The Last Blue

by Isla Morley

  “Everything all right, miss?”

  She is wheeled around by the man in the black uniform, who says for her to take her seat right away. He waits for her do as she’s told. She slumps into her seat, looks out the window. Smoke blows past. The steep hillside is covered with laurel. The man is still standing beside her and he’s repeating something which makes no sense.

  “I need to punch your ticket.”

  “I don’t—I—”

  He reaches for her wrist, where the ticket is sticking out of the top of Faro’s sock. Can’t he see something is wrong? Lift your veil, show him. But won’t he then ask questions, demand answers? Won’t he call for the police at the next stop and insist she name names?

  “Louisville. You’re looking at ten and a half hours, more if there are delays. Best you get comfortable.” He punches a hole in the card and hands it to her.

  Levi is somewhere. Pa is still out looking for him. Mama is at home sitting in front of plates of cold food. Havens is keeping his promise. And here she is. When will anyone think to look for her? How long before anyone realizes she’s gone? And what use will it be when they do? Everyone dear to her is lost. Instead of feeling empty, inside her swells and bloats like a rotting carcass. She could surely attract flies. She doesn’t cry. She gags and gags.

  Keeping upright takes every effort. A terrible thickness surrounds her. People push past her, fill the seats, empty the seats. She sits on her stumps, makes herself small, makes herself a thing that doesn’t matter. The last Blue.

  SEPTEMBER 1972

  Having sped back home from the cemetery checking his rearview mirror the entire way to make sure the upstart out-of-towner wasn’t following him, Havens now parks his truck beside his work shed and sits with his hands clamped around the steering wheel. He lets out a big breath. How much worse could things have gone? Instead of chasing off the stranger or getting any clearer picture as to his true intentions, he’d run smackdab into that old crone and her unrelenting grudge. Thirty-five years the grudge has suckled on her, and now it is so monstrous the woman seems little more than its host. There can’t be anything else keeping her alive. Nevertheless, it seems Havens might have chosen to wait for the stranger to return to his rental car rather than charge through the graveyard, disturbing the respectful activities of Decoration Day. If the dead had been resting peacefully before, they sure as heck were wide awake now, and that young man, whoever he is, is likely getting a blow-by-blow of what some distorted versions call the Spooklight Killing Spree.

  Eventually, Havens gets out, picks up a stick long enough for poking the undergrowth for snakes, and makes his way up the incline behind the house on rubbery legs, the deadfall crunching under his feet while broad branches of poplar and maple trees reach from overhead as if to scoop him up. Almost immediately, his head starts to clear. Though the woods can kill a grown man a hundred different ways, few things can calm him the way they can, and all it takes is a few feet along the footpath to feel nestled in nature’s bosom.

  Swatting to keep the deer flies from biting, he passes where the nettles are chest high and covered in clusters of tiny white blossoms, taking extra precaution not to rub up against them, and steps over a clump of fresh-sprung cohosh to climb up the ladder to the treehouse he built years ago. He ducks beneath the crossbeam and steps onto the platform on which the filtered light makes yellow swirls. Reclaimed barn boards form three of the walls, but instead of the north-facing wall, he nailed a railing so he could look out at the expansive view of timber and blue hills, now shawled in wispy clouds. Havens leans on the railing, lifts his face to the breeze, and scans for that place, a particular dip in the ridgeline, the marker for where she used to live. How he wishes she had been here this morning, even though he knows she would not have approved of the way he’d handled things. She’d have known what to do.

  A low rumbling disturbs his thoughts. Months can go by without anyone paying a call, and now two intrusions on the same day and it’s not even lunchtime. He climbs down from the treehouse and takes a shortcut through the stand of sassafras saplings and tromps through the sour grass. In his haste to step over a few errant logs by the woodpile, he loses his balance and bumps the gardening bench, sending the birdcage that needs mending crashing to the floor, but he still manages to get to the top of his driveway in time to see that white Ford Fairlane come to a stop about halfway to the house, where the left fork splits off to the barn. From his vantage point, the driver will be able to see Havens clearly, but because the sun is hitting the windshield directly, Havens cannot see him. Instead of proceeding the rest of the way up the driveway, the car idles. Havens adopts a wide stance and waits. Perhaps the kid has brought someone with him this time, maybe someone from the cemetery, and the two of them are debating what to do. For all Havens knows, that witch is in the passenger seat shouting instructions, her wheelchair ready to pop up out of the trunk, chase him down, and run him over. It wouldn’t be the first time she rolled up here breathing hot revenge. Whenever a reporter shows up, Havens knows she’s been working the phone lines, and if she can’t bait the true-crime writers, she dials up that other breed of bloodsuckers, the ones who like to write about Bigfoot sightings and lake monsters and the Virgin’s face appearing on pancake griddles.

  Though he doesn’t have the stamina for another face-off, he trudges down to the car, bends down to look in the driver’s window, and seeing no passengers, motions for the kid to get out of the vehicle.

  “You afraid I’m going to shoot you?” Havens makes a show of his empty hands.

  The kid does as he’s told.

  “You are persistent, I’ll give you that,” Havens says.

