Let Me Die in His Footsteps

6

ANNIE STANDS NEAR the stove in Grandma’s kitchen. The air is thick and damp, steamy even. Every window is closed, and Grandma has not turned on any lights. Instead several candles burn, their wax just beginning to spill over. Dim light flickers on the pale-yellow walls. Long shadows fall from chair legs and table legs and from Grandma, who stands near the sink. Two cast-iron pots sit on the stove, a low flame burning beneath each, and clouds of steam rise. Grandma, wearing her best quilted robe and her Sunday morning slippers, is carving a loaf of bread.

“Water’s ready,” she says to Annie and tips her head in the direction of the two heavy pots simmering on the stove. “Will you see to it?”

Grandma’s long white hair hangs loose down to her waist. Wiry strands, frayed and broken off, frame her watery blue eyes. That long hair and the soft light from the candles and the tone of Grandma’s voice, pitched ever so slightly deeper than normal, make her look and seem less like a grandma and more like a woman Annie doesn’t know so well. Grandma gave Mama her name. Long before Mama married Daddy, Grandma knew Mama would be born a girl and named her Sarah. Watching Grandma now, Annie imagines she looks like the woman she was before she became a grandma.

Knowing she shouldn’t speak while the water is simmering, Annie nods to Grandma and sidesteps around the table where Mama and Caroline sit. The rims of Caroline’s eyes are red from all the crying, and she is letting Mama hug her and stroke her hair. She’s probably thinking about that husband-to-be of hers and wishing he were here to comfort her and protect her. Annie wishes he were here too because then he could get a good look at Caroline when she isn’t looking so pretty.

Before doing as Grandma asked, Annie glances at Mama, but she doesn’t shake her head or give some other sign of disapproval, so Annie opens the cupboard next to the stove, reaches into the back, and pulls out a small dark bottle. The glass is smooth and warm in her hands. She protects it from the light by wrapping her fingers around it, and holds it away from her body so as to not warm it. Grandma taught Annie to do these things always when handling lavender oil. She unscrews the bottle’s small lid, lays it on the counter, taking care not to touch the inner rim, and tips the bottle over the first simmering pot. One, two, three drops. She does the same over the second pot.

“Think the water’s got too much get-up-and-go, Grandma,” Annie says, even though she thinks no such thing. “Should I let off a little?”

Caroline doesn’t have the know-how and so won’t know what “get-up-and-go” means, and as bad as it is to use the know-how in a way that will make a person feel bad about not having it, Annie figures Caroline brought it on herself. She stole Annie’s vision, but someone is dead up there at the Baine place, and that’s what Mama and Daddy will care about. They won’t trouble themselves with Annie’s visions, and Annie shouldn’t be troubling herself with them either, but she can’t stop thinking about Ryce and that dead frog and every kid who will want to know who she saw down there in that well and was he a boy who will want to kiss her. They’ll not believe her if she tells them Caroline stole her vision.

They’ll not believe Annie if she tells them there was a man-a dark-haired, blue-eyed man-who was meant for Annie. They’ll not believe Caroline saw him first because she always does things first or better or faster. Instead, they’ll say what a pity there is no one for Annie, no face in the bottom of her well. It will be worse than having the boys run from her. They’ll pity her. All of them. But when someone’s dead, no one will care about such things that trouble Annie.

Grandma leans over the pots, waves a hand through the steam, and coughs. The lavender will sting the back of the throat if the water is too hot, so maybe Annie is right after all.

“Sure enough,” Grandma says, giving Annie the soft sort of smile people give when someone has died. Later, Grandma will tell Annie what a good student she is and what a great knack she has for the know-how. Not everyone who has the gift has such a good knack. But Grandma will only say those things when Mama isn’t near enough to hear. “Just a smidgen though,” she says and gives a wink. “Want to keep a lively steam going.”

Lavender makes bees lazy, has a calming effect on them, and that’s why Grandma simmers it in this way. From daybreak to dusk, the bees light upon the bluish-gray blossoms that will soon enough burst into full bloom, and then they float, don’t fly, aimlessly, weightlessly back to their hives. Drunkards, Grandma calls them on those days when she watches the lazy dance from her kitchen window. The lavender soothes them. These are the most peaceful bees you’ll find. That’s what Grandma says, and she must figure the whole family is going to need a good bit of calming before the night is over.

