What? Mr. Polk was giving up on us after we’d paid him all that money? But instead of hammering his fist into the guy’s gut like I expected Gramps to do, he grabbed the lawyer’s hand and pumped it in a huge handshake.
“Thanks again for taking our case, Mr. Polk. You sure I can’t pay you nothing?”
“Not a penny, Mr. Tipton. This is the most meaningful pro bono case I’ve ever accepted.”
Mr. Polk had worked for free? I did some quick figuring. All the money Gramps had made from pawning his stuff must’ve found its way to our other neighbors’ doorsteps.
“I am sorry, Mr. Tipton,” Mr. Polk said. “I wish I could do more.”
“Me too, Mr. Polk. Me too.”
Anybody with the middle name Delano is bound to be a little stuffy, if you ask me. But I can honestly report that in all of my eleven years, I’d never laid eyes upon a president. So when the big cheese himself—Franklin Delano Roosevelt—came to the area for the park’s groundbreaking ceremony, I was one of the thousands of folks milling around for hours, pretending the early December rain and looming gray clouds were nothing but sunshine and blue skies.
What a spectacle! There were people cheering and flashbulbs popping and big, bendy radio microphones hoisted everywhere. (I was itching to yell “Autumn Winifred Oliver for president!” into one of them, but Cody talked me out of it.) There were even moving-picture cameras ticking off spool after spool of film. Mama said this newsreel might even be seen in California!
FDR was a tall man with spectacles and a mane of gray hair. The way he talks, you’ve got no choice but to listen—his voice booms and lilts and swings in all the right places. I’d heard him before on the radio during his fireside chats, but seeing him speak was like watching fire itself, all spark and crackle and fizz.
I really hadn’t heard a word, though, until Mr. Roosevelt said that the Great Smoky Mountains rivaled the most beautiful places he’d ever seen. That struck me as funny—beauty having a rival. Seems like beauty would have nothing but friends. Nobody else seemed to think it was all that queer, though, so I went back to figuring out how I could get my mug into one of those newsreels.
I shouldn’t have worried about that, because as soon as Mr. Roosevelt’s speech was done, some official-looking fella with a handlebar mustache and a heckuva grip grabbed me and Cody by the shirt collars.
“Line up, kids. Shoulder to shoulder. Smile nice, now. That’s it.”
It was nothing short of biblical. The sea of people parted, making a wide aisle in the middle of the crowd, and me and Cody somehow ended up on the front line. Within spitting distance of the president!
But then—oh, boy! Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself descended into the crowd. He walked with a limp and a cane, but you hardly noticed what with all the pumping of hands and nodding and smiling. Closer, closer, closer he came. . . .
“Beautiful home you have here, little lady.” And then Franklin Delano Roosevelt ruffled my hair. My hair! Now there were two people alive allowed to do that.
Mama, three rows back, nearly fainted. “That’s my girl!” she said to everyone around her who would listen. “She’s destined for great things, that one.”
I do things different. It helps to remind yourself of that when the most powerful man in the world just gave you a new hairdo.
17
I do things different.
It helps to remind
yourself of that
when you hear those
church bells tolling
once again.
Months. It’d been months since I’d hiked up to the Meadow in the Sky on old Thunderhead Mountain. We were on winter break from school, so I buckled my old leather book belt around my sketch pad and pencil case and scaled Thunderhead—the old way, not using those new trails. Tomorrow was Christmas, and I needed to finish up my drawings. I wouldn’t be the only one not giving gifts again this year, no sir.
It was cold up there in the meadow, all right. When the wind got to whipping, it whistled right up through the naked trees and across the bleak meadow. The grass had bleached out and shriveled up, and the chill rustled the stalks in a way that was both sorry and peaceful.
Only the pine trees—stubborn old coots—still clung to their needles. What was it about those trees that made them think those prickly little wisps were worth holding on to all year long? Why, if pine trees were people, they’d be . . .
Yep! That was what I’d sketch for Gramps—a grove of pine trees! I smiled at my joke, then flipped open the drawing pad and began scratching out the rough, triangular outlines of the pines.
