The Last Blue

by Isla Morley

  His head swings side to side. He balls his hand into a fist and presses his knuckles against his mouth as if to knock out his own front teeth. He paces two strides to the right and two strides to the left, while she describes traveling with the cast to a couple of small towns before spending almost six weeks at the state fair. Something is said about a nearsighted showgirl who sewed a costume for Jubilee and taught her about makeup.

  “You had to wear a costume?”

  “A person can hide in a costume,” she replies.

  Havens slumps onto the log beside her, clasps his hands together, and searches her face for some alternative ending.

  “It wasn’t so terrible. I made friends.” She speaks of a man named Mr. Lizard, who had his own skin troubles and who took her under his wing and taught her that everyone has unfixable parts. With fondness, she speaks of the Cannibal Man, who only ever ate vegetables, a woman of ample proportions named Lotta, and the bearded lady, who was really a man. That she’s been so grievously wronged is the only thing Havens can fully comprehend. That and how he’d like to kill Ronny. Anyone who’s ever hurt her ought to pay for what they’ve done, and that goes for the man who put her in that tent and any man who shelled out a coin to see her.

  She touches his shoulder and waits for him to compose himself before telling him about the doctor.

  * * *

  By the time Chappy returns, the sunlight roosts above them on the last of the fog, the airwaves belong to the finches, and Jubilee and Havens have each tilted away from their respective darkness, their heads together.

  “Can’t you stay a little longer?” Havens asks, reluctant to let go of her hand when she rises.

  “I can come tomorrow. If I haven’t scared you off.”

  “The only thing that scares me is being apart from you.” He suddenly remembers the new birdcall he whittled for her. “An improved version.”

  She blows softly, and a warbler on a nearby branch trills in reply. Before she turns to go, his lips graze her cheek. “Hurry back.” He watches her disappear between the trees, and watches the space long after she has passed through it—his eyes do not deceive him: it glimmers. She is a good distance away when he hears her whistle to him.

  JUBILEE

  The last three days, she’s met Havens at the aviary, and each time she’s returned home at a later hour, each time lighter from having told him a little more about the World of Wonders. All night she tosses and turns. She forgets to eat. Nothing she does will hurry time along. If Pa notices her long absences, he doesn’t mention it, and Mama and Grandma are lost in their own worlds. What she’s overlooked, though, is her sister’s nose for sniffing out secrets. All morning Willow-May’s been tailing Jubilee, from the coop to the barn and now back to the bedroom, where she watches Jubilee style her hair.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  Jubilee puts down her hairbrush. “Why would you say a thing like that?”

  “This.” Willow-May’s hand dives into Jubilee’s apron pocket and pulls out the lipstick.

  “Give me that.”

  Willow-May dashes over to the bed, lifts Jubilee’s pillow, and holds up the birdcall. “And this.”

  “Who said you could snoop in my things?”

  Willow-May puts her hands on her hips. “Also, you’ve been acting funny.”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “You hum all the time.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You were sad all the time, and now you’re happy all the time.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be at Socall’s for your lesson?”

  “I’m feeling a bit poorly today.” Willow-May forces a cough. “Is your boyfriend handsome?”

  “Willow-May, I do not have a boyfriend, now cut it out.” Jubilee makes a go for Willow-May’s ribs.

  “It’s not Wyatt Wrightley, is it?”

  “No!”

  Her sister heaves a sigh of relief. “If he’s nice, you should marry him.”

  “That does it. Shoo!” She pushes her sister out of her room. Instead of changing into a pretty dress and raising her sister’s suspicions even more, she pretends she has all day to mend clothes and clean the house and play hide-and-seek with Willow-May, and by the time Jubilee shakes free and gets to her aviary, it is midafternoon. Havens, who has been waiting for hours, waves away her apology, puts his arm around her shoulder, and steers her into the shed, where he’s set up two wooden crates and a barrel to serve as their dining area. He strikes a match and lights a candle on the middle crate. “You have to imagine this is a five-star joint now.” He motions to her birds. “Don’t mind the other diners; they’re just jealous because you’re my date and not theirs.”

