A Parchment of Leaves (7 page)

The miller was hanged for his deadly sin,

The older sister ought to have been.

I will be true, true to my love;

Love if my love will be true to me.

When she was done, she held handfuls of her skirt and walked back to her seat. Everybody was stunned for a minute, I reckon, because all was quiet for a long moment before people started clapping. While they did, I got up and went straight to her. I wanted to know somebody who could do something so beautiful.

Serena was setting on the big rock that rose up out of our yard near the front steps. Saul had wanted to dig it out, but I wouldn't let him. I liked the look of it, and when you ran your hand over it, there was always sand stuck to your palm.

“That give me an awful chill,” I said by way of announcing myself.

“It is scary,” she said, but she didn't meet my eyes.

“No, I mean your voice. I never heard nothing so pretty.”

She looked at me. “You a Indian, ain't you?”

“That's what they tell me. Cherokee.” I couldn't tell if she was disgusted or happy by the look on her face.

“I never knowed no Cherokee before. I'm happy to, though.”

“You're Whistle-Dick Sizemore's woman, ain't you?”

“No. Whistle-Dick is my man,” she said, and laughed. Her laugh was the opposite of her singing: low and thick. “That man can't drink nothing without passing out slicker than a ribbon.”

“He drunk a big lot of that homemade wine, I'll tell you.”

She waved a hand in front of her nose. “By the smell of your breath, I'd say you did, too.”

“Tonight's the first time I've ever even tasted it,” I said. “I guess everybody here will think I'm a sight.”

“Hell, it ain't nothing to be ashamed of. I've been known to take a sup or two.”

I laughed and throwed my head back and realized that I was still a little bit drunk. And I never had heard a woman talk in such a way.

“I've drunk with these old boys before. They'll tell you—I could put Whistle-Dick under the table any day of the week. My daddy was real bad to drink, and he used to slip it to me when I was little. I guess I got a taste for it.” Serena smiled at me then, seeing my shock, but she didn't comment on it. She ran her hand over her belly in a wide circle. “Them days is over, though.”

“Why?”

“Can't you tell I'm big?” I couldn't even see a knot there to tip me off that she was pregnant. She had a deep curve of hip and a wide waist, but her stomach was flat as a plate. “I'd be afraid to drink anything and me carrying a baby. I know some midwives that say to take a sup ever now and then, but it can't be good. It sure ain't hindered Whistle-Dick none, though.” She nodded her chin toward her husband, who seemed to be sliding out of his chair and onto the floor of the porch. A crew of men setting on the yard laughed at him.

“Well, if Betty Lester can't get here in time, I might could help when the child comes. My mama is the midwife on Redbud Creek.”

“Oh no, honey,” Serena said. “I'm the midwife round these parts. Betty Lester won't come all the way up in here. She taught me and has give this whole big creek to me.”

“Well, you can't deliver this baby yourself. She'll have to come.”

“I reckon you'll do fine.”

I laughed too loud again. “You'd trust me, just like that?”

“You've got the hands for it,” she said. She took one of my hands and flattened it out onto her palm, feeling of my fingers as if she was feeling for knots in my skin. She ground her thumb into the center of my palm. My hands were bigger than hers. For a minute I thought she might be a palm reader, the way she was studying it. “Yes, ma'am,” she said. “I believe you'll do the best ever was.”

“Well, I'll sure be glad to help,” I said. “I hate that I ain't been up to see you since you got back. I heard tell about your mommy dying. I sure do hate to hear that.”

“It's all right. She went out just like she lived, mean as a cat.” She eyed me for a long minute. “I bet you are tickled to death to get this house done. To get out from under Esme's little beady eyes.”

I started to laugh again but thought better of it. “She's been good to me.”

“You must be something, then. That old woman don't like many people.”

“Her bark is worse than her bite,” I said.

Serena wasn't listening to me. Aaron and the fiddler had quit playing. The guitar player was gently strumming, and a great hum had arisen over the gathered crowd as they laughed and told big tales. At first I thought she was looking at her husband again. Her eyes were narrowed, a deep line etched across her forehead.

