The Fallen Fruit, page 16
“Where have the boys gone?” one woman asked.
“Has anyone seen them in the orchard or the fields?” another said.
Ruth stepped forward when she had enough of an audience. “My son, Pete, was taken,” she said with a spark in her eyes. “He was at Reba’s house, supposedly learning, when the children told us he left.”
A few eyes darted in Reba’s direction at the mention of her name.
Ruth pressed on. “After Pete disappeared, Nelson ended up missing too. And not long after Reba showed up at my place, looking all innocent, we heard Hiram drowned.”
“That ain’t what happened,” Herbert said firmly. “My sister said he was there, then he wasn’t.”
“Maybe he’s downstream then,” Carrie said. “Half of y’all can’t see worth a damn.”
“We searched.” Herbert glared right back at her. “There’s no body.”
But Carrie would have none of Herbert’s remarks. “Don’t matter! Something ain’t right here. They could be out there, half beaten, or in chains already.” She spoke with bared teeth like a cornered cat. “I say we look for our children.”
Murmurs of agreement rose from the crowd.
Carrie turned to Lizzie and Gerald’s mother. “Your kids could be next. Who knows what’s out there.”
From inside the cabin, Luke emerged and shuffled to a stool. The gray-haired man eased onto the seat with a sigh.
“What if they weren’t taken?” the old man asked.
When Luke tried to speak again, Carrie continued to shout pleas for help.
“He got something to say,” another Bridge man called out. “Let ’em speak.”
Herb left Reba’s side to stand near the center of the circle. “I’ll say it, Luke. This has happened before. When I was a child, I remember Pa talking about how Luke disappeared one spring day, then a few days later he returned, twenty-two years older.”
Instead of gasps, Reba heard guffaws.
“Joseph told me that happened a long time ago,” Ruth growled. “What makes you believe it’s true?”
“Half of y’all have lost your common sense,” Carrie said.
“It’s true,” Herbert said firmly.
Carrie sniffed and slowly shook her head.
“Over the years,” Luke said slowly, “I’ve prayed this would never happen again.” He gripped his knees and leaned forward. “But here we are. Three children gone, and from what I’ve heard, there were witnesses, yes?”
“We saw it,” Reba managed.
“Did you see them disappear?” he asked.
She nodded.
His rheumy eyes stared at her as if he could see through her. “Then they’re gone and there’s nothing any of you can do to bring them babies back.”
“W-what?” Ruth stammered. “This man ain’t right in the head.”
Luke added, “I went back twenty-two years—maybe they gone that far too.”
Carrie slumped against Ruth. “I don’t want to hear this nonsense no more. My boy was taken.”
“My family searched for me too,” Luke said, his words eaten away as protests rose. “My mother told me that everyone searched as far as Charlottesville, but they found nothing. I wasn’t here for them to find.”
Reba glanced down in shame. Herbert had told a similar story to their children about a wandering man who’d traveled for twenty years before he found his way home. Back then, she’d listened with rapt attention, but the possibility the story was true sounded deranged. They lived in the real world, God’s world, and not once in the Bible had He sent one of His children into the past.
“Mama Bear, is what he’s saying true?” Jimmy asked her.
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
“But we all saw what happened to Nelson and Pete—” Jimmy began.
“I know . . . but there has to be . . .” Reba’s words trailed off. There had to be what? An explanation as to how three people were there, then they weren’t? As Jimmy’s mother, she’d taught him the skills necessary to survive. She’d even taught him the horrid realities of their life—how one man could own another. But time travel was make-believe and nothing else. No one could prepare for it.
“As much as we’d like to sit in this heat,” Ruth said bitterly, “Carrie and I are gonna find our children. You can listen to this man and waste time or you can help us.”
The pair strode away and many people trailed after them, offering prayers and comfort. Reba expected her husband to accompany them, but Herb watched them leave.
“Why don’t you go with them?” she asked him. “What about Hiram?”
Her husband briefly exchanged a hard look with Luke.
“We need to go home.” Herb clutched Jimmy’s shoulder and tugged the boy to follow. “It ain’t safe for us here.”
Chapter 17
Rebecca Raley-Bridge
September 1817
Early in the late-winter mornings, back when Reba was a child, she often came upon Mama Raley sitting before their hearth’s dying embers.
“I can’t find the splinter,” Mama would mutter.
The chill added mist to their breaths, so Reba stoked the fire to warm them, then sat next to her mother. Mama always smelled as sweet as the lavender she collected in the midsummer. Reba reached for her hand, but Mama curled away, her hazel eyes flashing brighter than the fire Reba had brought back to life.
“What makes you believe you can help?” Mama grasped a needle from her sewing basket at her feet. Instead of picking away at the splinter in her index finger, she poked the pad. Blood pooled, but she never spilled a drop. She stabbed and retreated, pricked and pulled away. Then she dabbed the site with her handkerchief before dragging the needle’s eye underneath her fingernail. Each minuscule wound was seemingly wiped away and forgotten, but not the splinter. The stubborn shard remained elusive.
Mama’s behavior confused Reba until she spoke to Papa. “Why does Mama hurt herself like that?” she asked him.
