Anybody Shining

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

  “Not today, but most likely I will tomorrow,” I told her. “I just thought I’d wander in and give a holler, see how you was doing.”

  “Oh, my bones is tired and my head is aching something fierce. You ever heard of something called bursitis? I just read an article about it in the Ladies’ Home Journal.”

  Sometimes I think I’d like to work in the post office, just so I could look at all the magazines that come through the way Miss Ellie does. Some folks complain about it, because she’s always dripping her morning coffee on their copies of The Progressive Farmer and The Saturday Evening Post before they even get a chance to read them, but I don’t drink coffee, so that wouldn’t be a problem with me.

  Miss Ellie went on for a while about the many things that ailed her, and then someone else come in and she shooed me away, like I’d been taking up her valuable time. So I headed on to the settlement school, telling myself what a good girl I was and remembering what Mama always says, that folks is folks, more alike than different.

  The Baltimore children was all out in the big garden behind the main building when I got there. The garden is Miss Pittman’s pride and joy, as they are able to grow most of the school’s food in it. A fair number of the younger students live at the school and take their meals there. They come from Stone Gap, Bakersville, Cranberry, and Spruce Pine, and most of them are between fifteen to seventeen years old. The boys stay in a house called a dormitory to one side of the main building, and the girls stay in a dormitory to the other side of the main building.

  Miss Pittman was standing in the middle of the garden when I got there, a hoe in hand, but when she saw me she waved and walked over. “Why, Arie Mae, I’m surprised to see you here. Is everything all right?”

  “Why, yes, ma’am, I was just out walking and thought I’d come by and see how the children was doing. Pastor Campbell says that the practice of hospitality is the centerpiece of a Christian life.”

  Miss Pittman nodded her approval. “I fully concur! As for the children, they are enjoying their morning in the fresh mountain air.”

  I couldn’t help but believe Miss Pittman and I saw a different picture. Oh, a few of the little ones seemed to be having a fine time pulling up clumps of weeds and throwing them at each other, but the rest of them Baltimore children was leaning against their hoes and wiping the sweat from their brows. They looked purely miserable.

  I searched the crowd for Tom and found him planted at the end of an okra row, peering at something he was holding. When he saw me, he held out his hand.

  “This is an odd-looking creature,” he called, pointing at the fuzzy bug crawling across his fingers. “I’ve never seen the likes of it.”

  “Why, that’s a woolly worm,” I informed him when I got close enough to see. “You can tell how bad the winter’s going to be by looking at its stripes. See how some are black and some are brown? Well, if the brown stripes is wider, than the winter’s going to be nice and mild. But if the black stripes is wider? Boy, it’s going to snow something fierce and you won’t see a thaw until April.”

  Tom watched as the woolly warm crawled from his hand to the edge of his sleeve. “I’ve heard a theory about acorns predicting winter weather. If the trees make more than the usual amount of acorns, it means the winter will be colder than usual. It’s nature’s way of providing for the squirrels. But my question is, how does nature know the winter’s going to be bad?”

  Now that brought up all sorts of topics for me. “Nature knows lots of things, and you can tell a lot of things by what nature does. Did you know if the sun keeps shining while it’s raining, that means the rain won’t last no more than half an hour? And if you see a crow flying real low, that means a big wind is commencing to blow.”

  Tom held up his hand, like he wanted me to stop. “Let me get my book out. I want to write all this down.”

  And then from his back pocket he pulled out a book the size of a deck of cards. “I like to collect interesting information and stories,” he told me, brushing the woolly worm from his sleeve onto the grass. “One day I’m going to be an author or a newspaper reporter.”

  I had never met nobody before who wanted to be an author or a newspaper reporter, and right away I thought maybe that’s what I’d like to be too. “What kind of training do you need for that sort of work?”

