A Parchment of Leaves Read online

  Saul handed me the jar of shine and told me to pass it to a man nearby. I stuck it under my nose and drawed its sweet bitterness up into myself. I shook my head. It smelled so strong, but my mouth watered to taste it, too.

  “Take ye a sup of it,” Saul said. I could tell he was already feeling good, for his voice possessed a laughing lilt to it that I had never thought he could manage.

  I did. I closed my eyes, leaned my head back, and took a good gulp of that moonshine. When I brought the jar down, I was breathing fire, and somebody shoved a jar of sauerkraut into my hands and told me to eat it right quick so I wouldn’t get sick.

  “Lordy mercy,” I said, when I could catch my breath, and everybody laughed and slapped their knees. I never had tasted no liquor before in my life, and I feared that my mother would find out about this and come huffing up the road to wear me out with a switch.

  “The trick is to hold your breath,” Saul said. “That way you don’t taste it.”

  “What’s the use drinking something if you don’t like the taste of it?” I said, and they all laughed wildly again, some of them slapping one another on the back.

  Saul kept taking swigs from the jar, but he wasn’t being loud or mean, like some men I knowed. My daddy used to get like that, way back. He would drink until he got outright cruel, and Mama would lock him out of the house. Once he took an ax and chopped the door down, then just fell into the bed and passed out. But Saul wasn’t like this at all. He just seemed like a more happy version of himself. His face looked distorted by his permanent smile, strange because he never let his eyes show what he felt. This was something I liked about him, although I couldn’t say why, and looking at him now—drunker than a dog, his face cut in two by that grin—I was disgusted by him and delighted at the same time. This has always been my problem in life—I feel too much all at once.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Drink you some more of it.” He looked dead at me, as if this were a secret we were sharing. I looked around at the crowd. Not one other woman was drinking. Although my daddy and uncles got drunk at least twice a month, my mother and aunts had always just set and talked or gone about their work while the men had their big time. I didn’t care. I tipped up the jar again. And again. And each time it got a little easier to swallow, although I never refused the salvation of that sauerkraut. Whoever had canned the kraut had put the core of the cabbage down into it, and Saul took that and dropped it into a jar of moonshine. I was setting on Saul’s lap by now, and he kept one big hand on the small of my back.

  “Look there,” he told the boys, holding the jar up like a lantern. “We’ll give it an hour to soak up that shine, and one of you all can eat that.”

  “What will it do?” I asked.

  “Make you wilder than hell, that’s what,” Saul said. I had never heard him talk so much since I had knowed him.

  The musicians started in on a whirling, stomping song that set my feet to patting until I couldn’t hardly stand it. I didn’t feel at all as I had expected to when drunk. I wasn’t dizzy or loud, or any of the things my cousins had said liquor made a person be. It was just that everything seemed heightened to me. Laughter from across the yard was high and sharp, like a pinprick on the darkness. When night smoothed itself out over us, the stars showed up in the sky like lights being turned on, one by one. I felt I had never seen it in this way before. The music sounded different, as if each note could be heard on its own. It seemed I could feel the blood running through all of my veins. Before long, the music got to me so bad that I began to move around on Saul’s lap, stomping my foot and swaying my hips as I sat there.

  I jumped off Saul’s knees and pulled at his arm. “Dance with me,” I said.

  “Lord have mercy, woman, you’ve lost your mind,” he said, looking embarrassed. “I couldn’t dance to save my life.”

  “Come on, Saul. Clog with me.”

  “Get Aaron to. He can outdance the devil.”

  “He’s playing the banjo, though.”

  Dave Conley leaned over. “I can take over that banjo,” he said. There was much guffawing, as he was known to always ask for the banjo when he got to drinking, although he couldn’t do much more that pluck at the strings. Aaron jumped down from the porch and started clogging out in the middle of the circle of people. His arms hung limply at his sides, as they were supposed to do, but every other part of his body seemed to be moving, matching the music. That boy could dance. He knowed just when to throw his knee high, when to tap his toe. His feet touched the earth in perfect rhythm with the music. He finally held his hand out for me.

