Hawks Mountain - Mobi (3 page)

“Can’t a soul around here climb those steps and not make that board squeak,” she’d say with a sly grin and a playful wink.
“Except me.”

Then she’d laugh because she knew exactly how to ascend the stairs without hitting the squeaky board, and though Becky had begged her to tell her, Granny Jo had kept her secret from even her small granddaughter for many years.

On her eighteenth birthday, Granny had revealed how to do it. Becky stared down at the step now and counted over three nail heads from the left, then placed her foot back on that exact spot, followed by her full weight. Again a loud squeak announced her arrival. She waited and listened.

“Well, come on in. Don’t stand out there waiting for an invitation.” Granny Jo’s voice rang out through the screen door.

It had come, Becky knew, from the kitchen at the back of the house.
Granny’s domain.
Becky had often thought that the rest of the house could have burned to the ground, but as long as the kitchen remained intact, Granny would have shrugged it off.

Becky smiled and opened the screen door. Stepping into the coolness of the dark front hall, she set her bag and shoes on the worn, braided rug at the foot of the stairs, inhaled deeply of the welcoming aroma of apples and cinnamon and fresh made cornbread that perfumed the house, and then padded down the passage toward Granny’s kitchen.

Still grinning, Becky stepped quietly into the warm, fragrant room. Granny Jo was rolling out pie crust. Sweat beaded her forehead just below the line of her salt and pepper hair, and a dusting of flour muted the bright colors of her flowered dress and apron. As she worked, she hummed
Rock of Ages
.

After using the rolling pin to carefully place the top crust on the pie plate heaped with apple slices, she laid the pin aside. The one-handled rolling pin brought a quick grin to Becky’s lips.
Grampa
Earl claimed she’d broken the other handle off over his sorry head the first year they were married. Granny Jo never said otherwise. As a small child, Becky had speculated on what her dear
grampa
could have done that had made her peace-loving granny hit him hard enough to break her rolling pin. But, Granny Jo kept that explanation stowed away with the secret of the squeaky stair, and to this day had never revealed a word about it.

Back then it was a secret a small, inquisitive child yearned to learn. As a woman, Becky didn’t have to ask. Now she knew all too well that even the best of men had a dark side.

Granny crimped the edges of the crust with practiced fingers, and then trimmed off the excess. Picking up the pie to insert it in the oven, she turned, and noticed Becky for the first time. Tears instantly filled the old woman’s clear gray eyes.

“My Lord, child.
You’ve come home.” Granny Jo set the pie aside and then rushed to embrace her granddaughter.

Warm, welcoming arms swept around Becky and gathered her to that familiar ample bosom. Contentment unlike any she found anywhere else but here enveloped her. At last, she’d truly come home and very soon her life would be better. She would be better.

Disengaging their tangled embrace, Granny Jo held her at arm’s length. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming home, child?”

“I wanted to surprise you.”

Truth be known, Becky hadn’t known she was coming back until yesterday, when she’d returned home to their tiny apartment and found Sonny, her college sweetheart and live-in boyfriend, in bed with another woman. When she’d confronted him, it resulted in the first and last time he’d laid hands on her.

Next thing Becky knew she was in the bus station with Sonny’s duffle bag and what little money she’d had to her name and no idea where she’d go. Then the man behind that barred window had asked, “Where to, ma’am?” And she knew instantly. She wanted to go home. She wanted to go home to Granny Jo and
Hawks
Mountain
.

“Well, you certainly did surprise me,” Granny said, pulling Becky from her memories, then planting a warm kiss on each of her granddaughter’s cheeks, just like she used to do when she’d put Becky to bed every night. Her grandmother peered behind Becky, and she knew Granny had expected to see Sonny, the man she’d spoken of in all her letters. But she didn’t ask.

Instead, Granny stared deep into her granddaughter’s eyes. “How long you plan on visiting?”

Becky could only push one word past the knot of emotion closing off her throat.
“Forever.”
Granny frowned, but just as Becky knew she would, Granny asked no questions. When the story needed telling, she would leave it to Becky to choose the time and place.

“Lord, just look at me, blubbering like a baby.” Dabbing at her moist eyes with the hem of her apron, Granny stepped back. “Let me get this pie in the oven and pour us some sweet tea, then we’ll go out on the porch where it’s cool and catch up.”

Granny scurried about the kitchen. She slid the pie into the cavernous oven of the gleaming black woodstove, then, after closing the heavy door, she cleaned away the clutter from her baking.

Becky watched, her mind wandering back to the days when she’d worked in this kitchen and dreamed of escaping
Hawks
Mountain
. How foolish she’d been.

The big kitchen looked exactly as it had the last day she’d spent in here with her grandmother. Granny’s old wood-burning,
cookstove
dominated. Beside it a modern electric range, which Granny shunned except for the most mundane cooking, looked out of place, like an intruder from the future. Granny claimed nothing tasted the same cooked on its sleek glass top as it did when cooked over the wood from the forests of
Hawks
Mountain
.

Beside the white enamel sink with its built-in drain board stood a pie safe. During Becky’s growing up years, it had always been full with
Grampa
Earl’s favorite pies, cookies, corn muffins and fresh baked bread. Since
Grampa
Earl’s death, all but one of the shelves held a mixture of dishes, bowls and glasses, brought down from higher shelves for easy reaching. Now, a small batch of cornbread and one lonely pie occupied the bottom shelf.

