by Diane Noble
He followed me into the house then, and sat by the fireplace in one of our two chairs, his poke by his side. After reaching for our best china cups and saucers on the kitchen shelf, I turned back to where the coffee was boiling over the coals. I could feel his gaze on my back as I wrapped a towel around the handle and poured the dark liquid into the two cups.
My cheeks heated from the warmth of the fire or from his nearness, I couldn’t tell which. I turned back to him, handed him his coffee, and sat opposite him. After a moment of letting his coffee cool, he took a swallow, his eyes still on mine above the rim.
“I brought you the books I promised,” he said, setting his cup and saucer on the wood-planked floor. He reached for the bag and placed it atop his bent knees, without making a move to withdraw the contents.
I couldn’t bear to meet his eyes, so fearful was I that my hunger for the leather poke’s contents would show. Like the starving cougar cub I’d once found caught in a bear trap over by Troublesome Creek, I hungered for book learning.
“Shakespeare,” I murmured. “And Chaucer.”
“Ah, you remembered!” he said as if it had been a test. He seemed to take extra care and time opening the parcel. At last, he beamed and held out the first large book.
I reached for it, quickly wrapping my fingers around the leather binding. The tome lay heavy in my lap, and I traced my fingertips over the gold lettering: A Treasury of Shakespeare’s Plays and Sonnets.
“Open it!” Zebulon said, scooting his chair closer and resting the second book atop his knees.
Slowly, I turned back the front cover.
“No, no, no!” He said, taking the book from my hands. “Like this! Like this!” He closed the cover, then proceeded to demonstrate opening the book in the center, slowly bending back the spine, cutting each side in half, then in quarters, each time bending gently as before. He carefully smoothed the pages, touching them as gently as a mother touching a newborn infant. Or a lover touching his beloved.
“Welsie True never told me about this,” I said quietly. I turned my attention to his method of preserving the spine and tried not to be offended.
He looked up, and his expression turned sheepish. “I shouldn’t have spoken so,” he said. “Forgive me.” He handed the heavy book back to me. “Who is Welsie True?”
I smoothed the pages, aware he still watched my hands, judging them. Some of the joy had worn off his gift. “She is my dearest friend in the world.”
“Someone nearby then? A neighbor?”
I shook my head. “I’ve not yet set eyes on her. But someday I will.” I said no more for I could see that he had lost interest.
“Read something,” he urged. “There, on the first page … The Tempest.” He reached across the distance between us and pointed to a place halfway down the page. “Ah, my dear, with your lovely voice … I cannot wait to hear you read Shakespeare.” He then surprised me by settling back into his chair and closing his eyes. “Read.”
I frowned at the unfamiliar words and began. The words came slowly at first, and then—almost unbidden—the fey magic of the language took root in my soul. “Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to the master’s whistle—Blow, till thou burst thy wind, if room enough!”
I continued on, images of ancient mariners filling my mind. Time passed without my awareness. It wasn’t until I heard footsteps on the porch that I realized I had read for an hour or more. Poppy was home for our midday meal.
The door burst open, letting in a blast of light. “What’s this?” Poppy growled. “Who’s here with ye, lass?”
“ ’Tis Zebulon Deforest,” I said, placing the book on the floor and standing awkwardly, the chair tipping over with a clatter behind me. “He’s returned.” I wondered why I felt the need to explain Mr. Deforest’s presence or protect him from what would surely be Poppy’s displeasure.
Zebulon stood and set the other book in his chair. “Good day, sir.” He strode across the great room, extending a hand to shake Poppy’s. He towered over Poppy’s elfin figure.
Scowling up at him, my grandfather ignored the gesture. “So ye’ve come to take away me Fairwyn.”
“No sir,” Zebulon said quickly. “I’ve done no such thing. I’ve come again to learn about your people, those things your granddaughter can tell me about your culture. Your stories, your songs. That sort of thing.”
“Ye mayn’t ken ye’re takin’ her away, but ye’re pullin’ her away from me, true.”
I stepped forward and laid my hand on my grandfather’s rough sleeve. “ ’Tis only as he says, Poppy.”
Poppy set his gaze on the Shakespeare volume at my feet. “What’s this?”
