Chapter 16
IT WAS GETTING TO BE LATE AFTERNOON, THE LIVING ROOM DEEPLY shadowed, the fire on the brick hearth piled with glowing embers. A chill was in the air. Ruth said it was time to go, explaining that we were being taken to people who would help us.
She smiled, but her eyes were distracted and conflicted.
At the age of nine, I realized the magnitude of what Mom was asking the Grahams. Three additional kids underfoot would have been a huge unknown in every way imaginable.
Ruth always put her children and husband first. She had good reason to worry about their well-being and safety.
All sorts of curious and unstable people made pilgrimages to Montreat in search of her husband.
It wasn’t uncommon for strangers to end up at the house, pretending to be lost, wandering about, knocking on the door.
Some visitors bore special messages from God.
Others believed they were God or Jesus Christ. Ruth was the buffer between people like this and her family.
Ruth and her caretaker talked in low voices on the driveway as I climbed back into the Jeep, Mom up front, my brothers in the open bed with me. The Grahams couldn’t keep us. As we were leaving, I sensed Ruth wanting to do more. But she couldn’t.
“Not possible,” I overheard her say, and Mr. Rickman agreed with “yes, ma’am” and a nod.
I caught phrases like better off and for their own good.
There were mentions of Gaither Chapel, and Reverend Calvin Thielman.
I wouldn’t know until years later that he was her partner in kindness.
They tag-teamed helping people, including those who lived outside the Montreat gate, families with nothing.
Ruth and Calvin would deliver food, blankets, clothing, whatever was needed.
While Billy was preaching on TV all over the world, she was home helping whoever she could, including kids in the juvenile detention center and adults in prison for serious crimes like murder.
She didn’t turn her back on anyone no matter what they’d done. It wasn’t up to her to judge.
“We’re not punished for our sins but by them,” she often said.
As she stood in the cold on her driveway, I gathered that she’d alerted Calvin Thielman about my family.
He’d been on the phone contacting members of his congregation, making our arrangements.
I heard Ruth say something to Mr. Rickman about missionaries and the Congo, my apprehension and disappointment rising like a tsunami.
The Jeep rumbled and shook to life, and I held on to the spare tire as we drove away, Ruth watching and waving.
Around a bend, she was gone, as was my earlier hope and excitement.
Dread tightened its grip as we bumped down the mountain, my eyes watering in the cold air, a few snowflakes blowing as the sun dipped lower.
Dense trees and foliage receded into shadows, my mood sinking deeper than I thought possible.
When we reached our house, a black Buick Electra 225 was in the driveway with the engine running, exhaust swirling.
The huge sedan reminded me of a hearse, and it seemed an ominous sign.
We’d gone from the mountaintop back into the valley of shadow and death.
I was devastated and afraid, having no idea what to expect.
Calvin Thielman had arranged for us to stay with former missionaries to the Belgian Congo.
My family didn’t know them. They were members of the Montreat church, but I had no recollection of ever seeing them on Sunday mornings.
As best I know, I’d never heard of them before this moment.
A burly man, Manford Saunders was short with dark hair, a deep voice, and a casual manner.
I remember him as gregarious and warm, smelling pleasantly like pipe tobacco.
It didn’t seem much bothered him except perhaps his wife, Lenore, and I liked him right away but not her.
She was unfriendly and severe, her dark hair in a tight knot on the back of her head.
Her beady dark eyes reminded me of the black snake that almost bit me the previous summer when I didn’t see it stretched across the path until too late. I jumped as high as I could, and it struck my shoe, hissing. My heart machine-gunned as I raced away, seeming to levitate.
My brothers and I piled into the backseat of the big sedan as Lenore escorted Mom inside our house to get certain essentials.
I watched light fill Mom’s bedroom window.
Moments later, it was dark again, and they emerged with a small suitcase.
Mom climbed into the backseat, John sitting on her lap while Lenore returned up front, giving us little information.
Mom wasn’t well, and we were headed to a place where she’d receive special treatment.
She would stay there for a while. That much we learned while driving down Kanawha Drive and passing through the Montreat gate.
