The Mulberry Tree

by Jude Deveraux

  “Ain’t met anybody who can go up against me yet,” Violet said cheerfully as she reached for another joint.

  Bailey rummaged in the pantry until she found some potatoes that weren’t rotten and a canister of flour. There were some cans of food also in the pantry, and she carried them into the kitchen and plunked them down on the table in front of Violet. “I take it that calories aren’t a concern of yours,” she said, and Violet snorted in answer. “All right. One lunch for information. What did your friend tell you about my farm?”

  “Her great-aunt told her the story, and the aunt said that nobody knew all of it. The farm was owned by a woman nobody in town liked. She had a couple of kids—” Violet halted when Bailey looked at her sharply. “No, none of the woman’s kids had a harelip, nor anybody else that my friend remembered did either. Besides, I think all this at your farm happened a long time ago, too long ago for the dates you want, so those kids had nothin’ to do with the man you’re lookin’ for.” She paused for a moment, smiling smugly at having figured out so much from the little Bailey had told her.

  “But anyway, the woman went off for a while and came back married to a man from outside. My friend said she thought he was named Guthrie or something like that. I like a little more pepper on my chicken than that,” she said as Bailey put salt and pepper in the flour to coat the chicken.

  “Go on,” Bailey said as she shook more pepper on the chicken.

  “My friend—her name is Gladys, by the way—well, Gladys said that the man was a big, hulking giant and kinda simpleminded. She said that when the woman—Gladys couldn’t remember her name—bought the farm, it was a run-down old place, and since the woman had a job in town, it stayed that way for years. But after she got married, her husband brought it back to life. You’ll like this: Gladys said that her aunt told her that the man used to make jams and pickles. She said the general store in Calburn used to sell them.”

  For a moment Violet drew on her joint and watched Bailey as she fried the chicken in hot Crisco, then put sliced potatoes in another big cast-iron skillet to fry.

  “So what’s the part that I’m not going to like?” Bailey asked.

  “Gladys said that she didn’t remember all the details, but her aunt told her that the wife started having an affair with some man where she worked. And when she told her husband she was divorcing him and he had to get off her farm, the poor guy went out into the barn and hanged himself.”

  Bailey paused with her tongs aloft. “My barn?”

  “That’s the one. Told you you wouldn’t like it.”

  For a few minutes Bailey moved the chicken about in the hot oil and thought about that poor man. She’d sensed that someone who truly loved the farm had lived there before her. Through marriage, the man had found a beautiful place where he could grow the things he loved. He’d even been able to sell what he made. But then he’d heard that it was all going to be taken from him by his adulterous wife. And if he was simpleminded, he could never hope to earn enough to buy his own farm. It was an awful story, she thought.

  When Bailey was silent, Violet said, “You shouldn’t take it so hard. All these old places have stories to them. A couple of years before my husband bought this place, the old man that owned it dropped a chain saw on his foot. Cut it clean off.”

  “But suicide . . . ,” Bailey said softly as she walked to the counter by the sink and checked the seals on the quart jars of tomatoes. All but two of the lids had popped down, showing that they’d sealed.

  “It happens. And, as I said, it was a long time ago. Who knows? Maybe he was sick, or somethin’ like that. We never know what’s in a person’s heart.”

  “So what happened after that?” Bailey asked as she walked back to the stove to check on the chicken.

  Violet chuckled. “Gladys said that after the woman’s husband killed himself, she packed up her kids and left town. Gladys said that her aunt hinted that the man she was plannin’ to marry already had a wife, so maybe he told the woman he wasn’t gonna marry her after all. Or maybe he was freaked out about the suicide. Who knows?”

  “Did she sell the farm?”

  “I asked Gladys that, but she didn’t know,” Violet said. “Gladys said that the house has been empty all her life, but then so has a lot of Calburn.”

