Silence
We get off the train in Morgantown, but I scarcely see the pretty town I remember. Grandpa buys food and fills our canteens, and we climb the stubbled hillside that heads us toward home. The suitcase is as heavy as before, but the weight inside me feels more burdensome.
We walk as long as we can, to put fewer miles between us and Mama. When dusk closes in, I hunt firewood while Grandpa sets up the tent and digs run-off trenches. There are no words between us. We know our chores well enough without them.
Friday is Independence Day, but there is no celebrating. Grandpa and I spend the livelong day walking, step after step, mile after mile. Silence walks between us, big as a giant and so loud it makes my ears ache.
Things need to be said, now that I’ve had thinking time. But I want Grandpa to talk first. I want an apology.
Our feet pad through needle-strewn pine groves, crunch along gravelly roads, and trudge up and down hillsides. Our footsteps echo through the covered bridge, where Grandpa’s temper flashed a month ago when I wanted to carve my name in its wood.
What is in his mind? Is he regretful, even though he doesn’t say it? Or is he more determined than ever to marry me off, now that I am truly the last of Rebecca’s Branch?
I don’t know your name. I don’t even know if you’re a boy or a girl. But I reckon you are with the rest of our brothers and sisters. Hug them for me.
Virginia Lee Kent
Saturday begins another day of walking in silence along a dusty road that snakes between hills. Even shade is unbearably hot. Shimmering ghosts of heat ripple in the roadway ahead, only to disappear before we reach them. We round a bend to see them farther down the road.
We don’t stop for a noontime meal. Grandpa pulls the last of the bread from his pack and breaks it in two. We eat and wash it down with water from our canteens, walking all the while.
We leave the road and follow a narrow path through forests of maple, oak, hickory, and pine. With no words to get in the way, my ears clearly hear a sparrow’s chip-chip-chip and a crow’s raspy caw. I’ve heard those birds all my life, but today their calls sound like scolding.
The bird that startles me seems to call my name. Ginnie Lee! Ginnie Lee! I see a flash of yellow against green leaves. A goldfinch, like on the hat I destroyed.
I nearly grab Grandpa’s arm and point, but I refuse to be the one to break the silence. I want him to apologize and swear to stop husband-hunting. But Grandpa is not of a mind to say those things. And I am not of a mind to forget his lies and hurtfulness. Daddy often says mule-headedness is in our blood, and I reckon it is.
The sky is still hazy-clear when Grandpa studies maple leaves. He stops, listens, and watches the sky. After a spell, I hear a growl of thunder in the distance. He stops often, scanning the hillside, looking for a place to wait out the storm. The sky grows dark and wind sends leaves into spasm.
Grandpa speaks his first words in days. “Goin’ be a gullywasher.” The wind snatches his words away, and he says it louder. “It’s whompin’ up a big’un,” he adds.
We find a clearing beside the path, and Grandpa looks at trees around its edge, checking for dead ones that could topple in a storm. He unrolls the tent, and hands me his little spade.
“Dig the trenches!” he orders into the wind.
I nose the spade into hard ground that fights me. I struggle to plunge it deeper and dig as fast as I can.
Jagged gashes of lightning rip from black clouds. The wind wrestles Grandpa for the tent. As he pounds in the first stake, the other side of the tent flaps ferociously. The wind billows under it and tries to pull it skyward.
Grandpa’s face and teeth clench and his veins bulge as he holds the tent stake in the ground. If he speaks, his words are lost in the crash of thunder and snapping sounds of canvas.
I drop the spade and grab hold of the tent. It’s like a terrified creature trying to fly free. Nearly pulling me off my feet, the rough canvas tears at my fingernails. I hold on with all I have, while Grandpa finishes pounding in the stakes. He takes over the trenches while I drag my suitcase, his rucksack and rifle under the meager shelter.
The clouds spill rain before Grandpa ducks inside and plops to the ground. His face is drenched, his hat is gone, and his dripping gray hair begs to be wrung out like a mop.
In those minutes before the storm, he warned of it. He broke the silence. I saved up a slew of words, but now they can’t be said. Thunder booms, rain pelts the tent, and wind snaps the canvas flaps. All that noise leaves no room for words.
