ALSO BY PAMELA STEELE

  Paper Bird

  Greasewood Creek

  For

  Beulah Fern

  October 1, 1955–April 15, 2015

  But love, sooner or later, forces us out of time . . . Of all that we feel and do, all the virtues and all the sins, love alone crowds us at last over the edge of the world.

  WENDELL BERRY

  Jayber Crow

  Contents

  Part I: Earth

  Granny Justice

  April

  Granny Justice

  Fort Campbell, Kentucky

  Tom

  Greyhound

  Carrie

  Deputy

  Bethel

  A Secret

  Last Days of School

  Bethel

  June Meeting

  Bethel

  Flying

  Snapping Beans

  Maynard’s

  Come a Storm

  Bethel

  Granny Justice

  Funerals

  Granny Justice

  Going to Ground

  Palimpsest

  Myrtle Gap

  Bethel

  October 24, 1968

  Lying In

  Searching

  Granny Justice

  A Christmas Card from Vietnam

  Time to Go

  Bethel

  Balsam

  Town

  Third Floor

  Bethel

  Part II: Water

  Flying Again

  Go Down, Miss Moses

  Mattie

  Laurel

  Wyla

  Bethel

  A Picture of Grace

  Invitation

  Baptism

  News

  Granny Justice

  Bethel

  Solomon

  Rena

  Tom

  Rain

  Alarm

  Keep Walking

  Granny Justice

  The Tipple

  A Red Thermos

  Goldie

  Toy Piano

  Birds

  The Smell of Antiseptic

  Shelter

  Macie

  Granny Justice

  Part III: Air

  Abandoned

  A Pink-and-White Trailer

  Bethel

  Vivian

  Store

  Shots

  People and Things, Gone Before

  Seng

  The Green House

  Arlo

  Prayer

  Hardy

  Hardy’s Place

  Tarpins

  Bethel

  Bathing the Dead

  Up on Five-Mile

  Sol

  Part IV: Fire

  Grace

  Acknowledgments

  About the author

  Part I

  Earth

  Granny Justice

  THEY’S THINGS THAT CAN ONLY BE KNOWED IN THE blood—the Memories, Mommy used to call it—a wordless knowin passed down through the generations. Things experienced in older times and languages that come back to us in dreams like we, ourselfs, had lived them: familiar frozen battlefields, dolls lost and found agin, the way sunlight lays on a wooden floor plank.

  If I was yet livin, I’d try to feature what it would’ve been like for June if things hadn’t turned out the way they did. I’d let myself imagine her gone to town, sometimes sensin Grace before she actually seen her—a lectric hum on the back of her neck or the momentary picture of a raw, green leaf turnin and turnin in the coal-black water. When she would look up, she would find the girl, her own child, almost a woman by then, a-standin in a store aisle or a-walkin toward her on a sidewalk, beautiful in the awkwardness of her age, her dark hair a veil over the scar that still yet cuts through her right eyebrow.

  June would be certain that Grace won’t, cain’t remember a particular gray sky, a roar that echoed off the houses and hills, the metal cocoon that pertected her from the angry churnin blackness, or the hands—June’s hands—reachin for her, liftin her little body free of that car seat, holdin her to the warmth of June’s own. There might would be times she’d come so close June might touch her—so near as to stop June dead for fear Grace might reach through the ether between them, and the girl would look up from whatever had her attention, and then, nerve to nerve, they wouldn’t be no way for either to return from the knowin.

  That were one way of seein it, I reckon. When you are dead, or in spirit as they say now, you’re sposed to know why somethin or another happened and what will occur next. That ain’t the way it goes. The dead have to wait to find out the future, just like the livin do.

