Meet our Guest Editors for Issue 191, Jan-Mar 2021

(Submissions open July 1 - September 30 at Submittable)

Strawberry Moon Solstice

by Lindsey K. Royce

Breaking morning, the dogs wake blind
to a dead bat at my feet. Pure

witchcraft, this pelt is punctured with holes,
wings held sarcophagal to fur. This

is how I hold my body in your absence,
stiff as the Matryoshka doll

a child struggles to open.
I let you open me,

break the lake’s surface tension,
dive deep as you liked into my undisclosed.

When you left, who knew water
would crave a particular swimmer?

Who knew your hair would tangle
my mind’s clock, cause time to seize?

Last night’s strawberry moon shone
over crops, a sphere recalling

this bittersweet I lick
from juice-stained fingers,

chocolate melting like my resolve
to mouth sweetness alone.

And when I look out
at morning’s magnificent

greens, see foothills as silky
as the dog’s ginger fur,

aspen leaves shining
like gamblers’ spun coins,

the lake skittering bat-winged light—
I don’t grieve, I postpone it,

this inevitable postcard
traveling between our lives

that has passed through the death of us,
saying, Wish you were here. Wish.

the lightness of water

by Rhonda Browning White

My daddy didn’t hold to our land with white-knuckled fists. No, Ol’ Doc Walker spat on the dirt when he left West Virginia behind, telling my sister Violet and me that Chief Cornstalk’s curse on the mountain state held more water than all of Big Sandy River.

I didn’t want to leave, though at six years old, I held no affection for the land. It was Momma I didn’t want to leave behind, freshly buried beneath the newly frosted black earth. I didn’t mean to make her die, and I was afraid I’d forget what happened to her if we left her there. I needn’t have worried. Nearly every day I recall the thunderclap of gunshot that put a hole through my momma.

It wasn’t me who pulled the trigger. I ran out of the house to see the fighting, see the government soldiers in their pretty uniforms, running like scattering ants all over Blair Mountain, shooting the striking coal miners.

When I grabbed the cold metal latch and flung open the door that day, Momma called my name, and I turned back to see her tear loose her skirt from Violet’s fat little hands. I ran out the door, and Momma chased me, shouting I should get back in the house, hide under the kitchen table.

After the fighting stopped, Daddy held Momma to his chest while he cried. He petted her hair and kissed her face over and over. His chest hitched when first Violet then I kissed our momma one last time. We sat beside him and watched the few men left in town dig coffin-deep holes, though there weren’t nearly enough coffins to go ’round.

Judge Karnes put his dirty hand on Daddy’s shoulder, looked at me, then turned away when he spoke. “Doc, it’s time to let us have her.”

Daddy shook his head. “I’ll do it.” He stood with Momma in his arms, kissed her face, then laid her in one of the holes the men had dug. He picked up a shovel, and Violet and I watched while he covered her with the hard, dark dirt. At first dawn, while the frigid air still reeked of black powder, he loaded Violet and me onto the train and headed south to Cades Cove, Tennessee, where he said doctors were needed and appreciated. He said land ain’t worth the grief it causes.

Took me fourteen more years to understand what he meant, that he wasn’t talking about the land, but the people who latch onto it, who think they own the land, when instead the land owns them. He understood what I’ve only just learned, that love and grief should be bound to people, not to places.

I don’t remember much about our old homeplace anymore. Don’t remember much about Momma, neither. I don’t recall her hands, or her smile, but I still recollect how her face twisted all strange when the stray bullet hit her chest, how she looked at me and opened her mouth like she needed to tell me something important before she crumpled to the cold ground. She was barefoot. The thing I remember best, see every time I think of her, is her bare feet, their soles black with coal dirt.

~ ~ ~

Now I know the word to go with the look that was on Momma’s face, and it is anguish. It’s the same look I seen on Violet’s face when her baby died two weeks ago. That kind of hollow suffering is all I think about on my way back to my little cabin in the Cove.

I skid my shoes against the edge of the porch to scrape off the thick mud, slip out my bare feet, set the shoes by the door. Then I reach into my pockets, pull out two big river rocks, feel their cool smoothness, heft their weight in my hands. I drop them onto to the growing pile by the edge of the porch. There’s about a dozen now, each of them dried to dull gray.

I hold my breath and quietly step into the cabin, hoping Johnny might be at his daddy’s house discussing the sale of the farm, but my luck never did run true.

“Where’s dinner?” Johnny eyes me over his cup of coffee, cold, I know.

