three

 woodsmoke -- 8/1952

On sunday afternoons after church, when daddy had quarantined himself in his chapel with its sagging roof, spindled steeple, and crooked yard of crosses, we would go down to the creek and swim. The best way to get to the creek was through Mr. Fredrick's land. He lived on a piece of land meant for farming, but for as long as I could remember there had never been a solitary stalk of corn nor a single cottonplant rooted in its soil. There was a snuffed silo, belching rust from its rims and its old tin skin peeling back like an exoskeleton. The land was strangled with weeds and when it was hot out, the locusts would flock and clip by on the farmroad and you'd be able to hear the birch trees nickering and the ghosts of cornstalks lisping in their papery, dead language. Mr. Fredrick's house was single-roomed and on most days he would sit in his rockingchair on his porch, with its murmuring floorboards – some missing, some pried up partially with their nails bent and revealed like a serpent's. He was always bundled up with wool blankets. He had fought in the civil war on the side of the confederacy and his gizzarded skin sagged in purses and pouches. He smelled of gangrene and blue powder and old bandages always. And he would watch us wordless as we crossed his land to the creek.

 

The creek snuck through the valley, narrow and deep and forming little coves and swimmingholes and the best swimminghole was situated under a rim of young cottonwoods. Whispered camelias and other nameless, timid flowers would grow in pale convents in the shade, shying away from us like complimented ladies. Sometimes Ava and I would pick the camelias and undress them of their petals and float their petals white and whorled as thumbprints down the creek and we would do it very solemnly.

 

Other people had used the swimminghole before us – there was a little bridge built from spongy wood and a rope hanging from one of the cottonwoods that had once been used to swing from. Now it was gray and toweled and knotted and we were afraid that it would snap under our weight, so it hung there from the tree like an unused noose over the dark, lipped pool.

 

We left the church that day in our dresses that turned blinding white in the sunlight and stuck to our chests because of the heat. Mrs. Thebault, who would usually take Penny home with her – because father didn't trust Ava and me with her at home alone – was ill that day and we tramped through Mr. Fredrick's land with her in tow, wavering and stepping deliberately, very pale in the sun and wide-eyed in the sun. There were squash plants in the field growing among the weeds, with their big yellow blossoms gagged and blemished and their vines gray and dendritic, like paralyzed nerve endings. We had no hats, so we kept our eyes to the ground and we walked and we left the farmroad when we came to a deertrail through the woods that was cupped by trees. Ava had to hold Penny by the elbow so she would keep up with us. None of us spoke. The heat stole our voices. I didn't think a word could live in such conditions.

 

Through the skimpy birch trees with their skins peeling off like receipts, we could hear the creek frilling and ribbing over the clambering bottom-stones and we pushed our way into the clearing. A man squatting at the edge of the swimminghole turned around and we stopped. He was an indian, and though I had never seen an indian in my life, I knew he was an indian because of his long black horsehair tied up in a ponytail and the way his frown settled on his troubled, tectonic face, and because he smelled like woodsmoke and whiskey.

 

The wildflowers in the shade breathed, like sleeping royalty, pale and pillowed.

 

The indian made a face at us. I think it was a smile.

 

Behind us, Penny was making strange noises and jerking her head to the side and drool snipped from her lips.

 

The indian stood.

 

How do you do?

 

I nodded.

 

Just fine, thanks, said Ava.

 

Looks like an awful nice place to take a dip.

 

Ava nodded and smiled.

 

He capped the tin canteen of water he was carrying and tipped his hat at us and walked past us.

 

Ladies, he said.

 

When he walked past, we could smell the woodsmoke and the tanning hides and the sulfur of the ceremonial paint and we could see shadows of fireside celebrations with drum notes low and catacombed and wilting, iron figures passing in and out of the light, with their own shadows long and interconnected in a red, unspoiled lineage.

 

We watched him go.

 

We let Penny sit on the bridge and throw pebbles into the water and study the regiments of ants, walking singlefile and with some greater purpose.

