Me & Emma Read online

“Did, too.” From the way she says it, I almost believe her.

  “Here’s our stream,” Emma says loudly, sweeping her arm toward the water.

  “What do you mean it’s your stream?” she says. When she talks her upper lip curls up like she’s sniffing dog doo.

  “It’s the Diamond River,” she says right back to Orla Mae, not noticing Orla Mae crossing her arms against her chest like she’s waiting for Emma to stop talking so she can prove us wrong. “It’s on our property so it’s ours and no one’s going to tell us different.”

  “My daddy says your daddy’s gonna work the smoke shift,” Orla Mae says.

  “Stepdaddy,” Emma corrects her again.

  “Your stepdaddy’s gonna work the smoke shift,” she says, minding Emma.

  “What’s the smoke shift?”

  “It’s the worst one,” she says. “They got to be careful not to let the sawdust catch fire overnight. Your stepdaddy’s got to keep stirring the pile and stirring the pile so’s it don’t catch on fire.”

  “Stirring sawdust?” I say. This doesn’t sound right, either.

  “Yeah,” she says. “You gonna be working the boxes?”

  “Huh?”

  “For turpentine,” she says in the way you do when someone’s stupid. “You’ll be working the boxes, I betcha. I work ’em. Summertime’s when the flow’s the best but the smell’s the worst. I wear a cloth that’s made from one of daddy’s old shirts. It’s tied around my mouth so I don’t cough to’n much.”

  “Orla Mae Bickett! Orla Mae!” her mama calls through the trees. “We got to get a move on, girl. Come on now.”

  “Bye,” she says, and she flies away like a bee after honey.

  “Turpentine,” I say to Emma.

  Emma squinches her shoulders up and jumps down from the rock she’s been sitting on above the Diamond River.

  “How’re we gonna know what to do?” I ask her, but really I’m not waiting for an answer since I know she doesn’t have a one.

  We take our time coming out from the stream, so when we get to the house the Bicketts have already gone and Momma’s nowhere to be seen.

  “Let’s go up behind the house that way,” Emma says, pointing.

  I can tell we’ve been gone awhile ’cause my belly’s growling at me to put something in it.

  “Let’s go back. I’m hungry,” I say.

  “Oh, all right,” Emma says. And once again it takes us a much shorter time to get back to the house than it did to get away from it.

  “Momma?” I call out while we’re fitting through the door off the kitchen.

  “What?” she hollers back at us.

  “We’re hungry,” Emma says.

  The kitchen is much smaller than our old kitchen and it isn’t near as bright on account of the window facing the tall trees. In a box on the floor there’s some bread and a jar of honey so I figure we can start there and see how far that gets us. Trouble is, I cain’t find any silverware to use to get the honey onto the bread slices, so we’re going to have to do our best without them. I hope Momma doesn’t come in—she calls us savages when we use knives and forks so no telling what she’d think if she saw us ripping the bread into sections, rolling it between our palms into little balls and then dipping the balls straight into the jar. A long string of golden honey stretches from the jar to my mouth. It’s all over my chin and half of the dirty counter. Emma laughs and copies me and then it becomes a game—whose string stretches farthest from the jar without breaking. I take a step back and the honey stays attached. One…more…step…

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Momma’s voice makes me jump clear out of my skin and the fine thread is broken, falling gently onto the counter, where it melts into the puddle that’s already formed.

  “Huh?” I say with my mouth full. I turn around but Emma’s run for cover. Where I don’t know.

  “Don’t you ‘huh’ me,” Momma says. And she swats my rear end to make her point. Trouble is I wasn’t ready for the spanking so I tumble into the counter and knock the honey jar clear over onto the floor, where it rolls a few feet, spilling gold honey, before I can get back upright and get my wits about me.

  “After all the cleaning I’ve done I’ve got to follow up after you like a damn maid?” Momma’s voice is louder than I’ve heard it in a while.

