Stay (9 page)

At Wytheville, just north of the North Carolina border, I left the interstate and took us onto the Blue Ridge Parkway: more than two hundred miles without a single traffic light or fast food franchise. With a speed limit of forty-five miles per hour—less on some of the hairpin bends—leaving the interstate meant adding at least two hours to our journey, but it was an essential buffer zone between where Tammy had been and where she was going. I turned off the radio and opened both windows.

“Breathe,” I said. Valleys ran long and deep to either side, and cows grazed in pastures framed by split-log fences. The air was rich and cool and edged with life.

“It’s cold.”

“Put your sweatshirt on. We’re two thousand feet up a mountain.”

“You live up a mountain?”

“A valley halfway up a mountain, but we’ve a couple of hundred miles to go.” Somehow, in four or five hours, I had to show her how much there was here to appreciate. She had to know before she got there how special this place was. It had to become special to her, too, otherwise she would trample all over the fragile peace of my refuge. She squirmed into her sweatshirt and we drove for a while in silence.

“These are the Blue Ridge Mountains.”

She nodded, but didn’t say anything.

“Part of the Appalachians, one of the oldest mountain ranges on earth. They’re so old that they appeared before most animal and plant life existed.”

“No fossils,” she said after a moment.

“Right. Lots of gemstones, though.” Smarter than she looks, Dornan had said. “Some of the rivers are even older than the mountains.”

She didn’t seem interested in the apparent paradox. Mountains form in geological time, in slow motion. A river that exists before the mountain forms will cut through the new, soft rock to get to the sea. Most of those seas were long gone, but the rivers remain. We passed a sign for Blowing Rock, the head of the New River. Stupid name for the oldest river on the continent.

“It’s about time for lunch. We could stop and eat and take a look at the river.”

She nodded, though I’m not sure whether it was the food or the river that appealed.

Blowing Rock is a small town with a lot of money whose inhabitants had managed to keep the ugly face of tourism from their doors. We ate fettucini in a café under a bright awning, surrounded by window boxes spilling flowers; sun warmed those wood and fieldstone houses not sheltered by maple and poplar.

Tammy spent more time watching relaxed, clean, happy people walk past the window than eating.

“Is this real?” she asked eventually.

I nodded, and for a moment I thought she would burst into tears, but she just shook her head.

When we got back in the car, she watched the scenery more intently, and once pointed to a speck hanging high over the canopy. “What’s that?”

“Hawk,” I said. “I can’t tell what kind.”

She was silent the rest of the drive, and I left her to her thoughts, because now we were driving through the beginnings of Pisgah, and the air began to smell like home.

An hour later we drove into Asheville and I parked in more or less the same place I’d parked when I got my hair cut, and when I climbed out of the truck into the slanting afternoon sun, I had the absurd urge to drop into the Heads Up Salon and see if Dree was there.

Tammy was trying to get out of the truck and pull off her sweatshirt at the same time. She managed both, then just stood there holding the sweatshirt in a bundle in front of her, as though it were something dirty.

“Is your house near here?”

“No. It’s… some distance outside Asheville. We’re here to pick up food, and clothes for you.” She might be staying with me, but she wasn’t going to wear my clothes. “Bring your money.” She rooted around in her purse, then hesitated, still clutching the sweatshirt. “You won’t need that. It’ll stay warm for another hour or so.” Somewhere between the sidewalk and the first hanging garments, Tammy’s body language changed; her brows arched disdainfully; she sighed and shook her head dramatically at the offerings, then fingered a slippery rayon dress.

“T-shirts and shorts and boots would be more appropriate for where we’ll be; some jeans; a sweater for the cool nights.”

She swung the hair back from her face and eyed me sullenly, now the perfect teenager. Infant to child to teen in one day. With any luck she’d be dead of old age before we reached the clearing.

“Your money, your choice.” It would only be for a day or two, anyway. And if she bought all the wrong things she could either suffer or drive herself back here. Nursemaid was not part of the job description.

Tammy remained in teenage mode as we drove north and west along secondary roads which narrowed to gravel, and then took an abrupt turn left and hit the unpaved track up the mountain.

“Where are we going?”

“My cabin.”

She sighed heavily and pulled her sweatshirt back on. After another ten minutes she rolled up the window.

I took the last half a mile in second gear. Judging by the mess alongside the road, hogs had been through recently, and tree debris indicated high winds sometime in the last couple of days. For some reason my heart was beating high as we pulled into the clearing.

It was all there, as I’d left it, cabin roof still on, tarps snug and tight across windows, trailer fast shut, but different. Forest litter from the wind or storm lay everywhere, and foliage that had been green had faded to yellow, what had already been yellowing was now gold, and the elder and dogwood and maple leaves had deepened to rich, winelike hues. I parked and just sat there for a moment, drinking in the smell, which was loamier, wilder.

