by Ruth White
“Hold it! Hold it!” Granny interrupted loudly. “Back up! Speak up! Slow down!”
Woodrow was breathless.
“You actually said to Mrs. Cooper, ‘There is rum in your drink’?” Mama said.
“Yeah. That was the seed I planted, see? I said to her …”
Here Woodrow leaned over and spoke in my ear the way I had seen him do with Mrs. Cooper.
“I put some rum in this drink just for you, okay?”
“And she believed me. She asked for more and more.”
All eyes were on Woodrow, and once again he had astounded everybody.
“It worked real good on Mrs. Cooper,” Woodrow said, blushing a little. “I wisht Mama coulda been here to see. She’d be tickled.”
Woodrow let out a satisfied little sigh.
About that time Porter started making funny noises in his throat, and he cupped his hand over his mouth. Then Doc had to bend over and pick something up off the floor. Was he trying to hide his face? Was he laughing? When the men couldn’t hold it in any longer, they like to fell out of their chairs. At first Woodrow was startled at the sudden explosion of laughter; then he broke into a sheepish grin. Even Mama and Granny couldn’t hold their faces straight.
“I wonder if Mrs. Cooper still believes it?” I said. “Does she still think rum was served at Mama’s garden party?”
“Oh my goodness,” Mama said. “I wonder.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Porter said, as he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “In the Echo we’ll say, ‘A good time was had by all!’ and leave it at that.”
Nobody forgot Love Dotson’s garden party of ’54. As for Woodrow, he shrugged and went on with his life.
It was maddening to me how he could stir up a whole town in a single afternoon and not even get scolded for it and I could never get away with anything at all. I reckon it was about that time I came across a streak of jealousy I didn’t know was hiding and festering in me.
In August the apples were changing color. Between the sunshine and the rain they were earning their title—Golden Delicious. You could smell them everywhere. It was a wet month, so wet in fact that we got tired of going to the movies and watching television. We even got tired of each other—Woodrow and me. Conditions were ripe for our first quarrel.
It was on an evening when Uncle Everett came to see Woodrow, but he stayed only about fifteen minutes and was gone. I could tell Woodrow was disappointed. We lay down on the floor and started watching television. A little girl was singing “Pretty Is as Pretty Does.”
“That ain’t the truth,” Woodrow said.
“What ain’t the truth?” I said.
“Pretty is as pretty does. That’s saying that anybody who does pretty is pretty, and that ain’t the truth.”
“No,” I disagreed. “I think it’s saying you can’t be pretty unless you do pretty.”
“Pretty people can do anything they want to and get away with it just because they are pretty,” he said.
“Well, I guess you’re one of them pretty people, Woodrow Prater, ’cause you do anything you want to and get away with it.”
“What do you mean by that?” he said.
“The rum! You got away with that without even a scolding from anybody!”
“That’s because I didn’t do anything!” he said crossly. “If I had really given rum to Mrs. Cooper, that would be different, but I didn’t.”
“You lied,” I said bluntly.
“Lied? How did I lie?”
“You told her she was drinking rum, and that was a lie!”
“Well, excuse me, but how can you carry out an experiment on the power of suggestion without making a suggestion? Huh? Tell me that!”
I had no answer.
The evening news came on, and John Cameron Swayze was showing some scenes of New York City while he did a story. One of the places was a hospital.
“I wonder if that’s the one,” Woodrow said.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“There’s a famous hospital in New York,” Woodrow said, “that operates on people’s crossed eyes and makes them straight.”
“’Zat so?”
“Yeah. Mama read me all about it in the newspaper. Me and her were saving money to take me up there and get that operation.”
“How much does it cost?”
“Oh, lots. Couple hundred dollars, maybe.”
“How much did you save?”
“Not much. Thirty bucks.”
“What happened to it?” I said.
“What do you mean, what happened to it?” he suddenly yelled at me, as he raised himself up on his elbows.
I was startled.
“I mean … what … what happened to the thirty dollars you saved? That’s all I meant. Did you have to spend it on something else?”
“That’s none of your business!” he sputtered.
There was more anger in his eyes than I had ever seen there before.
“You don’t have to know everything!” he went on.
“Well, shut my mouth!” I said.
And I did.
We didn’t speak then, and the air seemed to grow thick with our silence.
Coke Time with Eddie Fisher came on, and Eddie started singing “Oh, My Pa-Pa.”
“I don’t like that song,” I said, just trying to make conversation.
“How come?” Woodrow snapped. “’Cause it reminds you of your daddy?”
“No,” I said, surprised that he would mention my daddy. He never had before. “Because it’s Porter’s favorite song.”
“Why are you so mad at Porter?” Woodrow came back. “It wasn’t him that left you!”
“My daddy didn’t leave me!” I screamed at him. “He died! A person can’t help dying, you know!”
“He …” Woodrow started to say more, but thought better of it. “Never mind,” he mumbled.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
After the rain stopped, we went out on the porch and sat in the swing.
The air smelled clean and sweet. A few stars came out to wink.
