A Song of Home

by Susie Finkbeinger

  “They ran to this forest, the runaway slaves did. I like to think of it as a sort of Arden for them, a temporary haven.” She looked down at me. “They didn’t stay, though. There were too many dangers here for them if they did. They had to venture out and face adversity if they ever wanted to find home.”

  “Did they all make it?” I asked. “To Canada?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “I suppose I’ll never know that. But I hope they did. If not to Canada, to another place where they could live free.”

  We stood there another minute, only the sound of the woods filling our ears. Birds and chattering squirrels and crackling tree branches. A breeze so gentle I wouldn’t have heard it if I’d not been listening closely.

  “Something’s wrong with Mama,” I whispered. “And the baby, I think.”

  “The boys told me,” she said.

  “Ray and me, we found her,” I told her. “She said it was too early.”

  “Oh dear.”

  She let go of my hand and put her arm around my shoulders.

  “Is she going to be okay?” I asked.

  “I hope so, Pearl,” she answered.

  “And the baby?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We left the cabin, Aunt Carrie pulling the door to behind us. She held my hand all the way down the path that led to the apple trees.

  I couldn’t hardly help thinking of Mama all the way as I walked down the trail. I imagined she was in her bed, covers pulled up to her chin. I hoped maybe the doctor had given her something that might help her rest.

  I asked if God would see fit to let her be all right.

  I prayed it more than half a dozen times, just in case He hadn’t heard the first time.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Aunt Carrie cut slices of leftover meatloaf and put them between pieces of bread for Bert, Ray, and me. She’d asked if we wanted it warmed up, but we’d told her it was fine cold. I didn’t want to tell her, but I was so hungry, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to wait long enough for her to heat it. I knew the boys would be just as starved as I was.

  Once she put the plates on the kitchen table she went to the living room where she kept the telephone to call Daddy to let him know where we were.

  “They’re eating a little supper,” I heard her say. “They can stay as long as you need them to. I can send Bert home with Gus in a little bit.”

  Then she was quiet, only making a few noises and saying, “I see” every once in a while. I wished I could hear what Daddy said on the other end.

  “That’s fine, Tom,” she said. “I’ll see you in a little bit.”

  I’d only finished half my sandwich by the time she came back into the kitchen. By then, though, I found I couldn’t take another bite. I pushed my plate in front of Ray.

  “Is Mama going to be okay?” I asked.

  “Your daddy will tell you more once he gets here,” she said. “He shouldn’t be too long.”

  Bert didn’t want to leave when Uncle Gus had said it was time. I could tell by the way he poked around, walking slow out to the car. I waved at him out the living room window as Uncle Gus pulled away.

  Aunt Carrie set me up on the davenport with a couple magazines. Ray worked a puzzle on the floor. The only sound was the clock ticking away the time before Daddy came to get us.

  I flipped through the pages of one of the magazines and looked at pictures of women with their finger-waved hair and silky dresses.

  I couldn’t keep my mind on any of the words next to the pictures, though. Resting my head against the back of the davenport, I looked out the window, watching for Daddy to come.

  My eyes eased out of focus and my mind wandered, trying to think what could’ve happened to Mama and the baby. All I could think was if the baby came too early he would just be real small. We could take care of a tiny baby, I knew we could.

  I heard Daddy’s truck before I saw it coming up the drive to the farmhouse. Closing the magazine, I put it in the basket where Aunt Carrie kept them and stepped out onto the front porch.

  Uncle Gus’s dog came from around the side of the house toward Daddy’s truck. He didn’t bark because he knew Daddy belonged there. His tail went a mile a minute and he ran alongside the truck until it stopped.

  Daddy climbed out of his seat and started toward the house. Just from how weary he looked, I knew something was wrong.

  “Hey, darlin’,” he said.

  He made his way to the porch and put both hands on my cheeks before kissing me on the top of my head.

  “Is Mama … ?”

  “She’ll be all right,” he answered. “In time.”

