The Story Keeper (19 page)

The leek-digging woman straightened, bracing a hand on the small of her back. She watched me with consternation from beneath her sunbonnet.

A half mile farther along, I crossed a small bridge, rounded a corner, and discovered the reason. The road ended abruptly at a twelve-foot chain-link fence that was incongruously modern and decidedly familiar.

I should’ve known, from the direction the road was going, that it would eventually conflict with the domain of Evan Hall. No telling how many of these old logging trails he’d managed to remove from public use when he’d sectioned off his mountaintop.

Apparently my sightseeing trip was over, but it didn’t matter, I supposed. By the time I wandered all the way back to the highway and drove to Towash, then twelve miles beyond to Lane’s Hill, Coral Rebecca might be home. I wanted to talk to her first. The letter had come from her. Of all my sisters, Coral Rebecca,
the quiet one, was the most
together
. Her husband was still working for the timber company, last I’d heard, which meant they had regular income other than welfare, disability, and whatever they could make at swap meets.

A bird flitted past as I slowed to cross the bridge again. Its perch caught my eye
 
—a rusted sign, the letters and numbers almost faded beyond reading.

Sarra Bend Bridge

I blinked, hit the brakes, and looked again.
Sarra Bend Bridge.
It wasn’t my imagination.

The bird flitted off as I exited the car, blocking Friday’s hasty attempt to follow. Somewhere upstream, a waterfall rushed and gurgled. Its music enveloped me, giving the moment a dreamlike quality as I moved toward the sign, touched the surface, ran my fingers along the clinging scraps of paint, marveled that it could be there.

Had someone
 
—Evan Hall or whoever the story’s author really was
 
—named a character after this place, or had this place been named for a woman who
really existe
d
? Could the story be true?

Grabbing my phone, I snapped a photo, intent on preserving the proof. Proof of
what
, I had no idea. The mystery teased my senses as I returned to the car and rolled slowly onward, the bridge fading in the rearview.

I stopped where the woman was digging, got out again, and walked to the edge of the grass, Friday watching from the window.

“Ya lost?” She shook the dirt off a clump of roots before looking up. In the shadow of the bonnet, her face was weathered and
leathery, her mouth puckered inward, indicating the absence of teeth.

“I didn’t realize the road was closed off down there.”

“Been while now, thataway. No town down there n’more.” She returned to digging, offering neither an opinion nor interest in more conversation.

“I was wondering about the bridge. There’s a sign on it that says
Sarra Bend Bridge
. Do you know where that name came from?”

Bracing a hand on her back, she mopped her forehead with an arm and observed me. “Be Sarra Crick there, and Sagua Falls up a piece.” The trowel traced the line of tall trees at the end of a cleared field. “Been such long’s I knowed it. My pap brung the mule teams fer takin’ out the old mill bridge so’s this’un could go up, back in Depression days. Them letters was a-scratched in a bur oak tree up the way yander-piece.
S-A-R-R-A
.

“Mama never did cotton it much. Said the Cherokee done it, and it were a heathen word. But she’s a nervish type, my mama. Growed up over’ta Asheville. Never did like it too good down t’holler. Back when there wadn’t no highway, folk went on thisaway to Towash. Was a mill ’n’ a mill town down the crick. Ain’t there n’more.”

Nodding toward the road, she dusted her hands. “Used’a have us a stand, front a the house. Sold vegdables and rootstocks. Not many folk wander down here n’more . . . less they’re a-stayin’.” A practiced eye turned skyward, and the light caught her time-weathered face. “Rain’s a-comin. You bes’ git out while ya can.”

Chapter 18

C
louds stretched over the mountains, muting the afternoon light in Coral Rebecca’s yard. Beneath a thick growth of pines, the blue modular house nuzzled a rock ridge. A pretty location. The place was clean and well kept, but small for a family of four. In a winter-barren garden spot nearby, the last of the fall onions waited to be harvested. White bedsheets snapped on a clothesline, the breeze breathing life into them.

I recognized the front porch from some of Coral Rebecca’s Christmas pictures, I thought.

