"Why not?" my voice had squeaked.
She continued peeling potatoes and answered. "Because some gifts need to be passed down in certain ways. Father to son. Female to male. My great-grandmother's gift had to be passed from her to a female of the generation that came after her. That would have been my grandmother Longstreth, and she didn't want it. Didn't see it as a gift. She tried to convince her all her life. I told her I wanted to. I asked her to give it to me, but she said it didn't work that way. I was too young. Even if I had been the required age, I was still of the wrong generation."
I thought about that and swung my legs. "Why did you want the gift, Mom Mom?"
She stopped her peeling and rested her hand full of potatoes against the bowl. "Well, I guess I wanted to help people. Or to know that I was meant to do something special in this world." She resumed her prep work. "Or maybe, I liked that my great-grandmother was an important person in that town."
"Why?"
"Because no one else could do what she did." She slipped the last quartered potato into the pot on the stove. "Everyone came to see her at some point. If not for themselves, then with someone they loved. We never wanted for anything, either. Not for food nor clothing of any kind."
"Because she made a lot of money?"
"No, love. You can't charge money for a gift such as that. You give it away to the people who ask, but the people she helped always brought something with them. Chickens or a corn bushel. Leather shoes for us and iron shoes for the horses. Sometimes we'd come home, and someone would have just left something on the porch for us."
Now, I looked back down at the pages. "Did you have a gift you couldn’t maintain?" I asked them. “Where did you go? That no one knows for sure when you died?"
There were other mysteries in the family tree. Not only in our line, but the other lines as well. The boys were precious few. In our line as well as several others, the progeny were almost always girls. Two girls specifically; always born 7 years apart to the day. “Just one of the crazy things that run in families,” a stranger might say. I knew there had to be a special reason, something anchored in our collective past. My past and that of my seven years younger sister and most of our cousins.
I wondered about all the families who had lived on the Hill, and how piece by piece all the children born there had flit away. All but one in the family who would stay or come back after their mother had passed. I wondered if it was the loneliness that finally drove the last of them away or if it was hard times. Most likely, the younger generation hadn’t cared enough to learn the old ways. As they watched their friends in town grow more dependent on modern conveniences, the young ones perhaps had little desire to learn how their ancestors had survived on the Hill. More than endure, one could even thrive up there if you knew how to treat the forest right. I imagined a life lived up there, long ago, when the Hill gave you what you desired or at the least would allow you to coax out of it what you needed.
Aunt Robina had not been born on the Hill, even though she had been called back to it by the inheritance that passed to her after her mother’s early death. Little more than a girl, Robina had left New York City and a promising life in society for a world she had never even seen. Maybe she had hoped that the cool mountain mornings bathed in green would be consolation enough.
Robina’s mother was not a direct descendant to the legacy of the Hill. That honor should have been claimed by our relative named Cleo. By historical accounts, Cleo had spurned the gift and remained in her life in town after her mother Rose had passed. The cabin on the Hill had set empty for several years until there was no one to stop Robina from claiming it.
The Hill sets empty again. Even the home that Robina had built had fallen into ruin, and my Mom Mom had had all traces of it carried off the Hill after she bought the property. Now my family will get to be the stewards.
I’m toying with an idea, and even I’m not sure from where it’s blooming. Laurel would never move to the Hill. She has her family and their friends down here in town. Posie has always been adamant in her refusal to live up there.
Certainly I wasn’t planning on it. I’m only here for a short while, after all. Long enough to clear my head. Long enough to escape the world for a little.
But my dreams have started filling up with images of green and long nights full of stars.
________
Chapter: Violette and Summer Solstice
Midsummer on the East Coast is hot. And sticky. The longest day of the year means the sun burns your scalp for a few extra minutes. As a bonus, there’s enough moisture in the air that every pore on your body shines.
