I tried to describe the fierce pride of the people; their self-reliance and love of liberty; the rebellion against taxation and all governmental restrictions or even “benefits”; how out of centuries of tyranny they had learned the lesson well that for every benefit, a freedom must always be surrendered.
“But I surely don’t want to make life back in the mountains sound romantic. Mrs. Toliver was right to use the word ‘destitute.’ There’s nothing picturesque about homes without toilets, indoors or out. There’s nothing glamorous about a tired woman pushing a bull-tongue plow up a steep hillside, trying ‘to skelp the weeds out’; or about soap made out of hickory ashes and hog meat leavings; or about children who came to school barefooted in the snow or with “dewpizen” sores in summer—yes, it really is true!—or it was until women like you sent them shoes. And it’s hard to get sentimental about a child who needs a bath so badly that the only way I can stand to be near him is to put perfume on a handkerchief up my sleeve and keep the sleeve as close to my nose as possible.
“So please don’t think that I’m heroic. I’ve had just as much trouble adjusting to all of this as any of you would have. In fact, at first I almost gave up and went back home. It was a struggle to see underneath the rags and smells, the human beings—some with fine minds, some with great spirits, lovable, proud, sensitive—and begin to care about them, really care.
“It’s like—well, like garden vegetables. If you threw out your turnips because they came out of the ground with dirt clinging to them, you’d never discover the goodness there.” And then I tried to make the ladies see Fairlight and Opal and Little Burl and Aunt Polly Teague and Mountie and that crazy little clown, Creed.
“They’re people and they need a chance and you and I have it in our power to give them that chance.” Then I sketched in some of the specific needs of the school and the mission, and sat down.
There was silence in the room for a moment, then the beginning of conversation, like bees humming. Mrs. Toliver rose and fluttered her hands at the ladies for silence. “I know everyone in this room will agree with me that we are speechless—absolutely speechless—with admiration for this brave and courageous young woman. Our sex is supposed to be the weaker vessel, and yet when we reflect . . .”
Mrs. Toliver’s speechlessness lasted for some time. But at last, seeing hands raised around the room, she asked me if I would answer questions from the floor.
“I’ll try,” I said.
As the questions began coming, I found that I had underestimated my audience. A motherly looking woman sitting near the front window asked, “Why is the school so poverty-stricken, with so few books and all? Why doesn’t the church support the work better?”
“Ma’am, this mission is not under any one church. It’s interdenominational work. Anyway,” I added gently, “I guess the church is you and me and folks like us.”
Another voice spoke up. “Miss Huddleston, are there many adults who are illiterate?”
“Yes, quite a lot. I’ve seen the 1910 figures from the United States Census Bureau somewhere. Something like sixteen percent of those over ten years old in the mountain regions of Tennessee can’t write. That’s against a little over three percent for the national average.”
“What are the plans for handling that? I mean, you’ve talked about school for children, but what’s going to be done about the grown people?”
I took a deep breath and plunged in. “There aren’t any plans really. So far I’ve taught one woman to read and write, Fairlight Spencer, and I’m beginning on others now. But can you imagine a big boy of seventeen or twenty who desperately wants to learn to read, coming to school and being put in with the seven- and eight-year-olds? Most of them just won’t brave it and I can’t blame them. Yet that’s the way it is now.”
A lady sitting near the marble fireplace raised her hand and Mrs. Toliver acknowledged her. “Yes, Mrs. Browning. By all means.”
The woman who stood up was dark and petite, tastefully dressed in sapphire-blue duvetine. “Miss Huddleston, all the while you were talking I could not help recalling the trip Mr. Browning and I made recently to Scandinavia. Have you heard about the Folk Schools of Denmark?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“I hadn’t either until this trip. Then our host in Denmark took us to see the Folk School in Askov and now I’m full of admiration for them.”
I nodded, wondering what connection the schools in Denmark had with the subject at hand.
