The Ghosts of Varner Creek (12 page)

She held me back to get a look at me and with the renewal of air I told her, "Pap says Mama left. He says she took Sarah and left."

"I know," she said, "Your daddy done told your uncle and me."

I looked up at her and choked back the tears threatening to fill my eyes again,

"Why would she do it, Aunt Emma? Why would she leave and not take me? Not even tell me goodbye?"

She held me close and kissed me on my head. "I don't know, honey. I don't know what's going on except what your daddy told us, and I'm not sure what to make of that."

I thought maybe she knew more than I did, "What'd Pap say? He didn't tell me nothin' except Mama took Sarah and left, and that he didn't know to where or why."

"Well," said Aunt Emma, "That's more or less about what he told us. He walked over to our place this morning and told us your Mama had packed up her and Sarah's things and left. Told us you ran out the house this morning and he wasn’t sure where you had gotten off to. I want to talk to you about things but not right now, I don't think." She gave me a kind and pitying look, "Bless your heart, you look a mess, Sol. I think it'd be best if you came and stayed a while with your uncle and me, just until we get things sorted out. I think you need to go and get cleaned up and then get something in your stomach first, though. Why don't you go wash up a bit and I'll fix you something to eat?"

I wasn’t really hungry, but didn’t even have enough energy to say so, so I blindly obeyed. "Okay." I went out to the well and drew up a bucket while she went to the kitchen. Lilipeg's absence made it unusually quiet and I was struck with how small and empty her pen looked. I put the bucket on the edge of the well and as I leaned over it there was a strange greenish tint in the water, as though algae had sprung up in the bucket, and for a moment I thought I saw something move inside. I peered over the water and the reflection I saw staring back at me was not my own. As I looked down, Sarah was looking back at me. But as soon as I blinked she was gone. The bucket of water was its normal color and clarity, and the reflection was my own dirty face, still with a few indentions from this morning’s nap. It’s because I’m thinking of them, I told myself. I had imagined Sarah’s face looking back toward our house as the wagon disappeared down the path and now I was seeing her reflection when it wasn’t really there. I put it out of my mind and tried scooping handfuls of water on my face to clear my head. Finally I just dunked my entire head completely in. As soon as my face hit the water a horrible nightmare hit me. My head was pounding in pain and some unknown force was holding my head under the water. I was trying to catch my breath but couldn’t. Every time I struggled to pull away, I was pushed further in. I tried to yell but no voice came, only bubbles of air. My mouth, too, was pulsing in pain. Then I felt my head swim with dizziness and knew no more. I came to again to the sounds of Aunt Emma.

“
Sol! Sol? Come on, Sol. Take a breath.” She was patting my back hard and I spit up a bit of water. “That’s it! Take a deep breath.” I opened my eyes and was on the ground gasping and shaking. I looked up to see the bucket still on the well’s edge, and I crawled backwards as fast as I could away from it, looking all around for whoever, or whatever, might have been there trying to drown me. But nobody was there except Aunt Emma, who looked like she’d had a horrible fright herself. “Sol? Are you okay, honey? What happened?”

The air came to me in deep gasps like when I had been running earlier and my lightheadedness swirled around before settling. “I don’t know,” I told her. “I was washing up and then the next thing I knew I was having a terrible nightmare.”

Aunt Emma was feeling my head and checking my eyes like a seasoned nurse. “Oh, honey, I think you fainted. Can’t say I’m surprised what with all that’s going on. You must have passed out and had yourself a bad dream. I was in there just settin’ you a plate when I looked out and saw you sprawled out on the ground. You’re just givin’ me one scare after another today, boy.”

Fainted hell
, I thought. That was the most realistic dream I ever had. I thought I must be going crazy. My mind has gone damaged like Sarah's and I've lost my wits. I sat there on the ground, looking this way and that, my eyes eventually falling back on the bucket still sitting on the edge of the well. It looked plain as ever. I stared stupidly at it in disbelief. I listened and watched that bucket as though it were a snake that I expected to pounce at me at any second, but it didn't do anything. And after a little bit I started feeling foolish that I was expecting it to. Finally, I convinced myself that Aunt Emma was probably right. The day’s events, and all the running I had done, had so worn me down I wasn’t thinking straight. I was so distraught over Mama and Sarah leaving that I was losing it. I let Aunt Emma help me up gently. She patted the dirt off the bottom of my pants like Mama had done in such a way that there could be no doubting their relativity.

