“What happened to the boy, it ain’t no kind of payment for our sin,” Abraham says. He takes one long step into the room and kneels at Juna’s bedside. He takes one of her hands in his. “Don’t go thinking it is.”
Someone brought bacon, and whoever it was, most likely John Holleran’s mama, is frying it up in the kitchen. The salty, rich smell fills the house like it hasn’t been filled in years. If I could leave the room, dared to leave the room, I’d bake fresh cornbread and pour those bacon drippings in the pan before I put it in the oven. It’s how Mama made it, but folks don’t have the drippings like they once did.
“We have to praise God Juna was spared,” Abraham says. He must be talking to Abigail because he reaches for her. She slides up next to him and rests her head on his shoulder. “Whatever happened to Dale, we have to praise God.”
8
1952—ANNIE
IN A FEW weeks’ time, maybe a month, the wild grapes on the sunniest slopes will begin to ripen and the vines will fail under the weight of the swollen fruit. The willows near the road will droop, and the soil will turn velvety with the rains and will fatten up the elms and great walnuts. The ragweed will turn dusty, and folks will begin to sneeze, and the spring sky, clear and high-reaching, its sun glittering, will give way to a sky with a softer glow. And finally, the lavender will bloom, and folks from across Hayden County will come to Grandma’s farm.
They’ll come because five years ago, Grandma decided she would see things change for the Holleran family. All these years, folks have kept themselves at a distance, not because of hatred or meanness but because of fear, particularly the older folks who best remember. They remember that before Juna, Joseph Carl had been a decent man, the best of all the Baine brothers, but then he looked into those eyes of Juna Crowley, those black eyes the exact same color as Annie’s, and they made him do things that led to his hanging.
That Aunt Juna could do such things to a man as kind and simple as Joseph Carl Baine made folks fear for themselves, most certainly not so kind or simple as Joseph Carl. The older Annie grew and the more she favored Juna, the more folks shied away. But folks like a gathering—that’s what Grandma said the first year of the harvest. The lavender would tempt them. It was in the nature of these Kentucky folks, the coming together, so they wouldn’t be able to resist.
Some will come by car, others by foot. They’ll sip iced lavender tea, eat warm slices of Grandma’s lavender bread, punched down twice and left to rise on the sill, and buy freshly cut bundles. Some will choose blossoms narrowly in bloom and hang them upside down to dry in a spare bedroom like the farmers hang tobacco from the rafters of their barns. Others will choose bundles in full bloom and display them on their dining room tables.
Grandma will wear her best blue cotton skirt on that day, its pleats painstakingly ironed for just the occasion. She’ll waltz among the ladies and instruct them on how best to sprinkle lavender oil on their pillows for a good night’s sleep or how many drops to add to a warm bath to soothe a crabby child or even a crabby husband. There will be music and food, and the men will sip corn whiskey and smoke cigars. The ladies who come on that Sunday will wear their churchgoing dresses and hats and will pin up their hair. They’ll listen, though they won’t stand too close, as Grandma rattles off instructions for tending a skinned knee with a cotton ball and a few drops of oil. The ladies will nod, smile, sip their tea, but they’ll be ever so slightly wary of Grandma because she has the know-how, and didn’t Aunt Juna have it too? And what about that Annie? She has those eyes, you know, those black eyes.
Every year, this is how it happens, and this year will also include Abraham Pace and Abigail Watson saying their “I dos.” It was Grandma’s idea. The whole town will join in. The ladies will come and their husbands. There will be food and drink. There will be smoking, chewing, spitting, singing, the gathering of beautiful bouquets, but it all will begin, as it does every year, with the explosion of the lavender. It will be a powerful moment, and Annie has, these past many days, been feeling its approach much like a person might feel an oncoming train through the rattle in her feet that carries first through the rails and then through the ground and finally through the air. The coming of such a lot of splendor will fill a person up, near to the rim. This is what Grandma said when Annie complained of the spark, the sizzle, the something that clawed at her. But Grandma had been wrong. That spark wasn’t the lavender and it wasn’t a yearning of any kind. It was Aunt Juna coming home again.