I swallow to buy time, hang my coat on the peg by the door. “I’ll have it ready in a jiffy.” I take Johnny’s cup from his hand, pour the last dregs and undissolved grains of sugar into the slop bucket under the counter, manna for the pigs. “You talk to the men at the National Park Service today?”

“I done told you, Lurleen, selling family land is like selling your soul. We ain’t about to do it.”

I nod and walk into our little pantry, lift the handle of the big iron pot from the hook. My elbow hits the small shelf of books Daddy gave me before he died, knocking off Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables, and it hits the floor with a thud.

“You all right in there?” Johnny asks.

“Fine. Made a mess, is all.” When Johnny and I married two years ago, I read to him in bed each night. He pretended to like it, but we knew it was more for me than for him. A couple of weeks ago I started the Hawthorne, but one line I read caused Johnny to bust. “What we call real estate—the solid ground to build a house on—is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.”

Johnny tore the book from my hands and flung it against the wall. He called Hawthorne a fool, told me not to bring that ignorance into his bed again.

Now I put the book back on the shelf, promise myself I’ll get around to finishing it, and I hurry back to the kitchen and set the heavy pot on the stove. I stoke the fire, then pour water from one of the metal well-buckets into the pot, steal a glance at Johnny. “Might want to draw some more water before nightfall.” I dry my hands on a dishrag, turn and trace a sandy wave on the back of Johnny’s head with my fingertip, try to soften him up. “We’re about the onliest ones left in Cades Cove. It’s not doing me much good to keep studying with the granny-woman, if there ain’t no people left to tend up here.” I take a deep breath and turn back to the stove. “We move to Nashville, maybe I could go to the university and be a real nurse, like Daddy wanted.”

Johnny doesn’t say anything for a minute, but then he finally speaks in measured words. “Where you been?”

I hate the way my lies pile up like the rocks by the porch. “Up to the granny-woman’s place.” When Johnny doesn’t ask me what I learned, I know he’s on to me.

He clears his throat. “You been at the river again, ain’t you?”

I blink real fast and keep my back to Johnny as I slip on my apron, keeping it loose around the small mound of my belly.

“You’re a fool to keep watch for her,” he says. “She’ll be back. Violet don’t ever stay gone long. She’s been running away like this since you two was kids.”

I force my hands to unclench, my fingers to relax. I try to nod, but my head jerks on my shoulders like a ratchet.

“Seems she’d have grown up, by now,” he preaches. “She ought to know better. I don’t know how nor why Walter puts up with her shenanigans.”

The door takes a sudden pounding, and my heart kicks.

“Who the devil comes at suppertime?” Johnny unfolds his tall body from the chair, and I admire his broad shoulders. He’s a good man, a hard worker, even if he is a little bull-headed. He’s never laid a hand to me, though I know at times he’s wanted to.

I didn’t want to marry him. Daddy insisted. Said it felt right for his two daughters to marry the two brothers our ages who lived up the road, and Violet had already fallen foolish in love with Walter. I told Daddy no at first, but later that night, he told me consumption would take him before winter broke, and his dying wish was for his girls to marry good men. I married Johnny to please him, but now it is I who am pleased.

Johnny flings open the front door, and the reek of Lyle Gregory rides in on the chilly March wind. “Lyle.”

“Where’s your daddy at, boy?” Lyle talks like his tongue is too thick for his mouth.

“I don’t reckon I know. He don’t live here.”

“I already know that. I been to his house, and he ain’t there. He owes me two dollars, and I aim to collect.”  

I peer around the corner to see Lyle suck a draw from his moonshine jug and fix Johnny with a tobacco-stained sneer. “He ain’t gone off to Nashville to sign his deed over, is he? 

“Course not.”

“He better not.” Lyle points his finger at Johnny. “And you’uns better not, either.”

I step back to the stove and bury my nose in my sleeve to block out Lyle’s sour stink.

“We got to stick together,” Lyle says. “Your great-granddaddy and mine settled this cove over a hunnerd year ago. Eighteen and thirty-five. Our granddaddies was borned here, our daddies was borned here, and we was borned here. And we’re gonna die here, ever last one of us. You got that, boy?”

My jaw is tight from clenching my teeth, and I expect Johnny feels the same strain times ten. He hates Lyle Gregory almost as much as he hates the way the man always calls him “boy.”

“I told you already,” Johnny says, “we ain’t selling. Now you got anything else to say ’fore I shut the door? Lurleen’s got supper on the stove, and I ain’t too kindly when I’m hungry.”

Lyle grunts.

“When I see Daddy in the morning, I’ll tell him you’re looking for him. Now if you don’t mind. . .”