“It’s hard to describe in a few words,” the lady in blue went on, “but the Folk Schools are for older young people, seventeen and over. The boys go four months after the crops are in, November through February; the girls, three months during the summer. There are no entrance requirements except the desire to learn; no examinations, no grades, no degrees. They don’t use many books, but mostly rely on the spoken word through lectures and then discussions. It’s called ‘Training for Life’ and the idea is not to educate the student away from the land, so that all the bright students want to rush off to live in cities, but rather to send each pupil back to his own community a better person, quickened, more productive.”
Suddenly in the words this stranger was speaking, I caught a glimpse of something alive and exciting. Almost breathlessly I asked, “And, this idea—has it worked?”
“That’s what’s so startling. It really has!”
“Ladies . . .” Mrs. Toliver interrupted. “I’ve just had a signal from the back of the room from our refreshment chairlady. The luncheon is ready, so we’ll have to bring this fascinating discussion to a close. Once again our heartfelt thanks, Miss Huddleston. Ladies, a big hand!” Amid the clapping of gloved hands, the meeting was adjourned.
A little later, carrying chicken salad and hot beaten biscuits on a hand-painted plate, I made my way across the room to Mrs. Browning. She seemed to have realized that I would be coming and had managed to keep a chair next to hers empty by placing her handbag on it. “Mrs. Browning, I thought I was the only one who got all excited over ideas.”
She laughed. “Then we have something in common. No, I’m noted for it. Ask my poor suffering husband as with gusto I drag him from book to book, from art gallery to museum, from country to country.”
“You didn’t say so, but you must think the Folk School idea could be adapted for our Southern mountains—or you wouldn’t have brought up the subject.”
“I know it!” Mrs. Browning answered. “It’s the answer, I feel. You asked if all those big ideas worked? Just wait till you hear . . .”
Then for half an hour Mrs. Browning raved about Denmark, how in 1864 the nation had forfeited some of her best farmland as the result of a war lost to Germany and Austria. And how a poet-pastor-teacher named Frederick Grundtvig had conceived an inspired idea how to wrest victory out of defeat through a new type of education—the Folk School concept.
In time, the results were maximum productivity from Denmark’s tiny farms; Danish shipping growing and growing; ninety percent of all her farmers becoming members of a farm cooperative. So Denmark became a proud, successful little nation. And Mrs. Browning insisted that almost everyone gave the Folk Schools much of the credit.
I had been so drawn into Mrs. Browning’s enthusiasm that I had not noticed Mrs. Toliver approaching until she stood at my elbow. “I’m so sorry to interrupt, my dear, but I have to run. Do visit us again. I’m sure the Club will do something for your school. You’ll be hearing from us. You were an inspiration, simply an inspiration.” And she was gone in a flutter of green ruffles.
The group was breaking up and I saw that Mrs. Smith was waiting to take me home with her. There was so much I still wanted to ask Mrs. Browning, especially about those ideas of Grundtvig’s. Before we parted, we exchanged addresses and Mrs. Browning promised to send me a book. “That will tell you what you want to know,” she said, “better than I ever could.”
Most of the next day was spent walking from store to store, going down the list of the busine
ssmen Mr. Smith had given me. Everywhere I was received with such openness and promised so much that by the time I boarded the train for El Pano, I was fairly bursting with admiration for Mr. Smith. What had he said to those men that had given me such open sesame? One hundred pounds of flour from one merchant. Two hundred pounds of sugar and three cases of pork and beans from another; three cases of canned milk, a case of Log Cabin syrup; Peter Henderson seeds and some tools from a hardware merchant; Ivory soap, Crisco, and Jell-O in quantity. And best of all, folding cots and bedding, even blankets, warm blankets! Each donor would send his gift by prepaid express. Mr. Smith must have suggested that too. So now that I knew our boarding school was as good as a fact, I was dizzy with elation.
How different this arrival at El Pano from the one eight months before. Even before the train ground slowly to a stop I spied David standing waiting on the platform, anxiously searching the train windows for my face. Then there was his firm hand under my elbow guiding me down the high train steps, collecting my bags, carrying them to the Harvester wagon. He put both hands around my waist, hugged me and then boosted me into the wagon.