“A book for your granddaughter,” Zebulon said. “I saw her hunger for reading when last I was here … I thought—”
My grandfather turned his hard-eyed gaze to Zebulon. “Ye’re putting notions in her head. That’s what ye’re doing. Bad as Welsie True, ye are. Worse’n Welsie True.” He moved to the book and picked it up. “Fairwyn don’t need yer gifts. You pack ’em in yer poke and git.” He snapped his galluses, looking scornful.
“Sir …” Zebulon’s voice quaked with either anger or fear, I couldn’t tell which. “Sir, you have no right to keep your granddaughter from reading what she wants. She is a grown woman, able to make her own decisions about such things.”
He studied the book still in Poppy’s hands, then moved his gaze to my grandfather’s face. “These are classics of the finest order. Beautifully bound. Valuable beyond your imagination. There is a bright spark of intelligence and yearning in your granddaughter’s soul. You cannot forbid Fairwyn to have them.”
I stood rooted to the bare planks beneath my brogans. Bright spark of intelligence? My cheeks warmed. The professor saw such a thing in me? The gift of the books paled in comparison to the gift of his compliment.
Poppy turned toward the corner where his rifle stood, and I quickly took three steps to stand in his way. “Poppy,” I said gently. “Ye needn’t do anything more. Mister Deforest was about to go.”
Looking pale, Zebulon met my gaze, and with a slight nod he headed first to retrieve his leather poke, then outside. I followed him onto the porch, leaving the door open behind me for Poppy’s sake.
“Will he allow you to keep the books?”
I smiled. “His gruff manner is only that. He loves me and only desires to protect me. He fears that book learning will make me dissatisfied with my lot. With Sycamore Creek. I’ll assure him that your gift has nothing to do with my desire to leave. He’ll not understand, but he’ll agree to let me keep them.”
He leaned against the porch rail. “You’ve considered leaving this place?”
“I think about it every day.” I laughed and shrugged. “But where would I go? What would I do?” Then I sobered. “Besides, this is the only home I’ve ever known. Poppy’s raised me, and I’m the only one left to care for him.”
He studied my face. “About tonight, will there be a problem if I walk with you to the party? I mean, your grandfather—will he object?”
I glanced back through the doorway to where Poppy sat by the fireplace thumbing through the Shakespeare volume. His thin shoulders were hunched, and he frowned in concentration. His lips moved slowly as his index finger traced over the words. “I’ll convince him that he has nothing to fear from you,” I said when I turned back to Zebulon.
Zebulon stepped onto the bottom stair, which creaked beneath his weight, then turned and looked up at me. My heart caught at the earnest expression in his eyes. “When I first met you it was your mind—your undaunted thirst for learning—that captured my attention,” he said as if to himself. “But I’m finding your spirit captivates me as well.” He turned then and headed into the meadow, almost loping as he went.
“Be here by sundown,” I called after him.
Without turning he waved a hand over his head, showing me he’d heard, then disappeared down the trace.
&
nbsp; “Ye’re just like yer momma,” Poppy said between spoonfuls of possum stew. “I fear for ye, lass, I do. Fear ye’ll be sweet-talked by barren promises jes’ like she was. Came to no good, it did. And my sweet girl lost her life jes’ because of it.”
The scent of onions, beans, and cooking meat mixed with the aroma of burnt hickory filling the room. The stew still bubbled in the kettle hanging by its handle over the fire, and a pan of corn-bread warmed on the coals beneath.
“You shouldn’t judge me by the choices Momma made.” I thoughtfully stirred my food, looking across the scarred table at Poppy. “She made her choices on her own. Mine are mine alone to make.”
Poppy’s face grew red, and he set down his spoon so hard it rattled. “Now listen here, lass. Ye canna ken the trouble of those days.” His voice rose in anger. “Ye weren’t a part of what befell yer ma, but ye were a result of her sin.” Then he looked down again as if ashamed to have divulged even that much to my yearning soul.
I leaned forward to take his hands in mind. “Poppy, tell me what happened. You’ve always kept it to yourself. You tell me over and over that I’m bound to make the same mistake—tell me about the troubles that took my momma’s life. How can I avoid them, if I don’t know what they were?”
