by Jan Watson
Isaac would sit, forgetting to eat, listening to her read those papers. Many days when they went back to work, he’d stay at Julie’s kitchen table, struggling to write his name on a piece of lined paper with a fat red pencil.
One day he’d come to the bank with a Bible in his hand. He’d run all the way from Will’s house. “Listen,” he’d said to Daniel and Will, and then, just like that, he read: “‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’”
In the fall, Isaac would be leaving the confines of his mountain home. Julie had arranged through her sister for him to attend boarding school in Lexington. He hoped to get his teaching certificate and then return to Troublesome Creek and share the gift Julie had given to him.
Daniel’s thoughts returned to the job at hand. Before too long, they had a good-size hole dug. They’d fallen into a pattern. Daniel slung the pickax to break the ledge rock, Jeremiah hauled it out, and Isaac shoveled the dirt. They dug the grave in three vaults, the first two feet wider than the next two, and the last one just wide enough to hold a casket. They smoothed the sides of the grave with a broadax and the last vault in the six-foot hole was lined with wooden planks.
It was well past noon when they finished their task. They sat around the opening with their feet hanging in. They passed around a jar of cold springwater and spoke of the next day’s burying, knowing that the grave they dug would be admired by the men of the community as a job well done.
Daniel was the first to stand. He gathered the shovels, the axes, the maul, and the hammer. “You done her proud, boys.” He gripped Isaac’s shoulder. “We’ll come back in the morning to get things ready for the mourners.”
Halfway down the mountain, Jeremiah stopped to remove his boots. Tying the laces together, he slung them over his shoulder. “Nothing feels better than green grass between your toes after a cold winter.”
Daniel looked back at the graveyard, a dark foreboding place, deep in the shadow of overgrown trees and vines.
Isaac turned also. “I’m going to bring a hatchet up here soon. I’m going to clean out the hyacinth bean vine and the thistle weed and chop down that raggedy cedar that blocks the sun. Then I’ll plant some day-eye blossoms so she’ll have something warm and pretty to keep her company.” He choked up and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his shirt.
“That would make her happy, boy,” Daniel replied, feeling a little sting in his own eyes. “Julie liked purty things.”
Emilee stood, hand on her hip, in the doorway. She had just finished nursing her baby and was resting. She sipped asparagus-root tea Granny had fixed for her. She shuddered. “It’s bitter, Granny.”
Granny dipped a spoon into the jar of molasses on the kitchen table and stirred some sweetness into the potion. “Ye need to drink it straight down. Nursing two babies and crying all night has got ye all dried up.”
“I want to go with you to dress Julie’s body.” Emilee took off her apron and hung it behind the door. “Brother Nathan’s wife can watch the babies.”
“She can sit with you whilst Ellen Combs and I ready the body. Her two girls’ll be there to help out, I reckon.”
“Please, Granny?” Emilee pleaded.
“Yore place is here with these young’uns,” Granny told her. “Ye got to build up yore milk.” She tucked her sparse hair up under her old bonnet.
Emilee sobbed anew.
Granny gathered the grieving young woman in her arms. “Honey,” she consoled, “I know that Julie named you her closest friend, and I know how ye ache to do for her, but don’t ye reckon that nursing her wee one is the thing that would mean the most? There’s nary another person that kin do that for her but you, Emilee, nary a soul but you.”
Emilee pulled the rocker beside the open window. The newborn, Laura Grace, nestled in her arms. Little John sat at her feet on a bright rag rug gnawing on the end of a baked potato.
“Pray with me before you go, Granny,” Emilee said, finally giving in to Granny’s will.
A puff of cool air blew through the open window. In the distance they could see the mountain where Daniel was digging the grave.
Granny laid a little flannel blanket over the baby, then bowed her head and prayed. “Thank Ye, Lord, for saving this baby from the darkness of the water. Be with us all tomorrow, especially Will. It will be hard, putting Julie in the ground. Yore will, not ours, be done.”
Granny drew back the sheet that covered Julie. Her body was whole and unscarred. She hadn’t been in the creek long enough to do much damage, and thankfully the water was cold. Daniel had placed her on a board that rested on two sawhorses. He’d managed to close her eyes, and now two silver coins rested there. Granny blessed the corpse before bathing it with cool soda water. Then Ellen Combs plaited the long hair into ornate ropes of gold that she arranged like a crown on top of Julie’s head. When that was finished, they dressed her in clean undergarments and a simple shroud of black cotton, cut up the back, which Mrs. Combs had sewed.
“When I am yet dead, I shall wear black,” Granny repeated the old refrain, “but when I walk in heaven, I shall wear white.”
They laid Julie’s cold hands across her chest, and Granny called for a saucer of salt to set under the shroud on the still-rounded belly. She explained each task to Mrs. Combs’s daughters so they would know what to do when it was their turn to ready the dead for the grave. The salt was to keep the body from swelling by absorbing fluids, the little cheesecloth bags of soda tucked here and there cut the odor, washing the face with a rag dipped in soda water helped preserve the color, and placing a small pillow under the head made the body look more lifelike. “The face just don’t look natural if it ain’t propped up a little.”
