A Parchment of Leaves (10 page)

As we neared the town, all of this faded behind us. Up ahead was the dusty street and the wooden sidewalk, big buildings, and swarms
of people. I had never really liked coming to town. Town people looked down their noses at us. I couldn't understand why. We had as much as they did, for certain. If not more. We were not poor, but we didn't fix up all the time, like them. Seemed to me that everyone in town wore their Sunday clothes every day of the week.

It was a Saturday, and trading day, so the town was bustling. As we crossed the high bridge, I could see a steamboat setting on the river. Men rowed narrow boats from the steamer to the shore, unloading big crates of I knew not what. The coal smoke belching from the pipes of the boat made me think of winter. Horses and gigs traipsed up and down the dusty street. Men sat stiffly in the gig seats, clucking to the horses. Women raced down the sidewalk like they had somewhere important to go, grocery baskets on their arms. I took hold of Birdie's hand, as she was bad to fall behind in a crowd.

Since it was April Fools' Day, there was much big laughter and cutting up in the streets. Men stood behind their friends and put shreds of paper or crumbled leaves into their hair. Women snuck up on one another to pinch them on the rump. When the woman would turn, her hand ready to smack the face of some fresh man, her friend would cry, “April fool!” and they would both start into a laughter that reminded me of hens clucking. Children were soaping the windows of the businesses and scooping up shovelfuls of the horse manure in the street to put on people's porch steps. But besides all of this foolishness, business was being tended to. People were lined up all along the street, peddling their goods.

On the corner there was a fruit vendor, and people swarmed about him. He didn't come often and had not been here since the fall. I could see mounds of oranges, tangerines, and even bananas. But what caught my eye were the coconuts. I had not had one in ages. My mother used to buy one every Christmas and we would crack it with a hammer. Daddy would drink the milk, and then each of us was given a knife to scrape out the coconut. There's nothing in this world like a coconut—it's so different from anything we could grow
ourselves. I felt down into my purse for change and gave the man a coin. That money could have bought a whole pound of cornmeal, but I wanted Birdie to know this taste.

I took Birdie's hand and we turned toward the courthouse. A man was giving a campaign speech, hollering and going on like a preacher, as the election was to be held in May. A great crowd had gathered and stood with their necks craned upward, but I paid them no attention. I did take in the courthouse, which was the finest building I had ever seen. It was as solid as an iron, with bricks made from clay right up near God's Creek. All of the windows were opened and people sat in them, too, looking down at the politician. Some of the women had church fans that they swiped through the air, but it wasn't even hot. They must have thought this the proper thing to do while hearing a politician speak. He
was
full of hot air, from what I heard him say.

“Look what a pretty place,” I told Birdie, and nodded to the courthouse.

As I was looking at it, I ran right into a fat, round man who was coming off the post office steps with a stack of parcels in his arms. When I bumped him, he lost all control and let the parcels fly out of his arms and onto the sidewalk. “I'll be!” he boomed.

“I'm awful sorry,” I said with a little laugh, and bent down to help him get the parcels back up into his arms.

“Stupid Indian,” he said, snatching a parcel from my hands. “Why don't you people watch where you're going?” And then he took off down the street, his short legs pushing against the air like stubby logs.

I stood there for a minute, watching him go. Letting these words sink in. The sounds of business around me seemed to grow louder. Nobody had ever called me stupid before, and I had never really thought that people would judge me solely on being a Cherokee. My people had always got along pretty good with the town folk, except the magistrates. I spun Birdie around and I took off after the man. He
was so short that it didn't take me long to catch him. I tapped him on the shoulder.

“What did you say to me?” I said, cool as could be.

He huffed around until he could meet my eye and blew out a big puff of air, like he had forgotten to breathe up until now. “What, girl?”

“You called me stupid. I ain't.”

