by Ruth White
“Yeah, just like Grandpa left it.”
“Beds?”
“Yeah, two. What are you thinking?”
“We could come up here and stay through strawberry season!”
“You mean it, don’t you?” I said.
“I do. I mean it. Gosh, think of the fun we could have—just the three of us.”
“But what about school?”
“Oh, we’ll go to school. Daddy can drive the Studebaker and I’ll borrow his truck. He’ll let me have it—to get up here and to school.”
“And we could bring food from home,” I said. “And here’s our water. But there’s no electricity, Rosemary. No lights.”
“We don’t need lights. We’ll be too tired to stay up after dark anyway.”
“Let’s do it!”
We stood up and hugged each other and squealed.
Then we went into the cabin. Everything we needed was there to live for a few weeks. A coal stove for cooking, beds, dishes, pots and pans, odds and ends of furniture, and an outdoor toilet. We drove back down the mountain in high spirits. First step was to ask Mama. She was getting ready to go to the hospital and wasn’t very interested in anything else.
“Reckon so,” was all she said as she glanced out the window to look for Dixie’s car.
Vern said, “As long as there ain’t no boys up there after dark.”
I groaned inside, and didn’t look at him.
“Did you hear me, girlie?” he said.
“I heard.”
“No boys after dark,” he repeated.
I was wondering how he was going to know if we had boys up there after dark or not.
“I’ll be checking up on you,” he said like he was reading my mind. “And if I ever catch a boy with you after dark, it’s all over.”
Rosemary and I looked at each other and shrugged. After all, the object was to pick as many strawberries as possible.
“Fine with me,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”
Next we called Rosemary’s mama, who asked a lot of questions, but she finally said yes.
Then we called Bobby Lynn, who was very excited, and of course Mrs. Clevinger said, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” because she wanted to sell us the Henry J.
So that’s how it happened that when the first strawberry on Ruby Mountain turned red, Rosemary, Bobby Lynn, and I were standing there looking at it. We pounced upon it and were off and running.
To tell the truth, the first week we didn’t get many berries at all. They weren’t quite ready, but we sure had a good time. After we picked what berries were ripe in the afternoons after school, we took them down to Mama, and she and the kids went out selling just before dark. We went back up on Ruby Mountain and cooked hot dogs mostly, or beans and taters. Sometimes we had sandwiches and pop.
By Saturday afternoon of that first week we ran out of anything to do and we got bored. Only I knew what was coming the next week and the next. We sure wouldn’t have time to get bored when the strawberries really came on thick.
But that day I suggested we cook up some hamburgers for the fellers who were coming up there directly. Rosemary went down to the company store, while Bobby Lynn and I cleaned up the cabin and fixed the fire outside. Nessie knew something exciting was coming about and she got under our feet and barked at us like she was trying to talk. So I talked to her and told her what was happening.
Rosemary came back and we started frying hamburgers, and baking taters in the fire. It was beginning to smell good when Jesse and Roy arrived with Cecil in Cecil’s daddy’s truck. Cecil backed the truck up to the outside fire and turned on the radio.
“So fine, yeah!” the radio blared out. Jesse grabbed me around the waist, and we started dancing around the fire as free as Indians.
“My baby’s so doggone fine,” Jesse sang with the radio, but he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. We laughed hard.
Then Roy and Rosemary, Cecil and Bobby Lynn all started dancing, too.
“She sends those chills up and down my spine.”
We were whirling around the fire, and all over the mountaintop, while Nessie barked at our feet.
“Oh … oh … yeah … So fine.”
Afterward we sat on the ground and ate hamburgers hot off the fire, and drank pop. We could have stayed together for hours, but you could see the sun tapping a distant mountaintop and WBGV Radio in Black Gap was signing off with “Come home, come home, it’s supper time,” as it did every day.
“Vern says y’all have to be gone by dark,” I said.
“Yeah, I know,” Jesse said.
Then he took my hand and whispered, “Let’s go for a walk.”
