Chapter 36

It was March, Kee Granny’s Month of the Windy Moon, when Lily opened the door to let in fresh air. She looked down and slammed it shut. On the doorsill lay a copperhead as long as the door was wide. She pressed her back against the slatted door as if her body’s weight could keep the snake at bay. Her heart beat faster than the day she discovered Rattler, for that day she had eased up on his bed. He had not been right where she planned to put her naked foot. That day she had been a child. And Rattler had been Rattler.

As her breathing settled and her heart rate slowed, she chastised herself. Perhaps it was only an oak branch. In the leaves in a close face-to-face encounter, its markings camouflaged the snake so precisely that it took on the appearance of a limb.

To be safe, she slipped on shoes and picked up the fireplace poker and coal shovel. With the poker, she could lift him up and sling him into the road. He would leave on his own, for copperheads were not aggressive. If he coiled, she could chop him into pieces and feed him to the chickens or leave him for Owl.

“Open the door,” said Ena.

She eased the door open again. The snake had not moved. She nudged him with the tip of her poker and nudged again. He did not bend. He was dead. “Dead as a poker, Mama would have said.” Lily laughed in relief.

Lily stepped out on the porch and, using the poker, picked up the copperhead. It was perfect. In all its brown and grey glory, its symmetrical patches of tans and chestnut hourglasses marked its length, its head a tawny solid. There was no sign of battle.

Looking closer, Lily found the deathblow. One tiny fang puncture through top of the snake’s triangular head. The snake had not suffered. His death had been swift and sure. His beauty earned him a decent burial.

Using her coal shovel, she dug a narrow trench for the snake’s burial. If a dead snake isn’t buried, the mate will come to claim vengeance for the death. As she patted the earth back in place, movement across the road caught her eye. There sat a cat. A large calico Lily had never seen in these parts. A housecat would not survive on Turtleback with its rock ledges to shelter the likes of Rattler, its caves to harbor spotted bobcats, ancient hardwoods that nested night-flyers the size of Owl. And then there was Briar Slocomb’s dog in Flatland. But Briar Slocomb’s dog was different, almost an extension of his owner.

A car, a truck must have dropped off the calico. With Anna gone, the calico would make for company. Lily called “Here, kitty, kitty.”

The calico ignored her. Or maybe the cat was deaf and that was why somebody had dumped her. Lily started across the road bent close to the ground and murmured softly to entice it to stay until she could catch her. As soon as Lily reached the middle of the road, the cat disappeared in underbrush.

With time, the calico brought squirrels, chipmunks, mice, more snakes. Each equally perfect. Each looked as if it could have risen from the dead and skittered away. The calico waited for Lily to accept her gift, bury it and try to coax the cat across the road. Each time the cat vanished into the woods.

Each new day, Lily watched for the calico. This day, she sat in her mother’s pea-shelling chair and hummed an old ballad she had dreamed in the night. Out of the underbrush walked the calico. The cat crossed the road and rubbed her body against Lily’s leg.

“Did I call you, little girl? What’s your name?” The cat straightened her tail upright. “If I listen, will you tell me your name?” The calico purred and wound her tail around Lily’s leg. “I’m listening.” The cat looked up at Lily then across the road as if she thought of leaving.

“It’s Sunday,” Ena whispered, his green gown swaying.

“Of course,” Lily said. “It’s Sunday,” Lily said aloud. “Welcome to Boone Station, Sunday.”

That night Sunday moved into Lily’s place in the front room bed.

 

On St. Patrick’s Day, Lily spent the morning hoeing weeds from potato rows while Sunday slept in the sun near the woods. Heat from the midday sun and lack of water were making Lily’s head swim. She had been thinking about going to the house for a bite to eat when she felt something behind her.

A scrawny boy, or perhaps a man, appeared at the edge of the clearing, so thin and leggy, he could have been mistaken for a dirty wood sprite. Backed by lush mountain shrubs, he stared through ringlets of white hair at Lily while she stared back at him. Then he walked to Sunday where she lay in the grass and kicked at her underbelly. Both Sunday and Lily jumped and ran, Sunday for the woods, Lily for the boy.