I peek around the corner again in time to catch another gust of cold air when Johnny opens the door for the fox-faced man to leave. Lyle drunk-stumbles off the porch, and Johnny shuts the door behind him, then stalks back into the kitchen, sits at the table and props his chin on a fist.

I take the cabbage from the icebox, peel off the leaves one at a time, and fold them into little rolls the way Johnny likes them. My throat tightens with each fold. “They’re gonna make this a national park, Johnny. You and Walter and your daddy can’t hold out forever. Neither can Lyle Gregory. That money won’t lay on the table for long. Soon they’ll just up and take this land, and we won’t have a thing to show for it.”

Family land. I rue the day I ever stepped foot in Cades Cove. All Johnny, Walter, and their daddy ever talk about is the importance of their land. Feels like a millstone around my neck, choking me, drowning me.

Johnny snorts. “Great Smoky Mountains National Park. What’s so great about it?”

I glance over my shoulder, see Johnny shake his head. I take a deep breath, try to make my voice soft like dandelion fluff so my words will float into his heart. “It might be good to get out of the Cove, start over.”

“We ain’t a-going.”

I can’t blink back the tears this time. I swipe them away before they get out of hand, but the room still blurs through fresh ones. I tilt back my head, gaze at the tightly wound bundles of doctoring herbs drying above the stove: elderflower, boneset, skullcap, goldenseal, ginseng, and the blue cohosh root I dug up, in case Violet didn’t birth her baby on time.

“Besides,” Johnny says, “you’d hate to miss seeing Violet traipsing up the road eating forkfuls of humble pie when she comes home, wouldn’t you?”

I spin around and shoot venom from my eyes before I can stop myself.

“Now, Lurleen, don’t look at me like that.”

I turn my back, peel off another cabbage leaf and make a small, tight roll.

“I don’t mean to be cold. You know I love your sister well enough. But she had no business running away like that. Walter is grieving, too. Now he feels like he’s lost both of them, instead of just the baby.”

I spear the little roll of cabbage so hard the toothpick breaks. “She didn’t run away, Johnny, she got run off.” And I didn’t stop her. I suck in a breath, wish I could suck back my words back along with it.

“Who run her off? You ain’t fixing to tell me Walter run her off. He’s been all over these mountains looking for her.”

I hear the legs of Johnny’s chair scrape the floor, know without looking he’s turned it so he can watch me, see what I know.

“There’s something you ain’t telling me. Do you know where she is?”

“I—no.” My shoulders wilt like the cabbage I drop into the boiling water.

“Who run her off?”

My lip stings. I’m chewing it raw.

“I ain’t asking you again, Lurleen. Tell me who run her off.”

I whip around, and my throat aches when I whisper the truth. “Your mother, that’s who. Your own mother—she ran Violet off.”

Johnny stares at me as if he thinks I’ve gone crazy. Then he moves his head just a little, shakes it side to side. “Momma never would have done that. Not after—not after Violet’s baby died.”

My hands open without my meaning them to, and the butcher knife I clutched clatters to the floor. I stare at it a moment, not remembering why I held it in the first place. “She told Violet she was wicked and God punished her with that—with the baby.” My eyes start to burn, and I blink faster.

Johnny holds out his palms, and his face goes slack. “But Momma loves Violet like the daughter she’s never had—better than me, even.”

A little laugh jumps out of my mouth before I can catch it. “Your momma loves nary a soul more than you, and you know it.” I try to smile, but my lips won’t turn up, they twist the wrong way.

“Oh, now, don’t cry.” Johnny’s arms slide around my shoulders, and he pulls me to his chest, rocks me back and forth.

Once the tears start, I can’t seem to make them stop. When the crying and trembling finally slow, Johnny sets the pot of cabbage off the stove, leads me around the table to my chair, then fetches me a ladle of cool water in one of the pretty glasses I save for special days. 

“I want to know,” he says. “Why d’you think Momma run Violet off? Why did she say those things to her?”

I sip from my glass, set it down, trace my finger along the pansy pressed into its side. “I reckon she was upset over what Miss Hazel said.

“The granny-woman? Why would something that old woman said make Momma act hateful with Violet?”

I stare at the water in the glass, feel the coolness against my hand, wonder how Violet ever stood the cold when she waded into the river. A shiver ripples up my back. “She—Miss Hazel—she said it weren’t real. We didn’t even bury it, Johnny. Didn’t you notice that? There weren’t no grave! There weren’t no grave, and not a soul noticed it.” My throat clenches and hurts. “How can you men go about your business after a baby—after something like that happens—and not even notice there weren’t no grave?”

