“Fifty,” said her sister. It was the only word Miss Lettie had uttered throughout the breakfast conversation, and Lucy instantly loved both sisters.
Ignoring the sisters, Mrs. Klopp turned to Lucy. “So you’ve come to visit Mrs. Stewart?”
It surprised Lucy to hear Cora referred to as Mrs. Stewart. No one called her by that name. “Actually, I’ve come to work for her. As her stenographer.”
Mrs. Klopp’s lips pursed in disapproval. “Well, I’m surprised your father would want you associating with such a woman. She’s divorced, you know. Three times. Twice to the same man. Divorced him one month, married him again the next. Only to divorce him all over again!”
Lucy knew.
“The judge,” Mrs. Klopp said, sitting straighter in the chair, “campaigned vigorously against Cora Stewart in the election for the superintendent position.”
“An election that Cora won by a substantial majority, as I recall,” Miss Viola said, eyes narrowed and voice firm. “The first woman elected to be superintendent in the county.”
“We helped,” Miss Lettie said.
“Oh, we did indeed. We came up with Cora’s campaign slogan, didn’t we, Sister?”
“The Children’s Friend,” Miss Lettie said.
“Yes! That’s it. Good for you, Lettie. The Children’s Friend. And Cora won by a landslide. Imagine! A Democrat winning a Republican county.” She slapped her fragile, birdlike hands on the table. “And a woman, to boot!”
The judge’s wife was not impressed. “Cora’s politics have only added to our county’s many troubles.”
“Cora Wilson Stewart,” Miss Viola said, all fired up, “is the best thing that’s ever happened to our county. In fact, she’s becoming a powerful public figure in the entire state of Kentucky.”
“I don’t know about that,” Mrs. Klopp said, glowering at Miss Viola, then picked up her knife to butter a piece of bread.
“I do,” Miss Viola said. “And I’m always right.” She relaxed in her seat and sent a wink to Lucy. She smiled back. Mrs. Klopp harrumphed.
Lucy felt better after coffee and breakfast, better about being here, better about her aching body. She hated riding, hated Jenny, but it pleased her to no end to hear about the impact Cora was making, and she felt a tiny glimmer of renewed enthusiasm about coming to Morehead.
ANGIE COOPER ATTACKED the floor of the Little Brushy schoolhouse with her broom, peeved at Miss Norah for ailin’ so often. Days were wasting away and she was this close to her final exams for grade 8. Once she passed them, she could teach. But she needed Miss Norah to give her the exam, even though she knew twice as much as her teacher did.
And then there was Finley James. She wouldn’t marry him until he could read, at least up to grade 6. Maybe grade 4. He was plenty smart, but he needed proper schooling if’n he was ever to catch up with Angie. If Angie were the cussing type, she would cuss out Miss Norah for being such a no-good worthless teacher.
She swept the dirt out the door and off the porch. While she was outside, she looked around the corner at her troublesome little brothers. She’d sent them out to take turns on the swing that hung off a big oak tree. They weren’t near the oak tree. They’d found a big mud puddle and were stomping and splashing around in it, both of them covered in mud.
Angie sat down heavily on the edge of her porch and, in case either of her brothers bothered to note her reaction, did her level best to look calm and not, in any way, agitated. Inside, however, she was seething, simmering anger over Miss Norah’s slothiness. Was that a word? Laziness. She knew that was a genuine one.
She heard the sound of rustling leaves, then the rhythmic clomping of an approaching horse, so she jumped off the porch, dusted her skirt, straightened her bonnet, all in hopes the rider would turn out to be Finley James. But it was only Brother Wyatt riding past the schoolhouse on his beautiful black horse. She called to him and waved, then walked through the yard to greet him as he came through the trees.
“Looking for Paw? He’s over yonder, getting ready for the brush arbor.” She stroked Lyric’s black velvet nose, wishing she had a bit of carrot for this fine horse. The finest horse in Rowan County, Paw said.
“I am indeed. Thought I’d come up to help.”
“Paw said you’re welcome to stay at the farm.”
“Thank you, Angie. I might take you up on that, if I’m not any trouble.”
“You’re no trouble. Them boys,” she said with an eye on those two little brothers, “they’s nothing but trouble.”
