A Parchment of Leaves Read online

  So Aaron kept me company. I was desperate for conversation, and he always gave me that much, at least. He come up to the house every day, after he had done everything that Esme had asked him to. He didn’t have a job, even though he was plenty old enough for one. Somebody had to take care of his mother, he said. And he did—I’ll have to say that much for him. Every day he chopped the wood, shoveled coal for the stove, fed the goats, tended to the cows and chickens. He helped her stitch her quilts, since her eyesight had started to suffer. Then he’d come and talk to me while I swept the house or churned the butter or hung clothes to dry over the fireplace. He helped me stack our wood, clean the lamp chimneys, trim the wicks, shovel out the fireplace. Sometimes he even helped me cook, which was something I had never seen a man do in my life. My mama still had to pack meals to my bachelor uncle over on Redbud, as he would have died and split hell wide open before putting a skillet on the stove.

  And all the while, he talked. Most times I didn’t even acknowledge what he was saying. I’d just go about my work, nodding every once in a while. Sometimes I’d stop him to comment, but mostly I just listened. When I did say something, I don’t think he paid a bit of attention to it, as he was concerned only with his own dreams.

  “They’re building a new railroad up in West Virginia. Cutting tunnels out through them big mountains. The mountains is bigger up there than they are here—can you picture that?” he’d say. “I’d like to go up there, just to watch them do that. Or I could be a photographer. I could go up there and take pictures of them building the new railroad.”

  One thing always led into another, although most everything had to do with getting out of Crow County. I never could understand why he wanted to leave, since he had it made right there. Esme watched over him like he was a little child. In many ways he was like a child: dreaming of big things, his mind never focused on nothing but having a big time. And I suppose I was a little bit of a child, too. I was young, after all, and I was still adjusting to married life and the fact that I had to act like a grown woman. I had been raised up quick, my parents never giving much time for the foolishness of childhood, but I was a young person. I dreamed, too.

  Aaron got to where he would play his banjo for me right often, but only after I had set down and stopped doing the chores. He couldn’t stand to play the banjo unless he had my full attention, so I couldn’t even wash dishes or work on a quilt while he played. He knowed all of my favorites and always played the one I loved best, “Little Sunshine.” Aaron could play the banjo better than anybody I had ever heard before, and I wasn’t the only one to say that. His fingers picked in a blur, moving so quick and light that they seemed not even to touch the strings. The music he made on that banjo was like hearing magic. It was like Aaron held God’s rhythm right in his fingertips.

  Ever once in a while I could talk him into singing a little bit, too. Mostly he just liked to play. I liked the way he sung “Charlie’s Neat.” He hunched over the banjo and looked me right in the eye as he sung, making crazy old faces at the end of each verse.

  Charlie’s a good one,

  Charlie’s a neat one,

  Charlie he’s a dandy.

  Charlie he’s a magic man,

  He feeds the girls rock candy.

  And then it was like he lit in on that banjo, rocking back and forth with it atop his lap, his fingers pulling out clucks and pops on the strings. Lord, it was something to behold, the sound he could make with nothing more than his thumb and his pointing finger.

  “If you want to be something, you ought to make a living playing that banjo,” I said.

  He thought this was funny. “Shoot, Vine,” he said. “A person can’t make no money playing music.”

  When Aaron left, he would always throw his banjo over his shoulder by the strap, then push his hands far down into his pockets and whistle while he walked home. He had a way of whistling that no one could match, either. It was so sharp and high that it made a scratch on the air. But there was something else. Aaron’s whistle was not one of happiness, like most people’s. For some reason, it always made my scalp crawl to hear it.

