Light to the Hills: A Novel (21)

Sass hunted and gathered. She’d take Hiccup on long walks with her outside the cabin, mainly to get out in the fresh air and take her mind off her mama’s worried face and her brother’s pale one. She chatted to keep the quiet away and pointed out things she’d learned when she’d followed Finn around this same way.

“Looky here, Hiccup, this is a sassafras tree. It’s got the same name as me. See the leaves?” She made her little sister smell the root and point at the three different leaves. “My real true name—the one the midwife wrote in the Bible—is Susanna Lee. But you wouldn’t never know me by that. Mama says I used to flit from one thing to the next like a firefly, couldn’t make up my mind where to land, but Daddy said I’m like a sassafras tree. Too many good things to try, so why settle on just one? Sassafras has options. It can be lots of things all at once.”

“Three leaves,” Hiccup recited. “Sass-frass.”

Sass would bring home things Finn could get a whiff of—pine or cedar, a pail of cold creek water, mint or wild thyme from the garden, a comb of honey. If only there were a way to bottle the wind as it blew through the hardwoods, or the sun that rose slow and pale in the gray sky. If she could, she would scale a pin oak and catch that breeze in her pocket if it would bring back the old merry Finn. Instead, she brought turkey feathers and smooth stones, a tortoise shell and the claw of a crawdad. She snapped cottonwood twigs to reveal the secret star hidden inside to remind him of the clear night sky. If he was asleep, she’d line up the treasures on top of the log cabin quilt he lay under so they’d be there as a comfort when he woke.

Today, though, there would be no gathering walks with Hiccup. Today they bounced and jostled together in the small wagon as it wound its way down their mountain, through the rocky creek beds, and along the narrow bridle path across the next ridge. Sass couldn’t remember the last time they’d all gone to a regular church building. Likely, it would’ve been after a winter’s thaw, when the preacher was called on to do all the saved-up winter weddings and funerals all at once. It was a far piece to travel and a day’s work lost to make the trip, so they usually fashioned their own church with prayers and stories and songs around the hearth or beneath the trees.

“I see Pickins’s Nose.” Cricket pointed through the trees.

“Cricket,” Mama chastened. “That’ll do.”

From a certain viewpoint on the mountain, Pickins’s Ridge looked like a man’s profile. The church and its simple steeple covered in vines protruded from the slope at a most uncanny spot to look like the man’s nose, christening it with the unfortunate nickname. Sass idly watched the patches of sun grow between the trees as if some giant hand turned up the kerosene to light the path. A red fox watched them ford a creek, frozen with one paw lifted and water dripping from its chin. Though they couldn’t see them, a flock of geese flew somewhere beyond the trees, calling and honking to each other on their way to some water hole.

About midmorning, their wagon creaked and jounced its way into a clearing, and Mama tugged Plain Jane’s reins. The MacInteers sat up from where they’d been slumped in the wagon and surveyed the building before them. Pickins’s Holiness Church of the Risen Savior was a square pinewood structure with two steps leading up to the front door. The planks had been whitewashed, giving the church an obvious contrived gloss that stood out from the browns and greens of the underbrush. Its shingled roof was overrun with moss, and there was a brush pile of drying ivy that had been tossed toward the back of the site. The clingy, brown climbing roots it had left behind were peppered all over one side of the building. A single square window looked out from each of its flat sides, enough to let in light and air. Along the outside, sleepy horses and mules stood tied to posts and rails set for that purpose. When the newcomers arrived in the clearing, some of the horses swiveled their ears and nickered a welcome.

The church was silent save for a pair of nesting crows that surveyed the spot from their vantage point high above. They sent up a racket of caws like they were sentries for the anointed, heralding the entrance of goats among sheep. Mama was unbothered. She tied Plain Jane’s reins to an open space on a post while the children climbed and jumped down from the wagon. They were unusually quiet. Even Cricket stood in a line with his sisters and waited for a cue from their mama as to what came next. Nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking cheers. That’s how Finn would’ve described them had he been there.

Mama smoothed her hair, knotted at the nape of her neck, and gave them all a cursory once-over. She licked her thumb and rubbed at a smudge on Cricket’s cheek while he scrunched his face in protest.

“That’s it, then.” Mama marched up the front steps, her shoes echoing off the wood. She raised a fist to knock, but just as she pulled her arm back, the door burst open.

“Oh!” she cried, stepping backward into Fern and Sass, who jostled back into Cricket, who, with only one foot on the bottom step at the time, lost his balance and landed in the dust. “Oh!” Mama cried again, whirling to face Cricket sprawled on the ground.

“Welcome, welcome!” The man smiled broadly, his teeth taking up his whole mouth like a horse’s. “Didn’t mean to startle you. Looks like our cup runneth over. MacInteer, ain’t it, if I remember correct?” In the space of talking, he’d ushered Mama into the cool, dim indoors, and Sass and her siblings followed along behind her like ducklings. Now, all five of them stood in the back of the church, the attention of twenty or so members focused on them. Forty eyes—thirty-nine minus the patch-covered one belonging to an old man in a cane-backed chair under one of the windows.