by Vicki Lane
I’m not scared as I walk up the road to Dark Holler with Old Drover keeping close. Me and Mommy come up this way only last month and I’m a big girl, nine years old. I’m not scared of them dark old trees nor of the quare girl who lives up there—even if she did put out her tongue at me. I’m not scared as I go past them big green bushes where it feels like someone is watching me.
Old Drover’s neck fur goes up and he stops and growls real low. A skinny arm pokes out of the bush and stretches out an open hand like it was asking fer something. Old Drover drops his head and walks sideways over to the hand and puts his nose up to it. He sniffs of it real good and goes to back up a few steps. Then he circles around three times the way dogs always do and lays down there in the dirt and puts his head on his paws. He keeps his eyes on the bush like he is waiting for it to tell him what to do.
The arm pulls back and I hear someone scrabbling around in there. Then the arm shoots out again and in the open hand is a pretty rosy-orange Injun spearhead. The hand is holding it out to me and I wonder what should I do. I reckon it must be the quare girl and that maybe she wants me to look at the pretty she’s found. So I come a little closer.
“That’s a right fine spearhead you got,” I say out loud, like it was a real person I was talking to and not just a skinny arm sticking out of a bush. “I have found me some but none of them is that big.”
The bush don’t say nothing but I go on talking to it. “My daddy says the Injuns used to hunt all through this country. He says they most always camped by the water and that’s where you’re liable to find the most of their leavings. Did you find this un nigh a branch?”
The hand kindly jerks up and down and pushes towards me, like it wants me to take the spearhead. I start to reach out for it but then I pull back right quick, suddenly afeared that the quare girl will grab me and pull me into the bushes where she’s hiding.
“I ain’t gone hurt you,” the bush says. “Go on, you can have it.”
She is quare, that’s for certain sure. But she ain’t mean and she didn’t take no fits whilst I was there. She showed me her play house under them big bushes, and along with the spearhead, she give me some pretty marvels. She said she had found them by the field where her brothers used to play. They’s a yellow and green one and a solid blue one, what’s cracked, and some others. She told me that she ain’t never been away from their farm, not to school, nor church nor even down the road to Uncle Farnham’s and Aunt Alva’s.
“I have been up the road,” says she, all excited and acting like that was some grand thing, such as going to Asheville on the train or such. “I been once with Mama and once with my sister Fairlight but she’s gone to Detroit now. And lots of times all by myself. Visiting.”
“There ain’t nobody lives up there,” says I. “What do you mean—visiting?”
She looks at me like I was the quare one and rolls her eyes. “Visiting the Quiet People, who’d you think? Them Quiet People up there sleeping on the hogback ridge. They like for me to set with them and tell them how the day looks and what flowers are blooming and how the sun feels. They—”
Just then there’s a whistle, loud and shrill, like someone calling a dog. The quare girl freezes and shrinks down into herself like she’s afraid of something. The whistle sounds again and I crawl to where they’s a gap in the bush and I can see Miz Fronie standing at the open door of the house. She whistles again and then she hollers, “Least, quit your loafering and come here! I need me some more wood for the cookstove!”
I turn around to tell the quare girl that I’ll help her carry in some wood, but she has vanished clean away. I see that there is a back door out of the bush, a little worn-down trail that tunnels through the thick green leaves and over the knobbly roots. It comes to me that maybe she don’t want her mama to know she was talking to me.
Real quiet-like I crawl out the way I come in, then I stand behind the bush and out of sight of the house. Old Drover is still laying there in the road but he stands up when he sees me. I brush all the dirt and dead leaves off of me. The marvels and the spear point are safe in my dress pocket and I start for the house with Old Drover at my heels.
When I come up near to the front porch, ain’t no one there, so I call out, “Miz Fronie?”
Pretty quick, here she comes, red-faced and sweaty. There’s a dirty apron over her housedress and I reckon her to have been busy with canning or some such work. She peers at me and bunches up her face. Then she smiles but it ain’t a natural smile; to my mind, it’s more like a dog baring its teeth.
