When I Crossed No-Bob

by Margaret McMullan

  I never once hear from anybody about Momma or what happened to her or where she went to in Texas. I like to think that the man with the mule from Mr. Frank and Miss Irene's wedding took Momma all the way to exactly where she wanted to be in Texas. I like to imagine that the man with the mule took care of Momma, fed her, kept her out of the rain and trouble, fixed her a cup of life-everlasting tea. Maybe he even helped her look for my pappy. But after a while, they maybe saw that they had more than Texas in common. After a while, maybe they even fell in love and he decided that a woman like my momma needed just the kind of man he was. A good man to take care of her. Always.

  When I think on Momma this way, when I imagine her safe and happy, the angry thoughts leave me alone.

  My momma and pappy are no longer the center of my life. I have other things to consider.

  The population in Smith County has grown twofold and already they are planning to rebuild the courthouse with updates like a third story and a bell tower. The Tyler Tap Railroad running to the Texas and Pacific Railway is under way too.

  I know one thing for sure. I never want to go to Texas.

  When people stop by the store, I like to sit on the front porch and read from the Jackson paper out loud for the older ones and the younger ones who cannot read. I tell them news from all over. I read to folks about how they have a place called a "zoo" in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where they keep animals just so folks can look. I read to them about the presidential elections too.

  Rutherford Hayes runs against Samuel Tilden for the presidency and the final vote is so close, Congress appoints the Electoral Commission. There is a long period when none of us knows who will lead. We cannot help but comment that sometimes there's not much order, not in No-Bob, not in Smith County, sometimes not even in these new United States.

  Days before Ulysses'S. Grant's term expires, we find out that Rutherford Hayes is declared the winner of the election, and he is inaugurated as our nineteenth president. Some call it "The Great Swap" because they say Hayes got the presidency in exchange for some sort of promise.

  We don't pay much mind to Hayes or to the rest of the country.

  One day I am on Mr. Frank's store's front porch reading about the Old Confederates' Reunion, where two old Confederates got into a fight with their forks. Mr. Frank, Mr. Frank's ma, and I, we are laughing just to think of those two old soldiers when we see Sunny Rise walking up the road, strong and healthy, with his wife, Early Rise, their friend Please Cook, and her son Deuteronomy.

  Sunny takes his hat off to greet us, then tells us all about the store on the Taylorsville-Williamsburg road with the coffeepot hanging over the door. Garner O'Donnell owns it now. Not too long ago a customer found his coffee too hot and said, "Mister, this is hot coffee." Garner liked that and said, "Mister, this is hot coffee." And that's the name of the town now. Hot Coffee.

  "Now, isn't that something?" Mr. Frank's ma says. "That Garner started a store, then named a town."

  Sunny says he and his family, Please Cook, and Deuteronomy are moving on and they are here to buy, but Mr. Frank won't let them pay and we load them up with supplies. They are on their way toward Hot Coffee to settle on the highest point in Covington County, on a ridge called Hopewell.

  Mr. Frank takes care of the steady and ever-increasing traffic of men setting up the sawmills, for there are so many mills popping up in these parts, and so much felling and sawing and chopping, that soon there won't be but a few of these fine longleaf pines left. What with the rails and all the sawmills, there won't be much wilderness left to run to either, for there are fewer woods and fewer and fewer deer and wild turkey roaming.

  By the end of the summer, Mr. Frank's store is such a success he has to go to the market in New Orleans to trade and get more supplies sooner than he had planned. I mark off days on the storekeeper's calendar until he comes home safe.

  Not but two weeks after Mr. Frank left, he returns, unharmed and unrobbed. He's brimming with supplies and stories of the city. He has with him a brand-new, cast-iron cookstove. The Davenports and other neighbors come to look and inspect as Mr. Frank sets it up. There is the smallest of chills in the air, and when Mr. Frank lights the stove, we gather round to warm our hands. We all marvel at the cookstove's efficiency. Before, all we had was a fireplace, a long-handled skillet, a coffee kettle, a coffeepot, and a coffee mill. Mr. Frank tells me and Little Bit how the cookstove will change everything about our way of life.

  Mr. Frank talks up his idea of bringing big items such as the cookstove to the store so other people in Smith County can have such things. He considers taking out a peddling license for a two-horse wagon and traveling all over the county.

  "Better times coming," Brother Davenport sings out.

  "I'm so glad the younger ones won't have to go through the cruel, hard times we've had," Mr. Frank's ma says, holding her grandbaby and namesake.

  "Best thing about all of our troubles is that they taught us to be kind and loving to our enemies," Brother Davenport says. "Taught us to work hard and pray to the good Lord. Then we can do most anything that we wish to do."

  And it's true that that little baby Thelma Addy will have it easier, what with cookstoves and such. Manufacturing like this is springing up all over the country, causing us all to reconsider ourselves and maybe start to lay the old things aside.

  But there is something to be said for hardships and hard living too.

  Mr. Frank tells us all about everything he has learned. He tells us about a new game called "tennis" and a gadget that lets you speak with people across town or even across county lines. They have a building ten stories high in Chicago that people say scrapes the sky. And then there is the sewing machine so that Miss Irene and I can make our garments with less labor.

