by Leah Weiss
Baines Creek is mostly peaceful since then cept for moonshining, revenuers, ginseng hunters, and jaspers. More bodies been buried since and got turned to bone. That’s a fact.
The day in the long-ago woods when I was a girl was a queer one. That buck stood still and looked at me like he knew he would be special in my life for all time. He gave his self to my Books of Truths. Those pages grew thick over time, and when I write, I touch his hide that’s turned soft with handling.
I use a quill to put words in my books. Made my first one bout the time I killed the buck. I made it from a turkey feather, stiff and straight. Soaked it overnight in water and cut the tip at a slant. The ink comes from blackberry juice, vinegar, salt, and water. Been using turkey quills and my own ink for sixty years. They lay words neat and honest on paper.
I write down the usual births and deaths, but what makes me pick up the quill and lay down story words is when life don’t make sense.
One time, I write bout a swarm of speckled butterflies that come through these hills and stayed two weeks on the ridge they never lived on before. The mountain shimmered them weeks long ago like it was alive. Then the butterflies left with only my words to remember em by.
Then there’s the story of the chestnut tree that up and quit long ago and was the scariest thing I ever been witness to. It flummoxed everybody something terrible. Was like the end of the world when those ancient trees decided to die. Chestnuts was here…then they won’t.
When the dying started way back when I was a girl, truckloads of jaspers come to these mountains and scratched their heads. They hauled cameras up steep hillsides to take pictures of the war zone. That’s what they called it: the war zone. The leaves dropped off early and crunched underfoot when the air was still warm. Age-old limbs shriveled up, then trunks split open showing the heart of em trees was gone. That was one sad story.
The chestnut trees leaving long ago changed mountain life. It left a hardship for every man and every critter to this day. Back then, chestnut wood cut into wide boards made cabins and furniture that don’t rot. Chestnuts used to feed folks and four-legged critters with its carrot-tasting nut. And Injuns used them nuts and leaves to tend to whooping cough and heart ailments. Now we dig ginseng for money and a remedy. And shiners make hooch. Money gotta be made some other way with the chestnut tree gone.
Sometimes I feel this old mountain breathing weary. The high, thin air gets sucked deep into her lungs, all the way back to the start of time. I know her secrets and sins. This high place is hard on folks who give in or give up. For those who stay, Baines Creek is enough.
• • •
We was getting close to the honey hole and nobody messed with us yet, but that don’t mean they won’t watching. Samuel acted fidgety so I paid attention. The going was steep up that last ridge, and Tattler got in front and hold out his digging stick for me to grab and pull. We made it to the top when I said, “We here.”
We stood on the ridge and looked down the shade side on Shetland Holler. The shadows under goldenseal and pawpaw trees was blue-green, and red ginseng berries sat on top of the stumpy five-leaf plants.
To get to the seng was steep, so I sat on my fanny and grabbed holt of saplings to ease down the north slope through the seng. On the way down, we dug roots with our sticks and planted the red berries in the holes so they come back. The ground was damp and soaked clear through my three skirts.
Tattler and me was quiet while we worked and listened out for trouble. It don’t take long for our sacks to get full of roots, some as big as my hand. We won’t greedy, just grateful, and when we got enough for medicine and some to sell for hard times, I gave a short whistle and Tattler come my way. We worked our way up the hill, and it was a struggle I can’t hardly manage, and couldn’t if it won’t for Tattler.
Back at the top, we outta breath, sweaty and muddy from the pull, and we fell back on the ground breathing hard, and Samuel let go my head and flew up to a branch. We was gonna tie them sacks of seng under my skirts for travel, but that got sidetracked.
We heard the cock of a rifle.
We sit up slow and looked behind us. Two men, skinny as hickory sticks, pointed their rifles at us, ready to do us wrong. I won’t the cleanest woman, but they was the dirtiest men I seen all year. Up to their elbows was black from digging in the dirt, and their overalls patched twice over. The tall one’s bib was tied up with vine.
