Christy

by Catherine Marshall

I had driven with my parents and my brother George, first in our carriage and then in our Dodge touring car, up into the mountains around Asheville every spring for as far back as I could remember. Spring . . . That first pale fresh green suddenly lacing the mountainsides. Then the blur of the redbud, delicately Oriental in the arrangement of its branches like strokes from the brush of some Japanese artist. And the pure white of the dogwood climaxed by the flame of the azaleas. I longed to see that procession of bloom again.

  Then I realized there was something else I wanted more than to see spring in the mountains—to be with Miss Alice. I could learn so much from her. Where else could I find a teacher like her?

  What she had said last night about running back to the ivory tower had not only stuck to me like a burr, but it still pricked. I did not want my prime consideration to be thinking of myself, protecting myself. Nor did I want to be a quitter.

  Odd . . . It suddenly struck me that this train of thought—springtime, learning from Miss Alice—did not belong to someone who was leaving immediately for Asheville. And that was how I knew that somehow, some way in the night behind me, I had decided. Somehow this Cove was my Cove. The children were my children. Little as I had to give, I had to give it here. It was as Miss Alice had said last night, we have to decide to give—even in hard spots where there’s lots of evil. Well, I had decided. I rested my forehead on the cold wood of the window sill. “Dear God,” I said inside myself, “when I came here, maybe I was partly running off from home for fun and freedom and adventure. But I have a notion that You had something else in mind in letting me come. Anyway if You can use me here in this Cove, well, here I am.”

  That morning I entered the schoolroom eagerly. In an effort to understand “my” children better, two weeks before I had decided to assign the older ones a theme. They were to write on “What I Want to Do When I Grow Up.”

  The themes turned out to be even more revealing than I had imagined. Clara Spencer wrote:

  “. . . When I grow up, I want to have a lot of shoes like Catskins did in the mountain story; two, three pairs even. And I want a fine house with enough pans to cook in and a rug on the floor to sink my toes in.”

  Rob Allen had different dreams:

  “. . . Sometimes I get to feeling lonesome. I want to tell my thoughts, my good thoughts on the inside, to somebody without being laughed at. It would pleasure me to know the right way to put things like that on paper for other people too. I don’t want to keep mill when I grow up, just read books instead. . . .”

  Ruby Mae wrote that she wanted to smell nice and have lots of pretty shirtwaists like Teacher.

  Smith O’Teale wanted “to go far away from home across the mountains to the level lands and get me a fine job with plenty to eat.”

  There was only one theme that sounded a false note, Wraight Holt’s. Unsuspecting, I picked up his theme from my desk one morning and began reading:

  “I thought at your question about growing up. I disgust being a slickfaced boy and want to be a masterest man-person now. I wud be proud for a woman grown something like you are to claim me for her feller because when I set eyes on yer hair and yer pretty clothes that fit you so neat I cannot think a solitary thing about my book learning. It wud tickle me right smart to carry you for a walk anytime now.”

  Hastily, I thrust it to one side under some other papers. But color had flooded into my face as I realized the gist of what Wraight had written, and instantly the three boys at the back of the room were smirking.

  Wraight’s theme did serve a purpose, however, because it raised to my conscious mind a problem which I now realized had been nagging me at a deep level: why were these boys in school?

  By now I realized that everyone in the Cove was surprised to see Lundy Taylor in our school so long as any of the Allen children were attending. This was my first real-life glimpse of the family feuding that even Miss Alice had acknowledged.

  When I asked David, he explained, “A long way back, Allens and Taylors got shooting at one another. I’m not sure anybody much remembers now what the fighting was about. I can’t figure it out—this is the first time Bird’s-Eye’s ever let Lundy come near the school. Makes people uneasy. Maybe it’s just that Miss Alice’s teaching about forgiveness is finally making a dent in the Cove’s hate-traditions.”

  I would like to have thought that was the explanation. Instead, there was the reluctant conviction that something else was afoot.

