Chapter 38
MOVING DAY
The fall harvest season passed without incident. The FBI men slipped out of the county, and an uneasy peace settled over the valley. Burl was working at Windham’s, and Leatha told me that when he got home, he was too tired to go out drinking with his old bunch. None of the kids had been hit up the side of the head, and he didn’t even rant and rail at Fleetie like he used to do.
There was big excitement across the railroad when moving day came. It was about a month before Halloween, and you wouldn’t have believed it if you heard tell of all the commotion going on. Every one of Fleetie’s and Burl’s kin showed up for what was going to stand in for a shivaree. This time, the shivaree tomfoolery was turned on its head, and instead of bad tricks, every person who could lift, push, carry, or pull a wagon dove in and moved all the furniture, rugs, dishes, and the rest of the household goods up the hill to the new house.
Mother volunteered to stay in the new house and direct the placement of the furniture, dishes, and bed coverings. So while the rest of us carried the things that Fleetie pointed out to us, Mother showed us where to set them down. There were about a million little kids running underfoot, and since Mother had an inside job, she wasn’t handy to take charge of them. So they ran wild until Burl finally lost his temper and threatened to get a keen switch and cut the blood out of every one of them. This vile threat calmed them down for about five minutes. But they soon lost interest in the moving project and headed down the hill to the creek. It was a chilly day, but they ignored the cold and played on the bank and in the creek, turning over the smooth stones, looking for grampuses and mussels.
Leatha and I carried up load after load and then worked in the girls’ room, making things neat and pretty. We were taking a break and sitting on the front porch for a minute. The house below was completely empty. Fleetie started up the hill. When she got to the crossing, she stopped, turned around to her old place, and stood for what seemed like a long time. Geneva was hurrying up the road with the twins, and Fleetie waited for them. Geneva took Fleetie’s hand, and the two of them stood and looked one more time at the old house. To me, it was already beginning to look deserted.
“Mommy is about to cry, but Gen won’t let her,” said Leatha.
“Lots of memories and good times down there. I guess it is hard to leave them behind,” I said.
“More bad than good, if you ask me. No telling how many times I got a whipping for a little of nothing in that house. I’m glad it’s behind us.”
“Do you think Fleetie feels the same way because of the way Burl treated her too?”
“No, you can’t ever get her to say one bad thing about Daddy no matter how mean he is to her. It sure beats me, but she don’t.”
“Daddy always takes up for him too. He says he’s not all bad, and I guess he did build this house for you all. He left the mines and got a good job when almost nobody can find anything but mine work. None of that was easy.”
“Lordy, just listen to Ms. Sweet-as-Sugar-Pie Rachel. You can’t usually say one good word about him. You’ll be cussing him out tomorrow, I bet.”
“Probably. Looking at the old house is making me soft hearted too.”
Mother left the porch and walked to the back of the house to check the work we had done in the bedroom. The rest of the kin began to gather on the driveway, readying to get off toward home.
“Girls, you did a good job. Rachel, are you about ready to tear yourself away and go up the hill with me?”
I gave Leatha a hug and left her sitting on the top step. Mother and I slipped away, while the rest of the folks said their goodbyes.
For the next few weeks, Fleetie stayed busy putting the finishing touches on the house. Every window sported new white curtains. Fresh quilts, long saved back, covered every bed. The wood floors gleamed, and the new linoleum, cool and smooth, was so shiny, it caught light even in the near dark. Fleetie let Leatha and me help her braid long tubes of fabric that she curved into throw rugs for every room. She papered or painted every wall in the house. Piles of bright pillows filled the shaker chairs and porch swing. She told Mother she was as happy as she had been when she and Burl first got married.
Chapter 39
BOX SUPPER
Every year, about this time, there was a box supper at Ross’s Point School, and it was coming up that next Saturday. It was the school’s big chance to make money for materials and books for all the kids, and the event always drew a huge crowd. Parents dreaded the winter coming up with its long days of being closed in, and this was about the last chance for getting together before they were trapped. The teachers had cancelled the party last year because of the strike, but this fall, spirits were high, and plans for dinners and fancy boxes rippled up and down the valley.
