Autumn Winifred Oliver Does Things Different

by Kristin O'Donnell Tubb

  I wandered the campsite solo. Long about midnight, the kids started playing Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue. It only took one verse—

  Autumn’s father went to borrow a chair,

  When he got there, Cody was hugging his dear.

  Cody’s mother went to borrow a pan,

  When she got there, Autumn was hugging her man.

  —before I got up and left. Buncha hooligans!

  I went to see if Katie needed a hand on her shift, but she sure seemed to have it under control, what with that new Peter Lockland fella who was visiting from the Sugarlands doing all the fire stoking and pot stirring for her. Jeez! That girl and her want of a beau.

  So I went to sit with Mama and the other hens. All the biddies were prepping this winter’s leather britches beans, stringing snap beans onto lengths of yarn. I took to cutting up the yarn for them.

  “And so now those park officials are sayin’ that if we’re lucky, they’ll let us lease back our land from the government. Lease it!” big fat Aunt Lydia bellowed. “Imagine paying rent to live in a house you been in your whole life. Confounded park!”

  Mama cleared her throat and jerked her head toward me. “Lydia . . . little pitchers . . .”

  Ain’t it funny how grown-ups think if they don’t tell you something directly, you’ll never find out the secret? “Don’t worry, Mama. I know all about it.”

  Even by firelight, I could see Mama raise her eyebrows at me. What, did she think I hadn’t figured out what was going on by now? Jeez, sometimes parents don’t give you any credit. So I proved myself.

  “That park is buying everyone out and forcing them out of the Cove. The colonel? He lied when he said everyone could stay here and get rich. There’s no fortune to be had. And doesn’t he work for the president and all those government officials? I say, confounded government.”

  Now, let me stop right here for a second. On any given night in the Cove, it’s a noisy thing, darkness. There’s leaves rustling and cows bleating and water rushing and crickets chirping. But when you cuss the United States government—the very government that our Cove grandfathers stayed loyal to, even while living in a Confederate state during the Civil War—I swannee, every single noise stopped right then, so one and all could hear my truths echo off these dadblamed mountains.

  Out of the darkness came a noise I never thought I’d welcome: the sound of teeth-sucking.

  “Girl’s half right,” Gramps said. “But the real truth? Cove is cursed. Cursed by a Cherokee Indian chief.”

  Ttttttthhhhhhuuuuuusssssssuuuuuppppp!

  Yep, that teeth sucking sounded like sweet, sorrowful fiddle music about now. Gramps hitched up his overalls with his thumbs. At the mention of the word curse, Mama bowed her head and shot off a short prayer of forgiveness for her heathen daddy.

  “Cursed by Chief Kade himself. Yep, that old chief cursed the land that was named for his very soul. He’d’a rather seen it fall to ruin than end up in the hands of us settlers.

  “Legend has it,” he kept on, though nobody asked him to, “that the ruckus made from the first blow of the forge hammer in Cades Cove drove all the wolves away. The Cherokee thought the wáya—that’s Cherokee for ‘wolf,’ you know—was some sort of revered watchdog. Anything that would scare them away was surely gonna take away their land, too.”

  “A forge hammer took their land?” I asked.

  Gramps snapped his fingers at me. “Progress, girl! Progress! Them Cherokee Indians wanted nothing to do with saws and shotguns. Nope, give them a hatchet and some blow darts any day. They made settling up the land round these parts mighty difficult, I recall hearing. That’s why they’s asked to leave.”

  I looked from Gramps to Mama and the hens and back to Gramps. No one seemed to want to ask the next question, so I shook off the scolding I’d gotten last go-round and asked away.

  “They got asked to leave?”

  Even in the moonlight, I could see Gramps pull his mouth to one side of his face. “Yep. ’Bout a hundred years ago. Government came and rounded ’em all up and sent ’em to Oklahoma.”

  Danged if silence didn’t smother us all again. Mama smoothed her dress across her lap. The other hens sat still as stumps. Even big fat Aunt Lydia was quiet. Because the same thing was happening to us right now. It was the same song, second verse. It was all too familiar.

  “Confounded government.” This time it was from Gramps.

