Chapter Four

 

Farmington, Maryland

January 17, 1929

 

It was the one memory, the one day of childhood, that would always find a way to rise over the rest of his life and stand there holding his heart out in front of it.

Calvin had been six years old and the first to become ill. He’d trudged home from school with a sore throat and funny noises inside his stomach. On the way, he dropped his lunch pail, slumped over a ditch and threw up on the side of the rippled dirt road leading to his house. A piercing frost hung in the air.

“You’ll feel better now.” His older sister, Evie, wiped his mouth with her embroidered handkerchief so the small pieces of his lunch wouldn’t freeze there. She picked up his pail and carried it, along with his notebook, home.

Later, when he couldn’t breathe easily, his mama concocted a mustard plaster for his chest. She sat on the edge of his bed and blotted the perspiration from his forehead with a damp cloth. Every time he woke during the night, he found her there. More than once she picked him up and carried him to the small window in the attic room where he slept.

“That’s Cassiopeia.” She pointed to the constellation. “She was named after a mythical Greek queen. Her main stars form the shape of the letter W.” She traced a W on the windowpane with her fingertip.

The nights were so clear and bright, Calvin believed it possible to reach up and yank a star from that W right out of the sky.

Then, one by one, they all got sick. His older sisters, Evie and Allie, and the younger ones, Pam, Nellie, little Ronnie and finally his mama, too, sick in bed with the flu for weeks. His mama, sicker than any of them, tried to take care of her children. It was Calvin’s fault, no doubt about it. And that knowledge filled him with bitter sadness. He couldn’t bear to lose her, to survive without the sweet and comforting odors of his mother, the way her hair smelled like lemons, the lavender soap she used and the cinnamon scent of her apple sauce pies baking in the old wood-burning stove in the kitchen.

He got down on his knees beside his bed and prayed at night. “Please, God, take care of my mama.” But every time he tiptoed into her room, her face was pale, her eyes closed and it was hard to tell if she was breathing.

He was four months short of his seventh birthday when his mama died. His father’s sister, Aunt Pearl, spent the night at their house before the funeral. She brought new clothes and helped all six children dress up that morning. They were poor farmers, in a depression that ravaged the country and Calvin’s father guzzled even more alcohol to ease the pain.

Aunt Pearl straightened the bow tie around Calvin’s neck, arranged the starched collar, dropped her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back for inspection.

“Well, I reckon that’s the best a body can do. So it’s got to be good enough. Now you stay clean, Calvin Lee Miller, you hear me? Or your pa’s gonna whup you.”

Calvin nodded. He’d had enough whippings out behind the woodshed to know they weren’t so bad, but he didn’t tell Aunt Pearl. He shared that secret only with his father, who understood the boy, in a way he believed no one else did. Most of the time his pa wasn’t really angry, and he whipped his son because he thought he had to.

The last time was for smoking. Calvin had stolen the cigarette from his father’s shirt pocket, kept it cupped in his palm, the way he’d seen the older boys do it, though the embers burned his skin. He crouched on the wood pile and tried to blow smoke rings up where the sky spread its blue across the land, but the smoke just hung there, over his head, and he’d been watching it when his father appeared from behind the curved wall of the silo.

“What you got in your mouth, boy?”

“Nothin’, Pa. Just some rolled-up paper. A pretend cigarette. That’s all.” Calvin tried to yank it out and toss it behind the wood pile before his father smelled the tobacco, but it was too late.

“Your mama smelled smoke on your clothes when she done the laundry. You’re too young to be smokin’, boy. Don’t let me ever catch you again. Do you hear me?”

“How old were you when you started smokin’, Pa?”

His father smiled and smacked him on the backside.

Calvin grinned and let out a wail, for his mama’s sake, but it hadn’t hurt a bit.

Aunt Pearl interrupted his reverie with another warning. “And one more thing, Calvin. You have to be a big, brave boy. You’ve got to help your pa with the little ones and the farm work. Lord knows, with the way he’s been drinking since your mama died, he’s gonna need all the help he can get.”

Calvin didn’t know what she meant because he already helped around the farm. He was tall for his age, and strong, too, and he milked cows every morning before school and again when he returned. With all his chores, sometimes he didn’t attend school at all, but Calvin liked learning, and he could already read pretty well.