Johnny looks out the window into the back field, where crosses mark the graves of my father and his grandparents. I know he’s searching for the soft mound of newly turned dirt that doesn’t exist, the missing bouquet of brown, wilted flowers collecting evening dew.

He turns to me. “So where is the baby? If the women didn’t bury it, what did you’uns do with it?”

I take a sip of water, but the liquid thickens in my throat. I push the glass away. “Johnny, it weren’t no baby.”

“What do you mean? Violet was as big as a sow and could hardly walk.”

“Yes. She was too big, that’s what the granny-woman said. She told me in one of my lessons that Violet was too big, too soon, and that might spell trouble.”

Johnny steps closer, puts his fingers under my chin, makes me look at him. “You’re talking in riddles. What happened to the baby?”

The rock in my throat breaks loose, and words flood out of me. “Johnny, it weren’t no baby! Why won’t you listen! It’s the worst thing I ever seen. It was a wad of hair and bits of bones and things that looked like big pink grapes and little yellow buds, and the granny-woman made me hold out a blanket to catch it, and when she turned and dropped it into my hands, it broke open and water poured out all over the blanket and onto the floor and—”

I jump from the table, overturn my chair and run out the back door, my hands covering my mouth to hold in my sickness until I reach the cool outdoors.

I fall to my knees on the damp grass, try to pray, try to ask forgiveness, but God is too far away. I promised Daddy I’d take care of Violet. But how could I stop her when all she wanted to do was escape the coming years of grief and shame? How could she walk again through town, with all the women pointing and gossiping about the ungodly spawn that came out of her? She wanted to be with her baby—with whatever it was she had borned. She didn’t want to live anymore. Wasn’t even living the last days she was alive. Who was I to tell her she must? How could I tell to stay here, when all I want is to leave?

When I finally go back into the house, the goodness shows up in Johnny, and he holds a wet cloth to my head. “I’m so sorry, Lurleen. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“How could I?”

“I don’t understand. It doesn’t make sense. Are you sure what you saw? Maybe some of the herbs—”

“I saw it! Your momma saw it, too. So did Miss Hazel. So did that gossiping biddy Corrine, from the church.” I take the cloth from Johnny’s hand, sink down in a chair and wipe my face. “I wish I could un-see it.”

He sits at the table across from me. “You didn’t say anything to anyone about it. Not to me, nor Walter, nor—”

“How can I talk about something I don’t understand myself? It’s not the kind of thing Violet would want me telling. Too many people know already.”

Johnny nods and takes both of my hands in his, rubs my fingers with his thumbs. “Lurleen?” When he looks at me, I ain’t sure if the blue pain in his eyes is his, or mine. “If you women didn’t bury the—the thing that was supposed to be a baby, where is it?”

My mouth is parched. I long for a drink, but I don’t dare touch the glass of water. I don’t yet deserve the relief it will bring. I stare at Johnny’s hands, folded around mine, and my words come out steady this time, dry as bones. “Miss Hazel wrapped it in the baby blanket Violet knitted. She tied a big rock to it and took it up to Abrams Falls. She said a prayer and throwed the whole bundle into the waterfall.”

Johnny studies our hands a long time, too. “And Momma run Violet off over that?”

I shrug off my opinion, tell part of what I know to be fact. “Your momma said God punished Violet for being with child out of wedlock. Even though Violet offered to swear on the Bible that she was pure as fresh-fallen snow on her wedding night, your momma said she must have lain with Walter before they married, else she wouldn’t have been so big so soon. She said God gave Violet a goblin-child. Your momma made Miss Hazel drown it, before it hatched.”

Johnny shudders and drops my hands. He stands and paces half-circles around the table, first one way, then another. “Why didn’t Violet stand up to Momma? Why didn’t she give her a piece of her mind?” Johnny stops pacing, stares out the window, grows quiet. After a minute, he turns to me. “You’re not looking for her.”

“What?”

“You’re going to the river, you’re looking for that—thing. Walter has been all up and down Little Pigeon River, over the mountain to the Cherokee Reservation, up to Maggie Valley, but you haven’t once looked for Violet, because you know where she is.” He turns, smacks his hand against the side of the cabin hard enough to make me jump. “Where is Violet?”

Johnny’s hands grip my shoulders, and he gently shakes me. “I asked you a question. Do you know where Violet is staying? I’ll go tell her that my momma is as crazy as a bedbug. She’ll listen to me.” He stoops, leveling his sight with mine. “Lurleen?”

I remember Violet’s careful, steady stride breaking the current when she waded into the icy rushing water above the falls, and I shudder. I should have stopped her. Or joined her.

