The Ballad of Ami Miles

by Kristy Dallas Alley

  “I’m glad you showed up tonight, Ami. We were worried about you after you ran off at lunch.” Hanna was standing in front of me, her face looking down with concern but also curiosity.

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said. “I just … there’s things you don’t know about. And things I don’t know about, looks like. It’s just a lot. I needed to be alone for a while.”

  “You probably aren’t used to having all these people around, telling you things and asking you questions, huh?” Nina said.

  “Yeah. I guess I never thought that much about being by myself most of the time. It was just how it was. But now, seeing all these people, and all these people seeing me … I think maybe some of that is catching up to me. Like I’m just feeling how alone I really was, even though I thought I already knew it.”

  No one said anything for a minute, but I noticed that Jessie had finished her conversation and was looking at me and listening to what I had said. I stared at the fire to hide how flustered I felt every time I looked at her.

  “That’s the thing about loneliness,” she said. “It can creep up on you anytime, and sometimes it’s worst when the most people are around. Don’t always make sense, does it?”

  “That’s true,” I said, looking over at her finally. “Right before I came up here, to where y’all were sitting together, I was walking through the woods and down by the lake. And I didn’t feel lonesome then, just peaceful. Back home, I spend a lot of time in the woods by myself, so I always feel good there. Just … quiet. Settled inside. But I went out there because I was so upset and feeling like I had nobody.” I let my voice trail off, not knowing what else to say.

  “It’s good to have a place like that,” Jessie said. “For me, it’s always been music. No matter what else is happening, I can get lost in the songs, and by the time I come up found again, things always seem better.” We smiled at each other, and I felt warmth spreading all over my body that had nothing to do with the heat of the night. Even though music and the woods were not the same, what those things meant to Jessie and me was the same.

  “Who taught you all these songs and how to play that guitar?” I asked. “Did someone give it to you?” Then it was like a cloud came over her face, and she looked away from me, toward the fire. It was dying down to embers by then, glowing red but not giving off much light or heat anymore.

  “That’s gonna have to be a story for another day, Ami Miles. I’m real tired right now, and I think it’s time I got myself to bed.” She looked up and gave me the crooked grin again, but it seemed sadder now. “I’ll see you tomorrow, I bet.” Then she stood up and dusted off her backside with one hand, and just like that, she was gone. She walked off in the opposite direction from the lodge, toward the small cabins, but it was so dark that she disappeared within seconds.

  I realized that Nina and Hanna were still standing there and that they had been watching and listening to that whole conversation. My cheeks burned red again, but it was full dark now, so I knew they couldn’t see. I saw a look pass between them, but I couldn’t tell what it meant. And suddenly I was dead tired. The day had caught up with me all at once, and I was ready for sleep. I yawned big and loud, then put my hand over my mouth and laughed. My new friends laughed with me, and we all said good night and headed off to bed. When I got back to my room, I barely had the energy to use the bathroom and splash water on my face before I fell facedown on the bed and was asleep.

  Thirteen

  Helen had said there were about sixty people at Lake Point, and half of them lived in the lodge, mostly single adults and childless couples. Families with children lived in some of the cabins on both sides of the lake, so they’d have more room to spread out and more privacy for the business of doing what families do. There were more of them than I would have thought, and I wondered if maybe the sickness was fading away after all these years. The cabins had their own kitchens, but anyone could participate in the big communal meals at the lodge as long as they took their turns helping out.

  I found Helen that third morning after breakfast, back behind the counter where I’d first seen her. She smiled when she saw me coming, which was a whole lot better than having her point a pistol at me.

  “Hey there, stranger,” she said, “how you been?”

  “Pretty good,” I said, smiling back. I got the feeling that Helen didn’t like just everybody, so it made me kind of proud to have her act friendly toward me. “But I need to keep busy. I was hoping I could get on garden duty.” She gave me a thoughtful look and nodded her head.

