Autumn Winifred Oliver Does Things Different

by Kristin O'Donnell Tubb

  “That sounds like heaven to me.”

  Now that’s just plain loopy, liking things because they stay put. So I said so.

  Cody pushed his glasses back up his face. He paused so long I half expected him to empty his pockets in defeat. But then he said, “My mom’s really sick. I’ve stayed with lots of relatives I don’t know while my dad works three jobs to pay her doctor bills. But once she gets better, I’ll get to stay put, too. Once she gets better.” He stooped and fingered a sharp gray stone.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I did like I always do when I don’t know what to say: I say something stupid. “I like drawing.” Now, how dumb. I was sitting there with my sketch pad. “I like it ’cause it lets me see the same thing in a different way each time.”

  Boy, was that ever a stupid thing to say. I expected Cody to laugh right at me. But he nodded and flipped over a chipped red rock with his toe. “You like things that are different.”

  And that’s how, against my better judgment, I wound up with a sidekick.

  Several days later was the third Thursday of the month. Mama, Katie, and me stood out at the Cove Loop Road with our wheelbarrow. We were waiting to see the cloud of dust on the horizon that signaled the arrival of Jeremiah Butler’s rolling store. Of course, Cody was there, too, and he did what fellas always do when Katie is around: jabber without end.

  “So I’d guess those movie palace screens are so big, it’d cover Gramps’s cabin wholly if you were to lay one atop it.” He was talking to me, but he cut his eyes at Katie to make certain she was listening in.

  “Really?” Katie breathed.

  “Now, Cody, isn’t that a bit of an exaggeration?” Mama asked. Mama hates exaggerating more than anyone in the whole world ever has or ever will.

  “No, ma’am. Those screens are gargantuan.”

  I wasn’t sure how big gargantuan was, but I didn’t let on. It sure did sound awfully big.

  “So Cody, how much does a movie picture cost?” Katie asked. I could just see her calculating in her head how much it’d cost those Knoxville boys to take her on a date. Katie wants to go on a date so bad she might as well wear a placard stating just that.

  “Well, I’m not sure about that, exactly. Me and my cousins, we used to sneak in the back way.”

  Now how about that! Little old Cody, a bona fide sneak. I gotta admit, I got a soft spot in my heart for sneaks.

  “There he is!” Mama said. She lifted her chin at the growing dust cloud and knotted her skirt in her hands. “Right there!”

  Mama was excited to see Jeremiah for one reason only: he toted the mail from Knoxville.

  Katie noticed Mama’s excitement, too. “You getting all worked up about that cornmeal, Mama?” she teased.

  “Oh, hush, you.” Mama blushed and gave Katie a playful shove.

  Jeremiah’s truck skidded to a halt before us. He hopped out of his truck, and the chickens in the coop atop the cab squawked and flapped at the slamming door.

  “Mornin’, ladies,” Jeremiah said, and swooped off his cap for a deep bow. He glanced up at Katie while still bent in half and jerked his head at Cody. “Who’s your suitor?”

  Katie rolled her eyes at me but clucked over Jeremiah like a mother hen. “Why, this here’s nobody—just Cody.” At which I thought Cody might shrivel up like a piece of frying fatback. “Mama here sure is excited to see you, Jeremiah.”

  Mama looked to die of embarrassment. “Hush, Kathryn,” she said, and I knew she meant it. “Let Jeremiah go about his business.”

  Jeremiah leapt about like a frog on gigging day. He opened the back hatch, and as usual, his truck was stuffed full—Jeremiah’s rolling store carried everything from magazines to lard. He even carried toilet paper! Toilet paper, as if anyone in the Cove was that prissy. Even Katie uses normal old newsprint.

  After he’d loaded our wheelbarrow with flour and cornstarch and salt, he reached into his large canvas knapsack and pulled out what we’d all been waiting on: the letter from Pop.

  Mama ran her fingers over the handwriting on the front before gently untying the string on the parcel. She handled the letter like it was a baby. As usual, inside the big envelope were three smaller ones: one for Mama, one for Katie, and one for me.

  Hiya, Autumn! How’s my favorite season? I’m counting down the days till you and Mama and Katie join me in Knoxville. At least, I would count them if I knew when you’d get here. But Gramps needs you, so you help out your mama, you hear? Kin is kin. And when you get here, I got a surprise for you: roller skates!