  He pointed at the porch steps and I knew he meant for us to sit there. He lit himself a cigarette, smoking it slow and not saying anything right away.

  I kept my eyes on the yard between us and the road. Soon Aunt Carrie would plant her flowers in the beds on either side of the porch steps and ringing the trees. The irises, she’d told me, would come up on their own out of the bulbs she’d buried years ago in the ground against the south side of the house.

  She’d told me I could help her when it came time to plant. And she’d promised to let me pick out a couple seed packets to sow in the garden. I’d hoped for cucumbers and watermelon.

  “Pearlie,” Daddy said, catching my attention from the yard.

  “Yes?” I asked.

  “Your mama lost the baby.”

  I scrunched up my face, trying to make sense of the words. I just couldn’t. They had no meaning. Mama lost the baby. How could anybody lose a baby? Then I thought of how Peter Pan had flown away from his parents right after he was born. Flown away so they never saw him again. And Aunt Carrie saying they wouldn’t have been able to stop him even if they’d tried.

  But that couldn’t be right. Babies didn’t fly away. That was nothing but a fairy tale.

  “Do you know what that means, darlin’?” Daddy asked, putting out the stub of cigarette against the wood porch.

  I shook my head.

  Daddy reached into his pocket for another cigarette. Holding it between his lips, he lit a match and shielded the flame from the breeze. Once the end of his cigarette was lit, Daddy flicked his wrist, making the end of the match turn from flicker to smoke. He tossed it to the side on the ground.

  “Sometimes …” he started. “See, babies can be fragile.”

  “Like Beanie?” I asked.

  “Yup. Like Beanie.” He nodded and took a pull on his cigarette. “But we got lucky with Beanie. I guess some folks might not say lucky. They’d say a miracle isn’t anything less than the hand of God.”

  “Meemaw would say that.”

  “I do believe you’re right about that, darlin’.” Daddy rested his elbow on his knee and leaned his lips against his hand, the smoke of the cigarette curling up right in front of his face. “This baby, it wasn’t strong enough, I guess. I don’t know.”

  But it had been. I’d felt his kicks. If I tried real hard I could feel them still, bumping into my hands through Mama’s skin, through her dress. He’d been so strong.

  “It’s hard to explain, Pearlie.” Daddy tossed his half smoked cigarette to the ground. “I’m still trying to make sense of it myself.”

  “Where’s the baby?” I asked.

  “Doctor Barnett took it,” Daddy said, not looking at me. “He said he’d take care of it.”

  “He can’t take the baby.” I shook my head. “He’s ours.”

  “Pearl—”

  “It’s not right, Daddy. If Mama doesn’t want him, I’ll take care of him. I’d be good at it. It doesn’t matter if he’s real small.”

  “Darlin’, hush now.” Daddy said it in his softest voice. In his kindest way, not as a scolding. “What I’ve gotta tell you is hard to say. And it’s going to be hard to hear.”

  If I’d had any will left I would’ve run off to the forest and pretended it was my Arden. And I’d never have had to know what made Mama so scared in the back yard or Aunt
Carrie so quiet after Daddy’d talked to her on the telephone. And I wouldn’t have had to hear what Daddy said. But the strength was all gone out of me.

  “Pearl, the baby passed on,” he said. “It died, darlin’.”

  He put his arm around me and let me cry.

  Not once did he shush me or tell me it was going to be all right.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Aunt Carrie said Ray and I could stay at the farm as long as need be. She’d said it might be best for Mama, not having to worry about taking care of us just then.

  “I’d be happy to have them here,” she’d said.

  Daddy drove us back home so we could pack up a few things. Just enough to last us until he came to get us again. A couple changes of clothes. That was all we’d need. And a book or two. Maybe my hairbrush and the nice clip Mama’d given me for special occasions.

  It seemed impossible, thinking about what to take when I knew Mama was downstairs in her bed. Daddy’d said she was in a deep sleep, that Doctor Barnett had given her some powerful medicine so she wouldn’t have to feel any of the pain.