I’d just started adding the lowlights when I heard a tiny achoo behind me. I jumped higher than a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs and whipped around to find myself staring at ten, maybe eleven boys and one man—all decked out in the same drab clothing.
Boy Scouts. I knew it would come to this.
“Oh, ’scuse us, little lady,” the scoutmaster said. He smiled, and I could see by the crinkles near his eyes that he smiled a lot. “Didn’t mean to scare you. Just passing through. March on, boys!”
The troop shifted into a near-perfect line and began to traipse off down the newly hatcheted trail. One of the boys stopped short.
“Mr. Morris, sir?” the boy drawled, and I could tell he was from around these parts. Not the Cove, but nearby. “Do you hear a bell?”
I leapt off the rustling grass and cocked my ear downwind so I could hear better. Yep, there it was—the church bell.
It rang right past eleven and kept on tolling—ding, dong, ding—to fifty-one. Whew—no one in my family. (Heaven help me for saying it!)
“Fifty-one,” I must’ve muttered.
The scout shook his head. “Fifty-three.”
Fifty-three? That was how many winters Gramps had under his belt.
“No!” I scrambled down the trail, clutching my sketch to my chest.
No. No—somewhere down there, five thousand feet below, Gramps was hiding, listening to that bell tote up his number, sucking his teeth, laughing at his cleverness. “Another prank, it is,” I whispered.
Doc Tillman’s best guess is Gramps died of a heart attack. I think he meant a broken heart.
My senses disappeared—there was nothing to see but gray sky and black mountains, nothing to hear but the silence of snowflakes, nothing to smell but wet dirt. I felt blah and numb, like the wintry, sleeping trees that lumbered all around, dry and scratchy and reaching for naught.
And so even though the bells didn’t toll for me that day, I still felt like I’d died.
I always thought that God somehow knew when funerals were happening, because in my memory, I recall every one I’d been to previously as being cold and dark and rainy. But Gramps must’ve sweet-talked God into teasing us, because his funeral was on a sunny and warm late December day. It was warm enough for the frost to disappear, for the pine trees to give off the sweet smell of sap, for Mama to worry about the mayonnaise in the potato salad turning sour. But the earth was cold. We were told it had taken hours for the pallbearers to hack through the frozen ground.
The Right Reverend Feezell was just about to lower the lid on the coffin when I got my gumption up.
“Wait!” I yelled. I ran to the open casket and placed my sketch of those ornery old pine trees in the box next to Gramps’s still chest. It was my best drawing yet.
“It’s a piece of the Cove,” I whispered, then added even softer, “and a joke, too. You, pine trees . . . get it?”
Up till now, it had been my plan to bury the stick of dynamite I’d had stashed under my mattress these past few months with Gramps, too. But suddenly that didn’t seem right. I touched my dress and felt the place where I’d tucked the explosive beneath my knickers. No. No dynamite in the Cove. I stepped back. Katie smiled at me, rubbing her earlobe, and I knew I’d made the right choice. Boy, was I happy to see her.
The good reverend closed the casket and the pallbearers lowered it into the ground w
ith long, sturdy ropes. Mama rubbed my back and Peter T. rubbed Katie’s back. Then we watched Pop and Uncle John and Uncle John Too and about twenty other relatives shovel piles of dirt into the deep hole. The first few shovelfuls landed with a hollow thud on the coffin below, but the hole slowly filled and the dirt made a tidy pile above the ground. Then the pallbearers laid their shovels in a big X across the dirt to show an end to work and toil.
When Pop placed Gramps’s headstone, Cody came over and held my hand and I didn’t even stop him. Thousands of people would be gawking at this headstone every year, and not a one of them would be Gramps’s kin. I knew Gramps would’ve already thought of that when he told Mama—on his deathbed, no doubt—what he wanted it to read. I read the marble slab:
Thomas Reginald Tipton
And the eyes of them both were opened.
—Genesis 3:7
Adam and Eve. But boy, “them” sure did feel like me and Gramps. Gramps had taken a bite of the apple, all right, but he didn’t gain any knowledge of good and evil. Sometimes it’s too hard to tell. What’s good and what’s evil, that is.