  Still, when Aaron wasn’t there, the house was all silence. All day long, I felt like I was just going through the motions of waiting on Saul to get home. His silence liked to killed me that winter, but it seemed I loved him more and more every day. I remember plainly waking up one day and realizing that I loved him. I guess you can’t name a single reason you love somebody. It was a whole slew of things. I loved the way he put his hand on the small of my back when company got ready to leave and we seen them to the door. I loved how his breath smelled like sweet milk when he first woke in the morning. Despite myself, I loved him when he rode his horse down the creek before daylight, off to work at that old mill. Sometimes I caught myself and felt like a little lovesick fool for being hurt over his leaving for the day. Often I wondered why it was that I missed him so when he was gone. He wasn’t much company when he was present. Still, I loved it when he come home with his hands tore all to pieces from running the lumber through the saw. He would lay his hand out and let me doctor the cuts for him, even though I knowed he would have rather just let it heal up on its own. And somehow, I even loved his silence. I loved him for that, but this did not dull my loneliness, either. So I sometimes hated him for the same reasons I adored him.

  Winter was a cutting-off time. It was a time when people didn’t get around much. I went from December until March without seeing my mama and daddy. There was a lot of big snows that year, every one of them predicted by the bones in Esme’s little arms. So I had to force myself to make it. I would survive this season and tell myself that come spring, things would be different. I made myself busy, I listened to Aaron, I sometimes put on my mackinaw coat and went out onto the porch to wait on Saul when it got time for him to come home.

  I stood there, froze to death, the air so cold that there were long moments when I couldn’t see in front of me because of the bud of white that bloomed from my lips every time I breathed. My teeth chattered, but the air felt good and clean. It smelled like rocks that rest under dripping cliffs. I throwed crumbs from last night’s corn bread out onto the yard so redbirds would swoop down and peck at them. I leaned against the porch post and held my hand out into the snow, which fell so lazy and carefree that it seemed it might never touch the ground. Each snowflake that melted on my palm held the promise of spring. I let it melt there, and then put it to my lips, hoping I might catch the hint of spring in that snow water. Then Saul would come up the gray rocks of the creek, steam rising off the horse’s haunches.

  I knowed what I wanted: a baby. Somebody of my own to keep me company. This sounds selfish, but of course it was more than that. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t carrying one already. Saul didn’t talk much, but he sure did like to moan.

  I would have never guessed I was pregnant if Serena hadn’t told me. I hadn’t seen her for two or three days when Whistle-Dick’s brother, Dalton, showed up one evening. I was standing on the porch, watching for Saul. She had sent for me to help deliver her baby. Dalton was scared to death and breathing so hard he liked to never told me what was happening. Men ain’t worth a dime around a birthing. I run out of the house without even closing the door behind me. We got on Dalton’s horse and rode to the next creek over—Free Creek—where Serena and Whistle-Dick’s house stood at the mouth of the holler. I found her laying in the bed. She looked like she had just stretched out there to rest a minute. She wasn’t even a bit pale or breathless, and her belly seemed smaller, as if the baby had already made its escape. She had her gown pulled up to her breasts and run her hands over her belly with great, calm strokes.

  As soon as I stepped into the bedroom and shed my coat, she narrowed her eyes as if her sight was failing her and said, “Lord have mercy. You packing one, too.”

  “What?”

  “You’re carrying, girl. Didn’t you know?”

  Serena could see things that no one else could, when it c
ome to babies.

  Before I could say anything else, a pain swam through her. It was so fast and hard that I could actually see it stretching over her body. It seemed that every vein in her came to the top of her skin for a moment, then sank right back down into its proper place.

  I bent to go to work on her but was not sure about what I was doing. It didn’t matter, though. Serena had delivered so many babies that she talked herself right through this birth, too. She would holler out what she was about to do, and then she just did it. I suppose the only reason I had been called down there for was the company, or in case something went wrong. Serena hooked her hands up behind both knees and seemed to pull her legs back toward her as far as she could. At last she pushed so hard that I could see her whole body turning red—it moved from the top of her head all the way down to her feet—and then the baby’s head crowned. I barely pulled on his little shoulders before he burst forth onto the bed. Serena collapsed back, out of breath and panting for air.

