by Shutta Crum
I had to get one thing straight. “I can still go play with Baby and Robert, can’t I?”
“Give it a couple of days,” Mama advised. “Let’s make sure Doyle’s really staying away. I’d feel better knowing you weren’t over there. But they can still come here to play.”
“What about the clubhouse? Our collection?”
“It’ll still be there. Once we see what’s what, then we’ll talk about it again. OK?”
“OK. I guess.”
I got up, fetched my toast, slathered it with homemade strawberry jam, and sat back down. Everyone was quiet. I glanced around as I was chomping into my second big bite and saw that both Grandma and Mama were staring at that ugly white brassiere-thing on the table.
Mama cleared her throat and straightened her shoulders. “You haven’t thanked Grandma for buying you this,” she said.
I slid down farther into my chair so that my shoulders were barely above the level of the gray Formica tabletop. I took the biggest bite of toast I could and carefully avoided looking at either of them. “Thuumble . . . yuumble,” I said, chewing hard.
Mama gave me that You listen to me, young lady look. “I said, ‘You haven’t thanked Grandma yet.’”
I sighed. There was just no sidestepping this one. “Thanks,” I barely whispered, not looking at Grandma. And then, sitting up in my chair, I said louder, “But I’m not wearing it.”
“Jessssica,” Mama said.
“I’m not,” I said to Mama. And then, to Grandma, “I’m just not. And that’s a fact.”
“Maybe not right away,” said Mama. “But someday soon you’ll need to.”
I stretched out one finger and flicked the bra, sending it scooting across the table toward Grandma. She watched me, scowling.
“She isn’t ever going to grow up into any kind of respectable woman, Mirabelle,” said the Ol’ Biddy. “She’s run wild over these hills for so long she thinks she’s a boy.”
“Please, Mother,” Mama said, “let’s not start on that right now.”
Well, Grandma had got my goat again, but after everything that had happened I was just about tuckered out. Besides, with Mama there I remembered my promise to count to ten. So I did.
When I was calmer, I said, helpfully and reasonably, “Anyway, I don’t see the point.” I reached out and picked the bra up with two fingers so that it dangled between us. “I mean, look at it. It’s flat. And I don’t have a bosom anyway.”
“Hmmph! I did want to get one that would fit,” said Grandma.
I looked at Mama.
“You’ll get used to wearing one if you start with this,” she said.
“What’s wrong with my undershirts?” I asked. It seemed like Grandma and Mama were ganging up to get me strapped into this . . . this contraption. I slumped way down in my chair.
I’d be the laughingstock of the whole school if anyone found out. It would look like I was having hopes of being something I wasn’t. The boys would be sure to find out, and I’d be the target of a snap attack. The boys grab a girl’s bra from behind and rear back and snap it really good. If you were DeeDee or Lorelei, you giggled, fake-like. But that just wasn’t me. I’d punch anybody who did that to me.
I turned and leaned way over toward my mother so Grandma wouldn’t hear and pleaded, “I haven’t got anything to hold up, Mama.”
“Honey, someday you will,” she whispered back and reached over to push the hair out of my eyes. “Go on. Keep it in your drawer for right now,” she said.
I slid from my chair, but before I started back to my room with the brassiere, I turned to Grandma. It took all the strength I had to say, “Thank you, Grandma.”
seventeen
I WENT INTO HIRAM on my bike the next day I wanted to thank Adam for getting us five dollars in exchange for the gift certificate. And I thought he might help me figure out how to raise another fifteen dollars.
There was a good-sized commotion going on in front of the First Farmers and Tenants Bank. Several cars were parked there, and folks were walking around with cameras and other kinds of equipment. I pedaled over and saw Adam in the crowd.
I stood up and straddled my bike. “What’s going on?”
“Reporters,” said Adam as he tousled my hair by way of a greeting. “Some photographers, too.”
“How come? Has there been an accident?”
“No. I think they’re here to cover the mine closing at Greasy Ridge.”
“Oh” I said. “I thought the news had already covered that.”
“Well, there’ve been developments—some violence up Greasy Ridge way. I guess a group of the miners were trying to reopen the mine themselves,” Adam explained.
