On Agate Hill

by Lee Smith

  Molly looked up. “Why, where is Red?”

  Busily taking off their coats, they did not answer.

  “Where is he?” Molly darted to the door and soon returned with poor Red, sobbing and shaking, his nose bleeding copiously, his feet blue. Molly took him over to the stove where she wrapped him in her own coat.

  I have seldom felt such anger. “All right,” I said, standing before them. “Who is responsible for this outrage?”

  The silent children looked down, studying their desks. At the back of the room, Arthur stared out the window at the darkening day, while Jemmy Vestal pretended to fall asleep.

  “Who did this cruel thing to Red?” I asked them again, my voice shaking.

  Now Jemmy began to snore loudly, which caught the fancy of the other two. When they put their heads down on their desks and began snoring loudly too, all three, the whole room erupted in laughter. It was like an epidemic — even my “good girls,” such as Betsy Ray and Virginia Kershaw, caught it. I’m afraid I began screaming at them, but I could not even make myself heard above the uproar.

  At that moment a blast of freezing air came into the schoolroom along with Cicero Todd, wearing his huge black overcoat and hat, followed by Roy. Cicero’s dark hair lay on his shoulders unkempt, his coat had leaves and twigs and snow on it. Up the aisle he came, walking hard, leaving a trail of snow and dirt behind him. The laughter subsided into only a few titters, then silence, as he got to the front of the schoolroom. Automatically I stepped aside. I was hysterical, anyway. He crossed with heavy steps to my desk, where he took his time seating himself, scraping my chair across the floor loudly, then grunting as he sat down on it, facing the class. Roy lay down beside him, panting, ears up and hair on end, as if waiting for a command. Cicero stared at the students, his black eyes narrowed beneath his bristling brow, a formidable figure. Then reaching deep into his coat, he produced an enormous black pistol with a gleaming wooden handle, and laid it on the desk.

  A general intake of breath was audible in the room. Nobody moved.

  “All right then,” Cicero Todd said after a while. “Let’s let these ladies get on with school.”

  The next day, our three “big boys” were absent. They never returned, and we never had any more trouble with discipline at the Bobcat School.

  Winter turned to spring, then summer again, then fall. There was no question that Molly had come into her own, fully self-possessed and capable, though the second part of Martha Fickling’s prediction came true as well: everybody tried to court her, including poor Augustus Worth himself when his wife left him. Molly wouldn’t have it for a minute, though she spared his feelings as best she could, poor thing, laughing away his intentions as if it were all a capital joke.

  Likewise she sent away Eliza Valiant’s brother Ben who would not take “no” for an answer to his letters, but insisted upon a visit to Jefferson to see for himself and press his suit in person. He stayed at Martha Fickling’s for three full weeks, once arriving up at the Bobcat School with an armful of roadside flowers, to everyone’s delight and consternation, for she wouldn’t have him either, or encourage him at all, though our “big girls” were all swooning over him. The entire community took a shine to it: such a fine young man, so handsome, so interested in everything about Jefferson and Ashe County.

  What was wrong with Miss Petree?

  I wondered myself, finally determining to ask her on a misty May morning as we walked the familiar old Indian trail, a shortcut around the mountain from the Badgers’ farm to the Bobcat School. On that particular day, Felix Boykin was taking Ben on a botanical tour up to the bog on the top of Bluff Mountain.

  “Oh, Agnes, I don’t know!” Molly said. “It’s just . . . not . . . right.” She kicked a rock along the trail ahead of her, like a boy.

  “What’s not right? He seems like a fine young man to me.”

  “He is a fine young man.” Here Molly gave a great sigh. “But I don’t love him, and I never have, and I don’t know why I don’t, but I don’t, and so I just — can’t — marry him! He’s too nice.” She hauled back to give the stone a big kick into the trees.

  I had to smile at her childishness. “But Molly, what is all this folderol about love? You like Ben, don’t you?”

  She nodded, red-faced.

  “And as far as you know, he is a perfectly fine and upstanding and morally unobjectionable young man, even an admirable young man, is that not so?”