  The quilt in Mama’s lap pooled around her feet. I lifted a corner of it and snuggled underneath. I didn’t want to ask no more questions. I was all asked out. I looked up at the hundreds of stars that hung above and picked out Orion. Three stars in his belt. It was the last thing I remember seeing, until . . .

  “Girl? Girl, wake up!” It was Gramps, shaking me out of a deep slumber. “Girl, what time’s your shift?”

  My eyes fluttered open. The outline of dawn peeked around Gramps’s gray head like a halo. It was how I imagined a cranky angel would look. “Um—four a.m.?”

  “Cripes, girl, get up!” He yanked me to my feet. “It’s near five. Syrup’s done froze up. Let’s go!”

  One thing about Autumn Winifred Oliver—rarely do I see fit to cry over such mishaps. Salt’s expensive. Why waste it in tears?

  But boy, was I ever close to spilling some salt when I saw the mess of goo setting in Beef’s iron pan. The fire had long since burnt out, so the syrup’d turned cold and thick. The mules were braying and stomping and snorting, trying with all their fool hearts to stir up this glue. My bottom lip quivered.

  “Now’s not the time for blubbering,” Gramps said, and patted me on the back. “Wait right here. And unhitch those durned mules before they wake somebody up.”

  I scampered around the vat and turned the mules loose. One of them dropped to her knees and fell dead asleep. I felt like doing the same, minus the asleep part. I’d ruined all my neighbors’ syrup for the whole year! They’d have my hide!

  I stoked the fire under the vat and got it back to a gentle roar. Gramps returned, hauling four huge ceramic jugs—one in each hand, one in each armpit. He didn’t even look at me before he uncorked the first jug and poured it in. The stench hit me like I had bees up my nose. Whiskey!

  “Gramps!” I whispered. “Where’d you get—”

  “Hush, girl!” he whispered back. He jutted his chin toward one of the jugs he’d dropped next to the vat. “Pour it in.”

  I uncorked the jug, and listened to the glub-glub-glub of five gallons of whiskey being dumped into the Cove’s syrup supply. I thought the smell alone would get me drunk. “Couldn’t we just try—”

  “Water’s not quick enough.” Gramps shook his head. “We gotta loosen the tug before Beef gets here for the next shift. Nope, gotta use whiskey. This’ll loosen her up.”

  And then something amazing happened: Gramps laughed. Not just a snort. Not just a guffaw. A full-out belly laugh.

  “This stuff’ll loosen anything up!” he finally managed to spit out. He wiped a tear from his left eye.

  Then it hit me. The fear and sadness and guilt I felt by letting down my neighbors over a silly batch of syrup must be what Gramps felt about this park. Every day. Times a hundred.

  “What’re you two doing?”

  The voice was too deep, too gravelly for me to recognize. I froze up like the syrup in the pan below me. I didn’t dare turn to see who was riding us. Then I heard giggling.

  “Boy, are we ever glad to see you,” Gramps said. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him hand over a ceramic jug. “Pour it in.”

  Cody! I could swat him one for sneaking up on us like that, pretending to be all uppity. I turned loose the breath I’d been holding and smiled at him.

  I had just clicked the last hitch and smacked the lead mule on the rump to start the team marching when I heard Beef whistling a hearty good morning.

  “Hiya there, Autumn!” he said, and thumped me on the back. “Mr. Tipton.” He nodded to Gramps, who was throwing a burlap sack over four empty cer
amic jugs. “Cody.”

  Gramps straightened and grinned a too-large grin at Beef, and I just knew we’d been caught. “Mornin’, Beef. Whyn’t you try some syrup?”

  I shot a look of fury at Gramps—that whiskey hadn’t had time to blend in yet! But sure enough, Beef stuck out his meaty forefinger and dipped it right in.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” he said, and put a glob of shiny yellow syrup on his big tongue.

  Okay, so being drug out behind a team of wild horses wasn’t how I’d originally pictured leaving the Cove, but that was how it would happen now that Beef had tasted our dirty little secret, right?

  But instead he smacked his fat lips. “Mmmmm! This may be the best batch yet—even better than the infamous batch of ’twenty-eight!”

  Gramps clamped a hand around Beef’s shoulder. “I think folks’ll be real happy with this batch.” He winked at me. “Real happy.”

