Although I longed to hold her on my hip, I refused to pack her once she turned three year old. Even though her legs were skinny, they were tight with square muscles that tensed when she climbed the mountain in front of me. These were our best times together, when we climbed the mountain behind our house to see the wide bald spot that spread out there. All during warm weather the bald was a lake of wildflowers that moved like water when the ever-present breeze passed over them, but it was especially beautiful in the spring, since that is the time of the prettiest wildflowers.
One day that spring, Serena come to help me can my kraut, as I had put out early cabbage. We worked all day: cutting the cabbage from the garden, chopping it up, boiling the water, adding the salts. The next day I would go to her house and help her do the same. While we canned beneath the shade of the old walnut tree in my front yard, Birdie played with Serena’s little boy, Luke, in the creek. They busied themselves all day by packing rocks to build a dam. Even though the water pushed on as if nothing stood in its way, they were still trying when Serena and I lined all of our jars up in the root cellar, where the hot water kept right on popping and boiling in the hot glass, sealed tight.
When we came back up out of the cellar, Serena closed her eyes and took a long breath of the evening air. “It’ll be cool by the gloaming,” she said. “Let’s walk up to the bald.”
“My back’s killing me, Serena,” I said, and held one hand just above my waist to make this more clear.
“It’d be a sin to waste such a pretty evening.”
High summer would be upon us before long, and it would be too hot to do anything. That was always a miserable time, when the heat crept into the coolest shady spots, overtaking everything. Today the world smelled like honeysuckle and clean water. The shade was so cool and fresh that anybody could have laid down right on the grass and went straight to sleep.
“Let’s go,” I said.
The mountain was steep. The leaves were all new as creation, and held that lime color of spring, which I have always loved more than the river-water green of summer. Birds hollered and sang as if spreading good news, and the higher we went, the more clearly it seemed we could hear the creek rushing below us. Sunlight decorated the ground in places but shone through just enough to be warm on the backs of our necks. As we walked, Serena sang.
O, down in the meadows the other day
A-gathering flowers, both fine and gay,
A-gathering flowers, both red and blue,
I little thought what love can do.
I put my hand into one soft bush,
Thinking the sweetest flower to find:
I pricked my finger right to the bone,
And left the sweetest flower alone.
I watched the trees swaying. They moved as if they were underwater, so slow and graceful that you wouldn’t even notice unless you stopped to watch. The leaves felt thick and seemed full of juice that might taste good if I broke one open. I touched them lightly, afraid I might harm them, and felt of them the way a blind person might read beads of braille.
I wondered if the trees were God. They were like God in many respects: they stood silent, and most people only noticed them when the need arose. Maybe all the secrets to life were written on the surface of leaves, waiting to be translated. If I touched them long enough, I might be given some information that no one else had.
I let my hands trail against thick tree trunks, broad as Saul’s chest, and felt of them the same way I might have savored the touch of someone I loved. Luke and Birdie were like brother and sister, walking in front of us holding hands. Sometimes Luke would let go of her hand and begin to run up the trail, and Birdie would scream out for him to wait.
“He’s leaving me!” she cried, her face all pulled together into one tight knot. “Don’t leave me, Luke.”
“Luke, you wait on that baby!” Serena hollered. “You’re bigger than her and ought not run off and leave her.”
Luke stopped, waited with his back to us until Birdie caught up and took his hand once again. Serena went back to singing, and I reached down to let my fingers brush the tops of ferns that burst up between rocks lining the path. I thanked God that my baby could walk and run, that she could holler out with a voice as high and powerful as her father’s, when he used to come over to Redbud to court me.
When we got to the top of the mountain, you would have thought that we would have been give out, but catching sight of the wild-flowers took your breath in such a way that you felt the urge to press on. It was strange to see such a thing atop this wild, thick mountain. They crowded against the trees at the edges of the field and became taller and bigger at the middle of the field. There were trout lilies, toothworts, wild geraniums. Trilliums of all kinds crowded the field, and there were spring beauties and bloodroots and Dutchman’s britches. They were so many that no one could have ever counted them, and their scent seemed to cover us as soon as we got to the summit. You could lean down to smell one of the trilliums and barely be able to catch its smell, but the whole crowd of them was like perfume that steamed up out of the mountain.
It was Birdie who let go of Luke’s hand this time. She pulled away and he run ahead, but for some reason she stopped for a moment before crashing into the flowers. She already had her arms positioned to run—her elbows stuck straight out at her sides, her hands balled into fists for going faster—but she stopped for just a second and looked back at me. It was just a turn of the head, just a glance to make sure I was still there with her, but when our eyes met, it seemed to me she stood there a long while. Her hair blew around and ran black lines across her peach-colored lips, her eyes dark as a blue-bird’s. Very briefly, like a cloud passing over, her whole face smiled.
Something said to me, Take this moment. Memorize it, tuck it into that place that is made for such things. Put it there so that you might be able to pull it back someday and run your fingers over it. I knowed I would be able to close my eyes and picture this evening, the sky already turning purple, the air so sweet that I could taste it on my lips. I decided to have this picture of her, standing there at the edge of that flat piece of flower land, a place so strange and beautiful that it looked as if it had fallen right out of the sky.