  “Yes, Agnes.”

  “Well, then, let me suggest to you that love will grow between you naturally in marriage, that commitment fosters love, as does intimacy; this is what marriage is all about. True love is not necessarily cataclysmic, or whatever it is that you imagine. Marriage provides a safe place, a garden, for true love to grow and flourish.” There now. I was proud of myself.

  “No.” She shook her head vehemently.

  “But Molly, when I think of what Ben could offer you . . .” I had to say this, though I’d hate to see her go, for we had truly become like sisters. “A life in Charleston, a fine house and a position in society, why you could see Eliza and her children every day — your future would be made, dear. You would have the kind of security you have never had.” (And probably never will have the chance to have again, you little nitwit! I did not say.) “You should do it, Molly, you should say yes, you should go. I would be so happy for you.”

  “Would you? And what about you, Agnes?” Molly stopped walking and looked at me curiously.

  “Why, I will be here, I suppose,” I said lightly.

  “Well, I will be here too.” Molly stuck out her lip in a way that reminded me of how stubborn she had been when she first arrived at Gatewood Academy, and I knew I could not budge her.

  Sure enough, she had convinced Ben of the futility of his suit by the end of the month, and it was with a sad heart that I told him goodbye on the platform in Jefferson. Molly had stayed at the farm, pleading headache. “Promise me, Agnes, that you will let me know if you and Molly ever need anything, if I can help you in any way,” Ben said, his eyes huge and earnest behind his glasses. I promised. He leaped on board and the hack pulled away.

  “Too bad,” Felix Boykin said.

  “Oh, hell, I don’t know!” Martha Fickling snorted. “If it ain’t there, it ain’t there, ain’t that right?”

  “What’s that?” Felix turned back to ask her.

  “Chemistry,” Martha Fickling said. “Dynamite. Ain’t that right, Professor? You put two things together and the whole damn thing blows up, blows you clean out of the water. Just like they dynamite a mine.”

  Felix Boykin shook his head. “Sounds like a dangerous theory, Martha,” he said, winking at me.

  I agreed, waving as the hack drove away.

  But Ben Valiant proved to be as generous as he was disappointed, for not a month had passed when in came a box from South Carolina containing a beautiful globe of the world, the latest thing, and a stand to put it on, as well as eight pairs of little eyeglasses and a note which read, “For the children of the Bobcat School, with gratitude and very best wishes from your good friend, Benjamin Valiant.”

  This romance concluded, our lives fast became fuller than ever, as that summer we began our “moonlight school” for grown men and women who wanted to learn to read and write, and it was surprising how many of these there were, and how badly they wanted to learn, walking the long roads home at all hours, often sleeping on the schoolhouse floor. We also dealt with outbreaks of both ringworm and head lice — I came to depend upon trusty old kerosene as a primary medication for “doctoring” — and, in late fall, we mourned the tragic death of little Eunice Ward who fell into a vat of boiling molasses at a stir-off.

  The winter proved long and hard. Molly and I were separated by necessity, as the Badgers needed a place for their old granny, finally forced by a stroke to leave her lonely cabin on the top of Misty Mountain. Paralyzed and furious, she took over the girls’ bed closest to the fire, sending two of them in to me
, as Molly volunteered for a cot in the lean-to, a space which she professed to find quite suitable, though there were many mornings when she awoke to find her bed covered by a fine layer of snow that had sifted down through the cracks. She wore long linsey underwear and woolen socks to bed, keeping her school clothes under the covers at the end of her bed tick so that they would be warm in the mornings.

  At school, ink froze in the inkwells overnight, attendance was very low, and once, two boys heading home with their pony and sled went down the steep bank, through the ice, and partly into the river — fortunately, a shallow spot very near their home. We had to close school several times. I enjoyed those long days of staying home, reading Dickens aloud to the Badger children while Chattie worked at her loom and the old granny spit tobacco juice into a little tin cup, squinching her eyes shut tight as she listened. We roasted chestnuts, made snow cream and popcorn.