  “I’m sorry, Momma,” I say, choking on the last of the honey ball still lodged at the top of my throat, waiting for a good gulp to slide the rest of the way down. “I’ll—”

  “I’m sorry, Momma,” she gets her voice up high, “I’m sorry, Momma.” And she wallops me good again, in case I hadn’t picked up the point the first time around. Only this time I really wasn’t prepared so my head bounces against the counter on its way down, which makes it a little harder not to cry. But I don’t. Cry. That’d be the kiss of death with Momma.

  “Get up,” she yells at me. “Get up!”

  I do as she says.

  “Now get your sorry ass out to the front and get that mop. You’re going to clean this floor till it looks new, that’s what you’re gonna do.”

  I make for the door but I stumble again on account of the fact that I’m clumsy that way and it’s hard to get my balance after hitting the floor so fast. I swallow the blood from my lip and that helps the honey ball go down.

  “I hate you, you little savage,” she yells after me. “You hear me? I hate you. I hate the way you look, I hate the way you walk, I hate everything about you….” I don’t hear the rest ’cause I’m trying to hurry with the mop.

  I know Momma doesn’t mean this. She’s just mad and when Momma gets mad she has trouble with her mouth—it won’t stop moving, is what the trouble is. That’s why Emma takes off if we’re caught in the act of doing something Momma won’t like. Emma acts all tough and grown-up but when Momma says that hate stuff to her I can tell it kills her inside. Emma’s really not grown up enough to know Momma doesn’t mean it.

  The mop’s just where Momma says, tilted up against the front porch railing, with the wet side up so it can dry. But when I carry it back into the house the pole part bumps the wall and makes a racket that I know will set Momma off again so I stop and lower it a bit and tiptoe the rest of the way into the kitchen to set about cleaning up the honey.

  Momma’s gone but I hear her footsteps over my head so she’s probably back at work in the upstairs bedrooms, scrubbing down walls and floors. Emma peeks in through the kitchen door.

  “The coast is clear,” I whisper to her. She’s careful when she opens the screen door, closing it carefully behind her.

  Without saying anything more to each other, we clean up together. Emma picks up the jar and tilts whatever’s left of the honey back in and I push the mop around over the spill. When you dip a mop into a bucket of water you have to do it slowly so you can stop pushing it down when the water rises up to the edge of the bucket. I forget about that the first time and water sloshes out across the floor before I can help myself. It’s okay, though, since the floor’s still gluey with honey so the water helps in the clean-up.

  “You think you can just come in and fix yo’self anything your little heart desires.” Momma’s voice makes me jump all over again. “A little honey on toast, please,” she says in a higher tone, making fun of me and Emma. “Oh, thank you, don’t mind if I do.” She’s leaning up against the door to the kitchen, smoking a cigarette, watching us clean. I’m careful not to look her in the eye. I don’t want her to think I’m sassing her.

  She starts pacing. Back and forth on the part of the kitchen floor that’s clean already, her bare feet slapping against the wetness. “You think you can just come and go, pretty as you please.” Back. “Not a care in the wind.” And forth. “No troubles a’tall.”

  Emma’s head’s down, too, concentrating on the counter, even t
hough that didn’t need as much concentration.

  “Get out!” Momma shouts.

  This time I do look in her direction, but not into her eyes. I want to make sure she’s talking to us, which, come to think of it, she must be since Richard’s nowhere to be seen.

  “Momma?”

  “I said, get out.” She’s stopped pacing. “You deaf? Get out of here right now! I don’t even want to look at you! Get out!”

  I drop the mop pole and it clatters onto the floor. Emma leaves the rag she’s been wiping with and we hightail it out of the kitchen, through the back door and onto the trail in back of the house.

  “Get out!” Momma’s still hollering from inside. When we’re safe onto the trail we stop at the same time and listen to hear if she yells anything else. All I can make out is her crying.

  “Let’s go find Orla Mae,” Emma says after a spell.

  “How we s’posed to know where she lives?”