  Roller skates? Mama always said they were a waste of money, that if the good Lord wanted us to roll, He’d have us sprout wheels. Nobody in the Cove had them, anyways, ’cause there was nowhere to use them. But I kept reading. . . .

  All the roads round here are paved, so all the kids have them. Boy, I can’t wait to see you zipping around on them skates!

  Me neither! Skates! Boy oh boy! I wonder if Mama knows.

  I miss you and Mama and Katie so much it hurts. But this job is really good money, much more than I can make being a farmer. And the way I figure it, I gotta work for this lumber company now, because these fellas can chop down a forest the size of three farms in half a day. There won’t be any trees left in a few years. It’s ugly, ugly work.

  I didn’t know what he meant by that. But it sure didn’t sound happy.

  Mama tells me you’ve been helping Gramps get his farm ready for the opening of the park. Attagirl! Gramps may be more bitter than dandelion tea, but he’s got one heck of an idea with that park. You keep stepping up, you hear? This idea of his might actually work, and if it does, old harebrained Tom Tipton will get the last laugh on us all. Hotels in Cades Cove! Your granddaddy Oliver would never have believed it—he might as well be rolling around heaven on roller skates of his own!

  Bear hugs and butterfly kisses,

  Pop

  6

  I do things different.

  It helps to remind

  yourself of that

  when you realize

  you’ve had a hand in

  putting your family

  in the poorhouse.

  I’m about the world’s best eavesdropper. If I weren’t, I’d never find anything out. But even with all my snooping around, I still hadn’t figured out why Gramps would lie about this old park. It all seemed on the up-and-up: park = tourists = money. So I did what Pop said I should do: I helped get ready for the army of tourists headed our way. I could’ve cared less if them visitors had a comfortable place to bunk. But Gramps thought it’d make him rich, so my list of chores grew longer and longer.

  Truth be told, if it hadn’t been for all the summer rain we’d been getting of late, old Gramps likely would’ve worked my fingers to the nubbins with all his tourist-trap preparations. For two weeks he’d been doling out chores to me and Katie and Mama and even Cody. He had us help him take down all the sweet-smelling tobacco in the barn (and when I say help, I mean we did it; he’d really gotten used to taking it easy after his little brush with death). Then he had us scour the place with Mama’s old hickory mop and some rock sand. We hauled in a few straw mattresses and burlap curtains and plenty of kerosene lamps. We changed that rat trap into a right nice little guest home for all those rich tourists. Gramps even nailed a sign to a fence post along the Cove Loop Road:

  Tipton’s Lodge and Tourist Camp.

  Good Springs, Good Meals,

  Clean Cabins.

  Drunks and Base Characters Excluded.

  But then it rained. And rained. And rained. All the color washed away and everything in the Cove turned mud brown.

  “We’re gonna have to line up your animals two by two, Daddy,” Mama said as a soaking wet Gramps entered the cabin and shook off like an old dog.

  “They’s no way I’m getting on an ark with the likes of this crew,” Katie grumbled from behind the cover of Anne of Green Gables. “Nope, my ark is gonna be me, Shirley Tucker, Linda McCauley, and Mable Feezell.” Sh
e paused, and a light flickered in her eyes. “And maybe Shirley’s brother, Jackson,” she sang, and clutched the book to her chest. I stuck out my tongue at her.

  “Forget the ark,” Gramps said. “We’ll jest ride McCauley’s outhouse into the storm. Floating down Abrams Creek, it is. Right now it’s hung up on a tree limb next to the mill.”

  I jumped up and grabbed the back of Cody’s shirt. “Let’s go!” He stayed planted, cross-legged, in front of the fire.

  “That outhouse must’ve been twenty yards from the riverbank,” Mama said. “Floating, is it?”

  “River’s flooded again,” said Gramps. He fell into his rocker and huffed more rain off his face with a puff of breath. “Real bad this time. Durned lumber companies, it is.”

  Mama scowled her hush-up scowl at him and whipped around to the kitchen before I could get a read on her.

  “Pop’s lumber company?” I asked, still tugging at Cody, the durn lump.

