Soul of a Crow (43 page)

Without ceremony, without guile, Boyd went immediately to Rebecca and drew her into his arms. I believed he intended to keep the embrace brief, and proper to a fault, but was summarily unable; I saw how he crushed her close, as though never to let go, and bent his face to the side of her neck. Rebecca dropped the lantern to the wet ground, where it teetered precipitously before remaining upright, in order to wrap both arms around him. She cupped the back of his head, her fingers in his hair. His hat fell and remained disregarded.

“I figured,” Tilson murmured, watching the two of them as he drew the wagon to a halt near the corral. He had procured for me a lap blanket, under which I huddled, nearly as limp with exhausted relief as Malcolm appeared. He went on, “I may be an old codger these days, but I see the way my niece glows like a firefly when Carter is around, from near the first night she met him. Just the mention of his name is enough to set her to shining.”

“Boyd cares for her, as well,” I whispered.

“But I fear no good will come of it,” Tilson said. “She will only be hurt all the more when he leaves, if either of them admit to it,” and I understood that he was right.

Boyd collected the lantern and held the door for Rebecca, letting her enter the house ahead of him. Before I could reply, Malcolm gathered himself and hurried to us, leading Fortune, to help unhitch the team. Malcolm's hair was curlier than ever in the damp and he came directly to my side of the wagon, reaching to pat my leg.

“He ain't come to,” Malcolm said. “I stayed near him, Lorie-Lorie, I promise.”

Tilson hopped to the ground and lifted me down. I was chilled and my burned feet hurt so terribly I did not think I could walk the few yards required to gain entry into the house.

“I can't…” I started to say, but Tilson understood.

“I know,” he said gently. “I know, honey. You saved your good man a second time today, the least I can do is carry you inside.”

- 31 -

Sawyer Davis?

At first it was just a breath in my mind, hardly more than a whispered echo. I squinted as beams of sunlight angled low and into my right eye, blessedly eradicating the dark heat through which I had been aimlessly drifting, that had until this moment been rendering me blind. There was a scent in the air that I knew well, deepest memory stirred as I inhaled. When I blinked, the mellow beauty of a Tennessee evening spread placidly before me; immediately I blinked again, attempting to clear the lingering darkness from the left side of my head.

But it would not dissipate.

And then, closer than before, a jovial voice I knew well, and Bainbridge Carter demanded,
Sawyer, is that you? Where you been, boy? We ain't seen you in these parts in a month of Sundays!

Bainbridge approached from behind, and I wanted so badly to turn and greet him, but I was rendered immobile, watching the sun as its upper curve gilded the crest of the holler I knew better than any landscape, rimming the Earth with crimson fire. I beheld familiar sights—
the Carters' house is just beyond that stand of blue ash, yonder. See, there's that lone blackgum growing tall in their midst
—and was inundated by familiar scents—
Bainbridge must be roasting a hog over a hickory fire
—which should have served to comfort my heart…

But instead it thrust faster, in alarm; my field of view appeared vertically bisected, as though an impenetrable black curtain had been draped over half of my head. My hands jerked upwards, but I was suddenly fearful to place my fingertips upon my own face.

Lorie
, I thought, wild now with fear. I could not exactly recall the last time I had seen her, or where she was at this moment, and I shouted for her, stumbling forward, my voice echoing over the valley in which I had been born and raised.

I can't see—I can't see her—

Oh Jesus, what's wrong—something is wrong—what's happened –

“It's gone, Sawyer,” my brother Ethan said, low and solemn, and then, inexplicably, there he was, standing on my right side, the sun bathing his familiar face. His throat was smooth, unmarked, bearing no trace of the gaping bullet wound which had killed him that cold and terrible January day. He was dressed as though to attend a church social, his red-gold hair shaggy on his neck; he did not appear to have aged past the day he died, when I carried him from the battlefield at Murfreesboro. When I turned my head, the dark curtain followed, obliterating that which was not directly in front of my right eye.

“Ethan,” I whispered, so stunned by the sight of him restored to life that it overrode my fears. “Is it truly you?”

“It's me, brother,” he said, and there was tenderness in his voice. He curled a hand over my right shoulder; immediately I placed mine atop his, to keep him near.

“What is this place? Where are we, Eth?”

Ethan's face took on an appearance I remembered well from our school days, the sort he wore when attempting to puzzle through a complicated mathematics figure. He finally said, “It's what is…beyond.”

I demanded, “Have you been here in this place since the War? Eth, what's wrong with me…”

“Your eye is gone,” Ethan said, with deep empathy. “I know the shock of it, Sawyer, I do. When I first got here I could not breathe, nor speak. I was in terror. But Jere found me right quick. Sawyer, I must tell you—”

“Sawyer!” called another voice, joyful and moving closer, and my youngest brother caught me around the waist, clinging tightly.

