by Various
“Poor Little Earl,” said Miss Jewel sadly, setting the misused cat’s saucer in a pan of ammonia to soak. “Remind me to make him up a box of canned goods before they leave.”
There were two big pecan trees that shaded the house, and most years provided us with an abundance of nuts for our holiday pies, cookies and cakes. Traditionally it was the youngsters’ jobs—and this year we had a collection ranging from ages three to eight—to gather and shell the pecans while we women readied the kitchen for the annual baking of the fruitcakes. For as long as the men had been leaving their wives at home alone on the opening day of bird season, the women had been using the time to make our batch of Six-Week Fruitcakes. And since the prime ingredient in the famous fruitcake was, in fact, eighty-proof, it was generally a very festive time.
All morning we worked, getting a meal on the stove for when our hungry men came tramping in after midday, full of swagger and tales of triumph. Occasionally we would hear the barking of a dog or the report of a shotgun, and we would look at each other, our eyes reflecting worry and relief—worry because the sound of a gunshot was by its nature disturbing, but relieved because at least it meant they were still close by. We fried up a pan of chicken and one of ham, filled an iron skillet with buttermilk cornbread and rolled out a pan of biscuits. We put a couple of pots of vegetables on the stove to simmer with salt pork.
All the while we gossiped, catching up on the news since we had all seen each other last, trying to keep Miss Jewel’s mind off the only man she had ever loved, who was wandering around in the woods in a weakened condition with a loaded shotgun. I don’t think one of us missed Cathy, or thought about her out there in the cold picking up pecans with the children. If she crossed our minds at all, it was in relief to have her out of the way.
At noon Cathy and the children came in, all of them red cheeked and chap-handed, lugging a bushel basket half filled with pecans between them. The children were laughing and excited, and even Cathy seemed pleased with her labors. No one had the heart to point out that half the nuts were unusable, having been tossed down by squirrels while they were still in their green husks.
When the children were fed and put down for their naps, the real work began. We still had a couple of hours before the men were expected back, and we wanted to at least have the cakes in the oven by then. For the second time that day we scrubbed the kitchen floor to ceiling, washed the dishes and carefully replaced them in the corner china cabinet, and stripped off the vinyl tablecloth. We spread newspapers over the long trestle table, and brought out the tube pans and the waxed paper. During most of this Cathy simply stood by looking helpless, so I sat her down at one end of the table and showed her how to cut out waxed paper liners for the pans. It was tedious work, and she looked less than thrilled.
Within moments the kitchen was filled with the fragrance of cloves and cinnamon and the tabletop transformed into a jeweled wonderland as small plastic tubs of candied citrus, cherries and chopped mixed fruit were emptied into piles. But it wasn’t until Miss Jewel brought out a cider jug that had been filled with this year’s chosen libation, muscadine wine that we all let out a collective “aaahhh” of appreciation.
Miss Jewel ceremoniously poured each of us a thimbleful into a sherry glass–for purposes of tasting, you understand, and deciding whether the wine was fit to soak the fruitcakes in. We waited until everyone was served, we sniffed, we smiled, we tasted. We gave murmurs of delighted appreciation as the fresh heady taste of new wine warmed our mouths and our fingertips.
Cathy said, staring dubiously into her glass, “Are you sure it’s safe to drink?”
“Unless you’re a Baptist!” replied one of the sisters-in-law, and we all shrieked with laughter.
“It’s smells kind of...sour,” Cathy said, still looking at the glass as though she’d rather drink rat poison.
Miss Jewel went over to her, took her glass, sniffed it sharply, and drank the contents down. “Nope,” she pronounced, setting the glass down on the table with a clank. “Tastes fine to me.”
We grinned, and emptied our glasses.
Miss Jewel traditionally chose one assistant to work with her, sifting flour and beating eggs, while she mixed up the thick rich batter that was the basis for the fruitcake, while the rest of us chopped fruit and nuts and prepared the pans. It was only right that this year she choose Cathy, the newest member of the family.
