On Snowden Mountain

by Jeri Watts

  Mostly, I decided as I kicked at a rock before I reached the school clearing, it was different because it wasn’t home. I didn’t like that it was fast becoming too familiar, too much what I was growing used to. Even my mother was beginning to show that she was accepting this as home. Because lately she did come out of her room, had begun to eat tiny amounts, was getting some fresh air. That galled me, though I felt shame to admit it — I should have rejoiced at these small pieces of hope, but I was still all jumbled inside that it took my aunt Pearl’s pushiness and bossiness to bring Mama back from her deep plunge into a black abyss instead of me. Or from my father, who should have been at our side. And I felt shame that all of this was so clearly feeling like a ray of hope.

  While I was admitting things, while I was being honest, I had to put it to myself that Aunt Pearl wasn’t the ungainly woman I’d always said. Sure, she was taller than Mama, no doubt about it. She was a woman with a dominant personality, a woman to be reckoned with, and I supposed that had made her seem unattractive.

  But when you truly looked at her, as I was doing today, really looked, she wasn’t bulky or any of the words I’d used or that my father had used.

  She was a woman who simply didn’t take the care my mother, and women like my mother, did, with fashionable dresses of the day, with shoulder pads or belts to emphasize narrow waists or pumps to make calves look slim.

  She dressed for need. As did everyone else in Snowden.

  Except for Moselle Toms.

  It seemed I was wrong about so much in my life. I wondered, briefly, if this meant I needed to think more about my father, but I was flat-out tired of thinking about the people in my life who weren’t quite what I’d thought. Plus there I was at the school, where thinking of a different sort was expected. I sighed and took another step toward my day.

  I slowed as I saw Russell talking to Sara Ann. I’d never seen him talking to any of the students except for the little ones like Bobby, so I paused. She leaned against the elm tree, and he stood back from her, hovering at the bottom of the steps. They weren’t standing close, but they were . . . together. Russell held something in his right hand, something he tossed casually up and down. It’d sail up about even with his face, then drop to his hand. Sara Ann’s dimples peeked through her plump cheeks as she giggled with him.

  I stopped and my legs felt like weights. It was all I could do to lug myself up the schoolhouse stairs. I stepped as carefully as I could, considering my legs weighing tons, but neither Russell nor Sara Ann noticed me at all. I tried to focus on what Russell was throwing in the air.

  I watched the object as I backed through the doorway. It was a small carving, an animal shape, perhaps. Before I could give it more thought, Bobby closed his little hand over mine. “Hey, Ellen.”

  “Hey.”

  “I brought an evergreen log today — can you smell it?”

  I nodded and looked to the big stove that Miss Spencer kept going for warmth. She was pushing in sprigs of evergreen, certainly not the log Bobby’d implied, but it was nice; it smelled of Christmas to me.

  Soon Miss Spencer sliced the air with the sound of her bell. Sara Ann came in and sat beside me. She leaned over and whispered, “Russell’s not so bad, is he? I wondered how you could stand him, but he’s really very nice.” Russell was nowhere to be seen. I dismissed him from my mind, turned my back to Sara Ann, and readied my slate for the first assignment.

  After school, I walked toward Aunt Pearl’s. And I knew he was there, at the curve near the river, before I saw him. He cleared his throat. “You got anything for me?”

  “What in the world would I have for you?” I walked on past him.

  Russell shrugged. “Problems, some reading work. Usual stuff.”

  “Oh.” I peeked over my shoulder. “I thought you were looking for a secret message from someone special.” I tried to giggle like Sara Ann.

  “Stop that!” Russell clutched my wrist in his hand tightly.

  “Ow!” I jerked away and rubbed at my tender wrist.

  Russell lowered his gaze. “Sorry.” He looked up at me, and his eyes were blazing. “You shouldn’t have teased, though. That ain’t nice.”

  I rubbed my wrist more.

  I sneaked a peek at him quickly. He didn’t really look sorry; his eyes still burned, and he didn’t seem contrite. My stomach felt coiled and tight, almost nauseous. What if he stayed mad? Who would I have? I tried to keep my voice light. “Well, I’m sorry too, I suppose. I shouldn’t have been teasing you. I just never think of you liking girls.”

