by Ruth White
Gosh, I wanted to go with her, but how could I let Aunt Evie down?
So I told Bobby Lynn all about Aunt Evie, how everybody loved her and gave her stuff, that she got jilted, and she listened to your problems.
“Well, maybe I’d like to put up apple butter, too,” Bobby Lynn said, which like to have surprised me to pieces. “Did you ever think of that, huh?”
“You mean it, Bobby Lynn?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think Rosemary will come, too?” I asked.
“I’ll call her and see.”
At first I felt uneasy about Aunt Evie, so when I got off the phone I went up the hill to see what she thought of strangers invading her premises. I should have known it! Aunt Evie was tickled to death and she danced a jig right there in her kitchen.
“Hit’s just like when I was a girl! We did things like that all the time. We’ll build a big fire outside, and …”
She was off and running, laying plans for Saturday. The rest of the week we gathered wood and got together all the things we needed. She had a big black pot to cook the apples in, and from several kitchens we collected bowls and knives for peeling and slicing, and buckets for peels and cores.
Mr. Hess and Cecil brought the apples in baskets and put them in Aunt Evie’s back yard. I helped carry the jars, and Cecil’s little brothers and sisters pitched in and delivered the sugar and spices.
Saturday morning I woke up with this tune going around in my head:
There once lived an Indian maid,
A shy little prairie maid,
Who sang a lay, a love song gay,
As on the plain she’d while away the day.
It was nerves. Every time I got nervous, some silly ditty started up in my head, and no matter what I did, it wouldn’t shut up.
What if Bobby Lynn and Rosemary were bored? What if they thought I was stupid and Aunt Evie was stupid and we lived in a stupid place on a stupid hill, and canning apple butter was a stupid thing to do on a Saturday?
She loved a warrior bold, this shy little maid of old,
But brave and gay, he rode one day to battle far away.
But one thing I did know and that was what to wear this time. Both Bobby Lynn and Rosemary said they were wearing their blue jeans and their daddy’s white shirts. I stole Vern’s only white shirt, and I didn’t care if he got mad at me. It was worth it. And from Rosemary’s daddy’s general store, for only sixty-nine cents each, Rosemary had bought us dog collars, which were the absolute rage at school. They were plastic, and you wore them around the top of your bobby socks on one ankle. Mine was yellow, Rosemary’s was red, and Bobby Lynn’s was green. I had rolled my hair tight, and when I brushed it out around my face, it looked all right.
The world outside was crisp and clear, the changing hills brilliant against a perfectly blue sky.
Bobby Lynn and Rosemary arrived about ten-thirty. Rosemary’s brother, Hassell, brought them in their daddy’s black Ford pickup. Hassell was sixteen and tall, with gray eyes like Rosemary’s and a shock of black hair almost hanging down into his eyes. He made me nervous, and my heart was flying, my mind racing. I was surprised when Hassell offered to carry the Cokes and Nabs that they had brought from their daddy’s store up to Aunt Evie’s. I steered the three of them quickly around my house, scared one of them might want to go in there. I knew Mama and Vern were still in bed, and the house and young’uns were a big mess as always.
Aunt Evie met us at her door as excited as a girl.
“You’re Rosemary,” she said. “Tiny told me you were tall and pretty. And here’s Bobby Lynn, looking like a doll. Tell me, Bobby Lynn, is Clint Clevinger your grandpa?”
“Why, he sure is. You know him?”
“I useter. Yeah, I useter. Don’t no more. And who is this handsome feller?”
“This is my brother, Hassell,” Rosemary said.
Then who do you think came up the hill at that very moment? Why, Cecil Hess!
“Hey,” he said cheerfully. “Hassell, I saw you, and I said to myself, ‘I bet me and old Hassell can get this show on the road.’”
Hassell grinned. Bobby Lynn giggled. She thought Cecil was the stuff. Then here came Beau, Luther, and Phyllis. I about died.
“Now, y’all just go on back home!” I stomped my foot at them. “Nobody invited you.”
Rosemary put her arm around Phyllis.
