The Memory Thief
A
LSO BY
R
ACHEL
K
EENER
“An Appalachian coming-of-age novel… intensely lyrical, emotional debut… Keener’s vivid imagery and lush, folksy language
evoke traditions… the novel succeeds in bringing to life a slice of mountain life…”
—Publishers Weekly
“This dark, dramatic novel set in the Appalachians is an impressive and often lyrical debut by a young writer born in Virginia…
Rachel Keener shows some serious literary chops; her characters are complex, her plot twists are pleasingly unpredictable
and her writing oozes atmosphere. Put this one on your summer reading list.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Keener reveals the dignity and sense of community among the outcast and itinerant.”
—Charlotte Observer
“It has been years since I’ve read a book as profoundly dramatic in its examination of survival as Rachel Keener’s
The Killing Tree.
This is a story of the magic and the meanness of southern mountain people. In one way or another I have known each of them,
and Rachel Keener knows them also. Her writing in this debut novel is wonderful.”
—Terry Kay, author of
The Book of Marie
Available from Center Street wherever books are sold.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental
and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2010 by Rachel Keener
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
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First eBook Edition: March 2010
ISBN: 978-1-59995-270-3
For Kip, and our gift of ten
Contents
A
NGEL
The fire stole everyone’s attention. The newspapers, the gossips, the farmers from miles away. What they overlooked, what
they never got close enough to see, was that the real story was in the smoke. How it hovered low, too heavy to soar. Filled
with too many dead things to ever rise.
Weeks earlier I hid a bag of supplies under the tobacco leaves. A little food and water. The money I stole from Daddy’s glove
compartment. A sweatshirt for warmth. Then I sat and whispered a drunk woman’s story to the fields. I called her Momma. But
if the night was cold enough, and sleep far away, then the drunk woman’s name might be my own. You can call me Angel.
The story was long, but only a few words really mattered. Words like
five thousand dollars. Carolina.
And
rich Holy Roller
. I stamped them in black-and-white letters behind the lids of my eyes. Like a map to someplace I was going. Like a key to
who I really was.
With my getaway bag packed, I held a match in my trembling hand. I struck it, and watched it glow against the Tennessee sky.
But then I thought of you, and my lips pressed together to blow out that fire. I’d forgotten something. Memories.
I went inside the trailer and tucked a couple in each pocket. Not the best ones, like good report cards or the birthday candle
Mrs. Swarm gave me in a cupcake. I left those to burn. What I tucked in my pockets were the answers to what had become of
me. To what I had seen and felt. I kept those things because I believed. Because I hoped one day you would ask.
I returned to the matches, read the words across the front of the pack:
Keep out of reach of children.
It had been seven years since the school safety lecture where the dream of fire first came to me. Local firemen got their
kicks from showing little kids spectacular pictures of barn fires and forest fires. But the ones that I returned to, snuck
back to an empty classroom during recess to see, were the trailer fires. Nothing was left but black ash on the ground. Only
a label at the bottom of the page—
Single Wide Trailer, electrical fire
—left any clue. When the firemen showed those pictures, they swore that nothing burns as completely or quickly as an old rusted-out
trailer. With the electrical wiring sandwiched in between wood that’s not really wood at all, just some sort of stiff paper
that’s cheaper to make than it is to cut a real tree. And the heat. Pouring down from a steamy Tennessee sun. The rusted metal
sucks it in, the cheap walls trap it, and it’s ready to burn up quicker than a matchbox.
“In five minutes,” the fireman said, “it’s all gone. Every picture. Every memory. That’s why we’re here today. To talk about
a safety plan.” Their point was about naming meeting places, how to open windows and feel for hot doorknobs. But I sifted
through that and started dreaming smoky dreams. Ones where everything disappeared in five hot minutes.
I waited long years to light that match. My own safety plan forming slowly, until it moved and kicked inside me with its own
life. And when the moment finally came, I moved my hand smoothly across the front of the pack. Felt the scratch of friction
inside my fist. Heard the quick hiss of new fire. And I smiled. Burning down Black Snake trailer was easy. The hard thing
was walking away, when what I wanted most was to watch it die.
But I couldn’t stay and risk being caught. So I hid in the bacca and thought of you. Whispered old familiar questions.
Where are you?
So much time has passed.
And where have you been?
Long after the sun had set, I saw smoke still hovering. Unwanted memories burning up the night as I sat whispering with my
heart on fire, shivering beneath the Tennessee moon.
