He sure had some gifts.
May would have liked him. She would have said he was “full of wonders,” same as Ob. May always liked the weird ones best, the ones you couldn’t peg right off. She must be loving it up in heaven, where I figure everybody must just let loose. That’s got to be at least one of the benefits of heaven — never having to act normal again.
Ob and I agreed to meet Cletus at his house on Saturday, so Ob could meet Cletus’s parents and get the go-ahead for Cletus to come with us to Putnam County next week. Pretty soon we’ll all be in Ob’s Valiant, traveling like wise men to Bethlehem, looking for that star in the sky that might point us to May.
I’m afraid. Already I’ve lost many things, important things, and I don’t want to lose more in Putnam County. Cletus seems always to live full of hope and confidence. He thinks he’s found an answer for Ob and now all we have to do is get ourselves heading out the turnpike to pick it up.
But I’ve got too much to lose if this Bat Lady turns out to be a hoax. If May decides not to fly along with us, if she doesn’t show up in Putnam County and say whatever it is Ob needs, for life, to hear, then I figure there’ll be no use us returning to our home in Deep Water. Because we will have waded out too far, out past the point of no return, too far to ever make it home again.
Cletus had sure better be right about this.
May liked bats. Maybe it was some kind of a sign that we were headed for another woman who liked them, too.
We used to get bats in the trailer. Nearly one a week when it was hibernating time. I’d wake in the night and hear that cottony flapping coming from the living room. I’d lie there a few minutes, enjoying, in a way, the strangeness of my situation; then I’d groan and drag myself up to get Ob and May. I had to walk through the living room to do it, and with the low ceiling of the trailer, the bat and I would be practically eye to eye. But I was never afraid. I was being raised by one person who liked these creatures and another who tolerated them. I had no reason to fear bats, and as I grew and discovered how many people are deathly afraid of them, it made me wonder about fear. Whether it all just starts with the people who raise us.
May would be the first out, standing in the living room and talking to the distressed bat: “Poor little feller. Must be scared to death. You never meant to come into this old trailer….”
Ob would stagger out behind, rubbing his eyes and waking himself up with a few choice swear words. Ob always said cussing was like taking a strong drink of whiskey. It thawed him out and got his engine running again.
Then Ob and May would take turns trying to throw a blanket over the bat while it swooped around their heads, and pretty soon one of them would be carrying the blanket outside and watching the soft black thing fly off into the night.
Once, May injured a bat by mistake, crushing it when she opened a window it had roosted on.
She thought she might save it. She put it in a box full of warm towels, and inside the box she placed a little saucer of banana pieces and some dead grubs Ob had dug out of the backyard for it. The three of us took turns the following week, looking in on it, seeing whether it had eaten anything. Once, when I checked, it had pulled itself over to the saucer and, with what seemed to be the last bit of strength it had, was licking one of the pieces of banana. The bat was so small and lovely, a little animal with wings, and I wanted it to live. But the next morning it was dead, and we buried it in May’s garden.
Finally Ob had somebody check the trailer, and when we learned that the bats were flying in through the heating ducts, Ob covered these with wire and we no longer set free, or buried, any lost and lonely bats.
Ob got out of bed on time the rest of the week. And as I ate my cereal and drank my coffee before heading off to school, he would sit at the kitchen table, studying the road atlas he’d spread open, or thumb through the Triple A travel guide to West Virginia and Ohio. I didn’t ask him what he was looking for. I had a feeling it wasn’t anything you could find on a map.
Then Saturday morning rolled around, and we found ourselves shivering on Cletus Underwood’s front porch, knocking to be let in.
Cletus’s house was tiny and brown, not much bigger than some people’s garages. It sat far back from the road in a clump of pine trees and to a child might have been the house where Goldilocks met the three bears. In the cold of February it looked brittle and tight, and when I saw it I had a strange urge to throw a blanket over it and warm its insides.
