A Land More Kind Than Home (26 page)

She told me the story of those outliers one day while we tended the laundry on the porch of her cabin. I'd spent the afternoon watching her hands dive in and out of a wooden basin filled with soapy water while she rubbed her raw knuckles across the aluminum washing board. I remember thinking that by now the knuckles on more delicate hands would've took to bleeding, and I'd heard stories of women having to rewash baskets of laundry after finding their own blood warmed by the sun in brown smears across drying sheets.

After she'd wrung that water from each piece of laundry, she'd fold it into the basket in my arms until I couldn't hardly carry it down the steps into the yard, where I pinned the underclothes and dresses to tight lines running between two black locust posts. I've got some clear memories of walking the rows of billowing sheets while the image of the porch and the outline of my great-aunt's body stood stamped upon the sunlight. Her soft voice carried down the steps and trailed out into the yard, where it disappeared between the folds of white cotton.

“Those Confederates were starving, Addie.”

I stepped from between the sheets and dragged the basket through the high grass and up to the porch. I stood by her waist and listened and waited for her to pile the heaps of wet clothes into the basket.

“They must've been wandering the hills for days and didn't know no better than to eat that jimson fruit. That stuff can make you crazy until you almost want to die.

“This was back when they used to carry all the baccer into Hot Springs to cart it down the turnpike to the Asheville market. I was in town with my daddy and his crop the day those boys came down from the hills, shooting up everything and carrying on like nothing you've ever seen. I remember that wildness in their eyes, and my daddy told me it was jimson sure enough. He said nothing else could make a man act like that.

“By the time those soldiers were done, they'd shot some folks in town, and the folks they didn't kill had killed all but one of them soldiers. The one who'd survived was a boy from Gastonia who'd caught a bullet in his thigh. Folks said he'd been the only one of them Confederates without a gun, said he didn't even look old enough to handle a rifle. He was about out of his head by the time all the shooting stopped. Some folks in town took him in and cared for him and kept him safe and hid away.

“A few days later a posse of Confederate home guard rolled through looking for those outliers who'd shot up the town, and a few days after that a band of Union came through looking for rebels. But folks kept that boy hid. They weren't going to give him up, no matter who was looking for him. When news came from Raleigh that North Carolina had withdrawn her troops and the war was over and done, they took that boy out to the middle of town and strung him up. They hung him. Just like that.

“I saw that boy's face when they done it. I think I'll remember it for the rest of my life.” She quit her washing, and I watched her wet hand lift a big old grasshopper from the rim of the basin. She tossed it into the air, and I saw its wings open and catch the breeze before it disappeared.

“Why'd they kill him if they thought he was innocent?” I asked.

“Because,” she said, “he was someplace he shouldn't have been, and sometimes that's enough.” And now, when I think about what happened to Christopher inside that church, I think the same thing.

I
F SOMEBODY WOULD HAVE WANTED TO, AFTER
C
HRISTOPHER
was born, they could've just stood by and watched Julie and Ben grow apart from each other real slow. It was like a tree had sprung up between them, a tree that was just too thick to throw their arms around. Julie had always been a strong Christian woman, and she got herself believing that her little boy's being touched was a gift from God. But Ben wasn't no mystic about it, and I reckon he saw his own quietness in that little boy, and he loved him all the more because of it. He figured silence marked Christopher as being his son in a way their blood never could.

But that tree that grew up between them was just a gnarly old thing with thick roots that ran deep and wild and tore at the ground until it opened up, and, once it did, Julie found herself clear across a great divide from Ben, so far apart that they couldn't even see each other from where they stood. Julie looked around and saw that she needed her faith to help her understand God's plan for that little boy and for her family. It was like Ben's lack of faith inspired her, and his turning his back on God and the church worked on her belief and made it that much stronger. She never missed a chance to teach her boys a lesson about the Lord, especially after Jess was born. He was a curious thing, and once he lit into asking you questions about God and Heaven and Jesus you'd better have him some answers ready, or it just wouldn't do. But his daddy was somebody different altogether. There were two things that man just wouldn't talk about: his heavenly father and his own daddy. I reckon he figured that once he cut his ties with his earthly father, any substitute, whether holy or not, was going to be judged with the same thorough measure he judged just about everything else in his life.

And the Lord knows that when people don't get what they need they take what they can find, and Julie wasn't no different from most women about such a thing as that. What she found was a Christian family that welcomed her and her two little boys and never asked one question about why her husband wasn't joining the rest of his family on Sunday mornings. I reckon it was just about good enough for her, but I know there were still times when that loneliness for the way her and Ben used to be would come over her, and with it'd come a fear of him that I couldn't ever quite put my finger on. I ain't saying that Ben was the kind of man to hit a woman, because I can tell you that he wasn't. His daddy was, but Ben just didn't have it in him the way some men do. He wasn't the kind of man to let a woman get him riled up enough to go and make a scene and take to swinging his fists. But he was a brooding soul, and I believe the way he carried himself in all that quietness hurt Julie more than an open hand ever could. It got to where those two didn't hardly talk to each other at all, not even about the most important things married folks are supposed to share.

It turns out that the tree I'd imagined growing up between those two wasn't no tree at all. What I took for being roots were actually stories and lies and promises that festered deep into Julie's heart to where there wasn't anything anybody could do to pry them loose. Those thick limbs and branches that kept Julie and Ben from seeing each other when they needed to the most weren't nothing but arms and fingers that held Julie back, covered her eyes, and took her hand and led her to a place she never had no intention of going. Looking back now, it wasn't no tree at all; it was Carson Chambliss.