  “Go on,” Saul hollered. “Show em what you’re made of.”

  I took both of Aaron’s hands. We held our arms straight out in front of us so that we were very far apart, and we started to clog. He let go of my hand on the exact right note, and then we really set in to dancing. The music ran through me, churning and pumping. We were both awful good, I have to say, but in very different ways. He had learned clogging in the fashion of the Irish, and I had learned it by watching my mother, whose Indian stomp dances had been flavored by flat-out clogging. Somehow this worked to our favor, and we matched step for step. On every move I made, he met me in perfect stride. We danced so good together that it must have looked like we had rehearsed it. I could feel everybody watching us, clapping, the circle of people a blur of teeth in smiling faces. The music ran up and down my legs, flew around me, lifted my arms and my legs. I felt like I was celebrating the birth of the world.

  The pickers played harder and harder, and Aaron and me started to rush in a circle around the yard, looking each other in the eye. I couldn’t help but laugh, although Aaron held a straight face. His eyes were so serious that I felt I ought to look away.

  When the music swelled until it seemed it would bust wide open, Aaron took my hands once again and we held on to each other, moving round and round so quick that I couldn’t make out anything but his face. I caught his eye and for a minute it felt like he was looking deeper into me than Saul ever had. I felt like he could read my mind. I felt naked. It struck me as not being right, how he was looking at me. Even his hands seemed abnormally hot, as if he had held them over a licking fire. The ends of my own fingers tingled within his palms. Just when I was about to jerk away, the music stopped. Everybody jumped up and clapped like we were just back from a war. They whistled and hollered, held their glasses and bottles and jars high in the air.

  My chest heaved. I was so out of breath that I didn’t think I could make it back to my place on Saul’s lap, and I fell right back on a quilt, made damp by dew, breathing hard. When I finally gathered myself back together, I set up, leaning back on my hands, and tried to shake away the feeling. It was just the moonshine, I figured.

  A woman come out of the crowd into the middle of the circle. There were so many people there that I had not noticed her before, but my eyes fell so straight upon her that I felt I was meant to be seeing her. She looked different from the women on God’s Creek, more like my aunts and the women I had knowed growing up. She held herself in a proud way, her legs planted firmly on the ground.

  She was saying something low and breathy to the fiddler, so I knowed she was about to sing for us.

  “Sing ‘Long Journey Home,’ Serena!” a man called out.

  I had heard tell of her, of course. Her man, Whistle-Dick, worked with Saul, and they lived on the next creek over from us, but she had been gone ever since I had come to God’s Creek. She had been gone way over to Pineville, setting beside her mother’s deathbed. She had been home a week, but I hadn’t even had the time to go down and speak to her, what with the house-raising. “That gal’s a crackerjack,” Saul had said, but I hadn’t thought much about it.

  I spoke her name to myself. She was named just right, as her face was so smooth and clean that it looked as if she had just dashed two handfuls of ice water onto it. Her eyes were wide, so that she seemed to be taking in every single thing with cool concentration. She was a big-boned woman, but
in that curvy way that men like. She was solid as a beech tree, with hands that looked as if they knowed how to do things. She held her shoulders square, her chin high.

  Whistle-Dick was drunker than anybody there. Falling-down drunk, and by dark he had passed out right on the porch floor. Now, most women would have either got mad and took off home by theirself or went over there and tried to tend to their man, making sure he wasn’t about to get sick. But Serena just got up to sing.

  Everybody was calling out different songs for her to sing while Aaron tried to tune his banjo.

  She smiled at the crowd and spoke in a strong voice. “You all just hush now,” she said. “I believe I’ll do ‘The Two Sisters.’”

