From roots to sky, p.2
From Roots to Sky, page 2
“Sure do,” the man said, standing stiffly, so that the echoes of the creaking rocking chair seemed to reverberate in the man’s bones. He stuck out his hand. “Pleased to meet ya.”
“Jerry.” Luke shook the man’s hand.
“Last I knew, that’s me. Sat down a spell to rest my rusty old joints before goin’ in for my snaffle bits. Looks like you saved me the trip, and I thank you for it. And you are?”
Lost, he thought. “Luke,” he said. “Luke Hampstead.”
“Well, Luke Hampstead, stick with me. I’ll show ya where you can stay, and you can try again tomorrow with Ms. Hannah.”
two
Someday, I’ll keep going. Just up and up and up, and I’ll see the world.”
Hannah lay on the grass beneath the great old oak as purple-gray dusk slipped through the branches above. She could almost hear her childhood self saying it, hair flying wild behind her as she swung from the swing that hung from the big branch.
And even more, she could hear her brother’s laugh. “I know you will, Hannah,” Danny had said when they were kids. “And I’ll build a house and put down roots right here, and you can come home whenever you need a place to rest those wings.”
She remembered how he’d stood so proudly, looking out on their grandparents’ farmland to the east. The tree didn’t belong to them, but the innkeeper who owned it on the next parcel over never minded their playing beneath it, so long as they steered clear of the weddings and such.
It had been a magical childhood, growing up there, with the inn’s lights glowing into the evenings, its player piano piping ragtime that tumbled down the hill to her and Danny. She used to spin herself around, fancying she knew all the loveliest dance steps, while Danny rolled his eyes and kept to his books.
And then the inn had fallen silent and empty, those months after Black Sunday. She remembered that day in vivid detail—the tinny voice on the radio was somber with news of the great wind that picked up the earth itself from all that farmland, up in Oklahoma, spun it up in the air, and blew it clean away. So far that it blackened their skies down here in Oak Springs, its doomsday effects killing the land and sucking the life right out of towns like theirs, with farmers picking up and heading west before they lost everything.
Couples seeking a romantic getaway stopped coming to the Kissing Tree Inn, and the old Victorian had been boarded shut for a decade now.
But the tree lived on, bearing story upon story in its carved trunk.
“Just not mine,” she said, breathing out. She had never launched from that swing, kept on flying to see the world. And, ironically, Danny had been the one to be plucked from the land, until the war had claimed him for good. So here she was, planted in the grass he’d loved, fresh off from making a fool of herself to that nice airman today.
“What’s the matter with you, anyway, Hannah Garland?” She hopped to her feet, ready to give herself a proper scolding. “A man serves his country in this awful war, comes back, finds himself in the Feed and Dime, and all you can do is hush up like a silent old grave and push him out? Great gumdrops, you fool. You should’ve rolled out the red carpet! Pulled out a trumpet! Baked him a cake!”
The tirade against herself was off to a good start, but it hadn’t tapped into the tempest inside of her. Approaching the trunk, she leaned her forehead against it and let out a wail. A fake wail, but she’d long given up thinking she’d ever cry again. When news of her brother’s demise reached her, she hadn’t shed a tear. The pain went too far down, way past the place of words, and stopped up her tears forever, it seemed. The guilt over that seared her something fierce.
The truth was, that same force—whatever had stopped up her tears—had resurfaced again today. When that airman stood looking at her with solemn hope in his gray eyes, she’d wanted to hug him for whatever he’d been through, and she wanted to slug him for not being Danny, and she felt eternal remorse for the latter. The whole crisscrossed mess inside of her just stopped up her words and turned her into a bumbling fool. Well, even more of a bumbling fool than usual.
“Make it right, Hannah.” She closed her eyes as she felt the bark of the tree press into her forehead. Lifting her head, she rubbed the spot and took a shaky breath. “Get to work.”