“Are you cold? You keep shivering.” Johnny heads to the front of the cabin, pulls a quilt from the rocking chair near the fire, drapes it around my shoulders. He squats in front of me. “Lurleen, where is Violet?”

I settle my gaze on him, hope it looks as icy as it feels. “I don’t know where to find her.”

It is the truth. I figured she’d have turned up by now, but the rocks must have done their job.

~ ~ ~

Pounding at the door wakes us just before dawn, and when I hear the loud hammering, the shooting on Blair Mountain happens again in my head. I search the floor, trying to find Momma, then my sense returns to me, and I see Johnny springing from the bed. I throw a quilt around my shoulders and hurry out of the bedroom behind him.

Miss Hazel’s young niece Mary stands on the porch, several inches of her thin cotton nightgown peeping below the hem of her wool coat. “Miz Lurleen?” The gray light of early morning leaks through the fog behind her as she peers around Johnny. “Miss Hazel needs you.”

My stomach stiffens. I haven’t seen the granny-woman since that night she prayed over the bundle at Abrams Falls. “Can’t she take care of it herself?”

Mary rubs her bony hands over her arms and shivers. “She said you need to see this. For your training, she said. It’s Mr. Gregory. The oldest one, I forget his name. He had some kind of spell and fell off his horse and broke his leg. Bone’s sticking plumb out of it. It’s a sight. Miss Hazel says you need to come. She needs a extry set of hands.” Mary shifts from one foot to the other.

Johnny swings wide the door. “Well, come on in while Lurleen gets her coat and shoes. It’s too chilly to stand out there and wait.”

My feet are slabs of slate as I trundle to the bedroom to get dressed. I’ll tell them I’m sick, maybe. Say I’m coming down with something. But then Johnny’ll say Miss Hazel can whip up a medicine tea to help me when I get there. I pull on a pair of Johnny’s long johns, slip on a loose dress with big pockets, and follow the girl into the fog.

When Mary and I walk in the door to Lyle Gregory’s place, the stench of old sweat, moonshine mash, and wet dogs hits me, and my stomach rolls. I cover my nose and follow Mary beyond the quilt Lyle uses for a bedroom door, and I stand still for a moment as my sight adjusts in the dim light. When I can see a bit, I pull back the flour-sack curtain at the window and tie it in a knot to let in the struggling dawn.

“Mary, you best get along home,” Miss Hazel says. “You’ll have school in a few hours, so go get you some rest.” Her voice ripples and quavers with age.

Mary opens her mouth to argue, but shuts it when Miss Hazel’s bushy gray eyebrows lift. Mary backs out of the doorway, letting the quilt fall behind her.

I slip off my coat and open the window a crack, as much to flush out the stink as to let in cool air. “What do you need, Miss Hazel?” I can’t take my eyes off Lyle’s naked, bloody leg. Blood has spilled out and pooled around it on the bedcovers, dripped onto the floor. I ain’t seen this much blood since Momma’s chest—

“You can fetch the dishpan of water Mary put on to boil before she went to get you.”

Startled, I look up, and she motions toward the big, flower-strewn carpetbag that sits on the floor near the bed. “And we’ll need clean rags and the geranium heads from my bag. Lyle’s been hitting the corn liquor, so more of that’s all we’ll give him for pain.”

I do as she said, taking a moment to add another log to the blaze in the fireplace, so the tiny cabin will stay warm despite the open window. Then I carry the steaming dishpan and set it on a chair near Miss Hazel, and she motions me to stand beside her.

“We’re going to clean up this wound, then you’re going to pull on his foot, while I push in the bone.”

My jaw works up and down a few times. “Pull on his foot?”

“Yes’m. You’ll grab his ankle, hold fast, and lean back with all your weight.” She points to Lyle Gregory’s meaty thigh. “They’s a muscle up here that draws up when the bone breaks. We got to pull it straight, so’s I can push the bone back in there and line it up even-like. Then while you’re still pulling on his foot, I’ll tie this here broomstick tight agin his leg, so he can’t bend it.”

Most times, the doctoring don’t bother me. I’d gone with Daddy even when I was little, and while my job was to keep Violet busy, sometimes I got to watch and help. Now though, I struggle to keep my stomach inside. “And the geranium?” I ask.

“That’ll staunch the bleeding where the bone’s poking through. Pluck off the petals and mash them with honey to make a poultice, and we’ll lay it on the hole before we bandage him up.” She slides a gnarled hand under Lyle’s thinning ring of white hair, lifts his head and puts a mason jar to his lips. “Get another swig, Lyle, and make it a big one. It’ll feel like the devil’s got hold of you when Lurleen pulls on your foot.” She sets down the jar and dips one of the big squares of muslin into the scalding water.