“Ain’t she cute?” she said.
Well, I’ll tell you one thing, she wouldn’t think she was so cute if she could hear her squealing in the A & P. But Phyllis had herself a hero on the spot. Beau and Luther latched on to Hassell like leeches, and nobody seemed to mind but me. Then Cecil’s brothers and sisters arrived one at a time. I was ready to chew off my fingernails. Directly, J. C. Combs, Joyce Boyd, and Dolly Horn came, and we all busted out laughing. It was a full-fledged party, and I was no longer in charge of anything. I could relax.
Pretty soon young folks packed Aunt Evie’s yard and spilled over into the woods. We were all peeling apples, laughing, and joking, while Aunt Evie flitted about, happy as a jaybird, hollering instructions.
The black pot sat over the fire right in the middle of the yard, and when she started adding the spices to those bubbling apples, the aroma was enough to make you foam at the mouth. We dipped out a bowl full of half-done apple butter and passed it around for everybody to sample on a piece of bread. It was good, and it whet our appetites for other refreshments.
Somehow we accumulated hot dogs, candy bars, potato chips, pickles, suckers, and bubble gum, and I don’t know what all else. It seemed every time we finished off one thing, something else appeared in its place. Cecil, J.C., and Hassell were running back and forth to the coal company store down the creek, and then the adults started coming with more food.
The Horns and the Hesses came first with a big cake and fresh apple cider. They helped us finish the apple butter, and we wound up with fifty-four quarts all in a row on Aunt Evie’s front porch.
Then the Combs family and Mama and Vern came with sandwiches and Kool-Aid. Mama was cleaned up, and she looked nice.
“This is my mother,” I introduced her to Bobby Lynn and Rosemary, and they said hey.
Vern just stood there expecting me to introduce him, too.
“And this is Vern,” I said quickly.
He was looking at me in his only white shirt that swallowed me whole. I turned my back to him and bounced away. He said hello to my friends, then wandered over to talk to Mr. Horn. I guess they talked about guns all afternoon. What can you say about a gun after a minute? They make a loud noise. What else can you say? They kill things. And not much else. Anyway, Vern had this ugly musket hanging on the wall in the living room right over that hole that used to be the fireplace. For a long time, Mr. Horn had coveted that gun to add to his collection. He had a whole bunch of guns, some of them rusty, some of them centuries old. He had used every trick in the book to get that gun from Vern, and nothing worked.
I noticed Hassell was following Dolly Horn around and she wasn’t paying any attention to him. She liked a boy from Princeton, West Virginia, who she met at 4-H camp. Cecil and Bobby Lynn seemed to be hitting it off I thought of Mr. Gillespie and wished with all my heart he was here, too. But putting up apple butter was probably the last thing in the world you would ever see him doing.
By suppertime the air had grown cool and Bobby Lynn, Rosemary, and I sat near the fire with Aunt Evie. We each had a wad of green bubble gum to work on, but mine was the biggest. Then Aunt Evie started telling us about Ward.
“I lived up Glory Holler back then on the side of a hill kinda like here,” she said. “And Ward lived down toward Harry’s Branch. When he came to court me, he yodeled. for me down the road, and you could hear him coming from a long ways off. When I’d hear him a-yodeling, I’d yodel back to him.”
“Can you yodel, Aunt Evie?” Rosemary and Bobby Lynn said together.
“Course I can yodel!”
“Oh, do it! Do it!�
� Bobby Lynn squealed. “I just love yodeling!”
And bless Pat if Aunt Evie didn’t stand up right there by the fire in the cool of the evening and yodel her head off! It sent chills right up my spine because I never did hear anybody yodel any better, not even Carolina Cotton in the movies.
People stopped whatever it was they were doing and looked at Aunt Evie and listened to her yodeling.
Now, you might not believe this, but I saw forty-six years fall off that old woman. I saw a young girl standing there yodeling to her beau, and I think others shared the same vision.
When she was finished, nobody moved or spoke because the echo was still bouncing off the hills. Then we applauded and cheered.
