Chapter 45

Spring refused to show itself on Turtleback. There had been within Lily a sprout growing, waiting to burst into bloom since the mountain voice had spoken to her at Old Man Farley’s shack. Now, Lily needed time to nurture what she felt maturing within. She stood at the edge of the mining road and looked down into the valley. The shadow of Turtleback Mountain behind her had kept the ground moist with the moldy smell of rotting pine straw and oak leaves even in summer. This mountain had always had its own fragrance, season by season, a fixed reminder for Lily of its immortality.

Below her the town of Covington sat. From her viewpoint, rooftops in grays, greens, blacks, lay each next to each in rows that filled in the valley. Broken Rock Creek wrapped itself around the town like a wide brown rope, frayed by white ruffles the rapids created as they slapped against boulders. From Lily’s stance, rocks looked more like stepping stones crossing the river. Logs lay along the banks like remnants of bridges long fallen into disrepair. Above the town, sunlight threw an outline of Spencer’s Mountain on Covington’s opposite side, splitting hardwoods in two, trees in a tinge of greens and the purple blossoms of the Redbud, while lower down, shadows left them gray, almost black, near the river.

Lily could have more easily examined the scene from behind Boone Station; but, since the mine collapse that took her mother’s grave, the back of Boone Station had begun to drop ever so slightly, tilting itself down the mountain. She no longer sheltered her animals there. She feared she would slide down the rock steps, then tumble, stone-like, and bounce off outcroppings of powdery white rock, level to level until what would have be left of her body rolled down a gentle grassy incline into the waters of Broken Rock Creek. Only a ripple would mark where she entered the cold river water.

“Would that I could reach up and touch the sky with my own two arms,” Lily said to Sunday. “I would swing us away from this place.”

She could thank Breakline Mines for the deterioration of Boone Station. Her mother buried on her head in an abandoned mine shaft. Kee Granny shot by her own son. Briar Slocomb running rumors like wild greenbrier that refused to die. Eli holed away with people he never knew in a group home on the other side of Spencer’s Mountain. She thought of visiting Eli. She needed to go there, but she knew he would not understand her leaving him any more than he had understood why she had him go.

There had been a time the previous year, when, in delirium, Anna had spoken only in quiet murmurs. Lily had to bend her ear to her mother’s lips to understand the words. “Sending me away was a greater evil,” Anna said, “than any other you ever done to me.” Though Lily did not understand whom Anna meant, she knew her mother’s pain, for she carried the burden of Eli’s being sent away. His was her own.

 

During Kee Granny’s Month of the Green Corn Moon, winds, stronger and colder than usual for June, had whistled through Boone Station’s cracked walls the mineshafts created with each collapse. Once the earth chose to fill its inner cavities, there seemed to be no stopping it. Rumble after rumble echoed through dips along Turtleback Mountain. Clouds wreathed its top, hiding any change the Turtleback might reveal to those in the valley.

First, Anna’s grave sank deeper. Then Old Man Farley’s shed gave way. And the structure Uriah Parsons built generations ago, Lily’s Boone Station, now wavered. Lily questioned which would be easier: leave Turtleback Mountain for Covington or fall asleep one night knowing she, too, would be buried in a mineshaft before the sun rose.

A rumble awoke her during the night of another rainstorm. Eli had been gone these two months. The sun rose sporting a brilliant gold crown, taking with it fog and shadows. Another rolling sound, closer than the night before. Lily knew it wasn’t thunder. Living years between sun and shadow had taught her that thunder avoids the sun. It was growing up the Cherokee way with Kee Granny. It was living in a world made gentle by the presence of Eli O’Mary.

When she opened the door to the front porch, Sunday scurried past her leg and darted under the iron frame bed. Sunday had been curled in a mound in the porch chair asleep. Just out from the house, what had been the empty mining road was now a broad strip of black gully, half the ground between house and mountain gone, the gap’s rim made soggy and mud-like by heavy rain.

Lily stood on the edge of what had been her mother’s grave, opened again. Fifteen feet below, the coffin rested on its head. Wiry roots stripped white by the sucking shaft stuck out of the dirt like paralyzed worms. Anna’s coffin had been broken by the drop. The quilt pattern showed the color of dingy walnut stain made smooth, almost shiny, by the weight of brown dirt. The fruit jar identifying her mother lay cracked, crushed by a fist-sized lump of coal so luminous it glowed against the glass.

At the opposite end of the gash near the house, another section of timbers gave way. Earth slid in on itself, dragging a new oak with it, leaving its branches hanging upside down against the far wall. Another such section and the house would go. A second cave-in above where her mother’s grave had been collapsed, and what seemed to be half the mine, lay exposed. It was as if the land, as it dropped, was pulling itself from under her as she stood barefoot on the rim. All that had held her to the mountain was sliding into Turtleback Mountain. Lily called for Sunday. The time had come.