The Sargeant kids told me that the teachers and kids at school were in a fever of excitement. The kids made crepe paper streamers and, with the teachers’ urging, scrubbed their classrooms until even the old wooden desks were shining. Marion Stewart, the school trustee, spread fresh floor oil that tickled the children’s noses and kept the dust down. Mother said she remembered smelling the very same floor oil. It only took one whiff to trigger a book full of school memories for not just Mother but every person in the valley.
On the big night, Fleetie, Geneva, and Mary packed their dinners in their favorite baskets. Their husbands or other relatives would recognize the cook by their basket. However, the young unmarried women fixed up boxes with fancy decorations. They used ribbons and bows and curlicues to cover every inch of the surface. The color themes were a lot like the colors each family used for their decoration flowers. This scheme made it easier for the young men to spot which girl’s box he hoped to buy.
All of us started the long walk to the school. Burl wasn’t home from Windham’s yet, and he and Fred would catch up with us later.
Hobe’s oldest daughter, Virginia, and Nessa were sixteen and old enough to put a box in the auction for the young men to bid on. The reward for purchasing a pretty girl’s dinner was not only the delicious food, but also, more than likely, he would get the chance to walk her home. Nessa’s brown, curly hair fell in soft waves around her shoulders, and she was dressed in her blue Sunday dress. Clifford, her new sweetheart, would be waiting for her at the school.
She wore a pair of black patent shoes she purchased on layaway with money she made working at Newberry’s. Before leaving home, she had pulled an old pair of brown socks over her shoes to keep them from getting scuffed on the rough track. When Fleetie wasn’t looking, she powdered her face and slipped a Tangee lipstick into her pocket for later.
She and Virginia walked far behind the others. Leatha and I made a big show of ignoring them. Dorotha, Nessa, and Virginia were almost marrying age, and they didn’t fit in with us anymore. We closed our circle without them, but none of them seemed to care. After a brisk thirty-minute walk, we stepped off the track and climbed up the steep hill leading to the school yard. We stepped into the crowded building and gravitated toward our friends and relatives in the front of the room. Ben Sargeant, with his fiddle, and Marion Stewart on his guitar were playing, “Camptown Ladies,” and the first few rows of people were clapping and patting their feet. The smaller children at the front captured the space just below the platform and were spinning and stomping in their miniature version of a hoedown.
The tables along the front wall were full of a near-Christmas assortment of boxes, ribbons, and expectations. Henry Sargeant, the appointed auctioneer of the evening, walked to the front of the room and whispered to the musicians, and in turn, we received a string-strummed fanfare to settle the crowd. Susanna, his wife, was his assistant, and playing favorites, she selected her niece Nessa’s box first. It was wrapped with brown paper and sprinkled with red sumac leaves and crepe paper streamers. Henry held the box high as he began his chant to urge the bidding. Clifford jumped halfway down the middle aisl
e and threw up his hand to make the first bid.
“Fifty cents,” he stuttered, causing cheers and guffaws from the boisterous crowd.
“Can’t let him have this here work of art that cheap!” said Henry.
Lige Turner’s boy Ravenell and Roger Ellis threw in bids against Clifford, daring him to go higher as the sweat popped out on his forehead. Clifford turned a sickly green as he heard the bidding crawling higher and higher—one dollar, a dollar and a half, a dollar seventy-five.
Roger had been sweet on Nessa as long as he could remember. Everybody in the valley had pegged them as a match, but in the last few months, her kin had watched as Clifford, with his city airs, turned her head. Roger was fighting a rising tide as he threw in his last try.
“Four dollars!” he shouted.
