The Education of Little Tree

by Forrest Carter

  I seen right off she was a Christian, for while she was talking, she had licked my stick candy down to practical a nub. I got back what was left of it.

  I told Granma about the little girl. Granma made a pair of moccasin slippers. The top part of the moccasins she made with some of my calf hide, leaving the hair on. They were pretty. Granma put two little red colored beads on the top of each moccasin.

  Next month, when we went to the store, I give the moccasins to the little girl and she put them on. I told her Granma made them for her, and they didn’t cost nothing. She run up and down in front of the store, watching her feet, and you could tell she was proud of the moccasins for she would stop and run her fingers over the red beads. I told her the hair hide come from my calf, which I had sold to Granma.

  When her Pa come out of the store, she followed him down the road, skipping in her moccasins. Me and Granpa watched them. When they got a little ways down the road, the man stopped and looked at the little girl. He talked to her, and she pointed back towards me.

  The man went to the side of the road and cut a keen switch from a persimmon bush. He held the little girl by one arm and whipped her on the legs, hard, and on the back. She cried, but she didn’t move. He whipped her until the switch wore out … and everybody under the store shed watched … but they didn’t say anything.

  Then he made the little girl set down in the road and pull off the moccasins. He come walking back, holding the moccasins in his hand, and me and Granpa stood up. He didn’t pay any attention to Granpa, but walked right up and looked down at me, and his face was hard and his eyes shining. He poked the moccasins at me—which I taken—and he said, “We’uns don’t take no charity … from nobody … and especial heathen savages!”

  I was right scared. He whirled around and walked off down the road, his ragged overalls flapping. He walked right by the little girl, and she followed him. She wasn’t crying. She walked stiff with her head up real proud and didn’t turn to look at anybody. You could see the big red stripes on her legs. Me and Granpa left.

  On the trail, Granpa said he didn’t bear the sharecropper no ill. Granpa said he reckined that pride was all he had … howsoever misplaced. He said the feller figgered he couldn’t let the little girl, ner any of his young’uns, come to love pretty things for they couldn’t have them. So he whipped them when they showed a liking for things they couldn’t have … and he whipped them until they learned; so that in a little while, they knowed they was not to expect them things.

  They could look forward to the Holy Ghost as gittin’ their happy times, and they had their pride—and next year.

  Granpa said he didn’t fault me fer not catching on right off. He said he had the advantage, fer years ago, as he walked a trail near a sharecropper’s shack, he had seen a feller come out in his backyard where two of his little girls was looking, settin’ under a shade tree, at a Sears Roebuck catalog.

  Granpa said that feller took a switch and whipped them young’uns ’till the blood run out of their legs. He said he watched, and the feller took the Sears Roebuck catalog and he went out behind the barn. He burned up the catalog, tore it all up first, like he hated that catalog. Granpa said then the feller set down against the barn, where nobody could see him, and he cried. Granpa said he seen that and so he knowed.

  Granpa said ye had to understand. But most people didn’t want to—it was too much trouble—so they used words to cover their own laziness and called other folks “shiftless.”

  I toted the moccasin slippers home. I put them under my tow sack where I kept my overalls and shirt. I didn’t look at them; they reminded me of the little girl.

  She never come back to the crossroads store, ner her Pa. So I reckin they moved.

  I figgered they heard the turtledove from far away.

  A Dangerous Adventure

  Indian violets come first in the mountain springtime. Just about when you figure there won’t be a spring, there they are. Icy blue as the March wind, they lie against the ground, so tiny that you’ll miss them unless you look close and sure.

  We picked them there on the mountainside. I helped Granma, until our fingers would get numb in the raw wind. Granma made a tonic tea from them. She said I was a fast picker. Which I was.

  On the high trail, where the ice still crunched beneath our moccasins, we got evergreen needles. Granma put them in hot water and we drank that too. It is better for you than any fruit, and makes you feel good. Also the roots and seeds of skunk cabbage.