Across the yard, two pairs of small feet cavorted behind the clothesline. Little-girl giggles danced over the grass, then halted at the noise of my car door closing. An imp who looked startlingly like Coral Rebecca peeked around the edge of a sheet, and then another girl, slightly older, trotted out a few steps and stood with her head tipped, looking at me. She resembled Coral
Rebecca too. White-blonde hair, luminous blue eyes, thin limbs draped in pale skin that didn’t take to the sun, except to burn.

“Deedee?” I guessed, based on the last set of photos. The ones that had arrived just before the request for money. This was Diane Lenelle, named after my sister and my grandmother, but they called her Deedee.

Her younger sister wandered out, and Deedee extended an arm to stop her from coming closer. The motion was so familiar, I almost felt it in my bones
 
—that quick, protective instinct between siblings who never felt fully safe. Who weren’t quite certain of anything. I hadn’t been prepared for the girls to remind me so much of us. It almost hurt to look at them, garbed in long, old-fashioned dresses that fell below the calves. Burgundy cotton. Homemade. Sunday clothes, no doubt. Their curly hair was French braided in double plaits behind their heads.

“I’m your aunt Jennia Beth.” Even after hearing it a few times over the recent days, it still felt strange to say it. I had been
Jen
for so many years now. The only time I saw
Jennia Beth
was on insurance forms and legal paperwork, and I hated it even then. “Is your mama around?”

Deedee flicked a glance toward the house, gauging whether she should attempt to run past me, calculating the risk of abandoning her little sister with a stranger in the yard. The thought process was evident, just from watching.

“It’s okay. You two go on in and tell her Jennia Beth is here. I’ll wait.” I retreated a few steps to let them know I wasn’t planning to nab anyone on the way by. Kids among the Brethren Saints were taught to be careful of outsiders. Deedee bolted with her sister in hand, trying to move the three-year-old at a six-year-old’s pace.

After they were gone, I stood looking at the trees, trying to
wrap my mind around all of this, to prepare myself to appear in my sister’s yard after so many years. She would wonder why I was here. She’d expected a check, not a surprise visit. What if she felt that she was being hijacked? What if, by showing up without letting her know first, I was starting things off on the wrong foot?

But then, this discussion wouldn’t be ending in a good place, no matter how it began. I couldn’t tell Coral Rebecca what she wanted to hear.

A chill slid under my bomber jacket, and I hugged my arms, shivering against the wind from the gathering storm. The woman at Sarra Creek was right. A cold rain wouldn’t be more than a few hours behind. The clouds churning over the far peaks mirrored my thoughts as I waited.

I hoped Coral Rebecca came out of the house alone. I had the impression of her husband as a pretty decent guy, but in truth we’d never met. Levi had grown up in Towash. He’d joined the church in order to marry Coral Rebecca during her senior year of high school. I’d always wondered how deeply those who married in could accept the way of life on Lane’s Hill. My mother seemed to have tried. It was hard to believe that, to her, my father, his family, and the Brethren Saints had represented stability, and that false sense of continuity was the lure that brought her in. She’d grown up being passed around between relatives and drug-addicted parents, enduring worse situations than the one she found herself in when my father moved her to the little trailer down the road from his parents’ house.

Even though I resented my mother for leaving, for not being strong enough to take us with her, I had always hoped that the world she found after ours was better to her. I pictured her living in a house with flowers like the ones now frost-browned in Coral Rebecca’s gardens, but I’d never know for sure.

My sister emerged from the front door with a hand shading her eyes, despite the dim afternoon. At the edge of the porch, she hesitated, then took a step, hesitated, then took another.

“Jennia Beth?” She stopped when she reached the front walkway, which was just a dirt path etched out by foot traffic. “Oh, my word! Jennia Beth! It
is
you!”

Coral Rebecca ran through the brown grass, her skirt swirling around her ankles, her feet bare, her open arms answering the question of whether she would be glad to see me here.

She wrapped me in an embrace, and the first thing that struck me was that my sister still smelled the same, still
felt
the same. Her hugs were gentle, like everything else about her
 
—as if she feared she might do damage if she hung on too hard. She smelled of the goat-milk soap we sold at swap meets. The scent of it had always seemed to cling in her hair. The skin of her cheek was as soft as it had been when she was a child. Tiny curls, escaped from her plait, tickled my cheek, just as they had when she was a toddler and Mama moved her into my bed to ready the crib for Joey.

