Savoring the memory of that rich hand-cranked treat, I pulled into town and stopped at the convenience store. The air inside chilled me as it had in those days. I walked around, my flip-flops slapping against the dingy tile floor, and picked up a Heath ice cream bar and a bottle of flavored water. Before opening the door to the refrigerated display case, I ran my fingers along the handle.
When we were nine, Aunt Rae finally allowed us to walk to that very store by ourselves for ICEEs and anything else our allowance would buy. We met Neal Langford by the soda case that year. He was short on funds, and Trace bought him a Dr Pepper and a pack of M&Ms. The three of us hung around after that, playing in the woods behind Aunt Rae’s or on the back porch. Each night, when the setting sun would touch the trees on the ridge, Neal would head home, but he’d be back the next morning in time for sausage, grits, and gobs of buttermilk pancakes.
Every now and then, Aunt Rae would set up a tent in the backyard and let the boys camp out overnight. I felt left out until she introduced me to Lacy Edwards at the grocery store one day. After that, the four of us sat in a circle in the backyard until the chill of night—or faint rustlings in the trees Neal swore were bears—drove us indoors. The following year, Delia Somers moved into the house down the road from Aunt Rae’s, and we officially became a group.
Back in my car, I licked melted ice cream off my fingers and turned onto a road that was once covered with dirt. When we were old enough not to get ourselves drowned, or to send for help if one of us did, Aunt Rae introduced us to Honeysuckle Creek. We scaled down the steep slope through masses of honeysuckle using a prickly rope embedded in the trunk of an old sassafras tree. Once, Neal found a fishing pole along the bank of the stream and showed us how to bait the hook. The creek was wide and shallow and filled with big, smooth boulders. Perfect for trout, he’d claimed. Aunt Rae said we’d best learn to fly fish, but none of us wanted to cut up anything we caught, so we sat around the bank talking and stealing honeysuckle from the bees.
The summer Trace and I turned sixteen, we often piled into the back of Neal’s pickup truck and headed to the national park to hike or to eat lunch in a shady spot overlooking Shenandoah Valley. On days the mountain air wasn’t cool enough to keep the sweat off our skin, we practiced flips in the deep end of Lacy’s pool while Delia tried to catch Neal’s eye with her bikini.
That year, on the Fourth of July, Neal met us at the house and we hiked to Honeysuckle Creek. Delia and Lacy were there with bags of chips and a pitcher of tea. After a day of pretending to fish, we started a fire using branches Trace had found in the woods and cooked up the hotdogs Aunt Rae had contributed to the feast. For dessert, we attacked the yellow and white honeysuckle that tumbled down the hill. Swatting away bees, we plucked the stamen, dropped the sweet nectar on our tongues, and tossed the empty petals in the dirt at our feet. One bloom earned me a sting. As I nursed my wound, Neal grabbed my wrist and held the honeysuckle in my hand over his mouth. After swiping the drop with the tip of his tongue, he kissed me. After that, not even Delia’s bathing suit could separate us.
A concrete bridge now stood in the place of the wooden one my brother once threatened to use as firewood, and someone had cut the rope on the sassafras tree. I got out of the car and sat on the edge of the embankment where I could see the spot Neal first kissed me. The honeysuckle, like those long summer days, had disappeared. Razed by someone with plans that didn’t match mine.
Each August, after Mom picked us up, she spent the long drive home lecturing us on how we had the kind of summer only kids in novels or old TV shows enjoyed. Summers filled with water and clean air, where our needs were taken care of and all we had to do was sleep late and eat whatever Aunt Rae put on our plates. A freedom that would end when it came time to pay our way in life. She was right about everything but the timing.
A week after completing our junior year in high school, an orange-and-white U-Haul pulled into the Edwards’ driveway. When it left, Lacy’s dad and half the furniture moved to Charlottesville. We gathered around her on the living-room floor and held her as she cried. A week later, another U-Haul arrived, and Lacy and her mom went to Roanoke to live with family. Though we grieved the loss of one of our own, one hot day, we snuck over the fence of the empty house to swim in the pool. Dead leaves had already taken our place.