Abraham Pace was the first person Annie and Caroline woke after leaping the rock fence, running through the lavender, and throwing open the kitchen door. Annie shook him by his large shoulder. He snorted, tried to roll away, but finally opened his eyes when Annie said that a dead person was lying by the tomato garden up at the Baine place.

Grandma had put on the coffee while Mama gathered up trousers, boots, and fresh socks for Daddy and Abraham. Daddy stumbled as he balanced on one foot while trying to tug on a boot. Mama yanked it away, loosened the laces, and asked if he would care for coffee before attempting to walk on his own two feet. Daddy took the boot, its laces dangling, pulled it on his foot, and then made out like he was balancing on a narrow plank by stretching his two arms to the side, stepping one foot precisely in front of the other, and moving steady as a sober judge. Mama didn’t have to say it out loud. Daddy was supposed to have followed Annie up that hill, but the whiskey had gotten the better of him.

“We’ll fetch Buell and give the place a look-see,” Daddy said, two boots on his feet, both sets of laces dangling loose. “And you all stay put.” He pushed open the door, but before walking outside, he turned back to Annie.

“You’re sure about this?” he said. “Sure about what you seen?”

Annie nodded. “I’m certain, sir.” She linked her hands, stood with her feet together and her back straight. She was of age now and so should feel differently, should act differently. More like a lady, she supposed, and wouldn’t a lady link her hands and stand with good posture? “Just as certain as can be.”

Daddy and Abraham were heading up to the Baine place, and Hollerans never go near Baines.

WHEN ALL THE bread is sliced, and Mama and Grandma have started on their second cup of coffee and the lavender-scented air is almost too thick and sweet to breathe, Mama invites everyone into the living room. She says it’s because they’ll be more comfortable while they wait and maybe Annie and Caroline can even sleep a bit on the sofa. But really, Mama wants to go into the living room because from there she can look out the picture window and see the barn at the top of the hill. She won’t see the well or the tomato garden or even the littlest bit of the Baines’ roof, but still she’ll want to watch. Even when there is no dead person, Mama sometimes looks out that window. She’ll stand there for the longest time, her forehead resting on the glass, her breath fogging the window if the weather is cool enough, but always she lets the curtain drop and steps away when someone walks into the room.

At the sound of gravel crunching under a truck’s tires as it rolls to a stop, Annie opens her eyes. The steam has cleared and the house is cool, the air soggy as always in the early-morning hours. At some point during the night, someone threw a blanket over her. She gathers it around her shoulders and sits up, and as soon as she does, the memory of the empty well and the coming of the lavender and someone dead up at the Baines’ place fills her up.

Caroline is already awake, her blanket folded in thirds and draped across her legs. She sits on the edge of the sofa, her feet planted on the floor, her hands resting in her lap. Even the soft light of the sun just beginning to rise is enough to make her hair shine.

Mama hears the truck too. She steps away from the window, which maybe she’s been looking out all night long, and calls to Grandma. Walking into the living room from the kitchen, drying her hands on the apron tied at her waist, Grandma slides around her rocking chair and massages its wooden back as if it were a set of shoulders. Grandpa carved the chair for Grandma, and it’s all she has left of him, God rest. Stepping off to the side of the chair, Grandma gives it a nudge. On the smooth oak floors, it moves easily on its wide runners, rocking forward and back. Forward and back.

“What is it, Mama?” Caroline asks. “Is it Daddy? What’s happened?”

“Sit tight. We’ll hear soon enough.”

“You been feeling it, haven’t you, child?” Grandma says to Annie and begins rocking that chair a little faster. “You kept telling me and I wouldn’t listen. Shame on me for not listening.”

“Stop it, Mother,” Mama says. “I won’t hear any of that.” And turning to Annie, she says, “You too. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Annie says, wishing Mama would save some of her scolding for Caroline, who is the only one truly deserving of a scolding. Annie thinks to say as much, but that rocking chair keeps rocking, and something about it is concerning. She takes a step toward it, sliding one foot and then the other. That empty chair creaking and whining as it rolls forward and back makes Annie certain sneaking up on it is the thing to do. Each time it begins to slow, Grandma gives it yet another nudge.