  It was this same snowy February when Simon Black appeared, all unannounced, and I shall never forget it, though Molly refused to discuss it with me then, or ever.

  Since the sun had come out at last, Chattie and the children had walked over the mountain carrying food to her father, old Memorable Jones. The children were “stir-crazy,” as Chattie put it, from days of being housebound. As soon as they left, Molly announced her own intention of “walking in the woods a little” and was off like a shot. She was still a child in many ways. I watched her run across the snow, wearing her old hooded blue cloak, with Chattie’s red scarf flying out behind her. The sunlight was dazzling. “Agnes! Agnes!” croaked old Granny Took. Reluctantly I went back inside, closing the door behind me. I put more wood on the fire.

  About a half hour later I was reading — old Took having fallen asleep — when suddenly I felt the oddest sensation, compounded of both alarm and anticipation. There was no reason for it. We were alone in the house. Bright sunlight fell through the window to make a block of light on the heart pine floor. The fire crackled merrily. Yet the hair on my forearms rose, and my scalp prickled. My heart was in my throat as I put aside my book and rose. Quietly and swiftly I crossed to the door and opened it — but here I stopped, with the door cracked about six inches.

  Down at the gate by the road stood Molly talking to Simon Black. His horse breathed plumes of smoke into the clear freezing air. Of course I would have known Simon Black anywhere. The long black coat, the boots, the spurs, that unmistakable mustache and beard, now dead white. Though he faced me, I could not really see his features beneath the wide black hat, its brim lowered as he spoke earnestly to Molly. Head cocked, she appeared to listen, then said something, then made an emphatic gesture with her hand. He spoke again. Their breaths, like the horse’s, made clouds in the air, eventually drifting together as one. They talked for some time. All the world was brightest white or starkest black — snow, trees, figures — with only the red scarf for color. The great snowy mountains rose into the blue sky beyond. Finally Molly stamped her foot, then surprised me by turning suddenly to run back up the long hill toward the house.

  In an instant, I had pulled the door to and resumed my seat by the fire, heart pounding. I don’t know why I didn’t step forward, out onto the porch, and speak to Simon Black myself. It was an instinct I had, as strong as the instinct which had pulled me over to the door in the first place. I simply felt that their conversation had nothing to do with me, this conviction producing a sense of devastating loss as well as relief. How to put it? I felt saved from something.

  Everything else happened quickly. Molly ran in, getting snow on the floor, followed by Chattie and the children, who had just arrived, full of questions. “Who was that? What did he want?”

  “It was a stranger,” Molly said evenly, unwinding the scarf from her neck. Her blue eyes stared directly into mine. “He had lost his way.”

  At last came spring, and with it a box supper held at the school to raise money for a piano — for now that we had the globe, we had all grown very ambitious. The date was set. The children lettered signs which were posted at the Jefferson Academy as well as churches and stores throughout the community. As the date drew near, everybody began preparing. There was stiff competition, especially among the single girls, for the most beautiful box and the best food. A number of women felt that they had reputations to uphold. Steady beaux were expected to buy their girlfriends’ boxes even though other young men always “bid them up” out of devilment, so the fellow might have to pay a stiff price for his lady love’s box. Husbands had to buy their wives’ boxes too, with the same kind of friendly competition. The boxes themselves were works of art. Girls spent days trimming them with lace, feathers, scraps of cloth, ribbon, and even little pictures cut out of catalogs.

  Molly decorated ours, much to the delight of the little Badger girls who were sent again and again to the woods for pine straw and robins’ eggs which we stuck with a pin and blew out carefully for little “nests” on top. I crocheted a white froth of lace — this being my only domestic skill — to glue around the edges. Chattie put fried chicken, potato salad, pickled peaches, and fried apple pies in each. Biting her lip in concentration, Molly drew a freehand fairy for each box coloring them in with pastels from the school: pointed red caps, green suits, black boots, red hair. Caro cut the fairies out carefully while Molly folded layers of tissue paper for their wings. How in the world Molly ever came up with those fairies, I will never know. I always felt that she could have been an artist or a writer, either one — she could have done anything, really. Fresh violets from the creek provided a final touch on the boxes as we all sailed out the door.

