THEY SAID JOHNNY APPLESEED HIMSELF PLANTED THE TREE out front.

Thomas Jackson remembered that tree and the huge sculpted fruit that hung in crimson clusters from it, before dropping onto the soft green padding below.

He remembered the clean, sweet, wide mountain air that went on forever. And first and foremost he remembered the smiles and the suppers around the table with his mama and his pa, sister Elizabeth, and brother Warren.

His parents, Julia Neale and Jonathan Jackson, were a handsome couple, both well schooled—especially for their time and area—and the Jackson clan from which Jonathan hailed was perhaps the most distinguished family west of the Allegheny Mountains. The Jacksons had made their mark as counselors of law, merchants, and political leaders.

Life together had looked promising for Julia and Jonathan when they married back in 1817. Jonathan's pioneer father had endowed him with significant land holdings. But the winsome son did not possess the rugged father's strength, resolve, or judgment. A man who was appealing to women and liked by men, Jonathan's tastes ran too much to cards, socializing, and, most damagingly, the assumption of others' financial obligations.

Julia was different. She possessed a sweet but determined spirit and strong religious convictions. She deeply loved Jonathan. His quick step and twinkling blue eyes were magic to her. And she admired both motivations for his financial entanglements—desire to help others and to better provide for his own family.

His mounting list of assumed debts, however, troubled her as she knitted and rocked in the old chair that Grandmother O'Neale had brought with her across the sea from the north of Ireland. During these times, after the children had been put to bed, Proverbs 11:15 often returned to her mind: “He that is surety for a stranger shall smart for it.” But she trusted God, she loved Jonathan, and she prayed. Knitting and rocking in the evening, with the worn family Bible open on her lap, she would feel the pressing vicissitudes of her life waft away. And she would sleep deeply and in great peace.

She would need the peace, as one chilly morning in early spring of 1827 seven-year-old Elizabeth lay prone in a sweat, eyes closed and her pa at her side nursing her. Thomas discerned, though only three, how strong his mother seemed, doing her knitting and rocking in her wooden chair at the foot of the bed even at such a serious time. Warren and the family's gentle black giant, Uncle Robinson, stood nearby.

Thomas did not know what fever meant then. And he could not have pronounced typhoid. But he knew his father was worried about Elizabeth.

The tousle-haired boy never knew his mother's thoughts, other than that she was always there and had a sweet voice that soothed him when he was sad or afraid. He sometimes wondered if she was the way she was because of the small old book she seemed always to have with her.

“Please, Little Bit, please don't go yet,” his father pleaded, his perspiring face inches from Elizabeth's. “Please!”

Julia Neale Jackson rocked in her chair. Thomas saw how huge her stomach was with the next baby. He looked at his mother's face. It wasn't as nice looking as his father's and her forehead was creased with some lines on it, but it seemed content.

“She be in a better place now, Jonathan,” Julia said to her husband, in her soothing way.

Only now could Thomas see his father's face was gray and ghostlike. Jonathan wept deep racking sobs as he pulled Elizabeth's limp little body to his.

Thomas looked up and saw that Uncle Robinson had tears streaming down his face. He loved the big man's whole head. It was large and nice to look at, and Thomas always thought it looked like a big black lion's head with bright white teeth. But a gentle lion Uncle Robinson was.

Warren's eyes were wet, but he stood quiet and still.

“Warren, Tom, you come here,” Julia said, her knitting on her lap and her arms extended toward them.

As little Thomas entered his mother's embrace, he peered out through wide baby blue eyes at his father and the sweet kind girl the sweat-soaked man clutched against his chest, the one who had always played with Tom during the times he was sad.

Thomas Jackson remembered dark clouds and thunder the day Jonathan lay dying a few weeks later. He also remembered that as his pa grew sicker, the house didn't stay neat and clean like it usually did. And the rocking chair was empty all the time.

The room was darker this time, and Tom, spooked, could hear the wind whooshing through the apple tree outside, and through the dogwoods and pines farther out from the cabin.

