Blood Orange

ALSO AVAILAI3LE FROM DRl1SILLA CAMPI3ELL

Also by Drusilla Campbell

The Edge of the Sky

Wildwood

Drusilla Campbell

For Margaret Ellen

‘n the back of my garden a blood orange tree struggles for life. Its
effort to be fruitful against the odds touches my heart. Valiant
and struggling … maybe that’s me I’m describing: Dana Cabot
struggling to be better. But there is nothing valiant in me. I have
proved myself a liar and coward too many times to have illusions.

Does this explain why I take the time to fertilize and prune and
mulch my little tree when everything else in the garden must hobble
along as best it can? Having failed myself and others, I want and
need to prove I can do better.

In its protected corner my gawky blood orange grows slowly. In
a year or two, if all goes well, it may bear fruit. Perhaps then we will
all have healed. I long for that day, for summertime, a girl’s voice,
and the raspberry sweetness of the blood red fruit.

ana Cabot stood in the doorway to the undercroft holding a
pastry box full of twenty-six dollars’ worth of still-warm croissants. How typically Episcopalian to use the medieval word undercroft to designate what was essentially a basement consisting of one
large room and five smaller ones connected by a narrow hallway.
The walls of the undercroft were covered with Sunday school bulletin boards and pictures of Jesus as infant, boy, and man. And photos of Bailey Cabot.