We walked away from the others and around to the other side of the cabin, where the weeping willow was softly sweeping.
“Let’s crawl up under the willow,” Jesse said.
So we did.
Well, it was nice—cool and dark and private under there. We lay on the ground and started kissing. Pretty soon I had to push him away as I was always doing these days.
“What’sa matter, Tiny?”
“Stop.”
“I don’t want to stop, and I don’t want to wait no more.”
“We’ve talked about this before, Jesse.”
“Yeah, but it’s time to reconsider.”
“I don’t know, Jesse …”
“We can do what we want if we’re careful, Tiny.”
“What d’you mean?”
“Just that. There are ways to keep from getting pregnant.”
“So they say.”
“Well, I can’t wait, Tiny. Can you honestly say it’s easy for you?”
“No, it ain’t easy, Jesse.”
“There! Will you think about it?”
“Well …”
“Promise me you’ll think about it.”
“I promise.”
We crawled out from under the willow and joined the others. Shortly thereafter Vern came driving up the mountain with Phyllis beside him and Beau and Luther in the back. He parked the truck a ways from the cabin and watched us. The boys took the hint. Darkness was coming anyway. They left, and then Vern left, too.
TWENTY-ONE
Afterward Bobby Lynn, Rosemary, and I built up the fire and started singing “On Top of Old Smokey”—all forty verses.
It was a crystal-clear night with millions of stars all around us. The moon was full to bustin’, and so round and bright it seemed like you could walk out to the edge of the mountaintop and reach right up and grab it in your arms.
Then Rosemary brought out a pack of Lucky Strikes and we started puffing like we smoked cigarettes regular. But it was really our first smoke unless you count the corn silks as kids.
“What brought this on, Rosemary?” Bobby Lynn said. “How come you got cigarettes?”
“Oh … Roy!” Rosemary sputtered. “He said the other day that no wife of his was ever going to smoke cigarettes. I never wanted to smoke till he said that. So today at the store I felt like buying a pack.”
“You’re strange, Rosemary Layne,” I said. “You know that? You’re strange.”
She grinned, and puffed.
We practiced holding the cigarette just right, and flashing it around for dramatic effect as we talked. It wasn’t bad if you pulled the smoke in just a little bit, and blew it out real fast before you could taste it.
Then Rosemary said, “I have a suggestion.”
We watched her light up a second cigarette.
“Who wants to play One Question?”
We were silent.
One Question was more a test of loyalty than a game. Only the best of friends played it, and we had never played it before. Everybody must want to play, and everybody must swear never to tell the answer to the One Question.
What you did was ask the One Question you always wanted to ask your friend, but you didn’t because it was too personal. And when it came your turn to answer, you had to tell the truth. It was no telling what they might ask. Still I said,
“Okay, I’ll play.”
“Me too,” Bobby Lynn said.
So we got in a huddle and drew straws. Bobby Lynn lost, so she would get the One Question first. Rosemary and I walked away from her and discussed what we wanted to ask. We had to agree, and we had to word the question so she couldn’t answer with a simple yes or no. Then we walked back to the fire and sat down one on either side of her. She seemed to be holding her breath.
“This is our One Question for you, Bobby Lynn,” Rosemary said. “What happened between your mama and daddy?”
All the air went out of Bobby Lynn, and she drooped.
“They were fighting all the time,” she said quickly as if she had rehearsed her answer. “And she wanted him to leave. So they are getting a divorce. I haven’t seen him in months, and I miss him.”
She seemed real sad and I was almost sorry we had asked her.
“She said the feeling was gone,” Bobby Lynn went on almost like she was talking to herself or thinking out loud. “And he said—I’ll never forget it—he said, ‘Love is more than a feeling.’”
Nobody said anything for a while.
Bobby Lynn said it again, “Love is more than a feeling.”
Then silence.
We couldn’t ask anything else, and she seemed to be finished.
“Okay, Tiny,” Rosemary said. “Your turn.”
