"I will lift mine eyes unto the hills, from whence someth my strength...The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth and even forevermore." Psalm 121
************
"Thank you for coming," I said, standing by the doorway watching strange people offer their condolences in a painfully awkward manner. They exited quietly."I'll miss him. He was a wonderful man, that Jack. Never turned his back on a friend," said a man who turned to hide his face when tears began to well in his eyes.
"Oh never!" another said.
"Yeah...I can remember the times when Jack and I..." began another voice with a thick mountain drawl. I listened until my mind phased out of the conversation.
The bitterness I felt chilled me more than the wet mountain air that eased between the raindrops and crept under the flared-out curtains in the livingroom. If this was only a nightmare...that would be a dream.. If it were not real... but it is.
************
"Don't get too close to the edge, honey. You fall in, you'll catch your death," Pappy said placing a firm hand on my shoulder as my sneaker-clad foot dipped back into the shallow water.It was chilly, and the misty rain hung frozen in the air over the pond. The sun tried to shine, but was hidden behind thick clouds, even though it was late in the afternoon. All around it was silent. Occasionally a car passed and blew its horn, as it happened upon me and my grandad.
It was so hard to keep up with him. The slowness of my small legs made him stop and turn every few minutes. I quickened my pace.
"You know what that is there?" he asked pointing to the ground.
"No," I answered, wondering what he was talking about. I looked all around my feet, and all I saw were tiny green sprigs poking through the crunchy frost.
He squatted down and picked the green leaves that grew out of the hidden black earth. "This here's galax." He handed me a leaflet. I inspected it carefully. It was the greenest thing I'd ever seen. Maybe that was only because the tall trees formed a canopy overhead and filtered out what light there was. The green galax was the only color vivid enough to see.
He continued to pick them until he had ten or fifteen. "When I's a boy, we'd pick this stuff for days, galacking is what we called it. It grows wild, you know, all over the hills. Anyhow, me and old Blalock, Braswell, Hayes and some other boys, we'd pick galax sunup 'til sundown. You had to fit ten or twenty, I forget which, but you fit 'em together like this." He took one leaf and placed it on another and slid the top stem into the little slot at the base of the stem of the underlying leaf. He took up another and did the same until he had a tiny bundle of galax. Each one fit just as perfectly as the one before. "You won't believe how much we were paid."
I shook my head furiously, listening to every word he said, knowing the pride that he felt when he talked about his past.
"A nickel for every hundred we picked." He laughed his deep strong laugh and rose to his feet. He stood with his hands on his hips and looked down at the ground. "That's many a day ago..." His voice softened. I could tell his mind was somewhere else, perhaps running down some boyhood trail, doing the fun things that young boys do. All I heard was the breeze blowing gently through the treetops.
"Used to put it in medicines, sometimes tea, or just to look at," he said, breaking the silence. He slid his hands into his pockets and turned his back to me.
We stood a few minutes, listening to the wind pick up. I didn't know what direction his thoughts had taken, but I knew better than to interrupt him. He had such a deep love for the mountains and for the time that he lived here as a child. He missed those days.
We walked a little farther into the woods, and still he did not speak. The sky turned a flat grey color. Finally he said, "Let's go home, baby. It's lookin' bad."
We walked back out into the opening, and climbed up the steep slope. The tall grasses brushed our clothes, making us shudder in the wet cold. He skillfully, almost gracefully, took the lead as gallantly as any young man. He reached the roadside before I did, and stood on the embankment patiently waiting. As he offered his hand to help me into the truck, the misty mountain rain turned into tiny crystals that fell, stinging on our faces and sticking to our clothes.
************
"...Boy, we had a great time back then. Sure didn't have much, but we worked hard for what we did have--and we did it together. We were happy, and that's all that mattered." The deep voice droned in my head, and I suddenly realized I was still at the funeral home. The man rubbed his chin, and I saw in his eyes the same glitter that I had seen in my grandfather's when he talked about his childhood. "Times changed and we all went in different directions, but Jack was always a special person. You had a fine man for a granddad, young lady," he said, patting me on the back.A cold hidden place somewhere inside me melted, and tears began to flow.
"I know," I said. "I know I did."
©1991