by Laura Hunter
“I never saw this before,” Lily said. “It yours?”
“It’s your…Clint’s,” Anna answered. She considered her lie and washed it with words. “It come from the commissary,” she said.
Lily brought a chair up to the bed and flipped through tissue-thin pages. Dozens of pressed four-leaf clovers, brown and brittle with age, fell into her lap. Lily touched one. It crumbled in her hand. “My daddy collected clover for luck?”
“Them’s mine,” Anna said. “A person needs a mite of luck from time to time.” Anna licked her lips. “Just in case.”
“What you want me to read?” Lily turned the Bible over and looked at the colored maps in the back. “Says here King James Version. Want me to start at the beginning? Genesis, maybe?”
“No. I don’t like all that killing and stuff.”
Lily flipped through again, the pages whispering “choose me, choose me.” “Here’s something about somebody named David. What about him?”
“No. I don’t like him a’tall.”
“What you want me to read then?” Lily closed the Bible. “It’s a long book. Bound to be something in here you might like.”
“Can you find them Songs? I think I’d like to hear them Songs of Solomon.”
Lily thumbed through and found a place. “Here’s a page. Its corner’s turned down at Chapter 6 and number 1.”
“That’s the one. Read that.”
Whither is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women?
Whither is thy beloved turned aside? That we may seek him with thee.
My beloved is gone down into his garden,
to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens and to gather lilies.
I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine:
he feedeth among the lilies.
“Sounds just like a poem,” Lily said.
Tears covered Anna’s cheeks and ran down her neck.
“Mama?” Lily said.
Anna did not answer.
The second night at dusk, Owl floated into Old Man Farley’s place on silent wings. He perched on his rafter and clicked his arrival. Each night thereafter, he stood guard against whatever might have a mind to enter the hovel. After what Lily deemed to be a week of days, she arose and dressed. Though frail, she and Sunday went down Turtleback to meet the road to Boone Station.
Chapter 43
It was mid-May, Month of the Planting Moon, and Lily ignored buds growing into blossoms. She had little to say. She, day after day, had grown weary with chastising herself for not remembering to forget Kee Granny. The never-ending try to expel the hatred for what Kee Granny had brought into her life exhausted her.
This morning late, Lily leaned over the wooden table, her hands and wrists deep in white gloves of flour held close with lard. In preparing biscuit dough, she squeezed a lump of lard through her fingers and refused the childhood memory of helping Kee make her poultice base. She worked the flour in and down, gliding the softness down the sides of her mother’s wooden bread bowl before adding a splash of Gertie’s milk.
A slight breeze puffed thin curtains into the room and moved out the open door. It brought with it the smell of earth moldering to season its winterized seeds. Outside the open window, a woodpecker bored into a weakened tree. His dah-dah-dah echoed down Turtleback Mountain.
A chocolate-colored sparrow perched on the windowsill and waddled in. Lily lifted her apron and shooed it out. “Out of my house, you little sparrow,” Lily said. “We don’t need to lose nobody else.” She smiled and sang the bird into flight: “Fair thee well my own true love, and fair thee well for a while. I’m going away…” Lily stopped. She could not recall the remaining lyric.
The light feel of breathing dough under Lily’s hands brought Kee Granny into the room. She watched Lily a time before asking, “You making a new potion, u-s-ti?”
“I’m not your little one,” Lily said aloud. “I’m not sure I ever was.” Lily shook her head to force the granny out. A hairpin hit the floor. As Lily bent to pick it up, the granny vaporized into the wall by the cook stove.
Lily lifted Anna’s blue milk pitcher. The touch of cold crockery fetched Anna. With the pouring, Anna dropped into her pea-shelling chair next to Lily. It was the spring of 1959 again, and Lily was fourteen. Anna was teaching her to handle the dough with gentleness so the finished biscuit will bake tender and flaky.
A stronger breeze entered the room. This was no random breeze. It brought with it Kee Granny and a stout memory of life lessons she had taught Lily. The granny ignored Anna and retold the legend as Lily molded her dough.
Remember, she said. In the beginning, Great Spirit disguised his breath as wind that walks through tall treetops. He breathed it into the Cherokee and called it man.
