A Parchment of Leaves Read online

  On trading day, me and Serena went into Black Banks, and all along the sidewalk, people watched us. I didn’t think many of them knowed about the Aidia and Aaron story. The townspeople rarely had time for stories of those of us in the hollers. They called us Creekers. But today many of our people from the hollers had come out to town for trading, and the story had spread throughout the little coves and mountainsides—that and the stories of the Indian witch. I had willed the snake to strike Saul’s brother so I could kill two birds with one stone: I would not only get the lumberman off the mountain, but gain a husband, too.

  I walked down the street like a queen. I knowed how I looked. My hair flowed behind me, and they talked about me for that, too. “A woman with hair that long shouldn’t go out without a plait,” the fabric-store clerk said. She didn’t know how to whisper, and I heard her. “It ain’t proper.”

  I carried a basket on one arm and held my drawstring in the other. I had the molasses money, and plenty of it. That day, I intended to buy some things. I wanted people to see me spending our hard-earned money. We had more than most of the townspeople. We didn’t owe one person a single penny, but half the people in town lived on credit. The town had electricity, and this seemed to make them feel like they were better than us. No one saw it as important to string lines up in the hollers. It was like the people in the town were the only ones that mattered.

  “Lord, there’s a pineapple,” I said when I spied the fruit vendor.

  Serena had no taste for exotic food. “I never seen nobody like fruit the way you do. You’d think you was raised on it.”

  I picked the pineapple up and felt the prickly skin. I run my fingers up the green leaves that popped out of the pineapple’s top. “My mommy always loved fruit. She got oranges and lemons once a month. She could sit and eat a whole lemon without puckering her mouth.”

  Men were hollering from their carts on the square: “Hot roasted peanuts! Cashews!” A horse-drawn buggy met a sputtering Model T on Main Street, and the horse reared back, whinnying and pushing its feet against the sky. The man in the Model T punched his horn, leaning out of the car. The horse took three giant steps back, its flanks moving into the crowd on the sidewalks, and dropped a pile of manure at the feet of a townswoman.

  I handed the vendor a coin for the pineapple and tucked it under one arm against my chest. I looked out at the crowd. The towns-woman was hitting the horse with her parasol. Her hair had fell down out of its pins and trembled about her face. “People are such fools,” I said.

  “People are God’s stupidest creatures,” Serena said. She elbowed me in the ribs and added, “Especially men.”

  We moved on down the sidewalk, past storefronts with displays of new dresses. Someone had opened a casket-making store, and we stopped for a long time to peer in. We had never seen such fancy caskets in our lives. They stood on their ends, leaned back against the wall, and were lined with silk and linen and velvet.

  Now that the war was over, it seemed everybody had money and they were all willing to spend it. The trees of Crow County were being made into the finest furniture to grace big homes in New York City. The men who owned the lumber camps come into town and rode their cars down Main Street like they owned all of Black Banks. Since the big seam of coal had been found over at Altamont, there were even more people coming in. I had seen two Italians when they had first come into town, and thought they were Melungeons until one of them started talking. I had heard people saying that the coal camp was full of “Eye-tyes.” On our way into town that day, we had seen the coal-company houses being shipped in from Louisville on the railroad. The houses were built up in Louisville, put on flatbed railcars, and come into town ready to be set up and lived in. Already the Altamont Coal Camp was teeming with people, and the coal company had built the camp its own school and church house. People were fighting for jobs over there.

  We went into the post office. Serena’s box was filled by a thick manilla envelope. “Ah, God,” Serena said around a cigarette dangling from her lips. “It’s birth forms to fill out for them sumbitches in Frankfort. I can’t birth no babies for filling out certificates on them.”

  I went to my own box and withdrew a single letter. It was postmarked North Carolina.

  “It’s from Mama,” I said, ripping it open. I had not heard from Mama in a long while and couldn’t contain myself.

