A Parchment of Leaves

  I wouldn’t do a thing with Saul in that house, either. There’s no way I would have done that with Esme right there. When he took a notion to—which was right often—I’d make him lay there long enough to make sure his mother was asleep, then we’d slip outside and he’d snap a quilt out onto the air and let it sail down on the soft ground, and we’d take our clothes off right there. Our bodies looked like they had been dipped in milk, what with the glow of the big moon. The quilt would always be so cool that when my naked back touched it, a shudder would run up me and I’d pull Saul down hard so I could soak up his heat. It’s a good thing our house was built before winter, or we would have froze to death trying to spark a little.

  Three

  When Saul started to build the chimney on our little house, it come to me that some of the rocks ought to come from Redbud Creek. I latched a sled to the back of a mule and rode it over the mountains—splashing through creeks and climbing fern-covered ridges—until I reached my old home. It was fall and the leaves had turned yellow. The woods were cool and damp with morning fog that stood along the ridges. But by the time I was on the white road, the sun had took over and sizzled from on high. When I finally caught sight of Redbud Camp, beads of sweat stood on my brow.

  My mother was hanging clothes on the long line behind the house. When I called out to her, she turned and put a flat hand to her brow so that she could see against the glare of the autumn sun. She took the clothespins from her mouth and throwed them into the basket at her feet. She didn’t let gladness show on her face, but I knowed she had been waiting on a visit for a month now.

  When I hugged her, she felt warm and soft, like something that has been baked for just the right length of time. “Oh, Lord, it’s good to see you, Mama.”

  “You’ve put on weight,” Mama said without a change of expression.

  “Have I?” I stood back and looked down at myself. I put both hands on my belly. “Well, I guess married life is agreeing with me.”

  “I hope so,” Mama said. There were two chairs sitting beneath the hickory that spread its limbs out across the backyard, and she led me to them so we could set awhile. Beside the chairs the garden was stretched out long and narrow. The corn had turned to fodder, and pumpkins were bright and yellow against the dark earth. The cabbages and potatoes had been buried beneath straw in one end of the garden so that they would keep through the winter.

  “Where’s Daddy and Jubal?”

  “Gone to squirrel-hunt. They ought to be back by now. It’s about too warm for hunting.”

  I realized right off that I could not stay too long. Being here would make it that much harder to go back to Esme’s crowded house. Maybe I shouldn’t have come at all—I could see it would only make my homesickness thicker. “I hate that I missed seeing them.”

  “You won’t stay for supper?”

  “I’ll have to get back before dark.”

  “Why, stay all night.”

  “I better not, Mama.”

  She turned one hand over and rubbed its palm with her fingers, like she was trying to wipe away dirt. She spoke like this, watching her hands. “I’ve had a bad dread on me, Vine. You all right?”

  “I’m fine, Mama. I wish to God you’d quit worrying over me. Saul’s good to me. His people are good to me. I miss you all, but I’m all right.”

  “I just feel a dread that I can’t explain. It lays across my ribs all day long, and I can’t shake it off. Sleep’s the only peace I get. My mama was tortured by nightmares all of her life, but I’ve never had one dream that I can remember.”

  I took her hands. “Please be happy for me, Mama. I love Saul. Nothing is going to go wrong.”

  Mama’s eyes were so watery that I feared they might run right down her cheeks. Often it seemed that her eyes held all the pain of our ancestors.

  “I’ve come to gather up some rocks for our chimney,” I said.

  “Shouldn’t Saul do such a thing?”

  “I wanted to. I wanted some from Redbud so I’d have a piece of home in my house.”

  Mama shook her head. “You’re a sight, girl.”

  “Won’t you go down there with me, to the creek, while I get them?”

  “You go on,” she said. “But come back up before you leave. I’ll at least feed you a little something before you go off again.”

  I went down to the confluence and pulled a dozen flat rocks out of the creek. They were gray and red and black, all smooth and worn down from the never-ending flow of water coming out of Redbud Mountain. I set down there by the river for a while, remembering all my times spent there, and then I gathered a stack of rocks from its bank. I felt like these stones knowed the history of my life. I loaded the sled and led the mule to a patch of clover beside the road so that it would be occupied awhile longer. I stood there stroking its neck, for it was a good mule and never give me much trouble.

  I spied a little redbud growing in the shade of the woods. It was just beginning to shed its leaves and I knowed it was the wrong time to dig it up, but I had to have it. I went round to Daddy’s shed and got a shovel and a swatch of burlap. I dug up the redbud, careful not to break the main root. I was real easy with it, whispering to it the whole time. I pressed damp dirt against the roots, wrapped it in burlap, then soaked the round ball in the creek. It was surprising how light it was. It was so full of life, but it was no heavier than a finger. I put it onto the sled, and little rivers of water run down the boards.

  I started walking back up to the house and I heard a shotgun blast from a far ridge. I knowed it was Daddy. I judged how far away the sound was and figured that him and Jubal would not be back for another hour, even if they started home right that minute. Mama waited on the porch, sitting very straight in her chair, as if someone was about to take her picture.

  “Eat,” she said, and nodded to a plate covered by a piece of cloth. “It’s left from breakfast.”