One said, “I told you, Jed, they was senging, and look it. Ain’t we lucky buggers!” That one laughed like a jackass, and there won’t a tooth in his nasty mouth.
“Pull me to stand, Tattler,” I said, not wanting to sit helpless in front of these ne’er-do-wells.
“Ya’ll stay put,” Jed ordered, but we stood anyway and he don’t shoot.
Tattler was behind me breathing fast and smelling of fear. Off to the side, I saw a scrap of a girl sitting beside bags of their seng they mighta stole from the hardworking. She got remnants of Sadie Blue to her white skin and brown hair, but I think this girl would slit my throat in the dark for a dime.
We in a pickle.
The serious one called Jed pointed at our seng with his rifle. “Grab them pokes, Dooley.”
When Dooley reached for my bag, I said, “You don’t wanna do that, boy.”
He stopped, scrunched up his forehead, and looked back at Jed, then mustered some gumption. “Why not, old woman?”
Samuel flew back and settled on my head for support. “See this bird on top a my head?”
Dooley looked, but he won’t scared.
“What’s a scrawny bird gonna do?” he asked, sassy. “Peck me on my hand?” He snorted a laugh. “I’d slap him to the ground is what I’d do and shoot his fool head off. And yours, too, for the hell of it.”
He done a little dance cause he was crazy on hooch.
“Look over yonder,” I said and pointed with my stick to a dozen crows sitting on a low limb close by. Dooley and the girl done like I said, but not Jed. He stared at me and don’t blink. He got dead eyes that seen too much. I needed to move his dead eyes off me.
Just in time to help the situation, Samuel stood up, spread his wings, and called out, sharp: Caw! Jed cut his eyes up, and I raised my pistol in my skirt pocket and shot.
The bullet hit Jed smack in the knee, and he dropped his rifle and fell screaming and clutching his busted kneecap. Blood run through his dirty fingers. His leg cocked out funny.
I aimed for his foot.
Quick as my stiff body can turn, I pointed the smoking hole in my dress to Dooley, who peed his pants like the chicken he was and raised his hands without being told.
I said, “Get on your knees, and put your hands on your head,” and he done it cause he saw Jed was brought down by a old woman with a pistol in her pocket.
I told Tattler, “Get them guns,” and he snapped to it, brave, like I hoped.
I added, “Check them pockets, too.” He got two rifles and a pistol he fished outta Dooley’s stinky pocket, and a knife outta Jed’s.
“We don’t mean ya’ll harm,” I said, “but you ain’t getting our seng. You getting tied up.”
I looked at Dooley on his knees, and add, “Or I can shoot you like I done Jed. Which one you want?”
“Tie me up. Tie me up.” Dooley babbled and begged, and Tattler calmed him down and obliged him by cutting some honeysuckle vine close by to use as rope. My boy knowed his knots, and he tied them men’s hands behind em and their ankles tight, too.
I already seen up the hillside the girl and their seng’s gone, so they got trouble they don’t even know bout yet. Don’t think she’ll come after us now she saw I got a pistol and know how to use it. We picked up our things that day and the outlaws’ guns, and hightailed it outta there.
I got new energy, and Tattler and me moved away from Shetland Holler, me hauling one bag of seng and him the rifles and the other bag
. I was in front cause I knowed the way, and my long skirts swished back and forth, and my digging stick thumped like a third leg. Samuel clamped down on my head to keep from sliding. Tattler kept up, but I heard him huffing. We don’t waste breath on words. I don’t think those outlaws was getting out of them vines anytime soon, but I aimed for us to be far away when they do.
Yep. That be the last time I hunt seng—less it decided to grow by my door.
• • •
Walking past my door every day be that teacher Kate Shaw. I watch her going and coming, and I study her these weeks she settles in. She got a strong walk. Purpose to her day. She don’t rattle easy. Now that we know each other, when she sees my door open, she knocks and calls out, “Birdie, got time for a visit?”
