I Want to Show You More (9780802193742) (7 page)

Eva wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. The spots were elongating, drifting toward the center of her vision.

“Watch this,” said the boy, pulling something from his
bag. It was a large magnolia seedpod. He turned it over
in his hand. “Incoming!” he said. He plunked the seedpod down onto the bed of violas and made a crackling noise inside his mouth.

Eva removed her headphones. “Where did you learn that?”

“Since we moved here he's become obsessed with weapons,” the mother said. “All this Civil War history everywhere.”

For a moment Eva thought she might reach out and shake the boy by the shoulders.
In the name of what?
But then she could not remember what her question meant.

Now the mother was smiling; she was taking the children away. As they crossed McFarland the boy looked back and waved.

Eva lifted her chin and put her headphones back on.

On she went, past the Mountain Market with its green awning and smells of pipe tobacco and lard from the deep fryer, past the Garden Walk Inn with its trellised porch and dollhouse mailbox. And now began the stretch of large homes set back
from the road. Two more blocks and she would reach the
four-way stop. This was still familiar ground. But Eva was beginning to worry.

In the first place, she realized, now that she was near the border, she could not remember if the post office in Tennessee was actually on Lula Lake Road. She thought there might be a turn somewhere. In the second place—whether from excitement or just the anticipation of the extra length of her walk—her heart was clattering beneath her sweater like teeth in the cold. She turned off the radio, though she left the headphones on to discourage talkers. She put her hand into her pocket and rubbed the letter between her thumb and forefinger. The black spots floated up, and up, in front of her.

Past Elfin, past Robin Hood Trail. She had to stop three times to steady herself for passing cars, all of which slowed and crossed the double yellow line into the opposite lane. She saw Megan Compson wave from inside her silver van. Eva walked on, trying not to bend her knees too much. Beside the road were smears of color, red and yellow, purple and orange; twiggy bushes and small trees with dead brown leaves under them; low stone walls and white fences with latched gates. Vines with chalky periwinkle berries dragged at her sleeve and pant legs. The sun laid orange slats of light across rooftops. Dogs strolled out from porches and sniffed at her legs; the ones that barked she held off with her umbrella.

She rounded the last curve and saw the single pulsing red light above the intersection of Lula Lake and Lee Avenue. She could not remember why she was supposed to cross rather
than turn around. Something about solemn duty and the
government.

She reached the intersection and stood, breathing. Her lips felt dry. Beside her was a wrought-iron sign with arrows and words:
lookout mountain bird sanctuary
.
point park, cravens house, ruby falls
.
Another sign, shaped like a choo-choo train, read
take scenic highway down to historic chattanooga!

Something about the government. Something about a funeral. The post office. She was going to tell President Johnson how she felt about things in North . . . She reached into her pocket and her heart rattled beneath her ribs. Surely the post office would not be in the direction of all those damned tourist traps. She turned onto Lee.

After walking thirty yards Eva realized she had made a mistake. The road curved and began to climb a hill. She had not planned on climbing any hills. She turned to go back to the intersection and the asphalt rushed up toward her. She would have fallen were it not for the umbrella, which she threw out in front of her and held on to with both hands—she had to lean back and squat to avoid falling. There was nothing for it but to continue uphill, and to do so she was forced to lean forward and bend her knees, using her umbrella like a cane. She was considerably irked by the black spots, which moved around and around in the trees on either side of her. Pinestraw blanketed the pavement beneath her; it was slippery and she moved toward the center of the road. Why wasn't she on Lula Lake Road? Why wasn't she on her way home? The sun was already above the tops of the tallest pines.

The hill became steeper; now if she stopped at all she would not be able to hold her balance. Eva made up her mind to signal the next car that drove past and request a ride back home. No, that wasn't right. She was supposed to mail a letter. She would request a ride to the post office, and then home. She removed her headphones and left them hanging in an arc about her neck.

Ahead of her was a sharp blind curve. If she didn't cross the street she might be struck by an oncoming vehicle. Eva listened for cars; hearing nothing, with slow steps she crossed to the right side of the road.

