Under The Clay

The cosmos was out of kilter. I was coming home to Tennessee to say goodbye to my dear mother … three years too late. It was unconscionable that she had slipped right through my fingers into the red earth while I was three thousand miles away. Damn that pandemic! Damn my cancer that followed. A preacher saying words at the cemetery promised to “Face Time” the service. No signal at the graveside. Painful silence and a blank screen in Seattle. I had gone from the beloved to the nothing.

I approached her grave, still with its mound of clay, kept free of encroaching crabgrass. Beside her mound, my dad’s. I looked to make sure I was alone and kneeled, then prone, my heart nearest hers. “Mom, I’m so sorry I wasn’t here to say goodbye. Please forgive me. I love you,” I murmured into the cold earth, grains of the rusty dirt sticking to my wet lips.

Tears choked my voice. No space left, even for a whisper. She had lasted until her ninety-fifth birthday. I’m glad she didn’t live to see my suffering; it would have broken her heart. I wouldn’t make it to my sixty-fifth.

My God, where did the time go?

Six feet below me was the breast that I had suckled. The ears that attended to my hopes and sorrows; the lap I had sat on and the cheeks I had kissed a million times.

I looked at her name inscribed on the granite monument. Three years of grit. I cleaned it with a tissue, my tears as the solvent. Rolling over to be supine between the two mounds, I felt safe there. Looking up, I studied the ominous clouds forming over the mountains. It was like when I was a scared child and slept sandwiched between them. For the first time, I felt safe from the monster on a rampage within my marrow. The beast who would soon put me beneath the clay too.

I would spend the morrow chasing the sun back to the west coast. Dusting off my clothes, I climbed back into the rented Corolla. One last glance, the final image of my parents’ resting place, distorted by their tears in my eyes. I wiped my face with the sleave of my Henley and pulled out of the old church’s parking lot.

Each crossroad, house, barn, and woods were bookmarks, key places of the narrative that had methodically spun the fabric of my life. I drove past my childhood home for the last time. Surreal, not permitted to trespass. The small brick cottage would forever entomb my memories; lost to the world, without a curator to keep them.

My Lord, where did the time go?

I drove up the hill where I learned to mount a bike, a sled, a horse … and an aspiration. I turned right on the county lane. The road was chip seal, recalling when it was gravel. Now, it uncoiled between the hills like a shiny silver ribbon. It’s the path the mastodon, giant sloth, and camel had surveyed and scored. It’s where Cherokees walked, then the men with racoon hats and women with bonnets driving wagons. Later, our herd of boys on bikes with sissy bars and banana seats going so fast, leaving only a flash of chrome and tassels in their wake.

Dear God, in the span of a breath it’s over?

I passed Wayne’s house. He was my best friend. It was a two-car garage that his dad, Earl, had built in 65 for shelter while he planned a mansion beside it. Red brick, like all the houses in the village, but huge. Five bedrooms, and a pool was his intent. I watched his dad pour the footings, lay the cinderblocks, and cover the top of the garage with a flat roof. Then he bulldozed back the ground, uncovering a red clay bank, the footprint of the home to be.

Wayne and I spent summer days lying on what was left of his lawn, a blade of that grass between our teeth, looking at the thunderstorms organizing in the stratosphere. We would build small paddle boats powered by rubber bands to transport our army men from one side of the pool to the other. We would stock the pool with tadpoles. We would become excellent swimmers. We would impress the girls.

Boyhood is the pinnacle of life for a man, his dreams, preludes to the future. But the brick mansion never materialized and no pool. Earl brought home trunkfuls of bricks from the masonry factory where he worked. The place where they dug up our red soil and molded them into loafs, then baking them in hot ovens. He piled up his spoil as pillars in the woods.

Wayne and I buried a time capsule in that clay bank, the footprint for the house to be. I chose my black address book as the medium. Someone gave it to my dad, and he didn’t want it. The book bound of fine leather, with gold lettering and tabs for the alphabet. In school I would sniff it and suck on its corner to taste the salty bitterness of the tanning.

James Bond and Jerry West were my heroes. Like 007, I put the names of all the girls in my class in the book. Beside each name a ranking in stars based on traits. But then Susan Williams found the book and read it out loud to the entire class during recess. I think she did it because she had five stars, the best. It was so embarrassing that I wanted it buried.

Between its pages, I put my Topps Jerry West card wearing his 44, my favorite stamps, newspaper headlines, and a brand new 1965-dollar bill. Wayne and I interred it in the red clay bank inside two freezer bags wrapped in duct tape. He added his stamp collection in a cigar box. We marked the spot with a maple sapling.

The last time I saw Wayne was during the summer I turned fourteen, he a year older. He drove his mother’s car to my house with only a permit. I was boiling sassafras tea in a pot over an open campfire. Wayne walked toward me, his eyes red and watery.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Kay’s pregnant,” he mumbled between sobs.

I was dumbfounded. We had girlfriends, but I barely had gotten to the place of holding hands. I wasn’t even sure how you could get a girl pregnant. I thought you had to sleep with them for the entire night. You couldn’t teach sex in the Bible belt.

“What? How? Uh, are you serious?” I tried to ask, fumbling over my words.

“Yeah. Her dad is the Baptist minister, you know … uh, he told my parents that I had to marry her. I must drop out of school, quit the scouts, get a job, and live in my aunt’s basement in Sullivan. My life’s over.” He leaned on the hood of his car, sobbing. The whole front of the Chevrolet Impala was shaking. In contrast, I stood as stiff as a statue. Hugging another boy, even to show compassion, would start them down the path of homosexuality, wouldn’t it? Wayne left, climbing back into his car inebriated on grief, bungling his keys. Un-consoled, I never saw him again, ever. My boyhood becoming fragile, the dawning of adulthood … where dreams falter.