“Don’t you kick my cat!” she yelled, throwing the hoe.

He did not answer. He turned into the woods, ducking through the brush, and, without looking back, called, “Gotta get the cat.”

Lily stopped at the edge of the clearing and called for Sunday. The only sound she heard was the popping of fallen limbs as the boy crashed through the undergrowth. Comfortable with the knowledge that Sunday would survive, she picked up the hoe and took the path to the house. Before nightfall, Sunday was back. Lily pushed the bureau against the locked door and slept with the light on.

The next morning Lily opened the door to find a half-man, so puny he was going on dead. He stood off the edge of the porch. He wore an oversized shirt and a hat that resembled one she had seen Briar Slocomb wear.

“Gotta get the cat,” he said quietly. So clawed up by briars and thick brush, he wore black-blooded strips down his face and arms.

Memory spoke up from somewhere near the back of her brain. Maybe the hair. “Do I know you?”

“Gotta get the cat,” he said.

“Eli O’Mary. What happened to you?”

“Gotta get the cat,” he repeated.

“No you don’t,” Lily replied. “This is my cat and you leave her alone.”

“Gotta get the cat,” he said again, stepping on the porch and pushing past Lily into the room.

Having grown so naturally placid, Lily wasn’t rattled, but she refused to let Eli have Sunday. Lily grabbed his shirt to toss him back into the road. Though thin, he was tall and lean, and he out-strengthened her. Tugging his shirt out of her hand, he went straight to the bed and lifted Sunday, much as he would have an infant. He cradled her in his arms. His movements were so swift that Lily had barely moved into the room before he swept past her and across the road to the woods.

“Sunday!” She called. “Sunday!” She chased the two into the woods. Thrashing through ferns and deeper into briars, she called, overwhelmed with an innate sense that this man meant to harm her cat. Scratched and bleeding, Lily wandered out of the underbrush. She had found no trace of Eli or of Sunday.

Memories make a family. Lily carried memories of her mama and Kee Granny. She had had Sunday for such a short time, but Sunday had proven her commitment. Lily saw her as family. Sunday was gone. Lily grieved. She wept, harder than she had for her mama, for she feared Eli would cause Sunday to die a fearful death somewhere along the road to Covington or throw her down an open mine shaft. By midnight, Lily awoke with Sunday scratching at the door.

The next afternoon, after working the lower pea patch, Lily opened the door to find her bed covered in wild flowers, lavender to deep purple. Gabe must have spent the entire morning gathering dwarf iris. Her first thought when she recognized the flowers were irises was rainbow, promises. Promises? Hope? She called out to Gabe and looked around to see if he were watching her reaction. He was not there. Neither was he in the sleeping loft. He had come, decorated her bed and left while she worked the pea patch.

This was not something she had expected. She had known Gabe all her life. What was he saying? He, at forty-two, was old enough to be her father. She loved him like a father.

While caring for Anna, Lily became a creature of habit: before sunrise, milk the goat; stoke the fire until her body sweated; then shake her mother until Lily could hear the shallow defeated breaths across the room; try to get her mother to eat. But that time was gone.

She could not remember her mama as a wife. Nor Kee Granny. The only wife she knew was Juanita White over in Breakline. Juanita spent her days cooking, washing, cleaning, then cooking and cleaning again. Juanita had no idea a fawn, still spotted by its camouflage, could be fed calf manna and thrive. That it would follow like a puppy waiting to play. She did not know to ignore a coon when cornered or the coon would attack, as fierce as a small bear, and hang on till dark. That hanging a dead snake belly-up over the fence would bring rain. Juanita did not want to know such things. Shelling, canning, and washing fit her just fine. Such days did not fit Lily. She and Gabe would have to have a face-to-face talk when he returned.

