The Last Blue

by Isla Morley

  “What about when Ronny hears I’ve come back?”

  Socall has her sit beside her on the bed, gives her hand a squeeze that about pops her knuckles, and says, “My biggest regret is that I didn’t shoot Ronny when I had the chance, but hear this, if he even thinks of getting in your business again, I ain’t going to make that mistake a second time.” Socall’s voice returns to a lighter tone when she speaks of taking Willow-May to Smoke Hole tomorrow to the community fair. “Come with us. It will be good for her to get reacquainted with you someplace other than this house.”

  The very mention of a fair makes Jubilee stiffen. After what she’s gone through, that’s the last place she wants to go, but Socall won’t hear of her sitting this one out. “What’s the use of all this,” she says, gesturing at Jubilee’s skin, “if you go back to being cooped up?”

  After Socall leaves her room, Jubilee consults the mirror once again. She is like a fawn, like a creature who can’t cast a shadow. Around her is no hint of darkness. Let her stand in pools of silver and gold.

  * * *

  The field beside the red schoolhouse has been turned into a fairground, with dueling string bands at each corner and booths and tables lined up on all sides displaying all kinds of crafts and eats. Townsfolk, farmers, and miners’ families in their Sunday best stroll from display to display, giving their assessments on everything from homemade hatchet handles to quilts to mineral collections while rowdy children play tag, scooting under tables past stockinged legs and ducking out of reach of the grown-ups.

  Socall, Willow-May, and Jubilee hitched a ride with Jeremiah Wrightley, who has now gone off with his youngest son to check out the sporting events, leaving Wyatt to tag along after Jubilee. Even though he spent the entire twelve-mile drive staring at her from his side of the pickup, he still can’t seem to get his fill.

  “Don’t you have a horseshoe pitching contest to get ready for, Wyatt?” Socall hollers at him and off he trudges, but not after glancing back over his shoulder again.

  Willow-May, on the other hand, hasn’t spoken a word to Jubilee and keeps her distance by using Socall as a hedge. At the table of preserves, she readily accepts a sample of gooseberry jelly from the woman in the bonnet and apron.

  “You like canned peaches?” the woman asks Jubilee. “Because these are made with the best syrup you’ll ever taste.”

  Jubilee doesn’t know how to respond. So it goes at every booth: tongue-tied by people being nice. Willow-May makes no secret of how peculiar she finds Jubilee. “What’s wrong with her?” she asks Socall. “Why isn’t she like she used to be?”

  Because Willow-May wants to pet the baby animals, they follow their noses to the farthest corner, where a farmhand offers her a piglet. Being among others comes natural to her sister, and she asks a dozen questions about hatching, breeding, and butchering. Jubilee, on the other hand, can’t get the hang of things. She steps back some and notices the same young man they passed a few minutes ago tipping his hat at her a second time.

  After Willow-May has coddled every animal in the pen, they scan their programs to decide where next to go, and Socall points to where it says, “Curios & Relics,” and just that quick, Jubilee is back again in Louisville smelling sawdust and smoke and roasting peanuts, and hearing Arnold, the barker, outside that tent with a bullhorn at his mouth hollering, Step right up, ladies and gentlemen. She’d thought they’d be nice—city people weren’t supposed to be narrow like mountain folk, but she’d been asked all manner of questions, things you never imagined a decent person could be capable of asking another. You blue all the way down? a man once asked.

  “You two go on, I’m just going to find some shade for a few minutes.” Jubilee assures Socall she’ll catch up before making her way to an unoccupied hay bale. How long before her mind will rid itself of former things? She and Levi would sometimes talk about what it might be like to walk where you wanted or do as you pleased, but now she wonders if freedom has more to do with owning what all you’ve done and are capable of doing, bad parts especially, than just walking and doing as you please. She takes a few deep breaths to still the jitters, fans herself with the program, and considers the color of her hands.

  “Are you okay, miss?” The man from before is removing his hat. He’s about Levi’s age, and has the clothes and manners of an educated man. “I was afraid you were going to faint.”

  “I’m fine, thank you.” She pretends to study her program.