  Dear Vine,

  It has been a wet spring, but our garden has bore good. I put up thirty heads of cabbage yesterdey for kraut and thought of you and all the times we had done this together. I am homesick for you in a way I have not been before and dream of you nightly.

  Your daddy is doing well. He is able to speak pretty good now and talks of you often. He is all the time saying, I wonder what little Birdie’s doing right now. It was our best gift to get the picture you sent of her. She is a beauty of a child and looks just like her mommy and daddy. A even mixture of you and Saul, which is a good thing, the way I see it. This way she will be even in temper.

  Hazel is happy as Old Miss Happy with her man, who is good to her and has plenty to boot. They run the store in Big Cove and a bording house besides. Hazel works to much, but you know her that is all she ever liked to do anyway.

  I don’t have much to say this letter, Vine. Except my heart aches to see you. You told me that old Esme left you money to come here, and made you promise to do so. I am thankful to her for that, and trust you will keep that promise to her. Maybe it is knowing that you have a way to come that makes me want you here even more. I hate to say this to you, for I know you are tender hearted and will fret, but I must tell you that I grieve to see you again and hope that you won’t stay away much longer. I want you to come here so you will know who you really are. Your daddy always thought it was best to hide the old ways from you. He wanted you to have a good chance at life and was always fearful of people rising up against us again, like they did to us way back. But he knows now that he was wrong, to deny you that. He grieves over it awful bad. If you come here, you will know what you are made of.

  I have said more than I meant to and will only stir up homesickness for us in your heart. Kiss the baby for me and speak of us often to her. It’s my greatest heartbreak that I don’t know my grandbaby. I miss Kentucky awful bad sometimes, but overall we have a good life here and it is featured just like our home place. I love you, sweet girl, and will see you tonight when sleep finds me.

  Mama

  I folded the letter up real careful and shoved it back into the torn envelope. I could see that my hands were shaking. Mama had never come right out and practically begged for me to come see them, as she knowed it was too hard a trip. I would have to read the letter again once I got home. There was a message between the lines that I hadn’t been able to receive beneath the dim lights of the loud post office.

  “What’d it say?” Serena said, looking up from her forms.

  “Just enough to make me miss them even worse.”

  We moved out into the harsh sunlight again and through the bustling crowd. Inside the general store it was cool and windy, as Sam Mullins was a hot-natured man who kept four ceiling fans going all the time. He set at the counter, fanning himself with a church fan. The fan bore the image of Christ parting the clouds.

  Sam’s store had sunk into its piece of earth. The floors were so un-level that I sometimes felt like I was climbing small hills as I browsed. The floorboards cried out, so that on a busy day there was a music of creaks that rose up.

  I filled my basket up with things I needed. I got a cake of Ivory soap for bathing Birdie and Matracia, a bottle of witch hazel, a four-pound tin of lard, and a handful of buttons, as my supply was running low. Serena milled about in the store, shopping for balms and medicines. At the counter, Sam Mullins had fanned himself to sleep. He was leaned back in his chair with two legs off the floor. The fan, and the hand holding it, had fallen onto his lap.

  “Mullins,” I said loudly, and he started. The two front chair legs hit the floor.<
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  “What say you, Vine?” he said, acting like he had been alert all the time. He was a good old man who always asked about Mama and Daddy. He had lived near Redbud before marrying a town girl and taking over her father’s store.

  “Not much,” I said. “I need some things.”

  Sam Mullins struggled out of his chair and stood ready at the shelves behind the counter, waiting for me to name what I was looking for.

  “I’ll need four pound of sugar, three pound of coffee, and a pound of salt.”

  Sam Mullins went about filling the paper bags. I liked the neat way he folded the top down—three times, perfectly creased.

  “There she is,” a voice said behind me. I turned to find Nan Joseph standing right behind me, both hands clutching her purse in front of her. She was dressed in black, as she had been the two years since her man had died. A heart attack had killed him, but people joked that the past had. Nan was so nostalgic that she spoke only of her childhood days spent with her father. She spoke of him so much that I cringed every time the woman said “Papa.”

