CHAPTER 35
The walnut wardrobe creaked on its hinges. Emily had not opened it since that day three years before when she wrapped her soft batiste nightdress, with its tiny rows of tucks and finely stitched embroidered vines, in tissue and lay it on the upper shelf beside the folded stack of delicate underthings she had abandoned in favor of plain shifts and homespun cotton drawers.
As her fingers traced the undulating pattern of wood grain, Emily stared at her hardened, sunburned hands. She tucked them into her apron pockets and turned her back on the wardrobe. In the kitchen, she picked up the jar of cold bacon grease and rubbed some on the back of her hand.
In the doorway, Ginny stood watching. Without speaking, she broke a leaf of aloe from the old plant by the window. Reaching into the cupboard, Ginny took out a blue patterned saucer. She squeezed the sticky gel from the leaf and stirred in a spoonful of lard, slowly, then with vigor, until a thick cream had formed. Ginny wiped the spoon between her fingers and dropped it into the dishpan.
“Let me see them hands now,” she said, reaching out.
Emily did not move.
“Come on, honey. Let’s see them. They ain’t no secret, you know. Not in this house.”
Emily raised her hands. Ginny’s touch was quiet, but her stroke was firm. The cream felt cool, soothing. Emily laid her cheek against the top of Ginny’s head.
* * *
In the warm autumn sun Emily lay back on the grass, her palms moving over the tips, feeling the soft itch of it. The trees shed their many colors like Joseph robbed of his bloodstained coat. Emily peered into the opening canopy of interlocking branches. Life had become her work now, one that brought a satisfaction and an occasional joy wrapped in the hands of her children. Or in the warm strength of Ginny’s arm. She was surprised now to be surprised, taken unaware that life could touch her so, that joy, however small or fleeting, could find her.
Emily stared at the astonishing blue of the sky, studied the interlocking pieces of it where the bare branches meandered. What she saw were not the branches, but the random pieces of the sky. Fitting together like an intricate puzzle, like a shattered bowl of half-shelled peas, carefully mended, each broken piece in place. The scars of brokenness, she thought, are bold, yet the sky still astonishes. There is beauty in the broken.
At the sound of voices Emily turned her head and raised on her elbow. Ginny sauntered toward her with Lonso on her hip, Rosa Claire running ahead, her voice shrill with excitement, waving sheets of paper in the air.
“Look, Mama, look.” As Rosa Claire neared, one of the papers floated out, offering a glimpse of color in the air like a last leaf falling from the overhanging trees. She stooped to retrieve it and stepped on it in her excitement. Her face fell and she held it up to Ginny with an eruption of tears.
Ginny knelt with Lonso. “It’s just a little smudge there now. Ginny gone wipe that right off for her gal.” Ginny rubbed at the spot with the corner of her apron. “Don’t cry now, honey. Go show your mama what we found.”
Rosa Claire held the papers out to her mother. Emily sorted through them, unsure what she was seeing. It soaked into her that here was her mother. Rosa Claire knelt beside her, watching with fascination. Her little hands stroked her mother’s arm, her cheek against the worn fabric of the work dress. Emily raised her eyes. Ginny stood against the sky, Lonso still on her hip.
“Where did you find these?” Emily said.
“Over to the big house. I got some women cleaning up there. Hannah found this old chest in the attic. Full of these. I told Lucian to bring it on over here.”
“What all is in it, Ginny?”
“Miss Liza’s paintings. You children’s paintings, you and Will, marked on the back in your mama’s hand: your name, date, sometimes a little note. And some paints and paper, left over. Reckon your daddy had them stored away after she died. Don’t reckon he could manage seeing them.”
“My mother’s paintings. I used to sneak into his office and stare at his collection of them hanging there when I was a child. I thought that was all of them.”
“They’s a whole chest full. Stacks of them. She must have had you children painting alongside her when you was mighty little. Seems like I remember some of that.”
Emily pulled Rosa Claire into her lap. “See this,” she said. The image was one of wobbly circles converging on one another in varying colors, bleeding into one another. On the back were Emily’s name and a date that had been smeared. “I did this, Rosa Claire, when I was a little girl like you.”
