The Memory of Lemon (6 page)

I cataloged as much as possible before wandering over to the two little cabins joined by the dogtrot. Both doors were locked, but I peered in the windows. There wasn't much to see. The rooms were sparsely furnished.

Again I tasted spice, and I thought I heard a fiddle playing. I looked back toward the barn and saw that all three of my friends were still engrossed in it. I sat down on the steps of the dogtrot, held my notebook and pen, and stilled my mind.

Thoughts of Ben and Luke and Charlie Wheeler tried to invade my peaceful moment, but I brushed them away.

I crossed the threshold into my happy place, where I transformed colors and flavors and stories into desserts. I imagined Lydia's wedding in the tobacco barn. Wedding pie. Tarts and cookies with the flavors of her grandmother's garden.

As I let my imagination soar, I had a feeling that the stories that came from lemon and spice would lead to more than just creating the perfect wedding desserts. Much more.

I breathed in and breathed out, centering myself. I had to be patient. The flashbacks would come when they were ready. When I was ready.

I closed my eyes, imagined the citrus and spice on my tongue.

Lemon, which usually signified clarity and sharpness, now also whispered, “Wanderer.”

Spice lingered, as it always did, the flavor that evoked times past. Comforting. Healing. And then it, too, was gone.

My body thrummed with the energy I knew to be vivid intuition.

Wanderers. Healers. They had something important to tell me. Not long since, I had used my gift to reunite long-lost sisters.

Maybe this time I could bring a wanderer home and heal a family.

Lydia's family?

Or mine?

I began to
sketch.

AUTUMN 1825

AUGUSTA, KENTUCKY

The Healer

Abigail Newcomb sat in the rush-seated chair on the dogtrot, the covered area that connected her two one-room cabins. With a needle and stout thread, she strung pods of leather britches beans through their centers to hang and dry for winter.

Her hands were busy, but her mind wandered. She looked down the rise and out over the water below, as placid and river green as if it knew every mystery of life.

The river had its moods, just like people. Frothy on a bright, windy day. Murky during spring floods. Dark and somber in winter. Blue, green, brown, black, gray. The river was like a friend that spoke to her.

Abigail rose, hanging the latest length of beans from a peg in the rafters of the small cabin on the left side of the dogtrot, which she used as a workroom.

She always loved the woodsy smell of the tiny work cabin, a commingling of drying herbs, flowers, and roots. For Abigail, it was the scent of comfort: bunches of dittany for the tea that soothed headaches and colds, leafy sage for sore throats and hoarseness, feverfew for easing pain, spicebush for melancholy.

On hickory-hooped screens supported by narrow wooden benches, recently dug comfrey roots were drying; they were good for dysentery and female debility or in a salve for aching joints. On another screen were the orange-red rose hips she had snipped from her rosa rugosas. She would make a cheerful cordial with the inner seeds of the hips, sour in flavor, which helped put the bloom back into little cheeks after a winter of salted and dried foods.

This little cabin was also where her husband used to plane a board, turn a spindle, or notch dovetails so the bottom and sides of a drawer would fit together. The really heavy work of sawing boards from a hewn log he did outside, as she did her gardening and gathering.

She took a splint broom and swept dried leaves and seeds from the floor. She redded up the baskets and tools, so everything was tidy. She set out the plate of soup beans and a generous hunk of corn bread, covered with a homespun cloth. She had brought the food over from the identical cabin on the other side of the dogtrot, the space she used for cooking and sleeping. She placed a bucket of spring water, a hollow gourd full of soft lye soap, and a length of soft flannel nearby. The old quilt lay folded on a bench.

There was nothing more to do. She shut the door and sat down again in the dogtrot, halfway between her working world and her abiding world. She listened to the sounds of night falling.

As the light faded and the far bank of the Ohio turned from green to purple, her ears pricked up.

She loved the rustling and the whoosh of air as her dark-bodied guinea fowl flew up to roost in the trees bordering the garden. Awake, they chirped when they searched the ground for insects to eat. But they would caw loudly, and then make squeaky cries, if anything disturbed their sleep.

When darkness fell, Abigail retreated to the other tiny cabin. When she shut and barred the door for the night, the glow of the fire illuminated the walls, and the night sounds quieted. She was snug and safe here, protected by each wall of nine hewn logs of oak and elm and poplar that her man had felled, dragged here with the mules, and notched into place. She had done the chinking with stones and the white clay she had dug up from the creek.