 

That afternoon the sound of wood breaking, followed by a moan then laughter, startled Lily. Beneath Boone Station, Lily gathered her eggs. She dropped her egg basket. Every egg cracked. Whites ran through the basket’s open weaving. Shells cut into yolks.

 

“It’s beginning,” says Brother Moon.

 

She crept from behind the house. She could not see the front porch. She saw no car. She hesitated to climb the hill unarmed. The long-handled shovel stood against Bad Billy’s fence. She looked for the axe handle, but it must have been next to the woodpile. She picked up the shovel, holding it at the ready like a rifle and eased up the rock steps leading to the front of the house.

Before she rounded the corner, she dropped into a crawl. Whoever was there could not hear her; a man was laughing so hard he coughed. She stepped up on the porch and stood, propped on her shovel.

There, on the far end of the porch, lay Gabe, his feet stuck through the seat of Anna’s pea-shelling chair. Gabe looked as if he had been attacked by the chair and lost the battle. His fall had jammed the chair against the wall. Both his legs had broken through the rotten seat and pinned him down. The new wooden swing he had been hanging hung too high on one end. Its other end rested hard and heavy across his chest.

In an attempt to escape, he was now grunting, trying to lift the swing off his chest with one hand and push the chair frame off his legs with the other. Neither would budge. When he heard Lily’s step on the porch, he twisted his head back and looked at her coming his way.

“Lily, my darling, how is it you can walk upside down and I can’t even stand upright?” He laughed again, as if this contorted position had been part of his plan.

“Gabe Shipley, what are you doing?” Lily rested both hands on her hips, Anna’s stance when Lily as a child had misbehaved. I’m becoming my own mother, she thought.

“I’ve come to court my fair lady while setting in this fine swing,” he said. “Swing’s setting on me instead, I reckon.” He chuckled. “Help me up from here before you get the idea I’m an old man. Too old for a pretty girl like yourself.”

Lily tried to pull the chair off Gabe’s legs, all the while holding back her own giggles. The chair would not move. “Why’d you have to have such big old feet anyway?”

“Just lucky, I guess. They held me up fairly well before now.”

Lily moved around to lift the swing off his chest. After a try or two, she said, “I can’t lift this thing by myself. I reckon you’re just stuck here,” and she walked toward the door. “Let me know when you’re hungry. Can’t fry you eggs since all your clamoring about made me drop the whole basket. But I might bring a biscuit out later.”

“Now, my Lily my love, you’re not going to leave me pinned here like a stuck hog, are you? Not when I worked so hard to surprise you with a first-rate new swing.”

“What you suggest I do? Pry that swing off you?”

“Sure. Get a pole and prop this end up. I’ll roll out. Then we can work on getting my legs free.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Gabe,” she teased. “Ought to leave you stuck. You shouldn’t’ve scared me so.”

“You know I wouldn’t do that a purpose. I’m just working at making you happy.” Gabe tried to move his legs, only to run the seat up past his knees. “I aim to have a happy wife,” he grunted.

“I don’t need a new swing for that. I’m happy like I am,” Lily said. “Besides I don’t intend to be no man’s wife.”

“Well, I’m damned well not happy. I’m getting cramps. ‘Sides, I hit my head,” Gabe whined.

Lily stuck the shovel handle between two of the swing’s boards for leverage and grasped the swing. “Get ready to roll over. I can’t hold this thing up long.”

“Let’s go, girl.” Gabe rolled from under the swing, his feet still held by the chair’s missing seat. The chair clumped over twice as Gabe rolled. He sat for a moment, rubbing his chest where the swing had hit. He looked at his feet, still boxed in Anna’s pea-shelling chair. He laughed at himself and said, “I’ll fix this for my bride.”

“That’s my mama’s chair, so you’re not fixing it for nobody else, because I’m not your bride, Gabe Shipley.”

He released his feet, stood and kissed Lily’s lips. “Yep. But you will be before summer ends. Bet my last dollar on it, Lily my love.”