“No school again today?”
“No. It’s a worry. Twice this week.” She glanced up at him. “Say, mebbe you could do the teaching, if Miss Cora fires Miss Norah.” She bit her lip. “Oh, Paw warned me to keep quiet about that and not tell anyone.” But Brother Wyatt wasn’t jest anyone. He was . . . about as close to a holy man as a man could get.
“I won’t tell a soul.” Then he shook his head. “But I can’t teach at Little Brushy. Too much to do.”
Her brother Mikey had started toward the schoolhouse, but Angie saw and cut him off. “Oh no . . . no, you don’t. I jest swept dirt out of that schoolhouse that you brought in. You two git. Go worsh off.”
His twin Gabe was jest as muddy. He lifted up brown palms, as if he was surprised to discover the dirt. “Where?”
“Oh good grief. At the well.” She sighed. “I gots to do everything for them boys.” She turned back to Brother Wyatt, who was watching the scene, amused. “It’s only funny if you ain’t the one to scrub their clothes.”
“I suppose so,” he said with a laugh. “Don’t be too hard on them. Mud puddles are a favorite pastime for little boys. I well remember.” He pulled on Lyric’s reins to turn her back to the trail. “I’ll see you later tonight, Angie.”
She smiled, despite her annoyance with her brothers. It was always a treat when Brother Wyatt stayed with them. Paw would get out his fiddle and Brother Wyatt would sing and Angie and her brothers would clog to their hearts’ content.
Later that afternoon, Angie baked two loaves of fresh bread and took one over to Miss Mollie.
Next to her paw and them brothers, Angie Cooper loved Miss Mollie best. Everybody did. Her lap was always big enough for a crying child, and she always had something sweet to spare from her pantry. Folks in the holler knew to go to her for all their troubles. Collywobbles, heebie-jeebies, colic, too-much celebratin’. Miss Mollie might not be learned, but she knowed most everything worth knowin’.
Angie was particularly fascinated with the love potions and charms concocted by Miss Mollie, all kept in her head. She claimed credit for every love match in the holler, which Angie’s paw said was jest an old woman’s muddle-mindedness.
But Angie thought her paw was wrong on that. Once she’d asked Miss Mollie why her love potions hadn’t done right by Miss Cora. Thrice divorced! No one in the holler ever got themselves divorced. They might hate each other with a fiery passion, but they wouldn’t nary think of divorcing. One holler over, there was a maw and a paw who had said naught a word to each other for years and years and years. They couldn’t remember what they was mad at, but they stayed good and mad.
“Well, there you see,” Miss Mollie had sniffed. “Cora didn’t ask for my holp.”
That settled things for Angie. Miss Mollie was the one to go to for love and everything else.
“I recollect a surefire one,” Miss Mollie said. “If a man wipes his hands on a woman’s apron, he’s shore to fall in love with her.”
Angie looked down at her clothing. “Does that work for a pinafore? Or does it have to be an apron?”
“Apron,” Miss Mollie said firmly, and then, “I think.”
ON SATURDAY, Finley James came to till Arthur Cooper’s field so he could spend the whole entire day at the livery, its busiest day. Angie took a jug of cold water down to the field. She offered the jug to Finley James, then made a point to accidentally-on-purpose pour water all over him. She held out the corners of the apron she
wore, her mother’s blue one, for him to wipe his hands on, but he refused.
“You’re all gaumed up,” he said. “And you stink awful bad too.” He grabbed the jug, drank down the rest of the water, handed it back to her, raked his hands through his hair and plopped his hat back on, then returned to plowing.
She looked down at her apron, streaked with chicken dung after mucking out the henhouse. She sniffed her underarms and realized she did smell a little ripe. Miss Mollie shoulda told her to clean up first. Sometimes she thought the old woman’s wits were growing addled.
Bother!
AS THE DAYS PASSED, it wasn’t difficult for Lucy to find practical ways to help ease her cousin’s immense workload. Cora’s day, Lucy had quickly discovered, would start in one direction and veer off into dozens of small distractions. So Lucy’s main objective would be to handle as many of those distractions as she could. She set to work to organize the chaos. Scattered all over the office were notes—meetings, reminders, invitations to speak, and an abundance of to-do lists. She pinned a calendar to the wall, an attempt to keep Cora tethered, to try and create some semblance of order for her.
