The Scent of Lilacs (30 page)

She tried to turn her mind away from the echo of the baby’s cry. It had all been so long ago. She looked at Wesley and Jocelyn. Tears were sliding unnoticed down the child’s cheeks. Love shouldn’t have told so much, but it was too late to take back her words. Now she was anxious to finish the telling of it. “Mother thought I was going to die. I don’t know why I didn’t. I wanted to. Mother and Mae nursed me. I don’t know whether Mother told her about the baby or not. I don’t think she did or surely Mae would have said something. Father told everyone I had rheumatic fever. Every church in the county prayed for me. I drifted in and out of consciousness. I had visions of the war. I dreamed about Gil. The baby haunted me. And I couldn’t die. I decided it was part of my punishment to have to live. I had sinned, and sin
brings its own punishment. In the spring I finally got out of bed and went back out into the sunshine. But I didn’t feel its warmth for a long time.”

She had been little more than a ghost searching for some sight of the ghost of her baby. She’d begged her father to tell her what he’d done with the baby, but he’d forbidden her ever to mention it again. So she had searched every inch of the farm for some sign of a grave. “That was when I started my rock garden. It was something to keep me sane until Gil came for me. I still thought he’d come. The war was ending, and the soldier boys were coming home. But he didn’t come. And my mother died in June. I came in from hunting rocks for my garden and found her dead in her chair. And still I couldn’t leave. Not only might Gil come for me, but the baby was there on the farm.” She looked over at Wesley. “You do see that I had to stay.”

Wesley nodded. “Life can sure serve us up a pot of misery sometimes.”

Love saw the pain in Wesley’s eyes. “I shouldn’t have burdened you with my story when you have troubling memories of your own.”

“Sometimes there’s healing in the telling,” Wesley said.

“Some things never heal. I think you know that.” Love looked from Wesley to the child and reached out to touch the tears on her cheek. “Everybody has troubles, child, and secrets that might be best untold. But shared sorrows get lighter. Thank you for your tears.”

“I’m sorry, Aunt Love, for every time I’ve ever been mean to you,” the child said.

Love managed a smile. “There have been times when you have surely tried my patience, Jocelyn, but never a day when I didn’t thank the Lord for the kindness of your father and for him allowing me to be part of your family.”

“Does he know about the baby?” Jocelyn asked.

“No. It didn’t seem to be something I should burden a young preacher with. Especially one who had enough burdens already of his own.”

“You mean my mother leaving him?” Jocelyn said.

“She was a burden before she left.”

“I don’t remember much about her,” Jocelyn said.

“Just as well.” Love fished a handkerchief out of a pocket and handed it to the child. “I’d have been better off if I’d been half the country away from my father. Perhaps I could have stopped hating him then, but no, my hate was like a poison that soured everything around me.”

“How did you get over it?” the child asked.

“Some griefs are too deep to ever get over, but once I knew I wasn’t going to be able to just sit down and die, I had to find a way to keep living.” Love looked back to where the house had once sat. “There were my rocks. And there was the Bible. Psalms like ‘Give thy strength unto thy servant.’ The Lord picked me up and carried me through the blackest days. And the sun keeps rising. Apple trees keep blooming. Bean seeds keep sprouting. And rocks keep rising to the top of the ground after spring rains.”

“And you kept cooking and cleaning for your father?” Wesley asked.

“I did. I didn’t seem to see much other choice till he died. Then, as I said, I tried to burn the house down and start over. I guess it was just as well Little John came by and put the fire out. Nothing else I’d ever done had gone right. Why should that?” Love pushed down on the rock and stood up. Her joints set up a painful complaint, and she wondered how she’d ever ride Wesley’s monster machine back to the house. Another time it might be easier just to sit down and die. If the Lord would only allow it. She looked back at the cave.

Wes and the child stood up too. They were waiting for her to make the first step back toward home, but she couldn’t. “I always
wanted him to have a proper funeral and burial. Do you think we could do that for him?”

“I don’t see why not if we can find a shovel,” Wesley said.

“And David to say the words over his grave. He should be home by now. Jocelyn can go fetch him while we get the grave ready. There used to be some shovels in the barn.” She looked at the sky again. “We still have a few hours before dark.”

“What should I tell Dad, Aunt Love?” the child asked, a frown between her eyes.

“That you and your dog found the remains of a baby who needs a proper burial,” Love said.

“But he might think we need to call the sheriff.”

“I thought once of calling the sheriff, but I couldn’t think what good it would do. I had no proof of wrongdoing. I didn’t even know where the baby’s body lay. It was a hard birth. The poor child might very well have been dead as my father said.”

“You think your father . . .” The child couldn’t finish the thought as her eyes got wide.

“I think my father could have done what I feared.” Love thought she should say no more, but she seemed unable to stop talking. “But whatever happened, my father is long past any earthly punishment, and I can’t see how telling the tale can do anyone any good now. But if, after you tell your father what I’ve told you, he decides the sheriff should be told, then so be it. I’m past caring what people think of me.”

“Your dad will know the right thing to do, Jo,” Wes said. “You go on and fetch him while Lovella and I hunt a shovel.”

“We’ll bring one in case you can’t find one.”

“Yes,” Love said, “and bring the wooden box under my bed. I had Mae’s husband make it for me years ago. He never knew what I wanted it for, but all these years it’s been waiting.”

