Black Mountain Breakdown by Lee Smith

Author:Lee Smith [Smith, Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Adult
ISBN: 9781101560648
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 1980-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

II

FIVE YEARS LATER, Agnes is in the kitchen making a Lady Baltimore cake for her poor old daddy’s birthday, and while she mixes and measures she looks over every now and then at the postcard lying on top of the stove. She butters and flours the pans. She pours in the batter, licks the spatula, and throws it into the sink. She puts the pans in the oven: 350 degrees. She wipes her hands down her sides on the apron and looks at the card again. One side has a picture of some big pink birds sticking their heads into the water. The other side says: “Hi! We’re in Key West. Will come through Black Rock on our way back North. See you probably on Thursday. Best, Crystal.”

Agnes tightens her mouth and puts the postcard into the trash. Today is Thursday, February 16. You could have knocked her over with a feather when she got this postcard in the mail. Good thing she was the one who looked in the mailbox, so Mama and Daddy don’t know a thing about it. And won’t, if she can help it! Not that Daddy knows much of anything these days anyway, they keep him so doped up. “Best, Crystal.” Well, Crystal’s best is not good enough for Agnes anymore. Imagine writing somebody a card that you haven’t seen in three years, expecting them to say oh goody! Agnes fixes herself some instant coffee and sits down heavily in a kitchen chair. She has been up since 6 A.M. Crystal takes too much for granted, always has.

Maybe if Crystal hadn’t been born looking like that, Agnes thinks, maybe that was the trouble all along. Crystal’s famous beauty. Maybe if Grant hadn’t been so crazy. But things happen the way they do, and if you look back you think, “Oh, if I hadn’t closed the door just then when the carpet salesman from Bristol was here that time,” or “What if I had gone over to Knoxville for the summer that year Aunt Donna asked me, what then?,” but you didn’t do it, you didn’t go, and so you never know, and looking back it’s hard to say when the important things happened or even what they were because all the days went along so fast back then, like water under the bridge.

Well, they’re gone now. You’ve got to salvage what you can and keep ahold of what you’ve got, and not be looking off in the clouds someplace. If Agnes’s daddy hadn’t gotten so bad off, she never would have taken over the hardware store, for instance. She didn’t know a two-by-four from a hole in the wall that day she started. She didn’t know she was starting it either; she thought she was just going in to see how everybody was getting along with her daddy so sick.

And if Lorene hadn’t sent Crystal off to that so-called college on her rivet money, Crystal would be happily married to Roger Lee Combs today, and that’s the truth.

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