Pulling the papers from her satchel, she spread them fan-like in her hand. Danny had sent some, and his friend Luke had carried the torch when Danny no longer could. The two men’s drawings were as different as night and day. Her brother’s were haphazard in scale and captivating to behold. When he’d been drafted into this war and she’d been the one to put down roots to hold down the family farm, he’d promised to send her the world, one picture at a time. And he had. Sketches of London from the air, of a tiny chapel in the Alps, of a cathedral in Italy. The focus of his sketches had kept narrowing, from castles down to homes, until that was almost exclusively what he’d sent. Homes, he’d written. To give us hope for when I return and you can take flight, Hannah.
It was then she’d determined that they’d be kept more than on paper. She’d bring them to life, in a house right here. Danny’s house, and it’d be waiting for him when he got back. A place to hold the broken things he’d seen and taken such care to remember . . . and a place to hold him, too.
Luke’s sketches, when he’d taken over, had been a scalding oil and healing balm all at once. The unfamiliar hand—the absence of Danny’s trademark scribbles—broke her heart. And yet Sergeant Pilot Luke Hampstead’s attention to detail, to scale and measurement, was a boon. His sketches came with a few lines of correspondence and no more. He was a man of few words, it seemed, but the places he chose to sketch proved he had great heart. These places have been destroyed by war, he’d written. But at least they might keep in these humble sketches. Keep well, Hannah. He always signed it that way, and it always struck her. Simple and yet—so different. She felt an ache in the words. As if he meant that though the world before him crumbled, if he could just know the people back home kept well, then he might keep on.
He drew images side by side—what a building looked like after it had been reduced to rubble, and what it had looked like before its demise. He captured so much life in these that she had asked him, once, how he knew what they had looked like before their destruction. He’d written back: You can tell a lot if you watch and listen, and study a thing closely. Its surroundings, the buildings nearby, the person who built it, the people who knew it well.
His words surprised her. They made her feel that she knew these buildings well, too. And somehow, in the process, she was known a bit more. She felt those drawings etch right into her being. The quirky centered doorknob of a rowhouse in Rotterdam. A carved welcome in the wall of a French farmhouse—Bienvenue. A turret-like gable from a Scottish castle in Clydebank, vanished after two nights of blitzkrieg.
It lit her imagination on fire, and sent her back to her and Danny’s construction site, with the rest of the town’s hearts breaking right alongside hers, and their hands and arms swinging right alongside hers, too. It had given them something to set their hands to in their grief—some way to fight for hope, one nail and one plank at a time. They’d nearly finished Danny’s house over the past few months in stolen moments between plantings and harvestings. If not for him, then for her.
And now here she was. So close to being done, but with planting season in full swing, she was hard-pressed for time. She’d taken on the job at the Feed and Dime to earn some money to fund the project, but truth was, she had enough on her hands helping her grandmother on their own farm, too.
So the nights were hers. Her only time to fight the dark, to make sure this house was finished, once and for all, even if it was just her pounding nails late into the night. With a fortifying breath and a nod at her papers, she marched off into the growing dark for the job that filled her nights and fueled her days. There, at the edge of her grandparents’ land, stood the silhouette of a building. A small one, but when she thought of what it did—or would one day do, if she could ever finish the thing—it seemed the grandest building in all the world.
Picking up a hammer from her brother’s old toolbox, she got to work.
three
Here y’are,” Jerry said, planting his feet in the Texas soil and looking proudly up a gentle hill. “The inn.”
Luke could feel Jerry’s study of him and was thankful for his well-practiced deadpan face from his missions. He couldn’t let on that the place before him was—well—how could he say it nicely? . . . It looked more like some of the war-ravaged farmhouses back in Belgium than a Texas inn extending the state’s famed hospitality.
“It’s . . .” Luke cleared his throat. “I could help with that,” he said, pointing at the crooked sign, which had come loose from one of its chains. Stepping closer, he read the words aloud: “The Kissing Tree Inn.” The sign swung in the light breeze, a weary welcome.
Jerry stroked his stubbled chin and work-weathered skin, lending the moment all the gravitas as if Luke had just read aloud a treatise.