In the center of the worn, gray linoleum-covered floor stood Granny’s workbench, the kitchen table.
Over the years the old pine table had served a myriad of purposes: a work surface, an eating table, a desk at which Becky had done homework and had at times held the tin washtub in which Granny rinsed her “delicate unmentionables,” fine lace and nylon underwear, specially ordered from Raleigh. The only concession the old woman made to the well-heeled life she’d led before becoming Mrs. Earl Hawks.

“If an accident happens, a body needs to be presentable from the skin out,” she’d said every morning, as Becky got dressed for school.

Ice cubes clinking into glasses drew Becky’s attention back to her grandmother. Granny Jo set the tall glasses on the table. Into each she poured golden brown, sweet tea. After adding a slice of lemon, she handed one to Becky.

Becky’s hot palm closed around the icy glass. Unthinking, she raised it to her forehead and swiped it across her skin. She could not recall when anything felt so wonderful, so life affirming.

Taking their tea, the two women adjourned to the porch and the twin rockers that had occupied it as long as Becky could remember. Before Granny Jo could sit in the one she’d used since the rockers had come home from Clemens in the back of
Grampa
Earl’s old pickup truck, Jake hurried up the steps and sprawled his shaggy gray body at her feet. He rested his chin on the toe of her slipper. Granny scratched behind one of his over-sized ears, then patted his head. Jake’s eyes closed in contentment. Life was good.

Becky sat in the rocker that bore the imprint of her grandfather’s backside. As the heat of the sun-warmed wood seeped into Becky’s body, her gaze drifted to the spot under the big oak where
Grampa
Earl rested. A simple white cross marked his grave. Granny repainted the cross every year on his birthday. Beside it she’d planted a white peace rose, which had just started to open its buds. Granny Jo missed her husband as much as Becky missed the gentle old man who’d told her stories of this ancient mountain.

He’d been quite a man, Earl
Jedadia
Hawks. A farmer by trade, he’d always been ready to try something new, even the electricity he’d had strung into the house before he’d brought home his new bride, Josephine Walker of the
Charleston
,
South Carolina
Walkers. Many years later, he’d told Becky he didn’t want Granny Jo running back to the big city just because she didn’t have electricity and indoor plumbing.

In the end,
Grampa
Earl had nothing to worry about. He’d laughed and said that Granny had taken to
Hawks
Mountain
like a hog to corn mash and settled in before he’d had time to get out of his wedding duds. Granny had always claimed that underneath where it really counted, she must have been a country girl all along. Besides, she always added, she’d have walked through briars in her bare feet if it meant she’d be able to keep that handsome Earl Hawks by her side.

Too bad something as simple as being able to flush a toilet or to throw a switch to turn on a light hadn’t convinced Becky to stay on the mountain. So much pain and heartache could have been avoided. But, in retrospect, she wondered if anything could have stopped that head-strong, adventure-seeking girl from leaving.

“Well, girl, if you’re
gonna
just sit there staring off into space, I might just as well go back to my baking.”

Granny’s teasing voice roused Becky. “I’d forgotten how beautiful it is here. I want to soak it all up.” Becky sighed and leaned back in the rocker. With a shove of her foot, she propelled the chair into a soothing to and fro motion. “It’s so good to be home.”

Granny patted her granddaughter’s hand where it lay over the arm of the chair. “Good to have you back here. This place gets mighty lonely.” She sipped her tea. “Of course, now that I have a neighbor close by, it doesn’t seem quite as bad, but he’s not one for talking or visiting with folks. Stays mostly to
himself
up there and spends a lot of time walking through the woods and the meadow. Still, it’s awful nice knowing he’s there.”

Instantly Becky’s mind raced between an image of the man she thought to be a trespasser and the gut feeling she’d been ignoring for months that Granny needed her. Guilt washed over her. She should have come sooner, and she would have, except she’d been too busy trying to save the world. But she was here now, and she’d watch over Granny and their mountain.

Then the meaning of her grandmother’s words sunk in. “You sold part of the mountain?”

“Yep.
Had to sell off a few acres up on the ridge late last year to pay taxes.
Shouldn’t have to do that again though, now that I have an outlet to sell my quilts.”
She glanced at Becky. “A young woman saw one of the quilts on the clothesline and stopped to ask who made it. I told her I did, and she asked if I’d make some for her to sell at the
Fairfax
craft fair. Can you imagine people willing to pay a lot of money for the same quilt that’s been on your bed for twenty years? It appears to me that they could just sit down and stitch their own, if they wanted one so bad.” Granny shook her head and chuckled.
“Takes all kinds.”

Becky hadn’t yet gotten past the neighbor thing. “You sold land to someone?”

“Yup.”

“How close is
this .
 . . neighbor?” Becky fought down the feeling she’d experienced earlier in the
meadow .
 . . that her idyllic world had been invaded.

“Just up there on the ridge.” Granny pointed toward a jut in the mountainside above them.

“Who is it?”

“Oh, you don’t know him. He’s new in these parts.
A writer from
New York City
.
Seems like a nice enough fella, but he’s awful quiet and pretty much stays to himself.”

“
New York
?”
The trespasser.
A city man.
Sonny was a city man. Icy unease pricked her skin. “Granny, do you know anything about him?” Becky had stopped rocking and leaned forward in the chair.