 

The clouds were thin and dry as they passed overhead, like nursing mothers, and the wind spoke through the trees in prayers incomprehensible as the Latin ones spoken in vast, buttressed catholic churches. We stepped out of our dresses and we were even whiter in the sun and the dresses pooled around our ankles and we entered the water. We were white and silent as newts and we submerged and surfaced and slung our hair out of our eyes and we could feel the stones under our feet, slimy and shifting. The light from between the trees was warm on our skin and on the water. We could hear a radio from somewhere past the opposite bank, fuzzing, flustered, the cheap tin rattle of a trumpet and the downward sleaze of the trombone and we swam. Daddy would be home by dusk. Cicadas in the underbrush. The camelias white and concealed, like ladies underthings.

 

Petals floated by.

 

With water up to her chin, Ava looked at me, white water droplets caught in her eyelashes.

 

His name is Bo, she said to me.

 

I nodded. The guy you've been seeing?

 

Yeah.

 

What'd he do?

 

Oh he's a sweetheart. Wouldn't dream of doin nothin. Barely even kissed me when he had the chance. Real shy, idealistic guy. He can barely look at me, Fan. He can't barely look at me without blushing and sweating all over. Talks in whispers all the time and he whispers when he touches me.

 

There's a guy like that in Putnam County?

 

Ava smiled. Nah, he came in from Greensboro.

 

I was gonna say, I said. The pool shivered like a horse shaking off flies.

 

Daddy'd hate him.

 

Daddy hates everybody.

 

He's going to a university, you know. He's going to a university and he studies paintings and such and he writes poetry sometimes. He doesn't believe in God. He says God lives in everything, but he's not one thing and he says people nowadays have got the complete wrong idea about God.

 

Sounds like a heathen to me.

 

Ava splashed water at me.

 

But he's so godawfully nice to me, Fan.

 

I nodded.

 

Ava looked away. He wants me to go with him back to Greensboro while he studies.

 

I guess it won't help anything if I say daddy'll kill you?

 

Ava leaned back in the water and floated on her back.

 

No, she said.

 

We swam for a little while longer. And then we stepped out of the pool and wrung out our hair so that twisting braids and twines of water sneaked down our wrists and the day cooled around us and the radio across the bank turned off and we were alone. Even the cicadas had silenced, like unwound pocketwatches. I picked up my dress. Ava looked around.

 

Where's Penny?

 

I turned and looked toward the bridge.

 

Penny wasn't there.

 

I stepped into my dress and shoved my shoes on and my dress wasn't fully zipped in the back.

 

Check the water, I said.

 

Ava put her hand to her mouth.

 

Get your dress on, for godssakes, and help me check the water!

 

We ran along the bank of the creek, the silence absorbing the sound of the snapping twigs and our heavy breath and our thoughts into its cold, empty belly. Blackberry vines snagged at our shins and pulled knots of skin away, the scratches creeping up our legs like thread of mercury in a thermometer. Ava called Penny's name. She stumbled behind me. We reached a shallow place along the creek and splashed through it in our good sunday shoes calling her name. I turned, turned. The sky too bright and the shadows of the evening treed in the branches of the birches like coons.

 

oh lord, lord, lord.

 

Ava was shouting Penny's name.

 

My nose was running.

 

How far could she have gone?

 

Shivering and rooting through the underbrush, I prayed – oh lord, lord, help us find her. If daddy found out...

 

Ava stopped shouting.

 

Fan, she said to me. Fan, come here.

 

I splashed through the creek toward her and looked where she was pointing and I stopped.

 

Tangled in the climbs and gouges of blackberry vines, Penny lay breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling like a half-flightless moth, her lips frothing and her eyes staring skyward. Her dress torn open and her naked body revealed and red and bruising and her face white and fragile as a sanddollar. She moaned very softly. She smelled like whiskey and woodsmoke and there was blood on her dress, her white dress, and it had soaked through it entirely.

 

Ava was shaking and she was covering her mouth with her hands.

 

I thought I could hear the bruise and dark paint of the rawhide drums diffusing through the trees in the dusk and the smell of the indian clung to the skirts of the shadows.

 

Penny drooled and Ava couldn't look at her for even a moment.

 

The creek spoke in a secret dialect.