Nobody Can Say It's You

34

Chandra made Dara feel whole. They were so different in so many ways, Dara thought, but there was a bond that bound Chandra to Dara that she would never be able to describe to anyone else. 

Chandra was rebellious, Dara thought, because we lost our mother, because we lost our home in town, because of so many things. She would come to love this place. Dara could feel it in her bones.

She wondered if Chandra would follow her into the woods. It would have been nice. Chandra's company always turned mushroom hunting from a chore into something fun. When she didn't, Dara began her hunt for mushrooms in earnest. There were two fewer eyes to spy out the treasures but still three bellies to fill.

But that day, luck seemed to be on Dara's side.

She found lots of Leatherback Milkcaps and a few other varieties. How bountiful the mountain was to Dara.

***

Granny Dilcie was an expert when it came to woodland plants and fungi. Dara learned quickly. The young girl's heart swelled whenever she thought of that day, not so long ago, when Granny had given her the basket and told her to go hunting alone.

It was like a rite of passage. Like graduating from school.

And Granny Dilcie was proud of the young girl, too. How quickly she had taken to the old ways. Granny smiled. 

The old worries of having no one to pass them down to were things of the past. They were swept away like dust with her old grass broom. 

Granny Dilcie's heart was filled with warmth and love for the girl. She was certain Dara Elanor was the one.

***

In so many ways, it had been a long journey, trying to find the right one to channel her knowledge and pass along the wisdom of the Ancients. It had to be someone who was her blood.

It was obvious from a very early age that Alswyth had no interest in learning from her mother. Then her daughter married and moved into town. 

It came as no shock to Dilcie when Alswyth's marriage failed and her husband divorced her. That man was like the waves of the shifting ocean.

Granny Dilcie had warned Alswyth to wait for her true love. Granny had seen him in the clouds. He was coming soon, she had warned Alswyth. Cordell will bring you only sorrow. But Alswyth was impatient. At 17, she thought her marrying days had passed.

So, against her mother's advice, she married Cordell. And just as her mother said, she'd missed the boat called Mr. Right. There was something Cordell had given Alswyth besides sorrow, but a tub of tears sort of went along with the sadness Alswyth reaped during her marriage.

And then, like a magician, Cordell did his vanishing act. Alswyth would never forgive Cordell for as long as she lived. High and dry, he'd left her. With two small children and no money, Alswyth was forced to get 'public work' to support herself and her family.

It was all in the tea leaves and all in the clouds, Dilcie brooded. If only her daughter had listened and had believed her mother.

Dilcie was not against marriage for her daughter, but she hated the man her daughter had decided to marry. Alswyth was besotted by him. A no-good deadbeat who drifted from job to job. Cordell was cut from the same cloth as his worthless daddy.

"It ain't gonna work," Dilcie said. "He ain't the right one. I seen it, Alswyth."

"Oh, Mama," Alswyth said, "keep your signs 'n' visions for somebody who believes in them. Cordell's the one for me. I know it, Mama. I know it."

It was no use. Alswyth was in love. Or at least, she thought she was.

She was convinced that her mother's warnings were only imaginative ways to try to keep her chained to their little cabin and to the mountain.

"I ain't gonna die a godforsaken hillbilly up here," she had told Dilcie. "I want a decent home. Not some shack in the sticks. Decent, Mama. I want an indoor toilet, for goodness sakes. I ain't gonna die no swamp angel if I can help it."

So, she married Cordell, who stayed with her just long enough to get her pregnant, and then he took off. Just like a fox with rabies. 

Cordell decided he was tired of being hooked to a ball and chain. Told Alswyth he'd found him a new girl who didn't have to have a ring or a piece of matrimonial paper to have a good time. Bought himself a Harley and rode off into the sunset.

Alswyth was served divorce papers a few months later.

***

That was why she was driving the school bus.

She worked in the cafeteria at the elementary school, but one of the requirements for that job was that you had to drive a bus, too. The school board had deemed that making cafeteria workers drive the buses was the most efficient way to make use of the employees in the food and janitorial divisions.

Alswyth loathed that decision. As luck would have it, she had drawn the longest and curviest route. Her run was about 90 minutes longer than any other.

And the noise that the rambunctious elementary-age boys and girls made while she transported them to and from school usually ended up giving her a migraine.

But she had to eat. She had to feed her kids and keep them clothed. Not to mention keep a dry roof over all their heads. Like a lot of things, it wasn't what Alswyth wanted to do, but what she had to do.

So, she had done it. She'd clenched her teeth and kept her mouth shut and drove their bus. Just like they wanted. And she had kept their small house in town and raised her girls alone.

Now, she was forever entombed inside a vehicle she'd hated at the bottom of a gorge with tons of rock and dirt and only the smallest part of a fender exposed to the elements as her tombstone and grave marker.