I
t was after sundown when they gathered around the hole her father had helped Wes finish digging when they got back to the farm. They’d talked about waiting till the next day, but Aunt Love hadn’t wanted to. She’d said they could pull the car up and shine the lights on the grave site if it got too dark. But it was still light enough to see in spite of the heavy feel to the air as night crept up on them.

Jocie’s father stood at the top of the small grave with his Bible open in his hands while the wooden box waited beside the small heap of dirt. Wes had crawled back inside the cave with a flashlight to place the baby’s bones on a blanket in the box. Her father had thought to bring the flashlight and the blanket left over from Jocie’s baby days.

He had known what to do just the way Wes had said he would. While he’d found the box and got his Bible, he’d sent Tabitha and Jocie out to cut every rose in bloom to take with them. He hadn’t said a thing about the sheriff. At the turnoff he’d pushed the gate open wide enough to drive the car through. He’d straddled the ruts and driven back through the field, slowing to a creep when the bottom of the car scraped against a rock but not stopping. Tabitha had kept her hands on her belly as though she had to steady her baby through the jostles.

When Wes had handed Aunt Love the box with the baby’s bones in it, she’d cradled it in her lap while tears slid down her
cheeks. As she’d whispered the words of the Twenty-third Psalm, the world around them had held its breath. No bird had sung. No dog had barked in the distance. No airplane had passed overhead. Even the breeze had lain still in the branches and the creek had been whisper quiet as it rolled over the rocks downstream. Jocie wouldn’t have been a bit surprised to have heard an angel choir break out into “The Sweet Bye and Bye” or “In the Garden” after that, but instead the silence had followed them up from the creek to Aunt Love’s rock garden where the tiny grave awaited.

Into the silence her father read some Scriptures before he led them in prayer. Aunt Love had stopped crying, and after they put the box down into the grave, she dropped in the first handful of dirt. When she stepped back from the grave, Tabitha put her arm around her waist, and Jocie took Aunt Love’s hand. She thought maybe she should hug Aunt Love, but she wasn’t the sort of person who invited hugs. Even holding her hand seemed strange. Necessary, but strange.

When the dirt was all pushed back into the hole and Wes had gently tamped it down, Tabitha and Jocie laid the roses on top of the grave. Aunt Love pointed out a rock chiseled square on the corners. When Jocie’s father and Wes lifted it up, Aunt Love took the hem of her skirt and rubbed the dirt off it until the name Stephen appeared.

Wes propped the stone up at the end of the tiny grave, and they bent their heads again as David offered one final prayer. “We thank thee, O Lord, for giving us the opportunity to lay this tiny baby’s remains to rest. We know that these many years this child has been in heaven with you, and we praise thee and thank thee for this truth. And now we ask for comfort for this mother’s heart. Honor her grief and grant her peace. Amen.”

As her father gently turned Aunt Love away from the grave, he promised, “I’ll come back and set the stone properly.”

Night fell before they reached the car, as if the dark, which
had been holding off until they had finished, couldn’t delay another second. Slowly the noises of the night came back. Frogs and whip-poor-wills and katydids. Wes started up his motorcycle, and the noise of his motor seemed wrong, blasphemous almost. At the same time, Jocie wished she could ride with him through the velvety darkness instead of in the car. Still, she didn’t dare ask, but climbed into the backseat beside Tabitha, who had her hands firmly clasped over her rounded tummy even before the car started moving down the rutted road.

None of them said anything as her father slowly guided the car back toward the road. It was harder picking the best path in the dark, and they all held their breath each time the bottom of the car scraped against a rock. Jocie thought about praying for the oil pan or the muffler, but she didn’t know if she should. Then when they made it out to the paved road, she wanted to ask her father if he’d been praying. But the silence in the car made the words stick in her throat.

They were almost back to their house before Tabitha broke the silence. “I’ve always liked the name Stephanie. Stephanie Grace. That’s what I’ll name my little girl when she’s born.”

Aunt Love didn’t say anything, but after a moment she pulled the edge of her collar up to dab at her eyes.

Back at the house, Aunt Love washed her hands in the kitchen sink, thanked the family formally as if they’d just come back from a funeral home, picked up Jezebel, and went to her room. Jocie stared at the closed door of Aunt Love’s bedroom for a moment and then looked at her father.

“Don’t you think you should go talk to her? Pray with her or something?” she asked.

“I think she wants to be alone,” her father said.

“But I didn’t tell you the whole story,” Jocie said.

“She’ll tell me if she wants to,” her father said.

“But it was worse than what I had time to tell you earlier.”

Her father put his arms around Jocie. “Then maybe telling you and Wes will give her the peace she needs.”

“I don’t think I can sleep,” Jocie said.

Tabitha came over, took one of Jocie’s hands, and put it on her stomach. “Do you feel her moving?”

Jocie couldn’t feel a thing. “Maybe,” she said, because she could tell Tabitha wanted her to feel something.

“She gets bigger, you’ll feel it for certain. The doctor says she’s supposed to be born somewhere around the first of October. He says I’ll start getting big, really big, in a month.”

“People will know you’re expecting then,” Jocie said.

“Does that bother you?” Tabitha asked.

“No, does it you?”

Tabitha smiled. “Not at all. I thought it might, but now I just want her here safe where I can hold her and watch her grow. I don’t even care anymore who she looks like.”

“You keep saying she. How do you know the baby’s going to be a girl?” Jocie asked.