Fire Along the Sky Fire Along the Sky

by Sara Donati

  “Do you want me to like him?” Gabriel had demanded, and Lily was honest enough to admit that she did. “At least be fair,” she said. “Give him a chance.”

  “Even Missy Parker likes him,” Annie told her.

  “Missy Parker likes anybody in britches,” Gabriel said, in the worst of moods. Their mother would have scolded him, but Lily could not.

  She took more comfort from her aunt, who seemed to be the only person in the world with nothing to say about Simon, good or bad.

  Many-Doves said, “You must make up your own mind what it is you want.” And: “Help me with this doeskin.”

  For Many-Doves it was that simple. Curiosity had said the same thing, of course, but once Many-Doves had spoken she rarely repeated herself.

  In the end Lily couldn't stay out of the village, and so she went. Not to see Simon or hear about him—she stayed away from Curiosity's kitchen and the trading post, the two places she was most likely to find him—but to sit in the old meetinghouse with her breath billowing cold around her and look at her own work covering the walls. All the years of her girlhood up in plain sight for anyone to examine. The world looked very different to her now.

  The next day she got her father's help to haul what she would need to the meetinghouse: firewood and kindling, buckets and tools, and all the materials she had brought back with her from Canada. She spent a satisfying morning arranging it and then stood back to consider the neat row of pigment pots, the crocks filled with the things that she would need to mix her paints.

  What she wanted to do next was to bring her mother here to see it all. Her mother would ask sensible questions, thoughtful questions that made her think, and they might spend the whole day talking about color and shadow and shape.

  Instead, Lily loosened the ties on the book she had carried around with her since Gabriel Oak had given it to her just before he died, and sat in a pool of cold sunshine while she studied the work he had done so long ago, before she was born; before her mother had been born. Gabriel had given her this record of his life for safekeeping, and more than that: he had put a pencil in her hand, and shown her the magic of it.

  Standing between the stove and a single glass window, Lily began by sketching the things she saw: the Ratz boys dragging a sledge piled high with firewood, a tabby cat perched at the very top. Hardwork Greber trudging along, bent almost double with the weight of filled buckets. Goody Cunningham with her new granddaughter strapped to her chest, squinting into the sun. A wolf at the edge of the clearing, watching the hens that pecked and strutted around the Hindles' well.

  And then, when Lily was just starting to lose herself in the work, Jemima Wilde walked past the window, her head wrapped in a bright blue shawl, her cheeks chapped apple red with the cold. There was a bruise on her jaw, faded to yellow.

  She walked straight-backed, head held high, baskets over both arms. The mud was ankle deep and treacherous, and Jemima's mouth was clamped tight in concentration.

  Even wrapped against the cold her thickening waist was plain to see, and more than that: how it suited her, to be with child. Ripening fruit, heavy and full of promise. The pencil in Lily's fingers trembled and she put it down, but she could not look away.

  Jemima was too concerned with getting where she needed to be to have looked in Lily's direction.

  You must make up your own mind what it is you want.

  Lily drew in a sharp breath, the small sound filling the empty meetinghouse.

  As a younger girl she had sat here with her mother and listened to sermons, first from timid Mr. Gathercole and then from a long line of visiting preachers, none of whom stayed in Paradise very long. Some of them were good men and dull preachers, others made a great lot of noise but no sense at all, but none of them had suspected their sermons had been carried up the mountain to Lake in the Clouds, where Elizabeth Bonner had engaged her children in their dissection, as a person would take apart a gun to examine its parts and find out how it worked. Rarely had any of those preachers been lucky enough to have his sermon survive Elizabeth Bonner's close scrutiny.

  Strive to favor the rational over the subjective as you select one course of action among those available to you.

  Jemima was almost to the trading post now, balancing baskets as she lifted a foot high and set it down again. From here she could have been anyone, any woman on her way to buy pins or cornmeal.