  Russell blushed. “I like ’em. But only Sara Ann. None others.”

  “Not me?” I asked. My hand covered my mouth. Had I really said that?

  Russell’s confused look confirmed that indeed he didn’t like me, that I had let my thoughts air out loud. He explained, “Not like that. I mean, you’re teaching me. Helping me. Like a friend, I guess. But not a girlfriend.”

  I turned away and began to walk again. “Is it because of my mother that you can’t think of me as a girlfriend?”

  Russell fell in beside me. “No, Ellen, you got no call to be ashamed of your mama. And that ain’t it at all. It’s just, well, you’re younger than me by a lot. And you’re a city girl. And . . .” He shoved his big hand through his thatch of blond hair. “You’re just my friend. I like that I have a friend. I don’t want to mess it up with all that love stuff, ’cause I never had a friend before.”

  “Not even Sara Ann?”

  He looked surprised. “No. Nobody. Before I met you, I, well, I never even tried to talk to Sara Ann. She wouldna listened. You showed ’em, some of ’em anyway, that I could be . . .” His voice trailed off. He put a palm on my shoulder. It lay there, heavy and warm, and I stopped to look at him. He spoke again.

  “Uh, about your ma. I been thinking about what you said. I think, no disrespect intended and all, but I think your pa is wrong about her. I talked with my mama — don’t worry, I made her swear to keep it a secret and all — but she said as how she’s seen lots of people like your ma and it ain’t” — he scratched his head, remembering — “it ain’t a choice. It’s a part of your ma like the way some folks always look at things happy and some folks don’t. It just . . . beats her sometimes.”

  We walked in silence for a while.

  He spoke hesitantly. “I got some time this afternoon. Any lessons?”

  I smiled. “Okay.”

  Russell struggled with the idea of adding on, even when I let him use his fingers. We moved up Three Sisters’ Knob, trying to find something I could use to make him see the concept.

  “Why can’t I just count ’em every time? It ain’t like I can’t use the practice of counting?”

  “I know, but when you need to work with large numbers, going back to start at one takes too long.”

  He picked up a pinecone and tossed it up. I asked him, “Say, Russell, what were you tossing when you were talking with Sara Ann?”

  “Huh?”

  “You had some little carving, or something, in your hand. I just wondered what it was.”

  “Whittling.” He looked at my face, and I suppose it looked blank because he went on. “I like to whittle. Make deer and coons and dogs and such. Just to keep my hands busy.”

  “May I see?”

  He reached in his pocket, drew out the small wooden shape, and placed it in my hand. It was a raccoon, meticulously realistic, even down to individual rings on the bushy tail. “Russell, this is good!”

  He waved his hand dismissively. “Ain’t nothing. Anybody can do that. It’s my drawing I’m proud of.”

  I nodded. “Still, I can’t do this. Could you make one for me?”

  Russell shook his head.

  “Please? You said you wanted to give me something for teaching you; well, this is what I want.”

  He shrugged. “I reck — shh.” He interrupted himself and closed his large hand across my wrist, but gently this time. “Look.”

  I followed his gaz
e and saw a family of deer emerging from a thicket. “Watch,” Russell whispered.

  He clapped his hands together, and the largest of the deer raised its tail, flicking up the white underside. The other deer snorted, fled back into the cover of the thicket.

  “Why did you do that?” I demanded. “I wanted to look at them.”

  “Too good a target. We ain’t the only ones on this mountain.”

  “Hmmm.” I didn’t know of anyone else, but I didn’t argue. “The babies are getting pretty big.”

  “Probably April babies. Fawns are born April to June.”

  “I’d like to see them when they’re first born.”

  Russell laughed. “You won’t.”

  “I might. Just because I’m a ‘city girl’ doesn’t mean I couldn’t notice the mama deer.”

  He nodded agreeably. “Yep. But seeing the mama doesn’t mean you’ll see the fawns. She don’t hang around them much when they’re first born.”

  “You’re teasing.” I handed the wooden raccoon back to him.

