Summer in Mossy Creek

by Deborah Smith

  Ida Hamilton Walker, known for being the only gun-toting mayor in the mountains of north Georgia, is primed and ready to prod her nephew, Ham Bigelow, the governor, if he doesn’t get moving. Chief Royden is watching her closely “to prevent violence.” He says that with a grin, but we all know that it’s Ida he’s sticking close to, not her guns.

  This may be the hottest weather we’ve had since 1954, when the mercury down at Pop’s Garage popped right out of the thermometer. Mossy Creek occupies a cove with two-thirds of it cupped by the mountains like a hand shielding it from the north wind. That works well in the winter, but with the conditions just right, in the summer it’s like having the top on a teapot with the flame on high. We cook supper early in the morning.

  Most folks call the evening meal “dinner” but here, if you’re over sixty–and I’m not—“dinnertime” is still at noon. But even those over sixty have microwaves to heat up their food when it’s really hot. The children head for the creek and those of us lucky enough to work in air-conditioned offices stay late. But the old folks sit on the porch with a paper fan and talk about the past.

  You remember what I told you last fall? That I’ve asked Creekites to share their stories about summer with me. Let me know what you think.

  Your sentimental friend,

  Katie “True Confessions” Bell

  Chapter Two

  OPAL and the SUGGS SISTERS

  “My friends are my estate.”

  —Emily Dickinson

  I’D SEEN A lifetime of late summer mornings like this one. After a week of scorching temperatures, last night’s rain had swept cool air into the Blue Ridge range of the Appalachians. The sun struggled to peek over the south slope of Colchik Mountain, as if it were already exhausted from its vain attempts to clear away the smoke which hung like a gray blanket above the valley that sheltered Mossy Creek. The filmy layers cut off the Suggs farm from the rest of the world. No breeze stirred to help the sun on this cool September morning. The air was so still, you’d think it had died.

  Weary just from getting out of bed, I leaned my forehead against the cool windowpane as I felt the loneliness of the empty farmhouse close in around me.

  “It’s a good day to die.”

  “Oh, hush your mouth, Opal May Suggs. You’re no more ready to die than I was at fifty-nine.”

  My head banged against the glass, and I turned to glare at the completely empty room. “LordaMercy, Ruby. You might warn a body before sneaking up on them.”

  “If Opal wants to die, she can.”

  “Thank you, Pearl.” I headed downstairs to make breakfast, not bothering to hide my sass. “Nice to have your permission.”

  “We’re not talking about permission,” Amethyst said. “You can die just by hankerin’ to. Remember how Mama passed? After Daddy went, she missed him so much, she decided to follow. She up and died a year to the day after Daddy.”

  “Wasn’t a thing wrong with her,” Garnet added. “Doc Campbell said so. Mama was strong as Colchik Mountain until the day she died.”

  I could almost see my oldest sister nodding sagely, but somehow the Garnet I pictured was around twenty, the one I knew when we six sisters lived at home and were thick as thieves and gossiped about everything and everyone in Mossy Creek. The Six Suggs Sisters, we were called. If they have the option, people always opted for alliteration. But the tag didn’t matter to us. We were best friends, and swore there would never be a time when we’d be apart.

  Time has a way of making liars out of us all.

  “Mama always said she was rock hard, just like the mountains.”

  I was wondering when my fifth sister—Sapphire, the shy one—was going to chime in.

  Rocks had been a continuing theme with Mama, as her children’s names testified. Her daughters were each named after a birthstone, though not necessarily their own. Mama started with Garnet, January’s birthstone, then went down the list from there, skipping several she didn’t think were proper names, such as aquamarine and peridot. There’d been a problem naming the only boy in the family, born fourth in line, but she and Daddy had finally settled on Jasper. I was the baby of the family, so Mama had made it only to October before she stopped conceiving. Fortunate probably, since topaz and turquoise were the only choices left.

  Although, I always thought my life might’ve been different if I’d been named Topaz. Bright, sparkling and golden, instead of milky white.

