by Jay, Karla M
The girl needs to keep making milk and stop having her corn ground.
I’m still furious with William. How could he? What a hypocrite! Night-riding and “taking care of” men who are crossing racial lines for pleasure. On the rest of the drive, I plan the lies I’ll tell him. That’ll feel good. Not revenge. Justice.
Willow Stewart
This dewy morning feels like the end of the world. I’ve run till my legs are about to give out, keeping to the trees as much as Mama Nature allows. My injured arm is throbbing to the tune of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again.” All that’s missing is the fife and drums.
The occasional fence line announces the prospect of people. I follow a deer trail to a spring and trace it until I reach a shallow pool. Breathing raggedy, I bend over the water and scoop handfuls to drink. The clear water magnifies the flat rocks lining the bottom. Crawdads scuttle backwards, and when the water settles, my face stares back at me. My eyes are as dark as black walnuts. I can hardly recognize myself. My hair’s come loose, hanging in stringers. My mouth is stuck in an air-sucking frown. I look like a ghost who’s been haunting with no time off.
I don’t aim to be, but I’m peeved at the bad intentions in the outside world. From Mr. Coburn’s wicked plans to take me for his own pleasure, to a preacher’s wife and a policeman trying to lock me away in a deaf school. They know I can hear just fine. Their belief that I have no purpose in returning home with Mama gone, that I have no life there, is so wrong. Labeling me a half orphan when there’s no such thing. I pity everyone who’s run afoul of these wayward thoughts.
Briar had an easier time coming off our mountain. Traveled some, which must’ve pleased his wandering curiosity. One of his favorite storybooks when he was younger was The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. Nils is a naughty boy who takes off on an aerial journey after climbing on the back of a goose. He travels around his home country. On his voyage, Nils learns about Sweden’s geography and natural landscape. He has experiences with wildlife and strange people. He’s taught valuable lessons about humankind and the folly in chasing after riches.
Briar must have many an adventure to share by now. Just got to get a letter to him about coming home soon, so he can tell them all to us.
I pull up wild greens and onions and wash them in the creek, then stuff them in my mouth and chew—sorry, Mama—letting the water drip down my chin. I hurry, knowing I can’t stay in one place too long. They must be looking for me now that I’m a no-good runaway.
On my feet again, I follow the winding depression left by deer hooves, heading southeast. I recollect from studying maps left by the library ladies that a post office sits next to the Nacoochee Train Depot. It’s no more than two miles outside Helen, so I should be there soon.
Can’t count how many times I’ve stopped, thinking I hear something treading at my heels. This time it sounds like coonhounds baying. To make up for how ugly they are, God gave coonhounds the best noses on earth, and I didn’t need them sniffing after me.
Keeping caution close at hand, I head for a thicket and push through. It’s an overgrown mine opening. I step in. Dry dust on the rough walls reveals its years of idleness. The holes drilled for candles are empty eye sockets peeping my way. I take a few more steps inside. My boots scuff on loose rocks, and something small skitters away. Dripping water echoes from deeper inside, and even my breathing is exaggerated. Although the sound outside is muted, there are no shouts or barking hounds. The stale air tastes like minerals, and the chamber feels like it’s closing in. I push back through the brush into the open air and fight tears. My older brother Luther Junior breathed his last in a mine like this. Did he know he was about to die? Possibly call out in alarm to alert others? Briar tried to talk about it, but Poppy beat him down with his fists and accusations.
I shake those terrible images away and press on.
Moments later, a train whistle loses itself over the valley, spilling its lonesome song into the town and above the farms. Through the ground, I feel the thrumming of the wheels on the tracks.
I come out of the trees upriver a mite and cross the Chattahoochee on a covered bridge. The train station sits on a sweep of shorn grass. It’s a one-story white building with brick-red shutters framing a row of windows. The upper and lower rooflines cover the wooden walkway that circles the building, a dry waiting place for riders when the weather’s not so nice. A woman and two children sit on the white benches, the children taking turns spinning a striped wooden top.
The stopped train is vibrating in place. People climb down from the two passenger cars hooked between the locomotive in front and five freight cars behind.
My heart stutters. Two policemen are talking near the engine. They laugh, and one slaps the other on the back. They don’t seem to be in a serious discussion about a runaway gal.
I brush leaves off my riding dress, use my fingers to tuck the loose strands of my hair behind my ears, and head for the next building. The brick structure is about fifty paces away, with a big sign hanging out front saying one side is the Nacoochee Post Office while the other is the Henderson Mercantile Store.
Inside the building is a wall of metal boxes with small knobs on them. They’re all numbered. ’Cross the way is a short wall with bars running from there up to the ceiling. In the center is a two-piece door. Its top half is open and makes for a counter. A man with a thick-as-dog’s-hair mustache and wearing a smart cap waits on the other side.
“Help you, miss?”
I take a moment. I need to send a postcard. I hand it to him and wait.
He slowly nods, his eyes dropping to my neck and then back to my face, like he’s looking for why I can’t talk. Hmmpf. I wonder if Miss Helen Keller had her ears gawked at.