  I do things different. It helps to remind yourself of that when you’re about to slip the whole town a batch of devil’s syrup.

  12

  I do things different.

  It helps to remind yourself of

  that when you’re

  fending off the circling,

  swooping vultures.

  Nobody seemed to notice the funny batch of syrup they’d carted home from the Syrup Soppin’ Festival the week before, and I kept mum about sullying all my neighbors. But ever since I’d felt that letting-everyone-down noose tighten around my neck, I knew I had to help bail Gramps out of this park mess.

  How Autumn Winifred Oliver Can Stop the National Park:

  - Poison the water supply.

  - Burn all trees and crops.

  - Kidnap Col. Chapman. (Is it still kidnapping when it’s a grown up?)

  - Flood the Cove (plus there’ll be a big new lake).

  - Destroy the road into the Cove.

  - Build great big wall around Cove (Cody says it worked for China).

  - Spread rumor of giant fire ants.

  - Spread giant fire ants?

  - There’s a always that stick of dynamite . . .

  - Just not move?

  Every idea I had seemed too big or too dumb or it would end up ruining the Cove, which is what I was trying to stop in the first place. But “Just not move” might be an option. I mean, what could they do to us—drag us out by our shirt collars? Ha! I’d like to see one of those CCC boys try to put a hand on Gramps’s neck. They’d be worm food faster than a fly mop whups a housefly.

  But while I pictured us camping out with our shotguns and waiting for some greasy park pushers to force us off our land, I decided to take a different tack. I penned a letter in my fanciest script and threw in the biggest words I knew so he’d take me serious:

  October 23, 1934

  Dear Mr. Rockefeller sir,

  My name is Autumn Winifred Oliver, and I habitate in Cades Cove, Tennessee. It is my understanding that you, Mr. Rockefeller, have donated a gargantuan sum of dollars for the development of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I thought you should know the God’s honest truth about said park. Said park will leave myself and my kinfolk without homesteads. If you could see fit to cease all donating until this mess gets straightened out, I would truly appreciate your kindfulness.

  Sincerely and au revoir,

  Autumn Winifred Oliver

  Cades Cove, Tennessee

  P.S. Au revoir is French. It means “goodbye.” My teacher, Miss Winstead, says even people from as far away as France will visit this park, so she’s taught us how to say hello and goodbye. But I don’t know why, ’cause we won’t be here to say diddly-squat to any Frenchman.

  P.P.S. “Hello” is bonjour

  I passed the letter along through Jeremiah Butler’s rolling store, with three cents for the post. I half expected Jeremiah to give me a ribbing when he saw the address, but he just tossed the letter on a heap of mail.

  “And, oh, I’m real sorry ’bout your friend’s mama,” Jeremiah said as he hopped into his truck.

  “What?”

  “Your friend Cody.” Jeremiah slung his elbow out the window and shook his head slow. “Got a telegram ’bout his mama yesterday.”

  A telegram? A telegram means only one thing: death. “You sure?”

  “Yeah.” Jeremiah clicked his tongue. “Folks say he’ll just stay put with Matilda.”

  “Yeah,” I murmured. I felt sick. “Stay put.”

  The chickens in the coop atop the cab of the truck squawked and flapped as Jeremiah drove away. Cody said nary a word about his telegram the next day at school. So I didn’t say nothing, either. That day passed, and then the next. Mama and Katie both asked me about it, but I didn’t know anything more than what they’d gathered through Cove gossip. A few more days passed, and then it would’ve been downright awkward to say something to him. And so I said nothing.

  I’d hoped things might settle down for a while so I could resume my normalities: school, chores, fishing. But that was not to be.

  “You feelin’ okay, child?” Mama laid the back of her hand against my forehead. “It ain’t like you to forgo a second helping of flapjacks.”

  My stomach lurched right there at the breakfast table. I couldn’t help feeling like every time I gobbled up a forkful of syrup-coated flapjacks, I was getting tipsy. I tasted nothing but hooch.