Julia was now enormous. She was sitting on the bed where Jonathan was before, and he was lying where Elizabeth had been. Perspiration beads cascaded from his face in determined ranks, and he was talking, talking a lot, but his eyes were closed. Julia rubbed the cloth over his forehead, then wrung it out in the basin next to the bed.

Her face held no expression, but her eyes looked tired. All of a sudden, something hurt her—she grabbed her engorged abdomen and gasped. This scared Tom. Warren put his arm around Tom's shoulder and gave him his sure, winning smile. Uncle Robinson was there again. That made Tom feel a little better. Tom remembered Uncle Robinson asking his mother if she was all right. She nodded. Whatever was wrong with her stomach was OK now, and she turned back to Jonathan.

Warren leaned over and whispered in Tom's ear, “I think Pa's going to go be with Elizabeth.”

Tom looked up at his big brother, surprised and confused, but he didn't say anything because even a three-year-old, especially one as intuitive as he, could tell it wasn't a time to talk.

They laid Jonathan next to Elizabeth in the grove near the cabin. Tom never saw Warren go near the graves, and he only saw his mama do so once, to set Elizabeth's little wooden cross back up after a winter storm howled down from the mountain the next year and knocked it over. However, Tom visited the graves nearly every day. Sometimes he just stood and looked down at them, not thinking about anything. Other times, he would sit and think about Pa and Elizabeth and maybe even talk to them. He remembered them better because the crosses were always there, close to home.

Once in a while, mainly in springtime, Tom would sneak daisies and forget-me-nots from the long rolling meadow that stretched out behind the grove and put them on the graves. He watched carefully, to insure that no one saw him, because he knew that putting flowers on a grave was something that girls might do, but a real man never would.

He did not know that, in that mystical manner mothers have forever had, Julia often saw him at his task. And when she didn't, she would soon notice the newly picked flowers on the spots 'neath where her beloveds lay. And she would treasure up those moments watching Tom, and others remembered about her beloveds, and her heart would swell until she thought it would burst. Then she would remember the Scripture in Job: “The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. “ And she would cry until she could not cry anymore or until one of the boys came in or little Laura Ann needed milk. And then she would pray for Warren, Tom, and Laura Ann, who was born twenty-four hours to the minute after Jonathan's passing. Then for Tom again, that the sensitive boy would have a good, strong heart and be equal to the perturbations of love and loss and life.

The little wooden crosses marking the final earthly resting places of Jonathan and Elizabeth still stood lonely sentinel one especially intoxicating May dusk in 1830. As the sweet smell of clover, mint, and pine permeated their nostrils, Mama's new husband, Blake Woodson, and Tom's uncle Brake Jackson faced the darkening woods out back of the old Jackson homeplace.

“Come on, Tom Jackson!” Woodson shouted. “Come on out of there, you hear? Your aunt and uncle have got to be going now!”

“I declare, for a six-year-old boy, that young Tom knows his mind,” Uncle Brake said.

Warren and Uncle Robinson, standing nearby, glanced at one another.

Julia had worked with all the energy her heart and body could muster to provide for Warren, Tom, and little Laura Ann. However, her judgment in some ways did not match her piety. After learning that most all of the estate owned by the generous but thriftless Jonathan was to be claimed by creditors (of others, for whom Jonathan had provided surety) and bill collectors, she rejected the petitions of her family and married another man possessed of both legal training and dubious financial sense.

Woodson's financial lot, in fact, proved to be even worse than Jonathan's.

But it was Julia's tired, worn old frontier body of thirty, now pregnant again, that was most to blame for the situation that had caused Tom to be huddled in the spooky, animal-infested tangle that ran down from behind the cabin.

Sadness and frustration filled Woodson's face.

“Poor little guy,” he said. “I don't know what else to do. Been looking since sunup and nothing. You and Aunt Jennie are already late leaving, Brake. And he's fixing to be in there with the mountain lions.”

The group heard sounds behind them. It was Julia, limping from the house with the help of Uncle Brake's wife, Jennie. Three-year-old Laura Ann trailed behind them, sucking her thumb and carrying a small, tattered wool blanket. Pain sliced Woodson's face as he rushed to support his wife's tottering frame.

