One

Rebekah Thornton sifted flour into mountain peaks in a dark, troughlike wooden bowl. Thumping the sifter against the bowl’s edge, she watched as tall mountains collapsed into nothing but a wilderness of bran-speckled bread flour. She idly made a squiggle line through that expanse with one finger. Mother once would have disapproved of Rebekah’s baking on Sunday afternoon. But even if Mother would care now, she was taking a nap. The whole log dogtrot house was so quiet, now that the squeaky sifter was still, that she could hear nothing but a gossipy chatter of chickens grubbing the backyard and a teakettle’s soft hiss of steam. She dug out a handful of lard from a barrel, added it with warm yeasty water to her wilderness of flour, and, with milk for mixing, soon had developed what she called “some really nice, good dough.”

Aside from roaming outdoors, baking bread was the very best activity she could choose in preparation for talking to Father. She’d have hot bread to offer him later if he were upset, and kneading dough would soothe her own nerves. Talk to him she must. Working fields with him every day surely gave her the right to know what was happening to their beloved farm, Thornapple.

When she’d set dough to rise in pans, she threw her apron over a chair back as she left the kitchen to cross a hallway, called a “dogtrot” because it extended clear through the house, open at each end to the outdoors. An open, rough-hewn staircase ascended from one side with a clapboard door at the top to protect occupants from the elements. She dashed up those steps now, taking them two at a time as she hiked her dress up a notch. It would be best to shine up a bit before facing Father. He never liked her to be less than a lady on Sunday, no matter how grubby she might become on Monday.

Carefully considering her three decent dresses, Rebekah chose the dimity with blue flowers. It was too early to wear such a summery thing, Mother would say, but it was one Father really liked, and right now that was what was important. Anyway, the day was warm, and, though lightweight, the dress had long sleeves and a high neck.

Rebekah, being a tall girl, had to stoop slightly in her attic room to see her reflection in a mirror so mottled she had to twist this way and that to see herself between bluish mars in the glass. She’d always called those shapes land masses and bodies of water like segments of a map. Virginia stood alone on one side; then there was a long stretch of Atlantic Ocean lapping against Georgia’s coastline right down the middle, and below that a perfect cratered moon. Her reflection confirmed that, yes, her dark hair tumbling in an unruly mass should be put up. She rubbed a smudge of flour off her cheek and grabbed her brush.

Settling into a small armless rocker, she began to plait her hair into a single long braid. Mother would have had her braid it before she made the bread, but she hadn’t thought about it then. Maybe there wouldn’t be a hair in the dough! The mindless movement of her fingers weaving in and out of silky strands gave her ample time to consider her talk with Father. She’d waited all day, given him hours to recover from his three-day trip to Athens. She’d watched him last night take his horse to the barn and return with feet dragging and had decided he was far too tired for her to trouble then, no matter how she longed to.

But now she had to know why Robinsons’ Feed and Seed had refused to let her buy spring planting supplies on credit as they’d always done before. It was 1881, a very promising year. She and Father had read together many times Henry W. Grady’s glowing words in Atlanta’s Constitution about a wonderful future for the South. Sure, farmers were being urged to diversify, to plant less cotton and more corn. And they had done that. Last year they’d planted only two acres in cotton, the rest in corn. And Father had been pleased with the results. Mr. Robinson’s excuse that it wasn’t a good year for credit simply didn’t hold water. Somehow she knew he meant not that it was a bad year for everyone but for Thornapple in particular.

Thornapple. What a funny name for the Thornton family farm near Hogansville, Georgia. The story was that when Father and Mother came from North Carolina to settle here in 1857, Mother had insisted on naming it Thornapple, though Father argued that thornapples were little trash trees, and her choice wouldn’t be a very flourishing name to start out with. Mother was a romantic and had liked the sound of it and the way it used a large portion of their name, Thornton. Now Mother didn’t remember her own name many days, much less the name of their farm. Worse than forgetting mere names was Mother’s forgetfulness of who they were, that Father liked poached eggs on toast, that Josh wasn’t here but away at the university in Athens, and that she, Rebekah, would rather plow any day than be dressed up in petticoats and frills. Even when Mother was well, Rebekah had seldom asked her for advice. She’d always felt more protective of her mother than expecting help from her. And certainly now she couldn’t go to her with her feelings of helpless dread that something awful was about to happen to Thornapple.

She descended the steps slowly, unconsciously avoiding creaky boards, sliding one hand lightly along a skinned pole stair rail. When she stood before Father’s study door, she suddenly forgot all the bold questions she’d framed. She looked to her left along wide, pine floorboards to the opening at the dogtrot’s end and out past branches of a large oak to a slack-wired weed-grown fencerow, and beyond that to dark red furrows of a freshly plowed field. She’d laid out the last straight row in that field yesterday and had itched to begin planting it and other prepared fields. But when she’d tried to get guano fertilizer on Father’s credit, she was denied. Nor would they talk about letting her get a new planter or even the coffee Mother often requested. And why?

She made a hard fist and knocked on the door.

“Come!”