Birdie turned and was swallowed up by the flowers. Her laughter mixed with Luke’s until it sounded like a little celebration on the mountain.
Me and Serena walked through the field with the flowers breathing against our ankles. We stood on a big rock that stuck out like a plate that had been shoved halfway into the mountainside. It seemed we could see for miles. Curls of smoke drifted up from the town, and birds drifted over the valley, only flapping their wings every once in a while. Serena and I sat down at the edge of the field. The ground was warm beneath us, as if it had soaked up enough sun to make it through the night, when mist would rise up from the valleys below and steam low and breathy over it.
We watched the children running through the flowers for a long time. They were having a big time, but I hated for them to stomp through the field. I didn’t say anything, though. I loved watching them. Serena announced that she had to go to the woods to relieve herself and stepped behind a tree near me. She talked the whole time she was peeing, and I got tickled at her for this. I sat with my back to her, laughing softly to myself.
I could hear her pulling her drawers back up and rustling her skirt around. The movement caused me to turn, and when I did, I could see somebody hunched down at the edge of the woods. He was holding on to a pair of little saplings that stood on either side of him, like they had been placed there for him to lean upon. His face was flat and his features straight, as if he too was trying to freeze something into his mind so that he might look back upon it. It was Aaron. I could tell by the look on his face, by the way he held his body low and curved, that he was sneaking around up here. He did not want to make himself known.
I stood up, anger taking hold of my legs, so that I nearly jumped off of the ground when I was standing straight. “Aaron
!” I screamed. “What are you doing?”
He disappeared. It was just as if he was swooped back by the green arms of the forest. He was gone.
IT WAS DARK by the time Saul got home. It seemed that every night he got home a little later, and he was always filthy. Since the war had started overseas, work had doubled at the mill. The owner was scared to death that all of his workers would be drafted and was trying to get as much labor out of them as possible. He was hoarding lumber that he knowed the army would eventually need, believing that the president would not hold out much longer and would join the fight before long.
I set on the porch waiting for him while Birdie played with a doll at my feet. Inside the house, the stove was crowded with a supper of fried cabbage, salt pork, and beans. I had just took two skillets of corn bread out of the oven, one for the beans and the other for the big cake of butter.
I seen a lamp being lit at the mouth of the holler, and finally I could see Saul making his way up the footpath. He left a lantern on a tree down there, since the creek was liable to rise in the night. He could have walked that path blindfolded, but he kept the lantern so he wouldn’t walk right over one of the rattlesnakes that were beginning to stretch themselves out on the cool sand of the trail. The lantern bobbed toward me like it was floating on the air, held high by a ghost that would not make itself seen. When Saul entered the yard, the yellow light slowly showed his face. He was covered in sawdust. Slivers of lumber gathered in his eyebrows and stuck to the red hairs of his big arms.
“They’re working you to death over there,” I said. “It’s later every night.”
“Well, it’s bound to get worse,” he said. He blowed out the lantern and bent to kiss Birdie on the forehead, just as he did every evening. As he straightened back up, sawdust floated off his clothes.
I stood to be ready when he took his clothes off. They had a shower house over there at the sawmill, but Saul rarely used it. He said he would rather come home dirty than be away from us that much longer. Most evenings he undressed on the porch and I took his clothes to shake the sawdust from them while he bathed.
“Why don’t you just bring supper out here, honey,” he said, and crumbled down into a chair. “I’m killed this evening and too hungry to bath first.”
The crickets screamed while we ate. The night was so black that I couldn’t see past the porch steps. There was no sign of a moon, and not a speck of stars on the little bit of sky we could see between the heads of the two mountains that stood on either side of us.
I waited until he finished eating. I felt I should give him at least that much. As always, he ate silently, and I knowed that I would get no reply from him at all until he sat back in his chair to belch and say how good the food was.
“Saul, they’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“What is it?” He unlaced his boot strings and tugged at his dirty socks, which were hard to get off on account of being soaked with his sweat.
“Aaron scared me today.”
“What do you mean, scared you? Pulling a prank?”
“No. No, me and Serena and the children went up to the bald today after we got the canning done. We went up there to see the flowers. When we got up there, I looked over and there was Aaron, hiding amongst the trees, watching us.”
“Well, it’s a big free mountain, Vine.”
“No, Saul. He wasn’t just up there. He followed us there. He was looking at us. Serena was squatted down peeing, Saul. If you could have seen the look on his face. It was like he was not Aaron at all, but like a ghost of him. I felt like he was studying us. It scared me.”
“Vine, that’s foolishness.” He propped one foot up on his knee and rubbed it with his square thumb. His white feet seemed to glow against his hands, which had been tanned by countless summer days. He didn’t even look at me while I talked. I have always hated when somebody won’t look me in the eye as I speak to them.
“Saul, you’re not listening to me. I know the way it made me feel. It give me a cold chill,” I said. Nothing registered on his face, so I went a step further. Thus far I had tried to keep trouble from brewing, but I couldn’t stand the thought of him not believing me. “Other people’s noticed the way he looks at me, Saul. Looks like you—of all people—would see that he takes too big an interest in me.”