  Once I learned how, I was the best at acorn gathering. At first I would take each acorn as I found it to Granma’s sack; but she pointed out that I could wait until I got a handful before I run to the sack. It was easy for me, being close to the ground, so that I soon was able to get more acorns in the sack than Granma.

  She ground them up into a meal that was yellow-gold, and mixed hickor’nuts and walnuts in the meal and made bread fritters; which there has never been anything to taste like.

  Sometimes she had an accident in the kitchen and spilled sugar in the acorn meal. She would say, “Durn me, Little Tree. I spilt sugar in the acorn meal.” I never said anything but when she did that I always got an extra fritter.

  Me and Granpa was both pretty heavy acorn fritter eaters.

  Then sometime there in late March, after the Indian violets had come, we would be gathering on the mountain and the wind, raw and mean, would change for just a second. It would touch your face as soft as a feather. It had an earth smell. You knew springtime was on the way.

  The next day, or the next (you would commence to hold your face out for the feel), the soft touch would come again. It would last a little longer and be sweeter and smell stronger.

  Ice would break and melt on the high ridges, swelling the ground and running little fingers of water down into the spring branch.

  Then the yellow dandelions poked up everywhere along the lower hollow, and we picked them for greens—which are good when you mix them with fireweed greens, poke salat and nettles. Nettles make the best greens, but have little tiny hairs on them that sting you all over when you’re picking. Me and Granpa many times failed to notice a nettle patch, but Granma would find it and we would pick them. Granpa said he had never knowed anything in life that, being pleasurable, didn’t have a damn catch to it—somewheres. Which is right.

  Fireweed has a big purple flower on it. It has a long stalk which you can peel and eat raw, or you can cook it and it is like asparagus.

  Mustard comes through on the mountainside in patches that look like yellow blankets. It grows little bright canary heads with peppery leaves. Granma mixed it with other greens and sometimes ground the seeds into paste and made a table mustard.

  Everything growing wild is a hundred times stronger than tame things. We pulled the wild onions from the ground and just a handful would carry more flavor than a bushel of tame onions.

  As the air warms, and rains come, the mountain flowers pop colors out like paint buckets have been spilled all over the mountainsides. Firecracker flowers have long, rounded, red blooms that are so bright they look like painted paper; the harebell pushes little bluebells, dangling on stems as fine as vines, from amongst rocks and crevices. Bitterroot has big lavender-pink faces with yellow centers that hug the ground, while moonflowers are hidden deep in the hollow, long-stemmed and swaying like willows with pink-red fringes on top.

  Different kinds of seed are born at different body heats in Mon-o-lah’s womb. When She first begins warming, only the tiniest flowers come through. But as She warms more, bigger flowers are born, and the sap starts running up in the trees, making them swell like a woman at birthing time until they pop open their buds.

  When the air gets heavy so it’s hard to breathe, you know what’s coming. The birds come down from the ridges and hide in the hollows and in the pines. Heavy black clouds float over the mountain, and you run for the cabin.

  From the cabin porch we would watch the big bars of light that stand for a full second, mayb
e two, on the mountaintop, running out feelers or lightning wire in all directions before they’re jerked back into the sky. Cracking claps of sound, so sharp you know something has split wide open—then the thunder rolls and rumbles over the ridges and back through the hollows. I was pretty near sure, a time or two, that the mountains was falling down, but Granpa said they wasn’t. Which of course, they didn’t.

  Then it comes again—and rolls blue fireballs off rocks on the ridge tops and splatters the blue in the air. The trees whip and bend in the sudden rushes of wind, and the sweep of heavy rain comes thunking from the clouds in big drops, letting you know there’s some real frog-strangling sheets of water coming close behind.

  Folks who laugh and say that all is known about Nature, and that Nature don’t have a soul-spirit, have never been in a mountain spring storm. When She’s birthing spring, She gets right down to it, tearing at the mountains like a birthing woman clawing at the bed quilts.