“Yes.” Even I heard the smile in my voice.

“What happened?”

“A storm. The wind must have really ripped through here while I was gone. We can use the deadfall for firewood.”

“No. I mean the house. It looks… scabby.”

“I’m rebuilding it,” I said shortly, and climbed out of the truck, but I looked at the cabin again, at the different colors of the old and new wood—that could, I supposed, look leprous to the uneducated eye—and the messy tarps, the gables. “It will look better when the windows are in and the new wood’s had a chance to weather.” But I wondered, which made me angry. “Did you pull the wings off flies, too, when you were little?”

Her face changed abruptly, the same look a child gets when she breaks a parent’s favorite ornament and looks up, too frightened to even cry out that it was an accident.

“This place means a lot to me. If you don’t have anything good to say about it, keep quiet.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I—”

“You weren’t to know. Let’s get unpacked. We’ll be sleeping in the trailer.”

We unloaded the food, then her things. I showed her where to stow her clothes, handed her sheets, which she accepted wordlessly, and pointed out the sofa bed. I left her to it, and went to start up the systems. There was enough propane for a while, but after Dornan’s visits and with Tammy here, I’d have to take the trailer out in a few days and pump out the gray and black water tanks. Refilling with fresh from the pump was no problem, but there was no point if the sewage tanks were full.

That would be another new thing; I hadn’t had to pump the tanks since I’d arrived here, shell-shocked and more than half mad, not wanting to shower or wash dishes or use the toilet, not wanting to have anything to do with civilization at all.

I went back into the trailer. “Tammy.” She was sitting hunched on the couch that was the sofa bed, as though she had been given permission to use only that piece of furniture.

“Come sit at the table.” She did, cautiously. “I’m going to show you how everything works. Most of it’s simple, but if you have questions, ask. Tonight I’ll cook dinner, but from tomorrow you’ll take your turn.”

She watched me as a crippled deer does a hunter.

“Do you understand?” She nodded. “Good. But first I’m going to take the phone outside and call Dornan.” No reaction. “I won’t tell him where you are now, but I will say I found you, that you’re all right, but that you don’t want to talk to him at the moment. Would that be a fair statement?”

She started to nod again, then said, “Yes.”

“I will also tell him that either you or I will get in touch with him again within a week.” With luck, she wouldn’t be here that long.

Outside, late evening sun pooled on the canopy like syrup and the air felt slow and thick. Somewhere a wildcat would be crouching on a maple limb, waiting for a turkey to strut by; newly fallen leaves would rustle with the beetling of shrews and chipmunks; flycatchers would start swooping through the invisible insect towers hovering above the leaves, snipping up their dinner. It was just after six o’clock, a busy time at the coffeehouses. I called his home phone; this would be easier for everyone if I talked to his machine.

“It's Aud. I found her and have her somewhere I can keep an eye on her. She won’t be running off anywhere anytime soon. She’s fine but doesn’t want to talk to anyone at the moment. We’ve agreed she’ll call you in a week, if not before.” I lowered the phone, not ringing off but not knowing what else to say. For months, Dornan had been having god knows what nightmares about Tammy maybe sitting in seven separate garbage bags in a ditch alongside some dirt road in Alabama, or getting married to a red-haired, pompous psychologist, or wandering New York in an amnesiac daze. And he had helped me. I lifted the phone again. “Dornan, she was glad to leave. I think she’s been through a bad time, emotionally, but I think she’s going to be just fine. I’ll make sure she talks to you soon. And Dornan—she hasn’t thrown away your ring.”

I closed the phone up and resisted the urge to walk into the trees.

Inside, I set about showing Tammy the dos and don’ts of trailer living. I began with the stove and refrigerator, then took her outside to show her the propane hookups. I didn’t want to get blown up in the middle of the night just because she wanted a cup of coffee and the pilot light was out. “The fridge operates on propane, too. Here’s the shower. Gray water capacity is only sixty gallons, so you won’t be using it often. You turn the hot water on here, like so, but again, you won’t be using that much. The toilet is pretty self-explanatory and I’m expecting you to use it as little as possible.” Black water capacity was only forty gallons, and there were plenty of trees to use as screens. “We’ll get most of our freshwater from the pump, and there’s a stream we can use while the weather is good.” Ah, but how much longer would that be? “When you use the stream, use only the shampoo, soap, and toothpaste on this shelf. I don’t want you killing the trout. Over here is the TV. Music. Again, use sparingly. We can prime the batteries anytime, but it’s noisy, and I like my peace and quiet. Tomorrow I’ll show you how to use the generator. Crockery down here, bigger utensils up here, tins in the pantry. Dry food and other staples in the hogpen. No open food to be stored in this trailer except in the fridge,” Which was air-tight. Telling her about the bears could wait for tomorrow. “Beer in here.” I took two bottles from the fridge and opened them, but didn’t hand her one. “Which reminds me. You have a decision to make: you can drink, or you can take sleeping pills. It’s reasonably safe out here, but not if you mix and match your poisons.“

She nodded. I sipped my beer with obvious appreciation but didn’t hand hers over.

