by Leah Weiss
I eat it fast and ball up the paper and stick the Moon Pie in my paper poke. He says, “Didn’t your mama teach you better manners? You gonna thank me for thinking of you?” and now my skin don’t itch. It burns.
I whisper, “Thank you,” cause Ma did teach me manners.
He whispers back, “Let’s have us some fun.” His arm pushes me back in the seat and he goes to rubbing between my legs with his hairy hand. I shock him when I bite his bare arm and draw blood. He elbows me hard and mutters, “Ungrateful little witch,” then punches the sleeping soldier across the aisle so he wakes up and they trade seats. The soldier dozes right off and pays me no mind. I reach in my bag for that prized Moon Pie and toss it across the aisle. I can’t stomach the sweet of it no more. I lean my head back out the window and watch a land flash by that hurts my eyes.
Chapter 7
Lucy: Best Friend
I’m besotted with the mystery of Trula Freed, and Nancy Drew is partly to blame. Aunt Fanniebelle started it when she gave me the first six Nancy Drew books that her daughter Patricia cast off. Some of the spines weren’t even cracked open, so I know my older cousin wasn’t as bewitched as I am over Nancy Drew’s detective proficiencies. Now my aunt buys the newest ones direct from Grosset & Dunlap publishing house. The books with the full-color covers, wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine, come as special delivery to her front door. The next day, she brings them to me. The latest is The Quest of the Missing Map. Number nineteen. For all her etiquette lessons and lace-collared dresses, my aunt understands the desires hidden in my quixotic heart, for mysteries are everywhere—the magic of Trula Freed, Cora Brown’s pale condition, the crisp on Mama’s lacy cornbread, and the lost city of Atlantis, to name a few. It was Socrates who said To know is to know you know nothing; I aim to know something.
I have a lot in common with Nancy Drew besides my clever mind: my hometown of Riverton sounds like her hometown of River Heights. My name, Lucy Brown, has the same number of syllables and letters as her name. Nancy is only three years older than me, and her father thinks she’s brilliant. She drives a blue roadster. She faces danger with alacrity. Alacrity is one of Nancy’s favorite words, so it’s mine, too. We face challenges with eagerness.
It is into this wishful world of mystery that my new best friend comes the second Sunday in June. I’m sitting on the bridge that spans the Roanoke River because it’s cooler here with the flow of water that stirs the humid air beneath my feet. I’m reading The Secret of the Old Clock for the third time when the clock at First Methodist Church strikes four, and at that precise moment, a stranger’s shadow falls across my open book. I look up and shield my eyes against the bright.
First thing the stranger says in a dialect different from here is, “I’m gonna travel the world someday. I’m gonna fly in one of them air-o-planes and ride on trains and boats that cross the sea.” She plops down next to me on the bridge, and our bare legs swing in unison. “I’m gonna drive my own automobile, too,” is how she concludes that introduction.
She declares her name is Allie Bert Tucker but that she only answers to Bert. I tell her Nancy Drew has a best friend with a boy’s name, too. A girl she calls George. When I say my name is Lucy Brown, Bert sticks out her hand, grips mine firm, and says, “Glad to meet you, Lu.”
And just like that, my whole world changes.
Bert Tucker goes on to say that first day that when she has babies, she’s gonna name them places she travels to, like Paris and London and Nova Scotia. I tell her I hope she’s not going to Amsterdam, and that makes us giggle so hard we almost pee our pants. I set my book aside and grab her hand, and together we slide off the bridge into the river and come up still giggling over Amsterdam. I invite the stranger to supper, and she comes home with me like she was meant to, us looking like drowned rats smelling of creosote from the bridge and rotten eggs from the fertilizer plant upriver.
When we walk up the porch steps, I hold out an arm to stop Bert and warn her that we’re bibliophiles. She says she doesn’t mind cause her folks are Primitive Baptist. I say, “No, silly. Bibliophiles love books. Daddy got his family’s book collection when most everybody except him died of influenza in 1918. That tragedy was the start of our library, but we add to it all the time. Daddy says it’s money well-spent if a book broadens your mind.”
