by Amy Sorrells
Solly.
I glanced at him as I made my way to the back of the church for Sunday school. He searched my face for any news about Comfort and bowed his head when my face told him I had none.
Mama and I went along with tradition that evening, despite not having Daddy with us. We nabbed our seats at 6:30 p.m. on the library steps to watch the parade, which stepped off at 7:00 p.m. sharp from Town Hall around the corner. Floats and bands lined up and stopped traffic for two miles down the highway. Twirlers flipped and flung their batons behind the grand marshal of this year’s parade, Milo Sterns, a command sergeant major who’d won three purple hearts in Vietnam. A scruffy mix of veterans followed behind him, including Daddy’s old friend Larry, an oysterman who kept his skiff in the slot next to Daddy’s fishing boat.
Throngs of Boy Scout troops dressed up like elves pulled a flatbed full of their overpriced Christmas trees behind them. Princella’s ladies’ group—the Daughters of the Confederacy Auxiliary—hosted their own float, upon which all the well-to-do Bay Spring women dressed in red velvet, fur-trimmed dresses that made them look like elves, too, except the one crowned Sugarplum Queen. White taffeta and poufs of netting and sequins made her look like a sugarplum, all right. And I couldn’t help but scrunch up my nose when I saw Princella’s friends waving as they passed.
“At least she had the decency not to be a part of that,” Mama said, referring to Princella’s decision not to ride on the float this year. Instead, and to our surprise, she’d said she had a headache and couldn’t bear the crowds.
“Amen,” said Ernestine, who’d joined us on the steps.
The Bay Spring High School marching band all wore Santa hats and played “Silver Bells” and “Sleigh Ride.” Every cheerleader of every age in the Bay Spring area followed the high school squad, which carried a banner stretching from one side of the street to the other with Merry Christmas written in red and green poster paint. A drill team, stiff and proud, strode by from the local all-boy military academy. Horses whose manes and tails were braided with red and green ribbons clopped along carrying riders from the Thurmont Plantation Walking Horse Club. The United Methodist carolers, dressed in old-fashioned costumes, sang “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” The Devil’s Disciples motorcycle gang showed up fifty strong and all dressed in Santa suits.
In the middle of all the glitter and noise, a rickety float from the Weeks Bay Christian Church passed, nearly squashed between the Shriners on their thirteen-passenger bicycles and the Loxley Amateur Bagpipe Band. The float featured Mary and Joseph, live sheep, and a live donkey nibbling on hay falling out of a chicken wire basket. The baby Jesus was plastic, of course, and that’s all there was to His part of the parade, probably because the main point of the parade was to usher in Santa. And usher him in they did, with a float decked out with a blinding number of Christmas lights; a real, life-sized gingerbread house; real reindeer from the Miller’s pecan farm; and real midgets who evidently didn’t take offense to dressing up like elves to throw buckets of candy at the crowds.
As soon as Mr. Claus and his crew passed, we moved along, amoeba style, with the crowds toward Center Park, where tables draped in green and red fabric were topped with homemade casseroles, finger foods, and every kind of Christmas cookie you could imagine. I searched for Ernestine’s basketful of pecan cinnamon rolls, grabbed one, and tucked myself back into the huddle of Mama and Ernestine and their friends.
“Do you want to sit on Santa’s lap?” Mama’s eyes, wet with sadness, told me she knew the answer before she asked.
I shook my head no. What use would it be? We had no mantel of our own to set the photograph of me and Santa on. I had no adoring father to make me giggle as my too-long legs dangled off the lap of the fat man with the glued-on beard. So what if the picture donations went to fund youth mission trips. I had my own mission to get through.
Maybe Mama and I thought sticking with the traditions of years past would help us get through the sting of losing all that’d just been ushered out of our lives. But instead, it only pointed out how different we were now. How Cole had blown away more than my daddy. He’d blown away our lives.
Wont pi lou pase yon sak sèl.
“Shame is heavier than a bag of salt.”
CHAPTER 10
Comfort
The radio crackles and pops as I turn the knob, searching for something decent to listen to from one of the many churches sending out live waves of salvation to empty, homebound hearts.
I suppose I qualify as that. The empty heart, definitely. The homebound part, pretty much, although I managed to drag myself to the Piggly Wiggly in the early morning hours when the only folks who shopped were those too old to recognize me or too young and busy shushing fussy infants to notice. Sammy, the hauntingly pretty, young cashier, she noticed me. Greeted me by name too.
“—now let’s listen as Preacher Faust brings us a word from the Summerdale Baptist Church.”
I leave the dial there, more to fill up the stifling silence than to glean anything from what the man says. The rest of the family is in town kicking off Christmas, and though I’ve chosen these walls around myself, I long for memories of good Christmases past: Daddy holding me on his shoulders to get the first glimpse of Santa; Solly holding my hand for the first time in eighth grade as we sat on the Bay Spring live nativity float. He was Joseph; I was Mary. The manger holding the plastic baby Jesus hid our sweaty hands as we clutched them together beneath the straw.
“Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.” Preacher Faust reads the scripture in the raggedy voice and cadenced way of an aging priest.
Even as I am resting upon you.
The voice comes not from the airwaves, but from the near constant, pounding pain in the back of my head.
But Simeon was a good man, Abba.
And you are a good woman.
“Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying: ‘Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace …,’” the preacher drones on.
I will bring you peace.
Peace? How can anyone—how can You—bring peace to me?
“‘For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.’”
My light will reveal hope to you, My child.
I dismiss the prodding, still small voice. I even laugh out loud at the ludicracy of the conversation.
Peace and light are nice thoughts, Abba, but they are as tangible to me as the star that hung over Bethlehem too long ago.
LATE FEBRUARY 1980
Bonjou se paspò ou.
“Hello is your passport.”
CHAPTER 11
Anniston
That Christmas faded like all the other Christmases. One Friday afternoon in late February, long after we boxed the decorations away, and weeks after I’d started back at school, I tossed my backpack on the counter as Molly hopped and skipped at my feet.
Princella stood at the kitchen sink washing dishes. “How was your day, Anniston?” She smiled on occasion, this being one of them, but for the most part, Lord, if her moods didn’t change like the weather. One minute she was all storm and thunder. The next she was all sunshine and blue sky.
“Fine, ma’am.” I grabbed a peach out of the green, salt-glazed bowl on the counter, and followed Princella’s gaze out the window above the sink, which faced her rose garden. The bushes were each cropped close to the near-frozen earth. “Gonna add any new kinds of roses this spring?”
Even if we couldn’t talk about anything else, I knew I could talk to Princella about her roses. She loved them, after all.
Collected as many types as she could, traveling all over the area to find new varieties to bring home. She really did have the prettiest rose garden in the whole bay area.
She sighed and studied the sleepy winter garden. “I think I might stick with the ones I have this year. See if I can’t treat the ones I have as good as I can.”
She kept staring out the window, and I wondered if she might really be talking about me and Mama on account of her losing two sons, but one could never tell for sure if Princella meant something nice or not.
Mama brought her plate to the sink. “Anni, honey, you’ve been cooped up and helping inside enough this winter. Ernestine and I can handle the rest of the kitchen. You’re starting to look pale. Go on outside and help Vaughn. He’s out there picking up sticks or something in the orchards. He’ll give you something to do.” Mama smiled at me, her eyes turned down at the corners from a sadness that wouldn’t leave her.
“If he doesn’t, I’m sure I’ll find something to do out there, Mama.”
I changed clothes upstairs in Comfort’s room, which I now called mine. For the most part, I’d adjusted to staying there. Wasn’t hard. Her bookshelves overflowed with Agatha Christie and Little House on the Prairie books, and her soft bed was encircled by four posts and the lace canopy I’d always dreamed of. Hers and Daddy’s old room—where Mama slept—were joined by the bathroom where I stood, weaving my hair into a braid. Everything in the bathroom matched, from the pale blue tile down to the matching blue porcelain tub and toilet.
Besides Mama being in there, sleeping next door to Daddy’s old room helped calm my heart on nights when the fear of dreams of banging and gunfire kept me from sleeping. The same wallpaper he’d picked out as a little boy, a patriotic plaid, covered the top of the walls, and woodwork painted navy blue covered the bottom. Model airplanes of all kinds hung from the ceiling on fishing line. A teddy bear with fur rubbed off its paws and a missing eye sat against the pillow on the corduroy bedspread. Fishing rods and a stack of college textbooks about agriculture peeked out from an opening in the sliding closet doors. Old high school yearbooks lined a short stack of bookshelves, and an aging guitar sulked in the corner. He’d left it here in favor of the new one Mama’d bought him as a wedding gift years ago.
Across the hall, Cole’s room loomed, door shut tight since before me and Mama moved in. But I remember it from before. Football and baseball trophies lined shelves; posters and sports pennants pinned on all the walls. The posters always bothered me. Posters of girls in bathing suits, girls on cars, girls on beaches. Girls with not nearly enough clothes on their glistening bodies.
Downstairs, I pulled on a stocking cap and wrapped Daddy’s lined, flannel shirt around me before heading outside with Molly to find Vaughn. A blue jay circled above us as we walked toward the pole barn where Vaughn kept all the machines and equipment.
“Blue jays and crows are bad,” I remembered Daddy saying. “But squirrels are of the devil.”
One year, fox squirrels ate over two hundred pounds off old Mr. Bailey’s orchards next door. Squirrels, they didn’t care what stage the nuts were at. They ate mature nuts, nut buds, even the bark off the trees. While shotguns worked best to get rid of the critters, Vaughn would just as soon catch them in the act using squirrel traps.
When we reached the workshop, Vaughn stood fiddling with wood squirrel traps. “Tomfool varmints. Don’t let their cute little noses and beady button eyes fool ya.”
He handed me a spring trap, a hammer, and a leather apron full of nails. I knew from years past precisely what to do. My job was to hammer the trap onto the tree, about four feet off the ground. Then we’d load ’em up all year, until harvest, with peanut butter, nuts, or whatever attracted the squirrels any given day.
