On Blue Falls Pond (3 page)

“Seems foolish to give up afore I have to. Why, I could just sit here for years, doing nothin’, waitin’ to go blind. That’d be a sin. Changes will come in God’s time.”

“But, Gran, a toddler? And you’re all the way out here—”

“I got a phone and can call if something happens. Dr. Blanton says it’s not likely that my sight will just”—she snapped her fingers—“go like that. The bleeding was a fluke.” She went over and picked up the boy. “Besides, Scott and me, we’re partners. Ain’t we, big fella?” She kissed his cheek with her pale, papery lips.

The boy blinked, but showed no other response.

Curiosity overcame her reluctance, and Glory asked, “Is he okay? I mean . . . he’s so quiet.”

Granny settled him back on the blanket on the floor and set a plastic pirate ship in front of him. He reached out and began turning the toy in slow circles.

Glory looked away.

“Depends on which of his folks you ask. Jill says he’s just shy and slow to talk. Eric thinks there’s something wrong. They been doctoring a lot lately.” Granny caressed the top of Scott’s blond head. Then she sat back down. “From the looks of your car, you’re plannin’ on a long visit.”

Glory had brought in a single small bag last night. It had been dark enough that Granny hadn’t seen that her car was packed to the roof; pillows and blankets piled on top of TV, stereo, and computer until they were pressed solid against the backseat windows, looking ready to spring out the instant a door was opened.

Time to tread carefully. If Granny thought Glory was planning on hanging around Dawson because she thought Gran needed her, she would pack Glory back in her car and have her headed north before sunset.

“I’m in transition,” Glory said breezily.

Granny raised a gray brow.

“St. Paul wasn’t working out. I’m not sure where I’m going next.” Glory decided to leave it as broad and ambiguous as she could possibly get away with.

After a deep breath, Granny said, “You made your decision to leave here. I cain’t say I understand it, but I won’t be havin’ you change it for me. I just needed a day . . . that’s all.”

Glory didn’t say anything. Instead she concentrated on the shafts of early morning sun that broke through the kitchen window, the hypnotic dance of dust motes. She heard the sound of the toy boat spinning in endless circles. Suddenly she felt just like that boat, spinning, spinning, and going nowhere. As if she were caught in a whirlpool that pulled her deeper the harder she struggled. What would happen if she just stopped struggling? Would she be sucked into a cold blackness and never be able to resurface?

Staying in Tennessee would be like sitting in the eye of the vortex. She felt sure her strength would fail, and the whirlpool would win. But if she left here again, where would she go? Arizona maybe. Someplace where the heat and the blazing sun could bake the cold desperation out of her bones. She hadn’t been west yet. Would the vast differences in landscape cradle her? Did she need a more pronounced differentiation from the lush green of Tennessee? Perhaps beige upon tan, sand and stone, brittle vegetation and prickly cactus would make the difference.

But how could she leave Granny again—knowing that at any time, her sight might fail? Glory had plenty of cousins . . . but none she would trust to care for Granny. They’d put her in a home, or bicker about whose turn it was to take her to the grocery store; they’d make her feel like an invalid. And for a woman like Tula Baker, that would be the cruelest fate of all.

She took Granny’s square, knobby hand in hers. “One day at a time, Gran. Today, let’s pick raspberries.”

As Eric drove the curving road out of the hollow, he realized he was gripping the wheel with brutal force. Wisps of fog reached across the road in places, like fingers of the past trying to force him to stumble. But he couldn’t stumble; there was too much at risk. Glory’s return to Dawson was certainly an unexpected turn of events. He’d just begun to feel secure in thinking his questions were going to remain safely buried with Andrew Harrison.

Why was it that every bad turn his own life had taken pivoted around Andrew Harrison?

Eric remembered the flash of terror that momentarily sparked in Glory’s eyes; how she looked like a fearful child standing there in her oversized T-shirt with Scooby-Doo on the front. He hoped with all of his heart that Glory’s memory of that night remained a blank canvas. He told himself it was to prevent her further pain . . . but the coward in him recognized it for the desperate wish of self-preservation that it was.