The whole room could hear the tremor in his voice. It was every penny he had, and the crowd sensed it. A sudden hush then loud whispers swamped the room, followed by the low hum of rapt attention. With just a little more, four dollars would buy a baby calf or two good used tires. Clifford’s face flushed scarlet as he thrust his hands deep in his pockets and shot his eyes into Roger, who taunted him with a broad grin. Nessa threw her hands in front of her face and refused to look up. She was going to be the subject of porch gossip for months after this, and she probably could feel fingers of shame creeping up her spine.
Clifford’s eyes swept the entire room as he raised his hand, and with no sign of hesitation, he called out in slow, clear tones, “I bid five dollars. She’s the prettiest girl in this room, and I’m bound to eat that dinner.”
The crowd roared, and Roger dropped into his seat. Susanna carried the box to a shaking Nessa, while Clifford strode behind her as proud as a lord.
The crowd remained in a buzz, and Henry hurried to latch on to the momentum. He chanted off the next offering and was rewarded with more excited bidding. Box after box was bid up and out, but none of the others reached Clifford’s price.
Nessa and Clifford edged their way to the door just as Susanna selected Virginia’s box. Henry started his spiel, but the box was an easy sell. As young as she was, everyone in the room knew that Virginia’s food was the finest in the valley and up the hollers as well. Her fried chicken was as light and as crispy as the cloud-soft biscuits, the deviled eggs would be better named after angels, and her chocolate cake lingered in the memory like a first kiss. Two years ago, the bidding on her basket was rowdy and fetched a big price but not as big as the unbelievable five dollars.
Henry accepted the first bid—one dollar, a high start. Most bidding started at twenty-five or fifty cents. Other bids, scattered across the crowded building, were shouted in, but Billy Nolan and Jeremiah Howard soon left the others behind. Billy’s last bid at three dollars would take every penny in his pocket, but Jeremiah strutted down the aisle, shouting, “Three dollars and fifty cents, and she’s mine, by god.”
At that moment, Billy reached the full limit of his tolerance. He was not about to be outbid in front of the whole valley. In total frustration, he flung his right arm around the neck of his competition. With his heavy-muscled arms, Billy broke Jeremiah’s stranglehold, and the two overgrown boys rolled, kicking and cursing on the floor right in front of Henry. He gave Susanna a nod and grabbed Billy. As if she had practiced the move, she pulled Jeremiah up by his belt.
“Out of here with that foolishness,” Henry shouted.
Both the boys were just about pitched out the door. They rolled down the schoolhouse steps and continued the fight all the way into the school yard. The boys and men in the yard took sides and began baiting them even further. Finally, Marion Stewart, standing just outside the door, could see that the fight had all but stopped the big fundraising for his beloved school. He nodded at two of the men closest by, and the three of them pulled the two kicking, screaming boys apart.
“You can have the damn supper,” shouted Billy. “The food might be good, but you have to eat it with that scab Hobe’s brat. That ought to make it stick in your craw for a week.”
Total silence fell in the schoolhouse and in the yard. And then as if on cue, it was as if every other person there started yelling accusations. Virginia grabbed her basket and flew out the door. More fights broke out, and screams and shrieks from the women and children rattled through the crowd. Marion Stewart pushed his way back into the school and took the shotgun down from the wall where it rested for protection against poisonous snakes. He shoved in two shells, slammed the rifle shut, walked to the door, pointed the gun straight up in the air, and pulled both triggers.
The roar of a shotgun will stop a grown bear on a rampage, and the effect on every one of us in the crowd was immediate. Dorotha loved Virginia as much as any person in the world, and she must have seen the shock and humiliation on her face.
Whatever triggered it, Dorotha yelled over everyone, “Hobe ain’t no scab.” Dorotha had a strong voice, and the anger and desperation made her voice even louder and shriller.
The room was silent, and Henry walked across the room to her side. “Girl, what is that you’re telling?”