Zack and I drove up to the Lake where we knew it would be cooler. The extra daylight meant we would have plenty of time to hike in and still be able to swim in the lake to cool off. My dog Rocket even surprised me by jumping in after us. Water is not always appealing to him. The three of us paddled around lazily for a while. Zack draped Rocket around his shoulders when we were ready to head back up to the cabin. There was a solar heated shower set up outside. Surrounded by the green leaves of tree boughs, we all washed the lake water off of us. I traced the tattoo that ran across his biceps. An image of a roan in full stride. I hadn’t been looking for a beau, not with barely a year after Danny’s death. When I saw the tattoo on Zack’s arm that fateful first day we met, I knew he was meant to be mine. Zack and I chatted about how lucky we were to have his family’s cabin on a lake. While I dried Rocket with a towel, we talked about what we would do with the rest of the long weekend as we lazed in our retreat away from town. We had big plans of lingering over breakfast on the cabin’s front porch while the juncos brazenly begged for crumbs. Then we would have a stroll exploring in the surrounding forest until our stomachs told us it was time to turn back for lunch. Afterwards, we’d relocate to the lakeside and while away the heat of the day with cool dunks into the water. There would be evening hikes to the top of Blue Mountain Ridge where we could watch the stars reveal themselves until there were too many to count. At night, there might be a game of backgammon or two while we sipped the sweet tea vodka I had snuck into my bag without him noticing. After that, there was only curling up into the bed with Rocket sleeping at the foot to accomplish.
The moon was out that night on the lake, and we had left the doors and all the windows open so that the breeze could come in through the screens. After midnight, the stars chased away the humidity, and we were able to fall asleep curled close together.
That night, I dreamed we were on a boat, but instead of water we sailed in tall, green grasses. Fish leapt from the horizon, but other animals also surfaced above the waving seed heads. I turned to Zack, and he raised his arm to point out a rhinoceros. The roan tattoo on his arm was running in place, like a cartoon. I couldn't stop staring at it. I could almost hear it running. The hooves drummed louder as if coming closer.
I heard it neighing, and I woke. Half-asleep, I thought the sound was still coming out of my dream, but it couldn't be. The horse sounded again, powerfully, right outside the cabin. Zack woke and sat straight up in the bed as the animal stamped a half-dozen times, neighed again, and galloped away. "One of Kent's horses got away from the farm," he muttered, buried his head back into the pillow, and tried to pull me back into dreams. I stayed awake in his arms with no chance that sleep would come again that night. I would wait until morning, though, to tell him that my mother saw the horses once before. They came to her when she became pregnant with me.
********
The following night, the dream grass was high and soft, and the hills went on for miles as I walked through them. Sun was shining with a hazy yellow-gold, and the breeze from some far-away ocean swayed the tall, full seed-heads. Finally, up ahead, something in the grass created a shadow of darker green, and I knew someone else was coming. Their path was running straight and true into my own, but I was not afraid. Darker, the green approached; the shadows becoming longer the nearer my stranger grew. The sun was drifting lower in the sky, and I w
alked faster to meet them not knowing who I would find.
Then the greenery parted abruptly. Pulled aside like a curtain rather than the undulation that had been drawing towards me. A girl with a widow's peak in her dark hair that hung in heavy sheets down to her waist came through the green. She made me think of dusk in the garden when the other birds have gone, and the lone blackbird comes to the feeder that hangs from the potting shed eave. Not a crow nor starling, his small body shimmers with electric blue in the last sun rays of the day. Her eyes were dark and shiny, too. Darker than brown, they seemed as black as her hair. They seemed to grow larger as I stood there, and I realized she was still coming closer to me. She was floating, so slowly I could not have said that I discerned her movement. Her eyes stayed locked with mine, and I could not move away. I was frozen by her stare and her small, closed-mouth smile. When the tip of her nose touched mine, her dark eyes expanded and a blackness rushed around me. The black enveloped the grass and the sun and her and me.
