“She’ll curse you, Daddy. She’ll ruin us all.”
We use the piece of wood in the spring to prop open the shutter John Holleran hung for Juna and me some years ago. He hung it on the inside of the house so we could open and close it as we liked. The board we use is three feet long, two inches thick, four inches wide. It’s sturdy, has to be to hold open the heavy slab of wood. That board is all I have, so I grab it. I don’t mean to hurt Juna but only to silence her. She frightens Daddy, always has. Since she was a little girl, all she had to do was look at him just so, brush up against him, linger too near, and he was afraid. He was afraid of what more pain would come into his life. He was afraid of more failed crops and dry springs and a life lived alone because no other woman would have him after Mama died. He was afraid to lose his sight and afraid to lose his only son. And then Dale died, and now Daddy is afraid of Juna, and because she tells him to take the baby, he’ll do it.
I lift the board. Juna is screaming at Daddy to take it away, take it away so she never has to see it again. It, she begins to call the little girl. Over and over again, she calls this baby an it. I draw back the board, and I swing. It strikes the side of Juna’s face. Her black eyes are stretched wide. She falls to the side, slides off the bed. I lift the board again and strike her from above. One more time. One more time and she is gone.
22
1952—ANNIE
ANNIE’S FIRST THOUGHT had been to return the cards to Ellis and tell him she didn’t know who they belonged to. She would make a big show of telling him all the folks she questioned—Mama, Daddy, Grandma, Caroline, even the sheriff. But Abraham took the cards so Annie has nothing to return and no way to explain what became of them unless she tells the truth.
All her life, Annie has kept an eye out for the Baines. If it rattles, choose a different path. If it looks like a Baine, do the same. She’ll walk no closer than the fence. She’ll tell him she lost the cards and she doesn’t know where they came from. They’re just plain old cards. Faded and tattered and all bent up. Could have come from anywhere. From the drugstore, most likely. Or maybe the market where they sell playing cards near the batteries.
He won’t see her coming until she’s reached the barn, especially if she hunches down as she walks uphill through the lavender. The fields will be perfect for Sunday. Daddy has a way of picking the most perfect day. He’ll get up early that morning, Annie and Caroline too, and they’ll cut all the bundles to be sold. Fresh-cut, Grandma says. That’s the secret. That’s the thing that keeps folks coming back.
Daddy and Annie will reach deep into the bushes, grab a handful of the stems—Annie, not Caroline, because Annie’s hands are much larger—hack the bunch at its base with a rounded knife and snap a band around the whole of it. They’ll layer the bundles in a flatbed wagon Daddy will drag from row to row, and Caroline will tie off each bouquet with an eight-inch purple ribbon.
The lavender oil from last year’s crop is already distilled, bottled, and stored in the lower kitchen cabinets, where it’ll stay cool and safe from light. There will be more baking to do as the week comes to a close, and this year, there will be a special cake—a wedding cake. Harvest on the morning of the fourth Sunday in June, or a Sunday thereabouts—when that flatbed wagon is piled high with lavender bundles, the purple blossoms dripping off one side, the satin ribbons dripping off the other—is the one time Daddy might say he likes lavender farming better than tobacco farming.
But the real work will begin after the fourth Sunday. They’ll harvest the rest of the fields. They’ll cut and bundle, and Daddy will drive it to Louisville. They’ll next start to distill the oil and then prepare for next year’s crop and hope for a mild winter. Eventually, they’ll set up the trays to start new seedlings, and Daddy will stay awake all night to make sure the warmers don’t fail. The coming of the lavender will begin again.