When Bert walks into our home, my new friend is stopped still. She stares at the bank of tall bookcases on two walls holding our family’s library, alphabetized by authors. She runs her fingers along the spines in neat lines, and I declare, “These books are your ticket to the great mysteries of the world, Bert Tucker. You can read any one you want while you’re here, but wash your hands first. That’s Daddy’s rule we abide by.” I see deepened respect on Bert’s face.
“Every Wednesday evening when the weather’s fair, we have story time for anybody who wants to come. They sit on the porch or in the yard and listen to tales we take turns telling. And once a year, we have a birthday party for a special book Oma gave us.” I babble on. “It’s The Velveteen Rabbit, and she even made a stuffed rabbit to go with it.”
Bert’s eyes glide from the books to the sheet music and the battered case for the guitar and one for the fiddle lying on top of the upright piano that’s missing some of its ivories. Large maps of the United States and of the world hang above the piano. Hundreds of pins mark places we read about. When her eyes slide to the doorway and she catches sight of my ghostly sister Cora, she grins and whispers, “Y’all are different enough.”
My new best friend sits in Oma’s empty place, and my siblings take turns drilling her while she eats fried chicken and lacy cornbread and tries pickled okra for the first time. She tells us in her wordy way that she’s living at her aunt Violet’s place, helping her get ready for the baby though she’s never seen one birthed. Mama catches my eye, because Violet and Larry Crumbie are not a happy family. I feel a rush of apprehension for my friend.
Bert’s dialect murders the King’s English and her table manners are atrocious, but nobody calls her out because we want to hear what she says. Even my older sister Irene, who works at the newspaper, listens without her usual disdain. Bert is a revelation that brings a welcome spark to our boring days.
She came to Riverton on June second from the other side of North Carolina. Rode a Trailways bus by herself that stopped nine or ten times at places like Mocksville and Graham and Cary. Uniformed soldiers were everywhere, some leaving home, some coming home missing pieces of their bodies, taking up nearly every seat on the bus. Said she could tell the worn-out ones from the fresh. Mama and my sister Helen’s faces cloud over with talk about injured soldiers. Our thoughts are never far from Helen’s husband, Wade Sully, and my big brother Everett, who we desperately want to come home and work the hives. We don’t know if Mama’s words of persuasion did the deed.
“We don’t got wet heat back where I come from like y’all got here,” Bert says fanning her face with her hand. Oma complained the same way about our summer heat.
“Where I’m from, folks still sleep under quilts at night and frost can sparkle on the mountains in the mornings.”
Little Lydia says, “Oma came from tall mountains but she’s dead” and goes back to eating peas one at a time.
I clarify. “Oma was our grandma. She was born in the Black Forest of Germany and lived with us all my days till she died. You’re sitting in her place.”
Filling such an important seat doesn’t seem to intimidate Bert. Without pause, she says, “I don’t know bout no black forest but all the same I come from tall mountains. We got panthers and black bears and eagles. Mountains rise up so high that some days they disappear in the clouds. If you was to climb to the top, y’all could wash your hands in a cloud. Dirt slides right off. Don’t need no soap.”
“You’re lying,” Grady mutters, because Bert’s words are starting to sound like bragging, and that doesn’t sit well with my brother.
Mama says, “Son, don’t be rude. Have you been to the western side of our state?” and Grady shakes his head, embarrassed. “Then show Bert the respect she deserves.”
Lydia says, “I’m four, almost five. Do y’all have wolpertingers there?” barely getting her lips around the multiple syllables. She adds, “We got a dead one in our attic.”
Bert looks confused, shakes her head, and turns quiet, likely from Grady’s hurtful remark or maybe her puzzlement over wolpertingers. She lets us quibble among ourselves, trying to impress her, when the cuckoo clock does the job for us. Her fork stops midway to her mouth, and she says, “What in blue blazes.”
“It’s our cuckoo clock,” Lydia pipes up again.
“How’d it do that trick, popping out like that?”
I explain, “Springs and weights, Oma said. It was made a long time back by Hubert Herr from Bavaria. We wind it on Sunday mornings, and it keeps time all week.”