  But that syrup wasn’t the only thing making my belly ache. The park’d bought out five more families and torn down three more houses. Plus, folks in the Cove found it harder and harder to move their crops at market. Might’ve just been this depression, but rumors started that the government had put a block on our crops to drive us out of our homes, like you’d build a fire to smoke a nest of chimney swifts out of a chimney. Every time Katie and me asked, “Where will we go? What will Pop do for work? What will happen to Gramps?” Mama would just shrug and tell us that the Lord will provide. It didn’t sound like a foolproof plan to me.

  Mama hovered over me, waiting for me to explain my lack of appetite. I made up an excuse real quick. “Just nervous for Peter’s visit, I suppose,” I said, and tried not to roll my eyes.

  Katie lit up like a lantern. “Oh, when Peter Lockland shucked that ear of corn and it was red? I always thought that tradition was silly, letting someone who shucks an ear of red corn pick someone to kiss,” she said with a giggle. “But now I see. It’s so special, red corn. Red corn don’t happen along every day. Why, he could’ve picked any girl there to kiss, couldn’t he, Mama?”

  Mama smiled and nodded and drizzled some sinful syrup over her breakfast, like she was baptizing it in the name of all things depraved. Gramps watched her out of the corner of his eye, and I swannee the old geezer almost choked on his sausage link.

  “But he picked me!” Katie crossed to the window in grand fashion, leaned out of it, and breathed in a lungful of air. “Me! Oh, who knew that I’d find my true love at a syrup festival? Who, indeed?”

  Jeez! Katie’d been talking like this all week, ever since her first kiss. Mama says I’ll talk like that, too, whenever I get kissed. In which case I can do without.

  “And now he’s requested a visit. A visit!” She reached under her skirt and pulled a crumpled letter from ’neath her garter.

  “ ‘Dear Kathryn,’ ” she read, then looked up. “Did you hear that? Kathryn!”

  Had I heard it? At least a hundred times, I’d guess.

  “ ‘I reckon I’d fancy callin’ on you,’ ” Katie continued reading. “ ‘If your folks don’t mind, that is. Suppose I’ll see you Saturday next, then. Yours, Peter T. Lockland.’ ”

  Katie sighed. “Yours . . .,” she repeated, and floated into our bedroom. I was sure she’d be in there stuffing old rags in her brassiere. I reckoned this fool’d be like all the others. He’d break Katie’s heart, and once again I’d have to be at the ready with some new jokes and Jack tales when it happened. Katie wasn’t allowed to go on dates, but she’d had her fair share of heartbreak from the fellas who’d come sniffing a
round here.

  “Jeez,” I muttered, then slid my eyes at Mama to make sure she hadn’t heard me. But she was far too busy gobbling up that sinful syrup. I pushed away from the table, stomped to the front porch, and flopped into one of the old rockers. Why did I have to stick around for Katie’s stupid beau to turn up? It was Saturday! A gal should be able to grab a patch of shade and kick back on a Saturday.

  Thankfully, Cody strolled up to the porch a few minutes later. Unthankfully, he toted a fishing pole and basket.

  “Let’s go to Abrams Creek,” he said.

  I shook my head. “Can’t. Gotta wait for the fella Katie’s been necking with.”

  I hadn’t realized Gramps was on the porch, too. But he just snorted and dropped into the rocker next to mine. He leaned his Remington Parker against the table between us.

  “You up for a little fun?” he muttered, and jutted his chin toward the swinging suspension bridge. Crossing it was Peter T. himself—a good two hours earlier than we were expecting him.

  Gramps sucked his teeth while old Peter lumbered across the dusty yard. I hadn’t seen a twinkle in Gramps’s eyes in weeks, so I was happy to see a spark there now. The young man stopped at the bottom step of the porch and pulled at his starched collar. I have to admit, he looked right dashing in his button-up shirt and hat.

  “Mr. Tipton, sir, I’m here to accompany your lovely granddau—”

  “Whew-ee, son!” Gramps threw back his head, opened up his nostrils, and sucked in a huge breath. “You stink worse’n two hogs in August. You walk here all the way from the Sugarlands, boy?”

  Peter T. shook his head. “No, sir, I rode my—”

  “Whoo, son. I gotta tell you, you’re smellin’ mighty stout. Whyn’t you go warsh up in the springs over there?” Gramps raised a crooked finger and pointed to the far end of the yard.

  “But sir, I—”