Fire Along the Sky
Page 147
Instead, Lily loosened the ties on the book she had carried around with her since Gabriel Oak had given it to her just before he died, and sat in a pool of cold sunshine while she studied the work he had done so long ago, before she was born; before her mother had been born. Gabriel had given her this record of his life for safekeeping, and more than that: he had put a pencil in her hand, and shown her the magic of it.
Standing between the stove and a single glass window, Lily began by sketching the things she saw: the Ratz boys dragging a sledge piled high with firewood, a tabby cat perched at the very top. Hardwork Greber trudging along, bent almost double with the weight of filled buckets. Goody Cunningham with her new granddaughter strapped to her chest, squinting into the sun. A wolf at the edge of the clearing, watching the hens that pecked and strutted around the Hindles' well.
And then, when Lily was just starting to lose herself in the work, Jemima Wilde walked past the window, her head wrapped in a bright blue shawl, her cheeks chapped apple red with the cold. There was a bruise on her jaw, faded to yellow.
She walked straight-backed, head held high, baskets over both arms. The mud was ankle deep and treacherous, and Jemima's mouth was clamped tight in concentration.
Even wrapped against the cold her thickening waist was plain to see, and more than that: how it suited her, to be with child. Ripening fruit, heavy and full of promise. The pencil in Lily's fingers trembled and she put it down, but she could not look away.
Jemima was too concerned with getting where she needed to be to have looked in Lily's direction.
You must make up your own mind what it is you want.
Lily drew in a sharp breath, the small sound filling the empty meetinghouse.
As a younger girl she had sat here with her mother and listened to sermons, first from timid Mr. Gathercole and then from a long line of visiting preachers, none of whom stayed in Paradise very long. Some of them were good men and dull preachers, others made a great lot of noise but no sense at all, but none of them had suspected their sermons had been carried up the mountain to Lake in the Clouds, where Elizabeth Bonner had engaged her children in their dissection, as a person would take apart a gun to examine its parts and find out how it worked. Rarely had any of those preachers been lucky enough to have his sermon survive Elizabeth Bonner's close scrutiny.
Strive to favor the rational over the subjective as you select one course of action among those available to you.
Jemima was almost to the trading post now, balancing baskets as she lifted a foot high and set it down again. From here she could have been anyone, any woman on her way to buy pins or cornmeal.
With a sigh, Lily let her breath go and with it went, quietly, quickly, all the anger she had been holding in reserve for somebody truly deserving. For Jemima, who had finally appeared and presented herself as nothing but another woman who had done her best to pick wisely from among those few poor choices available to her.
Even after Jemima was gone, Lily stayed just where she was for many long minutes.
One of the surest signs of spring in the village of Paradise was the arrival of Black Abe, the hole digger. He came to dig any kind of hole people might need: privies and wells and sawyer's trenches. One of the most important services he performed in Paradise was to dig the long, deep trenches for charcoal burning, which was his primary occupation.
But most of all, when Black Abe came to Paradise it meant that it was time to put all those who had died in the coldest months to rest. He would dig as many graves as they needed, each of them a perfect hole six feet deep with straight sides that looked to have been plastered in place. The digging of a proper grave was an art, and one that Black Abe had mastered. The men of Paradise were satisfied to leave the spring digging to the strange old man.
Black Abe had come over from Africa on a slave ship when he was a young man. How and when he had won his freedom was a story he told willingly in a hoarse, high singsong, but never in the same way twice. Sometimes the ship was called the Santa Maria and sometimes the Cornwall; sometimes he had been bought by a Dutch farmer from Long Island and other times he had gone to a one-eyed silversmith in Philadelphia. The number of his wives and children shifted like the clouds overhead, and the number of his own years with them. But he could tell anybody who wanted to know the names of every person who had been buried in one of his graves, and the day it was dug.
He was a small man, a wiry twisting of muscle, black as the coal he burned, with great wide hands and feet that had never, as far as the people of Paradise could tell, known shoes. He always arrived in Paradise on foot, leading his mule; he would leave that way too, but nobody had ever been able to figure out just where he went. Even Curiosity, who was the oldest woman in the village now and whose memory was as sharp as flint, knew very little about Black Abe. Or at least there was not too much she was willing to share.
His first stop was always Curiosity's kitchen door, where he was received with her warmest welcome, a substantial meal, the winter's news, and the promise of work. The kilns and ovens in the doctor's laboratory consumed more charcoal than all the other families of Paradise put together and only slightly less than Joshua Hench's forge. When he was done at the doctor's, he would move on to the blacksmithy, where Curiosity's daughter Daisy would take over feeding him.
In the chamber they shared on the second floor of the doctor's house, Callie and Martha watched the weather and calculated when Black Abe might appear. They wondered if he would stay, once the graves were dug, or if he would be sent away: Doctor Todd was dead, after all, and Hannah was gone away to Canada and Jennet with her. Even Ethan, who had never really liked working in the laboratory, was living in Manhattan with his uncle and aunt Spencer while he studied at the college. They took the question to Curiosity, who fixed her gaze on them and laughed out loud.
