Stone Field

by Christy Lenzi

  Lord. Maybe I’ve always been here. Maybe it’s the room in the parsonage that was a dream. I feel myself sinking into the layers of leaves and moss and dirt beneath me.

  I feel as if I’m pulsing to the thrum of life all around—tree roots sucking water from deep inside the ground; animals burrowing tunnels; stones eroding; seeds sleeping, humming, dreaming, waiting. I lie here like a daughter in the arms of the earth.

  But I still hear my name being murmured in my ear. It’s Stonefield. I am both in his arms and hovering above him as he holds my lifeless body. He’s wounded bad, but somehow he’s driven the wagon to our home in the woods and laid me in our secret house. Henry and the preacher haven’t found us yet.

  The light of a small grease lamp flickers in the dark. He’s decorated my hair with leaves. His own hair is long and dark and curls on his neck. His eyes shine amber in the light with a wildness I remember from the day I first saw him in Stone Field.

  “Catrina.” He runs his fingers over the healed wound on the inside of my arm where I scraped his name from my skin. The scar has faded to a soft silvery mark. Then he traces the small scar on my forehead from the day the people in the church crowded in on me, but I don’t feel his touch. I’m outside my body, barely holding on to it.

  Blood stains his shirt, his arms. “I went away to find myself among my people, but my people didn’t know me, just like your people never really knew you. You and I don’t seem to belong anywhere. Except with each other.” He touches my cheeks, my lips.

  It’s true. The day I almost killed him in Stone Field was the day we each came alive.

  He glides his finger over my chin and down my neck. “I longed to be back in your arms—the only place I ever felt truly known.”

  He holds my seeing stone between his fingers. I think of all the beauty in the world contained in such a small gift. And how I threw it away and he gave it back to me.

  His voice is quiet, like a whisper. “One winter night you came to me. I lay on the hard cold ground, and you flew to me like a dove.”

  I remember the night I lay in the snow inside the secret house while my spirit traveled to Stonefield.

  “You rested over my heart and kept me warm. When you left me, I knew I had to stay alive until I could get back to you.”

  My soul longs to touch his soul. I almost can. Lord, I feel the warmth of it so near. If only I could hold it, I would let go of the cold girl on the ground and become something bright and burning.

  Slow, like he’s almost too weak to move, Stonefield pulls a book from our wooden chest. He opens and reads, “‘We know what we are, but know not what we may be.’” He closes his eyes and lies back down next to me, weak from the bullet inside him.

  I say to him in my silent voice, “To be or not to be. That is the question.”

  He whispers, silent, back to me, deep, deep, deep inside me, Then the answer’s “not to be,” if it means I can be with you.

  Stonefield’s book slips from his hands and lies open between us. The pencil marks of all the little parts he underlined weave across the pages like a thread connecting us.

  The lamp flickers and dies, but now we can see the stars shining above our secret house. I let go of the cold girl and reach for Stonefield.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  “He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

  Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë tells the story of the Earnshaws, a farming family living on the moors of Yorkshire, England. Young Catherine Earnshaw and her dark-skinned foster brother, Heathcliff, become inseparable companions and spend their time running wild together over the moors. As they grow up, familial resentments and social expectations cause Cathy to decide to marry Edgar Linton, a man of higher class. But Cathy, struggling with her decision to marry Linton, confides to the servant Nelly the spiritual connection that she believes exists between herself and Heathcliff. Cathy reveals a recurring dream to Nelly:

  Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.

  For Cathy, the “heath on the top of Wuthering Heights” is, of course, Heathcliff. She has the intense belief that her own soul is intricately tied to another’s in part through the landscape they grew up on. When I set out to write Stone Field, I was interested in the struggles and joys of a troubled and passionate person like Cathy, so I created a character, Catrina, who feels her soul is bound both to Stone Field, the place, with its surrounding hills and hollows, and to Stonefield, the person.