“
Jeremiah
,” I whispered, choking on a sob, crushing his warm body closer. When last I saw him, he had been stiff and colorless, wrapped in a pieced calico quilt for burying.

“Sawyer, we wasn't expecting you yet. What's happened?” Jere asked, drawing back and minutely examining my face; he looked mildly appalled by what he saw. That he was
able
to see, that he was not lying buried in the Suttonville cemetery as he was the last I knew, served to rob me of speech. I could not muster words past the jamming of emotion in my chest, and Jere recognized, “You's confused. I was when I first arrived. But Granddaddy found me before too long, and Ethan was right on my bootheels. And you'll heal up.” A smile seemed about to split my brother's face and he hugged me again, tucking close. He whispered contentedly, “Now we's all here,” and over my brother's shoulder I squinted into the last of the light, and saw my mother and father.

Daddy and Mama came our way across the holler in the sunset, the light glinting scarlet in Mama's hair. Together, as they had always been in life, Daddy's arm wrapped protectively about Mama's waist.

“Daddy, look! Mama, it's Sawyer!” Jere called to them, and my mother pressed both hands to her mouth, staring, before lifting her hem so that she could run.

I went to both knees as swiftly as if sliced across the back of them, a supplicant, and my father was there to take my head against his stomach, holding fast, his big hand curving protectively about my skull, as it had when I was a child needing comfort.

“My boy,” Daddy said, and his voice was just as I remembered, rife with happiness, and deep relief. He said, “You are home.”

My mother's soft touch joined my father's, smoothing the hair from my brow, kissing my face, murmuring her concern over my appearance, and I wept, shamelessly, heaving sobs that wrenched my chest. In the near-distance, perhaps from the Carters' front porch, I could hear the sound of a fiddle player picking out the merry notes of “Buffalo Gals.” Wrens chirped and called; I heard a mourning dove's soft warble.

Mama rejoiced, “My Sawyer,
mo mhac is sine,
you are finally home.”

I was home
.

Since leaving it at the age of nineteen, I had wanted nothing more than to return.

I had to tell them something, had to force it past the knot in my throat, and I whispered brokenly, “I am sorry, I am so sorry I couldn't keep you safe. I have never forgiven myself, in all this time. I never will.”

“Sawyer,” Jere said, in gentle reprimand. I could feel my family, all of them near to me at long last, their scents as familiar as my own. Somehow, I was here with them. It seemed as though I could stay.

“It wasn't your fault. It was never your fault,” Ethan whispered. “Jesus, Sawyer, how could you blame yourself?”

“
Forgive me
,” I begged.

Daddy's hand bracketed the right side of my face and he looked upon me with concern knitting his brows, his fair hair shot through with silver. He said, “You were never to blame, son.”

“It was our time, brother,” Ethan said.

“I knew it, I
knew
I seen Sawyer,” Bainbridge said, with delight in his gruff voice, and I eased away from my family's embrace to behold all of them—Bainbridge and Clairee, Beaumont and Grafton, and my grandparents, Sawyer and Alice Davis. My heart clenched as they converged upon us, talking and exclaiming over me, all at once. They appeared hale and whole, vigorous and lighted from within, as though they had never suffered a day's hunger, sickness, or pain.

The darkness on the left side of my vision began to recede.

“All of you,” I whispered. “Oh God, all of you, here…”

“Sawyer Davis, you handsome thing,” Clairee said, and the teasing lilt in her tone was exactly as I recalled. She said, “How glad we are to see you, darlin'.”

In the gentle brogue of her homeland, Mama said tenderly, “Come, let me clean your face,
mo buachaill milis
.” She exulted, “Alice, look, it is our Sawyer, home at last,” and tears streamed over my grandmother's cheeks as she kissed my face repeatedly.

“Sawyer, my boy,” said Granddaddy, and he grinned. “You have grown well. Your grandmother always said you would be as tall as me, someday.”

“You must be hungry as a bear in snowmelt,” Beaumont laughed, lightly knuckling my scalp. Beau had been born scarcely nine months earlier than Boyd, and looked just like him. He shook his head, dark eyes lit by a sheen of happiness, and said, “Sakes alive, Sawyer, it's damn good to see you. I can't tell you.”

“Boyd an' little Malcolm ain't with you?” Grafton asked, beset by evident disappointment. Before I could answer, he figured in his characteristically slow way, “I s'pose not yet. I s'pose I lost track of the time, just like I always done.”

“Dinner's waiting just yonder, love,” Granny said. “Your mama baked a cornbread this afternoon,” and at her words, I could smell it, rich and delectable. Granny smoothed my hair and lamented, “Oh, if I had known you were coming this evening I would have rolled out a crust and made you a rhubarb pie, sweetling. Oh,
Sawyer
.”

