Page 20

"To say good-bye to Daddy," I replied, my voice filled with desperation.

"Oh, Melody. Can't we start this trip on a happy note?"

"I've got to say good-bye to Daddy!" I exclaimed.

"I've got to!" My voice was full of desperation. Archie looked at Mommy and she shook her head. "It's on the way out," he said.

"Well, I'm not going in with you," Mommy said. "I can't bear it."

Archie stopped at the entrance to the cemetery. Mommy said it would break her heart again to drive in. It reminded her too much of the funeral.

"We're only waiting five minutes, Melody," she told me.

"Are you sure you don't want to come, Mommy?" She stared at me a moment, her eyes looking genuinely sad. She gently shook her head.

"I said my good-bye some time ago, Melody. I had to or I couldn't go on with my life."

I opened the door and jumped out, running up the pathway past the monuments until I reached Daddy's stone. I walked up to it and threw my arms around it the way I used to throw them around him. I pressed my cheek to the hard granite and closed my eyes.

"Oh Daddy, we're going, but come back as often as I can. Mommy has to get away. She can't live here anymore.

"I know you would forgive her. You forgave her for everything," I said a little bitterly. "And I know you would tell me to be a help to her, but I can't help how I feel."

I fell to my knees in front of the stone and bowed my head to say a little prayer and then I plucked a blade of grass growing on the grave and put it inside Papa George's pocket watch. It would always be with me, I thought. I kept the watch open so some of "Beautiful Dreamer" would play. Daddy loved that song, too.

Mommy and Archie were honking the Chevy's horn again.

I closed the watch, stood up, and gazed at the mountains in the distance, drinking in the trees and the bushes. I wanted to press the memory of this place into my mind as firmly as I had pressed the blade of grass into the pocket watch.

Then I kissed Daddy's gravestone, leaving some of my tears on top of it before I turned to walk away. I got back into the car without a word. Archie and Mommy both glanced at me and then he turned the car around and we started down the road that would lead us north, first to Richmond.

Mommy squealed with delight as we passed through the town and beyond the sign that read, Now Entering Sewell, West Virginia.

"I'm leaving!" she cried. "I'm really getting out of here. My prison sentence is over!"

I gazed at her and squinted. What had she meant by that? I would have asked, but my chest ached so, I knew my voice would crack as soon as I tried to speak.

Archie sped up. They turned on the radio and began to sing along with the music. Mammy swung around to look at me.

"Oh, be happy, Melody. Please. Be happy, if not for yourself, then for me."

"I'll try, Mommy," I said in a voice barely above a whisper.

"Good."

The scenery whipped by. I barely paid attention, but I saw enough familiar territory fall back to fill my heart with sadness. I gazed through the rear window, watching Sewell disappear behind a hill, and with it, the cemetery in which Daddy rested.

Then I turned around and looked ahead. Trembling, I felt no less frightened and confused than a newborn baby pulled kicking and screaming into the future, terrified at the unknown.

4

The Girl

out of the Country

.

I closed my eyes and lay back in the seat.