Fleetie's Crossing Page 15

  A true apple jelly was a glorious, transparent pink, the color of an early morning sunrise. To reach that prized level of color, with a delicate tart taste to match, required many more painstaking steps than making applesauce. Each cooking of apples had to be strained over and over to remove any hint of apple pulp, peeling, or seeds. The juice from the straining, added to refined sugar, was brought to a full rolling boil. After what would seem like hours of cooking and stirring, the cook checked the jelly by pouring a spoonful off a metal spoon. If the jelly slowed, collected, and then fell with one dramatic plop into the black pot, it was ready. At that moment, it had to be poured slowly into small jars and left to cool overnight while the jelly set.

  A golden jelly was also possible, but the truest jelly, the test of the maker and the signature of an apple artist, was a row of jelly jars filled with a treat that was so transparent and pink, it flattered the hand that held it aloft to the light.

  Mr. Ben had planted a dozen early-harvest trees on our hillside farm years before. All his life, everywhere he lived, he planted fruit trees. An abundance of pear, apple, and peach trees would bear fruit long after he had moved on. I loved our orchard for the bloom, shade, fruit, tire swings, and most of all, the climbing. An apple tree was a glorious place to hide and read a book. I could stay perched high up in the tree for hours with lots of ripe apples to eat and a good book.

  One Saturday morning, with the trees full, Mother and I walked to the orchard to gather a pan of the windfalls to fry for breakfast, and as we picked up the apples, she complained about the waste lying all around her because we could not possibly can them all.

  “Grab your pan, Rachel. I have an idea. Let’s get back to the house.”

  As soon as she hit the porch, here she went with the orders. “Hurry, girls, get out all the applesauce jars in the basement and line them up. We’re going to have company!”

  With that, she flew into the kitchen to tell Daddy she was going down the hill to get Fleetie and any other neighbors who would like to come up and can apples. Daddy sat there, watching her dash out of the kitchen with any hope of fried apples sailing along with her.

  “Hey, Rach, guess you wouldn’t want to cook your old daddy a skillet of apples, would you?”

  “Can’t do it. I’ve got to get the jars out of the cellar and wash the bugs out of them before Mother gets back.”

  I turned to leave when a fit of conscience struck me. Daddy almost never asked me to do anything like this for him, and besides, this way, I could make Jane go after the jars. She could fight the spiders and creepers off without me.

  “I’ll tell you what. You make Jane get the jars, and I’ll cook up the apples. How about it?”

  “Someday, you’ll make a good lawyer.”

  “Will you do it?”

  “I’ll do you one better. I’ll take your sister to get the jars and beat the bugs off her to keep her from screaming at us. Deal?”

  I was already melting the butter in the skillet as he headed out the door with Jane in tow. I loved cooking apples; the cinnamon, butter, and brown sugar mixed with the tartness of the early apples lingered in the kitchen air as sweet and as rich as lilac bloom early in the morning. The apples were just ready to pop out of the skillet, aiming to land on my hands and arms, when Daddy and Jane walked in the door, loaded with sacks of jars to be washed and scalded. That’s what happens in a kitchen—four things to do and only time to do two. Feed Daddy, wash jars, boil water. Here it comes.

  “Jane, run hot water in the sink, pour in some Palmolive, and put the jars in top down.”

  She went into a pout, but she did it anyway.

  It was not long before Fleetie, Mary, Geneva, and their children filled the orchard and the yard with a buzz of fun and visiting. The children’s squeals put everyone in a party mood. Daddy had long since disappeared down the hill in the Plymouth but not before dragging out the black boiling pot from the cellar. He left plenty of firewood and small logs for the fire pit. No one wanted to cook apples over a coal fire. It had to be a wood fire. While he knew Mother was as smart as a keen switch, he was careful to show her how some things were done here in the mountains. He needn’t have worried over this one. Bluegrass and Eastern Mountain applesauce canning was not very different except that back home, Mother would have enjoyed the applesauce without the hard work. There were always enough helping hands around to spare the only little girl in her family most of the drudgery.