“He's got it bad, don't he?” she said finally.

“Who?” I asked.

Still she didn't take her eyes away from the porch. “Aaron,” she said. “Your brother-in-law. He's watched you this whole night.”

I looked at him, and I felt as if somebody had poured ice water over me—the way my mother had sometimes done Daddy when he got too drunk. Aaron was looking right into my eyes while his long fingers rested on the frets of the banjo. His straight, white teeth seemed to be saying something improper to me. I could feel my face going to ash. At the same time, I thought to myself that this couldn't be true. Even though I had felt it myself, and now had somebody else saying this, too, I couldn't wrap my mind around it. When I had first come to God's Creek, I had knowed he had a little crush on me, but I thought he had outgrowed it. Surely Aaron didn't look on me that way.

“He'll get over it,” Serena said. Only now did she let go of my hand, as if she had just realized that she was still holding it. “He's about too pretty to be a man, and he never has been right. He's always been younger than his age, if you know what I mean. Not slow,
but sort of behind. No wonder, the way that old woman's petted him to death. And Saul's spoiled him worse than her.”

“He's probably just drunk,” I said. When I looked back to him, he was talking to the fiddler, discussing their next song.

“He's too old to be making eyes at his sister-in-law,” Serena said, like I hadn't even spoke.

A
s winter started to set in, I began to see something very clearly. It was as if I had been working on a quilt and suddenly the pattern had taken on its shape and meaning. I seen that I had married a very quiet man, the opposite of myself, of my own daddy, of my own people. He was the opposite of
his
own people, in fact, for Esme could outtalk any preacher, and Aaron was all the time going on with his notions and daydreams.

Maybe it was the time of year that made me notice it. The weather seemed to give me hints. Rain showers in the summer had come in with rumbling thunder, sheets of water pounding against the tin roof, wind that bent the trees low and set the leaves to chattering. But cold rain fell straight down in November and December, quiet and soft, sometimes so gently that it seemed a damp mist you could walk through without becoming wet. The sounds of evening—crickets, frogs, katydids—were gone until spring. Even the creek seemed to silence itself somewhat. The last of the leaves fell with no more sound than a dying breath.

And Saul was quiet, too. Still and silent. By the time the gray sky began to spit snow around Christmastime, I didn't think I could stand it. Esme was a different person in the winter. She didn't venture outside much and spent the colder days fooling around in her kitchen with a big quilt throwed over her shoulders. She wasn't much in the way of company, since the only thing she wanted to talk about was her aching bones. She could always tell when a big snow was coming by the harsh pulsing in her joints.

There was no solace in Serena, either. When Serena finally started to show that she was carrying, she really showed. She was big as a cow by January but still kept right on going out to catch babies, making her way over the slick rocks. I thought she was carrying twins, her belly was so huge, but she always just shook her head and said that it was nothing more than a big old boy.

So Aaron kept me company. I was desperate for conversation, and he always gave me that much, at least. He come up to the house every day, after he had done everything that Esme had asked him to. He didn't have a job, even though he was plenty old enough for one. Somebody had to take care of his mother, he said. And he did—I'll have to say that much for him. Every day he chopped the wood, shoveled coal for the stove, fed the goats, tended to the cows and chickens. He helped her stitch her quilts, since her eyesight had started to suffer. Then he'd come and talk to me while I swept the house or churned the butter or hung clothes to dry over the fireplace. He helped me stack our wood, clean the lamp chimneys, trim the wicks, shovel out the fireplace. Sometimes he even helped me cook, which was something I had never seen a man do in my life. My mama still had to pack meals to my bachelor uncle over on Redbud, as he would have died and split hell wide open before putting a skillet on the stove.

And all the while, he talked. Most times I didn't even acknowledge what he was saying. I'd just go about my work, nodding every once in a while. Sometimes I'd stop him to comment, but mostly I just listened.
When I did say something, I don't think he paid a bit of attention to it, as he was concerned only with his own dreams.