  “Opal can’t die yet.” Ruby had always been the bossy one. “She’s still got business to attend to.”

  I was concentrating on making legs that didn’t always work right take my old body safely down the stairs, so I reacted to Ruby’s bossiness rather than her words. “I can die if I want to.”

  “Why do you want to die, Opal?” Sapphire asked.

  “I’ll be seventy-nine-years-old, next March, and I feel twice that. I can’t half-see to read Katie Bell’s column in the Gazette, and forget watching reruns of Little House on the Prairie. I get the misery in my back every time it rains. And this cough won’t leave me be.”

  Ruby harumphed. “Heck’s underbritches, Opal, you still put up enough sweet corn from your own garden every year to feed an army. You’re healthy as a horse.”

  I focused on the four steps remaining, as if lowering my head could hide the emotion in my eyes. Would five spirits—even five upstanding Christian spirits like my dear, departed sisters—understand the loneliness of a woman who’d outlived her usefulness? A woman who’d never had much usefulness to begin with? A woman nobody but the preacher and the police chief came to see? Even though I was the baby in the family, I’d never been spoiled. I’d always been the practical one, the sister whose feet were planted firmly on the ground.

  I snorted with more than exertion. So when did practicality include talking to ghosts?

  Even if they’d still been flesh and blood, my sisters wouldn’t understand. Especially not Ruby. She didn’t have a sympathetic bone in her body . . . or lack there-of.

  “Heck’s underbritches yourself, Ruby,” I said. “I’m talking to ghosts, aren’t I? To my five sisters who haven’t all been together in one room since the night after Sapphire’s wedding in 1948. Isn’t living in the past a sure sign death’s come knockin’ on your door?”

  Ruby laughed. “Not all the time. Sometimes it just means you’re crazy as an old hoot owl.”

  I wanted to stick my tongue out at her, but there wasn’t much point.

  Tittering laughter echoed down the stairwell. I’d long since ceased being surprised that the dearly departed still enjoyed a good joke.

  “Living isn’t fun anymore,” I said. “Might as well join my sisters at the Pearly Gates.” I paused at the bottom of the stairs to catch my breath. Only then did Ruby’s earlier words catch me. “What business do I still have to attend to?”

  “You have to—”

  A scrambling of panicked voices shushed Pearl.

  “You can’t tell her,” Garnet insisted.

  “She’s got to figure it out for herself,” Amethyst said.

  I could imagine Pearl’s hands fluttering, like they used to when she got flustered. Pearl had always had the prettiest hands of all us sisters. “Well, if it’s fixing up the homestead, I don’t care how much money y’all help me win, it won’t be enough to coax construction workers this far into the mountains to fix a run-down old farmhouse. Not decent workers, anyway. The good ones all head for Atlanta where they give ’em decent pay. What’s the point, anyway? Isn’t as if anybody wants this old place.”

  “Your business on earth ain’t the house,” Ruby said.

  “Isn’t the house,” I corrected automatically.

  “Well, la-de-dah, Miss English Teacher,” Ruby said, working in a reminder of my prim, unmarried state. I was the only unmarried Suggs sister, which was why I stil
l lived in the house we’d all been born in.

  “Your business is related to the house,” Amethyst explained. “But all we can tell you is it’s coming soon, so be on the look-out.”

  “It, huh? Not he or she or they. So it’s a thing, this business of mine, not a person.”

  “Maybe so, maybe not,” Garnet said. “Can’t say.”

  I harumphed. “Y’all sure are full of yourselves, and about what’s happening in the days to come.”

  “‘Farther along, you’ll know all about it,’” Amethyst said primly. “Like the hymn says.”

  There was a chorus of amens among the sisters, ending that line of discussion as effectively as a prayer. I’d already tried cajoling information about the future out of them, but they were forthcoming on only one subject.

  “So you can tell me who’s gonna win Sunday’s NASCAR race, but you can’t give me any useful information.”

  “Winning all that money ain’t useful?” Ruby asked. “How else are you gonna fix up the house?”