“Why Julia, sweetie,” he said, “you shouldn't be out of bed. You can hardly walk. You know the doctor said you—”

She ignored his proffered hand and squinted out into the silent woods. The paleness of her once-ruddy complexion caused Uncle Robinson to wince and half-shake his head.

Julia swallowed hard. “Tom. Tom Jackson,” she said. “I love you, honey.”

Shivering behind a thick tree trunk in the deepening shadows, his face streaked with tears and dirt, Tom choked back more sobs. He flinched as a wild beast screeched from somewhere in the woods.

“Tom, honey,” the charmed voice continued, “please come out now, before it gets dark.”

Oh no, what to do? Tom thought, uncertain. Too many emotions. Too much to think. He began to weep wrenchingly, chewing hard on his small grimy fist to muffle the sound.

“Tom, I promised Uncle Brake and Aunt Jennie you'd be good for them.”

Got to be good for her, Tom thought with a grimace. Don't want to disappoint her. She's the only one that matters anymore. Everyone else important leaving. Don't want her to go too. Not fair, God, not at all.

The dark silence descended like a black canopy. Then, a small lonesome figure emerged from the thick brush. When Tom reached his mother, he collapsed sobbing into her arms. Mother and son clung to one another as though never to let go.

“Why, Mama? Why do I have to go away?” the boy cried.

She stroked his thick, mussed chocolate hair. “It's for your best, Son. Your aunt and uncle are much better able to care for you now than am I.”

“But Mama, I just want you.”

Tears rolled down Julia's face. For the first time, a guttural moan sounded from deep within her. Warren bit his lip.

Uncle Robinson's large, clear raven eyes glistened. He had known much pain in his life, having been separated from his own mother when he was a boy. His debt-ridden white owner had become deathly ill and with tears in his eyes had sold young Robinson to put food on the table for his own children. The gentle giant had always been partial to little Tom, and now he felt more so. It don't seem right, Lord. Some things just don't seem right, Sir.

Julia brought Tom back in from the woods, fed him, and bedded him down. Despite his hurt and pain, his exhaustion drove him to deep slumber within seconds of his head hitting the frayed feather pillow. But his mother's eyes did not close all night. She alternately tried to sleep in the bed, then rocked and knitted in the chair.

Around 3:00 A.M., she rose, put on her old threadbare gray shawl, and went outside.

The golden moon shone high and bright in the silent sky, and the myriad of constellations above her sparkled with clarity. There was the Big Dipper, which Tom still remembered his pa showing him and to which the boy referred as “Pa's Dip.” Off to the east, over the mountains, a shooting star arched across the horizon.

The sweet, pastoral fragrance was so rich in her nostrils that she felt she could almost drink it down her throat like the cold, clear mountain stream water that ran down from above on the other side of the grove.

Poor Tom, she prayed. What a fine boy I know he'll be, Lord, with your protection and help. Elizabeth is gone, Warren will handle whatever comes, but little Tommy...You have made him special; O Lord, I have known that since the very night he was born. He has a heart that is...different. He is a rare jewel, Lord, I know he is. Please bear him up under Your mighty wings. Be his shield and his buckler and let me never cease to faithfully pray for him. Someday, I believe You shall shine Your power and Your glory mightily through my little boy. I believe it as I believe You are here with me right now, Lord.

The mountains were peaceful now, but she knew what a hard country it had been, and in many ways still was. Johnny Appleseed was not the only one to have traveled the area in the early days. Just after she and Jonathan had moved out to this beautiful, audacious, barely tamed back corner of western Virginia, her first husband had found a pile of old arrowheads. Later, under some brush she had finally goaded him into clearing out for a garden, he came across two human skulls, a knife, a tomahawk, and a soft, frazzled stuffed doll, or what was left of it. This far land could be unforgiving. You could give and give and it just took—your husband, your children, finally you.

It also poured forth some of God's most beautiful handiwork. Like strange, bright flowers at odd times of the year. Like—Oh my, the graves, she thought. New flowers had appeared on the graves. She stared for a moment, then walked toward them, pulling the shawl tighter against the chill.