  With a sigh, Lily let her breath go and with it went, quietly, quickly, all the anger she had been holding in reserve for somebody truly deserving. For Jemima, who had finally appeared and presented herself as nothing but another woman who had done her best to pick wisely from among those few poor choices available to her.

  Even after Jemima was gone, Lily stayed just where she was for many long minutes.

  One of the surest signs of spring in the village of Paradise was the arrival of Black Abe, the hole digger. He came to dig any kind of hole people might need: privies and wells and sawyer's trenches. One of the most important services he performed in Paradise was to dig the long, deep trenches for charcoal burning, which was his primary occupation.

  But most of all, when Black Abe came to Paradise it meant that it was time to put all those who had died in the coldest months to rest. He would dig as many graves as they needed, each of them a perfect hole six feet deep with straight sides that looked to have been plastered in place. The digging of a proper grave was an art, and one that Black Abe had mastered. The men of Paradise were satisfied to leave the spring digging to the strange old man.

  Black Abe had come over from Africa on a slave ship when he was a young man. How and when he had won his freedom was a story he told willingly in a hoarse, high singsong, but never in the same way twice. Sometimes the ship was called the Santa Maria and sometimes the Cornwall; sometimes he had been bought by a Dutch farmer from Long Island and other times he had gone to a one-eyed silversmith in Philadelphia. The number of his wives and children shifted like the clouds overhead, and the number of his own years with them. But he could tell anybody who wanted to know the names of every person who had been buried in one of his graves, and the day it was dug.

  He was a small man, a wiry twisting of muscle, black as the coal he burned, with great wide hands and feet that had never, as far as the people of Paradise could tell, known shoes. He always arrived in Paradise on foot, leading his mule; he would leave that way too, but nobody had ever been able to figure out just where he went. Even Curiosity, who was the oldest woman in the village now and whose memory was as sharp as flint, knew very little about Black Abe. Or at least there was not too much she was willing to share.

  His first stop was always Curiosity's kitchen door, where he was received with her warmest welcome, a substantial meal, the winter's news, and the promise of work. The kilns and ovens in the doctor's laboratory consumed more charcoal than all the other families of Paradise put together and only slightly less than Joshua Hench's forge. When he was done at the doctor's, he would move on to the blacksmithy, where Curiosity's daughter Daisy would take over feeding him.

  In the chamber they shared on the second floor of the doctor's house, Callie and Martha watched the weather and calculated when Black Abe might appear. They wondered if he would stay, once the graves were dug, or if he would be sent away: Doctor Todd was dead, after all, and Hannah was gone away to Canada and Jennet with her. Even Ethan, who had never really liked working in the laboratory, was living in Manhattan with his uncle and aunt Spencer while he studied at the college. They took the question to Curiosity, who fixed her gaze on them and laughed out loud.

  “As if I could send that old African away before I got him fed up good and proper,” she said. “He'll come, don't you worry, and he'll stay until the buttons on his breeches pop.”

  Then one wet, warm morning the girls came down to the kitchen and found Black Abe at the table, bent over a plate of eggs and ham and cornmeal mush, deep in conversation with Curiosity and Lucy and Simon Ballentyne too. Curiosity hummed as she pou
red out coffee.

  To the girls Black Abe said, “Don't count on spring just yet, children. The winter still setting in my bones.”

  Looking hard into her porridge Callie said, “Then is it too early for you to dig—” And her voice faltered.

  “Oh, Lord,” Curiosity said. She came over to put a hand on Callie's shoulder. “Of course not. Why, me and Abe was just talking about it. He'll get started this very day on those graves, won't you, Abe?”

  The old man said that he had been planning on exactly that, and wouldn't it be a help if Callie showed him just where her mama was meant to rest, and Cookie Fiddler too, and wasn't that a shame about losing two such good women. He offered the same kindness to Martha, whose grandmother Kuick must also be laid to rest, and found that the girl was too frightened of her mother to make any such suggestions.