“Well, I’ll be…” Bert takes the last of her biscuit and wipes every trace of food off her plate. She helps clear the table and does the dishes. I scrape, she washes, I dry. The rest of the family heads to the porch to make butter from clabber and hear the next chapter of tonight’s book. The porch is quiet except for Mama’s voice. Bert wants to know what she’s saying.
“She’s reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, chapter four, I think. I already finished the whole book. It’s a grand adventure about the Nautilus and Captain Nemo.”
“They from these parts?”
“No, silly. Jules Verne wrote the book. Made it up from his imagination. He lived across the Atlantic Ocean in France in the seaport town of Nantes. We put a pin on the map close to where it is. Nantes would make a lovely name for one of your girls.”
“You believe that stuff I say? Bout traveling to them places? Bout having babies I give pretty names to?”
“Why wouldn’t I? You already rode a bus clear cross North Carolina. I don’t know any lone girl who’s done that.”
Arms in suds up to her elbows, Bert grins lopsided and nods to the window ledge. “What’s all them blue jars for?”
I whisper, “Vicks VapoRub. Daddy uses it for everything. Colds, bug bites, cuts, bee stings, dry skin, bruises, headaches, sore muscles. He goes through a lot of Vicks. Mama says it’s his man perfume. The jars are too nice to throw away. Now they hold dried herbs and seeds and odd buttons.”
“I thought I smelled something besides supper when I come in. Aunt Violet’s got tins of Dapper Dan pomade. Says the pomade keeps Larry Crumbie’s hair in place. He don’t come home since I been there.”
I say, “I saw him at market a week back,” and drop my voice. “I don’t understand how your aunt Violet and Larry Crumbie ended up together. They’re as different as chalk and cheese, her being meek and him being of an angry nature.”
“Pa said her being twenty-seven with no prospect in sight must a been the cause for her to latch on to Larry. He likely latched on to her cause she had a farm deeded to her. All I know is that the days I been there, Larry Crumbie don’t come home. My aunt’s pitiful lost without him.”
We finish the dishes in silence, me wanting to correct her grammar when Bert switches gears on me. “Your mama sure is a good cook. That was the best food I ever ate.”
“Daddy says she can make sawdust taste delicious with enough crackling and butter.”
“He’s right.”
“Your mama must be a good cook, too,” I say to include Bert in the compliment, not thinking I was trespassing where I shouldn’t. Her face scrunches up and her nose turns red and her shoulders slide up. She’s crying.
I whisper, “What’d I say?” wishing I could take back what it was.
With poor timing, Mama yells from the porch, “You girls finish up. Bert needs to head on home to make it before dark.”
My friend wipes her runny nose on her arm and yells back all composed, “Yes ’um.”
Mama adds, “You stay here, Lucy. You’ll see Bert another time.”
I whisper again, “What’d I say?” as I hang the drying towel on the hook, but Bert shakes her head and sets her jaw in a way I’ll come to know as her not ready to talk look.
We come out on the porch, and Mama has her finger in the book holding her place. She says, “You know the way?”
“Do I walk the road or can I cut through the field?”
Mama points to the pine grove on the far side of tobacco. “It’s quicker to cut through that way. You’ll meet the road the Crumbie farm is on. Turn right and you’ll be there before the sun sets good. Is everything okay over there?”
“Yes ’um. Thank you for the good supper.”
“You’re welcome here anytime.”
I say, “Larry Crumbie hasn’t been home since Bert came,” knowing that’s a good thing. The worry lines between Mama’s eyes soften but don’t go away. Bert and I step off the porch, and Mama starts reading again.
I walk Bert to the edge of the yard, past the line of beehives that have gone quiet for the night. She holds out her hand and shakes mine firm. “Good meeting you, Lu” are my new best friend’s parting words, and I want to hug her but I don’t. I want to know what made her cry, for tears coming that fast are a sign of trouble. I want to know she’s going to be safe in a mean man’s house. Instead I watch her walk into the June tobacco field. She turns around twice to wave farewell.
Like she knows I’ll stand there and watch her go.
Till I can’t see her anymore.