We slumped around for weeks. Just about the time I felt like piling into the truck for a trip to the park, Delia called and told me she was having a baby. The father would propose, she was sure, and she asked me to be her bridesmaid.
I declined. Standing that close to Neal at the altar had suddenly lost its appeal.
Memories of friendship and betrayal, lost love and Aunt Rae choked me as I sat in the shade above Honeysuckle Creek. I stood, brushed dirt off the back of my shorts, and got into my car. A mile from Aunt Rae’s old place, a little girl I knew to be four-years old played in a scraggly yard while a woman who could no longer fit in a bikini screamed into a cell phone. With her dark hair and cherub face, the kid looked more like Mr. Edwards than she did Neal or Delia, but Aunt Rae would have said that was spite talking.
I’d spent the rest of that seventeenth summer with Aunt Rae, learning how to cook and sew, and even doing a little gardening. While my brother hung out at Honeysuckle Creek with Neal, Aunt Rae taught me how to make butter pecan ice cream and how to treat a broken heart with hard work. That year, I went to Etlan a child and left a woman.
The following Christmas, Aunt Rae fell and broke her hip. When it was clear it wouldn’t heal up well enough for her to live alone, she had us board up the house and move her to Waynesboro. After that, I never went back.
Until now.
By the terms of the will, my brother and I now owned Aunt Rae’s property. Trace had asked if he could live there—a sure sign he intended to marry his girlfriend—but part of me wanted to recapture those days. To serve up gobs of food and live the life Aunt Rae gave us. But standing in the shadow of the ridge where we once sat in a circle until nightfall, I changed my mind. I’d already had all the nectar this life had to offer. Without it, the rest was empty.
Moonbow
Science tells us rainbows form when light refracts through a prism such as rain, but I never knew if the phenomenon occurred when a beam of light shone through a single bead of water, or if it took thousands of drops to form the bow. If the former, the sky should be filled with brightly colored arcs after a storm, delighting children lucky enough to see such a sight. If the latter, then science failed to explain to me how light bending through a myriad of drops can form a single, massive, unbroken bow separated into a palette of colors.
Foamy white water glowing in moonlight nearly obscured by a cloud gushed over a cliff into a pool sixty-eight feet below, its perpetual roar serving as a locator beacon. A fine mist blowing up from the falls dampened my skin. Tightening my fleece around me to fight off the chill, I crept across the overlook located just off the bank of the river. Though the sandstone typical of the Cumberland Plateau had eroded in places, leaving an uneven surface littered with potholes, I didn’t need a flashlight to make my way around the state park. My kin had been roaming this area of Kentucky for over two-hundred years.
And therein lay the problem.
Family, friends, and neighbors—people who knew me and knew every sin I’d committed while growing up, and some who participated in those sins with me—still lived in Corbin. When I’d left for college four years before, I was still the girl they knew me to be. As rebellious as I was back then, I didn’t care what they said or thought.
But that was before the weight of those sins had brought me to my knees before Christ during my senior year. Though God had granted me a new heart to go along with my new life, I couldn’t forget my past. And I doubted those in my old stomping grounds could either.
My pastor and his wife said that was the very reason I should head back to the hills after graduation. They pointed to a verse in Mark where Jesus had instructed a man He?
??d healed to go home and tell his family what the Lord had done for him. I’d promised to consider it, but the verse about a prophet having no honor in his hometown kept running through my head. In a town where I’d stolen everything from patio furniture to a woman’s husband, dishonor was all I could expect.
But God had made His wishes clear the following week. On the day my landlord informed me he was selling the building and couldn’t renew my lease, a teaching position opened up at my old elementary school.
Footsteps and flashlight beams brought me back to the edge of the river. Tourists and campers would soon crowd beside me on a rock some claimed was as old as the Ancient of Days. I would rather have the moment to myself, but I understood the lure of a miracle no one could fully explain.
