by Isla Morley
Passing the time at the World of Wonders, Jubilee learned how to look through people’s staring eyes to their own drab lives. One woman she could see lying rigid in bed next to her husband, pretend-sleeping so he wouldn’t touch the last of her alive parts, and another woman in her kitchen deaf to her children’s cries, and sometimes Jubilee could even see all the way through to their dimly lit futures. When she looks into Sarah’s eyes, she pictures everything Sarah confessed that day—sneaking off just hours after her son had been returned to her and stealing the pistol from behind her father’s pulpit, the one with the snake carved into the handle, and tracking Ronny to where he’d once lured her. She sees Sarah aim for the spot between his eyes and miss only by a few inches. But beyond Sarah’s vengeance, what Jubilee sees are hopes and dreams for this child, and doesn’t that count for something? Doesn’t it count as the fiercest kind of mothering?
When it comes time to say farewell, Mama hands Sarah the sack, and in taking it, Sarah seems to be accepting Mama’s blessing, too. In exchange, she promises, “Lenny won’t grow up ignorant or hateful of people who are different.”
Grace isn’t always handed down from heaven. Sometimes it springs up like a dandelion through the floorboards of an old worn porch, and there’s nothing to do but lean toward the tuft and let out that great big breath you’ve been holding so long and see the seeds fly off where they may. And won’t some of those seeds carry far?
With his arm around Mama, Pa makes a speech about everyone in Knoxville going around in an automobile these days and that perhaps Sarah can learn how to drive and bring Lenny back for a visit.
“I’ll write,” she promises. “I’ll send you a picture.”
Jubilee gives Sarah’s hand a squeeze. “Levi would be so proud of you.”
Sarah bends down to whisper in Jubilee’s ear when Pa and Mama step out onto the porch. “If it should ever come up again that Havens’s innocence needs to be proved or your Pa’s innocence or anyone’s for that matter, you go out to that old wolf tree where you found my baby, and dig up that pistol.”
“But what’s to say they won’t come after you?”
Sarah straightens up. “They won’t find me. I’m already someone else.”
HAVENS
After eight days away, Havens is back again in Spooklight Holler. In his absence, the days have grown shorter and colder, but mercifully, the first heavy snow of winter has thawed enough to allow his passage through the holler without mishap. Though being separated from Jubilee has made him irritable and impatient, he has to admit she was right—making his way up the holler, the Contax feels good around his neck again, like he’s put on a treasured talisman, and it is taking him twice as long as it should to get to her house because he has to keep stopping to photograph things for her—the eastern bluebird on a tree branch right above his head, the place where the overnight freeze has turned the edges of the creek into lace, and the fingers of light parting the trees at the turn-off to her aviary. Every picture is a winner and he can’t wait to develop the film and show her. How does she always know what’s good for him?
According to the poll his mother conducted up and down the telephone wires and around the cul-de-sac, no one thinks moving to a backwater town in the Appalachian Mountains makes any sense, and Havens telling his mother that sense never led him anywhere in life expanded her understanding by zero degrees.
“Who would be foolish enough to give up everything and take such a risk?” she fretted.
“Has living a sensible life made you happy, Mom?”
She clucked at that and made Havens’s father look up the number for the Lutheran minister. “He had a very good talk to Doris’s son when he was having problems settling down.”
“Mom, Jeffrey robbed a bank after that talk and went to prison for ten years.”
“I just don’t know why you have to be so rash.”
In his youth, Havens was penned in by illness, and in his adulthood by convention, but now his heart beckons from over the guardrails to a wild borderless land, and he couldn’t wait to get away from the stunted future once intended for him. He pacified his longing for Jubilee by writing her long love letters that will likely only reach her next week, but he has also written her poems, clumsy and wordy, which he’ll deliver in person.
As soon as Buford opens the front door, Havens knows it was a mistake to have left her.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, but Buford takes too long to form an answer, and Havens tears through the breezeway to her room to see for himself. He can barely make her out for the heap of blankets. The room is thick with the smell of pine resin.
“Jubilee?”
Calling her name again when he is right beside her elicits no response. He eases back the covers and is shocked by how gray her skin is. Havens runs his hand across her brow.
“Hello, my darling, hello, my lovely.”
Jubilee’s eyes flicker open.
“Hey, there you are.” Havens holds up his camera. “Look what I’ve got.” He thinks this is what it must feel like to be an apprentice magician whose sole trick fails.
She struggles to raise herself, and the effort does nothing except trigger a spluttering cough that turns quickly into a rib-rearranging hack. While she labors to clear her airways, he holds her upright and rubs small circles on her back.
Havens turns to her parents. “What does the doctor say?”
Because Buford has his fist against his mouth as though to stifle his own cough, Gladden Buford is the one to explain. “He says it can happen when someone’s in bed too long and the lungs don’t clear like they’re supposed to.” She offers Havens a mug of hot cider, which he waves away.
“Pneumonia?” Havens asks. “I shouldn’t have taken her out in the cold that day.”
“Not your fault.” Jubilee’s voice is croupy.
