Light to the Hills: A Novel (24)
Jack Wick seemed to casually handle the reptile, almost fondly, like the baby raccoon Cricket had found near its mama in a trap. He’d raised it until it was grown enough to wander off one day and make its own way in the mountains. When it was young, it would wind in and out of Cricket’s arms, playful and curious.
Jack invited anyone who wished to prove their faithfulness to come forward. It was at that moment that Mama stood and took her daughters in hand. She nodded at the Wicks and at those seated around her and excused herself, whispering they had to get back home to see about Finn. At the first sign of Mama’s movement, Cricket was already up and halfway to the door. The rest of them followed behind in a jumble of skirts and shawls. As they climbed up into the wagon, Mama unhitched Plain Jane and pointed her toward home.
“Reckon the Lord surely knows my heart and whether I meant every bit of prayer I prayed for Finn. We already done been tested enough,” Mama said. “There’s hardly call for fangs and rattles.”
Mama unpacked their lunch of sliced ham and cornbread, and she passed the pail around the wagon. They’d gone at least a half mile before anyone spoke, and Cricket whistled between his teeth.
“Well, I’ll be doggone. Reckon what kind of service they have on Easter?”
Rai already knew what Harley’s opinion would be of the spectacle they’d witnessed. Her husband had his own measure of faith, but Rai knew it didn’t stretch far enough to include taking up with serpents. She’d have to downplay it and pacify him with knowing Finn had been interceded for. Finn was worth anything that needed doing. Any of her young’uns were, for that matter. A wave of helpless despair rose in her throat, and she stifled it by pulling Hiccup close to her on the bench and squeezing her tight. A mama’s heart is a wonder, able to hold an endless measure of love, hope, sadness, and rage all at the same time. Multiply that by the number of young’uns you had, and sometimes the torrent wore Rai down to her bones.
Rai kissed the top of Hiccup’s head, her lips pressing hard against her daughter’s sun-warmed hair. Riding with her sweet girl on this sunny day was some comfort. Harley said sometimes that Rai indulged their youngest daughter too much. She’d been conceived after two miscarriages, coming on close to her change in life. When the unmistakable signs of another pregnancy had come upon her, Rai had told Harley this little Hiccup would surely be their last, and she had been. Despite the extra work a baby had added to her impossibly full days and aching joints, Rai had savored the time most of all her young’uns, knowing each milestone Hiccup reached wouldn’t pass her way again.
Though she was fairly certain she was past childbearing, Rai still put Harley off during certain times of the month. She’d seen plenty of miracle young’uns come later in life. Any other man might get up under a woman’s skirt just the same, but Harley wouldn’t push.
Rai smiled to herself as she remembered meeting behind the corncrib recently, their fumbled kisses and grasping as a casual trio of hens scratched and pecked on the dirt path behind them. She couldn’t resist Harley’s lopsided smile as he followed her appreciatively with his eyes. She knew it wore on him that he couldn’t provide much for the family. Bless him, he worked sunup till sundown, and still they rubbed pennies together. At least he stayed. That was more than a lot of men, who lit out for the hills when things got tough and their mettle got tested, or worse. Men like Amanda’s husband, Rai reckoned. Them, she couldn’t abide.
Rai let her thoughts roam to Beady Wick, the preacher’s wife and—now she wondered at it—Amanda’s mama. She wondered what it might feel like without the company and comfort of little ones underfoot, if she and Harley were blessed to live long enough to know such a time. Having your nest empty all in good time was one thing, but having the pleasures of grown young’uns and grandbabies yanked out from under you was another. For certain, Rai didn’t envy poor Beady. Surely that mama’s heart must carry a fierce ache.
Rai thought of her own mama, then, and sighed with the missing of her as her thoughts wandered. Before she was old enough to comprehend the task, Rai remembered sitting at her mama’s bare feet on their front stoop, sifting through the cuttings and pouches of roots and seeds that had been collected that day. In this way, without knowing it, Rai had learned to spy what nature shyly unfurled to the keen eye. She could tell a tree by its bark or leaves, depending on the season. She knew where certain mushrooms were likely to be found and how to grind or boil the roots, berries, or stems of this plant or that. Watching her mama’s hands, Rai measured the doses of teas, tinctures, or salves and discerned which part of dandelion was best for thinning the blood and which for gout or sore joints.
Rai learned much from her mother’s hands—the soothing comfort of a dry palm against a fevered brow, the number of times to knead a decent biscuit dough, the careful way to make even stitches up the seam of a shirt, and how to pat a baby’s back until the troublesome gas rose from his colicky belly. Rai had many brothers and sisters, some of them living and some of them passed on by now, but none close by. She’d helped look after quite a few when they were young and underfoot, keeping them from tottering into the fire on the hearth or getting too close to the hind end of their ill-tempered cow.
Her pa she’d learned from, too, but only in pieces, not like her brothers. Their labors were divided into housekeeping and farming, and although Rai remembered many times she and her sisters had to hoe the garden or tote wood or water, her brothers and Pa never mended a shirt or cooked a meal, even when her mama fell sick. Then, the house labor fell to her and her sisters, including gathering what was needed from the woods to nurse her. For weeks, at sixteen, Rai kept the house running steady for the family, her brow permanently furrowed at the sight of her mama in bed while the sun shone, her busy hands lying strangely still on the quilt tucked around her thin frame. Rai saved every bit of wisdom and healing know-how her mama had shown her. She’d pored through the stores in the lean-to, where the dried herbs hung from the rafters, and bottles of powders and salves lined the walls alongside the tomatoes and pole beans they’d put up that summer. Rai did her best, begging her mama to tell her what to do toward the end, what to try, what to grind or brew.