Light to the Hills: A Novel (75)

As the path grew steeper, they had to lean forward to help Junebug muscle up the slopes. Rai spotted a black bear in a thicket a ways off the path. It was the time of year when they foraged, growing fat off berries and insects. Soon after noon, they caught glimpses of the whitewashed church through the oaks and hickories.

A pair of juvenile black-and-tan beagles howled as they approached the house. Junebug’s ears swiveled forward, but he was used to dogs at most every house they visited, so he paid these no mind. Rai slid off first and Amanda followed. She held the mule’s reins and surveyed the place that was at once so familiar and so foreign. Red and black chickens scratched in the dirt around the tidy garden to the side of the house, and the same white curtains fluttered in the front windows. Tall green sunflower stalks surrounded the garden fence, their heavy heads about to bloom and open to the sun. Beady always said sunflowers made her happy to look on them, their round black centers like faces lifted up to heaven. She must have saved a whole sack of seeds to have planted enough to now circle the whole garden. On the porch sat the two cane-bottomed chairs with a tin bucket between them and a sack of early peas ready to be shelled. A skinny orange tabby cat wound itself around Amanda’s ankles, and she bent to pet it.

“Remember me, Jo-Jo? You’re looking kinda puny. Getting old, I guess.”

No one came to meet them. Amanda tied Junebug to a porch post and gave him a pat. She drew herself up tall and tried to calm her hammering heart by breathing slow and deep as she walked up the front two steps and knocked. It seemed so odd knocking on the door she must have gone in and out of thousands of times without a thought.

“Hello?” she called.

“It’d be a shame to have come all this way to miss them,” said Rai.

“They wouldn’t both be gone. Not usually. Let’s check the church building.”

Amanda led the way down the path between the house and the church, shooing the now-friendly beagles out from under her feet. No clanging sounds rang from her father’s forge out back, so he wasn’t busy smithing. The door to the church creaked when she opened it, a screeching echo in the stillness. It looked the same as when she’d last seen it. The rough wooden pulpit up front flanked by a short bookshelf, the simple wooden benches on either side, and few other embellishments, with the exception of a lantern or two hung in the back and a plain cross standing in one corner at the front.

There, toward the front, a woman knelt on the plank floor with her head bowed low onto the bench in front of her. She looked thin beneath the cotton dress she wore, and her graying hair was pinned up in a neat bun by the nape of her neck. Her hands were clasped together, and Amanda and Rai could hear her murmuring in a steady chant, although her words weren’t plain. Tears sprang to Amanda’s eyes.

“Mama?” she said, and the murmuring cut off. The woman raised her head and gripped the bench she’d been leaning on.

“Lord a’mercy, if that don’t sound just like my Amanda,” she said.

Amanda cleared her throat. “Mama,” she said again. “It’s me. I’ve come for a visit with Miz MacInteer.”

Beady seemed to come to herself then and turned toward the door. When she saw the two of them, her hand flew to her mouth and she rose to her feet.

“Well, I never,” she breathed. “Thanks be.” Beady closed the distance between them and wrapped Amanda in a tight embrace.

“Let me look at you.” She took Amanda’s face between her palms and drank her in. “A sight for sore eyes, ain’t you?” She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Oh, my land. My stars. My word.” When she ran out of exclamations, she turned to Rai. “And Rai MacInteer, do I have you to thank for this visit?” Without waiting for an answer, she waved her hands. “No matter, I’m just thankful you’re standing before me. Let’s go on up to the house and have some tea, then.”

Beady made her way down the aisle and back over to the house, turning her head as if to reassure herself she wasn’t imagining them. Amanda compared this woman to the one she’d last seen half a decade since, the one she’d held in her mind as “Mama,” and tallied up the differences. This one was a bit grayer and seemed thinner. Amanda was sorry, then. Sorry she’d stayed away, nursing her wounds, sorry she’d held on to her stubborn like a favorite prize she didn’t want to give up.

Inside, Rai helped light the stove while Beady got the water going. Amanda looked around the place, fingering a quilt she’d never seen draped over the back of a chair, where she imagined Beady sat of an evening, reading or sewing. She ran a finger over her father’s shelf of books, spotting one or two new volumes. She wondered if he knew she brought books to the hills—likely so; folks brought them news from town fairly regular. In this corner, the curtained bed, in that one, a coat rack, broom, and gun. On the mantel sat the familiar round-faced clock and its copper key for winding it twice a week on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

“Where’s Daddy?” Amanda asked.

Beady shook her head. “He’s had to go over to Cutout for some smithing, and I’m sure a bit of preaching while he’s at it. If he’d a’ known you were visiting . . .” She trailed off and turned away, likely not wanting to speak a falsehood. “But I’m glad you’re here.”

That’s where it stood, then; they were a house divided. No wonder her mama looked worn. As long as she’d been alive, they had functioned as a unit. She’d never questioned their affection for each other, watching the way her mama gazed at her daddy and hung on his every word, and the way he bent to her and was quick to share her load. The curtain hanging by their bed was thin, and Amanda had been lulled to sleep by their whispers and giggles many nights. This was different. Of course they’d disagreed over matters, but they didn’t stew. “Never go to bed angry” was their oft-repeated rule. Amanda wondered how many nights they’d broken that rule in the past five years. She’d never seen Beady’s mouth bite back words about her husband, dithering between fealty and feelings. Such a struggle had cost her.