  April

  IT WAS LATE WHEN JUNE PUT ON THE KETTLE—LATE enough, she hoped, for Isom and Bethel to be asleep. Late enough, for sure, to hear the brittle attic shrinking into its bones, the house beneath it shifting into the steady breath of night. Beyond windows and walls, the soft whir of spring peepers in the snowmelt branch between there and Granny Justice’s house, where no lamp had burned in the bedroom window since Granny passed away. Since she was a girl, June had looked for the light that told her Granny was up late reading her Bible or book of the month.

  When the water had boiled, she poured most of it into the washtub, then added dipperfuls from the well bucket to cool it enough to tolerate. She stood over the kitchen sink and washed her face with the rest of the kettle water and the Noxzema that Rena gave her last Christmas.

  The day had been warm for early April, more summer than spring, and just then, creek-cooled air drifted through the window screen, finding June’s skin as she pulled off her shirt and pants, the waistband button already difficult to undo. She reached up and tugged the light string and the room went dark, except for the yard light Isom kept on. She unhooked her bra and stepped out of her panties into the steaming water, sat hugging her knees to her chest.

  The water stung her feet and backside, her privates, but she waited it out—remembered those times that Granddaddy took them over to the swimming pool at Twenty-Two Mine, remembered how Rena, Tom, and the cousins dove into the icy, chlorinated water to get the shock over and done, how she’d held back, plodded in a few inches at a time, tried to acclimate to the cramp of cold water against her groin and then the sharp ache of it against her nipples. Truth was, she had always been a little afraid of deep water.

  June closed her eyes, let the creek air chill her tender breasts. The hot water still stung her skin below. She shivered, recalled a steaming day last summer when she and Ellis went swimming with her brother Tom and Lena Faye Hall in the holding pond up on the strip mine, how, after Tom had taken Lena Faye to lie on a blanket in the brush, she and Ellis had merely been two heads floating above the oily skin of water, blinded by the glint of minerals that lay on its surface, how their hands and legs sought each other below. She felt safe with him, and that day, she let him kiss her, both of them stunned by the strangeness of kissing in daylight.

  She wrung hot water over her shoulders and arms, took the Ivory soap from the seat of a nearby chair, swiped away the sludge it left on the vinyl. She scrubbed herself until the water had gone cool and turned the color of milk.

  A car drove past the house, moving up the holler, its headlights catching the undersides of the spring-tender leaves on Granny’s sugar maple. It made a metallic scrape as it crossed the bridge to Justice Branch. Probably Roger Dale going home after second shift. The sound of it reminded her of Tom’s coming home after late nights with Lena Faye. How she longed to be able to talk to him just then.

  A twinge started up in her belly, brought her back to her bath. She wasn’t sure whether it was time for the baby to be quickening. It was more like a feeling of absence than presence, a sadness brought on by thinking of Ellis, only weeks before, leaning over the truck seat to push open the door, offering her a chance she would take: a late winter’s afternoon ride to Morrison’s Drive-In in Myrtle Gap. She went without thinking much of Bethel’s disappointment should she be caught in the lie, or of Isom, who might whip her if he found out. She’d gone with Ellis, went skirting the foot of the mountain with the heater blasting and Percy Sledge on the radio. They rode by the green glow of dash light, with the rough heat of Ellis’s leg against hers and the scent of British Sterling that would stay on her tongue for hours, her coat collar for days.

  Then there was the quiet ride back, the tipple lit up against the bare, hulking mountain and her stepfather somewhere in the tunnels below. Ellis’s high beams scything the snow-crusted slate dump. Then, an early turn onto a side road where the startled eyes of night creatures stared from under frozen berry canes. Finally, the shut-off engine and winter stillness, the muffled ribbon of creek water running beneath a skim of ice and snow.

  He had turned to her in the darkness and kissed her. And then, again. She heard—felt—his breath and sigh, the roar of his blood in her own body. Her mind ran along behind it, chasing it across startled synapses.

  She had let him reach inside her coat and unbutton the buttons of her shirt, let his hand find her skin. No one had ever touched her there. She shivered.

  Are you cold? he’d whispered.

