by Isla Morley
Havens follows her gaze. The pale light has flattened the land into a pastel tableau and the hills no longer seem harnessed to a miserly land. What once seemed too remote and foreign is now familiar, inviting even.
“My roots are here,” she says. “My family is here. Levi is buried here, and now his little boy is here. This is my home.”
“Well, that settles it, then.” The sheriff will surely match the bullet to someone’s gun. But what if that bullet gets traced back to one of Buford’s weapons?
“You’re troubled,” Jubilee says. “I’m worried this way of life is going to be too solitary for you. Aren’t you going to miss your family and city life?”
He can’t stand to see her concerned. “Here’s what we’re going to do: we’re going to see about getting a piece of land and have one of those barn-raisings I keep hearing about, and move in all the horses that get old or go lame, and then I’m going to dredge out a pond the size of Lake Michigan, and I don’t know what I’m going to do about winter, but you just sprung that on me so you’re going to have to give me a little time to figure that one out.”
“And you’re going to start taking pictures again.”
“We’ll take pictures together.”
Now she smiles.
“We’ll make our fresh start here,” he says.
JUBILEE
If it’s a Jubilee Year upon them, you can’t tell by some calendar, only by how things take a different course. Instead of running along that worn-smooth easy-hating way, the flow is along the way of amend-making. Peace is on everyone’s mind, it seems, everyone except Socall, who offered to shoot Verily Suggins for sowing lies in Sheriff Suggins’s ear as well as anyone who cast a ballot in favor of Urnamy Gault, even though he was soundly defeated in his bid for mayor, and when Pa announced he was going to host a molasses stir-off, she carried on as though he’d tipped a wheelbarrow of manure on her boots. But Pa’s right—starting up what used to be an annual event when the Prices and Ellises all lived here sends a message, even if Pa’s late harvest of sorghum has yielded less than a modest crop. Mama said she has no feelings on the issue either way, just as long as she’s not expected to stand over a boiling pot all day, and Jubilee agreed it might lift spirits and mend fences, though she made it clear she wouldn’t be taking the pills, so whoever wanted to participate had to go along with blue or stay home.
And so they come, the same people who hunted Blues or sent their sons to hunt them or turned the other way when hunting was on, these same people who could not abide them come to the Buford homestead. Pa swears he explained properly, but somehow her having been right-colored for a little while and Sarah’s baby being a lusty, rosy-cheeked baby instead of one who lies in a grave have been credited to Jubilee’s so-called special powers by some folk, which means a few who come are the afflicted hoping for curing. Whatever their intent, they arrive on horses or carts, sometimes by foot, bringing with them fruit pies and squawking chickens and heirlooms, even.
Everyone leaves their horses to graze in the pasture and gathers in the back, where the autumn air is chilly, filled with smoke, and smelling of candy. Pa’s set up a makeshift overhang beside the shed, beneath which two steel drums of green broth bubble on open fires. Socall and Chappy’s grandmother preside over one pot, taking turns stirring, skimming foam from the surface and telling tales about the old days, and Reverend Tuttle has two tenant farmers help him at the second pot. Come evening, that cane juice turning into molasses will rival the miracle in Cana, when water was turned into wine.
Jeremiah Wrightley supervises at the small mill, herding Lass in circles while his two sons feed sorghum stalks between the mill stones, and Willow-May and two pigtailed friends from school are squealing and clapping as juice pours down the chute into a pot.
Jubilee has asked Pa to seat her in the sun beside Sarah. Though she’s not the same girl Levi fell in love with, Sarah has a resilience about her that wasn’t there before. She helps prop Jubilee’s bandaged legs on the milking stool and hands her the baby.
“When do the bandages come off?”
“Before too long,” Jubilee answers.
“You must be tired of sitting all the time.”
This kind of sitting is helping her make peace with the former kind of sitting in that tent.