  Leatha and I took the red wagon down the hill to carry back Geneva’s and Fleetie’s canning jars stored during the long winter. We scavenged in abandoned playhouses along the creek for jars that kids had ferreted out of the storehouse for minnows, pebbles, and grampuses. These jars also had to be washed to a sparkling shine and slipped into a boiling pot of water for scalding. Any impurity in the jars could cause the sauce to spoil during the winter. The women with the lowest number of bad jars during the long winter got bragging rights. A row of bad jars was as shameful as dingy laundry or grimy kitchen floors.

  Geneva brought in her tiny newborn Freddie, swaddled in enough blankets to smother a grown man. Years before, Pappy Ramsey carved a cherry cradle for his first granddaughter—me. It usually held Jane’s favorite dolls, but today, the dolls were dumped in favor of a real baby. Mother and Fleetie lifted the heavy cradle and placed it on top of the kitchen table, and Geneva snuggled the baby down on the soft pillow mattress.

  “What does Dr. Begley think of this big boy, Geneva?” Mother asked as she watched Geneva fussing over him.

  “I didn’t go last week. The union skipped strike pay last week, and Fred won’t hear to me running up a doctor bill, but Freddie’s doing pretty good, don’t you think?”

  Mother pulled open the bunting of blankets and held Freddie’s tiny feet as she cooed and whispered to him. There was little response from the baby, and the frown line in mother’s forehead deepened. Her fingers moved quickly as she checked his diaper and felt his little body to see if she could see any sign that he was gaining weight.

  “Geneva, does he cry much at night?”

  “Law’, no, Kathleen. This is a good baby. He don’t hardly ever cry. The twins cry enough of all three of them, I guess.”

  “You don’t even have to get up with him at night to feed him?”

  “Sometimes, I wake up, listening for him, but mostly, he just sleeps on through. Why?”

  “It is a little early for him to be giving up that feeding. I believe I’d go on and nurse him, even if he doesn’t cry. Maybe he is hungry and just is too sleepy to let on. What do you think, Fleetie?”

  Fleetie nodded at Geneva. “No use letting a good baby go hungry, Gen. Them twins were always yelling for more, but Freddie is a patient little thing. You might ought to nurse him a couple more times a day, even.”

  Geneva nodded as she hurried out the back door to the porch to check on the twins. “I’ll nurse him after I round up the twins and get them settled,” she said over her shoulder as she rushed off the porch and around the house, chasing the toddlers.

  Fleetie sighed. “Lordy, Kathleen. I knew her hands were going to be full, but I didn’t have any notion Freddie would be so poor. It’s a worry.”

  “Fleetie, he probably needs more than breast milk. Did she get the cod liver oil Dr. Begley ordered?”

  “I didn’t say nothing to her about it, but I doubt it. There’s not an extra penny anywhere for them to spend.” Fleetie picked up the tiny baby and rocked him in her arms. “We worked so hard to get him here. It’s up to us to do right by him.”

  “Fleetie, don’t say it today. Let’s get the apples put up, and you and I will slip off with him tomorrow. Ed can drive the three of us to town when he goes to the office.”

  Geneva came in the back door, a twin under each arm. The two had found the mud puddle at the top of the driveway, and except for their blue eyes, they now resembled baby pigs more than tw
in babies. Mother and Fleetie both burst into loud laughter at the sight of tiny Geneva with her two squealing “piglets” and all three of them covered with mud flying off them with every kick.

  Still in peals of laughter, Mother led Geneva to the bathroom and began filling the tub with water and bubbles. She set the squealing children in the water, shoes and all, and stripped the muddy pinafores over the children’s mud-splattered heads, leaving the little dresses to soak in the bath right along with their shoes and socks. The little girls grabbed at the mound of bubbles and squealed with delight at the soft puffs surrounding them. Geneva rinsed out their clothes, while I tried to wash their hair. Their slippery little bodies kept sliding out of my grip, and each time they fell back into the suds, they kicked their feet in a furious flutter that splashed water on all three of us. We fell weak with laughter.

  Fleetie, hearing our commotion, opened the door and, in her sternest voice, ordered all of us out of the water. “Law’ me, girls. We’ve got bushels of apples to can and dinner to cook. Come on out of there before we flood the whole house. I never seen the beat!”