I watched for a bit, a little bored, as the town fathers, especially Mr. McMasters and Mr. Byrum, kept trying to hog the reporters’ attention with their viewpoints on the situation. Then I saw Miss Woodruff talking to a couple of fellows with camera equipment by an old blue station wagon. I waved to her.
“Jessica! Jessica!” she called and gestured for me to come over.
“See you later,” I told Adam.
“OK.” He smiled. “Let me know if you find out anything more. And Jessie?”
“Huh?”
“I’m sorry we didn’t get that prize you wanted to win in the raffle. Your mother would have liked it.”
“That’s OK,” I said. I realized I had forgotten to thank him. “Thanks for bringing over the five dollars. I’ve got plans for that, too.”
“Well, say howdy to Mirabelle for me. Tell her . . . uh . . . tell her I might stop by sometime soon to see how she’s getting along. OK?”
Other than needing to relax a little, I thought Mama was getting along just fine. But it was all right with me if Adam stopped by. I shrugged and said, “Sure.”
I made my way over to Miss Woodruff, walking my bike through the crowd. She introduced me to a reporter, a Mr. Gerald Birchfield, and a photographer, a Mr. Louis Henry, from New York City. I thought it was kind of funny that the photographer had a second first name and was using it as a last name.
“Are all these people here because of the miners?” I asked her.
“Some are,” said Miss Woodruff. “But Mr. Birchfield and Mr. Henry are also planning on taking some pictures and reporting on the work we’re doing around Hiram and Baylor for the War on Poverty. They’ll be documenting how our federal dollars are helping the poor. Maybe their reporting will also help us get more funding.”
Mr. Birchfield smiled. “Yeah, we’ll be taking some local color shots and interviewing some of the citizens.”
“What are ‘local color shots’?” I asked.
“Oh, pictures of the local people doing what they do every day, or interesting local things that the rest of the world might want to know about.”
It looked like the interview with the city fathers about the mine closing was finished. Mr. Henry loaded up several cameras into a huge bag. The rest of the out-of-town folk were all packing up to leave.
Suddenly, I had an idea about that other fifteen dollars.
Photographers wanted pictures of local color. And Lester had said that sometimes photographers paid people to let them take their picture. So why couldn’t they take my picture? Heck! I’d let them do that for fifteen dollars—even five dollars—and they could take several.
Maybe if my picture got printed in the paper, we could put it up in the clubhouse. I smiled to myself. That would be nice—to be up on the wall with all the movie stars.
Mr. Henry had put most of his gear into the station wagon, and everyone was just about ready to leave. When Mr. Birchfield and Mr. Henry walked back our way to say goodbye, I figured it was now or never. “Um, I know where you can take lots of interesting local photographs.”
“You do?” asked Mr. Henry.
“Sure. Uh, local color. My friend Robert and I have a clubhouse with pictures of movie stars all over the walls. And . . .”
“Jessie, I’m not sure they’re interested in th
at sort of thing,” said Miss Woodruff.
“OK, then.” I was clutching my bicycle and trying desperately to think of something local that was interesting. What had I shown Miss Woodruff that was special? “How about Crazy Cooch?”
“Crazy Cooch?” asked Mr. Birchfield. “Who’s that?”
“He’s a dog, and he stands on his head. That’s local color, isn’t it?”
“What!” Mr. Birchfield was laughing. “You’re kidding us now, young lady.”
Miss Woodruff shook her head and laughed, too. “No, it’s true,” she said. “I would never have believed it myself without seeing it.” She turned to me. “Are you sure Miss Maybee won’t mind newspaper people coming to see Cooch?”
“No, no. It’ll be all right,” I said, crossing my fingers. “I’ll take you there to see for yourself.”
They chuckled. “OK,” said Mr. Birchfield. “We’re going to be in town, anyway. We’ll come around tomorrow morning to see this dog that stands on his head.”
“Where do you live?” asked Mr. Henry.
“In Baylor, about two miles straight thataway,” I said, and pointed back over my shoulder. “Number 208. There’s only one real road.”
“Thanks.” Mr. Henry stood there looking at me quietly for a moment or two. “You know, we could use a local guide, somebody who knows everybody,” he said.
