Fleetie's Crossing Read online

  As I sat there at the table alone, I let my mind wander over the fun that was coming at Decoration. Early in the morning, just as soon as we would set our feet and eyes up the mountain to the first of the three graveyards, the stories would begin. Each of the women in turn would tell about mothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, brothers, great-grands, and great-great-grands as far back as memory ran. Before the day was over, everyone would be drawn in and would cry, tease, laugh, and relive the past. Even if we were silent for a few minutes, which was rare, the silences served to give homage to the bonds of life to earth and earth to death.

  Decoration Day honored our dead right here in the midst of life. This annual trek up the mountain taught me about life’s respect for death and our relatives now gone. It was paper flowers because creating paper flowers was a gift. It was about taking food baskets because the living were required to go on living and about remembering and caring.

  Mother had not come back into the kitchen, so I began clearing the table, but my mind went right back to the fun just ahead. For Jane and me, Decoration was a day to spend absolutely free to revel in our daddy’s culture. Mother worked hard to smother most of Daddy’s early way of life from our daily existence. We rarely got to see as much of it as would be showered all around us during Decoration. Growing up with parents from two cultures, I always felt pulled between the two. If I leaned toward Mother’s way of life, then I felt guilty about Daddy being left out, and besides, Leatha and all the rest of the Sargeants, even hateful old Burl, felt as much a part of my family as those of us who lived at the top of the hill. Decoration was one place where their competition seemed not as important. It was almost as good as a free jump on a Monopoly board filled with opposing hotels.

  It worked better for everyone if Jane and I spent the night with the Sargeants so we would be handy to start off before daylight. Sleeping over was the first adventure—seven children, two beds. Each bed was a tumble of arms and legs laced together in a futile search for a bit of mattress. No one thought about comfort. The pure joy of being together with the promise of Decoration was enough for all of us.

  Well before daylight, we gobbled down Fleetie’s breakfast of cold biscuits, apple butter, and strong coffee. It was doubly delicious to Jane and me because no such menu ever appeared on our table. Coffee was forbidden, and cold biscuits were broken up for chickens. Nessa had braided all six heads so tightly, our eyes slanted. She was the eldest and the only one whose hair was allowed to flow loose. Even Fleetie’s curly hair was pulled into a stern knot, a total waste. In an hour or two, all her auburn ringlets would work out of the pins and, to her way of thinking, leave her looking disrespectful to the dead. The truth was that when her hair turned curly like that, she looked younger and sweeter. Her dead relatives probably liked seeing her look like she did when she was a little girl.

  As we left the yard, all of us picked up something: a picnic basket, baskets of paper flowers, buckets for water, rags, heavy brushes, and tools, especially the grubbing hoe. It had been a year since anyone had been to the grave sites to work, and the year’s growth would be heavy. During the first mile of our walk, we were joined by other relatives from both sides, and they also carried the same loads we did. Death was never the focus during the trek up the railroad bed. There were no long faces on Decoration, and each new person melted into the group, laughing and teasing.

  We left the railroad track and began the long climb up a narrow mountain path, steep enough to have been carved by mountain goats. It wound itself around the hill and then turned back on itself so that the front of the group would pass the back half, each going a different direction.

  The boys used the pass to start on one another. “Anybody can be slow. What’s the weather like up there? We’ve got the food. I’ve got the grubbin’ hoe. You’ll have to dig with your hands.” The banter broke the group into two camps—leaders and followers.

  “Remember when Dorotha was little and got so far behind, she sat down and refused to go another step?” asked Fleetie.

  “I remember I had to go back and get her lazy bones and carry her the rest of the way,” said Nessa.

  “Don’t start, Nessa, I had growing pains.”

  “You had growing pains between your ears. You were being plain good for nothing if you ask me.”

  Ahead, they could see the front of the group pass through the moss-covered rock fence at the Howard cemetery. As each of us walked through, we fell into teams. The adults gravitated toward a favorite chore, and the kids picked adults to follow. No one was too young or too old. The work of Decoration challenged every person making the trip. Without the hard work, there was no reason for the hours of crafting flowers, the long walk, and the anticipation. Proper respect was paid only if we poured enough sweat over it.

  I stayed close to Fleetie and her kids most of the morning. She was the stone cleaner, and we had to make trip after trip down the nearby ravine to carry water. With scraping and hard brushing, she slowly removed the gathered moss, droppings, and traces of ivy tendrils. When they were cleaned, she poured a whole bucket over each stone.

  Leatha teased Fleetie, “Mommy, you trying to baptize them all over again?” She dodged a swat from her mother’s stiff long-handled brush.

  By midmorning, Dorotha took pity on us and helped carry the heavy water buckets, while Susanna found a shady spot to rest. Dolly and Susanna had already helped the others attack the heavy growth of weeds and scrubby bushes. They pulled out every root and snag.

  Fleetie wiped her face and leaned back against a big oak tree. “Whooee, I’m about wore out. You kids decorate, while we catch our breath.” There were no sweeter words. Now the fun began.