I
T MUST HAVE BEEN A YEAR OR SO BEFORE
C
HRISTOPHER DIED THAT
I was out in my backyard gathering my laundry off the line when I saw Julie about as bad off as she'd ever been. It had come up a little rain, and I was trying to get all my laundry in before the sky opened up and took to pouring. On my way out back I looked across the valley and saw the dark clouds gathering in the distance, and I figured they were getting a good wash just a little piece up the road. It wasn't doing anything but drizzling now, but I knew better than to think that it wasn't going to come up a storm some time soon.

I took to unfastening the laundry from the line and tossing it into the basket when for some reason, and I can't tell you what it was, I knew that somebody was watching me. I turned around, and that's when I saw Julie standing up in the corner of the yard by the house. She was standing there in the rain and watching me with her arms folded across herself like she was freezing, but it was a warm summer day, not a bit cool at all.

“Lord, girl,” I hollered up at her. “You just about scared me to death.” I turned around and went to unfastening the rest of my laundry from the line, but when I looked again I saw that she hadn't moved an inch. “You all right?” I hollered. She didn't say nothing to that, and she didn't make no move to come down to me either, so I dropped the clothes I was holding into the basket and walked up the yard to where she was standing. When I got close up to her, I could see that her hair was damp and her skirt was wet where it had caught some high grass on her walk over to my place. She had on a pair of rubber boots that were covered in mud up to her ankles.

“You all right?” I asked her again when I got up to the top of the yard where she was standing. She pulled her arms even tighter around her and turned her head and looked up the road she'd just come down. That rain picked up a little then, and I could hear the thunder rumble out over the valley behind me.

“Can you keep me from having a baby?” she asked. She turned her face to me and her eyes looked like she was just terrified to have to ask me a question like that.

“Do you think you're pregnant?”

“If I was, could you keep me from having it?” she asked.

“Why are you asking about that?” I said.

“I just can't have me another baby,” she said.

“Well, Lord, why not?” I asked. “Having a baby is a good thing, girl. It ain't no reason to be scared.”

“I can't have it,” she said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because,” she said, “I'm afraid it'll happen again.”

“What'll happen?” I asked.

“It'll be like Christopher,” she said.

“Goodness, Julie,” I said. “That ain't no reason to get rid of it. Christopher's a fine boy, and you know you don't love him no less than you would've if he'd been different. And look at Jess. You got yourself two fine little boys, and there ain't nothing wrong with either one of them.”

“But Pastor said it might happen again,” she said. “And I think he might be right.”

“What makes you think that man knows anything about having a baby?” I asked. “He ain't no woman, and he ain't no prophet neither. No matter how bad he wants y'all to believe he is.”

“He just knows,” she said. “And I believe him when he says it.”

“What's Ben got to say about all this?” I asked her.

“I ain't told him yet,” she said. “And I ain't going to either.”

“A man needs to be told something like this,” I said. “I think a father needs to have a say in it.”

“If you're thinking you ain't going to do it, then tell me now so I'll know for sure,” she said. Her eyes dropped to the ground, and her voice was just a whisper. “I already been trying to stop it anyway.”

“What have you done?” I asked. She turned and looked out over the trees that ran down into the holler behind the house. When she looked at me again, her eyes were full of tears. She tried to say something, and then she stopped herself like she was going to cry.

“I been doing all kinds of things,” she finally said. “Boiled some water in a pot and knelt over the steam until I couldn't stand it anymore.” She looked back toward the road, and then she looked down at her stomach. She lifted up her blouse with one hand and pulled at the waistline of her skirt with the other. When she did, I saw that her stomach was purple with bruises so dark it looked like she'd dyed her skin with blackberries.

“Lord, girl,” I said. “Who done this to you?”

“I done it,” she said. “I threw myself on the edge of the porch until I couldn't stand up to do it again.”

She started crying then, and I went to her and wrapped my arms around her, and when I did her body shuddered like it was too painful to even be touched. She folded her arms across her belly again and leaned her head against my shoulder and took to sobbing.

“It's going to be all right,” I said. “There ain't nothing to be afraid of.”

“I was going to drink some castor oil, but I didn't have any,” she said.

“Who told you that would work?” I asked.

“Pastor did,” she said. When I heard that, I leaned back so I could see her, and she stepped away from me and wiped her eyes.

“Pastor told you to do all this to yourself?” I asked.

“He showed me how to do it,” she said. “And he told me if I didn't get it this month then I should come and see you. He said you might be able to fix it, if you're willing. He said you wouldn't tell nobody either.”

I didn't like Carson Chambliss speaking for me, especially when it came to this kind of thing, especially when we hadn't said more than two words to each other in years and years. And I didn't like a grown woman telling her pastor she was pregnant before her own husband knew and then him sending her out to me after showing her how to get rid of it on her own. Then it dawned on me, and I'll never forget the look on Julie's face when I asked.

“Is this Ben's baby?”

She raised her eyes to mine, and we stood there looking at each other. “What do you mean?” she said.

“Is this Ben's baby?” I asked again.

“Of course,” she said. “Whose in this world would it be otherwise?”

“You tell me,” I said.

“If you don't think you're going to do it, then tell me now,” she said. “I can figure out something else if you won't help me.”