The Mulberry Tree Read online

  “Ain’t met anybody who can go up against me yet,” Violet said cheerfully as she reached for another joint.

  Bailey rummaged in the pantry until she found some potatoes that weren’t rotten and a canister of flour. There were some cans of food also in the pantry, and she carried them into the kitchen and plunked them down on the table in front of Violet. “I take it that calories aren’t a concern of yours,” she said, and Violet snorted in answer. “All right. One lunch for information. What did your friend tell you about my farm?”

  “Her great-aunt told her the story, and the aunt said that nobody knew all of it. The farm was owned by a woman nobody in town liked. She had a couple of kids—” Violet halted when Bailey looked at her sharply. “No, none of the woman’s kids had a harelip, nor anybody else that my friend remembered did either. Besides, I think all this at your farm happened a long time ago, too long ago for the dates you want, so those kids had nothin’ to do with the man you’re lookin’ for.” She paused for a moment, smiling smugly at having figured out so much from the little Bailey had told her.

  “But anyway, the woman went off for a while and came back married to a man from outside. My friend said she thought he was named Guthrie or something like that. I like a little more pepper on my chicken than that,” she said as Bailey put salt and pepper in the flour to coat the chicken.

  “Go on,” Bailey said as she shook more pepper on the chicken.

  “My friend—her name is Gladys, by the way—well, Gladys said that the man was a big, hulking giant and kinda simpleminded. She said that when the woman—Gladys couldn’t remember her name—bought the farm, it was a run-down old place, and since the woman had a job in town, it stayed that way for years. But after she got married, her husband brought it back to life. You’ll like this: Gladys said that her aunt told her that the man used to make jams and pickles. She said the general store in Calburn used to sell them.”

  For a moment Violet drew on her joint and watched Bailey as she fried the chicken in hot Crisco, then put sliced potatoes in another big cast-iron skillet to fry.

  “So what’s the part that I’m not going to like?” Bailey asked.

  “Gladys said that she didn’t remember all the details, but her aunt told her that the wife started having an affair with some man where she worked. And when she told her husband she was divorcing him and he had to get off her farm, the poor guy went out into the barn and hanged himself.”

  Bailey paused with her tongs aloft. “My barn?”

  “That’s the one. Told you you wouldn’t like it.”

  For a few minutes Bailey moved the chicken about in the hot oil and thought about that poor man. She’d sensed that someone who truly loved the farm had lived there before her. Through marriage, the man had found a beautiful place where he could grow the things he loved. He’d even been able to sell what he made. But then he’d heard that it was all going to be taken from him by his adulterous wife. And if he was simpleminded, he could never hope to earn enough to buy his own farm. It was an awful story, she thought.

  When Bailey was silent, Violet said, “You shouldn’t take it so hard. All these old places have stories to them. A couple of years before my husband bought this place, the old man that owned it dropped a chain saw on his foot. Cut it clean off.”

  “But suicide . . . ,” Bailey said softly as she walked to the counter by the sink and checked the seals on the quart jars of tomatoes. All but two of the lids had popped down, showing that they’d sealed.

  “It happens. And, as I said, it was a long time ago. Who knows? Maybe he was sick, or somethin’ like that. We never know what’s in a person’s heart.”

  “So what happened after that?” Bailey asked as she walked back to the stove to check on the chicken.

  Violet chuckled. “Gladys said that after the woman’s husband killed himself, she packed up her kids and left town. Gladys said that her aunt hinted that the man she was plannin’ to marry already had a wife, so maybe he told the woman he wasn’t gonna marry her after all. Or maybe he was freaked out about the suicide. Who knows?”

  “Did she sell the farm?”

  “I asked Gladys that, but she didn’t know,” Violet said. “Gladys said that the house has been empty all her life, but then so has a lot of Calburn.”

  “This town is empty, isn’t it?” Bailey said. She was pulling open drawers to find paper towels to drain the chicken on, but there was nothing. Half of the many drawers were filled with empty bread wrappers, some of them quite old. Could bread wrappers reach antique status? she wondered. In the pantry, she found some paper napkins printed, “Happy birthday, Chuckie,” so she took them back to the kitchen. “Are you keeping these for sentimental reasons?” she asked.

  “If gettin’ somethin’ free is sentimental, then yeah.”

  Bailey washed a chipped dinner plate, covered it with the napkins, then put the chicken and fried potatoes on it to drain.

  “Why is half of Calburn empty?” Bailey asked as she put creamed corn and peas—found in cans in the pantry—fried potatoes, and fried chicken on a plate and handed it to Violet.

  “You’re welcome to join me,” she said, motioning to the empty chair across the table from her.

  Bailey looked down at the food and knew that if she started eating it, she’d never stop. What was it about the food you had as a child that was so viscerally appealing? But she also knew the calorie content of such a meal. “No thanks,” she said as she sat down on the chair. “Tell me about Calburn.”

  “Simple,” Violet said, her mouth full of chicken. “New highway. It was a toss-up whether the highway was gonna go through Wells Creek or here. I think somebody paid somebody off, and Calburn lost. A year after the highway was finished, Calburn was nearly a ghost town, while Wells Creek got rich. You should drive over there and see the place. It has”—she wiggled her eyebrows in disdain—“boutiques. Fancy places that carry little soaps shaped like hearts. And shops that carry clothes that cost more than I make in a year. They even changed the name of the town, give it the la-di-da name of Welborn. Isn’t that cute?”

  “Welborn?” Bailey asked thoughtfully.

  “Sure. Like in Australia except without the e.”

  “I think I’ve heard of that place. Isn’t there something there? Something that brings tourists?”

  Violet stuffed her mouth full of peas and corn. “Mot mings,” she said.

  “What?”

  She swallowed. “They have some hot springs over there, but—”

  “Yes! Of course,” Bailey said. “Welborn Hot Springs. Lots of people go there. I heard that it was a divine place. I wanted to go, but Jimmie . . . ” She trailed off.

  “He your dead husband?”

  Bailey nodded. Jimmie had refused to go to the hot springs in Virginia that some of the people they knew had sworn by. Lady something or other had said the springs had completely cured her arthritis. Bailey had hoped that a few days of lying about in hot water would help Jimmie relax, but he wouldn’t hear of it. The fact that he wouldn’t go was so unusual that Bailey had asked him why. His face had turned dark for a moment; then he’d laughed and said that if she wanted hot springs, he’d take her to Germany or somewhere exotic. “But not to the backwoods of rural Virginia,” he’d said as he picked her up and twirled her about, then nuzzled her neck and succeeded in making her stop asking questions.

  “You in there?” Violet asked.

  “Oh, sorry,” Bailey said. “I was just remembering something. Look, I need to go. I have to—”

  “Fix that big, good-lookin’ Matt Longacre dinner. You two sleepin’ together yet?”

  “Every minute we can get,” Bailey said as she stood up. “We’re regular rabbits.”

  Violet cackled with laughter, then leaned back on her chair and looked at the many quarts of tomatoes that Bailey had put up, and at the chicken and vegetables she’d prepared. “You come back any time you want to know anything.”

  “And next time I’ll bring a