- “Little Wren, little Wren,
fly away and come back again,
when the snow is on the ridge,
I’ll be waiting by the bridge,
little Wren, little Wren,
fly away and come back again.”
- My voice cracked on the last line.
- I sang it anyway.
- Three times.
- Like she did on the tape.
- When I finished, the creek kept running.
- The pines kept swaying.
- Dutch leaned his whole weight against my knee.
- And somewhere, up in the aspens, a bird started singing.
- I don’t know what kind.
- Harlan says it was a mountain bluebird.
- He says they come back to the ridge every April.
- He says they always have.
- Last October, I stocked the cellar.
- Harlan sat on a stool at the top of the ladder and told me what to do. His left hand doesn’t work well enough anymore to carry jars. So I carried them.
- Green beans. Corn. Tomatoes. Peaches. Applesauce. All from the garden I planted in the spring. Harlan taught me to can. In Grandma Hazel’s kitchen. With Grandma Hazel’s pots.
- Rice. Beans. Flour. Sugar. Oats. Powdered milk. Coffee.
- Blankets. Candles. Lamp oil. Matches. A first-aid kit.
- A forty-pound bag of dog food.
- And on the shelf at eye level, I put a jar.
- Small. Dark purple.
- Plum jam.
- From the tree in front of the cabin. Grandma Hazel’s tree. My mother’s tree.
- I made it in August. My first batch. Harlan said it was too sweet.
- It was.
- I made it anyway.
- I put a piece of masking tape on the lid.
- I wrote on it.
- In blue ink.
- PLUM.
- And underneath, in smaller letters:
- For whoever needs it.
- Harlan watched me from the top of the ladder.
- “Who’s that for?” he asked.
- I looked at the jar.
- At the shelves. At the blankets. At the dog food.
- At Grandma Hazel’s stones.
- “I don’t know yet,” I said.
- I thought about my mother.
- On Harlan’s porch. The September before she died. Forty pounds lighter. Barely able to stand.
- Make sure she has enough to share.
- “Somebody’s going to need it,” I said. “Somebody who’s been forgotten. Somebody who got left out in the cold.”
- I climbed up the ladder.
- I closed the hatch.
- I pulled the braided rug back over it.
- “And when they find it,” I said, “I want them to know what I know.”
- Harlan looked at me.
- “What’s that?”
- I looked out the window. At the plum tree. At the ridge. At the aspens turning gold.
- At Dutch, asleep by the stove.
- At the little glass bird on the windowsill. Catching the afternoon sun. Throwing a small blue light across the floor.
- “That somebody saw it coming,” I said.
- “And got ready.”
- “And that they were never forgotten.”
- “Not for one single day.”
THE END..!
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