Circle of Fire (Mysteries through History)

by Evelyn Coleman

  Mendy got up, grumbling all the way inside. She plopped down on the piano bench and waited for Mama. She let out a big sigh as she listened to Daddy driving away.

  Mama sat down beside Mendy. “There’s some things you don’t have to learn about just yet. There’s plenty of time to know about the world. We’re going to have a good summer together, just you and me. How about while Li’l Ben’s playing with his logs, I’ll teach you a song my mama taught me when I was your age?”

  Mendy frowned. Here it comes, another church song.

  Mama began to sing:

  There was a tree, the prettiest tree,

  The prettiest tree you ever did see.

  The tree in the ground

  And the green grass growing all around, all around,

  And the green grass growing all around.

  “Come on, sing it with me,” Mama said to Mendy.

  Mendy began to sing and play the tune on her piano keys. Soon they were both laughing and playing and singing and getting all the verses mixed up. Mendy forgot that it was Mama—strict, stern Mama. This was fun.

  When they finally stopped, both of them breathless, grinning at each other, Mendy felt a flood of tears coming. She started crying.

  “What’s the matter, baby?” Mama asked, pulling Mendy to her. “What you crying for?”

  Mendy didn’t answer. She just hugged Mama tightly and wished she could stay right there forever.

  Mendy finished practicing the piano and hurried through her chores. After she was done brushing down Daddy’s mare, Tandy, Mendy got a bucket and a small shovel and started digging up fat, juicy worms for bait. She wanted to be ready when Daddy came back. Mendy got their fishing poles and put them on the porch. Then she went in to ask Mama to fix a picnic basket. But Mama was way ahead of her. The basket was already waiting on the counter.

  Mendy sat on the porch, just looking for pictures in the shapes of the clouds and trying to recall only good memories about Mr. Hare, until Daddy came back. When Mendy jumped in Daddy’s truck, Mama’s last words were, “Mendy, don’t be running wild. And mind your manners.”

  As they drove along the mountain roads, Daddy told stories about mountain trappers and Great-Uncle Joe and the days when Daddy was a boy. As the truck bumped along the dirt and gravel road, Daddy’s stories began to cheer Mendy up, despite her broken heart.

  “Mendy, I used to have a spinning top whittled from a pine knot. I loved that top. Then Grandpa Ben made me a goose-quill whistle and I thought I’d blow my fool head off. But my favorite of all was the popgun that my daddy made from a hollow cane. Why, I could hit almost anything with that gun. Wild Trapper, did I ever tell you about the time I shot a buzzard with it? Your grandma like to had a fit. She never wanted me to hunt just for sport. She always said, if you kill an animal, you got to ask it for forgiveness, and you better be using it for something like food, clothing, shelter, or in her case, medicine. You know how your grandma was.”

  “Daddy, do you think a person who kills a rabbit just to get back at someone is mean?”

  Her daddy looked over at her, raising his eyebrows. “Naw, they ain’t just mean—they’re crazy. Who killed a rabbit to get back at someone?”

  “Nobody, I was just asking,” Mendy said. Crazy. The word rumbled around in her head.

  “Mendy. You ain’t in no trouble, are you?” her daddy asked, breaking into her thoughts.

  She shook her head no.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Daddy said. “I got some big news for you. Somebody special is coming to Highlander real soon.”

  “Who, Daddy? Who?” Mendy asked, her excitement rising. “Who’s coming to Highlander?”

  “Are you ready for this?”

  “Daddy,” Mendy whined. “Please stop playing and tell me.”

  “Somebody your grandma would have loved to meet.”

  A huge grin popped on Mendy’s face. Now Mendy had an idea who was coming. “You kidding me, Daddy?”

  “Nope. Got the flyer right here,” Daddy said, taking a folded paper out of his shirt pocket and passing it to Mendy.

  Mendy screamed with delight. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt would be at Highlander on June 17. That was less than two weeks away. She was speaking to encourage good race relations. Mendy couldn’t believe it—Mrs. Anna Eleanor Roosevelt right there in Monteagle, Tennessee, on Tuesday, June 17, 1958.

  “Can we go, Daddy? To hear her?”

  “I’m thinking on it, Wild Trapper. I’m thinking on it hard,” Daddy said. “Now just calm down and don’t say nothing to anyone about it, especially your mama. Just let me think on a plan.”

