Grandma Came Home to Pine Fork

The Drive Down

I had told Lowell I would have her back at his door by eight. Now he was here, and there was a different question. I went down to the field to ask it.

He was standing by my truck with Jesse. He had his hands in his pockets.

“Ivy,” he said, “would you mind if I drove her back? If she’ll ride with me.”

I did not answer for her. That had been the whole trouble all summer, somebody answering for her. I walked back up to the head of the table and asked my grandmother.

She looked down the slope at her son standing by the trucks, and she thought about it longer than I expected.

“I’ll ride with him,” she said. “But you tell him he’s bringing me back.”

I walked down and told him. Lowell nodded. Then he said something I did not expect.

“First Sunday of every month,” he said. “I’ll bring her up the first Sunday of every month. And Homecoming. And whatever else she wants.”

“You tell her,” I said. “Not me.”

He walked up the slope and knelt down by her chair at the head of that long, emptying table and told her. I was too far away to hear it. I saw her put her hand on his cheek.

Dovie and Grandma held hands one more time at the truck, through the open window. Dovie said, “Next month, then,” and Grandma said, “Next month,” like they had been saying it for eighty years, which they had.

I watched Lowell’s truck go down the gravel road in the evening sun with my grandmother’s white head in the passenger window, and then I sat down on the church steps and stayed there until Jesse came and sat down with me.

“You did right,” he said.

“I made your daddy cry in front of the whole cove.”

“No,” Jesse said. “You brought his mama home. He did the rest himself.”

The First Sunday

That was a year and some months ago now.

Grandma still lives with Lowell outside Charlotte. She has her walk-in shower and her rocking chair, and she has made peace with the trampoline. Lowell put a railing on every step of his house, both sides.

But on the first Sunday of every month, Lowell gets up at four o’clock, loads her pocketbook and her cushion in his truck, and drives her the four hours up the mountain to Pine Fork.

He sits beside her on the third pew from the front, left side. He does not sing much, but he stands for every hymn, and he holds the book for her even though she does not need it.

After church, they eat dinner with Dovie at the little table in the fellowship hall, or under the oaks when the weather is fine. Then he drives her home, and she sleeps the whole way down.

Last August, at Homecoming, Lowell was one of the men setting up the tables. He carried boards with Jesse and the old brothers all morning, and at noon he walked his mother to the head of that eighty-foot table himself.

She sat on her cushion. Dovie sat on her right. And when the deacon stood up to return thanks, the two of them reached for each other’s hand, like two girls on a school bench.

Grandma is 92 now. Every month, Dovie calls her on the Saturday night before, just to say she will see her in the morning.

And Lowell drives her up the mountain the first Sunday of every month now.