On the other side of the dream, my eyes opened onto the darkness of the room. There was no moon that night, and my heart skipped in my chest. A daughter, with her father's black hair. The small smile of my mother's side. The dark eyes, a sign of yet another in our family line born into the gift of prophecy and secrets but also of hope and healing. She'll be strong of heart and quick to prove her worth. A widow's peak, to tell me she'll live healthy and long.
________
Chapter: Violette and The Others
Mom Mom was a story hunter, and she rambled across counties and through states to find them. For all the success she had in tracking down the tales of our ancestors, the ones that had eluded her were those closest to home.
Aunt Cleo had lived only a few streets away from her in town. Whenever Cora tried to get her to talk about her childhood growing up on the Hill, Cleo always refused. It wasn’t until time began to make Cleo’s mind wander that Cora would get glimmers of information.
Some stories yielded key details Cora had been missing. They filled in gaps she had not been able to complete from the pieced together stories of distant relatives. Other stories seemed too fantastical to be true. Cora could never decide if Cleo was misremembering or merely confusing her life with fairytales. Just to be safe, she recorded every word.
Cleo would mutter about birds that weren’t truly birds. Sometimes she would talk about a thing that lived in the woods. She said it had lived for a very long time and could take the shape of any animal it pleased. She would whisper to Cora about secrets that Rose had tried to tell her. When Cora asked her what secrets, Cleo would sometimes share those as well. Then some part of her would recall that she did not like to speak about those days on the Hill. Her mind would grow lucid again, and she would clamp her lips tight.
There was a story Mom Mom told me on one of those days I sat beside her sick bed. A day when she had been feeling good, and we had played cards for a while. She had started to talk about the details she wanted for her funeral, even though she had made sure we knew what she wanted years before she was ever sick.
Her body would be bathed in rosemary water and then dressed in her favorite blue dress. She wanted to be buried in the long, woven wicker basket like her ancestors and then interred underneath her favorite apple tree on our land.
I had nodded while she talked not wanting to interrupt her on a day when her eyes were bright and her voice sounded strong. I listened gladly to all the parts I had heard her tell me before, and then she surprised me by saying something new.
She tilted her head closer to mine. In a lowered voice, she had said, “Maybe I’ll be lucky and see the orange light when I go.”
I felt my forehead frown a little while I tried to remember if I knew what this meant. “What orange light is that, Mom Mom?”
“The one that they say appeared when Janie Swavely passed on,” she told me as she reached up to adjust her glasses.
“Who told you this?”
“Cleo told me,” she answered in the voice that always seemed to convey belief and awe. She checked to make sure no one was listening at the open doorway, and then she settled back into the cushions. “Cleo said that Rose told her the story. When Janie passed, there were people up there on the Hill with her. To be with her and probably to help Winifred if she needed. When Janie gave her last breath, this wave of orange light came out of the forest, and everybody glowed orange for the rest of the day until night fell.”
“Hmmmm,” I gave her the impression I was thinking it over. We have an awful lot of weird stuff that has happened in our family over the decades, but this story seemed to be a stretch even for us. Cora seemed excited to be sharing, and I wanted to hear her thoughts. “What do you think the light was? What do you think it did to the people?”
“I know what it was because Cleo told me.” Cora was looking very pleased with herself. This was a story she had finally ferreted out of hiding. The tale that could have been lost. “She said that her grandmother Constance had told Rose. Constance’s mother, Salome, had tasked Constance to find the answer, and she had discovered that all the people who were there that day - all who were touched by the orange light - got some of the forest magic in their blood. They passed it to their children.” She paused to reach out for my hand. “You should talk to them, too.”
“Who should I talk to, Mom Mom?”
“I’ll make you a list.” Here she had smiled a sly smile. “But you can start with that Angelo boy that’s been coming around since you got home.”