The two of them got up and walked into the shadows. I couldn’t imagine what they would ask me, but I suddenly thought of Vern, and my blood ran cold. Could they possibly suspect? How could they know? No, it wasn’t possible. Still I couldn’t shake the paralyzing fear that somehow they would word their question so that I would have to tell. I would lie, no matter what. I would never tell.
They came back and I was afraid they would see how scared I was.
“Who is your daddy?” Bobby Lynn said quickly.
Was that all? I laughed.
“Do you know?” Rosemary said.
“Only One Question!” I reminded her. “Sure I know. He was a soldier and he loved my mother very much. He planned to marry her—I know he did—but he was killed at Pearl Harbor five months before I was born.”
Sure it was a lie. Somehow I couldn’t tell them he went away right after Pearl Harbor was bombed and never even wrote a letter, like my mama and I did not matter at all.
“That’s all,” I said. “Except for his name—Ernest Bevins.”
“That’s so sad,” Rosemary said.
Then she mumbled it was her turn. Our One Question for Rosemary was something Bobby Lynn and I had wondered about a lot.
“Have you and Roy done it?”
Rosemary grinned.
“Yeah” was all she said, and too late we realized our mistake. She didn’t have to tell us anything else because we asked a yes/no question. Bobby Lynn and I looked at each other, disgusted, and Rosemary laughed and laughed.
“Okay.” She yielded at last. “I’ll say more. We did it three times during football season. I wanted to beat Clintwood so bad, I promised Roy if he would make a touchdown, I’d do it.”
“And he did!” Bobby Lynn said.
“And he made two more touchdowns after that,” Rosemary said with a smile. “One against Bristol and one against Richlands.”
We giggled.
“But after football season I wouldn’t do it anymore.”
“Why not?”
“I was afraid of getting in trouble.”
“Well, I have heard,” I said, “that once you start doing it, you can’t stop.”
“That is a great big lie,” Rosemary said. “It was easy to stop. And I am through till I’m married. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, you know.”
It was midnight before we got to bed. Bobby Lynn and Rosemary shared Grandpa’s big bed that night, and I slept in the bed where I was born, and where I slept with Mama until I was three years old. I opened up the window all the way to let in the gentle night breeze. The homemade quilt, stitched by the hands of my Grandmother Lambert, was fully visible in the moonlight. It was a sunburst pattern in bright yellow and red. Lovingly I ran my hand over it and wondered about the woman who put it together. Was she in love with my Grandpa Lambert?
Nessie settled down with a sigh on the rug and I stretched out on the bed. I looked down at my body, firm and pretty in the moonlight. Yes, I thought, I have arrived. I have reached womanhood, and I am not ashamed of these feelings I have for Jesse. We want each other and it is as simple and natural as that. Then why this feeling of anxiety? Why do I hesitate to do what he wants me to do? I fell into an uneasy sleep.
It was not the bright moonlight that woke me, nor the shadow of the weeping willow sweeping my pillow. It wasn’t even the rich, heavy scent of honeysuckle that hung like something solid in the air. But I was aware of all these things as I rolled over and opened my eyes to the night. It was something else—something more subtle, illusive.
“What is it?” I whispered.
Then I saw her shadow interwoven among the shadows of the weeping willow. Sweeping … swaying … moving rhythmically with the pendent branches ever so gently across the wall, the bed, and my face on the pillow.
Willa, Willa, on my pilla’ …
Quietly I moved to the window and looked out. It was Willa in a long, full, lacy white gown dancing around the willow tree in the moonlight.
“Willa!” I whispered, laughing, and she looked at me and winked.
She went on dancing, breathlessly beautiful, and graceful as a swan with her lovely red hair floating about her.
“Willa,” I said again softly, and she came to the window, laughing mischievously, and knelt. We sat there, one on either side of the window, our arms touching on the windowsill, looking into each other’s eyes. I could smell her honeysuckle breath as she panted slightly. Her cheeks were full and red.
