The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,20

remained the same, “I don’t know.” The only thing he seemed to be certain of was his lack of pain.

In the hope of triggering some memories, I told him stories of my family. Stories about my momma’s family, poor Appalachian hill farmers coming down to work in the cotton mills. About her crazy cousin who robbed post offices and the federal agents who came looking for him. I told the story of my father’s half-sister, the only relation I had never met, who ran off with a boy from Chicago named Hardin.

Of all things, I thought my talk of the war would make him remember something, but even that seemed news to him. He could not remember anything from his past. Reluctantly, I concluded that he must be brain-damaged. But he was so lucid. He filled the room.

Something in his manner and bearing seemed so familiar. I was certain that he was a local boy. I covered the local geography, naming towns, counties, hills, rivers, and creeks nearby, hoping to jog some uninjured part of his brain. None of what I said helped him remember his people, but he turned that deaf-man gaze on me, and I felt like I was reciting Holy Scripture to a drowning sinner.

I saw no judgment, no appraisal in his eyes. He wasn’t like the boys in the mill-village. He reminded me of Cole. I was not too tall, red-haired, or freckled when I talked to him. I was unaccustomed to the intensity of his attention, and at times it made me shy, but I wanted to meet his gaze. I wanted to tell this man everything, to give him the world he seemed to have lost.

By the end of the day, his gait was almost normal and the questions were coming from him. He followed me, watching everything I did. He wanted to know the name of everything—a knife, the stove, the buckle on his overalls.

That afternoon, I discovered that he had even forgotten what a chamber pot was for. The outhouse was not close, so I had taken to using a chamber pot sometimes even during the day, and I certainly wasn’t going out in the continuing downpour just to pee. Since I had been living alone so much, I’d taken to leaving the pot on the back porch. In bad weather, I used it in a corner, behind the tool shelves. He found me there just before sunset that day. I was squatting over the pot, doing my business, when he appeared. I startled, but there wasn’t much to be done except finish peeing. He watched me with the same intense interest he had in everything. Beside him, Hobo peered at me, sniffing the air. Then the cat stuck her head around the corner.

“I guess this means we’re pretty good friends, but even my family doesn’t find this so interesting they have to watch.”

My comment seemed to please him.

“Oh!” he said when I finished and he saw the pot behind me. He stood very close to me. I smelled his faint green odor. He sniffed, too. I offered him the pot and walked away until I heard the metallic clink of the fasteners on his overalls. I couldn’t help myself, I peered back over my shoulder. When I didn’t see him standing over the pot, I took a couple of quiet steps backward and peeked over the shelves. He squatted like a woman, staring down between his legs like a child. I blushed, remembering what I had seen there when I helped him dress. After he finished, he beamed up at me, happy, completely unself-conscious.

Later, when we ate dinner, I noticed his skin was much better. Not quite normal, but in the lamplight, I could see that it had lost its odd yellow hue. Only traces of the burn-like scarring remained. His skin was smoother. The roughness now seemed just below the surface, like the dimpling and slight lumpiness of fat. His hair formed a short copper halo. He reminded me of the children in my family when they were younger. His emerging familiarity kept my mind off of how he had looked when I found him. I no longer felt the urgent need to call Momma and Daddy for help. This strange man had begun to feel like a gift instead of an emergency. A curious gift.

It wouldn’t have been right to have him sleep on the floor again for his second night. At bedtime, I put him in the room