He knew his wood, did Isaac Newcomb. Hickory, strong yet streaked dark and light; not pleasing to the eye for furniture, but strong enough for a tool handle. It also produced a fragrant smoke to flavor a kettle of soup beans or smoke a ham. Isaac favored cherry, with its smooth fine grain and a reddish color, for a chest of drawers or a side table. Oak was too hard to work by hand, but it made a stout cabin log. Isaac liked tulipwood for a hanging cupboard, as it wasn't too heavy to suspend by a peg on the wall. Abigail didn't have the knickknacks and folderol to display that city women favored. But the rendering of her daughter and grandchild by Mr. Audubon took pride of place, tacked up on the wall right by her chair.

When she and Isaac had been in this cabin just a year, he took his winter-made cupboards downriver to Queen City and came back with her fiddle.

Just the feel of it made her glad. Sitting in the old blue rocker by the fire, she nestled the fiddle between her chin and shoulder,
feeling the smooth contours of this happy marriage of two woods. Spruce, with its vertical, wavy grain, on the top front, and the golden brown, striped tiger maple on the body.

Together, they gave the best sound. Some said a mournful sound.

But it was all the company she needed of an evening. She could summon him back with song. She could summon anyone, it would seem, drifting between two worlds.

Abigail had heard that the dead did not always know they were dead, and it was unfinished business that kept them tethered to their old life. Isaac had been a good man. What was his unfinished business that he could not leave this place?

As she raised the bow, it seemed almost to shimmer in her right hand. The motion traveled down her arm, building up to a sinuous wave that skimmed over the strings and made the first beseeching note. The melody swelled, crested, then broke, as clear as water from the cave spring.

Black is the color of my true love's hair

His face so soft and wondrous fair

The purest eyes

And the bravest hands

I love the ground whereon he stands

I love the ground whereon he stands.

She half closed her eyes and saw Isaac again, a wraith floating in the darkest corner of the cabin. She sighed. It did no good to call out to him or try to touch. He would only disappear.

She played the rest of the song and then old favorites like “Shady Grove” and “Barbry Allen.”

When her arm got tired, she put the fiddle down and sang in her thin and reedy voice. As the embers died, pictures flickered through her mind of their courting days in Philadelphia, when they had walked down the paths of Bartram's Garden to the river's edge, pledging their love as the moon rose and the water glimmered with milky light. When they sang, the river echoed their voices.

The guinea fowl called out from their perch in the trees.

She heard the workroom cabin door swing open on its rusty hinge, then softly shut. Another traveler had found the way to her home and she was glad to be able to offer this stranger a place to rest, if only for a night. Abigail put her fiddle away in its case and placed it back on the carved shelf that Isaac had made.

And when she was ready to climb the ladder to her pallet bed in the loft, she sang good night to her beloved.

Oh, I love my love

And well he knows

Yes, I love the ground whereon he goes

And still I hope

That the time will come

When he and I will be as one

When he and I will be as one.

For the first time since Isaac had passed years before, she had a powerful knowing that made her body tremble. The sensation shivered from the top of her head, down her spine, to the soles of her feet. She would be with her husband again.

Soon.

LATE FEBRUARY 1826

AUGUSTA, KENTUCKY

“I can't go back there,” the young girl said. Her dark, thin face had a sheen that belied her shivering in the early morning chill.

She had startled Abigail, who hadn't expected to see anyone still in the workroom cabin. The travelers were usually gone by daybreak.

Abigail slowly walked toward the girl. She leaned over and pulled the quilt up over her rounded belly, taking in the clean head scarf, the too-big shoes neatly arranged beside the pallet bed, and her worried eyes.

“Let me get a fire going and I'll make us some tea. Get you some breakfast. Been travelin' long?”

The girl nodded yes and then grimaced.

Abigail put the back of her hand to the girl's forehead. No fever.

She rose and walked through the cabin door, across the dogtrot, to the twin cabin on the other side. She stooped at the fireplace and swept a few coals into her heavy iron frying pan, then brought them across.

Back in her workroom cabin, Abigail swept out the previous day's ashes and laid the fire, adding kindling and seasoned oak logs that a thankful first-time father had split for her. In a few seconds, she saw the satisfying plume of smoke rise with the first flame. The fire began to crackle and put out heat.