I always do for her.
I put on tea, and Kate picks up another one of my Books of Truths. That’s her favorite thing to do when she visits—read my words, cause she’s the curious kind. She turns them pages careful, bends over my words, and sounds some of em out loud cause they’re different from her spellings. Some of em are Injun words she don’t know. Some of em are made-up words I need for my story. Her finger slides along from side to side.
“Birdie, your stories are treasures,” she says, sips her tea, and goes back to studying.
I never let nobody read my words before Kate Shaw. Nobody before would understand or care like she does.
“You capture this community of people beautifully, and their pioneering independence. Your message is raw and powerful. Where did you learn to write like this?”
Kate gets flowery with her words, and she’s got surprise in her voice. I light my pipe and blow lavender smoke. “You think you the only teacher to come?”
Kate takes it like the part tease it is.
“Of course not. However, I think your writing is more than words on a page. You spin them into living history. What you’re recording is different from what others write about this place. Outsiders see Appalachian poverty as something to be cut out. The good with the bad. They send volunteers to save you from yourselves.”
Kate don’t say she’s one of them volunteers.
“Do you know the saying, ‘Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater’?”
The teacher in her don’t give me time to say so, when she adds, “Well, you write about the baby while everyone else is writing about the bathwater.”
I nod and puff on my pipe. “You smart.”
• • •
In that first week of October when frost come most mornings, Roy Tupkin and his shenanigans make my crow friends grow curiouser. The fool’s leaving a trail, and the crows bring me bits of his messy life. They put em in a box I got outside my door just for Roy’s stuff. I’m shuffling through that box when Kate comes by.
“What’s this?” She steps in close and looks over my shoulder, nosy as all get out.
“Roy Tupkin’s stuff. The crows bring it to me.”
“Roy Tupkin’s? These are specifically his things?”
“Yep.”
“A box only for Roy Tupkin’s things…”
“What’s wrong with your hearing?”
“I hear you, Birdie, although I find it impossible to believe the crows know what belongs to Roy. You have to admit, it sounds far-fetched.”
“Far-fetched or close-fetched, these here things is Roy’s things, and the crows bring em.”
I don’t like to raise my voice to her, but she’s got too much valley thinking left in her. She edges closer and looks over my shoulder at what I lay out on the stump. A chewed toothpick. A white shirt button. A strand of red ribbon. A gold necklace. A plastic comb.
“And all of these things came from Roy Tupkin. For certain.” Kate’s got that uppity teacher tone in her voice.
“Kate, you what Preacher Eli calls a doubting Thomas. You wanna see Roy drop that there toothpick, a crow pick it up and bring it to this box, but that ain’t gonna happen. And you don’t know jack squat bout crows. Take Samuel there.”
My friend rests on the low branch, watches, and puts up with doubting Kate.
“I’ve been friends with that rocas going on twenty years.”
“Twenty years?”
“Yep.”
She blinks twice and says, “Did you say ‘rocas’? That’s your last name.”
“Yep.”
I light my pipe and give Kate time to think. She’s turned addlebrained today.
“Does ‘rocas’ mean ‘crow’?”
“Yep. Rocas is crow, and crow is rocas.” Everybody knows that.
“In what language?”
“Gerlac.”
“You mean Gaelic?”
“That’s what I say.”
“And you’ve known this rocas”—she points to Samuel—“this crow for twenty years?”
I look at her like she needs to grow an extra head cause the one she’s got don’t work. I don’t insult Samuel and answer. I head inside and pull out one of the Books of Truths.
She follows me in. I say, “Sit. Read.” I leave her.
• • •
My story starts with a mean winter. It snowed to beat all, with drifts up to the roof and low clouds dropping ice steady. Felt like you had to stoop to get under those clouds. I’ve got snowshoes on and wear Gray Wolf’s bearskin that hooks in front with wire and trails behind. I head out to check traps cause the larder is bout empty.
