A Parchment of Leaves (29 page)

“A child shouldn't have to live through that,” I said.

Aidia looked up at me. “Why do people do such evil things to one another, Vine?”

“I don't know,” I said.

For a long time, Aidia just set there with me. There was nothing but the sound of our own breathing. I could see out the window as Saul brought Birdie up the road. She had stayed the night at Serena's, and he had walked to get her. He was carrying a shovel in one hand and had Birdie on his shoulders, and she was smiling.

“I hated it over Esme dying, too,” Aidia said softly. “You know I did, don't you? I thought a lot of that old woman, even if she didn't like me.”

“I know it,” I said. I ran my hand over Aidia's hair, which was as cool and black as deep water.

I heard Saul and Birdie come into the house. “Go on in there to Mommy,” Saul said, and Birdie ran back into the room. She jumped up into the chair with me and Aidia.

“Where you heading?” I hollered out.

“To dig Mama's grave where she wanted it,” he said, and walked away, leaving the door wide open.

M
y tree thrived. Its heart-shaped leaves were as big as hands, so green and full of life that they sometimes looked blue in the approaching dusk. The limbs fanned out in a shape so perfect it looked like it had been shaped by binding. I imagined the roots pushed deep into the ground, curling about rocks that laid beneath the rich soil. Pods of seeds hung from the branches like flattened green beans. The redbud tree stood in the yard like a guardian, its trunk straight and knowing. It seemed to watch over us. Every time I swept the yard, I paused by the tree and run my fingers over its leaves, down its knotty branches.

I leaned near the tree and whispered, “Live, little tree. Grow big and stay here with me on this creek.”

I had been thinking a lot about Aidia asking me why people did evil to one another. I turned the question around and around in my mind, like an endless whispering that would not hush until I realized the answer.

I couldn't figure out why people were the way they were. Why my
people had been run off their land and marched west. Why that man forced my own family to leave Redbud Camp. Why Aaron's mother had laid him down on the ground, turned around, and walked away forever. Why we had just lived through a world war. And I couldn't understand what meanness in me had allowed me to leave Aaron's body up on that mountain without so much as a clod of dirt throwed on his body. I wondered if we were put on this earth only to destroy every beautiful thing, to make chaos. Or were we meant to overcome this? Did bad things happen so that goodness could show through in people? The way Esme had loved a baby that wasn't hers, and the way my people had not let their spirits be broke, and the amazing fact that Aidia could still let out a beautiful laugh in spite of her suffering. And the kindness I found in rough-talking people like Serena, the safeness of setting close to Saul. There was so much good in the world that surely evil could not overtake it.

To think on it all was too much to bear. If people thought much about such things, they would go crazy as bess-bugs.

To keep myself from losing my mind, I did what many people would have thought was madness anyway: I talked to the redbud tree, willing it to live.

I had woke up that morning with the thought of going over to Redbud Camp. But there had been too much to do. Now it was evening, and Saul would be home from the mill before long, but I couldn't stop myself. I wanted to go back there and see it again.

I wrote Saul a note: “Went to Redbud. Be back by dark. There is ham and biscuits in the sideboard to tide you. We will have a late supper.”

I walked across the road and stood on the bank, looking down at Birdie and Luke working on Luke's dam. The morning's rain had beat white flowers off a brier bush upstream, and now they were all gathered on the pool behind the dam like bits of cut paper. Birdie was wading through them as she packed a rock to the dam, and the surface of flowers parted in the wake of her legs.

“Birdie,” I hollered, and held a hand to my forehead. Sunlight glinted off the water into my eyes. “Come on, baby. We're going somewhere.”

“Where to?” Birdie said. “I want to play.”

“Come on, now. You all can work on the dam tomorrow.”

Birdie climbed the bank. The hem of her dress was soaked.

“Luke, you need to go on home, now. Serena won't want you playing down here and me gone,” I said. “Come on.”

I took my horse out of the pen and hefted both the children up onto its back. I led it out of the holler, aware of the birdcall on all sides of us. The horse made a racket clomping across the wooden bridge, and its noise seemed to break up some sort of spell. Birds flew away with much noise.