  “I don’t know, but we can try.”

  So we set out off the trail, along the side of the house with Momma crying inside, down the path that brought us here in the beginning and out to the main road where we saw the Bicketts drive in from. I cain’t believe it took us this long to find our way out of the forest into the real world, but I’m glad we finally did.

  At the edge of the road the sand mixes with soil and then the blacktop starts up, nice and smooth like it’s just been tarred over. Clean yellow lines cut down the middle of it.

  “Right or left?” I ask Emma, since this was her big idea.

  “Let’s shoot for it,” she says.

  “Rock, paper, scissors,” I say, turning my hand from fist into flat for paper.

  “Scissors!” she says, her two first fingers chop-chopping into my hand. “We go left, since we ain’t been that way yet.”

  “It’s ‘haven’t,’” I correct her.

  “Huh?”

  “‘We haven’t been that way yet.’”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “You said ‘ain’t.’”

  “No I didn’t,” she says.

  “Did, too.”

  “Did not.”

  “Em-ma.”

  “Car-rie!” she whines right back at me, stubborn as a mule.

  “Oh, come on,” I sigh, “let’s go to the left then.”

  It doesn’t take long before we come up on another opening in the trees big enough for a car to make tracks through, but there’s no telling whether this is Orla Mae’s road.

  “You can’t see anything from here,” Emma says, standing on her tippy toes in case whatever there is to see up the driveway is higher than her head. “We better just walk up and see what we see.”

  Three steps in and the barking starts.

  “Dog!” a man’s voice calls out from far away. “Brownie! Get!”

  I’ve turned to leave but Emma calls out, “Sorry!”

  “Who there?” the voice is getting closer yet. “Brownie, get up front. Brownie!” The dog’s still barking up a storm.

  “It’s just us,” Emma says. I roll my eyes at her. Like he’d know who “just us” is.

  Then he’s standing there. Right in front of us. Holding a shotgun that’s almost as long as his whole body. He’s the kind of old where you have no idea what his birth age is. He could be a million years old as far as we know. His hair’s greased back, all shiny and gray, and his face has more lines in it than there are blades of grass in the world. If he’s wearing a belt you wouldn’t know it ’cause his belly hangs so far over where his waist is s’posed to be. He’s scary-looking, especially the way he’s scowling at us, which makes his eyebrows almost meet in the middle, above his nose, which, by the way, takes up a whole lot of his face. It’s the fattest nose I’ve ever seen and it has bumps all over it.

  “Brownie! Quit!” And, just like that, the dog shuts up good. “Who you? Whatchoo want here?” He’s still scowling, but his eyebrows are working their way back to where they belong.

  “I’m Carrie and that’s my sister, Emma, over there by that tree, and we just moved in a bit up the road.”

  He doesn’t speak or move. He just looks at us, waiting. “Who’s your family?”

  “Our momma’s Libby Parker and our stepdaddy’s Richard Parker.”

  “You the Rutherfordton Parkers? Now, what was his given name? Sam, I believe.”

  “Not sure, sir.”

  “What you mean you not sure? You don’t know who your family is?”

  “It’s not that,” I explain. “It’s just that we don’t know who my stepdaddy belongs to. My daddy was a Culver. From Toast. His daddy, my granddaddy, sold farm supplies out of there, too. Anyway, that was our name, too, till he died and Momma got a new husband and then made us get a new name.”

  “Culver,” he thinks on the name. “Culver. From near the Yadkin side?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I knew of your granddaddy—he used to play a mean banjo, he did.”

  “I remember Daddy talking about that. He kept his banjo after Granddaddy died.”

  “Sure enough! Jordan’s his given name?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s right.”

  “So, this Parker fella, you don’t know who his family is? Where he come from?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I see.”

  “Number twenty-two. That’s our house. Number twenty-two.”

  “The old Farley place.” He nods like he knows it. “Whatcha want here?”

