A Parchment of Leaves

by Silas House

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Critically acclaimed author Silas House's A Parchment of Leaves was named Kentucky Novel of the Year and won a special achievement award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. In 1917 rural Kentucky, Saul Sullivan marries a beautiful Cherokee woman named Vine. They weather the storm of prejudice, but when Saul temporarily moves away to work a better job, his younger brother makes advances on Vine that are not welcome and ultimately lead to tragedy.

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

THERE WAS MUCH TALK that spring of a Cherokee girl who was able to invoke curses on anyone passing her threshold. Several men had ventured up into the place called Redbud Camp and had come back either dead or badly mauled. One man was killed when he walked off a high cliff and was shattered on the rocks in the gorge below; it was widely reported that every bone in his body was broken. Another, hired to burn out the heavy brush near the summit, was struck by an unlucky wind that caught his clothes afire and burned most of his body, including his face. A young man claimed that his ax was overtaken by a spirit in midswing and came down to chop off the toes of his left foot.

The men who died on the mountain went to their graves knowing what had really happened, and since all of the men who survived were either married or betrothed, they too were unable to tell the true reason for their misfortune. They had been possessed by the Cherokee girl standing at her gate, but she had not done it intentionally. The truth was this: her beauty had so transfixed their thoughts that they could not keep their minds on the work at hand. They could think of nothing but her eyes—round and black as berries—and her brown arms, propped up on the slats of the paling fence. They saw her strong jawbone curving toward her chin, her blue-black hair flapping behind her like clothes hung out to dry. They were mesmerized by the image they had caught of her, and they carried it up the mountain in such a way that they neglected to watch where they were walking or the angle of their axes or the intensity of the fires they built.

But most people around those parts had not been to Redbud Camp and knew nothing of the girl’s paralyzing looks. They reckoned she was simply able to conjure curses and hexes. All of the men had spoken of her in their wild pain when they were being doctored, and the rumors of the girl-witch began to fly.

She had a perfectly good motive, anyway. Tate Masters was the richest man in the nearby town of Black Banks, and he owned all of the land in the head of Redbud Camp. He had decided to build himself a mansion on the mountain’s crest. Masters had made it well known that his plan was to run the Cherokees off.

The Cherokees demanded that Masters prove he owned the mountain by producing a deed. Their families had settled on Redbud Camp nearly eighty years before, and no one had questioned their claim to the land until now. He made no proof of his ownership, but he didn’t have to. None of the clerks or magistrates would hear the Cherokees’ complaints. He was left free to build. Masters hired team after team of men to go and clear the land, but to no avail. After so many men were killed or hurt on the mountain and word began to spread that it was at the hands of the Cherokee girl, no one would go back.

Masters thought he might never see his land prepared until a young man by the name of Sullivan answered the notice and told him that he was not afraid of anything and certainly didn’t believe in such foolishness as maledictions. He had been looking a long time for the chance to make some money of his own and escape the ever-watchful eyes of his mother.

Saul Sullivan’s mother would not hear of his going up on Redbud Mountain. She believed that such things as spells and witches were as real as Scripture. Esme Sullivan was the kind of woman who kept an acorn on every windowsill to ward off bad spirits, and boiled old shoes in a Dutch oven to guard against snakes coming into the yard. When her cat sat with its back to the fire, she prepared for a snowstorm. Besides, Esme had always been ill at ease around the Cherokees. When she saw them in town, she eyed them suspiciously, as if they might snatch her purse or cut her throat for no reason at all. Some of her people had been killed at the hands of Shawnee warriors, ages ago, and she reckoned the Cherokees would have done the same thing if they had happened upon her family back then.

“You’ll not be taking any such job,” Esme said, slopping beans onto Saul’s plate. “You can ride back into town tomorrow and tell that man to find some other fool.”

“I want to take it,” Saul said. “Masters is paying top dollar, on account of this nonsense about the mountain being witched.”

Esme’s voice was firm. “Ain’t nonsense. Look at all the men that’s got killed or hurt up there.” She hovered over his shoulder as he ate, just as she always did. She never sat down until her boys had been fed. She was a short, slender woman, but she could work from daylight to dark without breaking a sweat. Today, her presence seemed bigger as she stood behind him. “I’ll not have you risk it. You heard me.”