  “Idle hands is the devil’s workshop, that it?” she asked. This was something Ruth often said, and I felt another stab of homesickness shoot through my chest.

  “Something like that,” I said. “I know my way around a garden, so I won’t be any trouble. And I want to earn my keep. Like you said, everybody here works to keep this place running, right?”

  “Well, I can’t argue with that. Go on out there, then. Just tell ’em I sent you. They can always use extra hands.”

  The gardens were run by a couple of older women named Hillie and Sam. Even though they didn’t really look alike, their mannerisms and way of talking were so similar that I wondered if they were sisters. And they both wore their hair as short as men! They always had on old hats or visors to keep the sun off their faces, and they dressed in loose clothing that hid their skin from the sun and kept it from burning.

  Hillie and Sam weren’t much for talking. They seemed to be able to communicate with each other without ever saying much, and I figured they had a routine from working those same garden beds for years. That first morning when I went out there, Hillie looked me over, sizing me up.

  “You ever done any gardening before?” she asked, looking like she expected the answer to be no.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, sticking my chin out. “How else can folks eat?” She looked surprised, and Sam cackled and nudged Hillie with her elbow.

  “We got a live one,” Sam said, and Hillie cracked a grin.

  “Looks like,” she said, but her voice was friendly. “All right, then, Miss Expert Gardener, this is how you’ll do: Pick whatever looks ripe, pull up any weeds that’s sprouted since your area was last worked over, and deal with any pests. You see any hornworms on the ’maters, pull ’em off and throw ’em in that bucket over there for the chickens. You see any aphids or whitefly infestations anywhere, spray ’em with this. You know what aphids are, don’t ya?” I shifted my weight and put a hand on my hip.

  “I know what aphids look like. You got vinegar and hot pepper seeds in your spray bottle?”

  Hillie smiled at me for real then. “What else?” she said. “All right, then, go on and get to work. You can start over there,” she said, pointing me to the tomato patch. It was satisfying to pull the ripe, red tomatoes from their vines and put them into the big basket that would take them to the kitchens. It felt good to know that I was doing something useful, and being out in the sunshine and fresh air helped me stay calm, even though it felt like my mother could show up anytime—or never.

  I didn’t see Jessie that day. I found myself playing her campfire songs over and over in my mind, watching her there like the moving pictures I’d heard about. I could see the way her hair and eyes reflected the light of the fire, and the way she tossed her hair back and tilted her face up to sing. It was the music, I told myself, so different from anything I knew, that had gotten itself stuck in my head. And I’d realized that she must be the Jessie Nina had mentioned in her story about Teenie and her baby. I wondered if I could ask Jessie about that when I saw her again. But it wasn’t until the next day, while I was picking ripe tomatoes and singing “Good and Greasy” softly to myself, she snuck up behind me.

  “Kinda sticks in your head, don’t it?” I whirled around and saw Jessie standing there, smirking. I felt the flush creep up my neck and over my whole face, which only made me more embarrassed.

  “I think you might need a hat or something, Ami Miles. Your face look
s like you’re gettin’ too much sun.” I started to say that it wasn’t the sun, but then I realized she was teasing me. And then all I could do, for some reason, was laugh.

  “Well, you’re the one stuck it there,” I replied too late. We stood there just looking at each other for a minute. She looked different in the sunlight. She seemed a little older than me, maybe a year or two. Her long black hair was pulled back into two thick braids, but the sun caught blue sparks wherever it touched. Her eyes were gray and rimmed by thick, short lashes that made them seem outlined in black. Her skin was tanned all over from the sun, and there was a whole lot of it showing. She had on a top that was really just skinny straps holding up a tube of fabric that clung to her chest and stopped short of covering her belly button. Her pants had once been blue jeans, but they were cut off short and frayed to strings all around the bottom, and they hung on her hips like they were made to fit someone bigger around. Her feet were bare, and a straw cowboy hat hung from a string hooked over one finger. My grandma Ruth would have had a fit and shooed her inside to put some clothes on.