“Why, you’re Voncel’s little girl, ain’t you? What in the name of mercy are you doing up here so late? Is your mama behind you on the road?”
I come up the steps. Close to, I can smell the sweat that’s making black patches under her arms. I think that when I get older and start to stink like grown-ups do, I will use Mum deodorant, the kind my mommy buys in Ransom at the drugstore. There is another smell on Miz Fronie’s breath that puts me in mind of rotting fruit. This other smell worries me somehow and all at once I notice that the light is fading and dark is coming on fast.
“No’m,” I say real quick, “Mommy’s to home with a hurt foot.”
I ask about the rug pattern and she says she’s done with it. I wait on the porch while Miz Fronie goes to get the pattern and I look in the door to see if the quare girl is back in there. While I’m looking, I hear the sound of stove wood being dumped into a box and then I see the quare girl, standing in the kitchen door and pointing at me. Her blue eyes have a light to them that makes me pay attention as she brings up a finger and lays it to her lips.
I nod. I won’t tell, I say in my mind, knowing that’s what she wants.
Chapter 5
In the Barn Loft
Dark Holler, 1931
(Least)
Wanna hear a scary story?” Lilah Bel whispers. Me and her are up in the barn loft. She don’t like my other hidey places, so we have fixed us a play house up here. Mama and Brother have gone to town and won’t be back till dark, so I got all my work done early for I knew that Lilah Bel would come if she could slip away. Me and Lilah Bel have been friends for the longest time now and she knows that on the first Saturday of every month Mama and Brother go to Gudger’s Stand to trade. Sometimes they even ride the train into Ransom.
“What kind of story?” I say and stretch out on the pallet that I have fixed from old quilts. Lilah Bel is sitting cross-legged at one end of the pallet and she is dividing up hard candy from the little paper poke she had in her pocket. Her shiny hair, which is darker than a horse chestnut, falls on either side of her face like blinkers on a mule. I wish my hair was pretty like hers. Mine ain’t but plain old brown—and it’s always braided tight. Mama braids it every Saturday night after my bath and she pulls it so hard that sometimes hit makes my eyes squinch up and water.
“Don’t take on like that,” she says. “Much as I got to do, I need to fix your hair so it stays fixed.”
I did ask once why didn’t she cut it short and I almost said Like Lilah Bel has hers but I stopped in time and said, “Like them girls in the wish book.” Mama hadn’t paid no mind; just went on pulling at my hair and fussing.
Lilah Bel has finished making two piles of the candy and she looks up. “It’s a terrible story,” she says, “and it really happened. Aunt Alva and Mommy was talking about it last Sunday while they washed the dishes and they didn’t know I was just outside the window and could hear them, every word. It was about this lady and what happened to her babies.”
“What happened to her babies?” I say and hold out a hand for my part of the candy.
Lilah Bel’s eyes get real big. She takes a deep breath and tongues the piece of candy she’s got in her mouth over to one side till it pokes out like she’s got a chaw of baccer in there. She gives me a whole mess of lemon drops and peppermints and commences her tale.
“Well,” says she, “afore Aunt Alva married Uncle Farnham and come to live over here, she lived on
Twist Ankle Creek and in their church there was this lady whose babies kept dying. Not at first, for she had her a girl and four great boys, all as stout as could be. But then she had another girl and it only lived a few days. And folks all round come to the house and brought food, like folks do, and sat and visited with this lady and mourned with her. And after a time, she did seem to get to feeling some better.
“But then come another year and another baby and the same thing happened again. And after that, every year, Aunt Alva said, there’d be a new baby and it would be as peart and healthy as anything, and then afore a week had gone by, here would come this poor lady to the neighbors, her hair flying loose and tears just a-running down her face and a dead babe wrapped in her apron.”
