A Parchment of Leaves Read Free Page A

“I’ve got plenty of magic about me.”

PART ONE

Confluence
    There is so much writ upon the parchment of leaves,
So much of beauty blown upon the winds,
I can but fold my hands and sink my knees
In the leaf pages.
    â€”James Still, “I Was Born Humble”

One
    T hose words flew out of my mouth, as sneaky and surprising as little birds that had been waiting behind my teeth to get out. Apparently, they did the trick. I could see my announcement making a fist around his heart. I was so full of myself, so confident. One thing I knowed I could do was charm a man until he couldn’t hardly stand it.
    I wanted Saul Sullivan, plain and simple. That was all there was to it. I didn’t love him—that came later—but I thought that I did. I mistook lust for love, I guess. I knowed that I could fill up some hole that he had inside of himself and hadn’t even been aware of until laying eyes on me. Saul looked to me like he needed to lay his head down in somebody’s lap and let them run their hand in a circle on his back until he was lulled off to sleep. I knowed that I was the person to do it. I had been waiting a long time for such a feeling to come to me.
    That whole summer, I kept one eye on the road as I went about my chores. I throwed corn to the chickens without even watchingthem, bent over to pick beans and looked upside down at the road, where I might see his horse come trotting down foamy mouthed and big eyed. At first, when I caught sight of Saul heading down into Redbud Camp, I would turn back to the task at hand and make him think I hadn’t seen him coming. He’d have to stop at the gate and yell out for me. I did this just to hear him holler. I loved his full-throated cry: “Vine! Come here to me!” I loved to hear my name on his tongue. But as summer steamed on, I couldn’t bring myself to continue such games, and I’d rush out to the road as soon as I seen him coming. I’d throw down the hoe or the bucket of blackberries or whatever I was packing. I’d leave one of my little cousins that I was supposed to be tending to, would rush off the porch even though Mama had ordered me to peel potatoes. The more he come by, the harder it was to stay away from him.
    Mama frowned on all of this. Every time I’d get back from being with him, she’d wear a long, dark face and not meet my eyes. “It’s not fitting,” she said. “People ought to court their own kind.”
    â€œThere ain’t no Cherokee boys to court,” I said. “They’ve left here.”
    â€œJust the same,” Mama said, and dashed water out onto the yard. Her face was square and unmovable. “Them Irish are all drunks.”
    I couldn’t help but laugh at her, even though I knew this would make her furious. “Good Lord, Mama, that’s what they say about Cherokees, too.”
    Daddy made no objections. Him and Saul went hunting together and stood around in the yard kicking at the dust while they talked about guns and dogs. Saul brought him quarts of moonshine and sacks of ginseng. We were kin to everybody in Redbud Camp, and when they seen that Daddy had warmed to Saul, they started speaking to me again. Everybody looked up to Daddy, and if he approved of Saul, they felt required to do the same. My aunts Hazel and Zelda and Tressy even seemed to be taken with him. They talked about him while they hung clothes on the line, while they canned kraut in theshade, when everyone gathered to hear Daddy’s hunting tales at dusk.
    â€œWonder if he’s freckled all over,” Hazel whispered. She was much older than me but had been widowed at a young age, and we had always been like sisters. She laughed behind cupped hands. “You know, down there.”
    â€œYou don’t know, do you, Vine?” Tressy asked, jabbing her elbow into my ribs.
    â€œThey say the Irish are akin to horses,” Zelda said, “if you know what I