by Silas House
I stood in the door awhile, watching for Saul, but there was no sign of him. I had not heard him leave on his horse, so he couldn’t have gone far. He had left without so much as a lamp to light his way. Even after the children had gone to sleep, I went out onto the porch and listened for some sign of him. I thought maybe he was on the mountain facing our house, where I had buried Aaron. In winter I would have been able to hear him up there, his feet heavy on fallen limbs and crisp leaves. But tonight I could hear nothing over the cry of the night things. Crickets and tree frogs sang as if in great celebration.
IN THE MORNING, Saul still had not returned. Surely he hadn’t slept all night on the mountain and arisen only to go off to work, without so much as changing clothes or washing his face. His horse was gone. It had not awakened me because I had fallen into a sleep like the dead. Telling him everything had wore me out so badly that my eyes had grown heavy before midnight.
I cooked breakfast, trying to figure what Saul would do. I had lived with him this long, and I didn’t know if he would choose me or his family. After all, I had taken one of them. I had killed his baby brother. For all I knowed he was gone to get the law.
Serena come to the house about the time I put breakfast on the table. She had been up with the birthing all night long and her face was heavy with weariness as she trudged up the yard. She looked as if she had fought a great battle.
I looked up from my syrup, which was still bubbling in the cooker. “How was it?” I asked.
“Bad,” she said. “A real bad one. The baby never made it, and I tried everything in me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Cry when they are born, and celebrate when they die, the Bible says,” Serena said. “Still, it’s hard to see that.”
I broke up a biscuit and spread gravy over it, then put two pieces of tenderloin on the plate and slid it across the table to her. She bit off a big hunk of the meat and chewed loud while she talked. “Luke good last night?”
“Why, yeah,” I said.
“What’s the matter?” Serena said.
“What makes you think something’s the matter?” I said, glancing past her to look out the open door. I don’t know why. Even if Saul was coming back, it wouldn’t be until his shift at the mill was over with.
Serena jabbed her fork into the biscuit and gravy, then talked around a mouthful. “Hellfire, Vine. I know you. I know when something’s wrong.”
I didn’t answer her. I went into the girls’ room and awoke the children. Birdie and Matracia were all hugged up, as they always slept. Their arms were intertwined. Luke slept on his pallet on the floor. I wished for the ignorance of children. I wished that I was like them, and knew nothing of the real ways of the world. I shook them awake.
In the kitchen, Serena was sipping from her coffee with both hands holding the cup. She put it down quick and said, “Tell me, Vine.”
I set down at the table. “I told him,” I said.
Serena put her cup down hard. “Oh, Vine. Oh, honey, you oughtn’t have.”
“I had to, Serena. I couldn’t go on living like that.”
“What did he say?”
I shook my head. “He just walked off. He said, ‘He was my baby brother,’ and then just walked away. I don’t know where he stayed all night. Up on that mountain, I guess. He must have laid right down next to where Aaron was buried and slept there.”
“Maybe he meant he was sick to think his baby brother could do such a thing.”
I didn’t think so. If that was true, why hadn’t he put his arms around me?
The children padded into the kitchen. I poured them buttermilk and run my hand over their hair, trying to put on a good face. I had lived so long trying to look happy for Birdie and Matracia. Only now did I realize that it had give me out. Carrying around a lie is the worst kind of labor.
“If you want to go down to the mill and look for him, I’ll stay here with the children,” Serena said.
“Go get in my bed and get you some rest,” I said. “You ain’t able to make it back outside, much less back to your house.”
I got up to get more biscuits off the sideboard, and Serena come around the table to me and put her hands on my shoulders. She smelled of sweat and woodsmoke. “You all right?” she whispered.
I nodded. I couldn’t speak for fear of crying. She patted my back and pulled away. She stood at the dishpan a long while, scrubbing her hands and arms, and then went to the bedroom. “If you need me, you get me up,” she called.
SERENA SLEPT ALL DAY, far past noon. I set on the porch, looking through the soup beans for stray rocks. I glanced up every few minutes, watching the road. I let the beans slide through my hands as I took them from the sack and put them into the crock of water. I set them on the porch table to soak and went to the garden to pull up green onions for supper. With each one I pulled up, I started to feel spots of anger rise up in my body. All morning I had had feelings of relief and then despair. I didn’t know if I had done the right thing or not. I put the onions in my apron and turned to take them back to the house, and there was my great-granny Lucinda. Just as pretty as she had always been. She looked at me a long moment without any sign of expression. I stood there, aware of my loud breathing, and did not move. She was so real that I was sure I could smell her. She smelled of cedar.
I put my hand out but felt only air. She was showing herself to tell me something, but I couldn’t figure what exactly. Maybe she was there as a sign of comfort. I reckoned I might be conjuring her just to feel like I had some of my own people there with me. I wasn’t scared of her, but I closed my eyes, willing her to leave. I didn’t want to see the dead. And when I opened them again, she was gone.
I skinned the onion’s heads and cut the tails off, then let them soak with the beans. I thought about Lucinda coming to me, and I knowed that she was giving me a sign as to what I should do. If Saul couldn’t accept what I had done, I would give him more time to think about it. I would go to see my people.