  “You remember what you told me about the man you knew in the war, Daddy?” Mendy asked.

  “Sure I do.”

  “Tell me again,” Mendy said. “I like hearing that story.”

  Her daddy smiled. “Well, all right. You know I was stationed all the way over in a place called Brisbane, Australia. It was 1943 and I was friends with a man named …”

  “Calvin Johnson,” Mendy said, grinning.

  “That’s right,” Daddy said. “You got a good memory. Back then, the army still had a white division and a colored division. Why, even the Red Cross was segregated. But we could all be in the canteen—remember, that’s like a small café—at the same time. Now, one day we’re sitting in the canteen, me and Calvin, when this tall white woman comes walking in.”

  “And you whispered to Mr. Johnson, ‘Man, that’s Eleanor Roosevelt.’ And neither one of you could believe it.”

  “Yep. And about that time, she walks behind the counter and begins shaking the men’s hands until she come to me and Calvin, the only two colored men sitting in there. Calvin was eating an ice cream cone.

  “He put that cone in his left hand so he could shake her hand. He told her he was from Pittsburgh and she smiled and said, ‘What do you know, we have a Yankee here.’ And all the soldiers started cheering and laughing. Then Mrs. Roosevelt looked Calvin straight in the eye and said …”

  “‘May I have some of that ice cream?’ And you and Mr. Johnson couldn’t hardly believe it,” Mendy said.

  “Yep. And then Mrs. Roosevelt gently took the cone from Calvin’s hand, took a bite, and handed it back to him. And she said, ‘You see? That didn’t hurt at all, did it? You won’t even miss it.’

  “Them white boys was red as beets. I bet not one of them ever thought he’d live to see a white lady eat a colored person’s food. No sirree. Why, that room was so quiet you coulda heard a mouse peeing on cotton. When she got to me, I was so nervous I couldn’t even lift my hand for her to shake it. So she lifted it up for me. After that, me and Calvin always said Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt was …”

  “I know,” Mendy said. “The nicest white woman you’d ever met. And now it’s my time to see her.”

  “I’m thinking on it, Wild Trapper. Just be patient.”

  Mendy settled back in her seat. Her face lit up like a Christmas tree as she reread the flyer. Wow. Eleanor Roosevelt was coming to Monteagle, Tennessee!

  Daddy started singing:

  Heavenly shades of night are falling

  It’s twilight time

  Out of the mist your voice is calling

  It’s twilight time

  When purple-colored curtains

  Mark the end of day

  I hear you, my dear, at twilight time

  Mendy said, “That’s a pretty song, Daddy. What’s the name of it?”

  “‘Twilight Time’ by The Platters. You’re right, it sure is pretty. Not as pretty as my daughter Mendy, though. Nope. Ain’t no song prettier than my Mendy,” Daddy said, grinning.

  Mendy grinned too. She felt happier than she had for days, since she’d first spotted the cigar. “I hope we catch the biggest widemouth bass that’s ever been caught in these parts, Daddy.”

  “Me too, Mendy. Me too.”

  That night Mendy felt so excited about Mrs. Roosevelt coming to Tennessee, she thought she’d burst wide open. She just hoped Dadd
y could come up with something really convincing so that Mama would let Mendy go to the Highlander School on June 17.

  The next morning, after Daddy left for work, Mendy did all her chores cheerfully. After lunch she didn’t even complain about taking Li’l Ben outside to play before his nap. Then Mendy offered to string beans for Mama.

  As Mendy sat on the porch alone and worked on the beans, she forced herself to think of what had happened to poor Mr. Hare. She had promised herself she’d teach those mean people a lesson, She was scared to go back to the clearing, but Daddy always said, “Just because you afraid don’t mean you can’t do something. It just means you need to be more careful about doing it, is all.”

  CHAPTER 5

  THE PERFECT PLAN

  Mendy finished stringing the beans, then waited for a good moment to ask Mama if she could go visit Aunt Sis. Her chance came when she caught sight of Mama out in the yard, talking to one of the ladies from church. Mama seemed sad that Mendy didn’t want to stay with her, but she said all right. Mama didn’t even make Mendy practice the piano before she left.