“Can I do that, Mama?” Rosa Claire traced the image with her finger.
“Of course you can.”
Emily studied the images. Will had painted a man, it seemed: a circle of sorts for the head, lines that appeared to be arms and legs extending out of the head, no body, all in a brilliant yellow. Emily’s pictures consisted generally of multiple circles in a wild array of colors. But one with her name showed a similar figure to Will’s and beside it, another in brown, the lines connected as if the two might be holding hands. On the back was written in delicate script, “Emily and Ginny.”
“Did you see this?” Emily held the paper up to Ginny.
“Yes’m. I seen it.”
“What a long time we have been together, Ginny, you and I.”
Ginny handed her a small book, a sketch pad bound in worn leather. Opening it, she found page after page of loose depictions of slaves: at work in the kitchen and fields, sitting on porch steps visiting, playing fiddle and dancing, walking the quarter path with a child in hand. A loose page slipped out.
She lifted the image: a little girl in a blue dress reaching for something out of sight. Me, she thought. An unexpected sense of being loved enveloped her, a moment of stillness, a stoppage of time.
BOOK FOUR: LOVE
1864–1866
CHAPTER 36
Through the tangled limbs, the sky formed a canopy of blue stained glass. How could she have forgotten? How could color astonish her so? Emily lived in shadow and she knew it. Her back to the sun, she leaned into the great old sycamore tree, cradling herself in the split of its trunk. She fingered the bark in the crevice where the tree took two equal directions toward the light. She turned her cheek to one side and stared at the curling gray bark. She pulled a piece away, like a child picking at a scab on a partly healed gash. Under it curled another dark piece, and another. But under that, there was no more peeling, only a glimpse of the pale meat of the tree, like skin of whatever color the instant before it bleeds. Above the wound, a single green leaf grew from the hard trunk. Not a branch, but one solitary leaf.
A bunting’s rapid song came clear to her, the distant bark of a dog, and the sound of wagon wheels on the road. She surveyed the scene around her, the hills, with their magnitude of greens and the earthy, new-planted fields. Clearly this green and these woods and the birds had gone on without her, gone on without Charles and her father, without Will or Hammond, gone on in spite of the war. They would go on without her, too, when she was gone. Emily withdrew her fingers from the tree and walked into the field.
Small, and bluer by far than the sky, a feather lay at Emily’s feet among the clover and the milkweed in the ungrazed pasture. The cows had been in the back fields for weeks, and the buntings had come and gone in their migratory passing. Entranced, Emily had watched as a multitude of small birds rose and fell, wave on wave, like hovering blue jewels, cresting and plummeting, cascading over the fields. Their iridescence flashed and glimmered in the sunlight. She picked up the feather and brushed it against her cheek.
Holding the blue feather, Emily felt the intensity of all she could never know, what had been done and not done, and by whom, all of it buried in various graves. Her life hung over her like a wavering mirage of summer. Emily closed her eyes and leaned against the fence. A slight rustling made her blink. In front of her a lone blue bunting darted up. It mounted the air, then dove into the clover, up and down, seen, then not seen. Emily held out her ha
nd. She yearned after this bird. She was a pillar of yearning in a field of green clover. The bird darted and swooped, a brilliance of unreachable, impossible blue in the sunlight; then he was gone. Still holding the single blue feather, Emily lowered her hand.
* * *
The length of wood was rough to Lambert’s touch, much like his own hands. He laid down the saw and righted the plank. The board would come smooth with sanding. Not so with his hands, no matter how much fat he rubbed into his skin. Rough hands were not a thing Lambert had ever cared about before, but now he thought of Emily, how soft the skin beneath her simple dress must be, how many years he had in age beyond her. In his hands, this board would become as smooth as he imagined her to be.
Lambert took a plane and a sanding block from a low shelf in the shed. He stretched his back, one hand on his lower spine as he returned to the stack of evenly cut boards. Laying one across the sawhorses, he took a few strokes, then paused to readjust the balance. Satisfied, Lambert addressed the board again, following the grain of the wood in firm, long strokes. This walnut would make a fine new cupboard.
