Page 35 of Junie

Chapter Thirty-Five

Violet slams the door to her room and does not come out again. Mr. Taylor and Mrs. McQueen dine in silence, an odd pairing, the widow and the spiteful master. Junie catches glimpses of Mr. Taylor gnawing on his chicken legs like a rabid dog. She prays one will split and slice his throat.

When the white folks finally retire for the evening, she ought to go to the cookhouse, to sit beside her family in vigil of the one they’ve lost. What is a memorial when the one who is gone is still alive? The scene plays out in her mind: Auntie inconsolable and dazed, Granddaddy speaking the kindest words he can at her side, Muh struggling through the last of the cookhouse tasks to hide Marilla’s overwhelming grief from the white folks. Who is to say Mr. Taylor wouldn’t sell Marilla herself away for falling apart? He’d sent Bess away over even less.

She should be there, alongside them. She should be the one to clean the dirty pots, to change the filthy water, to feed the scraps to the pigs the way Bess would. It is what Minnie would have done, if she were still alive.

But, the more Junie imagines the scene, the more her eyes well with tears she won’t be able to contain. If they’d have run that night in December, maybe Bess would still be with them. If she hadn’t asked Bess to pretend an injury to get out of serving at the wedding, maybe Taylor wouldn’t have sent her away.

She can’t be there, not feeling like this when her family will expect only grief, not anger, resentment, and guilt.

So, she hides instead.

Junie runs into the arms of a willow tree hanging at the end of the forest near the cotton fields. She hasn’t climbed a tree since that day in autumn with Caleb, and her body feels tentative on the branches. Her breath wheezes in her chest as she rubs her eyes, looking over the dark horizon in the hope of seeing Bess and the carriage coming back around the bend.

The last of the winter winds whip through the trees. Junie draws her shoulders to her ears. At least Bess is alive. If all things have gone to Mr. Taylor’s plan, she will be sitting in another house only a couple of dozen miles down a dirt road, drawing breath with a beating heart. Junie’s mind sews together scraps of ideas on how to bring Bess back, how to undo what happened earlier that day. Selma isn’t too far. Could someone be persuaded to bring her back? Junie has lost all her goodwill with the white folks and remembers the unfeeling coldness in Mr. Taylor’s eyes as Auntie crumpled to the ground. There is no way out of this, no way to fix it. This day feels as dark as the night Minnie died.

Her body tenses as boots crunch the twigs on the grass. A kerosene lantern bobs above a pair of lanky legs.

“Awful big squirrel in this tree,” Caleb says, holding up his light. “You planning to stay up there all night?”

“How’d you find me here?” she asks.

“You weren’t by Old Mother. I looked all over.”

“You went all the way to Old Mother by yourself?”

“I’m becoming a regular country boy, ain’t I? Come down, won’t you?”

“I’m awful comfortable here,” Junie says.

“Fine then, I’m coming up,” he says, placing the lamp at the base of the tree. He shimmies up and takes a seat next to her on the branch.

“Dark up here,” he says. “I can hardly see you.”

“I don’t mind the dark,” Junie says. “It keeps your secrets.”

“Suppose that makes sense. You are one for secrets.”

“I’m starting to believe that secrets don’t help much,” she says.

“Tell me what you’re thinking about, then,” Caleb says. His jacket smells like smoke and earth.

“Keats.”

Caleb pulls away. “Who’s that?”

“John Keats, the poet.”

“Did he find the sublime, too?”

“I don’t think so. He died real young, and since he knew he was sick he wrote about the knowing. He said, ‘ Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies, where but to think is to be full of sorrow. ’ I remembered it while sitting here, and it just got me wondering whether it’s harder to watch somebody die, or watch ’em go away knowing they’re full of sorrow. Maybe it’s na?ve of me, but I always thought the worst thing I’d ever see would be my sister’s body. That there couldn’t be anything worse than seeing life leave her like that. But after today, I just don’t know.”

“I liked to pretend my momma had died when I was young,” Caleb says, his voice wavering. “It was easier than thinking of her alive, all the way across the ocean.”

“Why’d you think that?”

“Well, there’s something final about death, like there ain’t nothing you can do to turn it around or fix it. Thinking about her being alive just made me feel like I wasn’t good enough to go back to her. Like I wasn’t strong enough to fight off the white folks and swim back to her. Like I was a coward.”

“You ain’t a coward, Caleb, no matter what stupid shit I say when I’m mad,” Junie says. She nudges her hand closer to his.

“But see, that’s the problem,” he says. “When the people you love are alive, there’s just enough space for doubt, to wonder if you could’ve done something different, if they’re sitting there waiting for you to come back and rescue ’em. Death doesn’t leave any room for doubt.”

“Maybe that’s true,” Junie says, thinking of Minnie and pulling her hand back.

“What about living, then? Did Keats say anything about that?” Caleb asks. His hand slides down the branch toward hers.

“Nothing I can remember now. Guess we’ll have to go by our own hearts.”

Wind blows through the willow branches again like wind chimes. The pitch-black new moon night is quiet enough to hear the rush of the river in the distance. Before Minnie gave her the very first task, she’d sat by that same river, in awe of the way it flowed not on the path the earth set for it, but on one it carved for itself. Her path is set at Bellereine: torturous servitude as long as Mrs. McQueen lives, Violet’s indifferent bitterness, the persistent terror of separation at Mr. Taylor’s whim. Her family and Caleb want her to stay, and Minnie wants her to leave everyone and go. She’d spent months tangled in everyone else’s desires, so afraid of breaking another thing in their lives that she’d never listened to her own voice.