Marah Diane had thrown such a fit that day. She didn’t want to be shifted to the mattress on the floor to sleep alone. . . .

“Why’re you here?” Coral Rebecca released me but threaded her fingers through mine and held on as if she were afraid I might skate away on the puffs of wind buffeting the clothesline.

I explained the working trip while the linens popped and whiplashed in the breeze. Coral Rebecca cast a concerned look in that direction. “You can get those,” I said. “I’ll help you.”

The girls had wandered onto the porch by then, the littlest watching us with a thumb in her mouth. Coral Rebecca sent Deedee in for a laundry basket and shoes, and we went after the sheets together, the girls surreptitiously trying to get a look at me as we completed the task and went inside.

For a while, the conversation was pleasant, touching on innocuous topics. The house was quiet, empty except for Coral Rebecca and the girls. The men
 
—Levi, my father, and Marah Diane’s husband
 
—had gone over to the next county to talk with a guy who wanted to trade a four-wheeler for one of my father’s coonhounds.

“’Course they won’t do no business on the Sabbath,” Coral Rebecca was quick to assure me as she poured sweet tea for the two of us in mismatched plastic tumblers. “But they needed Levi to drive ’em in our truck, and today’s the only day he’s got off from the timber comp’ny. He’s workin’ all the others.”

I glanced at the little girls standing near the bedraggled sofa, shyly watching Coral Rebecca and me. I wondered if they saw much of their dad. The logging life was one of long hours and dangerous realities.
Six-day workweek and ya hope ya come home
 
—that was always my father’s reason for not getting involved with timbering.

“It’ll sure help a whole lot if Daddy can trade off the dog. He’s already got a neighbor who wants to buy the four-wheeler off a him for cash.” My sister was leading around to money now. Her big, deepwater-blue eyes glided toward the girls. Nervousness, worry, concern etched her birdlike features. I knew the source. Despite the fact that her husband worked long hours, six days a week, there was nothing extra in this tiny house. The furniture was threadbare, secondhand and thirdhand. Coral Rebecca’s dress was faded, well-worn, and the tennis shoes she’d put on to gather the wash looked like they’d been glued back together a dozen times.

My family was leaning on her and Levi, sucking the life out of this tiny house. Coral Rebecca would never be able to admit that, even to herself. She was too tender. Too unfailingly kind.
Even as we sat drinking tea, she was probably wondering how she and Levi would foot the bill for the extra gas consumed in driving my father and my brother-in-law to attempt the trade of the dog today. Assuming the deal went through, no one would offer reimbursement.

Guilt settled heavy and cold. I felt it sitting on my chest like snow mass from an avalanche, choking the breath from me. These people were stealing my sister’s life. She wouldn’t have written to me if she weren’t desperate for some kind of relief.

How could I tell her no? And then . . . how could I say yes? I couldn’t keep digging myself further and further into a credit card hole in order to send money here.

“How are Evie Christine and Lily Clarette?” I barely knew my two youngest sisters. They were just girls when I’d seen them at Joey’s funeral, only a few years older than Coral Rebecca’s little ones.

“They’re fine . . . just fine.” My sister drawled the words, the sound strangely musical. Coral Rebecca always had such a pretty voice, but she was too timid to sing if she knew anyone was listening. “Evie Christine and Marah Diane are
both
expectin’
 
—Marah Diane just found out the other day. They’re so excited. We all are. It’s a blessin’. I’m gonna wash up all the baby clothes and the high chair and everythin’.”

But Coral Rebecca’s expression didn’t speak of blessing. It spoke of anxiety. Two more mouths to feed. More shoes, more diapers, more space. More needs, where needs were already going unsatisfied.

“I might’a told you that already in my letter.” A glance fluttered up again, then she focused on her tea glass, poked the ice cubes down with a fingertip. “I’m sorry if I’m repeatin’ myself. I’m nervous, I guess.”

