Chapter 38

September brought with it muscadines so heavy they swagged vines from tree branches. They hung so low Lily could reach them without effort. Reach up, grab a vine, and pull it toward the earth from whence it came. This year’s crop was so prolific she could fill a tin bucket with the wild purple grapes in one picking. She had threaded her belt through the bucket handle so it hung free. She had only to glance to her side to see how quickly the muscadines piled up.

She created her own delay by popping every other one she picked into her mouth. A tender bite was all it took to break the thick skin at its weakest point where it separated from the vine. Sweet, sweet juice exploded in her mouth. With a deft movement of her tongue, she parted pulp from seed, spit seeds to the ground with a foretelling of next year’s crop, chewed the skin and pulp, and swallowed while she continued to pick with both hands.

After a short picking time, Eli appeared, as he often did, seemingly from nowhere. Lily felt, rather than saw, his presence. She had picked less than an hour when he materialized next to her and added his fruit to the bucket. Together they stripped the lower vines. Vibrant orange muscadine leaves showered down on them.

As dusk neared, Lily broke the wood’s silence. “Let’s quit today and go to Boone Station. I’ll bake us a cornpone and we’ll have Gertie’s milk.” Lily thrived on goat’s milk. Gertie was now at least fourteen years old. She should ask Gabe to start looking for another milking goat and give Gertie a rest. “Come on,” she said. “Time to go.”

Eli shook his head and pointed to a thick grape-filled vine in the branches one level up. Lily refused, saying they could not reach that high without climbing the tree.

Eli dashed for the tree trunk chanting, “Hickory-dickory dock. The mouse ran up the clock,” and scurried up the lower stoutest limbs.

Lily called for him to come down.

He climbed higher, then stopped and pointed toward a vine thick as a man’s thumb, filled with heavy ripe muscadines, muscadines that outweighed any in the bucket. Ignoring Lily and her pleading for him to come down, he snaked out the limb toward a vine that had broken loose from the branch and hung free, nine feet above red and orange leaves and brown straw.

Anger in Lily’s voice yelled, “You better stop it right now!”

Eli stretched his body to grab the vine. He crossed his feet below the limb and flipped over.

Lily covered her eyes and screamed. When she looked up, he hung upside down, clinching the grey-speckled limb with his hands and feet, possum-like. He laughed when Lily demanded that he get down before he fell.

He walked his hands out the limb and reached for the vine. One strain and the limb splintered, releasing the vine and its fruit. The broken vine spun toward the tree, wrapping itself around Eli’s neck. “No, Papa!” Eli shrieked. The resiliency of the green vine swung Eli to the forest floor.

Lily ran to free him from the vine, but Eli was up, running in circles screaming, “No! No! No!” His eyes blared open, magnifying the extent of his terror. She reached for him. His momentum threw her down. The collision slowed him, but he steadied himself. He spoke quietly, then louder, “Gotta get the cat.” Intoning the words over and over, his arms flailing about his head, he ran deeper into the woods.

Lily chased, following the sound of his voice. For a time, she lost his direction. When she heard him shriek, “Water! My cat!” she knew where he was. She turned toward Parsons Branch and the Falls.

Lily found Eli standing at the head of the Falls, his calves cutting two strips into the icy mountain water. She stepped out of her shoes. She tiptoed to the edge of the water and waded in, all the time caressing him with her voice. “Sit down, Eli,” she hummed. “I’m coming.”

Eli looked back at her. “I gotta get the cat.” His eyes pleaded for her help. “In the river.”

“I know,” Lily answered. “I’m in the river. See?” She lifted her hands toward the sky. “I’ll help you get the cat.”

Lily repositioned her feet against the force of the water as it broke over the ledge. “Come with me. We’ll find the cat.” She extended her hand.

His head cocked to one side, like an inquisitive bird. “There.” He pointed to the base of the Falls where water splashed white in the gathering dark, silver now against thickly mossed rock.

“We’ll go down there,” she crooned. “Come with me.” When he did not move, she added, “Sit down, Eli, and wait for me.”