  “If you want to be a writer, you write. At least that’s what my tutor, Mr. Sheard, says. ‘Don’t just want to be a writer, Tom, be a writer!’ He’s always telling me that.” Tom leaned down and give his left knee a rub, like it pained him. “Would you mind if we found someplace to sit?”

  “How about under that tree over yonder?” I pointed to a pretty chestnut tree a little ways away from the garden.

  We sat down under the tree, and Tom took a minute to get hisself comfortable. You could tell his leg was a bother to him, and I wanted to ask him what had happened to cause his limp, but I reckoned it wouldn’t be polite. Instead I asked him if he’d written any stories yet or if he’d just been thinking about it so far.

  “I’ve written a hundred at least,” he declared. “I’m not much good at running or games, so I have a lot of time to write. I don’t mind, though. I’d rather be writing stories than doing most anything else. Sometimes I make them up, and sometimes I visit my neighbors and ask them to tell me about interesting things that have happened to them. I practice my newspaper reporting skills that way. It’s all about collecting the details, Mr. Sheard says.”

  “I wish there was more news around here to report,” I told him. “You’uns coming up from Baltimore is the biggest news we’ve had all year. I guess it would be odd for you to write a story about yourself, though.”

  Tom give me a shy look. “If we worked together, well, I bet—I bet we could scare up some good stories. You could be my guide, and then Mother couldn’t complain about me going off on my own. She’s sure I’m going to be eaten by a mountain lion the minute I’m out of her sight.”

  I wanted to be a reporter alongside of Tom so bad the taste of it was in my mouth! Only I didn’t know the first thing about collecting stories or how to go about finding interesting things to write about. Tom might be sorry he’d asked for my help.

  But if you are looking for your own true friend, and somebody who might be your own true friend is sitting right next to you, you will make every effort to help them.

  “I reckon I could come up with a hundred good story ideas if you give me time to think of them,” I declared. “I just have to set my mind on it, is all.”

  Tom looked pleased. “Good. Now tell me more about this woolly worm, so I can get all the facts down in my book.”

  Well, Cousin Caroline, didn’t we spend the rest of the morning trading stories back and forth beneath that tree? Oh, we talked over all manner of things, from the interesting ways of animals to our beliefs about the afterlife. I told Tom I reckoned heaven must look a lot like Stone Gap, North Carolina, and he reckoned he agreed.

  When I got home for dinner, Mama give me a questioning look, but she never come out and asked me where I been. As for Daddy, he’d spent the whole morning in the upper field and never even knowed I was gone.

  I am writing this letter in the last light of the day. In the morning I will walk it over to Miss Ellie at the post office, and maybe, just maybe, I will go visit the Baltimore children for a minute or two, hospitality being the centerpiece of a Christian life, as Pastor Campbell will tell you.

  Signed,

  Your Cousin,

  Arie Mae Sparks

  Dear Cousin Caroline,

  Sometimes I wonder about writing these letters to you, just what good is coming of it? I know that it makes Mama happy for us to be friends, even if our friendship is only on my side, so that is one reason I keep writing. Also, I find that I like remembering the things I done of a day and what folks said and the thoughts that I thought. Sometimes I am surprised I have so much to write about. Turns out my life is fairly interesting, even if certain cousins of mine don�
�t appear to agree.

  Today I learned that there is another good reason to write letters, and that is you never know who you will meet at the post office. Why, you might even run into your own true friend and have yourself an adventure.

  Now Tom Wells was the last person in the world I expected to see as I come up the post office path this morning. Didn’t he have something he needed to be learning, like how to make a chair or weave a basket? I didn’t even know they let them Baltimore, Maryland, children off the school grounds by their own selves.

  But there he was, sitting on the bench where me and James liked to sit to wait for the train. My heart quivered a bit at the thought Tom might be leaving, but then I noticed there weren’t no packed bags by his feet, and I calmed down.

  “Why ain’t you at school?” I called as I run over to him. “You got skills to learn, son!”