Chapter Three

G
LORY WAS SKEPTICAL
when Granny insisted that Scott could walk all the way to the raspberry patch. It wasn’t a long hike, but with those stubby legs, he’d be taking four steps for their every one.

“Scottie and me walk most every afternoon,” Granny said as she packed the last of the junk they were having to haul for the little guy into a quilted tote.

Glory’s eyes lingered on the bag. Since Pap died, Granny had been supplementing her social security income by selling her quiltwork. For years folks had encouraged her to do it, but Granny had always insisted that her quilts were just to be shared with family and friends—that’s why she enjoyed it so much. Every newlywed couple, each new grandchild and great-grandchild received a quilt lovingly made by Granny. But necessity had won out, and Granny now sold quilted place mats, tote bags, and bed coverlets in touristy places around Gatlinburg.

The bag riding on Granny’s shoulder as they left the house was one of Glory’s favorite patterns, done in colors that reminded her of the hills in October.

Before Granny stepped out the door, she put on her ancient sunglasses with lenses the size of headlights. They made her look like a praying mantis, all long, skinny arms and legs and giant eyes.

They would be walking through the woods the entire way; there should be plenty of shade. Glory must have given Granny an odd look, because Granny said, “Been wearing them outdoors lately even on cloudy days. Just more comfortable.”

Glory paused, contemplating the significance of this revelation. It hadn’t hit home until this very moment that if Granny’s sight deteriorated to the point that she couldn’t quilt, how would she make ends meet? That just added another stone in the “reasons to stay in Dawson” basket.

“Awww, stop lookin’ like that. It don’t mean my eyes are worse. Let’s get goin’.” She led the way down the back steps.

Glory followed along behind Granny and Scott, leaving plenty of space between her and the toddler.

Surprisingly, Scott walked along at a reasonable pace, clinging not to Granny’s hand but to the tail of the baby quilt she had draped over her arm. That quilt was definitely Gran’s work. Had Scott rated up there with Granny’s own grandchildren, or had his parents purchased it? For some reason, the answer mattered to Glory.

“That quilt, it’s beautiful . . . is it Scott’s?” She tried to sound offhand.

“His favorite. Sleeps with it all the time.”

“Gosh, it looks pretty new to have been dragged around by a baby for a couple of years.” She was almost ashamed of herself.

“He’s only had it ’bout six months.”

Glory let go of the fishing line. The answer obviously wasn’t going to come without a direct question, and she wasn’t quite ready to resort to that yet. She felt petty enough already.

The trail was fairly even, well-worn with only slight rises and dips. Scott didn’t once ask to be carried, just trudged along in silence, neither asking questions, nor pointing in curiosity, nor looking beyond the path immediately in front of his feet.

Halfway to the meadow, a narrow, fast-moving stream cut across the path, tumbling around a cluster of smooth gray rocks. Granny shifted the tote and reeled in the blanket, as if to pick up the toddler. For a moment, Glory stood motionless. Then she stepped up.

“I’ve got him.” She grasped Scott under the arms and held his sturdy body away from hers. Then she stepped carefully from the dry top of one rock to the other. Immediately when she reached the other side, she set him back on his own little feet. Then she shoved her hands in her pockets. It was no more personal than lugging a bag of potatoes over the obstacle.

When Granny joined her on the far side, she gave Glory an odd look, slightly puzzled yet slightly reproachful.

Again, Glory felt almost ashamed of herself. What kind of woman was she that she was so resistant to physical contact with this little boy?

She turned away from the question, fearing what she’d see inside herself. She walked on ahead, leaving Granny to set Scott up with his quilt once again.

The raspberry bramble was probably within two hundred yards of Granny’s house, yet felt as isolated as Blue Falls Pond. It sat on the edge of a small clearing, a patch of brilliant sunlight in the green gloaming that covered most of the hollow. Here there was nothing but the still heat of the afternoon and the rustle of foraging squirrels.

Glory blinked against the brightness as she stepped into the clearing. Even with Granny wearing sunglasses, Glory noticed that Granny paused behind her and waited for her eyes to adjust before leaving the shadowy trail.