“Ignore it.” His words were terse and final. “We’re all scratching away at something. As long as she keeps it to herself, I don’t care. You shouldn’t either.”
Among the Negroes in Richmond, affluent mulattos like her parents never revealed their weaknesses. They paraded around town instead, their tailored clothes heavy with perfume and their get-togethers filled with pretentious neighbors. When Mama kept wandering about the house, murmuring strange words to herself, Reba told her friends that Mama had fallen ill from charitable work. Or her mother had left for a trip to Norfolk to see kin. All these excuses formed a protective cowl over the Raley family home.
As she came to ignore her mother, she lost something precious: time. Mama Raley no longer taught her how to cross-stitch—she learned that from one of the housemaids. When her womanly time arrived, it was Mariah who gathered rags and taught her what to do.
She should’ve reached out during Mama’s brief moments of clarity. She should’ve asked the things she’d always wanted to know but couldn’t ask: What had it been like to grow up at Dunlora? Did Mama take after her own mother—or the white father she never spoke of? But by then, the answers were lost. Reba still had many questions and little sense of her family history because she’d remained silent.
Armed with indifference, Reba had stabbed a new sliver into her mother, a thorn of neglect.
Reba continued to remain silent on her porch as she sought her own splinter before the rooster sang his reveille. She hadn’t slept well the previous night, worried over the missing children. She took a step forward. Her family hadn’t woken up yet, and the shadows held firmly to their perch. This morning’s cooler weather drew out wildlife they rarely glimpsed during the day. A herd of deer strode through a copse of trees nearby, while on the far side of the pasture, the bushes shifted from a fox darting into the woods. She waited for the animals to pass on their wisdom of survival, but none of them had an answer as to why this had happened to her family.
The temperature had dropped from sweltering to pleasantly warm, bringing the caress of a lukewarm wind against her face. Raindrops touched her forehead, and the deer fled under a crackle of lightning in the distance.
The empty bucket in her hand needed to be filled. She’d taken the path from her house to the well behind Carrie’s home many a time, but today the splinter poked at her hand gripping the pail. She’d have to face what she feared.
No one guarded the well, but the Bridges should’ve started their day. Joseph and Peter usually made their way from their house to the barn about now. Pete swept their chicken coop while Joseph fed the horses. Yet Ruth’s house was still.
Carrie’s home groaned with the oncoming rain. A thin line of smoke rose from the chimney. Was anyone awake inside? Nelson used to tarry in the mornings, but the boy had milked Carrie’s cow and fed the chickens. The place Carrie tended with love, her garden, was green and lush with crops ready to harvest, but she hadn’t touched the field since her boy disappeared. Reba had the mind to send Herb over there to help, but would Carrie accept their kindness?
Reba circled around her neighbor’s house along the familiar footpath. The only sounds came from their elderly collie. The animal sniffed her skirt, barked at her, then ambled back to the woodshed to resume his guard duties. She waited for sounds to emerge from the house, for the scrape and clang of pots or the thud of footsteps to reach her ears, but none came. The temptation to knock on Carrie’s door and ask if her family was well tickled the back of Reba’s neck. But she could still hear Carrie’s spiteful words. The sear from Ruth’s condemnation added an embarrassed heat to her cheeks. It was best for Reba to keep her distance and get what she came for: the water her family needed for the day.
The familiar stone structure was close. She still remembered the day Papa Raley had hired men to dig this well after he’d purchased Charles Bridge’s property. Even though Papa’s gesture had ensured her family no longer had to fetch water from the creek, she still felt like a prowling thief. This land belonged to Nelson now.
As Reba hurried up to the well, her stomach quivered, and nausea added a stumble to her step. Her palms grew slippery as a chill swept down her back.
Do not vomit here, she prayed. Not where Carrie can see you.
Five steps from the well, she closed her eyes and waited for the queasiness to pass. Murky swirls spun behind her eyelids. She was a seasick passenger on a ship that would never reach the shore. The seconds stretched out to minutes. With her last pregnancy, she’d constantly felt this way—each wave left her stuck on her pallet, dry-heaving. How easy it was to forget these miseries after she gave birth. Over and over again, she’d lain with her husband. Four times now she’d gotten with child. She often wondered what wrongs she’d committed to have to go through the weakness, the strain and burning during childbirth, and then the sleeplessness and the irritation of a screaming babe once it was born. Perhaps it was the joyous moments afterward, Annie’s first words or Jimmy’s arms reaching up for her, that made her bury these maladies.
Once her sickness retreated, she fetched the water. Not long after, she heard the yawn of Carrie’s front door opening from around the corner. Reba added strength to her back. Any moment now, her neighbor would appear. The echo of Carrie’s footsteps approaching made Reba quicken in her task. She considered what she’d say to the woman, what words of endearment she could offer, but when she turned to see her neighbor, she faltered. With only a hint of dawn, all she could see was the sternness in Carrie’s features. The woman’s downturned lips and hunched shoulders grew menacing with each breath Reba took. Her empty stomach threatened to rebel again.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Carrie asked far too quietly as she set down one of her twins.