He just started walking again. But I followed. “I said, I ain't stupid,” I hollered loud enough for several people to look. This got him. He must have been a businessman, as he didn't want anyone to know that he was being yelled at. His gray eyes looked around like he didn't know which way to go. He nodded to one of the women standing nearest us. She was one of those who had wore her Sunday clothes to town and looked at me as if I had fallen out of the sky.

“Get away,” he said. His lips were small and red, like a woman's. “If I was you, I wouldn't be showing my face in town about now. Stupid people ought to stay at home anyway.”

I felt like slapping his face, or even drawing back my coconut to split his head wide open. I was that mad. When he turned and started walking again, I couldn't help myself. I kicked him, right in the hind end. Not hard enough to hurt him, but he sure felt the toe of my shoe. He nigh about fell down and sent his arms straight out for balance. This sent the parcels flying again.

He was so mad that he looked like he was about to cry from anger. His lips trembled. “You're a fool!” he hollered, whirling around on me. The woman standing nearest us said to someone, “Don't she know who that is?”

Then I was aware of Birdie's hand in my own and felt ashamed. Not for what I had done, but for her being witness to the ignorance and cruelty of people. I must have half dragged her down the sidewalk, going on to the post office, for I was mad as a hatter. I had never thought that people in Black Banks had ill will toward Cherokees, but it looked like I had been wrong. I should have known as
much—hadn't these very townspeople tried to drive us off our land up on Redbud? A great sense of injustice settled over me that troubled me the rest of the day. None of my people had ever done a thing to be ashamed of.

We went on to the post office. Birdie had just got a new pair of shoes and was having a big time, hearing the clicks the hard soles made on the marble floor of the high-ceilinged post office.

There was nothing in our box, so I closed the little gold door and took hold of Birdie's hand. As we were leaving, the postmistress hollered at Birdie and held out a peppermint for her to take. She was a sweet, hunchbacked woman who was cursed with not one sign of a neck. The little bun of hair on the back of her head sat right on her hump. I always made niceties with her when I went to the post office but had not thought to do so today. I stood at the door, waiting for Birdie to come on and gave the postmistress a nod. But this wasn't good enough for her. She motioned me over.

“You heard tell what happened in Bell County?” she said in a low voice. The post office had a high ceiling that carried voices throughout, so she always whispered. “They hung a Cherokee boy over there. They say he robbed a bootlegger and pushed him over a cliff.”

I just looked at her. I wondered what she wanted me to say.

When she spoke again, I noticed that she had a dip of snuff under her lip. Her teeth were crooked and brown. “It'll be bad times for your people, my opinion.”

I nodded to her and took Birdie's hand and we went on out. I walked back home like a defeated woman, thinking about the man calling me stupid. Thinking that Saul might have to go overseas one of these days. I barely paid attention to Birdie, who called my attention to things along the road: a terrapin in the weeds, wildflowers peeping out of the cracks of rocks. She wouldn't hush until I looked at a little white flower that stood alone beside the creek.

“What is it?” she asked, stroking its leaves.

“It's an oconee bell,” I said. The flower took my mind off the
matter at hand for a minute. Its petals were waxy, its stem straight. My mama had pointed oconee bells out to me, since they were as rare as four-leaf clovers. They were only supposed to grow in North Carolina, but every once in a while I saw one. My mother was one of those people who could stand in a field and find ten four-leaf clovers without so much as bending over, and she had the same talent for finding oconee bells. She had passed on this magic to Birdie.

“Can we pick it?” Birdie asked.

“Lord, no,” I said. “It's a rare thing. Leave it. It's late for an oconee to bloom, so it's meant to stay here.”

I took Birdie's hand and walked on toward God's Creek.

“L
OOK HERE
,” Saul said, coming in. “Lettuce already.” He laid a mess of lettuce and some green onions on the table and leaned in to kiss me. He had been out working and didn't have no shirt on. He took hold of my shoulders to turn me around and kissed me. I put my hand on his arm and kissed him hard.

“What was that for?” I said, and started skinning the little onions. “That good kiss?”