Father looked up briefly from his farm record books, tried a smile that didn’t even tickle his steel gray mustache, and said, “Oh. Rebekah. Have a seat.”

She clutched rough brown hands in her white dimity lap and leaned forward in her chair. “Did you have a good trip, Father?”

“Sure. Good as could be, I guess.” He didn’t look up.

“Was Josh all right?”

“Oh. Yes. Josh—is—fine.”

“Father.” She stood up in such a hurry, her chair fell over backward. “You can tell me the truth. I’m not a little girl any longer, you know. I’m twenty now.”

He looked up then, blue eyes startled. “Really, Rebekah, has something gone wrong while I was away? You seem extremely jittery. I thought your mother seemed about the same as I left her.”

“Oh, yes, Mother’s fine—well, as fine as you can expect. I’ve taken good care of her. I got Nancy West to stay with her while I went to town yesterday. But I’m not fine, and I won’t be until you tell me what’s going on!” She picked up her fallen chair and sat back down with a thump, wishing with all her might she could remain calm.

“You went to town yesterday? I thought I told you—”

“But we’d decided to use that guano this year, remember? And we need a new planter. The one we have has that broken handle, and half the time it won’t drop the seeds when it should and then drops a wad of them. You weren’t home yet, so I thought I should go for things.” She waved a hand westward, then eastward. “The fields are ready to plant! Mr. Jones planted his corn three weeks ago—”

“Rebekah!” It was her turn to be startled. Father seldom raised his voice like that.

He heaved to his feet and pulled at his mustache as he maneuvered his way around his desk. When he stopped and leaned one hip against his desk, he looked down at her, and Rebekah noticed for the first time how his eyes appeared swollen, his skin saggy and gray. He put a hand to his deeply furrowed brow as if to rub away a nagging pain, then used the same hand to grip the desk edge.

She shouldn’t have needled him so. But what could be wrong?

“Rebekah,” said Father in a thick voice, “I—didn’t want to tell you this, but—I have to. The bank is foreclosing on Thornapple. We’re losing the farm.”

“No! It’s not possible! You own this farm! You’ve always said whatever happened we’d have the farm because it’s paid for. You said that, Father!”

“Well, there are such things as mortgages, Child. To help you pay for other things you can’t—afford.”

“Like what? Our crops have been good! What couldn’t we pay for? Father?”

He rubbed his eyes with both hands as if to clear a cloudy picture, then brushed his stubby fingers through a stand of short gray hair before propelling himself into pacing to the window and back, again and again.

“Father, tell me! What has happened?” When he still didn’t answer, she suddenly knew. “It’s Josh, isn’t it? Something’s happened to Josh.”

“He’s all right. But he won’t be in school anymore. And—”

“And what? What does this have to do with Thornapple? We could use Josh to help us. Is he coming back?” Under ordinary circumstances, they would have had a laugh at the mention of Josh being any help on the farm. As of her last knowledge, he’d probably freeze before he could even figure out how to build a fire.

But there was no laughter. The pacing stopped beside her.

“Rebekah, promise me you’ll still love your brother. People do things; they just do things sometimes. You know—he wanted to be a doctor, and he was smart enough. But he couldn’t bear the sight of blood. He wanted to be a lawyer—and he’d have been good. But he couldn’t stay awake long enough at night for all that reading. And then—”

“He was going to finish his business degree and—”

“And open a men’s clothing store in Hogansville.” Still no glimmer of humor in his gray voice. They both knew quite well that Hogansville needed a men’s clothing store about as much as it needed a millinery shop or a fancy hotel. Everyone shopped at Drew’s General Store and Robinsons’ Feed and Seed. That was it.

“Father. Just tell me. What’s Josh done? What’s happened?” His pacing had brought him close to her chair. She tugged at his sleeve as she’d done since she first followed him beside the plowing mules. He patted her shoulder awkwardly as if all of a sudden she’d become that little tomboy again. Then he turned quickly back toward the window.

“It started out as innocent gambling for pennies. Just for fun. But—”

“Josh has been gambling?”

“Yes. For—a long while,” he said. “Poker games and such.”

A rooster crowed outside. She waited for the rest of the story while folding tiny pleats in a section of her soft skirt. Her mouth was dry. She’d go to the spring for water when this was over. When this was over?

“He gambled—everything away,” Father continued. “The farm, the cattle, everything, I’m afraid. He’s—devastated by it, refuses to come home. He’s going to Atlanta to try to get work. Knows somebody down there he thinks can help. I told him—I had to, he should have known that—I told him I couldn’t help him anymore. Rebekah, think how awful he has to feel!”

She jumped to her feet and put her hands on her hips. “I know how we would feel, but I’m not sure Josh feels anything at all except sorry that the game’s over. I’m sorry, Father, if I can’t be very compassionate right now. But we have to save Thornapple. You can do that, can’t you? At least part of it. We can do a lot with just a few acres. You know, with that guano fertilizer we can make the most beautiful crops. Like Mr. Jones’s. Even if we lose some of the farm, we can hang onto some of the best acreage. And this house. Of course we can!”