Blue, green, orange, and red flowers. Right where Tom always placed them. She whirled toward the cabin. It was dark. Even from here, she could faintly hear Tom's distinctive, soft snores. And she had heard them almost from the moment she laid him down. He could not have placed these flowers. Then who—wait, someone was on the ground in the shadows, over by the grove. Uncle Robinson. She walked to him.

Like everyone else, he was exhausted. Normally a light, alert sleeper, he did not even stir as she approached. In the old days, he would have been a quick scalp on this night, as would the rest of them. In the old days, you couldn't afford a deep sleep, she thought.

Then she noticed something else in the luminous moonshine—a wad of blue, green, orange, and red flowers in Robinson's huge black hand.

No one said anything when Uncle Brake guided the buckboard out a few hours later. It was sad, and mountain folks knew better than to suffer words when none were of use.

As they pulled out, Tom watched his mother from the back of the wagon. Her face looked whiter than ever. A horrible thought stung him like a pine needle: What if I never see her again?

Little Laura could take it no longer. She broke free from her mother and began to toddle, fast, after the buckboard, holding forth a handful of crumpled daisies in her hand. Tom melted as he watched her. Her desire to reach him was so strong that he feared she would topple forward at any second and plunge face first into the dirt.

“Tommy! Tommy!” she cried. “Come back, Tommy!”

Tom watched his little blond darling chase him, his eyes full. His compact chest swelling, he forced his quivering lips together. I won't cry, not again. Cried too much already.

Late the next November, Laura and Tom, together again, joined Uncle Brake and Uncle Robinson to go see Mama for the last time. The day dawned snowy and cold, mountain cold. Warren had been moved two months after leaving Mama, to a house on the other side of Clarksburg to live with one of the Neale families. Tom and Laura had not seen him in the four months since. Tom especially had missed him, nearly as much, he guessed, as he missed Mama.

The boy never liked Uncle Brake. He wanted to be with his mother. It didn't help any that his uncle seemed to wish for Warren to be with him rather than Tom. It caused the loneliness in Tom's heart, cold and heavy, to grow even stronger.

Snow blanketed the apple tree, the bitter wind shaking its fragile, white-powdered branches, as Uncle Robinson pulled the buckboard up to the snow-piled cabin.

Uncle Brake stepped into the dwelling and lanky Uncle Robinson helped the two children down. His small mittened hand dwarfed in Uncle Robinson's enormous one, Tom grimaced and bowed against the swirling, stinging ivory flakes, which were now turning crystalline.

The quiet black giant led Tom and Laura into the cabin. Shaking off, Tom thought, It seems different than I remember. He noticed the home was in a complete state of disarray. Then he followed Uncle Robinson into that room. That dark, cold, dread room where people go when they are leaving and never coming back. He wasn't sure he wanted to go in there—but there was Mama. Oh! She did not even look like Mama anymore. She looked, um, old. Old and very, very white, like a ghost. She lay on the bed.

The boy scarcely saw Warren standing nearby, or Uncle Brake, or a Neale aunt whose name he could not recall. Or Woodson, who could not muster a living for Tom or the rest of his family, kneeling by the bed at his wife's side. Or sweet, fuzzy-headed two-month-old Wirt, being suckled by his mother Julia.

Tom shrugged loose from Uncle Robinson and walked across to the bed, as if in a hypnotic trance. He stared at his mother.

She turned toward him. Her lips were blue. But when he saw the countenance of her face straight on, it was different than he had first thought. Yes, different. She looked like—an angel.

She summoned a weary smile, then reached her hand to his cheek. The gentleness that had calmed many rushing rivers in Tom's life remained in that hand. But now the boy felt the hand trembling. He remained stoic, but his chin began to quiver.

“Oh, my dear, sweet, good Tom,” she said. Soft words. Words he could barely hear. Words that meant the whole world. “You've been through so much, my darling.”

Tears began streaming down Tom's cheeks, but he stood in silence.

Julia swallowed, with effort. “Now I'm going to go away, Tom. But there is no reason to be afraid. I'm going to be with Pa and Elizabeth, so I'm going to be very happy.”

