by Isla Morley
“And you loved her.”
“From the minute I saw her.”
“Did the two of you become a pair?”
Pairing is what happens between two of a kind; what happened between him and Jubilee had more to do with belonging. In each other, they found their home. “You got a lady?” Havens asks.
“Yes, sort of.”
“What kind of answer is that?”
“Well, she’s studying for the bar exam so she doesn’t have a lot of time.”
“Let me give you a piece of advice.” Havens straightens the frame and tidies the pile of books around it. “If you love her, go after her and win her over, and don’t let anyone talk you out of it, especially not her.”
Rory comments that Jubilee appears to be the same age in these pictures as in the one he brought. “I’m guessing this was sometime in the twenties?”
“Geez, kid, how old do you think I am?” Havens quips. “That was 1937.”
“What a coincidence—that’s the year I was born. Theoretically, that is.”
“What do you mean, ‘theoretically’?” And what is it about a coincidence that always makes the needle of a person’s internal pressure gauge start bouncing around?
Rory explains that in going through his mother’s documents, he couldn’t find his birth certificate, and that according to the state, his birth was never registered, and all the while Havens is registering that the needle inside his chest is deep in the red zone. “All I have is a baptismal certificate.”
A few winters back, Havens got caught in a whiteout. Within hollering distance from the house, as it would later turn out, he had completely lost his bearings, which is the exact same feeling he’s having again. “But surely your father must know.”
Rory shakes his head. “And he’s not my real father. I told you my whole life changed when my mother died.” He snaps his fingers. “Just like that, you think you know who you are, and then you don’t.” Havens has to force himself to concentrate on what Rory is saying, that the man who raised him told him after the funeral that Rory had been fathered by someone else. “He doesn’t know the man’s name or anything about him, and it doesn’t really matter to him because I am in every sense his son. He said he’s always believed I had the right to know and if he’d had his way, it would’ve been out in the open years ago, but he respected my mother’s wishes. You don’t know who your mother really is, then a day later you don’t know who your father is!”
“She changed her name,” Havens says to himself, dashing inside. “Of course she changed her name,” he mutters to himself. Why wouldn’t she? He heads for the studio at the far end of the house, rushing down the hallway—a gallery of wildlife photographs. To get to his old pictures, he has to move aside the setup for his macro work, get on all fours, and reach all the way to the back of the photo cabinet for the shoebox. It takes no small effort to get back up. When he returns to the sunroom, he takes the commissioned black-and-white photographs from the box and deals them out in front of Rory as though they were tarot cards. Mixed in with the scenics of the town are the portraits of its residents.
Viewing them now, a person would think it was a grind, sunup till sack time for these folk. Romance is not in any one of these pictures. It was easier to depict people showing affection to their mules than to one another. The men look like beasts, fit only for picking coal out of caves or hoeing dirt or socking one another in the jaw, and the women, scabbed with grease and worry, peer right past their children into the future, as though it can’t come quickly enough. If all you had to go by were these photographs, you wouldn’t be able to imagine anything but misery coming out of that time, anything but the taste of dirt and the smell of sweat and the loss of dreams stacked on top of one another like broken plates. Weight is what a person thinks looking at them. How could they have carried anything but weight?
Photographs are tumbling from his trembling hands. Why has he been so stupid, so slow? Why hadn’t he seen the resemblance until now? He sifts through the portraits, scattering some to the floor, until finally he singles one out—the portrait of Revered Tuttle at the altar, and in the background, his daughter trimming candlewicks.
“That’s your—”
In unison with Havens, Rory exclaims, “Mother!”
“She was known around here as Sarah Tuttle.”
Rory holds the photograph close to his face. “She’s so young in this picture. And poor.” He has taken on both a stiffness and a hollowness, like clothing washed in cheap soap and baked on a line.
Havens ought to take one of those pills the doctor gave him a couple years back for when his heart starts clocking it. He excuses himself and, forgetting he is a seasoned outdoorsman, gets lost in his own kitchen. He cannot find the damn pills. “You drink whiskey, Rory?” he yells. Getting no reply, he reaches for the dusty bottle on the top shelf, pours two fingers in each glass, and returns to the sunroom, where Rory is slumped in the rocking chair with the photograph in his lap. “You knew my mother.”
“Not well. She left Chance soon after I moved here.” He can’t stop staring at the kid. “That’s your grandfather, Reverend Tuttle.”
“I knew him only as Pop. He died when I was four, and my grandmother about a year later. I vaguely remember going to my grandfather’s church, but my mother said that’s not my memory, only what she told me.”
Havens takes a big swig of whiskey, makes a face, and breathes out the fumes through his teeth. “Lenny.”
Over the top of the photograph, Rory regards Havens.
“That’s what your name used to be.” Havens takes another sip.
“My mother sometimes used to call me that.”
“The first time I met you, you were just a few weeks old.”
“I was born here?” Rory pores over the other pictures.
Havens nods. Running through his head is only one refrain: How can it be?
“Do you have any other photos of my mother? Do you have any of my father? Do you know him?”
How is Havens expected to tell about this man’s roots, about his father? Which question is he supposed to answer first, and what of the things Rory hasn’t yet thought to ask?