  “Yoo-hoo,” she called out, but her voice was just loud enough for me to hear. I dragged my eyes back up to meet hers and saw that smirk again. “There we go. I’m on garden beds today. Looks like we’ll be workin’ together.” She put the hat on over her braids and walked toward me. “I’ll start on the next row.” She tossed a grin back over her shoulder at me as she brushed past, her arm grazing mine. Her skin felt as warm as it looked. She grabbed a basket off the pile and went to work on her row. Pretty soon, she was humming softly, words rising up through the sound just every once in a while, singing time, time, time, hm-mm mm-mm-hm-mm, all the time.

  I tried to focus on the tomatoes, but the work was too easy. I wondered if she had been looking me over while I was looking at her. That same uneasy thought filled my head: What do they see when they look at me? Is there something wrong with the way I look? I was still wearing Amber’s shorts and short-sleeve shirts, washing one set out in the tub each night and hanging it over the shower rod to dry. When I got back to my room the night before, I’d studied myself in the mirror. My skin didn’t tan all over the way Jessie’s did; it just seemed to sprout more and more freckles. I was amazed they hadn’t grown together yet. That would be better, I thought. I needed to change the subject.

  “You ready to tell me who taught you your songs now? It is another day, right?” I made my voice sound steady, but for some reason, my heart was thumping in its cage. Why did I feel so crazy around this girl? Talking to her should be no different from talking to Hanna or Melissa or Nina. It was, though. It was very different, and I couldn’t make sense of it. I kept my eyes on the tomato plants, but I heard the humming stop. Then she was quiet for a minute before she spoke.

  “It was my daddy. He died a couple of years ago. That was his guitar, and he taught me how to play.” Her voice sounded tight but not angry.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You must miss him a lot.”

  “He was a bastard and I’m glad he’s dead,” she replied. There was a hard edge to her voice, and I could not have been more shocked if she had slapped me. “But sometimes I loved him. And sometimes I miss him. Music was the only good thing he ever did.” I didn’t know what to say to that, so I stayed quiet.

  “He was the reason my mama left,” she said, her voice softer now. “He used to hit her because he couldn’t make her do like he wanted. When I was about six years old, I guess she had enough. She said she was going down to the beaches to find us a place and then she’d come back for me, but she never did. Hell, she might not’ve ever made it that far. I don’t even know if she’s still alive. So then it was just me and him.”

  “Did he…?” I didn’t know how to ask the question in my mind.

  “Hit me? Naw. For some reason, he never did. He used to say I reminded him of his sister that died when they was kids, so maybe that’s why. But after Mama left, he stopped talking to me much. Seemed like most of the time he didn’t even notice I was there, like he couldn’t see me. Sometimes I wished he would hit me, just so I’d know I was really there. When I was little, I’d scream and throw fits and try to make him talk to me, but he always just left. So I gave up. By the time he died, it didn’t hardly make no difference. I was always by myself anyway.”

  I tried to picture Jessie as a little girl, and my heart broke for her. I felt tears well up and spill over, and I didn’t wipe them away. When I looked up, Jessie was standing stock-still, staring at me with her mouth hanging open. She looked so surprised, like I had hollered out or something. I didn’t know what to say, so I just raised my chin and looked her dead in the face. I would not be sorry for feeling sad about what had happened to her. She closed her mouth, then gave her head a little shake and turned back to the plants.

  “He didn’t teach me all the songs I know, though. I taught myself a whole lot more than he ever knew. Made some others up myself.” She grinned at me. I recognized what I saw in her face as pride, but somehow I couldn’t think of that pride as sinful. It seemed to me that she should feel proud of what she could do.

  “I’d like to hear some more of those songs,” I said. “The only songs I know are church songs. That’s all that was allowed back home.”

  “‘Just As I Am,’ ‘Onward Christian Soldiers,’ like that?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “‘Amazing Grace’ was my favorite.”