  “It isn’t useful unless I can find somebody to fix it,” I said. “Besides, I mean spiritually useful. Spiffing up the house is an earthly concern. At this stage in my life, I’m more concerned about fixing up my mansion on a street paved with gold.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Pearl said sweetly. “Your mansion is all—”

  “Time to go, ladies,” Garnet announced.

  “But Pearl was just about to tell me—”

  “Hut Stricklin in Daytona this coming Sunday.”

  I blinked at Amethyst’s change of subject, then as quickly as I could, reached for the chalk hanging from twine on the chalkboard next to the telephone. “Hut? What kind of name is that? Is he a new driver?”

  No answer. Not that I thought there would be. Information about the weekend’s race was always the last thing said. Amethyst, whose husband had been an avid NASCAR fan, always whispered it to me right before my sisters skedaddled for the day.

  I glanced at the clock on the stove. Six-thirty. Couldn’t call the bookie in Atlanta yet. He’d already yelled at me once for getting him out of bed before noon.

  I started the coffee and meandered onto the porch as the brew began to percolate. The sun now touched the roof of the barn, but there was no glare from the rusted, warped tin. An early hawk circled the walnut grove up the hill, its overgrown state even more obvious since last night’s rain had perked up the knee-high weeds.

  “That’s one thing I can do with all this money, I suppose,” I muttered to no one in particular. “Hire some kid in Mossy Creek to mow the weeds. If he can get Daddy’s John Deere to start up, that is.”

  Watching the hawk dive into the trees after his breakfast, I sighed.

  This was the loneliest time, when my sisters had just left. The few minutes between missing the camaraderie we’d shared growing up and convincing myself I was hallucinating. Although if I was, I sure was good at picking NASCAR winners, something I knew nothing about. The bookie asked me once how come I was so good at it. When I told him my dead sister told me who was gonna win, he reacted the way I thought he would—like I was a crazy old hoot owl.

  “And I reckon I am,” I said out loud. “Comes from ghosts being the only friends I’ve got.”

  With no other destination, my words drifted down the deeply-rutted, muddy gravel road winding down the mountain . . . to the world that passed me by.

  Feeling tears sting my eyes, I turned impatiently. No sense feeling sorry for myself when there was a day’s work to be done. Even if I couldn’t climb a ladder to put a new tin roof on the barn, I could polish Grandmama’s silver tea service and sweep the . . .

  My thoughts trailed off as I caught a movement out the corner of my eye. Thinking it was probably a fox or stray dog, I glanced over my shoulder.

  There about a hundred yards up the hill was a young man, carrying a dead rabbit toward my barn. He saw me two seconds after I saw him. Both of us froze, like deer sizing up the situation, deciding if we should run. Everything about the young man looked underfed. He was short, dark and skinny as a fence post. His clothes were thin, too, even considering the past week’s hot weather.

  Had the boy shot the rabbit? If he had, that meant he had a gun.

  I did, too, but my granddaddy’s loaded Smith and Wesson was in my nightstand drawer upstairs.

  Should I lock the door and call Amos Royden? Technically, I was out of the Mossy Creek Police Chief’s jurisdiction, but he’d get here quicker than a sheriff’s car all the way from Bigelow.

  Even as the thoughts ran through my head, the young man started down the hill. As he came closer, I could see he was of Hispanic origin. The world outside Mossy Creek had been overrun with illegal aliens from across the southern border. I knew that from watching the evening news on one of the two channels my old TV picked up. A few may have passed through Mossy Creek, but I didn’t go into town much anymore, so I’d never seen one up close and personal and didn’t know anything about them.

  “Stop right there,” I shouted when he was just outside the back gate. I heard the panic in my voice and cleared my throat. “What do you want?”

  He looked tired and scared and very, very young. I could see now he was as much a boy as a young man. He held up the rabbit. “Please, ma’am, don’t call police. I pay you for . . .” His face contorted as he struggled for the word. Finally he gave up and supplied the Spanish. “. . . conejo.”