Thirty-one
I didn’t know what to pack. I just throwed some clothes into a bag and got a few things I couldn’t do without: a cake of soap, a washrag, a tin cup for water. I wrapped up a pone of corn bread and some jerky, took a pint of honey and a box of matches. I checked two or three times to make sure I had the roll of money that Esme had left for me. This was what she had wanted me to do with it, after all. And I got the wad of Lucinda’s hair that Mama had give me on my wedding day. I felt this would help guide me over the big mountains between here and there.
I stepped off the porch and walked to the little redbud in my front yard. I ran my thumb over one of its leaves, just as I had done many times before. It was cool and it smelled wild and green. I leaned close to the tree. “Forgive me,” I said, and in that moment I felt like I had finally forgiven myself. It happened that quick, that easy, after so many days of packing such a weight.
Serena come out of the house in a flurry, pushing her hair back into combs on either side of her head. “Vine, you’ve lost your mind,” she said. She grabbed me by the arm. “You can’t ride no horse all the way to North Carolina. It’ll take you three or four days.”
“I’m going to, Serena.”
I walked on around the house and spread a blanket out on the horse’s back. I took the saddle from the fence and dressed the horse as it stomped its feet, like it knowed of the long journey ahead. I run my hand down its long face. “It’s all right,” I said.
Serena stood behind me with the children. “Don’t run off like this,” she said. But I wasn’t about to give in. My mind was made up. “Everything will be all right, Vine.”
I strapped my pack across the horse’s flanks and turned very slowly. Birdie and Matracia looked up at me with expectation in their eyes. I knelt down in the dirt and pulled them both to me. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be back before long. Serena will see to you.”
“Aidia didn’t come back before long,” Birdie said.
“But I
will, baby. I promise you that. This time next week, we’ll be together.”
I kissed each of them on the forehead, then on the lips. I held their faces in my hands for a long time, letting the feel of their skin sink into my own. I thought of the day on the mountain when I had looked at Birdie for so long. Something had told me to take that moment and dog-ear it for future reference. Now I knowed that this image would carry me over the mountains to North Carolina. And I felt like I was leaving for Birdie. For Matracia. Even for Saul. I knowed that I had to get away a little while or I would collapse right in front of their eyes.
“I wish I could take them with me,” I said, my words caught in the back of my throat.
“It’ll be too hard a trip to do it alone, much less with children,” Serena said. She stood in the yard with her hands held together in front of her. “That’s a big trip, Vine. You’ve lost your senses.”
“I need to see my people,” I said.
Serena grabbed my hand, run her thumb over the back of it. “I’m asking you not to do this.”
I slipped my hand away and put my foot into the stirrup. I pulled myself up onto the horse. “Just take care of the children for me. Do this and I’ll never ask nothing else of you,” I said.
“Please, Vine,” Serena said, and took a step nearer the horse.
I looked down on them and felt as if I was far up in the sky. “Mind Serena, now, girls. I’ll be back in a few days.”
“I don’t want you to go,” Birdie said.
“I love you all,” I said, trying not to hear what Birdie said. I couldn’t bear to hear her cry after me. I dug my heels into the horse’s side and steered him down into the creek bed. I didn’t want to take the road. I had first entered this holler through the creek, and I would leave this way. I didn’t look behind me as I left the holler. I could hear Serena hollering to me—her voice now mad instead of humble—but my ears couldn’t decipher the words.
Before long we were on the hard-packed road that would take me over Buffalo Mountain and eventually out of Kentucky altogether. By midnight I would be at Cumberland Gap. I thought I might be able to find a place to sleep there, and in the morning I could go to the place where Esme had lived as a child. I would have liked to have found the big running field Esme had spoken of. After that, I would head over the mountains into North Carolina. I couldn’t imagine seeing my people once again.
Epilogue
THE OVERPOWERING SCENT of spring came to Saul on a breeze no stronger than a breath. It washed over him, a tangy, moist smell that was potent—even over the sourness of sawdust he could taste spring. The aroma had seeped into his mouth and coated his tongue. He closed his eyes and breathed it in, let it mesmerize him. It smelled like Vine. And it smelled like a memory, although he could not place it.
He had sat up on the mountain all night, on a cliff where he could look down and see the place Aaron lay. He had not really been able to see the place, of course, as darkness had covered the world completely. But he was aware of its closeness all night. He sat there with his knees pulled up to his chest, his arms wrapped about them, rocking. Seeming never to blink. He was so still that animals came near without knowing he was there. A whippoorwill lit on a limb above him and cried out for more than an hour. The moon had drifted in and out of the black clouds, never shedding enough light for him to see his hand in front of his face. When daylight came, he remained there for a long while.
He had wanted to fashion some kind of marker for his brother, but he could not bring himself to move near enough to the grave.