I wasn’t sure I believed Cora at the time. We all knew how fuzzy Cleo’s mind had been during her last years. From what I’ve been able to piece together from my own inquiries, we’re not the only family with strange stories that have been handed down through the years. Using the list that Cora had given me, I slowly made inroads. In a small town, people tend to keep the bizarre or the unusual close to the chest. I found that if I shared some of our family stories, others were more willing to do the same.
********
The Heritage of the Gables as told by Beth Gable-Johansen
My mother Gertrude Gable had always been a fire-starter. My father Merle had known it when he married her. He knew because she had tried to set his Lincoln Logs on fire when they were both 6 years old. Since she had never actually burned a house down over the years following that incident, her parents generally hushed up any borderline scandalous occurrences that might have warranted the Columbia County authorities. And while there never was a house that went up under suspicious circumstances, the old barn at the edge of their property had been known to smoke from now and then.
No one was ever certain whether Gertrude started the flames intentionally or whether fire just followed her around. Gertrude’s grandfather had had this same predicament as had his grandfather before him. All Merle knew was that Gertie was a beauty when they were 14 and gorgeous by 19. He hadn’t even minded what happened on the night they were parked up at the lake. Gertrude was soft under his hands and the moon bright on her pale skin as it came through the windshield. Moonlight that soon turned to red before he realized the engine had caught on fire. With no reservations, he asked her to marry him a year later.
Their house was always overly warm every winter by the blaze of their fireplace even when the wood was wet. Toast burnt in the oven. The candles were always pools of wax within an hour. When their firstborn came, one of the McConaughey’s cornfields went up in flames.
In this part of the country, asparagus grows wild and volunteers itself in many gardens. A common practice is to burn the patch after harvest to yield an even more fruitful crop the following year. Numerous ladies may have done so as a chore, but Gertie always had a blanket and a picnic lunch set out as she coyly set her lighter to the balls of tissue. Her long legs tucked under her and her hair caught up away from her face in a French braid, she made the task look like art.
One year, a patch grew close to the hayfield. Merle eyed the proximity of an especially large stack and his fire-p
rone wife. Even though he gave the warning that she be careful so close to it, he still saw the inferno from the lower fields an hour later.
The young firemen in training from the University Fire Department program were just down the street and arrived in record time. Gertie served lemonade and black-bottom cake squares while Merle shook his head and rolled his eyes. He had a pyromaniac for a wife, and even the firemen gazed at her, knew her for what she was and didn’t care.
“Well, this is the nicest fire I’ve ever responded to,” the department head had said. He smiled as his boys practiced putting out the small blaze and accepted a refill for his glass.
Gertrude had smiled proudly as she straightened her gaze back to the field. Her face slightly flushed from the heat, she held the laden refreshment tray in her two strong arms and inhaled a deep slow breath that no one could mistake for anything but contentment. “It’s the best one I’ve ever started.”
********
The Heritage of the Pattersons as told by Doug Patterson
Making sugar has always been an important enterprise for the town. I still remember the day I first went to the maple grove. You could smell the sugar in the air, seeping even from the trees that didn’t have taps in them. Walking slowly through the forest floor covered with supple new green, the trunks so massively tall even the lowest branches loomed far overhead. A silver glint would catch your eye and draw you to it. A tiny spout you’d find as if part of the tree – how silly to find a spigot on a tree. It made you giggle, and the smell of sugar got headier the closer you got to the boiler.
Continuing to walk deeper through the grove, my brothers and I would make a game of who could see the next spigot and pail first and kept count of how many trees had them. That first time you went out with the Sugar Master, he’d ask if you wanted to taste the raw sap. It’s pungent and only slightly sweet, but you loved the idea that the trees made this inside of them. You didn’t know or care where Daddy was leading you. You wanted to stay lost in the woods forever. The looming machine up ahead was like a large black engine. You’d think it was a train by the steam. Coming around the side of it, the old boiler seemed to bustle and whistle at you. You saw the men pouring the buckets in the top. Later, of course, you got to taste the cooled sweetness we bottled for ourselves and to sell.
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