Ob said nothing about the place except that he used to go fishing with a man who lived in it years ago. He said it was a good little house.
The front door opened to us, and standing there was Cletus. And I knew, in an instant, that this was not the same boy who had been coming to us with his battered old suitcase all these weeks. This was a different boy, and I knew, even before I set one foot inside his house, that here in this place, he was a much-loved boy. It’s funny, how you can know something like that right away. How you can see in someone’s face that he feels completely safe, and full of power and love, and suddenly things between you become so easy. Cletus was home, and he didn’t need to be crazy at all. He smiled his big smile, and for the first time in my life I was glad to see him.
“Come on in, folks,” he said, moving out of our way and motioning us inside. Behind him stood his parents.
I knew right off that they were shy, and unused to company. And they were older than I ever expected.
Mrs. Underwood looked to be made of dried-out apples. She was small and tight and dry, just like her house, but with a shine that attracted me. She shook my hand, and her thin cool fingers felt like twigs that could be snapped in a minute. I had a pang of fear that she might die soon. I seemed destined to be surrounded by people on their way out.
“Well, hello, Summer. It’s good to finally meet you,” she said softly.
“Thanks. You, too,” I answered, feeling awkward before her good manners.
Mr. Underwood was shaking Ob’s hand and laughing at something Ob had said. Leave it to Ob to walk right in and have the house laughing.
I loved Mr. Underwood from the minute I set eyes on him. He was a stooped-over little man with a long gray beard. A little elf. Even his cheeks were rosy. And instead of shaking my hand, he put his arm around me and gave me a squeeze and said, “We were wondering when that boy of ours was going to bring you on over here. We’ve been asking him since Christmas.”
I stood there in his father’s arms and looked to Cletus in embarrassment. I could guess now why Cletus had never had me to his house before. I had thought all along that it had something to do with his parents. That he was hiding them from me, maybe ashamed of them in some way.
Now, meeting these sweet people, I knew right away it wasn’t them Cletus was ashamed of. It was me. Ashamed of me and my indifference to him, afraid to let his parents see the way I barely tolerated their strange son. Ashamed of the difference between their adoration of him and my disgust.
I had not been in that house for five minutes yet, and already I’d learned so much.
We all sat down in the little living room. Mrs. Underwood brought out an extra chair from the kitchen.
Never one to mess around, Ob got right to the point.
“Well, you know, we was wondering if you might let us take your boy Cletus along on our little trip next week.”
The Underwoods both nodded and said nothing, waiting for Ob to fill in the details, which I figured he had come prepared to do. I waited to see how he would handle it.
He went on:
“See, I lost my wife last August and since then Summer, she’s had a rough time of it.” He looked at me and shook his head sadly. “Poor little thing. She just can’t figure what to do with herself when she’s got some time on her hands. So I was thinking she’d get a lot out of this little sightseeing trip.”
I looked at Ob in astonishment. He avoided my eyes and continued.
“I thought we’d go on over to Putnam County to visit an old friend
of mine….”
At least he’s got that part right, I thought.
“And then go on into Charleston to see the capitol. That’s where your boy comes in.”
Mrs. Underwood gave Cletus an affectionate look.
“As you all know by now,” Ob continued, “Cletus is a boy just full of curiosity about the world, and I reckoned maybe he’d like a chance to see the capitol, too. And him and Summer, they get on real good, they’re practically best friends, and it’d be a help to her to have him along. Take her mind off things.”
Ob sent me a look of deepest sympathy as I gaped back at him, while Mr. and Mrs. Underwood turned their understanding faces upon mine, probably searching for the right words to say to the poor lost child sitting before them.
Cletus had simply stared with his mouth hanging ever since Ob passed the “poor little thing” part. It was one of those rare occasions when he was too flabbergasted to speak. Like me, Cletus must have expected Ob would explain about the Bat Lady, about our real reason for going to Putnam County. He didn’t know, though, how slick Ob could be. And now I had a hunch Cletus’s admiration for Ob had just shot up about ten points.