Bainbridge winked at me and rumbled, “An' I've a bottle of my best, just a-waitin' for you, boy.”

Jere urged, “C'mon home with us.”

Grafton said approvingly, “You's lookin' better already.”

And indeed, he had hardly made this observation before my sight fully cleared. I blinked, imbibing the seemingly impossible—this place, this dear and familiar holler, which had been my home longer than any other on the earth.

“Sawyer?” a man called from a short distance, approaching around the blue ash grove. “Is that you?”

I recognized this voice—it was one known to me much more recently than any others' present. I struggled to recall how many months it had been since last hearing him speak, but before I could figure, Angus Warfield strode into view. He wore his hat, doffing it politely at the ladies as he approached, though he did not remove his startled gaze from me. Upon one arm he carried a child, a somber little boy with brown curls. Once the two of them were close enough, I saw that the boy's eyes were a deep gray—exactly like Angus's.

“Gus,” I whispered. Not long ago, in a stupor of agonized unknowing, I found him lying near the ashes of a cookfire with his sightless gaze directed at the dawning pewter sky, a bullet hole splitting his breastbone. Lorie had been missing from their camp and in my panic to find her I had no time to bury Gus, a man I'd known my entire life, whose calm and quiet wisdom was a large part of what saved my soul after the War; I had wrapped this man's body in a quilt and rode madly away, across the endless prairie in search of Lorie.

I said painfully, “
Angus
…”

Still upon my knees, I reached a hand for him, which he took and held firmly. His chest was blessedly intact, and his eyes were deep and comforting, as they had never failed to be in life. He alone appeared perplexed at my presence and he asked intently, “Surely you are not here to stay?”

“Grace, don't you look well?” Mama said over her shoulder, reaching a welcoming arm. “My eldest son is home. You remember Sawyer.”

A woman came near and smiled warmly at me. Her honey-brown hair hung loose, rippling over her shoulders, and her resemblance to Lorie, while not exact, was marked enough that I made a sound, part disbelief, part agony. A seizure of need for my wife obliterated any fleeting notion I had harbored of remaining in this place.

Grace said demurely, “Evenin', Sawyer.”

“She was waiting for me,” Angus explained softly, and brought her to his side, where she tucked close to him. He said with wonder, “My Grace was waiting for me, all this time. But Sawyer—why are
you
here? This cannot be right. What has happened?”

I caught Gus's forearm in my grip, begging, “Where is Lorie? Where is my wife? How do I get back?”

The sun was setting quickly now, pulling the warmth of the day with it. An indigo mist lifted from the land around us, melting into the greens of the holler, and I saw Lorie's eyes in the blending of those two colors.

I demanded again, “How do I get back?”

As I asked, the darkness encroached swiftly over my left side.

Gus knelt and brought the child on his arm to a level with me. The boy, though small, studied my face with the solemnity of someone much older. Gus whispered, “Tell her that I will never fail to care for him.”

Love, and girding pain, simultaneously cinched my heart. I knew I was looking upon Lorie's son, who had been lost on the Missouri prairie, whose grave marker I had constructed. I rested my fingertips softly against the boy's round cheek, and saw my wife in his face. I whispered, “Of course I will tell her.”

The air in the holler grew ever darker, but I could discern each of their faces in the faint afterglow of the vanishing sun, those I loved more than all others, save one. They had fallen silent at my exchange with Angus, watching wordlessly.

I sought my mother's eyes with my one-sided vision and whispered, “I cannot stay here.”

Mama caressed my face. There was sorrow present upon hers as she regarded my mangled appearance, but she said at last, “I understand.
Téigh go dtí di, mo mhac. Bí láidir as a cuid, do i gcónaí
.”

“I will, I promise,” I said, and she smiled, hearing the fervor in my voice.

“Your Lorissa loves you so,” Mama whispered, and her expression was soft with fondness. “She is waiting for you. She will help you, my son.”

Ethan's green eyes glinted in their old teasing way, and he cupped my shoulder, whispering in my ear, “
Tá mé in éad de do oíche, deartháir
. You've a fine, sweet woman.”

“You go an' kiss my boys for me,” Clairee said, and the soft floral scent of her enveloped me as she bent near, bestowing a kiss on my forehead. “You tell my sweet baby that I'd never forget his dear face. That I will recognize him no matter how old he is when he comes to me again.”

“You tell Boyd an' Malcolm I am goddamn proud of 'em,” Bainbridge said, with his stern affection.

“Your path ain't an easy one, my boy.” Granddaddy's palm rested briefly upon my back. He said, “But you are my grandson, a Davis. You are stronger than you realize.”