A Parchment of Leaves (23 page)

T
here was an early snow the day we found out the war ended. Just a light dusting that didn't amount to anything, but it seemed like a sign. The sky was a bright gray, and the sun showed itself like a silver ball hung there, so smudged you could look right into it. The snow drifted down and frosted the big rocks lining the creek, clung to thin tree branches. It stood like sugar in the yard. By noon it had melted away except where the sun could not reach; it striped the mountainside like white rows in a garden. The road turned to mud, and the yard was too wet to walk through. Even after it melted, the scent of winter had come in, solid and tough, letting us know what it had in store for us.

We learned of the war's end from some boys over on Buffalo Mountain. They'd heard the news in town, got drunk, and come back through, firing their pistols up into the air. America Spurlock lived out at the mouth of God's Creek, and she could hear them coming from a long ways off. She always was nosy. She got her shotgun, went out to the edge of the road, and waited for them. They
bowed their horses up when they seen her there. They took their hats off and started telling about the war ending as fast as they could, each of them taking a turn in sharing the news. And of course she run up the holler, squalling for everyone to come out and hear the news. She had a grandson over there and she was wild with the prospect of him coming home. She was so excited that she paid no attention to the shining mud that caked her shoes and lined the hem of her skirt.

Three days later I got a letter from Saul. I could not believe that the mail had traveled so fast all the way from Laurel County, but there it was in my box. It had been written the day the war ended. I tore it open.

My darling,

We got word of the war ending today and everybody was whooping and hollering. Hearing this news made me long for you all. Such happy news makes you want to be with people you love. There are still boys in the hospitals, though, so we're still cutting down them trees for the turpentine. It is a hard thing to stay, especially with the war ended, but I try to think of all them who are hurt and still in misery, needing medicines. It won't be much longer and I guess I can stand it because I know this is helping some mother's son. We was awful lucky that none of our family had to go over there, as many a man will never cross that ocean again.

Boss moved us off Wildcat Mountain, as we stripped it bare. We are cutting all the pines out of this little place called Sugar Camp. It is pretty country. So it will not be too much longer and at least now we know that the war is over, so that is one load off our shoulders. The price of everything is bound to fall again and the world will be back in shape. For one thing, I will be with you all and will be the happiest feller that ever drawed a breath. Please do not fret too much
that I am not coming home right off the bat. Just think of all the men who will never come home.

All my love,
Saul Hagen Sullivan

The letter should have made me happy, but it only made me mad. And guilty. I despised his goodness, talking about all them hurt boys. Being selfless enough to accept staying there right on. I had done everything wrong, had made the worst mistakes a woman can make, and still I could not find it in my heart to be as good as he was. I had thought very often of them men over there, but I hadn't done a thing to help. It seemed like he was throwing it in my face.
Look,
the letter seemed to say,
I am a good person. I am willing to stay here. What have you done to make things better for people?
And I had to answer,
Nothing.

I wanted him to come home, but I didn't want to face him. My guilt would be stamped clearly on my face.

After that, something in me changed. That letter seemed to get me going. The day after the snow, it was fair and the sky was white as a sheet, with not one sign of weather about it. There was no hint of the sun, as if it had tucked itself away. Yet the strange sky made the world bright. It was cold, but the day looked so pretty that I set into cleaning the house. Aidia had set up all night with Esme, who had took on a bad chest cold, but she still come down to help me. We scrubbed the floors and the walls and stood on chairs to clean the corners of the ceiling. I set my kettle up near the creek and washed out the curtains and all the bedclothes. We washed all day, and while I hung out the curtains to dry, Aidia made us a little supper.

When I walked in, Matracia waved and said, “Vine.” She was in that stage of calling people's names, but Aidia paid no attention, as she claimed Matracia asked for me all the time. Aidia kept right on stirring and moving pots around while Birdie sliced the corn bread.

