The Silver Star

by Jeannette Walls

  The Holladay family, Uncle Tinsley explained, had owned the cotton mill—and pretty much the town itself—for generations. The mill was good to the Holladays, and in turn, the Holladays were good to the workers. The family built them houses with indoor plumbing and gave out free toilet paper to go with the toilets. The Holladays also gave out hams on Christmas and sponsored a baseball team called the Holladay Hitters. The millworkers never made much in terms of wages, but most of them had been dirt farmers before the mill opened, and factory work was a step up. The main thing, he went on, was that everyone in Byler, rich and poor, considered themselves part of one big family.

  Things started to go downhill fast about ten years ago, Uncle Tinsley continued. Foreign mills began undercutting everybody’s prices at the same time those Northern agitators started going around stirring up the workers to strike for higher wages. Southern mills started losing money, and as the years went by, more and more of them shut down.

  By then, Uncle Tinsley said, his father had passed, and he was running Holladay Textiles himself. It, too, was in the red. Some Chicago investors agreed to buy the mill, but it didn’t bring much, only enough for him and Charlotte to get by if they watched their pennies. Meanwhile, the new owners laid off workers and did whatever they could to squeeze every last ounce of profit out of the place, not just doing away with the Christmas hams and the Holladay Hitters but cutting back bathroom breaks, turning off the air-conditioning, and using dirty cotton.

  “Back in the day, Holladay Textiles made a quality product,” Uncle Tinsley said. “Now they turn out towels so thin you can read a newspaper through them.”

  “It all sounds too depressing,” Liz said.

  Uncle Tinsley shrugged. “Things change, even in this town.”

  “Did you ever think of leaving Byler?” I asked. “Like Mom?”

  “Leave Byler?” Uncle Tinsley asked. “Why would I leave Byler? I’m a Holladay. This is where I belong.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  At Mayfield we slept with the windows open, and you could hear the frogs croaking at night. I conked out as soon as my head hit the pillow, but those noisy birds woke me early every day. One morning in late June, after we’d been at Mayfield for almost two weeks, I woke up and reached out for Liz and then remembered that she was in the next room. Much as I had loved sharing a bed with Liz, I’d always thought it would be neat to have a room of my very own. The truth was, it felt lonely.

  I went into Liz’s room to see if she was awake. She was sitting up in bed, reading a book called Stranger in a Strange Land, which she’d come across while we were cleaning the house. I lay down beside her.

  “I wish Mom would hurry up and call,” I said. I’d been expecting to hear from her any day. I constantly checked the phone to make sure it was connected, because Uncle Tinsley didn’t particularly appreciate getting calls and sometimes unplugged it. “Uncle Tinsley’s going to think we’re a couple of moochers.”

  “I think he actually likes having us here,” Liz said. She held up the book. “We’re like friendly aliens visiting from another planet.”

  Truth be told, in the time we’d been there, Uncle Tinsley hadn’t had a single other visitor. He had one of those big old-fashioned radios, but he didn’t seem that interested in what was going on in the world, and he never turned it on. What fascinated him were genealogy and geology. He spent most of his time in his library, writing to county historical societies, requesting information on, say, the Middleburg Holladays, and going through what he called his archives, boxes of crumbling old letters, faded journals, and yellowed newspaper clippings that referred to the Holladay family in any way. And there was nothing he didn’t know about the earth, its layers of rocks and soil and underground water. He studied geological charts, conducted tests on little glass jars of soil and trays of rocks, and read scientific reports to cite in the articles he wrote and occasionally published.

  While Liz liked to lie in bed and read after she woke up, I always wanted to get up and get cracking and I went downstairs for breakfast. Uncle Tinsley was in the ballroom, nursing a cup of coffee and staring out the French doors. “I hadn’t realized how tall the grass has gotten,” he said. “I do believe it’s time to mow.”

  After breakfast, I went with Uncle Tinsley up to the equipment shed. Inside was an old-timey red tractor with FARMALL on the side, a little side step up to the seat, and an empty paint can over the exhaust pipe that, Uncle Tinsley explained, kept out the critters. The tractor coughed when he turned the engine over, but then it fired right up, a big belch of black smoke coming out from under the paint can. Uncle Tinsley backed it up to his pull-behind mower, a big green contraption, and I helped him attach the mower to the rear of the tractor, getting grease all over my hands and under my fingernails.