  “Hello, Nan. If I’d knowed you was coming to town today, me and Serena would have stopped on the way so you could ride with us.”

  “I like to walk to town,” Nan said. “I’m old, but not too old to still walk to Black Banks. My papa walked to town until he was eighty year old.”

  “D’you say three pound of salt?” Sam Mullins hollered, leaning over the counter.

  “Naw,” I said. “Three pound of coffee and one of salt.” I turned back to Nan. “Well, it’s good to see you.”

  Nan nodded and held her purse even closer to her belly. “How is everbody up on God’s Creek? You all’ve had a hard time these last few weeks, I know. Esme dying, and Aidia running off. And all the talk.”

  I knowed what Nan was up to.

  “What talk?” I asked. I rearranged the things in my basket to give the impression of really not knowing what Nan spoke of.

  “Lord God,” Nan said. She stood as straight and prim as an iron fence. “Everbody going on about Aidia killing Aaron and running off. And leaving that little child on you and Saul. That’s all they talking about on Free Creek, and every other creek between your place and town.”

  “Looks like people would have better things to do.”

  Nan twitched her shoulders around a bit. I guess I had miffed her. “It’s no wonder, Vine. Aaron disappearing, and then Aidia taking off—it looks bad on her. I heard tell she fired a gun at him not too awful long ago.” She shook her head. “Poor old Esme, she would outright die over again if she knowed what her family name had come to.”

  “Nan,” I said, taking a step forward, “remember who you are talking to.”

  Nan looked back at me as if dumbfounded. “Do what?”

  “I’m part of that family name now. Aidia never killed Aaron. It makes you look stupid to say such a thing aloud.”

  “How can you be so sure, Vine?” Nan said, leaning in, like I had some secret to share with her.

  “I know for a fact, Nan. I’ll tell you that much. There ain’t no use dragging Aidia’s name down. You’ve worked with ever one of us before. Helped us kill that big hog on the very day Aaron brought Aidia here. I’ve cleaned your house for you when you was sick, and if you remember rightly, Aidia come with me. She scrubbed your floors. How could you be so ugly as to stand here and talk bad about her, right to my face? And it’s untelling what you all say behind our backs.”

  Nan walked away in a huff, her purse clutched tight.

  Serena come up the aisle with a grin on her face. “I don’t know what you said to that old biddy, but I loved the look on her face when you did.”

  I watched Nan as she stepped out of the store into the white sunlight.

  Twenty-nine

  Saul was in the backyard with the children when we got back from town. He was laying back on the grass like a daydreaming boy, his hands beneath his head, his elbows pointing up at opposite angles. There was a blade of grass in his mouth. Luke and Birdie were running round and round him. Matracia sat astraddle his chest. It wasn’t often he watched the children, but today he had volunteered. He was glad that I had agreed to raise Matracia, but he couldn’t get over the way Aidia had left her. He would never forgive Aidia and got real mad when Matracia cried over Aidia, missing her.

  I cupped my hand on Birdie’s head, but she kept scooting off. I just squatted down in the grass next to Saul. Now I seen that his eyes were closed.

  “Have they just about killed you?” I asked.

  “Lord, no,” he said. “They’ve been good as gold.”

  There was still a gulf between Saul and me, but it wasn’t as wide anymore. I knowed what was wrong—the idea that I knowed something about Esme that he didn’t. It wasn’t fair, but that was the way Esme wanted it. I tried to ignore his shunning; it was one more thing I had to get myself through. One extra thing was not much weight at all.

  “I had a letter from Mama,” I said. I felt of its square shape in my apron pocket.

  “They all all right?”

  “She says they are, but she’s asked us to come down there. She asked in a way she never has before, like she needs me for something.”

  “We’ll have to wait till the harvest,” Saul said, and set up. He rested his elbows on his knees. Birdie and Matracia put blades of grass in his hair. Luke laid back on the grass now, mocking what Saul had been doing earlier.

  “Wait till the harvest?” I took the letter out and held it on the palm of my hand.