Aidia had warmed up the soup beans from last night and baked
a fresh skillet of corn bread. She opened some of the chowchow and sweet pickles we had canned that summer. I set down at the table and ate everything on my plate while Birdie fed Matracia beans. Aidia wiped down the sideboard, her back to me.

“I'm wore out,” I said when I had cleaned my plate. “I never did like to do the wash.”

Aidia didn't say a word back. It wasn't like her. She bent over the sideboard, scrubbing hard. I walked over to the dishpan to dash out the dregs of my coffee and seen her face. She was far away, in deep thought. I touched her on the arm and she turned to look at me.

“What in the world's on your mind?” I said, laughing at her, for she looked serious as a lawyer.

“You know why Aaron tried to strangle me all them times, don't you?” she said. “Why he treated me thataway?”

“Because he was drunk, I reckon. Because the devil took charge of him.”

“No,” she said, and glanced at the children, who were still eating.

“Why, then?”

“Because I wasn't you,” she whispered.

I should have denied it. I should have laughed at her and told her that was foolish talk, but I couldn't add to my lies. She had forgot to put the onions on the table, and when I seen them on the sideboard, I took a rind and bit into it and looked away.

“I'm studying on leaving here, Vine,” she said. She folded her dishrag and laid it over the lip of the dishpan. “I can't stay here.”

“Where would you go, Aidia? You can't leave here.”

“Back to my people, I guess. East Tennessee is booming since they found all that coal.” She looked out the window. The world was so bright outside that her face seemed lit up. “I won't set here all my life, waiting on a man I know won't be back.”

“Don't leave us, Aidia,” I said. “You'll regret it before long. You've got us, now—me and Esme and Serena and the younguns. We're a family, ain't we?”

“Esme despises me. She hain't even spoke to me since the night I fired that shotgun. That's been two months now, and me living right in her back door, almost. She don't look on me the way she does you. You please her. She ain't liked me since the minute she seen me.”

“I ain't never heard her speak ill of you,” I said, and this much was true. But I knowed that Aidia was right. I had seen the looks Esme gave her, the long sighs she breathed out when Aidia said something she didn't agree with.

“You know it's truth, though,” Aidia said, and took a quarter of the onion and bit from it. “Aaron hain't coming back. I've done accepted that.”

I didn't answer. Aidia looked at me as if she could read my thoughts. After a long time, she looked away and made herself a plate. She set down at the table and began to eat her beans as if a great hunger had all at once fell upon her.

Around a mouthful of food, she said, “I heard tell they was having a big square dance at the schoolhouse. On account of the war ending.” Her eyes widened and she smiled at me, as if she had completely forgotten what she had just been talking about. That's the way she was, though. Sad one minute and laughing the next. “We ought to go. I'm so tired of setting in the house. It's just now November, and already a snow has fell. Once winter comes, we'll never get out to go nowhere.”

“Two big married women can't go to no square dance alone,” I said.

“If you don't go with me, I'll go by myself. I can't stand to know they's a dance happening and not be there. That's what I was just telling you, Vine. I ain't going to wait for the rest of my life on somebody that ain't coming back.” She thought for a long time, chewing with her mouth tightly shut. Then she slammed her fork against the plate, like she had had a revelation. “Serena will go with me.”

I
MENTIONED IT
to Esme the next morning. “What could be wrong with going?” she said. “The war's ended. If I was able, I'd go to celebrate it.”

So I took this as a sign to go. I thought it might do Aidia good.

Serena was tickled to go, too. She had not sung in public for a great while, and even though she claimed not to like to show herself, I knew that secretly she did. She enjoyed the clapping and the whispering about how beautiful her voice was.

Even though Esme said her cold was better, I went down and asked Nan Joseph to stay with her. Nan seemed outright shocked that we would be going to a square dance without our men, but I told her that Esme had insisted upon it, so she never said another word. Me and Aidia hooked up Esme's gig and loaded the children in the back. We rode over to pick up Serena, and it was like we were young girls out to catch some man's eye. It would have looked that way, too, if it hadn't been for the baby on Aidia's hip, and Luke and Birdie following right at our heels.

