by Leah Weiss
She sits back in her chair, easy, and sips more tea, looking pleased with herself. “That’s a healthy start, don’t you think?”
She don’t talk bout my baby. I don’t neither. If we do someday, I’ll tell her these first days after don’t fit right, like skin too tight and colors gone gray. But nights are worse. Too much time in the dark. Nobody to hear me cry.
I picked names for my baby. Otis after Daddy if it was a boy cause I love Daddy and he loves me. Carly if it was a girl cause I don’t know my mama any other way. Nobody knew my baby names and nobody asked. Not Granny. Not Aunt Marris. Not Miss Kate. It don’t matter now cause my baby don’t need a name, and I’m getting used to not seeing my baby bump. It’s my hands though; they keep reaching to hold that precious bump, hoping to feel a kick that won’t never come again.
I pick up my tea to give my hands somewhere to go, and say, “Those things sound awful simple. Helping somebody and wanting to read. They don’t sound special to me.” Miss Kate hears the sad in my words, and her face folds in like a drying leaf, curling round the edges.
“Please don’t underestimate those fantastic gifts. Look deeper. There’s more to discover about yourself, and this will become clearer over time.” She tops our mugs again from the teapot, but mine’s still mostly full.
“At the age of fifty-one, I still discover new things about myself.” She opens a tin a sugar biscuits; I take one.
“Like what?” I ask, but really want to talk about me.
Miss Kate scratches her head, and the stand-up cowlick flops to the side. She gazes over my shoulder at some place far away. “Before I came to Baines Creek I lived in a community of five hundred students and teachers. I had two rooms to call my own but I was rarely alone. Rarely ate a meal on my own or took a walk on my own. Until I moved here.” Her eyes come back to me. “I find I love my cabin, the challenges, the solitude, the beauty of this place. I lived in a crowd and thought I belonged in a crowd, but—surprise—I’m more content on my own.”
We sit still for a minute, then take in a big breath at the same time. Then Miss Kate asks a question out of the blue. “What can you tell me about the teacher’s cottage burning down? Do you think it was an accident or on purpose?”
“It be accidentally on purpose is what I think,” I say, and dunk my cookie in my tea.
Miss Kate giggles like a girl and shakes her head.
“What’s funny?” I say, scared I say something wrong.
She says, “Well, what you said, Sadie. Accidentally on purpose. It’s what is called an oxymoron. A perfectly executed oxymoron, if I may say so.”
“Oxy-what?” I scrunch up my nose.
“Oxymoron. You see”—she sits up taller, getting in that teacher way—“it’s one thing for something to be accidental—not planned—and entirely another for it to be on purpose, planned.”
I squirreled those thoughts round, then say, “But accidentally on purpose is what I mean.”
Miss Kate puts another log in the woodstove and wipes her hand on her britches, then sits back down. The fire pops; the logs shift and settle. “I wasn’t criticizing you. And oxymoron isn’t wrong words, Sadie; it’s a play on opposite words, like alone in a crowd and pretty ugly.” Her hands flutter in the air trying to help me see.
“Can you think of another one?” she asks.
She cocks her head to the side but don’t rush me. I want to make Miss Kate proud so bad, but now my belly turns sour, and my eyes wander, looking for the answer. I look at the wet marks my mug leaves on the table. Chew on my thumbnail. Watch a line of ants in the corner who wanna get outta the cold and pick here to be safe.
Then, when my head hurts from trying, it comes to me easy, and I say, “Awful good?”
Miss Kate’s face lights up like a sunrise. She reaches cross the table and squeezes my hands. “Sadie Blue, you are a wonder.”
This woman makes me feel good. Granny don’t like her but she never saw her cept once at church when we hear Miss Kate got fired and wants us to give her a job. Roy Tupkin don’t like her cause she’s my friend, so that don’t count.
I go to wash our cups in the wash bucket when out the window I see Birdie coming up the trail, huffing. Miss Kate sees her too and opens the door, but Birdie won’t come in. She yells, “Come on, you two. Gotta git to the Rusty Nickel,” and she whips right round and heads back down the trail. Hips rock to and fro, walking stick jigs, her making good time. I grab my shawl and Miss Kate her sweater, and we head out the door.
