I WAS SICK this morning when I woke up. It came over me while I sat with Momma in the kitchen. She stood by the stove poaching eggs and frying bacon. There was bread in the toaster, and I was doing just fine until she brought out the sweet butter and a jar of homemade sorghum. She set it there on the table right in front of me, and it sent a current pulsing into my throat, a burning sensation that raised me off my chair. Momma knew immediately what was happening. A dishcloth across my mouth, she helped me run to the bathroom. I knelt at the toilet, my body shivering against the cold floor. I threw up what little was in my stomach, Momma's hand on my back rubbing slowly to help calm me down.
Afterward, nothing smelled good. Every time I tried to leave the bathroom, the nausea hit again, the smells so rancid that the air seemed poisoned. I stayed there on the floor for I don't know how long while Momma opened doors and windows to let cool mountain air in. She helped me back to bed where I slept until noon. And then, it was as if nothing had ever happened. I woke up hungry, feeling no ill effects at all.
I lay in bed for a while longer with my windows opened, the sounds of the summer birds chirping, a breeze light and cool holding back the heat of the afternoon. Momma made lunch, sweet tea, fresh cucumber and tomato sandwiches. She asked that I join her on the front porch, where we sit now. I'm still in pajamas, the afternoon beginning to push light up against the face of White-side. When she lifts herself out of the chair to water her flowers, I ask if she would like my help, but she declines, says this is her exercise. So I sit quietly watching her lift the can on tiptoes to pour fresh well water into the soil. “Besides,” she says, “you're pregnant again.”
The water overflows the hanging pots, splashing onto the worn planks below like a sudden outburst of tears. “No I'm not,” I say.
“Yes, I believe you are.” Her voice is more stern this time, like I should know better than to doubt her. “How late are you?”
She won't turn around to look at me after her question, and I know what this means. I have to answer, though I don't want to because I know that I am; late I mean—maybe six weeks, maybe a little more. Looking back, I realize I didn't have my period in May—I figured then it was stress that delayed it, but now it's pushing the middle of June. “I don't see that I need to talk to you about this,” I tell her. My denial, the avoidance of saying more, is not enough for her, but she lets it go, remains silent while finishing her watering, and then leaves the porch when the phone rings.
From where I sit, I cannot see Whiteside Mountain, but I feel its presence on the land as I feel my father's presence in this house. When I was pregnant with Kelly, Momma knew the trouble it would mean. “This is going to kill your father,” she said as we sat in the car that day. There was little hope in any of it. My father walked off after being told, didn't come home by the time the dew settled across the fields. I stood with Momma watching from the kitchen window, waiting for him to return that night, my chances for college vanished.
You're pregnant. The words hang in the air like one of Momma's dripping baskets. If it is true, if I am pregnant, I cannot say if it is Clay's or Peck's. Either way it's not what I want because to have a baby right now is to resume my old life, and all I want is to leave that behind.
When she is finished on the phone, Momma returns to the porch. “You'll need to get dressed,” she says. “John Boyd just called to say he would like to talk to you today. He's coming by in about an hour.” I look at Momma, her face expressionless. I know this conversation is not over, not yet.
The morning sickness is a distraction that slows me down. When John Boyd arrives, I am still in my room dressing, fretting about what I should wear when I talk to him. The man is so intertwined in my past that I don't remember growing up in Whiteside Cove without him somehow being here. He helped my father lower me into the Cullasaja when I was baptized. I used his car for my driver's- license test because we didn't own one when I turned sixteen. He was the one, ten years ago, who found my father at the foot of Whiteside Mountain on his knees, head bowed, dead. He carried him home in his arms, told Momma that it was as if God had come down in the middle of his prayer to take him. He was at peace.
For a time after that, Momma was not capable of living alone. She stayed in bed refusing to eat, sat for hours on her porch forgetting to take care of her flowers. John Boyd was there. And even when she told him to leave her alone, that she would just as soon lay there and die, he came to the house day after day until the pall passed and Momma found her feet. Now he is coming to talk about the land and how best to save it—John Boyd in our lives still.
When I come into the room, he is standing by the door, his hand extended. Momma smiles from her seat. She seems so small sitting there, so vulnerable that I walk over ignoring John Boyd's hand and lean down to kiss her cheek. “You two go have a good talk,” she says.
“No,” I say, “I thought we would all sit down and discuss this together?” I look at her concerned that she so willingly excludes herself from what will be said.
Momma takes a Kleenex from the waistband of her dress. “Your father never talked to me about such things and I don't want to tread on his grave by starting now. You and John Boyd can do all of that. He'll tell us what we need to do.” With that Momma is up and out of the chair, her small frame walking so softly that she seems to float off the ground. She touches John Boyd on the shoulder as if anointing him her caretaker, and that worries me even more.
It's obvious from the way I am silently led down the steps and into the front yard that I am only here to listen, to follow John Boyd's direction and do as I am told. “I thought we'd take a walk out over the fields,” he says, pointing in the direction of my father's daily retreats toward Whiteside.
“That's fine,” I say.