“You feel it, too, don’t you, Willa?”
She rolled her eyes toward the moon, and smiled mysteriously.
“Is it the spring?” I said. “Or is it the moon? Is it that old black magic, Willa?”
She looked steadily into my eyes.
“Or is it just a trick?” I whispered to her, and the breeze caught my words and lifted them into the night. “Is falling in love just a trick that nature plays on us?”
She said nothing.
“I want to be sure, Willa. I’m going to wait until I’m sure it’s the right thing to do.”
The next day I said no to Jesse.
TWENTY-TWO
Just as I figured, the weeks following were so frantic not a one of us had time to spit. At the crack of dawn we rolled out of bed. And up on the mountain with the sky right on top of you, dawn seemed to crack earlier than it did down in the bottom.
We were grumpy as we ate bread and jelly or something left over from the night before. We each took a pan full of water—cold because none of us wanted to build a fire to heat it. I went off to my bedroom, Rosemary to the other, and Bobby Lynn took the kitchen, and we washed ourselves as best we could, shivering, shaking, and scratching bug bites. You’d be surprised how fast you can wash yourself under those conditions.
Then we dressed, piled into the pickup, and rode the twelve miles to school, where we dragged through the day, feeling grungy.
Right after school we changed into our shorts and tennis shoes and headed for the patch. Along with Aunt Evie, Mama, Luther, Beau, and Phyllis, Cecil and his brothers and sisters, and sometimes Roy, we all picked until our fingers were crimson and our backs in pain. Then Mama and Cecil took the berries down the mountain. That week Mama struck a deal with the A & P and the coal company store in Ruby Valley. Both stores wanted all we could pick. We had hit the big time. Mama handled all the money and kept track of how many quarts everybody picked. She made a rule also that “a nickel on every quart goes to Tiny ’cause this is Tiny’s land and Tiny’s strawberries. Without her, none of us would be making any money.”
Her saying that made me feel important, but selfconscious, too. I nev
er had told my friends about my land because we never bragged to each other.
“You own all this?” Bobby Lynn said, sweeping her arms around the mountaintop.
“Yeah, my Grandpa Lambert left it to me.”
“You? Just you?” Rosemary said. “Not your whole family?”
“No, just me.”
“Wow!”
They looked at each other and grinned. “That’s cool, Tiny.”
Cool. I would have to remember that word. Everybody was saying it. Yeah, it was cool, thanks to Grandpa Lambert.
At the end of three weeks we were plum picked out, and we didn’t leave many strawberries on the ground that year. We counted up our money and squealed. Rosemary and Bobby Lynn made just over $100.00 each and I made $160.00. It was the most I had ever made on strawberries.
Saturday afternoon, Rosemary drove us down to the Clevingers’ to get the Henry J.
Mrs. Clevinger was hanging out clothes in her back yard.
“My goodness, just look at you little brown boogers and it ain’t even June yet!”
We crowded around the Henry J. It was olive-green, six years old, and not a scratch in sight. Only problem was Bobby Lynn and I couldn’t drive, but Rosemary was going to teach us.
Then a funny thing happened. Bobby Lynn’s daddy drove up. He looked handsome, wearing a dark suit, a white shirt, and a tie. Bobby Lynn got the strangest look on her face when she saw him, like she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. She walked out to him and they fell into each other’s arms, and started to cry, both of them. I never loved Bobby Lynn more than at that moment. I knew somehow exactly how she felt, seeing her daddy like that for the first time in months. I had to turn away and look at something else because I wanted to cry, too. How wonderful it must be, I thought, to have a daddy like that—a real daddy. And the way he cried when he hugged her—gosh, I loved him for that.
Mrs. Clevinger was standing watching them and she had tears in her eyes, too.
Rosemary cleared her throat and poked me.
“Let’s get out of here.”
“Okay.”
So Rosemary went over and said to Mrs. Clevinger, “If you’ll give me the key, me and Tiny will go for a ride and leave y’all alone for a while.”