“What’s happened, Birdie?” Miss Kate calls out while she walks with long legs and I run to catch up. My insides rumble cause none of this can be good.
“Bad news for the Dillards. It’s Buck,” Birdie says, and a sad wallop hits me square in the chest.
The Dillards is the family me and Aunt Marris been helping through a hard time, and they helped me through my hard time, too. Aunt Marris is smart cause she knows when we bring food and comfort to somebody else, it brings us comfort, too. I can’t stay in bed when hungry babies need tending to. I can’t cry for long being round happy ones.
Now this. Something happened to Buck Dillard.
When we get to the Rusty Nickel, we see through the window everybody and his brother is already there. On a good day, Jolene and Horace Dillard and their kids are a spindly lot on the puny side going downhill, needing Aunt Marris and me to feed them. Today, they’ve got a room full of friends to hold em up in their hour of need. Mooney’s behind the counter sitting on his stool; the Dillards are in front near the radio to hear good. We slip inside the door. Aunt Marris stands by the Dillards and she sees me come in and motions for me to come on up with her.
I see Mr. Turner, the mailman, who looks different not riding in his truck, sitting tall, delivering news like I seen him do all my days. I don’t figure him for a puny man short as me. I squeeze past Fleeta Wright, who smells like pumpkin pie, and Preacher Eli pats my shoulder, and Jolene Dillard holds out arms to give me a hug. I hug her back, and she whispers in my ear what Birdie said: “It’s Buck.” Jolene and me hold each other while the man on the radio talks. I can’t tell which one of us is shaking more, but we hold each other up and listen.
“…five hours since the explosion rocked this coal town at five thirty this morning, trapping ninety-nine men. It’s a sad situation…”
Buck Dillard. He’s seventeen like me, and on the shy and quiet side like his daddy, Horace. In my mind, I see a tender picture when Buck was fifteen, two years back. He walked outta church with young Eddie in his arms. Tiny Weeza and Pearl on each side held to his coattails, coming careful down the steps, them not up to his waist high, and Buck goes slow so the little girls don’t fall or have to let go of him. He is a kind soul. I bet this morning he don’t plan for his special life to be locked in coal dark, trapped in a mine.
The terrible truth is that paying work in Baines Creek is spotty, and some men go off to work the mines or cut timber. Some men don’t come back whole; some don’t come back at all. Sometimes paying work costs more than the paycheck.
The radio man goes on. “We’ve been told two dozen miners escaped right after the explosion before we got here. They’re badly burned and have been taken to Morgantown, but we don’t know…” Jolene and me squeeze each other and rock back and forth, and hope rises in the crowded room like a bubble of air coming to a gasping man. Bad luck threw Buck a bone, to be burned but not buried. At least there’s a sliver of hope.
The telephone shocks us, ringing loud over the radio talk, and everybody stops and looks at it like it’s alive and gonna bite us. Mooney turns down the radio and nods for Buck’s daddy, Horace Dillard, to pick up the ringing phone, and the poor man trembles and shuffles up to it. On the fourth ring, he lifts the receiver, and nobody makes a sound while Horace listens to a faraway voice, then says yes, yes, and bye. He hangs up, and his shoulders go to trembling, and Jolene hurries t
o him and takes his crying face in her tender hands, and he whispers, “He’s in the hospital.”
My empty belly fills with sweet joy I feared won’t ever come again, and the Dillard babies run and put arms round their mama and daddy, hugging each other. Buck will come home when he can.
Aunt Marris and me take the Dillards home on a day the sun pokes out from low clouds and shines a little warmth on blessed souls. Jolene and Horace sit in front, and I climb in back with the little ones, and we ride off, waving to Miss Kate and Birdie, who wave back. Preacher Eli does a happy jig in the road to make the children laugh, and they turn young for a minute, giggling at him. Their oldest sister, Lucy, and me hug em extra to keep em warm. By the time we get to the Dillard home, people from church are already there on the porch with food and helping hands. We leave today knowing hope walked in their front door and will stay for a spell.