  Wuthering Heights takes place in the isolated Yorkshire moors of Northern England, a setting that Emily Brontë was intimately familiar with. This inspired my decision to set Stone Field in a remote wild environment to which I feel a deep attachment—my childhood home. I grew up among the hills and valleys of the Ozarks on my grandfather’s land, which was nestled in the countryside that stretches between Rolla and Newburg, Missouri.

  Following the Missouri Compromise in 1820, Missouri entered the Union as a slave state, which kept the peace for a time, but its people were divided during the Civil War, with some fighting for the Union and others for the Confederacy. Missouri, a border state, had its star on both flags, had separate governments representing opposing sides, and waged its own miniature civil war within its borders as neighbor fought neighbor.

  As a child, I heard stories of Bushwhacker Bill Wilson, the brother of Napoleon Wilson, my grandfather’s great-grandfather. Bill resisted enlistment by the Union soldiers and sought revenge when they burned his house and barn during the Civil War. I swam in the same creeks as Bill and Napoleon and went spelunking in the caves where Bill once hid from the soldiers. My grandfather’s and mother’s graves now lie in the real Hudgens Cemetery, the old graveyard where Napoleon Wilson is buried.

  Although Stone Field’s setting was inspired by a real geographical area, I created the fictional town of Roubidoux Hollow and invented other fictional locales, such as Lanesville, where Stonefield was a schoolteacher. Some of these sites were placed in personally significant areas; for instance, I imagined Roubidoux’s first church to be on the spot where my grandfather attended a one-room schoolhouse when he was a child. I also sometimes renamed or repositioned landmarks such as springs and creeks to better suit the story I wanted to tell.

  Rolla, in Phelps County, Missouri, was an important site during the Civil War. The southwest branch of the Pacific Railroad had recently been extended to the town of six hundred people and ended there, becoming a busy depot for arriving Union soldiers and supplies on their way to the early battles in southwest Missouri.

  Missouri was a slave state but had relatively few slaves. An 1880s history of Phelps County says that in 1861 there were only about one hundred slaves in the whole county. A brief biography of a white missionary to the Congo in the 1800s who married there and brought back eight black daughters when his wife died, inspired Effie’s and Lu Lenox’s stories.

  Stonefield’s story was based on the various experiences of many displaced Muscogee Creek Indians during the Civil War as well as accounts of mission schools and orphanages in the Western territories. In September of 1861, Creek Indians in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) received a promise from President Lincoln that the United States government would assist them and protect them from Confederate forces. The letter directed their leader, Opothle Yahola, to move his people to Fort Row in Wilson County, Kansas, and pledged refuge and support there.

  Stonefield seeks out the Creek Indians who are headed north at this time in order to join them. But by November, 1,400 Confederates, including pro-Confederate Indians, pursued the fleeing Creeks to convince the chief and his followers to support the Confederacy or to “drive him and his party from the country.” An estimated two thousand of the nine thousand Muscogee Creek people were killed from the battles, diseases, and harsh winter
conditions, leaving a “Trail of Blood on Ice” during their journey to Fort Row. The survivors arrived in December to find that the fort lacked medical support and supplies. Many died that winter under bitter conditions.

  To learn more about life in the Ozarks during the Civil War, read the accounts of those who experienced it firsthand. “Community & Conflict: The Impact of the Civil War in the Ozarks” at ozarkscivilwar.org is a fascinating collection of primary source documents—photographs, letters, journals, and other artifacts—that portray people’s struggles in everyday life during the devastation of the American Civil War. The project is a collaborative digitization effort to document the war in the Ozark region from 1850 to 1875. To find out more about the Muscogee Creek Nation, past and present, please visit the official website, muscogeenation-nsn.gov.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  It takes a village to make a book. The mayor of my little village is Erin Murphy, a brilliant agent and dear friend—thank you for believing in me. I would also like to thank the people at Roaring Brook Press, especially Katherine Jacobs. What a delightful experience to have someone with whom to discuss the imaginary people inside my head as if they were mutual friends. I appreciate your astute insight and shared vision.

