Just then someone let out a scornful laugh.
Christy had an uneasy feeling as she recognized the source. She turned around to see Granny smirking back defiantly.
Miss Ida laid a comforting hand on Christy’s. “Don’t pay them any mind,” she whispered. “They just don’t know any better.”
Christy looked at the woman next to her in surprise. It was the first time Miss Ida had revealed such kindness. But before Christy could thank her, Miss Ida withdrew her hand and returned her attention to David.
“I’m certain,” David continued, his voice taking on a sterner note, “that you will all give Miss Huddleston a chance to prove what a wonderful teacher she is.”
Jagged lightning lit up the sky, followed by an ear-splitting clap of thunder. Christy shifted uncomfortably in her seat. It was going to be a very, very long service.
“You can say I’m crazy all you want,” Christy said to David as they finished up their pancakes at breakfast the next morning, “but I’m certain there was a lot of whispering and staring going on at church.”
“Well—” David sipped at his cup of coffee— “perhaps they were just entranced by your charms.”
“Stop teasing,” Christy said. “I’m serious, David. And you heard that snort of disapproval. It was Granny O’Teale, I’ve no doubt of it.”
“Could have been one of the hogs,” David pointed out. “Talk about your hog heaven. With all that mud, they were having a real party out there.”
Christy laughed. “Well, I’ve got more important things to worry about today, like figuring out how to get more organized with the children’s lessons. To begin with, I thought about dividing them into grades, instead of this boys-on-one-side-of-the-room, girls-on-the-other nonsense.”
Ruby Mae looked up in alarm. “No’m, I can’t sit by no boy!” she cried. “That ain’t no courtin’ school!”
“Of course it isn’t,” Christy said reasonably. “But it just makes sense to seat children of the same level together, whether they’re boys or girls.”
“Makes no sense a-tall!” Ruby Mae exclaimed.
David cast Christy a smile. “Seems you do have other things to worry about today,” he said.
Miss Alice gazed out the window at the unceasing, icy rain. “Have you ever seen it rain so hard?” she asked. “I’ll be surprised if all your students make it today, Christy.”
“That might be just as well,” Christy said, grinning. “I was feeling a little outnumbered last week!”
With a last sip of coffee, Christy gathered up her notebook and sweater and headed across the plank walk to the schoolhouse. Ruby Mae followed behind, carrying Miss Ida’s umbrella. David had already lit a fire in the schoolroom stove, and the chill was gone from at least part of the room. Christy and Ruby Mae straightened school desks while they waited for the children to arrive.
By seven fifty, Christy was beginning to worry. Only about a third of her sixty-seven pupils had shown up. “Where is everybody?” she asked Creed Allen. “Do you think the weather’s keeping them away?”
“Yes’m,” Creed said in an unusually soft, polite voice. “Could be the weather. Strangest thing I ever did see, snowing somethin’ fierce, then rainin’ like it ain’t never goin to stop.” He cocked an eye at Christy. “You ever seen such weather, Teacher?”
As Christy opened her mouth to answer, she noticed that all of her students were watching her expectantly. A strange quiet had fallen on the room. “Well, Creed,” she said, “come to think of it, I can’t say that I have.” She leaned against her desk, smiling at her pupils. “I must say, this is the most well-behaved I’ve seen you since we started school. Is it just because there are fewer of you? Or is it the weather?” She paused. “Come on, somebody tell me. To what do I owe this wonderful behavior?”
Nobody answered. Creed studied his dirty thumbnail. Vella Holt twirled one of her pigtails nervously. Even Lundy Taylor, sitting sullenly in the back of the room, seemed subdued.
“Well,” Christy said, “I guess I should just enjoy my good fortune.” She reached for her attendance book. “Let’s see. Who is missing today? I don’t see any of the O’Teales or the McHones.”
As Christy took the roll, she strolled up and down the rows of students, noting each empty desk. With every step, she sensed eyes following her, just the way she had in church. This is odd, she thought. The children hadn’t acted this way last week. They’d been barely able to control their excitement. Why would they be treating her differently now?