Chapter 8
Bert: Everything
Crickets, katydids, and tree frogs start their racket when I step off the heat of the field into the cool of the pines. I look back at Lu Brown standing on the other side in a patch of light. She’s the luckiest girl I ever seen and likely don’t know it. Why she took a shine to me I don’t got a clue. They talk smart and got everything a soul could want—vittles, music, books, family. I like that ghost girl. She’s got pink eyes.
I want what they got but I’m tainted. I finger the black button I stole. It was sitting on the windowsill, and it come from Miz Brown’s housedress, the button at the neck. It was dangling by a thread when she snapped it off and set it on the sill for safekeeping. I snatched it when everybody went to the porch and Lu wiped crumbs off the table. Now it’s mine. It’ll go in my treasure box cause Miz Brown touched it. She’s likely got more buttons in her sewing basket with proper thread and needles.
I walk on soft ground through tall pines, jump over the ditch onto the dirt road that takes me back to my aunt’s place. My feet drag and my heart hurts for the difference between where I been and where I’m goin.
I don’t say to the Browns that when I come off the bus in Riverton with my body and heart as empty as a June bug shell, nobody was at the station to fetch me. I sat waiting, hungry and parched, needing to relieve myself. The ticket man was locking the station door when he saw me and said, “Who you waitin on, girl?”
I said back, “Violet Crumbie. She be my aunt on my pa’s side. I’m here on account of her having a baby.”
The man took pity on me, drove me out to the farm, and left me in the yard. I knocked on the screen door for the longest time before my aunt showed her fat-bellied self. She said, “What business you got here? I got no handouts,” like my coming was a surprise. In truth, we was strangers to each other. I didn’t recollect what she looked like, and she didn’t know me neither.
“I’m Bert. Your niece,” I say. When she don’t answer, I say louder, “My name is Allie Bert Tucker. Pa sent me. Your brother. He wrote you a letter saying I was coming today.”
She said, “I don’t get no letter” but stepped closer to me. “Brother sent you? Why don’t he tell me?” She unhooked the screen door, looking round for the boogeyman. “I reckon it’s okay. Larry’ll be home any minute from fishing. You can’t stay here when he gits home. Larry
don’t abide outsiders.”
That was my welcome to her house. It was as dirty a place as I ever did see. I held my breath for the stink. By oil lamp, I saw dishes piled in the sink, flies on spoiled food, soiled clothes on the floor. She went in her bedroom and shut the door. I put down my paper bag of belongings and got to cleaning.
This evening on day twelve since I come to Riverton, after meeting the luckiest girl in the world and eating at her fine table, I call out when I get back, “Anybody here?” but nobody answers. I head to the room where I been staying with its iron bed, stained mattress, bare walls, and a window that don’t open. I reach under the bed for my treasure box to put Miz Brown’s black button for safekeeping when I hear, “Where you been?”
Aunt Violet scared me. She sneaked up like a spook. I don’t pull out my box. I push it back deep and stand up and look at her.
“At the Browns. Lu asked me to supper. They got a cuckoo clock that tells time all day long.”
“You was at the Browns,” she says like she woke up from a long sleep and got cobwebs in her head.
“Yes ’um. You hungry? Want somethin’ to eat?”
Her face twists all catawampus. Her eyes dart to the ceiling for answers, then she says, “I used to know me some Browns but I don’t recollect from where…” and with that, she steps outta my bedroom into hers and closes the door. Her house holds sticky heat and lonely smells no matter how hard I clean on it. I’m lonely here, too.
The dark of night settles in, and I stretch out on the bed in the shorts and shirt I wore all day, them holding traces of the river I jumped in. I finger the smooth black button that belongs to me now. I smell the button and it makes me think of fried chicken, okra and biscuits, and a cuckoo clock. I think I smell Miz Brown’s kindness on that button.
This confounded heat makes a body feel like a slug with the backbone turning to jelly. In the dark, through thin walls, I hear Aunt Violet’s mattress creak, and she calls out, “What you doing sneaking in like that? You look a fright and stink of fish. I bout give up on you, is what I done. You hungry?”