“What’s that mean?” Luke asked. “The Kissing Tree.” He could feel his face burn as he repeated the words.
“That, over yonder,” Jerry said, gesturing down a hill to the left and beyond the inn, where a lone tree stood, “is the Kissing Tree. Or the Big Oak. Old Oak. Oak of Shame, depending on who you ask. Folks’ve been carving initials in its wood for decades now, and still it stands.”
“Can’t say as much for the inn, eh?” Luke said, beholding the place that was clearly once a prized property. But the windows were boarded up, the pale green paint peeling back to reveal—was that pink? Belay that. Bright pink—and what once was a gravel path was now a scattered vestige of a former byway.
“Fell on hard times, like most of this part of the country, the past ten, fifteen years,” Jerry said. “But it’s got itself a new owner, and that owner’s got hisself a new caretaker, and that’s yours truly.” Jerry stuck his thumbs under his suspenders, snapping them proudly. “Which means, you can stay here, far as I’m concerned, so long as you don’t mind it ain’t up to snuff, being that I just started working on the place.”
“I don’t want to trouble you,” Luke said.
“No trouble. You won’t find any other inns around here, so unless you want to set up camp outside somewhere, you’d best come with me.”
Luke followed. It’d only be for one night, after all, and after years of barked orders, droning plane engines, and Luftwaffe attacks, well, the man’s rambling ways were a welcome change.
Inside, Jerry set to work laying a fire in the parlor, where an old photograph hung of a silhouetted couple beneath a tree, keeping watch over the empty tables and chairs.
Something cracked inside him, along with the log that had just caught fire. This hollow place, in the face of what it—according to the photo—once represented. It felt . . . too real. Too close. He thought of his own story, one that was once supposed to have ended in marriage. That, too, had gone hollow and empty.
“You can pick any room you want,” Jerry said. “I’ve got the downstairs one, keepin’ it for me and my grandson, Arnie. He’s coming out here to live with me, if I can get the place fit for a kid. He’s stayin’ with an aunt right now who’s none too keen to have him, so by George, I’m making a place for him here. A kid needs room to roam, you know? Fresh air and sunshine and a place for life to get back inside him, after all he’s lost.” Jerry didn’t elaborate, but the way his stubbled chin trembled and he shook himself out of that thought, Luke hoped his grandson would find his way here very soon. It seemed the two needed each other. “Anyhow, grab any other room you like. Have a look.”
Luke did, mounting the creaking stairs. He passed the first room—Maiden Faire, the brass plate on the door declared it—and felt he’d be an imposter in there. The next room’s plaque called it Oakhaven, and Luke ducked inside, where muted tones of hunter green hushed the world around him.
He deposited his kit bag on the bed, ignoring the cloud of dust that rose in response, and took himself to the window. May as well earn his keep. Finding a shoehorn in the dresser drawer, he used it to pry off the wood that boarded the window and discovered that the view overlooked the sprawling old oak. He could see why it had taken on such a life, so much lore and legend to it. It seemed to lay its branches upon the ground like unfolding fingers, inviting one to climb up inside and stay awhile.
He unzipped his bag, unfazed by the scant number of belongings inside. He’d learned to travel light, and he’d needed to leave room for the rather awkward, spindly yet bulky bundle he’d hauled all this way to deliver to one Hannah Garland.
Still, for all the places he’d been, there was one possession he always took with him. He pulled it out now, unwrapping the bundle from a scrap of old canvas.
Letters. For a man who’d gone so long in the war with no word from home but that fateful “Dear John” letter, he hadn’t known where to begin when he’d taken up writing to Hannah Garland. So his letters had always been short. When her first letter had arrived, he’d not opened it for three days, not knowing what to make of it. He had no family. No home or history, other than the Chatham home for boys back in New Jersey. He had thought he would have all of that one day, but that hope had been crushed to bits. And so for Danny’s sister to write him out of the blue, he felt like a big fake—undeserving of her words. But he’d opened that envelope and found a simple thank-you. Short, but kind, written from a broken heart. Thank you for the drawings, it said. They mean the world.