Shuffling through the pictures as if to rustle up the figure who will explain everything, Rory stops to examine another picture, one of Willow-May sitting on the porch steps with her doll.
“That’s my guitar! I have that guitar! See where the black finish has worn off? That’s my guitar!”
Havens puts on his reading glasses, and Rory taps the area on the porch just to the right of the front door, where Levi’s guitar is propped against the wall.
“My mom told me a very important person wanted me to have that guitar,” Rory continues. “She said more songs were caught in those guitar strings than trout on a fisherman’s rod, but I always wondered what kind of important person would give a kid a banged-up cheap guitar. She insisted I learn how to play it. Sometimes she would have me play something she could sing, but then she’d usually start crying, and that’s why I took up the keyboard instead. I never liked that guitar.”
“That was your father’s guitar. His name was Levi Buford. He was the son of Gladden and Del Buford, the brother of Jubilee and Willow-May.”
For a while, Rory doesn’t speak. “He’s dead, too, isn’t he?”
Havens downs the rest of his drink. “Levi was a decent man and a hell of a musician, and he died before his time.”
“How old was I when he died?”
“You hadn’t been born yet. He knew about you, though. He was happy about it, too, and wanted to make a go of it with your mother.”
“So what stopped him?”
Havens takes the roundabout way, explaining about Levi’s rare blood condition that made his skin appear blue, and Rory stops him partway through the story.
“My mother used to sing a song called “The Lark and the Boy So Blue.” All this time, I thought ‘blue’ meant sad.”
“He and your mother made e
ach other very happy, and you’re the product of that happiness.”
Havens checks his watch. He’s lost track of time. Hurrying into the kitchen, he gathers up his camera and fills a couple of canteens with water.
Rory follows him. “So he died from his condition?”
“In a way, you could say yes.” Thirty-five years and it still pains Havens to talk of Levi’s death. “Prejudice got him in the end.” Havens can’t think how to stall Rory except to hold up his hand. “Not all at once, kid. Please.”
He inspects Rory’s shoes. “What size do you wear?”
“Ten. Why?”
“I’ll be right back.” When Havens returns from the shed, he hands Rory hiking boots and a pair of snake chaps. “Put those on over your trousers, just to be on the safe side.” He packs the rucksack, grabs his hat, and flings open the screen door. “Are you always this slow?” Havens hands him the large paper sack that’s been propped up against the porch rail, and Rory peeks inside.
“Is this a wreath?” he asks.
Setting a brisk pace, Havens cuts through the back of the property, showing Rory where to watch out for stands of poison ivy, in places neck-high, and in no time they have reached the path that runs alongside the creek. They cross where it bottlenecks, and then pick up the path as it veers to the left and begins its steep incline, flowering jewelweed and poke growing thick on both sides. Havens leads him along the same route he and Massey explored all those years ago, the only difference now is Havens could walk it blindfolded. Several times along the way, he checks on his companion, who has stopped asking about bears and snakes and sinking sand. When they arrive at the overlook, Havens pauses for a drink, and surveys the vale where the house stands—the house he built—and the stables and the pond that took forever to dredge, which has yet to be visited by a single goose. “Say what’s on your mind, son.”
“When you said prejudice got my father in the end, do you mean someone killed him?”
No flies on this one. “As far as I’m concerned, the man who killed your father doesn’t have a name. If there’s an entry for him in the Book of Life, it’s just a smudge.”
“The old woman in the cemetery, the one who called you a murderer, was that the smudge’s mother?”
Faro’s aunt, Verily Suggins, is who that is. “Let’s save that story for the walk back.”
Havens points out a pileated woodpecker drilling into a dead tree, and a bit farther, the little family of grouse scurrying into the undergrowth. Just before they come to the place, Havens tells Rory, “This is where your father’s buried.”
“Why all the way out here? Why not in the cemetery?”
Picking a sprig of foxglove, Havens explains that this is where many of his relatives are buried, beginning with his great-grandmother Opal. “Back then, the people in town wouldn’t allow her to be buried in the church graveyard because she was blue.” Sentiments have changed over the years, but who wouldn’t prefer to be buried here? One day, Havens will be buried here.
Just beyond the carpet of wild ginseng is Del Buford’s grave, a small stony plot in the shadow of a regal maple tree. None of the graves up here used to be marked, but Havens has had engraved headstones placed at every one, and Buford’s grave has already been cleared of weeds and its pattern of pebbles around the edge tidied.
Rory nods in the direction of the area shaded by birch trees on the far side of the clearing. “Who’s that?”
Havens beams. “Wait here a minute.” He takes the paper sack from Rory, and, rushing ahead, whistles to the beautiful gray-haired woman kneeling beside Levi’s grave.
“You’re late. I was starting to get worried.”
“I got held up.”