  Others in my village who have helped me on this journey include Debby Vetter, editor of Cricket magazine, who published many of my first stories and whose editorial guidance taught me to appreciate the collaborative effort involved in producing good work and fostered in me the desire to write books. I am also thankful for Miciah Gault, Bethany Hegedus, Caroline Carlson, and Hunger Mountain, the VCFA Journal for the Arts, for connecting with my work and publishing various short stories and novel excerpts, the first being an excerpt from an early version of Stone Field.

  Some wonderful people read various drafts along the way. Thanks to Cheryl Klein for her generous and thoughtful notes on an early version, and for introducing me to Francisco Stork and his work. I am grateful to have had him as an early reader. Thanks to Francisco, also, for giving me my own magic seeing stone—a reminder to always find the beauty in the world.

  I am grateful for writer friends who read and critiqued Stone Field at various stages: Jennifer Duddy Gill and Elizabeth Reimer (Weird Martian Gnomes!), Sarah Williams, Rose Green, Sarah Shantz, Suzanne Kamata, Raynbow Gignilli, Jeannie Mobley-Tanaka, and Tanya Goulette Seale.

  Bridget Gallagher, Jan Marlese, Lisa Jones, Allison Savage Atas, and Ellena Gibbons—thank you, dear friends, for your commiseration, art therapy, and laughter. And thanks to Hector Escalante and Wanda Wright for your encouragement at my day job, reminding me that I can do this.

  I also want to credit those whose ideas directly inspired some of my own: Michael Ondaatje tells of his grandmother sewing fireflies into her gown in his memoir, Running in the Family, which inspired me to imagine a similar dress for Cat. The poem “A Noiseless Patient Spider” by Walt Whitman inspired the scene where Cat has similar observations. The work of nature artist Andy Goldsworthy had a tremendous influence on how I formed my ideas about Cat’s “wild work.” And thanks to Zac Spurlin for letting me steal his description of a piece of sky being carried in a mirror.

  I appreciate the assistance of Michael Price, Local History Reference Associate at Springfield-Greene County Library District, in answering my questions. If there are any inaccuracies in this text, they are due solely to my own mistakes or stubbornness.

  My family is familiar with this stubbornness of mine, and I am grateful they have patiently endured my dogged determination to write and publish this book, and cheered me on during the long journey. Thanks to my parents, who always filled our house with love and books. Much love to Alexandria, Noah, and Josh for keeping me supplied with hugs. Alan, I never had to convert you, because you believed in me from the beginning. Thank you for everything. I’m a lucky gal.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Christy Lenzi grew up in the hills and hollows of the Ozarks and now lives in California’s sunny Central Valley. When she's not working, writing, or reading, she is fond of stuffing messages into bottles and throwing them into the river, making art, and zooming around on her motor scooter, Roxanne. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Text copyright © 2016 by Christy Lenzi

  Published by Roaring Brook Press

  Roaring Brook Press is a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

  fiercereads.com

  All rights reserved

  First hardcover edition, 2016

  eBook edition, March 2016

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Names: Lenzi, Christy, author.

  Title: Stone Field / Christy Lenzi.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Roaring Brook Press, 2016. | Summary: In this loose retelling of Wuthering Heights set in Missouri during the Civil War, when free-spirited seventeen-year-old Catrina discovers a mysterious young man with amnesia on her family’s sorghum farm, they fall passionately in love, scandalizing intolerant family members and neighbors.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015027143 | ISBN 9781626720695 (hardback) | ISBN 9781626720701 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Love—Fiction. | Amnesia—Fiction. | Toleration—Fiction. | Racially mixed people—Fiction. | Missouri—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Fiction. | United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Historical / United States / Civil War Period (1850–1877). | JUVENILE FICTION / Love & Romance.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.L445 St 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015027143

  eISBN 9781626720701

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