Lily glanced out the window at swaying trees. Kee Granny had told her Great Spirit would call her to him. She wondered if this swaying was what it meant for Great Spirit to speak.
Great Spirit had great hopes for man. But, according to Sister Sun and Brother Moon, man was stubborn, like the ass Great Spirit made for labor.
Lily admitted she had been stubborn, especially with Gabe.
Legend says Sun blazed down on his back to slow his run. Man ran on. Moon hid behind Great Spirit’s cloud cover to darken his path and keep him off Turtleback Mountain. But man trudged on. So Sun and Moon offered Great Spirit a challenge in an attempt to prove man’s stiff-necked attitude. And Great Spirit accepted.
Lily had accepted. She had accepted living on Turtleback, Gabe and his silly ways, Eli and his strange way of speaking. She had accepted the lies of Kee Granny. Until she learned all of it.
Within a rotted-out hemlock trunk on the Eastern slope of Turtleback Mountain, Great Spirit placed Uktena, an enormous snake, large as a tree trunk himself, with a bright, blazing diamond crest on his forehead, and scales that sparkle like flickering fire. Uktena, with splats of patterned browns and blacks along his entire length. Great Spirit placed him in wait to see if man will be tempted by Uktena’s beauty. “Come take my diamond,” Uktena hissed.
There was Rattler, dangerously beautiful, asleep, filling his hollow tree trunk.
Uktena waited, coiled.
Briar Slocomb must have given in to Uktena’s tease.
Some say he waits still today.
But his skin was nailed to a Flatland post. Burned in the fire.
It was all true. No. None of it was.
A gentle tap on the doorframe pushed Anna and the granny out. Winston Rafe stepped through dust motes into the room.
“Come in, Mr. Rafe,” Lily said. She removed her flour-dusted apron and pulled out the one her mother favored. A fleeting memory took Lily back to when she, as a child, had fingered the blue and green rickrack rows across her mama’s bosom.
Winston Rafe had changed since she saw him the day Gabe drove him to Breakline’s Big Mama outside Covington. Stopped by to say hello, Gabe had said. But Lily didn’t know. Coarse hair now grew from his eyebrows and out his ears. He moved, as if he, like his underground miners, carried a heavy load. Before he had held himself tall, clean-shaven, his cinnamon-colored hair thick and curly and brushed back from his angular face. She needed him to stand upright, for somewhere in the back of her mind, he had done so. But the memory was vague and fuzzy, so she put it aside.
Today, his stooped shoulders lessened his height. He had aged, aged even more since she saw him at the commissary when she came for help finding Gabe. His hair remained thick; curls and waves, the same, but his dark beard had not been clipped in weeks. She could have overlooked grey streaks through his hair, but she could not go past the real difference. His eyes. No longer piercing like Owl’s or sharp like Uktena’s. Perhaps it was Gabe’s death. Not finding the killer. His loss after having Gabe work for him so long. His inability to act when he had spent his life fixing other people’s problems. That could age a person.
She wondered how it must feel for his wife to comb her fingers through that hair. Gabe’s hair had been
an almost orangey-red. Thin to the point of seeing patches of scalp. She realized she had never put her fingers in Gabe’s hair. This sadness was drawing out her energy. She steadied herself against the table’s edge.
“I’d rather wait out here. On the porch,” he muttered. “If you have the time, that is.”
“Give me a minute,” she answered. “To clean my hands.” Lily hoped he had not seen her blush at remembering Gabe. She rubbed her hands, slick with grease, on a towel and washed some of the flour off before she joined him on the porch. Outside, she noticed that she had left rising dough trapped under her nails.
Sun’s warmth promised a soothing day. Tired of mere breezes, trees waited still. They needed a stiffer wind to enliven them. Chickens under the back of the house clucked as they scratched about.
Winston Rafe sat in the cane-bottomed chair. Lily lowered herself to rest in Gabe’s marrying swing and pushed off with the tip of her toe. She forced herself to concentrate on paying attention. The power of the swing did that to her.