  We moved the baskets nearer the graves and began to select the brilliant-colored flowers. There were roses, daisies, daffodils, carnations, dahlias, lilies, and even the very-hard-to-make hydrangea. We arranged the flowers on the cleared graves under the shadow of each clean stone. We fell into an easy pattern of movement. First, we placed one color, perhaps yellow then red, followed by pink, green, and orange. Each grave received a bouquet nestled close to the stone with sprays of paper leaves trailing across the length of the mounded earth. Each family had its own distinctive decorating style. The Hensleys across the valley covered their graves completely. The Clems encircled the graves. The Howards used only green and yellow flowers. Some had even made arrangements that perched on top of the headstones.

  The vivid colors made the little cemetery come alive. It looked as carefree as a day at the circus. You might think a giant piñata had spilled every hue in the rainbow across the green earth and gray stones. No trace of neglect remained in the small cemetery. The riot of color was matched by the outpouring of laughter and teasing. I wondered if down in the depths of their resting places, the ancestors and relatives were smiling too.

  While we finished distributing the garlands and bouquets, the women opened the food baskets and spread a meal of cornbread, fatback, chow-chow, and slices of dried apple stack cake. Dorotha carried up one last bucket of cold spring water for drinking, and the feasting began. The phrase “remember when” began story after story about those sleeping under the flowers.

  “Remember when Pappy got caught in the clothesline trying to catch a coon?”

  “Remember when these poor little twins were born, and it snowed for two weeks?”

  “Remember how Aunt Ethel could sing like a bird, and all Uncle Ned could do was pat his foot?”

  “That was a pair if ever you saw one.”

  There were stories and more stories, and I relished every one of them and promised myself that I would write them down so I would never forget them. I was fascinated by the drama of years and folks gone by. None of us seemed to get tired of hearing the old tales, but there was another cemetery to clear, and the picnic had to end. Every one of us would have lingered, but both sides of the clan had to be remembered.

  As our gro
up moved across the brow of the hill, I wondered if maybe we had made the ancient Clems who were resting deep in the ground happy for a little while. Maybe they were basking in all the bright colors and the memory of the lively visit. I had never had any appetite for spook stories and cemetery ghostings. One work trip on Decoration Day was good medicine for that silliness. Those graves held real people who had left us but whose stories were important to those still living. If we were lucky, their spirits might linger, but there were no made-up sheet-wrapped ghosts.

  We left the old cemetery in a line. I, along with Leatha and some of the other kids, walked behind Fleetie, but her steps slowed just at the edge of the pines that enclosed the Clement graves. Just a few dozen feet to the right of the cemetery, she pointed out a late blooming dogwood.

  “Look, Rachel! I remember how Pappy loved them dogwood blooms. He told the crucifixion story to everyone that he could chase down ever’ time it bloomed. I’m gonna cut some for his grave. You go on. I’ll catch up in a minute,” Fleetie said.

  She pulled out her knife and began to trim a large blooming branch. The rest of the kids who were walking behind us headed on down the path. Leatha and I waited.

  Fleetie carried her branch of bloom back to Daddy Clement’s grave. Just as she bent over, I saw her shiver as if she’d felt an uneasy chill. I followed her eyes as she looked across the stone. She stepped back and then went still as a statue. Her keen eyes searched the dark shadows along the back of the short fence.

  I heard her whisper to herself, “Fleet, don’t you be acting quare.” She even took a step forward as though she was trying to shake it off, but in spite of herself, Daddy Clement was right there. I could feel it too, but mostly, I could see what was happening because of Fleetie’s reaction.

  She said, “Don’t go? Why, Pap, I ain’t going nowhere in this world. Rest now. We’re all fine.” She closed her eyes and shook her head as if to shut out something she didn’t want to hear. Then I heard it myself, muffled and quiet but real.

  “I say, girl, don’t you do it. You need to stay near. Hear me now. Don’t never go.”

  Fleetie turned her eyes from the stone and walked toward the cluster of pine trees, looking as if she was following someone.

  Leatha was watching her and called out, “Mommy! Where you going?”

  Fleetie turned away and crossed the cemetery and stood looking into the deep woods. “I’m coming. Just go on, I’ll catch up,” she yelled down the long stony path. She shivered and glanced back into the darkness at the woody shadows once more, but the moment must have passed because she turned and walked back to where we were waiting. Sensible, hard-working Fleetie was not given to conjure, but the rest of the day, I could see her looking off as if her mind was far away, and I could not shake off the feeling that Pap Clement had been near.

  We moved across the steep path on the way up over the summit of the mountain to the Howards’ burying ground. There was where Burl’s people were buried, and I imagined that they too were waiting for the gaiety and release of Decoration. There was no time to linger.

  Quarreling under her breath, Fleetie hurried us the rest of the way along the mountain path. “I must be getting funny in the head,” she whispered aloud but not really to us.

  Leatha winked at me and rolled her eyes. It was her “parents drive me crazy” look. She had not heard Pap like I had, and I didn’t know for sure that I had really heard him or just thought I did. Maybe I was the one getting funny in the head.

  We caught up with the rest of the group, and Fleetie began scraping the nearest moss-covered stone. “Leatha, get me a bucket of water right quick now.”

