Swinging the cabbage sack over her shoulder, Rachel climbed the ladder one handed, leaning her body as she crossed the pitched roof to the chimney. Placing the stones was like solving a wobbly puzzle, finding the one that fit most snug in each of the chimney's cavities. The last stone finally locked into place, and the chimney was again as it once had been.
Rachel did not leave the roof immediately, instead looked westward. She let her eyes cross the horizon toward the higher mountains that rose where North Carolina became Tennessee. She thought of the map in Miss Stephens' classroom, not the time in the fifth grade when Joel had been such a smart aleck but a morning in first grade, just months after her mother had left, when Miss Stephens had stood by the map whose different colors were like patches on a quilt. The first state they'd learned was North Carolina, long and narrow like an anvil, everything within its lines green. And that had made sense to Rachel at six, because come winter there were still holly bushes and firs and rhododendron, even in the gray trees bright-green clumps of mistletoe. But when Miss Stephens showed them Tennessee, the red hadn't seemed right. When her father pointed out mountains that were in Tennessee, they'd always been blue. Except at sunset, when the mountains were tinged with red. Maybe that was why, she'd thought as Miss Stephens began pointing out other states.
Rachel gave the chimney a last inspection, then eased down the ladder. Once back on the ground, she picked up Jacob and studied the cabin a few moments.
"That'll get us through another winter," she said, and was about to go inside when she saw Widow Jenkins coming up the road, still dressed in her Sunday finery, a peach basket covered with a dish towel in her gnarled hand.
Rachel went to meet her, Jacob already waving at the older woman.
"I figured hard as you had to work on your day off, I'd fix you a supper," Widow Jenkins said, nodding at the basket. "There's fried okra and bacon in there, some hominy too."
"That was awful kind of you," Rachel said. "It has been some work."
Widow Jenkins looked at the roof and chimney and studied it a few moments.
"You done a good job," she said. "Your own daddy couldn't have done better."
They walked over to the porch. Rachel sat on the steps, but when the older woman set the basket down she did not sit herself.
"That cloth ought to keep those victuals warm long enough for me to hold that rascal a minute," Widow Jenkins said, taking Jacob and jostling him until he laughed. "The way he's growing these old arms won't be able to do that much longer."
She gave Jacob a final nuzzling before handing the child back to Rachel.
"I better be on my way so you can eat and get some rest."
"Sit with us a few minutes," Rachel said. "I'd like the company."
"All right, but just a few minutes."
The sun had fallen enough now that the air was cooling, the day's first breeze combing the white oak's highest branches. The bullfrog that lived above the springhouse made its first tentative grunts. Rachel knew the katydids and field crickets would soon join in. All soothing dependable sounds that always helped her fall asleep, not that she'd need them tonight.
"Joel Vaughn asked about you at the service today," Widow Jenkins said. "He was worried you or the young one was feeling puny. I told him you had some chores needing done."
Widow Jenkins paused and looked straight ahead, as if observing something in the woods beyond the barn.
"He's turned into a right handsome young man, don't you think?"
"Yes ma'am," Rachel said. "I suppose so."
"I think he'd make you a good sweetheart," Widow Jenkins said.
It was the kind of comment that would normally make her blush bright, but Rachel didn't. She shifted Jacob on her lap, let her fingers smooth the down on the back of his neck.
"I'm beginning to think us Harmons don't do very well when it comes to love," Rachel said. "It didn't for Daddy and Mama, and it didn't for me."
"Young as you are you could yet be surprised," Widow Jenkins said, "and I expect someday you probably will be."
For a few moments neither of them spoke.
"Do you know where my mother went when she left? Daddy never told me, even when I asked."
"No," Widow Jenkins said. "Your daddy met her in Alabama when he was in the army. Maybe she went there, but I don't know for sure. The one time your daddy talked about it, he said your mama never said where she was going. All she told him was that life up here was too hard."
"Hard how?"
"The farm land being so rocky and hilly, the long winters and the loneliness. But she told him the hardest thing was the way the mountains shut out the sun. She said living in this cove was like living in a coal mine."
"Did she want to take me with her?"
"She tried. She told your daddy if he really loved you that he'd let you go, because you'd have a better life if you left here. A lot of folks argued against him for not letting you. They claimed what she said, that if he really loved you he'd have let you go. They thought he did it to spite your mother."
Widow Jenkins paused and took off her glasses, rubbed them on her black skirt. It was the first time Rachel had seen the old woman without them. Eyes that had appeared pop-eyed now receded into her face. Widow Jenkins had never looked younger than at this moment-the eyes usually fogged by the thick spectacles a bright blue, the lashes long, the high-boned cheeks smoother than when the gold rims creased them. She was my age once, Rachel thought with a kind of wonder.
"Why do you think he wanted me to stay with him?" Rachel asked.
"I don't like to speak any ill about the dead," the old woman said after a few moments. "All I'll say is that he had a temper and he could hold a grudge, like every Harmon I've ever known. Your granddaddy was the same way. But your father loved you. I never doubted that and you shouldn't either. I'll tell you something else I think. It would have been wrong to take you away from these mountains, because if you're born here they're a part of you. No other place will ever feel right."
Widow Jenkins put her glasses back on. She turned to Rachel and smiled.
"Maybe that's just an old woman's silly notion, about the mountains I mean. What do you think?"
"I don't know. How can I if I've never been away from them?"
"Well, I never have either, but you're young and young folks these days get restless," Widow Jenkins said, slowly lifting herself from the steps, "so if you ever do find out you'll have to let me know."