Flowers (6 page)

So I kept on down the coast. With winter coming on and all, I figured it would be best to make for the Gulf of Mexico. I hoofed through these here Appalachian Mountains, oh, yes, I've been through them three times now, only back then there wasn't one long trail like there is now. You kind of had to make up your way where you found it. But the shoes didn't seem to mind.

I went down through Atlanta, followed Sherman's tracks for a while,, then veered on over to Mobile and New Orleans. I spent the winter between Beaumont and Lubbock by way of San Antone, just walking under those wide open skies with the smell of cattle and trail dust in my nose, acres and acres of sun-scorched mesquite and tumbleweed with barely a soul to bother me. I covered some of those old pioneer trails, you could still see where the wagon wheels had carved ruts in the red clay.

I saw the sun sparkling fire off the snowcaps of the Sangre Cristo Range and I threaded up through the Rockies following the Rio Grande and the Gunnison. Boy, my toes just about froze off. It was like these shoes had two dead tree-stumps in them. But the shoes just kept on, one in front of the other, except at night, like I said.

Let me stop here for a minute and slip off these shoes. Here, see how easy they slide off, smooth as kid gloves, I tell you. I invite you to hold them, rub your hands over them, smell the leather, no, not the inside, I'm not that mean. Just soak in their history and all the places they've been, all the dirt they've kicked up.

Now, go ahead, try them on, just so's you can get a real feel for them. Go ahead. Don't be shy. They won't nip at you.

See? See how easy they go on? Never felt something so comfortable, have you? Not even your fancy boots match up. Go on, wiggle your toes some, so you can explore their history a little. Because all the miles have touched them, and changed them, and become a part of them.

Thought they would be too small, did you? Well, I'm not surprised they fit even your big old feet. They got a way of stretching out and making themselves at home, no matter what feet they're wrapped around.

Now where was I? Oh, yeah, then it was over to the Great Salt Lake and around the desert, which was like a lake, only holding yellow and white sand in its banks instead of water. My feet burned like I was walking on the hot coals of hell, but the shoes never quit. On up north to the Matterhorn and Walla Walla, then along the Columbia River over to the foggy Oregon coast. I followed those stormy Pacific cliffs down into California.

At that point I'd been walking for nearly two years, ran, shine, snow, or sleet, like a mailman only without the pay. Every single day I was putting one shoe in front of the other. Every night I took them off and rested, wondering if I really wanted to walk anymore, if it was time to settle down and grow some roots. But in the morning it would be up with the sun and back on with the shoes, and more miles of country laid out in front of me.

I rubbed up against a world of natural wonders along the way, plus lots of things that will never be wrote down in books. And I've met many a fine person along the way, too. Maybe that kind of traveling ain't as romantic as a rich man's with his jet planes and yachts and all, but it gets you more in touch with the salt of the earth.

So I went through California down to the Baja and then back out to the Midwest to hit the corners of the country I'd missed the first time around. And I just kept on and on, all these years.

I see I'm losing you now, you're thinking maybe I'm crazy after all. Well, you see, the walking wasn't my doing. I was just the flesh, the legs and feet. I was just the means of transportation, same as a car or boat.

What it was, was the shoes. The shoes wanted to go places. The shoes made me keep walking, putting one foot in front of the other every single day. The shoes that got themselves on my feet every morning at daybreak and wouldn't let me walk away from them at night.

You laugh. Just an old pair of shoes, you say. Just a crazy old coot spinning a yarn for his supper. Go on and laugh.

My, how I've rambled on. Plumb talked the night away. Look yonder at the sun just starting to pink up the sky, slipping over them mountains. Time just flies when you're caught up in a good story.

Now, in all that walking, and all those miles, I've had plenty of time to think. And I'm thinking that these shoes need some new feet. I'm thinking that these shoes ain't even begun to travel.