Mr. Underwood was the first to reply.
“Why, sure, Ob, if you don’t think Cletus’ll be too much trouble to you. I know Cletus has been wanting to travel some, see new things. But I’ve got down in my back, and Margradel’s right eye has nearly gone blind on her, and we just can’t do like we used to.”
I looked at Cletus to see if all this talk of illness and deterioration affected him the way it did me. But there was no fear or worry in his face. He looked perfectly serene. I couldn’t understand that kind of peace. Already I was thinking I ought to get Mr. Underwood into Fayetteville to a chiropractor and maybe there was some kind of medicine that might save Mrs. Underwood’s right eye. Already I was making plans on how to keep them both from the grave.
Mrs. Underwood spoke next, looking at me.
“I’m sorry about your loss, dear. It’s so hard when the Lord takes a loved one away from us.”
Something caught in my throat all of a sudden, and I didn’t try to answer her. I was feeling way too vulnerable in the face of such tenderness. I couldn’t risk opening my mouth to speak of May.
Somehow the topic turned to lighter things, and Ob and Mr. Underwood talked of the weather and the new bridge being built down the road. Mr. Underwood said he had been a machinist in his day, holding up a hand with two fingers missing to prove it. I was afraid Ob might try to top this and start pulling down his pants to show where he’d been shot in the navy in World War II. Japanese shrapnel had got him in the thigh. But he kept his head about him, and his pants around him, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
Mrs. Underwood brought us all some gingerbread cake and the best coffee I ever tasted. She tried to get me to drink a glass of milk, couldn’t get over a girl my age loving coffee so much. But Cletus told her that coffee had made me tough, and besides that all writers needed something to see them through those long novels, and better it was coffee than Jim Beam whiskey.
Mrs. Underwood’s eyes crinkled in amusement as she refilled my cup.
While we sat eating, I looked around the house as much as I could. It was neat as a pin. Simple pieces of furniture, plain lamps, and only a few things on the walls. One of these was a picture of Mr. and Mrs. Underwood holding a small baby between them. It made me think about the difference between Cletus and me. About the way he could trust things to be all right. The way I worried about losing everything.
Those two people in that picture had been holding Cletus between them, frail as they were, ever since Cletus took his first breath. And Cletus just never expected them to let him fall.
During our visit, Cletus didn’t pull out his old suitcase, didn’t entertain us with his usual stories of exaggeration and gossip. He sat listening and looking and smiling, and I wondered what he thought of us all.
Maybe he really was wise in a different way. Maybe drowning was the best thing that ever happened to him.
I just wished May had turned around and come back from heaven the way he did.
Ob and I left the Underwood house full of warm cake and coffee. And something else. We couldn’t say what. But the rest of the day had a nice quietness about it, and we laughed together about Ob’s fear of telling the Underwoods the real truth (“Not everybody is as free minded as us, Summer,” he said), and we began to gather up our things to take to Putnam County.
“Is that all you’re taking?”
I looked at the grocery bag in Cletus’s left hand and the famous suitcase in his right.
“Well, I would’ve packed my Cadillac, but I couldn’t fit it in the bag,” he said.
“You two stop that jawing and get on in the car,” Ob said cheerfully as he slammed the trunk. “We got us an appointment in the next world.”
Ob and I climbed in the front seat of the Valiant (I wasn’t about to let Cletus take my front seat) and Cletus settled himself into the back, where right off he started unloading some magazines from his suitcase.
I turned around to glance over the titles and gave him a weird enough look that he had to say something.
“This old fellow up in Creasy’s Hollow … he gave me these. They’ve been sitting in his outhouse for a good ten years or more.”
Just as I was about to puke, Ob spoke up.
“Best reading I ever done was in my daddy’s old johnnyhouse. And I don’t mean dirty stuff, neither. He kept him some books on auto mechanics, fishing, Civil War — you name it. I used to love to get the diarrhea.”