Immediately the heat of the sun mixed with the heavy humidity, making Glory pluck her T-shirt away from where it clung to her chest. A butterfly flitted in front of her, black wings glistening in the sun, bright blue tail shining like a beacon. She felt Scott’s presence by her leg and wondered if his brown eyes—Eric’s eyes, she realized—followed the flighty course of the butterfly too. She didn’t glance down to see.

“Whew!” Granny fanned herself. “Hot one. Let’s put Scott in the shade over here.”

She spread a blanket under a tall yellow buckeye tree near the thicket. Then she pulled out his toy ship.

Scott soberly walked over and plopped down. Beads of perspiration dotted his forehead.

“Maybe we should give him a drink,” Glory said.

Granny smiled, rummaged in the canvas tote, and brought out a Sippy Cup. She poured water from a bottle into it and handed it to the boy. Then she lifted the bottle toward Glory. “How about you?”

Glory took a long drink, then gave it back to Granny.

When she looked down at Scott again, he was moving the boat in the same tedious circles as he had earlier in the day. He still hadn’t said a word.

“Alrighty. Let’s get to pickin’.” Granny handed Glory a small galvanized bucket. “I’m thinkin’ cobbler.”

Glory grinned and nodded. Berry cobbler and ice cream. The remembered taste sprang onto her tongue. At least once every year during berry season, she and Granny would pick berries and make a cobbler. Then when Pap came home from work, the three of them would eat the entire thing while it was still warm, melting the ice cream into a pool of creamy sweetness. It was always Glory’s favorite day of the summer.

She moved closer to the berry bushes with her mouth watering. Her first few attempts to pluck berries were marred by sharp stinging scratches from the thorns, but soon she remembered her technique and fared better. Granny was picking four feet away with her back to Scott.

Glory gave frequent sideways glances in their direction.

Every two- and three-year-old she’d ever been around had been out of one thing and into the next, little whirling dervishes. She’d seen mothers exhaust themselves at a park trying to keep their children from eating sand, chasing squirrels into the street, and climbing to dangerous heights.

Again she looked at Granny, who was picking berries with her mouth pursed in concentration. Glory bit her lip, considering.

Granny had always been so vigilant—covering outlets, locking doors, using wire ties on the cabinet under the sink that held the cleaning supplies—when her cousins’ children had been babies. Maybe age had begun to impair her judgment; her seemingly careless nature with this boy finally prickled too much.

“Aren’t you afraid he’ll slip away, get lost out here?” If he ran into the underbrush, he’d be awfully hard to find. There were rock ledges, steep slopes, a dozen streams for drowning, and poisonous plants aplenty here.

Granny cast a quick and casual glance over her shoulder at Scott. “Nah. Once he starts with that boat, he’ll keep at it until you take it away from him.”

Glory could hardly argue the point; there he sat, not even looking at the squirrels as they became braver and grew gradually closer. “Odd.” She was surprised when she realized she’d said it out loud.

Granny sighed. “Reckon it is. He didn’t used to be so . . . so focused.”

“He seems, I don’t know, disconnected. Like he doesn’t really care what’s going on around him.”

“Just try to take the boat away. He’ll throw a hissy that’d wake the dead.”

Glory couldn’t imagine this silent, impassive child reacting that strongly to anything. She went back to her berry picking but kept a sharp ear out for the patter of tiny Nikes making for the woods. All she heard was the steady friction of that boat on the blanket.

Once the buckets were filled, they both sat on the edge of Scott’s blanket to cool off before walking home. Just as Granny had predicted, Scott had stayed in one place, turning his boat the entire time they picked. He didn’t stop when they joined him.

Glory lay on her back, watching a bushy-tailed squirrel jump from branch to branch overhead, chittering loudly.

Granny’s gaze followed hers. “Buckeyes from this tree make a right fine paste.”

Glory’s gaze shifted to her grandmother.

“Pa used to make all of our school paste,” Granny said. “Didn’t know you could buy it at a store ’til I was ten.”

Glory closed her eyes and thought of the jars of white paste with the flat plastic spreader built right into the lid that she’d used in grade school. Paste was cheap. That single statement brought into sharp focus just how poor Granny’s family had been. The kind of poor that even Clarice could never imagine.