Saul knew better than to argue with her. He didn’t relish being slapped, which was what happened when one of her children talked back, so he said, “All right, then.”

In the morning, Saul got up before daylight and dressed silently. He didn’t make a sound as he pulled on his clothes and laced his shoes, but there was no sneaking past his brother Aaron, who followed Saul everywhere he went. Saul slipped out into the blue light of early morning, and Aaron threw back his covers. Saul was standing near the creek, stretching and listening to the bones in his back pop, when he heard Aaron coming out of the house.

“Get back yonder,” Saul said, without looking at Aaron. The moon hung low and ghost-faced above the mountain. “You’ve got no business up this early.”

“Where you gone to? I want to come with you.”

“I’ve got a hard day’s work ahead,” Saul said, fishing down behind the woodpile to get the bundle of supplies he had hidden there the evening before. “Go back to bed.”

Aaron was only a year younger than Saul, but he was a cane pole of a boy. He took after their mother and was so fragile that Saul always ended up obliging him even when he set out to be firm. Aaron had been spoiled long ago, because Esme gave in to his every whim. When she didn’t, Aaron would sit silently, strumming their father’s old banjo in such a careless way that she gave in out of frustration, if not pity. He was bony but determined, and when he pleaded to go, Saul could not deny him. Saul told Aaron to grab the ax out of the chopping stump and climb on the back of his horse.

Saul steered the horse down the creek while Aaron held tightly about his waist. It was high spring and the morning air smelled as if it were made out of the dogwood and redbud that crowded the mountainside. The flowery scent crept into their mouths and forced the sleep from their eyes. The moon went down and the stars dimmed to the color of sky. By the time they reached Redbud Camp, the sky was messy with peach and lavender light. It seemed that as soon as sunlight touched the ground, the world came awake. Saul could hear hens clucking and pecking, children running out into the yards, women splashing into the creek, their dress tails pinned high on their thighs, to scrub out their clothes on a washboard. The lime-colored leaves seemed transparent in the brightness of new daylight.

Redbud Camp was just seven houses, all crowded in at the mouth of the holler, where the flattest land spread out, bordered on one side by the creek rushing down from the mountain and on the other by the smooth river. The mountain looming behind the houses looked like one peaked clump of lavender, dotted with a few pines and hickories. It was an imposing silhouette against the citrus sky, so wide and big shouldered that Saul expected it to growl at his approach.

“Is it true, about the Cherokee gal?” Aaron asked. He scooted as close to his brother as he could, until his chest rested on Saul’s back. He capped his hands over Saul’s belt buckle.

“Why, no. But if you scared, hop off and walk back to the house.” Saul slowed the horse to a lazy trot, as he didn’t want to stir any dust to settle on the houses. He had always liked Cherokees; he figured they had much in common with his own Irish ancestors, long mistreated in their own homeland. He didn’t know any Cherokees to speak to, but he liked the way they carried themselves in town. They kept their shoulders square and their chins high.

Saul could see the girl standing by the gate from a long way off. The closer he got, the clearer her image became, like a reflection coming together in rippled water. When he could finally see her perfectly, he couldn’t make himself swallow correctly. He felt his mouth fill with water. She was sticking her fingers to the vines of small flowers that were tangled about the fence. When she touched them, they exploded in a burst of color and soft petals. Touch-me-nots. She put one long finger out and grazed a flower nervously, as if she were putting her hand out to be pecked by a hen. A thin smile showed itself across her fine, curved face. Her hair was divided by a perfectly straight, pale brown line down the middle of her head. She did not wear plaits, but let her hair swing behind her. It was so long that the ends of it were white from the dust in the sandy yard. She felt his eyes on her and looked up. The whites of her eyes were as clear as washed eggshells.

She watched them pass. When Saul managed to get his arms to move and tipped his hat to her, she made no motion and did not change her expression. She looked at him the way someone might examine a tree they have not seen before without having anyone there to tell them its name. She leaned against the fence, her lips tightly clenched. He expected her to spit.

