Fire Along the Sky
Page 148

“As if I could send that old African away before I got him fed up good and proper,” she said. “He'll come, don't you worry, and he'll stay until the buttons on his breeches pop.”
Then one wet, warm morning the girls came down to the kitchen and found Black Abe at the table, bent over a plate of eggs and ham and cornmeal mush, deep in conversation with Curiosity and Lucy and Simon Ballentyne too. Curiosity hummed as she poured out coffee.
To the girls Black Abe said, “Don't count on spring just yet, children. The winter still setting in my bones.”
Looking hard into her porridge Callie said, “Then is it too early for you to dig—” And her voice faltered.
“Oh, Lord,” Curiosity said. She came over to put a hand on Callie's shoulder. “Of course not. Why, me and Abe was just talking about it. He'll get started this very day on those graves, won't you, Abe?”
The old man said that he had been planning on exactly that, and wouldn't it be a help if Callie showed him just where her mama was meant to rest, and Cookie Fiddler too, and wasn't that a shame about losing two such good women. He offered the same kindness to Martha, whose grandmother Kuick must also be laid to rest, and found that the girl was too frightened of her mother to make any such suggestions.
Callie looked at Martha's flushed face and tear-bright eyes and wondered if she looked like that: frightened and relieved; eager to get it done, and wanting to run away at the same time.
Curiosity squeezed her shoulder. She said, “You girls got to get on to school, now.”
On the way they stopped at the blacksmithy to tell Daisy about Black Abe, and then they did the same thing at the trading post. At school the other children asked questions until Miz Elizabeth got their attention by putting a whole twenty lines from the Constitution on the board for them to learn by heart.
On the way home at dinnertime the girls saw that the meetinghouse windows had been propped open and so they stopped there too. Mostly they were shy of bothering Lily Bonner while she worked, but the news that Black Abe had come was enough reason.
Unlike the rest of Paradise, Lily seemed to have no questions to ask about Martha's mother or Callie's father, which meant that the three of them got along just fine. If Lily held any grudges about the way things had turned out she kept them to herself, and more than that: she seemed happy to see them. She showed them her work and sometimes found scraps of paper for them to draw on, and told stories about anything they could think to ask her. They were kindhearted girls and they liked Lily and appreciated her attention, so they never compared her storytelling to Jennet's.
Today they found her wrapped in a leather apron frowning at a line of glass beakers. This was such an interesting sight that Black Abe was forgotten for the moment.
“What are you making?” Martha was especially timid with Lily, but for once her curiosity got the better of her, and she came right up to the table. In the slanting light from the window her hair was as red as fire.
“Watercolor paint,” Lily said with a quick, sharp smile. “To see if I can get the color of your pretty hair down on paper. Or I would be, but I'm missing something.”
Some of the best stories about Lily had to do with when she was a reluctant schoolgirl in her mother's classroom. To this day the children spoke with respect about the schemes Lily had come up with to get out in the fresh air when she was supposed to be parsing French verbs or writing out arithmetic problems on her slate. And now here she was, always eager to be teaching the things she had learned in Canada to whoever might stand still long enough to listen.
She showed them how she meant to mix the oddest things together—gum arabic, strained honey, glycerin—to make the binder that was the basis of her watercolor cakes.
“But I've misplaced my crock of benzoate of soda,” she finished, looking around herself as if it might appear magically. “Or I left it behind in Montreal. In either case I can't finish without it.”
She saw the girls exchange meaningful looks.
Callie said, “There must be a hundred filled crocks in Dr. Todd's laboratory. Would you find some there?”
“Oh and,” said Martha breathlessly, as if to keep Lily from objecting, “we stopped to tell you that Black Abe is come.”
Lily might be distracted, but she knew what that meant. She said, “Well, then. When's the burying?”
“Tomorrow, I think,” said Martha, tugging on her plait so hard that the tender skin at her temple reddened.
Callie said, “Won't you come back to the house with us?”
For a few days now, it seemed to Lily, the two girls had been conspiring to get her to Curiosity's kitchen. She didn't know if this was because they had decided they liked Simon and wanted her to spend more time with him, or because they were bored since Hannah and Jennet and Ethan had all gone away, and wanted some excitement. Or maybe, it occurred to Lily, maybe they didn't like the idea that Lily was at odds with her mother, and had taken it upon themselves to draw them back together. Right now it could be all those things, and the arrival of Black Abe on top.
“Did Curiosity send you?” The question didn't come out the way she meant it to.
“We thought you'd want to know.” Callie looked indignant and Martha injured. Taken together that was strong medicine indeed.
Lily said, “Very well. Let's go see if there's any soda to be had.”
“Then you can get back to your work,” offered Callie.