Bobby Lynn was speechless. She really did love yodeling, and I think she decided right then that Aunt Evie was going to teach her to yodel.
“I never heard the beat,” Rosemary said.
Aunt Evie just shrugged.
“Everybody nearabouts yodeled when I was a girl. Hit was a signal to say, ‘Here I come.’ Nowadays you just toot your old car horn. Ain’t near as pretty.”
As darkness came, we grew quiet, and started cleaning up. Bobby Lynn and Rosemary were the first to take their leave along with Hassell. I hated like the devil to see them go.
“Aunt Evie,” Bobby Lynn said, “I don’t know when I’ve had a better time.”
“Me too,” Rosemary agreed.
“Me three,” chorused the others.
“Well, you can thank Tiny,” Aunt Evie said and put an arm around me. “Hit was her doing.”
I was embarrassed, and I bent over and fiddled around with my dog collar.
That night I was so wound up I felt like I would never sleep again. Beside me Phyllis was out cold as I lay looking out at the moon over the hills.
Now, the moon shines tonight on pretty Red Wing,
The breeze is sighing, the night bird’s crying …
EIGHT
In the weeks following, autumn exploded and so did my social life.
Splatters of orange and red … the aroma of burning leaves and sharp winds crackling down the holler … the shrill new sound of the telephone ringing!
“It’s for Tiny … again!”
Football season, first downs and touchdowns … perfect skies and a flurry of blue and gold ever whichaway you looked … “The Star-Spangled Banner” … cold, clear nights and school spirit.
Hail, Black Gap High School,
Three cheers for our dear alma mater!
Pounding drums and parades … left—right … chills and cheers.
Strawberry shortcake, huckleberry pie!
V-I-C-T-O-R-Y.
Will we win it?
You doggone right!
Black Gap High School,
Fight! Fight! Fight!
Boys, winks and giggles, hot chocolate and Sousa marches … our rivals—Blueneid and Richlands and Big Lick—tucked away in the little dips and grooves of the hills like lurking beasts … my first best friends, Bobby Lynn and Rosemary, and Mr. Gillespie, of course, presiding over all, laughing and cheering with us, waving his baton, flitting in and out of my dreams, both waking and sleeping.
It was truly a magic season, but as suddenly as it had begun, it ended. The last football game was played at Black Gap. Afterward, as the crowd milled around, and the parking lot turned into a traffic jam, Rosemary, Bobby Lynn, and I slipped away to a quiet spot on the front campus. In our band uniforms we lay on our backs, looking up at the white steeple of the school against the sky. We were so close by then nothing needed to be said.
Suddenly our thoughts were interrupted by a frightening male voice.
“What’s yer name, girl?”
The three of us jumped to our feet gasping as a man stepped out of the shadows. We faced the intruder.
He was old and stooped over, using a walking stick. He had a long, white beard, and was wearing a toboggan cap over his ears, a red plaid jacket, and overalls.
We were speechless.
“Speak up! What’s yer name?” he repeated, and he poked me so hard in the shoulder with his stick I about fell backward, but Bobby Lynn and Rosemary caught me.
“Ti—Tiny Lambert,” I stammered.
“Huh!” he snorted loudly, and spit a big splat of tobacco juice on the grass. “You live up Ruby Valley with them Mullinses?”
I nodded.
Rosemary edged away from me. She was about to run for help.
“What? Can’t hear your head shaking, girl!” he hollered.
“Yes!” I spoke up. “I live up Ruby Valley with my mother, Hazel Mullins, and my stepfather, Vernon Mullins. Who are you?”
“None of yer goddamn business!”
That made me mad, and we stood glaring at each other for a minute. Then he turned abruptly and left us standing there.
“Who do you reckon … ?”
“I don’t know,” I said quickly, shivering. “Let’s get back to the others.”
Late that night the face of the old man came back to haunt me. Oh, I knew him all right, though I was surprised I could remember. It was a face from the misty past—a face I associated with Willa, and running across a windy mountaintop, and the taste of strawberries. Grandpa Lambert.