When he’d turned five, his mama bought him a book about the stars for his birthday, and he couldn’t wait to read it. So she taught him his letters and how to sound out words. And his world expanded into a light-filled sky of constellations. Every night, Calvin and his mama would position themselves at the window, searching for the book’s pictures. His pa taught him other things, like how to split kindling for the kitchen stove, milk cows, and shovel out stalls, but he liked the things his mother taught more.

Although he didn’t want to be a farmer, Calvin excelled with his hands. He used his penknife to whittle all sorts of objects from small pieces of wood. He carved a rifle, and one day he planned to build a doll buggy for his sister, Allie, and a truck for little Ron. Someday, he hoped to apprentice with a carpenter and learn how to build houses and make furniture.

Calvin loved his father, but lately, he feared his silence and the way his face froze into a mask like it was stone. Things weren’t going well with the farm. There’d been a drought, and the corn stood dried up and dead in the fields. He heard his father beg Grandpaw for money, but he didn’t hear his grandpaw say yes.

After Aunt Pearl finished with dressing him that day, he stepped out on the porch and found his father there. The yellow morning light cast a golden sheen on the dry land. Stretched out on the wicker chaise, his father wore the black suit he usually saved for weddings and when Mama talked him into church on Sunday. Calvin stared at his father’s eyes, but they didn’t see him. So he perched on the top step leading into the house, hypnotized by the movement of the brown bottle going up and down in his father’s hand.

“What you looking at, boy? Ain’t you got nothing better to do?” His pa threw back his head and drank, his hand fisted around the bottle’s neck.

“I reckon not. Aunt Pearl told me if I got dirty, you’d whup me.”

“Oh, she did, did she? Well, she don’t know everything. Though she thinks she does most of the time. Come over here.”

Calvin stood and walked across the slanted floorboards, the wood naked as skin. He nestled close enough to his father, a big man, to see red and yellow lines etched in his eyes, like the veins of a leaf. His pa draped his arm around Calvin.

“I wish you wouldn’t drink all that whiskey, Pa.” Calvin didn’t know how or why, but lately when his father stood, he stooped over as if he was still behind the plow. His skin was tanned from the sun and dry from wind and too much whiskey, his eyes sad and distant. Calvin thought his father looked empty like some big fire went out inside him.

Pa wasn’t an old man—he had to be much younger than Grandpaw—but the crow’s feet around his eyes were carved deep enough for the dust of the fields to gather there.

His father tightened his grip on Calvin. “You’re right, boy. Drinkin’ ain’t no good. But I can’t face my life right now without your mama in it.”

Calvin pitied his father, and he knew he wasn’t supposed to. He wished he were big enough to understand. Last week, when Pa passed out before the bottle was empty, Calvin picked it up and took a swig. He thought he’d swallowed a lighted match, and spit it right back out over the porch railing and into his mama’s flowerbed. It was undoubtedly the worst-tasting stuff he’d ever put in his mouth. He half expected the flowers to wilt and drop dead.

Now, Calvin reached up and wrapped his thin, wiry arms around his father’s neck and squeezed hard. “I love ya, Pa.”

Pa pulled him onto his lap, and Calvin kept his arms around his father until the rumble of Grandpaw’s Ford crossing the wooden cattle stoppers lifted his pa off the chair.

They all piled in. Six kids, their father, and Aunt Pearl clutching little Ron on her lap. Grandpaw maneuvered the car five miles down the road to the old homestead in Rising Sun. Nobody made a peep the whole trip, not even the baby—all of them scared half to death of Grandpaw.

His grandpaw was a man who always said what he meant the first time. Calvin had heard his pa say a dozen times there was no point in arguing with Grandpaw. The grandchildren thought him a giant. His legs were as long as tree trunks, and his black and gray moustache curled down on both sides like a frown. Rarely seen without a cigar jutting from his lips, even Grandpaw’s smoke was impressive as it curled into a white river above his head. Evie hated the smell, but Calvin liked it and wondered if they tasted as good as they smelled.