And then I laughed. Inappropriate, yes. Cody lifted his eyebrows at me and jerked his head at the pile of dirt as if to say, We’re at a funeral, Autumn.
I whispered out of the corner of my mouth, “At least the headstone doesn’t say, ‘What the hell are you lookin’ at?’ ”
18
I do things different.
It helps to remind
yourself of that
when you realize
that having the
knowledge of good
and evil and knowing
the good from the evil
are two different things.
Five standstill days after Gramps’s death, a crisp, white letter was delivered by Jeremiah Butler. Our address was typed in crooked, jumpy letters on the envelope.
Mama ripped it open. Her eyes filled with tears as she read. Her hands shook, and the only sound in the cabin was the crinkling of paper. She dropped the letter and it floated to the floor.
December 27, 1934
Dear Mrs. Martha Oliver,
It has come to our attention that the lessee of plot 7 in Cades Cove, Tennessee—one Mr. Thomas Reginald Tipton—is recently deceased. As he was legally listed as the sole lessee of plot 7, the ownership of said property hereby reverts to the United States government upon his death. Please consider this letter your notice of eviction. We request that you permanently evacuate the premises by January 1, 1935.
The United States Park Service
P.S. Our deepest sympathies for your loss.
One week! One lousy week to pack up our lives and get out. Somebody really hightailed it to get us this letter this fast.
But oh, it was a banner day for us, mail-wise. Jeremiah delivered a second letter, this one worn, yellowed, and musty, like it’d been found at the bottom of a forgotten mailbag.
November 25, 1934
Dear Autumn Winifred Oliver of Cades Cove, Tennessee,
My name is Mary Elizabeth McGovern (but everyone calls me Puss because they say I look like a cat), and I live in New York City, New York. I am fourteen. My mother bought an egg from a pushcart on Orchard Street with your name on it, so I thought I’d write to you. Hello from New York!
My mother read that your city is being adopted into the new Great Smoky Mountains National Park. What an honor to have your home turned into a national park! If they did that in my neighborhood, all’s they’d get is a few fish markets and some newspaper stands. My mother also says that she read there’s just one road in and out of Cades Cove. One road! How exciting to have a pen pal in such an exotic location. Please write me back and tell me all about Cades Cove. My mother says we might make the drive to Tennessee to visit the Great Smoky Mountains on our next vacation. We could meet and you could be our official tour guide. I bet you do that a lot, though.
My best to you and yours,
Mary Elizabeth McGovern, aka. Puss
P.S. I have red hair. Do you? I ask because your name is Autumn. That’s a pretty name. Much prettier than Puss. Being a redhead is hard because it’s so different, isn’t it?
But for all our mail that day, there was still no letter from Mr. John D. Rockefeller.
On my last day in the Cove, I went to say goodbye to Gramps. I blamed the tears in my eyes on the sunlight glinting off his silvery sleek headstone. The dirt over his grave was still muddy fresh. My leg itched, as I had the stick of dynamite tucked into my knickers. The rest of my life had been packed away in boxes and crates, all except for this stick of dynamite. I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I thought Mama might question a cardboard box labeled “Explosives.”
It was so quiet at the cemetery, and I enjoyed the peace. Then the roar of an automobile cut through the silence. I didn’t turn when Cody appeared beside me.
“Your mama said you’d be here.”
I nodded, and glanced over his shoulder at the shiny black Ford parked below. We stood there looking at Gramps’s headstone as if we expected it to give us further instructions. A minute or so passed without us saying nothing.
Then the sunlight disappeared. To my left, a tall man in a black trench coat had stepped in front of the sun’s rays, blocking the light, casting a long shadow over Cody and me.
“Miss Oliver,” Colonel Chapman said. I don’t think anyone had ever called me that before. “My sympathies for your loss.”
I felt like my tongue had been stung by a swarm of bees, it was so obvious I didn’t know what to say. Colonel Chapman shifted, and a patch of sunlight sprang around him and blinded me.