Annie has always known Aunt Juna is her real mother, though she isn’t certain how. She wonders if that’s why Mama is oftentimes short with Annie, quick to give a warning or brace herself for one of Annie’s misdeeds. Mama has never told Annie that Aunt Juna is her real mother. Daddy, neither. Someone must have once said something. Probably Grandma. Probably she said something when she thought Annie was too young to understand. Maybe she and Mama were playing cribbage at the kitchen table or piecing together fabric squares for one of Grandma’s quilts, or maybe Grandma was peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink, and the conversation turned to what different coloring and stature the two Holleran sisters have. Caroline is dark-haired with blue eyes, just like Mama, and already she has the same pleasing shape as Mama. Daddy says Mama is soft in all the right places, which makes Mama swat at him and wag a finger for talking such a way in front of his girls.

Annie, a scant one year older than Caroline, is fair with the oddest black eyes, and every time she starts to soften up, to fill out here and there, she grows another two inches and turns hard and lean again. Juna had those black eyes and same slender frame. Cut close to the bone, Grandma may well have said. Like mother, like daughter. Grandma is all the time saying things she ought not say. Mama would have shushed her the way she’s always shushing Annie. But Annie wasn’t too young, and somewhere along the way, sometime during her fifteen and a half years, Annie soaked it up. Aunt Juna isn’t an aunt at all.

Out in the kitchen, the screen door swings open and slaps closed. Two sets of heavy footsteps cross the floor. It’ll be Daddy and Abraham Pace, and they’ll be taking off their boots before setting foot on Grandma’s kitchen floor. Nothing rankles Grandma quicker than someone leaving footprints on her kitchen floor.

“It was Cora Baine,” Daddy says.

Standing next to Abraham, Daddy doesn’t look so tall. His dark hair is matted on top from the hat he would have been wearing. If Daddy is wearing boots on his feet, he’s wearing a hat on his head. His hair has a way of bunching up on him, particularly when the air is heavy and damp, and Mama is all the time smoothing it down for him. His jaw, where his beard has filled in since yesterday morning, is a darker shade than the rest of his face, and the whites of his eyes shine against his brown skin.

“Sheriff loaded her up,” Daddy says.

Except for the creaking and whining of the rocking chair, the living room is quiet. The last Baine is gone. Twenty years ago, there was a litter of them living up at that house. Cora and her seven sons. All those brothers were big men, or so folks say, tall stock with ragged beards and ragged clothes. Each of them, except Joseph Carl, was chased out of Hayden County by his own mama. How bad must a son be to get himself chased off by his own mama? Folks also figure most of those boys are dead by now. They all had a taste for whiskey, and whiskey lovers are dealt less years than the rest of us. That’s what Mama says to Daddy over toast and coffee on those mornings he wakes suffering the aftermath of too much whiskey. The only Baine left in the county is Joseph Carl, and he’s six feet under, sent there by Aunt Juna, and the both of them are legends for her having done it.

Aunt Juna isn’t the good kind of legend, but the kind that has wrapped itself around the Holleran family and hung there for almost twenty years. Annie has never met a single one of those Baine brothers or Aunt Juna, knows them only through pictures. They never smiled, not Aunt Juna and not those boys. Grandma says folks didn’t have much to smile about in those days.

“What happened to her, Daddy?” Annie says, taking another step toward that rocker and wishing Grandma would stop, for the love of the good Lord above, rocking that rocker. “How did she die?”

Abraham Pace will tell anyone he meets that he is the largest man in Hayden County. Not that he is fat, but he is tall and thick and broad. His fingers are so wide, his knuckles so big, he can barely wrap them around another man’s hand to shake it. His chin is as square as the end of a table leg, and he has a wide-set jawbone. But the thing about Abraham Pace that makes him hardest to look at is the bulging brow that hangs over his brown eyes. When he was younger, he would tell people, he had the reddest hair too, though it isn’t so red anymore.

“Not certain,” Abraham says, resting a hand on Daddy’s shoulder. “Sad damn sight, that’s for sure. Sheriff calling in someone from the state. Let them have a look at her.”

“What does this mean?” Caroline says, still sitting with a straight back, her hands resting in her lap.

