Coldwater Revival: A Novel (12 page)

Cool breezes fluttered past the curtains, shooing away the stink of stale perspiration that had gnawed its way through the bus like wild locusts. But with the fresh drafts came the dust, pricking my eyes and watering them with fresh tears.

While I abode in the murky land of near sleep, Papa’s hand stayed fixed on my back. ’Twas a comfortable, reassuring hand. I could almost believe Papa and I were off on a splendid vacation, and not the one-way trip I found myself traveling. A trip that might divide me from my family forever.

Papa awakened me when we arrived at the depot in Galveston. I’d been nodding in and out of sleep most of the ride. Upon awakening, I knew but a solitary moment of joy and wonderment as to the reason I was lying on a bus seat with my legs curled beneath me like those of a newborn colt. All too soon, the old blackness pounded on the postern of my heart, demanding readmittance.

As we debarked and began the long trek to Granny’s house, Papa slung the pillowcase over his right shoulder and shifted our scrappy suitcase to his left hand. He raised it like a pointer, aiming it in an easterly direction. “Mama’s house is on the east end of the island, about eighteen blocks from here. Think you can make it, punkin?” Before I could answer him, a shrimp-tainted gust of wind whipped up my skirt and tried to tear Papa’s hat from his head. He rammed his felt hat down to his ears and strode down the walkway at a brisk pace.

We stepped from Harborside Drive and progressed through the alphabet streets until we arrived at Avenue G. From there, we turned onto Winnie Street, passing a multitude of houses, each one a letdown because it wasn’t Granny’s. I had used my crutch very little the last three weeks, and now my underarm ached with untried soreness. Though Papa adjusted his stride to match my sluggish one, I knew I pushed the limits of my strength.

When eighteen blocks had turned into twenty-two, we reached Granny’s place. I saw her atop her high front porch, all atwitter and flapping her arms in hello. The house’s tattered appearance rendered me dumbfounded, for Granny’s residence lingered in my memory as a grand old mansion, rising almost to the clouds. A magnificent castle with a winding staircase and pointed, chopped-up ceilings. Now I viewed it in all its dowdy truth: an old, dilapidated, and lonely house, much like the empty place inside me. My gaze hustled past busted shingles, blistering paint, and windswept gables. It came to rest on the stairs leading up to the porch. As I counted them twice, then again, I swallowed a boulder of despair, knowing my crutch and I would probably topple before the fifth step, splitting my head like an overripe melon.

“I thought ye’d never get here,” Granny bellowed, her feet taking wings as they soared down the stairway. A gust of wind—or Granny’s anxious fingers—had released wisps of gray hair from the bondage of her topknot. She stroked them back in place as she made her way to us, wearing her trademark laced-up shoes and rolled-to-the-knee stockings.

“Come here, child. Let’s have a good look at you.” It came back to me then—the remembrance that Granny’s hearing had begun a slow expedition away from her ears a few years back. She reeled in close, peering at me with watery eyes. She removed her spectacles and dabbed her eyes with an apron hem. “How’re ye doing, sweet-pie?”

Though I jumped a bit at her overloud voice, the ancient nickname she had conferred on me at birth danced in my head like fireflies at midnight. Sunrays must have sparked my eyes, for Granny noted it in a voice the neighbors could hear four blocks away.

“See there … ye’re feeling a mite better already, ain’t ye, Emma Grace?”

My grandmother had the Irish about her, slipping into her native brogue when her heart felt light and airy, and at other times as well. She clutched me to her bosom, the two of us swaying to the silent music in her head. We stepped apart, Granny seeming to covet a more intimate look at her eldest son—her one remaining offspring.

“How are you, Mama?” Papa asked as he waltzed her into his arms and a solid Falin hug. Three years of separation kept them locked together for long moments.

“Doing real good, Son … but … how are you and my sweet Annaleen faring?” Granny narrowed her eyes, checking for telltale signs it seemed that sorrow hadn’t robbed Papa of his robustness. She clutched her apron hem again and removed her glasses a second time, patting her eyes as Papa draped his arm across her shoulder. “Just can’t believe little Micah is gone.” Granny’s voice tottered like Widow Lindstrom’s walking stick, and bore unaccustomed weakness, as though speaking Micah’s name placed undue pressure on her vocal cords.

Papa’s lids pinched together in a plaintive squint, the merest shake of his head a signal, no doubt, for Granny to refrain from talking about my brother’s passing. At least while in my presence. Micah’s death was something we no longer mentioned. It was as though it had never happened. Perhaps someday, when the weight of time had pressed the last bit of sorrow from our hearts, we’d speak again about the precious light that had gone out of our lives.

Papa placed his hand beneath my elbow and we began the steep climb to the porch. Granny’s chattering recommenced, but I heard little, for I’d already lost my grip on the here and now. The mention of my brother’s death had set my feet plodding down the dark, solitary pathway I seemed unable to resist.

“We’re okay, Mama. But we’ll be doing a lot better when Caleb wakes up and Emma Grace gets well.”

Papa’s words tugged on my heart, causing it to quiver like the needle of a compass. His voice was magnetic—drawing me to him as though he were True North—The Pole Star. While my gaze reconnected to his prominent height and loving face, my feet slid off the dark trail they’d been tramping and ambled into the light. I felt the corners of my mouth tweak the tiniest bit as Papa’s smile stretched the space between us and sank into the depths of my eyes. With his hand grasping my arm with firmness, we climbed the stairs together—one step at a time.