When the sun was overhead, Lambert sat against the shady side of the barn and took out the cornbread and bacon Asa had wrapped in a clean handkerchief. Brushing crumbs from his breeches leg, he leaned back dozing in the warm spring air.
A great bellow from the south field woke Lambert, brought him to his feet in an instinctive sprint. He could see the bull, its horns trapped between two poles of the fence, its massive head jerking, its body braced with its powerful legs. He sprang over the fence, loping toward the enraged animal, visually assessing both danger and damage. His concern was for the bull. The fence could be mended. There seemed to be no injury, but the bull had yet to come to the same conclusion. It bellowed frantically, pulling against the fence pole. Asa had heard the ruckus and came running from the other end of the fence, ax in hand.
“You just back off now, Lambert. I got this one.”
The ax hovered in the air for a second and then sliced into the pole near the head of the frantic beast. The pole bent and split. The great animal lumbered backward, caught its balance, and charged at nothing, its hot breath smoking in the air. The brothers chuckled as the bull halted in confusion.
“Well, Lambert, reckon that’s what love’ll do for you,” said Asa. “Eh, boy! We’ll have to move him over to the other corral till that heifer’s out of heat.”
Asa slapped Lambert on the shoulder, chuckling, and strode back toward the barn. Lambert studied the bewildered bull, laughed, and spoke to the air.
“Well,” Lambert said to himself, “what are you waiting for?”
* * *
Great fork loads of hay dropped over Benjamin’s shoulder from the loft to the mounting wagonload below. The scent of earth emanated from the hay as it fell through shafts of sunlight, shifting from fodder to gold, back to fodder again. The sun outlined Benjamin’s face, his warm features intensified, his white froth of hair haloed in the golden light.
Across the open field, Benjamin spotted a man approaching on horseback. The man’s body adjusted easily to the horse’s gait so that his movement suited that of the animal. Benjamin wiped the sweat from his brow and leaned against the fork, watching, anxiety consuming him, as it did every day now since the Union scouts had appeared and Lucian had gone silent. Below him, in the yard, Benjamin heard the laughter of the children, Aimee and Rosa Claire, playing ring-around-the-rosy with Lonso, who threaded in and out between them. Ginny’s laughter, now returned, rang out with the mirth of the children.
Presently, the man’s form grew familiar. Benjamin relaxed and readjusted his grip on the fork. Below him, the dust of the hay still eddied in the light. Benjamin wiped his forehead again and pocketed his handkerchief. He resumed his task, though his fear for Lucian felt like the empty space below him. By the time Benjamin dropped the last fork of hay into the wagon, the rider and his horse had entered the yard. It was Mr. Lambert.
* * *
At the porch steps, Lambert removed his hat and peered up at Emily, working at her churn. He cleared his throat and propped his work boot on the lower step.
“Mr. Lambert.” Emily’s voice was cordial. “Would you care to come up and have a seat?”
Lambert settled on the edge of a cane chair next to hers. He twirled his hat in his hands, appeared uncertain what to do with it, then laid it on the floor.
“Nice day,” he said, looking around.
“Yes,” Emily said. She waited. He cleared his throat. “Well, Mr. Lambert,” she said, “what brings you here mid-afternoon on a workday?”
Lambert twisted his rough hands. “Well, Miss Emily, here it is. I have some things to say to you, but there’s some other things I need to say first, so I guess that’s where I should start.” He hesitated. “I was there that night, you see.”
Emily looked puzzled. Then her face blanched. She rose, reaching out to the back of the chair for support. She took a few halting steps and stood at the edge of the porch, her back to Lambert.
“I didn’t think you’d know that,” he said. “I don’t reckon Adeline would have ever talked about that night. But I was there. I was coming on foot toward town. On my way to Jenkins Saloon to fetch Logan Mackey’s boy home for his ma. If I’d been a mite earlier—well, no use talking like that. I wasn’t. Nothing changes what’s already done. It troubles me something awful. But I’m off the target now.” Lambert pressed his open hands against his thighs.