  We all look at the new cookstove and at one another and know that we are living in a world of great conveniences. But I can't help but wonder, Will this make us good people? Better people? Or will this make us weaker? I can't rightly tell. I wonder when the feeling of possibilities ends. Who knows what the future will bring. But right now? Right now we are just warming up.

  "Thank you for minding the store and everything else, Addy," Mr. Frank says.

  I am so full up with warmth and happiness that I have to excuse myself and go to the schoolhouse, where I have myself another look at the geography maps Mr. Frank keeps there. On top of my old desk, I roll out the map of Mississippi.

  Living with Mr. Frank and Miss Irene and now Miss Thelma Addy has set my mind on the future and finding my own place. I know a lot about helping. I help run a store and a farm and a family. I helped testify against my own father in a trial that decided his fate, a trial that gave Jess Still Rise his due, bringing a kind ofjustice here that I had not thought possible. I know how I am like and how I am not like Momma and Pappy and the other O'Donnells of No-Bob, Mississippi. And I know that just because I was born into badness doesn't mean I have to live with it forever.

  I wonder and worry about Rew Smith and how when he grows up, will he fret about having been a little part of his pappy's undoing? Or will he just be relieved that Sunny Rise got away?

  I can remember clearly the day Mr. Frank showed us schoolchildren this map of the country. And today I see the world all charted out and made right again. From where I stand, the states and the borders look so clear.

  I put my finger on where I know No-Bob is. Bob couldn't get out of No-Bob, but I did.

  I move my finger a few inches up and down on the map. I've been to Jasper County and to Jones. I've seen a good part of this world now. What will I do next? Maybe I'll marry and stay here in these few bits that make up Smith County. Or maybe I'll find some other fellow in Simpson or Rankin County. Or maybe I will go and take the Three Notch Road and head out by myself across the Alabama River to Mobile, or go the other way toward Natchez. Or maybe I will just find me a river and follow it to its source.

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  Author's Note

  I began writing When I Cros
sed No-Bob in my parents' home in Pass Christian, Mississippi, a Gulf Coast town of about 6,500 before Hurricane Katrina hit.

  This yellow house built in 1845 meant a great deal to my family. It was my parents' dream, their summer home meant to make up for a lot of other lost homes. During World War II, my mother lost her childhood home in Vienna, Austria. More recently, my father lost his childhood home in Newton, Mississippi.

  My husband and I got married at the house in Pass Christian; our son learned how to walk on the beach out front; our family spent most every holiday there together; we brought friends there for vacations; and I wrote many stories, essays, and books there.

  Katrina took its toll on Pass Christian. Ninety percent of the buildings were leveled. Most of the town's people were left homeless.

  Our house is there and it is not. It is a shell with very few walls. It is still standing, but just barely. The destruction is breathtaking. The reconstruction is slow and ongoing.

  When I finally settled down to write When I Crossed No-Bob, I couldn't help but think I was writing about more than one reconstruction in Mississippi.

  I come from a family of war survivors—on both sides. My mother survived Nazi-occupied Vienna, Austria. A good many of my father's people lived through the Civil War. At this writing, the United States is in its fourth year of warring in the Middle East.

  Whereas How I Found the Strong was based on the real life of one of my relatives, Frank Russell, When I Crossed No-Bob is Addy's story. Abandoned by her parents, Addy is a survivor, a young girl living through a difficult situation during one of the worst times in the South's history.

  I know that when put to the test, people, young and old, can do tremendous things. Average people transform into noble, strong, resilient human beings—perhaps the very human beings they were meant to become. This was my hope for Addy.

  As I neared completion of Addy's story, my father told me about a girl some of his relatives took in after she had fallen on hard times. The couple grew to love this girl and adopted her, raising her as their own. My father referred to this girl as his cousin, who, he says, worked and studied hard, then grew up to become a nurse.

  At this writing, the people of Pass Christian are still living in FEMA trailers and tents. I keep hearing a need to get back to "normal." But I have to admit, I want more and better than normal for Mississippi.

  It is wonderful to complete a novel, but it is sad too, because to finish means that you have to say goodbye to all the characters, people whom you've come to see as your friends and family now, people you have come to know and love so well. You've lived with them and dreamed about them. You've worried about them. So when I began When I Crossed No-Bob, I was both excited and relieved to return to the Smith County in my imagination, if only to check back in on the Russells and Frank. Still, it's hard to say goodbye to them a second time.

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  Acknowledgments

  My thanks to the University of Evansville for granting me a sabbatical leave so that I could research and write, to the Mississippi Association of Arts & Letters, to the Indiana Library Association and the Mississippi Library Association for inspiring me to continue to write about Frank Russell and Mississippi. And thank you too to my father, James McMullan, and Mr. Gene Tullos of Raleigh, Mississippi, who both took the time to tell me more and more about Smith County. Thanks to Maureen Duncan for all of her help. Thanks to my sister, Carlette McMullan, and my brother-in-law, John Gibbons, who brought Madeleine Honor Gibbons into the world so that I could dedicate this book to her. Thanks too to my mother, Madeleine, who always takes the time to listen. I could not have written this book without my husband, Pat O'Connor, our friends, their children, our son, James, his friends, and all the schoolchildren I've corresponded with and visited. And many, many thanks must go to my agent, Jennie Dunham, manuscript editor, Susan Buckheit, and Margaret Raymo of Houghton Mifflin, who said the magic words, "What's next?"

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