This morning Lucy found a file full of neglected correspondence from teachers and principals who applauded Cora’s work as superintendent of schools, including many invitations to speak. Lucy found one letter from Kentucky’s Christian Women’s Board of Missions, asking Cora to speak at their convention in Louisville about Progressive Reform. She was a gifted orator and would love to make more time for speaking engagements, but she was bent on improving the fifty-one little one-room schoolhouses sprinkled throughout the county. An education, she believed, was the great equalizer, the answer to all of life’s injustices.
Lucy hoped Cora was right about that. She was astounded at the abject poverty, the enormous gulf between townspeople and hillbillies. She corrected herself. Cora disdained the term hillbillies. She was a fierce advocate for the mountain people, speaking of them almost as if they held on to characteristics fading away in the rest of America: honesty, pride, ambition, reverence for God, a simplicity that she described as a purity of heart. She felt that the barriers between mountain people and city people were geological, not intrinsic. The mountains isolated them and kept them from the opportunities that were due to them. Educational ones, mostly.
A gentle knock on the door interrupted Lucy. An older man opened the door and looked around. “Morning,” he said, hat in hand. “I came hoping to see Miss Cora.”
“She should be back soon. She had a meeting to attend, but it will be over soon. Would you like to wait?”
The man wasn’t really listening, he was looking past Lucy toward the books on the wall.
“Would you like to borrow one? I’m sure Miss Cora wouldn’t mind.” Lucy knew Cora loaned books out to others. In fact, on Lucy’s to-do list was to start a record of those who borrowed Cora’s books.
The man walked up to the bookshelves, eyes as wide as a child in front of a candy shop. He gently fingered the back of one book’s spine as if touching pure gold. “Can’t read. Can’t write.” He turned back to Lucy and she noticed his eyes were shiny. “I’d give twenty years of my life if I could read jest one of them books.” He put his hat back on and said, “I’ll come back later for Miss Cora.”
After the door shut, Lucy looked over at the narrow bookshelves that lined the walls. Seeing the hunger for knowledge written all over that man’s face left her feeling unsettled, disturbed.
It reminded her of a buried memory from her childhood—walking down a busy Lexington street, past a beggar, as she and Charlotte ate ice cream cones. Father held both girls’ hands and kept them moving along, ignoring the beggar’s pleas. But even at age eight or nine, it didn’t seem right.
Five
IT TOOK SOME DOING for Angie to coax more love potions out of Miss Mollie since last Saturday’s blunder with Fin. The old woman said it had been a long time since she used her magic and she’d forgotten most of it, and besides, potions were a mighty powerful tool and oughtn’t be used by bossy girls who might marry too soon. Hardly! At thirteen or fourteen—she wasn’t quite sure which—Angie was no girl.
After she swept out Miss Mollie’s dirt floor one afternoon, the old woman was in a more pliable mood. “I got a good one for you.” Miss Mollie held up a threadbare sock she was darning. “This knot I knit, will true commit, to know the thing I know not yet, that I may see, who shall my husband be.”
Angie wrote it down. “So each time I sew, I say that chant?”
“Jest on the nights when you want to be dreaming of who he be.” Mollie stroked her whiskered chin. “Mebbe ’twould holp to put a sock or two under yor pillow.”
That night, Angie tried it. She dreamed only of socks.
As soon as school let out, Angie hurried to Miss Mollie’s to tell her the love charm hadn’t worked, and that she dreamed not of her beloved but of darning socks.
Miss Mollie took the news unfazed, as matter-of-fact as if she were making a pot of soup. “I recall something else about that love charm. There’s a second verse that’s shore to work. ‘This knot I knit, will true commit, our hearts entwined, our love aligned.’” She took in a big draft from her pipe, then coughed and coughed.
“You shore about this one, Miss Mollie?”
“Try sticking the needle in the feller you’re sweet on. Guaranteed to work.”
Oh, Angie could jest imagine how that would turn out. Finley James would likely kill her. “That sounds like a heap of nonsense.”
