The Memory of Lemon (8 page)

“Hey, nerd.” A tall handsome boy with an expensive backpack walks past him, leading a pack of wannabes across the parking lot to the sidewalk. The tall boy turns and walks backward, shouting, “One hundred on your spelling test,” he taunts, “too cool for school,” and the wannabes guffaw.

“Hold on just a second. I'd like your opinion on something.” I ran to the back of the bakery and brought out a tiny piece of upside-down strawberry-rhubarb cake that I was trying out for May. I handed it to him on a napkin.

“Rhubarb?” he asked and downed it all in one big bite. “Mm-mm,” he said, wiping his mouth with the napkin. “Maybe I'll rethink your offer.” He whistled as he hoisted his heavy leather postal bag as if it were suddenly lighter.

I looked through the bakery and my personal mail. The Carriage Hill Country Club still hadn't sent its check for the Member-Guest Golf Dinner desserts that had been so fiddly to make. Little cakes resembling putting greens. Why was it that the projects that took the longest to do were always the ones that were the slowest to be paid?

Bills. Junk mail. Letter.

The stationery from the old City Vue Motel still smelled faintly of cigarette smoke, but the return address had been crossed out and a new one written in, with that spiky handwriting I recognized with that familiar stab to my heart.

Dear Claire,

I've moved from the City Vue Motel, as you can see from this address. I'm living in an old trailer in a scrapyard near the Blue River in Kansas City. I'm sort of the guardian of the junk. My new part-time job. But, hell, I'm grateful.

Got a dog. Looks like a black Lab. I call him Ranger.

The folks at Project Uplift still seem to find me wherever I
go. Three times a week, they bring hot food and clean socks, bottled water, little individual soaps, things to keep me civilized. They mail my letters to you.

Today, they brought some really good chicken chili and scratch-and-dent dog food for Ranger.

One of the guys was playing “500 Miles,” an old Peter, Paul, and Mary song that was popular when I was in Vietnam. It's all about trying to go home, my theme song right now.

Ranger just came back to the trailer from a dip in the river. When he shook himself dry, the water droplets caught the sunlight like little prisms. It's not every dog can make its own rainbows.

I remember we went to Oster's Bakery when you were a little girl and you told me that the bakery smell made rainbows. You could always do a lot more with our special gift than I ever could.

I dreamed that dream again last night, the one that starts with me falling out of the sky and then looking up at the girl with blue hands. It's the nightmare that makes me not want to fall asleep. The one that made me drink myself into a stupor for too many nights.

Been going to group therapy at the VA hospital when I can get a ride. Post-traumatic stress. That was news to me.

And I think all the years of drinking dulled my ability to taste. You and your gran know what that means. Maybe that's part of the reason why I've been lost, to myself and to the people I love.

But it's starting to come back a little bit. I hope, anyway.

I won't burden you with a lot of this. I just want you to know that I'm trying.

Love,

Dad

Well, true to form, my dad had moved on again.

I searched the new address on Google Maps. I pictured an old trailer and a black dog by the Blue River. I touched the red indicator button to make it feel more real to me.

I didn't want to get my hopes up that he would turn his life around. I had gone down that wishful-thinking path too many times already. But these were promising developments. He had stopped drinking. He was going to therapy. He was explaining himself and staying in touch.

But I was still far from ready for him to come home.

My life was hardly serene.

I had not heard from Ben since we had all gone to Augusta. I was planning for a make-it-or-break-it society wedding. And my football player husband was trying to tackle me as I was running for a divorce touchdown.

My dad had been absent from my life for almost twenty years. Was it too much to ask for him to stay away until things settled down?

My stomach rumbled. So much for the quinoa and greens salad filling me up. I wanted a spice cookie.

I took one from the display case and filled my mug with more coffee.

Mmm. Spice. It made me think of the double cabin in Augusta, of how peaceful it must feel sitting on the dogtrot porch and feeling the fresh breeze come up from the wide Ohio River, the flowing boundary that both separated and joined two worlds. Ohio and Kentucky. North and South. Mrs. Stidham and
Lydia.