Heading back to my place, Aunt Marris says, “It don’t seem right that beat-down folks gotta get their hearts bruised, too. Buck Dillard’s life changed today, but his mama and daddy’s gonna take whatever comes home. They got help from folks so they can float awhile.”
I’m lucky, too. When I get home, Roy’s truck ain’t there.
• • •
That night, with no sign of Roy, I got the trailer to myself. A wind whips through the trees, and hard rain clacks on the roof like BBs. I sit straight up in bed when a thought flies outta the dark. It’s bout when Mama left me behind and went off on her own.
My mama, Carly Hicks Blue, who I don’t recollect these years later, but all the same, we look alike and I carry her blood…
Did Mama go off looking for her special life?
Did she have to leave Baines Creek to find it?
Did she have to leave me behind?
Birdie Rocas
Some folks call me a witch, and that’s a good thing when it comes to digging ginseng. They come up on me in my long dress dragging the ground, catching twigs and leaves and stones. Got me a crow nesting in my topknot. I talk a little crazy, and folks back away and turn tail. Those who get forceful to my face got Tattler Swann to deal with. He’s scrawny and wiry, but Tattler and me is a pair.
Him and me dug ginseng back in the early days of September, before falling leaves covered the red berries and men turned desperate when the money plant’s gone.
When the ginseng was ready for harvest, Tattler showed up at my place at first light that morning with his digging stick. He got leather strips tied below his knees in case of rattlers. I got on three wool dresses so if them snakes strike, they get a mouthful of wool.
“What’s seng going for this year, Tattler?”
“Romey’s doing seventy dollars a pound.”
“That’ll do.”
The root of ginseng was what we gonna dig that day, hang it to dry, keep some for what ails us, and sell the rest to Romey for big money. Romey sends seng from our mountains all the way to New York City and cross the water to where the Chinaman lives. Seems rich folks far off got burdens of worry this plant can fix.
That’s why Tattler and me headed into danger that day, but when that money plant come in late summer, lazy men turn greedy. They mess with the hardworking. Take what ain’t theirs. We got digging sticks and burlap sacks. I got a pistol in my pocket.
There’s a honey hole on the north side of Shetland Holler where we headed that belongs to Chilly Dodd. He let me dig on his land cause I plant back what I take. He say he won’t shoot if he saw me with my digging stick.
“You a caretaker of the land, Birdie Rocas. I’m pleased to share my seng with you once in a while.”
Cause of Chilly Dodd, finding ginseng this year was easy; getting seng home without it getting stole was another matter. Tattler and me got time enough to get to Shetland Holler and back in daylight. We didn’t dawdle. Didn’t wanna end up in the woods at night with seng poachers.
• • •
Tattler always looks like a bundle of twigs, all legs and arms with no meat on his twelve-year-old self. That hunting day last month won’t different.
“You eat anything?”
“Had me an egg. Won’t near enough,” Tattler said, looking like the beggar he was.
“Get you some hardtack and whatever’s on the table,” I said.
Like usual, my crow friend, Samuel, was on a branch outside my door. When he seen me take holt of my digging stick, he glided down easy and settled in my hair, then we three was gone in the shy morning light.
It rained a big one last night, and we waded through mud in the low spots and crossed through the creek to wash it off. It was all the same. When the air stirred that morning, leftover rain dropped on us. We’d dry when the sun popped up.
We got to the top of the first ridge, and I stopped and Tattler stopped. He looked off in the distance while I rubbed my knee and twisted my foot thisaway and thataway. Gout was acting up mean and I got a nasty cramp in my arch. When I walked on, Tattler walked, too. The boy got natural manners.
Been couple of years since I head over Shetland Holler way, but the way don’t change. We cut through Old Nate’s farm that’s stood empty for ten years. We walked under pieces of pale bones hung long ago from a tall tree, dangling and clanking in the breeze.
“Them really damn Yankee soldier bones?” Tattler asked.
“Yep. Nate come up on em in a gully with their flesh rotted off. There was buttons, scraps of uniforms, and musket balls there for the telling. He don’t want to bury them bones on his land. Don’t want em to poison his dirt so his crops won’t never grow again. He strung em up at the edge a his land in insult and disrespect.”