When we pass the gate, I look for the old narrow pathway that is no longer visible. In the ten years since my father's death the cove has reclaimed any evidence of his presence. Momma remains in the house, her small figure diminished in the kitchen window by a single lightbulb wrapping a halo around her gathered hair.
“I want to thank you for taking care of Momma,” I say.
John Boyd smiles at that. “She can be set in her ways. But we get along. She's been a good neighbor.”
We walk through wild fields, carefully navigating large growths of blackberry and thorny bush, our clothing caught and pulled. The mountain's massive rock face rises nearly two thousand feet from this point in the cove, high enough that it forces you to look straight up to see sky. I cannot look at its sheer face and not think of my father. To me it is his immortality, his spirit that will never leave this place, though there have been times I wished for that whole of the mountain to disappear into the earth's core. We walk at a brisk pace toward the tree line, sweat beading in the small of my back. I am about to tell John Boyd that I cannot go any farther, that I did not intend to return to where my father died, when he stops and turns to look back over the land we have just covered.
“Let's stop here for a moment,” he says. “This is such a pretty view, don't you think?”
“I don't even know how far Momma's land extends,” I say. “I don't think I‘ve ever walked the whole parcel.”
“Your father and I discussed his desire to own the land to the base of Whiteside, but this is about the extent of it, right here.”
“It's smaller than Momma thought,” I say, surprised, though John Boyd remains silent beside me. It's as if he's letting his words sink in and become truth before he continues.
Through the stillness comes the sound of earthmovers working the land. It fills the hollow air and makes me think the cove is being torn apart. “God, are they tearing up everything at once?”
“No,” John Boyd says, “they're still down by 107, but they want to come up here, that's for sure. They want to make this whole cove a golf course and residential area. Arnold Palmer's designed it. The ninth green would be right back down yonder.” He points, his finger settling right on top of Momma's house.
I look at him when he does this, surprised that John Boyd would know such specifics of something he has promised will never happen. “Arnold Palmer,” I say. “They've already designed the golf course, already taken into consideration all of this?”
“Sure,” he says. “They've designed the whole resort area. Not just this parcel, but many different ones around Cashiers and over near Glenville. They can get hold of maps and make designs. Anybody can do that.”
“And you've seen them, the maps and designs?” I ask.
“I have,” he says. “They keep me abreast of what's happening. I met Arnold himself when he came up here to do a flyover.”
For the first time, I realize that in the length of our walk, John Boyd has yet to look at me. “And what are these developers telling you?” I ask. “What are they saying?”
“Well, one thing is that they're getting close, Cassie. They want the land.”
“Want our land?”
“Yes, this land, all of it from Whiteside to 107.”
“Can we fight them?”
“Probably not,” he says, the words so matter- of- fact that they make me wince. “I'm trying to make some deals, trying to keep your mother in a good place when this happens.”
“When it happens?” I say, “How can that be? It's her property. She'd have to agree to sell it, wouldn't she?”
John Boyd turns and walks until he is at the edge of the woods, my father's old refuge somewhere near where the earth and mountain meet. He sits down on a rock that is protruding from the ground. “Look, Cassie, come here, sit down, please.” His hand moves in front of him like he is swatting flies, a motion meant for me to follow, but I remain a good distance away.
My distrust of John Boyd resurfaces hard and fast. I have carried it with me for years after finding out about his part in having me sent away. Kelly had already been born when Momma wrote about John Boyd's involvement. She was trying to be the peacemaker and heal the wounds between my father and me. She said John Boyd made him choose, me and my baby or the church. It hadn't been a blunt order, Momma wrote, something direct and out in the open, but more a threat implicitly made when he told my father that there would not be an illegitimate child born into Whiteside Cove Baptist. “It was better to send you away,” she tried to explain. “It might be hard for you to understand this now, but your father made the right choice.”
I was so angry at the time that I couldn't understand what she was saying, couldn't see my father was, in his own way, going against John Boyd's orders that I experience the same fate as any other girl who became pregnant in the congregation. I wrote her back in anger, one line: “This wasn't my choice.” The response, I'm sure, hurt my father greatly, if he ever saw the letter and read it.
I don't know what he thought about me in the end. If he were alive today I would talk to him, tell him about his granddaughter, say, I still love you, no matter how much hurt we caused each other. I would not let what happened all those years ago stand in the way of our reconciliation. If he were alive, we would talk and make amends. But my father is dead and I'm here with John Boyd, the man who found him along the base of Whiteside, talking about what is to become of Momma and our land. His impatience makes me uneasy, my refusal to come, do as I'm told and sit with him, unacceptable. But I won't do it. I stay put, tell him that I'm fine where I am.
“Just tell me what we need to do,” I say. “It's getting late, Momma will worry.”
It's then that he tells me—the land is not really hers. It has always belonged to the church, the agreement between the deacons and my father never made legal in the eyes of the law.
“Parker knew our agreement,” he says. “He knew we would take care of Mavis as long as we could. But when the church closed its doors, well, it sort of changed.”
“I don't understand,” I say. “I thought there was an agreement, written and signed, that deeded the land to her. I thought it was all taken care of before Daddy died.”