H
ANNAH
Things go missing in Carolina. That’s what Hannah would remember most about her time there. It started easy, even sweetly,
with small things like words. The wasteful parts, whole syllables, disappeared around her.
Charleston
became
Chah’stun. Hurricane
became
her’cun
.
Yankee
was
Yank
, only spoken with a snort. Hard
g
’s were an insult. Good manners required a softer tongue.
Comfort went missing next. Hannah’s first hour in Carolina left her sweating in a way no powder-soft deodorant could help.
Poor Yank, dressed in stinging polyester. That night, after swatting away palm-size mosquitoes, she walked to the water and
stuck her face close enough to feel its mist. Sucked in her breath like a newborn ready to yell out a first cry.
Her family arrived with one suitcase each. Father’s was everything expected. Clothes, maps, sketches of bridges, and Bibles.
Mother’s was nearly the same. But underneath her clothes and soaps and Bibles was a small wedding picture. The one where her
husband reached under her veil and pulled her out for the kiss.
Hannah had been given the smallest suitcase and told to keep it light. But clothes weren’t a challenge. Gray and khaki ankle-length
skirts, gray sweaters, long-sleeved blouses, and a few pairs of pleated kool-lots—shorts that were so loose they looked like
skirts and fell the required eight inches below her knees. She dug through her nightstand drawer, searching for anything else
she might need. There were pictures of her and her friends at Bible camp. Flowers dried and pressed into an album page. A
folded-up two-inch triangle torn from a magazine page she found loose in a shopping cart. It hid the checklist:
Top Ten Ways to Know a Guy Likes You.
Hannah’s mother scanned the contents of her suitcase, pulled out a white shirt and replaced it with a yellow one. Then she
handed Hannah a trash bag and told her to clear the junk and organize her mess of books. Dozens of them were piled in sloppy
stacks around her room.
Those stacks began the day of her sixteenth birthday party. “No more banned books. You’re old enough and smart enough, so
if it’s literature you can read it,” Father announced. Hannah shook her head at him, embarrassed by the shock of her friends.
“Like Psalms,” Father whispered. “People quote happy ones, yet so many speak of suffering.” He handed her a copy of
The Grapes of Wrath
. “Like this,” he said.
That winter Hannah hid inside the Mission Room and made up for sixteen years of various versions of
Pilgrim’s Progress
. She loved that room. Maps lined the walls with little red flags pinned to all the exotic places her parents had served.
Shelves were filled with souvenirs—baskets woven by natives, broken pottery, and a hand-painted porcelain doll.
Babies were the last souvenirs her parents had collected. They spent their youth serving the miserable and poor of the world.
But at the age of forty-four they turned up pregnant in the middle of rural Philippines and realized they were more than missionaries.
They were a mother and father. And the first thing on their minds was the safety of their own. They left. For the security
of a hospital and a doctor. For the steady paycheck and good life Father’s PhD in structural engineering could offer. For
a little surprise they wrapped in pink blankets and named Hannah Joy.
All the energy they had poured into missions they now focused on building Hannah a spotless world. They lived in a neighborhood
that sparkled with money. And drove forty-five minutes into the countryside to the church where Hannah’s mother was raised.
They called it Tabernacle. The building’s great marble columns and stone archways set it apart from modern, redbrick churches.
And the women took it one step further. Their devotion to God and holiness was proven by floor-length skirts, high-collared
polyester blouses, and uncut hair.
When Hannah was three, her parents pondered their age. “I’ll be sixty-two when she marries,” Mother said dryly. And they began
to notice how different Hannah was from other little girls in their neighborhood. They watched her struggle to ride her tricycle
in gray baggy kool-lots, while other baby girls splashed naked in tiny plastic pools set in their front yards. It didn’t hurt
them when Hannah couldn’t ride the pony at a neighborhood party because her ankle-length skirt kept getting in the way. But
it made them see her need.
“I won’t conceive again,” Mother said. “I’m forty-seven.” So Hannah’s father took one last flight to the Philippines and came
home with Bethlehem Rose, a two-and-a-half-year-old orphan they called Bethie. Now two little girls struggled to ride a tricycle
instead of just one.
With only six months between their birthdays, the girls were nearly twins. One pale with white blond hair, the other golden
with black hair. Her parents were relieved that Hannah didn’t have to start kindergarten alone. Bethie was there beside her.
Both of them in plain grays and pastels, their hair in long braids down their backs.