The Hill We Cleared for Grandma

Wiley’s mother asked the blessing. She kept it short. She thanked the Lord for the day and for the food and for everybody who was there, and for everybody who was under the grass, and then she said amen and handed Grandma the first plate.

And then Grandma told us about every one of them.

She did not do it all at once. She did it the way she always used to. Somebody would ask, and she would point with her fork, and she would tell. Then somebody else would ask about another one.

She told about the first Hensley who came over the mountain from Virginia with a mule and a rifle and an ax, and cleared the bottom by the creek, and is buried under a field rock with no name on it because nobody in the family could write then.

She told about the twins who died in 1902, a boy and a girl, and how their mother made one coffin for both of them because she could not stand to have them apart.

She told about the one who went in the second war and was buried overseas, and how his mother had the family put up a stone for him here anyway so she would have somewhere to put her flowers.

The children sat on the quilts and listened. I watched Dovey’s youngest boy, who is seven and has never sat still for five minutes together in his life, sit cross-legged at Grandma’s feet for an hour with his chin in his hands.

She told about Grandpa Burl, how he courted her for two years and she said no three times, and how he showed up the fourth time with a new pair of shoes for her mother, and that was that.

She told about my daddy, and how he used to carry her up this hill on his back when she broke her ankle in 1979, and how he made her promise she would let somebody carry her up after he was gone.

“I reckon you kept my promise for me, Asa,” she said, and she did not look at me when she said it, and I was glad.

She went slow. All afternoon. The sun moved across the sky, and the shade from the cedar moved with it, and we moved her chair twice to keep her in it.

About four o’clock, I saw Wiley stand up from his quilt and look down toward the logging road.

He stood there for a while with his hand up over his eyes. Then he walked over to me.

“Asa,” he said quietly. “She’s walking up.”

I knew who he meant. I found out later that Charlene’s daughter had called her from the bottom of the hollow. She had driven by and seen the trucks lined up from Grandma’s barn all the way to the creek road.

Charlene had come in her car, and her car could not make the logging road, so she had parked at the barn and started up on foot. She is 66, and that road is steep. She was walking slow.

I did not know what to do. I will be honest with you about that. Everybody on the hill had seen Wiley stand up and look. Everybody knew. The talking had all stopped, one quilt at a time, until it was quiet.

Wiley did not ask me what to do. He walked over to Grandma’s chair and leaned down and said something to her I could not hear.