So he’d kept them coming, and she’d kept her letters coming. Always short, sometimes newsy about plantings and harvests, and always a hearty thank-you.
And at the bottom of the stack . . . was the other letter. Caroline’s. Like always, he shoved it back into the dark of his bag, closing the door on that part of his life.
Opening the window and leaning out to fill his lungs with the sweet air of farm country, he inclined his ear. What was that he heard, reverberating so sharply? It stopped, and after a beat an owl hooted somewhere in the tree. Then it started again. A thwack and an echo, a thwack and an echo, again and again. Someone was building now, with so little light? Surely that wasn’t good for the eyes.
A cry of pain sounded, confirming his fears but bowling him over in surprise. It was the voice of a woman. And not just any woman. There was no mistaking the voice when it piped up again with all the frustration in the world: “Jumpin’ gumdrops!”
He was out the door with a quick “I’ll be back” to Jerry before he could think better of it. Long strides carried him swiftly up the old gravel path, beneath the tree whose branches created a tunnel of sorts, and out the other side to the pasture beyond. With the moon rising now, he paused to catch his breath and take in the sight before him.
A small two-story white house—or most of one, anyway. A ladder leaning against it, and perched at the very top, the same kerchiefed, overalled Hannah Garland he’d seen earlier. This time sporting a headlamp and a hammer in the dusky pink sky. She paused hammering to lean in and examine something, muttered a few words, and clambered down the ladder at a speed that made even him nervous—he, who was used to soaring thousands of miles above the earth.
She disappeared up a hill beyond. In her absence, he closed the distance between himself and the house. When he drew close enough to touch it, he stopped in his tracks, jaw dropping.
This was—what? Words pounded in succession for trial, none of them quite enough. Incredible. Creative. Singular. Heartbreaking. Healing. It was—it was—
“Impossible,” he said out loud. He stepped closer, the structure drawing him. It was, at first glance, no different from many a country farmhouse. But the gable on the left corner of the house was no gable at all, but rather a turret in miniature. Plucked right out of the castle he’d seen in Clydebank before the Luftwaffe descended upon Scotland.
And the doorknob in the middle of the door was distinctly un-Texas-farmhouse-like, and very distinctly European. He had drawn one such from a sketch he’d sent from the Netherlands, after Rotterdam had been blitzed and that bright blue fallen door had reached out from the rubble, with its plucky tarnished brass knob in the middle.
Though Hannah’s pounding hammer had silenced, it seemed to take up residence now inside his chest. He stepped up the makeshift porch steps—placeholders, he assumed, for something more permanent to come, and reached a hand out to feel for himself what his eyes could not believe: etched letters, deep in the wood, as they had been in their original stone back in France. Bienvenue.
Welcome.
A home, welcoming him, when he had no home to speak of.
“Hey!” said a voice, in a less-than-welcoming tone.
He turned, his hand lingering on the carved word. “I-I’m sorry, Miss Garland. I didn’t mean to intrude. I just came because—”
“It’s you,” she said, her voice softening. “From the Feed and Dime. Listen, I owe you an apology. I was all addlepated today—you just took me by surprise is all. Standing there in uniform, fresh out of the air from heaven-knows-where, and I was late in closing, and I’m all thumbs and two left feet as you saw, and it flustered me something awful and I—there I go again, railroading you with my words. Gran says I get to ramblin’ more than a tumbleweed when my words go. Like a full-force faucet, she says.”
If she was a full-force faucet, he was a stone wall, all the words caught somewhere deep and silent inside. “I, uh—”
She picked up a hammer from the steps, disappearing around the side of the house. Grabbing the tin can of nails, he followed.
“So if you’ll forgive me for my abysmal behavior, mister, I’ll let you be on your way. Where you heading to, anyway?” She held a hand out for a nail.
“New York,” he said, handing her three. She stuck two in her mouth and climbed halfway up the ladder, pounding a nail into a piece of trim with remarkably swift accuracy.
