A Parchment of Leaves

by Silas House

  “That old creek’s a pretty sound, but lonesome, too,” Esme said, just as if she had been reading my own thoughts. “When I first come here, I thought this was the lonesomest old place that ever was. I thought I’d never make it.”

  My laugh was short and sudden on the quiet. “I know. Me, too.”

  “I was raised on the other side of Cumberland Gap, you know. In Tennessee. Once through the gap, it spreads out in a big valley. The awfullest big valley you ever seen. The mountains was like a big wall on one side of our farm, but beyond that, it was just fields, full of flowers and gardens. They was so much room to run. Our creek was slow-moving, over limestone, no big rocks to make sound. You could wade in it for miles. When Willem brought me here, this was like a whole new country to me.”

  “Saul never says much about him,” I said. I had barely heard Saul mention his daddy.

  “Nothing much to tell. He was a quiet man, like Saul. Stayed gone a lot when Saul was little. But he could be mean. He was rough on them boys, believed in hard work. Rougher on Aaron, though, and him just a little feller. Willem died when Aaron wasn’t but five year old.”

  “So Saul was his pick?”

  “I couldn’t say that,” Esme said. She pulled her coat together and latched the top button. “He was just harder on Aaron. I guess that’s why I petted him so much. I always felt so sorry for him. He was a pitiful little child, trailing along after Willem, wanting to be made over.”

  I hated picturing Aaron as a child, for it made me aware that he had once been innocent, a baby like Birdie or Luke or Matracia. Thinking of him as a child made it that much harder. I couldn’t hardly stand to hear Esme say his name; she spoke it with a lilt that churned in my gut.

  Esme leaned forward and reached her hand out over the space between our chairs, then put her hand atop mine. I looked at her hand for a long time, so small and soft in spite of all the work it had seen. Then I looked at Esme, who seemed altogether different to me. She had aged so much in the last year, as if she was shrinking into herself. Her hair was thinner and blew in wild wisps around her face. Her eyes were losing their blue. The lines in her forehead had gotten deeper. I had a sudden thought: Esme is sick with grief.

  “They’s something I want to tell you,” Esme said, leaning forward. “Not even Saul knows it.”

  I waited, aware that I was taking short little breaths.

  “Aaron hain’t mine. I never bore him.”

  I brought the cup down from my lips and set it upon my upturned palm. I don’t believe I had ever been so surprised before in my life. But I just waited for Esme to go on.

  “I knowed for a while that Willem was fooling with this gal over on Pushback Gap. She was the talk of the country. Her man had run off and left her with a big slew of younguns and without a dime. She didn’t have no way of making it, couldn’t tend a garden or do her a thing with all them children to see to. Men went over there all the time, and she had another baby after her man had done left. People talked about her a sight, called her the whore of Pushback Gap. They said she took money or things, see. I never had laid eyes on her, but I sure heard tell of her.”

  “Surely not,” I said.

  Esme took her hand away and looked at it as she talked. “One morning, here she come. Packing a little baby. I’d heard enough about her to know who she was. The prettiest woman you ever seen, all dressed up. Had a big silk bow on the blouse of her dress. But right nasty-looking. Wild black hair, yellow-skinned the way people gets from not being clean. I was setting right here. Right here in this spot, drinking me a cup of coffee just like now. Willem was down there bout where your-all’s house stands now, clearing out a place for cane.”

  I looked down the path to where our house was, as if I might be able to see them, but all was lost to the shadows of approaching day.

  “I could tell by the way they was talking to each other. I knowed sure as my name was Esme what had passed between them. When a man and a woman argues, they’s something’s happened with them. She tried to give the baby to him, but he wouldn’t offer his arm for it. He turned his back to her, went right back to chopping with his hoe. I just set here, watching them. Never even got up out my chair. She kept on hollering. I couldn’t really hear her, but I knowed what she was saying. It was plain by the way she stood. And finally she just laid the baby right down on the ground, down there by that rock in your yard. She leaned down over it a minute, like she was having a second thought, then she took off. She run right down the creek. I could see her dress tail turning dark with water.”

  I wanted to say, Don’t. This word rested on my tongue, but I did not spit it out. I didn’t want to be the only one to know this.

  “Willem kept right on hoeing, hitting that ground like it might open up and swallow him if he tried long enough. I don’t know if he knowed that baby was laying there or not, but he bound to have. I don’t see how he couldn’t feel it behind him. So I dashed out my coffee and went down there. I knowed then that I hated him and never would do nothing but that again. To see him with his back to that child laying on the ground. It eat me up.”

  “Esme,” I said—a lost breath, since Esme paid me no mind.

  “I bent down and gathered it up. Little thing, no more than two months old. Prettiest baby you ever seen in your life. Full head of black hair, and all eyes, to boot. Big blue eyes. Wasn’t even crying. Just laying there content as could be, and that hurt me worse than anything, seeing how a child just has to take whatever’s doled out to it. Willem turned around then and asked me what I thought I was doing. I told him that I couldn’t set and watch a little child be left behind and that I knowed it was his. He never denied it, and he didn’t have to. ‘Did you not pay her what she was owed?’ I said, and that was the first time he ever drawed his fist back on me. He never had hit me. I stood there feeling bigger than him. ‘You know better,’ I said.