And now that the sun's up, don't you feel like they've made themselves at home? Don't you feel like they've grown right on your feet? Ain't they just itching for you to start putting one in front of the other? Remember what I said about things choosing you?

You don't?

You're taking them off?

Drat darn it amighty.

I was looking forward to resting a spell. Nothing personal, mind you. I just have to try that every month or so, in hopes that these shoes are ready for a change. But maybe you ain't got it in you. Maybe you don't know how to wear them like they ought to be worn.

So you just put on your fancy boots and curl up your shiny sleeping bag and get on with your high-dollar walking. At least your trail's got an end to it. At least you got a choice.

Me, I expect I'm heading down to Florida. The shoes feel like touching a bit of Gulf water. Mind your step, and thanks for the grub. What's that the poet said, about miles to go?

See, one shoe in front of the other. That's how you go places. That's how you get there. When you wear these shoes, you know.

###

INVISIBLE FRIEND

The evening was Halloween cool, the sun creeping toward the horizon. It would be dark soon, and the games would be over. Margaret could stay out as late as she wanted, but not Ellen. Ellen had a mom and a bed and a life to worry about.

"Come out," Ellen called.

The scraggly shrubbery trembled. Margaret was hiding under the window of the mobile home where Ellen lived. For an invisible person, Margaret wasn’t so good at hide-and-seek, but she loved to play. Maybe you got that way when you were dead.

The mobile home vibrated with the noise of the vacuum cleaner. Mom was inside, cleaning up. Taking a break from beer and television. Maybe cooking a supper of sliced wieners in cheese noodles.

"I know you're in there," Ellen said.

She stooped and peered under the lowest brown leaves of the forsythia. Vines snaked through the shrubbery. In the summer, yellow flowers dangled from the tips of the vines. Ellen and Margaret would pull the white tendrils from the flowers, holding them to the sun so the sweet drops of honeysuckle fell on their tongues. They would laugh and hold hands and run into the woods, playing tag until night fell. Then they would follow the fireflies into darkness.

But only in the summer. Now it was autumn, with the leaves like kites and November rushing toward them from Tennessee. Now Ellen had school five mornings a week, homework, chores if Mom caught her. Not much time for games, so she and Margaret had to make the most of their time together.

The bushes shook again.

"Come out, come out," Ellen called, afraid that Mom would switch off the vacuum cleaner and hear her having fun.

Margaret's long blonde hair appeared in a gap between the bushes. A hand emerged, slender and pale and wearing a plastic ring that Ellen had gotten as a Crackerjack prize. The hand was followed by the red sleeve of Margaret's sweater. At last Ellen's playmate showed her face with its uneven grin.

"Peek-a-boo," Margaret said.

"Your turn to be 'it.'"

The vacuum cleaner suddenly switched off, and the silence was broken only by the brittle shivering of the trees along the edge of the trailer park. Ellen put her index finger to her lips to shush Margaret, then crawled into the bushes beside her. The trailer door swung open with a rusty creak.

Mom looked out, shading her eyes against the setting sun. Ellen ducked deeper into the shrubbery, where the dirt smelled of cat pee. Margaret stifled a giggle beside her. Everything was a game to Margaret. But Margaret wasn't the one who had to worry about getting her hide tanned, and Margaret could disappear if she wanted.

Mom had that look on her face, the red of anger over the pink of drunkenness. She stood in the doorway and chewed her lip. A greasy strand of hair dangled over one eye. Her fists were balled. The stench of burnt cheese powder and cigarettes drifted from the trailer.

"Ellen," Mom called, looking down the row of trailers to the trees. Mom hated Ellen's staying out late more than anything. Except maybe the special teachers at school.

Ellen tensed, hugging her knees to her chest.

"She looks really mad," Margaret whispered.

"No, she's probably just worried."

A thin rope of smoke drifted from the trailer door. "She burned supper," Margaret said.

"It's my fault. She's really going to whip me this time."

