by Leah Weiss
She glares at Daddy. “You betrayed me, David Brown. You and that slick government man. Y’all were selling something I was buying, and now you’re taking it back. Telling me it’s not that simple when it is. We need Everett and Wade here. Not over there in some god-forsaken land.”
On one side, Daddy speaks the war-truth that’s turned our days hard. On the other, Mama wishes on a star like a girl wanting to keep our boys safe. I wish that both sides would go away and today I’d see my big brother come around the corner of the barn. He’d be whistling and he’d swing Lydia and Cora high into the air, and they’d squeal with joy, and he’d tell us a riddle. That’s what I want.
Daddy is a peacemaker at heart so he lifts his arms for a hug, but Mama bats him away and locks her jaw. He says, “We’ll let the men know, but the decision is theirs. They’re old enough to go to war so they’re old enough to make up their own minds.”
Mama stomps off toward the house, and Daddy heads to the barn. We’ll be keeping the two blue stars in our window representing our men in harm’s way. Mr. John T. Booker’s offer was a misnomer.
Lydia and Cora are near tears to see this argument. It used to be rare to witness fights between our parents. Now it’s grown common. I say to Grady, “You gonna stay home and make Mama happy?”
He drops the toothpick on the ground and the three cat’s-eye marbles back in his pocket. “I don’t rightly know,” he says, being honest. “I don’t turn eighteen for twenty-six months and eight days. The war might be over by then. I don’t want to look like a coward, Lucy. What kind a man chickens out of a war when his buddies are risking it all?”
I shoot back, “A smart man. A live man. A whole man who wants to stay that way.”
“I got time to decide,” he says, and he walks to the barn where Daddy went. With only us three girls in the yard, Cora and Lydia stop crying. I push them on the swing while the tension in the air dissipates.
I wish Oma were here to comfort Mama, but she died a week back when I was in the hayloft stealing time, reading The Secret at Shadow Ranch. I looked up when the screen door screeched open and watched my mama bring German tea to her mama like she did every afternoon. But this time, Oma’s head lolled to the side. Her mouth had gone slack, and Mama dropped the cup of hot tea and it cleaved down the middle, a good life split between Germany and Riverton. Nancy Drew slipped from my fingers, and I lost my place.
Mama lost her place, too.
Chapter 2
Bert: Thoughtless
It’s wash day on the last Wednesday in May. Sheets is heavy on the line next to overalls and flannel shirts, flapping in a breeze coming down from the highlands, heading for Asheville. There was this itty-bitty tear in Ma’s old sheet, and it’s what I’m in need of—a strip of cloth two lengths of a baby coffin. So being the thoughtless girl I am, I take the edge of that tear, rip it up one way then cross the other till I get what I want. Then I go to my room I share with my older sister, Ruth, and bolt the door.
Cause it’s in plain sight, Ma sees that tore-out sheet and lets out a scream to her savior and her wayward daughter, getting us a tad mixed up. “Sweet Jesus, what in tarnation got into you, Allie Bert Tucker,” she shouts to the heavens.
I don’t come outta my room. Don’t answer in respect neither. I keep winding that stole muslin round my necked chest to cover my swoll breasts. I’m tamping down my bosom because it changes things. I ain’t ready for change.
The rusty hinges on that screen door scratch open and slap shut. Ma’s heavy feet flap cross the sticky linoleum up to my door, where her words slide through the crack. “I know you done it. Can’t be nobody but you. Ruint the cloth you sleep on, like we rich as kings and can buy what we please. You gonna be the death of me.”
Ma stops her talking, breathes like a mule run hard, and moans low from the baby growing heavy in her belly. Her voice turns to mush when she says, “What’s got into you, Allie Bert?” and I yell back, “My name is Bert. Plain Bert,” then I jump when Ma hits the outside of that door with the flat of her hand and says, “You a thoughtless girl. I pray the good Lord will punish your selfish ways. May he break your willful spirit.”
I still don’t open the door. I git up on tiptoes to look in the cracked mirror on the wall to see a chest flat as a boy. The muslin makes breathing hard. I don’t worry bout the washing on the line. Don’t worry bout shelling peas or scrubbing a sticky floor. I let Ruth do the worry stuff, since she’s fifteen to my thirteen. I pull on a shirt and overalls, climb out the open window, and drop to the ground quiet as a cat.
