•✦─Summer, 1960─✦•
Sally Jean, age 22
"Okay, okay, now listen to mine: Take me away to the meadows that bloom
To a place that isn't four walls and a room
Where the trees are so green and the clouds are so fair
To a place I can breathe the fresh floral air
Let me live with the clovers and dance in the rain
And never once again feel that cold, frosty pain
With the sun on my skin and your front on my back
Let us lay in the flowering fields of lilacs
We can waltz in the starlight and dance in the streams
Let us stay in this place that exists in my dreams."
"Oh, that's real pretty, Delores."
"Yeah, Lore, you should make that into a song."
"Yeah, that's a right good idea, Paula. That would sound like such a beautiful song."
"They grow in bushes."
The group of cheery women swivel their heads towards where Jean lies in the green grass, her hands resting on her stomach and eyes closed as she soaks up the summer sun through her freckled skin.
"Pardon?" Delores asks.
"Lilacs," Jean says. "They don't grow in fields. They grow in bushes."
Delores looks down at the poem in her hands, lips pinching together. "Well, they could grow in fields, couldn't they?"
"Yes, I suppose, but that's an awful lot of work. Someone would have to plant them, as they don't spread easily enough to cover an entire field. Either way, it's stupid to say 'fields of lilacs.'"
"Well, geez, who made you the expert on lilacs?" Delores asks bitterly.
"My mama had a bush that grew at the front of our house," Jean reveals, smiling softly, her eyes still closed. "She loved those flowers. It was her favorite color, that purple."
She can picture her mama clear as day with her frayed, straw hat and her worn day dress that matched her blue eyes, pruning her lilac bush and answering any questions Jean's curious, little mind could come up with.
"LADIES! YARD TIME IS OVER! LINE UP!"
The memory of Mama is violently slashed down the middle by Matron Jones's loud, rough voice. Jean frowns as she sits up, opening her eyes. "That woman's got the voice of a bulldog," she grumbles.
Paula laughs under her breath, covering her mouth. "Oh, Jean, don't let her hear you say that!"
"I'm not that daft, Paula. That would be Delores you're thinking of," Jean jokes, snickering when Delores shoots her a glare.
"Oh, I wish you'd hurry up and leave already," Delores groans.
"Me too, Lore. Me too."
"Five more months, right, Jean?" Janis asks.
"Would be sooner if she'd just call that man of hers," Paula comments. "Really, Jean, you should give him a ring. You know he'd get ya out."
Jean frowns. "I'm not calling him to help me. I already told you that."
"But, why? I bet that poor fool is worried sick for you."
A terrible pain unfurls in Jean's chest. She doesn't like to think about him. Not one bit.
"He's not worried for me," she says. "He would've chased after me when I left if he really was worried about me."
"Jean—"
"Nope. I don't wanna hear any more of this, Paula."
Jean turns her face away from her friend and up to the sky, soaking up the last bit of sun that she can before she is confined to her cell once again.
Briefly, she thinks about the summertime of her youth and the boy that had captured her heart there.
And how she had ended up in a prison a thousand miles away from him.
•✦───✧✦✧───✦•
Summer, 1943
Sally Jean, age 5
•✦───✧✦✧───✦•
On some mornings, Mama liked to send Sally Jean to gather coal by the train tracks.
Sally Jean liked hunting for coal. She thought it an adventure traipsing through the thicket of pines that surrounded the weathered shack she called home, even when it was hotter than Hades outside.
The land sweltered hot on summer mornings, the gentle breeze carrying moisture and notes of pine and earth through the air, bugs buzzing alongside it.
Sally Jean didn't mind the heat, however. She didn't have time to. She was on an important mission, after all.
She strode through the woods like she always did, eyes alert and feet cautious like Mama had taught her. She was only five at the time, but Mama was too worried about the war to care much about that.
Mrs. Mayberry cared, though. She'd started sending out her two youngest to watch after Sally Jean the second she heard about the little girl's early morning whereabouts.
Sally Jean always enjoyed when the Mayberry brothers tagged along, that was why her face split into a grin when she spotted them waiting for her at the fallen log in the woods one morning.
Little Clyde Mayberry was trying to turn over the log with his worn, hand-me-down boots that had been passed down the long line of brothers to him.
The sun reached through the treetops to grab onto his dark hair, pulling out bits of red that only showed in the sunlight.
His older brother of four years, Jory Mayberry, leaned up against a pine, tall and lanky as he wrestled a pine needle from the spurs on his boot, his head covered by the Stetson hat his brother Simon let him have before he left for war.
"Sally Jean!" Little Clyde exclaimed when he spotted her, abandoning the decaying log and breaking out into a grin that rivaled hers. He ran up and grabbed her hand in his.