The road was quickly swallowed up in redbud trees.

“Hellfire,” he breathed.

“What’d you say that for?” Aaron asked.

Saul did not answer. He ground his heels into the horse’s sides, and they made their way on up the old mountain, the petals of the redbuds brushing against their faces. Many years later, Saul would catch the scent of this tree in springtime and be transported back to this day.

VINE WAS IN THE garden when she heard the man screaming. She paused, then figured it was her imagination. The yells came from high atop Redbud Mountain. Usually it was a woman wailing up there. Everybody said it was the way the sharp wind sometimes caught in the cliffs far up on the mountain’s side, but the sound always made Vine’s ears perk up. Vine liked to think that the crying was the ghost of her great-grandmother Lucinda, of whom there were many good tales. This seemed much more pleasing than the idea of air whistling against rock.

She tried to ignore the screams and pushed her long fingers into the black dirt. The beans were so white they seemed to glow against the soil. Vine loved the feel of earth beneath her fingernails, so rich and soft. She had been planting the beans ever since she was a small child, because her mother said her name was good luck. It seemed true—her vines outgrew everyone else’s, and her beans came about long and firm, never giving way to rot.

She had not been able to sleep all night for thinking of the planting. Seeing her bean vines snaked high around the cornstalks in the summer made her feel like a proud mother watching her children caught up in laughter. It had pained her to wait until midday to begin, but her father would not let her start earlier. The beans not only had to be planted on a day when the signs of the moon were in the arms, according to the almanac, but also couldn’t be put in until midday, when the ground had had plenty of time to awake properly.

Vine raised her head. It was not the wind that always blew on the mountain, nor the mourning of old Lucinda. The man was screaming in such a way that it reminded Vine of the way people went on at funerals. She let her handful of beans fall onto the ground as she stood and capped a straight hand against her forehead to survey the scene. Through the trees, she could see a man trotting down the mountain with a boy across his arms. She had never seen anyone run so fast. Dust kicked up behind him.

Vine ran out to the gate and unlatched it. It was the man who had passed so straight-backed on his horse. He was as pale as the beans she had held in her hand, and his face was long with fear. As soon as he saw her, he sank down in the road with the boy stretched out like an accordion across his legs. “Help me,” he said, as if his mouth were full of dirt.

“What is it?” she asked, leaning down and looking into the boy’s face. His eyes were rolled back in his head. He had either died or fainted; she couldn’t distinguish which.

“Snakebit. It was a copperhead—I seen it go off.”

“Vine?” her mother called from the yard, but Vine did not turn to answer. She sank to her knees and found the wound on the back of the boy’s right shoulder. She pressed two fingers against it. Already the blood had hardened there.

“Give me your knife,” she said, and put her hand out without looking at the horseman. She kept her eyes on the bite.

He seemed not to hear her; he was smoothing the boy’s bangs out of his eyes and rocking him. “Shh, shh,” he whistled, even though the boy was not making a sound.

“Your knife, I said!”

She dug the blade deep into the pulsating wound, and the boy suddenly squirmed beneath her. “Be still,” she said, hateful and firm. She cut a straight line between the marks of the fangs.

“Vine?” her mother called again. She had come down out of the house and was standing at the fence, watching them.

“Mama, get me the snake medicines,” she said.

The man began rocking his brother again. Tears did not show on his face, but he made the low, guttural sounds of crying. “Mother of God,” he said, over and over. “Aaron.”

“Be still, I told you,” she hollered. Suddenly her mother was kneeling down beside her. Vine threw the latch on the lid of the jar and held the wound open with two fingers. She poured in the thick yellow liquid and it quickly began to boil and bubble. Her mother held out the crock of hog fat, and Vine dipped out a great handful. She smoothed the lard over the moving gash until the bubbling subsided.

“Give me your apron, Mama.” Vine tore three strips of cloth from the apron and wound them loosely about the boy’s shoulder, tying it in a small, neat knot.

The boy had passed out and lay limp in the man’s arms, his face smooth. “He’s dead,” the man said. “My brother is dead.”