  A little, she said. Just then, she’d been picturing her mother at home, opening the stove door, letting orange light into the room as she banked coals for the night. She’d heard Bethel sigh as if she were in the car with them.

  Ellis turned the truck key. The sound of the
roaring heater, the dash lights shining like a clock face, jarred her back from where she’d gone, reminded her of the hour.

  I need to get home, she’d said. But then she had turned her face to his and, just weeks shy of her seventeenth birthday, gave in to the thing they had known was coming since they were kids. And then, just nights later, another parked car—another man—something she couldn’t have foreseen. Thinking of it made her ill.

  June came back to herself in the kitchen then, stood from the cold bathwater, let it sheet off her body. She ran a hand over the rising hill of her belly, then reached for the towel, buried her face in it, drew a deep breath of sun and outdoor air.

  Across the branch, Granny’s house was still dark, but there were times that June could swear she saw a light burning from deep in the house. When she pulled down the window to close off the draft, a sudden, soft light struck the glass, then a flood of it on the kitchen floor. June realized that the door had been opened, knew before she turned around who she’d find. Light streamed around her mother, already in her nightgown, standing in the doorway, mouth open, staring at her. Seeing.

  Granny Justice

  I KNOWED BETHEL’S GIRL WAS IN TROUBLE EVEN AFORE she did, for I could tell it in her eyes. Women get that particular look, like they carry a secret even they don’t yet know. I knowed Bethel was pregnant with Corrina, too, before she even knowed. Hit’s a story I seen over and over in my livin days, for my mommy was a granny woman, just like cousin Carrie Vance.

  By my accounts, the child was made in the wolf moon, the time of year for new beginnings. I do say! I spect that it belongs to that Akers boy, for I seen him drop her off down past my garden a few times. People allus forget that my land goes that far down, with part of it hid by kudzu on the fence and weeds grown up among the willows. I’ve seen some things from there. Besides, anyone could hear the boy’s truck comin for miles. I hope they’re in love.

  Isom is liable to pitch a walleyed fit after what went on with Rena, Bethel’s oldest. He’s the touchiest of men, gets riled up over a little bit of nothin, carries a slight forever. He’ll try to whup her for share, or worse, put her out, but I don’t believe Bethel will tolerate that. They lucked out that Rena and Watt could get married afore she was showin too awful much.

  They’s a even bigger reason Isom will rage, and that’s because Ellis is not pure white like Isom expects folks to be. He allows for that down in the mine when he’s workin alongside folks with darker skin, but he for shore don’t aboveground. He’s conveniently forgot that Bethel has some Indian in her, but you cain’t tell by lookin.

  If Isom throws June out, she can go live in my house. Ain’t nobody there since I been gone, save me, the roly-poly bugs, and a odd mouse or two. She could have my old bed, and I’d watch over her, wouldn’t pester her t’all less I had to.

  Sometimes I get to studyin on how life would be different had Bethel’s first husband Shag Branham not got hisself killed over on the Yellowjacket Mine road. Honey, he were a corker. He was but twenty-six when he died. Hit tore all of us up when it happened. I loved him like he were one of my own. It like to have killed all of us when we got the news.

  Even though this land has been passed down through the generations of women in my family, the old way, I had it in my will that Shag and Bethel would be equal owners after I was gone. Honey, soon as she married Isom Fields, I caught me a ride straight over to Myrtle Gap and had that lawyer, Mr. Fancher, draw up new papers. Hit’s Bethel’s land now, les Bethel dies first—and I cain’t feature she will, for Isom is poorly in his lungs. The scriptures says Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless. Isom Fields will not get even a speck of dirt off that land. I’m just liable to scrape it from under the fingernails of his dead hands when the time comes—take it back. He never grew up here, anyways. He’s from over to Oceana. No, buddy. When Bethel passes away, this land will go to Rena and June in equal portions if it ain’t blasted all to hades by then.