I looked out my window at the landscape dissolving in the dusk, the setting sun smoldering in a cleft of mountain ranges.
The car had chains on the tires, and we clattered and clunked past Camp Merri-Mac for girls, where I’d spent several weeks during our first summer in Montreat.
Beyond was the country store that sold hot cinnamon jawbreakers, root beer barrels, horehound drops, cans of sour balls.
It was a special occasion when Mom would stop there and buy us treats.
The proprietor was Mr. Leatherwood, and the name suited.
A tall mountain man, he was lean, sinewy, and hard-bodied, with a weathered face, his eyes preoccupied and tragic.
I’d heard his son had been struck by a car and killed.
Or maybe it was Mr. Leatherwood who’d hit someone else’s child.
I didn’t know what was true, but it seemed something terrible had happened.
I wanted to ask him the details, hoping I might say something to make him feel better.
That was on my mind while perusing bags of Fritos, potato chips, pork rinds, tins of sardines, and the Slim Jims and pickled eggs in jars on the wooden counter.
Past the store on the left was Max Twitty’s farm stand where Mom bought homegrown tomatoes, corn on the cob, and other produce.
This time of year, it was boarded up. Beyond was the imposing brick First Baptist Church, then the Presbyterian church where John had attended kindergarten.
Next was the Ingles supermarket, the lights out, the empty parking lot churned up with dirty snow.
I thought of what little was left in our refrigerator and cupboards.
Maybe if we’d had more food Mom wouldn’t be unwell.
Not many people were out as we drove through downtown Black Mountain, the roads beginning to freeze again. Few places were open on Sunday, the windows dark in the Rexall drugstore, Mack’s Five & Dime, Tyson Furniture, the Rug & Jug, and Collins Department Store.
Past the lumberyard, Manford picked up Old U.S.
Highway 70, heading west as night fell, the waves of mountains darkly rising.
Traffic was light, the roads clear as we neared Asheville, snowflakes crazed like tiny white moths.
We skirted the Innsbruck Mall and motels like the Mountaineer Inn, the neon sign in front a barefoot hillbilly leaning on a musket.
Bumping over railroad tracks, we reached downtown Asheville. Turning off onto Biltmore Avenue, we crossed a narrow murky stretch of the Swannanoa River as Mom hugged John tightly in her lap.
“Where are we going?” she asked now and then.
“To a place where you’re going to get better.” Lenore would say the same thing.
“What place?” Mom’s voice sounded small and distant.
“A very good place, Pat. The best for what you need.”
Soon we reached the posh area of Biltmore Forest, known for George Vanderbilt’s 250-room summer retreat built in the late 1800s.
Mom had promised to take me to Biltmore House one day.
She’d showed me a brochure with photographs of lavish wall coverings and paintings, the library, the grand staircase, the banquet hall, and gardens.
It wasn’t often we visited this part of Asheville with its upscale shops, big estates, and fancy country club.
I wondered where we were being taken. What would happen to Mom?
What would happen to all of us? Up a hill, we wound along Caledonia Road through a neighborhood of small homes spread out in the woods.
Around another sharp turn was a snow-covered clearing and a four-story Tudor Revival building with rows of lighted windows. Hemlocks bordered the covered stone patio arranged with dark green rocking chairs. Appalachian Hall looked huge and foreboding like something in a scary story.
The private psychiatric hospital once was a resort called the Kenilworth Inn.
In the early 1900s it offered luxurious rooms, a swimming pool, bowling, tennis, and gourmet dining.
During the First and Second World Wars, the inn was used as a military hospital, the design well suited with its three separate wings that from the air form an inverted T.
In 1931 the property was purchased by psychiatrists Mark and William Griffin. Dr. Bill, as he was called, would take charge of my mother this time and again four years later. I would have been horrified to know that one day he’d be my doctor too.
We parked under the covered stone entryway, and through windows I saw formal furniture and brass lamps, the front wooden door solid and imposing.
Lenore escorted Mom inside with her suitcase, an awaiting nurse intercepting them, clearly knowing they were coming.
The nurse talked to Lenore for a few minutes, taking notes before spiriting Mom away.