“They're building a new railroad up in West Virginia. Cutting tunnels out through them big mountains. The mountains is bigger up there than they are here—can you picture that?” he'd say. “I'd like to go up there, just to watch them do that. Or I could be a photographer. I could go up there and take pictures of them building the new railroad.”

One thing always led into another, although most everything had to do with getting out of Crow County. I never could understand why he wanted to leave, since he had it made right there. Esme watched over him like he was a little child. In many ways he was like a child: dreaming of big things, his mind never focused on nothing but having a big time. And I suppose I was a little bit of a child, too. I was young, after all, and I was still adjusting to married life and the fact that I had to act like a grown woman. I had been raised up quick, my parents never giving much time for the foolishness of childhood, but I was a young person. I dreamed, too.

Aaron got to where he would play his banjo for me right often, but only after I had set down and stopped doing the chores. He couldn't stand to play the banjo unless he had my full attention, so I couldn't even wash dishes or work on a quilt while he played. He knowed all of my favorites and always played the one I loved best, “Little Sunshine.” Aaron could play the banjo better than anybody I had ever heard before, and I wasn't the only one to say that. His fingers picked in a blur, moving so quick and light that they seemed not even to touch the strings. The music he made on that banjo was like hearing magic. It was like Aaron held God's rhythm right in his fingertips.

Ever once in a while I could talk him into singing a little bit, too. Mostly he just liked to play. I liked the way he sung “Charlie's Neat.” He hunched over the banjo and looked me right in the eye as he sung, making crazy old faces at the end of each verse.

Charlie's a good one,

Charlie's a neat one,

Charlie he's a dandy.

Charlie he's a magic man,

He feeds the girls rock candy.

And then it was like he lit in on that banjo, rocking back and forth with it atop his lap, his fingers pulling out clucks and pops on the strings. Lord, it was something to behold, the sound he could make with nothing more than his thumb and his pointing finger.

“If you want to be something, you ought to make a living playing that banjo,” I said.

He thought this was funny. “Shoot, Vine,” he said. “A person can't make no money playing music.”

When Aaron left, he would always throw his banjo over his shoulder by the strap, then push his hands far down into his pockets and whistle while he walked home. He had a way of whistling that no one could match, either. It was so sharp and high that it made a scratch on the air. But there was something else. Aaron's whistle was not one of happiness, like most people's. For some reason, it always made my scalp crawl to hear it.

Still, when Aaron wasn't there, the house was all silence. All day long, I felt like I was just going through the motions of waiting on Saul to get home. His silence liked to killed me that winter, but it seemed I loved him more and more every day. I remember plainly waking up one day and realizing that I loved him. I guess you can't name a single reason you love somebody. It was a whole slew of things. I loved the way he put his hand on the small of my back when company got ready to leave and we seen them to the door. I loved how his breath smelled like sweet milk when he first woke in the morning. Despite myself, I loved him when he rode his horse down the creek before daylight, off to work at that old mill. Sometimes I caught myself and felt like a little lovesick fool for being hurt over his
leaving for the day. Often I wondered why it was that I missed him so when he was gone. He wasn't much company when he was present. Still, I loved it when he come home with his hands tore all to pieces from running the lumber through the saw. He would lay his hand out and let me doctor the cuts for him, even though I knowed he would have rather just let it heal up on its own. And somehow, I even loved his silence. I loved him for that, but this did not dull my loneliness, either. So I sometimes hated him for the same reasons I adored him.

Winter was a cutting-off time. It was a time when people didn't get around much. I went from December until March without seeing my mama and daddy. There was a lot of big snows that year, every one of them predicted by the bones in Esme's little arms. So I had to force myself to make it. I would survive this season and tell myself that come spring, things would be different. I made myself busy, I listened to Aaron, I sometimes put on my mackinaw coat and went out onto the porch to wait on Saul when it got time for him to come home.