  I eat the biscuit and tenderloin and drunk a glass of milk straight down. When I was done, I found that I had nothing else to say to Mama, and I could not get my mind around this unhappy revelation. The place was strangely silent. Life in Redbud had gone on just fine without me. My aunts were all gone into town, since it was Saturday. The men were all working or hunting. The children were gone to the swimming hole down the river, getting the most out of the last warm days. Before Saul, on days such as this, it had always been just me and Mama, working around the house, speaking in that quiet way we used to share with each other. I realized how lonesome it must be for Mama now. Instead of saying anything, I figured I ought to just leave. The trip back would be sad enough as it was.

  “I better go on, Mama,” I said, and stood. “Me and Saul’ll try to come over next Sunday.”

  “You said that last time I seen you, a month ago.” Mama did not get up.

  “Well, building the house takes up all our time. He works all day at the mill and all weekend on the house.” I leaned down to kiss her and found her cheek very cold, like the rocks I had pulled up out of the rushing creek. “I miss you bad, Mama. I love you.”

  I was about to get on my mule when something made me look back. I had a sudden thought, so I dropped the reins and run back to the house. I got down on my knees and looked under the porch until I seen a rock that had fell out of one of the columns holding up the porch floor. It was wide and flat, so that I had trouble picking it up, but once I got hold of it, I carried it easily to the sled. I loaded it, got on my mule, and waved until we had traipsed across the bridge, up the hill, and out of Mama’s sight. Another blast from the shotgun rang out over the valley, as if Daddy and Jubal was saying good-bye. The shot tore through the silence that seemed to seep down out of the mountains and press at me from all sides.

  Four

  Me and Esme and all the other women on the creek helped build that house, though the men would soon forget that. We’d be right there waiting when they come from the sawmill. We’d pull the planks off the truck and pack them up the path, stand for long while
s to hold them up while the men nailed. We climbed right up there and laid the tin.

  It took two months to build our house, and everybody we knowed helped us. One Saturday, when Saul had all his buddies over there helping him to fashion up the inside walls, I heard a horse stomping up the creek and looked around to see Daddy and Mama. I could never remember seeing them on a horse together before—usually when they went somewhere, it was always by wagon—and they looked so young to me like that. Mama’s hands were looped around his waist, her thumbs hooked in the front loops of his britches. She laughed when she saw that I had caught sight of them. There was no road up into God’s Creek, so people either parked their wagons or gigs at the mouth of the holler and walked up the little dusty footpath, or rode their horses right through the creek. Daddy cooed to the horse as it climbed up the steep bank out of the creek and into our yard. Behind them came more horses, most with couples astraddle them—my uncles and aunts, my cousins who were old enough to take part in a house-raising. There were so many people there that Saul told me later they got done in one evening what would have taken three or four days otherwise. Everybody I loved or would come to love had a hand in building our little house, which made it that much more special to me.

  God’s Creek was a pretty place that held noise within its closeness like a voice in a cupped hand. Two mountains rose up on either side, and between them was a patch of flat land beside the creek and the little white footpath that led out to the road. Across the creek was God’s Mountain, but nobody never told me how it or the creek took on God’s name. It was wild and steep, full of laurel hells so thick that a man could get lost in them. Esme’s house set up on the last little slope of God’s Mountain, but ours sat on an acre of earth that was flat and low. In our yard there was a snowball bush that bloomed purple in high summer, along with old, hunched-over walnut trees. Their black limbs spread out to lay shade over the front of our house, their leaves always seeming to sway gently, even when there was no sign of a breeze. Behind our house was Free Mountain, named for Free Creek, which laid on the other side of it. It was not so steep as the one facing us and had a good path that went all the way to the top, where a big bald held a field of wildflowers in the spring.

  Not far from the porch, I had planted the little redbud I had dug up over at home. It was little, but it still held its juice. I talked to it every day, willing it to live. I knowed that trees that were moved out of season usually wilted up, but I was determined that this one make it.

  I leaned close to its bony branches and whispered, “Live, little tree. Grow strong and live here with me on this creek.”

  There were only five other houses on God’s Creek at that time, and they all faced out toward the mouth of the holler, but Saul turned ours so that the porch would look out on the creek. The porch was the only thing I had insisted upon. It was long enough for a whole collection of chairs and so deep that sun never shone upon our front door. I knowed that porch would be my favorite place. On the day I knowed my house was finally finished, it was the porch that I loved above anything else. I could picture children playing under our feet while we set out there with twilight sifting down over the mountains. I would hang beans to dry from the rafters, set up my canning table there, take my children out there to rock to sleep when the night was so black that it looked like you could cut a patch out of it with a kitchen knife.

  Behind our house, the mountain stood close, but there was plenty of room there for a long, finger-shaped garden. The earth was so cold and loose there that it run through my fingers like brown water. Being so near the creek, it was sandy ground and would be perfect for raising beans, corn, a little bit of cane, tomatoes, squash. Everything we needed.

