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Chapter One
The Scarlet Skies
It was the crying from dawn below that woke me up that hot night. I caught the words clear as the mill bell: "No, you can't say that to me. You can't say you won't two times, Davey Reed, not again you can't!"
I sat up to listen, being careful not to pull on the bedclothes and disturb Mama, who was asleep beside me.
Then I heard another, deeper voice, saying something softly. After that came a wordless cry, then a wild weeping, and a minute later the sound of somebody running.
Rosellen! It was Rosellen and my older brother, Davey, down there talking at the front door. No, not talking — quarreling. Rosellen was the one who did most of the talking and then ran of. It must have been a really fierce quarrel for her to raise her voice. That wasn't like Rosellen Sanders.
I sighed, listening now to hear if Mama had been woken up, too; but no, her breathing hadn't changed. Mama had slept through the ruckus below our window. That was good. With the baby coming, she needed her rest these days. I lay back on my pillow and closed my eyes, hoping to fall asleep fast, but I knew I wouldn't. I used to sleep like a log, but since the war had begun three years ago, every time I woke up at night I stayed awake for a long time. I'd lie awake worrying about Davey, who is fighting in the Confederate Army, and about us Reeds, now that Pap died in an army hospital last winter. And now I had a new worry-the misery between Davey and his longtime true love, Rosellen.
While I was pondering them, I heard Mama stir. Then I heard her say, "Hannalee, do I hear you sighin'?"
"Yes, Mama, I was. I'mnot asleep. Do you want somethin'?"
It was her turn to sigh into the dark. She whispered, "Honey, would you fetch me some cold water? Not from the pitcher in the pantry but from the pump outside. I'd like some real cold well water. I'm dry as an old bone from all that talkin' tonight with you and Davey and the Sanderses. I'm hot, and the baby's movin' in me. He's woke up, too."
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stayed there for a minute, thinking of the baby that was to come in the fall. Marna always spoke of the baby as "him." I hoped this baby would be a boy, and favor Pap in being redheaded. None of the rest of us, neither Davey, my little ten-year-old brother, Jem, nor I, had his hair. We were all black-haired and brown-eyed, and favored Mama, who had some Cherokee Indian blood in her family. Pap's dying was a deep ache to us, and a boy baby who looked like him would be a comfort.
I found the chinaware cup on the pine table next to the bed on my side, picked it up, and made my way across the room and down the stairs as quietly as I could. I didn't want to wake up Jem as I went past his bedroom.
I walked through the dark house and went outside into the hot night. It was late June, and the red rambler rose that Pap had planted beside the back door was in bloom. He'd planted the sweet-smelling rose even though this wasn't really our house but one we rented from the millowners. But that had been like Pap — he had always favored pretty things.
Thinking of him, I looked up at the sky. That was when I saw it-the bright red flare to the southwest. I pressed the cup to my chest, watching. There it was again! Another blaze of red, and then another. They were sharp bursts of light that came and went, always in the southwest. I knew they weren't summer lightning. Lightning made jagged streaks slicing through the sky or sometimes sheets of light that lit up everything. Besides, lightning was white or blue, not red, and thunder came after it. These flashes were silent, like suddenly blossoming red flowers.
I didn't like them. A cold little breeze that went right through my old cotton nightgown made me shiver. Fear caught hold of me, the same kind that now came to me whenever I met up with anything strange. Pap's dying of camp fever in Virginia had done that to me. Marna confessed she felt the same way, too, now that he was gone from us.
While I watched the red lights, I suddenly heard a soft coughing from somewhere near me. When it came again, I knew who it was. Davey. He'd come around from the front of the house. Davey'd brought a cough back home with him from his army camp in Virginia. He'd been sick like Pap, but he'd gotten over it except for the cough. He'd come home on furlough for a week and was going back to Virginia the day after tomorrow.
Before I could call out his name, he asked fiercely, "Who's out here? I can hear you breathin'."
"Me, Hannalee. I'm goin' to get some cold water for Marna. Did you think I was a Yankee boy, Davey?"
"Bein' a soldier makes a man careful . . ." He shut of what he had meant to say and told me, "Get the water and get inside, little sister. You shouldn't be walkin' around in the dark."
"I won't be long at the pump. Davey, what's that over there in the sky to the south and west? Can you see the red lights...
Turn Homeward, Hannalee. Copyright © by Patricia Beatty. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