Eli bent his knees to sit, his butt in the rushing water.

He spoke in a quivering voice above the breaking water, “Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great…” A rush of water caught him in the back. Eli vanished over the rock ledge.

Lily screamed his name again and again as she clambered down the rock face. She grasped rhododendron as she passed so she would not slip on slick rock and slide into the water. At the base of the Falls, air bubbled with a fierceness that suggested Eli had aroused some demon from the black water.

Lily dove into the pool and felt for Eli. Her hands felt only rocks flattened by years of the water’s pounding. She could see nothing through the murkiness. She surfaced, looking about to see if he had been boiled to the top by the water’s churning. He had not.

She dove again, this time toward the far side of the pool. In the darkness, she grabbed a heavy log and forced it to the surface to avoid hitting it again. As she broke surface, she realized she had Eli by his lower arm. She lifted his face from the water. His eyes showed no more than slits. Eli was dead.

Lily could not distinguish between branch water and her tears. She had to haul him out. He deserved a decent burial. She would see to that. She dog-paddled to the bank with the nearest flat rock, tugging him behind her. She sat on the rock and grasped him beneath his arms to heave him out of the pool. His weight threw her back on the rock, and he landed atop her. She pushed and rolled him over on his back. He lay supine, stretched there on a cold slab of stone. Lily lifted his body into a sitting position and laid her head on his shoulder, supporting his back with her body. She cradled and rocked him like a prodigal child.

Lily wept. She wanted to curse Great Spirit or God or whatever it was that put innocents out to fend for themselves. She did not. Words accomplished nothing. To name it did not make it go away. Kee Granny had used words to no avail when she tried to cure Anna. Kee Granny and all her knowledge about life and death and the power of the two had gained Lily nothing more than loneliness. And Eli, now cold and still in her arms.

Lily’s heart solidified against Kee Granny. All she had taught Lily over the years had been no more than make-believe. And Anna. Anna had never shared what kept her strong. What had steadied her enough for her to take a two-year-old to live on an empty mountainside? What had changed her life and given her reason to get up one morning after those three years of emptiness as Lily spent days with the granny learning the world of Turtleback? Anna had never shared what had opened the love Lily had seen from her mother once she started elementary school in Covington. Nor could Lily comprehend why Anna deteriorated so before the December snow.

And Eli. Eli, who so valued the life of his cat that was almost lost as a child. And now this brutal fall.

Rage rose within her and bumped against her thick-set heart in an attempt to kick itself out. Lily refused to give anger dominance over her life. She released her rage in a primordial scream. Lily reached out and grasped her fury from the damp air. She tucked it inside a pocket of her past, and Ena pinned it shut.

Lily wanted Eli to know that someone had loved him. That she had. That she did. She pulled his upper body close and held him firm against her breast. She brushed her fingers through his wet hair, now dingy curls plastered with water, and cooed his name.

 

“Ease her, Brother Moon,” pleads Sister Sun. “It’s your time.”

 

Since her mother’s death the previous winter, Lily had slept in the indention left in the bed by her mother’s body, hoping to take some of her mother’s strength for living a life alone. Lily believed she had succeeded. Now, with the loss of Eli, she doubted. She lowered her forehead into the dip in Eli’s back and hugged him hard. “Oh my dear friend, I am so sorry,” she said. “So, so sorry.” A fury against her inability to save him from himself overtook her. She released him and he slumped forward. Lily pounded his back with her fists. “How dare you die?” she raged. “How dare you die?”

Eli coughed. And coughed again. He vomited muscadine hull, pulp, and water onto his lap.

Lily jumped up.

Eli fell forward and hit his head on the rock. “Oooh,” he moaned and rolled to his stomach.

Lily nudged his buttocks with her foot.

“No,” he said and swung his arm back toward her.

Lily knelt by him, turned him to face her and laughed. Moonlight sent silver strips across the pool at the base of the Falls.

“Gotta get the cat.”

“I know.” She held him close as light faded.