Chapter 31 Anomaly
Anomaly
Kate Shaw
The clerk in the general store is standoffish to a stranger with questions.
“An old lady and a girl? What’s so special bout that?” she says while stacking the Yancey Journal on the counter. She doesn’t look me in the eye.
“It was only five days back, last Tuesday before five. They were walking west, each carrying a basket. I think they were coming from your store.” I stretch the truth.
She scrunches up her nose and stares into space like she’s thinking but doesn’t speak.
Then I take a chance. “Is there a woman named Carly in these parts? Does that name sound familiar?”
She rings up an order for tenpenny nails and a ball of twine, then calls out to the man stocking honey jars on a shelf. “George, what be the name of Granny C what comes down from the hills now and agin. You know what that C stands for?”
“Don’t recollect.”
“Could it be Carly?” I add.
George says, “Might could be, but I won’t swear to it.”
“Did you see her with a girl a few days back?” I push.
“Maybe,” he offers weakly.
Disappointed, I thank them for their time, and drive to Baines Creek with Rachel to catch up on Loretty news.
The peculiar thing was hearing Marris speak Carly’s name when the search for the child was only hours old.
What prompted a forgotten name to come to light?
Was there an incident that sparked her fading memory?
And was her speaking that name tied somehow to Loretty’s disappearance?
I’m not the best detective, but these questions now carry possibility, and hope spurs me on the winding drive, across the creek and into the clearing.
But no one is there. The Rusty Nickel is closed.
Irma Jolly’s boardinghouse is empty. The schoolhouse and church stand hollow.
I don’t go to Eli’s home where Prudence and her bitterness live.
I ride over to the Dillards, but their yard is empty except for the iron plow where Gladys’s husband Walter was struck and killed by lightning long ago.
I knock on the yellow door and step back.
Buck’s mama Jolene opens it, wiping her hands on a dish towel.
She leaves the door open, and that’s an invitation for Rachel and me to follow her inside through the parlor to the kitchen, to the smell of a molasses pie baking in the woodstove.
She sits at the table and nods toward the coffeepot then gazes out the window.
I pour myself a cup and Rachel settles at my feet.
“Where is everybody?”
“Babies wid they daddy.” She drags her hooded eyes from the kitchen window toward the stairs. “Sadie be upstairs near broke in two.”
“What’s happening with the search?”
“Nobody sayin’.”
“They’ve given up?”
“Nobody been by.”
I shake my head over the travesty but resist sharing a theory I can’t confirm. “I need to talk to Eli. Do you know where he is?”
She shakes her head.
“How bout Marris? Is she home?”
“I reckon. Ain’t seed her fer two days.”
“I’m gonna walk down to her place then come back. If Eli comes by, ask him to wait for me or send him to Marris’s. Can you do that?”
Jolene doesn’t answer or show me to the door. Everything about her is sluggish like the blood in her veins is tired of trying. She’s back to staring out the kitchen window and stirs her coffee over and over. I say, “Watch your pie. Smells like it’s starting to burn.”
It’s a three-minute walk down the dirt road and round the bend to Marris sitting in a yard chair by her dented mailbox. I call out as I grow near, “Afternoon, Marris.”
She pivots her chicken neck in my direction. “That you, Miz Kate?” she asks, though I’m only a dozen feet away. Her eyes are milky. Her sight is gone.
“It is. You doing alright? Waiting on the mailman?”
“Naw. Waitin on Carly. She be by directly.”
I gulp and work to keep my voice normal. “What makes you think she’s coming today?”
“She bring Loretty home,” she says easy as pie and startles me even more.
“How do you know that?”
“Cause she say so.” Her voice is calm and sounds rational, but I’m not sure how far Marris’s mind has wandered. I believe her enough to wait with her.
“I’m gonna step inside and get a chair if that’s okay.” Rachel lies down beside Marris.
“Suit yourself.”
The inside of Marris’s home is dark and neat.
There’s only one window to let in daylight.
The packed dirt floor is swept clean, the faded quilt on the featherbed is pulled smooth, the water bucket is half full, the table is wiped clear, and a basket holds a half dozen brown eggs.
I carry out her other ladder-back chair and sit beside her. “Which way will she be coming?”
“From that’a way.” She points to the right with her arthritic finger, away from Sadie’s house.
“Does she come often?”
“Now that Gladys be dead, she come now and agin.”
“What does Gladys dying have to do with Carly coming?”
“Cain’t say.”
“You mean you don’t know or you can’t tell me?”
She repeats, “Cain’t say.”
“What can you say?”
“She be coming along today…or maybe tomorry.”
“Oh.” I thought we were talking about an imminent arrival, but Marris is good at waiting.
She can no longer tell time. Her world has grown small, and waiting is what she does best. But she may be speaking part-truths, and the truth that I hope is real is that Loretty is with Granny C, and the C stands for Carly, and that they’ll be coming to Baines Creek soon.
I take a gamble and say, “I thought I saw Loretty with Carly last Tuesday.” I watch her face but there’s no change in her expression.
“I was driving through Micaville and saw a girl who looked like Loretty. I went by the store this morning to ask questions. That’s when I heard the name Granny C.
I wonder if that’s what Carly calls herself these days. ”
Marris looks to the right and kneads her turkey neck with one hand and chews on her gums like a cow its cud, but she doesn’t speak.
I never knew her when she had teeth or a spring in her step.
The soft skin of her thin lips folds inside her mouth.
I know so little about this woman except that she is the first to come to the aid of anyone in need.
The second is how she got her name. Sadie told me her rightful birth name is Mary Harris Jones, named after the warrior hero Mother Jones who was the famous female labor activist of the nineteenth century.
Marris’s mama and daddy witnessed the hero standing in the rain on the back of a caboose talking about fair pay and rights.
With hope for bravery, they bestowed that powerful name on their baby.
Sadie bestowed it on her second born “because it is the name of a great woman,” she said.
I think she was talking about her Aunt Marris.
The only anomaly in her humble place is a glorious rose bush blooming red in a spot of sunshine. It defies logic in this high country. From ten feet away I can smell its sweetness as the minutes tick by and I wait on a back roads with the oldest woman in these parts.
She reaches over and pats the back of my hand. “It be all right, Carly. Yor kinship sin be coming out the dark. It be here directly, sweet thang. It be wrote down in Birdie’s books.”