“Naw, he ain’t dead. That’ll cure him.” Vine pulled her skirt up to her knee and pointed to a wrinkled pink scar on her ankle. “It cured me when I was struck.”

Vine’s mother got up and went back into the house, her heavy stride making it obvious that she did not approve of Vine’s hiking up her skirt. The man looked at her without blinking.

“Pack him on back to your house and let him rest long as he will. He’ll be full of life once he comes to,” she said, and smiled. “You’ll have to make him stay in the bed.”

The man did not move, and in that instant she considered him. His face was well made and his eyes were green as the river water in autumn, but it was his bare shoulders that held her attention. They were dappled with freckles, some tiny, some big as corn kernels. She wondered if his whole body was so beautifully decorated. His skin was covered in a mixture of sweet-smelling sweat and dust from the dry road. She felt like reaching out to wipe away the clump of mud that had somehow caked itself around his brown nipple.

“What was that you put on him?” he asked.

“Snakeweed. An old man up in here put a copperhead and a blacksnake up to fight,” she said. “When the copperhead struck, the blacksnake took off and the old man followed it. It went to a clump of weed beneath the cliffs yonder and latched on until it had sucked all of the juice out. The snake was healed, so the old man made juice of them weeds, and everybody on this creek uses it.”

“And it works?”

She laughed at his look of astonishment. “I ain’t no witch, like they say. You live amongst snakes long enough, and you know how to cure their doings.”

THE WOUND HEALED whole and tight, with just the scar of the knife blade as a reminder. Even though Saul told everyone that the Cherokee girl had saved Aaron’s life, none of them would hear of it. They said she was the very one who had willed the snake to strike in the first place. The only reason Aaron hadn’t died, they said, was that his mother had prayed over him for hours.

“That Indian willed it to keep that land from being cleared,” they said, “and she’s won.”

Saul did not go back to Redbud Camp to clear the land, but not because he was afraid. He told Tate Masters that the Cherokees owned that land and he would have no part in cutting down the mountain. Besides, Saul had not relished the job of sawing down the redbud trees while they were full of their purple bloom. He didn’t tell anybody that he could not bring himself to do it on account of the girl’s beauty as well as her goodwill. He thought of her for a week before his mother gave him the perfect excuse to see her again.

Esme packed a basketful of everything that she could think of: loaves of bread, dried apples, jars of molasses, honey, and jelly, beef jerky, crackling for corn bread. She lined the basket with a piece of her treasured linen and brought it to Saul.

“I’ve studied on it, and it may be that that girl did save him,” she said. She had a hard time admitting that she was wrong, but she always did so when she realized her mistakes. “Take this up there by way of thanks.”

As Saul made his way down the road, he could see Vine standing in the doorway. Only half of her body was visible, and part of her face was lost to the shadows. Dark was the only way he could think to describe her to himself. Her eyes were chips of coal; her lips, the color of peach light at dusk.

When Saul climbed down off the horse, Vine moved slowly out of the door. She walked to the gate and did not smile.

“We don’t take no charity,” she said loudly, as if she wanted everyone to hear.

“Neither do we,” he said. “That’s why I’ve brung this. This is payment for saving my brother. My mother’s sent it.”

“You don’t owe me,” Vine said, and snorted a short laugh. “I couldn’t let him lay there and die.”

“She wants you to have it. Please.” He held out the basket over the fence. “She’ll be insulted if you don’t take it.”

She nodded and took the basket in to her mother, who sent back three cakes of soap. Vine handed him the bundle, which her mother had tied up in oilcloth. “Take these.”

Saul grabbed the reins of his horse and began to walk it away from the fence, but Vine threw open the gate and stepped out into the road. She let her hands be buried in the folds of her skirt.

“I thought your people was afraid of me. Said I was able to kill men that come up in here.”

“I’ve heard tales of that, but I didn’t know it was you,” he lied.

She laughed softly. “You believe in such? That somebody can lay curses?”

“Naw, I never did,” he said, and threw his leg up over the horse. He found his place in the saddle and looked down at her. “But the others do. Ever one of them.”