  “Um, well, we were just looking around,” I stammer.

  “We looking for the Bicketts’,” Emma calls out from behind a tree.

  “They down the road farther,” he says. I can tell he’s still suspicious of us. He’s looking at us like we’s ghosts.

  “Okay, well, we’ll just be going on then,” I say. Brownie the dog’s back and sniffing my hand. I haven’t looked down at her because I’m scared to take my eyes off the old man in case he changes his mind and points that shotgun at us square. He looks at his dog and his face softens up, the lines unfolding a bit, so I look down at her, too.

  “What happened to her leg?” I ask him. Brownie’s two front legs are fine, normal. Same with one of her back legs. But strapped across her back, right above her tail, is a harness thing that’s holding up a wooden leg to take the place of a missing one.

  “Got caught in a trap,” the old man says. “Years back. Had to saw it off her.”

  I kneel down to pet her, since now she seems like she wants to make friends with me. Emma’s by my side, petting her, too. She’s cooing her name over and over again and she looks like that’s just fine with her.

  “Ain’t never seen her take to strangers like this,” the old man says. He’s tilted the shotgun away from himself, forming a triangle with the ground. “I tell you what. You got pig fat in yo’ pockets, something?” And then he smiles. And just like it was the scariest frown I ever saw, his smile is the sweetest on account of all the lines framing his mouth, highlighting it.

  “Just like a human, that dog is,” he says. “Ain’t got no one else round but her and me and I’ll be damned she doesn’t make the best comp’ny I ever had. I fashioned that wood leg for her after the accident. Couldn’t stand seeing her try to get used to skippin’ around the yard out front. I got’s one, too,” he says, lifting his pant leg for us to see his own wooden leg.

  “Are you a pirate?” Emma asks him. I’m glad she does ’cause I’m wondering the same thing. Then again I don’t know if pirates are for real or just in stories.

  The old man smiles again. “Naw. Just lost m’leg is all. Name’s Wilson.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Wilson,” I say, knowing Momma’d be proud my manners are getting better.

  “Y’all come on by see Browni
e when you want since she’s taken a shine to ya, from the looks of it. Aw-right, dog. You let them get on their way, hear?” He pats his good leg so the dog’ll come to him. She does, but not without some more pets from us before we straighten up.

  “Which way to the Bicketts’?” Emma asks him.

  “End of this path you turn left, pass three more of the same, and on the fourth you’ll see ’em. Can’t miss ’em.”

  “Bye!” we call out.

  He doesn’t say anything, he just turns to go back where he came from, but Brownie sits and watches us go, her tail wagging a half circle in the dirt. If a dog could smile that one’d be doing it right now. And I don’t have any earthly idea why it makes me mad that a dog can be so happy but it does.

  “Let’s go to Orla Mae’s tomorrow,” I say to Emma when we’re back by the blacktop. “All the sudden I don’t feel much like going over there.”

  “So what do you want to do, then?”

  “We better go back and see what’s what,” I sigh.

  “Aww,” she whines, letting her head flop back up at the sky, her arms dead against the sides of her. “But I don’t want to.”

  “I know. Neither do I, but we have to.”

  “You reckon we’ll be gettin’ a proper supper?” she asks. “After the honey thing?”

  “How should I know?”

  We walk along the blacktop a spell and then she speaks up, her voice sounding old. “Hey, Carrie? You think Momma’ll ever like me as much as she likes you?”

  I don’t reckon she will but I can’t exactly say this to Emma without her feelings being hurt. I mean, it’s one thing to know in your heart your momma doesn’t like you that much, it’s another thing to have someone like your sister spell it out to you clear as day.

  “Sure,” I say, wishing it were true.

  “What do you think it’ll take?”

  “Huh?” I say over my shoulder.

  “For her to like me,” she says.

  I cain’t come up with anything so I just keep my mouth shut, like Gammy says to do if’n you ain’t got anything good that can come out of it. After a spell of walking some more I look back at her.