He turns and opens a drawer, pulls out a stack of cards, and spreads them in front of me on the countertop. I sort through them, shrinking from horror when I come across one with four Colored men hanging from a tree. I quickly choose the photo of the train station next door. Words across the front say, “Welcome to White County, Georgia.”
“That’ll be a penny plus another to send it.” He puts the cards away.
I slide one of Mrs. Holcombe’s dollars across the counter and get back a handful of change.
He hands me a pen along with the money and stamp.
“Just drop it in the slot when you’re done.” He points to the opening in the wall to his right.
Taking the few steps to a small stand, I try to decide what to say. Telling Briar bad news right off might not encourage him to come home. He and Poppy need to patch up their broken ties, but he might figure with Mama gone, there’s no reason to try. She was the freshness in the air after a fast-moving rainstorm. The sugar in a rhubarb pie. The goodness in everything, whether hardship or daily pleasure.
Tears blur the white paper, and I blink them away, swipe them from my cheeks, and calm my jittery chin.
Briar. I’m sending this to say I have news of the family. We all miss you and your letters, including Poppy. If you can get time off, come for a visit. It’s about Mama. With Love, Willow
I look out the window and picture Briar reading this at his post box in Cartersville. Does it say enough or too little to stir him to come home?
It takes me a moment to register, but I hear a man outside mention my name. I shift to see who it is. Policeman Vissom! How did he know I’d come this way?
He’s talking to the other policemen.
My heart stomps, and blood makes haste to my head. I’m in a mess. Mr. Vissom knows where I live. The law can easily come drag me off Stewart Mountain once I return. The forest could be a safe hiding place, but what kind of life is that? Poppy will need me at home. Ruthy is still there until she gets hitched the end of August.
Listen to yourself, Willow, thinking like a lawbreaker on the run. I look at the postcard in my hand. Briar will know how to help me. And Mrs. Holcombe’s mon
ey will buy a train ticket to Cartersville, a place they will have no reason to try to find me.
I can tell Briar in person about Mama. I slip the postcard into my dress pocket.
With their backs to the post office, the policemen are talking to the conductor of the train that just arrived. Ducking my head, I slip out the door and head to the train station.
Once at the ticket window, I try to make myself small behind a man carrying a brown case, dressed in what I imagine is a business owner’s suit. Poppy has one dress coat, but it doesn’t hang as straight as this man’s.
The paper and my pencil are still in my dress pocket, and I pull them out and write, How much is one ticket to Cartersville? I have no idea what it costs to ride a train.
When I reach the window, the ticket agent says, “Morning. Where to?” He’s older than Poppy with swept-back dark hair and a gap betwixt his teeth wide enough to slip a strip of bacon through.
I smile and hand him my note.
He hands the note back, which I’m grateful for. I have only the few scraps left from what Mrs. Holcombe gave me.
“No direct route. Gotta go south to through Gainesville then Marietta, two train changes. Then northwest to Cartersville”—he points to a chart on the wall behind him—“It’s a hundred twenty-seven miles. Rates are running near three cents a mile, so that’s three dollars and eighty-one cents.”
I hand him the four dollars and hope he doesn’t mind that the bills aren’t dry. They were in my pocket while I was running. I quickly wipe my hand on my dress because it feels dirty where I touched the stolen money.
He messes with a machine, and I watch it spit out a colorful ticket. Then he gives me my change.
“You traveling alone?” His voice is a blue hush of evening sky, the color of Poppy’s when he speaks with worry.
I tuck the coins and ticket in my pocket and nod.
“Find a family or a woman to sit by. Shifty rascals ride these trains and they are so slick, they can sell salt to a snail.”
He has no idea he’s talking to a hunted thief. I smile, full of gratitude for the advice.
Next, I discover an attached washroom with private toilets. I do declare! Never shared this personal time with other people doing the same thing in a little bitty closed-off space next to me. When do people have their thinking time if they’re never left alone?
The flushing spooks me, and I jump back, hoping my clothes don’t get swooshed away. At the sink I wash my arms and face. I corral my loose hair into the braid again, but it still looks like a vexed red snake. A blazing signal, considering policemen are hounding for a red-headed gal.
Once outside, I slip around to the back of the building away from the tracks and draw in breaths to calm my worriment.
That washroom was a mite too tiny for what was happening in there. And Mr. Vissom said I’d be all wide-eyed and caught in a spell by indoor plumbing, but he’s wrong.
Ten minutes until my train. I stay along the back of the building near the woods and move over to the mercantile store. Through a window, I see only a woman and small boy being waited on. I walk inside and choose a new style hat Mama and I saw in the newspapers that we laughed at. It looks like a pail got turned upside down on your head. I pay eighty cents for that cloche hat. Then I roll up my braid inside and pull the hat down over my ears. Hides my red-haired giveaway mighty nice.
The train whistle blows, and the engine and cars chug away. The police have crossed two sets of tracks and are talking to another man over there. I now understand why trains fascinate Briar and Billy Leo. Passengers sit safe, coated in the hardy metal wrapping, and are carried almost anywhere. Through cutouts in the mountains and over rivers and wheat fields, miles and miles of surprise unfold past the windows.