It seemed like everybody in Crow County was at the dance. We could hear the music from a long way off. There were cars and gigs parked all up the road, and horses tied to every pine. The windows of the schoolhouse were all lit up, yellow and square. As we walked up the path, we could see the people dancing inside. Their feet made such a racket that it sounded as if the floor would fall through. There were men standing out front, just like at any other gathering. They stood around a bonfire and passed around a bottle of whiskey, nodding to us as we passed.

When Serena opened the door, the music busted out onto the night air. The warmth from inside hit us in the face, and the scent of coal burning in the stove settled on our cold clothes.

There was a fiddler, two banjo players, three guitarists, and an old woman with a dulcimer. Her music was lost to the strings of the men, but she was having a big time, sitting there hunched over the curved wood in her lap. Her face was lit with the happiness of the war being
over. All the desks had been piled up behind the pickers, and the floor was full of people dancing. The band was playing “Buck Creek Girls” and the caller moved amongst the dancers. “Fish for the oyster!” he called. “Weave ye a basket!” Those who weren't dancing were standing about in a great, thick circle, clapping and laughing. There was a pie auction lined up on tables over to the side, with pies that didn't look fit to eat. The girls fretted about the table, each leaning over every few minutes to turn her pie around, as if wanting the light to hit its surface just right. Each girl was trying to figure out which man would bid the highest on her pie and take her to the cloakroom for a piece of the pie and a kiss.

Aidia shed her coat and handed it to me, gave Matracia to Serena, and broke through the circle and found her a man to dance with. He was standing on the outer edge of the circle, watching all the others. Once he caught sight of Aidia's pretty face, he went right out with her.

“She's a feisty one,” Serena said. I could hear the glee in Serena's voice. “She can dance, too.”

I knowed that everyone there was watching Aidia. I could see the women leaning over to one another. “Married,” they whispered.

There was a crew of children playing off in the corner, so I let Birdie and Luke join them. Serena bounced Matracia around on her hip to the beat of the music. Women surrounded Serena, telling her how their babies were doing. She had delivered every child on this side of Buffalo Mountain for the past seven years.

I was the only Cherokee there, of course, and ever since that Cherokee boy had killed the bootlegger in Bell County, people had acted different toward me. I was not a regular face to these people, either. They knowed me only as Saul Sullivan's wife. Some of them had helped raise our house and had been good to me, but none of them took me by the arm to talk.

O
NCE THE PIE AUCTION
got under way, we could not find Aidia. We all stood, watching the men bid on the pies. We clapped and went on when each girl received her bid and packed the pie down to the highest bidder, but I wasn't paying that much attention. I looked over the crowd, trying to pick out Aidia's curls.

When the auction was over, the couples went off to the cloakroom, the men already pulling their knives from their pockets so they could cut the pies. They were in a hurry to eat a slice and maybe get a kiss if they acted as if they liked the pie. The old woman playing the dulcimer motioned for Serena to step out into the middle of the floor. Serena handed Matracia to me.

Serena sung “O Beautiful For Spacious Skies” and everyone sang along as loud as they could. It was a song they all knowed by heart, and several of the women cried as they sung. They let their tears flow without wiping them away. Their voices rose and moved over the crowd. All those voices together made me want to cry, for I thought of the war again and what so many people had been through. My troubles were few next to what women over in Europe had suffered. And women right in America, receiving word of their sons or husbands being killed over there. It seemed like it took the end of the war for me to realize it all.

I did not want to dwell on such things. This was a time of celebration. So I closed my eyes and listened to Serena's high, pretty voice. I could feel Matracia going to sleep against my chest. She was sung to sleep by that high chorus, by that collection of happiness. I stood there with my eyes closed until Serena had finished, even through the crowd hollering and clapping. Matracia raised her head for a minute, then put it right back down on my shoulder. It seemed as if Serena was back beside me all at once. I felt her elbow in my rib. “Lookee there,” she said.