  I wondered if he had anything in that doctor’s bag of his that might deal with all the hurt that was coming once she woke up and remembered why her stomach wasn’t round anymore.

  “You need help?” Ray asked, standing in the doorway of my bedroom, his few things crumpled in his hand.

  “I’ll manage,” I answered.

  He came in anyway and sat on my bed. I thought how Mama would’ve gotten after me if I’d bunched my clothes like he had. She’d have grumbled at me for making a mess of my blankets if I’d sat on my bed the way he did. But she’d never scolded Ray, not really. Not in all the time he’d been with us.

  “It’ll be like we’re on vacation,” he said.

  “What?” I asked, turning toward him.

  “It’s like we’re goin’ on a trip,” he said. “I ain’t never been on vacation before.”

  “We’re just going to the farm.” I turned my back and took a couple dresses off their hangers. “It’s not that far.”

  “Nah, you’re lookin’ at it wrong.” He cleared his throat. “Just think of it. We’re gettin’ away from life in town and goin’ out to the country for a spell.”

  I shrugged, not wanting to see the sunny side of anything just then.

  “We’ll be far away from all the cares of the world,” he went on.

  “There’s no place somebody can go to get away from bad things,” I said. “They’ve got a way of following a body around.”

  “Guess we just gotta be faster then.” He gave me a weak smile. “Ready?”

  “I wanna see Mama first.”

  He didn’t try to stop me. He knew better than that.

  Daddy’d said it was okay to go to Mama if I promised not to wake her. I told him I’d be quiet as I could. I’d just wanted to look at her, to see with my own eyes that she was all right. To maybe feel with my own hands that her skin was still warm and hear with my own ears that she was still breathing.

  I opened the door to her bedroom as slow as I could and stepped in on my tiptoes. She was on her side, facing away from me. She didn’t move but her snoring let me know she was breathing all right. Mama never had been one to snore, not that I knew of, at least. I thought whatever the doctor had given her must have been mighty powerful.

  I stepped around the end of the bed, running the tips of my fingers along the quilt and feeling the patches of cotton and the stitching like scars holding it all together. I stopped, resting my pointer finger on one of the squares, tracing the red thread heart Meemaw had sewn at the bottom right-hand corner of the quilt.

  I remembered so many years ago I’d gotten sent to bed without supper. For the life of me I couldn’t remember what I’d done, but it must’ve been bad for Mama to have me go without a meal. It had always bothered her something awful to think that Beanie or I was hungry.

  That day, I’d crawled up under that quilt on my bed. It was in my room in Red River and I remembered rubbing the soles of my feet against the gritty dust on the bottom sheet. My stomach grumbled but I was too angry at Mama to admit that I was hungry, not even to myself.

  Later on, before she’d sent Beanie up to bed, Mama’d come in my room. I pretended to be asleep that day, pinching my eyes hard so I would remember not to open them and give myself away.

  She’d sat the end of the bed. I opened one of my lids just enough to see her there, her eyes on that square and her finger tracing the shape of the heart. Mama’d stayed there a long time, so long I nearly fell asleep for real.

  But then I’d heard her sniffling. I opened that one lid again, wider that time, and saw her reach up and push a tear off her cheek.

  “Mama?” I’d said.

  She startled, but just a little. “I thought you were asleep,” she’d said.

  “Why’re you crying?”

  “I wasn’t crying,” she’d answered. “Do you know I love you, Pearl?”

  “Yes, Mama,” I’d answered. It’d been the truth, I did know it.

  “I really want you to know that I do.”

  “I know.”

  She’d reached to where my foot bumped up the covers and gave it a squeeze.

  “Don’t ever doubt it, sweetheart,” she’d said.

  That day in the house on Magnolia Street it was Mama’s foot forming a ridge under the quilt and my finger tracing the stitched heart.

  “Do you know I love you, Mama?” I asked, keeping my voice as quiet as I could.

  She didn’t answer. Still, I hoped she knew.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  We’d gone to school the next morning, much as I didn’t want to. Neither of us said a word about Mama. Bert didn’t either. It wouldn’t have felt right, talking about something so private as that.

