My dad, Mom had told us, was a Byler boy. He was a blast to be around, with this incredible energy, but she and he came from different worlds. Besides, he died in a mill accident before I was
born. And that was all she would say.
“You knew my dad?” I asked Uncle Tinsley.
“Of course I did.”
That made me so nervous, I started rubbing my hands together. Mom’s account of my dad had always left me hankering for more details, but she said she didn’t want to talk about him
and we were both better off if we put it behind us. Mom didn’t have a picture of him, and she wouldn’t tell me his name. I’d always wondered what my dad had looked like. I
didn’t look like my mom. Did I look like my dad? Was he handsome? Funny? Smart?
“What was he like?” I asked.
“Charlie. Charlie Wyatt,” Uncle Tinsley said. “He was a cocky fellow.” He paused and looked at me. “He wanted to marry your mother, you know, but she never took him
that seriously.”
“How come?”
“Charlie was a fling, as far as she was concerned. Charlotte was pretty shaken up when that wastrel, Liz’s father, decided he didn’t want to be a father after all. She went
through a wild-divorcée period and got involved with a number of men whom Mother and Father disapproved of. Charlie was one of them. She never considered marrying him. The way she saw it, he
was just a linthead.”
“What’s that?” I’d heard Mom use the word, but I didn’t know what it meant.
“A millworker. They come off their shifts covered in lint.”
I sat there on the floor, trying to take it in. All my life I had wanted to find out more about my dad and his family, and now, when I’d met someone who was related to him—and to
me—I’d acted like a nut job, calling him names and throwing peaches at him. And he wasn’t a thief. Since Uncle Tinsley didn’t mind Joe Wyatt taking the peaches, he
wasn’t actually stealing. At least, that was one way of looking at it.
“I think I need to go apologize to Joe Wyatt,” I said. “And maybe meet the other Wyatts.”
“Not a bad idea,” Uncle Tinsley said. “They’re good people. The father’s disabled and doesn’t do too much these days. The mother works the night shift.
She’s the one holding the family together.” He scratched his chin. “I suppose I could drive you over there.”
Something about the way Uncle Tinsley said that made me realize he didn’t want to do what he’d just volunteered to do. After all, he was a Holladay, the former owner of the mill.
He’d be paying a visit to the millworking family of the man who got his sister pregnant. It would be awkward for him to drop me off without coming in but probably more awkward to sit down
with the Wyatts and shoot the breeze over a glass of lemonade.
“I’ll go on my own,” I said. “It will be a chance for me to see Byler up close on foot.”
“Good plan,” Uncle Tinsley said. “Better yet, Charlotte’s old bicycle has to be around here someplace. You could ride it into town.”
I went up to the bird wing to tell Liz about the Wyatts. She was sitting in a chair by a window, reading another book she’d found in Uncle Tinsley’s library, this one by Edgar Allan
Poe.
When I told her about the Wyatts, Liz jumped up and hugged me. “You’re trembling,” she said.
“I know, I know. I’m nervous,” I said. “What if they’re weirdos? What if they think I’m a weirdo?”
“It’ll be fine. Do you want me to come?”
“Would you?”
“Of course, Beanstalker, you weirdo. We’re in this together.”
The next morning,
Uncle Tinsley found the bike Mom rode as a kid. It was in the equipment shed, where he also found his old bike,
but it needed a new tire, so Liz and I decided to ride double.
Mom’s bike was a terrific Schwinn like they didn’t make anymore, Uncle Tinsley said. It had a heavy red frame, fat tires, reflectors on the wheels, a speedometer, a horn, and a
chrome rack behind the seat. Uncle Tinsley wiped it down, pumped air in the tires, oiled the chain, and drew us a map of the part of town where the Wyatts lived, explaining that it was known as the
mill hill, or just the hill. With Liz pedaling and me sitting behind her on the chrome rack, we set off for the hill.
The day was hot and sticky, the sky hazy, and the rack dug into my behind, but along the way, we rode through cool stretches of woods where the branches of these big old trees reached out all
the way across the road to create a sort of canopy, and you felt like you were going through a tunnel, with patches of sunlight occasionally flickering between the leaves.