He withdrew his hands from mine, and set his lips in a straight line, refusing to meet my eyes as he continued eating. It was always the same when I asked about my mother and father.
We finished our meal in silence.
During the afternoon we loaded the rest of the corn into the sled and then hung two more razorbacks in the smokehouse, fresh-killed by Poppy that morning. He said nothing about the books Zebulon brought, and when I looked at the slant of the sun and said that Zebulon Deforest would be here soon to fetch me for the play party, he turned away, his narrow shoulders sloped with a kind of resigned sorrow.
Yet when Zebulon arrived, Poppy made it clear that he expected to accompany us.
With the sun low in the western sky, we started up the trace leading to Selah Jones’s cabin at the topmost knob of Blackberry Mountain. Poppy led the way with Blinken, our sorry one-eyed mule, pulling the sled. I suspected it was on purpose he wanted Zebulon at the south end of that foul-smelling creature, though I was there as well.
We met a passel of kinfolk and neighbors along the way. Empty-handed Charlie Beck hollered out that he was fit to be tied over the poor crop of late corn, then he fell into stride beside Poppy to talk of the woes of an early frost.
Rosie and Alpha Green joined us next, two ancient old-maid sisters who skittered like waterbugs up the trace. White-haired and wiry, they cackled as much as they talked. I never saw much of them unless there was a play party. I had always figured I would be like them someday. Known for my tale-telling and singing, considered one of the ancient keepers of our stories and songs by the generations to come. But never loved as a woman by a man.
As darkness fell, I turned to watch the swinging lights coming up the trail, twinkling as the bearers wove through the autumn forest. A sharp breeze blew from higher on the mountain, biting into my cheeks, bringing with it a flurry of falling leaves. I quickened my stride to keep warm. Beside me, Zebulon drew in quick breaths of air, obviously winded at the climb.
Selah Jones was one of the few knob folks with a barn, and as we came up the trace, the glow from a ring of torches around it welcomed us. Already, music spilled into the night air, fiddles and mountain dulcimers sawing prettily, jaw harps twanging, and a washtub drum beating its bumpy rhythm into the starry sky.
Selah spotted me right off and hurried over, hobbling all the way. “Fairy lass,” she said, peering through the dim light to Zebulon. “Who’s this ye’ve brung?”
Poppy held no great esteem for Selah and was already leading Blinken to the far side of the barn where a group of men was unloading their sleds of corn.
“Zebulon Deforest,” I said to Selah, looking back to her. “He’s here from North Carolina to study our ways.”
He stepped forward, his hand hanging limp as if he didn’t know quite what he was supposed to do.
“Pshaw,” Selah said and spat to a place beyond Zebulon’s shoe. Then staring at the same fancy shoe, she brightened and peered again into my face. “Ye goin’ walkin’ together, lass?”
I shook my head, but I couldn’t help grinning at the change in her. Seemed everyone in these mountains except Poppy wanted to marry me off—even to a furriner.
“He asked to come along. Wants to see our dances, hear our folk tales and music.”
Selah put her hands on her hips, frowning. “Ye shoulda axt if ’n I keered.” Behind her, the fiddlers started in on a Virginia reel, a foot-tapping rhythm I could scarce resist. I glanced longingly at the open barn door.
But Selah was looking hard at Zebulon, still not letting us pass. She was small but mighty. If she wanted Zebulon to leave, he would have no choice.
“It’s just for tonight, Selah,” I said.
“Perchance if ’n he’s acourtin’—”
I held up a hand to interrupt, but before I could speak, a low rumbling laugh made my heart dance as fast as the tapping feet in the barn. At my elbow Zebulon leaned closer to Selah and whispered so I could barely hear him. “Now, how will I ever find out if Fairwyn and I are meant to go walking together, if I can’t watch her dance and listen to her tell tales?”
Selah blinked her bright eyes at him, a hint of a smile playing at the corner of her lined mouth. “Well sir,” she said. “Ye have a quare way o’ puttin’ hit, but I reckon ye’re right.”
“You don’t mind if he stays then?” I grinned at her, then looked up at Zebulon, who winked at me. Winked! Surely, goodness and mercy!