“I’m trying. But I see no way. And you know—your mother is far from well anyway. How can we keep her safe while both of us work fields? I’d already been wondering what we were going to do. And now—” He pulled a crumpled letter from his pocket. “This is from your mother’s sister, your aunt Constance in LaGrange. She wants us to come live with her, has been asking us to move there for fifteen, sixteen years, ever since the war when she lost your uncle Herbert. Don’t look so stricken, Rebekah! Don’t make this any harder than it already is!”

“Don’t look stricken, you say! Am I supposed to be delighted about all this? You’ve let my brother gamble away the farm I’d have given my life for! And I cannot go live in town with Aunt Constance!”

“You’re quite right. Constance has only enough room for your mother and me. We’ll arrange something else for you.”

“Arrange something? Arrange something! You’re telling me I’m losing my home, my parents, everything, all in one fell swoop?” She choked on her words. It was just too preposterous!

Father walked again to the tall, curtainless window, his slumped shoulders dark against the bright western sky. He’d always refused to have curtains because he wanted to see everything, from puppies rolling in the sun to clouds drifting over. And he was going to live in LaGrange? Would Aunt Constance let him have a curtainless window? This plan was no better for him than for her. It simply wouldn’t work.

“Father, I’m not leaving this place—not now—not ever.”

“Rebekah, your whole life is before you, and you don’t need to be so melodramatic about this,” he said, turning once more and putting his hands out, palms up. “I know you have a number of young beaus around here who already have been trying to work up courage to propose marriage. Surely one of them is suitable for you. I can arrange for you to stay with the Joneses until—”

“Until the right one kneels at my feet? Until my heart goes pitty-pat and everything is perfect? I will never marry, Father! Thornapple is all I want! I’m staying right here! No one is going to move me!”

“You can’t. The farm will no longer be ours. The estate sale is set a week from Friday.”

“Estate sale? You—and you still weren’t going to tell me? Oh, Father!”

“Get hold of yourself, Rebekah. Show some faith, can’t you? I’ll talk to Mr. Jones tomorrow. He’s always seemed to manage without making his girls do heavy work. Maybe you can learn to play their piano, let your hands soften up a bit.”

“Father, you don’t even know me. I thought you understood me. I–I can’t believe you’ve let this horrible thing happen! But, regardless—well, no one is going to make me leave, and I don’t want soft hands!”

She gripped the doorknob and realized her hand was shaking as if she had a bad chill. She took one last look at Father, who, with infuriating calmness, was sitting back down behind his desk. A slant of late sunshine turned his short, gray hair a pinkish tinge and threw his prominent features into harsh relief as he stared down at columns of spidery entries. It was all she could do to keep from slamming the door, but she knew even in her distress she didn’t want to upset Mother.

❧

Her own words echoed in her mind as she raced her horse, Firefly, between fields ready for planting. “I won’t leave! No one can make me leave!” Were those empty, meaningless words? What would happen to these fields? Would someone else plant this year? No one else would love it the way she did. No one else would care for the sweep and tilt of the fields or the fringes of woods whose tall straight pines gave you sights for aiming straight rows. Oh, they’d care how much per acre the land yielded, but they wouldn’t appreciate the color of rich reddish earth, the bravery of tender green shoots standing at attention in long furrows.

Show a little faith, Father had said! Faith? What was that? All she knew was that if there was a God, of which she’d never been sure, He certainly cared not a flip about little helpless creatures He’d randomly set in motion. If she’d pictured God at all, she’d thought of Him as being like Cousin Isabel, who always wanted to play paper dolls when she came to visit. She’d set the dolls up in all sorts of little scenes, and then when she got tired, she’d simply sweep them down with one hand, laughing at her own game.

Anyway, who was Father to say have a little faith, when he had never shown much interest in that area of life? Oh, he went to church. But Rebekah knew he dreaded it every week and simply did it to make her mother happy—and for appearances, traditions. She’d never seen him studying his Bible.

The sun was setting behind her, and her own shadow careened ahead of her. Darkness thickened between trees far to her left beyond plowed ground. The scent of dark, vulnerable earth turned up to the sun had always made her feel so good, challenged in a contented kind of way. Now she shook her head as if to shed the scent, to rid herself of an untrue message. She urged Firefly to jump a gully and then slowed as she ascended a hill she’d dubbed Monarch Mountain because of butterflies she once found there. At the top of the hill was an open area where one could see out, view low, blue hills rippling away to beyond yonder. She stopped a moment and shaded her eyes to look west, where the simple shingled roof and stone chimney of Thornapple House glowed in the sunshine as if a painter had brushed them with gold. But where sunshine hadn’t reached, under eastern eaves, in the kitchen’s chimney corner, darkness was as dense as charcoal.

As she looked, everything gradually blurred. She bit her lip and firmed her chin, determined not to cry. Not yet. Flicking her braid over her shoulder, she pressed her knees against Firefly’s warm sides and leaned toward the horse’s head, turning east. She knew exactly where she was going. The same place she’d always gone with childhood woes, growing-up pains, and a young woman’s heartaches. She was heading into woods and the very back acres of Thornapple, riding toward the Talking Tree.