And with that our trip to Putnam County was launched.
You would have thought with two big talkers like Cletus and Ob in the car, we’d have been a noisy bunch all the way down the road.
But as soon as we got out of Deep Water and onto the main highway, a quiet spell settled over the three of us, and the only sound was the rattle of something loose in Ob’s radio. There was a feeling in that car, and it was almost sadness, but it wasn’t. It was sweeter than sadness. I knew Ob’s silence was connected to May. Probably he was praying to her all the way to Putnam County, praying to her to come back to him and tell him what to do now without her. For all his pep, I knew Ob was scared.
And Cletus. Well, a couple of times I looked back and saw him staring up at the tops of the mountains, staring like he was looking at angels flying up there, and his face was so clear and open that he seemed like a tiny child to me. What was it he was thinking, looking up like that?
My own quietness, I think it came from peace. Nothing needed doing in that car. Ob was beside me and safe. Cletus behind us content. I knew that for a good three hours we were going to be like this, no surprises, nothing gone wrong. I could look out at the mountains and the tiny little houses people had squeezed onto them. I could see the muddy old toys in the yards and the melting-away snowmen. The smoke from chimneys keeping people warm and happy. Dogs chained to their houses, asleep in soggy yards. I didn’t need to take care of anything or anybody, and the silence was as blessed to me as the deepest kind of sleep could have been.
When the signs on the turnpike started telling us we were coming to Charleston, Cletus became so fidgety that at first I thought we’d better find a filling station, and fast.
But when he started talking about the capitol, I knew it was only nerves.
“I never have seen it,” he told Ob. “Only a black-and-white picture in our West Virginia history book. Even that knocked my socks off.
“I just think about all those important people, making laws under that gold dome. It must be to West Virginia what the Parthenon was to the Greeks.”
Cletus shook his head and stared out the window toward the Du Pont plant we were passing.
“It’s got to be the greatest thing,” he said, “to work in the West Virginia capitol every day.”
And for a second, right then, I had this strong image of Cletus someday doing that very thing. Of his being Fayette Co
unty’s elected representative to the legislature and driving over to Charleston to put his head together with other important heads and enact profound laws.
Then I remembered that he liked to eat Vienna sausages from the can and watch reruns of Laugh-In, and came to my senses.
The green-and-white road signs kept teasing us along with mentions of Capitol Street so many miles ahead, and we strained our eyes for a glimpse of the gold-leafed dome, like Columbus looking for a continent.
Then … there it was, and I know it was better than all three of us figured it would be. The capitol building sprawled gray concrete like a regal queen spreading out her petticoats, and its giant dome glittered pure gold in the morning sun. I felt in me an embarrassing sense of pride that she was ours. That we weren’t just shut-down old coal mines and people on welfare like the rest of the country wanted to believe we were. We were this majestic, elegant thing sitting solid, sparkling in the light.
Ob kept running the car off the road as he tried to drive and look at the same time.
“Sure is a beauty,” he said as he pulled the car back into the lane for the third time.
“Sure is,” I heard Cletus answer. The boy looked like he was just swallowing up the sight, gulping that capitol down as fast as he could as we moved on past it, on toward I-64. I knew he wanted to stop right then and stay there, maybe forever. Forget that Bat Lady.
Ob probably knew it, too.
“Don’t you folks worry,” he said. “Tomorrow when we come back this way, we’re going to stop and spend the whole day wandering that place. We’ll see us some historical documents and some genuine West Virginia artifacts. Then we’ll go have us some lunch with the senators and maybe even the governor himself in the capitol coffee shop.
“Me and Cletus, we’ll tell him how to straighten out all his mess.”
So as Cletus pinned his eyes to that place he thought might just be heaven, our car kept on moving, out of view of the fine gold dome, further apart from Deep Water and the people we used to be there, on nearer Putnam County and the people we were about to become. Three visitors heading for Oz.