I feel alone even though I’m not the only one here. That’s the way it was when visitors filled the house after Mother’s funeral—everyone walked around quiet as ghosts. The thought brings my darkness with it. My darkness stays away when Stonefield’s near, but when he’s not, it comes creeping back in.
Stonefield. I call to him in my head. Stonefield, please come to me. But the door to the study doesn’t open. This house feels like a chicken coop. I walk out the front door and don’t stop. I climb Hudgens Hill, skirt the cemetery, and head down into Hudgens Hollow where Roubidoux Creek branches off into a little stream.
The air’s cooler here. I breathe in the fresh green scent of river water and ferns and the sweet smell of rotting leaves turning into dirt. Nobody comes here anymore. All the Hudgenses died years ago and people think the hollow’s haunted. That’s why no one’s bought the land. It’s not really haunted, though, except by me. This is where I do most of my wild work.
One day when I was little, I sat in a meadow by myself picking wildflowers and carried them in my apron to the creek branch where the holes in the large smooth rocks were full of water, making little pools. I filled each pool with flowers—one with sun-colored dandelion heads, another with flaming red jewelweed, one with larkspur as blue as the sky, and another with purple violets. It took ages, but when I stood back and saw the water rushing between the gray stones that held those perfect circles of bright color, I thought my heart might stop beating at the beauty of it.
I’ve been making things ever since with vines, thorns, leaves, stones, clay, sticks, flowers, water—I’ve got all the things I need right here. Once I worked all day piling flat round rocks like stacks of flapjacks through the woods. When I finished, the hollow was full of tall stone pillars standing like silent guardians among the oak trees. They’re still here.
Most of my work fades if the wind and rain don’t scatter it, or it falls apart and rots back into the ground, becoming something new and different. I like watching it change and slip away, but I wish I could share with someone the beauty of that fragile in-between moment when it’s not quite mine and not quite nature’s—the magical time before it disappears. I should have shown Mother my wild work. She would have understood.
My work from several days ago is still here. Hundreds of curling tendril vines dangle from tree branches, each with a little feather pinned to its end with a thorn. I collected the feathers all year. Red, brown, black, blue, white, gray, yellow. I walk under the trees with my hands in the air and let the soft slips of shimmering color brush against my fingers as I pass. I wish Stonefield were here. I run my finger over the pebble necklace he gave me.
When I think of him, I know what I’ll make next. But the thunder rumbling in the distance means I have to hurry or it will wash away before I’m finished. I run to the woods. All the cold night rains and sunny days have started to turn the color of some trees early. The sassafras has gone from green to gold with a tinge of red creeping in. I fill my pockets with leaves and carry them to the stream. I already know which rock I’ll use before I get there—the smooth flat one the size of a wagon wheel.
The thunder gets louder as I sit on the bank near the boulder. The smell of approaching rain fills the air. I work fast, cutting away pieces of the leaves with my fingernails and wetting them so they’ll stick to the rock. I use the golden strips and red slivers to make a flaming version of Stonefield’s circle design. The image has been burning in my thoughts ever since I first saw it in the cane field.
I stand and gaze at the swirling lines of bright gold. For a moment, I think the dark rock’s cracking and light’s shining out from its insides. It blinds me like a flash of white lightning. I feel dizzy, but I don’t want to rest—I want to make more wild work as this one gets washed away. The rain will be here in a whipstitch. If I hurry, I can do some rain work. I turn and climb up onto my rain stone, a huge smooth rock bigger than me, and lie down on my back, my arms and legs spread out, my face to the sky. The rain will help me form the image I want to make on the rock.
Now. The drops hit me like little fists. Sometimes, rain can beat the bad thoughts far away from me. Its soft wet blows almost make me forget that Stonefield’s not here beside me and that Effie didn’t come like she said and that Henry’s hiding drunk in his room. I try to imagine instead the raindrops turning from little fists into a thousand little kisses. If I can, they might make me forget that Mother’s gone and will never come back. And that it’s my fault.
