All That Lives (28 page)

Extravaganzas your pitifully small imaginations cannot fathom.

“Please, cast no aspersions this evening.” Mother stood at her place and raised her arms to the sky, addressing the crowd
and the Being. “See here, the beauty of the fading light, the rising moon. Hear the song of the katydids.” She paused, allowing
the company a moment of silent listening, and during it the doves in the stable obediently cooed goodnight. “Hear the melodies
of affection between family and friends, gathered at this table.” Mother sat down smiling and cups were raised to toast her
sentiment.

For you, Luce, we must celebrate.

The Spirit spoke as if it smiled on Mother and she did look angelic in her summer dress, her face shining in the lantern light,
moist with the heat.

“I would celebrate your departure from our home.” Father’s words were slurred but I thought it was impossible for him to have
already consumed too much of Calvin Justice’s whiskey. I saw Mother take up his hand with some passion, turning patient eyes
of long-standing love onto his face. I wondered if she too had whiskey in her pewter mug, rather than her usual tea.

I enjoy nothing so much as a good party!

The invisible Spirit’s incantations danced around the table, raising everyone’s expectations.

“A party!” cried a stranger, “how shall we celebrate this witchery?”

“The Lord has blessed us, and we must celebrate not witchery, but in His name.” Calvin Justice raised his glass off the table.
I knew he had not convinced the Shakers of his opinion during his debate with them, and I believe he preferred a party to
continuing that discussion.

“I fear the sap does rise tonight!” The Reverend Johnston made a joke, and everyone laughed, and the light summer heat reverberated
with ease and comfort. I saw the Reverend take Mrs. Johnston’s hand into his own under the table, following Mother’s example.
John Jr. sat beside him, looking quite jovial. He raised his mug to me.

“In Betsy the sap does rise bewitchingly!” he teased and a chorus of knowing laughter circled the table.

What a clever boy you are, John Jr.
“

’Tis true, eh, Betsy?” Father ignored the Spirit and, turning his back to Mother, he looked into my eyes as though none were
present with us. “Darling daughter, do you feel the sap surging in your breast this evening?” I was shocked he had addressed
me so before a crowd of strangers. Did he mean to come to my room later? I could not think how I should answer, but Mother
made light of his comment.

“Jack, all the young girls here are as lovely as the breeze at night. Let us have a dance and celebrate the summer season
now upon us!”

The crowd pulsed happy agreement with her words and whatever oddities they expected to experience, they seemed satisfied to
dance instead. I looked down at my hands so I might meet no curious stares, for I noticed my breast was rising with excitement
and I supposed it
could
be sap.

“Get your fiddle, William,” called one of the strangers to another, removing a bright pennywhistle from his shirt pocket.
John Jr. ran up to the house to fetch his wooden flute, and in an instant a large square was made for dancing beside the tables
in the flat part of the path. The men built up a bonfire, and laughter and music paired off in the night as everyone chose
a partner and took their places in twos, like the lightning bugs mating in the deepening dark about us.

Play “My Lady Fair”!

The Spirit called the dance in perfect time to the musician’s notes. Thenny was my partner and we passed between Jesse and
Martha on our left and Joel and Richard on our right. I watched Mother coax Father off the bench by sitting on his lap, covering
his legs with her wide flouncy skirt. She held his face in her hands, then stood and pulled him up. I watched him smile reluctantly,
lengthening his body. He stiffly turned her on his arm, and they joined the top of the square, dancing beside Jesse and Martha.

“The Virginia Star”! Take the lady on your left …

I was amazed the Being knew every reel and step, and could change its voice most unctuously, so I was uncertain if it were
a stranger calling out the dance, or the Presence I knew so intimately. It hardly mattered, for we were a mixed-up mass of
spinning folk. I noticed Mother’s hair fell down, hanging in brown curls around her face and in a long thick rolling wave
all down her back, causing her to look like the young girl she must once have been. Her dress too was loosened, and when she
leaned her head back, laughing, I saw the delicate white skin of her neck exposed to the top of her bosom. I looked away,
feeling as I had earlier when I had seen Amanda Ellison, oddly embarrassed, as if I knew something I should not. Why had Josh
Gardner not been present at the schoolhouse? Thenny and I took our turn casting off and I skipped down the line, my feet in
perfect time with hers. We formed a bridge with our hands held high for our line to pass under and we laughed breathlessly,
squeezing our fingers tight as the couples ducked through. I wondered if I would ever be so lucky as to share a dance with
Josh. Thenny swung me round onto Jesse’s elbow and I flung my head back like Mother, looking up at the bright stars, the few
remaining lightning bugs hovering at the line of trees. From the cabins I heard the mellow beat of a pigskin drum and deep
Negro voices engaged in song, Zeke’s rising above the rest. The warmth of the firelight on Thenny’s flushed cheeks and her
delighted giggles filled me with tremendous happiness as we spun through our moves. I felt no fear, for I was certain no violence
would be enacted on me, and none was. I was allowed to swing and roll my body in time to the music, at one with the sap coursing
through the veins of the trees and through my breast.

Before long, all except the youngest children had exhausted themselves with dancing, and the musicians were forced to quit,
complaining of sore fingers, and being in need of refreshment. All returned to the tables to share whiskey and cold water
carried fresh from the well.