MARCH 1826

AUGUSTA, KENTUCKY

The Wanderer

Hunters found Abigail Newcomb's body, washed up way beyond the shoreline. They took Sean O'Neil to the cove to show him the exact spot.

It must have been a terrible thing to find, he thought. The gray, sodden, moldering body amid the tender green leaves of a twiggy spicebush just wakening to spring.

One of the hunters recognized the herb woman from the signet ring still on her withered hand. And someone else had sent a message upriver to Queen City.

Sean could not let Sarah and Little Abigail, barely six years old, travel from Queen City on their own. They were as close to family as he had in this big country, as a wayfarer who yearned for a home.

Abigail Newcomb had been like a mother to him. Sarah's dark hair and gray eyes reminded him of the missus, Eliza Shawcross,
back in Ireland, whose kind yet stern face was still etched in his memory. It was too soon after Sarah's husband's death and now her mother's to ask for more.

They buried Abigail on the edge of the garden she had planted on the top of the hill, next to her husband.

Sean carried Little Abigail and put a protective arm around Sarah as they trudged back to the cabin. And then he set about providing for them as best he could, chopping more firewood, getting a roaring blaze going in the abiding cabin, and swinging the copper kettle over the coals to boil water for tea.

“What was it that Mother recommended for melancholy?” Sarah asked Sean.

“Spicebush,” he said, remembering Abigail's gift to Lucy Audubon. Lucy and her boys had gone downriver to her people in Kentucky not long after John James Audubon had taken off on his bird adventure. Had he no more care for his loved ones than to leave them in this raw country? Sean wondered.

“But isn't that where they found Mother, in a stand of spicebush downriver? I'll never touch spicebush again,” Sarah muttered.

Sean threw a chunk of dried sassafras root into the kettle instead.

When Charles Ballou came to call, the tea was ready. The newcomer from Virginia wanted to buy the property and start farming. With close-cropped blond hair, a ruddy complexion, and pale blue eyes, he didn't look like someone who had spent much time in the hot sun, thought Sean.

Sean poured Ballou a mug of tea as he sat across from Sarah, by the fire. Sean took a step back into the gloom of the cabin. It galled him that he did not have a voice in this matter. Sean gritted
his teeth and sent up a silent prayer to Abigail Newcomb, telling her he would watch out for her daughter and granddaughter as best he could, no matter what Sarah decided.

“I'll terrace these hills and plant tobacco, build a big barn on the back side of the garden,” Ballou told Sarah. He smiled, he charmed, he told little stories.

Sean narrowed his eyes. “Those are big plans,” Sean couldn't keep himself from saying. “Have you the capital for it all?”

“Not yet. The bank has yet to know what Charles Ballou is capable of. And I'm of a mind to be doing this family a favor. Newly widowed, I understand, and I'm sorry for that, ma'am. But I could farm this for you, make improvements, keep it going.”

Sarah's look was unreadable.

“But not pay her anything,” Sean said, his voice deep like the growl of a guard dog. “And you think that a help?”

“You misunderstand, sir,” Ballou said, rising from his chair. Sean took a step forward and the two stood toe to toe, glaring at each other.

“Gentlemen,” Sarah said quietly. “Please sit.” Sean stood guard until Ballou sat down. Then Sean pulled up a three-legged stool and sat, as well, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

“Have some tea.” Sarah filled a mug for Sean and the conversation resumed.

Eventually, Sarah saw the benefit in letting Ballou work the land, build the barn, and pay her a percentage of the profit. Ballou saw the advantage in not getting in over his head, with Sarah retaining ownership of the cabin and the land.

They would draw up the papers at the solicitor's office the next day.

Sean was proud of Sarah, who'd handled this matter in her mother's calm, quiet way. But he could also see the spark of interest in Ballou's eyes for this widow with property, but scarce a glance at Little Abigail, the child she held most dear.