  Callie looked at Martha's flushed face and tear-bright eyes and wondered if she looked like that: frightened and relieved; eager to get it done, and wanting to run away at the same time.

  Curiosity squeezed her shoulder. She said, “You girls got to get on to school, now.”

  On the way they stopped at the blacksmithy to tell Daisy about Black Abe, and then they did the same thing at the trading post. At school the other children asked questions until Miz Elizabeth got their attention by putting a whole twenty lines from the Constitution on the board for them to learn by heart.

  On the way home at dinnertime the girls saw that the meetinghouse windows had been propped open and so they stopped there too. Mostly they were shy of bothering Lily Bonner while she worked, but the news that Black Abe had come was enough reason.

  Unlike the rest of Paradise, Lily seemed to have no questions to ask about Martha's mother or Callie's father, which meant that the three of them got along just fine. If Lily held any grudges about the way things had turned out she kept them to herself, and more than that: she seemed happy to see them. She showed them her work and sometimes found scraps of paper for them to draw on, and told stories about anything they could think to ask her. They were kindhearted girls and they liked Lily and appreciated her attention, so they never compared her storytelling to Jennet's.

  Today they found her wrapped in a leather apron frowning at a line of glass beakers. This was such an interesting sight that Black Abe was forgotten for the moment.

  “What are you making?” Martha was especially timid with Lily, but for once her curiosity got the better of her, and she came right up to the table. In the slanting light from the window her hair was as red as fire.

  “Watercolor paint,” Lily said with a quick, sharp smile. “To see if I can get the color of your pretty hair down on paper. Or I would be, but I'm missing something.”

  Some of the best stories about Lily had to do with when she was a reluctant schoolgirl in her mother's classroom. To this day the children spoke with respect about the schemes Lily had come up with to get out in the fresh air when she was supposed to be parsing French verbs or writing out arithmetic problems on her slate. And now here she was, always eager to be teaching the things she had learned in Canada to whoever might stand still long enough to listen.

  She showed them how she meant to mix the oddest things together—gum arabic, strained honey, glycerin—to make the binder that was the basis of her watercolor cakes.

  “But I've misplaced my crock of benzoate of soda,” she finished, looking around herself as if it might appear magically. “Or I left it behind in Montreal. In either case I can't finish without it.”

  She saw the girls exchange meaningful looks.

  Callie said, “There must be a hundred filled crocks in Dr. Todd's laboratory. Would you find some there?”

  “Oh and,” said Martha breathlessly, as if to keep Lily from objecting, “we stopped to tell you that Black Abe is come.”

  Lily might be distracted, but she knew what that meant. She said, “Well, then. When's the burying?”

  “Tomorrow, I think,” said Martha, tugging on her plait so hard that the tender skin at her temple reddened.

  Callie said, “Won't you come back to the house with us?”

  For a few days now, it seemed to Lily, the two girls had been conspiring to get her to Curiosity's kitchen. She didn't know if this was because they had decided they liked Simon and wanted her to spend more time with him, or because they were bored since Hannah and Jennet and Ethan had all gone away, and wanted some excitement. Or maybe, it occurred to Lily, maybe they didn't like the idea that Lily was at odds with her mother, and had taken it upon themselves to draw them back together. Right now it could be all those things, and the arrival of Black Abe on top.

  “Did Curiosity send you?” The question didn't come out the way she meant it to.

  “We thought you'd want to know.” Callie looked indignant and Martha injured. Taken together that was strong medicine indeed.

  Lily said, “Very well. Let's go see if there's any soda to be had.”

  “Then you can get back to your work,” offered Callie.

  “Yes,” said Lily. “Then I can get right back.”

  Lily spent the walk from the meetinghouse to the doctor's place working out just the right thing to say when she came face to face with her mother or Simon. It was delicate business. She must find the words that would make them understand that she had neither forgotten nor forgiven, nor was she resigned to the situation as they had worked it out between them. Just the right words would make all that clear, and would make them understand even more: that she was not a child, and would not be treated like one.