When Grandpaw caught him stealing one, he whipped him like he meant it. Whipped him so hard it hurt to sit for days. “Ya best be keepin’ your hands off things that don’t belong to ya, boy.”

From the backseat, Calvin stared at Grandpaw as the old man drove across the Maryland countryside to the farmhouse he shared with Grandmaw. To Calvin, it seemed like a fancy place, three floors high, with a porch that wrapped all the way around it. Colorful rugs scattered across the parlor floor and lots of pretty things set around he was forbidden to touch. Because of that, he didn’t much like to go there. They went anyway, every Sunday after church for supper. They didn’t have a car, and Grandpaw always came to collect them. His pa never wanted to go, but his mama said it was the proper thing to do, visit your family on Sunday afternoons. Pa didn’t argue.

Having grown up on the farm, Calvin knew about death. He’d seen his father slaughter pigs and cattle, stared up at carcasses dangling by their hoofs in the meat shed as blood drained into dark pools on the dirt floor beneath them. When his mother killed chickens, he’d stretched them out across the old stump behind the chicken coop, holding the head in one hand and the feathered body in the other while she lifted her hatchet and with one firm stroke, chopped off their heads.

The headless chickens dashed around the fenced yard, and when they finally dropped, his mother plunged them into a kettle of boiling water. It was disgusting. The smell of wet feathers and chicken poop made him gag. Calvin thought he would throw up the first time he saw her pull the chicken out of the water, but he’d helped her pluck out the feathers until they looked like naked babies. Their skin was white and covered with goose bumps. “I ain’t never gonna eat another bite of chicken,” he said.

Later that night at the dinner table, when his mother passed the platter of fried chicken to him, he shook his head. Her eyes locked with his for an instant and he knew she understood. After everyone else took a piece, she set the steaming platter next to his plate. It smelled so good. A few minutes later, when he picked up a drumstick, her eyes met his again, and she smiled.

Yes, a farm boy like Calvin knew a lot about death, but he’d never known a person who’d died and never been to a funeral before. As they drove along the rutted dirt roads, he finally got the courage up to ask the dreaded question. “Where’s Mama, now?”

His father gazed out the car window toward the corn fields. “She’s over at Grandmaw’s, boy. You’ll see for yourself soon enough.”

In the foyer of the old clapboard farmhouse, the clock’s pendulum had been stopped and its golden face covered with a black cloth. Calvin was disappointed because he loved to sit on the wide-planked floor and listen to its steady tick and the bright, tinkling bells. He always counted the times they rang out, and when he reached four, he knew they’d be going home soon. It was a game his mama taught him to help the hours pass, but that day, time held still in a way he knew, even then, it never would again.

Calvin tiptoed to the usually-forbidden parlor, stood in the doorway and peered inside. All the mahogany chairs from the dining room were lined up in front of the bay window on the east side of the room. Nestled in the curve of that window, his mother lay in a wooden box, lined with white, shiny cloth, even prettier than the boxes cigars came in. Though it was winter, a summer smell poked at his nose. He dropped his gaze to a half circle of flowers on the floor beneath the coffin. They were tied with yellow and red ribbons as bright as the candy jars in the Farmington general store.

The early-morning light drifted in through the window, laying golden feathers across his mother’s face and the pink Sunday dress she wore. Calvin thought she looked like a sleeping angel as the light formed a circle around her. He couldn’t believe she was dead, even though he’d watched from behind the apple tree as the men from the funeral home carried her out of the house and down the porch steps. His gaze had followed the long, black car to the end of their road where it turned left at the willow tree. Calvin had kept watching until all the dust on the road settled.

Peering into that light-filled parlor now, he believed if he stood there long enough she would open her eyes. Her lids would flutter, then lift to a brown so rich and dark he’d think he looked down at the newly-plowed earth. He didn’t know then that picture of his mother surrounded by light would be a perfect bud that would blossom repeatedly in his mind. The most vivid memory of his childhood.

Standing in the parlor doorway, he forgot last week, the strain of her breaths, the rattle of each gasp as she cared for her family. She was beautiful now, and Calvin saw her with eyes that were not the ones in his face, but rather the eyes of his soul. Eyes so old and timeless they could see her beauty somehow rose above everything else and wandered out into the world around it. His mother was alive.

