Burning Bright: Stories (14 page)

L
ily sat on the porch, the day’s plowing done and her year-old child asleep in his crib. In her hands, the long steel needles clicked together and spread apart in a rhythmic sparring as yarn slowly unspooled from the deep pocket of her gingham dress, became part of the coverlet draped over her knees. Except for the occasional glance down the valley, Lily kept her eyes closed. She inhaled the aroma of fresh-turned earth and dogwood blossoms. She listened to the bees humming around their box. Like the fluttering she’d begun to feel in her stomach, all bespoke the return of life after a hard winter. Lily thought again of
the Washington newspaper Ethan had brought with him when he’d come back from Tennessee on his Christmas furlough, how it said the war would be over by summer. Ethan had thought even sooner, claiming soon as the roads were passable Grant would take Richmond and it would be done. Good as over now, he’d told her, but Ethan had still slept in the root cellar every night of the furlough and stayed inside during the day, his haversack and rifle by the back door, because Confederates came up the valley from Boone looking for Lincolnites like Ethan.

She felt the afternoon light on her face, soothing as the hum of the bees. It was good to finally be sitting, only her hands working, the child she’d set in the shade as she’d plowed now nursed and asleep. After a few more minutes, Lily allowed her hands to rest as well, laying the foot-long needles lengthways on her lap. Reason enough to be tired, she figured, a day breaking ground with a bull-tongue plow and draft horse. Soon enough the young one would wake and she’d have to suckle him again, then fix herself something to eat as well. After that she’d need to feed the chickens and hide the horse in the woods above the spring. Lily felt the flutter again deep in her belly and knew it was another reason for her tiredness. She laid a hand on her stomach and felt the slight curve. She counted the months since Ethan’s furlough and figured she’d be rounding the homespun of her dress in another month.

Lily looked down the valley to where the old Boone toll road followed Middlefork Creek. Her eyes closed once more as she mulled over names for the coming child, thinking about how her own birthday was also in September and that by then Ethan would be home for good and they’d be a family again, the both of them young enough not to be broken by the hardships of the last two years. Lily made a picture in her mind of her and Ethan and the young ones all together, the crops she’d planted ripe and proud in the field, the apple tree’s branches sagging with fruit.

When she opened her eyes, the Confederate was in the yard. He must have figured she’d be watching the road because he’d come down Goshen Mountain instead, emerging from a thick stand of birch trees he’d followed down the creek. It was too late to hide the horse and gather the chickens into the root cellar, too late to go get the butcher knife and conceal it in her dress pocket, so Lily just watched him approach, a musket in his right hand and a tote sack in the left. He wore a threadbare butternut jacket and a cap. A strip of cowhide held up a pair of ragged wool trousers. Only the boots looked new. Lily knew the man those boots had belonged to, and she knew the hickory tree where they’d left the rest of him dangling, not only a rope around his neck but also a cedar shingle with the word
Lincolnite
burned into the wood.

The Confederate grinned as he stepped into the yard. He raised a finger and thumb to the cap, but his eyes were on the chickens scratching for worms behind the barn, the draft horse in the pasture. He looked to be about forty, though in these times people often looked older than they were, even children. The Confederate wore his cap brim tilted high, his face tanned to the hue of cured tobacco. Not the way a farmer would wear a hat or cap. The gaunt face and loose-fitting trousers made clear what the tote sack was for. Lily hoped a couple of chickens were enough for him, but the boots did not reassure her of that.

“Afternoon,” he said, letting his gaze settle on Lily briefly before looking westward toward Grandfather Mountain. “Looks to be some rain coming, maybe by full dark.”

“Take what chickens you want,” Lily said. “I’ll help you catch them.”

“I plan on that,” he said.

The man raised his left forearm and wiped sweat off his brow, the tote sack briefly covering his face. As he lowered his arm, his grin had been replaced with a seeming sobriety.

“But it’s also my sworn duty to requisition that draft horse for the cause.”

“For the cause,” Lily said, meeting his eyes, “like them boots you’re wearing.”

The Confederate set a boot onto the porch step as though to better examine it.

“These boots wasn’t requisitioned. Traded my best piece of rope for them, but I’m of a mind you already know that.” He raised his eyes and looked at Lily. “That neighbor of yours wasn’t as careful on his furlough as your husband.”