Ruth comes walking round the corner of the house cause she knows I’d be crawling out the back window for a getaway. She says, “Where you going?”
I whisper, “I need to skedaddle.”
Ruth says, “Ma’s upset at what you done. And Sam Logan’s come for a visit. He’s talking to Pa but waiting on you to take a walk with him.”
Sam Logan don’t make me pause, but I peek round the corner and see him tall as Pa, him sucking on a sassafras branch cause of his stinky breath. He’s got ideas I don’t like one bit, but I don’t say such things to Ruth. I run. I run on bare feet cross the clearing with a circle of blue mountains all around. Through the apple orchard where blossoms are mostly spent. Past the graveyard of my people into the dark of the woods. I’m heading to my thinking spot back in the holler. Grapevines thick as my wrist hang from tall trees that grow outta cracks in boulders. Moss covers felled logs and is so green it pains my eyes to gaze upon it.
In the bend of the narrow trail lined with ferns, I see a tiny ball of fur. It’s lying still, and I walk up to it and nudge it with my toe. It’s a baby rabbit, no more than a week old. When I pick it up, the little head falls to the side. It fits in the palm of my hand, and I tuck it against my chest and feel grief stab my heart for a death I got no part in. It’s still warm, and I carry it and walk through my quiet woods. Patches of sunlight move on the ground and light up lichen and mushrooms and mica.
The rumble of falling water comes to my ears first, and when it comes into view, the spray soaks me clean through. I still hold tight to the dead rabbit, too precious to cast off. I tuck him inside my shirt pocket so I can climb wet rocks and work my way behind the rushing water to the slip of a cave. Inside is dry enough and deep enough to snuggle up to the far wall. Its comfort seeps through my damp clothes into my bones. A rainbow sparkles through the water, and I think bout today and why I come here: I don’t wanna change from a girl to a woman and work till the day I die.
That’s the God’s honest truth. That curse from blood between my legs don’t mean nothing but heartache. A growed woman won’t never come to my cave. Or fly high on a grapevine. Or jump in a swimming hole deep as tomorrow. Or grieve a dead rabbit that barely saw the sun rise and set a half-dozen times. A woman’s feet is nailed too solid to the ground to roam, and I need to roam. I wanna go to places Teacher talked about in them picture books. Paris, France. London, England. China with a great wall that wanders forever. I want to see water as blue as a morning sky. Teacher says I’m smart enough, and I want to believe her. I rub the soft rabbit fur with my thumb cause it gives me comfort and hope I won’t have to settle for a puny life. I dream of blue ghost fireflies that will rise up soon and dance in the dark…
When I wake it’s late and I scramble outta the cave and scoot down the slick rocks, wondering if Ma and Pa’s gonna be mad at me again for neglecting chores. I hope they don’t send me to bed hungry. I run through the long shadows of the woods, clutching my dead rabbit, come out in the clearing, and stop confounded. Clothes is still on the line. No light is in the windows and no supper smell in the air. In the yard beside the chopping block, Pa faces the setting sun on the long slope of Mount Mitchell.
I get up next to him and say, “Pa?” but he don’t answer, and I look over at the cabin that looks like nobody lives in it. Gloomy and sagging in the middle, it makes the innards of my
belly clutch. I think to say, “Where’s Ma and Ruth?”
He look down on me like it’s great pain to pull his neck my way. “Oh, Bert. Hello, girl,” he says polite as church, “Your ma’s dead. Your baby brother, too. They inside growing cold. Ruth’s gone to fetch help.”
I can’t hardly breathe from the shock. Ma’s labor musta come on early cause I run away. Labor pains brought on by her girl who don’t think of nobody but herself. A girl who give her ma grief every live long day. But I’m puzzled. Why would the Lord punish Ma and that little hope of a baby stead a me? I’m the one who shoulda got kilt or got struck blind. I look up at Pa, who acts like he don’t know I’m here. I hold the dead bunny in one hand and try to take Pa’s hand for comfort, but he don’t take mine back.