  If a tree has been hanging on, having weathered all the winter winds, and She figures it needs cleaning out, She whips it up out of the ground and flings it down the mountain. She goes over the branches of every bush and tree, and after She feels around a little with Her wind fingers, then She whips them clean and proper of anything that is weak.

  If She figures a tree needs removing and won’t come down from the wind, She just whams! and all that’s left is a torch blazing from a lightning stroke. She’s alive and paining. You’ll believe it too.

  Granpa said She was—amongst other things—tidying up any afterbirth that might be left over from last year; so Her new birthing would be clean and strong.

  When the storm is over, the new growth, tiny and light, timid-green, starts edging out on the bushes and tree limbs. Then Nature brings April rain. It whispers down soft and lonesome, making mists in the hollows and on the trails where you walk under the drippings from hanging branches of trees.

  It is a good feeling, exciting—but sad too—in April rain. Granpa said he always got that kind of mixed-up feeling. He said it was exciting because something new was being born and it was sad, because you knowed you can’t hold onto it. It will pass too quick.

  April wind is soft and warm as a baby’s crib. It breathes on the crab apple tree until white blossoms open out, smeared with pink. The smell is sweeter than honeysuckle and brings bees swarming over the blossoms. Mountain laurel with pink-white blooms and purple centers grow everywhere, from the hollows to the top of the mountain, alongside of the dogtooth violet that has long, pointed yellow petals with a white tooth hanging out (they always looked to me like tongues).

  Then, when April gets its warmest, all of a sudden the cold hits you. It stays cold for four or five days. This is to make the blackberries bloom and is called “blackberry winter.” The blackberries will not bloom without it. That’s why some years there are no blackberries. When it ends, that’s when the dogwoods bloom out like snowballs over the mountainside in places you never suspicioned they grew: in a pine grove or stand of oak of a sudden there’s a big burst of white.

  The white farmers gathered out of their gardens in late summer, but the Indian gathers from early spring, when the first greens start growing, all through the summer and fall, gathering acorns and nuts. Granpa said the woods would feed you, if you lived with the woods, instead of tearing them up.

  However, there is a right smart bit of work to it. I figured I was more than likely best at berry picking, for I could get in the middle of a berry patch and never have to bend down to reach the berries. I never got much tired of picking berries.

  There were dewberries, blackberries, elderberries, which Granpa said makes the best wine, huckleberries and the red bearberries, which I could never find had any taste to them, but Granma used them in cooking. I always brought back more red bearberries in my bucket as they were not good to eat, and I et berries fairly regular while I was picking them. Granpa did too. But he said it wasn’t like he was wasting them, because we would eventually eat them anyway. Which was right. Poke salat berries, however, are poison and they will knock you deader than last year’s corn stalk. Any berries you see the birds don’t eat, you had better not eat.

  During berry picking time, my teeth, tongue and mouth was a pretty continual deep blue color. When me and Granpa delivered our wares, some flatlanders around the crossroads store remarked that I was sick. Occasional a new flatlander would get worked up about it when he saw me. Granpa said they showed their ignorance of what a berry picker had to put up with and I wasn’t to pay any attention to them. Which I didn’t.

  The birds had a trick about wild cherries. Along about July, the sun would have been on the cherries just enough.

  Sometimes, in the lazy sun of summer, after dinnertime, when Granma would be napping, me and Granpa would be setting on the back door stoop. Granpa would say. “Let’s go up the trail, and see what we can find.” Up the trail we would go, and set down in the shade of a cherry tree with our backs to the trunk. We would watch the birds.

  One time we watched a thrush turn flips on a limb and wobble out to the end, like he was walking a tightrope, and then he walked plumb off the end. A robin got to feeling so good, that he wobbled right up to me and Granpa and lit up on Granpa’s knee. He fussed at Granpa and told him what he thought about the whole thing. He eventually decided he would sing, but his voice squeaked and he give it up. He staggered off into the brush, with me and Granpa practical laughing ourselves sick. Granpa said he laughed so hard it hurt his gizzard. Which it did mine too.