“Had they took sick or—”
“That was what Mommy wanted to know, was it the summer complaint. Lots of babies dies that way when ever drop of milk they take just runs right through ’em, is what she said, but Aunt Alva said no, she herself had seen those dead babies and each and every one was as fat as mud. Hit just looked like they’d stopped breathing.”
I suck hard on a lemon drop, letting the sour-sweet spit make a big pool in my mouth before I swallow it. Then I ask, “Why’d she want to keep having them babies iffen they was just all going to die on her like that?”
Lilah Bel looked at me funny. “Why, don’t you know nothing? Married ladies just naturally have babies.”
Lilah Bel is all the time letting me know that she is ten years old and goes to school, while I am only nine and ain’t never been nowhere. I pick up one of last year’s swiveled-up apples that’s laying on the plank floor and chunk it at her.
“I don’t see what’s so scary about this dumb story.”
“You let me finish, you’ll see. Or maybe I hadn’t ought to tell you the rest for it truly is the awfullest thing.”
She makes like she’s not going to say no more and starts turning the pages of the old wish book we have up here. Sometimes we play a game of picking out what we like best, but I know she’s going to tell me the rest of the story, so I just wait and suck on my lemon drop.
Pretty soon Lilah Bel points to a picture of a baby doll laying in a little basket. “There was three more of that lady’s babies died and ever time it was the same: all the folks coming round, bringing food and making over her and folks at church praying for her on Sundays and at Wednesday night meeting too. But my Aunt Alva’s mamaw suspicioned something and the next time that lady had a baby, why, Aunt Alva’s mamaw she went over there and offered to stay with them and help out. She stayed there for a week and the baby was still living and she stayed for another week and the baby was still living and finally after three weeks, Aunt Alva’s mamaw begun to think that the danger time was past and she could go back home.
“So she put her things back in her grip and was ready to be on her way but first she thought she’d step into the other room where the mama and baby was and take her leave. So in she went, just a-tippy-toeing in, quiet as ever she could, so as not to wake the little un. And there she seen the most dreadful thing …”
Lilah Bel stops and goes to looking through her candy for a peppermint drop. I poke at her with my bare foot.
“What? What did she see?”
Lilah Bel looks at me funny again and pinches her mouth together. “I’ll tell you the rest but then you got to tell me something scary.”
I can’t think of aught scary to tell her but I nod my head and we hook our fingers together for a promise. Then she stands up and reaches for the hem of her skirt. She folds it back and I see that she has got one of her mama’s great long hatpins jobbed through the cloth. She pulls it out real slow and holds it where I can see it good. Then she bends down and picks up that little apple what I had flung at her.
“Maybe you don’t know it,” she says, “being as you’re the least un in your family and ain’t been round no babies, but when they’re born, new babies all have a soft spot on the top of their little heads. When Woodrow was born last year, Mommy showed me hisn and let me put my finger on it real gentle-like. I could feel the beat of his heart on that soft spot and it went up and down, up and down.”
Lilah Bel is talking slow and whispery and making her eyes big. There is goose bumps coming on my arm and my mouth has gone all dry.
“You got to be very, very careful,” Lilah says, staring hard at me, “that nothing don’t hit that soft spot for it could kill the baby.”
I sit up and swallow hard. I want to stop her from telling the rest but I can’t make myself say nothing for the lights and the sounds are coming on fast. Lilah Bel has the apple in one hand and the hatpin in the other and the lights are sparking off the cruel sharp hatpin as it comes down at the baby’s little head and the hatpin is going in and in and in and the mama is laughing and crying at the same time and the humming and the little drums and the lines of light are everywhere and
The cold water is in my face and some gets up my nose. I sneeze and I hear Lilah Bel hollering, “Wake up! Please, Least, you got to wake up!”
I blink my eyes and there she is, standing over me with the dipper gourd from the springhouse in her hand. She is breathing hard and I know she must have clambered down from the barn loft and run all the way to the spring to get that water. Her face is nigh as wet as mine with the tears that are running down her cheeks.
I set up and wipe my face on my skirt. “I’m all right—that was just one of my spells. Law, you like to drownded me.”