Havens asks about treatment, and is told rest and fluids are the only remedies. Gladden adds that she’s giving Jubilee holly for her cough, pokeweed for when the fever spikes, and boiled hog’s hoof, which Chappy’s grandmother swears by.
Hog’s hoof? “We must get her to a hospital right away so she can be treated properly,” Havens insists.
Jubilee puts her hand on his arm, but he won’t be calm, he’ll take her now, he’ll carry her if he has to.
“The doctor said a hospital can’t do anything for her that we can’t do better.”
“I don’t buy that. They’ll have medicine for her—”
“I can’t go anywhere.” Jubilee sinks back into her pillows and closes her eyes. “Please.”
“Okay, my sweet, you rest.” Havens strokes her hair and, in an instant, she is asleep.
Though she doesn’t wake until noon the next day, her eyes seem clearer and she’s strong enough to sit up without assistance.
“I must have given you a scare,” she says.
Havens could cry. He bends forward and rests his head in her lap, and she runs her fingers through his hair. “I’m better now you’re awake.”
She wants to know about his trip, and he supplies a few mundane details.
“Does your mother think you’re crazy?” she asks.
“My mother believes I’m marrying into the Hatfield family and am going to make moonshine for a living, so she’s thrilled. Couldn’t be happier, really.” The one thing he enjoyed about his trip was shopping for Jubilee. From his rucksack, he pulls out three packages and places them in her lap.
“This is too much.”
“There’s going to be a lot more where that came from,” he says.
She unwraps the first gift and presses the silk pillowslip against her cheek. “So soft.”
When she notices the monogram, he suddenly worries that she’ll disapprove of his decision to have the initial of her last name match his, thinking it premature. “You could put it away till the wedding, if you want.”
She hands him her pillow to make the switch, and opens the next gift, a bar of lavender soap. Beaming, she unties the
black pouch and lifts out the silver locket. “Oh, Havens.” He shows the miniature portrait of him and her tucked inside, and she has him clasp it around her neck, where her engagement ring hangs from a ribbon.
“My finger got too skinny.”
“Well, we’re going to see about fattening it up again.”
When he returns with a bowl of food, she is coughing again.
“You mustn’t worry. The doctor said it’s running its course,” she says in the cough’s wake. In an attempt to cheer him, she adds, “Look, he took the bandages off.” She rolls down her socks partway to shows Havens her calves and ankles, where her skin is shiny and puckered, and she demonstrates her ability to bear her own weight by getting out of bed and relocating to the chair. She holds out her hand for the bowl, also, he suspects, for his benefit. Gamely, she finishes it, smiling between mouthfuls.
* * *
Though the cough does not abate and Jubilee sleeps too much during the day, she does grow restless, which Havens takes to be a good sign. Until she is strong enough to go outside, he has decided to bring the outdoors to her, shooting roll after roll that he immediately develops in Buford’s cellar. He has her write captions for each image and lets her say where on the wall each should be pinned. Because her preferred subjects are animals, Havens has taken dozens of bird shots, and befriended just about everyone in Chance just to photograph their cats, dogs, and horses. Jeremiah Wrightley let him photograph the mice he feeds his timber rattler, and Chappy took him to a cousin who keeps a porcupine as a pet. Jubilee’s latest request, though, has been for people pictures, and Havens has shot portraits of Willow-May, Socall, Chappy, and any child who will sit still long enough. This latest batch he is developing in the cellar when he figures out what Jubilee’s up to. She’s been giving him assignments. She’s having him go out and participate in life without her.
She lowers her book as he enters her bedroom. In an instant, her expression becomes grave. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not taking any more pictures.”
“But I love your pictures.” She gestures around her room, where his images cover much of the walls. “They make me happy. They make me feel like I’m still part of the world.”
He waits for her to finish coughing. “They take me away from you.”
“You can’t spend all your time in this room.”
“Why not?”
She consults the ceiling for a long time before turning to him with an expression of surrender that he has never seen in her face before.
He starts yanking pictures from the wall. “This was a mistake. If you want to be part of the world, you’re going to get out of that bed and come with me and be in it!”
“Havens, please.”
“I don’t want to take pictures anymore!”
She begs him to stop. She gets out of bed and stumbles over to him, pulling at his shirt. “Don’t take them down. Please.”
His shoulders start to shake. He doesn’t want to turn around and have her see him like this.
Arms as thin as a child’s wind around him as he weeps, and she rests her head against his back.
Eventually, he manages to speak. “You’ve got to get well.”
“I will.”
“I need you to promise me.”
“I promise,” she whispers, doing her best to suppress her cough.
* * *
Three days go well. Jubilee eats more, sleeps less, and spends time each day sitting in her chair, but on the fourth day, her body gives up all the gains. She coughs even when she sleeps. Dr. Eckles is summoned, and his verdict is for the Bufords and Havens to prepare themselves. In a fit, Havens sends him away and insists another doctor be consulted, one from Smoke Hole. Havens is defiant. She made a promise, he keeps reiterating, and Buford feels it necessary to take him out of earshot and speak of accepting things.
“You accept what you want,” he tells Buford, “but I am marrying Jubilee, just as we promised each other.”