  Everyone was back at work again, and the comfortable ritual of Decoration continued. The Howard plot was more open, and the additional sunlight made for extra vine and weed growth. Before we could even finish the cleaning and grubbing, we could hear the gunshots and firecrackers in the valley.

  “Lordy, they have started that old drinking early,” said Susanna. “You’d think they could wait until the flowers was spread.”

  “I never knowed a man who could wait for nuthin’,” said Nessa.

  “I swear, Nessa! You’re awful young to be so soured on men,” said Dolly.

  “I’m sixteen and old enough to marry one of them if I was that silly, which I’m not.”

  “Pretty big talk,” said Dorotha, “for someone who gets all moon-eyed when ole Clifford Hensley walks in the church door.”

  “You’re just jealous ’cause no one would ever look twice at you with your old long legs and big mouth.”

  The girls were heating up for a fight, and I knew it would not be long before Fleetie would pounce. She almost never let us get into good quarrels, probably because Burl created enough arguing for the whole family.

  “I swear, Susanny, it’s bad enough that Burl’s probably already drinking. The last thing I need is for those two girls to be going at it like a couple of banty roosters.” She called across the stones and mounds, “That is all I want to hear of that talk. Stop it and get to work. We’ve got to hurry up and get on down off this mountain.”

  Most of us were so busy spreading the flowers and paid little or no attention to the racket the men were making in the valley. The wonder of a day filled with a picnic, paper flowers, and the rill of laughter spilling around us was worth stretching out as far as a day could go.

  The older children kept up the stories of the personal histories of relatives buried far below the headstones. Uncle Lige had a peg leg to replace the one he lost across the ocean fighting the Huns. Aunt Mary had a glass eye. Her brother poked out the real one with a sharp stick playing Indians. Sook was the meanest woman in three counties. She had shot two husbands and poisoned another one. But she loved her children and left them with a whole trunk of silver she had stolen somewhere in her younger days. Daisy died from eating green apples, and her mother purely pined away for her. They were buried in the same grave.

  Each story, repeated year after year, became more or less embellished depending on the amount of sand kicked up by the original subject. Poor Uncle John, plain as an old shoe, died in his bed after seventy-five long years of hard work. He merited no more than a reading of his stone, but Black Davy’s wicked ways could hold us spellbound for an hour or more. He wore a patch over one eye and had a long scar running from his cheek across the crease in his chin. Stories said he had once been a pirate. From the tales that were told about him, it was not hard to believe that he might have been a pirate or anything else bad we might think up.

  In spite of the fun, the day was getting short. Shadows creeping from up in behind the mountain peaks began to draw the valley together. The women and children picked up the tools and stacked the now empty baskets. As we started down the mountain, I stopped and turned back. I scrunched up my eyes, and the whole cemetery seemed to glow. I wanted to be able to visit this place in my mind if I ever started worrying about dying and the dead and what it all meant. Today broke it down for me. We lived and made our mark. We died, and our clan took care of our passing year after year and on and on. Life and death was a circle that tied all of us together. There was nothing to worry about if we just remembered Decoration.

  I hoped that this year, I could tell Mother enough about how much fun it was to work together and make the cemetery plots come alive again. She was big on story writing. I just knew she would love hearing the tales of all the long-dead relatives if she would just give in and go with us next year. But I figured she had spent the whole day grieving for Grandmother Bertha, gone now all these years.

  Mother was just my age, fourteen, when she lost her mother, and it seemed to me that it hurt her as much now as it must have back then. Any chatter today about our cemetery decorating would be as unwelcome to her as a gift of the colorful paper flowers we placed on the kinfolks’ graves. Fleetie seemed to understand much more than I about how lonely Mother had to be at times
like these.

  Just before we started down, she handed me an arrowhead. “Rachel, would you give this to Kathleen? It is a caution how much she likes to find Indian things. I picked it up last night on the riverbank and thought of her. Today has probably been right smart lonesome for her.”

  “She’ll love it, Fleetie. Thank you so much. I know this will make her feel better.”

  Down below, shouts and gunshots from the men rose to meet us. Smiles dropped away, and the women’s expressions changed. Suddenly, all of them seemed older, more set in the work and duty patterns of their normal lives. As we moved down the path, I saw shoulders stiffen and strides lengthen. Even the youngest child in the group knew the best part of Decoration was over.

  Chapter 19

  PINK JELLY

  The summer after the big flood, the old-timers on the front porch of the store swore that good old Mother Nature was making it up to us by sending a patch of growing weather so fine, fruits and vegetables would fairly jump out at us. Since they mostly lied about everything else they “allowed” on that porch, it surprised me that sure enough, June apple trees, red and yellow, were bent low by early summer. Bushels of the tart fruit promised applesauce and apple jelly off every tree. Even the oldest, most gnarled snag of a tree seemed bent on getting in on the show. All up and down the valley, everyone with even one tree in their patch of ground dragged out their black pots and uncovered the fire pits that would keep applesauce bubbling.

  It took hours of boiling and stirring for a bushel of apples to reach the right consistency for canning. Apple butter took even longer. Summer apples worked better for butter, and spring apples made the best sauce and jelly.