The Secret Sense of Wildflower (2 page)

I look all around to make sure no one is watching before I enter the path. Gossip travels the grapevine in Katy’s Ridge like Western Union telegrams. If anybody sees me, Mama will know in a matter of minutes. Minding your own business isn’t the way of mountain people in Tennessee in 1941, though sometimes I wish it was.

The coast clear, I duck behind the tree and take the secret path. The trail travels a steep hill before it levels out and dips down into the valley again. The footbridge is about halfway between home and the graveyard.

At the bridge, I do my good luck ritual that I’ve used since I was a little girl. It has three parts. Daddy used to say that threes always happen in fairy tales: three wishes, three ogres, three sisters. Whenever a “three” shows up you can expect some kind of magic to take place. No matter how old I get, I’ll use magic, luck, or my own prayer meeting, if it means I get safely across that bridge.

My sister, Meg, gave me a rabbit’s foot key chain from Woolworth’s last Christmas. I retrieve it from my pocket and squeeze out a dose of good luck. Then I ask Daddy to watch out for me, calling on God and his angels if need be. After that I kiss the dime-sized gold medallion that I have worn around my neck ever since Daddy died. The medallion used to belong to my Grandma McAllister. Engraved on it is a picture of the baby Jesus sitting on his mother’s lap. I like looking at the sweet smile on her face on account of my mother hardly ever smiles anymore.

All us girls got something after Grandma McAllister died. Jo got fancy doilies and things, Amy got some of her books and Meg got a set of her dishes. I would have liked to have the books, since I’ve been a tomboy most of my life and was never much of a jewelry person. But Daddy said, since I got the medallion, that I was the luckiest one because Jesus’ mother watches out for people. Standing at the bridge, this seems as good a time as any for her to watch out for me.

Before they moved to the United States, the McAllister’s were all Catholic. Sometimes I would see Daddy cross himself the way the Catholics do. It was usually when nobody else was around. Mama’s folks were Lutheran. But after Mama and Daddy moved to Katy’s Ridge they joined the Baptists just to keep the peace. At least that’s how Daddy put it.

Little Women
is Mama’s favorite book. A worn copy of it sits on her dresser right next to the King James Bible. I was named after the lady who wrote it, Louisa May Alcott. Destiny must have rewarded Mama for her devotion to the book because she gave Daddy four daughters, just like the March family in the book. My older sisters, Amy, Jo, and Meg, were each named after somebody in the book. Another sister, Beth, died two days after she was born. This explains how I ended up with the name Louisa May, because all the good names were already taken.

I am the youngest McAllister. Jo and Amy, my two older sisters, each got married last spring and live in Katy’s Ridge, right down the road from our house. Meg, my closest sister in age, graduated from Rocky Bluff High School last year but still lives at home and works at the Woolworth’s store in the town of Rocky Bluff. I like having Meg around because she smoothes things out between Mama and me. Even on our best days, we are like vinegar and soda, always reacting. When Meg isn’t there, Mama and I do our level best to avoid each other.

The board of the old footbridge creaks and sways when I step onto it and I have to hold out my arms to steady myself. I shot up like a weed last year, from 4 feet, seven inches to 5 feet 3 and I am still not used to this willowy version of myself.

As far as I can tell, the secret to not falling is to keep your arms out and your feet moving in a straight line, which is probably the one good thing that has come from looking at my shoes so much around Johnny Monroe. While I summon my courage, I am reminded of the pictures I saw once of trapeze artists crossing a wire at a circus. My knees start to shake and I tell them to stop. If I’m not careful I could shake myself right into an early grave. I bite my lip, which for some odd reason also helps me keep my balance.

Even though I am nearly thirteen years of age, if Mama knew I was crossing this old bridge she’d give me a good talking to, using all three of my given names while she did.

Louisa May McAllister, what were you thinking? Don’t you know you could fall in and bust your head against the rocks? You’d be dead in an instant. Then what would I do?

Mama has a way of asking a question that makes my head hurt.

Safe on the other side of the footbridge, I sit cross-legged on the ground and take a few deep breaths. The mountain feels solid underneath me and I thank it for holding me up. I also take time to thank Daddy, my rabbit’s foot, and the mother of our good Lord, by way of Grandma McAllister, for helping me get across and not fall into the chasm.