Lily studied the man’s face, a familiarity behind the scraggly beard and the hard unflinching gaze. She thought back to the time a man or woman from up here could go into Boone. A time when disagreement over what politicians did down in Raleigh would be settled in this county with, at worst, clenched fists.

“You used to work at Old Man Mast’s store, didn’t you?” Lily said.

“I did,” the Confederate said.

“My daddy used to trade with you. One time when I was with him you give me and my sister a peppermint.”

The man’s eyes didn’t soften, but something in his face seemed to let go a little, just for a moment.

“Old Mast didn’t like me doing that, but it was a small enough thing to do for the chaps.”

For a few moments he didn’t say anything else, maybe thinking back to that time, maybe not.

“Your name was Mr. Vaughn,” Lily said. “I remember that now.”

The Confederate nodded.

“It still is,” he said, “my name being Vaughn, I mean.” He paused. “But that don’t change nothing in the here and now, though, does it?”

“No,” Lily replied. “I guess it don’t.”

“So I’ll be taking the horse,” Vaughn said, “lest you got something to barter for it, maybe some of that Yankee money they pay your man with over in Tennessee? We might could make us a trade for some of that.”

“There ain’t no money here,” Lily said, telling the truth because what money they had she’d sewn in Ethan’s coat lining. Safer there than anywhere on the farm, she’d told Ethan before he left, but he’d agreed only after she’d also sewn his name and where to send his body on the coat’s side pocket. Ethan’s older brother had done the same, the two of them vowing to get the other’s coat home if not the body.

“I guess I better get to it then,” Vaughn said, “try to beat this rain back to Boone.”

He turned from her, whistling “Dixie” as he walked toward the pasture, almost to the split-rail fence when Lily told him she had something to trade for the horse.

“What would that be?” Vaughn asked.

Lily lifted the ball of thread off her lap and placed it on the porch’s puncheon floor, then set the half-finished coverlet on the floor as well. As she got up from the chair, her hands smoothed the gingham around her
hips. Lily stepped to the porch edge and freed the braid so her blonde hair fell loose on her neck and shoulders.

“You know my meaning,” she said.

Vaughn stepped onto the porch, not speaking as he did so. To look her over, Lily knew. She sucked in her stomach slightly to conceal her condition, though his knowing she was with child might make it better for him. A man could think that way in these times, she thought. Lily watched as Vaughn silently mulled over his choices, including the choice he’d surely come to by now that he could just as easily have her and the horse both.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Nineteen.”

“Nineteen,” Vaughn said, though whether this was or wasn’t in her favor she did not know. He looked west again toward Grandfather Mountain and studied the sky before glancing down the valley at the toll road.

Okay,” he finally said, and nodded toward the front door. “Let’s you and me go inside.”

“Not in the cabin,” Lily answered. “My young one’s in there.”

For a moment she thought Vaughn would insist, but he didn’t.

“Where then?”

“The root cellar. It’s got a pallet we can lay on.”

Vaughn’s chin lifted, his eyes seeming to focus on something behind Lily and the chair.

“I reckon we’ll know where to look for your man next time, won’t we?” When Lily didn’t respond, Vaughn offered a smile that looked almost friendly. “Lead on,” he said.

Vaughn followed her around the cabin, past the bee box and chopping block and the old root cellar, the one they’d used before the war. They followed the faintest path through a thicket of rhododendron until it ended abruptly on a hillside. Lily cleared away the green-leaved rhododendron branches she replaced each week and unlatched a square wooden door. The hinges creaked as the entrance yawned open, the root cellar’s damp earthy odor mingling with the smell of the dogwood blossoms. The afternoon sun revealed an earthen floor lined with jars of vegetables and honey, at the center a pallet and quilt. There were no steps, just a three-foot drop.

“And you think me stupid enough to go in there first?” Vaughn said.

“I’ll go in first,” Lily answered, and sat down in the entrance, dangling one foot until it touched the packed earth. She held to the door frame and eased herself inside, crouching low, trying not to think how she might be stepping into her own grave. The corn shucks rasped beneath her as she settled on the pallet.

“We could do it as easy up here,” Vaughn said, peering at her from the entrance. “It’s good as some old spider hole.”

