He stopped talking.
She said, “You think what?”
He went through the events of what he saw, and what happened after.
Rae Lynn had taken his hand and said, “You think you might’ve died?”
He raised his shoulders, then expanded a little more on his inability to, as he put it, aim high for the sky.
She said, “You can’t . . . ?”
He gave her such a forlorn look right then and said, “I ain’t sure.”
Rae Lynn emitted a soft, “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
She said, “We’ll just take it one day at a time. I was married seven years and never got pregnant. I don’t know what to think about that. Warren had Eugene and all. I got something I need to tell you too, speaking of Warren.”
He said, “You ain’t got to if you don’t want to.”
She said, “No, I need to.”
And so she did, observing his face, his eyes mostly, looking for his reaction to what happened. There was none, only quiet listening, and a nod here and there as she poured out all of the pain and distress of what it had entailed. What it had taken out of her. When she was finished, his grip tightened on her hand.
He said, “It’s terrible, but what you done was merciful at that point, not murder.” And the most important thing he could say was what he said next. “I’d have done the same thing. It’s a hurt near about impossible to get over, but I’m hoping when I tell you you’re the first woman I’ve ever truly loved, Rae Lynn, it’ll help, if only a little.”
Her heart soared from out of the darkness that day, and here they were now. Three children later, another one on the way, a small but flush turpentine farm, and most important of all, each other. Rae Lynn couldn’t get enough of looking at their children, watching them when they didn’t know it. She found herself thinking on how her and Del’s blood ran in their veins. They were an indelible symbol of what they’d accomplished; like the catfaces on the trunks of the longleaf pines, they were the imprint of their love, their existence proof of what they’d been, who they were, even long after they’d left this Earth. For now, all she needed was to hold them close, and so she went to them and did just that.
Chapter 37
Delwood and Jeremiah
Bladen County, 1942
Dark haired like their mother, they had their father’s startling blue eyes. Eight-year-old Delwood, born in May of ’34, was quiet and thoughtful, while almost six-year-old Jeremiah （as he liked to remind everyone）， born in August of ’36, chattered endlessly and couldn’t sit still. On this early summer day, they followed their older cousins, Joey and Darren, as they ran through the woods to where their parents waited. With the Reese boys ran their coonhound, Rabbit, named so because of his long, floppy ears and twitchy nose. Delwood and Jeremiah were excited. Today, their father was going to show them how to make the funny catfaces on the special pine trees he called the longleaf. The Reese boys each carried a small tool made by their father. He told them it was a bark hack.
Since they were old enough to walk, they’d spent a good deal of time in the woods with their parents, and like their older cousins, the Reese boys already knew the names of all the different pines, the hardwoods, plus many other plants and flowers. They knew about scrape, pine gum, pitch, tar, and that smelly stuff called turpentine, which their mother used for most anything that ailed them. They knew about crops of trees, the small sections the work hands called drifts, but most of all, they knew the work their family did was hard, but meaningful. The special trees, the longleaf, their father said, used to be all over, but now, most were gone.
The boys spotted their mother and their little sister, Beebee, walking around smacking her hands and singing. Their mother was by their father, and both were talking with Aunt Sudie May, Uncle Amos, and their adopted relative, Uncle Peewee, along with several work hands near a drift of trees. Cousin Norma held their baby brother, Joshua.
As they ran up, their father squatted down eye level to talk to them.
He said, “It’s gonna take time before your work looks like this,” and he pointed to the odd markings on a tree that made the catface. The face was almost as tall as Jeremiah from top to bottom. He said, “You got to be patient.”
Their mother came close, listening, while their father spoke. To the boys, she was the prettiest lady they’d ever seen and they loved her with all their might. They spent hours looking for and bringing her flowers and colorful rocks from the river. What she gave them in return they craved. Like when it was nighttime, she’d slip quiet into their room, kiss them on the cheek, and sit in a rocking chair by an open window, the curtains shifting and swirling on a warm, summer wind. She’d hum softly until they fell asleep.