Saul put his hands on my waist as he stood behind me. “A man can love on his wife ever once in a while, can't he?”

“I reckon,” I said.

He kissed my neck. “Birdie's up at Mama's, ain't she?” he said, his lips close to my skin as he spoke.

I turned to face him and ran my hands down his bare arms. I smiled and nodded.

A
FTERWARD, WE LAID
there with our legs all tangled up, hands everywhere. It was strange to be laying there naked, right in the daytime.

Saul was laying on his back and I was on my side, up close to him. Sunlight fell in a square right across the tight muscles on his stomach. I moved my hand into the patch of golden and saw it change the
color of my skin. Saul put his hand on my chin and pulled it up so I would face him. He looked at me a long time without saying a word, just running his hand over my lips and my cheeks. I closed my eyes and he put a big thumb onto my eyelids, soft as a breath. When I opened my eyes again, he was still studying me.

“You're looking at me like you never seen me before,” I said.

“I've got something to tell you,” he said. “Something you ain't going to like.”

I set up and gathered the sheets around me, pulling them up to my neck. Saul set up, too, but didn't cover himself. All at once I thought we ought to get our clothes on—Esme was liable to bust in at any minute. Really I didn't want to hear what he had to say, since he already knowed I wasn't going to be pleased.

“Boss has opened him a new mill over in Laurel County. A big mill right at the foot of Wildcat Mountain. They's a million pine trees there. He's going to cut them all down to make into turpentine, for the war,” he said. “You know President Wilson is already talking about us getting in on it.”

“So? What's that got to do with us?”

“Well, he got a contract with the War Department, for the turpentine,” he said. The sun had crept onto his face, and light caught in the red stubble around his chin. “So it's going to be a big operation. He wants me to go over there and be his foreman. In two weeks.”

“How long?”

“Long as it takes to log that mountain. I'd say at least a year, Vine.”

I got out of the bed and pulled my shift on. “They ain't no way,” I said.

He pulled on his britches and walked toward me, tried to get ahold of my arms. I stepped into my dress, though, and went about buttoning it up.

“It's awful good money, Vine. If I done it for a year, we could have anything we wanted.”

“We already have everything we need,” I said. I walked on into the kitchen and busied myself with making the corn bread.

“I want to make this money for us. I want you to have fine things,” he said. “Besides, it'll help with the war effort.”

Somehow, I had always thought the war would never touch us. When we listened to the radio in the evenings, I grieved over little children that were probably suffering overseas. I imagined wives being told their husbands were dead, mothers who lost sons. We knowed it was only a matter of time before the United States would enter the war, too. Men were so anxious to fight that they were going to Canada to enlist. But it all seemed far away to me, like we were not a part of that world at all. Now I saw that the war had caught up to us in a roundabout way.

I broke an egg into the cornmeal, then stopped with a sudden thought. “Does that mean they might not make you go overseas, if you're doing something for the war effort?”

“It might,” he said. “But that's not why I'm doing it. Not to dodge the fighting.”

It was selfish of me, I know, what with all them other men being called overseas, but if this might help to keep Saul out of the war, it would be worth missing him. I stirred up the corn bread and poured it into my skillet, my mind racing. “You'd get to come home right often, wouldn't you?”

“I'll hope to,” he said, and by the look on his face, I knowed that it was settled. He wouldn't be going to fight, but he would be leaving me all the same.

T
HE LAST WEEK
he was home felt like we were waiting for a death. In 1917, Laurel County was still a long ride, more than an hour by car and much farther by horse. I crammed all the life I could into that final week, feeling like I was vying for his time all the while, as Esme and Aaron were constantly down at the house, already missing him, too.

Saul was just happy at the prospect of making a good living. But sometimes I would catch him studying Birdie's face while she slept, and I knowed how bad he hated to leave us. If he had been quiet before, he was downright silent now. But he took it in his careful way and was the first one to rise the morning we were to see him off.

“Aaron will be here to help you all,” he told me and Esme.