Like every other girl after she has looked down into the well and seen the face of her intended, Caroline is all the sudden acting like she’s a grown woman. It’s in the tone of her voice and her posture. Both of them so altogether proper. But in truth, Caroline’s been proper for most of her life, so maybe it has nothing to do with intendeds and wells and first kisses. Annie’s voice is the same as it was yesterday. She has no desire to tie on an apron or brush her hair, and because Mama is frowning at Annie and poking her thumb toward the ceiling, Annie is certain her posture is no better either.

“Are they all gone?” Caroline says. “Will someone new move into the house? What does it mean?”

“It means nothing,” Mama says. “Means nothing to us. The town will see to it she’s buried. She was an old woman, and it’s a sad day. That’s all that needs said.”

“But it does mean something, Mama,” Annie says, straining to hold her shoulders back and studying that rocker.

“The child is right,” Grandma says, tapping the side of her head with one finger. “Should have been listening to her all along.”

“There’s no more Baines,” Annie says before Mama can scold Grandma again. “No more anywhere. We won’t never meet up with one of them in town, and Mrs. Baine won’t come here ever again. No more Baines, ever.”

ONCE A YEAR or so it happens. Usually on a Friday or Saturday night. That’s the night folks partake, Daddy would say when trying to explain. Don’t try to make sense of a person partaking. Mrs. Baine would usually walk because her truck never ran so well. She would holler from the drive for Mama to come on out. Mama would send Annie and Caroline to their bedroom and tell them to close the door and stay put until called to come out again.

When they were young, the girls would do as told. They would close the door and then the windows and sit side by side on the edge of Annie’s bed. Caroline would cry because even though they couldn’t make out who was saying what through the closed windows, they could make out the hollering and screaming and most certainly they could make out Daddy’s voice. He didn’t start out yelling, but by the end, by the time Sheriff Fulkerson pulled up the drive, loaded up Mrs. Baine, and drove her home, Daddy would be yelling. As they sat on the bed, Annie and Caroline would hold hands, their feet dangling, not quite touching the floor, and they’d not move until Mama tapped on the door and invited them to come on out again.

As the girls grew older, they still did as they were told, but Annie stopped closing the front window and if it was already closed, she would open it. Even when Caroline begged her not to, Annie would unhitch the latch and slide the window up at least a few inches because just as she had soaked up Aunt Juna being her real mother somewhere along the way, she had also soaked up that Mrs. Baine came to the house yelling and crying and carrying on because she wanted to see Annie. Not only was Aunt Juna Annie’s mama, Joseph Carl Baine was her daddy, and that’s largely the reason he took his last breath while hanging from the end of a rope.

“No more Baines in Hayden County, Mama,” Annie says. She is almost close enough to Grandma’s rocker to reach out and touch it. “No more. No more crossing the road or skipping church. Mrs. Baine won’t come no more and yell at you, Mama. No more Baines.”

“Enough,” Mama shouts. “Not another word about the Baines.”

And then Annie remembers.

“Stop that rocking, Grandma.”

Grandma looks at the hand doing the nudging. She looks at it like it’s someone else’s hand, and she doesn’t have the first idea what that hand is doing. Not sure why but certain she has to do something, anything, Annie drops down in the rocking chair, grabs the wooden armrests, one in each fist, and holds on tight.

“Oh, good Lord,” Grandma says. “I done it now.”

“Mother,” Mama says, “language.”

Annie keeps a good hold on the chair, digs her toes into the floor so there will be no more rocking, and looks back at Grandma. The expression on her face-mouth hanging open, pale-blue eyes stretched wide, chin drawn in much like a turtle might do-makes Annie wish she’d stopped that rocker sooner.

“Out,” Grandma says. “Out of that chair right this instant.”

Annie leaps to her feet. “Is it too late?” she says once she is outside of what she figures is striking distance.

She starts sidestepping, putting more and more distance between herself and that chair, and doesn’t stop until she bumps up against Daddy.

“Take it away,” Annie says, jumping behind Daddy.

“Yes,” Grandma says, her blue eyes darting from the chair to Daddy and back again. “Outside, quick as you can.”

“Mother,” Mama says, “stop your nonsense.”

“Take it away, John,” Grandma says, ignoring Mama. “Out on the porch’ll do. Maybe we caught it in time.”