"Come on, now, I've got some breakfast over the fire that'll be ready soon. You come on in and have a bite and you’ll feel much better."

After we ate she helped me pack up my clothes and things. She spent a while in Mama and Pap's room, looking for things left behind by her, I'd imagine. There wasn’t hardly a thing to be found. It was almost as though Mama had never lived here at all. Aunt Emma was going through everything thoroughly, though, and I knew she was looking for anything, good or ill, that would explain Mama’s sudden disappearance.

Pap never came home during this time. I could only assume he was over at their house or maybe even out working the field. It seemed impossible to me that Pap could just go to work like it was any other day, but then again Pap didn’t seem too surprised this morning, as though he’d long suspected the possibility of Mama leaving him.

After a while Aunt Emma said we were ready to go and we climbed up in the wagon. "Ho, Joe! Get on now!" she called. And with a flick of her wrists on the reins we started along to her house.

Aunt Emma let Joe walk at a leisurely pace and it took a good thirty minutes to reach Uncle Colby and Aunt Emma's house. The dirt road between wasn't a straight line, but rather curved in and around the fields. We spent the first few minutes in silence, but Aunt Emma would peek over at me now and then. Finally she spoke up, "Did your Mama say anything to you yesterday?"

I had already thought back while I was eating on the very same question, "No, ma'am. Nothing I can remember, at least."

"But she seemed a bit out of sorts at dinner," she said, "you reckon?"

I shrugged my shoulders a bit, wishing I had paid more attention to everything the day before. I thought about Mama’s strangeness while reading us the bedtime story, and how I should have been more interested in what was gnawing at her.

The wagon bounced along in a rutted area of the road and I shifted uncomfortably on the wooden bench. The cotton fields on either side were beginning to bud and I watched a rabbit off to our right happily hopping along. It was a long minute that seemed to stretch itself out before she asked another question. "Her and your daddy been fighting much lately?" Now she was looking me in the eye, and she asked almost in a whisper,

"Has he been hittin' on her again?"

I didn't meet her gaze. I don't know why but for some reason the way she asked me made me feel a bit ashamed, not only of my Pap, but also of myself in some odd way. Pap’s old ways were like a family secret we’d all kept, though it wouldn’t have surprised a lot of folks in town, I guess. I tried not to think about it and instead watched Joe's back as he trudged along.

"Sol?" Aunt Emma politely prodded, "Has he?"

"No, ma'am. Not for a long time, now, that I seen." It was the truth, but I wasn’t so young that I couldn’t remember what she was talking about. Joe gave an occasional swish of his tail trying to beat off a stubborn horse fly. Somewhere under this same hot sun and the sky decorated with cotton, Lilipeg was probably also swatting at flies. Mama and Sarah were probably talking about wherever they were going. Would Sarah ask about me? Would she beg and plead with Mama to go back and get me?

Whap! Joe's tail whipped around and ended one particular fly's annoyances.

Another was there to take its place, though. I watched the horsehair whip dart this way and that and those memories of Pap hitting Mama around came back to me. He and Mama could be arguing in the kitchen about something and just like Joe's tail his arm would fly out and slap her. Only when Pap did it, he did it a little faster and harder than Joe the horse.

Chapter 7

I can’t say he was a kind man. I guess that much is obvious. Pap had his good and bad like anybody else, but there seemed more of the bad in him than the other. He had a hard life and just wasn’t able to find the happy things in living most of us can. It seems both cruel and sad, but the only times I really remember Pap smiling was when somebody else was getting the short end of things.

When I was little and used to visit Aunt Emma, Uncle Colby used to grab me by the ankles, turn me upside down, and spin me around until I was dizzy. Then we’d both laugh as he set me down and I tried to walk in a straight line, failing miserably. I’d eventually flop down with nausea threatening, and then beg to do it again. Pap didn’t seem to like me playing this game with Uncle Colby, though, so he made up his own way of playing it. He’d grab me by the ankles, turn me upside down, but then hang me over the well playfully threatening to drop me. He thought it was hilarious, but I didn’t. I can’t help but to remember that feeling, hanging over the darkness of that black hole, crying out for the fear of it, and then looking back to see Pap smiling. Mama would often yell at him, “Abram! Quit it, you’re scaring him.”