  “This town is empty, isn’t it?” Bailey said. She was pulling open drawers to find paper towels to drain the chicken on, but there was nothing. Half of the many drawers were filled with empty bread wrappers, some of them quite old. Could bread wrappers reach antique status? she wondered. In the pantry, she found some paper napkins printed, “Happy birthday, Chuckie,” so she took them back to the kitchen. “Are you keeping these for sentimental reasons?” she asked.

  “If gettin’ somethin’ free is sentimental, then yeah.”

  Bailey washed a chipped dinner plate, covered it with the napkins, then put the chicken and fried potatoes on it to drain.

  “Why is half of Calburn empty?” Bailey asked as she put creamed corn and peas—found in cans in the pantry—fried potatoes, and fried chicken on a plate and handed it to Violet.

  “You’re welcome to join me,” she said, motioning to the empty chair across the table from her.

  Bailey looked down at the food and knew that if she started eating it, she’d never stop. What was it about the food you had as a child that was so viscerally appealing? But she also knew the calorie content of such a meal. “No thanks,” she said as she sat down on the chair. “Tell me about Calburn.”

  “Simple,” Violet said, her mouth full of chicken. “New highway. It was a toss-up whether the highway was gonna go through Wells Creek or here. I think somebody paid somebody off, and Calburn lost. A year after the highway was finished, Calburn was nearly a ghost town, while Wells Creek got rich. You should drive over there and see the place. It has”—she wiggled her eyebrows in disdain—“boutiques. Fancy places that carry little soaps shaped like hearts. And shops that carry clothes that cost more than I make in a year. They even changed the name of the town, give it the la-di-da name of Welborn. Isn’t that cute?”

  “Welborn?” Bailey asked thoughtfully.

  “Sure. Like in Australia except without the e.”

  “I think I’ve heard of that place. Isn’t there something there? Something that brings tourists?”

  Violet stuffed her mouth full of peas and corn. “Mot mings,” she said.

  “What?”

  She swallowed. “They have some hot springs over there, but—”

  “Yes! Of course,” Bailey said. “Welborn Hot Springs. Lots of people go there. I heard that it was a divine place. I wanted to go, but Jimmie . . . ” She trailed off.

  “He your dead husband?”

  Bailey nodded. Jimmie had refused to go to the hot springs in Virginia that some of the people they knew had sworn by. Lady something or other had said the springs had completely cured her arthritis. Bailey had hoped that a few days of lying about in hot water would help Jimmie relax, but he wouldn’t hear of it. The fact that he wouldn’t go was so unusual that Bailey had asked him why. His face had turned dark for a moment; then he’d laughed and said that if she wanted hot springs, he’d take her to Germany or somewhere exotic. “But not to the backwoods of rural Virginia,” he’d said as he picked her up and twirled her about, then nuzzled her neck and succeeded in making her stop asking questions.

  “You in there?” Violet asked.

  “Oh, sorry,” Bailey said. “I was just remembering something. Look, I need to go. I have to—”

  “Fix that big, good-lookin’ Matt Longacre dinner. You two sleepin’ together yet?”

  “Every minute we can get,” Bailey said as she stood up. “We’re regular rabbits.”

  Violet cackled with laughter, then leaned back on her chair and looked at the many quarts of tomatoes that Bailey had put up, and at the chicken and vegetables she’d prepared. “You come back any time you want to know anything.”

  “And next time I’ll bring a
sous-chef,” Bailey said, making Violet laugh some more.

  “Wait a minute,” Violet said as she heaved herself up from the table. “You’ve been such a good sport, I have somethin’ to give you.”

  “No marijuana!” Bailey said instantly.

  “ ’Fraid it’ll loosen you up so you do start rollin’ around with that hunk that’s movin’ in with you?” Violet asked as she held out a battered paperback book.

  “I’m more afraid of jail sentences,” Bailey said as she took the book and looked at it. The Golden Six, by T. L. Spangler, it said on the cover. “Were they glorious young men or were they instigators of a great hoax?” the copy read. “You decide.”