I led the horse on down the main road until we got to the mouth of Free Creek and Serena's house. I took Luke off the horse and helloed the house. Serena come out onto the porch with a cigarette in one hand and a spoon in the other.

“It's bout time you got home, Luke Sizemore. Supper's on the table,” Serena hollered, and he run up the yard.

“We headed up Redbud,” I said.

Serena stepped down and stood close to me. Her clothes smelled of fried chicken. “Don't go up there. You'll just get into it with that man, Vine.”

“I want to see it. It's been long enough. I want to see what my home looks like now.”

Serena shook her head. “Wait and take me or Saul with you.”

I pulled myself up onto the horse and clucked my tongue. “I'm going now.”

Serena stood in the yard and watched us get farther away. “Awful late to be setting out!” she called, but I just waved.

B
Y THE TIME
we got to Redbud, Birdie had got so used to the rhythm of the horse that she had just about gone to sleep. I shook
her shoulder and kissed the top of her head, then got off the horse and put my arms out to let Birdie down.

We stood at the confluence of Redbud Creek and the Black Banks River. The sound of the waterfall was not as loud as I remembered it, but it was still a wild, powerful thing there in the middle of the peaceful woods. The water fell in such a fury that a little mist rose from it, dampening our faces.

I squatted down next to Birdie and put my hand in the small of her back. “This is where your daddy asked me to marry him,” I said.

Birdie smiled at this. “Was he pretty then?”

I laughed and put my hand atop Birdie's head. “Pretty as he is now.”

We eased up the thin path toward Redbud Camp. It looked like no one come down to the confluence anymore, as the trail was overgrown by weeds and wildflowers. Ironweed stood purple and thick. No one had trod them down all summer long. Perhaps the fools had not even discovered the falls. And maybe they just didn't have the sense to appreciate them. We come through the trees, and the remains of Redbud Camp was slowly revealed to me. It existed no more. The shape of the land was the same: rises and flats, bottoms and hills, the cleft where Redbud Mountain met River Mountain. But it was as if houses had never stood here. There was no sign of the paths we had used, the squares of white dust where our chickens had scratched, the patches of garden. It was the worst feeling, to look upon the place of my childhood and realize that it had been swept away like sand at the swing of broomstraw. There was no mark of the people who had lived here. Of the families. Of my family. I strained to hear the ghosts of their laughter, hoped to find the imprint of their lives here on the air, but it was gone.

The trail up the mountain had been widened out, and many of the trees atop its crest cut down. I could see the roofline of the big house up there. It had dormer windows that looked out over the valley. I wondered if the man who lived there had children. Did they play
along the creek down here and find remnants of my own life here? Maybe they happened upon a lost ball, a jack catching sunlight in the grass. I hoped that none of them ventured up on the cliff. I didn't want anybody in my spot, where I had spent many hours looking down upon the world.

I left the horse at the edge of the woods and walked out into the field, which was overgrown with goldenrod and daisies. The road was the only cleared spot now. It amazed me how fast the earth took back its space, how easily weeds could rid a place of people. But I found our old houseseat. There were four gnarled locusts, one at each corner. I stood in the middle and could feel my family's spirit there. The ground held a memory of them.

“This is where our house set,” I said, but Birdie paid little attention. She was picking daisies. “I spent many a day right here. The porch was here,” I said, moving to the front. “In the mornings, Mama would brush out my hair. During the day, we'd work here. Breaking beans, churning butter. And in the gloaming, Daddy would tell us stories. Everbody on the creek would gather.”

I heard the sound of an engine coughing to life atop the mountain, and I turned fast. I could see a curl of dust breaking apart on the mountain, but I made no move to leave. I bent and looked at some rocks that must have been part of our chimney. They were warm to my touch.

I watched Birdie, who was getting closer to the creek as she picked the flowers. She had a handful now and had put one behind each ear. “Will you make me a daisy chain?” she asked.

“Be careful by that creek,” I said. “Snakes live here.”