There was still water in the copper teakettle, so she added a bunch of dried dittany. She set the kettle to boil next to the fire.

“Did you eat what I left last night?” Abigail asked.

“Yes, ma'am. Thank you.”

“I've birthed many babies around here. Do you want me to see how your baby's doing?”

The girl nodded.

“Well, if we're going to be on such intimate terms, maybe we need to introduce ourselves. I'm Abigail Newcomb.”

“My name's Safronia Birdsall. My people call me Fronnie, but he calls me his little bird,” she said with a tremor of distaste that she couldn't quite hide. “That be Mr. Birdsall, over by Ol' Washington.”

“I know of him,” said Abigail, trying to keep a neutral expression. The Birdsalls owned a big brick house in Old Washington, about twenty miles to the south and east, and a tobacco farm worked by their slaves. She had ridden over on the cart with Isaac when he delivered a cherry chest of drawers for their sons' bedroom. The trip took so long, they had had to spend the night. Mrs. Birdsall gave them a cramped, cold attic room; they took their supper with the house slaves. “You've been walkin' a good day or two.”

Abigail splayed her hands over the girl's belly while she looked at her face. Skinny, not much over thirteen, fourteen years old. Scared, but plucky—or desperate. Abigail pressed firmly in a circular motion, checking on the progress of the baby, humming a tuneless song as she did. The girl's hips were thankfully wide enough, but that didn't always ensure an easy delivery in one so young.

“Was that you playin' the fiddle last night?” Fronnie asked.

Abigail nodded.

“At the last house, they said that'd be the sign to go on in.”

Abigail felt the baby kick down low. She smiled at Fronnie. The girl tried to smile back, but turned her head to the side as a tear trickled down her cheek.

“What's the matter, Fronnie?”

“I cain't tell no one.”

“You can tell me.” Abigail stroked the girl's arm through the blanket.

The girl closed her eyes tight as another contraction took hold.

A minute or so later, Fronnie turned to look at Abigail.

“Miz Birdsall, she hate me. And Mr. Birdsall, he just turn his back.”

Abigail did not have to wonder why that was. She knew all too well.

Fronnie sat up slightly, propped on her elbows. “I don't want them sellin' my chile. I seen them do that to the other girls. Sol' off a chile like it was a calf.”

Abigail sighed, then smiled at Fronnie. “Nobody's goin' to hurt this baby, now that it's ready to come into the world.”

Fronnie relaxed a little bit.

“My sister Celie ran off, up in the Ohio country, to Leb'nun,” she said. “Celie's free now. I reckon I can git me and the baby there. Once we get over the river, we're free, too.”

“Well, not today,” said Abigail, patting the girl's arm. “Won't Mr. Birdsall be sending riders out looking for you?”

“Nah. He's at the tabaccah auction in Maysville. That's why I took off when I did.”

When the tea was ready, Abigail poured her a cup. “I put some
black cohosh and cramp bark in it, too. Helps speed things up,” she told Fronnie.

Fronnie sat up and sipped the tea.

Another pain gripped the girl. She clutched her belly and breathed hard.

By late afternoon, as the shadows drew in, Abigail built up the fire so that Fronnie and her baby girl would stay warm. She brought her rocker and a yarn blanket over from the abiding cabin so she could sit and watch over them.

—

“When did you say that Mr. Birdsall was comin' back?” Abigail asked Fronnie, as the young mother suckled her baby by the fire the next afternoon.

“Well, he come back on Sunday after breakfast. Miz Birdsall, she be at church all day.”

We will have to leave tonight, then
.

She hated the thought of taking this girl with a new-mint child out into the cold, but it had to be done. It wasn't safe to stay here longer.

While Fronnie and the baby rested, Abigail lit the lantern and hung it from the tree branch so that the Lovejoys would know she was coming across. She gathered six little squares of blue and white ticking that she had intended to use in a coverlet, but would now be the baby's diapers. She grabbed her wool shawl and her late husband's buckskin coat and wool muffler.

At moonrise, Abigail helped Fronnie and the baby, both wrapped up in her shawl, down to the skiff at the riverbank. The
river was down, maybe about two feet. But that was normal this time of year, when ice jams further upriver held back the normal current.