I piddle time away in the store and then slip round the backside of the building again. My train’s arriving with a long blast of its horn. The brakes make a squeaky fuss. After a frightening croak of steam, I approach the rumbling metal machine.
Some folks exit, then I enter what I believe is the second passenger coach. I eye an open seat next to a fine lady in a fancy blue suit and feathered hat. I point to the seat and raise my eyebrows, my way of asking for permission to sit.
“It’s free.” She pats the bench and smiles. “But be warned…I’m all worked up and might talk your ears off.”
Riders stow their small cases and other things they’re toting under their seats. Now wondering if I look out of place carrying no travel bag, I drop onto the seat and keep my head down.
“I’m Alice Burns.” She sticks out her hand and I accept it.
I pull out my loose paper. I’m mute. Thanks for letting me sit here.
Miss Alice gives me a long look-see and then says, “I think I would die if I couldn’t talk.”
I write, I talk all day long. It just stays inside my head.
She chuckles and it sounds like the tinkling of the high-note keys on the piano. Happy. Hopeful. I hear rose petals with fresh dew on them.
“Believe there’s a lesson in that for me. If I live to be seventy, I won’t have the time to take back half the things I shouldn’t have said.” She digs around in her bright blue bag, then stops fumbling and meets my eye. “’Course, my clock doesn’t wind that way. If it needs to be said, I’ll go right ahead.” She pulls out a bright red tablet and pushes it toward me. “I’m not sure why your school hasn’t given you more of these, but an independent young lady like you shouldn’t be carrying around scrap paper to express herself.”
I hold the tablet as if it’s a shiny gold nugget. The Big Chief Pencil Tablet is fifty pages of wonderful clean paper. Only seen them advertised, going for ten cents each, but never owned one. The brown paper wrapped around store-bought goods works fine. And our neighbor folk save it for me the rare times they’ve left the hills to shop. Mama and I cut it into rectangular pieces that fit into my dress pocket, sewn on just for the purpose of toting my writing paper and pencils.
The gift is almost too much. Tears build in my eyes and are close to spilling. Mama would be so happy for me. Maybe she’s peeking down from heaven. I open the red cover with the Indian in full headdress on the front and pick up my pencil and scritch out words on the top line of the first page. My writing instrument is a pioneer, treading its way across unexplored ground.
My learning has been at home. I never owned such a wonder as this. Thank you.
“You’re welcome.” She studies me some more. “Your eyebrows say you got red hair to match. Means you’re covering up a fiery spirit. Don’t let any man take it away from you.” She crosses her feet at the ankles. “A word to the wise. Write what you want to say, not what others force you to say.”
I nod. Her words about a man taking from me remind me of old Mr. Coburn. I could tell her about my close call with the peddler, but I don’t want to remember what happened. And my heart still beats too fast from fear, knowing any second the police might board the train.
I like Miss Alice Burns. She seems sassy and brave. It’s not every woman who dares go against proper dress and wear a feathered hat and a dress short enough to bare her calves. Lace-up shoes and boots are the only things we Stewart women wear, but Miss Burns wears two-tone blue and tan Mary Janes with T-straps I’ve seen advertised in newspapers. These open shoes are preached against at our mountain revivals, amounting to a scandalous affair for showing off stocking-covered legs. She’s so pretty, like she’s important. Most likely from a big metropolis. Hmm. I wonder if she’s been inside a library, a dream of mine. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if she has. But how does someone decide on just one book with hundreds to choose from?
I write, Are you from Marietta?
“I was born in Athens, got married, got tired of him cheating, and I got out.” She laughs, shaking her head at a memory only she can see. “Pick wisely, young lady. Marry a man who thinks you’re above him, not his
possession.”
The thought I’d marry a man above, below, or equal to me is a little bit like guessing what the wind will bring. It sometimes offers honeysuckle so powerful you’re stuck in place by the weight of it. Or it can sweep by the swamp and drop a wet boggy smell that you could swear by all that’s holy will ride your skin till the lye soap comes out. Every girl must fend off a few swamp gusts while she waits for a sweet breeze to blow her way. If that’s God’s plan, I reckon I will too.
The train’s whistle blasts a long notice, and my innards jitter with excitement. I will try to memorize every detail of the ride once we get rolling. My ride to freedom. Billy Leo will want to hear all about it. He’s forever running through the trees woo-wooing like a locomotive. My chest tightens at the sadness he’s bearing right now. If only he could be here with me. We’d be on a grand adventure, ignoring the sadness we’ve pocketed.
“You’re a brave one to be traveling alone.” Alice’s smile is easy, and her soft gray eyes are kind. “Where are you going?”
To avoid explaining my last thirty-six hours, I jot down, To Cartersville to meet my brother.
“How nice. I’ve got a sister who accuses me of dancing with the devil for my decision to divorce and a brother who spews preacher’s words at everyone’s feet while making gallons of sacramental wine for himself. He sells a few quarts to the priest at his church to make it look legal. I envy you your relationship.”
The train jerks several times and pulls away from the station. Two men with satchels tied to their backs run alongside the train, visible only to the riders on my side. I point. Have they missed boarding on time?