“
Oh, I’m just foolin’ with ‘em.” Then he’d put me back on my feet and said, “You know you’re old man wouldn’t ever drop you, now don’t yah, boy?”

“
Yes, sir,” I told him. But the truth was I wasn’t really so sure.

“
Hell, if you think that’s scary, you should thank your lucky stars nobody plays the games with you that I played when I was your age.” I wasn’t sure what he meant, but the way Pap said it, I was thankful.

I never understood why Pap picked on me like that, whether he was happy to have that kind of power over me or happy that somebody else didn’t have that power over him, anymore. Maybe he was jealous . . . jealous that I didn’t have to suffer the things he suffered, so he felt like giving me a dose just so I’d appreciate not having the full measure. That’s just the kind of thinking Pap found perfectly rational. Whatever the reason, I was always scared he was going to take it too far.

Then there was the hitting, of course. One of the earliest things I can ever remember is of the time Pap went into a rage and gave Mama a full blown beating. I was only four at the time, but I can still remember it. I never saw my Pap the same after that. Whenever I looked at him, I didn’t see my father, I saw the monster hiding inside of him. This is not to say my Pap was always mean and hateful, but he was a servant to his demons and they often ruled his nature.

Before anybody could say my Pap was truly a worthless, evil human being, they’d have to know where he’d been in life. Abram Mayfield was born into hardship. The term hardship I’ve heard used many times to describe poverty, lack of love, neglect, what have you, but I use the term here in its most basic of meanings, which is to say all of the above and then some. He was an unwanted child, one of several children, and was sent to live with his uncle at the age of eight as his father died. That’s when things really went bad for Pap. His uncle had no love of children, and saw his nephew Abram as only an extra hand in the field and another mouth to feed. He agreed to take the boy on as long as Abram pulled his own weight. That’s what he told Pap’s mother, at least, but his idea of what constituted pulling ones own weight was distorted to say the least. I heard a lot of this from Pap’s own words growing up, and the rest Aunt Emma had gleamed from Mama.

Pap’s uncle worked him more than twelve hours a day, every day, in the fields at hard labor. If Pap failed to meet his uncle’s requirements and expectations, he’d go without food for that day and could expect a good beating. Or his uncle might be in a foul mood and decide to make a point. Pap told me once that he had been sick all day, but still working, and when he sat down to dinner that night his uncle put a plate in front of him with pig shit on it.

“
You do a shit day’s worth of work, boy,” his uncle had told him, “you get shit for dinner.” Pap tried to push the plate away but his uncle grabbed him by the neck and told him, “Eat it.” Pap had to eventually take a piece in his mouth, and when he threw up his uncle laughed and was satisfied. Then there was the time Pap stole a bit of moonshine from his uncle and got caught. His uncle tied him to a fence post at midday and told him that if Pap managed to untie the rope and wasn’t there when he came back he’d find and beat Pap to within an inch of his life. He ended up leaving Pap there until the following evening. I can only imagine what went through Pap’s mind as his body tried to sleep standing up, no guard from the elements, or the ants and bugs, no food or water, and not being able to do for himself when he needed to urinate. And even those weren’t the worst of it, I don’t think. There were other things Pap’s uncle did to him, things that don't bear going into detail over, but suffice it to say his uncle was an alcoholic, just like Pap would end up being, and until Pap’s arrival, his uncle had lived by himself with no intimate contact with others. He saw Pap as his property to do with what he wanted. Aunt Emma and I had a long talk about it years later, and while Mama had never told her outright what Pap had gone through, we both could imagine some pretty terrible things. Pap never was a well-adjusted man. He didn’t get any love growing up, so I guess it shouldn’t surprise anyone that when he had a family of his own, he didn’t really know how to love us, either. Pap struck out on his own when he was thirteen and drifted from place to place trying to eke out a living before he wandered into Varner Creek several years later and into Annie Stotley‘s life.