  But neither her mother nor Simon was in the kitchen, as she had thought they must be. Instead there was Sally, spinning directly from a fleece that lay on the floor beside her, while Lucy was busy with dinner. She was moving back and forth between setting the table and stirring the pot that hung from the trivet over the hearth.

  “You looking for your ma?” Sally asked. “She supposed to be here for dinner, any minute now.”

  “I'm not here to see my mother,” Lily said. All her good intentions went up in flame, just like that, and in their place she felt herself flush with irritation. “Why would you think I'm looking for my mother?” And she marched back out again, leaving the door open behind her.

  “I suppose it was Simon she was hoping to run into,” said Lucy, and then she caught her sister's eye and they both giggled.

  Callie said, “You shouldn't tease her so,” trying to look concerned and understanding and serious. And then all four of them broke down into laughter that drifted out the open door and followed Lily a good ways down the path to the laboratory.

  Dr. Todd's laboratory, closed up for long weeks, was damp and dusty and it stank of sulfur and cloves, vinegar and herbs and chemicals. It took a quarter hour of looking to find what Lily needed and another quarter hour before she had found an empty jar, a cork that fit it, and a rag to wipe it out. She worked at the big table, in a spot she made for herself among the pots and bottles.

  By the time she had found a funnel, the racing of her heart had slowed and she had a hold of her temper. Or enough of a hold to be honest with herself about a few things. First, that she must learn not to react to teasing. Second, more happily, that Simon had not been there to see her fluster. Third, she was hungry, and that everyone would be sitting down now in Curiosity's kitchen to a dinner of stew and new bread and dried peach compote. Fourth, that her own cold packed dinner was back in the meetinghouse, and finally: that they expected her to stay away, out of obstinacy, and hurt pride.

  Lily did not like being predictable, but even worse was the idea that people found her amusing, a little girl to be chucked under the chin. Lily confounded by love. Lily out of sorts, because she couldn't control a man.

  The logical thing to do, then, was to show them they were wrong. She would sit across the table from her mother and Simon Ballentyne and pay neither of them any particular attention; she would be polite but disinterested. All her attention would be paid to Black Abe, who must have a year's
worth of news to share. Black Abe was why she had come, after all, and it made no sense to deprive herself of the pleasure of his storytelling.

  Lily had just worked this out to her own satisfaction when a shadow fell across the door. A man-sized shadow.

  Simon Ballentyne said, “They've sent me to fetch you to dinner.”

  Lily took a very deep breath and counted to three. Then she gave him her most polite, most distant smile. “That's kind of you,” she said. “I'll be along shortly, as soon as I've finished here.”

  She couldn't make out his expression in the shadows but he shifted a little where he stood: a man who had gone into the bush loaded for bear and found a fawn instead. She had hoped to put him off balance and understood now that she had disappointed him: he got pleasure out of putting her in a temper.

  Lily smiled again, and perhaps that was the mistake.

  “I'll wait,” Simon said easily. He leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms.

  “You must do as you please.” And then, her voice shaking with the effort: “If you will wait, come in. You're in my light.” Then she looked up at him and saw the hesitation on his face.

  “Unless my mother forbids it,” Lily added, and cursed herself for it.

  Simon was working hard at keeping his temper too; she could feel him struggling with it. He cleared his throat. “You spilled some . . . what is that?”

  She put down the crock. “It's benzoate of soda,” said Lily. “And if I've spilled some it's because you're in my light. As I've already pointed out.”

  “Aye. Or perhaps it's just that you're nervous to be alone with me and your hands are trembling.”

  She had picked up the bottle closest to hand and thrown it before the last word was even out of his mouth. It was heavy and rounded and it flew like a fat bird to hit Simon Ballentyne with a thump, right between the eyes. Then it broke neatly in half. The room filled immediately with the scent of rose oil, thick and sweet.