Sarah pulls out an envelope. “Dr. Fordsworth wrote back.” Aloud, she reads that his greetings be passed to Jubilee and that Sarah and her family are welcome to visit his office at any time for consulting or testing. Lenny’s fading color, he writes, is on account of him having only one blue-making gene and not two, and that Sarah’s not to worry about it returning. While Sarah reads Dr. Fordsworth’s complicated explanation, Jubilee’s only task is to get Lenny to smile at her.
A shadow falls across them both. Havens has finally come! With glistening eyes, she looks up at him. “Isn’t he the sweetest boy?”
Havens crouches in front of her and takes a tiny fist and inspects the fingertips. “No calluses yet.”
“Don’t let that fool you,” Sarah says. “Music lessons have already begun.”
Exiting the kitchen, Mrs. Tuttle adds a basket of steaming biscuits to the serving table, where yellow jackets zigzag above the covered dishes. “Can I fix you a plate, Mr. Havens?” she offers.
“He’s got to work up an appetite first.” Jeremiah Wrightley removes his cap to wipe the sweat from his brow, pops a biscuit in his mouth, and tugs on Havens’s shirt, mumbling, “No time for cootering around when there’s work to be done.”
Havens winks at Jubilee and follows his tour guide to the first pot, where Socall offers him the long-handled paddle. A minute later he has sweated up his shirt and returned the instrument with a comment that makes everyone laugh. He greets Chappy, who is rearranging the empty mason jars that later will be filled with molasses, and settles on the task of hauling sorghum stalks to the mill. He rolls up his sleeves and whistles a tune he knows is Jubilee’s favorite, and once he’s sure he has her attention, he motions for Jeremiah to pile the load of cane even higher.
Throughout the day the visitors cluster in different configurations. Some stay only a little while, some will ride home after dark. Nobody ever apologizes for the past. Maybe they don’t apologize because they know summoning and granting forgiveness can take a toll on a person. The visitors never make any mention of Jubilee’s burning, Levi’s slaying, or Mama’s rampage, but they don’t mention Faro’s funeral or Ronny’s recovered body, either. Mostly, they lament about the weather and grouse over how much Willard is charging for feed and speculate on what crops ought to be planted and how much they’ll fetch come market-time. Peace-making is not how they say, waving a white kerchief or shaking hands. If only it was that easy. Rather, it’s having to sit in the company of those known before only as foes, and then growing comfortable with how much is held in common. By midday, Jubilee’s become certain of one thing—the Bufords are not the only people to have prayed thy-kingdom-come only to be waiting still. Maybe the kingdom doesn’t come on those hard words that about loosen a person’s teeth on the way out. Maybe it comes in small talk, the kind of talk that fills the quiet, that packs the cracks so the bitter truth doesn’t always have to blow through. Maybe the kingdom’s no more grand than Them and Us under one roof, hardship making each indistinguishable from the other.
Eventually testing time comes, and everyone grabs a piece of cane and gathers around the pots and scoops up servings of molasses. Never been a sweeter batch is the consensus. All this toil has resulted in sweetness that’ll find its way down the holler and into kitchens all through town, and isn’t that some kind of peace-making, too? Bringing Jubilee a sample, Havens is halfway across the yard when Sheriff Suggins rounds the house and apprehends him. Before Pa or anyone can reason with the man, he has snapped a pair of handcuffs around Havens’s wrists and is leading him away. Jubilee rises to her feet, only to fall to her knees in pain. Havens hears her cry out and turns to give Jubilee a smile as if to say, Nothing to
worry about, be back in a moment.
* * *
Pa returns from town a couple hours later with news of Verily Suggins being the so-called eyewitness claiming to have seen Havens take off into the woods with a pistol in his hand. Almost as terrifying is the news of Havens in a cell by himself and being denied visitors. Desperate as Jubilee is, Pa point-blank refuses to ride her down to the station.
Reverend Tuttle has gone in to see the sheriff, Pa reports. If his attempts fail, Pa will put his lawman on the case. “Suggins doesn’t have anything to bring a case against Havens, and he knows it,” Pa tries to reassure her. “This is just so everyone will credit him with doing his job.”