  “And he did, cause he put his arm right down. I just walked on up the house with the baby. Saul was still in the bed, asleep, him not big as nothing. I laid the baby in the bed with him and changed its rag. Its little tail was blistered with the rash. I balmed him good and wrapped him back up; then I set down on the porch and sung to him. That night I cracked the Bible and seen the name Aaron. And I took him as my own.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “You don’t think about helping a child,” Esme said. She jerked around in her seat real fast and fretted her eyebrows together. “You just do it. Later, I wondered if I was a fool, to raise another woman’s baby. A woman that had laid down with my man. But there wasn’t nothing else I could do. And by the time it really hit me, I already loved him. And a funny thing: what I done killed Willem’s soul more than anything else I could have done. That galled him, seeing how calm I was about all of it. But I never laid with him again, and a good thing that was. I reckon she drowned herself in the river not long after, on account of having a bad disease. I don’t know what happened to the rest of her younguns.

  “Aaron’s mine as much as if I did have him,” she said. “I’ve loved him his whole life. He don’t know no difference. Hain’t no use in telling him or Saul. But I had to tell somebody. I’ve carried that many a day. I guess some people knowed—they had to. But they’re all dead and gone now.

  “I’ll tell you what, now. I grieve over Aaron ever day of my life. Just like when he run off, when he found Aidia. I cried myself to sleep ever night, and now I don’t more know than a goose where he’s at. Good as I was to him.”

  I just looked at Esme. I felt as if I couldn’t look away.

  “I always knowed they was something wrong, though. They was a look that could come into Aaron’s eyes. I never was scared of no man, but I was of Aaron. And it was his daddy in him, or that woman. I don’t know which. But that made me love him that much more, Vine.”

  There was so much hurt in Esme’s voice. I got up and wrapped my arms around Esme, but she set there without moving. She didn’t bring her arms up to put around me. She felt so little
in my arms, little enough to break if I held her too tight. She smelled of talcum and earth. I had never loved her more, had never loved another woman as much, besides my own mother.

  For the first time since Aaron had died in my own house, I cried. I tried to contain myself, but still the tears come. I would have liked to have crawled up onto Esme’s lap and sat there like that for a while, but Esme could not have stood the weight.

  Esme remained quiet. She let me cry but did not weep herself. When finally I pulled away and turned to look out onto the morning, Esme said in a whisper, “I know you’ll not tell it. This is our secret between us.”

  I nodded.

  After a minute, Esme stood and picked up the long basket for our Christmas greenery. She hung her hatchet in the drawstring of her apron and placed the two big knives in the basket. She got the shotgun that was leaned up against the house and handed it to me. We would use that to shoot mistletoe out of the trees. We walked up into the mountain without a word, scanning the treetops for mistletoe, searching the woods for big-leafed holly and mountain laurel. When Esme found a holly bush that was full and dotted with red berries, she had to get down on her knees to chop it down, as the branches growed low to the ground. I squatted beside her. I put my hands through the thicket of sharp leaves so I could hold the middle of the bush. When she swung the hatchet through the air, I held the limb tight, watching the concentration in Esme’s kind eyes.

  PART THREE

  The Promise of Joy

  Dream of deep woods,

  High purple hills, a small cool sky.

  —Jane Hicks, “Gershoem”

  Twenty-three

  When I heard Saul’s truck coming up the holler, I started crying and couldn’t stop. I felt like throwing my apron over my face and running off. Up until then, grief had been swelling in my chest like a plume of smoke looking for air to push out on. I heaved so much that my stomach ached from crying.

  Aidia had invited everybody up there to wait on him, and even though I hadn’t wanted them there at first, I hadn’t told her as much. I thought it might help me to face him. As soon as they heard him pull up, they all run outside—everybody except Serena, who stood over me for a good long minute until she grabbed me by the arm.

  “Straighten up, now,” she said. “Get hold of yeself.”

  I ran to the dishpan and splashed cold water on my face. I could hear them out there, talking loud and laughing and going on. His friends had come up to play music and they was guffawing and slapping him on the back. I raised my head up and there was the mirror, right on the washstand. I couldn’t look at myself for fear of seeing the guilt burning in my eyes.

  He come in, and Serena slipped out the door—to make sure nobody else come in, I guess. He strolled in, big as you please. He had Birdie on his hip and they was both looking at me like I was a lunatic. I was still bent at the washstand and I stood there looking at him in the mirror. I couldn’t make my expression change.

  “Hain’t you even going to say hello?” he said, smiling.

  The words bubbled up in the back of my throat. I had to tell him what I had done. But all I could get out was, “Saul.”

