Chapter 41

Breakline Camp buried Gabe Shipley in Unity Church Cemetery next to Clint Goodman. Lily did not go. She spent the burying time on Juanita’s front porch, wrapped in a brown afghan. Its zigzag pattern of variegated browns wasted away into tans the closer the color came to its fringed edge. Lily rocked a slight back and forth and stared absent-mindedly at the road. Straight ahead, neither left nor right. Her lonesome emptiness refused to force Gabe to walk up the road, to appear in his clomping gait and ignite her hope.

Juanita stayed inside against the morning chill. She pulled a stained white cotton curtain back from time to time to see that Lily had not moved. “Anna and Clint all over again,” she said.

Once enough time had passed for the service to close, Juanita joined Lily on the porch. She talked to keep Lily from hearing the echo of dirt clods thump off the coffin lid.

“You trying to move that there rock with your staring?” she asked.

Tears slid down Lily’s cheeks and dripped off her chin, but she made no sound. She looked cornered, a trapped animal, awaiting her own tearing apart, piece by piece.

Juanita took Lily’s hands and led her down the steps. “See them clouds, Lily?” Juanita lifted her hand, palm open, toward the sky. “Stars’ll be out soon. What if they ain’t stars atall? What if they’re little holes in the bottom of heaven where our lost ones pour their love through and shine down on us to let us know they’re happy?” She took Lily’s face in her hands and turned it to her own. “What if, Lily? It might just be, you know.”

Lily did not answer.

 

“People have to have something to believe, don’t they?” says Brother Moon.

“Yep. Too bad they all don’t know it.” Great Spirit shakes his colossal head. He initiates a cyclone in the Pacific where Sister Sun has spent the day heating ocean waters. “Sure makes some lives hard. Believing or not, either way.”

 

Juanita walked Lily into the house. “Here. Lay down on this bed.”

Lily obeyed. She lay stiff, her hands folded over her bosom, and stared at the ceiling. Juanita pulled a nubby chenille bedspread over her.

“Close your eyes and rest.”

Lily closed her eyes on command.

Juanita pulled up a woven-seated chair. “Listen up, girl. I’ll show you something special in the morning. I got buttercup blades shooting up through this old black dirt. Now ain’t that something in all this cold snap?” Juanita patted the bed. “Sometime soon there’ll be a blaze of glory ever’ where you look.”

Tension held Lily’s body taut. In an attempt to lessen Lily’s opposition to life, she had to be called back. Without a thought, Juanita began a soft ballad she had often sung to Jason. “I gave my love a cherry that had no stone…” She hummed through verses until she saw Lily’s chest relax. She eased off the chair and sang, “a baby when it’s sleeping has no cryin’.”

Juanita slipped off her shoes. She crept into the kitchen to have food ready for Jason and Seth when they returned from closing Gabe Shipley’s grave.

Within days, Lily’s begging and anxiety for Eli wore Juanita and Seth down. “It’s been a long mourning time for the girl,” Juanita told Seth. “Her mama. That old goat she loved so hard. Now Gabe. She’s got to move on.”

Seth agreed to leave Lily at Boone Station if Juanita stayed to see that Lily did not slip away.

“Slip away? What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I just know she ain’t right yet,” Seth said. “Them Granny herbs and all.”

Once Juanita got Lily to eat and to sleep without belladonna, they put her in the back seat of their ’54 Chevy and drove the garish pink sedan to Boone Station.

Eli met Lily at the door with a kiss over her ear. He sang, “Oh was he stobbed in the heart, my darlin’?”

Lily bit her lip and shook her head.

Eli hummed, “Come, I’ll help you to my house, my love.” Lily followed him inside. Sunday wound herself around Lily’s legs, making it hard for Lily to walk a straight line.

Juanita moved into a tiny side room Uriah Parsons had built as his family grew. She cleaned from Lily’s absence. She sat in the repaired pea-shelling chair with the girl on the porch and eyed Owl perched on a rafter while Lily swung. Eli left each morning and returned at dusk, as frogs at the cistern began their chorus.

For Juanita, Boone Station existed in a surrealistic world, one unlike any she had ever known. After a week, she gathered her belongings to return to Breakline Camp. She told Lily and Eli that Seth would come at the end of the week to take her home. Lily nodded as if she understood.

Three nights later, an explosion of shattering crockery startled Juanita awake. The moon was down, so dark was the room. More crockery hit the floor. From the next room, Lily shrieked. The screech sounded to Juanita as if cold fury spewed out of Lily.

“My God,” Juanita said as she ran into the room.

Lily stood by the shelves where the crockery was stored. She slung another bowl against the door. She lifted a pitcher and drew back to smash it on the floor.

“Lily, you’ll cut yourself,” Juanita said. She hopped across shards of broken bowls and plates. Sunday peered from beneath Lily’s bed.

Lily held the pitcher higher over her head.

“Lily!” she said. “Stop it!” She grasped Lily’s hands and held them hard. “You’re scaring Eli. Tell him to stay. I can’t search the woods for him.” She nodded her head toward the ladder leading to the loft. “Look at him. He don’t know what’s ahappening.”

At the sight of Eli peering over the loft’s edge like a terrified kitten, Lily collapsed against Juanita and wept.

“Oh, little girl, whatever shall we do with you?” Juanita patted Lily’s back. “Whatever shall we do?”

Eli appeared in his worn shirt. Ignoring chips of pottery under his bare feet, he came up behind Juanita and hummed a note. He sang, “I wish I was a pretty little sparrow and I had wings to fly so high.”

Lily visibly slackened. She lifted her head and looked at Eli as if this were the first time she realized he was there. “Fly so high,” Lily repeated in tune.

Juanita released her hold on Lily. Lily went to Eli and wrapped her arms around his waist. The two stood among the broken dishes and cried, blood seeping unnoticed from their feet.

Saturday morning Juanita left. Lily and Eli stood under the Boone Station sign, waving her on. Once Seth’s truck disappeared, they sat in Gabe’s marrying swing and hummed the sparrow song to each other.