Back when the one-year anniversary of our father’s leaving came, Momma announced it was cleaning time, told Andrew and me to gather up everything we no longer wanted or needed. A yard sale, I figured, as Andrew and I hauled load after load of old toys and clothes onto the front porch. I had just carried out my old Easy Bake Oven when Momma appeared at the screen door and told me to go help Andrew clear out the garage. It was July, and the woods around our house exuded an almost narcotic quietude, so hot it was. Sweat sluiced down our backs as my brother and I lugged out tools that had long hung from Daddy’s pegboard, followed by junky boxes of odds and ends, boxes I doubted had been opened since Uncle Si and Aunt Adalene were alive. Once in a while Andrew filched things from them--a bag of Daddy’s old marbles, a couple musty comic books, other things he wouldn’t let me see--sequestering his haul out back in his old red wagon.
When Momma came outside and caught him slinking off, she barked fiercer orders and stuck around to supervise. Andrew and I worked double-time to please her, lugging out everything Daddy had let pile up: busted storm windows, shadeless lamps, two mismatched kitchen chairs. Cobwebbed fishing rods came next, then a dust covered wagon wheel, treasures Daddy had purchased long ago at auctions.
Momma set aside only the most essential of items: hammer, screwdriver, pair of pliers, an old shotgun she could use to shoot at the raccoons who snuck past Buck to paw through our trash. All the rest of Daddy’s things we piled on the cement driveway and watched, spellbound, as Momma carried from the house armload after armload of Daddy’s abandoned clothing: blue work shirts, winter coats, the Sunday suit he wore the time we drove to Elkins to have our family portrait taken at Sears. The twelve-by-sixteen wooden-framed result of that trip Momma tossed on as well, and soon the mound on the driveway had grown into a small hill. As she and Andrew struggled to carry Daddy’s green recliner out the front door, my throat grew tight. I knew what Momma was up to, and it wasn’t a yard sale.
I cradled Elizabeth beneath the maple tree’s shady canopy, sad that my she would never see the tacky Hawaiian shirt draped over the pile animated by our father’s lean torso, never feel his steady grip close around her wrist and ankle as he lifted her in the air and flew her like an airplane in dizzy circles above the grass. For Momma had taken it upon herself to complete his vanishing act by eliminating every reminder, every souvenir, every last iota of his presence she could find. Her anger felt more real to me than the man himself. The sight of her, in old jeans and knotted blouse, squeezing lighter fluid onto the pile, branded itself upon my brain. In silence I watched her strike a farmer match against the drive and light a wad of paper. She threw the crumpled ball onto the pile then stood there, arms folded and head low, eyes tired and mouth slack, like she wasn’t sure whether she was experiencing victory or defeat.
For an hour and more I watched the fire blaze, charring down into ruinous embers and scattered pieces of metal atop the scorched driveway: hammer heads, shovel scoops, the coiled springs of Daddy’s chair. Momma sat nearby, lips twisted tight, as if something that should have tasted sweet had turned out curdled instead. I clutched Elizabeth like a rag doll and cried into her fine blond hair--cried that I’d never again be able to sneak into closet, press his shirtsleeves against my nose and mouth, and inhale the sturdy scent of him.
I tried not to think about Daddy much after that. But once in a while I overheard things like
Momma talking to Great-Aunt Inez on the phone, whose daughter Helena had seen Daddy stumbling out of Wimpy’s pool hall one night, drunk and with blood staining his shirtfront. Word of his fighting and
carousing trickled through to us, like a message through the tin-can phone Andrew and I had played with as kids. We didn’t talk about it with one another. Summer passed. Grandma Rose and I kept up our walks, and I learned the names of every wildflower and herb she showed me. Momma sent Andrew to Bible school to shake some sense into him, and when it was finally over, he got a part-time job at the Y. Elizabeth took her first steps without me holding onto her.
Come August, a week before my twelfth birthday, Grandma Rose took me to the pond by Cheat River for what would be the last time. Even now I remember how heat thickened the air of that bone-dry afternoon. Momma had been in a cross mood all morning, rushing to drop me off at Grandma’s, to ferry Andrew to the Y, to take Elizabeth to her vaccination appointment. So I hadn’t told her about the circles spinning inside me the past few days, pain pressing like doubled-up fists against the wall of my stomach. I didn’t mention the spot of blood I had found that morning when I changed my underwear. Or how last spring at school the girls had gossiped behind Marie Wilson’s back when she was the first among our class to experience the change--that fleshy transformation older girls whispered about while waiting for the bus, their voices hushed and reverential as they drew their heads together behind a wall of three-ring notebooks. With growing worry I recalled how, by the time yearbooks had come out, Marie no longer looked like the string bean girl in her photograph, but instead stood pimply-faced and towering above our heads, an object of ridicule and crude comments by boys, betrayed by the early-bird awakening of her body. Was I now transforming that same awful way?