Standing between the stove and a single glass window, Lily began by sketching the things she saw: the Ratz boys dragging a sledge piled high with firewood, a tabby cat perched at the very top. Hardwork Greber trudging along, bent almost double with the weight of filled buckets. Goody Cunningham with her new granddaughter strapped to her chest, squinting into the sun. A wolf at the edge of the clearing, watching the hens that pecked and strutted around the Hindles' well.
And then, when Lily was just starting to lose herself in the work, Jemima Wilde walked past the window, her head wrapped in a bright blue shawl, her cheeks chapped apple red with the cold. There was a bruise on her jaw, faded to yellow.
She walked straight-backed, head held high, baskets over both arms. The mud was ankle deep and treacherous, and Jemima's mouth was clamped tight in concentration.
Even wrapped against the cold her thickening waist was plain to see, and more than that: how it suited her, to be with child. Ripening fruit, heavy and full of promise. The pencil in Lily's fingers trembled and she put it down, but she could not look away.
Jemima was too concerned with getting where she needed to be to have looked in Lily's direction.
You must make up your own mind what it is you want.
Lily drew in a sharp breath, the small sound filling the empty meetinghouse.
As a younger girl she had sat here with her mother and listened to sermons, first from timid Mr. Gathercole and then from a long line of visiting preachers, none of whom stayed in Paradise very long. Some of them were good men and dull preachers, others made a great lot of noise but no sense at all, but none of them had suspected their sermons had been carried up the mountain to Lake in the Clouds, where Elizabeth Bonner had engaged her children in their dissection, as a person would take apart a gun to examine its parts and find out how it worked. Rarely had any of those preachers been lucky enough to have his sermon survive Elizabeth Bonner's close scrutiny.
Strive to favor the rational over the subjective as you select one course of action among those available to you.
Jemima was almost to the trading post now, balancing baskets as she lifted a foot high and set it down again. From here she could have been anyone, any woman on her way to buy pins or cornmeal.
With a sigh, Lily let her breath go and with it went, quietly, quickly, all the anger she had been holding in reserve for somebody truly deserving. For Jemima, who had finally appeared and presented herself as nothing but another woman who had done her best to pick wisely from among those few poor choices available to her.
Even after Jemima was gone, Lily stayed just where she was for many long minutes.
One of the surest signs of spring in the village of Paradise was the arrival of Black Abe, the hole digger. He came to dig any kind of hole people might need: privies and wells and sawyer's trenches. One of the most important services he performed in Paradise was to dig the long, deep trenches for charcoal burning, which was his primary occupation.
But most of all, when Black Abe came to Paradise it meant that it was time to put all those who had died in the coldest months to rest. He would dig as many graves as they needed, each of them a perfect hole six feet deep with straight sides that looked to have been plastered in place. The digging of a proper grave was an art, and one that Black Abe had mastered. The men of Paradise were satisfied to leave the spring digging to the strange old man.
Black Abe had come over from Africa on a slave ship when he was a young man. How and when he had won his freedom was a story he told willingly in a hoarse, high singsong, but never in the same way twice. Sometimes the ship was called the Santa Maria and sometimes the Cornwall; sometimes he had been bought by a Dutch farmer from Long Island and other times he had gone to a one-eyed silversmith in Philadelphia. The number of his wives and children shifted like the clouds overhead, and the number of his own years with them. But he could tell anybody who wanted to know the names of every person who had been buried in one of his graves, and the day it was dug.
He was a small man, a wiry twisting of muscle, black as the coal he burned, with great wide hands and feet that had never, as far as the people of Paradise could tell, known shoes. He always arrived in Paradise on foot, leading his mule; he would leave that way too, but nobody had ever been able to figure out just where he went. Even Curiosity, who was the oldest woman in the village now and whose memory was as sharp as flint, knew very little about Black Abe. Or at least there was not too much she was willing to share.
His first stop was always Curiosity's kitchen door, where he was received with her warmest welcome, a substantial meal, the winter's news, and the promise of work. The kilns and ovens in the doctor's laboratory consumed more charcoal than all the other families of Paradise put together and only slightly less than Joshua Hench's forge. When he was done at the doctor's, he would move on to the blacksmithy, where Curiosity's daughter Daisy would take over feeding him.
In the chamber they shared on the second floor of the doctor's house, Callie and Martha watched the weather and calculated when Black Abe might appear. They wondered if he would stay, once the graves were dug, or if he would be sent away: Doctor Todd was dead, after all, and Hannah was gone away to Canada and Jennet with her. Even Ethan, who had never really liked working in the laboratory, was living in Manhattan with his uncle and aunt Spencer while he studied at the college. They took the question to Curiosity, who fixed her gaze on them and laughed out loud.