  Meanwhile, the themes were dramatizing for me the poverty of the Cove. Most of the boys and girls could not see beyond the next corn crop. One pair of shoes would be wealth indeed. Most had only the vaguest idea of the world beyond the mountains.

  Naturally the mission reflected this poverty. Everywhere I turned during those weeks I saw the lack of articles we needed. One day after finishing the compositions, I deliberately took a walk through the mission house, notebook and pencil in hand. In my mind were the irksome home situations of a few of my students. Some had to walk long distances to school. There were occasions when the deep snows or the ravaging sleet storms made it impossible for them to get to school. Already I was finding that spotty attendance and interrupted work were slowing down the entire group. So there had always been the thought of taking in a few boarders for the worst winter months. That was why Miss Alice had designed such a large house. The barnlike room on the third floor could be used as a sort of dormitory. But before we could make even a beginning with the boarding school, we needed all sorts of supplies, even money for food for boarders.

  So I began my list. There were no shades at any window; no rugs. All the mattresses were makeshift and dreadful. The linen closet was almost empty: sheets, towels, blankets were needed. Miss Ida’s kitchen cupboard lacked even basic cleaning supplies.

  Then my thoughts went to the yard. The mission did not own a horse for us to ride. There was only Old Theo, a mule with a crippled hip. Miss Alice had her own horse Goldie, but since her regular routine kept her in Cutter Gap only every third week, Goldie was of little use to the rest of us. David and I had talked about the fact that buying a horse could not be postponed much longer. Yet a good horse cost about a hundred dollars and Dr. Ferrand struggled for every penny he sent us.

  That night as I sat in my room looking at this long list of things we needed before we could take even a few boarders, wondering where it was all going to come from, I remembered the words that Miss Alice had quoted from the Bible the night before. Something about “pressed down and running over.” There was a picture in my mind of golden wheat being heaped up and up.

  Suddenly it seemed important to find that verse—but where in the Bible was it? I got out my Sunday-school-graduation Bible, rather guilty to find it near the bottom of my trunk, and began turning the unfamiliar pages. I was glad Miss Alice was not there to see how long it took me to find that passage. Finally I stumbled on it. “Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.”

  I chuckled to myself at those heaped-up words piled on top of one another like the golden wheat: Good measure . . . pressed down . . . shaken together . . . running over. An exuberant promise, if ever I had seen one! Abundance sure enough.

  My thoughts carried over into my own kind of prayer . . . “Lord, Miss Alice said that ‘if we give, it shall be given unto us.’ Well, she is giving, Lord. And so are Dr. Ferrand and David. And even I’m trying to give, though I don’t yet see what I have that You can use. I don’t have the faith that Miss Alice has, Lord, in You, in this Book, in anything. Can You help me with my faith (I hope it isn’t wrong to ask this) by giving unto us—as it says here, good measure? Maybe by giving unto us a horse or—or anything else on the list . . . ?”

  Three days later Mr. Pentland brought me a letter postmarked Plainfield, New Jersey. The heavy cream-colored envelope had been addressed with a distinctive feminine handwriting,
very large capital letters slanting sharply to the right.

  As I opened it, a check dropped into my lap. It was for one hundred and six dollars, made out to me. Wonderingly, I read:

  Dear Miss Huddleston:

  I hope that you will forgive a stranger writing to you. Let me explain that I have just returned from Asheville where I was visiting my sister, Anne (Mrs. Dellafield) Boggs. At a tea which she gave in my honor, I met your mother. In my presence, some of the ladies were inquiring about you, and your mother told—most charmingly—about the contents of some of your recent letters, your fascinating pupils, their needs and so on.

  On the journey home, I could not get this off my mind. Then in the pile of mail waiting for me at home there was an unexpected, larger-than-usual dividend check from some stock of mine.

  My husband (who is the head of a linen import firm) and I are trying the experiment this year of tithing all our gross income and giving it, as we feel led, to churches and charities. The enclosed check represents the ten percent on my dividend check. My heart tells me that it belongs to your work. Since I could not for the life of me remember the exact name of the mission, I have made the check out to you. I send it with real joy.

