Bloodroot (42 page)

I remember it was fall in a windstorm, leaves whirling up in little tornadoes and the sky gray with clouds skidding over. Dark was coming and Mama was stumbling around the kitchen trying to make supper, tanked up on nerve pills or whatever she was drinking. Finally she dropped a hot pan out of the oven and I went out the back door. I
couldn’t stand being around her when she was like that. From outside, the house was cozy looking. Somebody passing on the street might have smelled the supper and seen the yellow kitchen window and wanted to come in out of the cold. But they didn’t know about Mama, puffy-eyed and hair sticking up from being in the bed all day, slumped over the stove in her old housecoat smoking a cigarette. They hadn’t heard the stories Daddy told at the supper table either, bragging about all the men he killed in the war. He talked about human life like it wasn’t worth a plug nickel, not even his own. He didn’t want to be stuck in Millertown with a wife and kids, he wanted to be in the Philippines with a gun on his shoulder, hunkered down waiting for somebody else to kill. He’d go on and on about how many arms and legs and skulls he’d shot off. Me and my brothers would just look down at our plates and keep on chewing, trying to be like him and not feel anything.

After I left Mama in the kitchen, I went down the steps and knelt to look under the porch. There was a stray dog under there, a black mutt with a white ruff that had showed up the day before. I thought it might have been hit by a car or something. It wagged its tail when I made kissing sounds but it wouldn’t come to me. It just laid down and cowered, ears back and licking its lips when I tried to lure it out. Daddy came over, wiping his grease-blacked hands on a rag where he’d been working on the car. “Is that thing still under there?” he asked. His coveralls smelled like cold weather and kerosene, leaves blowing across the yard behind him. I wanted to say no but he’d already seen it. “You better leave that old thing alone,” he said. “It might have rabies.” I looked at the dog, huddled beside the gas can, and knew it didn’t have rabies. Daddy went off for a minute and came back with a pie tin and a dirty white jug of something. I watched as he unscrewed the cap and poured thick green liquid into the tin. “What’s that?” I asked.

“Antifreeze. It’s supposed to taste good to dogs and cats. I bet you he’ll lap this right up.” He pushed the pie tin under the porch. The dog showed no interest at first but I figured it would later, when we was gone. It was probably pretty hungry and thirsty. We went in for supper and the whole time I was eating I kept praying that dog would be able to resist. When we got done I offered to take out the garbage,
but Daddy said the can wasn’t full yet. I wanted to sneak and throw away that poison before the dog could take it, but Daddy watched me like a hawk all night. He must have suspected what I meant to do. The next morning I went out and looked under the porch. The pie tin was empty and the dog was gone. I don’t know if it went off somewhere else to die or if Daddy drug it off, but I knew it was dead one way or another. Just like one of them Japs Daddy killed.

A few weeks later, my mama got sick. She was upstairs in the bedroom hacking and coughing with a fever. She always had a smoker’s cough, but this was different. It might have been the flu or even pneumonia but nobody went to the doctor much at our house. It had got to be winter and Eugene and Lonnie was gone. A man had come in the store and offered them ten dollars apiece to saw up a tree that had fell in his yard. Me and Hollis was setting in front of the television when Daddy hollered for me to come in the kitchen. I could hear Mama having another coughing fit upstairs. Daddy glanced at the ceiling and held out a medicine cup to me, full to the top. “Take this cold medicine to your mammy.” He shook his head. “That racket’s fixing to run me nuts.” I took the cup and looked down into it. “Go on,” he said. “Before she hacks up a lung.” I was halfway up the stairs before I thought about the dog. I stopped and looked in that cup again. The liquid inside was kind of green, just like the antifreeze. My heart was knocking so hard I liked to lost my breath. But I thought about my daddy down yonder, telling me to do something. I’d had my backside striped with a belt enough times to know what would happen if I disobeyed him. So I went on up the stairs in the dark, into their room where the lamp was on. I hated going in there because it always smelled like the perfume she used instead of taking a bath. She rolled her eyes over at me and I saw she looked half drunk besides being sick. When she reached for the cup I held it back. I thought surely it was medicine and that was all. But I knew Daddy was liable to do anything. I had time to turn around and walk out of there. I could have poured whatever it was down the bathroom sink. Daddy never would have known the difference and Mama probably wouldn’t even have remembered me coming. Then I looked at her and thought of all the times she was mean to me and my brothers and how she let that man put his hand inside her blouse behind the wellhouse. She coughed
again and motioned for me to give her the cup, like I was trying her patience. I watched her drink it down without a bit of complaint. I’d say she didn’t even know where she was, much less what it was she might be drinking.