“I was hiding in his smokehouse during the flood, and they was three men came up on his porch. I heard them tell Hobe they was union and they was going to organize or they would burn down all of Ross’s Point. They told him they had brought him good money to set fires all up and down the valley until everybody got so sick of it, they would settle the strike. With the operators backed down that way, the union would be right where it should be. They paid him. I saw them counting it out.” She was trembling from top to toe, but she was determined to get it all told.
Fleetie pushed her way through the crowd, trying to get to Dorotha. “Dork, hush that. You don’t know what you’re saying. Hush now. I mean it, child. No more.” Fleetie turned to the angry crowd. “She don’t know what she’s saying. I can’t never put anything past her. When she gets shaky like this, she just rattles on. Don’t you all pay her no mind.”
Dorotha, flapping her arms with tears cascading down her cheeks, screamed, “I do too know. Hobe said he’d kill all of us if I told what I heard. I hain’t told a soul. But you can’t be callin’ Virginia no scab child. Hobe ain’t no scab. He’s pure union. Tell ’um Hobe.”
Fleetie grabbed Dorotha and, dragging and carrying, shoved her beyond the school yard and down the bank to the railroad track. Dorotha’s outburst, so typical of her unsettled nature, jolted the crowd into stony silence. She was trying so hard to comfort and protect Virginia, but she blurted out a charge against Hobe far more damning than “scab.” It was as if the fires that killed Freddie and Hershel and broke the back of the strike were raging again with the discovery of this new treachery. Hobe stepped back into the shadows on the far side of the school house and slipped up the mountain rising behind them.
Geneva and Fred gathered all us kids and began moving us away from the school and onto the tracks for the walk home.
“Fred, I can’t find Nessa,” said Geneva. “Go back and tell Susanna to take her home with her. Nessa can cross the river for home in the morning.”
As Fred walked back across the school yard, he could feel dozens of eyes on him as his neighbors tried to ferret out how he was taking the news of Hobe’s guilty role in the death of his baby. Some of the younger boys commenced to prattling at one another, calling names and throwing rocks. Henry and Marion stomped into the middle of them and, by collaring one or two of the taller boys, managed to scatter them and stop the commotion but not before taunts were thrown right at Dorotha. She ran down the track, tears streaming down her face, as the rest of us followed.
The women in the crowd took controls and one by ones each family moved to their trucks or took out on foot. Most of the boxes had been sold, but the dancing, games, and music died right there at our feet. The weight of Dorotha’s secret stole away all appetite for fun.
At Ross’s Point, ties of kinship went back ge
nerations, and the idea that blood could be guilty of such treachery left the adults soul sick and the rest of us bewildered. I had forgotten my red jacket and had to run back to the schoolhouse to get it. Mother would skin me alive if I lost one more piece of clothing. I scattered my stuff wherever Leatha and I roamed, but tonight, even in the middle of all the trouble, I somehow remembered it.
With the group fading into the dark, I saw Marion before he turned to lock the schoolhouse. He checked the back door and looked up. I followed his eyes and saw the outline of a man making his way along the mountain ridge that paralleled the tracks leading south above the county road.
“Hobe,” he whispered. “Man, I hope that little gal ain’t got that straight. If not, you’ll not live soft in your skin another day after this. Lord, lord, sometimes trouble’s all there is.”
He turned out the overhead lights, and I grabbed my jacket off the hook by the door and stepped over the threshold just before he closed the heavy door and snapped the heavy lock. His slight frame folded itself into the surrounding dark as he felt his way down the bank and into his battered truck.
Chapter 40
WHERE’S NESSA
Fleetie and Geneva herded us onto the railroad track for the long walk home. Dorotha could not stop crying, and she and Virginia fell farther behind. For once, Leatha and I were not the guilty ones. No one was paying us the least amount of attention. Burl and Fred, who had gotten to the schoolhouse just as the trouble began, took the truck and headed across the valley to look for Nessa. Just as they pulled away, the deputy sheriff’s car drove past our group and headed toward the schoolhouse. The car rolled by us and slipped into the dark. The brake lights slashed red streaks in the fog, leaving a trail a blind possum could follow.
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