“I left the hyacinth bulbs for you to plant.” She has him notice the violets she’s planted at the foot of the grave. “I have enough left over for Socall, but I’m going to have to trim back the laurel around her grave because it’s gone crazy.” From the sack, she pulls the wreath and the colorful paper flowers that the two of them spent a week making. “See how pretty it’s going to look on Levi’s headstone? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Havens sweeps her hair from her face and tucks the foxglove above her ear. He doesn’t like to think how close she came to dying in the fall of 1937. Gladden once told him she’d bathed Jubilee so thoroughly that day, sponging every inch of skin, because it was the only way she knew how to say goodbye, that she would never have imagined it would lead her to the site of the infection that the doctor hadn’t before been able to source and therefore treat. Jubilee used to complain at times, especially in the early years of their marriage, that Havens worried too much about her, that he had to let her roam the hills by herself when she needed to, and he can’t say he ever worried less, only that he got better about keeping it to himself. When Jubilee consented to marry him all those years ago, she raised the question of whether love is ever on the level, and what marriage has taught them both is that love’s incline changes depending on who needs the flow of affection most. In truth, it has favored him more, though she is the one most deserving. Now there is another young man who is about to be favored by her love. Havens caresses her cheek. “Oh, my darling.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
“Who?” She glances past him. “Who’ve you brought, Clay?”
What he has to say to her is part fairy tale, part Gospel by-and-by, and there is no suitable introduction. “It’s Lenny. Levi’s boy has come.”
Believing and knowing aren’t the same thing. Believing is the little fort you build in your head, while knowing is what you feel first in your knees. It’s what makes a body go slack. He holds her around her waist and shores her up, and she puts her hand on his chest while he beckons for Rory to come forward.
“Hello?” Rory’s eyes are wide with wonder as he makes his approach.
A lifetime ago, Jubilee would’ve been inclined to hide, but she has spent many years doing as she pleases—mostly putting out hay for the horses and nursing their neighbors’ livestock back to health and giving Havens a run for his money photographing little creatures—and has therefore come to trust the blessing of an unremarkable life. Of the two of them, Havens prefers privacy, whereas Jubilee has long been reconciled with those who used to keep their distance, and welcomes company. She eases from Havens’s embrace. Making a little steeple of her fingers against her mouth, she keeps shaking her head. He can’t hear what she is whispering to herself. She seems to falter, but only for a moment, and then unsteady steps become wide strides and graceful arms stretch out to welcome what was long ago given up.
With the proceeds from the sale of their books, Havens and Jubilee bought all this land, in part to secure an undisturbed peace for these unmarked graves, but now that they are old, they’ve discussed what might happen to the land when they’re gone, who might they bequeath it to so that both the land and the story of the Blues will be forever intertwined and preserved. What could be more fitting than entrusting this legacy to the member of the next generation? Married all these years to Jubilee, Havens has discovered that life is a string of beginnings. Sometimes, a beginning has worn away a bit more of that old regret of having once brought her harm. Sometimes, a beginning has made him feel proud, and sometimes like he’ll never be good enough for her. Now Lenny’s return is another beginning, and who knows what all it might call forth.
Havens opens his rucksack and pulls out the Nikon F Jubilee gave him a few years ago to celebrate the third book they collaborated on, which was funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and published under a pseudonym. He slips the strap over his head, pops off the lens cap, and squints through the viewfinder. Jubilee is introducing herself to her nephew. He is bending a little and she is reaching up to touch his cheek. Havens catches just a fragment—she’s telling him how little he used to be. Little rooster, she calls him. Maybe she’ll want to show him that old wolf tree where she
found him all those years ago, but now she takes his hand and starts to introduce him to those who lie in repose, telling him the tale that’s only ever been hers to tell.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank my agent, Emma Sweeney, who with every draft of each novel taught me how to be a better writer, dispensing sage advice along the way. “Just keep writing” was her exhortation when I fretted about the publishing business and my prospects, and because she is right about everything, I did/do. I will miss her and be in her debt always. Margaret Sutherland Brown read this book when I was convinced it was done, but with one eye a telescope and the other a microscope, she gave the story direction that turned out to be transformative. In gratitude, I hereby pledge to do it her way from now on.
That this book found such an enthusiastic reception from Jessica Case is something for which I am deeply grateful. I couldn’t ask for a better editor or publisher. Nor could I ask for a better cover design, thanks to Derek Thornton. Also deserving of praise are Maria Fernandez, Rita Madrigal and Barbara Greenberg for making each page sparkle. I further wish to acknowledge Carol Trost whose article, “The Blue People of Troublesome Creek,” served as an inspiration for this book; Walker Evans and James Agee whose work for the WPA provided a portal to a bygone era; and the Library of Congress for its painstaking preservation of Depression-era photographs and audio recordings, which allowed me access to such rich culture.
It is impossible to convey my gratitude to Carol Saggese for her unwavering support, whether demonstrated by reading and proofing drafts, or praying God’s ears off, or suggesting voodoo dolls. Similarly, I have benefitted from the encouragement of Helena Ogle and George Tagg. Emily Morley is the bright lamp in my life that keeps me steering toward beauty and truth, and if I write accurately about love at all, it is because I have encountered so pure a form in her. She is also to be credited for the title. Robert Morley has been an indefatigable champion of my peculiar calling, and I have come to rely heavily on his input. As is the case with my life, the book is better because of him.