  “Take it and read it,” Violet said, her eyes twinkling. “Maybe it’ll give you somethin’ to do when you’re in bed alone at night.” She shook her head. “Your generation are fools. In my day we—”

  “Didn’t have AIDS or herpes, or morals, as far as I can tell,” Bailey said pleasantly.

  Violet didn’t take offense. “That Matt Longacre could make a nun forget her vows.”

  “I’ll consider that before I take mine,” Bailey said as she pushed open the door. She was smiling at Violet’s laughter, but then she saw that Violet had an odd look on her face. “Is something wrong?” she asked as she wiped her hand across her cheek. “Do I have flour on my face?”

  “No,” Violet said, “no flour. I just thought for a moment that I’d seen you before. Probably the grass. You go home and take care of that man.”

  Smiling, Bailey left the house. Outside, she looked up at the shade trees. Violet Honeycutt was lazy, manipulative, could be taken away to prison at any second, and was quite rude at times, but Bailey felt as though she’d made a friend.

  In the car, she tossed the book onto the passenger seat and started the engine. It was three P.M., she hadn’t had lunch, and she had yet to buy anything to make for dinner for Matt tonight. Maybe she should stop by that nice Mr. Shelby’s farm and see what he had for sale besides pigeons and rabbits. It had been his sign, “Rabits 4 Sale,” that had made her stop at his roadside stand instead of the many others along the highway. If she remembered correctly, she’d seen some collard greens growing in the back.

  Eight

  Matt parked his truck under a shade tree next to Bailey’s Toyota, and for a moment he leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. It was after eight in the evening, and he was exhausted. He wasn’t used to doing construction. He’d had too many years sitting at a desk looking at a computer screen or at a drawing board. His visits to the work sites had been quick and nonstrenuous.

  But, to be fair to himself, today he’d really pushed it. He’d driven his two nephews until they were threatening mutiny. But Matt had wanted to finish the job to have the weekend free, so he’d done three days’ work in one. The fact that his brother and nephews had helped him move into Bailey’s house during their lunch break didn’t lessen his fatigue.

  Of course it hadn’t helped that Patsy had called him six times today on his cell phone. By the fifth call, he was ready to smash the thing. “This better be good, Patricia,” he’d said as he stood up on the roof and took the call.

  “She’s spent the entire day with that horrible old Violet Honeycutt,” Patsy announced.

  “Bailey—if that’s who you mean—couldn’t have spent the entire day there, because you’ve already told me that she spent the morning with the gossipmonger of Calburn, Opal. So which is it?”

  “You know exactly what I mean, Matthew Longacre, so don’t get smart with me. And are you seeing that my boys wear their shirts and that they have on sunblock?”

  Matt glanced down at the ground. His big nephews had on no shirts, and right now they were drinking water out of plastic cups and letting the water pour down their sun-bronzed, muscular chests. They’d seen “some dude” do this on TV, and the girls had gone crazy. So now there were half a dozen teenage girls in the neighbor’s yard across the street, studiously pretending that they weren’t looking at Joe and John pouring water all over themselves.

  “Yeah,” Matt said into the phone. “I coat your babies down with sunscreen every forty-five minutes. Patsy, I have work to do. I don’t have time to listen to everything that my landlady does.”

  “Oh? Then I guess you don’t want to know that after she left that Violet Honeycutt’s house, she visited Adam Tillman’s house.”

  “She did what?” Matt yelled so loud that his nephews stopped pouring water down the front of their chests. Actually, he was so loud that the girls across the street stopped not looking at the boys and turned to stare at Matt on the roof.

  “No, she didn’t,” Patsy said sweetly. “But she could have. I tell you, Matt, you better not let this one get away. So, are you two coming over on Saturday?”

  “Patsy,” Matt said slowly and with exaggerated patience. “I hardly know the woman. For all I know, she has friends in this area. Maybe she’s going to spend the weekend with other people.”

  “Then that means you better step on it and get her locked up. Oh! The oven timer went off. I gotta go.”