  Mendy scrounged around in the barn until she found some old work gloves, some leftover wire screening, and wire cutters. She packed them in a burlap sack and put it in her wagon. This time she’d set a better trap.

  When Mendy arrived at Aunt Sis’s house, there was no sign of her. Mendy stood on the porch and called, “Aunt Sis. Aunt Sis, where are you?” but there was no answer. Where could she be this late in the afternoon? She hardly ever left home. The rolling store even brought her groceries out. This was a horse-drawn wagon with a colored man driving it and a white man working in the back, taking grocery orders and seeing to the money. The rolling store didn’t usually serve coloreds, but the white family in Sewanee that Aunt Sis used to work for made sure it stopped at her cabin each week.

  Mendy looked under the crabapple tree near the edge of the woods. Sometimes on warm afternoons, Aunt Sis sat under the tree fanning herself. She never seemed to notice the apples dropping like rifle bullets all around her. Mendy hated to sit under the tree with her, since you might get clunked in the head at any moment.

  Mendy walked back up to the porch. Maybe Aunt Sis was sick. The screen door wasn’t latched, so Mendy went inside. Aunt Sis wasn’t there, but everything looked in place; the bed was made up and the kitchen was clean. Aunt Sis might be “bad to forget” and often confused, but she still kept her house clean—so clean you could eat off her floor. Then Mendy noticed that Aunt Sis’s walking stick was gone. Aunt Sis took her stick everywhere she went. Mendy decided maybe someone had come and picked her up to take her into town. Lots of folk who were raised in the mountains and hollows didn’t lock up when they left home.

  Mendy took her wagon and headed into the woods. She needed to set her trap and get back home before Mama came looking to see what she was up to.

  When Mendy reached the clearing, she let out her breath with relief. There was no sign that the trespassers had been back. Mendy checked the low brush to make sure that Mr. Hare’s grave hadn’t been disturbed. The makeshift cross still stood guard.

  Mendy walked back into the clearing and emptied the contents of her wagon. Then she picked up an empty sack and got to work.

  Creeks and streams speckled the woods of the Cumberland Plateau. Mendy searched the damp edge of the nearest creek until she found what she was looking for—a nest of water snakes. The snakes were lying curled up under a rock, sluggish from the cool darkness. Grandma had taught Mendy how to catch snakes. Mendy could even catch a rattler with her bare hands and milk the fangs for the venom, which Grandma used to treat folks for snakebites. Catching these harmless water snakes wouldn’t even be scary.

  Mendy moved around the nest quietly, careful not to step on a twig that might snap or leaves that might crunch. Suddenly she pounced, letting the sack land right on top of the nest of snakes. She snatched them up into the sack and tied it off just like Grandma had taught her.

  Mendy dragged the sack over to the hole where she’d set the honey trap. She planned to set her new trap in the same hole, then make the spot look exactly the way the trespassers had left it when they reversed her trap. She knew they would be back to check it. Every hunter came back to check his traps.

  Mendy carefully emptied the sackful of snakes into the hole and secured the wire screening over them. Then she spotted the blood-stained rag that the trespassers had wrapped around Mr. Hare, still lying in the same place she’d left it. She pulled on her work gloves, took a deep breath, and picked up the cloth between the tips of her fingers. She could see the red circle and the cross. Mendy wrapped the cloth around grass and leaves until it was about the same size as Mr. Hare. She placed the bundle on top of the screening. Below it, she could see the snakes writhing against the mesh already.

  Now came the hardest part: picking up the bowie knife. Mendy had thought she’d never touch the knife again. She dreaded touching it now. But it had to be done. Unless the hilt of that knife was sticking out of the trap just like before, the trespassers would know she had been back. Mendy stuck the knife into the wire mesh. Then she put grass and leaves around the knife’s hilt. The minute one of the trespassers lifted the knife to see if Mr. Hare was still there, the wire would come up, too.

  A snakebite would be a hard lesson. These were plain water snakes but they looked like copperheads, the most poisonous snakes around. Whoever got bit would spend some anxious hours fearing for his life.

  Mendy started packing up, then hesitated. Was it right to leave this trap for the trespassers? Her mind went back to the last time she ever saw Mr. Hare. They killed an innocent rabbit. You darn tootin’ it’s right, she decided.

  She stopped by the cave to see if maybe Jeffrey had come by. But there was no sign he’d been there. She felt angry that Jeffrey had just accepted that they couldn’t be friends anymore. It hurt that he could give up so easily.