Clyde was Sally Jean's bestest friend in the whole wide world, and the only kid her age within a fifteen-mile radius. He lived beyond the shack and past the cow pasture at Mayberry Ranch with his brood of brothers and was practically inseparable from Sally Jean.
They spent nearly every day with each other. If it wasn't Clyde sneaking out of his chores to play with Sally Jean at her house, then it was Sally Jean helping him gather eggs and feed the livestock on the farm.
"You took too long," Jory commented, pushing off of the tree he leaned against.
Sally Jean blushed. She always did that around Jory. She thought Jory was the most handsome boy in town, after all, with his brunette, sun-kissed hair and blue eyes.
"I had to help my mama with the baby," she explained. "She's awful fussy today."
"Well, be faster next time," Jory said. "I gotta help Paulie muck the stalls here soon."
Sally Jean ignored him, swinging her and Clyde's interlocked hands as they journeyed toward the train tracks.
"Mama's makin' pie tonight for dessert!" Clyde said excitedly. "'Cause Hank's leavin' for the war here soon. She said he gets to have his favorite tonight. You wanna come over?"
Jory thwacked him on the back of the head. "Don't go invitin' people you ain't got no business invitin', nitwit! Mama don't like when you do that stuff."
"But Mama loves Sally Jean. She won't mind."
"Yeah, she will. That pie's 'post to feed the whole family. We get one less slice with Sally Jean around."
Sally Jean ignored Jory, smiling at Clyde. "Maybe Hank will get to be with my Daddy."
"Hank's in the Marines, not the Army," Jory pointed out.
"Well, my mama said that they might get to see each other. If he does, you oughta mail him and tell him to tell my daddy to send more letters. Mama gets so happy when she gets them letters." Seeing Mama happy happened just as often as seeing a blue moon did.
"My mama said that your mama's got the sadness," Clyde blurted out.
"The sadness?" Sally Jean echoed, frowning. Their hands stopped swinging. "What's that?"
"Mama said that wives get it when their husbands go off to war. Makes them not wanna do anything and sleep all the time. She said my grandmama caught the sadness when my granddaddy went to war."
"Is it com-tagious like the chicken pox? Am I gon' get it?"
Clyde shrugged. "Mama didn't say, but make sure to wash your hands. Mama said clean hands keep you healthy."
Sally Jean nodded, snatching her hand from his to wipe on the back of her feed-sack dress absentmindedly.
"Quit scarin' her, stupid," Jory said. "The sadness ain't con-tagious. It's just a feeling, not a disease or somethin'."
"Well, how do you know that?"
"'Cause I read it in a book. You'd find stuff like that out if you were smart enough to read."
Clyde's face grew red in shame, making Sally Jean angry. She knew Clyde had a hard time reading. On days that the chores got done early, Mrs. Mayberry would sit with them and teach them how to read.
She said Sally Jean was a natural, but Clyde complained about the letters flip-flopping in his head when it was his turn to read.
"Jory Mayberry!" Sally Jean yelled out, trying to sound as stern as Mrs. Mayberry did when she got onto her boys. "Don't you talk about Clyde like that!"
Jory stopped in his tracks, glaring at Sally Jean. "Don't tell me what to do, Sally Jean! I'm the eldest here. I'm in charge."
"Then stop actin' like a big ole baby," Sally Jean shot back.
"Yeah," Clyde chimed in, grinning ear to ear, "quit actin' like a big ole baby, Jory."
Jory glared down at his brother. "Watch it, Clyde, or I'll slap you silly."
"Okay, big ole baby," Clyde said with a smirk. "You can't do anything to me anyways, 'cause Mama said you can't, remember?"
Jory took a step forward, smiling darkly. "Yeah, well, Mama ain't here right now to see anything, is she?"
Sally Jean didn't like what he was implying and hatched a plan in her head. She bent down and snatched up a handful of pine needles from the forest floor, hurling them into Jory's face before yelling at Clyde to follow her, the two taking off into the woods together.
Jory would soon chase after them. "I'm gonna get you, Sally Jean!" he yelled out at her.
Sally Jean ignored his threat, running with a laugh in her chest, her lips spread wide in a smile from the thrill of the rush.
If only she would've savored moments like those longer when she could be a young, carefree child untouched by the horrors of the world.
Because, very quickly, she would have to become an adult. Far younger than most adults did.
•✦───✧✦✧───✦•
1,756 words.
Question: Have any of you seen Wonka?
My mom and I watched it recently and now every time I eat chocolate, I can't help but sing the lyrics "put your hand into your pocke-let, get yourself some Wonka chocolate!" and it's been driving me and my family crazy, but I can't help it!
Anyways, I'm super excited to start on this book! This one has definitely been a lot of fun to write, and y'all are going to LOVE Jean. At least, I hope you will. I know I love her!
PLEASE VOTE AND COMMENT TO MAKE ME SMILE!!!