We were making a half dozen cakes, one for each family and one to give away, and the bowl we used was approximately the size of a washtub. We held our collective breath when Cathy picked up the bowl, half-filled with fruitcake batter, and transferred it from the mixer stand to the counter top, where the last of the sifted flour would be folded in by hand. But our relieved smiles and raised eyebrows were shared a moment too soon. Cathy picked up the paper towel—yes, paper—upon which she had sifted six cups of flour and the requisite spices, and turned to carry it to the bowl. Six cups of flour and spices rained down onto Miss Jewel’s freshly mopped floor when the paper towel split.
I’ve got to say, we were all feeling a little sorry for Cathy by that point. She was such an obvious misfit, helpless in the kitchen, completely out of her element with her husband’s family. But it was, after all, six cups of flour and the last of the cinnamon she had spilled, and no one could say for sure what shape the rest of the batter would be in by the time one of us drove to store for more supplies. Miss Jewel decided to take no chances, threw out the contents of the big bowl, and started over.
It was well after two o’clock by the time we all resumed our places at the big table. Cathy was assigned the relatively harmless job of separating the nut meats from the shell with a silver nut pick. Miss Jewel stirred the batter in the big yellow bowl with a wooden spoon, the rest of us chopped candied fruit and rolled it in a mixture of flour and spice. We sipped daintily on our little glasses of muscadine wine while we worked, but the talk grew desultory as the afternoon wore on. We kept glancing toward the window, and trying not to. We hadn’t heard a gunshot in a long time, nor the bark of a dog.
Finally Cathy burst out, “Where are they? Earl said they’d be home by lunch!”
We called the midday meal “dinner” in the country. Somehow, her simple misuse of a word separated her from us more than anything else she had done that day. We glanced at each other, but no one answered right away.
Then Miss Jewel said in a tone as calm and flat as though she were reporting the weather, “They’ll be along directly.”
“Probably walked over to Henry’s Flat,” someone offered.
“That’s an awful long way,” someone else worried.
“One of those fool dogs might’ve got loose.”
“That’s probably it.”
Cathy’s gaze darted from woman to woman as though each one might hold the answer to a prayer. I tried to make my smile reassuring as I told her, “They’re never out later than four.”
At four o’clock, I said, “They’ve got another good hour before dark. They’ll be here.”
But it had started to rain, a slow, ugly, bone-chilling drizzle, and I tried not to think what this weather might do to an already fragile old man. I tried not to look at Miss Jewel while I thought it.
The first batch of fruitcakes went into the oven and filled the house with the warm baking aroma of vanilla and spice. The children, tantalized by the fragrance, made pests of themselves underfoot until they were sent off to the parlor with cookies and milk and a trunkful of old clothes to play dress-up with. The light faded from the lowering gray sky while we chopped more fruit and nuts for the second batch of cakes, and Miss Jewel pulled the chain on the bare bulb that was suspended over the table. A pool of yellow light spilled over our busy fingers and made soft circles in our glasses of wine.
Suddenly Cathy cried out sharply and dropped the nut pick. A spot of blood appeared on her finger.
“What’d you do, prick yourself?”
“Let me see that, honey.”
“
Just rinse it off under the faucet, it’s not bleeding much.”
“I’ll get a Band-aide.”
“No,” Miss Jewel said.
She pushed herself up from the table, wiped her hands on her gingham checked apron, and walked around to Cathy. “Come with me, child.”
She led Cathy over to the mantle, took her bleeding finger, and pressed it firmly into the aged, stained oak of the mantlepiece. “There now,” said Miss Jewel with satisfaction. “Now you go get yourself a bandage.”
Cathy stared at her mother-in-law in a mixture of repulsion and horror. She looked at her bloody fingerprint on the mantle, which was already beginning to disappear into the oiled wood. She looked at us. We were smiling.
“You people,” she said, quite distinctly, “are crazy.”