The moment I am able to imagine the little fists turning into kisses on my skin, Stonefield’s laugh rumbles deep in my head. But it’s so clear, I can’t tell if I’m hearing it with my ears or my mind. I open my eyes. He’s standing by my rain stone, smiling like the sun.
“Catrina.”
My heart comes alive every time he says my name. I smile back at him, blinking through the rain. He holds out a hand to help me up, but I wave it away. “I’m not finished yet.”
He doesn’t ask what I mean, but nods and waits like he already knows. I stay still until the gray surface of my rain stone turns completely black except for where I’m lying, then I reach for his hand, and he pulls me to my feet. His warmth courses through my cold fingers as I jump down beside him. We laugh at the silhouetted image I left behind on the wet rock. The strange, skinny rock girl looks surprised, with her arms, legs, and hair all spread out that way. Slowly, the girl disappears as the blackness of the rain swallows her up. But this time, I’m not alone when she goes. Stonefield’s hand is large and firm around mine. I feel the hot blood flowing under his skin. I’m not a cold stone girl. I’m full of something bright and burning.
He walks to my circle design and squats beside it, tracing what’s left of it with his finger. We watch as the rain pushes the last of the leaves from the rock into the creek. As they float away, the golden strips look like little flames flickering on the surface of the water.
Catrina, he says, silent, as he looks up at me. Show me more.
I think a flock of tiny thistle birds lives under my breastbone and they’re all beating their wings at once. No one’s ever asked to see what I do in the woods. No one’s ever looked so hungry and thirsty for more of me like Stonefield does. I take his hand and pull him to his feet.
He follows me over the stones, into the woods. Rain pelts our faces and soaks our clothes. We weave between the stone guardians toward my feather vines. When he sees them, Stonefield stops and stares, slowly turning to take everything in. Raindrops hit the feathers, making them twirl and spin.
I spin, too. I turn around and around until the whole world blurs. Stonefield, the sky, the woods, the dirt, the rain—we all melt together. It reminds me of the thaumatrope Henry bought for me at the county fair when I was little—when I twisted the strings in my fingers, the spinning pictures turned into one magical image that took my breath away.
Spinning makes me feel weightless, like my soul’s coming loose from my body. The dizziness turns my legs weak, and I slip to the thick carpet of brown leaves below. Hudgens Hollow keeps spinning around me. Stonefield lies down, too, his hair touching mine and his body stretched out in the opposite direction. We must look like paper dolls connected at our heads, cut from the same piece and opened up. We lie quiet under the twirling feathers until the rain stops and the thunder rolls off to some other land. Water drips from weighted tree limbs.
“Catrina, your art—the fire leaves, the rain girl, the stone pillars, the feather vines—it’s beautiful.” His voice is so low, I’m not sure I heard him right.
“Art?” The word makes me think of expensive pictures in fancy gold frames. Henry says a man in St. Louis paid the price of two Thoroughbred horses for a painting of the Mississippi River just so he could look at it in his parlor whenever he pleased.
I twist around to see Stonefield. “You think my wild work is art?”
He nods. “The most beautiful I’ve ever seen.”
I grin back. “You mean the most beautiful that you can
remember.”
He rolls over on his stomach to face me. His features are sharp and fierce, but his words turn so tender, I want to touch the softness of his lips with my fingertips. “Some things are beautiful because they’re pleasing, and some things are beautiful because they’re true. If pleasure and truth come together—that’s the kind of beauty no one can forget.” When he looks at me that way, it seems like his words have two meanings—his mouth talks about my work and his eyes talk about me.
My heart beats faster. “I don’t know anything about art. My wild work comes from my head. And from somewhere behind my rib cage where it gnaws at me until I have to let it go. I don’t know what else to do but bring it here and set it free.”
“That’s what makes it true—it comes from straight inside you. That’s why it’s so beautiful.” His steady stare turns my skin warm. “And it belongs here in the hills and the hollows, near the plants and stones. It belongs in the creek and the air.”
He’s saying things I’ve felt but never had the right person to tell them to. His words stir me up like a spoon in a bubbling pot.