  I wondered if we’d ever talk about it again, even between us.

  After school Ray changed into work clothes and went out to the fields to work alongside Noah Jackson, repairing fences and getting the farm ready for the planting season. I wondered what it was like, the work men did that built up calluses on their hands and muscles in their arms. Whatever it was, Ray liked every minute of it even if it did wear him out.

  As for me, after school Aunt Carrie and I picked a couple books and climbed up in the reading tree out by the chicken coop, our skirts tucked up so we wouldn’t be quite as unladylike as we might’ve been.

  The hens clucked at us and it sure sounded like they were laughing.

  We read for a spell, the air not quite warm enough to be without a sweater, but the sun just bright enough to keep us from being too cold.

  After a little bit I found myself staring off toward the woods. I let myself think through the day before. It seemed like a year had passed since I’d stepped into the pigeon’s coop and since Ray had told me Bob’s story about Mr. Fitzpatrick hanging that man.

  “Are you finished reading?” Aunt Carrie asked.

  “I guess so,” I answered, turning toward her.

  “It’s nearly time to get supper in the oven.”

  But she didn’t make a move to climb out of the tree so I didn’t either.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

  “Just about a story I heard the other day.”

  “It must have been a good one for you to still be thinking about.” She closed her book and rested it on her knees.

  “Aunt Carrie, is it true about the house on Astrid Street?” I asked, turning my eyes back toward the forest.

  “What house?”

  “The haunted one, not too far from the library,” I said. “It’s gray with black shutters.”

  She shut her eyes and nodded her head. “I think I know the one.”

  “Is the story true?”

  “Tell me what you heard.”

  I told her the story Ray had told me. The man and woman and the Ku Klux Klan and how Mr. Fitzpatrick had hung the man himself. She listened, her hands folded on top of the book, her eyebrows lowere
d and eyes squinted.

  “Is it true?” I asked, leaning back on the branch behind me.

  “Yes and no.” She sighed. “It’s half true, I suppose. How about we go inside and get supper started,” she said. “Then I’ll tell you a little more about it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  We climbed out of the tree, the chickens scampering over to see if we had anything for them to eat.

  “It’s not time yet, ladies,” Aunt Carrie told them. “I’ll have Pearl come out with your supper in a little bit.”

  I bent at the waist and petted one of them on the back. She didn’t seem to mind so much.

  Once we got supper simmering on the stovetop, Aunt Carrie warmed up some coffee from breakfast for herself and poured a glass of milk for me.

  “Ruthie Bliss was my very best friend when we were growing up,” she started, sitting across from me at the kitchen table. “She’s the one I told you about. The one who let me play with her hair.”

  “Bliss?” I asked. “Like the town?”

  “Yes, she was sisters with Abigail. You’d know her as Mrs. Wheeler.”

  “Were you friends with Mrs. Wheeler?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Not really. She was a few years younger than Ruthie and me.”

  Aunt Carrie went on to tell me that they went to school together, back when even the high school grades were in the same building.

  “Not many stayed in school that long in those days,” she said. “Many of the kids gave up their education early to help at home.”

  “That doesn’t sound too bad,” I said.

  She smiled at me and looked at her fingernails. “I don’t think most of the children would have disagreed with you.”

  “Ray would be happy if he could stay here and farm with Uncle Gus.”

  “Ah,” she said. “But Gus would want Ray to stay in school. You too.”

  I nodded and took a sip of my milk.

  “Now, my friend Ruthie and I were inseparable. We’d run all over the farm when she’d come to visit. We’d hide in the barn and jump out at my brother. Charlie would get so mad at us for scaring him like that.” She laughed. “The Bliss family lived in that house where the Wheelers live now. And when I’d visit her house we’d eat candies in the cellar. Abby had a sweet tooth. If she knew we had candy, she’d bother us until kingdom come to give her some. So we told her there were goblins living down there. That way we could eat our sweets in peace. And talk about boys.”