"Hey."
This voice is different, and it pulls me up from the dark cavern of sleep and out of the reach of the nightmare. I peel my heavy eyes open, and peek up from behind my fortress of blankets. Mom is already dressed, standing in the doorway in a pretty soft colored dress, and her fluffy brown hair waves around her olive face.
I smell bacon and eggs in the air and can hear the radio echoing down the hallway as mom plays the tunes softly from the kitchen.
"Who were you talking to?"
Mom walks into the room, her eyes noticing the mess on the floor, but her eyes don't linger and she doesn't scold me on it. She switches the lamp beside the bed on. I squint for a second with the last images of the nightmare fading away in my brain.
"Just a dream," I reply.
The sun is barely up in the sky. It is October, and a chill wind blows through the trees in the front yard beyond my window. If you put your hand up to the glass of the window, you would be able to feel the autumn chill. The sharp claws of winter scratch at the Earth, begging to grab a hold of autumn and rip it apart, and soon there will be nothing left but harsh winter days. Winter on the mountain clings tightly like a black cat. We haven't had snow yet, but it is only an amount of time before it drizzles down from the burst of dark clouds that hang forever in the skies of the mountain.
"Get dressed and join me for breakfast."
"Oh and.." Mom turns before walking out of the room, "heavy sweater, you hear?"
"I hear," I answer back and climb out of bed.
The lamplight glazes over my bedroom in a hue of dark yellow, glowing, as it blends with the morning light filtering in through the window, together combined they cast out the shadows of midnight.
I can feel the bitter air tickling it's way up my arms, causing my arm hairs to poke forward and I steal a glance at my space heater that has not been working properly. I wish dad would have fixed it. I instantly wish I could curl back into the comfort of my bed and soak up the warmth one last time.
I wiggle my toes on the red Indian rug on my bedroom floor as I stand and stretch. My mother and father had an argument once that I'm a girl and should have lady-like things, like my older sister, but the argument resulted in me getting my way. My sister's bedroom had been painted pink upon moving into the house, and I had repulsed the idea of my own bedroom being pink. I could only think of the shit I would receive from my friends if my room were to be pink.
The bedroom is my sanctuary, my own fortress against the darkness of the world, and here I am protected from the enemies that lurk in the shadows. The desk with the seven mystic drawers is where I do my homework every night but I honestly spend more hours there reading my comic books and drawing up my own heroes. Mom has allowed me to buy a small aquarium holding these tiny goldfish too. Mom isn't big about having pets.
My dresser top is covered in airplane model kits that me and dad had worked on together relentlessly. Every time I look at those airplanes, I smile.
I opened the dresser and pull out a heavy red sweater.
A stack of Batman and Justice League comic books sit waiting anxiously for me on my desk. Brand let me borrow his latest issues to catch up on and read since I haven't been allowed to buy the most recent issues. Mom said they need be watching what they spend from now on. Penny pinching or something. Whatever. I think that is an adult excuse to buy only adult things.
My shelves go on and on. I'm pretty sure if they could talk, they would tell a tale of my life, and the grand adventure that is me. A collection of marbles gleams in a mason jar on my top shelf on the wall. I also have a yo-yo that even my friends got jealous over but the string is broken and is something I will have to work on fixing.
"Breakfast is on!" Mom calls.
I button up my flannel shirt and tug on my red sweater. My blue jeans have patches on the knees, like badges of courage marking adventures with barbed wire and gravel. Things I have done with my friends. I sit on the unmade bed and force my feet into my boots.
Before leaving my bedroom, I grab my pocket knife, the orange one with an eagle carved into it and stuff it into my pocket. The trusty knife was gifted to me many moons ago by my favorite person in the world: my granddaddy Jaybird. Or that's what the grown ups called him.
Jaybird had a curiosity about life. Whenever my sister was born, he held her and smiled, but kept her at a distance as she grew, as if not knowing what to say to a kid in ribbons and ruffles. But then I came bursting into the world, riding bikes, reading comic books and being the only girl on the playground who can fight the boys, well Jaybird took a fancy to me. It made me feel special.
The one thing we shared was the spirit for adventure. He was seventy-eight and tough as beef jerky, and he had a foul mouth and a foul disposition, but you could always find him prowling around outside. He knew the mountain well. He had lived up in a cabin deep in the woods of these Mountains, near the empty mines all of his life. He was a true mountain man.
Jaybird use to bring home things to grandma from his walks, the kind of things that would unsettle any other woman, but not grandma. I fondly remember the collection of snakeskins, furs, mason jars and bones of animals he had found up on the mountain. He would hold me up and let me touch the mountain treasures. He would tell folktales of mountain magic.
Maybe he was crazy. But on Sunday dinners after church let out, everyone would sit around the table and talk except Jaybird. No, he would seek me out and we'd both would sit on the sofa and he would read a book with me and fill my head of stories of haunted houses and stories of the mines. I loved Jaybird. And when he passed away, it hurt to leave him in a hole in the ground up on that snowy mountain. Sometimes the memory of walking away, hand-in-hand with my mother, tear-streaked face, looking back on him still haunts me to this day.
I snug the knife tightly in her pocket.
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