  It was a good house. Since Saul worked at the mill, we got our lumber at a good rate. It was one big front room that run into the kitchen, and two bedrooms with closets in each one. Some people were still building cabins back then, but ours was done out of clapboards that would have to be painted every spring. When we got a little money together, I would get Saul to make us some shutters, which I would paint green. Not shutters that you close on the windows, but ones just for decoration, like the houses in town had. Later I would paint dark green around the door frames. Someday I would have flower boxes on all my windows. We had four windows, two in front and two in back. That was the only thing we went in debt over—the glass cutter was higher than a cat’s back.

  We stood there in the yard together, my arms folded across my chest, Saul beside me with a hammer still in his hand. Dusk was settling in, cool and damp. Only a couple of crickets sang, the last of their tribe to venture out this late in the year. The air smelled like sand and oncoming rain.

  “Well, there she is,” Saul said. “Your house.”

  “It’s so fine, Saul. It’s the finest house ever was.”

  “I reckon we ought to hold a breaking-in tomorrow night,” Saul said. “Get everybody that worked on it to come up here and eat.”

  “Me and Esme will cook the awfullest big supper that ever was,” I said.

  THE NEXT DAY, me and Esme lit in on cooking the biggest meal you ever seen in your life, and Saul went to round up every single person who had helped us. Esme went out in the yard, grabbed up a fat hen and flopped it on the block, pulled her little hatchet up in the air, and chopped the chicken’s head off. The hen jumped off the block and stumbled across the yard until it toppled over at Esme’s feet. She dunked it down in boiling water and plucked it before I could even get outside to help her. We cut up the hen and rolled out a spread of dough that covered the whole kitchen table. Pretty soon the smell of chicken and dumplings was pumping out of the house, and we made shucky beans, fried corn, boiled Irish potatoes, stirred up three big skillets of corn bread. We made a big fire on the yard and baked sweet potatoes and ashcakes. Esme had a half bushel of dried blackberries, and we used every one of them to make four big cobblers.

  We had packed the kitchen table outside for the food and spread three or four quilts out for people to eat on, too. There were people all over that yard eating as hard as they could, and it was almost like being back on Redbud, what with them all laughing and cutting up. My people hadn’t come, even though Saul had gone over there and personally invited them. One of Mama’s sisters was in the midst of a hard labor, so none of them felt it would have been right to leave.

  I couldn’t eat after cooking all day, so I just set there and looked at everybody. I knowed all of them well by this time. They were people that lived the next little place up the river, men that worked at the mill with Saul, boys who went to church with Esme. Their wives and children came, some of those women who had helped in the house-raising, too. I wanted to remember all of the people that helped build our home. I memorized them all like that, setting on the ground eating and laughing, drinking lemonade out of jars. It was late October by this time, but it turned out to be bright that day. The sun lit up the yellow leaves like colored glass. We had spread out the quilts close to the fire, so nobody got cold, even when the holler grew dark.

  When everybody had eat, one of the men pulled out a jar of homemade wine, and when it was clear Esme wasn’t going to throw a fit, a few more made it known that they had brought liquor. They had bottles of whiskey from town and jugs of moonshine that had been made up in the hollers.

  Esme smiled, dusted off the skirt of her dress, and stood from her stiff chair. “Well, I don’t have a bit of interest in seeing a bunch of fools get drunk,” she said. “I guess I’ll head up to the house.”

  I didn’t ask her to stay, because I knowed she wouldn’t anyway. “Night,” I said, and kissed her cheek. “I won’t let Aaron get too drunk.”

  “Never mind Aaron. You can’t keep that sot from drinking,” she said. “But Saul’s got a tongue for liquor, too. It’s him I’d watch.”

  I had never even seen Saul take a drink before and suddenly realized that I had only been married to this man three months and that I really didn’t know him at all. Every day it see
med I learned something new about him: the way he took his coffee, the songs he whistled while he piddled around the house, the size of his shoes. I had never even entertained the notion of him liking to drink. Maybe it was true what they said about the Irish.

  The men really set into drinking once they spied Esme walking up the road. It seemed that mason jars and bottles appeared right out of the ground. A man by the name of Moseley—one who had helped raise the rafters on our house—run down the creek to where his car was parked at the mouth of the holler and come back with his fiddle. He started sawing away on it as he walked up the creek bed, and the horses standing there scratched at the ground and flicked their ears at the sound. It was pleasing to hear that sound coming up out of the darkness as he walked through the shoals. Another man had a guitar. Aaron brought down his banjo, which he usually just sat around and strummed upon as if he really didn’t know a song to get all the way through. But this night his fingers flew across the strings like possessed things, picking out fast, wild music that I couldn’t help but pat my foot to. He hunched himself down—as if hugging the banjo to him—so that we couldn’t see anything but the top of his head and his shoulders moving to the beat.

  I imagined the music drifting over the creek like mist on an autumn evening, spreading itself out with its high notes pressed tight against the mountains. I felt like a bird had been let loose beneath my ribs. Everybody was clapping to the music or stomping their feet, and some of them were even up and clogging. I had not been so happy since leaving Redbud. Being amongst that music and the people hollering to one another, touching one another on the shoulder while they talked, drinking from the same jar of moonshine—all that made me feel at home at last, somehow.