When all the careful tasks were completed, the girls helped lift the body and lay it in the coffin that was padded with cotton batting and lined with cream-colored silk.
The carefully constructed, highly polished rosewood casket was Granny’s own, fashioned by her grandson Daniel during long winter evenings and tucked away in the hayloft against the time of her need. When Daniel had come to fetch her early in the morning after he had found Julie’s body, she had requested, over his protest, that he give it to Will for Julie’s internment.
“Daniel, I don’t need nary a thing so fine to lay these old bones in,” she told him. “But it’ll do us all good to view Julie laid out in such a purty box.”
“Well, Granny, I reckon I got years yet to make you another.” That said, he’d hauled it over here to Will’s place.
The ladies stood in silence to admire their handiwork. “Why, she looks just like a princess,” said Mrs. Combs’s eldest.
Julie’s hair shone. They had opened a jar of pickled beets and dabbed her cheeks with the juice so there was a touch of pink on her cold blue face. Her garment lay gently upon her small frame.
Mrs. Combs’s youngest daughter placed a bouquet of white service berries in Julie’s folded hands. “I gathered them just for her,” she said shyly as she picked a stray petal from the front of the shroud.
“Ye done her proud.” Granny praised the girls before she went to the porch and hung a wreath fashioned from cedar to the outside of the Browns’ cabin door. The cedar wreath, along with the tolling of the church bell, would alert the community that the viewing could commence.
The day of the burial dawned warm and beautiful. Spring in all its glory had come to the mountains. Every flowering plant was bursting with color and fragrance, birds seemed to be in contest to see whose song was sweetest, and the gentlest of warm breezes stirred the soul and warmed the spirit.
Daniel waited with Isaac at the graveyard for the mourners. They had assembled rough-hewn benches near the gravesite. A gray granite bucket filled with cold water from a nearby spring and a matching dipper sat on a hastily constructed table. It was a long walk up the mountain, and people would need to quench their thirst. Daniel removed the boards that covered th
e deep hole, grateful it was still dry, and placed them beside the grave for the casket to rest on during the service. He did not mind missing the service held at the church—although he loved to hear Brother Nathan’s stirring funeral exhortations—because he wanted to do this last small task for Julie.
He’d sat up all night at the wake with Granny and several others. They’d pulled straight chairs to face the coffin, which rested on sawhorses hidden under a white quilt. It seemed like everyone in the valley had come to view the body and to express sympathy to Will. But strangely, unaccountably, Will was nowhere to be found.
He’d disappeared after seeing the lifeless form of his wife laid out in the very place where they had known such joy. Will had stood over the small form for several minutes, staring down at the shell of his beloved Julie. He’d not shed a tear, just touched her once, gently stroking her cheek, then leaned down and whispered in her ear. His breath stirred a strand of her hair. “I found your baby” was all he said, just that one thing. “I found your baby.” Then he had turned on his heel and walked out into the dense early morning fog, leaving Daniel and Granny to care for the body. He’d not even told them how to reach Julie’s sister, who surely would have wanted to know what had happened.
They could hear the funeral procession long before it came into view.
“Shall we gather at the river,
Where bright angel feet have trod;
With its crystal tide forever
Flowing by the throne of God?”
The familiar refrain mingled with birdsong as it echoed up the mountain.
They watched as six stalwart men labored up the hillside carrying the coffin suspended from two hickory rails by heavy rope. The pallbearers walked three on each side, the rails resting on their shoulders. One of the biggest boys in the procession walked behind the wooden box, a hand stretched to steady it and keep it from sliding from its bonds. Occasionally, the men would pause to catch their breath and wipe salty sweat from their eyes; and then they would fall into the measured, respectful step that carried the body to the grave. The coffin was followed by family and friends in order of importance, with a space left for the conspicuously absent Will.
On reaching the graveyard, the pallbearers let down the ropes and set the casket on the grave boards.
Brother Nathan offered a final prayer for the soul of the departed and for solace for her loved ones. “Brothers and sisters, I know your hearts are troubled. I know God’s ways are sometimes hard to fathom. As Jeremiah cried out to the Lord, ‘When I would comfort myself against sorrow, my heart is faint in me. . . . Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there?’” Pausing, he wiped a tear from the corner of his eye.
“We need but to petition God, and He will supply our every need. He will surely comfort us in this dark and dreadful time. Brothers and sisters, let us recite the Twenty-third Psalm, David’s gift of solace to us. ‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.’ Amen and amen.”
In conclusion, the preacher stooped to gather a handful of grave dirt, nodding for the pallbearers to lower the casket into the vault.
The men held tight to the rope—Daniel could hear the whir as it slid through their hands—and let the weight of the coffin aid its descent until it reached bottom, six feet down.
Brother Nathan stepped forward. “Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.” He released a stream of red-clay soil from his hand. It was so quiet the mourners could hear the pebbly dirt ping off the nailheads that secured the top of the casket. It seemed even the squirrels and jays had stopped their raucous chatter in honor of the dead.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Sleep here all night, sister,” each person intoned as they, in turn, sprinkled dirt into the dark hole and bade their sister in Christ a last good-bye.
