Almost Home by Valerie Fraser Luesse

Author:Valerie Fraser Luesse
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction;Christian fiction;FIC042000;FIC066000
ISBN: 9781493416608
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2019-01-22T05:00:00+00:00

Reed pulled into a high mountain overlook and came around to open Daisy’s door.

“Dang,” she said. “Never saw anything like this before.”

“Never had Sunday dinner on a mountain?”

“Never even seen a mountain till I moved here.”

He grabbed the picnic basket they had packed and one of Dolly’s “everyday quilts”—that’s what she called the ones that were old enough and worn enough to be used outside.

“Where are we?” Daisy asked as they spread the quilt on a gently sloping, shady spot.

“Hick’ry Mountain. Daddy used to bring me campin’ up here when I was little. That’s the Cahaba River down there. If it was nighttime, you could see a glow from the lights o’ Birmingham over that ridge.”

“You need help?” Daisy asked.

“Nope, thanks to you.” Reed could now bend his knee enough to sit down without propping himself on anything. They unwrapped leftover fried chicken and white bread that they had found in Dolly’s kitchen. Reed opened the Cokes they had bought at the only filling station that was open along the way.

He watched as Daisy took in the view—Appalachian foothills against a blue summer sky, the river way down below, and sweeps of green in between. Yellow wildflowers painted the rolling landscape.

“It’s so beautiful,” she said.

“At night, it’s just as pretty. You can see a million stars, and it’s real quiet. You said you’d never seen a mountain in Mississippi, so what’s it like where you’re from?”

“The Delta—that’s farmland around the river—is flat as a pancake. And we don’t have red dirt like here. The fields are the color o’ coal, and they smell like the river. There’s a bunch o’ little towns—no big cities—and the food’s different on accounta all the people that’ve come up the Mississippi to work the cotton. You can see little tamale stands next to chicken joints and Italian restaurants across the road from barbecue pits. The music’s great ’cause there’s so many blues players around.”

“I never even heard the blues till I went in the Army. Served with a guy from Indianola.”

“I’ve still got a few o’ my records if you want me to bring ’em to Dolly’s sometime.”

“That’d be great. You sure sound like you love that place to be workin’ so hard to avoid it.”

“I did love it.”

“But not anymore?”

Daisy shook her head. “I don’t fit anymore. And I lived there my whole life.”

“You fit in Alabama?”

Daisy thought about it. “Yeah. I think I do.”

They watched an occasional breeze send a yellow wave across the mountainside as first one patch of flowers and then the next bowed to it. Daisy reached out and picked two dandelions from the grass, then handed one to Reed. “My granddaddy used to say that if you can blow all the feathers off a dandelion in one breath, you can blow all your troubles away. Ready?”

They each took a deep breath and blew, both of them leaving just a few feathery remains.

“We got most of ’em,” she said with a shrug. “That’s at least a start.”

“Progress,” Reed agreed. “Hey, next time we come up here, you oughta bring your sketchbook with you.

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