He had walked down the mountain, slipped into the house without Vine’s even knowing it and gotten ready for work. He had led the horse out of the holler quietly and had ridden to work just as he did every morning. He had talked with the men as if nothing had happened, but he didn’t really hear what they said. He only nodded and managed to answer their questions correctly, without any knowledge of what they had asked. All day long he had been running the lumber through the big saw. The buzz was a litany behind his ears. He had been in a daze of memory. Thinking about Aaron. Strangely enough, the things that came to him were not ones he called forth. He had hoped to remember his brother laughing, playing the banjo, talking of big dreams. But all he recalled of him were arguments in which Saul had remained silent while Aaron shouted, the menacing way Aaron would whistle a song when he passed their house very early in the morning. It seemed he was remembering a brother he had never accepted having—the Aaron that Vine had always feared, the one she had spoken of to him many times. He had not paid her any mind.
He placed the smell of memory. That scent of spring was from many days ago, when he had first met Vine. The air had been made of redbud and dogwood. The world had been brand-new, the color of an eggshell.
He kept working mindlessly until the whistle sounded. He stood at the silent saw a long time, not knowing what to do.
Because he had done it so many times before, he went home. He didn’t know where else to go. He didn’t have anybody in the world except Vine and Birdie, and now Matracia. And so he knew what he had to do. All a man had in this life was his family, and he had to do his best by them. This was the thing that would matter most to him when he lay upon his deathbed, taking inventory of his days on earth. Things had to be set right.
When he came up the holler, Serena was on the porch. She ran down into the yard as if she had not seen him in ages. He had never seen Serena cry before. In fact, he had thought it impossible. But today she did, her words coming out in a great blur that he had to strain to hear. When she had finished and backed away from his horse, he took off up the mountain.
SAUL RODE DOWN TRAILS he had not been on in ages, shortcuts he had used in his youth. Trying to catch up with her, he steered the horse up old logging trails and across ox paths that had not been trod in many years. He dug his heels deep into the horse’s side, his eyes scanning the trees in front of him for any sign of her dress or her long black hair.
His horse was not used to negotiating such steep trails, as it had grown accustomed to the new roads. It stumbled on roots, threw its head down when limbs struck it in the face. Saul did not let up, and the blood in his ears drummed along in rhythm with the stamping hooves.
He had not been on this trail since before he and Vine married, but he knew that it would bring him out onto the main road into Pineville. Vine would have gone that way, surely. She had never been out of Crow County and would stay on the most traveled roads. He had ridden out of the county by now. He was sure of that much. Below him he caught a glimpse of the Black Banks River, white-capped water washing about in great, foamy whirlpools. He was getting close to the confluence of the Black Banks and the Cumberland, for the water moved fastest here. The grade began to go downhill and the horse moved carefully down the steep path. Rocks had fallen into the way so that Saul had to steer through the woods for a moment before he was back on the path. Sunlight fell through the leaves in dappled, unpredictable patterns that blinded him momentarily.
Before long he had reached the foot of the mountain. The path ended abruptly at the water’s edge. There had been a bridge here once, but now it was long gone, taken by a spring flood and never rebuilt. The river moved so quickly that drops of water rose up to snap on the air. He jumped off the horse and let it drink. The horse hesitated, nervous about fast-moving water, then bent its head.
Saul squatted and dipped both hands into the water for a drink. He threw the rest across his face, smoothing his bangs back with wet fingers. He remembered the last time he had been here. He and Aaron had come here to fish for trout. He tried not to think of them, standing thigh-deep, casting their lines, their laughter clear and solid on the humid air. And then he thought of Aaron’s fingers on the banjo, and the way he would entertain them all with his stories after supper, and the way his hair hung down in his eyes. He thought of squirrel hunting with his brother, of felling trees in autumn woods and stacking coal behind Esme’s back door. He swept all of this out of his
mind and remembered that the river was shallow enough to cross, even in such a quickening current.
He swung back onto the horse and dug his heels into its sides. The horse raised its legs high to make sure it had proper footing. On the other side, the path resumed and went straight up another mountain. On the other side of that was the road to Pineville, and he would find Vine there.
He could not let her slip into the big mountains east of here. She might never be found once she got through the gap. He did not intend to let her get away like this.
IN BARBOURVILLE THE streets were crowded with people. There was a trial going on in the square and it was so well attended that people had parked all down the streets leading up to the courthouse. Saul twisted about on his saddle to see around cars and horses and buggies in front of him. It seemed to take him forever to get through the town and back to where the mountains rose up on all sides. He rode beside the Cumberland River, and glints of sunlight from its water played across his face. The trees gathered about the road once more and he pushed the horse harder. He didn’t know how long the mare would be able to keep up this pace. He watched for foam at its mouth.
And then, up ahead on the road, just going over a hill, he saw Vine. She was moving slowly, like a dead woman strapped to the back of a horse, sitting upright. He urged the horse on and leaned forward, and they broke into a canter. Even as he approached her in such a wild fury, she did not turn to see him. He pulled back on the reins as he came up beside her, and she turned to face him.
He jumped off the horse and had to walk quickly to catch up with her, as she did not stop. “Vine,” he said, and she looked down at him. Her eyes were full of questions. He could not read what emotion lay behind them.