Over the rise, Aunt Beulah comes marching in a flurry, and Uncle Bud behind, and the midwife from Baines Creek that Ma don’t have need for. All of em is led by Ruth, who looks older than she did this morning. Nobody looks my way. They hurry to the cabin with mighty purpose, go inside, and commence to wailing over the dead.
Chapter 3
Lucy: Legend
Daddy signed the honey deal on May twenty-seventh, but Mama writes the letters to our soldier men. She doesn’t trust Daddy to plead with Everett and Wade to come home, so she works to find the right words. Words that won’t be censored in V-mail. She pours out a mama’s love that will be seen by a stranger, copied on microfilm, flown to foreign lands, and printed off again. The letters will reach Everett and Wade in as little as two weeks. The next morning, she kisses the envelopes and hands them to me to take to the mailbox and pull up the flag of hope. Daddy doesn’t ask what she wrote.
The next Saturday at first light, I help Mama load the truck with honey, eggs, and extra produce for market. Our customers know our honey supply has been cut down, so the selling won’t take long. We’ll make government money, but some folks will have to drink bitter tea and eat cake flavored with sorghum molasses.
Cora and Lydia stay home with Helen, and Daddy and Grady are in the fields, and Irene is already in town working, so it’s only Mama and me pulling out of the driveway, crossing the bridge over the Roanoke River, past the Majestic where the much-anticipated Lassie Come Home starts today, past the Hollingston Pharmacy and Soda Fountain, the courthouse where on hot days you can chip ice off the block that sits in the shade under a tarp, and the Mercer County Reporter, where my sister Irene works. A small library is tacked on back, which Miz Elvira, the librarian, oversees. We cut down River Road to the docks and farmers market held on Saturday mornings. I heard somewhere that my town has five thousand citizens living within its confines, but I think some folks must have been counted twice or even three times. It’s only at the opening of tobacco market that starts in late August and runs six weeks that my town swells with importance. Still, it holds six churches that maintain distinctions people love to debate.
Our market table is in the shade, and I’m lining the jars neatly when Tiny Junior shows up. He’s a hard worker with a sweet disposition but a simple mind. He won’t take pay for helping because his heart is pure. Today, Tiny Junior helps me unload the truck, then we sit on two weathered stools and watch the crowd grow. I slip him a new pack of Black Jack licorice gum Daddy bought for him. It’s his favorite.
“Do you know chewing gum comes from the sapodilla tree? The gummy resin is called chicle. So you’ve got a tree in Central America to thank for your chewing gum.”
Tiny Junior grins.
Though it has been nine days since Oma passed, Mama still collects condolences. Miz Elvira shops early so she can open the library at ten, and she’s the first of a dozen who speaks kindly of Oma who stayed a foreigner all her days. She pickled everything and skewed her words peculiar. She was a gloriously odd soul, and I loved everything about her except when she’d poot in her sleep and smell of sauerkraut. The older she got, the more she pooted, the more she slept alone.
Another fascinating soul is Trula Freed, the consummate enigma of Mercer County, a mystery who is making her way among the market stalls on the far side. She is a butterfly among common houseflies. Tall and graceful, she carries her sweetgrass basket on her skinny arm that holds a dozen gold bangles. I wish she’d come to our table so I could study her up close. Today, she wears a long dress in purples and blues and an orange turban wrapped around her head. Gold hoops hang from sagging earlobes. Her skin is as smooth as an egg and her eyes the green of a regal feline. Everything about Trula Freed is rich and exotic. When she casts her glance my way across the crowd, I duck my chin and my cheeks flush. Mama doesn’t allow Trula Freed’s name to be spoken under our roof for reasons I honor but cannot fathom. The woman’s magnetic pull is palpable.
Mama taps my shoulder so I stop daydreaming and help Violet Crumbie. The brim of Miz Violet’s tattered straw hat is cocked over one side of her face to shield it. I’m shocked to see a nasty bruise and a split in her lip. One hand rests protectively on her pregnant belly and the other trembles when she picks up a jar of honey. “How much?” she whispers.