  Yours most sincerely,

  Lucy Mae Furnam

  (Mrs. Charles Furnam)

  The horse! It was for the horse! Of course. “David—David! Where are you?” I went running through the house waving the check in the air.

  “Here I am. Here in the kitchen.”

  “David, look! Just look . . . Isn’t it great!”

  “What’s great?” He was lifting the lids of Miss Ida’s pans steaming and bubbling on the stove, sniffing them one by one. “Stop waving that piece of paper in my eyes.” He took the check, read the amount, and whistled. “Say, not bad. Who’s Mrs. Furnam?”

  “I don’t know her! She was visiting in Asheville and heard about the mission at a tea. This is her tithe on some unexpected money—David, remember you said that a good horse would cost about a hundred dollars. This is it—for the horse.”

  “But if Mrs. Furnam meant it for the mission, Miss Alice will think she should send it to Dr. Ferrand.”

  “Oh, no—she couldn’t!”

  “She sure could.”

  “Not when she hears what’s behind it, she wouldn’t.”

  “What do you mean, ‘what’s behind it’?”

  I was shy about telling him. “Well, David, it’s that—you see, Miss Alice believes that the things that are promised in the Bible are there for us to claim. So—I tried it. I found a special promise and I asked God to send us some of the things we need around here—like a horse—some of the other things we need too. So David, this is it. Don’t you see? This is it!”

  “Christy, you surprise me. Really you do.” His voice was gentle. “Do you honestly think this Mrs.—whatever her name is—Furnam sent this check as the direct result of your thoughts or ‘suggestions’ or prayers one night in your bedroom? Probably she would have sent the check anyway. A coincidence. Perfectly natural thing for her to do. Nice though. Hope we can use it for a horse.”

  But when I told Miss Alice the story, she agreed at once to our using Mrs. Furnam’s check for a horse.

  “Then you don’t think the check was just a coincidence?” I asked her.

  “No. I think you reached out for faith in the best way you knew. I think it’s the intent of the heart that matters. And I think you got your answer.”

  “But David seemed to think I was silly—”

  “Perhaps you misread David.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Anyway, what goes on at a deep level inside you, Christy, is not silly, whatever else it may be.”

  “Oh, Miss Alice!” I hugged her.

  To help in purchasing a horse, David took along John Holcombe, a man known in the Cove as a sharp trader and a good judge of horseflesh. At Overbrook Farm near Lyleton, they found “Prince,” a black stallion with a distinctive white star on his head, a long silky mane and a flowing tail. Mr. Holcombe came back saying, “Blamed if he ain’t the finest brute-beast ye ever flung yer leg over.” And David, having picked up the horse-dealer’s jargon, talked knowingly about Prince having “good depth of chest, well-muscled withers and slender, strong legs.” He and Mr. Holcombe bid the horse in for ninety-five dollars and paid thirteen dollars and ninety-eight cents for a saddle and bridle.

  “Roughly three dollars more than Mrs. Furnam’s check,” David reported to me. “If we were going by the gospel according to Christy, Prince plus his saddle should have cost exactly one hundred and six dollars, not one penny more, not one penny less. Some angel got his figures garbled. Anyway, I made up the small difference out of my pocket.”

  But David’s teasing could not deflate me. “Give and it shall be given unto you!” From being weak, my faith now knew no bounds. Mother had been sending me her copy of the Ladies’ Home Journal each month as she finished with it, partly, I suspected, as her way of reminding me that life along gracious and comfortable lines was still going on in the world. One night as I browsed through the latest issue, looking at some of the advertisements, an idea struck me. What about asking these advertisers to contribute not money, but some of their products to our mission? Could I draft the kind of letter that would present the mission’s case dramatically—yet briefly enough—for a business firm? In the same notebook in which I had made the list of needs, I turned to a fresh sheet . . .

