother told me stories about him. He was always roaming the woods and one day, after he had been missing for a few weeks, he showed up at the general store in town and told his neighbors he’d seen a vision. Said a voice told him to sleep with his head on the ground for forty days and nights and he’d see the future. He predicted Bear Creek valley would be filled with factories that would help this country win the greatest war ever fought. People thought he was crazy. They locked him up for a while at the county farm, but now they know he was right. Twenty-eight years after he died, the factory was built in Bear Creek valley where they made the uranium for the first atomic bomb.”

“What’s any of that got to do with me?” I asked, working to keep my composure. The man in the apron brought our food on a tray and left without speaking.

“Nothing, except he’s the reason I see visions. It never happened until after I lost this finger.” He held up his hand. “That’s when I found God and the voice started speaking to me.” He took a bite of cheeseburger, mustard squirting down his chin. My food sat untouched on the table. Smelling it turned my stomach.

“How’d you lose it?” I asked.

He raised his eyebrows. “You mean my finger? It happened while I was noodling for catfish. Some people call it grabbling. That’s where you wade out in the water and feel along the bank for holes where catfish go to spawn. The female lays her eggs in there and then the male moves in to guard them. If you stick your hand in his hole, he’ll bite it and you can pull him out. I was in the lake up to my neck, water so cloudy I couldn’t see a thing, even when I ducked under. The trouble with noodling is you never know what you’re going to get. That time it was a snapping turtle, bit my finger clean off.”

I felt a vein pulsing in the middle of my forehead. I knew that he was lying. It was something about the way his eyes shifted. “That’s not what happened,” I said.

“Well, I wish that’s what happened.” He grinned again in that maddening way.

For a while I watched him eat in silence, smearing ketchup on his plate with his french fries, looking out the window as if I wasn’t even there.

“What did you see?” I asked.

“Hmm?”

“In the vision.”

“Not much. Just that you were coming to us.”

“Who’s us?”

“Me and my wife, Carolina.”

I shook my head and laughed for what felt like the first time in years. “You’re one crazy son of a bitch.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But so are you. Because you believe me.”

He was wrong. I didn’t believe him, but I felt like I needed to know who he was. When we finally walked out of the bar and grill, it seemed we had been there for decades. Ford fished around in his pocket for his keys and asked, “Where can I drop you off?”

I thought about it. “I don’t know. Just take me back to town.”

“Where you staying?”

I took out a cigarette. “Nowhere right now. But I’ll figure it out.”

Ford fell silent, leaning on his truck. I lit the cigarette and smoked, watching cars pass on the road. Finally he said, “Why don’t you come and stay with me for a while?”

I turned to him, startled. “Huh?”

“I’ve got a shed with electricity. It’s quiet out there. No kitchen or toilet, but all you have to do is walk across the yard. You can eat with us.”

“What about your wife?”

“She’s expecting you.” I pretended not to notice another allusion to visions.

“I’m not going to sponge off of you and your wife.”

He laughed. “I don’t expect you to. I’ve got trees that need trimming, a tractor to fix, tobacco to set out. Me and Carolina can’t handle all that land by ourselves. I was planning on hiring a man this summer. It might as well be you.”

I shook my head, part of me still not believing what was happening. I wondered if he would be inviting me into his home if he knew I was fresh out of prison. “I can’t.”

“Just for a while. You can’t get any writing done without somewhere to stay. I’ll give you a few minutes to decide. You can let me know when you make up your mind.”

“Well,” I said, taking a last draw from my cigarette and pitching it into the parking lot gravel. “If you’re a prophet, I guess you already know what I’m going to do.”

Ford smiled and opened the truck door. “Carolina will be glad to see you.”

LAURA

As time went by, Clint got more and more nervous about the baby. Every chance I had, I told him how happy our son would be. “He’s going to grow up right here in the fresh air, beside of the water.” Clint acted like he believed me, but I knowed he was worried because of his mama. I didn’t think she’d ever come back after what I done to her, but I was wrong. Every once in a while she’d get mad about Clint leaving her and drive over to the trailer to let him know about it. Once it was the middle of the night. We was in the bed asleep. Next thing we knowed, she was out in the driveway laying on her car horn. Every dog for miles was barking. It scared me and Clint half to death. He jumped up and ran outside with just his drawers on. I got up to look and there was Clint’s mama, yelling at the top of her lungs. “Clint,” I called out the front door. “Are you all right?”

“It’s okay,” he said over top of her screaming. “Go on in the house.”

I was real proud of Clint. He came back in and left her out yonder cussing by herself. Before she went home she drove over in our grass and spun her tires. She tore the yard all to pieces. I held Clint in my arms the rest of the night. He was shaking like a leaf.

Next time she came, me and Clint had been to the store to buy ice cream. It was dusk, and she was setting out by the water in the December cold, waiting on us when we got back. We had been laughing all the way down the road, but when we pulled in and seen her there, our day was ruint. Clint said, “Just stay in the car. I’ll run her off.”

I rolled the window down so I could hear them fussing. “Me and your daddy never was divorced,” she hollered in Clint’s face. “Every last thing that son of a bitch had belongs to me.” Clint took her by the arm and started steering her back to her old beat-up car. “This place belongs to me!” she shrieked, trying to get away from him.

After he forced his mama back in her car she finally drove off, slinging mud and gravel everywhere. I got out of our car and Clint went on to the trailer with his head down. One of his arms was bleeding where she’d scratched him. I took the ice cream in and made us each a bowl. We set down at the little kitchen table to eat. Clint wouldn’t speak or look at me. I didn’t want to make him feel worse, but I was too worried to keep my mouth shut. “What your mama said, about this place belonging to her …”

“Don’t pay no attention,” he said, staring into his bowl. “She’s all talk.” I could tell he wasn’t too sure, but, like always, he kept his worries quiet.

After that run-in with his mama, Clint quit eating as much and started losing weight. I’d take hold of his sharp hipbones and say, “I got to fatten you up. I can’t get big as a house all by myself!” I acted like I was kidding, but he went around with dark rings under his eyes not smiling near as much, and I didn’t know how to make him feel better. It should have been a happy time for us. One night I couldn’t help crying beside of him in the bed. He knowed why I was upset. He said, “I’m sorry. I can’t help it.”