“Everything here in the wild lives without being told how it should be done. Maybe you and I belong here, too.” He glances up at the feathers fluttering above us.
It’s true, isn’t it? I say in the way only he can hear.
He rests his forehead against mine. Yes, it’s true.
I smile. True and beautiful.
8
We work side by side all afternoon, only stopping to eat the biscuits and cheese I stuffed in my pockets. Having Stonefield help with my wild work fills me up with light like I swallowed all the stars in the sky. I can’t stop laughing for the joy of it. Sometimes he stops what he’s doing and grins at me, the breeze ruffling his hair and flapping the ends of his white linen shirt. He looks so alive, I want to step into his body and live inside him. I think maybe our souls are connected and always have been, but somehow our bodies got separated and lost to each other. Until now.
Stonefield helps me build a sled from tree limbs to pull loads of rocks through the woods. He understands what I want almost before I do and helps me move more stones and gather more blooms than I ever could on my own. By early afternoon, we’ve built a small, round, roofless house of creek stones under the hanging feathers. Our door is a curtain of ivy and our floor is a thick bed of posy petals—wild roses, bright butterfly weed, soft blue aster—and scattered leaves of mint.
As we dust off our hands and admire our finished work, a shot rings out from the direction of Roubidoux Hollow, followed by a second.
“It’s Papa,” I whisper.
Stonefield’s eyebrows knot up in concern.
“No, it’s all right—that’s how he calls for me when he wants me to come home—if something was wrong, he’d only shoot once. Still, I better go before he gets worried. And you need to get back to the study soon.” I swallow the disappointment that swells in my throat.
“We can come back tonight when everyone’s sleeping.”
“I don’t want to wait that long.”
Stonefield grins. He picks up a tiny yellow-gray feather that’s fallen to the ground. “‘We’ll quickly dream away the time; and then the moon, like to a silver bow new-bent in heaven, shall behold the night of our solemnities.’”
He twirls the yellowthroat’s feather in his fingers as he talks. Words I’ve only read on paper come alive when he says them. I smile and glance at our work one more time before I turn to go.
Stonefield takes hold of my hair and pulls me back against him. His fingers find my neck. “Catrina.” His words are warm breaths on my skin. “I’ll come back tonight and meet you here after supper.” He unbuttons the top button of my shirt and slides the yellow feather through the buttonhole, then pins it down by buttoning it again. “Don’t forget.”
I lift my face and laugh at the sky. Nothing could ever make me forget him, not in a thousand years. I shake loose his fingers, even though I want them to tighten around me, and run toward home. Lord, I wish it was night.
* * *
When I get home, Henry’s not there, but Papa’s humming “Camptown Races” in the smokehouse, where he’s fixing the floorboards.
“Papa, are you all right? I’m sorry it’s so late in the afternoon and I wasn’t here for dinner—”
“Cat.” When he sees me, his face lights up. Since Stonefield arrived at the farm, Papa seems to have found a taste of new life. He smiles. “Don’t worry, Henry doesn’t know you weren’t here—he’s been gone, too.” He doesn’t ask me where I’ve been, he just puts his hammer down to take hold of my arm.
A clanking noise sounds from outside.
“Look at this!” He leads me out the back door of the smokehouse and beams.
I yelp. “Holy Moses!”
Napoleon is running on some kind of contraption that moves under his feet as he runs, but the dog stays in one place. The contraption’s hooked to a wheel that moves the handle on the butter churn up and down. The clanking is the sound of the butter being churned by Napoleon the dog.
“Papa—”
“Isn’t it amazing? After you went to bed last night, I guess Stonefield couldn’t sleep. First he fixed the broken swing in the oak tree, but then Henry and I heard him tinkering out here and came out to find him working. I stayed up most the night watching him. He said he made this for you so you wouldn’t have to bother staying at home churning the butter, because he imagined you had better things to do. He said he can make one that will even toss the laundry around in a tub till it’s clean. Can you believe it?”
Warmth spreads through my body, starting behind my ribs and reaching all the way to my toes and fingertips. Nobody’s ever done a thing like that for me. No wonder they slept so late! A laugh bubbles up in my chest, and when it comes out, I can hardly stop.