Lily gathered her chickens and put them in a wooden crate. She washed thick dust off her Red Ryder wagon and tied on the crate. She secured a loose rope around Gertie’s neck. She and Sunday carried her animals down Turtleback and freed them in Juanita White’s fenced yard. She had not called Juanita. Lily’s faith in the camp woman told her Juanita would understand that Lily had gone.

On the return walk, Lily and Sunday veered off the road and up to Flatland. They stepped around the charred fir barrier and passed what remained of Kee Granny’s church. What had been Briar’s log cabin stood, though smoke had darkened its outer wood. Near the stream, Lily found the bees intact. She bent before a box and whispered. “Queen Mother, Sunday and I are leaving Turtleback.”

The bees hummed.

“Our reunion will be a splendid celebration,” she said.

Sunday followed Lily as they climbed to Kee Granny’s sacred cedar. Lily was certain it lived. The last time she had seen it, the cedar had become a glorious tree, filled with nests and surrounded by nourishing needles. She knew this, but she needed to see again what had been one of Kee Granny’s most stinging lies. Lily saw the top of the cedar well before she arrived on the ridge. As she neared the tree, she widened her stride. Sunday had to trot to maintain Lily’s pace.

The cedar was as beautiful as she had remembered. She sat away from the branches so she could view the tree in its entirety while she rested. The ground was soft. What spring had not touched at Boone Station had obviously settled here. Between Lily and the cedar, supple dirt had allowed new life to push aside, creating space for small blades and budding leaves of green to poke through.

Lily scratched Sunday’s ears. “If Kee Granny’s Great Spirit is a powerful god who has things on his mind other than me and you, we’re in trouble.” Lily chuckled. “But. If Mama’s God is a god of justice, as she always said, he can be on our side when bad things happen, don’t you guess?” Sunday rolled over for Lily to scratch her belly and purred. “You and me, Sunday, we got two guardians. We’ll be fine.”

The memory of another spring day, the day when she had leapt from the rock overhang to Old Man Farley’s cabin flashed through her mind. That day she had flown through the air as lightly as Owl. Today she was free to go. She had new wings, wings handed her by the voice on Turtleback Mountain.

The mountain settled. Two days passed as Lily folded her clothes and stacked them just so in a muslin pillowcase. The morning of their leaving, she looked around at what had been the only home she remembered. She saw her father’s Bible where she had placed it on the bureau. She dropped it into her pillowcase. “Come, Sunday,” she said. “Time for us to begin.”

Out of respect for Boone Station, Lily tried to close the door as she left. The roof sat so skewed the door drooped heavy out of its frame. She left it cracked open and walked down the Turtleback. She need not bother closing up the house.

With a backward glance, Lily searched the trees for a glimpse of Owl. He was not there. She and Sunday started down the road to Breakline Mining Camp and then crossed over to the trail Kee Granny had made when taking her curses and wadulesi to sell in Covington.

A swinging bridge, no more than slats hung on two ropes, crossed Broken Rock Creek above Covington. Lily stepped on the first board. It wiggled as if alive. Sunday balked. She leapt from Lily’s arms and dashed into a blackberry thicket. Unable to coax her out, Lily fell back against a massive mountain oak. Halfway up, its trunk separated into three parts. She would wait. Her back fit flawlessly into a niche that stretched up from a split in the roots. She settled herself, rubbing her back against bark nubs. The trunk included her in its girth. She braced her weight by stretching her feet out before her.

Looking up at a canopy that spread at least fifty-feet across, she wondered how many men it would take, five full-grown, maybe six, arms outstretched, to reach around the trunk. This could be the father of all trees. Cherokee had once wandered in and out of the valley. Intuitively, she understood they would have slept under this tree when it was young.

She slid down the trunk, allowing the bark against her back to scratch at memories of Flatland and her granny, her mother’s body crooked in its grave, Gabe murdered, and Eli driven away in a long black Buick. Tired from her walk and weary from the emptiness she had lived with throughout the past year, she relaxed. Her roots, the Cherokee roots and the roots of all she loved and had loved, buried themselves in the earth where she sat. She was content with that knowledge. She removed her Ena pin and laid it to rest in the moss under the oak.

Sunday padded up and plopped down in Lily’s lap. Lily dropped Eli’s little wolf pup from her pocket into the pillowcase. She lifted Sunday gently in and gave her time to nuzzle into the clothes before folding over the top and slipping the bundle into her dress bosom. Against Lily’s warmth, Sunday stretched and turned, molding herself to Lily’s body. Lily stood.

Out of the leaves above her, Owl appeared. He looped around Lily, once, twice, three times. He then turned and soared back into the wilderness. Lily watched him until he disappeared in the distance. She whispered, “Farewell, wisdom of Great Spirit. I will carry you always in my heart.”

After repositioning her treasures against her bosom, she walked toward the bridge. Moving like an ancient pregnant woman carrying her unborn too high, Lily Marie Goodman placed one foot before the other. She stepped easy across the swinging bridge and on into Covington, Virginia. Eli should be across the next mountain.