  “I spent two hours this morning learning how to weave a tablecloth on a loom. That’s enough skills for one day.” Tom waved a packet of letters at me. “Miss Pittman asked me if I’d mind posting her correspondence. I think she was trying to get rid of me.”

  “Why? Were you making trouble?”

  “I think I was asking too many questions and they were getting in the way of her history lesson. I now know more about the history of looms and weaving than any other boy my age in the country.”

  I sat down next to him. “I think it would be right fun to make a tablecloth. Or anything like that. I never done it.”

  Tom looked at me all curious. “Doesn’t everyone up here weave?”

  “Not to my knowledge. I think my granny did, but now you can get cloth at the store. No need to make it yourself.”

  “I wonder if Miss Pittman knows that?”

  “I think she’s fairly against buying things at the store. She likes the old ways best.”

  Tom tapped his stack of letters against the bench so that they was all even with one another. “I don’t have to be back at the school until noon. You want to go exploring?”

  I glanced at Tom’s leg, the one that don’t work so good. Only the day before I’d been so excited by the thought of us having adventures and hunting for stories, but now I wondered if Tom was really up to tramping around the hills and hollers. “It’s a lot of climbing to get anywhere around here,” I said. “Lots of tree roots and rocks.”

  The color rose up in Tom’s cheeks. “I can climb. I can do just about anything except run.”

  I nodded, figuring that Tom knew best about what he could and could not do. “That’s fine then. Let’s mail our letters and I’ll show you the creek.”

  Now, Cane Creek is a well-traveled area, and mostly what there is to look at is birds and fishes and a snake or two swimming through the water. If you hear something crunching down the path, why, it’s almost always someone on their way down to the post office or the settlement school. But I figured to Tom, who growed up in a city, Cane Creek would be high adventure.

  I had no idea how much adventure we was about to have.

  Tom, as it turned out, was an admirer of rocks. “Look at that one,” he said, pointing to a craggy piece of quartz crystal sticking out from the water. “I wonder how old it is? A thousand years? A hundred thousand?”

  I’d not ever wondered about the age of rocks. They seemed like forever things to me, not items with their very own birthdays. “How can you tell?”

  “There’s a scientific method,” Tom assured me. “But I don’t know much about it. It has something to do with looking at the layers, I think.”

  I started examining the rocks along the creek bed. There was quartz crystal and limestone and lots of shiny mica. I reached down to pick up a piece of mica to show Tom how you could peel its layers off one by one, and when I looked back up, well, that’s when I seen the bear.

  It was actually a black bear cub, and it was standing on the other side of the creek, looking over at us.

  “Tom,” I said, keeping my voice low. “If I was you, I wouldn’t make any sudden moves. We’re just going to back up real slow.”

  Tom, to his credit, did not startle or shout or even say a word. He just did exactly what I did, which was one slow step backwards, then another slow step backwards. Still talking soft and low, I said, “Now, you may not have noticed this, but there is a bear cub across the creek from us, and I can tell by the look in his eye he finds us a right interesting sight.”

  Tom stopped in his tracks. “I see him!” he said in an excited whisper. “Is he going to come after us?”

  My experience with bears is fairly limited, but I have heard the stories from others, so I knowed what the possibilities was. “He ain’t going to attack us, if that’s what you mean, but if his mama is around, she just might. So the best thing is for us to move away real slow like we’re doing.”

  But Tom had no interest in moving, it would appear. At least his feet had no interest. His hand was heading to his back pocket, where he kept that little book for writing things down.

  “You can write about it later!” I hissed. “Right now ain’t the time!”

  Tom was already scribbling notes. “Right now is the only time! When am I ever going to find myself face-to-face with a bear again?”

  “I’d say never, if his mama comes and eats you alive.”

  “Just give me one minute. Anyway, he’s just standing there.”

  “It ain’t him I’m worried about!”