Where the pavement ended, there was a steep drop-off. Below, fifty yards down the rocky hillside, Eva could see a track. A woman was running laps. Next to the track was a baseball diamond, the grass still green. Silver bleachers gleamed on either side of the baselines; beyond the field was a playground with swings and picnic tables. The Commons, on the Tennessee/Georgia border
grass stains on his pants. The smell of leather oil and sweat. Watch this hit, I'll fly it to the moon. Crepe myrtle blossoms in a jar on the kitchen table . . .
and now a black dog was bounding up the hillside. Eva saw him for only a second before he reached her. She did not have time to steady herself. She hit at him with her umbrella, then lost her balance and fell. Her thin body hurtled down the side of the hill toward the baseball field until she struck the trunk of a maple tree with her left hip bone.

She lay on her side among rocks and fallen leaves. For a space of time—seconds? hours?—she thought she had finished with her walk and was now resting in her own bed, and for this she felt an overwhelming gratitude. Interrupting her sleep was a dog's bark, abrupt like the scrape of a chair being pushed back from a table. A leaf blower droned, a bird sang. The sifting of leaves, then a quick panting, very close to her ear.

She opened her eyes. The black dog was in front of her; she saw his paws, toes spread on the uneven rocky hillside, cluster of silver tags hanging from a purple collar. He barked and Eva threw an arm over the ear that was facing upward.

The sleeve of her sweater was torn and pocked with hitchhiker burrs. She noticed her earphones were gone. The dog stopped barking and began to sniff around her face. Warm tongue on her cheek. The dog whimpered and backed away, then disappeared down the hillside.

The trunk before her was twisted about with a vine of bright pink leaves. In her confusion, Eva thought they were hands clamoring to reach the top branches, each leaf five fingers pressing into the bark, staking its claim. She rolled her head and saw that the vine ended halfway up the trunk; at the top of the tree the branches were thin and white, with only a few yellow leaves still attached. Through the branches the sky was an exhilarating blue.

She remembered: She was going to the post office in Tennessee. She was going to deliver a letter to President Bush.

What foolishness! She should never have attempted such a thing. Twenty years she had stood up to speeding tourists, and all anyone would remember was that she had fallen off the side of the road because of a dog. And what did she know about the war? Listening to NPR had only given her ideas, had made her forget who she was. She was an eighty-nine-year-old pacifist who could not find her way to the post office. Who could not remember her own son.

What do you know about the decisions of our government?
It was Hugh's voice. He was standing in the driveway next to her; in her hand was the garden hose.

I know our son is dead. Cheated out of his birthright by his own country. I know the President is a liar
.

Hugh slapped her across the face. She stumbled backward into the hydrangea bush.
Your son died in the name of this country. And here you are, setting your goddamn table with goddamn linen napkins.
She lay in the bush, looking up at the sky.

But something was not right with the sky. The black spots had returned and now swirled in front of the blue and branches and the yellow dangling leaves. Eva let her head roll back so she was again looking at the vine on the tree trunk and the black spots came with her, they went out to join the leaves, or the leaves peeled off and joined the spots, she couldn't tell. They were coming together, the colors merging into a subdued gray, approaching her, arranging themselves in a dark processional.

In her mind, Eva righted herself to meet them.

The spots drifting toward her were soldiers in uniform. They were all identical—all her son. She cried out and tried to touch one of them but the sons did not look at her as they came on. As they neared, Eva saw Thomas's face over and over again—his high cheekbones; the slight depression across the bridge of his nose, left there when he broke it against the handlebars of his two-wheel bicycle; the scar below the downy blond arch of his right eyebrow; the cowlick at the center of his part above his forehead. She used to wet down the cowlick Sunday mornings before church. His hair was soft and during the sermons she twirled it through her fingertips.

The faces came on. She could see the green and gold of Thomas's eyes. None of them saw her. The sons drifted past and out of her vision in a regular, stolid rhythm.