  “Would you like me to fetch you a drink of lemonade?”

  She shakes her head.

  He gestures at the crowd. “This is the biggest turnout the fair’s ever had.”

  Why won’t he leave?

  “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  In hopes of ending this inquiry, she says, “I’m from Chance.”

  “I knew I hadn’t seen you here before. I would’ve remembered if I had.” The man is partway through introducing himself when Jubilee takes off through the crowd to the schoolhouse, where she’s relieved to see that “Curios” are not “human curiosities” and “oddities of nature” as she feared, but mostly just guns from former wars and old pistols of every sort. At the front of the hall, Willow-May has become enchanted with a display of tiny boxes housing figures the size of grains of rice. DRESSED FLEAS FROM MEXICO, reads the sign.

  “They’re dead, but they really are fleas!” Willow-May hands Socall the magnifying glass. “Look at these two—they’re getting married! Aren’t their clothes so fancy?”

  “Here’s a farmer and his wife.”

  Willow-May inspects Jubilee’s box before nodding in agreement. “Just like Mama and Pa.”

  Say what you will, those fancy-dressed dead fleas help put things right between sisters.

  After lunching on sponge cake and cherry soda, Jubilee has another idea how to put things right and suggests they find the toy store, and the three of them drift down to Main Street, which is double the length of Chance’s. They stroll past the druggist, the hardware store, and the shoe repair place. Socall goes inside the corset shop, leaving Jubilee and Willow-May to browse the toy store two doors down. Inside, Willow-May flits from display to display, exclaiming at everything she sees—Chinese checkers, ring toss, a tiny pastry set, a tea set—and when she comes upon the shelf of baby dolls, she falls silent. Not even a snuffling fat piglet had this effect on her.

  Jubilee hands her a doll. “Would you like to have her?”

  Willow-May strokes the doll’s head and nods, so Jubilee ushers her sister to the counter, where the clerk rings up the purchase and says, “Ah, our best seller; this one cries and wets itself.”

  Jubilee feels a flash of heat in her face. Surely even Socall wouldn’t know how to respond to such a statement.

  “Look what Juby bought me!”

  If Socall wonders how Jubilee has money to afford such a luxury, she doesn’t ask, but after Jubilee’s bought Mama a crocheted shawl, Pa a bag of vanilla-scented tobacco, and Grandma a new bonnet, she can’t resist commenting. “That purse of yours near empty yet?”

  “Oh, Juby’s got a lot more money in there.”

  Socall raises her eyebrows at Jubilee. “In that case, don’t you think you ought to get something for yourself?”

  Willow-May won’t hear of Jubilee settling for a peach cobbler. “You have to get yourself something nice, Juby. A dress!”

  Jubilee has only ever worn homemade dresses and hand-me-downs. “But where would I wear it?”

  “Come with me.” Socall leads them across the street, telling Jubilee the clerk will want to sell her the most expensive dress in stock and then will try to plump her sale by suggesting it needs alterations should she show even the slightest interest. “You tell her you’re browsing and act bored, and whatever you do, don’t try on anything she suggests.”

  Inside the store is a lady waving as if they’ve long been acquainted. Jubilee’s never seen so many dresses, enough to clothe all the women in Chance three times over. Right off, a
yellow one with a full skirt catches her eye, and the lady rushes over to tell her it comes in six different sizes. Different sizes? For the Bufords, there is only one size dress—if it’s too big, you tie a belt around the waist, and if it’s too small, you either let out the sides or cut back on the mashed potatoes.

  The lady says for Jubilee to call her Margaret. She holds the dress against Jubilee. “You’re so lucky, most women can’t wear yellow, but I bet you can wear just about any color.”

  Socall is giving Jubilee a hard look, so she tries making her face flat, but how can she when someone is going on about her perfect complexion?

  Margaret says for her to try it on.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, but you must.” She pushes Jubilee into a little space about the size of a closet, except it has a curtain where a door should be and a long oval mirror at the back. Jubilee slips off her shoes, shrugs off her dress, and startles herself all over again. Only when she hears Margaret ask about the fit does she remember about the yellow dress she’s to try on, which might as well have been made for her.