“Drewry, take the young’uns to the house …” John Jr. slurred his words dreadfully, and sat with only one leg around the wooden
bench between Jesse and Father, who laughed, realizing he had imbibed more strong drink than his young body was accustomed
to.

“How say
you
to retiring, young’un?” Together they helped him to his feet and I followed, with Mother, Thenny and the boys, all of us
laughing so hard tears leaked from the corners of our eyes and made the torches blur.

I will tell the rest of you a story, if you like …

I heard the Spirit cajoling the folk who remained with the promise of a long evening, and I felt extremely grateful to the
strangers as I held my skirt up climbing the hill. Though they might be unaware of it, they occupied the Being, involved as
it was with their entertainment, and we were allowed a peaceful night of rest.

A month of long hot days passed by while we endured the company of the strangers. They seemed intent on remaining on our farm
until their supplies and ours were completely diminished. They urged the Spirit constantly to sing new songs, or to entertain
their small minds with long tales, and I thought though they were fine to dance with, these outsiders had revealed themselves
to be ignorant indeed. They did not understand even the simplest of concepts, and continually expressed great fascination
regarding the Spirit’s ability to be in two places at one time, or to exist in both the past and the future. Their interest
seemed to feed the Being tremendously, and it was most always present, night and day.

I was sitting on the porch steps with Mother, engaged in stripping the leaves and twigs off dried slippery elm and the Spirit
was with us, singing a sweet tune it had introduced as a French gardener’s song.

When the day is warm and fine,

I unfold these flowers of mine;

Ah but you must look for rain

When I shut them up again!

Mother quietly hummed along, happily employed by her work, but I frowned, wishing she would in no way encourage the Being.
I was also thinking they did not call it slippery elm for no reason. Each time I grasped hold of a twig, the branch twisted
in my hand and poked my belly or caused another twig to break off and peck me on the cheek and I was having a difficult time.
The Spirit’s song was like the drone of a menacing bee to my ears.

“Ouch!” I sucked my pricked finger against my teeth, annoyed that I must learn such a laborious task in which I had no interest.
The Spirit broke its song and laughed at me, but Mother was too patient with my frustration.

“Look, Betsy dear, it’s simple, like this.” She took the branch from my hand and snapped each twig off, efficient as the saw
blade at Polk’s mill. She held the final stick imprisoned between her knees and expertly sliced downward with her paring knife,
separating the bark away. “ ’Tis for Father’s throat and we need much of it.” She laid the thin bark into a tightly woven
vine basket by her side. I had suspected Father’s throat was troubling him, for he had been mostly silent for days. Though
amongst the chaos engendered by the strangers on our land, his pain was barely noticeable.

I was reaching for a new branch from the pile between Mother’s feet on the porch steps to make another attempt at my labor,
when I felt a sudden vicious itching on my scalp.

“Mother, there is something biting at my head.” I bent over for her inspection and I was not pleased to hear her moan.

“I believe it is head lice.” She yanked a hair out and held it up to look more closely.

The wooden cart of the Shakers rode up to the horse tie and I was surprised, for since they had camped on our land, the strangers
had not often ventured out in their carts. The tall man in the black coat shouted up to us.

“There is a plague of lice so severe amongst us, we are motivated to leave your farm.” He scratched his hat across his head.
I was not sorry to hear they were going but I found a plague of head lice to be a disturbing thought. Mother and I laid our
task aside and walked down to see them off. Behind the Shakers came the couples from Kentucky, who had already packed their
carts and gathered their slaves from our cabins leaving flattened grass at the foot of our hill.

“Farewell, Mrs. Bell, Betsy Bell. We will keep you in our prayers.” The woman who had waved to me that first morning waved
again now from her seat in the wagon, then returned her hand to itching her neck. Her husband, the red-faced pudgy man, thanked
Mother for her hospitality but then remarked, “I hope to cleanse my skin of every pest, invisible or not, when I away from
here!” I understood a new attitude had risen amongst them. They had witnessed enough of our torture.

Get gone, Shakers!

The Being spoke from the blooming honeysuckle vines lining the road and the horses were shocked, bolting dangerously for a
short spell, then stopping, as if they’d run smack into an invisible wall and could go no farther. The Spirit laughed when
the Shakers’ wide brim hats blew off and it sicced the farm dogs on them.

Caesar, Harry, Domino!

The Being called the dogs by name up from the barn and we saw them run, barking at the Shakers’ cart as if it were a cornered
rabbit they had hunted down, urged by the Spirit screaming.

Go, hounds!

The horses bolted, then halted, bolted, then halted, so it took nearly three hours for them to travel less than five hundred
feet down our road. I watched the whole scene squirming as the red dry dust of the path disturbed by the horses rose and settled
on my skin, contributing to the irritating itching of my head.

We soon discovered everyone on our farm, including the slaves, had the nasty lice. It was easy for the Negroes; they lined
up like sheep in spring and Zeke shaved all their heads, but our family, having suffered profoundly so many afflictions of
the Spirit, felt our pride in this instance and wished to show it through the keeping of our hair, infested or not. The boys’
locks fell only to their shoulders, and once trimmed, it took less than an hour to pick over their heads, but my braid was
well past my bottom and it took over four hours from the day to oil, wash, comb and pick the nits off the million fine blond
tresses down my back. I cried in pain as Mother pulled them out, hair by hair.