“Look at me,” she said. “I want to ask you a question.”

One of them stopped and turned his head. His face remained expressionless and the others waited patiently behind. She understood that he was waiting for her to ask the question and it was terrible, this passionless waiting man who was her son, terrible that he did not recognize her. She felt certain that, were she able to kiss his cheek, she would remember how to feel sadness and grief, love and longing.

In his gray uniform the son continued to wait. Eva could bear it no longer. “In the name of
what
?” she cried out to the son in front of her. “
Of what?
” she asked the waiting ones behind him. The son smiled and for a moment Eva thought he would comfort her. She saw his lips move but no sound came out. The others smiled in exactly the same way as the first.

And then they were pulling back, all of them, one by one. With horror she realized they were leaving her and she felt at the very least she should say something to put Thomas at rest. But the sons were not at rest—they were only apart, winnowed from victories and failures. While she watched they withdrew into the sky, grown dark now. They began to circle above her with a hard, impartial energy, like the stars.

Now the dark sky and circling soldiers started to descend and she understood that the darkness would cover her like a hood. Eva saw the last gray soldier turn. This time it was Hugh Bock's face before her and when he spoke it was only a whisper.

“Unanswerable,” he said. And the host of orbiting sons repeated the word until it became a kind of song, the sound of air moving in summer trees:
Unanswerable, unanswerable
.

Beneath them, Eva listened.

The dog was, in fact, a female retriever named Pearl. Her barking alerted her owner, Sharon Miller, who was running laps on the track at the Commons. Pearl led her up the hillside to Eva Bock's body, her leg wrapped around the trunk of a tree. One of her shoes was missing and her thin foot in its dirty white stocking looked like a child's. Her hair was spread out across the rocks and colored leaves in a way that would have been almost sensual had she been merely asleep. Her eyes were open, wide and antique, and there was a vertical gash shaped like a parallelogram from her temple to her jaw. The frail skin looked as if it had been freshly shucked. Sharon Miller could see the grayish skullbone. She vomited, then called 911 and the Lookout Mountain, Georgia City Hall. She also called her husband, who called Liza at the
Mountain Mirror
. Assuming Miss Eva had been, as long predicted, run off the road by a tourist, Liza posted the information on the
Mountain Mirror
's website, so that, for a time after her death, the Lookout Mountain residents felt a sense of indignation at the license plates from anywhere but Georgia or Tennessee.

Because she had fallen on the Tennessee side, the ambulance came not from the Walker County, Georgia, response unit six miles away, but from St. Elmo at the base of the mountain. It took seventeen minutes, during which time residents gathered and peered down the side of the hill. Dr. Bailey was called—he was young and took the steep hillside with ease—and was able to determine that Miss Eva was, indeed, dead. Just the same, he administered CPR until the EMTs came. Everyone felt it was a heroic gesture.

Before the night-shift CNA at Memorial Hospital threw out the white pants—bloody at the knees, both pant legs cut off the victim from the hemline up through the waistband—he found the envelope in the pocket. He was an immigrant from Haiti, nineteen years old, and had never seen 15-cent stamps. He felt this must be an important letter; he was surprised the EMTs had not removed it from the pocket for the next-of-kin. He could not read the words on the front but he opened the letter to see if there was any money inside. Then, feeling guilty and superstitious, he went into the supply closet and resealed the envelope with Scotch tape.

When he clocked out the next morning, the CNA gave the letter to the woman who volunteered at the front desk, who placed it in a stack of outgoing mail.

Seven months after Eva Bock's funeral (during which the local police closed 58 South to tourists, to ensure that the funeral procession could head down to the cemetery in St. Elmo unimpeded; the residents, who had already simplified Miss Eva the way the living do, felt it was her final triumph), a letter in an eight-by-ten white linen stock envelope, addressed to Mrs. Eva Bock, arrived at the Lookout Mountain Post Office. Steven Ruske, Receiving, had never seen a letter from the White House. He was supposed to shred it (there was no next-of-kin listed on the Bock account) but who would know?