  Mendy took out the secret treasures they kept in the cave to signify they’d be blood sister and brother forever-quartz crystals, agate, a piece of sparkly green fluorite, yellow sandstone banded with delicate brown lines, even the skeletal remains of a box turtle who might have lived for sixty years. Mendy took it all to the edge of the stream to throw it away. This was the end of the pact between her and chicken Jeffrey.

  Then Mendy saw it—an Eastern painted turtle shading on a nearby rock. Its beautiful head and shell were patterned with every color in the mountains. Mendy had heard tell of these turtles, but she’d never come face-to-face with one. She took it as a sign. Grandma said you should never ignore the signs. Mendy wrapped the treasures back up and returned them to the cave. Then she pulled the wagon back toward Aunt Sis’s house.

  As Mendy walked, she noticed how dark it was under the trees’ thick canopy. Was night coming already? Had it taken her that long to find the snakes? Maybe. She couldn’t use the sky to tell time in the thickest part of the woods. Mendy began walking a little faster.

  She stopped abruptly. She had heard something—a sound like a baby’s whimpering. Mendy followed the sound. She had to stop every few feet, because the sound was so faint and her rusty wagon so loud. She heard the whimpering more clearly now. Mendy ran toward the sound, leaving the wagon behind. Suppose a child or an animal had gotten hurt or trapped somewhere? The forest was full of sinkholes and caves.

  Mendy cocked her head to listen. The sound was coming from her right. She knew there was a cave and an old well off in that direction. Folks said a mountain man used to live there. Mendy took a few steps forward, but she halted as she caught sight of something half-hidden in the leaves. She put out a toe and nudged it. It was a stick– Aunt Sis’s walking stick.

  Mendy picked it up, her heart racing. She followed the whimpering sound to the entrance of the cave. “Aunt Sis,” she called. “You in there? Aunt Sis, answer me.”

  Mendy could hear the sound more clearly now. It was Aunt Sis, talking and whimpering at the same time.

  On hands and knees,
Mendy peered inside the cave, but she could see only darkness. “Aunt Sis, what you doing in there? Please, it’s me, Mendy. Come on out now.”

  Aunt Sis ain’t never been this bad before. I should go get help, Mendy thought. But was there time to fetch somebody and get back before darkness fell?

  “Aunt Sis, I’m coming to get you,” Mendy said. “Just sit still.” She went back to the wagon and grabbed a flashlight. She crawled into the dark cave, struggling to hold the wavery beam of light steady. The cave floor felt cold and damp. Mendy’s hand squished a bug. But she kept crawling until she reached Aunt Sis. Mendy held her flashlight so that she could see Aunt Sis and Aunt Sis could see her.

  Aunt Sis cowered against the back wall of the cave, clutching a white cloth. In the flashlight’s beam, Mendy could see that the cloth had a red marking on it. Mendy’s heart hurt.

  “Aunt Sis, what are you doing in here? Where did you get that cloth?” Mendy said while trying to snatch it from her.

  Had Aunt Sis killed the poor rabbit? Mendy remembered her daddy saying that only a crazy person would have killed Mr. Hare. Didn’t some people say Aunt Sis was crazy? What if Aunt Sis had killed Mr. Hare, thinking he was something else or not knowing what she was doing? Mendy tried to push the thought from her mind. No, Mendy wouldn’t let herself think that.

  “This here’s mine,” Aunt Sis said, pulling the cloth from Mendy’s grip. “The Devil done come. This proof the Devil is here.” Aunt Sis rocked back and forth.

  Mendy tried to take Aunt Sis’s hand to calm her, but she jerked it away. Even if Aunt Sis had killed the rabbit, Mendy knew now she couldn’t be mad at her. It was clear Aunt Sis was more confused than Mendy had thought possible.

  “Y’all ain’t gonna get us no more. No. No more wailing, no more beatings,” Aunt Sis was saying now, almost singing like she was in church.

  Mendy sat back on her heels. Her head brushed the top of the cave. How in the world had Aunt Sis gotten back in here? “Come on now, Aunt Sis. It’s me, Mendy. Remember? I sit with you under the crabapple tree sometimes. Remember? Come on out with me.” Mendy inched toward her.