Offended, Miss Mollie wouldn’t talk to Angie for the rest of the visit, so she gave up and went home.
FIN WAS AT THE LIVERY, fixing a loose board in Jenny’s stall, when he saw Miss Lucy walk down the road toward the boarding house. As his thoughts wandered off to Miss Lucy, how delicate she was, how graceful-like she walked, he got a little sloppy with the knife and sliced his finger. A thick scarlet river spurted down his hand and arm. He screamed bloody murder and Miss Lucy came running.
“What’s happened? Oh, Fin, you’ve cut yourself!”
“I’ll be fine,” he said bravely, and then promptly passed out.
Miss Lucy shook him back to the living by making a tourniquet with her dainty lace handkerchief. He saw the red stain soaking the handkerchief and passed out again.
The next thing he knew, those two little Cooper twins were staring down at him. “Is Fin dead?”
“No, no,” Miss Lucy said. “He just fainted from the sight of his own blood.”
“I done nothing of the kind,” Fin said in a weak voice.
Suddenly there was Angie Cooper, peering down on him. She took hold of Fin’s hand to examine it, unwrapping the blood-soaked handkerchief.
“I think it might need a stitch or two,” Miss Lucy said.
“It’s a mighty bad cut,” Angie said, sounding like she knew everything. “Finley James, what were you thinkin’ that you didn’t pay no attention to what you were doing?”
One of those little boys—Fin was never sure which was which—shouldered his way in to peer at the bloody hand. “Yeah, Fin. What was you thinkin’?”
What was Fin thinking? He’d been thinking about how Miss Lucy always smelled as sweet as a flower, and how she always looked fresh and neat, like she’d jest had a spring bath. But heck if he would say any of that out loud. All his feelings would come tumbling out and he might embarrass hisself.
Arthur Cooper saved the day. “Boys, get back and give Fin some air. Angie, go in the tack room and get the needle and thread.” He tipped his head toward the back of the livery.
“I’ll be fine,” Fin said, even though nobody paid him any mind.
“Let’s get him up on one of them barrels.” By the time Fin got settled on top of a barrel, Angie had returned with a big sewing needle threaded with black thread.
“What are ya gonna do with that?” Fin asked.
“I noticed a button was off yor shirt and figured I’d jest sew it back on.” Arthur Cooper chuckle
d, mopping away the blood to find the cut. “What do ya think I’m going to do with it?”
This was no time for making fun. Fin squeezed his eyes shut. “Take yor time with it. I want a tidy scar.”
“If’n it’s tidy ya want, then Angie should do the stitching.”
Fin’s eyes popped open to see Angie grin and wave the needle up in the air.
“I’ll be glad to,” she said, with a vicious glint in her blue eyes.
Such a big sharp point on that needle. “Go ahead. I can take it.”
Those twins crowded in on him again. “Paw,” Angie said, “take them boys out of here while I do the surgery.”
“She’s right, boys. Let’s get the horses fed.”
Angie tied a knot on the end of the thread. Fin wanted to swat her off, but then he caught sight of the needle coming close and he felt faint again. The last thing he remembered was Angie handing the needle to Lucy and saying, “Hold this a second. I gotta find something first.”
As Fin struggled back from the darkness, he felt Angie’s hair brush his face. She was whispering a poem in his ear, something under her breath, something about knots and knitting and husbands and hearts entwined. “This knot I knit, will true commit, our hearts entwined, our love aligned.”
Then Lucy turned and smiled down on him, and Fin thought she looked a little like an angel.
Suddenly Angie let out a yelp. “YOU SEWED HIM UP?”
“He’d fainted,” Miss Lucy said, in her singsongy voice. “I thought it would be better for him to get stitched up while he was unconscious.”
“YOU STUCK A NEEDLE IN HIM?” Angie was outraged. “YOU DID IT WITHOUT ME?”
“It just took two little stitches. I used to sew up my sister’s stuffed animals. It seemed like the same kind of thing, considering Fin was temporarily lifeless.”
If Fin wasn’t mistaken, Miss Lucy seemed rather proud of herself. He lifted his head to look at his hand. It was bandaged up, no blood seeped through. She’d done herself a fine doctoring job, and he thought it was especially sweet that she took care of it while he was unaware.
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