  “Nobody will talk to me.”

  And here Havens considered himself a man who’d lost the ability to be surprised by people. He slides his hands in his pockets, more than a little pleased to be having the upper hand, and says, “Well, there are other ways to get your story—the county library in Smoke Hole has newspapers going back that far.”

  “I keep trying to tell everyone I’m not here to do a story. I’m here about the people in this picture and what they—”

  Havens thinks it’s high time he took a look at that picture. “Tell you what—how about I trade you that picture for my confession?”

  “This is my mother’s picture; I’m not giving it to you!”

  “Well, then, let’s start with why your mother put you up to this.”

  “My mother didn’t put me up to anything! My mother is dead!” The kid is fired up now, and Havens struggles to reorient his thinking.

  “Do I know your mother?”

  The kid glares at him and gives the name, Hannah Ashe, which doesn’t ring a bell, and then explains about her having died two weeks ago. “The first time I saw this picture was the day she was buried, and all I know is that the people in it must have meant something to her, but it seems like there’s some kind of law against finding out what that was.”

  Havens raises his palms and pulses them at the kid—the same gesture he uses when his mule gets a wild hair and kicks at her stall door. “Why don’t we slow down, okay, son.”

  “My mother was a very private woman,” the kid continues. “She didn’t like to talk about the past, and then she dies, and suddenly I start learning about things she kept to herself. You think you know your mother. Maybe she’s not as strong as other mothers, maybe she’s more nervous than anybody you know, but she’s cooked for you and sang to you and walloped you for cheating on a test in fifth grade, and you think you know her.” As if to amend any wrong impression that might be forming in Havens’s mind, he points his finger in the air and takes an emphatic tone. “She was a good mother, a really good mother.”

  Parched and lightheaded, Havens needs to sit someplace cool so he can think. “I’m sure she was.”

  “My whole life has changed since she died. Nothing’s the same. Nothing.” The kid presses his lips together to keep them from quivering and swings his head side to sid
e. He could not appear more miserable.

  “Why don’t you come up to the house for a minute, catch your breath? It’s been quite a morning.” The truth is Havens feels bad for having treated a young man mourning the death of his mother so poorly.

  Stepping as though to avoid booby-traps, the kid starts following Havens.

  “How about we start over, and get properly acquainted. You know my name already.”

  “Rory Ashe,” the kid offers.

  Havens extends his hand, and after some reluctance, the kid shakes it briefly. Keeping his voice low and his words slow as if negotiating with a hostage taker, he asks, “And where’s home for you, Rory?”

  “Lexington.”

  Havens doesn’t know anyone from that city. He leads Rory around to the back of the house and invites him into the enclosed porch, and the kid parks himself on the edge of the rocking chair beside the birdcage, where he starts cheeping at the pigeon.

  “Watch out for that one,” Havens cautions. “He’s got a temper.”

  Rory remarks about the bird’s bandage, and Havens tells him that he is the least cooperative patient he’s ever tended, nothing at all like the blue jay and the mockingbird. Havens explains why they’re in his care.

  “So this is some kind of bird Red Cross?”

  Havens smiles. “That about sums it up.” He tells the kid the place is sometimes wall-to-wall cages.

  “That old lady at the cemetery called you the devil.”

  “Well, I guess even the devil likes company.” Havens hands Rory the jar of sunflower seeds and indicates for him to fill up Lord Byron’s dish.

  “Actually, you’re a lot less scary than my boss.”

  “Whatever you do, don’t let word get out. I have a reputation to protect.” He’s warming to the kid. “Mind if I take a look at that picture now?”

  Rory reaches into his jacket pocket and hands Havens the photograph. “There aren’t any names written on the back, only Chance, Kentucky, which is how I knew to come here.”

  Barely glancing at it, Havens touches it against his chest. The family portrait, in black and white. He reaches over to the side table for his reading glasses and gives the image his full attention. Jubilee is in the back row facing the camera, although not directly and not exactly smiling. Here she is, this beauty—utterly without guile—her eyes the start or end of a tunnel, he could never tell which and still cannot, but how they undo him still. He peers at her face for a long time—young as she is, he can see her wisdom. So graceful is she in this picture that a person would never guess at her burden. He removes his glasses, hands back the picture, and lets his eyes come to rest on the ground as if his strength has drained from him and pooled at his feet.

  “Do you remember taking it?” asks Rory.

  “As if it were yesterday.” He also remembers developing it down in Del Buford’s cellar, how he felt duplicitous and excited and then proud to present it as a gift. For a short time, it sat on the mantel in their living room, and now thirty-some years later it has wound up in this man’s possession.

  “Something terrible happened to them, didn’t it? That’s why you chased me away and why nobody wants to talk to me.”

  Jubilee would know what to say about this picture. She’d tell the story perfectly. For Havens, though, there are half a dozen different ways to tell it depending on who’s doing the listening—a sheriff, a judge, a priest—and each version would be riddled with omissions and half-truths, but what is he supposed to tell this young man?

  Whatever idea has just sprung into Rory’s mind has made his eyes grow wide. Lowering his voice, he asks, “What that old lady called you in the cemetery… was she referring to what happened to these people—” Rory hesitates. “It wasn’t you who—you didn’t—I mean, you weren’t the man who—?”