  That was a song about a girl who drowns her own sister out of jealousy. I never had liked that song, since it was one of those that repeated the same verse over and over, but this time it was altogether different. Serena had the clearest and most perfect voice that I had ever heard in my life. She must have had a whippoorwill’s soul because she sung just as pretty and mournful as they did. She closed her eyes and held her face skyward, and a wrinkle come to her brow at some verses, making me believe that she felt every painful word of that song, like somehow she was connected to what happened in it. She sung:

  She pushed her a little further from shore,

  Bow down.

  Pushed her a little further from shore,

  Bow and bend to me.

  She bent and pushed her out from the shore,

  All for the sake of the hat that she wore.

  I savored her voice the way I had once clenched my mouth tight to lock in the taste of my mama’s coffee. The whole yard was quiet. I closed my eyes and felt the words make goose bumps run up the backs of my arms.

  The miller was hanged for his deadly sin,

  Bow down.

  The miller was hanged for his deadly sin,

  Bow and bend to me.

  The miller was hanged for his deadly sin,

  The older sister ought to have been.

  I will be true, true to my love;

  Love if my love will be true to me.

  When she was done, she held handfuls of her skirt and walked back to her seat. Everybody was stunned for a minute, I reckon, because all was quiet for a long moment before people started clapping. While they did, I got up and went straight to her. I wanted to know somebody who could do something so beautiful.

  Serena was setting on the big rock that rose up out of our yard near the front steps. Saul had wanted to dig it out, but I wouldn’t let him. I liked the look of it, and when you ran your hand over it, there was always sand stuck to your palm.

  “That give me an awful chill,” I said by way of announcing myself.

  “It is scary,” she said, but she didn’t meet my eyes.

  “No, I mean your voice. I never heard nothing so pretty.”

  She looked at me. “You a Indian, ain’t you?”

  “That’s what they tell me. Cherokee.” I couldn’t tell if she was disgusted or happy by the look on her face.

  “I never knowed no Cherokee before. I’m happy to, though.”

  “You’re Whistle-Dick Sizemore’s woman, ain’t you?”

  “No. Whistle-Dick is my man,” she said, and laughed. Her laugh was the opposite of her singing: low and thick. “That man can’t drink nothing without passing out slicker than a ribbon.”

  “He drunk a big lot of that homemade wine, I’ll tell you.”

  She waved a hand in front of her nose. “By the smell of your breath, I’d say you did, too.”

  “Tonight’s the first time I’ve ever even tasted it,” I said. “I guess everybody here will think I’m a sight.”

  “Hell, it ain’t nothing to be ashamed of. I’ve been known to take a sup or two.”

  I laughed and throwed my head back and realized that I was still a little bit drunk. And I never had heard a woman talk in such a way.

  “I’ve drunk with these old boys before. They’ll tell you—I could put Whistle-Dick under the table any day of the week. My daddy was real bad to drink, and he used to slip it to me when I was little. I guess I got a taste for it.” Serena smiled at me then, seeing my shock, but she didn’t comment on it. She ran her hand over her belly in a wide circle. “Them days is over, though.”

  “Why?”

  “Can’t you tell I’m big?” I couldn’t even see a knot there to tip me off that she was pregnant. She had a deep curve of hip and a wide waist, but her stomach was flat as a plate. “I’d be afraid to drink anything and me carrying a baby. I know some midwives that say to take a sup ever now and then, but it can’t be good. It sure ain’t hindered Whistle-Dick none, though.” She nodded her chin toward her husband, who seemed to be sliding out of his chair and onto the floor of the porch. A crew of men setting on the yard laughed at him.

  “Well, if Betty Lester can’t get here in time, I might could help when the child comes. My mama is the midwife on Redbud Creek.”

  “Oh no, honey,” Serena said. “I’m the midwife round these parts. Betty Lester won’t come all the way up in here. She taught me and has give this whole big creek to me.”

  “Well, you can’t deliver this baby yourself. She’ll have to come.”

  “I reckon you’ll do fine.”

  I laughed too loud again. “You’d trust me, just like that?”

