I switched off the motor and coasted to a stop on the circular dirt drive beneath a magnolia tree my grandmother had planted in 1900 to mark the new century. Its sweet fragrance welcomed me back as gladly as the two dogs that waited silently for me to open my car door. A few more querulous yaps, then the hounds and rabbit dogs out by the barns subsided. Those penned dogs get sold or traded every few months, but the night that Blue and Ladybelle bark at me will be the night I know I've stayed away too long.
They were too well mannered to jump up on my linen skirt or rip my stockings, but they appreciated a hello scratch behind their silky ears.
Five wide wooden steps led up to the shadowy porch and I sat down on the second one to whisper baby talk to the dogs. The smell of cigarette smoke reached me just as I heard the creak of the porch swing from the deepest shadows.
"Didn't wake you, did I?" I asked quietly.
"Nah," said Daddy. "I was just setting here enjoying the night. And thinking about taking a ramble. You want to come?"
"If you'll wait for me to change."
"Take your time. I ain't in no hurry" * * *
Without turning on a light, I went through the house and up the central staircase. None of the curtains were drawn, but the moon was unneeded. I could have walked blindfolded to my old room on the southeast corner.
Maidie keeps fresh linens on my bed, and I leave several changes of clothes in the closet and extra toiletries in the dresser drawers. Like a snake shedding its skin, I peeled off my town clothes in the dark and slipped into jeans and an old cotton sweatshirt. Knowing Daddy's rambles, I felt around on the closet floor for a pair of worn leather boots and tucked my pantlegs down inside their tops against ticks and chiggers. * * *
The caged dogs whined in excitement as we approached, hoping this meant they were going to get to run with us through a night world sensuous with the smell of coons and darting rabbits and slow-trundling possums. They gave soft pleading yaps as we passed.
"Hush!" Daddy said sternly, and they hushed.
Blue and Ladybelle, aristocrats of the farm, strode past without turning their heads.
We walked on down past his vegetable garden, through a cut, past Maidie's little house perched on the last bit of level ground before it sloped down to the creek. No light in her windows either. She and Cletus were early to bed, early to rise and they slept soundly. The dogs never woke them unless they kept it up so long that even the soundest sleeper must come awake, knowing there were trespassers on the land.
It seldom happened.
Cletus's pickup was parked beside the porch. From atop the cab, Maidie's big black tomcat was an inky pool of watchfulness as we passed.
On the other side of the lane lay a small field of melons. Honeydews and swollen cantaloupes gleamed among dark vines, and watermelons were starting to stretch themselves.
The lane wound through another stand of trees and then we were out into a twenty-acre field of tobacco. The waning moon, almost a week past full now, sailed high in the sky, flooding the countryside with silver-blue light. A winelike aroma arose from the very earth itself, compounded of cool dirt, green tobacco, and a light breeze blowing up from the creek.
Of one accord, we stood as still and unmoving as the tall pines behind us and breathed it in. Long moments passed, then an owl swooped down into the middle of a truck row. There was a sudden frantic squeak, followed by a silence all the deeper as the owl gained altitude on noiseless wings. A small dark shape dangled limply from its talons.
The spell broken, Daddy lit a cigarette, and we walked on in the general direction the owl had taken. Another quarter mile brought us out along the edge of a deep irrigation pond. Three people had drowned in it over the years. Tonight, the still water was a sheet of shiny black glass. White moths fluttered toward the moon reflected there and were snapped up by the waiting fish.
Beyond the pond was the beginning of the farm he'd given Seth and Minnie as a wedding present years ago. On tonight's clear air, faint music mingled with distant laughter and raucous speech—Saturday night winding down at the migrant camp that straddled the line between Seth's land and Andrew's.
Thus far, we had walked the two perpendicular sides of a right triangle, now we struck across a fallow field to make a rough hypotenuse back toward the house, less than a mile away. The dogs raced out ahead of us and began casting back and forth through the weeds. Once I would have nearly had to trot to keep up with Daddy's long legs. Tonight, even though my feet had been too long on concrete, the pace was slower. Still, he didn't seem winded, and his pauses were contemplative, not for rest.
Mostly we had walked in silence, enjoying a communion that needed few words. Now as we started up the gentle rise, I remembered a warm May night back when this field was planted in corn. He and I and Mother and the little twins had been out walking in the moonlight, much like this. It had rained all night the night before, a long, much-needed soaking rain, and the sun had shone all afternoon. As we stood at the edge of the field, Daddy suddenly hushed us. "Listen," he'd said.
Crickets and cicadas stridulated all around us and a soft breeze rustled the green plants, but that wasn't what he meant. We strained our ears and there beneath the crickets came faint creaks like the opening and closing of a thousand tiny rusty hinges.
"What is it?" we whispered.
"Corn's growing," Daddy said. "Hear it? Drinking up water with its roots and stretching up its stalks. It'll be six inches taller tomorrow."
"Do you remember a night?" I asked him now
"What night was that, shug?"
"The night we heard the corn growing?"
He smiled but kept walking. "That was a purty sound, won't it?"
Down the slope from the house, on the same side as the porch swing, lay our family graveyard; and I suddenly realized this had been his destination all along.
Under a blazing sun, the bouquet of all the old roses planted here would have met us downwind. The cool moon silvered the heavy old-fashioned blossoms. It washed away their delicate pinks and flaming yellows, and it paled their heady aroma into a ghostly fragrance.
Inside the low stone wall, we passed the black marble obelisk he'd erected to his father's memory, the act of a boy's defiant pride after revenuers shot out the tires of the older man's truck and left a young family fatherless. The inscription was in deep shadow, but I knew it by heart:
ROBERT ANDREW KNOTT
1879 - 1923
WELL DONE, THOU GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT
Ten feet away was a white marble stone washed in moonlight. Its block letters were so deeply carved that they were as easy to read against the smooth surface as newsprint on a page.
ANNIE RUTH KNOTT
1915 - 1944
HER SONS WILL REMEMBER AND BLESS HER NAME
Growing up, I hadn't given those dates a second thought. Yet here I stood—now past my thirtieth birthday, but still young, still in a state of becoming—and I experienced an almost visceral shock as I realized for the very first time what it meant that she had ended while only in her twenties.
Daddy's words seemed to come from far away. "They say Herman may be in a wheelchair the rest of his life."
I slipped my hand in his. Less for his comfort than for mine.
"I been thinking on his mama all day. She named him after her daddy. You know that?"
"Yes, sir."
"She didn't have much of a life. Nothing but hard work and babies."
"And you," I said loyally.
"Won't much of a prize." He reached out with gnarled fingers and lightly touched the letters of her name. "She was such a little thing. Not much more than a baby when she come to me. Not as old as Annie Sue is right now when she lost our first son."