  I was in a pickle. I knowed the smartest thing to do was to get out of there as fast as we could without causing a commotion. And nobody was stopping me from doing just that. But I couldn’t leave Tom, now could I? Who leaves their own true friend to get eat up by a bear?

  “What’s the difference between a black bear and a brown bear?” Tom asked. To his credit, he was still whispering, not that I thought whispering would keep us alive in the long run.

  “There ain’t no brown bears around here, so that’s one difference. Can we go now?”

  Tom held up a finger. “Just one more second. I want to describe how intelligent his eyes are.”

  I was starting to think that bear cub was far more intelligent than either me or Tom. He was King Solomon of the Bible compared to the two of us. I bet if he’d been in our position, he would have run off a long time ago.

  He’d been standing there staring at us for a while, but now the cub turned his head toward the woods. I heard a rustling sound and knowed it was the sound of our doom. I grabbed Tom’s arm.

  “Mama bear’s coming—let’s get going!”

  Finally Tom listened to sense, and together we backed up step by step until we were again on the path.

  “Let’s just get one look at the mother, Arie Mae,” Tom pleaded. “I bet she’s something to see, and we’re safe up here, don’t you think?”

  This time I stood my ground. “I’ll show you a picture of a mama bear in Miss Sary’s encyclopedia, but if you don’t move right now, then you will be the cause of my death.”

  I am pleased to report that the thought of my dying in the jaws of a bear made Tom feel bad enough to hightail it on up the path as fast as he could, which was faster than you might think, shooting a glance backwards every few seconds. Maybe I’m wrong, but I was pretty sure he was hoping that mama bear was hot on our trail.

  That is just a little bit too adventuresome for my tastes.

  We was huffing and puffing by the time we got back to the post office and plopped back down on the bench, holding our sides and breathing hard.

  “We saw a bear, Arie Mae!” Tom exclaimed. “I can’t wait to write Father about it!”

  “Don’t forget to mention the part where you almost got both of us killed.”

  Tom waved off my words like he was swatting a pesky fly. “We were fine! We weren’t in the least bit of danger.”

  I stared at him a long time. “You really are from Baltimore, Maryland, ain’t you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I shook my head. “I mean you sure ain’t from around here.”


  That got Tom to laughing, and I started laughing too, and we just couldn’t stop ourselves. We laughed so hard and so long that Miss Ellie come out from the post office to see what was wrong with us.

  “You’uns go on home!” she yelled. “You’re scaring off my customers!”

  Tom got up to go then, but I said I thought I might sit a few more minutes. After Tom had gone, I let out a few more laughs, but the thought of my walk home sobered me up. What if that mama bear was on the path, looking for me?

  Well, I thought, pushing myself up off the bench, at least Tom will be able to explain to Mama and Daddy what happened when all they find is my bones halfway between here and there.

  And then I ran all the way home.

  Now I suppose I might have come across that bear cub even if Tom hadn’t been with me. Of course, I would have gotten away a lot quicker, having more sense when it comes to bears than Tom does.

  But if Tom hadn’t been there, why, it wouldn’t have been an adventure, would it? It wouldn’t be something I’ll be telling folks about for the rest of my life. And I had that adventure all because I wrote you a letter, Cousin Caroline, and needed to mail it.

  So I suppose I will write you another letter soon, even if you don’t rightly deserve it.

  Not that I am judging, because I don’t judge.

  Signed,

  Your Cousin,

  Arie Mae Sparks

  Dear Cousin Caroline,

  Last night I got to thinking about why you ain’t written me back yet, and I have come up with a right good theory. You fear that your mama will be against it. Maybe she has said to you, “Caroline, under no circumstances are you to write a letter to that Arie Mae Sparks up there in Stone Gap, North Carolina! I don’t care how many times she has written to you. If you don’t answer her, maybe she will leave us alone!”

  Well, you can tell that mama of yourn that I will keep writing these letters for the rest of my life if that is what it takes to show you that we are kin and should be the best of friends.