The mill hill was in the north part of town, just past the mill, at the base of a wooded mountain. The houses were identical boxes, many of them with the original white paint
now all faded, but some had been painted blue or yellow or green or pink or had aluminum or tar-paper siding. Chairs and couches lined porches, auto parts were crammed into some of the little
yards, and one grimy house had a faded rebel flag hanging out a window. But you could see that keeping up appearances was important to a lot of the folks on the hill. Some used whitewashed tires as
planters for pansies or had colorful pinwheels spinning in the breeze or little cement statues of squirrels and dwarves. We passed one woman out sweeping her dirt yard with a broom.
The Wyatts’ house was one that clearly showed pride of ownership. The sky-blue paint was fading, but the front yard was mowed, the bushes around the foundation were evenly pruned, and
little rocks lined the path from the front steps to the sidewalk.
Liz stepped back, letting me go first. I knocked on the door, and it was opened almost immediately by a big woman with a wide mouth and twinkling green eyes. Her dark hair, which had a streak of
white, was gathered in a loose bun, and she was wearing an apron over a baggy dress. She smiled at me curiously.
“Mrs. Wyatt?” I asked.
“I reckon I am.” She was drying her hands on a dish towel. They were big hands, like a man’s. “You all selling something?”
“I’m Bean Holladay. Charlotte’s daughter.”
She let out a shriek of joy, dropped the dish towel, then wrapped her arms around me in a spine-crushing hug.
I introduced Liz, who held out her hand in greeting.
“This ain’t a shaking family, it’s a hugging family!” Mrs. Wyatt shouted as she enveloped Liz in another crushing hug. She pulled us into the house, hollering for
Clarence to come and meet his nieces. “And don’t you be Mrs. Wyatt–ing me,” she told us. “I’m your Aunt Al.”
The front door led into the kitchen. A small boy sitting at the table stared at us with wide, unblinking eyes. There was a big coal cooking stove with two freshly baked pies on top of it.
Plates, bowls, and pots were stacked on the shelves according to size, and ladles and stirring spoons hung on a rack above the stove. You could tell Aunt Al ran a very tight ship. The walls were
hung with needlepoint and small varnished boards with Bible verses or sayings like
A SCRIPTURE A DAY KEEPS THE DEVIL AWAY
and
YOU CAN’T HAVE A RAINBOW
WITHOUT A LITTLE RAIN
.
I asked if Joe was there. “I met him yesterday, but I didn’t know he was my cousin.”
“Where’d you meet him?”
“In Uncle Tinsley’s orchard.”
“So you’re the peach thrower?” Aunt Al threw back her head and let out a huge laugh. “I heard you got quite an arm on you.” Joe was out and about, she said, and
usually didn’t come home until dinnertime, but he was surely going to be sorry he missed this. She had four children, she went on. Joe was thirteen, her middle boy. She introduced the kid at
the table as her youngest, Earl. He was five, she said, and he was different, not much strength, and he’d never really learned to talk—so far, anyway. Her eldest, Truman, who was
twenty, was serving his country overseas. Her daughter, Ruth, who was sixteen, had gone down to North Carolina to help out one of Aunt Al’s sisters, who had three children to look after but
had been taken down with meningitis.
A man came out of the back room, moving carefully like he was hurt, and Aunt Al introduced him as her husband, our Uncle Clarence.
“Charlotte’s daughters? You don’t say.” He was thin and slightly bent, his gaunt cheeks had deep lines, and his gray hair was crew-cut. He studied Liz. “You I
remember,” he said. Then he looked at me. “You I never laid eyes on. That momma of yours got you out of town before I had a chance to see my brother’s only child.”
“Well, now you got your chance,” Aunt Al said. “Be sweet.”
“Glad to meet you, Uncle Clarence,” I said. I wondered if he was going to hug me, like Aunt Al had. But he just stood there looking at me suspiciously.
“Where’s your momma?” he asked.
“She stayed in California,” I said. “We’re just here for a visit.”
“Decided not to come, did she? Now, why don’t that surprise me?” Uncle Clarence started coughing.
“Don’t be getting all cantankerous, Clarence,” Aunt Al said. “Go sit down and catch your breath.” Uncle Clarence left the room coughing.
“My husband can be a little crotchety,” Aunt Al told us. “He’s a good man, but his lot ain’t been an easy one—what with his bad back and the white lung he got
from working in the mill—and he’s sour on a lot of people. He also worries hisself sick about Truman being over in Vietnam, but he ain’t going to admit it. We’ve lost three
Byler boys to the war, and I pray for my son and all those boys over there every night. Anyways, how about some pie?”