An excited three-year-old girl tramped across the room to the bed. “Mama, Mama, Mama.” Little Laura. Bright eyed, a happy smile lighting her cherub face, her gaze trained on Julia.

Warren ground his teeth together to keep from bursting into tears, his eyes watering over. Uncle Robinson covered his mouth with the back of one hand, his face already painted with tears.

Julia swallowed hard again, her eyes misting over as she stroked Laura's golden hair. Then she turned back to Tom.

“Jesus will come and be with you,” she said, “when you ask Him to cleanse your heart from wicked thoughts and deeds and when you embrace Him and His death on the cross in trust and faith for the forgiveness of your sins. He will guard and protect you until God decides it's time for you to come and be with us.”

Wirt cooed, causing Julia to pause.

“But first,” she continued, “the Lord has some things that He wants you to do here. Some good and exciting and wonderful things. Then, when He brings you to be with us, we'll all be able to celebrate the fine things you did on earth. Does that make sense to you, Son?”

No, Mama, but if you say so, he thought, beginning to nod. Julia paused, closing her eyes and catching her breath.

“Now, Son, can you remember a couple of things for me?” she continued after a moment.

Another slow nod. Then Tom felt a tug on his leg. It was Laura, hugging him, her sweet upturned face radiant with love and affection. He put his arm around her and pulled her close.

Deep coughs racked Julia. Then Wirt sputtered and squirmed. Finally she continued again, with difficulty.

“Tom, Son, you must be generous to all,” she said, “especially those less fortunate than yourself. You must love the Lord with all of your heart and all of your soul and all of your mind, and other people as yourself. These are not just words, Son; they must be your life.” She summoned all of her strength and grabbed her rapt son's arm.

“And Tom, you must always remember that no matter what obstacles or problems you run up against in life, if you try and try and never, ever give up”—she rose to one elbow and delivered the last with force and passion, looking straight into his face, her eyes alight—”you may be whatever you resolve to be.”

Tom stared at her, his lips parting just a bit. The room was hushed. Julia drew deeply for breath. A weak smile crept across her now quiet face. She cupped Tom's chin in one hand, little Laura's in the other. After a few seconds, her arms were shaking so hard she had to pull them back.

Wirt burst out crying and Woodson lifted him away from Julia. Then she bid Warren, Tom, and Laura each in turn to stand by her with their heads bowed as she offered fervent and passionate prayer for their protection and guidance all through life.

Tom, his arm still wrapped around Laura, split open his eyelids and cast a surreptitious peek at his mother through the tiniest of openings as she prayed for the children.

Her eyes are barely open and I can't understand all of her words, but she—how can it be?—she looks like she is beginning to glow!

As his eyes widened in amazement, Julia prayed with calm a few verses from Psalm 118: “‘Let them now that fear the LORD say, that his mercy endureth for ever. I called upon the LORD in distress.’” The words began to trail and to come farther apart. “‘The LORD answered me...and set me...in a large place.’” Weaker now, beginning to go away. “‘The LORD...is...on...my...side…”

“‘I will not fear: what can man do unto me?’” Uncle Robinson finished the verse, eyes swimming and voice cracking, but a brilliant ivory gleam lighting the handsome, distinguished face. “Miss Julia be with the Lord Jesus now, honeys.”

For a moment, all was silent. Then Woodson began to sob until the sounds of his grief filled the chill room. The aunt, also in tears, took the sleeping Wirt. Uncle Brake shook his head. Warren buried his face in his hands.

“Is Mama sleeping, Tommy?” asked little innocent Laura.

Tom stared at his dead mother. Then at Uncle Robinson, the venerable cheeks again wet. Then, back at his mother. Her face was at peace.

No one stays; they all go. They all leave me. Even Mama. I know that now. No one can I trust. They all break their word and leave me. Going to be strong, ready next time. Never, ever going to cry again, either.

A strange sound interrupted Tom's thoughts. He and the others turned to see. The wooden chair, now in a far, dark corner of the death room, held Mama's knitting things, coated along with the rest of the chair by a layer of dust. The chair rocked to and fro, as it had from Tom's earliest recollection. One thing was different this time: nobody was within ten feet of it.