  Russell crossed his heart with his whittling as he talked. “Honest. A mother deer licks her babies right away, then leaves them. She comes back to the nesting place a few times a day to nurse, but she goes again after a little while. She doesn’t want her scent to be too strong around them. The fawns don’t have much scent of their own, so they can’t attract hungry animals, and they blend in pretty good with the forest floor. She leaves to protect them.”

  I nodded, swallowed hard. I picked up a stick, swallowed twice more, and worked to clear a space in the forest growth with my foot. “Think back to when the deer started to run. One deer raised its tail before it ran. So, we start with the number one and . . .”

  I stopped. There was someone standing behind me. Russell stared but even if he hadn’t, I could feel someone close, looming, breathing. I knew who would be there even before I looked.

  I turned slowly. Rooster Armentrout glared at me. I smelled him, a mix of body odor, old liquor, mint, and some sort of gamey smell — had he been checking the traps? I took a step back.

  “There ain’t gonna be no schooling going on.” He brushed me aside and stuck a finger against Russell’s chest, poking him with every word. “I ain’t gonna tell you again. Get your sorry ass to them traps. Now!”

  Russell scuttled off. Mr. Armentrout turned to me, jerked my wrist where Russell had squeezed it just an hour or so before. “And I cain’t make it no clearer for you, missy. Stay away from here and away from Russell. He’s got work to do.”

  I started to snap back — Moselle Toms said I could handle him. He was nothing but a bully. But there was a fierceness in his eyes that I couldn’t meet, and I remembered Aunt Pearl’s words: Be careful around that family. I meekly replied, “Yes, sir.”

  He released my wrist and went slinking up the mountain. My God, he showed up almost every time Russell and I got together; it was like he had some sort of connection that enabled him to find us. I collapsed against a sturdy oak and slid to the ground. My legs were shaking so badly, they couldn’t hold me up another minute.

  I rubbed my wrist, now reddened and aching. I remembered how angry Russell had been, how his eyes held lightning flashes the way his father’s had just a minute before. Would Russell grow to be another Rooster? That spot on my wrist was exactly where Russell had grabbed me. Mama flashed into my mind: her paper-thin skin, her dry and unused voice, the sadness emanating from her. Did people simply grow into the people their parents were?

  I walked to Aunt Pearl’s and glanced around me, trying to see what Russell might see. I spotted nothing, though. I don’t mean I failed to notice the beauty of nature. My friend had already attuned me to that. For example, the leaves were now scarce, and the bare trees had a new loveliness (the word being one of my contributions to our friendship).

  The stark trees were now able to show their true shapes, branches reaching to the sky, each different like arms or fingers touching the sun or the clouds, and the bark of each tree showed me, under Russell’s careful teaching, the kind of tree it was. My third-grade leaf study hadn’t been so thorough.

  And my thoughts led me back to Moselle Toms. I wished I’d never agreed to go to her house for Thanksgiving.

  She wasn’t anyone I wanted to be around. And I made up my mind to get out of that promise.

  THERE WAS STILL NO LETTER from Daddy.

  I’d told Russell I was tired of lectures from my father — and I was — and that I didn’t want to read any more about how wonderful Aunt Pearl was — and I didn’t — but I did want to hear from Daddy. Every day, when I’d check to see if Mr. Pritchard had left something or when I’d walk out to meet him in his carefully creased mail uniform, there was only empty space in the mailbox or an empty shake of Mr. Pritchard’s head if I caught him as he walked by. No letter.

  It made me angry at first; maybe Daddy’d read my mind and decided not to write, but he should know me good and well, that I frequently made foolish wishes that I didn’t really want to come true.

  I was in a pickle at Aunt Pearl’s house because of that very sort of thing. Sure, I’d wished that I could go to Moselle Toms’s house for Thanksgiving dinner, because Aunt Pearl didn’t try to stop me, didn’t insist I have Thanksgiving dinner with her. But after that wretched afternoon with Moselle Toms, I desperately wanted Aunt Pearl to demand I stay at the house on Thanksgiving. And I wanted it even more after listening to Moselle Toms tell me she could handle Rooster Armentrout, when I was sure no one could look him in those dark, mean eyes and cross him. The dinner with Moselle Toms loomed before me. A dinner with her chattering about herself, or gossiping about other people in a mean-spirited way, or sliding in comments about Mama and her “fragile” health — well, it just made me want to either cry or fly into a rage. Especially since I’d gotten myself into it just to be prickly with Aunt Pearl.