Rita and Garnet dropped by, and the four of us sat there in the misty mountain shadows and talked of important things—school starting in a few weeks, new classes and teachers, who liked who, stuff like that.
Dawg came and nestled her head against me. I scratched behind her ears.
“Do you have a story for us, Woodrow?” Rita asked sweetly.
Woodrow sighed.
“Yeah, I got one.”
Didn’t he always?
“Way back in the hollers a long time ago,” he began, “there was a beautiful girl with long, golden hair.”
“Like Gypsy,” Garnet said.
“She was married to a farmer,” Woodrow continued, ignoring Gamet’s comment, “and he wasn’t good enough for her. In fact, she thought nobody was good enough for her—at least not in these hills. Then one day a city slicker named Leon came along and asked the girl to go away with him. Her name was Olive Ann, by the way. So Olive Ann said yes, she would go away with him, but first he would have to kill the farmer, because he would come find her and drag her right back. So they plotted to kill the farmer in his sleep.
“But you see, what they didn’t know was, the farmer overheard them plotting. And you can figger he was plenty sore. So when they came to kill him that night, he was ready for them, and he killed them instead with his hunting rifle.
“The farmer took Leon’s body and dumped it down an old abandoned mining shaft, but he couldn’t bear to do that with Olive Ann’s body, because she was so beautiful and he still loved her, even though she treated him like a dog. So he buried her in his own back yard under the grass.
“When folks missed Olive Ann and asked the farmer where she had got to, the farmer told them she had gone down to Cincinnati to see some kinfolks, and that satisfied them for a while. But as time went by and she didn’t come back, they got suspicious, especially since the city slicker had disappear
ed, too. Not only that, but the farmer’s conscience started hurting him bad. He cried a lot, and talked about Olive Ann to anybody who would listen.
“Then one day the farmer looked out the window and saw something that nearabout scared him senseless. Out there where he buried Olive Ann, there was golden hair growing out of the ground where the grass used to be!
“The farmer went out there and cut that hair right down close to the ground before somebody might see it, but next morning it had growed longer than before and covered more ground.
“You can bet he was frantic. So he cut the hair again, but before the day was over, it had growed back even longer and covered more ground still.
“A week later the sheriff came out there to ask the farmer about Olive Ann, and what he found made him shiver.
“The whole hillside there was covered with long, golden hair just a-blowin’ in the wind. And in the middle of it was the farmer. The hair was all growed up around him in a tangled knot, and it had squeezed the life out of him.”
There was silence when Woodrow finished his story.
“Well, didn’t you like it?” he said crossly.
“It sure was strange,” Rita said.
“Is it true?” said Garnet.
“’Course not!” Woodrow said irritably. “It’s a story with a moral.”
“And what is the moral?” Rita said.
“The moral is, don’t ever have anything to do with a girl with long, golden hair. She’ll tie you up in knots every time.”
With those words I got up, stomped across the porch, and went home.
“Damn dern it!” I sputtered as I stepped up on my own porch. “Double damn dem it!”
“Damn dern it?” came an echo from the shadows of the porch.
It was Porter sitting there in a chair, smoking a cigarette. “Gypsy, if I couldn’t cuss any better’n that, I’d quit trying.”
I glared at him.
“Whatsa matter?” he said.
“Why wasn’t Woodrow punished for what he did at the garden party?” I said angrily.
“Do you think he should have been punished?”
“He thinks he’s so clever!” I said. “With his stories and experiments and stuff!”
Porter said nothing.
“If I had done what he did, Mama would confine me to my room for a year!”
“But it’s not a thing Love Ball Dotson’s girl would do,” Porter said. “Is it?”
That burned me up.
“I can do things, too!” I cried. “Why, I can be just as naughty as a boy when I want to!”
“Would you like to do naughty things sometimes?” Porter asked.
“Yes!”
“Why?”
“Because … because … I don’t want to be Love Ball Dotson’s good little girl all the time!”
“Who do you want to be? Woodrow maybe?”
“No! Me! Just me! And nobody sees me!”
“Why do you think they don’t see you?” he said, leaning forward into the dim light.
We were eyeball-to-eyeball.
I couldn’t find the right words.
“I see you,” Porter said. “I can see you even under all that hair.”
“What … what do you see?”
“Well, let’s see. You remind me a whole lot of your Aunt Belle, the way you’re so talented with music.”
It was the second time that summer I had heard that, and it tickled me.
“And you’re wonderfully imaginative and creative like her. But she was mad at the world because she wasn’t Love. You’re also a fine person in your own right. Nobody can outshine you if you can just be yourself. Belle never learned that, and it caused her a lot of grief.”
“What do you think happened to her?” I said.
“Belle? Oh, that’s easy. She actually vanished, you see, many years ago, when she was about your age. Now she is out there trying to find herself again.”
Seventeen
For the rest of summer vacation things were not quite the same between me and Woodrow, but we were polite to each other. We didn’t mention the change.