  Matt flipped the phone shut and counted to ten, then shouted down at his nephews to get back to work. Yelling helped to alleviate some of his anger, but not much. Damn Patsy and her meddling anyway! Hadn’t he already pushed Bailey as much as he could and as fast as he could? He’d just met her yesterday, and this afternoon he’d moved into her house.

  But even that hadn’t been fast enough for his sister-in-law. “She won’t last long,” Patsy had said at lunch as she helped toss Matt’s belongings into boxes. “She won’t stay in Calburn long. She’ll get bored and get out of here. You have to do everything you can now.”

  “If I’m out of your house, what does it matter to you who I get involved with?” Matt had snapped at her.

  At that Patsy had thrown up her hands as though to say that she’d never met a dumber man in her life. “You tell him, Rick,” Patsy said. “I can’t talk to him.”

  Rick said, “Well, uh, Patsy thinks, I mean, we all feel that—” He broke off and turned to his wife. “You’re so much better at explaining things than I am, honey.” Behind her back, he looked at his brother and shrugged his shoulders. He had no idea why she was pushing Matt so hard.

  Patsy took on a tone that said she couldn’t believe Matt couldn’t see the obvious. “Because, Matt, dearest brother-in-law of mine, whoever you are ‘involved with,’ as you call it, becomes part of our family. We have Christmases and Thanksgivings together. Weddings. Funerals.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Look what you did last time.”

  “Right,” Matt said. “I see what you mean.” His former wife had not participated in any family affairs. For the most part, he’d been isolated from his brother’s family for all the years he was married. If he did see them, he saw them alone. One meeting between Patsy and Cassandra had been enough for both women.

  “This one is nice,” Patsy said, letting him know, yet again, what she thought of his ex-wife. “Opal likes her a lot. She even gave Opal and that daughter of hers some jam, and you should taste it!”

  “She can cook,” Matt said, and there was reverence in his voice. “She can cook.”

  Later, as Matt and Rick were on the stairs carrying boxes down to Matt’s pickup, Rick whispered, “The widow didn’t go bananas about Patsy and Janice.”

  Matt nodded. After the one and only time that Cassandra had met his sister-in-law, she’d said, “Do you expect me to pretend that there is only one person in the room when there are two of them? That’s absurd. I won’t be visiting your relatives again.” And that had been that. Nothing Matt ever said budged her.

  When Matt got out of his truck and went into Bailey’s house, he was amazed at how disappointed he was that she didn’t come out to greet him. “Hello? Anybody home?” he called, feeling a bit odd to be entering without knocking. This afternoon, when they’d moved Matt’s few belongings into the house, he’d known that she wasn’t there. Patsy a
nd her chain of informants had told him of Bailey’s whereabouts every minute of the day.

  The house smelled great, warm with cooking, but when he went into the kitchen, she wasn’t there. There was a note on the refrigerator, “Dinner’s in the oven.”

  It was the first time he’d seen her handwriting, and he liked it: easy to read, on the small side, neat and tidy. Like she is, he thought, smiling.

  “Bailey?” he called, then thought, Maybe she wants me to call her something else. He went down the hall, and when he saw that her bedroom door was ajar, he pushed it open farther. “Bailey?” he called softly. No answer, and the open bathroom door showed that that room was also empty.

  Did she go out? he wondered. Did she make him dinner according to their agreement, then leave him to eat alone?

  Matt decided that the next time he saw Patsy, he was going to wring her neck. She was making him believe there was something between him and “the widow” that there wasn’t, and making him believe that if he thought there was ever going to be anything between them, then he had to act instantly.

  Shaking his head to clear it, Matt went back to the kitchen and opened the oven door. Inside was a big plate and a bowl, both covered with foil. Slowly, he took the plate out of the oven, then peeled back the foil. There were four filets of fish, each lightly breaded and sautéed; a red sauce was under the fish, and when he tasted it, it was spicy-hot. Beside the fish was a big pile of what looked to be old-fashioned greens, the kind that they didn’t sell in stores and that he hadn’t eaten since he was a child. Beside it was a square of something that looked like onions. They were. Caramelized onions.