Page 63 of Goodbye Days

I’d prepared myself for the experience of treading on sacred ground. But the reality is something else. I suddenly want to confess exactly why I’m not worthy to be doing this. Then Mr. Krantz’s voice echoes in my head and yanks me down to reality. A partial confession only. “Nana Betsy, I’m not sure I’m the person to be doing this. This is so special.”

She turns down the already-quiet radio. “It is special. It’s the most special thing we could be doing at this moment. Which means I decide who’s worthy to be doing it with me. And when I say you are, you are. Got it?” Her tone is kind, but with a don’t-mess-with-me edge.

She glances over at me and I nod.

“What would Blake say if he were here?” she asks. “Would he say, ‘No, Nana, he’s not worthy to be doing this’?”

I shake my head. But I still fear that Nana Betsy’s and Blake’s generosity aren’t enough to absolve me.

“The first time he ever mentioned you was on a bad-fishing trip,” Nana Betsy says.

“Really?”

“I asked him how he was doing at school, if he’d been making friends. He had plenty of Internet fans from his web page, but that’s not the same as real friends. I worried about that because he hadn’t had the best social examples.”

“You wouldn’t have known it.”

“I thought so, but here we’re moving from little-bitty East Tennessee to the big city and he’s thrust into this school with all these smart, talented kids. I knew Blake was smart and talented, but I worried.”

“So what did he tell you?”

Nana Betsy smiles. “He says, ‘Nana, I met this nice guy at school named Carver and he ate lunch with me. We’re gonna be friends!’ ”

“That’s exactly how he said it?” It sounds so childlike.

“Exactly. I remember because it was one of those days I knew we’d done the right thing by uprooting our lives and moving out here. That was a big risk and I was scared.”

And then a flash realization: That risk you took resulted in Blake’s death. If you and Blake had stayed put, he wouldn’t have died. “Do you ever regret coming here?” I ask quietly. I can’t bring myself to ask the rest of the question and connect the dots.

But she seems to have done it anyway. Her eyes glaze with a faraway sheen and well up. “No. Blake died here. But if we hadn’t come, he’d never have lived. He found his people here. God’s hand guides our lives, and I believe he guided us to this place. I don’t know why he ordained for Blake to be taken from us; he works in mysterious ways.”

We sit for a few moments with silence between us like a curtain suspended from a thin thread. Then Nana Betsy turns up the radio. “We’ll talk plenty today. But for now, we need to be singing off-key at the top of our lungs to old country music. Tradition is tradition.”

We pull up to Percy Priest Lake, park, and hike a little ways to their fishing spot. We set up the lawn chairs. Nana Betsy helps me bait my hook, chuckling. “I believe I’ve found the lone person on Earth worse at fishing than Blake and me.”

“Lucky you.”

We cast our lines and settle into our chairs.

Nana Betsy claps me on the knee and points. “Look,” she whispers. An elegant blue heron glides past, its spindly legs ramrod straight behind it.

“Whoa.”

“That’s half the reason we’d come. We’d sit in this beautiful place and ponder God’s creation.”

Nana Betsy looks wistfully across the lake. She starts to say something. She covers her mouth, but she’s shaking with laughter and snorting. “Of course, not even God’s mighty creation was safe from Blake. Once, four or five deer walked right up to the edge of the lake to drink, not fifteen feet from us. So we watch them, and Blake whispers: ‘What do you guess God was thinking, Nana? He makes these nice brown deer that blend in with everything, and then he says, No, not done yet. And he gives them these glorious, brilliant, gleaming-white asses. The most beautiful asses of all of God’s creatures.’ ”

We laugh until we’re winded.

“It’s probably why we never caught anything. Couldn’t shut up. Scared the fish,” Nana Betsy says. And after a moment of reflection: “I think a lot about how he changed me. Did he change you?”

My mouth starts before my brain even knows it’s ready. “He made me less afraid to be naked.”

Nana Betsy looks slightly horrified.

“Not that way. Less afraid to be vulnerable. Sorry.”

“Oh, because with Blake…”