Stranger still was the odd aroma, bitter and pungent, that seemed to follow her as she walked. Smells were nothing new, of course. These were children who had never been exposed to the basics of hygiene. Already Christy had come to hate her too sensitive nose. She had found some relief by carrying a handkerchief heavily soaked with perfume up her sleeve.
But this smell was something altogether different. It reminded her of the horrid-smelling medicine her mother had made her take as a child when she’d had the flu. It smelled of strange, bitter herbs and even a touch of garlic.
She considered asking someone about the smell, then hesitated. After all, maybe one of the children had been given some kind of homemade medicine. She didn’t want to embarrass anyone by drawing attention to the odor. Still, it was odd that no matter where she went in the room, the scent seemed to follow her.
The sky was darkening with each passing moment. Christy lit two kerosene lamps. As she set one on her desk, she said, “How about a song to chase away the gloom?” She knew the children loved to sing. Although they didn’t know some standards like “America,” they knew all kinds of ballads from their Scots-Irish and German heritages. “How about ‘Sourwood Mountain’?”
A few children nodded.
“When I asked you if you wanted to sing that last week, you were all practically jumping out of your seats!” Christy exclaimed. “What is wrong with—”
A deep growl of thunder interrupted her.
“Now, don’t tell me a little thunder’s bothering you,” she chided. She touched Vella’s shoulder and the little girl jumped. “I’m sorry, Vella, did I scare you?”
“No’m, I ain’t scared,” Vella said quickly. “I ain’t scared of you ’cause I got my—”
“Hush up, big mouth.” Her sister, Becky, yanked on one of Vella’s pigtails.
“What were you going to say, Vella?” Christy asked, kneeling down to the little girl’s side.
“Nothin’. I ain’t scared, that’s all.”
Christy frowned. She eyed Becky, but the older girl just stared straight ahead. Her hands were clasped together as if she was praying.
“All right, then,” Christy said. “ ‘Sourwood Mountain.’ I’ll start it up, but you know the words much better than I.”
She went to the front of the room. The kerosene flame flickered, sending long shadows dancing up the walls.
“ ‘I’ve got a gal in the Sourwood Mountain,’ ” Christy sang. To her surprise, only a few half-hearted voices joined in.
Christy sighed, hands on her hips. “Is this the same class that was here last week?” she teased. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say someone had put a spell on you.”
Several of the students gasped. Creed’s eyes went ’round. “Ain’t no spell, Teacher,” he blurted. “I promise we is us, just like always. Ain’t no spell or nothin’!”
“All right, Creed, relax. It was just a joke—”
Just then, lightning as bright as the noon sun sent a blinding flash through the room. Christy heard something cracking, a sound like the slow splitting of wood. Rain pelted against the windows. Deafening thunder, like nothing she had ever heard, shook the sky, drowning out the cracking sound.
And then it happened. Christy heard it before she saw it—the eerie, musical sound of glass shattering as a tree limb lurched through one of the windows, reaching into the schoolroom like a huge hand.
Desks overturned as children screamed and ran, and rain fell in torrents.
Everywhere she looked, Christy saw mud and dirt and branches and glass and splinters of wood.
“It’s just a branch,” Christy called to the terrified children cowering near the door. “Lightning hit that old pine, is all. Is anyone cut? Anyone hurt at all?”
Some of the children were sobbing. A few hid behind desks. Christy ran from child to child, checking for glass cuts or scrapes.
“Vella, are you all right?” she demanded.
The little girl could only manage a terrified sob.
“Creed?” Christy called.
“Yes’m,” he answered in a squeak of a voice. “I ain’t hurt none.”
Christy climbed over the great wooden carcass in the middle of the room. The smell of pine needles and mud had replaced the strange odor that had filled the room only moments before.
“Well, it looks to me like we may just have to move school over to the mission house for the rest of the day,” Christy said as she checked Ruby Mae for cuts. No one responded. The children just kept staring at Christy, dazed and sobbing, as if they were afraid to take their eyes off her for even a moment.