In the early hours the following morning Jubilee begins burning up with a fever and Havens races out to the wash shed for the basin and fresh water, but Gladden insists on taking it from him at the doorway to her bedroom, asking him to wait. He watches from the doorway. So much has been taken from her, but at the bedside she calmly undresses Jubilee and bathes her, soothing her daughter in a temperate tone, describing some memory of when Jubilee was a little girl.
It’s while she’s sponging Jubilee’s feet that Gladden grows quiet and especially focused. “Oh dear God,” she exclaims. “Clayton!”
Havens rushes to her side. “Get Del to bring Dr. Eckles,” she orders. “It just burst open,” Gladden says of the large open wound between Jubilee’s toes, its inflammation having been camouflaged all this time by blue skin and scarring.
* * *
Jubilee sleeps through the entire day. Seldom does Havens leave her side. Between bargaining with the God on whom he has seldom called and never relied, he reads her entries from the Audubon book and the poems he wrote, and tells her silly stories from his youth. Their future, too, he describes. For her part, she labors to breathe. It’s just as dawn is breaking the next morning that she finally awakes, gasping for water.
Havens helps her sip from the glass.
“Cold,” she croaks, even as sweat beads along her brow.
Havens gets into bed beside her, eases her onto his lap, and cradles her in his arms. He’s frightened by how emaciated she is. When he was fourteen, he had whooping cough so bad that he stopped breathing, and the pressure that built up in his chest made him feel like he was drowning—that’s nothing compared to how he feels now.
Though weak, Jubilee stays awake. “Pictures,” she requests.
He reaches for the latest photographs and shows her the cottontail at the edge of the field, Willow-May coming out of the schoolhouse with a gaggle of friends, the cardinals jockeying for position at the birdfeeder, and, for the first time, a picture of himself. It’s this one Jubilee clasps, comparing the likeness to the real version.
“Your sister’s got serious talent to make me look that good.”
“Handsome,” Jubilee rasps.
“She’s volunteered to be the photographer at our wedding.” He searches Jubilee’s wet eyes. “It’s time we set a date.”
She moistens her cracked, lead-colored lips and tries to speak, but presses her hand against her chest and rides out another punishing offensive. In the lull, she reaches for his hand, and he is surprised by how much strength is still in her grasp. He has to put his ear right against her lips to hear her say, “I’ll marry you in the spring.”
He wants to plead, why not tomorrow, why not today, now, but he lays his cheek against her fingers. “In the spring, then, my darling. It won’t be long.”
SEPTEMBER 1972
It’s with fingers arthritic with age that Havens accepts the glass of water this stranger, Rory Ashe, has poured for him, the very stranger Havens spent the better part of the morning chasing off his property and accosting in the cemetery and who has made friends with Lord Byron and now has just waltzed himself into Havens’s kitchen and helped himself to a good old look around the place. On the coffee table beside Havens is the portrait Rory has come about, the one Havens took of the Buford family on their porch thirty-five years ago. Long gone are Buford and Gladden and the old grandmother with her suitcase. Little Willow-May, so perky in this picture, is a middle-aged woman now, still teaching grade school in Frankfort and taking care of her husband, Paul, who did not go off to war on account of his asthma but made a fine contribution to the nation by fathering five sons. Willow-May and her family used to visit Chance fairly often when their boys were young, but they are grown now and have lives of their own, and Willow-May writes letters telling Havens that roads run both ways.
“This is your book?” Rory has wandered over to the cluttered bookshelf and spotted Havens’s first published work, Edge of Splendor, which received critical praise though most of the copies that we
re printed are boxed up in the shed. “Do you mind if I take a look?” Rory reads the back cover. “It says you’ve helped identify and document three hundred species in Central Appalachia. You are famous!”
“Fame is something I plan to enjoy posthumously.”
“These are amazing.” Rory is particularly enthusiastic about the close-up of a bobcat. He returns it to the shelf and notices the three old portraits of Jubilee in a pewter frame: one of her in the doorway of her aviary, one of her hanging the wash, and another sitting on a rock.
Havens takes up beside Rory. Jubilee doesn’t inhabit a space, she commands it. The ground rises up to meet her step, the doorway widens for her entrance, the wash line lowers itself to accommodate her reach.
“She’s beautiful,” Rory says.
“Jubilee, never ‘she,’ okay, Rory?”
“Yes, sir.”
Her face, more familiar to him perhaps than his own, is full of that serenity that undid him then and undoes him a little now. “Jubilee was twenty-three when I met her and even at that age, she was astute, which took a person by surprise because she had grown up so isolated, but she knew a lot more about human nature than I did, that’s for sure. And when it came to animals, she just had this sense about them.” Havens is surprised by how much he wants to talk about her. All he’s ever wanted is to talk about her, to have every conversation start and end with her.
“It must have been a hard life looking different from everyone else.”
“What showed was her heart.” Never one ounce of bitterness.
Rory points to the picture where she’s sitting on a rock and looking back over her shoulder at the camera, her dimple like a comma, that half-smile, which had the ability to strip away a man’s motives. “I think Jubilee was taken with you.”
Havens could kiss Rory for saying so.