  Even though Fleetie was about half teasing, Mother and Geneva grabbed the twins and wrapped them in towels, while I wiped down the drowned bathroom. Thank goodness for Conga Wall. We couldn’t keep from laughing as we dressed the wet, wiggling children from the pile of old toddler clothes that Mother resurrected from the back of our closet. The twins would look at each other and explode in another round of giggles. The twins just naturally generated as much fun as a circus.

  Leatha and I were put in charge of the still-damp toddlers, and the women settled into the work at hand. For no practical reason, Mother decided to make a few jars of pink jelly, but Fleetie and Geneva stayed with the applesauce project. They set up shop on the back porch. The children had gathered or picked three bushels of the precious June apples, and Leatha and I, with the twins in tow, picked a peck of the tiny red early apples for the pink jelly. Fleetie built a fire in the fire pit several yards from the porch. The peeled apples would be boiled down in the huge black pot and then spooned into the clean jars. The rings and tops would be screwed down tight and the jars boiled in the blue granite canner, sealing them safely for months.

  Everyone helped with the tedious peeling, competing to see who could take off the longest, unbroken peeling. Dorotha and Nessa made a great game of throwing the longest peels over their shoulder and checking to see which letter it formed. It was supposed to be the initial of the boy they would marry. Leatha and I looked for initials of boys who might be caught looking at us. We weren’t all that clear about what their looking our way might mean, but the older girls seemed to think it was the very thing.

  The huge pot was soon filled with apples and enough water to keep them from sticking. As they cooked down, the apples released loads of apple juice. It took a straining effort for Mother and Fleetie to carry it off the porch and to the fire. With one heaving swing, they placed it on the cooking grid. It would not take long before the women would be ready to begin the hot, dangerous job of stirring the apples. Applesauce popped with explosive force and burned instantly when it landed on human skin. Mother claimed that the fire and pot was hers, and that made stirring her job.

  Geneva and Fleetie draped her in a raincoat and a huge black hat draped with a honeybee net. She put on a pair of Daddy’s heavy work gloves and her own work boots. She did the stirring with what looked like a small oar but was really an old apple paddle carved and smoothed by Mr. Ben. He must have left it in the attic years ago when he moved across the valley to open his store. It would have been like Mr. Ben to leave his paddle to remind whoever owned the trees to take care of the apples. He hated waste. The paddle was a reminder of the many years that apples had been cooked in this yard.

  While Mother sweltered and stirred the pot, Geneva and Fleetie finished peeling the devilish little red apples. They were faulty, filled with wormholes and freckles, and each imperfection had to be removed to ensure clear jelly. It was tedious and painstaking work, but like Fleetie said, “Pretty, clear jelly demands a toll on the cook.”

  While she set them to boil on the kitchen stove, Geneva placed a drip pan under one of the cabinet doors and carefully placed the muslin drip bag in the drip pan. In about twenty minutes, the little red apples softened into pulp, and Geneva poured the cooked apples and juice into the drip bag. Working quickly, Geneva wrapped a strong cord around the top of the bag and tied it and looped the end of the cord through the handle of the cabinet door. Using the handle and cord as a pulley, she pulled the apple mash up from the drip pan. Wrapping the cord around the handle, she tied the bag off and watched as it revolved, steadied itself, and began to drip into the pan. It would drip for hours. The clarity of the jelly depended on how well the bag filtered the juice. If one of the women became impatient and squeezed the bag, the jelly would be cloudy, or if the fabric of the bag was not dense enough or if the peeling process had been sloppy, the jelly would turn cloudy. It tasted just as good but couldn’t win a ribbon at the fair.

  Fleetie lined up the clean jars on the back porch swing, waiting for the pot of sauce to boil down sufficiently or for Mother to throw in the oar and yell “uncle.” The pops of applesauce were peppering the air around her, and I was sure if Fleetie got close enough to help lift the pot off the rocks, she would get burned. If there had been time, Burl or Daddy could have set up the iron fire pot swinger. Without it in place, they were both apt to get some burns moving the pot off the heat.