  “Come out so we can see, dear.”

  Jubilee pushes aside the drape.

  Socall puts her hand on a cocked hip and keeps shaking her head as if Jubilee deserves a blue ribbon, and Willow-May springs about on one foot saying, “Get it, get it, get it!”

  Margaret’s hands are tied like a bow under her chin. “Oh, you are beautiful in that. Don’t you just love it?” Turning Jubilee toward the mirror, Margaret handles Jubilee’s middle, making Jubilee wonder if she will ever get used to the ways of Right-coloreds. “My, but you are slight around the waist.” On right-colored women, a blush always looks pretty, but on Jubilee it looks showy, sliding all the way down her neck, and no amount of willing stops it.

  “Our seamstress just has to make a few little tucks here and here, and it’ll be just perfect.”

  Socall clears her throat, so Jubilee says, “I’ll take it just as it is.”

  “Keep it on,” Willow-May insists, taking Jubilee’s hand as soon as she’s done paying, and skipping them back outside.

  At the corner, a woman stares disapprovingly at Jubilee’s scuffed old shoes. Used to be Jubilee was the woman with the wrong skin; now she’s the woman with the wrong shoes. Wrong shoes or not, every step with Willow-May at her side takes her a little farther from Louisville and a little closer to feeling normal. Headed back to meet the Wrightleys for their ride home, something makes Jubilee turn her head. Leaning against a lamppost half a block away is Faro Suggins. From the way he’s watching her there’s no mistaking it—he’s figured out who she is.

  JUBILEE

  Today the clouds hang low, rumoring rain. The broken cornstalks have been turned over and mulched into the soil, the air smells of rot, and fall’s come early, turning the leaves of the maples orange already. It’s as good a day as any for Pa to be taking Jubilee to see Levi’s resting place. They pass the milkwoods and cross the stream, and Pa makes a beeline for the spruce at the far end, which always used to be so leafy, but now looks as though it’s on its last legs.

  She would’ve walked right over Levi’s grave had Pa not taken her arm. It’s a typical grave for a Blue, nothing to mark it save distance. Digging it, Pa would have counted the exact number of strides from the spruce in front and the boulders to the left. Instead of flowers, they each place a stone on the dirt patch.

  “Remember that time your brother got stuck in the tree?” Levi was always one for high places, whether it was a tree or the roof of the barn or the top of a hill. “He was fearless right from the get-go.” Brushing away a few yellow leaves from the mound, Pa gets on his knees and summons one memory after another. “I’m glad I was the one to find him and bring him home, not someone else.”

  Jubilee nods.

  “I wanted to clean him and bandage him before your ma saw him, but there was no stopping her. You’ll understand if it takes a while before she comes around to you…”

  To mourn someone is to be caught up in a flood, which is to say sometimes you are near-drowned and sometimes drifting, and when eventually you will be beached is something over which you have no control. “Mama will get her feet back under her again.”

  Pa seems relieved. “I just didn’t want you to get the idea she isn’t pleased to have you back, because she is.”

  For a while, they each keep their thoughts to themselves, and then Pa says, “Ronny’s cried self-defense, but you tell me how two men against one counts as self-defense.” Pa addresses the trees in a way that makes her wonder if this isn’t a regular talk he has with them. “I tried, Juby. I tried real hard to get Levi to mind me; he always had his own ideas about how to handle things, though. I should’ve done more. Maybe if I’d gone to see Gault right away…”

  That she always feared Levi would come to a flat-out halt never stopped her from hoping otherwise, and at the time, that kind of hope had the feel of virtue, but it’s hard now not to see it for what it truly was—a failure to act. What good was hope if there wasn’t any will behind it, any muscle? Where Pa’s regrets trail off hers pick up—she ought to have told Pa the very day she clapped eyes on Levi and Sarah at the creek.

  “I miss him so much. My son.”

  In all her years, she’s never seen her pa cry. She steps away to give him time to compose himself, but he just gets worse, making hard gulping noises and about ready to topple over, so she lays her hand on his shoulder, her pa who says some days he doesn’t know how to go on.