“Nervous? Why?”

She was too polite to tell the truth. “I just am, I guess. You know I’m not too good at talkin’ to people. . . .”

“Mama, the dogs’re gettin’ after that car out yander,” Deedee observed, and both girls pressed close to the window.

“Oh no! Friday!” I stood and hurried the few steps to the front door. Friday had been sound asleep when I’d arrived. I’d forgotten all about him. He and the yard dogs were probably scrapping the rental car right now.

The girls scampered through the door behind me, Deedee lifting her skirt and passing me in a barefooted mad dash, her thin legs as agile as a doe’s. The girl could fly, just like her mother. The coaches had begged Coral Rebecca to run track at school, thought she might earn a scholarship even, but my father had forbidden it.

By the time I reached the car, Deedee was dragging a lanky bluetick hound off the car, kicking at a mutt, and yelling at a third dog. Her younger sister arrived a few steps behind me and rescued a puppy from underneath the vehicle, while I opened the door and extricated Friday.

“You ga a puppy!” the younger girl giggled.

“Oh, he’s not a puppy. He’s a grown-up. He won’t get any bigger.” Friday displayed a full mouth of teeth, either trying to prove his age or get his bluff in on the hound as it dragged Deedee closer.

“What kinda dog is tha-ut?” Deedee drawled, giving Friday a cross-eyed look.

“He’s a Chihuahua. A fat one.”

“He don’t look too friendly-like.”

“He isn’t.” Other than the girls across the hall, who were older, Friday had never been around children as far as I knew. “He’s grouchy.”

“Where’d ya git ’im?”

“I found him.”

“We got a couple’a
them
kind.” Deedee indicated the mutts now sniffing around our legs. “Papaw said he’d come shoot ’em for us, but Daddy said just let ’em be. They ain’t hurtin’ nothin’. That’un had pups, too. But just this pup lived. Sissy likes it.”

Sissy offered up the puppy, and surprisingly Friday didn’t try to eat it.

“He’s cute,” I said, but I had a feeling the last thing Coral Rebecca needed around here was another mouth to feed.

I returned to the house in a gaggle of dogs and kids, Friday wiggling in my arms, trying to alternately threaten and sniff noses with everyone. One of the mutts stepped on Friday’s leash as I reached for the door, and the girls and I paused a moment outside the screen, untangling everyone.

Coral Rebecca was on the phone in the kitchen, the olive-green cord wrapped around her finger, her back turned to the door. Her voice drifted through the screen. “I don’ know. She said she’s here for work. . . . I don’ know, Marah Diane. I think you jus’ need a come down here, and the two a you oughta visit. . . . Yes, she got my letter. She said so. We didn’ talk on it much but . . . Okay. . . . Okay. . . . Well, jus’ bring the kids. They can play with Deedee and Sissy.”

The screen door slammed behind me as I went in.

Coral Rebecca’s shoulders jerked beneath a heavy white sweater she must’ve pulled on while I was outside. She turned toward me, pressed a smile, and said into the phone, “Jus’ come on down soon’s you’re ready, then, Marah Diane. We’ll be here.”

Depositing the receiver, she crossed back to the table, frowning at Friday as I set him down on the little patch of chipped-up linoleum in the entryway.

“What in the world’s that?”

“It’s a
She-wow-ya
.” Deedee’s approximation was adorable. She dropped to her knees beside Friday, then squinted up at me. “’Cept’n, this is a
boy
dog. Did you know tha-ut? It’s gotta be a
He
-wow-ya.”

Coral Rebecca slapped her hand over her mouth, and a snicker broke through. A giggle tickled my throat, and in an instant, my sister and I were laughing together for the first time since childhood. I stood next to Friday for a minute, just to make sure everything was all right as the girls investigated his ears and admired his tiny toenails. He seemed to be enjoying it, actually. Maybe he’d been a little girl’s dog before ending up abandoned in a Dumpster.

“Well . . . I hate to . . . tell ya this but . . . he ain’t real pretty,” Coral Rebecca chugged out, her laugh high and sweet.

“Ma-
ma
!” Deedee protested. “I think he’s purdy.”