“Well, here’s the point, or thereabouts. I helped Adeline load Hammond in the wagon. He was like a baby. I laid him down comfortable as I could, as if that mattered—and I guess somehow it did. She wouldn’t let me help her after that. Sent me off to try to keep the sheriff alive.”
Lambert rubbed at the worn knee of his breeches.
“Point is, Emily, I don’t need as much imagination as another man might to put myself into your mind and heart. I know that can’t be done. But anyhow, maybe something akin.”
He rose and took a step toward her, where she gripped the porch railing.
“Strange way to go about this, Emily. Maybe I am a bit strange, or so folks think—some folks, leastways. Here I am more than twenty-three years your senior. By rights, you should still be a girl, and I could be your father. But you’ve had a share of hell not many folks could walk through. Though this war is making lots of them do just that. I reckon that makes the difference in our age not count for much.”
Lambert walked to the railing. His hand was close but not touching hers.
“My brother, Asa, and me been living together all these years, taking care of one another, not that he needed it, but I needed to care for something and he was there. Never courted, either one of us. I don’t guess I’m courting now.” Lambert half turned. “I’m just asking you to marry me.”
Emily considered his face, the weathered lines somehow softening it. She studied the kindness in his hazel eyes. Very slightly, she nodded. Lambert laid his coarse palm against her cheek. She turned her head in his hand and kissed his palm, then raised her lips to his. He held her to him, rocking. She leaned back, a smile on her lips and tears in her eyes.
* * *
When Lambert departed, kissing her hands, the part in her hair, her lips, Emily wandered through the last of the day, thinking. Lambert would not take away her suffering. She knew that. But that he had been witness to her anguish gave her peculiar comfort. There was no need to explain herself, no need to tell her story, or to hide it. Lambert’s story lay alongside hers, wove itself into hers without fixing it. With him, she was simply whoever she was. There was nothing different he wanted.
She would sleep on this, hold it through the night, like the pillow in her arms. Tomorrow, she and Ginny would turn her least worn dress inside out, spruce it as they could, and Lambert would come for her.
* * *
They were married by Jason Trumble, in the parsonage of the newly come pastor of Grace Methodist Church. The day was warm, with a cool b
reeze that forestalled the coming heat of summer. Asa served as witness for Lambert. The pastor’s wife, Nellie Anne, stood up for Emily. The children were at home with Ginny. No one else was present.
How different, Emily thought. How utterly different, in her simple cotton dress, trimmed with salvaged scraps from three other dresses that had succumbed to various rips and tears over years of wear. She felt authentic, beyond pretension now, with a simplicity that fit.
Lambert stood beside her, tall, lanky, his long beard newly cropped, his butternut frock coat hanging loose on his frame. He wrapped an arm around Emily’s shoulders, his other hand, warm and damp, cupping hers. She felt his gaze on her and smiled. His face was as steady as his hands.
When they returned from the parsonage, Ginny brought the children out to greet them. Lambert was not a stranger, but somehow both children sensed that today was different. While Rosa Claire flew to them both with arms outstretched, Lonso hid his face in Ginny’s skirts. When Ginny knelt to give him encouragement, he began to cry and buried his face in her neck.
“Shush now, baby,” Ginny crooned. “Ain’t everyday a little boy gets a new pappy.” She patted his back and smiled up at Lambert, who lifted Rosa Claire high in the air and settled her giggling on his shoulders. He bent toward Emily, into whose arms the little girl dropped in abandon, then immediately held out her hands to Lambert for another ride. As Rosa Claire played, Ginny shifted just enough for Lonso to see. He peeked over her shoulder.
“You want to go ride on your new pappy’s shoulder?” Ginny’s voice in the boy’s ear was a half-whisper. She transferred him to her knee and jiggled him as she spoke.
Lambert knelt with Rosa Claire perched on his shoulder, his other arm widespread toward the boy. “It’s all right, Lonso,” he said. “It’s just me coming by again. Only difference is this time, I’m not leaving.”
The Abolitionist's Daughter Page 24