  We saw a red cardinal eat so many cherries that he keeled over and passed out on the ground. We put him in the crotch of a tree so he wouldn’t get killed by something during the night.

  Early the next morning me and Granpa went back to the tree and there he was, still sleeping. Granpa punched him awake, and he got up feeling mean. He flew down at Granpa’s head a time or two, and Granpa had to slap at him with his hat to make him go on. He flew down to the spring branch and stuck his head in the water and taken it out … and puffed and spewed and looked around like he was personally going to whip the first thing he saw.

  Granpa said he believed that ol’ cardinal held me and him personally responsible for his condition, though Granpa said he ought to know better. Granpa said he had seen him before—he was an old-time cherry eater.

  Every bird that comes around your cabin in the mountains is a sign of something. That’s what the mountain folks believe, and if you want to believe you can, for it’s so. I believed. So did Granpa.

  Granpa knew all the bird signs. It is good luck to have a house wren live in your cabin. Granma had a little square cut out of the top corner in the kitchen door, and our house wren flew in and out, building her nest on the eave log over the kitchen stove. She nested there, and her mate would come and feed her.

  House wrens like to be around people who love birds. She would cozy down in her nest and watch us in the kitchen with little black bead eyes that shined in the lamplight. When I would drag a chair close and stand on it, so I could get a better look, she would fuss at me; but she wouldn’t leave her nest.

  Granpa said she loved to fuss at me. It proved to her that she was more than likely more important in the family than I was.

  Whippoorwills start singing at dusk. They get their name from their call for that is what they say: whip-or-will, over and over. If you light the lamp, they will move closer and closer to the cabin and will eventually sing you to sleep. They are a sign of night peace and good dreams, Granpa said.

  The screech owl hollers at night, and is a complainer. There’s only one way to shut up a screech owl; you lay a broom across the open kitchen door. Granma done this and I’ve never seen it fail. The screech owl will always stop complaining.

  The joree only sings in the day, and he is called joree because that is all he ever sings … jo-ree … over and over, but if he comes close to the cabin, he is a certain sign that you will not get sick at all for the entire summer.

  The blue jay pl
aying around the cabin means you are going to have plenty of good times and fun. The blue jay is a clown and bounces on the ends of branches and turns flips and teases other birds.

  The red cardinal means you are going to get some money, and the turtledove don’t mean to mountain folk what they mean to a sharecropper. When you hear a turtledove, it means that somebody loves you and has sent the turtledove to tell you.

  The mourning dove calls late at night and never comes close. He calls from far back in the mountain and it is a long, lonesome call that sounds like he is mourning. Granpa said he is. He said if a feller died and didn’t have anybody in the whole world to remember him and cry for him, the mourning dove would remember and mourn. Granpa said if you died somewheres far off, even across the great waters, that if you was a mountain man you would know you would be remembered by the mourning dove. He said it lent a matter of peace to a feller’s mind, knowing that. Which I know it did for my mind.

  Granpa said if you recollected somebody you loved who had passed on, then the mourning dove would not have to mourn him. You would know then that he was mourning for somebody else, and they didn’t sound might near as lonesome. When I heard him, late at night, while I lay in my bedstead, I would remember Ma. Then I wasn’t as lonesome.

  Birds, just like everything else, know if you like them. If you do, then they will come all around you. Our mountains and hollows was filled with birds: mockingbirds and flickers, red-winged blackbirds and indian hens, meadowlarks and chip-wills, robins and bluebirds, hummingbirds and martins—so many that there is no way to tell of them all.

  We stopped trapping in the spring and summer. Granpa said that there was no way in the world that a feller could mate and fight at the same time. He said animals couldn’t either. Granpa said even if they could mate and you hunting them, they could not raise their young, and so you would eventual starve to death. We taken pretty heavy to fishing in the spring and summer.