I watch, wondering how she can bear plunging her hands into water so hot. She drops the dripping rag across Lyle’s protruding bone, and Lyle sucks in a breath and roars through clenched teeth.

“Hesh up, now. It’ll hurt worse ’fore it feels better.” She holds the mason jar to his lips, and this time Lyle takes long, loud gulps.

I dig around in Miss Hazel’s bag until I find one of the cotton-wrapped bite sticks she’d whittled, and I hand it to her.

She smiles, reveals the two gaps where teeth used to be. “You learn real good, Lurleen. You’re going to make a fine granny-woman someday. Ol’ Doc Walker would be proud.” Her eyes start out kind, but they accuse me just before they settle on my belly. “You feeling all right?”

I nod and look away.

Miss Hazel swabs around the bone that sticks out of Lyle’s leg, then she hands me the bloody rag.

“Rinch it out good, and hand it back.”

My hands light afire when I dip them into the scalding water.

“Seen Violet yet?”

I plunge my hands deeper, now needing the burn. How could I have watched her wade deeper, deeper into the river? “No, I an’t seen her.” I would have wanted the same thing, the same end to the ache, wouldn’t I?

I rinse the muslin, watch the water turn red and sluice between my fingers. I wring out the rag, then offer it to Miss Hazel.

She shakes her head. “Again, ’cept this time leave it wetter. The hot water draws out the ’fection.”

I sink the rag beneath the surface of the bloody water. Water draws out the infection. This time I wring the muslin gently, just enough to keep it from dripping. When I turn to hand it to Miss Hazel, her stare stabs into me.

“You know what Walter’s momma said weren’t the truth, don’t you? Violet didn’t do nothing wrong to cause what happened to her baby. She ain’t the onliest one to birth a thing like that. It weren’t no goblin.”

I can’t speak for fear of crying.

A slight shrug lifts Miss Hazel’s shoulder, then she drops the rag onto Lyle’s leg, bringing another loud growl from behind the bite stick he clamps between his teeth. She dabs at Lyle’s leg, then hands me the rag. When I reach for it, she grabs my hand.

“What happened to Violet’s baby ain’t a-going to happen to yourn. Just get that thought out of your head.”

It takes me a minute to swallow. I never told her I am with child.

She points to the end of the bed. “Now go down there and get ready to grab Lyle’s foot.”

It only takes a minute or two to set Lyle Gregory’s leg, but it seems like an hour, because he curses and screams ungodly all through it.

Full daylight shines through the window when we finish with Lyle and get him settled down again. I wash and wring out the bloody rags, hang them on the porch railing to dry. When I come back inside, Miss Hazel offers me a small tin. 

“When you didn’t come up to learn doctoring with me, I knowed you must be feeling poorly.” She studies my face. “There’s catnip, peppermint, lavender, and goldenseal in here. You got some ’seng root at home?”

“Yes’m.”

“Add a thumb-sized piece to a teacup of water, boil it nearly dry, then add another teacup full of water and steep these here herbs with it. Put a few spoonfuls in a glass of water, and drink it morning and night. You’ll feel a might better in a day or two.”

My hands tremble as I take the little box. “Did Violet drink this, too?”

Miss Hazel takes one of my hands in hers and pats it. “No, ’cause I didn’t give her none. This ain’t for the baby, Lurleen. This is for the momma.” Her raven eyes nearly disappear inside her wrinkles when she smiles.

“Thank you, Miss Hazel.” I stuff the tin into my dress pocket, pull on my coat and open the door. I turn to look at her. “Bertha’s baby should be coming along any day now, shouldn’t it?

Miss Hazel’s mouth sags. “It was stillborn. I didn’t see nary a need to send for you.” She touches my arm. “That don’t have no bearing on you, neither, Lurleen.”

My heart sinks heavy toward my belly. “Violet first, now Bertha makes two,” I whisper. “They come in threes.” I walk out the door and down the wooden steps.

Miss Hazel steps onto the porch and calls after me. “Lurleen, you drink that tonic, hear?”

I start up the road toward home. The weight in my belly seems to grow heavier with every step, and by the time I reach home, I can hardly walk. I need to tell Johnny I’m in the family way, before he learns it on his own. I need to tell Johnny lots of things, but first we have to get out of Cades Cove. If he learns I’m with child, he’ll never let us leave. 

~ ~ ~

When I mount the steps to our cabin, the door opens, and Johnny steps out.

“Good. You’re here before I leave. Me and Daddy—my Lord, Lurleen! You look a mess!”