Pickings was slim that story day, and I only had one hare to show for it. Had one more trap to check before I head back home when I hear a gunshot from up on the ridge.
They shot me! Shot me in the back!
I stood for a odd second, then fell in the snow. The wind went quiet like it knowed something bad just happened, and the fire pain in my back made me suck air in little bites. Bodies come running, crunching through the icy snow, then they come up beside me. One of em said, “Shit, Elton, I told you it won’t no bear. You kilt a old woman, is what you done. Get her hare. Least we got something to eat out of this. You want the bearskin?”
They pulled on Gray Wolf’s bearskin but it stayed hooked, then they flipped me over. When I opened my eyes clumpy with snow stuck to my lashes, they jumped back.
A different voice said, “Lord, she ain’t dead. What we gonna do now?”
Elton said, “She’s a goner for sure, losing all that blood. I’m not wasting another bullet when the deed’s mostly done.”
Just like that, them scalawags walked off with my hare and left me for dead.
I looked up at the sky and gotta decide: Am I gonna die today or another day?
I picked another day.
I started the crawl to the tall hemlock to get outta the sleet coming down hard. I was a worm inching along, a snail leaving a trail. I got to the tree weaker than a body got a right to be and call itself alive. Scooted under the branches up against the trunk. Pulled the bearskin over my head. The pain in my back’s gone numb. Home’s far off. The hunters who shot me long gone. The snow has already covered my tracks. I wanna sleep. I heard the crows. I sleep.
I woke up cause something like BBs was falling. I pulled back the fur and saw juniper berries. They don’t grow here, but I ate some, slept some. The sun went down. The sun come up.
When I wake next time, I hear a rustling through the branches, and a man’s voice said, “There you is,” like he was looking for me. He picked me up, bearskin and all, and put me on his dogsled, and off we went over the snow.
I woke up in a teepee, warm and weak. Got no clothes on under the furs. Got a strip of cloth running round my middle holding medicine of comfrey root and honey from the smell of it.
The man in his underclothes sat on his heels and stirred stew over a fire. Wet clothes hung on a line. He saw me come to and poured black tea in a wood cup. “Drink this.”
I drink tea, sleep, and wake
through daylight, then dark, then day. Day and night got turned upside down, and I don’t care.
One day I opened my eyes and sat up and ate his stew. The man said his name was Abraham. He said the crows saved me, and I said, “I know.”
“How come you know that?” Abraham asked, curious.
“I was a crow in another life. You believe that?”
“I believe you,” that man said.
“How come?”
“Cause you said so.”
Abraham had been coming through that stretch of valley where I was shot, and he saw a dozen crows circling a hemlock. He said he would have passed it by if it was vultures, but crows is different. They dipped in front of his sled, then flew back to that hemlock. He paid attention. He looked under that tree and thought he saw a starved bear, but it was me. He said I would have been a goner in another day if it won’t for them crows.
• • •
Kate comes out the trailer when she finishes my crow story. I’m quiet. I sort the box, but not really, and make her talk. She takes her time and I don’t blame her. She’s finding out she don’t know much, and that’s gonna make her feel lost for a spell. All her book smarts is worth a handful of nothing when it comes to real truths.
“I don’t know what to say,” she starts.
That’s good.
“Did you see Abraham again?”
That’s safe.
“No. Him a rover. Don’t stay in one place.”
“How long did you stay with him?”
“Nigh on two weeks to heal, then he brought me home, got in wood, built my fire, hunted, and filled my larder. Then he left. But something come home with me.”
“What?”
“Samuel.”
“Samuel?”
I nod my head toward the branch.
“Samuel, the crow? That crow?”
Kate looks at him sitting on his branch. He looks off a ways, but he listens. He don’t mind being talked bout but you gotta be respectful.