“Take the tractor and wagon and get around to as many trees as you can get to.”
I put a couple dozen traps in the tractor wagon and drove off to the east part of the orchards, near where a wide creek dumped into the large pond on the far corner of the property. Once there, I grabbed a couple of traps and picked out two of the largest trees to start with—trees so large I knew they had to be either native to the land or planted by a Harlan around the time of the Civil War.
Molly barked, and then she let out a slow, low growl in her throat. She was not a barker—one of the reasons Mama and Daddy let me keep her a few years back. She’d been a stray, and workers from the orchards had found her limping, ribs showing and all, and brought her to Mama, on account of her nursing knowledge. Sure enough, with some help from the vet, we cleaned up her bloody front paw and her torn left ear. We combed through her fur, matted from the tips of her paws clear up her sides from the filth of roaming in mud and creek beds. Once we gave her a good bath and pulled the ticks off her ears and neck, a perfectly good white retriever appeared. After we fed her for a few weeks, we couldn’t see her ribs anymore.
Like I said, Molly wasn’t a barker, so when she did bark, I knew something was off. I followed the stare of her eyes to where they focused on a rustling close to the creek. It was too large and slow to be a deer, and my heart thudded in my throat. As I got closer, it turned out to be a boy who looked to be about my age. He crouched down and used a sifting pan on the edge of the creek. Then he stood and walked farther on down the creek. He hadn’t seen me yet, so I had time to notice that he limped a bit when he walked.
“Hey.” I figured I oughta let him know I was there, rather than both of us scaring each other. When he turned around, he threw a cigarette to the ground and squashed it with his work boot. He tilted his head toward the sky and puffed out a couple of smoke rings.
“Impressive.” I waited for him to reply, but he kept silent. Maybe he was a new boy Vaughn hired. Actually, Daddy probably hired him before he died. That was his job. Vaughn kept track of the books.
I walked toward him, and soon noticed he had a crooked eye to match his crooked leg. Molly ran to him, sniffing him up and down and running circles around him. “Aren’t you gonna say something?”
“Hi.” He leaned down and scratched Molly around her neck and ears.
“I’m Anniston. Anniston Harlan.” Maybe he’d catch on by my last name that I wasn’t any old girl wandering through. But it didn’t faze him. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“The polite thing to do would be to tell me who you are.”
“I suppose it would.” But he still didn’t tell me. Just stood there looking at me some more and with a smart-aleck grin on his face.
“Fine.” I turned away and started back toward the tractor and my business. I’d find out who he was on my own if he wasn’t going to tell me.
“Name’s Jed, short for Jedediah. Manon’s my last name. Rey—Mr. Harlan—brought me on late last fall. I’ll be working all spring and summer through harvest time, once it’s time to start working the orchards again.”
I spun back around and faced him. “Rey is dead.”
“I know. Read about it in the papers. Awful thing to have happened.”
“He was my daddy.” I let that sink in him before I turned and walked back up the hill. “Now I’ve got to set these traps up.”
I was almost back to the tractor when he ran up beside me. “Why don’t you let me help you with that?”
“I can handle it. Grew up doing this.”
“Now who’s impolite?”
“Refusing help from a stranger is not rude, Jedediah.”
“Jed.”
“Fine. Jed.”
“That your house up there by the road?” He pointed toward Comfort’s house.
“No, that’s my aunt’s place. I live—I’m staying—in the house over there.” I pointed toward my grandparents’ home.
He raised his eyebrows as if I was suddenly fancy to him.
“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, living here. Believe me.”
“Rey—I mean
… Your daddy, he didn’t tell me he had a daughter.”
“Probably didn’t see a need to.”
Jed kept his dirt-brown hair long enough for the wind to tousle, and a band of freckles covered his nose and cheeks. He wore a green army jacket and jeans that were almost too big, in a nice sort of way, even if he did have a bit of an attitude. I wasn’t used to thinking a boy was cute, but this one stirred something warm up in my knees and worked its way toward my heart. I hoped he couldn’t tell.
“Maybe not. Say, would your granddad mind if I search for fossils and critters down here? When I have days off? I’ve been picking around along this creek for a couple of weeks now, but I can leave if you think he’d mind.”
“No, he won’t mind. You coulda asked him, though. Where you from, anyway? You new around here? I’ve never seen you at school or around town before.”
“I’m from Tuscaloosa. Got reassigned to a new foster family down here. I been in school. Maybe you just ain’t noticed me before. What grade are you in?”
“Eighth.”
“I’m a freshman. Besides, sometimes I don’t feel up to going, so I don’t.”
“Must be more often than not that you don’t.” I wasn’t so sure about this boy. “Where do y’all live?”
“In town. Behind the library. I live with John and Hettie Devine.”
This time, my eyebrows raised. Main Street and the library were kept up and quaint for tourists, but a patch of run-down trailers filled the block behind.
“So you know the place.”
“Ain’t many places ’round here I don’t know.” I wrapped the leather tool belt around my waist and headed toward a line of trees. “I better start on these traps, if you don’t mind.”