At last Christy felt certain that no one had been hurt. She was grateful to see that the children had been spared injury. But no matter how hard she tried, no matter what words she used, she could see the dark fear in their eyes as she tried to comfort them, and something told her it was not the storm that they feared.
“That lightning was a sign, I’m a-tellin’ you, Swannie,” Granny said Friday morning as she settled into her rocking chair on the O’Teales’ front porch. “It’s a good thing we ain’t lettin’ the young’uns near that city gal.” She reached out her hand and pulled Mountie into her lap, rocking quietly as she stroked the girl’s hair.
Mary stood in the yard, listening to her great-grandmother talk. She tossed corn kernels to the chickens, who strutted about the yard as if they owned it. Ever since Granny had heard about the lightning strike at the mission school on Monday, she hadn’t stopped talking about it.
It hadn’t taken her long to hear, either. News had a way of traveling fast in Cutter Gap. Of course, by now almost everybody had heard about the raven’s visit to the mission school at the end of last week. They’d also heard about Granny’s carefully prepared mixture of herbs and roots. “Smells plumb fearsome,” Creed Allen had whispered to Mary when his mother had stopped by the O’Teale cabin to get some of Granny’s “curse chaser,” as Granny called it. She placed a spoonful of the smelly mixture on a little piece of rag, then tied it up with a string. It was to be worn around the neck under the clothes—at all times, if it could be tolerated.
Mary thought Creed was right—the mixture did smell horrible—but Granny knew her potions well. And for whatever reason, nobody who’d been around Miz Christy had been hurt yet. Fact was the tree hit by lightning hadn’t done much damage other than scaring some of the children. That very afternoon the preacher had boarded up the broken window.
Mary tossed the last of the corn to Lucybelle, her favorite chicken. She gazed toward the path that led to the school and let out a long sigh.
“Look at that face,” Granny chided. “You look like you lost your last friend.”
“Granny,” Mary asked slowly, choosing her words with care, “if’n the raven and the lightning were signs that Miz Christy’s cursed, how’s come none of us were hurt at church last Sunday or the Sunday afore that? She was right there in a pew a-sittin’.”
“It’s the Lord’s house on Sunday, child.”
“But the children who keep a-goin’ to school, they’re still all right. Creed said so on Wednesday.”
Granny considered. “Well, most all of ’em is wearin’ your granny’s secret curse chaser, for one thing. And for another, that don’t mean bad things can’t still happen. Those parents is takin’ an awful risk, if’n you ask me.”
“Creed said his mama figures he’ll be safe if’n he wears your recipe. She wants real bad for him to learn Latin, ’cause that’s a proper education. So she’s lettin’ him and the other children keep a-goin’ to school.”
Granny held out her hand. Mary squeezed it gently.
“You don’t need no schoolin’ anyway, Mary,” Granny said. “You’re already smart as a whip.”
Mary thought of Teacher’s magic blue eyes as she’d read them the Twentieth Psalm the first day of school. Her voice had been magic too. She’d promised them she would teach them how to read words out of real books and how to write the way she did on the blackboard, with letters full of loops and curves. She’d talked of faraway places they would learn about, places with funny names that twisted on the tongue.
And she’d told them wonderful stories that came straight out of her own head—made up, but real as could be. Sometimes Mary told Mountie stories like that, late at night when they were too cold or too hungry to get to sleep. What a gift it would be to write them down all nice and proper on a chalkboard, or maybe even on a piece of paper Mary could keep forever and ever.
Mary pulled on her herb necklace. “Granny,” she asked, “can I take this off’n me sometimes? It stinks somethin’ terrible, and it itches me too.”
“That’s its power,” Granny said firmly. “You leave that right around your pretty neck.”
“But Teacher’s nowhere near here.”
“You leave it on, just in case. She weren’t too near Bob Allen when that tree nearly killed him, now was she? A bad curse can travel a long ways.”
“What would happen if Teacher found out I was wearin’ this thing?”