  While Uncle Tinsley mowed, I used a shovel and rake to clear the leaves from the koi pond. I discovered overgrown brick paths running between the old flower beds, and I started pulling the weeds off them. It was hard work—the wet leaves were heavier than you’d think, and the weeds were itchy—but by the end of the morning, I had cleared out the pond and most of the brick around it. The flower beds, however, still had a ways to go before they won any new prizes. Uncle Tinsley motioned me over. “Let’s see if we can get us some peaches for lunch,” he said.

  He hoisted me up onto the tractor’s little side step, explaining that you really weren’t supposed to do this but every farm kid did it anyway, and with me standing on the step and hanging on for dear life, we drove past the barn, up the hill to the orchard, the old Farmall shaking so much it made my teeth rattle and my eyeballs jiggle.

  The apples and pears were too green, Uncle Tinsley said, they’d be ripe in August and September. But he had some early peaches that were ready to eat. They were old varieties, bred centuries ago for the climate in this particular county, and they tasted nothing like the mealy Styrofoam that passed for fruit in your modern supermarkets.

  There was fruit on the ground under the peach trees, and bees, wasps, and butterflies were swarming around, feasting on it. Uncle Tinsley pulled a peach down and passed it to me. It was small and red, covered with fuzz, and warm from the sun. That peach was so juicy that when I bit into it, I felt like it almost burst in my mouth. I wolfed it down, all that juice leaving my chin and fingers sticky.

  “Dang,” I said.

  “Now, that’s a peach,” Uncle Tinsley said. “A Holladay peach.”

  We brought back a paper bag full of peaches. They were so irresistible that Liz and I ate them all that afternoon, and the next morning, I went back up to the orchard for more.

  The peach trees were behind the apples, and as I approached, I saw the branches of one swaying back and forth. When I got closer, I realized that someone was behind the tree, a guy, and he was filling a bag with peaches just as fast as he could.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”

  The guy, who was about my age, looked at me. We stared at each other for a moment. He had longish brown hair that flopped in his face and eyes as dark as coffee. He was shirtless, and his sunbaked skin was streaked with sweat and grime, like he ran around half-wild. He held a peach in one hand, and I saw that part of a finger was missing.

  “What are you doing?” I shouted again. “Those are our peaches.”

  The boy suddenly turned and ran, the bag in one hand, arms and legs pumping like a sprinter’s.

  “Stop!” I shouted. “Thief!”

  I ran after him for a few steps, but he was fast and had a good head start, and I knew I couldn’t catch him. I was so mad at that dirty kid for stealing our delicious peaches that I picked one up and threw it after him. “Peach thief!”

  I headed back to the house. Uncle Tinsley was in the library, working on his geology papers. I fully expected him to share my outrage over the low-down scoundrel stealing our peaches. Instead, he smiled and started asking me questions. What did he look like? How tall was he? Did I happen to notice if he was missing part of
a finger?

  “He sure was,” I said. “Probably got it chopped off for stealing.”

  “That’s Joe Wyatt,” Uncle Tinsley said. “He’s your father’s family. His father was your father’s brother. He’s your cousin.”

  I was so stunned, I sat down on the floor.

  “And I don’t mind him taking a few peaches,” he added.

  Mom didn’t talk much about either Liz’s dad or my dad. All she’d told us was that she had met Liz’s dad, Shelton Stewart, while in college in Richmond, and after a whirlwind romance, they got married in the most lavish wedding Byler had seen in a generation. Mom became pregnant almost immediately, and it didn’t take long for her to discover that Shelton Stewart was a dishonest parasite. He’d come from an old South Carolina family, but their money was gone, and he expected Mom’s family to support them while he spent his days playing golf and shooting grouse. Her father made it clear that wasn’t going to happen, and so, shortly after Liz was born, Shelton Stewart walked out on Mom, and she and Liz never saw him again.