  She remarks about the blanket on the shelf, and he confesses to having spent the night in the aviary. “I wanted to be close to you.”

  Though it’s clear he’s been getting little sleep, in three days his shoulders have less of a stoop to them and the lines across his forehead have smoothed out. His presence, the way he disturbs the air around her, is still the same as before, and his eyes have that knowing way of seeing her again.

  “Are you cold?”

  “A little, maybe.”

  He takes off his jacket, threads her arms through the sleeves, and reaches for her hand as though she might disappear in his garment altogether. He leans into her hair. “You are lovely this afternoon.” He holds a crate for her to sit.

  “Are you hungry?” From a sack, he unpacks two Cokes, a couple of sandwiches, an apple, a banana, an orange, and a candy bar. “I didn’t know what you might be in the mood for.”

  She eyes the orange, and he starts peeling it for her, handing her one segment after another. Is this how a queen feels?

  “Willow-May knows I have a boyfriend.”

  “Smart cookie, that one.” He says he wishes he could see her again.

  “If Mama wasn’t so poorly, I could test the subject of you visiting—”

  He stops her. “I don’t want you to feel any pressure about this.”

  “But I don’t want you to leave.”

  He strokes her cheek. “Who said anything about leaving?”

  “You can’t stay here forever.”

  “Why not?” He turns to the cages. “I’m not the worst roommate who’s ever lived, am I, fellas?”

  The flicker’s head pops out from under his wing, making her laugh.

  She leans toward Havens, breathing in his smell, resting her head against his neck. He strokes her hair. She nuzzles closer. She places her hand against his chest, slides the tip of her finger between his shirt buttons, and touches his skin, and his hand follows the curve from the nape of her neck to the little notch at the base of her throat, as though her neck’s never been yanked or throttled or used to drive her to a place she didn’t want to go. His fingers trail down to the neckline of her dress.

  Never has she wanted to be loved as much as she does now. She undoes her top button. With his thumbs, he pries apart her collar, and the breath he lets out is the one she holds in. His hand glides beneath her slip and hovers over her brassiere. She presses herself against his hand, which cups and closes around her breast. From some secret place, boldness springs up in her, and what used to be a timid creature is a woman who wants.

  As soon as the fairgoers’ jeering faces jump into her head, she squeezes her eyes shut. You blue all the way down? that voice asks again. More faces crowd around, all of them greedy and flushed and beaded with sweat, so she opens her eyes to see if a hard stare will chase them away. As soon as she closes her eyes again, they are back. Doesn’t she know how to be anything other than someone who sits and endures someone else’s looking?

  Havens raises his head from her bosom, sensing her distress. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I can’t.”

  Havens touches her cheek. “It’s my fault.” He buttons her dress, grabs the blanket, and wraps it around her shoulders. “I’m a damn fool.”

  “It’s me. It’s my head. I
t gets muddled sometimes.”

  “I love this head.” He plants the softest kiss on her temple. “The other parts aren’t bad, either.”

  The frightful faces fall back again. She opens the blanket for him to scoot in.

  “This is perfect, just like this,” he says. Wrapped together, they trade sips of Coke. They talk, and before long, the afternoon is spent.

  She looks at his watch.

  “That thing lies,” he says.

  Neither of them lets go of the other.

  “I don’t want to leave.”

  “Don’t.” He kisses the side of her head. “Leaving doesn’t suit you at all.”

  He stands only because she does, and still neither breaks free from their blanket cocoon. Together, they shuffle to the door.

  “Are you dancing with me?”

  “Smooth, aren’t I?” he boasts. They squeeze through the doorway, knocking knees and poking each other with elbows, but still keeping the blanket in place, and she doesn’t know why it strikes her as funny, maybe because she wonders what the birds must make of this, but here she is, in a fit of giggles. Imagine.