I would tell no one, not even Grandma Rose, though the silence between us was roomy and ready to be broken as we stepped off her back porch and started towards the pond. It had been over a month since our last walk together, and I refused to let anything spoil it. So I ignored the wadded toilet paper that scratched my thighs as we made our way down the alley and over to Cheat River, its coppery water so low I could see the silver shapes of fish darting around an upturned shopping cart someone had pushed in. Crossing the swinging bridge, we did not stop to feed the ducks this time. I wanted to know why we
weren’t doing so but knew better than to ask. When we had left the house I had asked if we were off to pick more ramps, but Grandma said they were out of season now, we’d have to content ourselves with dandelion
greens and whatever herbs we could find. I asked why she needed such a big sack, but she shushed me, as she’d done earlier that morning when her phone rang, when I had watched her respond tightlipped to the questions her doctor asked over the phone. Her mind seemed far off as I followed her.
With her walking stick, Grandma Rose pushed aside the brush that had sprung up since our last passing. Lance-leaved goldenrod flowered at heights from a few inches to a foot, parched looking blooms that seeded the air in the wake of our passing. In some spots the weeds had gone brown and thin, revealing sun-scoured patches of dirt. Looking at it all left my tongue feeling dry.
Overhead, the sky burned an excruciating blue. How long had it been since last it stormed, I wondered, as pain shot up anew inside me. But it was more than clouds and rain I was waiting for. More than a change of flesh and bone. I was waiting for something to come that wouldn’t. I was waiting for something I might have to leave these mountains to get.
Why the hell were we going to the pond now, when every sprinkler-soaked, unmowed backyard held more than enough dandelion greens to fill any countrywoman’s pot? Maybe Grandma longed for something too.
Past the river, at the foot of the hillside where the pond lay, the treetops had grown thick enough to wall out the sun. Their shade felt comforting, but it wasn’t enough to ease my shock at finding Grandma’s pond shrunken to half its size, a casualty of the past rainless month. A crust of mud circled the pond’s border where ringlets of water once stood. The grasshoppers were hushed, the katydids quiet. The treefrogs had taken their high trill elsewhere.
Other insects had taken over. Annoying aerialists—mosquitoes, dragonflies, bees—now swarmed the stagnant surface of the pond. I felt the pocket of my cut-offs for my EpiPen, then looked at Grandma Rose, wanting to ask how this change could come to be, but my throat felt sandy and my voice wouldn’t come. A bee zoomed by her face, but Grandma ignored it as she gave the sad sight of the pond a wry half- smile before shuffling off to gather greens.
I cut through limp tussocks to the water’s edge where I overturned rocks, eager to see what life remained there. All I got were spiders and worms. The creatures I had my heart set on had already hopped or slithered away. A fresh wave of pain sharpened within me, and I had to steady myself against a tree. But I wouldn’t buckle beneath it; I felt better out on the sunny hillocks, even gladdened when I found a clump of fiddlehead ferns I could pick.
Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes had passed when Grandma called out, startling me. “Allison! Come quick!”
I looked over to find her mouth agape and eyes wide. “Old Snapper’s here!” she hollered. The clouds overhead seemed to stop then start again.
frozen mid-munch around a mouthful of pickerelweed. His beady eyes seemed to appraise our role in his world--predators? Prey? Mere passersby? The turtle lowered his head to the water and swallowed hard but grazed no further. I glanced up at Grandma Rose. Her own jaw shifted, resetting the dentures in her mouth. She drew her tongue across the red line of her lips. An idea was working up inside her, one she could almost taste.
Old Snapper must have realized he was in trouble. His clawed forelegs pushed against the mud. He jerked sideways, laboring toward the safety of deeper water. At the same time, Grandma rushed forth quicker than I thought she could, shoving aside grass and weeds as she chivied up behind Old Snapper in a sneak attack. I started to laugh but caught myself. The turtle’s algae-green shell swallowed the sunlight. How old could he be, I wondered, and just how big? Well over twenty-five pounds, I reasoned, but still Grandma acted as if she could take him. She inched forward. Old Snapper curled his tail to his side, trying to tuck it beneath his shell.