  I cut the cord with Serena’s scissors and laid the baby up on her belly. He was a boy, just as Serena had said he would be. He curled into a little ball there on her chest, balancing himself atop her frame. She was too weak to even bring her arms up to touch him, but she did lean her head up enough to kiss the top of his head.

  “Luke,” she said. “After my daddy, and the apostle.”

  I nodded to her.

  “I know, I ain’t much on church, but I read my Bible right often,” she said between big breaths. “And Luke is my favorite of all.”

  I took Luke to the dishpan of warm water I had waiting and took a rag to him. He was a big baby with many creases and folds where the birthing clung. When I had cleaned out his nose and put the jelly in his eyes and bathed him good, I wrapped him up in a little blanket and held him against my chest. I cradled Luke to me, and I had a glimpse of what it would be like to hold my own. It felt like peace, right there in the crook of my arm.

  Six

  Serena delivered my baby the following June. It is an awful thing to say—and something that I will regret until my deathbed—but I cannot remember a thing about the birth. Here is all I know.

  At that time, Saul’s crew was cutting timber way over in Clay County, and sometimes he didn’t get home until far past dusk. It was close to dark, and I was up at Esme’s, watching her can beans. I felt fine and begged her to let me help, but she wouldn’t hear of such a thing. Not because she felt it would be a strain on me, but because she went by the superstition that a pregnant woman canning anything would cause the yield to spoil before winter was good and settled. My water had broke the day before, but Serena had told me this didn’t really mean anything, since she knowed of women whose water had busted two weeks before the baby ever come. All at once a bolt of pain shot through me and I knowed this time Serena was wrong.

  I screamed out so loud that Esme dropped a jar onto the floor. Glass flew everywhere and hot water splashed onto my legs, but it somehow felt good. The next day my calves were blistered from the burns, but at that moment it seemed to spread stillness out over me. This feeling lasted only as long as it took for another pain to hit me, though.

  “Go get Serena,” I managed to say.

  Serena come before long, packing Luke on her hip. She handed him over to Esme like she was offering her a sack of sugar. “Whistle-Dick’s drunk, as usual,” she said, and then her eyes fell on me. I was sprawled out in the chair where Aaron had left me when he went to fetch her. “Why in the hell ain’t you got her in the bed?” she hollered to Aaron.

  She yelled through the whole birthing. She barked orders that I’m certain were the only ones Esme Sullivan ever obeyed in her life. After she had run Aaron out of the house and put Esme to work, she got me settled in Esme’s feather bed, which was so full that I felt like it was swallowing me up. But I was in no shape to be packed to my own house, where I had always imagined my child would be born. She put her hand between my legs, and I could see her face crumble.

  “What?” I screamed. I thought I tasted blood in the back of my throat.

  “It’s turned,” she said.

  The next thing I knowed, Serena was putting my baby into the crook of my arm. I was so weak that Esme had to take hold of my elbow so I could hold the little thing.

  “God,” I said when I looked down at her. They all thought I was just saying this in amazement, I guess, but I wasn’t. When I looked down at my baby, I felt like I was looking down and seeing the face of God. Peace washed over me. It is an unexplainable thing, holding your baby for the first time. It’s a feeling you can’t put a name to, so I won’t try. But I’ll say this much: I felt like we were the only people in the world that night. I felt like nobody else existed except for the people right there in that room. Even Saul was a ghost, steering his horse around steep mountain roads on his way home.

  The birth of my child made me believe in God full and complete all of a sudden. Before, God had been someone who I heard others discuss with great passion, but I had never thought much about Him. I had listened obediently while Daddy versed us in the ways of the Quakers, which mostly involved silence. I had stood silent with Mama when we went up on the mountain to hunt ginseng and she seen Him. We would be bent down, digging out the roots with wooden spoons, and she’d raise up real fast, her hands flat on her apron, and say, “Shh. Listen.” Her watery eyes would scan the treetops as a gentle breeze drifted over. “That’s the Creator passing through.” But bad as it is to admit, I had never thought a lot about the Lord. I did that day. I started believing the day my baby was born, because I could look right down and see proof of Him.