Papa laughs, too. “Cat, the dogs love it. I let them take turns. Just look at Napoleon wag his tail.”
“It’s the best present I ever got! I bet Henry thought it was something! Now maybe he’ll leave off bothering Stonefield after seeing how helpful and hardworking he is.”
Papa’s face falls. “I reckon Henry didn’t care for it. He says you have too much time on your hands as it is or you wouldn’t keep running off to the woods.”
My skin turns hot. Oh Hell. “Henry knows I’d plow the fields as good as a man if he’d let me, but he just wants me to stay at home.”
Papa shakes his head, puzzled. “I don’t know what’s ailing him. Must be the start of this war—he’s worried Missouri will be lost to the Confederates. I tried easing his mind off it. I told him Stonefield was probably the brightest fellow I’d ever met and that I’d given the boy my pocket watch for a present because I want him to think of us as family since he’s without any, but Henry didn’t seem pleased.”
Something sharp scratches at my throat and I can hardly get the words out. “You gave Stonefield the gold watch that your father gave to you?”
“Yes!”
Henry was already mad—now he must be steaming not to inherit his own grandfather’s watch and see it go to a near stranger. My heart turns heavy. If Henry gets too fired up about Stonefield, he could ruin everything. “Papa, where did Henry go?”
He scratches his head. “It’s the damnedest thing, Cat.”
“What?”
“Henry went a-courtin’.”
Courting? I feel like Lot’s wife in the Bible, when God turned her into a pillar of salt. The slightest breeze could make me crumble into a thousand little grains. “You mean he went to see Effie?”
“Nope.” Papa shakes his head. “Henry’s gone to propose to Miss Dora Hoss.”
“Damnation!” I kick a stone, barely missing Napoleon and the butter churn contraption.
“Cat—”
“He wouldn’t do such a fool thing.”
“Lots of young men marry their sweethearts before they go off to war.”
“Dora’s not his sweetheart. Henry loves Effie lik
e she’s God’s own cousin. What’s he doing with Dora Hoss?” I kick the side of the smokehouse. “And Henry isn’t joining the army.” The thought sends a shiver up my spine. He wouldn’t leave us alone on the farm, especially with Papa so frail. “You must’ve got it wrong.”
“I don’t know, Cat.” A line of worry creeps across his forehead, and I hate Henry for being the cause of it. “A lot of the young men are talking about joining the army, and Henry has strong opinions about keeping Missouri in the Union. And he’s always been outspoken about slavery and how it’s tearing the country apart. He isn’t the type to sit by idle. You know that, Cat. And before he left this morning he told me himself that he was going to propose to Dora.”
“No!” My voice turns loud, and Napoleon starts barking and his legs go faster.
My legs start moving, too.
“Cat, where’re you going? You already missed dinner, and it’s almost suppertime.”
“I’m going to Effie’s,” I yell.
“But you never go to the Lenox place. You said you’d rather climb a thorn tree with an armload of snakes.”
It’s true. But I don’t care. I have to see Effie.
9
I’m all hot and sweaty by the time I run the three miles to Effie’s. It’s a good thing for me that Effie’s father has never thought to get himself some watchdogs, because peering through windows to find Effie is thousands better than knocking on the door. I quit coming to Effie’s house long ago so I wouldn’t accidentally slap her sister, Lu. Lu Lenox talks like buttered sugar, but her eyes say puckered sour things.
She’s been mad at me for ages for something that wasn’t even my fault. Once, when I was swimming in the creek, Frank Louis was spying on me from behind a tree on the bank. Lu was always sweet on Frank and thought he was the handsomest boy in Roubidoux, but when she caught him looking, he called her a “nosy nigger” and grabbed her and bent her over, saying, “I’ll teach you a lesson.” He pulled up her dress and spanked her on the seat of her bloomers. I heard Lu screaming for him to stop, so I snuck out of the creek and grabbed a handful of rocks. But Frank saw me, and he knows full well I have good aim, so he let her go. She ran off crying, but Frank just laughed as he walked away.
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