  But then, as I thought about a letter from Daddy not coming, the dinner looked like less of a worry. I thought about the father I’d been so angry with. I didn’t know exactly why he might not be writing, but maybe it meant he was fighting. Suppose he wasn’t writing because he was injured? Or dead?

  I wanted to talk to Russell about things, but I couldn’t. I was too busy avoiding him. Maybe Moselle Toms thought she could handle Rooster Armentrout, but I knew I couldn’t. Just thinking about his eyes blazing through me shook me with chills. If he didn’t want me to teach Russell, well, maybe that was a good idea.

  I didn’t realize, though, how much I depended on Russell to share ideas with, how I counted on time spent with him to fill my day. Sure, I talked some with Bobby and even Sara Ann and Polly, but I had no real friends here; I’d allowed no one close enough to be my friend.

  No one except for a lanky blond boy with a monster for a father and fingertips that turned out the finest animals you ever saw this side of Creation Week. I like that I have a friend, he’d said.

  A week before Thanksgiving, Aunt Pearl invited Miss Spencer to join us for dinner. I protested with my usual pouting and silence, but to no avail. Miss Spencer came. Mama was propped at her end of the table, delicately mashing her potatoes with a fork, the starchy pile spreading across the figures on her plate. I cleared the ham off my willow tree — every night Aunt Pearl loaded the plate haphazardly, and I liked for that one spot to remain uncovered, so I could imagine the shade of the tree on a warm summer day.

  A side of Aunt Pearl emerged as the evening wore on, a side I’d never seen. She was chatty, loquacious even, and she brought that quality out in Miss Spencer too. They covered subjects I’d never dreamed either of them cared a fig for — classic literature, world travel, opera even — as well as topics I’d expected them to cover: pickling and the lack of rain. Mama continued to mash her potatoes, stirring and stirring the butter.

  After dinner, we settled near the fire, and Aunt Pearl and Miss Spencer continued a discussion of the values of a particular kind of stitch used for quilting. Mama was quiet, of course, propped in a ch
air close to the warming blaze. Aunt Pearl threw words at her, “Martha, you used to be so good at quilting” and “These colors remind me of that quilt we made when you were ten, Martha,” but the syllables lay flat where they fell. A hint of a smile danced across Mama’s lips once, but nothing more. I gladly adjourned to the kitchen to wash dishes and try to imagine an aunt Pearl who chittered like a little bird and — well, the image wouldn’t appear.

  “Ellen,” Aunt Pearl called, “leave those and come in here, please.”

  I left the roasting pan to soak and wiped my hands on the blue-and-white-checked drying towel. Miss Spencer waved me to a spot near her. “I brought you a first peek at my new purchase, Ellen.” She held up a thick book, the embossed leather cover causing my palms to itch I wanted to touch it so badly.

  “It’s an encyclopedia of animals,” she said. “The illustrations are splendid, I think. Take a look.” She placed it in my ready hands and turned back to Aunt Pearl, who had brought out a quilt for them to repair together.

  I sat on the floor, breathed in the brand-new book smell, and slowly turned pages. The great horned owl had a plump feathered body, and the text said that it hunts skunks, among other luckless nocturnal creatures. That reminded me of Russell, so I turned to the section on skunks as Aunt Pearl and Miss Spencer prattled on about the stitching choices.

  Three basic kinds of skunks. Striped, hog-nosed, spotted. They can have many different stripe styles — including chips, swirls, and even solid-colored coats. The book said gray baby skunks tend to become white skunks, but they could turn out to be gray as well. Hmmm, I’d only seen black skunks. With that white stripe, of course.

  When alerted to danger, I read, the skunk turns its rear, raises its tail, and patters its front feet. Then it hisses and spreads it haunches and . . . I closed the book. I knew all too well what happened then.