Half-submerged, water-marked debris littered the surface of hard red clay around the old streambed. Reed went from piece to piece, prodding the objects with a stick, pushing them out of the dirt, turning them over. He made a list of everything he found, then stacked the objects into piles for sorting. A rusted can. Gray board. White fence. Nondescript cloth. A boy’s shoe—he couldn’t tell if it had been his or not. A coat hanger. Part of his momma’s white china teakettle, the spout and one side gone. A twisted bucket. Rifle barrel. His grandfather’s mantel clock, the wood rotted away, the workings bent as if a fist had entered. Two Civil War coins. Six arrowheads. A musket ball. Part of an Indian pipe. The frames of his father’s glasses.
Starting at the south wall of the house, he began systematically sweeping the surface of each square, listing objects, descriptions, locations, and jotting down any associations that seemed pertinent.
An old mason jar, a dried-out green substance filling the bottom. When his mother canned she had always worn that yellow smock Grandma had given her. One year she had been burned down one side of her neck; she wore high collars after that. His father couldn’t tell her he was sorry it happened, so he had made fun of her stupidity instead.
Decaying horse harness near the springhouse wall. Rusted hedge shears under two old boards. Pieces of a chicken’s skeleton. Two ladder rungs. The oven door with a large dent in the center, found under part of a roof beam. His father had gotten drunk on Reed’s fourteenth birthday, and when he thought Reed was talking back (Reed hadn’t said a word to his father all night), he jumped Reed, straddling him on the kitchen floor, and beat his head against Momma’s oven. Headless hobbyhorse, a gash in one side. His baby sister played with it for hours on the back porch.
A lizard worked its way out from between stones, its crest such a vivid red Reed wondered if he were hallucinating.
Assorted beads and brass fittings. Doorknob. Odd electrical wiring. Drawer handle. Three-inch piece of picture frame. Shapeless steel. Bag full of plaster dust. A baby’s… no, a calf’s broken skull. His hands trembled as he brushed it off.
He felt strangely uncomfortable when he had to dig a little in the dirt to get a piece completely out. The wind rose, and it was as if that wind were also rising inside himself. Something was in the woods, but he knew he had no chance of discovering it.
He continued with his work. Eyes beginning to water, cold coming back. He was a mess. He was feeling guilty now, as if he were grave robbing.
Chapter 17
Reed moved out of Inez’s boarding house and into his uncle’s home that first day of the excavations. He was hesitant at first, thinking that might be much too soon. He wasn’t sure he was ready to be deluged by family and the accompanying memories so quickly, especially when he was digging into those same memories at the old homesite. But Ben Taylor was a hard man to turn down. And besides, Reed found his uncle’s eagerness to accept him back into the bosom of family and neighbors very appealing.
“Now we don’t want you lifting a finger, Reed. This is your time to relax.” His Aunt Martha busied herself with cooking as she talked to him, moving plates and pans with such skill it seemed like a circus act. Her gray hair was neatly kept, except for one long strand that kept coming loose, hanging down between her eyes. She would periodically scratch at the irritant by raising her eyebrows, then brush it away with the back of her hand. Suddenly she pulled open a drawer, brought out a pair of scissors, and snipped the offending hair. Without missing a beat she had the scissors back in the drawer and continued with her work. “We want you to feel at home here. This here’s where you belong.”
Reed didn’t know why, but her statement made him profoundly uncomfortable.
The kids ran in and out of the room, sometimes dragging playmates in with them—the Wilsons, the Norrises, Martha trying to hush them. It gave Reed a warm, bittersweet feeling.
“Ben says he’s going to take you down to the new house later.”
“Yes, he is.”
She looked at him briefly and smiled. “He doesn’t show that place to just anybody. You know, that man really loves you, Reed.”
“I know…” and it made him nervous to think about it.
Tom Schmidt arrived just before dinner. Mr. Schmidt had done odd jobs for Reed’s father and uncle a decade or so before the flood, before he’d saved enough money to get a small place of his own. Reed’s uncle invited the man to stay, and he ended up sitting next to Reed during the meal. He seemed perpetually dirty—oil and coal stains on his britches and his white hair yellowed with dirt and grease. And he smelled—not unpleasantly, but strongly enough that it was distracting. He remembered Reed only by name.
“You were Alec Taylor’s second son; I remember, the first boy got killed in that green pickup.”
“No, I was the only son.”
“Yeah, yeah, I remember. And you ran the mill in Barclay, gave me good rates cause I’d worked for yer daddy.”
“No, I went away to school, never had a regular job around here.”
“That’s right! That’s right!”
Ben Taylor had rebuilt their home after the flood had leveled the old one. A freak situation, that: although the flood waters had never reached the town itself, the mud embankments were loosened by the heavy rains. One had collapsed above the house and virtually flattened it. In rebuilding the place, he had added three rooms. Reed’s uncle had always taken pride in his skills as a carpenter. Mr. Schmidt had been impressed by that.
“Did it all by himself, boy. I watched him. Took six months, workin’ daybreak till two hours after dark.”
“Now, Tom,” Ben Taylor said, smiling proudly.
“Well, hell; you worked hard, Ben. I tell you, Reed. He leveled the ground, redug the root cellar, straightened out the old nails cause he didn’t have much money… did it all. Lots of us watched.”
The house was interestingly, if not aesthetically, put together. Ben had had no money for new lumber—and Amos Nickles wasn’t extending credit then—so he had made do with what scrap was lying around after the flood. Not a right angle in the place, maybe only a dozen full-length boards, the rest being patched-together half and quarter pieces.
Mr. Schmidt leaned over toward Reed, who pulled away from the onslaught of the man’s unusual breath. “I felt real sorry about your family, son… real tragedy for the entire community.” Schmidt took another bite out of his chicken leg. “Hear you’re diggin’ up around the old place?”
“Yes. I’d… like to see what’s left.”
“Well, sure is your right, sure is. Know you won’t get nothing out of that coal company, nosir. They got the power round here for sure. First they leave the Simpson Creeks all yellow and red with that mine acid, then them gob piles that gonna burn and smoke ‘till Gabriel blows his horn, then they kill off all the old men with their black lung, then top it all off by killin’ half the valley with that damn flood.” He paused and looked at Martha Taylor sitting shyly at one end of the table. “Damn dam,” he said, and chuckled. She smiled and looked down at her hands. “You sure have had your share of the troubles,” he continued. “Haven’t you, son?” He turned and looked at Reed straight in the eyes. “Wouldn’t want to see nothing else happen to you, son, nosir. Now you watch out for that bear.”
“I’ve heard.”
“Now, I’ve seen that young brother o’ yours hangin’ round those woods… you tell him it ain’t safe, y’hear?”
“But I’ve no…”
“Boy looks something like you. Maybe somebody else’s boy… don’t know. Never saw him before. Seen him a hunderd times up that woody holler.”