He was one to watch, Sean thought.

—

That night, Sarah fried up slices of ham that a neighbor had brought, baked biscuits, and opened a jar of her mother's wild blackberry jam.

As the evening drew in, Sarah picked up her mother's fiddle. Little Abigail sat on Sean's lap in the rocking chair near the fire, drowsy but still trying hard to stay awake.

Sarah drew the bow over the strings a few times, waiting for the music that wanted to reveal itself. When she tried the first few notes of “Black Is the Color,” her mother's recent favorite, the strings screeched. Little Abigail sat up straight, startled.

Sarah loosened her shoulders, her neck, her fiddling arm, and tried again.

This time she felt the familiar tremble travel up her spine, down her arm, into her hand, and move the bow ever so gently over the strings. A melancholy note. And then another. And finally a mournful song.

What is this specter I can see?

With icy hands taking hold of me.

I am Death and none can tell

I open the door to heaven and hell.

Oh, Death, oh, Death, please pass by me

Until my love again I see.

Sarah fiddled and sang all the verses, letting her mind wander. But when she saw Little Abigail crying in Sean's lap with her arms wrapped around his neck, she put the instrument down.

“Maybe a lullaby?” Sean gently suggested.

Sarah took up the fiddle again. The rhythm of this lullaby reminded her of the slow sway of a mother's hips, a baby in her arms. Little Abigail relaxed and snuggled into the crook of Sean's arm.

Go to sleep, my little baby

Go to sleep, my little baby

Papa's gone away but Mama's here to stay

Gonna be right here with you, baby.

Weep no more, my little baby

Weep no more, my little baby

Can't be blue when you're wearin' silver shoes

Gonna sleep all night, little baby.

You're my sweet little baby

You're my sweet little baby

Sugar in the pie and a big blue sky

Go to sleep, my precious little baby.

“I can't play no more,” Sarah whispered and seemed to collapse into the chair.

She put the instrument away in its case. The narrow, lined piece of paper glued to the inside of the lid brought fresh tears.
Abigail Newcomb
was written on the first line in her mother's tiny script. One day, when Sarah felt stronger, she would pen her own
name on the next line. It was, she thought, as if the violin's maker fully expected that such a fine instrument would be handed down through the generations.

“Now that your grandmother is gone, I guess you can't be Little Abigail anymore,” Sarah said to her daughter, sadly. “You can only be Little Abigail if there is a big Abigail.”

“I want to be Little Abigail,” the child wailed. “I don't want to change my name.”

“All right, all right, child,” Sarah said, reaching over to caress her daughter's tear-streaked face, so like her own. She sighed, suddenly bone weary.

Sean reached over, still holding the child close, and took Sarah's hand. “There's enough change as it is. Let Little Abigail keep her name for now.” He stood up and carried Little Abigail to the pallet bed in the loft.

“Do you want me to stay?” he asked Sarah when he came back down, gesturing to the chair he had recently vacated.

“I'm no fit company for anyone,” Sarah said, staring into the fire. “Go get you some sleep. I'm after another piece of sassafras root.”

When she walked across the dogtrot and opened the door to the workroom cabin, the moonlight shone on a pair of eyes glimmering in the dark. Sarah jumped back, banging into the door, but didn't cry out or run away. Abigail had taught her to be brave, even in the darkest night.

“I heard the music,” the stranger whispered.

“Let me bring you some ham and biscuits,” whispered Sarah. “And then we'll go.”

She would feed this old man and light the lantern to alert the Lovejoys across the river, just as her mother had taught her when
Sarah still lived there. It was a good thing she had felt a sleepless night coming on. Maybe a row across the river and back would tire her out and let her sleep. She would not wake Sean. Unlike Sarah, he had never learned to swim and was afraid of the water.

Change was coming. Charles Ballou would farm the land, but he would not live here. And who knew where his sympathies lay? Did he believe a slave was a person who deserved to be free or chattel that someone had a right to own?