“She ain’t a-goin’ to find out because you ain’t a-goin’ anywheres near that school.” Granny gave a playful tug on Mary’s hair. She’d been in a fine mood the last couple of days, Mary had noticed. “And ain’t you just as glad? Didn’t you miss your ol’ Granny, sittin’ in that school all day long?”
“Sure I missed you, Granny.” Mary hesitated. “But just for the sake of askin’, what would happen if she done found out?”
“Then the curse would take over,” Granny explained. “It’s the secret of the recipe that gives it all its power.” She winked. “How about a smile for your poor ol’ granny, now?”
Mary did her best. “I gotta go get some more kindling,” she said. “Fire’s gettin’ low.”
“Ain’t no need to fuss.” Granny wriggled her bare feet. “Gonna be a warm ’un for Jan’ry, now that the rain’s done stopped.”
Mary’s mother peered out the cabin door. “Strangest weather I ever did see.”
“It’s the brought-on teacher,” Granny said.
As she headed for the edge of the woods, Mary considered her granny’s words. Here in the mountains, strange weather was hardly unusual. And lightning strikes—well, they were as common as ticks on a hound. The McHones’ cabin had nearly burned down last summer after being struck by lightning.
She bent down to pick up a stick. Everything was far too wet to make good kindling. There was no point in looking. Granny was right, anyway. It was going to be a warm one today.
Granny was right a lot, she thought. She’d known Miz Spencer’s last baby was going to be a boy. Of course, that could have just been good guessing. She knew that corn should go in the ground when the dogwood whitens, but then a lot of folks knew that. She said you should never step to the ground with one shoe on and one shoe off, because for each step, you’d pay with a day of bad luck. But that was just common sense.
Granny had also told Mary not to climb to the top of the hickory tree near Blossom Ridge or she’d fall and break into a thousand pieces, but she had anyway, and she’d had a fine view of the sun coming up, all rosy and full of itself. She’d told Mary not to bother telling Mountie stories, because Mountie couldn’t understand them, but Mary told them anyway. And she knew from the way Mountie smiled at her that she always understood every word.
It wasn’t that Granny didn’t love Mountie, of course. You could see she did, from the way she rocked Mountie to sleep at night. It was just that sometimes even Grann
y was wrong.
It was a hard thing to be thinking. It made Mary feel mixed up inside. She didn’t like that feeling, not at all.
“Mama?” Mary called. “I’m a-goin’ down to the Spencers’ to see Zady.”
“Take Mountie,” her mother called back. “Mary? You hear me?”
But Mary was already winding her way through the trees. She headed, fast as her feet could carry her, down a path that didn’t go anywhere near the Spencers’ cabin.
It went straight to the mission school.
“Twelve, thirteen, fourteen.” Christy sighed. Fourteen students today. At this rate she’d be down to zero soon.
“Has anyone talked to the O’Teale children?” she asked. “Or the McHones or the Holcombes?” Even Lundy Taylor and Wraight Holt were gone today. As strange as it seemed, she was sorry to lose them. “With the weather better today, I’d hoped to see more of you.”
Christy’s gaze fell on Creed. The little boy’s neck was flushed, and his eyes were oddly bright.
“Creed, are you feeling all right?”
“Yes’m,” he said in the same flat voice he’d been using all week. “Just a little scratchy on my chest and neck is all.”
“You might be coming down with something,” Christy said. She reached over to feel his forehead. The boy flinched at her touch.
“You do feel a little warm. Are you sure you feel all right?”
“Yes’m.”
“What’s that string around your neck?”
“Just a—for decoration, Teacher.”
Christy shook her head. She’d noticed that several of the other children were wearing pieces of string or yarn around their necks. There seemed to be something attached to the strings, but since the children wore the necklaces under their clothing, she couldn’t tell for sure. Whatever the odd necklaces were, Christy had begun to suspect that they were the source of the bitter medicinal smell wafting through the room. By now she’d almost grown used to the odor.
Even Ruby Mae had taken to wearing one of the necklaces. Yesterday at dinner, it had been hard to ignore.
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