Tragedy visited that family again in 1970 when Wayne’s dad walked into the woods behind the garage-house, put his double-barrel shotgun in his mouth, took off his shoe and dirty sock and pulled both triggers with his toes. My dad, insensitive to violence since the war, said at the breakfast table, “Yeah, the sheriff searched and there was no trace of his head. Just a neck and jaw.”

“Bill!” countered my mother with a frown. “They arrested him for stealing from his company and he had just made bail.”

“Yeah, I know, bricks,” I added, nodding.

“No son” said my mom shaking her head. “Uh … money.”

The last tragedy came in 72 when Wayne, after Kay divorced him, enlisted in the Army. The Chinese shot him down over Cambodia … from then on, MIA.

“God’s cursed that family,” said Mom.

“Why?” I asked.

“He had to have a good reason,” she said with confidence.

I observed that garage-house deteriorate with each annual visit. A big zig-zag crack formed on the wall. The mortar joints coming apart with the shifting footings. Someone filled the crack with caulk. It opened again over time and they filled it with tar. The place fell further into decay. No one knew what had happened to Wayne’s mom and his little sister, Lucy. It was like the mountain winds had blown the family away ... without even a trace.

With this last drive by, I stopped. The dark clouds had just dropped their deluge as I walked across the yard to the storm door. I saw eyes inside, peeking between the moving curtains. I knocked.

The weathered veneered door cracked open, and a heavy-faced woman appeared, safety chain engaged. “Yes?”

“Hi, I used to be best friends with Wayne Painter, who lived here a long time ago.”

“They don’t live here anymore,” she said abruptly.

“Yes, I know. Have you lived here long?” I asked.

She unhooked the chain and stepped out on the small concrete landing in her housecoat, leaning on a cane. “Uh, I bought this place from a young couple five years ago. OxyContin broke them up. This place was all I could afford. I’m on social security since my stroke.”

“Stroke? Aren’t you too young for that?” I asked.

“My husband beat my head with a Louisville Slugger,” she mumbled.

“I hope he went to jail,” I said in an angry tone.

She snickered, “He works at the jail. He’s a cop. We signed a mutual responsibility form, and they dropped the charges.”

“Mutual?” I asked with a smirk. “Did he have a stroke too?”

“What can I do for you?” She asked with a frown.

“I grew up just up the road,” I said. “I’m Terri Johnson’s son.”

“Oh, she died, didn’t she?”

“Yes.” I answered. “This is my first visit to town since, and it will be my last.” Looking at her yard over my shoulder I added, “Uh, Wayne and I buried a time capsule in the clay bank over there. Perhaps I could dig it up?”

“Do you know where?” she asked.

“Yeah, we planted a maple sapling in front of the spot. I watched it grow over the years into a giant tree, then someone cut it down. I still see the stump.”

“A friend cut it down for me … for heat,” she said. “Otherwise, I would’ve frozen my ass off. I only have a wood stove. The furnace conked out. The roof leaks and the walls are crumbling, but on a social security of seven hundred a month, it’s the best I can do.”

“Do you have a shovel?” I asked.

“Hmm. I have the ash shovel next to my stove, but it’s small,” she answered.

“That’ll work.”

I looked in the woods where Earl died. The pillars of old bricks, now covered by kudzu, looking like a lost Buddhist temple, reclaimed by the jungle. I dug through the wet clay—having just been soaked in the downpour—as if it were marinara sauce. My shovel was red, as were my fingers and knees. I dug deeper into dryer clay, looking for the gray tape to appear. Instead, I saw shiny gold. I dug around the object. It was a Bell jar lid, a quart, an enigma. I dislodged the jar. I took it to the concrete birdbath in the yard and washed it off with the fresh rainwater. Green papers filled it. I worked with the container between my knees and my hands on the lid until it twisted off. Inside, one-hundred-dollar bills were jammed in pristine condition. I took the jar to my car where it was dry. It took twenty minutes to remove the money, counting it as I pulled it out. There were two hundred one-hundred-dollar bills. I studied them, and the newest one was 1970. That was the year they arrested Earl, and he put the barrel of his gun in his mouth.

Fifty-five years had passed since the crime. There must be a statute of limitations? I didn’t need the money. My health insurance was covering my chemo, and I had savings that would last longer than me.

I put the money in a trash bag. I knocked and the lady opened the door again.

“Hey, I didn’t get your name.” I said.

“Oh, it’s Nancy. Nancy Thomas” she said.

“I’m Dan Johnson. My friends called me ‘Danny,’” I said.

“Did you find your time capsule?” she asked.

“No, I didn’t,” I said shaking my head. “But I found something else … and it belongs to you.”

I handed her the bag. She carefully opened it and peaked inside.

“Oh, my God! Money!” She screamed, her right hand sliding over her mouth.

“Yep. I think the man who built this garage, burried it. He was saving it to build his house … but then killed himself. He would want you to use it to fix the cracked wall, the foundation, the roof, and the furnace. When you finish that, buy yourself the prettiest dress you have ever seen and go out for a steak dinner.”

Her mouth gaped open, as was the bag in her hands, her bewildered mind empty of words, but eyes full of tears. I climbed into my red Corolla and drove up the silver ribbon between the hills. Earl must have found my notebook when he interred the jar … or did he? It doesn’t matter. Nothing does.