Vine stroked the strong muscles of the horse’s hind leg and looked Saul straight in the eye. “You ought to believe,” she said. “I’ve got plenty of magic about me.”

Those words flew out of my mouth, as sneaky and surprising as little birds that had been waiting behind my teeth to get out. Apparently, they did the trick. I could see my announcement making a fist around his heart. I was so full of myself, so confident. One thing I knowed I could do was charm a man until he couldn’t hardly stand it.

I wanted Saul Sullivan, plain and simple. That was all there was to it. I didn’t love him—that came later—but I thought that I did. I mistook lust for love, I guess. I knowed that I could fill up some hole that he had inside of himself and hadn’t even been aware of until laying eyes on me. Saul looked to me like he needed to lay his head down in somebody’s lap and let them run their hand in a circle on his back until he was lulled off to sleep. I knowed that I was the person to do it. I had been waiting a long time for such a feeling to come to me.

That whole summer, I kept one eye on the road as I went about my chores. I throwed corn to the chickens without even watching them, bent over to pick beans and looked upside down at the road, where I might see his horse come trotting down foamy mouthed and big eyed. At first, when I caught sight of Saul heading down into Redbud Camp, I would turn back to the task at hand and make him think I hadn’t seen him coming. He’d have to stop at the gate and yell out for me. I did this just to hear him holler. I loved his full-throated cry: “Vine! Come here to me!” I loved to hear my name on his tongue. But as summer steamed on, I couldn’t bring myself to continue such games, and I’d rush out to the road as soon as I seen him coming. I’d throw down the hoe or the bucket of blackberries or whatever I was packing. I’d leave one of my little cousins that I was supposed to be tending to, would rush off the porch even though Mama had ordered me to peel potatoes. The more he come by, the harder it was to stay away from him.

Mama frowned on all of this. Every time I’d get back from being with him, she’d wear a long, dark face and not meet my eyes. “It’s not fitting,” she said. “People ought to court their own kind.”

“There ain’t no Cherokee boys to court,” I said. “They’ve left here.”

“Just the same,” Mama said, and dashed water out onto the yard. Her face was square and unmovable. “Them Irish are all drunks.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at her, even though I knew this would make her furious. “Good Lord, Mama, that’s what they say about Cherokees, too.”

Daddy made no objections. Him and Saul went hunting together and stood around in the yard kicking at the dust while they talked about guns and dogs. Saul brought him quarts of moonshine and sacks of ginseng. We were kin to everybody in Redbud Camp, and when they seen that Daddy had warmed to Saul, they started speaking to me again. Everybody looked up to Daddy, and if he approved of Saul, they felt required to do the same. My aunts Hazel and Zelda and Tressy even seemed to be taken with him. They talked about him while they hung clothes on the line, while they canned kraut in the shade, when everyone gathered to hear Daddy’s hunting tales at dusk.

“Wonder if he’s freckled all over,” Hazel whispered. She was much older than me but had been widowed at a young age, and we had always been like sisters. She laughed behind cupped hands. “You know, down there.”

“You don’t know, do you, Vine?” Tressy asked, jabbing her elbow into my ribs.

“They say the Irish are akin to horses,” Zelda said, “if you know what I mean.”

I had been around horses enough to know what this meant, so when they all collapsed in laughter, I had to join in.

I couldn’t have cared less if they loved him or if they had all hated him and met him at the bridge with snarls and shotguns. I had decided that I was going to have him.

Our courting never took us past the mouth of Redbud. Even though Daddy thought a lot of Saul, he wouldn’t allow it. Daddy had said that I was his most precious stone. “I’ll let you trail from my fingers, but not be plucked,” Daddy told me one evening when Saul came calling.

I didn’t care where we went, as long as he come to see me, but I would have liked to ride off on that fine horse with him a time or two without worrying how far we went. I thought a lot about how it would feel to just slip away, to just wrap my arms around Saul’s waist and take off. We never got to do that, though. We always went down to the confluence of Redbud Creek and the Black Banks River. There was a great big rock there, round as an unbaked biscuit. It had a crooked nose that jutted out over the water. This . . .