  “We can’t just up and leave everything. There ain’t nobody to tend it, Vine. Nobody but me and you in this family now. Hain’t you realized it?” He spoke with such anger that the veins in his neck tightened. “Mama is dead. Aidia is gone. God only knows what has happened to Aaron. We’re all that’s left. Me and you and these children.”

  I felt myself start to tremble, not out of fear, but out of that old guilt that never really left. And because of my longing to see my people. I was surprised by the emotion rising up in my chest. I had not expected it. “Saul, I need to go see them. It’s been too long.”

  “We can’t right now, and that’s all there is to it, Vine.”

  I let out a sigh. “Why do you speak to me so hateful anymore? Why is your voice always so hard?”

  Saul looked at the mountain. He had plucked a piece of clover from the ground and now he twirled it by its stem between forefinger and thumb. I watched the spinning leaf for a long moment. He spun it first one way, then the other.

  “Answer me,” I said. My voice was louder than I intended for it to be. It come from way down inside of me.

  He turned to face me real quick, and his brows were gathered together in such a way that I thought he might be about to cry. But it was only anger, a mark across his face. “Because there is a secret here that I’m not privy to. There is something you ain’t told me, and I don’t like it.”

  “You mean about why Esme didn’t want to be laid by Willem.”

  “No,” he said. “Something bigger than that. I have been married to you seven year now, and I know you, Vine. They’s something standing between us and I want to know what it is.”

  I had been foolish enough to think he wouldn’t sense it. I should have known. This realization sent a calmness over me, a peace that held a stillness as large as winter. I stood and hollered to the children, who were playing hide-and-seek among the sunflowers.

  “Luke, I want you to take the girls to the house,” I said. “They’s half a coconut cake on the sideboard. Take it out on the porch and eat all you want.” Luke took off, and Birdie hitched Matracia up onto her hip, walking fast.

  I went back to Saul. I put my hand on his shoulder as I set down on the grass beside him. I set there for a minute, trying to choose my words. I considered the sky and knowed the gloaming was coming in fast. Soon the lightning bugs would come up out of the laurel, and the night would close in. And by that time, everything would be changed between us. Nothing would ever b
e the same again.

  “Something happened between me and Aaron,” I said.

  Thirty

  After I had told him every bit of it, the world seemed completely silent. Not so much as a whippoorwill’s call coming down out of the mountains. He just set there a long time. Dusk had overtook the holler, and his face was lost to me.

  I put my hand out and touched his arm, but he didn’t move. His head was bowed, like he was praying. I let my hand linger there just a moment, hoping for some kind of answer, but I pulled it slowly away and let it fall onto my lap. I felt exhausted. It seemed everything had come out in a great jumble. I had been dying to say all these words for so long. My mouth was dry as a hat, and my throat ached. But after I got it out, I felt my soul stepping back into my body there on the grass.

  An owl screeched far up on the ridge. Its call slid out onto the night air like a ribbon being unwound. And then I was aware of the katydids in the weeds. The crickets called “Pharaoh! Pharaoh!” The children’s little voices twinkled across the yard, and a slight breeze caused the corn blades to brush against one another like the whispers of men.

  Saul stood as if with great effort. I got up, too, and stood there beside him, waiting for him to say something. Waiting for him to say anything.

  Seemed like he was having trouble making his mouth work. “He was my baby brother,” he said, the words coming out like bits of glass. Then he walked off into the night.

  I stood there a long time, not knowing what to do. Not knowing what he had meant. It didn’t matter now what happened. I had told him, and it had been as freeing as a confession to God. It had been a testimony. My words had been my penance.

  I walked to the house, still hugging my arms, and found the children on the porch. I couldn’t believe they had occupied themselves so long. It was nigh their bedtime. Serena still hadn’t returned from a delivery way over on Pushback Gap, so Luke would be staying the night. I hustled them into the house and made them wash. I went about getting ready for the night, just as I always had. I could not understand how collected I was.