After I begin my trek again, I follow the path that winds up the hill like a snake. At the top of the hill I push open the rusty gate at the back of the graveyard and enter. In the distance stands the willow tree draping its branches above Daddy’s final resting place.

The summer before he died, we made fishing poles out of its branches and he told me stories about our people buried here, especially my baby sister Beth. He never failed to mention how old she’d be if she hadn’t died, which is always one year older than me at any given moment.

It is still strange to think of Daddy being under the ground in a wooden box, even if his spirit has gone off to live in heaven. It seems like his bones would get to go, too. But Preacher says you throw off your body at the end, just like you throw off an old coat you are tired of wearing. Maybe your bones weigh you down when you get to heaven if you take them with you. I don’t know.

I am one month away from my thirteenth birthday and the only girl I know who hangs out in graveyards. But if you don’t mind being around dead people, it has a beautiful view overlooking the Tennessee River. Thick, old maples and oaks grace the hillside and the nearby stream empties into the river at the bottom of the hill. In the distance stands the small Baptist church practically everybody in Katy’s Ridge attends. A large weeping willow grows in the center of the graveyard. A willow whose leaves sweep the ground when the wind blows, just like Mama sweeps our porch in the evenings. Last fall it wept down gold, almond-shaped leaves on top of Daddy’s grave, and I knew he must be smiling because he always said he’d struck gold when I was born.

“Hi Daddy,” I say to his tombstone.

I sit under the willow tree and cross my long legs up under me. With my finger, I trace the dates, 1902-1940, feeling the coldness of the stone. Daddy is the one who nicknamed me “Wildflower” when I was ten-years-old. He said the name fit me perfect since I’d sprung up here in the mountains like a wild trillium. Trillium will take your breath away if you see a patch of them. Daddy had a way with words, like a poet, and not just with me. He could make Mama smile faster than anything. Sometimes he’d get her laughing so hard she’d hold her sides till tears came to her eyes. All us kids stood around with our jaws dropped. To see Mama laugh was as rare as snow in August.

“We miss you, Daddy,” I say. “All of us do, especially Mama. But we’re doing all right, I guess.”

He would want to know that we’re doing all right and sometimes I tell him this even when we aren’t.

Daddy always put his arms around Mama in the kitchen or laid an extra blanket on the bed because he knew she got cold in the middle of the night when the fire died down. No matter if he was sweating he kept Mama warm. But there aren’t enough blankets in the world to make up for Daddy being gone. Sometimes I wonder if she ever gets mad at him for going away. I know I do. After the sadness gnawed me numb, I got pissed as a rattlesnake that he hadn’t been more careful while working at the sawmill, and that he’d left us all alone.

“Louisa May, you fell asleep again.”

The voice hovers over me and I wonder if maybe one of God’s angels has come to take me to be with Daddy. Even though I am not a little girl anymore, I like thinking there are angels. When my eyes focus on what I hope will be my first celestial visitor, I see instead my sister, Jo. She is the most beautiful of all us McAllisters. She has golden blond hair the color of the inside of a honey comb, unlike my tangled dirty mop of curls, as Mama likes to call them. Like honey, Jo is also very sweet, but she isn’t the angel I hoped for.

“My name is Wildflower,” I say half asleep, rolling over on Daddy’s grave.

When I was little, Daddy and I used to take naps together on Saturday afternoons like this one. He’d be folded up on one end of the sofa and I’d be on the other, our toes touching, until Mama made us get up to do our chores.

“Mama has dinner ready,” Jo says. She taps the bottom of my shoes with hers.

“How’s Daniel?” I ask, opening one eye. Her husband is almost as sweet as she is.

“He’s fine, and he’s waiting on his dinner, too.” She reaches down to pull me up.

I brush away the pieces of leaves and dirt that leave spider web patterns on my legs. Jo and I are the same height now, but I haven’t filled out like her yet.

“Mama worries about you coming up here all the time,” Jo says. “I don’t see why you bother. It takes forever to get here.”

I don’t tell Jo about my secret shortcut. If she knew about the old footbridge she’d probably make me promise not to come that way again.

“Jo, do you ever think about Daddy?”

She pauses, as if my question has surprised her. “All the time,” she says softly. She looks down at Daddy’s grave like he isn’t there at all, but instead lives in her memory. Nobody talks much about him, probably because none of us is fond of crying. I envy Jo sometimes, mainly because she had more time with him. She was eighteen when he died. I had just turned twelve.