  “We’d be champions at sack-racing,” Havens says as they shuffle past the shed.

  She laughs.

  “We could start a new division—long-distance blanket-racing.” They shuffle all the way out into the meadow. “Cross-country blanket-racing.”

  And while she’s laughing, she’s making note that nothing’s ever felt as good as his body pressed against hers. They make it to the trees without falling. He kisses each of her eyelids, and then her lips, and she tilts her chin up at him, and he kisses her again, this time slow and firm.

  “I’ll come early tomorrow morning,” she promises. “Pa’s going hunting, so we’ll have the whole day.”

  After letting her out, he wraps her end of the blanket over his shoulder. “I’ll be here.” His gaze is warm on her back, and when she looks over her shoulder before passing through the trees, he waves, but worry has shadowed his face again, as if it might be the last time he sees her.

  * * *

  She decides to take the long way home, going through the ravine and along the old rock quarry to check Pa’s traps, and while she’s still savoring the feel of her skin, tingling where Havens’s hand stroked it, she is startled by the scream of a vixen. Worrying that it’s got itself snared in a trap, she rushes toward the sound, and still she cannot see it. The small clearing is surrounded by spindly sugar maples and, on the far end, one gnarled wolf tree, and it’s from there that the cries come.

  She’s wrong—it’s not a fox; not a coyote, either. She takes a few steps closer to the tree, and the thing falls silent. She looks around to see if this is some kind of trick. No one jumps down from the rock pile or steps out from behind a tree, so she takes two steps closer. Just barely can she make out a shape inside the burrowed-out trunk. One step closer, and she sees the bundle rustle a little. Not a sack of kittens.

  “Hello?” she calls out to the surrounding cliff.

  The echo takes its time coming back as if it, too, would prefer to be any place but here.

  “Anyone there?”

  She strains for signs of an ambush, but there are none, so she crouches down, reaches inside the hollow, and retrieves the bundle, peeling back the burlap and revealing what makes no sense. Scarcely bigger than a pigeon is a baby. A baby boy. He’s wearing only a white cotton vest, and his lips are frozen into a pout, his eyes are glassy with tears, and he’s turned blue from the—

  Not the cold.

  In an ages-long moment, she realizes what she’s got here is another Blue, Sarah and Levi’s baby. She covers him, shelters him in the warmth of her bosom, and rocks him. “You’re okay, little one, I’ve got you.”

  What is he doing here? Who brought him? Are they coming back?

  “Hello?” her call rings out.

  He’s a good little boy, so content to nestle against her chest.

  She doesn’t know what to make of this. Has Sarah put down her child so she can forage, and if so, why hasn’t she come running? Maybe she got herself hurt. Jubilee walks in wider and wider circles, searching and calling for Sarah. “I’ve found your baby.”

  Even the birds are afraid to answer.

  She waits a long time for his claiming, but it doesn’t come. Somebody ought to have come by now. They say to put baby birds back in the nest.

  “I’m not taking this baby, you hear? I’m putting him back where I found him.”

  From leaves and burlap she makes up a soft bed and wraps him in her sweater. He protests as soon as she lays him down, but rather than pacify him, she tells him to scream as loud as he can. She finds a nearby bush to hide behind, and waits for his mother to come, for anyone to come. Federal agents come through these woods every so often looking for stills, once a census-taker and once a map-maker, and what seems like forever ago, two men on assignment for President Roosevelt. Someone please come and take this crying child.

  Can’t they hear his distress? Why won’t they come?

  Both she and the child have had their fill of waiting. She picks him up again, cradles him against her chest, and offers him the tip of her little finger to suckle, peeking again at his legs and arms. His color is a shade much paler than hers and Levi’s, but he has the Buford nose and Levi’s short chin. She strokes and teases the ginger fuzz on the crown of his head. “You’re a little rooster, aren’t you?” She peels open his tiny fist. He is perfect and beautiful, and she is breathless with love for him. It’s as though some of Levi is brought back.

  “You’re going to be okay, little rooster.”