“I know almost everybody hereabouts. I could be your guide. Ask Miss Woodruff. She can tell you. I did a good job for her. I’d do a really good job for you.”
“That’s true,” Miss Woodruff said. “Jessie knows almost everybody, and everybody knows her. You couldn’t ask for a better guide.”
“But,” I went on, screwing up my courage, “it’ll cost you five dollars.”
“Five dollars!” Both men turned to look at Miss Woodruff.
“I know it’s a lot,” I said quickly. “But I’m the best guide you could get, and anyway, the money’s going to a good cause. A special cause,” I said, nodding at Miss Woodruff, who had her hand over her mouth. I knew she was trying to stop another laugh from coming out.
Then I shut up and looked from one of them to the other, holding my breath and clutching the blue rubber grips on my handlebars so tight that my knuckles turned white.
“Okay,” said Mr. Henry. “We’ll take that deal. We’ll go see this dog that stands on its head, you’ll introduce us around, and you promise to be the very best guide we could get.”
“The very best,” I promised, and raised my hand to put it over my heart.
Miss Woodruff burst out laughing, pushed her glasses up, and winked at me.
eighteen
THE NEXT DAY, WHEN Mr. Henry and Mr. Birchfield showed up at my house, Mr. Henry gave me the five dollars for my wages right up front. I ran inside and put it in my Smokey Bear bank, and then back out to do the job I’d contracted to do. I’d told Miss Maybee that Mr. Henry and Mr. Birchfield were trying to get some pictures of exceptional local happenings and that since Cooch was so exceptional, he’d fit right in. So she’d said it was OK to go over and see Cooch.
Unfortunately, Cooch was not in a very cooperative mood when I took Mr. Birchfield and Mr. Henry over there. We all stared at him lying stretched out in a patch of morning sun on Miss Maybee’s dirt driveway, yawning.
“C’mon, Cooch. C’mon, show them what you can do,” I pleaded, slapping the sides of my legs. All Cooch did was blink.
I heard Mr. Henry clear his throat.
“C’mon, Cooch!” I shouted and snapped my fingers in the air over his head. I hoped to get him on his feet, at least—then maybe it’d come to him that he really wanted to stand on his head. But it wasn’t any use. Even when I gave him a gentle poke, he just looked at me and scratched behind his ear with his hind leg.
“He does do it,” I told them. “Maybe we should come back later. It’s hard to tell when he’s going to be in the right mood.” I saw Mr. Henry raise an eyebrow at Mr. Birchfield.
I showed them around what there was to see of Baylor, the way I had Miss Woodruff, and they snapped a few pictures. Then they wanted to go up a couple of the hollers to see if folks would let them take some pictures up there. I got permission from Mama first, and then the three of us got into Mr. Henry’s station wagon with a whole lot of camera equipment. We headed up Dog Gap Holler, where the Whittens, the Applebys, and the Purchells lived.
Dog Gap’s a hard place to drive a car through. The road is dirt that’s topped with brittle red cinders, and some of the lanes to the houses are almost straight uphill.
We went up near the head of Dog Gap and worked our way back down toward Baylor, stopping at the Applebys’ house, where Mr. Henry took some pictures of Mr. Appleby on his front porch and proudly standing by his pickup truck. Nobody was home at the Purchells’ house. Then we stopped at the old lane that led to the Whitten place. Mr. Henry took one look at the lane where it forded Martin’s Creek and decided it was too rocky to take his car up.
I told Mr. Henry and Mr. Birchfield that it was a good thing we weren’t stopping by the Whittens’ because Dickie and I always seemed to end up in a fight whenever we saw each other. And besides, I told them, Mr. Whitten supposedly had a whiskey still on the side of the mountain behind his barn, so it wasn’t safe to go taking strangers up there. Mr. Henry and Mr. Birchfield agreed, especially when I told them that Mr. Whitten also liked rattlesnakes and kept a few pet ones around.
So in a little bit we came back down Dog Gap and started up Rockcastle to where the Weavers lived. When we got there, Mrs. Weaver came out on the porch with two or three of her youngest ones hanging off her.
“Miz Woodruff ain’t to home right now,” she said, wiping her hands on a raggedy dishrag. “She be in Bartlettsville. Expect her tereckly.”