Mom called once more, then slammed the door closed. Margaret rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at the mobile home. Ellen laughed, though her stomach felt full of bugs.

"Let's go to my place," Margaret said.

"What if Mom sees me? She can see me, even if she can't see you."

Margaret started crawling behind the row of dying shrubbery. "Your mom won't find you there."

"She always finds me anywhere." Ellen hung her head, near tears.

Margaret crawled back and poked her in the side. "Don't be a gloomy Gus."

Ellen slapped Margaret's hand away. "I'm not no gloomy Gus."

"Why don't you let me get her? I can make her hurt like she makes you hurt."

Ellen folded her arms and studied Margaret's brown eyes. Margaret would do it. She was a good friend. And in her eyes, behind the sparkle, was a darkness buried deep. Maybe you looked at things that way when you were dead.

"No. It's better if we keep you secret," Ellen said. "I already got in trouble at school, telling the special teachers about you."

Margaret poked her in the ribs again. Ellen smiled this time.

"Follow me. Hurry," Margaret said.

Margaret scrambled ahead, staying low beneath the hedge. Ellen looked at the trailer door, checked for any sign of movement in the windows. Then she crawled after Margaret, the dead twigs sharp against the skin of her palms and knees.

From the end of the hedge, they dashed for the concealment of the forest. Ellen half expected to hear Mom's angry shout, telling her to get inside right this minute. But then they were under the trees and lost among the long shadows.

Margaret laughed with the exhilaration of escape. She ran between the oaks with their orange leaves, the silver birch, the sweet green pine, ignoring the branches and briars that tugged the fabric of her sweater. Ellen followed just as recklessly, her footsteps soft on the rotting loam of the forest floor.

The girls passed a clearing covered by crisp leaves. Margaret veered away to a path that followed the river. The air smelled of fish and wet stones. Ellen stumbled over a grapevine, and by the time she looked up, Margaret had disappeared.

Ellen looked around. A bird chittered in a high treetop. The sun had slipped lower in the sky. Purple and pink clouds hung in the west like rags on a clothesline. She was alone.

Alone.

The special teachers at school told Ellen it was worse to be alone than have invisible friends. "You can't keep playing all by yourself," they told her. "You have to learn to get along with others. You have to let go of the past."

When Ellen told the special teachers about what happened at home, the teachers' eyes got wide. They must have talked to Mom, because when Ellen got home that day, she got her hide tanned harder than ever. Someday Mom was going to lose her temper and do something really bad.

Ellen thought of Mom, with fists clenched and supper burnt, waiting back at the trailer. Ellen shivered. She didn't want to be alone.

She put her hands to her mouth. "Margaret!"

She heard a giggle from behind a stand of trees. The red sweater flashed and vanished. Margaret was playing another game, trying to make Ellen get lost by leading her deeper into the woods. Well, Ellen wasn't going to be scared.

And she wasn't going to cry. Sometimes the girls at school made her cry. They would stand around her in a circle and say she was in love with Joey Hogwood. Well, she hated Joey Hogwood, and she hated the girls. Ellen wished that Margaret still went to school so that she would have a friend to sit beside.

Margaret wouldn't want her to cry. Margaret would just pretend to be bad for a little while, then pop out from behind a tree and tag her and make her "It."

Laughter came down from the hill where the pines were thickest. To the left, a sea of kudzu vines choked the trees. A run-down chicken coop had been swallowed by the leaves, with only a few rotten boards showing under the green. That's where Margaret was hiding.

Ellen ran across the kudzu, the leaves tickling her calves above her socks. She could read Margaret like a book. That was the best thing about invisible playmates: they did what you wanted them to do.

Right now, Ellen wanted Margaret to go just over the hill, into the new part of the forest. She reached the pines and started down the slope. Half a dozen houses were sprinkled among the folds of the hill. A highway ran through the darkening valley, the few cars making whispers as they rolled back and forth. The headlights were like giant fireflies in the dusk.