Before I can say, her husband, Larry Crumbie, wrenches her wrist. “Put It Down,” he orders, and she obeys, docile as a child.
They turn away, but Mama picks up the jar and heads after Miz Violet. “Wait,” she calls out and presses the jar into the shy woman’s hand, saying, “It’s a gift. Please take it. It’s good to see you at market.”
She doesn’t even look at Larry Crumbie, and that doesn’t sit well with him. He grabs the jar and says, “We don’t take charity,” and he hurls that pint of precious honey on the ground. The bottle shatters and honey splatters. Tiny Junior stoops and picks up the glass, and a mutt dog sleeping in the shade ambles over to lap up the sweet, shards and all.
I can’t help myself but blurt, “Do you know that it took the labor of twenty thousand bees to make that one jar of honey?”
Larry Crumbie shoots a mean look at me, obviously not caring for knowledge or a girl speaking outright.
Mama pats my arm to calm me. She got talked to rudely, but my heart breaks extra for Miz Violet. To my way of thinking, Larry Crumbie is the worst kind of fancy man. A showy man who wears ironed shirts and pomade in his hair. Now that his wife is in the family way, instead of being kind and considerate to her, he’s turned extra spiteful. I’m glad Mama was nice to her. Maybe that counted for something.
We sell out of eggs and honey and head home early because it’s picture show day. The humid air from the open windows lifts the hair off my damp neck. I hear Mama sniffling. “What is it?” I say. “It’s not that Larry Crumbie, is it?”
“No, no,” she says.
“Is it worry for Miz Violet?” I try again. “There’s nothing you can do for her really,” I say like I know what I’m talking about.
When I say Oma’s name, Mama nods, wipes her runny nose on her forearm, and gives me a watery smile. I miss my grandmother, too. She was wrinkled and wore flowered scarves tied under her floppy chin. She was soft and squishy and smelled of lilac powder she got every birthday and caraway used in cooking. With Oma gone, Mama needs something new and promising in her life.
I need something new and promising, too, and I think an enigma like Trula Freed might be just the thing to hone my empirical thinking.
As fate would have it, the very next week, our paths cross.
When Assassin gets set on fire.
Chapter 4
Bert: Exiled
The week after Ma and the baby get buried in the Tucker cemetery, Pa says he’s sending me away. He got a letter from his sister Violet, who lives clear cross North Carolina. I don’t recollect ever meeting his sister Violet, but Pa says she’s kin and in the family way and needs help, so I’m going. He found money for a one-way ticket on a bus outta Asheville that leaves at first light. He let Violet know I’m coming so the deed is done and I don’t have no say. I thought bout running away and living in the woods, but that wo
uld hurt Pa to have to look for me. He can’t help if he’s got a wayward girl. All the same, my heart aches.
When can I come home? I wanna know, riding that goodbye journey in the truck that bounces over ruts, with Pa looking straight ahead and his jaw set hard. We go down, down the mountainside, and the chill leaves the air, and the air turns mild and buildings grow close, then rise up, and electric lights on the hard road chase the dark away cause we’re in Asheville. Pa’s a shy man so it’s me who asks strangers for the way to the bus station, and we find it.
How you gonna know I’m okay? I wanna know before I climb the three steps into the belly of the bus, hugging my paper satchel holding clothes and my treasure box, but I don’t wanna sound weak.
You gonna miss me? I wanna know but don’t say. I go to the dim back of the bus to sit beside an old lady with dark skin, but she says, “Your kind gotta sit in front of that line,” and she points to a faded mark on the floor. I hurry to find another seat quick and look out the window, hoping to catch sight of Pa looking back waving, but he’s already going back to where we come from.
My punishment is exile from my homeland—like the Nation of Israelites in the Old Testament. It’s what happens when you disobey and disrespect. The Lord keeps score. Exile is worse than being dead or struck blind. I hold back my tears. I gotta turn brave.
Chapter 5
Lucy: Our Ass
Mama pulls in the yard and toots the horn for Lydia and Cora to run to the truck. Every boy and girl in Riverton is buying matinee tickets at the Majestic for Lassie Come Home, because yesterday, Friday, June fourth, school let out for the summer. Lassie is the reward for finishing another year.