She turned to leave the room, then whirled around again, her color high. “Your husbands are out there with guns! It’s cold and wet and the grass is slippery...they could be lost or—or hurt—they’re over two hours overdue and it’s getting dark! Mr. Bill shouldn’t be out there at all and my Earl—he’s never even fired a gun, did you know that? He hates guns! You all think he’s just like the rest of them and he lets you think it but he’s never shot anything! But he couldn’t let his daddy down, had to take him out on this stupid hunting trip... And instead of trying to stop them, you all sit here and bake fruitcakes and drink that horrid stuff you call wine and—and put blood on the mantelpiece! Why, that’s not even sanitary! It’s—it’s crazy, you’re all just crazy!”
Miss Jewel said, “Go wash you hands, honey, and come on back and finish them pecans. Smells to me like that first batch of cakes is about ready to come out.”
Cathy looked from one to the other of us. Her voice was strained to the edge of cracking. “How can you sit there and not do anything? They could be hurt, or in trouble! How can you just sit there?”
The oven door creaked as Miss Jewel swung it open, and the sweet spice aroma was so thick we could almost see it. One by one, she removed the cakes from the oven with hands wrapped in dishtowels. And as she worked, she spoke.
“It was right after the War Between The States, and the County was plumb run over with Carpetbaggers and Reconstructionists. It was Willie Barber who built this house, you know, with his young bride Martha, before he went off to fight for the South. And he was one of the lucky ones who got to come back home.
“But what he came home to was a mess. Taxes sky high, law-breakers running the country, Yankees doing their best to beat down any good Southerner that tried to stand up for himself. I done some reading on that time; I know how it was. And that’s why I believe this story.
“The year after the war, cash money was hard to come by. But somehow Willie Barber scraped together enough to pay the taxes on this place. He set off early in the morning to walk the twelve miles over to Jefferson, that was the county seat back then.”
She turned the three tube pans upside down over Coke bottles to let them cool, and returned to the table, picking up her stirring spoon. She began to beat the flour mixture into the batter.
“He was long overdue, getting nigh on to dark, right like it is now, and Martha, I reckon she was getting mighty worried too. I can just see her face, and how relieved she must’ve been when she heard her man’s footsteps on the stoop, and she ran to fling open the door– and he ‘bout fell in on her, all covered with blood.
“Seems he’d been accosted in town, by a drunk with a knife, trying to steal his money. Willie fought back, and killed the man. Maybe it wouldn’t’ve been so bad, but the drunk was a Yankee, and this Yankee was an important one—a commissioner or some such. Like I say, a man didn’t have to have character to be runnin’ things back then, and there were a lot of bad ones in charge.
“So anyways, there was Willie, cut bad on the arm and not too far ahead of the law, who wouldn’t have much trouble proving him a killer, even if it was self-defense, if they found him there all bloody and beat up. The law was all Yankee law back then, and not inclined to hear a Southern boy’s side of any story.
“Martha had to think fast. She hid Willie in the storm cellar, and mopped up the blood and dirt he’d trailed in so’s there’d be no sign. When she heard the horses in the yard she knew they’d come for her man. She grabbed a kitchen knife and hid it in her apron pocket, just in case she had to do some fighting of her own that night. And then she stood right yonder in front of that mantlepiece and met those Yankee law officers just as cool as you please.”
I scooped a double handful of chopped fruit into the batter Miss Jewel was stirring. So did my sister-in-law who sat next to her. Cathy sat with her hands in her lap, still and quiet-eyed, listening. Miss Jewel resumed speaking.
“No sir, she says, her husband wasn’t in town today. No sir, she didn’t know when he would be back. He’d gone off huntin’ squirrel for the dinner table, she says, and he’d be back when he got back. No point in them waiting. Might as well move on.
“It might have worked, might not. But she saw it at the same time that Yankee lawman did–right there on the door, bigger than life, a bloody hand print. She thought she’d cleaned up all the blood, but she had missed that one place where her husband had leaned his hand. And it was enough to get him hung.
“‘What this?’ says the lawman, stooping down to get himself a better look. ‘Looks like blood.’
“Martha, she feels that knife in her pocket, and she slides her hand down the handle, and onto the blade. And she closes her hand around it. Squeezes hard. ‘It’s mine,’ she says, bringing out a hand smeared with blood. ‘I cut myself when you knocked on the door. I didn’t have a chance to wrap it.’”