The river downs trees, erodes dirt, and cracks rocks as it flows. It doesn’t allow the possibility of destruction to stop it from moving forward.

“I’m going to run, Caleb,” Junie says. “I’m leaving this place as soon as nature allows, and I know you don’t want to, and I know my family ain’t going to, but I am. After Bess today…I don’t…You ain’t a coward, and I respect what you want to do, but I—”

“I should’ve gone with you,” Caleb says. “When you asked, back at New Year’s, I should’ve run with you.”

Junie pulls back and looks at him.

“What do you mean?”

Caleb looks down at his dangling legs. “I play from pages somebody else made. I can make ’em sparkle, but I can’t write them myself. I ain’t got your imagination, Delilah June. I can’t see and create new worlds with my mind the way you can. When you said, back then, that we could make something new together, I couldn’t imagine it.”

“But I don’t know what I’m doing, either, Caleb. I’m just trying to run as far into the dark as my candlelight will take me,” Junie says.

“It don’t matter how far you get, Junie. It matters that you try.”

“Why are you saying all this now?”

“When I watched ’em take Bess away, all I could think about was the look on my mother’s face back on the island. She was cold as stone, like they’d taken away her reason to breathe. I saw that in Bess’s and Marilla’s faces today, too. Hell, I saw it in Violet and Miss Taylor. And I ain’t gonna let ’em take away mine.”

“You don’t sound nothing like you did when we met,” Junie says.

“I was a fool when we met, Delilah June. I believed that if I just walled myself off, I could never lose anything. But, living that way just leaves your soul half-empty. There ain’t no other way to fill your heart than to do the things that scare you. And maybe it’s too much to say, Junie, and maybe I’ll scare you right out of this tree and away from me forever, but when I said back then that this was my first taste of family since I was a boy, I meant it. And I intend to go with you wherever you see fit to take me, if you’ll give me another chance.”

His hand grabs hers, and the familiar fire burns through Junie’s blood. Caleb moves closer, enveloping her in his arms until her head is full of the smell of tobacco and rain.

“I still love you, Delilah June. I never stopped, no matter how much I wanted to sometimes. I’ve learned well enough now that when you find somebody with a mind like yours, you ought to follow it if you know what’s good for you.”

Her hand lingers on Caleb’s stubbled cheek before she leans toward his lips. The kiss moves through her body like lightning before guilt twists in her stomach. She has to tell him. She can’t let him love the person he believes she is. She pulls back, burying her head in her hands.

“Junie, what is—”

“I killed Mr. McQueen,” Junie blurts. “It wasn’t no fever. I put hemlock leaves in his liquor.”

Caleb’s eyes widen, color draining from his cheeks.

“I ain’t mean to kill him, I promise you, I swear on my mother’s grave,” Junie says, her voice frantic. “But, he…died. He’s dead.”

“Why’d you do it?”

“I thought the leaves would make him sick, sick enough that we could all run away when they wasn’t looking,” Junie says. “But, even if that didn’t work, he was the reason my mother got sent away. He…he did such horrible things to her. He was my sister’s true father. He was the reason my sister died.”

“I thought your sister caught a fever?”

Junie shakes her head, the air chilling the tears on her cheeks.

“She killed herself. Mr. McQueen was supposed to make her free, but he destroyed her papers instead, so Minnie killed herself.”

Caleb shifts in his seat, his shoulders straightening.

“I know this means you ain’t gonna love me anymore, Caleb. I know you ain’t gonna love somebody as sinful and evil and destructive as I am, and I don’t expect you to come down to my level. But I couldn’t…I can’t lie to you no more. You deserve the truth.”

“You ain’t evil,” Caleb says.

“What?”

“I believe that if I met the men who took me from my momma I would hurt them, too. There ain’t no good and evil in this world, not when the devils are the ones setting the rules. You’re brave, Delilah June. You’re braver than anybody I’ve ever known.”

Caleb trails his finger along the edge of her jaw. Her fingertips brush against his stubble before sliding behind his head as she pulls him toward her. Caleb’s mouth trails down her neck, leaving kisses like raindrops along her shoulders and collarbone. His touch tingles like the first summer dip into cold water.

“Delilah June,” he whispers, his hot breath on her ears. “I love you. I love you as you are.”

“I love you, Caleb. I love you.”

They climb down together, bodies longing to touch. Caleb takes off his battered jacket and lays it across the ground at the tree’s trunk. They sit together, tangled in each other’s arms. Junie’s hands fumble underneath his shirt, feeling the ripples of muscle on his chest until he takes off his shirt altogether. The candlelight dances across his bare chest.

She pulls her dress over her head, her bare skin pressing into him. She lies back on his jacket, eyes locked with his.

“You sure?” he asks, his eyes glancing down her body.

“I’m sure.”

He climbs gingerly on top of her, cupping her head in his hands.

“You are the most beautiful view I’ll ever see,” he whispers into her ears.

Junie melts into him, savoring the hands that caress places only she has touched, exploring the parts of him she’s never seen. When he pushes himself inside her, the pain subsides in his embrace. They move together through artless bumbles and consuming bliss. When he rolls off Junie, he pulls her to his chest, touching her hair while she listens to his heartbeat.

“When do we go, then?” she whispers, trailing kisses along Caleb’s chest.

“Whenever you say.”

—

The next night, after taking care of her household duties and putting Mrs. McQueen to bed, Junie meets Caleb in the cotton fields—the same place they started. They discuss and debate, kiss and embrace, until they settle on a plan.

They will stay at Bellereine for the summer, playing their roles.

They will spend the time they have together, with the ones they love.

And at the end of August, once the cotton harvest begins and draws Mr. Taylor’s attention away, they will run.