“David! People will see.”
“See that I’m glad to have you back? Well, let ’em. Cutter Gap’s been a dull place without you.” His eyes held mine.
“David, wait till you see all the stuff that’s coming. Those people were so nice. And generous. If you thought you were hauling Express before, this time you’ll really moan.”
David took the wagon reins with his right hand and reached for my hand with his free one. “How did your speech go?”
“I was scared at first, but after I got going it was all right, I think. Wealthy ladies mostly, but nice. They seemed really interested. And David, with all that stuff coming, now we can get the boarding school going right away. Isn’t that great!”
David nodded. He laced his fingers through mine and kept watching my face. “I missed you,” he finally said.
He really had. I could tell. His hand was warm around mine. “It’s nice to be missed,” I said softly.
David moved closer and not knowing what else to do, I began chattering again. There was so much to tell. About the two nights at the Smiths’ elegant home. Their friendliness, their hospitality.
“Oh, yes, David,” I said above the rumble of the wagon wheels; already we had left El Pano behind. “I met a wonderful woman at the speech affair. A really wonderful woman. She had just gotten back from Denmark. Well, after I finished my speech, she told me a lot about some schools over there. They call them Folk Schools. They sound really exciting. I think they have some ideas we can use.”
“Sounds great,” said David. But he seemed to be only half listening. Suddenly just beyond the Big Mud Hole, he began pulling on the reins lightly and steered the wagon off the road into a little grove of trees at a watering place.
“Why are we stopping?” I asked, though the thudding in my ears told me.
David secured both reins, turned to me with a half-smile. “Because Prince and Buttons can use a drink and I can talk better this way.”
“But—but aren’t they expecting us at the mission?”
“Sooner or later.” He took my hand again and moved still closer. His breath was on my hair. As David’s mouth found mine, I thought, I wonder how many other girls he’s kissed. But I brushed the thought aside, for I liked his arm around me, the way he cradled my head on his shoulder. Somehow I was surprised that my mind would be so aware of details. Shouldn’t I be feeling more and thinking less?
David was chuckling. “Now this is the kind of conversation I like best.”
He kissed me again. I touched his cheek lightly with the tip of one finger. “David, I think we should get back to the mission, really.”
“Not yet. We need to talk.”
“About what, David?”
“You and me, of course. About the question I asked you last July.”
I knew what he meant. In my heart I was ready to say, “Yes, David, I will marry you.” In fact, I opened my mouth to say it. But then something deep inside me held back the words, and I heard myself saying, “I care a lot for you, David. But I need a little time to be sure about marriage. You understand, don’t you?”
Only for an instant did David lose his bouncy mood. He would play the role of the impatient suitor, he said, if that was the way I wanted it, but it was only a matter of time. The rest of the way to the mission I was the silent one while he did all the talking. He told about the last four weeks and about his vacation and about how often he had thought of me. He was full of plans for the future.
I sat there in a warm glow saying scarcely another word. But I was thinking that this school term was going to be quite different from the last one.
It felt good to be back among my friends in the Cove and they were all here today. But standing there, wedged in between Rebecca Holt and Granny Barclay in the crowd on the Morrisons’ porch, I was wishing that I felt easier about Ruby Mae’s decision, made while I was in Asheville to marry Will Beck. She was still not quite fifteen, Will only sixteen. From the plateau of my almost twenty years, it seemed to me that these child marriages were no good, that the girls caught in them never had a chance. They were worn out with having babies and drudgery by their middle twenties; usually they were grandmothers by their early thirties. And since they were rushing at the pretense of being grown up when they were scarcely out of childhood, they could bring so little to marriage. As Granny Barclay had once commented, “Green apples don’t have much flavor.”