I reached across the table, scooped up a cup of chopped nuts from Cathy’s pile, and added them to the batter. Someone else tossed in several scoops of floured chopped dates. Miss Jewel stirred, the muscles in her small arms straining as she moved the batter back and forth.
“Now, you can’t tell me,” she went on, “that that lawman didn’t know that wasn’t Martha’s blood on the door. He had to’ve known she’d just cut herself while he was standing there. But when one of his deputies got all riled and started talking about searching the house, so the story is told, he just stood there, looking at Martha, and he said, straight to her face, ‘We don’t doubt a lady’s word, Mister. Her husband isn’t here.’
“And they rode out from there and never came looking again. I reckon he figured a woman like that was nothing to be trifled with. Or maybe he was just glad to be shed of a bad apple, and grateful Willie had done the killing for him. But when they were gone, so the story’s told, Martha was shaking so bad that she grabbed the mantle there, to keep herself upright, and left her bloody fingerprints. What with tending to Willie and worrying about the law, it was days before she thought about cleaning up, and by that time the blood stain had set into the wood. Reckon they could whitewash over the door, where Willie’s handprint was, but not much you can do about that old knotty oak. Some say you can still see her fingerprints to this day, if you look real hard. I don’t know, myself. Could be just the way old wood colors.”
For a time there was no sound except the click of the spoon against the bowl and the faint patter of light rain against the tin roof, like tiny feet scurrying up above. Cathy’s head was turned toward the mantle, and her eyes were oddly bright.
“It’s been kind of a way with the women of this family,” Miss Jewel went on after a time, “to add their fingerprints to Martha’s on the mantlepiece there. Kind of reminds us who we are, and what we’re made of. Must seem kinda silly to you, though, I reckon.”
Cathy blinked, and swallowed, but didn’t speak.
I said gently, “I’d been married two years before I felt like part of this family. Remember, Maddie? I cut my hand peeling potatoes and—“
”Lord, I thought it was the strangest thing I’d ever heard of. Like something Indians would do. But I took a sewing needle, myself and—“
One by one, we related our
own stories of blood and struggle, and fingerprints left in wood. Crazy? Prehaps. But, like our men who had strode off into the dawn to observe a primal rite that no longer had any place in modern life, we too had our sacraments. They brought us home.
The clock on the mantle chimed six, and it was full dark. Silence fell, and we were acutely aware of how many ghosts our voices had been keeping at bay.
Cathy turned to look at us, her color mottled, her lashes wet. She swallowed hard. She said thickly, “What do you suppose Martha would have done tonight?”
We looked at each other. We listened to the rain and the darkness pressing against our small island of light. Then, without another word, we went to gather sweaters and flashlights, and we left the house in search of our men.
#
We met them half way down the dirt road that led to the house, wet and cold but otherwise in good spirits. Mr. Bill was walking slowly, but beaming broadly, and his sons kept close and matched his pace. “Got us a mess o’ quail, old gal!” he called when our flashlights came into view. “Brought home supper one more time!”
Miss Jewel wrapped her arm around his and took the string of birds from his hands and she smiled, broadly and genuinely, for the first time that day.
When the weather started to go bad, it seems, they had taken shelter in the old fishing shack down by the pond, had a few sips of some moonshine Mr. Bill had hidden under a floorboard years ago, and had done some reminiscing of their own. We should have scolded them. But somehow it just didn’t seem appropriate.
Little Earl hung back a little, as though uncertain of his welcome. He needn’t have worried.
It was only after Cathy had disentangled herself from his arms that we all noticed he was carrying Mr. Bill’s shotgun. A little shyly, he reached into the oversized pocket of his hunting jacket and brought out a brace of quail. “Pa let me shoot his gun,” he said. There was uncertainty in his voice, and his eyes, as he searched his bride’s face in the reflection of our flashlights, but there was also an unmistakable pride. “I got these two dead on, one shot each.”