A chorus of shhh nearly drowned out the rumble of the falls. As those around me extinguished flashlights, a cloud as stubborn as I once had been shifted revealing a full moon, dazzling this deep in the dark country. Moments later, an arc of color shimmered, and the famous moonbow formed across Cumberland Falls.
Children and adults, their voices quivering with excitement, tried to take pictures with their cell phones. I reached out along with several others, unable to touch that which I could plainly see.
They say darkness is the absence of light, but the Apostle John reminds us the light of Jesus shines in the darkness, and the darkness can’t overcome it. Maybe God wanted me to go to Corbin for that very reason. Whether He intended to shine His light through me alone or to use me as one of a thousand droplets, I didn’t know. But if He could use the mist from a waterfall located in the middle of nowhere to project a miracle, then maybe, just maybe, He could use me.
Poplar
Mornings are best, just after dawn when the only creatures awake are the birds. A mist rises from the river, nearly shrouding the sea of leaves rolling across the gorge. I can think then. Think without having to compete with Mama’s chattering or the constant blare of cooking shows.
The breeze curls around me, bringing with it the sweet scent of pine mixed with new growth and decay. Scents I’ve known since childhood. Moving slowly, as if I’m still the gymnast crossing the beam, I walk across the sandstone arch known as Sky Bridge and bend backward. My hands land on gritty rock. Pointing my toes, I kick off into a back walkover and flip to my feet. A tangle of chirps erupts from the trees like applause.
“Girl, you’re crazy.” From the middle of the arch, Joley peeks over the edge to remind me we’re a couple dozen feet above the ground. Though I’d love to continue the routine, I settle beside her and let my gaze wander across the canopy shielding the deep ravines of the Red River Gorge.
“That’s probably the last time I’ll be able to do that. After Memorial Day, tourists will be crawling all over the place, and the fall semester will start before they clear out.” Which irritates me. I won’t be able to hike without running into someone.
Joley crosses her legs, tucking her toes beneath her thighs. “That’s true, but it’s stupid to take chances before graduation.”
At the reminder of the upcoming event and the changes that will follow, I focus on poplars and sourwoods, elderberries and laurel, silently reviewing family and genus. Will I remember it all when my college classes begin this fall?
Joley nudges me. “Have you decided?”
I know she’s not asking what I plan to study at the University of Kentucky. I’ve known that since my family’s first trip to Daniel Boone National Forest when I was a kid. Mama hated sleeping in a tent and using the toilet in the bathhouse, but I fell in love with Tree City, as I’d called it. Stomping through the ferns, I pretended the rhododendrons were houses and Jack-in-the-Pulpits preached to tiny gnomes wearing pointy-white Dutchman’s Breeches. I refused to spend vacations anywhere else, though Mama once said she’d like to go to Florida. Daddy sided with me, and when summer rolled around, off to the forest we went.
Amber Pennington loves to harass me about it, but only because I’m prettier than she is—least that’s what Tom Meadors tells me. And because the blonde in my hair is natural where she has to buy hers.
An elbow lands in my ribs. “Darryl Ann, I asked if you decided.”
I brush away her arm and focus on the trees just off the trail below. “Have you ever wondered why God put tulips in a tree?”
“Oh my…” She stops because I smack her when she says the Lord’s name in vain, but to complete the thought, she rolls sideways and flops on layered rock melted into shape by exposure to the elements.
I commit that line to memory. It will sound good on a test.
“Come on, Darryl,” she says as if it’s one word. “It’s too early in the morning to be deep. You’re better off trying to figure out how to keep Amber away from Tom while you’re at college.”
“If he’s stupid enough to go for her, then I don’t want him.”
Joley sniffs because she knows better. “Stop changing the subject, and stop talking about tulips. Have you decided if you’re going to ask your mom?”
She was the one who changed the subject, but I let it go. “No, and that’s why I wondered why God put tulips in a tree.”
With an exaggerated sigh, Joley drops her arms on the rocks, softly so as not to make bruises before the big graduation bash. “You know, it’s no wonder you don’t get invited to parties.” She pushes herself into a sitting position. “Okay. Tell me where you saw tulips in a tree and I’ll make up an answer to explain why they’re there.”
This shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. Pointing into a section of intertwined branches below, I flatten my hand on Joley’s back and press. “There, on the tulip poplar.”
She squints at the yellowish blooms resting atop lobed leaves, then her eyes widen. “Oh my gosh, those are tulips. Is that for real?”
Joley has spent her life keeping an eye on her popularity. It’s no wonder she never bothered to look up every now and then, even to see the state tree of Kentucky.
“Yes, it’s for real. Why would God put tulips in a tree?”
She shrugs. “To get a better look? Who knows, Darryl. It’s a tree. What does this have to do with asking your mom about your father?”
It had everything to do with it, though I wouldn’t say that to Joley. She hates it when I get what she calls philosophical. Translated, when I think of anything deeper than what shoes to wear to school. But a tulip in a tree seemed like a question God didn’t intend to answer, and not answering the obvious was what Mama was doing. I’m a blonde in a household of chocolate-topped people. A thin reed to their average statures. Nothing on my face matches my father except the blue in our eyes. Mama claims she named me after Darryl Hannah, an actress who was popular when she was young, but I think it was her way of telling Daddy who my real father was.
Not that Daddy seemed to notice. My entire life, he called me his little butterbean. He always tells me I make him proud, and he supported my dream of going into Forestry when Mama insisted I become a nurse. If love was proof of parentage, I had my DNA.
So should I hurt him by telling Mama I had a right to know if I had another father before I ran off into adulthood? And what if Amber didn’t get her claws into Tom while I was at school, and he and I ended up getting married? In one of Joley’s smarter moments, she said I should know my medical history before having kids. Though she blew it afterwards by saying I should know to make sure I wouldn’t have retards. This from a girl who wants to be a teacher.
Joley rolls to her feet and brushes bits of sand from her jeans. “I’ve had enough of this nature garbage. Let’s go to the grill for breakfast. You can pay for making me get up this early.”
I stand, and as Joley makes her way to the trail, I stare across the Red River Gorge and the sheer drops of Clifty Wilderness. I have visions of spending my days here, working. Of hiking with Tom and two little boys with or without incapacities, mental or otherwise.
But Joley is right. I should know if risks exist before Tom and I make those kids.
&n
bsp; We go to the grill where we order waffles topped with strawberries. After spending an hour listening to Joley gush about a party I would have skipped anyway if Amber had invited me, I drop her off and head home to talk to Mama.
I open the door to the house my grandfather built after settling in Clark County. The smell of old and bacon fills the air. Daddy is sitting in his recliner reading the paper while the same news blasts through the television loud enough for our deaf neighbor to hear. He looks up and mutes the volume.
“Hey, butterbean. Where did you run off to so early?”
“The gorge. Where’s Mama? I need to talk to her.”
Before she launched into talk of the party, Joley and I had practiced what I would say. How I would beg Mama not to tell Daddy I’d asked.
“She’s making breakfast. Whatcha got there on your shoe, hon?”
He gestures toward my feet and I look down. Sticking to the side of my hiking boot like a wad of chewed gum is a yellowish flower. I lean over and peel it off.
Daddy turns a page and skims the headlines. “What do you need to talk to Mom about? Is something wrong?” He peeks over the top of the paper. “Don’t answer if it’s a girl thing.”
I walk across the room and kiss my father on the forehead. “Nothing like that, Daddy. I just need to know how to keep Tom while I’m at college. Short of marrying him, that is. I’m not ready for that.”
Daddy puts aside his paper and pulls up the ottoman as he did when I was little. While he dishes out advice, I finger the crushed flower in my hand. Maybe God did put tulips in a tree so He could see them better. Or maybe He figured some things are so precious, they need to be protected.
Saints and Sinners
“Bath. The oldest town in North Carolina. Settled in 1705. Notable residents: Edward Teach and a surveyor named John Lawson. Notable visitors: George Whitefield.” Delana smiled at me. “I thought you would like that.” My daughter shoved the brochure in the pocket of her sweater and turned slowly, inspecting the destination she’d chosen for our weekly outing.