She is still bawling as she drops down on the quilts beside me and hugs me hard. “I’m sorry, Least. I didn’t mean to …”
I hug her back. “I reckon you’ll not need me to tell you no scary story now—I done scared you already. But I will tell you one thing and it’s a secret—Brother’s got him a girl and he ain’t telling Mama for fear of what she’ll do.”
Article from the “Church News” column in the Ransom newspaper (no date)
MANY ANGELS: THE TALE OF A MOTHER’S UNDYING LOVE
Half hidden in the hemlocks, the little family cemetery lies at the end of a winding path trodden smooth by the daily passage of her feet. In sunshine and in rain, midst winter’s snows or ’neath Old Sol’s blazing summer heat, the faithful little mother keeps her vigil.
Of respect for her privacy and her sorrow, we shall not name this one who has suffered such loss, but that name is surely graven in letters of purest gold on the pages of the Celestial Record.
Nay, call her “Trueheart,” she who tends the six little graves, bringing such rustic posies as the season affords or shaping green wreaths of box when the time of blossoming is o’er.
In a pitiless procession, one after another these sweet babes have been ushered to their final resting places—some after only a few brief days of life.
But Trueheart keeps her watch, as mindful of these little ones sleeping ’neath the clay as any mother with a nursery filled with living babes. One by one she names them for us—these infants who will never grow old—and recalls for us their tiny faces, each precious and unique in her maternal memory.
How few could suffer as Trueheart has suffered, yet hold firm to a trust (cont. on p. 5)
Chapter 6
Brother’s Girl
Dark Holler, 1931
(Least)
I met her a while back of this, Mama, at a ball game in Dewell Hill. She’s a beauty operator at Clara’s Beauty Shoppe in Ransom and she boards at Miz Jarrett’s place on Hill Street.”
I am on the back porch shucking the roasting ears and Mama and Brother are in the kitchen. I don’t know why Brother has decided to tell Mama about this girl after keeping her a secret for so long. Whatever the reason is, I bet he wishes he had kept his big mouth shut, for Mama don’t like it, not one little bit, and she is bowing up something fierce.
“A beauty operator! Lives in a boardinghouse!” Mama spits out the words like they taste bad in her mouth. “Might as well say a whore-woman from that wicked place acrost the river—and you aim to
marry her? What kind of use is a woman like that on a farm? Who are her people? Why don’t she live at home with them, like a respectable somebody?”
“Her mama’s dead and her daddy’s on the Southern Railroad.” Brother is talking slow and careful now, the way he does when he’s trying to bring Mama around to his way of thinking. “She grew up in Hot Springs but went in to Asheville to learn her trade. She’s—”
Mama snorts like a mule. “How old is this huzzy?”
Brother don’t say nothing and Mama laughs, a hard ugly sound. “You don’t even know, do you, son? Like as not she’s someone else’s leavings and she thought to catch her a man too young to know the difference betwixt spoiled—”
Brother cuts in right quick. “Don’t, Mama. It ain’t no use you saying any more. I aim to marry her and bring her here. Iffen that don’t suit you, well, I reckon I can find another place to call home. I’ve worked for you since I can remember and tried to do right by you when all the others went off but, aye God, I’ll please myself in my wife.”
I can hear the thockety-thock of Mama’s sharp knife against the board and I know that she is chopping up cabbage to fry with some hog jowl. She don’t answer Brother for the longest time. But then at last I hear the hiss of the cabbage hitting the hot grease and she calls out, “Least, hurry up with them roasting ears; the water’s a-boiling.”
It is a Sunday afternoon when Brother brings his girl home to meet Mama.
“And there ain’t no need for you to send Least off out of the way like you always do,” he said as he made ready to go down to Gudger’s Stand and meet the number eleven from Ransom. “I already told about her taking spells and why she don’t go to school and all—it don’t bother my girl one bit. She says she’ll be tickled to have her a little sister.”