Daddy scoops up Annie with one strong arm and drops her in the center of the living room. He believes in facing fears. When Caroline was afraid of swimming, Daddy rowed her into the middle of the lake and dropped her in the cold, dark water. Every time she got to crying hard enough that she coughed and choked, he yanked her up by the forearm, let her rest until she stopped spitting out water, and then let go. It was not a pleasing thing to watch, but Caroline is a strong swimmer now. It occurs to Annie as she lunges to the right in hopes of taking cover again that this is her deep, murky pond, and sure enough, Daddy wraps his two large hands around her shoulders and makes her face the rocking chair square on.

“Chair ain’t going nowhere,” he says. “I don’t know what’s got you two riled, but you stop all this damn foolishness.”

Mama exhales long and loud. There is nothing Mama hates more than language defiling her home. It’ll root itself, she always says. If one of us takes liberties, other forms of nastiness will follow and then what’ll we have?

“I’ll see to it,” Grandma says, grabbing the rocker by its wooden headrest and dragging it toward the door that leads onto the front porch. “It’s my doing, so I should set it right.”

“Enough,” Mama says. The tone of her voice stills everyone in the room.

Mama’s eyes have taken on a blurry look like she’s near to tears, and she doesn’t bother brushing away the strands of hair that hang in her face. Mama doesn’t think much of the know-how, but she must know enough, remember enough from all her years growing up with Aunt Juna, to know what that empty rocking chair means.

“That chair is just fine where it is,” she says. “Go on, all of you. I want every one of you out right now.”

“Sarah,” Daddy says. That’s Mama’s name. Grandma gave it to Mama before she was even born and it means princess. Daddy’s usually the only one in the house to use it. She’s mostly Mama to everyone else. Daddy says it again in his deep, scratchy voice. At the sound of her name, Mama, Sarah, takes a deep breath and blows it out long and slow.

“My apologies,” Mama says. “Mother, why don’t we see to some breakfast for everyone, and then let’s us mix up a cake for Annie’s day.”

The sizzle in the air was Annie’s first inkling something was lurking. First inklings aren’t so troublesome, and for a week, she’d labored to convince herself Grandma was right. The charge in the air was the lavender coming into bloom. But that empty rocking chair is a second inkling. Second inklings are more dependable still. That chair was rocking forward and backward. Forward and backward. Coming and going. Someone is coming. Someone is going. When an empty rocking chair rocks, someone is coming home again and someone is going to die.

Every Christmas, a card comes, a handwritten letter tucked inside. They arrive in mid-December. Mama keeps the letters to herself and hangs the cards from the refrigerator with a magnet. The signature inside each card is always penned in the same flattened-out, slanted letters. As a child, before she learned her cursive alphabet, Annie couldn’t read the name written inside the colorful cards, but always she knew they had come from Aunt Juna. Annie had hoped when they moved from the north side of town to Grandma’s house that the cards and letters wouldn’t follow. But they did.

While the cards from Aunt Juna hung on the refrigerator for several days, not until Christmas Eve did Mama read the letters. Over supper, after grace was said and before the first fork was raised, Mama would pull the most recent letter from her apron pocket and read it aloud to the rest of the family. These letters grew longer as the years passed. Aunt Juna wrote of her life. She wrote of living in California, where the sun always shone, and of oranges hanging from a tree where a person could pick them and eat them right where she stood. She wrote of pasturelands in the middle of the country that stretched to the horizon and farther still, so far they looked to roll right off the edge of the earth. She wrote of trains and cars and of streets in the northeast where buildings rose up as tall as those California mountains.

And always Aunt Juna wrote of how beautiful Caroline and Annie had grown. When they were children, she said they were precious. Last year, they were lovely young women. Each Christmas, she wrote how wonderful it would be when she could finally, after all these years, see them in the flesh, touch them, hug them, tell them she loved them. And then Mama would refold the letter, press out each seam, tuck it into that same apron pocket, and say what a shame she couldn’t write back. Annie always wondered, but never asked, was afraid to ask, how Aunt Juna knew Annie and Caroline were precious when they were young and lovely now as young ladies. Mama never wrote back, never sent pictures. How could Aunt Juna know the girls were precious and lovely if she lived so far away?

“Aunt Juna will come home now, won’t she?” Annie says. “Now that every Baine is dead, she’s coming home.”