She cut us each a fat slice. “Best peaches in the county,” she said with a grin.
“And you can’t beat the price,” I said.
Aunt Al burst into laughter again. “You’re going to fit right in, Bean.”
We sat down at the kitchen table next to Earl and dug into the pie, which was unbelievably yummy.
“How’s your momma doing?”
“She’s fine,” Liz said.
“She ain’t been back to Byler in years, has she?”
“Not since Bean was a baby,” Liz said.
“Can’t say I fault her for that.”
“Did my dad look like Uncle Clarence?” I asked.
“Different as night and day, though you could still tell they was brothers. You never seen a picture of your poppa?”
I shook my head.
Aunt Al studied the dish towel that she seemed to carry everywhere, then folded it into a neat square. “I got something to show you.” She left the room and came back with a thick
scrapbook. Sitting next to me, she started paging through it, then pointed to a black-and-white photograph of a young man leaning in a doorway with his arms crossed and his hip cocked. “There
he is,” she said. “Charlie. Your daddy.”
She slid the album over toward me. I almost heard the blood rushing in my head. I started to touch the photograph but realized that my hands were damp with nervous sweat, so I wiped them on Aunt
Al’s dish towel. Then I bent down until my face was inches away from the picture. I wanted to take in every detail about my dad.
He was wearing a tight-fitting white T-shirt with a pack of cigarettes folded into one of the sleeves. He had wiry muscles and dark hair, just like mine, though it was slicked back the way they
did in those days. He had dark eyes, also just like mine. What struck me most was his crooked grin, like he saw the world in his own special way and got a kick out of it.
“He sure was handsome,” I said.
“Oh, he was a looker, all right,” Aunt Al said. “The ladies all loved Charlie. It wasn’t just his looks. It was mainly the way he lit up the room.”
“What do you mean?”
Aunt Al eyed me. “You don’t know too much about your daddy, do you, sugar?”
I shook my head.
Charlie had been a loom fixer at the mill, Aunt Al said. He could repair anything. Had a head for it. He never got much in the way of a formal education, but he was real smart and all the time
on the go. He always had to be doing something. And when Charlie arrived at a party, that was when it started.
“You got his spark, I do believe,” Aunt Al told me. But Charlie Wyatt also had the wild streak that ran in their family, she went on, and that’s what got him killed.
“I thought he died in a mill accident,” Liz said. “That’s what Mom told us.”
Aunt Al looked like she was considering something. “No, hon,” she finally said. “Your daddy was shot.”
“What?”
“Gunned down in cold blood by the brother of the man he’d killed.”
I stared at Aunt Al.
“You’re old enough,” she said. “You ought to know.”
After Liz’s dad ran off, Aunt Al explained, Charlotte left Richmond and came home to Mayfield, changing her name back to Holladay. She was feeling pretty mixed up about it all and dated
around a bit. Then she and Charlie became sweet on each other. She ended up in a family way, and Charlie wanted to marry her, not just because it was the honorable thing to do but because he loved
her. But Charlotte’s father, Mercer Holladay, was of no mind to let his little girl marry one of the loom fixers from his very own mill. Charlotte also seemed to feel that, as much fun as he
was, Charlie was beneath her station.
Charlie was still hoping to change Charlotte’s mind when, one night at Gibson’s pool hall, a fellow name Ernie Mullens said something about Charlotte being a loose woman—to put
it politely. When Ernie refused to apologize, Charlie took after him. Then Ernie pulled out a knife. Charlie whacked Ernie upside the head with his pool cue, and Ernie fell against the pool table,
cracking his skull. It killed him dead. The jury decided it was a case of self-defense. After the trial, Ernie’s brother, Bucky, swore he was going to kill Charlie, and lots of people urged
him to get out of town, but he refused. Two weeks later, Bucky Mullens shot Charlie Wyatt down on Holladay Avenue in broad daylight.
“Your daddy was murdered,” Aunt Al said, “because he defended your momma’s honor.”
Her Clarence had sworn revenge, she went on, but Bucky was sent to the penitentiary, and when he got out, he left the state before anyone knew about it. Aunt Al said she was glad it had turned
out that way, but Bucky disappearing was one more thing that had made Clarence mad at the world.
Aunt Al took the photograph of my dad out of the scrapbook and placed it in my hand. “This is for you.”