Rafe drew a Lucky Strike from inside his suit jacket and lit it with his silver lighter. Lily waited, giving him his own good time. He propped the chair back against the limestone wall and blew grey smoke through his nose. He let the front chair legs drop to the floor, as if announcing his intent to speak. The sound startled Lily. She had not known how tense this man made her, nor why. She picked at the dough under her fingernails.
Rafe cleared his throat. “Eli here?”
She inclined her head toward the house. “He’s asleep,” she answered. “In the loft.” She pushed off the swing again. “That’s where he always sleeps,” she added, as if she owed this man some explanation for Eli’s living in her house. Just the two of them.
Rafe breathed a breath from the bottom of his lungs. He gave it as much time as it would take to release itself. “I’ve come to get him.” He spoke with determination, not allowing her time to question. “I’ve found a group home over in Abington that’ll take his kind.”
Lily stopped the swing. “What’d you mean ‘his kind’?” She clenched her jaw. This was Eli he was talking about, not some stray animal. Rafe could take her attitude or not. She owed him nothing.
“He’s going to Abington. I’m taking him today. You can tell him or I can. It don’t matter.” He swallowed more cigarette smoke.
Lily stood up, allowing the swing to whack the back of her calves. She stalked across the porch to face Rafe. “Look at me, Mr. Rafe.” She planted her feet apart in an attempt to stop her knees from shaking.
Rafe raised his head.
“Eli lives here. With me. He’s not going to some ‘group home’ for ‘his kind.’ We’re perfectly happy as we are. Me and Eli.” As if in afterthought, she added “And Sunday.”
“Sunday?” Rafe tilted his head in question.
“Our cat,” she answered. “She’s asleep inside with Eli. And I don’t intend to wake either one of them.” She pulled her shoulders up to make herself as tall as she could. “Now that that’s decided, I’m going back inside and finish our biscuits. We’re having biscuits and butter and dandelion greens. And some honey from your commissary. After we eat, we might walk up to Old Man Farley’s place and on to see the Falls, but ain’t nobody going to Abington.”
She turned on her heel and went inside. She had lived in Boone Station for sixteen years with door and windows opening and closing in season, and yet there was still the smell of earth within these walls. She sat at the table, staring at her unfinished biscuit dough, clutching her hands to stop the trembling. She pinched off rounds of dough and slid the pan into the oven. She heard Rafe’s steps behind her.
“Come back outside, Lily,” he said. “I handled that wrong.” He placed his hand on her shoulder. “Please. We need to talk.” He glanced down and rubbed the toe of his shoe over an old burn on the floor. His body slumped as he looked at the darkened scar. He bit his lip.
“I’ll only come out if you swear you won’t mention Abington.”
“I swear. I just need to tell you what’s going on down in Covington.” He raked his fingers through his hair.
Outside, they took their positions again, at opposite ends of the porch.
“What’s that over there?” He nodded toward a dip in the earth that had been filled with brush and rock. An old log stuck out of the near end.
“Mama’s grave. A mine roof, probably a shaft from that first mine opened by Breakline years ago fell in after the spring flood,” Lily said. “It dropped her down.”
“My God, Lily.” Rafe raised forward. “You should have called me.”
Lily raised her eyebrows. “Gabe and me, we tried to fill it in. We did for the most part, but we couldn’t get the coffin right. It was too deep.” Lily stopped. “Mama, she’s resting upright. And that’s okay. At least she’s covered now.” It would sound absurd to say that her mother was resting on her head, so she did not volunteer any more. “For the most part.” No one would know other than Gabe and she, and Gabe was these three weeks buried.
“I’ll have one of my men bring a machine up and fill the grave for you,” he offered. “With dirt,” he added.
“That’ll be much appreciated,” Lily said.
Rafe puffed on his Lucky Strike. Lily waited for him to speak to what was happening in Covington.
“Sorry ’bout all that with Gabe. I didn’t know he was courting you.” Lily focused her eyes on a far sweet bay magnolia. “Youell swears he’s got somebody working full time on finding out who killed him.” Rafe dropped his hands between his knees and bent forward. He stared at the floor. “Never a cross word with anybody ’cept that crazy old granny. Something, he said, ’bout selling her honey.” He rocked back toward the wall. “He was one fine man.”