The sound of the car engine was closer, but I didn't turn to look up the road. It was still far up the mountain, but the motor's purr echoed to me on the cliffs dotting the hillsides. I walked through the weeds and found our front step hidden by a mess of burr bushes. I don't know how I had missed it when I was standing in the middle of our house's old space. I set down on it, a big square rock that
Daddy had dragged out of the creek. I could see him doing it. All the hard work he had put into this place, only to have it stole from him. I put my face in my hands and fought back tears. I pictured all the steps Mama and Daddy had taken onto this rock, all the times I had skipped across it, in a hurry to get somewhere without realizing the straightedged beauty of it.

The car came onto the white road, black smoke puffing from its pipes. I heard the screech of the parking brake. The vehicle spat and hissed as the engine was turned off. I raised my head to see a round man climbing out of the car. He squeezed himself through the little door and pulled at the bottom of his suit jacket and straightened his hat. He started to walk across the field, then stopped as he realized his pants were covered with beggar's-lice. Birdie run to me and held on to my skirt tail. She clutched the bouquet of flowers tight in one hand.

“You're trespassing!” the man hollered. He pushed his glasses up with his thumb. I stood up straight with my hands on Birdie's shoulders.

“I wanted to show my little girl where I come from,” I said. I didn't speak very loud, hoping that he would be forced to ask me to repeat myself.

“I've seen you,” he said. “I know you from somewhere.”

“We'll go now,” I said, since I knowed now exactly who he was. My voice quavered. I didn't like the feeling of hate, and it washed up over me. He'd forced my family to leave, to pack up everything they had and move across two states. And I seen now that he was also the man I had argued with on the street in Black Banks. The one who had called me stupid. He was Tate Masters. He had robbed my family. I remembered the way it felt to kick his tail, and now, knowing it was Masters made it all the more satisfying to me. If I stayed here and argued with him, I would get too mad. I would be liable to go wild on him. There was no use in that. I steered Birdie around to walk back to the horse.

To my back, the man hollered, “Don't be back on my land.”

I clenched my jaw, trying to keep quiet, and I wished that all those tales about me had been true. That I could throw a hex. That I could cause a snake to rise up and strike him. I turned around real slow and said, “It was my land before you took it.”

He stepped closer. “Where do I know you from, girl?”

“Probably from when I kicked you right in the hind end on Main Street.”

He drawed in his breath. He pushed at his glasses again, trying to figure out what to say next.

“It will come back on you, what you've done,” I said. “A person can only do so much wrong before it catches up with him. Someday it will find you out.”

“Get off my land!” he yelled. He put his hands on his hips. “We ought to run all you Indians out!”

I lifted Birdie up onto the horse and then took the reins in hand. I walked the horse back through the woods slowly. I run my hands along the slick trunks of old sycamores as I passed them. Trees I had grown up with.

I stopped for a moment at the confluence, then pulled myself up onto the horse and rode away, the familiar scent of Redbud Camp filling my head. I felt sure that my great-granny Lucinda was up on the high ridge, watching me leave. I turned around and waved to her.

I had said good-bye to my home place at long last, and I realized that I was slowly saying good-bye to everything I held dear. I had already decided what I was going to do, although I had not yet told myself.

I
n the days after Esme's funeral, Saul was quiet toward me. I thought he was just grieving his mommy, but one evening I put my hand on the back of his neck, and he flinched. He had never acted sick of my touch. Was he mad over how close me and Esme got to be, or over me not letting him bury her beside his daddy? Or over how I went back to Redbud, or was it even more than that?

It was hot as the hubs of torment that day. The corn wilted in the garden, turning from green to nigh blue. In the woods the heat bugs screamed. Saul was in the garden, chopping out the rows, and I took him a big jar of water. He didn't have no shirt on, and his back was golden. I stood at the edge of the garden a long time without saying a word, watching him work. I liked the way the long, narrow muscles on either side of his spine grew hard, then flexed back to unseeable. Beads of sweat stood on his big shoulders. His body arched into his work, then pulled away again, a giving and a taking. There is nothing so thrilling as seeing your man in the heat of work.