“Evie, look.” He motioned his oldest sister to the doorway. “Look at Mama. She’s not dead. They were wrong. She’s just asleep. That’s all. Isn’t she the prettiest thing you ever seen?”

“You don’t know nothin’, Calvin Miller. Mama’s dead. She ain’t sleeping, and she won’t be waking up, either.” Evie planted her hands on her hips—all bossy like usual.

He didn’t want to believe his older sister, although he could see by the throbbing in her throat she was serious. But Evie was always trying to trick him. She often provoked him to tears just so she could call him a baby. She probably figured out a way to pulse her throat, but just in case, Calvin ran into the parlor and stood in front of the box on his tiptoes so he could reach inside. As soon as his fingertips touched his mother’s cold, stiff hand, he knew Evie wasn’t fooling. Unable to move away, he stood there, in that rich, lemon-colored light of morning, listening to the old house creak in the wind.

Outside the bay window behind his mother, clouds moved in that would soon close up the sky. He could smell the snow before it actually came, feel the dampness in the pit of his stomach and he knew that night, there wouldn’t be a single star in the sky.

There was nothing he could do and time took on that curious quality when everything happens fast—his heartbeat, the shadows moving across his mother’s face. He heard an anguished echo from somewhere, like a bird caught in the fence, and he didn’t realize the sound came from his own throat until he felt Aunt Pearl’s hand on the back of his head as she gently moved him away from the coffin.

Later, all six children, either led or carried by their aunts, filed past the box where their mother lay. “Say goodbye to your mama, Evie. Give her a kiss, Nellie. It’s all right. You can touch her if you want.”

When Calvin’s turn came, he planted his feet in the corner of the room, rammed his hands into his pockets and refused to budge. The more Aunt Pearl coaxed, the more his jaw jutted forward.

When a thin wail spiraled out of his mouth, his father moved closer and put his hand on Calvin’s shoulder. “Leave the boy to me, Pearl. He’ll be all right.”

Calvin clutched his father’s hand. It was hot, like the blood that flowed through it had been heated over a stove. He stood in the corner, his small fingers wrapped around his pa’s hand as the preacher touched his mother’s forehead, then covered her face with a lacy handkerchief and started to close the coffin.

Pa cried out.

Calvin released Pa’s hand and slipped across the room, through the crowd of mourners, to the preacher.

He pounded on the back of the preacher’s black coat with his small fists to stop him, but the man pushed Calvin aside and lowered the coffin lid. Calvin knew he wasn’t ever going to see his mama again, but he didn’t cry. He was brave just like Aunt Pearl told him to be. He had to help his father take care of his sisters and baby brother. And he had to help him take care of their farm. Calvin understood, from the smell of the whiskey on the old man’s breath, someone would have to take care of his father, as well.

Later, Calvin shivered as he stood on the side of the hill overlooking the cemetery. Snow dropped onto his shoulders and on the dark red hair that fell over his forehead. He wiped it away with his ungloved hands. Sadness gathered in the corners of his eyes and pulled his skin tight. Calvin listened to the preacher’s voice and hated him for closing the lid on his mother.

“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. We send the soul of Emma Miller back to you, Lord. Back home to you. She was a good woman and died taking care of her young’uns.”

Calvin heard every word, said them repeatedly in his head until he memorized them, but he vowed he wouldn’t sing another hymn to a God who took away his mother. He decided right then and there, he’d had enough religion. But he would forever protect the memory of his mother’s beautiful face with the sun lighting it. That picture held the code to his happiness, the treasure chest recorded with the last message of his childhood.

The coffin was lowered into the yawning hole in the ground. When he heard the first shovel of dirt hit the top, Calvin shuddered. Once a kitten had died in his hands before she was old enough to open her eyes. Thinking about that small death made him weep, and he raced into the woods near the cemetery.

Calvin feared wild animals, death, and his own loneliness, but he ran anyway until his back hurt, and the ladder of ribs covering his heart ached. He ran until he was just too tired to go any farther. Then he made a bed out of twigs, covered himself with dried leaves and hid there, not wanting Aunt Pearl to know he wasn’t brave.