“I tried to be quiet.” Reba adjusted her hold on the bucket, but the water sloshed over the side. “You look pale. Have you eaten?”
Carrie slowly shook her head. “You can stay away. You’re not welcome.”
“I know you’re hurting right now—”
“No, you don’t know,” Carrie snapped. “You got a house full of children. Not a single one of them is missing.”
Reba opened her mouth to speak but let the words course down her throat to her upset stomach. Her family had always used this well. They were kin, after all.
Carrie took a step toward her. “You got plenty of folks at your house—why not tell your boy to go to the creek?”
“That isn’t neighborly, Carrie.”
“Neighborly? If you were feeling neighborly, you should’ve been searching with Ruth and me last night.” Carrie drew closer, and her other twin clung to her skirt. “A neighborly, God-fearing woman would’ve cried and prayed with us all night.”
“I’ve been praying—I never stopped.” She shuffled from one foot to the other and swallowed past her dry throat. “Why don’t you come by my place? Your children can eat while you sleep.”
Carrie snorted. “I ain’t slept since yesterday. If your Jimmy was gone, would you sleep right now?”
She shook her head.
“When the rain started, I damn near collapsed. We were soaked as dogs looking for them.” Carrie turned away, giving the forest past the well her anger. “Ain’t nothing out there.” Even in her bitterness, Carrie trembled and wrapped her arms around herself.
“We can search again today,” Reba offered.
“I’m too tired. I can’t think straight.” The woman released a long breath from her tiny frame. “I have too much to do.”
Whatever captured Carrie’s mind tugged her away. She strode back into the house. The wind picked up and bit Reba’s face, harsh and wet.
* * *
Reba returned home to find her husband in the spot he’d occupied late into the night. Instead of searching for Nelson and Pete, Herb had guarded the house from a stool near the door. His rifle rested on his lap while he rubbed the timber surface of a relic from his childhood: a compass set in a wooden box. She’d seen him holding it before. His thumb had circled the scratched-up cover many times. But the compass was a simple thing. She eyed the gun instead, wondering how they’d reached this point. Could they kill what had taken those children? How could they fight against something they couldn’t see?
Breakfast was a mostly silent affair with little chitchat. Herb kept glancing at the door. Did he expect someone to thunder through? Mariah fumbled with the firewood. The only person who didn’t notice the tension in the room was precocious Georgie. The boy clapped and ran in circles around them.
“The pumpkin bug’s got a pumpkin smell,” he sang, “the squash bug smells the worst. But the perfume of that ole bedbug, it’s enough to make you burst.”
From her spot on the floor, Annie had finished her food, but she kept looking up at Reba, then to Jimmy. He’s gonna get in trouble, ain’t he? her frown conveyed.
Reba’s eldest tried to reach for George, but the child darted away. On most days, she’d ignore Georgie or even send him outside to release the little bugs crawling under his skin, but today she preferred the thump, thump of his footsteps to the terrible silence in this house.
“George!” Herb threw the child a stern glare and jerked his chin to the floor. Their youngest scurried to plop down in front of Jimmy.
Herb added, “No more fussing, boy. If you’re done eating, then you got chores to do. Get started on them dishes.”
“Should I fetch the firewood first?” Jimmy asked.
Reba glanced at Herb and they shook their heads.
“Stay inside,” she added.
Jimmy and Annie hurried to their feet. George was left behind, but he didn’t sit still for long. He picked at the sole of his boot.
Herb turned to her with a sigh as the children stacked the dirty bowls and utensils. “You been to Carrie’s house? Was she home?”
“Yes,” she said quickly. “And she made it all too clear she doesn’t want me paying any visits.”
“She’s probably exhausted,” Herb said. “While I was out checking the house, I heard from a neighbor that she carried those twins of hers all night long.”
Poor thing, Reba thought. “Why didn’t she leave them with us?” she asked gently.
“After what happened to Nelson and Pete, would you have left your children with anyone?” Mariah fiddled with her empty cider cup. “She’s scared like we are.”
Herb and Reba glanced away—their answer was clear.
“It was late by the time the search party returned,” Herb said. “We should lend a hand, if possible.”
“I can milk her cow and feed the cow and calf,” Mariah offered.
“Jimmy and I can do it.” Herbert revealed his stoic profile to Reba as he took in the rain through their open door. His meal had long gone cold, but he hadn’t asked for a warmer portion.
“Seems like everyone is spooked,” he said. “Not a single soul outside.”
“Maybe Hiram and the others’ll come home—just like Luke.” She squeezed his hand.
Herbert’s jaw twitched in irritation. She withdrew her hand. One of them needed to believe their loved ones were well somewhere.
“I don’t know what’s going on.” Her husband rubbed his chin, just like all the other times he’d worried for their children. “Luke says we need to keep on living or we won’t have anything for those who remain behind.”
After they’d eaten supper the previous night, Herb had left to speak to Luke again. He’d returned at nightfall and begun his guard duties. She wondered what the men had talked about, but her husband hadn’t said a word. His face was stony and she assumed he’d learned nothing new. Perhaps when they had a moment alone, she’d ask.