  Mostly, though, I just keep to myself and mind my own matters, but I wish I could tell Isom about June’s trouble so as to soften the blow—to prepare him and Bethel. I know my situation. They cain’t hear me if they ain’t listenin for me. They cain’t see me if they ain’t lookin. Bethel has not welcomed the second sight that the women in our family have. She’s awful religious and don’t believe in such.

  Hit’s a sorry thing the way Isom has done them kids. And now he’ll punish June for doin somethin he probably did plenty of in his day. It ain’t right that women have to carry all the shame. I prayed on it and decided to let it alone. Cain’t do nothin about it, no ways.

  Fort Campbell, Kentucky

  JUNE WATCHED THE BUS PULL AWAY FROM THE STOP. Diesel fumes lingered to mix with the odor of urine that filled the phone booth. She pushed a dime into the slot and dialed the number her brother had scribbled at the bottom of his letter.

  Above her, a moth battered the cracked light cover. She grabbed the shelf for the phone book, tried to steady herself, took a deep breath. Stale aftershave on the mouthpiece, layered over the other smells—cigarettes and anxious breath—brought up a small retch. At the other end of the phone line, a pulsing buzz, then the sound of the dime dropping into the change return as she hung up the receiver.

  She buckled the folding door, poked out her head into the late-spring evening. Traffic whooshed by on 41-A, sent up fans of rainwater that settled on the storefront parking lot. She surveyed the glittering windows of the dry cleaner, tiny bar, a Chinese restaurant. Across the road, at Gate 4 of the army base, a lighted sign with pictures of a parachute and the head of a bald eagle, the bold black words under them: 101st Airborne. Beneath the sign, a line of cars waited to drive past the guardhouse. Tom was in there, somewhere among the rows of buildings and columns of lamp-lit trees. She pictured the stark barracks he’d described in his letters and remembered what he’d said when he enlisted on his eighteenth birthday.

  I cain’t go down in that mine no more, June. It’ll kill me for sure.

  She’d begged him to stay, to get a job on the state road, to think about his girlfriend Lena Faye, but in the end, he’d said, At least, this way, I’ll have a chance of gettin out of here before I kill Isom.

  •

  June flattened the door against the noise and spray of traffic, pushed the dime back into the slot, dialed again. The phone rang, then a man answered in a peculiar accent—Somewhere far north of here, farther than Ohio, she thought—and she asked for Tom. The man told her they’d send a runner for him, and as he said it, his voice cracked some of the words in half. She featured that he probably wasn’t yet even eighteen.

  Rain tapped an uneven rhythm on the phone booth. June opened the door again and waited. She thought back to an evening last week, when she’d come home from the ball field down in the creek bottom and found her stepfather standing in front of the mirror that hung on the outside wall of the house during warm-weather months. The sun was not yet down, but it skimmed the yard, settled on the diagonal ridges of bone beneath his thin T-shirt.

  He’d flattened the creased skin of his face with his fingers, scraped at a pale cheek with the safety razor he kept in a wooden cheese box on the kitchen shelf. He stopped, nodded at June’s reflection in the mirror.

  June, he said.

  Hey, Isom, she’d answered, trying to gauge his mood.

  Isom wiped his face with a thin towel, once white but grayed by coal dust, then turned his head from side to side to check his work. He said, Where you been?

  Just then, she’d called up a memory of him rubbing his whiskers on her neck when she was a little girl, his stretched-out arms, him laughing and pretending to want a hug. When she went to him, he’d scratch her neck and cheeks with his stubbly face while she squealed—their long-ago game.

  She said, Down the road, playing softball in the bottom.

  He ran his hand over his face, said, Was hoping you weren’t up at Beauty’s. Jewel’s boarders are drinking this evening and making a racket, and I don’t want you walking past there by yourself.

  Too late, she thought, as she watched him dip the razor into the soapy water of the wash pan, then bang it on the furrowed rim.

  Isom drew the blade from his Adam’s apple to his chin. He said, Who all was down to the ball field?