Drifting South

But it was clear to me by the forceful way Ma and the elders had brought me back before that summer was near over that she’d changed her mind about that. I’d never fought nobody so hard as I did the day the elders took me back to Shady for no good reason that they’d tell me, except the elders had ordered it was time for me to go back home and we had to be quick about it.

Since I’d been a little boy, Ma had always told me that the world outside of Shady Hollow was a dangerous one. She said I wasn’t yet ready to step foot in it whenever I’d get in a wandering mood. But after she’d let me leave Shady Hollow with Aunt Kate and I spent those short months in Durham County, it didn’t seem a bit dangerous to me.

She kept telling me that she’d fetched me back because she missed me and needed me around to make money to help her take care of my younger brothers, but I didn’t think that was the real reason as she kept saying it was over and over. I remembered how the elders looked so serious and loaded down with guns when they came and grabbed me all in a rush.

Whatever the real reason was, Ma’d kept it to herself, as she’d do with so many other things.

As I crept up the back steps to where I lived so Amanda Lynn couldn’t get a glimpse of me yet, all of those thoughts swirled in my head. The one thing I didn’t think about or realize was that the terrible danger my ma had always feared and I’d never understood, had come to Shady Hollow.

And it was looking for me.

Uncle Ray jumped off of Ma’s sofa just as fast as I’d thrown open the front door. If he’d been standing behind it instead of lounging with his feet up, it may have killed him.

By the time he said something, I was already in the bathroom pouring a basin of water.

I grabbed the cake of soap from the rim of the bathing tub and I rubbed and rubbed on it and finally got some suds going even though the water was cold. After I finished and dried off, I still thought I didn’t look as good as I could. So I reached into Uncle Ray’s shaving kit that he kept on the second shelf and I searched and found his bottle of fancy hair-oil treatment. I squirted a bunch of it in my hands, rubbed it through my black hair in a big fury and then slicked it all back away from my face and over my ears like he carried his hair.

I studied my new look for a bit from the front and then side to side, and noted how it made me look older. I thought I looked better, too. I figured if I ran into my brothers, they were sure to give me some sass about my hair all shiny, but I’d shut that up right quick.

I was more pleased with my new look than I could have even hoped for, especially at that important moment, so I took one long last look before I wiped my hands on my dungarees and went into me and my brothers’ bedroom. I searched the closet and dresser for the best shirt I could find.

I found my favorite shirt, which was a little past a little dirty. A person would have to get close to notice though, I figured. I’d just tell Amanda that I’d been working hard all day to make traveling money to come to see her, that’s what I’d tell her if I saw her looking too close at the shirt.

I was buttoning it up when I heard Ma’s footsteps. I tried to grab my stash hidden in the floorboards so I’d have money to treat Amanda Lynn to a nice evening, if she’d be agreeable to it. She was the only person in the whole world I’d spend that money on, but Ma peeked around the door too soon, still wearing her shiny red robe but she had on her old slippers now. There was no way I was gonna let her know I had a sack of money, so I kept a foot on the board.

“Did you get the food?”

“You won’t believe it, Ma. You know that—”

“Sugar, did you bring back the food?”

I shook my head. “You know that girl I told you about last year, the one I got to know in North Carolina?”

Ma stepped into the bedroom and her face looked like it froze on her. I wondered if it was over me not bringing back the steak dinner, but it was even a more serious look than she’d given me the couple of times that I’d gambled away her supper money.

I backed up from her look and the excitement fell out of my voice, but just a little. “Remember, the girl who lived on that—”

“I remember.”

“She’s here. She checked into the Alton House and I’m going down there.”

Ma walked across the squeaking pine floor for a moment and both her hands started grabbing at the robe where it draped her legs. She now just looked spooked.

“You mad I didn’t bring up the steak dinner yet?” I asked.

Ma rolled up her hair to the top of her head. She pulled a pin from somewhere in her robe and stuck it into the ball.

“I put the order in. I paid for it already, Ma. I’ll bring it back from Merle’s in a—”

She shut the bedroom door and stood between it and me. “Have you seen her?”

“Not yet. But Herbert saw her and said she was looking for me. It’s her. It’s Amanda Lynn. She told Herbert her name.”

“So she knows you’re here?”

“Yeah, Ma. He told her I lived here.”

“You can’t go see her.”

A long ugly quiet passed between us. Ma’s eyes were watery but never blinked.

“What?”

She started pacing again and wiped under one eye. “Find your brothers, right now. They should still be down at the falls…you tell them to stay until I come for them. Tell them not to come back here. Don’t you come back here neither until I find you. Do not come back. For any reason. Now go. Right now, Benjamin. And do not go to see this girl.” Ma tried to turn me toward the door with one hand on my shoulder, but I didn’t move.

“What’s going on?”

She started pushing harder. “I’ll tell you when I meet you at the river.”

“I wanna know now.”

Ma let go of me and starting pacing again, but this time a lot faster. She went to take a seat on the double mattresses that me and my brothers slept on, then she looked at me all of a sudden like she’d forgotten I was standing there. She shot back up.

“Go! And if you see any men you don’t know, don’t get near them. Run. Don’t speak to anybody, not even your friends. Now find your brothers. I’ll be there soon. And go through the woods to get there, don’t take the river trail. I have to go talk to the—”

“I’m gonna see Amanda Lynn.”

Ma took one long step and slapped me hard across the face. I mean real hard. “I said no,” she said.

I turned back to her. I was a lot bigger than Ma and had been for a couple of years. I’d never gotten so mad at her as I got the second after she laid a hand across my face for no reason. Before, she’d always had a decent reason for something I’d done. Not this time. I hadn’t seen Ma with the moonlight in her eyes in ages, and wondered if she was off in the head and that man she was with had given her something bad to drink or sniff or smoke like had happened before one time.

I stepped up full in front of her and she backed up from me. I tasted the blood in my mouth and wanted to hit back and hit back hard, but I didn’t. It was the first time I’d ever wanted to hit my own ma like I’d hit a man, being riled up as I was, and it shook me up even more feeling like that because I’d never felt such a dark thing before.

“Don’t ever hit me again,” I finally said.

When I went to leave my bedroom, Ma tried to grab hold of me. She pulled my shirt out from where I’d just tucked it, but I was walking fast toward the front door.

“Don’t let him leave!” she screamed at Uncle Ray.

I looked back at Ma knowing she was acting crazy now. I think Uncle Ray thought the same thing by the way he watched her. But he rose from the sofa, looking back and forth at us with his quick eyes. Ma was still screaming right behind me, trying to slow me down.

“Stop him!”

Uncle Ray went to grab me same as Ma did, and at first I tried to get his hand off me easy-like, but he wasn’t letting go. He was taller than me, but so thin and with his feet busted up, I just turned fast and shoved him back down onto the sofa as hard as I could.

He rolled onto the floor and I felt bad about what I’d done the moment I did it, because I knew Uncle Ray wasn’t expecting what I’d just done to him. He’d always been good to me and I knew from then on we’d always be different toward each other. Besides that, I was always a little leery of Uncle Ray the way he was so book smart and good with a gun and a razor. But I had to see Amanda and he was in my way of doing it. And now I just felt like I had to get away from Ma, too.

I yanked open the door and ran out with Ma still trying to hold on to me and yelling. When I looked back, an old man with hair sticking up everywhere was peeking out her bedroom. I stopped at the bottom of the back steps when she said all out of breath and shaky, “You can’t go.” She was holding on to the top railing with both hands when I turned to leave. “She may’ve brought trouble here!”