  When Saul finally did get home, he walked in like a man packing a heavy load. His face seemed much older to me. I sensed that new wrinkles and creases had pressed themselves out at the corners of his eyes and mouth. He fell on his knees by the bed and kissed the baby on the top of her head.

  “So soft,” he said. He run his cheek across her thin hair.

  “I’d like to call her Birdie,” I told him. I knowed that his people cracked the Bible for names, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t see the joy in just getting a Bible, letting it fall open to whatever page it would, and giving the child the first name you happened upon. With my luck it would have fallen to Haggai or something that I would never be able to spell. There would be no Bible name for my baby. This was my one moment of creation. My mother had named me Vine in the hopes that I would help the earth to produce, that I would like to put my hands into the soil and find joy in seeing what come forth. It had worked for her. So I named my baby Birdie, hoping that she would sing to me every day of my life. I hoped I could hear her singing when I laid on my deathbed, and willed her a voice that would smooth out all the loneliness I carried around, tucked hidden and safe in the womb from which she had come.

  PART TWO

  On the Mountain

  There are things in the forest that can kill you with ease.

  —Lisa Parker, “Bloodroot”

  Seven

  Birdie could sing, but her body matched her name, too. By the time she was three year old, she had shed every bit of her baby fat and kept a cough from fall to spring. She was thin as a leaf vein and stayed cold all of the time, even when the sun was a high ball of blazing fire, so hot it seemed you could hear it rumbling. Her legs were long but spindly, her beautiful cheekbones ruined by the fact that they took over her face, which had no meat upon it at all. Her eyes were as big and black as buckeyes. They would have been pretty enough to take your breath if they hadn’t set back in her skull as if they might be swallowed up at any time. Her eyes were very old; they looked like they held some awful knowledge that nobody else had, as if she was haunted by miseries that she could not share.

  She was pretty despite all of this, but she looked sick all of the time. Sometimes when we went into town to get the mail or buy sugar, I felt people looking at us and imagined that they whispered I wasn’t giving her enough to eat. Many times I felt like cramming food down her th
roat, for she wouldn’t eat a thing at supper. She lived on hunks of corn bread soaked in molasses or butter, and the closest thing to meat that she ever clamped her teeth upon were soup beans. If she hadn’t eat fried potatoes every once in a while, I believe she would have starved herself to death. She was nearly as dark skinned as me, but I knowed that if she hadn’t had Cherokee in her, she would have been one of them children who are so pale that even their hair is the color of buttermilk. She had my black hair but her daddy’s curls. They hung in ringlets down her back.

  Saul and me were both big, strong people who had to lean down to clear the top of the doorway in some of Esme’s rooms. He was tall and broad shouldered, and I had hands so large that when I spread them atop his, there wasn’t much difference in size. So I reckoned that Birdie had simply taken after Esme, who was no bigger than a breath. Still, there was more to it than that. Esme was strong, and Birdie never was. I feared that she carried something deadly around in her blood, but Serena said there didn’t seem to be a thing wrong with her.

  “She’s just made that way,” Serena said. “Some people are just born weak and stay that way all their lives.”

  I couldn’t have thought of a worse thing for a child to be than weak, but there was nothing I could do about it. I grieved over it, though, and babied her to death on account of this. I did whatever she asked, fearful that she might take sick at any time.

  But I did push Birdie to strengthen up. I seen to her every whim, but I refused to pet her when she claimed that her legs were giving out from walking along with me on our way to gather berries. I told her to toughen up when she complained of setting for so long on the mountainside while she watched me plant the beans. She was only three, but I felt this was the best time to give her a sense of determination. I taught her to help me around the house and follow along in all my chores. Work had made me firm, and I figured it would do the same for her. It is like curing a good skillet—the more you put the cast iron in the oven, the blacker and tougher it gets.