“You’re saying I have to decide right now?”

“Right now.”

“Jesus. You’re not my mother.”

My mother wouldn’t have cared. “My land, my rules.”

“I’ll take the beer.” I took another sip from my bottle.

“Jesus!” She rooted around in her bag, handed me both bottles of pills.

I handed her the beer. “What do you want for dinner?”

I lay in bed and watched moonlight inch its way down the wall by my side. Tammy had been asleep for over an hour; the whole trailer hummed with her presence.

After giving me the pills, she had eaten her dinner quietly and cleaned up without being asked. Even after she was in bed I felt her cowering, quivering, afraid to make a noise in case I disapproved and did to her whatever had been done to her in New York.

When someone cowers, their body language says, essentially, Hit me. The permission is there, they are telling you they will not retaliate, and I could feel this terrible urge to throw aside my duvet, stride down past the galley, and drag her outside by her hair into the moonlight. Her shirt would ruck up around her waist, her eyes would be black in the silver light, she would look up into my face and see hard bone and shadow, wet strong teeth, and she would tell me everything. Then I could take her somewhere else, get rid of her, tell Dornan, I found her, here’s what happened to her in New York, and I would finally be alone again, and safe and quiet. It was tempting, and I resented the temptation.

I
surged upright, then realized it was morning,
and that the noise that had woken me was Tammy leaving the trailer. I knelt on the bed and watched through the window as she took a pan to the pump and filled it, then studied the pile of firewood by the pit. She stood there for a while, then looked around. I’d put the hatchet away before leaving for New York. She went to the hogpen, hauled open the door, and disappeared inside. I imagined her studying the different axes. She reemerged with the hatchet.

“Promising beginning,” Julia said, joining me at the window.

Tammy glanced around again, as though she thought someone was watching from the trees, then lifted a log onto the chopping stump. The swing needed improvement, but she got the hang of it after a while and soon had a small pile of kindling at her feet. She took off her sweatshirt.

“Interesting. Oh, don’t look at me like that. I meant the fact that she has a clue how to build a fire.”

“She hasn’t built the fire yet,” I pointed out.

“She has lost weight, though.”

Tammy was about five foot six. When I first met her, I would have guessed her weight at a lush hundred and forty-five pounds. With her dark hair and eyes and golden skin she had been as sleek as a seal. Now some of the luster was gone, and about fifteen pounds of fat. On another woman it would have looked fine, but on Tammy it was all wrong. Her breasts no longer plumped out her T-shirt with soft weight; the seams of her jeans did not strain over hip and buttock as she knelt on the turf by the fire pit; the bones of her face, once softened with subcutaneous fat, stood out sharply.

She had her back to the trailer, face to the woods, but I could see enough of what she was doing to know that her first attempt to light the fire would be a failure. The kindling sputtered and went out. She looked around again. Perhaps it was some kind of tic. She pulled the pile apart, rebuilt it along much the same lines as the first, and tried again with the same result. This time she took everything apart and thought about it for a while, then carefully made a pyramid of twigs and dry grass surrounded by the seasoned kindling. It caught at the first try and she watched it with quiet pleasure. Too late she realized she should have brought more fuel, and the brave little blaze died to nothing.

Julia lay down and stretched luxuriantly in the pool of sunshine on the bed. “Are you going to let that poor girl struggle out there for hours to get a fire going?”

“Let her do her learning in private.” Even as I watched, Tammy assembled what she would need: grass, twigs, seasoned kindling, green wood as fuel.

This time it worked. I watched long enough to see the fire blaze up merrily and Tammy carefully hang the water over the flames, then turned back to Julia. She was gone.

I dressed in boots, shorts, and tank. The soap and toothpaste and towels in the bathroom were undisturbed. I thought about that for a while, then brushed my teeth at the sink, used the toilet and flushed it, and went outside. The air was cool and still, and my boots left tracks in the dew.

She scrambled to her feet. “I thought you might want some coffee when you woke. Or some cooked breakfast.”

“Thank you.” The fire wouldn’t be much good for cooking until it had been burning long enough to produce coals, but there was no point in spoiling her triumph. “Don’t make my coffee too strong.”