  Jubilee closes her eyes, deciding a prayer’s what’s called for, but no words come. It’s not how they say, that a person quits praying. It’s the other way around. The prayer quits the person.

  Pa wipes his shirtsleeve across his eyes, then gets out his handkerchief to blow his nose. “Your brother always fought back, which is more than I can say for myself.”

  They take the long way home, which gives her time to consider how little her altering alters anything. Instead of bearing the burden of blue, the Bufords now bear the burden of grief, but where blue was something they all carried together—all of them accustomed to the shape, weight, and feel of it—grief now has them carrying their own separate burdens, making them all but strangers to one another.

  Pa and Jubilee are a ways yet from the house when they see a wagon pass the field and draw up to the porch.

  “Eddie.” Pa groans. They pick up the pace.

  A woman is at the reins with Uncle Eddie slouched against her shoulder. “Who’s he got with him?” Jubilee asks.

  Under his breath, Pa says, “I’ll be.” If the mother of God had come to pay a visit it would be no less of a surprise.

  Sarah Tuttle. Last time Jubilee saw her, she was not much wider than a broom handle; now she’s a barrel. Though Jubilee always took her as being on the vain side, her frizzed hair is only partway pinned into an old sunbonnet, and she has on not one scrap of the makeup she always favored. If Jubilee didn’t know better, she’d count the girl twenty years older than what she is. Sarah avoids Pa’s eyes when he helps her down from the wagon bench, but she can’t hide her shock at seeing Jubilee. Uncle Eddie has to call three times for her to give him a hand. After she’s done being his leaning post, she moves to the far side of the horse and takes another peek at Jubilee.

  Uncle Eddie’s in a bad way from the gout, much worse than the last time he showed himself at Socall’s frolic, but he still reeks of shine. “So, it’s true; you ain’t a coon no more.”

  With Uncle Eddie, Pa is never confrontational, but now he gets up in his blistered face. “You can take your sorry self someplace else, because I won’t tolerate that kind of talk anymore, Eddie.” Pa’s missing the most important part—that word’s getting around about her.

  Uncle Eddie mock-surrenders, saying Pa’s not to get so het up. “Besides, is this any way to treat a man who’s come to introduce his fiancée?”

  Pa and Jubilee exchange glances, and Pa tries steering away from the subject by commending
him on his fine new horse, and Uncle Eddie says, “Came with Queen of Sheba here.”

  Sarah’s face has gone from splotchy to wan. She says she’s in need of the privy, and Jubilee hastens to her side, offering her hand while Uncle Eddie warbles on about his foot having to come off any day.

  Supporting her belly with one hand, Sarah comes out of the privy looking no better, so Jubilee leads her to the wash room, where she fills the basin with water, wets a cloth, and hands it to Sarah.

  “When are you due?”

  “Supposed to be a few weeks yet, but I think sooner than that.” Sarah eases herself onto the stool and puts the cloth on the back of her neck. “You could go anywhere you wanted and you came back here? If it were me, I’d be headed to Lexington, or the Big Apple, maybe the Orient, anywhere but this godforsaken place.”

  “My family’s here.”

  “Well, your brother would’ve leaped at a chance for a better life, that’s for sure.”

  In Louisville there were days Jubilee didn’t want to believe Levi was dead and other days his death was so bitter-real it was easy for her to be who she was paid to be, but there was never a day she didn’t wish she could somehow bring him back. “I’d give anything for Levi to have that chance—for both of you to have that chance,” Jubilee replies.

  There’s but the barest softening in Sarah’s features. “I know what you’re thinking, me taking up with Eddie and all, but who’s going to let a preacher serve a church when he’s got an unwed daughter at home nursing a baby?” Sarah reports that none of the fellas who used to harass her for a date will go near her, that Eddie’s was the only offer. Voice breaking, she adds, “When I think how Levi would feel about this—”

  “Don’t.” Jubilee crouches in front of Sarah and puts her hand on Sarah’s knee. “Levi knew better than anyone about having to choose between bad and worse.” For Jubilee, she’d had to make a choice between beggar or fair-worker, back alley or that big tent.