Next day was a Saturday and I went to work with Daddy and Eugene and Lonnie. For once I was glad to go. I wanted to be as far away from that house and my mama as I could get. I’d heard her stumbling down to the bathroom in the night, back and forth until she finally must have slept down yonder on the floor. At first light I heard Daddy leading her back up to the bed. He made breakfast for us before work, fried eggs and baloney. Eugene was sitting across the table from me, mopping up runny egg yolk with a piece of light bread. “What’s wrong with Mama?” he asked, without looking up from his food.

Daddy was wolfing down his breakfast standing at the sink. He said, “I reckon she’s got the stomach flu. Hollis, you better keep an eye on her while we’re gone.” Then he looked at me and our eyes locked. I wish it was my imagination but later on when Hollis called, Daddy said, “You boys watch the store. I got to get on home.” Then his eyes locked on mine again. “Something’s happened to your mammy.” My bowels got hot and loose. He never said a word about giving me that cup. But for as long as I lived at home he’d give me a secret look every once in a while, like we was in cahoots together.

I can’t say for sure if I helped my daddy poison my mama, but thinking I might have weighs on me. Not a day goes by, and me getting to be an old man, that I don’t think about handing her that cup. I should’ve snatched it away from her and drunk it down myself. The world probably would have been better off. I know Myra would have been. For a while with her, I thought I could forget about it. I thought loving her could chase off whatever evil there was in me, but I was wrong. Someway, Myra brought out my bad side. I wanted to be good to her, but I didn’t know how. I never felt in control of myself around her. I got to drinking just to get my head back on straight. We made a promise before we got married to change for each other. Come to find out, there wasn’t no taming either one of us down. She couldn’t be the kind of wife I wanted, and I wasn’t cut out to be a husband. You can’t fight that old nature, at least that’s what I thought when I was younger. I figured there wasn’t no use, I might as well give up.

As soon as my jaw didn’t have to be wired shut no more I got out of that hospital. I packed my things and burned hers up in a barrel out behind the house and took off, with no intention of ever coming back. I cleaned out the bank account and got me a motel room until I could figure out what to do next. I decided to come up here to Rockford in Illinois, a city I’d been to with Daddy on a buying trip. It was hard to make ends meet at first. Nobody would hire me, looking the way I did and with my hand not working right. Finally a foreigner let me manage his motel. I’ve lived for decades in this tiny room with just a television for company. The cold has been hard to get used to. My jaw pains me all through the winters. The nights are so long, I don’t know whether to curse Myra or wish she was here to warm my back. The only person I let know I was alive was Hollis. I needed some cash so I told him what happened and where I was. He came to see me several times. He wanted to go up Bloodroot Mountain and cut Myra’s throat, or at least put the law on her, but I told him to leave her alone. He didn’t understand it, but he never fought me on anything. He said Daddy was fixing to call the sheriff and report me a missing person, but I got him to convince Daddy I’d finally dusted my hands of Myra and run off like I was always threatening to. Hollis was the one who let me know when Daddy died and left me a little inheritance. After him holding that store over our heads all them years, it ended up being worth next to nothing. But I needed the money, so I took it.

Running off to Illinois don’t mean I got away from the place and the people I came from, though. It ought to be easy here where it’s cold and the sky is like a blank slate. But something, maybe God, won’t let me forget. I could avoid the mirror. I could wear a glove, but I’ve learned the past would still find me. Like what happened today. The foreigner I work for subscribes to the national newspapers. Every morning I make a pot of coffee and read the paper in my office behind the curtains. I have to keep up with the world someway, since I don’t get out much. I opened the newspaper and saw a face I knew, even though I only laid eyes on it once. Right there above a black-and-white picture I saw my own last name. My hand shook so bad I sloshed coffee on my lap. Hollis told me a long time ago Myra had twin babies. I didn’t know what to think when I heard it. Back then, I hoped they wasn’t mine. Now the boy has won a prize for a book he
wrote. If he was mine, I’d be proud. But I could never get in touch with them. They wouldn’t want to look at me and see on my face how bad it was between me and their mother. Besides that, if they are mine, it’s sad how they came into the world. Best thing for me to do is let them alone, like I should have done Myra.

