Ann Pancake - Strange as This Weather Has Been. A novel

Table of Contents

WHEN I WAS eleven, I got it in my head I was going to a high school basketball game in Charleston. Mom told me I was not. Said I had no business going to some high school basketball game in Charleston, I wasnt even in junior high, but I had friends older than me and thats all theyd been talking aboutthe first time weve made it to regionals since 1962, everybodys going to be there, were making banners, and Paulas moms driving and taking us to Shoneys beforehand. My mom said she didnt care who was driving.

The game was on a Saturday night. The week leading up to that Saturday I made sure not to mention it again. Soon as I finished the supper dishes, I slipped on back into me and Sheilas roomSheila and Dad busy watching TV, Buck and Roy and Grampa Jones, even at eleven I wouldnt be caught dead watching Hee-Hawand I put on my clothes I thought made me look oldest. I ripped my jeans a little climbing out the window, but I told myself just dont take off your coat, and then I was running light and quiet and very, very fast down the Ricker Run in the March early dark. I stopped on the footbridge, stitch ripping in my side. I could hear Yellowroot Creek under the hoarse of my breath.The hardest part was next, trotting the whole mile down Yellowroot Road without anybody seeing me. Everybody knew everybody back then, and everybody knew I had no business running down the road on a Saturday night in the dark. But then three miracles happened, two for me and one for Mom. First, I made it to Route 9 and had my thumb out before a single neighbor saw me. Second, a man in a Lantz truck picked me right up and drove me all seventy-five miles to the Civic Center without a word about my age, my parents, or why I was hitching. And third, and least surprising, given the time and place, the Lantz truck man didnt do me any harm.

I didnt get to the game until the last quarter, but I was there. After we lost, Paulas mom took me home with everybody else, called Mom before we left once she figured out I hadnt ridden in with them. I was the last one they dropped off, and it wasnt until we were all the way down to just me and Paula in the van that I started thinking about what was going to happen once I got home. But I wasnt scared. And I sure didnt feel guilty. Just mad at Mom, it was her fault. If shed let me go the regular way, I wouldnt have had to hitchhike. Right there I decided I wouldnt let her get me.

I trudged back up the Ricker Run in a dark so pure I could hardly see my feet at the end of my legs. Then I saw the porch light. Mom waiting there with her long wooden spoon. I stopped out in the yard, just beyond where the light fell. Get your rear end up here. Now, Mom said, and there wasnt nothing else I could do.

When she went at it, though, something was different. Once I had that dont-get-me in my head, I dodged that whipping like a boxer who fought from his behind. I danced, swinging out on Moms grip on my arm, I arched my back and fast-footed, I spun and I leapt, to where every lick either missed me or barely grazed. Mom wore out faster than me. Then we both stood there, her panting, me feeling the wind through the spreading rip in my jeans.

She ended up making me stay in my room except for chores and church every Saturday and Sunday for three months. I still do say it was worth it. I still do say I won.

By then Id decided I was newer than all this here. Here was fine for Mom, Dad, and Sheilayou could take one look at them and see how they fitbut only outside of here would I, Lace See, live real life. Ages one to eighteen were just a waiting for that. Nothing on TV, nothing in books, nothing in magazines looked much like our place or much like us, and its interesting, how you can believe whats on TV is realer than what you feel under your feet. Growing up here, you get the message very early on that your place is more backwards than anywhere in America and anybody worth much will get out soon as they can, and that doesnt come only from outside. Still, despite all those shows and pictures and stories and voices, I never was able to see what lay ahead for me as something solid. I saw it instead as a color, a sweet peach-pink. A color I could walk into, with its own temperature, own smell, and by the time I was a teenager, that color, temperature, and smell had put such a spell on me I didnt see much else.

So when I was in eleventh grade, and they brought in a guidance counselor from away from here, and I ended up doing work-study for her second period, it proved what Id known all along about my own specialness and how southern West Virginia was just a holding pen for me. Mrs. Claylock always seemed nervous, and she only lasted two years, but in that time, she figured out not only was I smart, but really good at tests. Us cooped up in that supplies closet they gave Mrs. Claylock for an office, cloudy with her strange perfume. I never smelled that perfume again until a department store in North Carolina, and when I did, Mrs. Claylock came so clear I could see the acne scars on her chin. Mrs. Claylock told me how to apply for college, then she went even further and fixed me up with scholarships and grants, and the day I graduated high school, May 1983, I told myself once I got to WVU, Id never look back.

Truth was, though, after a month away, I was feeling a kind of lonesomeness Id never known there was. Id start drinking in my dorm room most evenings, stretched out on my window ledge on the eighth floor of Tower Two, a rum and coke between my legs, or a bottle of Mad Dog 20-20, and if anybody asked, Id say I was just warming up for that nights party, but really Id be watching the ridges in the distance. It was like I was all the time feeling like I wasnt touching nothing, and wasnt nothing touching me back, and yeah, they had hills in Morgantown, but not backhome hills, and not the same feel backhome hills wrap you in. Id never understood that before, had never even known the feel was there. Until I left out and knew it by its absence.

October made it worse. The sky never clearer any time of the year, keen mornings and warmish afternoons, sharp color in the hills, and the threat of winter making everything more precious. Id be sitting in a lecture hall, in the library, trying to take notes, trying to study, and thered come to me October things Id thought Id left behind when I left being a kid. The rich wild fur smell of squirrels in my daddys canvas jacket pockets. The rough of a burlap sack for picking up hickory nuts. Persimmon taste. Searching for the prettiest of the pretty leaves for Mom to help me iron between wax paper. By the third week of the month, I couldnt hold off any longer. Just for a weekend, I told myself. Theres no failure in that.

I left on a Thursday, and because I didnt have another way, I hitchhiked, but Id gotten so turned around by those two months in Morgantown I headed east instead of south and was halfway to Cumberland, Maryland, before I realized something was wrong. Spent the night at a truck stop on Keysers Ridge, head in my arms, and woke up with ketchup in my hair. I was in the restroom washing it out when the counter lady came in and asked me, Where you trying to get to, honey? The lady knew a lot of drivers coming through and found one heading my way.

Daddy was out in the garden twisting off pumpkins. He almost lost his balance when he recognized it was me. He took off stiff towards me, his legs loosening as he walked, then he clapped his arms around me and slapped on my back. Hollered for Mom, and even Mom looked happy to see me. People around here dont really want their kids leaving, doesnt matter for what. They dont have a lot else. With his arm around my shoulder, Daddy guided me on into a kitchen chair, Mom carrying my suitcase behind, and Get us out a plate of them peanut butter cookies, she called to Sheila. Then we all four sat around the table, and they listened to the parts of college I knew theyd want to hear, Daddy saying, Well now! Well now! once in a while, slapping the table in surprise.