Then too, all of us at the mission had hoped that Ruby Mae would get more schooling. Since my first visit with her parents, we had succeeded in bringing about a reconciliation between the girl and her stepfather. But that had turned out to be a mixed blessing because about a month before school was out, Ruby Mae had gone back home to live. There during the summer she had had more freedom for Will’s courting. All too easily she had fallen back into mountain patterns where it was the accepted custom for a girl to get married when she should still be skipping around climbing trees and catching lightning bugs and pumping high in a homemade swing and playing elves and fairies in a cool glen.
I looked at her now standing in the yard, the center of attention of a knot of admiring relatives and friends and gawking children. Granny Barclay’s eyes followed mine. “Looks like a woman grown this day. Pretty as a hummin’bird round a rosy bush.”
Age looking at youth admiringly, I thought. While Ruby Mae’s buxom figure was scarcely like a hummingbird’s, it was true that her red hair was shining like a flame in the sunshine and her face was aglow. Gone were the heavy pigtails down her back; for the first time, her hair was piled on top of her head, woman-fashion. Her white muslin wedding dress was a poor makeshift affair, bearing the unmistakable look of having been made by the “loved ones at home”—as in fact it had. I had offered Ruby Mae one of my nicest shirtwaists, thinking that we could make a white skirt to go with it. But when she had tried on the waist, it had come nowhere near buttoning, so she and her mother had made her dress out of yard goods from the country store.
Today her constant chattering was punctuated with giggling. As Granny Barclay (who was good for a steady stream of priceless comments) put it, “That gal could talk water uphill.” As for the people milling around, she clucked her tongue. “Hit’s so crowded now you couldn’t cuss a cat ’thout gettin’ fur in yer mouth.”
It was true; it seemed as if the entire Cove was here. Even Opal McHone, whom I really had not expected to come. Even Dr. MacNeill, whom I had not seen since before Tom’s death. There he was, laughing and joking with Uncle Bogg. Rows of mules, horses, a few lumber wagons were hitched to the rail fence. The cabin, the porch, and the yard were teeming with people. In our Cove, weddings and funerals were prime social events; no one stayed away if he could avoid it. Besides, the bride’s infare (as it was called in the Cove) was to be held immediately following this ceremony. Word had circulated that Miss Alice, anxious to give
Ruby Mae some support since she could not persuade her to call off or postpone the marriage, was helping the Morrisons supply the food. So who wanted to miss “good vittles”?
David was standing against a post at the edge of the porch with Isaak McHone beside him. His father’s murder had drawn Isaak and David together. The boy was still seeking David out, staying as close to him as possible; we saw him often at the mission house. At Isaak’s request, David had been letting him help with various carpentry projects, and he was teaching Isaak to play the ukulele. They had taken some trips into the mountains together, David riding Prince, Isaak on Buttons.
I was too far away to hear what the two were saying, but I was interested in the camaraderie between them. From time to time David would lay an arm protectingly across the boy’s shoulders. Once Isaak must have said something that amused David vastly, because he threw back his head and laughed, his deep bass rumbling out as he playfully rumpled Isaak’s hair.
But I knew that underneath the banter, David was not happy about today. He felt that somehow we had failed Ruby Mae. After all, she had lived at the mission for months, and it seemed as if we had had so little influence on her.
All eyes were on Uncle Bogg now as he made his way to the center of the yard, flourishing the quart bottle of whiskey, a big white bow tied to the neck of the bottle. The look of distaste on David’s face was only mildly disguised. For this particular wedding, he had tried to turn off the horse race custom with the “Black Betty” bottle as the prize, using as his argument the youthfulness of the bride and groom. But neither Ruby Mae nor her parents nor Will could see his point. “Who ever heerd of a wedding without Black Betty? No celebration a-tall ’thout a little dram!”
Humor is sometimes a matter of viewpoint, I suppose. Waiting now for the riders for Black Betty, the crowd thought this hilarious fun. But I could not help thinking of eight men lying dead because of moonshine—one way or another—the latest, the son of the old man out there right now holding the festive bottle high. Even after this interlude, the thought that Tom McHone was dead was a stabbing thought. Dead. It still seemed unreal.
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