“No, there was never a paper, Cassie.” John Boyd shakes his head, clicks his tongue like he's scolding me for such a suggestion. “Your father knew that at the time. Parker agreed with the way we handled it. Who would have thought the church would close its doors? No, I wish there would have been a contract or something, I really do. It would make all of this much easier.”
“How has all this been handled over the years?” I ask. “Who's been in charge of all this property?”
“Well, I was the last deacon,” he says. “It's been up to me over the years. When we sold the church property down on 107, I took that money and set it aside for Mavis because we weren't tax exempt anymore. It's all gone up over the years, Cassie. It's costing an arm and a leg to keep her there. The money I was using to pay the property tax, repair the house, things like that, is about gone. We're going to have to do something. I'm trying to work out a deal that she'll get one of the condos to live in, sort of part of the trade—you know, to let her still believe that this is her land. But I need you to talk to her. I don't want her to be upset when it all has to be done.”
“When is that?” I ask.
“What?”
“When do they want her out?”
“August, my god, that's like six weeks or something.” I count it out on my fingers just to make sure I'm right.
“It could be longer, Cassie. I just don't know.”
“But there was a contract, something written down that might help,” I say.
“I'm sorry, Cassie. There's nothing. I would have told her myself some time ago, but then the way she is with me sometimes, well, I just didn't want to risk her shutting me out. I promised your father I would look after her, if anything happened to him. I've tried, Cassie. But now I need you to tell Mavis what's going on. She needs to know.”
“I don't know if I can do this,” I say.
John Boyd pushes himself up, hands pressing against thighs, the exertion of this long walk hard on him. “Cassie, there's been some hard times up here, bad blood between us, I know that. I want to do what's right, and what's right is to get her to understand the situation so we can all move forward.” He puts an arm on my shoulder, looks at me for the first time. “You're really the only one who can talk to her.”
What John Boyd has just told me about the land makes me sick to my stomach. And if I had any nerve at all, I would slap his hand right off my shoulder. I don't know what to believe about any of it, but I know John Boyd is not to be trusted. I smile, but promise nothing, tell him that there's a lot to think about and that we need to start back.
It bothers me, his insistence that there are no papers or a deed. It was not in my father's character to leave loose ends. He ran his church from top to bottom. He was in on every major decision concerning its upkeep, knew by name his entire congregation, who was tithing and who gave in other ways, canned vegetables and smoked meat, a new roof on the parsonage, painting the church—good works done when money was not an option. My father worked tirelessly, and I can't imagine that he would have let John Boyd just shake his hand over something as important as land.
When we reach the back fence, John Boyd peels off from our walk and heads toward his car. Momma is on the front porch watching, one hand holding on to the rail, the other pulling a sweater closed across her dress. I join her on the steps. “I'll be in touch then,” he says, climbing into the front seat, a smile faint on his face like he's not so sure he has made his point with me.
I wave. “That'll be fine,” I say.
When I watch him drive away, I feel I have been talking to the enemy. I think about how he never really looked me in the eyes, always glanced downward or out over the land like he was sizing it up, imagining what the cove would look like after it was carved up and divvied out to those who would be able to afford to live where Arnold Palmer might play a round of golf. Then a question enters my mind. “Momma, where did Daddy keep all his papers? You know, business papers and such?”
“Lord honey, I don't know,” she says. “Some of it was at the church, and some of it was kept here at the house.”
“What about the deed to your land? Where did he keep that?”
This stops her for a moment. It is as if she realizes for the first time that there are things lost to her, memories and events in her life that have left her for good, or else are buried so deep that they require more than she has left to dig them up. “I don't know,” she says. “Your father and John Boyd took care of all of that.”
“But Daddy had something, right? He signed a paper, a contract or a deed or something?”
I can tell the questions frustrate her, the details about things that happened ten years ago, details my father kept to himself because he never wanted her to worry over them, but now she has to. “He would have shown it to you,” I remind her, “you might have even signed it.”
And then the confusion clears, memory of what I am asking for returns. “Yes he did,” she says, her eyes brightening. “I remember. He brought the paper home. We sat at the kitchen table and looked at it. He felt after all the years he had sacrificed for his congregation, that he had finally done something for me, something that was really just for me. He was proud.”
I smile, touch her face. “Well, we need to find that paper,” I say. “We need to find it very soon.”
“John Boyd will know where it is,” she says. Her words have a sense of finality that this man will somehow come to her rescue.
“John Boyd wants us to look here first,” I lie. I cannot tell her that she doesn't own this land. I cannot because I believe she does, and that John Boyd is lying.
Peck once told me that the eyes are a window into the soul. When someone won't look at you straight on, they must be missing something inside or withholding something that they don't want you to see. He told me this after his suspicions about Clay began. After he failed to come in on time for one of his shifts last year, Clay avoided eye contact with Peck, and he knew something had changed. Peck said it was strange, but at the time I knew why Clay had been late on call. He was with me that afternoon for the very first time. It was the beginning, the first step that has brought me this great distance, standing here with Momma on her front porch and pregnant again. But John Boyd won't run me off this time. I'm here to stay.
Peck was right about a man's soul. John Boyd is hiding something. The man is up to no good.