  His offer took me aback. Seemed like a painfully honest thing to do. Was it a trick?

  “That isn’t my rabbit,” I told him. “That’s one of God’s creatures.”

  “This is not your land?” he asked.

  “Well, of course it’s my land. This and the two hundred thirty acres surrounding it.”

  He nodded solemnly. “Then this is your rabbit.”

  I was dealing with a smart young man, one who listened closely and learned quickly. “How’d you kill it?”

  He seemed surprised at the question. “I set snare last night. This morning, rabbit caught.”

  “And just why were you taking it to my barn?”

  He glanced guiltily over his shoulder.

  “You sleep there last night?”

  He took an anxious step toward me. “Please, ma’am. I come in from other side. We—I think nobody live here.”

  My ears were sharp enough to catch his slip. “We, huh? Who else is hidden up there?”

  His head dropped.

  “Do I have to call the sheriff to find out?”

  He looked up in panic. “No! Please. I . . .” He glanced up the hill, back at me, then turned and emitted a shrill whistle. A couple of seconds later, the barn door opened slowly and two dark heads peeked out.

  The young man waved them forward, and two young girls slowly walked toward the house.

  “What in tarnation . . . ?” I peered closer at the young man. “How old are you, son?”

  He straightened his shoulders. “Fifteen, ma’am. These are my sisters, Consuela and Inez.”

  Realizing I still had a death grip on the door latch, I let go and turned, adjusting the glasses sliding down my nose. The young girls were as skinny as the boy. One looked as if she was several years younger than her brother, maybe around ten. The other was a few years younger than that. “LordaMercy. Y’all are just kids. Where are your folks?”

  “Folks?” the boy asked, clearly confused.

  “Your kin, son. Your parents. And what’s your name, by the by?”

  “I am named Arturo, ma’am. Arturo Sanchez. Our parents are . . .” He glanced sadly at his sisters. “They are gone.”

  “Gone as in run away, or gone as in dead?”

  “Our parents have gone to the Blessed Virgin, ma’am.”

  “LordaMercy, you’re on your own?” Before I kne
w it, I’d taken a step off the porch. I stopped myself. Didn’t pay to be too trusting in this day and time. Was I really crazy as an old hoot owl? I was about to invite them into my house.

  I searched their young faces, pinched and anxious. When my eyes fell on the youngest, she scratched her leg, drawing my attention to the mass of bites covering them.

  “LordaMercy! Y’all are eat up. Come on in the house and let me put some Calamine on you.”

  They didn’t move.

  At that moment, all my doubts fled. These were good, honest children, scared and alone. “I was about to fix breakfast.”

  The possibility of real food perked them up, and the girls glanced hopefully toward their brother. The older girl, Consuela, said something to him in Spanish, and he snapped back a reply. She lowered her head.

  Arturo straightened his shoulders. “We have not come for charity, ma’am. We are on the way to Mexico, to our grandmama.”

  I’d been an English teacher at the Mossy Creek High School until it burned down over twenty years ago, and had known native English speaking kids his age who wouldn’t have been able to come up with the word “charity.” Arturo and his sisters had obviously been forced to take enough hand-outs during their short lives to be well acquainted with the word. “Tell you what, son. I’ll share my breakfast with you, if you’ll share your rabbit with me. I’ll make a nice rabbit stew, if you’ll dig up some carrots and potatoes from my garden.”

  Arturo hesitated. Connie—I’d already nicknamed Consuela—said something to him again in Spanish. Arturo didn’t reply this time, just gazed at me steadily, as if trying to find the hidden charity in my deal.

  “Do you know English, Connie?”

  The girl’s eyes widened, but she knew who I was talking to. “Si . . . I mean yes, ma’am.”

  “Then please use it, all of you,” I said. “It’s rude to speak in Spanish when you know the other person can’t understand. It makes them feel like you’re talking behind their back.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And call me Miss Opal.” I pulled the screen door open. “Y’all coming in or not?”