All day I’ve been nervous after seeing my name in the newspaper. Maybe God’s trying to tell me that a man can’t run away from who he is and where he comes from. It’s like when that man came here looking for me once, about ten years after Myra took off. There was an ice storm coming and I was out salting the parking lot. The sky over the motel looked like sheet metal. He came walking across the highway from over at the truck stop. He could have used a haircut and a shave, had on a tatty old coat and a flannel shirt with holes in it. The heels of his boots was run down, like they’d seen a lot of traveling. He headed straight for me. I knew by the way he stared me down that he wasn’t looking for a room. I quit salting and we stood there sizing each other up. I figured he was caught off guard by my face, but that didn’t seem like all it was. I didn’t ask what I could help him with. I waited for him to talk first.

“I been working on the bank building they’re putting up downtown,” he said finally. I seen he had a rotten front tooth. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him.

“So what?”

“I heard from the men there’s somebody works here by the name of John Odom.”

I got to feeling dizzy-headed. I could tell where he was from by the way he talked.

“What if there is?”

“Is that you?”

“Who’s asking?”

“Doug Cotter. I believe we come from the same neck of the woods. You ever been to a place called Bloodroot Mountain?” I saw in his eyes that he knew I had been. He took a step toward me. He was tall. I didn’t know if I could take him or not.

“Well, what in the hell do you want?” I asked, trying not to show my nerves.

He looked me over again, seemed like he was thinking. Then he
said, “I came here meaning to put you in the hospital. But it looks like somebody beat me to it.”

I forced myself to laugh. “What, did Myra send you here to finish the job?”

His eyes changed when he heard her name. It took him a second to collect his cool. Then he smiled in a way that hid his rotten tooth. He looked toward the truck stop where he came from. “Why don’t you let me buy you a cup of coffee?”

I went on across the highway with him. He didn’t seem to want a fight anymore. We sat at the counter and I ordered pie to go with my coffee, since he was paying. We both got quiet. I didn’t want to talk first but I couldn’t help it. The ice had started ticking on the window of the truck stop. I looked at the weather instead of his face. “I guess Myra left her mark on you, too,” I said. “Not on the outside, but I can still see it.” I looked back at him. My jaw had started aching. “Have you seen her?”

He shook his head and looked down into his coffee cup. “No. But I know where she is. Mental hospital over in Nashville. I thought you put her there, but now I don’t know.” I had already been told where Myra was. Before Hollis died, he kept me informed. But I wondered how she was surviving in a place like that, as bad as she’d hated being cooped up. “They auctioned off her house on the mountain,” he said. “My brother bid on it.” He smiled in his odd way. “I guess she left her mark on him, too.”

“What is it that woman does to people?” I said. All of a sudden the pie didn’t look good to me anymore. I dropped my fork on the plate.

“It’s funny you would ask that.” He looked out at the ice rain with me. “I’ve always thought I was cursed for loving Myra. Everywhere I go, bad luck follows me.”

I shook my head. “You and me both.”

“I don’t know.” He turned back to me. “I feel different now that I’ve seen you.”

“Why’s that?”

“There’s nothing supernatural about what she did to your face, is there? It’s not right, what we’ve put on her. She’s made out of flesh and blood, just like anybody else.”

I forced myself to laugh again. “Glad to be of service, buddy.”

He hung his head for a minute, like he was wore out. “I’m trying as hard as I can to forget about her,” he said. “But sometimes I still think I’d give anything to have her.”

Then he got up and paid the bill and left the truck stop. I never saw him again. Whenever I passed the new bank building downtown I didn’t look over there. I didn’t want to think about Myra anymore. I doubt he ever did manage to forget about her. I got to mulling over the things he said and wondering myself if I’d ever really get over her. Sometimes it seemed like she was crying out to me when winter storms came. I’d cover my ears to drown out her screams, begging me to rescue her from that old asylum. It drove me out one night into the snow and I fell on the ice in the parking lot. I thought I was dying of a heart attack and maybe I was having one, because the weight on my chest was so bad I couldn’t get up. I laid out yonder freezing for a long time, and all I could think was if I died right then I’d never see her again. I knew someday I had to find her.