The boy had his ear glued to the transistor radio. He’d lost interest in books this past year, drawn more to thewilded music, as Jackson called it, fretting. Sometimes he’d sneak books into Elijah Jack’s room or purchase comics from the drugstore rack to coax him back into reading.
Instead, the boy snatched up the S&H Green Stamps we’d earn from grocery and gasoline purchases and paste them into the booklets. He had his eye on the wooden guitar on the S&H catalog cover he’d hung above his dresser. The inviting scene on the catalog showed two young’uns playing the guitar and record player, while two others pretended to fish from new poles inside a spiffed-up modern living room.
“Elijah Jack, put that radio away and let’s get. We need to finish this garden today.” Jackson dug into his pocket for the truck keys.
I reached for his arm. “Maybe we can go for a picnic this weekend instead of driving over to West Canfield? It’d be nice to go over to Bald Mountain and enjoy some fishing.”
For all his fussing, Jackson spent many weekends looking at the older houses of the city, driving the fine neighborhoods with wide streets and welcoming bungalows. It was a sight to reckon with, and he’d marvel over the rich architecture and fascinating details of craftsmanship that graced Detroit. In the spring and fall, we’d walk West Canfield and admire the elegance of the stately mansions before heading back to our street with its rows of white homes that looked no bigger than dollhouses.
“I’ll get your dinner basket down from the attic when I return if you’ll promise to pack it with your fried rhubarb and berry pies. He planted a kiss on my forehead. “Let’s get this sorry excuse for a garden fertilized,” he told Elijah Jack.
Jackson was still miserable for home, and it folded into my own longing. The rumblings always seemed to arrive with the first buds of spring—his first turn of dirt.
And though we hadn’t talked again of the long-ago evening when I told him he could leave, the offer was always sitting there like a small creek stone that had been smoothed by worrying fingers, scarred from battle-worn hairline cracks, waiting to shatter.
Often, Jackson would grumble on the back porch during the loud summers. “Hear that?” he’d say. “It’s what’s missing. What young Elijah Jack will never hear. The soft paws of forest critters and running brooks. Our singing pines. Remember it all? Why, you could even hear the acorns drop in autumn. Here, we are nothing but birds without song.”
I’d studied and soon realized we’d lost so much of what made us.
Sometimes we’d both still to the grated cries of a dull catbird that mimicked the grinding charrs of the city, then search thesmoky skies, pining for the cheered calls and slow trills of the colorful red cardinal back home.
Always he’d catch my eye, and together we were pulled back into our feral hearts inside the mist-kissed woodlands. There, I’d walk free alongside him on winding paths of moss and trillium, the murmurous forest floor my slippers.
As the years passed, we barely spoke of the mountains we call home.
Spoken even rarer these days, but always there, the longing could not stay silenced.
Fifty-One
On a misting June morning, I lifted my head to the screech of brakes and glanced up at the clock, then over to the hanging 1967 Ford automobile calendar that the filling station handed out to customers each Christmas.
I squinted and looked again.
Weren’t nothing written down on its square today.
I knelt back over the kitchen floor and scrubbed the last patch of dull linoleum, then stopped to stretch before knee-walking over to the bucket, my bones tender and burning.
Jackson would always fuss and point to the cotton string mop that had hung untouched in our kitchen corner for years. But the city dirt always found its way back inside, wormed itself into cat-eyed cracks that a factory mop couldn’t swipe away. Same as Troublesome’s coal dust I used to sweep out as a child.
“Angeline.Cussy,Cussy Mary!” he hollered from outside.
Dropping the rag into the pail of water, I pulled myself up and arched my back, a question braided across my brow.
Jackson flung open the door, a newspaper in one hand and a small bouquet of flowers in the other.
“Leave your wet boots on the mat, I’ve just mopped. What’s all this? Why are you home at this hour?”
Jackson’s eyes glinted with a mixture of playfulness and something bold I couldn’t put my finger on. He waved the newspaper then tossed it and the flowers onto the table.
I moved closer. “What’s got into you? Did I forget—”
He swept me up in his arms. Twirled us around with a might I hadn’t seen in years, almost losing his footing. Then his face pained when another hitch grabbed hold of his bad leg.
“Jackson!” I squealed. “Put me down ’fore you hurt your good leg.” He planted me firmly on my feet, and I playfully batted him away. “There’s nothing on my calendar today.” I smoothed down my rumpled duster.
“Mark it now to pack our suitcases; I’m taking my bride home.” He nudged his chin toward the newspaper.
Puzzled, I stepped over to the table and read the bolded headlines and inspected the photograph of an unusual-looking couple on the front page.