I can name you the murderer, and he’s dead in the fire at Flatland, Lily said to herself. But she didn’t say that. Instead she said, “It don’t matter none now. Gabe’s gone. That’s all.”
“True. True,” he murmured. “What’s gone is gone.”
For a long thinking time, Rafe smoked. Lily pushed the swing back and forth. Now and again, the chain creaked against the hook holding it to the rafter. Neither spoke.
Rafe took up the conversation first. He looked at her arm. “Where’s your bracelet? You had on a gold bracelet when you came to the commissary.”
Lily glanced down. “In Mama’s grave. I was wearing it after she died, but I dropped it in when the mine broke. The coffin was open a bit, and I dropped it in. Just like that.” Lily’s eyes glazed over. “Before we filled in the rock.”
“I thought your daddy gave that to her.” He rubbed the nape of his neck.
“He did, but I don’t know my daddy. He’s been gone a long, long time. And Mama knew him better than me. She knew what that bracelet meant. So she ought to have it with her.”
“Lily…” Winston faltered. He cleared his throat and spit phlegm into the dirt. “Briar Slocomb showed up at the Doc’s in Covington yesterday morning hobbling on a long-handled shovel. He’s talking ’round that Eli killed his mama and set Flatland afire.” He spit out the words as if they dirtied his tongue and he refused to drink in the thought.
“Said him and Eli wandered the woods days. He showed Eli the old granny’s place. Talked about him wanting to shoot her 30.06. Said Eli got irksome when it didn’t work. Youell says the gun’s there on the porch, its stock burned off. And that’s about all.”
Lily’s lips quivered. Lungs filled her mouth with air. She breathed it out in a moan that reached across the porch. Drained, she had no fight left.
“I don’t know if there’s any truth to what he’s saying,” Rafe continued. “But he’s getting the town riled up. They’s talk of coming after Eli. Could even be a lynching.” He spoke so softly Lily was not certain she had heard him.
Lily’s body jerked. “Briar…I… The shoo…” Panic shut her mouth. She shrunk away from Rafe and slid to the opposite end of the swing.
“He’s pretty beat up, but
he’s not dead.”
For the first time, Lily noticed Rafe’s Adam’s apple. Large and pointed, it moved up and down with each swallow, each word. She tried to recall if Gabe had had a noticeable Adam’s apple when they talked together on the swing, but she could not.
“Says Eli come at him with a shovel. Cut into his knee and slammed him up the side of the head. He’s lost one eye and his jaw’s broke. Walks now on a crutch from Doc, but he’s ain’t dead.” Rafe gulped. He rubbed his hands together. “Between you and me, I question Eli O’Mary having enough mind to plot out a murder and set a fire to cover it.”
“Murder?”
“I don’t see Eli handling a gun, not one that big.” Rafe settled back in his chair.
“Kee Granny’s dead?” Lily’s breath came on her so fast she felt light-headed.
“I got no argument against the deeds. Only thing I could think of when Sheriff told me is get Eli off Turtleback. Take him far away. I found this group home in Abington this morning.” Rafe scraped his shoe across the floor. “So I need to take Eli with me,” Rafe said. “’Fore dark falls.”
“Kee Granny is dead.” Lily repeated herself. “How?”
“Slocomb never told me Eli lived here. With you. Gabe told me.” Rafe slumped forward.
“Why?” Lily steadied the swing.
“Slocomb’ll have the whole town searching Turtleback for him,” Rafe said. “Me taking Eli will keep you from having to lie.” Rafe tossed his Lucky Strike into the dirt and lit another. “If we don’t do something, we’ll have this whole mountain afire.”
“Kee Granny. She’s dead.” Lily’s resentment toward the old woman for her lies fought with her contradictory love for the compassionate woman who had taught Lily the ways of her world. Kee Granny and her misdirected love. Lily had realized, since she cast her out of Boone Station, how different life would have been without her. Turtleback’s woodland, its animals, Gabe, though love for Gabe differed in a singular way. Then there was Eli. Strange, singing Eli. Without Kee Granny’s total acceptance of all living things, disregard her perverted baby droppings, could she have loved Eli so openly, so without hesitation?