  Gramps didn’t give one twit about any hush-up looks. “Yep,” he said. “And others. The more trees they chop down, the less there is to stop all the rain-water from runnin’ down the mountain. Nothin’ but a big, muddy mess, those lumber companies make. But all that tree choppin’ll stop once the park takes over.” He looked real smug when he said this. Mama banged some pans around in the kitchen.

  Katie finally looked up from her silly book. “But don’t that mean—”

  “Yes, Katie,” Mama interrupted her. Worry jumped into Mama’s eyes. “Your daddy’ll lose his job.”

  It took a second for that to sink in, like I was watching Mama write out the words on a tablet rather than speak them.

  Pop . . . lose his job? Jobs were mighty hard to come by these days. Where would we live? We’d already sold our house here in the Cove. Would we still move to Knoxville if Pop didn’t have work there? Or would we—Oh, dang it! Would we try to run the tourist trap here in the Cove with Gramps?

  The muscles in my neck squeezed up. Now I knew Gramps’s dirty little secret: his park would shut down all the lumber companies. Lots of folks round here have kin working in those sawmills. Nobody would’ve signed his official little paper if they’d known they were signing away all those jobs.

  And Mama! She looked worried, to be sure, but not the least bit sad.

  Cody scrambled to his feet like the fire had leapt out of the fireplace and licked his toes. “C’mon, Autumn,” he said. “Let’s go check out that floating commode.”

  He took my wrist and pulled me out the door before I could get my words working again. Katie’s voice trailed off behind me: “But I don’t understand! Why do we want this old park again?”

  I balled up my fists so tight I thought my fingernails might poke straight through the palms of my hands. Twelve minutes earlier I couldn’t’ve given two flips about this old park. I’d even helped prepare for it! Now it was about to tear me to shreds.

  I guess I felt numb about the whole mess, because I followed Cody about half a mile through the warm summer rain before I realized he hadn’t let go of my wrist, the little sneak. I wriggled my hand out of his. I wasn’t about to cozy up to some lousy park supporter.

  “Leggo, traitor,” I said. Cody looked like he’d been stuck by a pin.

  I stomped ahead of him, splashing through the muddy field toward the river. “You and your flashy uncle are gonna put Pop out of a job. And Gramps! Ooooo!” I clenched up my fists again. “When I think about all the work we did for him in that stupid barn. Each chore put us closer to the poorhouse!”

  “But Autumn—”

  “Don’t you ‘but Autumn’ me, mister!” I said, sounding an awful lot like Mama. I was so mad, I did the first thing I could think to do. I picked up a rock.

  I wanted to chuck it at his head. But nah—beaning him with a rock’d be too easy. I bet he wouldn’t even duck. I twiddled the rock around in the palm of my hand. It was smooth and pinkish and full of holes—likely one Cody would want for his collection. So I showed it to him.

  “Pretty, ain’t it?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he breathed. “It’s a hematite.”

  “It’s you!” Then I spit on the rock three times and hurled it over my left shoulder. Stupid, yes, but I felt better.

  Cody’s eyes grew wide. “Was that some kind of mountain voodoo or something?”

  It took everything I had not to laugh in his face. I squinted at him. “Yep. I just put a hex on you and your heart of stone.”

  “Hex?”

  “Yep.”

  “Wha—what kind of hex?”

  I smiled a big, evil smile as he followed me to the mill. “Just have to wait and see. Now get lost already!”

  A small crowd had gathered on the riverbank opposite the snared outhouse. The shack was wedged in the crook of a tree, and the river rushed all around it. The muddy water trapped inside the outhouse spewed out the door’s crescent moon cutout in a neat little arc.

  “Ain’t she something!” Beef Jackson bellowed. “Looks like a reg’lar fountain, don’t she?”

  As we all stood admiring the Cove’s latest work of art, a squawking squalor came tumbling around the bend upriver.

  “What is that?” Tilly McBroom squinted at the thing drifting our way.

  “It’s a chicken coop!” Beef yelled, and we all shook our heads as the McCauleys’ chickens screeched past us in a mess of feathers and mud and chicken wire.

  “Poor old McCauley’s really going to have a time of it,” Tilly said, clicking her tongue. “Bet half his stuff’s done washed to Townsend. That man’s gonna need all our hands.”