  “You’ve got the hands for it,” she said. She took one of my hands and flattened it out onto her palm, feeling of my fingers as if she was feeling for knots in my skin. She ground her thumb into the center of my palm. My hands were bigger than hers. For a minute I thought she might be a palm reader, the way she was studying it. “Yes, ma’am,” she said. “I believe you’ll do the best ever was.”

  “Well, I’ll sure be glad to help,” I said. “I hate that I ain’t been up to see you since you got back. I heard tell about your mommy dying. I sure do hate to hear that.”

  “It’s all right. She went out just like she lived, mean as a cat.” She eyed me for a long minute. “I bet you are tickled to death to get this house done. To get out from under Esme’s little beady eyes.”

  I started to laugh again but thought better of it. “She’s been good to me.”

  “You must be something, then. That old woman don’t like many people.”

  “Her bark is worse than her bite,” I said.

  Serena wasn’t listening to me. Aaron and the fiddler had quit playing. The guitar player was gently strumming, and a great hum had arisen over the gathered crowd as they laughed and told big tales. At first I thought she was looking at her husband again. Her eyes were narrowed, a deep line etched across her forehead.

  “He’s got it bad, don’t he?” she said finally.

  “Who?” I asked.

  Still she didn’t take her eyes away from the porch. “Aaron,” she said. “Your brother-in-law. He’s watched you this whole night.”

  I looked at him, and I felt as if somebody had poured ice water over me—the way my mother had sometimes done Daddy when he got too drunk. Aaron was looking right into my eyes while his long fingers rested on the frets of the banjo. His straight, white teeth seemed to be saying something improper to me. I could feel my face going to ash. At the same time, I thought to myself that this couldn’t be true. Even though I had felt it myself, and now had somebody else saying this, too, I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. When I had first come to God’s Creek, I had knowed he had a little crush on me, but I thought he had outgrowed it. Surely Aaron didn’t look on me that way.

  “He’ll get over it,” Serena said. Only now did she let go of my hand, as if she had just realized that she was still holding it. “He’s about too pretty to be a man, and he never has been right. He’s always been younger than his age, if you know what I mean. Not slow, but sort of behind. No wonder, the way that old woman’s petted him to death. And Saul’s spoiled him worse than her.”

  “He’s probably just drunk,” I said. When I looked back to him, he was talking to th
e fiddler, discussing their next song.

  “He’s too old to be making eyes at his sister-in-law,” Serena said, like I hadn’t even spoke.

  Five

  As winter started to set in, I began to see something very clearly. It was as if I had been working on a quilt and suddenly the pattern had taken on its shape and meaning. I seen that I had married a very quiet man, the opposite of myself, of my own daddy, of my own people. He was the opposite of his own people, in fact, for Esme could outtalk any preacher, and Aaron was all the time going on with his notions and daydreams.

  Maybe it was the time of year that made me notice it. The weather seemed to give me hints. Rain showers in the summer had come in with rumbling thunder, sheets of water pounding against the tin roof, wind that bent the trees low and set the leaves to chattering. But cold rain fell straight down in November and December, quiet and soft, sometimes so gently that it seemed a damp mist you could walk through without becoming wet. The sounds of evening—crickets, frogs, katydids—were gone until spring. Even the creek seemed to silence itself somewhat. The last of the leaves fell with no more sound than a dying breath.

  And Saul was quiet, too. Still and silent. By the time the gray sky began to spit snow around Christmastime, I didn’t think I could stand it. Esme was a different person in the winter. She didn’t venture outside much and spent the colder days fooling around in her kitchen with a big quilt throwed over her shoulders. She wasn’t much in the way of company, since the only thing she wanted to talk about was her aching bones. She could always tell when a big snow was coming by the harsh pulsing in her joints.

  There was no solace in Serena, either. When Serena finally started to show that she was carrying, she really showed. She was big as a cow by January but still kept right on going out to catch babies, making her way over the slick rocks. I thought she was carrying twins, her belly was so huge, but she always just shook her head and said that it was nothing more than a big old boy.