I muttered, “Wonder what kinda rope he used that don’t rot?”
Tattler don’t say, but cut his eyes up at the ribs and hips and leg bones swaying at rope’s end, and curled his lips in disgust. He spit to the side to get the taste of Yankee outta his mouth.
We passed a shell of Nate’s cabin with the door missing. The roof blowed off from strong wind years back but the cockeyed walls still stand. Squatters, who gotta be worse off than most, took up here now and then. Today, it was empty. A barn on the hill leaned to the left like Jerome Biddle and his short leg.
“Birdie, you believe that stuff they say bout Old Nate’s ghost who still walks these woods and scares folks to death? You think he’s real?”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
“Why wouldn’t he be real?” Tattler’s voice turned high and young. “It’s told he scares the bejeezus outta people who walk on his property is what he does. Heard he killed a poacher for shooting a dang turkey in front of his house. You wanna believe that?”
“How’d he kill the poacher if him a spook?”
“The spook stopped that poacher’s heart, is what he done. Died right there on the ground next to the dead turkey he killed. Some sorry soul walking by come up on em two dead corpses. Almost had his self a heart attack. If he did”—Tattler stopped and did the math quick—“there’d be three dead corpses.”
“Bet that sorry soul took that turkey home and cooked it.”
“Well, I don’t hear that part… I wouldn’t pick up a dead turkey on the ground next to a dead man.”
“Even if you was hungry?”
“No, ma’am. I would not touch a dead turkey on Old Nate’s farm,” he said loud enough for Old Nate’s spirit to hear him.
“Even if you was starved three days?”
“Well…”
“Even if your innards got tied in a knot so painful you can’t stand up straight?”
Tattler chewed on his thumbnail, a worry sign his brain’s sorting out killer ghosts and dead turkeys.
“Well…when you put it that way—”
“Uh-huh. Hungry changes things.”
We walked by Old Nate’s weedy apple orchard smelling of hard cider from rotten fruit on the ground. A few
wormy apples hung in easy reach. The boy looked, but he don’t take. He said, “I don’t wanna be on Old Nate’s farm come sundown, Birdie. Just in case…you know.”
Samuel cawed.
“I hear you.”
• • •
Crows give me my name Birdie Rocas. Must have been one in another life cause the comfort I feel with them birds is natural. The crow who stays with me most days—now that him and me are getting up in years—is named Samuel. He’s smart. He finds things, fixes things, figures out riddles. Like today, Samuel rides on top of my head, like he always does when he gets the notion to warm my brain. All’s right in the world when Samuel and his kind are around, soaring on a breeze, nesting in the trees, and strutting on the earth.
Or riding on my head.
I’m midwife, medicine woman, and storywriter for these parts. For my kind of stories, I don’t sit round the fire spinning yarns and giving goose bumps like Tattler’s tale bout Old Nate. What I do is collect truth that bends easy if you won’t careful, and I write it down in my book where it stays put.
My Books of Truths is bound in soft leather made from the hide of a twelve-point buck I took down with my own bow and arrow. He stopped twenty paces in front of my lean-to when I was a girl learning the ways of the woods from a Injun called Gray Wolf.
That Injun let me glean secrets from him out in the beyond. He had skin the color of tupelo honey, but he was as tough as beef jerky. He went to the woods to die, and I slowed down his leaving cause I had need of him, and he obliged me.
That man’s hair glowed silver, and the braid of it lay down his brown back in summer, or over a bearskin in the cold so I could find him in the gloom of the woods. I followed that braid from one season into the next and learned plant magic. Dutchman’s pipe helps gas and lung troubles. The leaves of maidenhair ease coughs, and yarrow, the fever.
Gray Wolf was a Cherokee, and his native roots run deep in these mountains, back to the start of time, before Baines Creek got a white man’s name. When my kin settled here two hundred years ago, bones—or baines, like they was called in the old country—littered the ground. Couldn’t turn over a spade of dirt without finding a bit of baine. A war with the Injuns, Brits, Yankees, and settlers made a mess of things way back.