  The baby is asleep by the time she opens the front door.

  Mama turns from her post at the kitchen window, and it’s as if a fraction of her former self returns when she shakes her head and says, “You cannot bring a critter in this house, how many times do you have to be told?”

  “It’s not a critter, Mama.”

  What Mama sees in Jubilee’s face makes her take slow, careful steps forward. “What you got there?”

  Bringing a falling star into this house ought to come with a warning first, some way to prepare Mama for the impact, but what is there to do but unwrap the sweater so she can also be dazzled?

  Mama spins the other way. As though to set her seeing straight, she turns around for another look, and stops her mouth with her hand. She doesn’t need to be told this is Levi’s boy. She makes a scoop of her hands and says, “Give.”

  Passing him feels like passing trouble and salvation both. How Jubilee came to find him and in what location are of no interest to Mama.

  “You’re the spitting image of your daddy,” Mama whispers to him, lifting the sweater to count toes. Easing herself into the rocking chair, she tells Jubilee where to find the box with Willow-May’s old baby bottle and says to warm some milk, but first Jubilee goes to where Pa’s pumping out the privy, and tells him Levi’s baby’s in the house. “Mama’s got him,” she adds so he’ll make haste.

  In front of Mama and the baby, Pa becomes fixed as granite.

  “Isn’t he beautiful, Del?” It’s as though Mama’s come out from under a bad spell.

  Pa’s voice is high. “That’s a newborn.”

  “He’s little, but he’s strong.” She shows how he grips her finger. “Aren’t you, little fella? Just like your daddy.”

  White with worry, Pa instructs Jubilee to saddle up Lass. “I’ll ride down to Eddie’s and get him back to his mother.”

  Mama’s head whips up. “You’re not taking this child anywhere, least of all that swamp. Didn’t you hear what Jubilee just said? He was left in the woods. They don’t want him.”

  “Gladden, he’s to be returned to Sarah right away.”

  “There’s no pardon for what she’s done and there won’t be for you, either, putting him back in harm’s way.”

  “We don’t know what the circumstances are.”

  “What do you mean, we don’t know? He was left there
to perish. Because he’s a Blue.” Mama tells Jubilee to quit standing around and get his bottle.

  On his haunches, Pa speaks to Mama the way he speaks to the cow when it’s time to calve. “Glad, we have to return this child to his rightful family, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “This is your grandson, Delbert. We are his rightful family. And don’t you talk to me like I’ve never lived through a baby being born blue. Those people pushed us out on account of our blue young’uns and now they’ve pushed out this one and we are going to take care of him.”

  Pa hangs his head and the baby starts to cry.

  “Do you have the milk ready or do I have to do it myself?” Mama snaps at Jubilee.

  She prepares the bottle and cools it in a basin of water, and when she hands it to Mama, she may as well be making a terrible pact with her.

  Mama flicks a few drops onto her wrist before offering the bottle to the baby, who is straightaway pacified while the statue that resembles Pa says, “As soon as he’s finished eating, okay, Gladden?”

  Mama makes it clear she doesn’t want to hear any more, and Pa and Jubilee drift to the far corner like soot from a sudden wildfire. Instead of bringing the baby here, Jubilee should’ve taken him to Socall’s. She would’ve known what to do.

  “I’m sorry, Pa,” she whispers. “I didn’t think it through.”

  Pa’s too busy watching Mama to mind her.

  When the baby finishes his bottle, Mama gets up and puts him against her shoulder and walks him around the front room, patting his back and congratulating burps, and once he’s asleep, she nestles with him in the rocking chair again. After a while, Pa approaches her.

  “Glad, I don’t want to risk going down the holler with him in the dark.”

  Mama glares at him. “One boy was taken from me, and what happened? He was left to die out there on his own. I won’t have that happen again.”

  Pa starts to crumble. After a long pause, he tries again to reason with Mama, but she cuts him off. “Have you even looked at this child? Look at him.”

  Pa’s eyes go watery.