Brush strewn across a cobblebar blocked the turtle’s clean getaway. He would have to go around it, but a steep rise precluded any movement to his left and Grandma’s jabbing stick cut off his right. She bent down and crept even closer. The turtle rose up on his forelegs, opened his mouth and let out a cry--the heavy hiss of a crudely slit tire.
Dragon’s warning, I thought. I pulled back. The turtle lunged, but Grandma dodged his move and thrust her stick in his face. Lightning quick, the turtle’s beak clamped down, snapping the wood with a hollow crack. In the second it took for the broken tip to hit ground, Grandma’s hand shot out to grab the turtle’s half-hidden tail. Her fingers locked around it. With a grunt she pivoted him ass-end up, pinning the turtle’s head to the ground with what remained of her stick. For the first time I saw the pale gray of his belly and the shy proof Old Snapper was indeed a male.
He was mad as hell, and bucked and hissed to prove it. He tried to crane his pinned neck, but couldn’t wriggle far enough to do any harm. “Reach me my sack,” Grandma said, and I did as told, setting the burlap bag on the ground in front of the turtle then lifting the material’s mouth with a little stick of my own up and over his head. Old Snapper jerked hard, but Grandma Rose was stronger. Like her brothers before her, she was determined to take home her prize. She nudged the turtle deeper into the sack, onto the cushion of dandelion greens already there, guiding him with her broken stick while I pulled the coarse burlap over his kicking legs--both us careful to avoid the snap-trap of his jaw.
When we were done, Grandma Rose laughed like a young girl, high and sweet--the sound growing gravelly again only when her breath ran out and she had to cough hard to draw it back in. In our shared excitement, I had forgotten the pain taking root in my body, and only now did it step back in. I thought again of the ruined underwear I had hid from Momma that morning, its blood-red proof I was becoming a woman. Breathing slow and steady, I watched Grandma Rose wipe the sweat from her brow, lift her burlap sack and start for home.
By the time we reach her backyard, both of us were exhausted from taking turns carrying the burden of our catch. We heaved the sack atop Grandma’s picnic table. The burlap writhed and wriggled anew, and I was dismayed that Old Snapper hadn’t been knocked unconscious by my efforts to smack him against the ground when Grandma Rose wasn’t looking. I didn’t want him to see what I knew was coming.
Grandma Rose told me to fetch a hatchet from her lawnmower shed as well as the metal rack from her charcoal grill. I found them hanging from hooks on the shed wall and took them to her. The rack unhinged into two separate pieces, wire half-moons with a small gap in the center. I held one above the bag as Grandma began to work Old Snapper out, using the weight of her body to pin him to the table. At the first sign of his head, I was to lock my makeshift pillory around his neck. My stomach roiled with anticipation, leaden circles tumbling inside.
Too soon the turtle’s head jerked free; I wasn’t fast enough. Old Snapper whipped around, dragged his hooked beak across Grandma’s palm in the split-second before I clamped the metal tight around him.
Blood inked the pale parchment of her skin. I had failed her. But Grandma did not cry out, she merely pressed harder, lying upon the creature the way a man might lie against a woman--resolute, insistent. With her wounded hand, Grandma Rose reached for the hatchet. One well-placed chop is all it took. The turtle’s head fell to the ground, jaw gaping. His legs kicked, one last electric jolt.
After I pulled the metal away, Grandma flipped the dead turtle over. “Go to the shed again,” she told me. “You’ll find an old tent spike in a bucket on the floor.”
I delivered the metal stake to her and watched her pound it through bone, the flat end of her hatchet producing a harsh staccato. She was sweating hard now, smelling of talcum and chalky mints, of mud and metallic blood. Her wig had lost its luster--a gray, limp dust mop sliding down her forehead. Only after securing the turtle to the roughhewn table did Grandma Rose lift her hand to inspect the damage to her palm. Drops the color of blackberry juice trailed down her wrist, falling one by one into the pool encircling the turtle.
Without a word, I hurried to my grandmother’s bathroom. There I found disinfectant and gauze. I headed outside again. The day’s bright light made me squint as I elbowed open the kitchen’s screen door and made my way down the back porch stairs. Pain lunged anew deep inside my belly, but I swallowed it down. I crossed the lawn, took Grandma Rose’s large hand inside my own, and began to clean her cut, to wrap her wound—my grandmother’s quiet conveying trust and her unspoken need of me. Beside us, dragon blood drained into the ground. Soon Grandma and I would carry fresh meat inside the cool stillness of her kitchen. We would set a pot atop the stove. Strike a flame, boil the water, eat our soup and pretend to be satisfied.