  Sure enough, our boxes were among the prettiest — and certainly the most unusual — with our fairies and birds’ nests. But I was getting nervous by the time they came up for bid, since it seemed to me that there were more boxes and women than men, though the schoolhouse was packed, with many people standing out in the schoolyard.

  “Miss Agnes Rutherford!” the auctioneer, Harold Stump, called out, and Felix Boykin gallantly bid a dollar.

  “One fifty,” another voice called out, then “Two dollars!” bid the newly widowed minister from Warrensville, Lester Ham. People turned to look; Molly elbowed me. I could feel myself blushing. “Sold!” cried Harold Stump, banging his gavel down. This being a decent price, I was not embarrassed at all, and was pleased to share Chattie’s good food and keep Lester Ham company out on the table rock. He was a serious and shy but determined man, much older than I, with an emphatic way of speaking.

  After we had exhausted the topic of teaching school (Lester Ham did not believe in too much education for women), I cast about for another subject. “Now, does your church believe in infant baptism?” I asked.

  “Believe in it!” he said, sitting back. “Why, I have did it many times myself.”

  I got so tickled I almost choked, but Reverend Ham did not even smile, chewing steadily. You will not do, I thought.

  Meanwhile Molly’s box had been hotly contested then sold to the young lawyer Reuben Kirk, one of her admirers, for the maximum cash allowed. Harold Stump took the stage again. “Now wasn’t that some of the best food you ever ate?” he demanded. “Yessir! Let’s give all these ladies a round of applause. All right! Now it’s time for dessert, and this here cake is for the prettiest girl in the county, and if you win the bid, you get to name her, and take the cake and her too. Yessir! All right! Let’s go!”

  “Rosalie Yates, one dollar!”

  “Susan Trivette, one fifty!”

  Men started calling out names, mine not among them, though Molly was bid for twice.

  “Martha Fickling, five dollars!” someone called out, and everybody laughed. She had made the cake, as usual.

  Then “Molly Petree!” an unfamiliar voice rang out from the schoolyard. “Ten dollars!” Heads swiveled and people leapt up to see who it was, bidding such a sum.

  There stood a young man I had not seen before, a good-looking stranger wearing a three-piece tan suit and a green tie, all of which made him sta
nd out like a sore thumb. His black hair was parted carefully, slicked back with brilliantine.

  “What am I bid? What am I bid?” Harold Stump called. “Going, going, gone!” slamming down his gavel, on my desk.

  Molly went forward through the crowd.

  The young man said something in her ear.

  Molly tossed her head, her color high. Then she cut the cake into little pieces, passing it out to everybody, apparently determined not to pay him too much attention, a thing he had not seen before, as this was a young man used to a great deal of attention.

  Henderson Hanes was the black sheep in his family. But now he had come up from Salisbury to run the woolen factory for his father, its absentee owner, who was ill, and he was neither brilliant nor nice, and Molly did not even like him, but from the beginning, there was “chemistry.” Even I observed it. “He is a slick customer,” Felix said, while Martha Fickling only smiled when I asked her opinion. Chattie was worried, saying, “He will never marry her,” though agreeing that Molly certainly had him “wrapped around her little finger.”

  Molly was furious when I repeated this opinion to her. “Well, who says I want to marry him? Maybe I don’t want to marry anybody! What’s wrong with that?”

  Though Molly made endless fun of his affectations — especially those three-piece suits, which he was devoted to — by summer she was riding with him every Saturday and Sunday in his wire-wheeled buggy, unchaperoned. Tongues wagged. The Misses Reedy came to talk to me about it. “It’s not right,” they said. “What kind of a model does she make for these young girls?” When I told Molly about their visit, she bit her lip and burst out laughing. “Well, I don’t care!” she said. That “contrary streak” which Mariah had complained about was emerging again. “What’s wrong with having some fun, for a change? Those old biddies are just being silly.”