  My dad, Mom had told us, was a Byler boy. He was a blast to be around, with this incredible energy, but she and he came from different worlds. Besides, he died in a mill accident before I was born. And that was all she would say.

  “You knew my dad?” I asked Uncle Tinsley.

  “Of course I did.”

  That made me so nervous, I started rubbing my hands together. Mom’s account of my dad had always left me hankering for more details, but she said she didn’t want to talk about him and we were both better off if we put it behind us. Mom didn’t have a picture of him, and she wouldn’t tell me his name. I’d always wondered what my dad had looked like. I didn’t look like my mom. Did I look like my dad? Was he handsome? Funny? Smart?

  “What was he like?” I asked.

  “Charlie. Charlie Wyatt,” Uncle Tinsley said. “He was a cocky fellow.” He paused and looked at me. “He wanted to marry your mother, you know, but she never took him that seriously.”

  “How come?”

  “Charlie was a fling, as far as she was concerned. Charlotte was pretty shaken up when that wastrel, Liz’s father, decided he didn’t want to be a father after all. She went through a wild-divorcée period and got involved with a number of men whom Mother and Father disapproved of. Charlie was one of them. She never considered marrying him. The way she saw it, he was just a linthead.”

  “What’s that?” I’d heard Mom use the word, but I didn’t know what it meant.

  “A millworker. They come off their shifts covered in lint.”

  I sat there on the floor, trying to take it in. All my life I had wanted to find out more about my dad and his family, and now, when I’d met someone who was related to him—and to me—I’d acted like a nut job, calling him names and throwing peaches at him. And he wasn’t a thief. Since Uncle Tinsley didn’t mind Joe Wyatt taking the peaches, he wasn’t actually stealing. At least, that was one way of looking at it.

  “I think I need to go apologize to Joe Wyatt,” I said. “And maybe meet the other Wyatts.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Uncle Tinsley said. “They’re good people. The father’s disabled and doesn’t do too much these days. The mother works the night shift. She’s the one holding the family together.” He scratched his chin. “I suppose I could drive you over there.”

  Something about the way Uncle Tinsley said that made me realize he didn’t want to do what he’d just volunteered to do. After all, he was a Holladay, the former owner of the mill. He’d be paying a visit to the millworking family of the man who got his sister pregnant. It would be awkward for him to drop me off without coming in but probably more awkward to sit down with the Wyatts and shoot the breeze over a glass of lemonade.

  “I’ll go on my own,” I said. “It will be a chance for me to see Byler up close on foot.”

  “Good plan,” Uncle Tinsley said. “Better yet, Charlotte’s old bicycle has to be around here someplace. You could ride it into town.”

  I went up to the bird wing to tell Liz about the Wyatts. She was sitting in a chair by a window, reading another book she’d found in Uncle Tinsley’s library, this one by Edgar Allan Poe.

  When I told her about the Wyatts, Liz jumped up and hugged me. “You’re trembling,” she said.

  “I know, I know. I’m nervous,” I said. “What if they’re weirdos? What if they think I’m a weirdo?”

  “It’ll be fine. Do you want me to come?”

  “Would you?”

  “Of course, Beanstalker, you weirdo. We’re in this together.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The next morning, Uncle Tinsley found the bike Mom rode as a kid. It was in the equipment shed, where he also found his old bike, but it needed a new tire, so Liz and I decided to ride double.

  Mom’s bike was a terrific Schwinn like they didn’t make anymore, Uncle Tinsley said. It had a heavy red frame, fat tires, reflectors on the wheels, a speedometer, a horn, and a chrome rack behind the seat. Uncle Tinsley wiped it down, pumped air in the tires, oiled the chain, and drew us a map of the part of town where the Wyatts lived, explaining that it was known as the mill hill, or just the hill. With Liz pedaling and me sitting behind her on the chrome rack, we set off for the hill.

  The day was hot and sticky, the sky hazy, and the rack dug into my behind, but along the way, we rode through cool stretches of woods where the branches of these big old trees reached out all the way across the road to create a sort of canopy, and you felt like you were going through a tunnel, with patches of sunlight occasionally flickering between the leaves.