Sixteen

I realized at once from whom I had inherited my chatty nature. It had passed through the blue-green bloodlines of Granny’s Irishness, directly into me. Her uninhibited tongue shoved more thoughts into a sentence than the natural world had ever before heard. Or so it seemed to me. During the week of Papa’s stay, her words pounded the air and caulked the gaps begot by three years of lost communication with her son. As Irish yarns and feisty phrases drubbed the walls, I concluded they were as slathered and spiked with puffery as our tall Texas tales. I loved her spirited chin-wag, for it claimed most of her time, leaving little leftover energy to scrutinize me.

Panic rose in my heart more each day, for Papa’s stay in Galveston was about to end. His departure on tomorrow’s bus was but hours away. He’d spent the week scraping clean, then painting Granny’s blistered, peeling house. He’d replaced rotted boards and tightened loose shingles. He’d accomplished all he would have done in previous years, had time and money allowed more frequent visits.

The night prior to Papa’s departure, I was unable to sleep. In the hollow hours before dawn, I rose from bed and walked to the window. Silver and blue stars pulsed in the pitch-black heavens, splashing the sky with bits of fairy dust, it seemed. The moon had waned to paltry insignificance, a mere sliver of mellowness on a vast parchment of black. I melded my gaze on the moon’s paleness, sensing camaraderie with the lesser orb. Our lights were the same: diminished and weak, and shrouded in darkness.

Three blocks of habitation separated Granny’s house from the ocean. Though the sea was too far away to hear, I recalled its never-ending sounds: muted whooshes and sighs as it sloshed about in a basin of sand, and the rush of tide as it flowed into inland pockets on shore. Were I to walk an eastern route, I would bump into its wetness, and once there, I’d hear the roar of waves breaking off and washing ashore, only to return again to the depths. Such sounds had always been, and forever would be. All this I remembered from my last trip to Galveston, three years earlier.

My reluctant ears identified the cadence of Papa’s footfall tracking the back hallway. Boards squeaked more loudly now as the worn, wooden planking directed him to my room. I had but a moment to compose my emotions before he appeared in the doorway, his gait slacking not until it halted near the window. In the pale gray of near dawn, I made out the outline of Papa’s felt hat, his broad shoulders, and his arms reaching out to me.

“I’ll be taking my leave now, Emma Grace,” Papa said as he dragged me from the window and into his arms. How warm and secure I felt in those brief moments. He lowered his pillowcase bundle to the floor and held me with tightness. “We’ll be expecting you to write … want to hear in your own words how you’re faring. And you can believe we’ll be keeping ol’ Mr. Hefflin busy, collecting letters to send your way.” Papa stiff-armed me, holding me at a distance as he peered into the darkness of my face. “Listen to your granny, Emma Grace. She knows what it is to grieve. She has suffered more than her fair share of sorrow. Listen to her with your heart. Maybe she can help you find your way back to the Light.”

I muffled my sobs into Papa’s jacket and clung to him as though welded by blue-hot flames.

“Know this, little one. You hold a place in my heart that no one else can fill. You always have … always will. It’s tearing me apart to go off and leave you like this, but for now, it’s the only way I know to help you. Your family loves you, Emma Grace. I love you. Don’t ever forget that. Just try to get well … for all of us.”

Papa kissed my head time and again, squeezing me against his chest with gentle strength. After a while, he peeled my fingers from his jacket, bent over, and retrieved his bundle from the floor. Then he was gone.

After Papa left, Granny settled down some. I believed she had worn herself out, concocting meals fit for a king, for in Granny’s eyes her son was a king. Her voice grew softer, previously unfettered words now shackled by the pain of her child’s departure. When Holly married Flynn, Mama told us that though Holly no longer slumbered beneath our roof, she’d forever remain Mama’s little girl. I supposed Granny felt the same way about my papa.

Though Granny and I both knew pain, we shared it not, mainly because I couldn’t share my anguish with anyone. How could I parcel out a thing that lay twisted and gnarled within me like knotted strands of rope? Saying good-bye to Papa had been a repeat of the day our bus hauled out of Brenham, the door of hope slamming shut in my face a second time. As loneliness seized my waking hours, I discovered a more sinister blackness than the one companioning me these last weeks. This blackness avowed kinship with a deeper, darker place than I had yet visited.

Granny’s obvious answer to despondency was food. Her own stoutness attested to its importance in her life. I thought she’d grow weary of trying to force-feed me, but her dedication to my diet only burgeoned as days slipped into one week and then another. She outdid herself, preparing savory recipes and personal favorites I had salivated over in years past. But my throat felt as though it had been stitched closed, disallowing most everything to glide through the sutures. When I tried to swallow—be it gruel, pork chops, oatmeal, or potatoes—I choked and gagged like a baby gulping his milk too quickly. My body slimmed to frightening boniness, apparel draping my skeleton like soggy clothes on the line.

I experienced passion for two things only: sleep, and Granny’s stories. Both afforded hours of forgetfulness. I doted on those hours, knowing I could make it through another day—if I slumbered, or pretended the day away.