The last Saturday in August Mama took me to Bristol to shop for new clothes, like she did every year. I didn’t ask Woodrow to go along, even though I knew he had never been there and he really wanted to go. I got dresses, skirts and sweaters, shoes, and a topper for cool fall mornings. We had lunch at an S&W cafeteria, and drove home late through the rolling hills of Abingdon and Lebanon. It was a beautiful drive. Just me and Mama. We had a good time.
Coal Station got its first stoplight, at the intersection of Residence and Main, and we all trekked down there to see it—even Dawg.
Grandpa was in the market for a new car, so Woodrow went around singing car-commercial ditties.
What a joy to take the wheel
In your brand-new Oldsmobile!
And:
You gotta drive it to believe it
The Dodge for ’55!
Also:
Ford! Ford! New kind of Ford!
Car of tomorrow by Ford!
Woodrow also had a new joke: “Name me two cars that start with P.”
Of course everybody said, “Plymouth and Pontiac.”
And Woodrow would come back with “No, they start with gas!”
The apples started falling. Summer was dying.
It looked like Cleveland was going to the World Series.
And there were no new developments in the Belle Prater case.
My old familiar nightmare came more often, but with less horror. It didn’t send me into hysterics anymore. Sometimes I would wake up with a tear on my cheek, haunted by the memory of blood on the face of a dead animal. I would look out my open window at the stars at such times, and I could almost recall what it was the nightmare was trying to tell me—almost. The ugly thing seemed ready to come out and show itself to me.
School started back the day after Labor Day, and Woodrow and I advanced to the seventh grade. You couldn’t call it high school yet, but it was in the same building as the high school, and we would be changing classes. On the first day Woodrow and I found out we were assigned to the same homeroom. Our teacher was new, a man from eastern Virginia. Neither of us had ever had a man teacher before.
Several of our classmates, including Buzz, Mary Lee, Franklin Delano, Flo, and Willy, were in our room again. We all sat there in new clothes before the bell rang, talking in hushed voices and sizing the teacher up. He was a middle-aged man with tiny blue eyes and a big red nose. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and a tie, which I thought was uncalled for in this heat. Already beads of sweat were popping out on his forehead.
I reckon each one of us was wondering what the school year would bring. I was secretly promising myself to make the honor roll every six weeks, which was nothing new for me. I always made the honor roll, and Mama always said, “That’s my good girl.” I wondered what she would say if I made straight C’s? The bell interrupted my thoughts.
“Good morning, young men and women,” the teacher said.
We pulled ourselves up to attention and tried to look the part.
“I am Mr. Collins, your homeroom and first-period English teacher.”
Straightaway Woodrow wanted to know what was his relation to Floyd Collins, the poor man who got himself trapped in the Kentucky cave.
“None whatsoever,” Mr. Collins replied. “Though I have read of that unfortunate man.”
That was a new one on Woodrow. He never had heard tell of two people a-bearin’ the same last name and being no kin a’tall. And he told Mr. Collins as much. Why, everybody knew a Prater was a Prater, a Honaker was a Honaker, and a Coleman was a Coleman, no matter where they lived. Same as a dog was a dog and a cat was a cat. You couldn’t get away from it.
Sometimes it was hard to tell if Woodrow was putting you on or not.
“Well, perhaps somewhere in the far past,” Mr. Collins conceded, “all Collinses did come from the same hoose.”
“What’
s a ‘hoose’?” Woodrow wanted to know.
“That’s how they say ‘house’ in eastern Virginia,” Franklin Delano said, giving us a short lesson in dialect. “My uncle lives in Fincastle, and out there they say ‘aboot the hoose’ instead of ‘about the house.’”
That didn’t bother Mr. Collins one bit. In fact, he said it was an amusing observation. I decided I was going to like him.
“I am new here,” Mr. Collins went on. “Not only in your school, but in your town. I arrived in Coal Station only last week, and I’m staying at the Presbyterian Manse with the minister and his good wife.
“So I would like to start by learning some things about you and your families. Could we have some volunteers first?”
Of course Woodrow volunteered.
“My name is Woodrow Prater. I live with my granny and Grandpa Ball in a great big old two-story hoose …”
Woodrow paused and grinned at Mr. Collins, who grinned back at him.
“ … on Residence Street. We have …”
“He’s Belle Prater’s boy,” Buzz interrupted. “Do you know about her, Mr. Collins?”
“No,” Mr. Collins said. “I am not familiar with that name.”
“Tell Mr. Collins, Woodrow,” Buzz went on, with a devilish grin. “Tell about your mama disappearing into thin air and all.”
Everybody looked at Woodrow. I saw a shadow of pain flit across his face. But he collected himself just like that.
“Good idea!” he said cheerfully. “It was like this, Mr. Collins. My mama, Belle Prater, learned the secrets of invisibility.”
“I see,” Mr. Collins said politely. “Go on.”
“She wasn’t like most grown folks. She was still a child in some ways. She wished on a star and played she had a fairy godmother—stuff like that. She made up swell stories for me about the little people. And she believed in magic. You have to believe, you know, to make the magic work for you.”