I drop my head, look at my coat. It looks just like always, to me. My dress is stained, but Johnny can’t see that. “What?” I ask.

“You’re white as a lily. You must be exhausted.” He puts an arm around my waist, takes my hand and leads me inside. “Lyle Gregory was hard on you?”

“Fairly rough. I’ll be okay, after I sit a spell.”

Johnny helps me out of my coat, and his eyes grow big when he sees my bloody dress. “That looks a sight more than ‘fairly rough,’ to me. Lyle going to make it?”

“He’ll live. Reckon he won’t get drunk and ride horseback for a while.” I lower my sore bones into the rocking chair by the fire.

Johnny hangs up my coat, goes to the kitchen and returns with a cup of hot water sweetened with honey. “Sip on this while you rest. It’ll warm you up a tad.” He pulls the quilt from the back of the rocker, and he lays it across my lap.

I smile and thank him, then I remember what he started to tell me. “Say you’re going to your daddy’s?”

“I’m going to get him, yes. We’re going to ride out to see the men at the National Park Service. We’re going to tell them no.” He smiles, and it’s the proud kind of smile I can tell he wants me to mirror. “Lyle might be a drunken fool, but he was right about one thing. Our daddies and granddaddies and great-granddaddies have all lived on this land, and one of these days, I’ll have me a son who’ll live on this land, too.”

My free hand finds my belly before I can stop it, and Johnny sees, cocks his head to one side.

He kneels by the rocking chair. “Lurleen, I know you had your sights set on Nashville, on a house in town and university learning.” He holds my hand. “That ain’t no kind of life for a country man like me. I need to farm and raise cattle. I have to hunt these here woods and build cabins for newlyweds. This is all I know, Lurleen. Besides, there ain’t no better place in the world to raise a family, and it’s about time for us to get started on one.”

I’m too tired to cry. It wouldn’t do no good, no how. I try my best to smile, and I must do okay, because Johnny grins and kisses me full on the mouth, then jumps up and grabs his coat.

“It’ll be nigh dark before I’m home. You get some rest, and I’ll see you ’round suppertime.”

~ ~ ~

I fall into fitful slumber, dream of Violet wading into the river, of Miss Hazel tying Lyle’s bloody leg to the bundle she threw into the waterfall, of Johnny planting corn, of Momma’s dirty feet. I’m in a sweat when I wake, and the blood on my dress scares me. Then the world rights itself, and the room comes back to me. I’m going to have to live in Cades Cove until the end of my time, and then I’m going to die in it. The best thing I can think to do is make the time in between living here and dying here as short as I can.

I stand and pull off the ruined dress, throw it on the fire. I don’t want rags with Lyle’s bloodstains marking this day.

In the bedroom, I hang Johnny’s long johns on the bedstead to air, and I pull on another loose dress. Before I know it, I’m wearing my coat, and I’m standing by the porch, hefting smooth river rocks in my hands. Two at a time, I load them into the pockets of my dress and coat, feel them thump hard and heavy against my legs and knees as I walk toward the river.

It’s hard to climb the hill toward Abrams Falls weighted down like I am, but I imagine seeing Violet again, telling her how sorry I am, and she will say it’s okay. She’ll say I’m with her now, where I belong. I think of seeing Momma and Daddy standing on either side of her in heaven, of how they’ll open their arms to receive me, and I keep on going.

When I reach the riverbank at the head of the falls, my legs are ready to give out. I sit for a bit, look out at the place where Violet waded into the water. In my mind, she is before me, moving slow and steady, water climbing to her knees, her waist, her neck. Did she know I watched her from the trees? Was she waiting for me to come to her rescue, save her?

Foolish thoughts. She couldn’t have known I followed her.

When I saw her loading her pockets with rocks, loping up the path toward the river, I knew what she was up to. That’s when I should have said something, took her by the hand, dragged her home. Instead, I watched.

She’d cried every day for thirteen days. Not just now and then, but all the time. Her hollow eyes were bruised like she’d been hit. At first, I’d hold her, rock her in my arms like I did when we was little. Then after several days, I got mad at her. Told her to clean herself up, fix dinner for Walter, come back to the land of the living. When she started to stink, I bathed her in a washtub by the fire. She just sat there, her tears steady streaming, not moving a muscle to help me. The day she quit crying was the worst. I’d ask her a question, and she’d look beyond me, like I wasn’t even there. She was gone somewhere inside herself, somewhere only she alone could go. It spooked me.

The night before she walked to the river, as I tucked her into bed, I saw a flicker of my sister behind those blank eyes. It was as if she peered out at me from the darkness of a deep, dank well from which she didn’t want to emerge; rather, she wanted me to jump in with her, sink straight to the bottom of the shaft into the soft, swallowing silt.