Bobby Lynn started spending every Saturday with Aunt Evie learning how to yodel. On pretty days I could hear them up there practicing outside. At lunch I joined them and we gossiped and giggled as we ate something good that Bobby Lynn had brought from her house.
Rosemary’s birthday was on a Saturday in February and she invited me and Bobby Lynn to come to her house and spend the day and night with her. She lived about twelve miles outside of Black Gap. Then a big snow came on that very day, but Bobby Lynn’s daddy put chains on his tires and took us anyway.
It was fun driving through the snow and seeing how pretty everything was. We were in high spirits as we climbed out of Mr. Clevinger’s car and went into Rosemary’s daddy’s store.
Rosemary was helping out, but when we went in, her daddy excused her. She bundled up and we went out the back door of the store right on the river. Before us was a swinging bridge suspended all the way across the river—about thirty or forty yards to the opposite bank where the railroad tracks were. Beyond the tracks, nestled against the hillside, was the Laynes’ cozy white house with smoke coming from the chimney.
“You live over there?” I cried out in amazement. “We have to go over that bridge?”
“Sure,” Rosemary said. “Come on, I’ll show you how to walk it. It’s fun.”
Rosemary struck off across the bridge. It was about three feet wide, with a high mesh-wire fence and a cable on each side so there was no danger of falling off.
It was obvious Rosemary was an expert at navigating that bridge. It began to sway—tike a bed does when you walk on it. She grabbed a cable and grinned at me and Bobby Lynn from the center.
“Come on! You have to pick up the rhythm of the bridge.”
So we took off after her, laughing. But that bridge was a trick you didn’t learn just by watching somebody else. Every time you thought it was going to swing to the right, it went left. And every time you thought it was going to dip, it rose up at you instead. After about ten steps, Bobby Lynn and I had the silly giggles so bad we just stood there hanging on to each other, and to the cable. Rosemary had to come and get us. A few steps at a time, she guided us across the river and up onto the railroad tracks on the other side.
Rosemary’s house was comfortable and clean. They had a big fire going in a fireplace in the living room, and in front of it was a huge round thick rug. I could smell some good sweet thing baking—probably a birthday cake. A television set was turned on in the corner of the room.
Hassell came out of the kitchen with a glass of milk and an enormous sandwich in his hands, and his mouth was pooched out and running over.
“Hi, Hassell!” we said, and he waved his full hands around, while trying to do justice to the load in his mouth.
We laughed. We
were prone to laugh at anything.
Mrs. Layne came in from the kitchen wiping her hands on her apron. She was a warm, friendly woman who looked like a middle-aged version of Rosemary.
“Come in, girls. Take off your coats. Ain’t it awful out there?”
“No, no, we’re going to build a snowman,” Rosemary said. “I just came in to ask you to make us some hot tea to drink with the cake.”
“Fine, fine,” Mrs. Layne said.
We went back outside.
“I want to go on the bridge again,” Bobby Lynn said when the snowman was almost finished.
“Me too!” I said.
“Sure we will,” Rosemary said.
The bridge probably was not that much fun for Rosemary, but she was always agreeable.
“After that we’ll go in and have some cake and tea and watch television,” Rosemary said.
“Yeah!”
We finished our snowman and went on the bridge. Back and forth we traipsed, lunged, swayed, giggling all the time until suddenly Bobby Lynn and I discovered the secret, picked up the rhythm, and waltzed across without missing a step.
We met in the middle, hung on to the cable for balance, and gazed out at the half-frozen river and the white hills. The sun was out by then, and we knew the snow wouldn’t last long under its brilliance.
“Yodel for us, Bobby Lynn,” I said.
“Oh, do!” Rosemary squealed.
“I’m not too good at it yet,” she said.
“We don’t care. Do it,” I said.
“Okay,” Bobby Lynn conceded. “Y‘all sing ‘When I Lived in the Valley,’ and when you get to the yodeling part, I’ll do it.”
So we did.
When I lived in the valley,
And my sweetheart in the hills,
Our signal was
Odel … odel … le … di … whoo!