Jubilee sleeps hardly at all, and she is at her post beside the window before sunrise. She watches the first snow of the season powder the hills. All day she waits, and just when she is ready to threaten Pa with what she knows and demand that things be put right, Havens comes galloping up the path. Before the mare has even come to a halt, he’s kicked free of the stirrups and slid from the saddle. How this old house loves to receive him, its wood creaking sweetly from his weight. In one wide stride, he is beside her, twigs and leaves in his hair, his shirt soaked through and his pants ripped at the knee. “Took a bit of a tumble,” he says, grinning. He stands beside her bed with his arms crossed, breathing hard, one shoulder higher than the other, looking at her as if she’s some prize, and why shouldn’t he look his fill? His looking never was like anyone else’s looking. His looking makes her feel found. His arms go around her and he lifts her off the bed and twirls her around, and she clings to his shoulders, buries her face in his neck, and fills herself with his woody smell. Those charred places in her green up a little more.
“I’ve been so worried!” she cries.
“Don’t ever let go of me,” he says.
With care, he eventually sets her back on the bed and has to tell her ten times over that Sheriff Suggins is not going to press charges, just as Pa predicted.
“But it’s not going to clear your name,” Jubilee fears. “And I don’t want there to be any doubt in anyone’s mind that it wasn’t you.”
As though he doesn’t like to correct her, he uses a soft voice to tell her, “No, let people think I did it.” This is how Jubilee understands that Havens has figured out who killed Ronny. “Besides, I only care about what you think of me.”
His fingers burrow under her sleeve and trace a path along the inside of her arm.
“Are you trying to change the subject?” she asks.
“Most definitely.” He kisses her once, kisses her again, then looks out the window at a curdled sky, heavy now with snow. Pulling blankets from the bed, he hurries out. When he returns, he helps her into her coat, lifts her in his arms, and carries her through the front room, where Mama and Socall are quilting.
“You’re not taking her out in this cold,” Socall says.
“We won’t be long.”
Havens carries her down the porch steps to where the wheelbarrow is loaded with her blankets. “Your carriage awaits, my lady.” He sets her in it and covers her and says for her to quit snickering because this is a mission most serious. It doesn’t help to keep asking where he’s taking her because he won’t do anything but whistle a waltz. Every time they go over a bump, she tries not to wince. By the time they reach the grove of trees Havens is sweating and panting and out of steam, but he pushes her to the tallest evergreen before lifting her from the wheelbarrow and setting her on a boulder as though it were a throne.
“I was going to wait until we took our first walk together so you could walk away from me if you needed to,” he begins.
“I wouldn’t walk away from you.” Because of this man she has found her way back to herself. His love has made her proud and brave, and it’s surely not possible to love him any more than she does now.
The air becomes so still that the first tiny snowflakes cease their falling and hover about their heads. Nothing moves. Even hearts hold still.
Havens gets on one knee. Between his fingers is a dainty ring with a blue stone. “Jubilee Buford, will you complete my joy and be my wife?”
If she loved him one degree less, her reply would be an immediate yes, but every day she loves him one degree more, which means she wants his welfare more than her own. “What if you end up having to take care of me?” She considers her feet. She hasn’t told anyone what she fears, that there is the start of an infection. “What if it turns out that things aren’t level between us?”
He wastes no time in replying. “Why does it matter if things are level? What if I want to take care of you and protect you more than anything else? If that makes the ground between us uneven, so what?”
She folds her arms around Havens’s neck.
“Is that a ‘yes’?”
“Yes.” She presents her marrying finger, and he about busts out of his shirt fitting the ring. He cups her head and kisses her, and she slides her fingers into his hair and kisses him back.