“Let’s go home,” Jo says, sliding her hand into mine. We lock fingers like best girlfriends.

“Goodbye, Daddy,” I say, as we walk away.

Goodbye, Wildflower,
I imagine him saying.

It takes nearly thirty minutes to get home. My secret way through the woods would have cut that time in half, but I’m not willing to tell anybody about it, not even Jo. Johnny is gone when we reach the crossroads, and my step lightens. I smile at the sky, imagining a world without Johnny Monroe.

Nearer to home the smell of honeysuckle and wild roses walks with us. As the sun dips below the ridge, the crickets warm up their night songs. Jo and I say our goodbyes at the three mailboxes at the bottom of our property. She and Daniel live across the road; Amy and Nathan next door to them. But there are several acres in between. I take the steep dirt path toward home, glad the rainstorm from the day before dampened down the dust from the dirt road.

To announce my arrival, I let the screen door slam. Mama and Meg are in the kitchen.

“Wash up,” Mama says, and I do as I’m told.

Then I sit next to Meg who is still in her Woolworth’s work clothes. Meg catches a ride to and from work with Cecil Appleby who drives his almost-new 1940 Ford truck into Rocky Bluff to work at the sock factory, an hour away. Not that many people have cars in Katy’s Ridge.

“How’s Daddy?” Meg asks.

“He’s fine,” I say. “He asked after you and I told him about your new job.”

Meg smiles, but her smile has sadness in it, and I don’t know if it’s because she misses Daddy or if she’s just sad she had to get a job.

Catching rides into Rocky Bluff makes a long day for Meg, because Cecil goes in at seven in the morning and she doesn’t start work until nine. For two hours every morning she sits in the diner across from Woolworth’s and reads cheap romance novels passed along by one of her customers.

Mama has no idea how much time Meg spends reading trashy novels and she would burn them in the woodstove if she ever found them. I have been sworn to secrecy until the day I die. However, not being one to pass up a business opportunity, I also collect ten cents a month for keeping my mouth shut. While Mama isn’t looking, Meg slides me a dime across the table and I put it in my pocket.

A box under our bed is stacked full of books with bare-chested men standing next to women in long, sexy nightgowns. Meg says I can read them if I want to, but I can’t get past the first chapter without feeling like heaving my breakfast oatmeal. If what’s in those books is romance, I don’t want any part of it.

In all my years of schooling, I’ve never had a boyfriend. I’ve had plenty of friends who were boys, but beyond that they hold no interest for me. In the country, some girls my age are already thinking about marriage. In the back, back woods, some girls are already having children of their own. But that’s the last thing on my mind right now.

The secret sense tells me that Mama wants to say something to me about being at the graveyard again, but she swallows her words. If she wasn’t so busy doing chores she might be up on that hill, too, lying next to Daddy’s grave like they used to lie in bed together. I’ve never seen Mama cry, not even the day he died. But sometimes I hear her through the wall, tossing and turning all over the bed that doesn’t have Daddy in it anymore.

“We waited supper on you,” Mama says, as if this was a great inconvenience.

“Thank you, Mama,” I say. Daddy would want me to be nice to her, even though she hasn’t been that nice to me lately.

A large bowl of pinto beans sits on the kitchen table. We eat beans a lot since Daddy died. Mixed in with the beans are pieces of ham, sweet onion, and turnip greens—little surprises that your taste buds stumble upon. Mama places an iron skillet of cornbread just out of the oven on folded dishrags so it won’t burn the wood. Next to the cornbread is a big plate of sliced tomatoes that Mama grows in the side yard. I spear three slices with my fork and put them on my plate. Then I remember how Mama always says my eyes are bigger than my stomach and put one back.

“Who came into the store today?” Mama asks Meg.

Meg starts naming names, most of which I recognize. You’d think Woolworth’s was the center of our universe as much as they talk about it. The population of Rocky Bluff is roughly six hundred people. Katy’s Ridge has all of eighty, five of which are my immediate family, and another dozen or so that are related in one way or another. Some of the markers in the graveyard date back to the 1840s, and there are at least a dozen confederate soldiers there, and two Union soldiers on the far side, a whole graveyard separating them. The 1860s saw a lot of funerals in Katy’s Ridge. I can recite nearly every name and date on the tombstones, except the ones that are faded beyond recognition. Meg and Mama like to study the here and now. I like to study the past.