  The mill hill was in the north part of town, just past the mill, at the base of a wooded mountain. The houses were identical boxes, many of them with the original white paint now all faded, but some had been painted blue or yellow or green or pink or had aluminum or tar-paper siding. Chairs and couches lined porches, auto parts were crammed into some of the little yards, and one grimy house had a faded rebel flag hanging out a window. But you could see that keeping up appearances was important to a lot of the folks on the hill. Some used whitewashed tires as planters for pansies or had colorful pinwheels spinning in the breeze or little cement statues of squirrels and dwarves. We passed one woman out sweeping her dirt yard with a broom.

  The Wyatts’ house was one that clearly showed pride of ownership. The sky-blue paint was fading, but the front yard was mowed, the bushes around the foundation were evenly pruned, and little rocks lined the path from the front steps to the sidewalk.

  Liz stepped back, letting me go first. I knocked on the door, and it was opened almost immediately by a big woman with a wide mouth and twinkling green eyes. Her dark hair, which had a streak of white, was gathered in a loose bun, and she was wearing an apron over a baggy dress. She smiled at me curiously.

  “Mrs. Wyatt?” I asked.

  “I reckon I am.” She was drying her hands on a dish towel. They were big hands, like a man’s. “You all selling something?”

  “I’m Bean Holladay. Charlotte’s daughter.”

  She let out a shriek of joy, dropped the dish towel, then wrapped her arms around me in a spine-crushing hug.

  I introduced Liz, who held out her hand in greeting.

  “This ain’t a shaking family, it’s a hugging family!” Mrs. Wyatt shouted as she enveloped Liz in another crushing hug. She pulled us into the house, hollering for Clarence to come and meet his nieces. “And don’t you be Mrs. Wyatt–ing me,” she told us. “I’m your Aunt Al.”

  The front door led into the kitchen. A small boy sitting at the table stared at us with wide, unblinking eyes. There was a big coal cooking stove with two freshly baked pies on top of it. Plates, bowls, and pots were stacked on the shelves according to size, and ladles and stirring spoons hung on a rack above the stove. You could tell Aunt Al ran a very tight ship. The walls were hung with needlepoint and small varnished boards with Bible verses or sayings like A SCRIPTURE A DAY KEEPS THE DEVIL AWAY and YOU CAN’T HAVE A RAINBOW WITHOUT A LITTLE
RAIN.

  I asked if Joe was there. “I met him yesterday, but I didn’t know he was my cousin.”

  “Where’d you meet him?”

  “In Uncle Tinsley’s orchard.”

  “So you’re the peach thrower?” Aunt Al threw back her head and let out a huge laugh. “I heard you got quite an arm on you.” Joe was out and about, she said, and usually didn’t come home until dinnertime, but he was surely going to be sorry he missed this. She had four children, she went on. Joe was thirteen, her middle boy. She introduced the kid at the table as her youngest, Earl. He was five, she said, and he was different, not much strength, and he’d never really learned to talk—so far, anyway. Her eldest, Truman, who was twenty, was serving his country overseas. Her daughter, Ruth, who was sixteen, had gone down to North Carolina to help out one of Aunt Al’s sisters, who had three children to look after but had been taken down with meningitis.

  A man came out of the back room, moving carefully like he was hurt, and Aunt Al introduced him as her husband, our Uncle Clarence.

  “Charlotte’s daughters? You don’t say.” He was thin and slightly bent, his gaunt cheeks had deep lines, and his gray hair was crew-cut. He studied Liz. “You I remember,” he said. Then he looked at me. “You I never laid eyes on. That momma of yours got you out of town before I had a chance to see my brother’s only child.”

  “Well, now you got your chance,” Aunt Al said. “Be sweet.”

  “Glad to meet you, Uncle Clarence,” I said. I wondered if he was going to hug me, like Aunt Al had. But he just stood there looking at me suspiciously.

  “Where’s your momma?” he asked.

  “She stayed in California,” I said. “We’re just here for a visit.”

  “Decided not to come, did she? Now, why don’t that surprise me?” Uncle Clarence started coughing.