“Your granddaddy was . . .” Colonel Chapman paused and closed his eyes, as if he was reading this speech off the inside of his eyelids. “He was the toughest man I ever met.”
With that, he turned on his heel and flounced toward his Ford, parked at the bottom of the hill.
Cody leaned over my shoulder. “Sorry ’bout that. He offered to give me a ride to say goodbye.”
I shrugged with one shoulder. “ ’S okay.” Then I guess it was the setting or something, but I finally gathered up my gumption and said what I should’ve said long ago. “Sorry ’bout your mama, Cody.”
Cody tried to mirror me: he shrugged one shoulder, too. But his eyes glassed over with tears, magnified by those awful glasses of his. “ ’S okay.”
We stood in silence for another minute before Cody said, “You leaving tomorrow, then?”
I nodded. “You staying put?”
He swiped at the corner of his eye with the back of his hand, but he grinned. He pulled something out of his coat pocket and thrust it at me. Three of the best rocks from his collection: a wavy, palm-sized phyllite, a sugar-sparkly quartzite, and some chunky slate. “It’s a going-away present.”
“Rocks?” I asked.
The corners of Cody’s mouth turned up. “So you can put hexes on all those mean city folks.”
I shook my head. “No, so I can chuck them on their rooftops when they need to repent.”
Cody and me laughed. But I shook my head. “I can’t take those, Cody,” I said. “They’re the best part of your collection.”
Cody looked at the trio of rocks in his hand and seemed to be considering the consequences of not giving them to me, now that he’d offered. Then a light came on behind his eyes. “I know!”
The tip of his tongue peeked out of his mouth as he dug in his pants pocket. He withdrew his hand, opened his fist, and there sat the shiniest penny I’d ever seen.
“My lucky penny. Take it.”
I smirked. “You don’t have a lucky penny.”
“I do now.” Cody placed the coin in my hand. He smiled at me, gave me a quick hug before I could stop him, then turned and slid down the rocky slope toward his uncle’s car. “ ’Bye, Winnie,” he said over his shoulder. He’d been waiting for months to call me that, I bet. Only did it when he was out of reach, too.
I looked at the tiny button of copper in my
palm and my eyes watered over. I glanced at Gramps’s headstone, then past it to the row of dogwood and elm trees that stood below the cemetery like an army of faithful old friends. Behind the trees, Gregory Bald and Thunderhead Mountain cut into the bright blue sky in two graceful arcs. But they no longer shared a likeness to a couple of bald behinds to me. Nope, they looked more like a pair of angel’s wings anchored across the sky. Thin wisps of clouds floated hither and thither at mid-mountain, and for a second I thought that Gramps had simply left one paradise for another.
That ring of mountains around us didn’t just keep the new out, it kept the old in. Cades Cove was as perfectly preserved as a pickle. But those old, worn-down mountains weren’t as strong as they used to be. They couldn’t fight the good fight against air-planes and automobiles and radio signals. They were no match for the chain saw. They couldn’t replace the missing panthers, the missing Cherokee, the missing chestnuts . . . the missing Gramps. Nope, Cades Cove was changing. It wasn’t going to be a pickle much longer. Unless we did something to keep it crisp and spicy.
I clutched my fist around the penny.
“Colonel Chapman!” I yelled, and raced down the hill as fast as I could to where he was pulling out of the parking area. “Colonel, wait!”
I jumped in front of his auto. The colonel’s eyes widened, and Cody gripped the dashboard. The Ford skidded across the gravel and stopped an inch from my kneecaps.
I dashed to the driver’s side. “Here!” I said, and shoved the penny at him. “It’s a donation for the park. If you promise to keep this place just like it is—no more homes torn down, no more people kicked out—there’ll be much more to follow.”
Then, almost as an afterthought, I pulled the dynamite from beneath my knickers. “And I believe this belongs to you,” I whispered.
I’d meant it as a peace offering, a confession of sorts. But from the look in Colonel Chapman’s eyes, being on the receiving end of that stick of dynamite must’ve seemed like some mighty clever intimidation tactic on my part.
Autumn Winifred Oliver Does Things Different Page 12