But Granny never spoke of being poor, of doing without. Her stories of childhood were all about adventures she and her brothers had had in the hollow. How once they’d actually roamed so far that they’d been lost overnight and her father had whipped the boys for endangering their little sister, when in reality it had been Tula that had led the way. Of the wounded baby bird she’d found in the yard that she’d nursed back to health; of the barn cat’s litter of kittens Tula had taken into Dawson to find homes, then visited on a regular basis to make sure they were being treated well—a feline protection agency of one; of Fourth of July parades and watermelon-eating contests. Never of threadbare, outgrown coats or winters without enough coal for the furnace.

Granny had what couldn’t be bought; she was happy in her own skin, with whatever life gave her.

A bee buzzed nearby. Glory opened one eye to see if it was too near Scott.

Granny said, “You tell your mama you were coming back here?”

Glory shook her head. She really couldn’t explain
why
she hadn’t called her mother in Florida. Since Glory had left Dawson, she’d been avoiding speaking to her mother as much as possible. Clarice was like a counterpoint to Granny; chased by her own unhappiness and insecurity for years. It was suddenly startling to realize that Glory herself had fallen into a similar mind-set—but at least Glory had just cause. Her mother had lived with a chip on her shoulder most of her life. From grade school on, the driving force inside Clarice Baker had been to divorce herself from the hollow.

The first step in that transition had happened the weekend after high school graduation when she had married Glory’s father, Jimmy Johnston, a town boy in her class whose parents both held respectable jobs with the telephone company and had a nice new ranch-style house on the outskirts of Dawson. But Clarice soon discovered that her new husband had no intention of following in his parents’ footsteps by finding a job that offered security and a pension, and buying a nice house on a quiet Dawson street. Jimmy loved dirt-track racing as much as he loved anything in his life. Clarice had settled for a mobile home on a city lot and a husband gone every weekend. But at least it was out of the hollow.

When Glory was four, her dad had been killed in a motorcycle accident. The thing Glory remembered most about him was the smell of Goop, the hand cleanser he used after working on engines.

After he died, his parents, Glory’s other grandparents, retired and moved to Florida. Clarice had gone to work at the bank as a teller. She was trapped in the mobile home, but she spent her salary proving to the town that she and her daughter were respectable—Girl Scouts, ballet lessons, and brand-name clothes for Glory; manicured nails and bridge club for herself. She had encouraged Glory to run for student government and try out for cheerleader. Clarice was fifteen times more excited when she made both than Glory had been.

The icing on Clarice’s cake had been Glory’s marriage to Andrew Harrison, son of the most prominent family in Dawson. But even in that moment, the hollow had reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder. At the garden wedding reception, Glory had been standing beside her mother when they overheard someone say through the meticulously manicured boxwood hedge, “She seems like a nice enough young woman, especially considering where her people come from.” Glory had had to grasp her mother’s wrist to keep her from reaching through the hedge and grabbing the woman by the throat.

Clarice had moved to Florida the next month.

When Glory left Dawson after the fire, her mother had been insistent that she come to stay with her. After all, Florida had saved Clarice from her world of slight and unhappiness; surely it would do the same for Glory.

But Glory had needed to be alone, not coddled in a way that reminded her every day of her loss. She’d struck out first for Asheville, then to a small town in Ohio, then to Kansas City, and finally St. Paul.

She had yet to forget her loss.

On their way back from berry picking, they took a fork in the trail that took them past a plain white clapboard church with a row of clear-glass-paned windows lining either side. In the churchyard stood an old iron fence that surrounded the graveyard where Bakers and Prathers (Granny had been a Prather before she married Pap) had buried their dead since long before the Civil War. From here they would follow the gravel road the rest of the way to Granny’s house.

It had never struck Glory before how limited the geographic scope of Granny’s life had been. She’d been born on a farm not three miles from where she now lived. She’d gone to school a mile from that farm in a building that housed first through twelfth grades—before the days of consolidation. She and Pap had been married in this church, her seven children had been baptized here. And she’d buried her parents, three siblings, a husband, and one child in this graveyard.