Around us clusters of kinfolk and neighbors stared curiously, whispering among themselves. I figured they would since I’d been an old maid for a decade or more already. I squared my shoulders and shot another smile at Zebulon, allowing him to take my arm and lead me into the barn. My face tilted upward with pride to be with such a refined and educated man.
Zebulon met my gaze with an expression of wonder as we made our way through the play-party game already in progress. The place was filled with music. On a low platform in the middle, Poppy was strumming his dulcimer while Billy Butler and Ruffy Hill played on their fiddles. Granny London was sitting proud as a peahen by the washtub drum, tapping and clapping, and Jonce Reed twanged away on the jaw harp.
“You keep calling this a play party,” he whispered in my ear as soon as we were seated. “It looks like dancing to me.”
I gave him a nod, though I kept my eyes on the whirling and dipping couples in front of us. “Long time back a circuit preacher came through telling folks that dancing is a sin. No one stopped dancing, but now they call it a play party, playing games set to music—much like children do.” I turned to smile at him.
But he was lost in watching the activity on the hay-covered floor. “They’re the same as English country dances,” he said slowly with a frown of concentration. “Straight off the courts of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, I’d wager.”
Then he turned to me, still puzzling something in his mind. “There’s a book called The English Dancing Master, which ran through seventeen editions from 1650 to 1728. I’ve seen copies of it, drawings of the dance forms.” He turned back to the dancers. “What’s this called again?”
“ ‘Molly Brooks.’ ”
“The squares—or sets, as they’re called in the Dancing Master—are identical.” He turned to me again. “And the one before, the Virginia reel, was originally called ‘Sir Roger de Coverly.’ It’s the same tune and rhythm.” In his enthusiasm, he grasped my hand. “These dances go back hundreds of years. I’ve known it was true, but to see the purest form of Elizabethan dancing is … well, almost overwhelming.”
He leaned closer as if taking me into his confidence. Something deep inside me welled with pride, and I bit my bottom lip to keep my happy smile from spreading.
“Think of it”—he squeezed my
hand for emphasis—“we might find the key to rituals and games and songs that go back even further. I’m searching for those that are from pre-Christian rites. Pagan, if you will. Perhaps those taken from sword dances, English Morris dances, traditionally done by teams of men. I have a theory that they arrived in America before all the rest. I want to trace their history.”
I blinked with surprise, trying to comprehend his meaning. “I’ve never heard of such thing in our mountains.”
“If you ever do, Fairwyn, please note it in the journal I gave you. Perhaps something was mentioned by your kin years back. Something of rites or rituals that struck you as queer.”
Again, a flush of gratitude and wonder filled my soul near to overflowing, knowing he valued my mind, my help with his work. I was afraid to show him the longing for more that surely shone in my eyes. So I merely nodded as answer to his request and then turned to watch the double lines of dancers finish their promenade.
“Time to hear Fairwyn,” shouted Dearly Forbes from the far side of the barn.
“Hear, hear!” Granny London called from her seat by the washtub. “Fairwyn, sing us a pretty.”
I was glad for the break from the professor’s intense stare and the whirl of unsettled emotions inside my heart. I stepped onto the squat platform and took my place near Poppy. He glanced at me with pride and handed me his beautifully crafted dulcimer.
Dearly wound through the crowd until he was sitting at my feet. “The one about the groundhog,” he whispered loudly.
Grinning, I strummed a C-major chord and began tapping my foot.
Groundhog married the baboon’s sister;
Smacked his mouth, and how did he kiss her?
Kissed so hard he raised a blister!
First couple out on the floor!
Dearly hooted and slapped his knee as though he’d never heard the song before. Granny London grabbed white-haired Horace Mitchel, and they hobbled to the center of the floor to start a play-party square. Next came Rosie and Alpha Green and the Braugham brothers, widowers both, to take their places across from the old women. Then came pretty young maids Molly, Honey, Maudie Mae, and Beulah, peering toward the passel of young men who were standing shylike at the far end of the barn. By the time I got to the second verse, four of the boys had shuffled to join the girls to complete their square. Soon another half-dozen couples followed, and the barn floor was filled with laughter and song.