Once upon a time, being unblue was the only happy ending she ever wished for, but the love of a colorblind man has changed that. Being blue, she is someone who returned a stolen child, who looked her adversary in the eye, and did not submit to hate, who is allowing the World of Wonders to own only so much space in her. And here now: a bride-to-be.
* * *
It’s dark when she wakes from her nap to find him sitting beside the bed. His arms are folded on the backrest of the chair, his chin propped up on one fist.
“How long have I been sleeping?”
“A couple of hours, maybe.”
“You haven’t been watching me the whole time, have you?”
He shrugs. “You were having a nice dream.”
“I was dreaming about you.”
“Were we naked?” He reaches for her hand and singles out her ring finger for special treatment.
She rolls her eyes at him. “You were taking pictures again. They were beautiful.”
“They must’ve been pictures of you.”
“I asked you once what kind of setting would suit me, and you wouldn’t answer. Do you remember?”
He nods and gestures to the window. “Stars would suit you.”
“So all I have to do is climb a ladder into the night sky, and you’ll start taking pictures again?”
He leans back to peer at her through a frame he makes with his fingers, and she tilts her chin at him.
“When are you going back for your camera?” she presses.
“Soon.” He nuzzles beside her.
“You keep saying that. I want you to do it. This week.”
“You’re going to be stubborn about this, aren’t you?”
“I made you a promise, and now you’ve got to make me a promise.”
Still Havens barters. He’ll go this week as long as he can visit the mercantile for fabric samples so she can choose what she wants for a wedding dress, and as long as she’ll agree to look through all the shoe catalogs he’ll bring back so she can order the perfect pair. “And as long as you set a date.”
“I want to enjoy being your intended for a while first.”
“You mean you want me to woo you some more?”
“Since you’re so good at it.”
Havens rises, holds out his hand, and says, “In that case, how about a dance?” He gathers her in his arms and starts to whistle, and it is not unlike their first dance at Socall’s frolic, their hearts finding the same rhythm. She holds on to his neck as he waltzes her to the window, where the night sky is a velvet cloth with bright notes flung against it.
* * *
Sarah comes the day after the snowstorm clears, when the sky is a vivid blue, crystals sparkle in the breeze, and cardinals chime across the holler. Pa picks up Jubilee from her bed and carries her to the front room, where he eases her into a chair. Sarah wears a smart coat and a modest dress that fits her figure well, a little white belt cinching her waist and turning her into a Christmas parcel. Looking at her, you wouldn’t thi
nk it was only a month ago that she gave birth. Mama puts out her arms for Lenny, and doesn’t stay for the conversation but whisks him off to the hearth and indicates for Pa to put on another log.
Sarah asks after Jubilee’s health, and Jubilee says nothing of the worsening pain in her right foot or why she’s in bed again, or that the doctor also now fears an infection, but cannot find the source on account of scar tissue. “Just a week or two before I’m allowed to walk,” she says.
In that direct manner of hers, Sarah wastes no time apologizing for Havens’s arrest. “My pa was going to turn himself in if it came to it.” She keeps her gaze only on Lenny, as if every act from now on will be done for his benefit alone.
Pa says what a good man Reverend Tuttle is and that the Lord would never forsake one of his own, and Mama gives him a sideways glance to remind him forsaking happens too many times to the favored for it to be some kind of heavenly oversight.
“There’s something else,” Sarah adds, and Jubilee sees clouds start to form. “My pa’s been reassigned to a new church.”
Jubilee monitors Mama, who’s got her shoulders hunched now as though against an icy draft. “Where?” A short train ride, Jubilee prays.
“Knoxville, Tennessee.”
“I see,” Jubilee says. So far away!
“They need preachers for all the churches they keep building out there,” Pa’s tone is unnaturally bright for Mama’s sake, who hands Lenny back to Sarah as though she knew this was coming, as though all a mother is every really required to do in life is give up those she loves most. With Pa in close pursuit, Mama goes around the house with a sack, filling it with things that Lenny can remember his kin by, while Sarah and Jubilee do nothing but regard each other.