  “Wait a second,” Cody said. “Isn’t Mr. McCauley an undertaker?”

  And just like that, a coffin tumbled around the bend and washed up practically at our feet.

  Beef Jackson grabbed ahold of my arm and pushed me toward the washed-up coffin. “Open it,” he whispered.

  “Why me?” I squeaked.

  “You’re the one who’s supposed to be layin’ in one of them, anyways.”

  “Uh-uh.” I shook my head. I bit my lip and took a step back. The crowd looked at the bare pine box as though everyone half expected a dead body to pop right out of it and shout “Boo!”

  When none did, Cody stepped forward. “I’ll open it,” he said. He inched his hand toward the lid.

  “Oh no you don’t!” I yelled, and grabbed his mitt. The little twerp had done this very same thing with those durn bees. He wasn’t about to steal my thunder again. “I’ll do it,” I said. Cody smirked and shrugged and stepped back into the crowd.

  Had I just been duped into opening a real live coffin, here in front of Cable’s Mill?

  Duped or not, I’d said I was going to open this here mystery casket. So I squinched up my nose as tight as I could to close off my sense of smell. No telling what a washed-up dead body might smell like. Geese, I bet. I turned my face over my shoulder, reached one hand out to the soggy box, and tried to flip open the lid with a twitch of my fingers.

  I do things different. It helps to remind yourself of that when you’re reaching into a box of death.

  Now, what you don’t know before a stray coffin washes up at your feet is that the lid to said coffin is heavy. Real heavy. So just a flip of the wrist didn’t cut it. I soon found myself kneeling in the mud, jimmying my fingers into the crack between the lid and the box. What was I doing, sticking my digits into heaven knows what? I took a deep breath and readied myself for what might be inside, just beyond my fingertips.

  “One. Two. Three!” I heaved the pine lid open and leapt backwards faster than a cat with a stomped-on tail. The crowd sucked in a huge breath.

  Empty!

  The crowd let the breath go. Other than the pillowy, mud-stained velvet lining the inside, the coffin was empty. I’d never been so happy to see nothing in my whole life.

  Beef guffawed and slapped me on the back. “Sure were lucky on that one. Guess you could say we mighta been up the creek without a paddle, har-har!”

  Paddle?
<
br />   And then I got the most wonderful, incredible idea. I sure could stand to be distracted, what with this park and Pop and all. And I knew just the way to do it. I jumped into the washed-up box and grabbed ahold of the sides.

  “Gimme a shove, Beef,” I yelled. “I’m going for a ride!”

  Beef whooped. “Now thar’s a dandy idea!” He placed his hands on the edge of the coffin and dug in the toes of his shoes, readying himself for a mighty push. “Hang on!”

  “Wait!” Cody shrieked, sounding an awful lot like a girl. “I’m going, too.”

  “No!” I shouted, but it was too late. Cody had already hopped in and Beef had already pushed the coffin-turned-canoe into Abrams Creek by the time the word got off my lips.

  The deep, cold, muddy water lifted us off the shore and hurled us down the creek, leaving the shouts of our neighbors behind. We spun, we bounced, we rocked, we teetered, we hollered—boy, did we holler! Cody knew more cuss words than I’d ever dreamed of! My insides felt like a big, fluttering moth, and my stomach was in my throat every time the coffin lifted, lifted, lifted . . . then peaked and toppled over a tall rapid, crashing back down to the muddy surface. I thought that coffin might splinter into a million tiny toothpicks, the way the creek’d pick us up and slam us back down again, next to all sorts of jagged rocks. But old Mr. McCauley was quite the craftsman, all right, because our makeshift canoe did just fine carrying us through those swollen rapids. It was, in fact, our own little luxury liner, what with the plush velvet lining cushioning the blows. A right comfortable coffin, it was.

  I rode that old coffin like I was a cowgirl taming a wild bronco: hands waving, hair flapping, mouth whooping. It sure felt good having something under my control for once.

  But then it occurred to me. We had no way to stop this thing. The water was as powerful as a mule and as cold as ice; we couldn’t just jump out and swim for shore. Cody must’ve thought the same thing because he started whimpering.