For a magical, morbid moment, I entertained joining her.

It takes me a couple of tries to stand up now—I’m un-balanced by the load I carry—but I get my feet beneath me. I follow in Violet’s footsteps, walk towards the river, and my breath catches as I step into the icy water. It’s so cold it feels like it’s cutting me, but the mineral scent of river water smells like home to me. I keep going, step towards the rushing current, and the freezing river slides between my calves, my thighs, rises around my waist. The rocks in my dress and coat hold me steady as water sluices around my belly, around the baby that’s inside of me. Can my baby feel the cold?

The few times after the birthing when I could coax Violet to talk, she’d only say she missed her baby. She’d touch low on her belly, the soft, empty place once filled with something not quite alive, yet still growing. The horrid thing that’s out here where I stand. My foot finds something slimy, and I shudder.

Terror rises in me, and I turn to run towards the river-bank, to escape this briny water where dead things float beneath the surface, where the thing that’s not quite a baby lies wrapped in a blanket my sister knitted, where she herself now lies bloated and purple. My mouth opens wide, and a scream tries to climb out of my throat, but I’m too cold, too frightened to make a sound. My belly tightens, and I imagine my baby inside, curling and huddling against the icy river.

I’m thigh-deep when I slip on a slick stone, fall face-first, my mouth filling with frigid water. My hands find the river bottom, and silt oozes between my fingers. My eyes are open in the murkiness, and bubbles rise in front of my face as I struggle to stand. I rise to my knees and cough out the scream that finally surfaces.

I claw and stumble my way back to the riverbank, shoulder out of the rock-laden, heavy, wet coat and fall to the ground. I curl into a ball, make myself small, shivering as much from the horror of what I’ve almost done as from the icy wetness. The sob inside me breaks loose, and I empty out all that I have carried.

~ ~ ~

Hours later, I stand before the hot stove, stirring venison soup, and Johnny flings open the door.

“I’m home. Sure smells good in here,” he calls out before he even sees me.

I want to run to him, but my feet have roots that won’t let me move. I squeeze my eyes shut, try to remember how I want to begin. I jump when Johnny touches me.

“Why you cooking with a blanket around your shoulders? You chilled again?” He touches his hand to my forehead. “You’re fevered. Come sit down.” He guides me toward the rocking chair by my shoulders, and I let him.

“I ain’t got the fever. My forehead’s hot ’cause I been standing over a boiling pot.” I sit in the rocker, and he stands over me, his face full of questions.

“What’s the blanket for, then?”

Things ain’t unfolding the way I pictured. He’s scattering my thoughts out of order. “I got wet. I—I felt in the river.”

“Lurleen! That water is like ice. You could catch your death of cold.”

He stoops and rubs my arms up and down, and they feel loose, and I know if I shook them, they’d fall to the floor. I could come apart, arms first, then my head, pieces of me scattering across the floorboards.

But I can’t do that. I have baby in me. I’m a momma now, and I have to save my baby, even if I didn’t save Violet. I have to save my child, the way Momma saved me.

I watch Johnny lay another log on the fire, watch the sparks float upward, light the dark with their tiny glow. “Johnny,” I say, remembering the lines I practiced, and he turns to me. “I am glad about the land. I’ll live here with you for as long as you will have me.”

He scoops me up as though I am a kitten, sits in the rocker with me on his lap. He kisses my forehead. “I will have you forever,” he says.

I pull my hand from beneath the blanket and stroke his cheek, look into the pools of his eyes. “You promise?”

He tilts his head. “Course I promise. I promised that on the day we wed, and I ain’t a-going back on it. Sickness and health. For better or for worse. I vowed before God.”

I press my cheek against his neck, close my eyes. I think I could sleep, then I remember the soup. I move to get up.

“Where you going?”

“Dinner,” I say. “Come and eat.” I untangle myself from Johnny’s arms, from the blanket, and he follows me to the kitchen, pulls out his chair, while I ladle the soup.

I thought I was doing the right thing by letting Violet go, but my thinking was so very wrong. There is no way I can imagine forgiving myself, since even walking into a watery grave couldn’t bring me peace. But maybe I can, at least, find Johnny’s mercy.

He takes my hands and blesses the food, and when he starts to let go, I keep holding on. “For better or for worse?”

He leans forward, studies my face. “For better or for worse.”

I grip his hands tighter, soak up their warmth, feel their roughness beneath my fingertips. “Johnny,” I say, “there’s some things I’ve got to tell you.”