“I ain’t going to dirty myself rooting around on the ground,” Lily said.

She thought he’d leave the musket outside, but instead Vaughn buckled his knees and leaned, set his left hand on a beam. As he shifted his body to enter, Lily took the metal needles from her dress pocket and laid them behind her.

Vaughn set his rifle against the earthen wall and hunched to take off his coat and unknot the strip of cowhide around his pants. The sunlight made his face appear dark and featureless as if in silhouette. As he moved closer, Lily shifted to the left side of the mattress to make room for him. Lily smelled tobacco on his breath as he pulled his shirt up to his chest and lay down on his back, fingers already fumbling to free his trouser buttons. His sunken belly was so white compared to his face and drab clothing it seemed to glow in the strained light. Lily took one of the needles into her hand. She thought of the hog she’d slaughtered last January, remembering how the liver wrapped itself around the stomach, like a saddle. Not so much difference in a hog’s guts and a man’s, she’d heard one time.

“Shuck off that dress or raise it,” Vaughn said, his fingers on the last button. “I ain’t got time to dawdle.”

“All right,” Lily said, hiking up her hem before kneeling beside him.

She reached behind and grasped the needle. When
Vaughn placed his thumbs between cloth and hips to pull down his trousers, Lily raised her right arm and fell forward, her left palm set against the needle’s rounded stem so the steel wouldn’t slip through her fingers. She plunged the steel as deep as she could. When the needle stalled a moment on the backbone, Lily pushed harder and the needle point scraped past bone and went the rest of the way through. She felt the smooth skin of Vaughn’s belly and flattened both palms over the needle’s stem. Pin him to the floor if you can, she told herself, pushing out the air in Vaughn’s stomach as the needle point pierced the root cellar’s packed dirt.

Vaughn’s hands stayed on his trousers a moment longer, as though not yet registering what had happened. Lily scrambled to the entrance while Vaughn shifted his forearms and slowly raised his head. He stared at the needle’s rounded stem that pressed into his flesh like a misplaced button. His legs pulled inward toward his hips, but he seemed unable to move his midsection, as if the needle had indeed pinned him to the floor. Lily took the rifle and set it outside, then pulled herself out of the hole as Vaughn loosed a long lowing moan.

She watched from above, waiting to see if she’d need to figure out how to use the musket. After almost a minute, Vaughn’s mouth grimaced, the teeth locking together like a dog tearing meat. He pushed himself backward with his forearms until he was able to
slump his head and shoulders against the dirt wall. Lily could hear his breaths and see the rise of his chest. His eyes moved, looking her way now. Lily did not know if Vaughn could actually see her. He raised his right hand a few inches off the root cellar’s floor, palm upward as he stretched his arm toward the entrance, as if to catch what light leaked in from the world. Lily closed and latched the cellar door, covered the entrance with the rhododendron branches before walking back to the cabin.

The child was awake and fretting. Lily went to the crib but before taking up the boy she pulled back the bedding and removed the butcher knife, placed it in her dress pocket. She nursed the child and then fixed herself a supper of cornbread and beans. As Lily ate, she wondered if the Confederate had told anyone in Boone where he was headed. Maybe, but probably he wouldn’t have said which particular farm, wouldn’t have known himself which one until he found something to take. Ponder something else, she told herself, and thought again of names for the coming child. Girl names, because Granny Triplett had already rubbed Lily’s belly and told her this one would be a girl. Lily said those she’d considered out loud and again settled on Mary, because it would be the one to match her boy’s name.

After she’d cleared the table and changed the child’s swaddlings, Lily set him in the crib and went outside,
scattering shell corn for the chickens before walking back through the rhododendron to the root cellar. There was less light now, and when she peered though the slats in the wood door she could see just enough to make out Vaughn’s body slumped against the earthen wall. Lily watched several minutes for any sign of movement, listened for a moan, a sigh, the exhalation of a breath. Only then did she slowly unlatch the door. Lily opened it a few inches at a time until she could see clearly. Vaughn’s chin rested on his chest, his legs splayed out before him. The needle was still in his stomach, every bit as deep as before. His face was white as his belly now, bleached looking. She quietly closed the door and latched it softly, as if a noise might startle Vaughn back to life. Lily gathered the rhododendron branches and concealed the entrance.