Sarah couldn't help but feel that she was disappointing her mother. Abigail Newcomb had tried to help everyone she met, slave or free, man or woman, puny or strong. Now, there would be no one to strike up a tune on the fiddle in the evening, to signal that it was safe to come in from the woods. There would be no more food and fresh water.

The double cabin would sit empty until Sarah and Little Abigail came again. She couldn't bear the thought of selling it or renting it out. It was home. Maybe one day she or Little Abigail would return.

After that night, the dark wayfarers would have to find the way to freedom on their own.

OCTOBER 1862

AUGUSTA, KENTUCKY

Little Abigail put the violin back in its case. She had tried, but failed, to elicit anything but a mournful screech from the strings that evening. Some nights were like that. Or maybe she was losing her touch.

On the inside lid of the fiddle case, she ran her work-worn thumb down the list of women, mother to daughter, who had played and loved this instrument: Abigail Newcomb, Sarah O'Neil, and Little Abigail. Strong women. Women who knew how to persevere in difficult times.

Times like now.

Although Kentucky hadn't declared for the Confederacy and wanted to remain neutral in the conflict between the North and South, the Confederacy had declared for Kentucky.

Her grandmother would have been proud of the Augusta Home Guard who had just held off Colonel Basil Duke and his Confederate troops a week before. The rebels had come up from Falmouth, Kentucky, their aim to take the town of Augusta and its strategic spot on the river. Once they had Augusta, they could venture into Union territory.

And they almost did.

After a long, dry spell, the river was so low a sandbar had appeared. Duke's men on horseback had charged into the water, running the federal patrol boats off. But the home guard had set up shop in town, shooting down at the rebels until Colonel Duke signaled a retreat.

Maybe that skirmish had kept her O'Neil family safe on the Ohio side, Little Abigail thought. But there was no way to tell them. With the war on, she couldn't send a letter. She couldn't cross the river herself. She couldn't even conjure her mother and father; her brother, Dennis; or her favorite niece, Sadie, with a song in the dim firelight tonight.

Yet she had been right to come here.

The distance had definitely put a strain on their
relationships. Sarah and Sean were now too old to travel; young Sadie tended to them. Dennis needed looking after as well. He had taken to drink after his little boy died of cholera.

If she were back in Lockton, Little Abigail knew she could set it all right again.

Yet the turmoil of war had kept all but the most intrepid travelers at home. Little Abigail admitted that she was many things—stubborn, strong-minded, even “mulish,” her husband, Jacob, once told her. But
intrepid
, no.

Upstairs on a pallet bed, her daughter, Lizzie, slept, a slip of a girl at thirteen who would soon bloom like the prettiest rose in the garden. The last time Lizzie had seen her cousins she still carried her little hand-sewn poppet everywhere, the doll that Little Abigail had made for her.

She and Lizzie would be all right, even if Jacob never came back from the war. It seemed like he had drifted out of their lives like wood smoke. Here one day, gone the next.

But he had left them bags of cornmeal hidden in the work cabin. After the first frost, they'd gather what menfolk they could. They'd kill the pig and smoke the hams and the bacon with the hickory wood Jacob had set aside. Their guinea fowl still nested in the trees. And there was the garden. And the woods. And the river.

The Ballou men had gone to fight for the Confederacy, so the tobacco fields lay fallow. There was no tobacco curing in the high rafters of the barn. It was difficult and dangerous to travel, even from here to the tobacco auctions in Maysville, so it didn't really matter.

But she and Lizzie wouldn't starve, unless more soldiers came and took what little they had.

She had the work cabin full of herbs hanging to dry, and she had pomades and potions and liniments to give to the poor and sell to those who could afford them. The spicy aroma of the workroom and a cup of sassafras or spicebush tea always put her right. Maybe a cup of that tea would have loosened her arm this evening, made the bow glide over the fiddle strings, and brought her loved ones back to her in spirit. But it was too late now.