Page 64 of Goodbye Days

“Yeah, you never knew.”

Nana Betsy opens the cooler and pulls out a root beer and hands it to me.

I open it and take a sip. “Once I went with Blake to film a video. The one where he walked into Green Hills Mall shirtless.”

Nana Betsy claps her hand over her face. “Oh. I wish you’d talked him out of that. Lord almighty.”

“Oh, believe me, I tried. I was dying just following him with the camera. I was so relieved when a security guard finally kicked us out after he went into Nordstrom.”

“Didn’t he ask the security guard how he was supposed to get a shirt if he wasn’t allowed to go into a place that sells them?”

“Something like that. Anyway, we go out to the car, and I’m like, ‘Dude, Blake, aren’t you embarrassed?’ And he looks at me like I’m the crazy one, and he goes, ‘Have you ever thought less of somebody for making you laugh on purpose’? And I think for a sec and say no. And he goes: ‘Dignity is overrated. People can live without it. I know because I did. But people can’t live without laughter. I’ll gladly trade dignity for laughter, because dignity is cheap and laughter is worth everything.’ ”

Nana Betsy stares out over the lake, shaking her head slightly. She clears her throat a couple of times and wipes her nose. “He always said the first part to me. Never the second part. How much did Blake tell you about his circumstances growing up?”

“Not much. He obviously hated talking about it. I figured it was bad.”

Nana Betsy finishes off her root beer, puts the empty in the cooler, and pulls out another. She looks pained. “Mitzi was our wild child. She was our youngest, and I guess we were too tired by then to be as strict as we ought to have been, so she did whatever she pleased. She got pregnant with Blake when she was sixteen. It could’ve been any of five men, all over thirty. She picked the one with the nicest trailer and most running cars and convinced him that Blake was his.”

“So Blake never knew who his real dad was?”

“No. And all the possibilities were awful.”

“Jeez.”

“So they”—Nana Betsy makes air quotes—“raise Blake. Which meant sitting him in front of the TV for hours a day in the same filthy diaper while they partied and snorted meth. Sometimes they’d let me take him for the day, and I’d bathe him and feed him good food and try to teach him to talk and read and all the things he was behind on.”

“Did you ever call—”

“Child Protection? My heavens, yes. The sheriff? Many times. But we’re talking about a rural county with limited resources. They don’t do a thing.”

“Sorry. Go ahead.”

“So this goes on until Blake is eight. They leave him for days. He’s not attending school. Mitzi’s boyfriends are slapping him around. And I’ve finally had it. I go get him without asking anyone’s permission. I figure if the sheriff and Child Protection can’t protect Blake from Mitzi, they can’t protect Mitzi from me protecting Blake.”

This spurs a memory. “There’s another way Blake tried to change me,” I say softly. “We were hanging out in my room; I don’t remember what we were doing. Anyway, my mom knocks on the door to ask me a question and I get supermad—I’m embarrassed telling you this because it makes me sound like the worst kid ever.”

“I’m not judging you. You said that Blake taught you not to be afraid of vulnerability.”

“Okay. Well, I get supermad at my mom and she leaves, and Blake goes, ‘Why are you mean to your mom?’ And I go, ‘Whatever, dude, you don’t understand.’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah, I don’t, because if I had your mom, I’d never be mean to her. You have no clue how lucky you are, but I do.’ So yeah. I’m pretty embarrassed to have treated my mom that way in front of him.”

We sit for a while, smacking mosquitos, sipping root beers, and chatting, the sun hot on our backs. A couple of times we think we might have a bite. Of course it turns out to be nothing. Wind shaking our poles or something. We don’t bother reeling them in to see if our hooks are still baited.

Finally, Nana Betsy looks at her watch. “Blade, I’m getting hungry. It’s probably time to say goodbye to bad-fishing.” Her voice cracks. “You made a very good bad-fishing companion, I must say. Second best I’ve ever had.”

“We can come do this anytime.”

She looks at the ground; out over the lake; and back to the ground, blinking fast. “Afraid not. I’m leaving.”

It doesn’t quite make it into my brain. I think for a second she’s talking about us leaving right then. “Wait. What?”

“I’m moving home. I miss my mountains. I was only ever here for Blake’s sake, to put some distance between our old life and our new life. My two sons live in Greeneville, and my older daughter lives in Chattanooga.”

That shuts me right up.

“I have enough years working for the state to get my retirement. I’m putting the house on the market on Monday. I’m not asking for much. Enough to cover the funeral costs and the cost of some little place on the side of a mountain overlooking a holler. And I’ll watch my stories and read my mysteries and have Sunday dinners with my boys and live quietly with my thoughts and memories until the Lord calls me home.”

It had never occurred to me that Blake’s death would have this particular sort of consequence. I thought its impact would be limited to grief, guilt, aching, missing. Not packing up and moving. I wonder what else will fall now from this shaken tree.