  “Esteemed Sir: . . .” Pompous. I crossed that out. “Dear Sir:” Better. I plunged into the letter. “Let me introduce myself as Christy Huddleston from Asheville, North Carolina. A few months ago I accepted a job teaching a mission school in the Great Smoky Mountains. Quickly I discovered great destitution back here . . .” No, it wouldn’t do. It was all wrong to begin the letter with me. I tore out the page and crumpled it up.

  If I were the executive of a mattress company or a window-shade company and received a letter from some unknown girl, would I read it? After many tries, I evolved what I hoped was an acceptable letter, a sort of master one which could be altered to suit each company:

  Dear Sir:

  You are a busy man and do not know me, so I shall come to the point at once. This is to ask if you will share with us in our mountain mission work by making a donation of some of your fine Ostermoor mattresses to help furnish our mission house?

  This is the story: This mission was established five and a half years ago in a remote and poor region of the Southern Appalachians in the Great Smoky Mountains, seven miles from the nearest railroad. This is an interdenominational work, now under the American Inland Mission, with Dr. Mercer O. Ferrand of Blytheville, Arkansas, at the head. We have a big mission house, a small chapel which doubles for weekday school and Sunday services both. I volunteered to come here from my home in Asheville, North Carolina, to teach in the school. There are sixty-seven pupils, all ages, quite a handful for a new teacher like me.

  There are some awfully bright pupils but we have only a few books and practically no supplies. Many of the children walk a long way, even four and five miles to school, some—believe it or not—barefoot even in the coldest winter weather.

  This work is supported entirely from free-will offerings. Funds are scarce. The highest salary paid to anyone on the mission staff is twenty-five dollars a month.

  Yet out of this situation, love and hope and help are being given to the mountain folks. I thought perhaps you might like to be a part of this work. For our staff and for the boys and girls we hope to take in as boarders, a good night’s rest on one of your great Ostermoor mattresses could help a lot! I shall be happy to supply references, any further information, or to answer any questions you may have. Let me thank you ahead of time for any help you may be able to give us.

  Yours most sincerely,

  Christy Rudd Huddleston

  Over the next few days, exhilarated by the success with the horse, I got carried away with the letter writing and sat up nights working
on it. After I had covered firms that manufactured basic items like shades, mattresses, and soap, I thought how nice it would be to have some communication with the outside world. So I included the Bell Telephone Company, asking them to donate wires and equipment for a telephone. Then my mind went to those long winter evenings. How pleasant it would be to have a piano so that we could gather around it and sing! So I wrote to the Lyon and Healy Company.

  The promise said “heaped up.” I hoped that I was not overdoing it.

  Ruby Mae was sitting sideways on a straight chair in my bed room while I tried to comb out her shoulder-length tangled red hair. “Sorry if I’m pulling. How long has it been since you combed this hair, Ruby Mae? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

  “Factually, I lost my tuckin’ comb,” she answered sadly. “Disremember when. Onliest tuckin’ comb ever I had too.”

  “There are some bad tangles.”

  “Yes’m, but my head ain’t tetchy. I’ll try not to holler when you hit them mouse-nests. Ohoo—weee!”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t matter. What d’ye aim to do when ye git hit all combed out?”

  “How about nice long braids? Like Miss Henderson’s?”

  “Be tickled to death with braids. But ye’ll have t’learn me how.”

  “Braiding’s easy. I’ll teach you.”

  And braiding hair is not the only thing I’ll have to teach you, I was thinking as I held the hair firmly in my left hand and eased the comb gently with my right, trying to unravel the snarls. Ruby Mae’s sole idea of cleanliness was to wash her face and hands a few times a week—never a full bath—with the result that it was not pleasant to be near her. I had dodged and fled and resisted until now I realized that there was no escape. One of Miss Alice’s Quaker sayings was apropos: “Such-and-such a person is meant to be my bundle.” Well, I might not like it, but Ruby Mae was clearly my bundle, no getting around it.

  That being so, there was nothing for it but to get on with teaching her what I could about cleanliness and basic grooming. After the hair, I was going to suggest a bath in the portable tin tub and then make her a gift of a can of scented talcum powder.