I introduced Mr. Henry and Mr. Birchfield and told Mrs. Weaver that they were here to visit with her. So she stayed on the porch to chat with them. Mr. Birchfield took some notes, and Mr. Henry took some pictures of her and the kids. Mrs. Weaver would have been pretty, I thought, if she wasn’t so worn out—looking. Her faded housedress was held together at the top with a couple of safety pins. Her limp hair kept falling down into her eyes as she grappled with first one little one and then another, who were intent on investigating Mr. Henry’s camera and camera cases.
Sitting on a stump back a ways by where we’d parked the car, I had attracted an audience myself. One of the littlest Weavers—I couldn’t remember whether it was a boy or a girl—came toddling down the path with a dripping-wet diaper and sat down, right on my sneaker. “Hey!” I yelled, and slipped my foot out from under its wet bottom.
Then Clay Weaver came over and stood watching me. He was about seven. He didn’t say a word for the longest time. Finally he pointed at me and asked if I owned a toothbrush. “Of course,” I answered him, wondering why in the world he’d want to know that.
“Yup,” he said, nodding his head. “I figured as much. Miz Woodruff, she got her a purty blue one.”
“So?” I asked.
“So I aim to get me one, one of these days. Yes, sir.” He said it like it was the most important thing in the world.
I started to laugh, and then something made me shut my mouth. I looked past him and saw that Mr. Henry had reached round to his back pocket and pulled out some money to give to Mrs. Weaver. I was glad of that.
After visiting the Weavers, I hoped to get Mr. Henry and Mr. Birchfield over to the clubhouse to take some pictures. I figured Mama wouldn’t mind because even if Doyle turned up, I’d be safe with the two of them. Maybe they’d take my picture, too. But first we swung by Miss Maybee’s again to see what Cooch was doing.
When we pulled into the driveway, there he was, standing on his head as pretty as you please.
“See there?” I said, jumping out of the car as Mr. Henry hurried to get his cameras. “What’d I tell you? Did you ever know a dog to do that in New York City?”
“No, I have to admit this is the first time I’ve ever seen anything lik
e this,” Mr. Birchfield said. “Do you have any idea why he does it?”
“Nope. Just does,” I said, and grinned. “Miss Maybee thinks he does it only when there’s been some animal around. But I’ve seen him just get up from a nap and do it. Dr. Meyer, the vet over in Bartlettsville, says he’s really just standing on his front paws and resting his head on the ground, that his head isn’t taking the weight.” We all kind of tilted our heads sideways and stared at Cooch’s short little legs, his thick, short body, and his flat head.
“What kind of dog is he?” asked Mr. Henry.
“Just a mutt. My friend Lester says he’s got Bluegrass Bandy-legged Bantam in him.”
“A bantam’s a chicken, isn’t it?”
“That’s just what Lester says. Cooch showed up in front of Miss Maybee’s one day and stood on his head. So she fed him and he stayed. I guess he liked Baylor.”
“Hmm.” Mr. Birchfield pulled out his notepad and headed up to Miss Maybee’s house while Mr. Henry took some snapshots of Cooch from all kinds of angles. I went up on the porch with Mr. Birchfield.
We knocked and waited a few minutes but nobody came. We were just turning around to go back down the steps when Baby walked out the front door with a peach in one hand and a cookie in the other. “Hi, Jessie. Miss Maybee’s gone,” he said.
“Thanks, Baby. We’ll take you home, OK?” I offered. “We’re headed over that way . . . to the clubhouse.” I’d just stepped off the porch to lead the way when Mr. Birchfield stopped me.
“Who’s this?” he asked.
“Oh, this is Baby Blue. He just stopped in to get something to eat.”
“Baby Blue?”
“Well, his real name’s Morton Ketchum, but he doesn’t go by that,” I told him.
“What’s he doing here all by himself?”
“‘Grazing’ is what some folks say,” I said. “When he’s hungry, he just stops in somebody’s house to eat. It’s OK. The people around here don’t mind.” I took Baby by the wrist and started across Miss Maybee’s yard. “I’ve got one more place to take you,” I said over my shoulder. “You’ll really like it.”