  “Whoa, whoa!” Havens waves his hands. “Kid, you’ve got to line up your crosshairs before you go firing off rounds like that.”

  Havens waves off the kid’s apology and goes into the kitchen. Rinsing a couple of mugs, he looks out the window to see the noonday sun turning the earlier gloom into a cloud-scalloped sky. When he returns to the sunroom, Lord Byron is perched on Rory’s hand—not just perched, but preening, too.

  “How long did it take you to train this bird?”

  Havens puts down the cups, rolls up his cuff, and shows the peck marks on his hand from early this morning. “Does this look like the doings of a tame bird?”

  The pigeon refuses to be returned to his cage and instead climbs up Rory’s shirt to his shoulder. “I’ll be damned.” Havens suggests Rory assert his authority unless he wants to get covered in bird shit.

  “That’s okay, I like animals.” Looking a lot less forlorn, Rory takes a sip. “The shopkeeper in town told me you were a world-class photographer. He said you were as famous as Ansel Adams.”

  “Right, which accounts for my lavish lifestyle.” Havens gestures around the room full of mismatched furniture, houseplants in cracked pots, and throw rugs with threads balled up where the cat scratches its claws. He asks Rory how he makes a living.

  “I work in a record shop, but I play in a band on weekends—that’s my real job.”

  Rory has to explain what a synthesizer is, and even then Havens is still a bit fuzzy. He decides not to ask what “psychedelic” means.

  With renewed purpose, Rory returns to the matter of the photograph. “Is it true they were blue? That’s what the man at the store told me.”

  Havens knew it. He takes a deep breath. “You know what my favorite thing is about black-and-white photography? You don’t get distracted by this or that color, because if blue is all you’re looking for, it’s all you’re going to see. You’re going to miss what makes someone similar to you and different from you, and you miss what makes someone memorable.”

  Havens checks his watch, figuring how to hurry this along. “Let’s talk about your mother for a minute.” Havens names each person in the picture, starting with Del Buford and ending with Willow-May. “Did your mother ever mention any of those names?”

  Rory shakes his head.

  “Did she ever live in this area or have friends or relatives who lived here?”

  “Not that I know of.” Rory takes a stab at finding the connection. “How about the Bufords—did they ever live somewhere else besides here? Maybe Lexington?” Rory explains that his father’s job as an engineer moved them around to a number of places. “Maybe my mother met them through her charity work…” He mentions a couple of places, including Johnson City, where he attended elementary school, and then he says, “How about Louisville? We lived there for a year when I was really little.” Rory leans toward Havens, his head tilted to one side. “Louisville? Is that it? They moved to Louisville?”

  Havens has stopped listening to his visitor. They say a smell can take you back in time, but sounds—that haunting train whistle, those clacking wheels racing along tracks—they take you to what seems foreordained.

  “Are you okay, Mr. Havens? Can I get you something?”

  Rory returns with a glass of water and the dishcloth dripping wet.

  The thing they never explain about trains is that no matter the destination, you cannot board and disembark the same person.

  SEPTEMBER 1937

  JUBILEE

  The train rounds the last bend before pulling into Chance, the clacking wheels slowing on the approach to the station while the beat of her heart ratchets up to full-speed. Jubilee takes a few deep breaths, tells herself that everything is going to be fine, better than fine. How different life is going to be for her now, for Mama and Pa and all of them.

  Four months she’s been away and so much has changed for her, right down to being a passenger on a train. Leaving, she’d been at the very back of the third-class car, an outcast riding on someone else’s ticket, and returning, she is in a first-class sleeper, paid for from her own purse. Even before the train comes to a full stop, she is up on her feet, suitcase in hand, adjusting her little
satin hat. She was the last one to board the train four months ago. This time, she is the first off.

  What she sees doesn’t line up with her memory, not exactly. The scale is wrong, for one thing. The station has shrunk. Gummy legs carry her along the platform to the front door, where she hesitates and looks out onto a much-shortened Main Street and the stunted version of town sitting cowed by the hills. The air feels right, though. She takes a deep breath, tightens her grip on her suitcase and steps onto the sidewalk, almost colliding with Verily Suggins, Faro’s aunt. Jubilee has spent the entire train ride figuring how best to conduct herself on her return, picturing and preparing for any number of reactions from the townsfolk. None of this helps when the moment presents. She comes to a dead halt, uses her suitcase as a fort between her and the woman, and waits for Verily to point her finger and say, What are you doing here? Nothing would make Jubilee feel more at home than a scare, but polite as you like, the woman instead says, “Pardon me, miss,” and all but curtseys around her.

  After this test, Jubilee chooses the sunny side of the street. She still can’t get over what it feels like to have no veil and no gloves. A man walks her way. He tips his hat as he passes her. Another man walks by, and then a woman, and Jubilee studies their faces, their shoulders, their stride, but nothing changes when they see her. A group of young people come toward her at a clip, only to file past her as though she were a lamppost. She becomes a bit giddy. The simple joy of walking. Will she ever get used to it?