Every eye followed Emilee as she carried the baby to the edge of her mother’s grave. She’d dressed the infant in a long yellow gown with fanciful embroidery around its hem and a little knit bonnet. Dipping her free hand into a small reed basket, Emilee scattered its contents around the grave’s opening. Tiny white blossoms fell like snow onto the raw red earth, emphasizing the gaping wound.
The baby began to cry, a mournful long-noted wail that brought tears to the eyes of each assembled there.
Suddenly Will appeared out of the shadows. Some ladies gasped at the sight of him, for his shoulder-length dark hair and bushy brown beard had turned white in the course of one night. He held out his arms to Emilee, and she cautiously handed Laura Grace over. Then he did the oddest thing. Holding the baby in one arm, he began to unbutton his shirt. Emilee stepped forward, but Granny put out a hand to hold her back. Will tucked the infant next to his skin, then buttoned the shirt around her. As he placed his hand against the bundle of his daughter, she quieted and cried no more. Will stopped before Daniel and grasped his shoulder before vanishing again, swallowed up by the anonymous forest, baby and all.
Turning his attention back to his task, Daniel picked up his shovel and began to pitch dirt into the grave.
The people murmured among themselves as they gathered up their Bibles and church fans and began to straggle off down the mountain. They would gather at Daniel’s for a noonday meal prepared by the women of the church. He knew the past couple of days had taxed their spirits. The fellowship of breaking bread would help to salve their sorrow.
Snatches of comments drifted to Daniel as he worked—“Strangest thing I ever seen. . . . Poor little young’un. . . . Did you see Will’s hair? White as snow. . . . I’ve heard of it. . . . It were the shock. . . . Brother Nathan done a good. . . .”
Finally, after what seemed like hours, Daniel finished, and all that was left in this world of Julie Brown was the little hump of dirt at his feet.
CHAPTER 6
“Daniel, you have got to say something to him,” Emilee fretted. “This just can’t go on.”
Man, Daniel thought, am I between the bull and the barn door. On the one hand, he understood Emilee’s concerns; he had some of his own. On the other, he couldn’t bring himself to chastise Will for his bizarre behavior. It had been two weeks since the burial, and Will still spent his days roaming around the woods with the baby tucked inside his shirt. At intervals when Will could no longer ignore her mewling cry of hunger, he would show up at their door and hand the infant over for a feeding. Each evening at dusk he’d leave the baby for Emilee to bed down with little John, then go sleep by the creek, alone.
Daniel knew Emilee was near exhaustion. Laura Grace wanted to nurse constantly during the night to make up for what she missed during the day. Also, to add to Emilee’s indignation, the baby had a bad rash. Even Granny’s special paste of borax and honey didn’t clear up her sore bottom, and she cried every time Emilee washed her.
“Emilee,” Daniel replied, “I swear I’d druther be in hell with my back broke than to interfere with Will that-a-way.”
“If you don’t remedy this situation soon, you won’t have to go to hell to get your back broke. I’m near dry as a lizard on a hot rock now. And this little girl don’t need to suffer because her pa’s gone quare.”
Daniel’s tone turned sharp. “To think you’d say that after what Will’s been—”
“I know. I’m sorry. But he ain’t the only one to suffer a loss,” Emilee said, a trace of anger in her voice. “I miss Julie too, and I love her baby like my own. Will needs to let me have her, Daniel. I want to raise her up with little John.”
Granny commenced stirring the bubbling thick oatmeal sh
e was fixing for their breakfast. She could stand in the middle of the week and see both ways to Sunday on this one. Daniel was right to allow Will to heal in the only way he knew how, but Emilee was also right in her desire to protect the baby. Granny had thought Will’s treks would stop of their own accord, that he would come to terms with his loss, but so far there seemed to be no lessening of his pain.
She portioned the cereal into white ironstone bowls, topping them off with a dollop of blackberry jam. She set the bowls on the table beside the platters of fried ham and biscuits. Food will help, she reckoned. A full belly don’t grumble.
The baby was newly fed and freshly bathed when Will came for her later that morning. She’d had her first dipping bath, for her navel cord had finally shriveled and come off. Daniel met Will at the door and took him to the barn for a “little talk.”
Granny and Emilee tarried on the porch. Granny picked over pintos, flinging the pebbles and broken beans out into the yard. Emilee busied herself by untangling a morning-glory vine and trailing it up the string she had fastened with a tack to the eave of the cabin.
“Granny, this will be purty when it blossoms,” she said. A fat red hen scratched around her feet. “It’ll make a nice shade where I can set my rocker and feed my babies.” The hen cocked its head and pecked at Emilee’s bare toes. “Shoo, now. Shoo!” Emilee flapped her apron. “There’s corn in the chicken yard. I don’t want you messin’ on my clean porch.”
They watched Daniel put his arm around Will’s shoulders and heard Will say, “Never, Daniel! I’ll never give my baby up!” Will stalked away from Daniel and stood, arms dangling at his sides, shoulders slumped, looking out across the valley for the longest time.