  He come to me and wrapped one arm around me while he held Birdie with the other. I put my face into his neck and there was his same good smell. He smelled of lumber, clean and smooth. Birdie put her little hand on the back of my head and he leaned his face down and kissed me on the forehead.

  “I never thought I could miss nobody so bad as I’ve missed my two girls,” he said. He stepped back and held my chin with his hand, then laughed at me a little. “I’m home,” he said. His voice boomed, louder than I had ever heard him speak before.

  Outside, somebody run a bow down a fiddle. It would be like old times tonight. Since it was so cold out, they were all heading up to Esme’s house. They’d push the front room’s furniture into the back to clear a space for the party. Serena and Aidia had been working up there all day to get everything ready. They had built a big fire from hickory that would crack and pop throughout the night. Later we would eat the ashcakes and potatoes that we’d bake in the red coals. We would dance in Esme’s house, and Serena would step out into the circle to sing.

  I kissed him on the mouth until Birdie put her hand between our faces. She never could stand for us to make over each other. She didn’t know who to be more jealous of. Saul laughed at her and rubbed his nose against hers. “You old polecat,” he said to her, and she put her palms flat on either side of his face. He pecked kisses across her forehead.

  Looking at them, I felt certain that I never would be able to tell him. There was too much at stake. This is what I had wished for on my wedding day: my own family. A man who would love me, and a baby who called out for me when she needed something. That is all I had ever wanted, to have people love me and need me. I felt so full that I thought I might bust. This was too much to lose. I would carry my guilt like a ghost.

  I saw that night that Saul was a different man. I sat and watched him as he ate. The language of his long limbs, the way he leaned into the food on his plate. “There is nothing in this world good as a baked potato,” he said. “It tastes like the earth.”

  I could not say exactly how he was changed, but he was. There was an ease about him that I hadn’t seen before. He had realized some things while he was gone. I guess he had seen how much he loved his life on God’s Creek, how much he loved me and Birdie.

  I knowed for sure that he was different when he asked me to dance. The caller from the war celebration had come up to call our dancing. He patted one leg to the music and picked his guitar, leaning back to call out, “Swing to your left!” or “Bow to ye partner!” Esme’s big front room was full of people dancing. They made a living circle that moved in and out, changing hands, twirling about one another.

  Aidia had lined up a couple beds in the room, and me and Saul were laid back on our elbows on one of them. He jumped up fast and offered his hand. “Come dance with me,” he said.

  “I didn’t think you danced,” I said, not giving him my hand.

  “I do now,” he said. “Come on.”

  We joined the circle, the music getting faster and faster, the people swirling around, hands going in every direction. There was a big-enough crowd to fill the room, and every once in a while couples would crash into one another, but they would just laugh and take right back off to dance. The house fairly shook with stomping feet. Men grabbed hold of me and pulled me through the tunnels of bodies until I met up with Saul again. He danced like he had been doing so his whole life. I caught sight of Aidia, whose curls bobbed all about her head. I could hear her laughter even over the music. She laughed as if she couldn’t stop, her head thrown back, her hands reaching out for the next partner. I watched her as Saul took her hand. She looked up at him and her chin pointed skyward. I scanned the crowd standing around us. They were all watching her, too. But I was happy for her now. I didn’t care what they thought of any one of us. When the music slowed, she was slung into the arms of Dalton. He held her tightly as they box-stepped, and she did not try to pull away, but this time I noticed her glancing about. She knew better than to be too wild in Esme’s own house.

  When the circle had been completed and I was back in Saul’s arms, he pressed his chest against mine, breathing into my ear. I felt dizzy with grief and joy and could not pick which was the most overpowering. “A man never was so glad to be home,” he said.

  Esme made her way out into the middle of the circle. “I ain’t got much a voice,” she announced to the room, “but I feel the need to sing.”

  I had never heard her sing before except when she hummed around the house. She looked broken and pale. I had been noticing this awhile now, but tonight it was more evident than ever. She had gone downhill fast. Some of her fire had been took; life was seeping out of the tips of her fingers. But then she opened her mouth, and she sounded so alive. She sounded so free and young, so light that she might float right off the floor.

 
I’ve been a foreign lander

  For seven long years and more.

  Among the brave commanders

  Where the wild beasts howl and roar.

  I’ve conquered all my enemies,

  Both on the land and sea.

  But you my dearest jewel,

  Your beauty has conquered me.

  The fiddler walked slowly across the floor and stood close behind her, so that there was nothing but the sawing on his strings and her voice. She closed her eyes and made her hands into fists at her side. The song came from deep within her, like it was something she had been dying to say.

  I can’t build a ship, my love,

  Without the wood of tree.

  The ship would burst asunder

  If I prove false to thee.

  If ever I prove false, love,

  The elements will turn.

  The fire will turn to ice, my love,

  The sea will rage and burn.

  She opened her eyes and looked around, smiling. “Well, I’ve hurt your ears enough. I’m laying down.” There was a scattering of good-natured laughter. “You all have a big time, now, and don’t worry about keeping me up. This old house goes off in so many directions I probably won’t even hear you.”