  “Fleetie,” said Mother, “you better get some towels to put on your arms and over your head. It’s time for the pot to come off.”

  Fleetie took off her long white apron and tied it around her neck and turned her sunbonnet around, completely covering her face.

  “Fleet, you can’t see where you are going. You’ll trip and fall in this sauce and be cooked alive.”

  “I can see through the buttonhole slits. It works fine. The bonnet’ll keep the heat off my face. Mammy Howard uses her bonnet to shield her face. That’s how I got on to it.” She moved quickly to the other side of the pot, and with a heavy rag protecting her hand, she grabbed hold of the bale. “Here, take hold on your side, and we’ll count it off. One, two, three, heave!”

  Mother took a deep breath and moved with Fleetie as the two shifted the weight from the uplift to the downswing. They moved quickly from the fire pit toward the back porch. Just as they were about to swing the heavy pot to the porch, the twins came tearing around the side of the house.

  You could hear Geneva’s scream all the way down the hill and across the river. The sound of her mother’s scream scared Annie, and her feet tangled up in the flagstone path. She fell just beyond her mother’s outstretched hand and rolled toward the black pot. The sauce was still popping, and before Fleetie and Kathleen could swing it up to the edge of the porch, Annie was peppered with hot splats of sauce on the back of her plump little legs. Mary Beth also fell to her knees, catching hot splats of sauce in her hair. Their screams reamed the ears of every adult and child on the hill. Mother grabbed Mary Beth, and Fleetie swept up Annie and ran to the pump just a few steps to the right of the porch.

  I could hear Mother praying that the old pump had held its prime from earlier in the day as she began pumping with one hand and as she held the toddler with the other. I grabbed the pump handle so she could hold the baby with two hands as she begged, “Oh god. Let the water come.”

  There was an immediate rush of the icy water as she held the baby’s legs under the cold stream. Geneva grabbed her baby from Mother as I kept pumping hard and fast. By this time, Fleetie had determined that the hot sauce had only scared Mary Beth. Her thick, curly hair had trapped the hot sauce away from her scalp, and she was not burned, but her wails continued, pain or not. Listening to Annie’s screams had convinced her that she was hurt too. By this time, all the other children had raced to the backyard and were huddled in a tight knot, afraid to
speak, afraid to look away, and afraid to watch all at the same time.

  Mother sent Jane running into the house for the aloe plant sitting in the living room window. After a few more minutes of the cold water sluicing over Annie’s pudgy little leg, Mother took hold of a thick branch of the plant and broke off several of the fat, spongy leaves. She bent them double, opening them up, and began squeezing the thick liquid over each of the angry red circles dotting the backs of Annie’s legs. Geneva gently rubbed each of the spots, urging the burned skin to accept the healing juice.

  While the women were working with Annie, Nessa and Dorotha began to fill the glass jars with the hot applesauce, and the other kids sank to the ground, mostly silenced by the excitement. The twins were still crying, but the shrieking was subsiding, and occasionally, Mary Beth would pause and give Annie a long look, and since Annie was still crying, Mary Beth would immediately start again. It didn’t take long for the toddlers, Emma, Logan, and Rebecca, to catch on to Mary Beth’s trick. They laughed each time she started crying again, and this made her cry even harder, adding to the general confusion.

  “Geneva,” Mother said over the roar, “the burns aren’t deep. The aloe will be enough to heal them up, don’t you think?”

  “Lordy, Miz Hill, I don’t know. They’s always getting something banged or cut. They don’t pay it much mind later after they get through being so mad over the hurting.”

  Fleetie moved to the porch to help Dorotha and Nessa finish filling the empty jars as Geneva and Mother worked to calm the frantic twins. She tried to trick Mary Beth by distracting her. She set her down on the ground right in the middle of the huddled children. It might have worked, but Annie seeing Mary Beth so far away from her own center of pain and misery sent her into a new set of howls. Separating twins was not a likely task if one of them was upset. After another few minutes, both the little girls began the snubbing phase of their great upset. Annie finally began to pull away from Geneva to get to Mary Beth and what looked like fun with the other children.