“Well, you have him up here every day talking his leg off,” he said in a voice no more loud or forceful than if he was asking for a second helping of cabbage.
“I won’t no more. That’s for certain,” I said. I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t able to decipher the tremble in my voice. I had never been scared of anything in my life, but I was afraid of the way Aaron had looked at me up there on that mountain. I felt Saul should have realized that, but he didn’t.
He looked up briefly from his massaging, but not at me. He looked out onto the yard, which was black as syrup. “And who’s said that, said Aaron had designs on you? Serena? That woman’s a fool. She treats her own man like a dog.”
“I know what I’m talking about, Saul. He was looking at me. He was studying me. And it felt just like a stranger was watching me, hid away in the woods.”
“Well, he’s my baby brother, Vine,” he said, and suddenly I saw that he did understand. He saw perfectly and had noticed it before. “What do you want me to do, go up there and whup him?”
“Well, I think you ought to talk to him. You know he’s different. He’s not right sometimes. Always talking that foolishness, always sitting alone with that look on his face.”
Birdie put her hands atop my knees and said, “Get me, Mama.” I lifted her up onto my lap without hardly noticing her. She was no heavier than a match. She folded herself up into my arms, put her face against my chest.
Saul said nothing. I would have been happier if he had jumped up and throwed his chair off the porch. He just set there, rubbing his foot, not meeting my eye. All this time I had wondered to myself what his great fault was. I had laid awake some nights wondering why other women had men who laid drunk all the time, who took their fists to them. Some women had men who wouldn’t work or had another woman in town or whipped their children a little too hard. But here was my husband’s great wrongness, and I should have seen it sooner. He would always choose his family over me.
Eight
On April Fools’ Day of that year, two things happened to me that changed my life for good. One thing meant little to me at the time; it was something that I didn’t give much thought to until many months later. The other, however, formed into a stone that I carried in my stomach for the next two years.
Birdie and me walked to the post office that day, Birdie trailing along behind like a shadow that couldn’t keep up. It was a long walk, but one that I enjoyed. Serena drove Whistle-Dick’s car to the post office once a week to get everybody’s mail, but every once in a while I would take the notion to go myself, on foot. I could have rode the horse, of course, but it was such a fine, clear day that I wanted to savor it. The trees were all budding, and the sky was without a trace of cloud. Easter lilies opened on the side of the road, yellow as butter. The air smelled like something freshly washed and felt good on my skin.
As we neared the town, all of this faded behind us. Up ahead was the dusty street and the wooden sidewalk, big buildings, and swarms of people. I had never really liked coming to town. Town people looked down their noses at us. I couldn’t understand why. We had as much as they did, for certain. If not more. We were not poor, but we didn’t fix up all the time, like them. Seemed to me that everyone in town wore their Sunday clothes every day of the week.
It was a Saturday, and trading day, so the town was bustling. As we crossed the high bridge, I could see a steamboat setting on the river. Men rowed narrow boats from the steamer to the shore, unloading big crates of I knew not what. The coal smoke belching from the pipes of the boat made me think of winter. Horses and gigs traipsed up and down the dusty street. Men sat stiffly in the gig seats, clucking to the horses. Wome
n raced down the sidewalk like they had somewhere important to go, grocery baskets on their arms. I took hold of Birdie’s hand, as she was bad to fall behind in a crowd.
Since it was April Fools’ Day, there was much big laughter and cutting up in the streets. Men stood behind their friends and put shreds of paper or crumbled leaves into their hair. Women snuck up on one another to pinch them on the rump. When the woman would turn, her hand ready to smack the face of some fresh man, her friend would cry, “April fool!” and they would both start into a laughter that reminded me of hens clucking. Children were soaping the windows of the businesses and scooping up shovelfuls of the horse manure in the street to put on people’s porch steps. But besides all of this foolishness, business was being tended to. People were lined up all along the street, peddling their goods.
On the corner there was a fruit vendor, and people swarmed about him. He didn’t come often and had not been here since the fall. I could see mounds of oranges, tangerines, and even bananas. But what caught my eye were the coconuts. I had not had one in ages. My mother used to buy one every Christmas and we would crack it with a hammer. Daddy would drink the milk, and then each of us was given a knife to scrape out the coconut. There’s nothing in this world like a coconut—it’s so different from anything we could grow ourselves. I felt down into my purse for change and gave the man a coin. That money could have bought a whole pound of cornmeal, but I wanted Birdie to know this taste.
I took Birdie’s hand and we turned toward the courthouse. A man was giving a campaign speech, hollering and going on like a preacher, as the election was to be held in May. A great crowd had gathered and stood with their necks craned upward, but I paid them no attention. I did take in the courthouse, which was the finest building I had ever seen. It was as solid as an iron, with bricks made from clay right up near God’s Creek. All of the windows were opened and people sat in them, too, looking down at the politician. Some of the women had church fans that they swiped through the air, but it wasn’t even hot. They must have thought this the proper thing to do while hearing a politician speak. He was full of hot air, from what I heard him say.