  She nodded. “That’s a good one. Miss Jean, you know, over at the library? She has some old records and record players. Hymnals and songbooks too. They got even more in the town library at Eufaula. I go over there sometimes and bring things back. Miss Jean keeps lists of everything we get from there. I don’t know why; it’s not like we’ll ever need to put them back.”

  “Were those library songs the other night or ones your daddy taught you?” I asked.

  “Little of both. He taught me ‘Good and Greasy.’ Used to sing it all the time when he was in a good mood. But the other ones are real old mountain songs. I found a whole book about them called Appalachian Ballads. These people lived up in the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia and around there. Some of them never came down off the mountain once in their whole lives, so even though the world was changing all around them, they stayed the same. Buildin’ cabins out of trees they cut down themselves, butcherin’ their own meat, growin’ their own food. Not too different from what we got here, really, but for them it was more of a choice to keep livin’ like that even though they coulda come down off the mountain and bought a house lit up with electricity and clean water runnin’ hot and cold out of the taps. Eventually they did, but not for a long time.”

  “Maybe they were scared to change,” I said. “They felt safe with what they knew, so they just stayed put.” She nodded, and I felt a little thrill that she agreed with me.

  “Maybe so,” she said. “They sure kept the songs the same. There are rules for a ballad. The tune has to stay the same on every verse, and it has to tell a story—usually a terrible, sad story. Brokenhearted lovers, tragedy, sometimes murder. I guess life was hard on the mountain. Not much entertainment either. Stories and songs were it.”

  “I haven’t been to the library or met Miss Jean yet,” I said.

  “Well, we got to fix that, don’t we? Miss Jean knows a little bit of everything, and I can tell you’re real curious.” She flashed me the crooked grin. “You like to read?”

  “I do, but I only ever had a few books. Some old encyclopedias and some books about a pioneer family named Ingalls.”

  “Little House on the Prairie?” she asked. “On the Banks of Plum Creek?”

  “How did you know?” I replied, surprised.

  “Shoot, Ami. All us kids here read them books. Miss Jean and her sister, Evelyn, taught us how to read and write and made a little school, like. We read those books and plenty others you might know: The Birchbark House, Narnia, Wrinkle in Time, Anne of Green Gables, Harry Potter. I didn’t always like to go, and my da
ddy didn’t make me, but I liked the books best.”

  “My … I wasn’t allowed to read anything else. Just the encyclopedia and the Ingalls family. And the Bible, of course.” We were both still working our way down our rows while we talked, but she stopped and looked up, surprised.

  “Not allowed? How come? Where’d you grow up, anyway? You haven’t told me about that yet.”

  I thought about telling her that would have to be a story for another day, but then I just started talking. She had told me about her daddy and her mother leaving, so it seemed wrong not to tell her my story. It wasn’t easy to talk about, but once I got started, I couldn’t seem to stop. I told her everything—about Heavenly Shepherd and Ruth and Papa Solomon, Rachel and Billie and Jacob, David and Amber. I told her how the compound came to be and how I thought my mother had to leave because of the C-PAF man but now I wasn’t sure about any of that. I talked about what it had been like to grow up with all those adults and no other kids, and how I spent as much time as I could outside in the garden and the woods. And finally, I told her about that man, Zeke Johnson, and how my aunts and uncles had a plan for me to run away and come here.

  “Ruth tried so hard to raise me up right and get me ready to do my duty,” I said. “It took me five days to walk here, and that whole time I was walking, I was thinking. I thought … I thought maybe I could make it right and go back, but now … now I don’t know. It’s all different than I thought.”

  I had talked so long that the sun was straight overhead and we had finished our work. Jessie didn’t say anything for a few minutes. She walked over to a little shelter nearby that had a jug of water and cups set up for whoever needed a cool drink on this hot day, and poured us both a cup. Then we sat down at the picnic table that was there, facing each other across the table. Without garden work to keep my hands and eyes busy, it was hard to know where to look. She took the straw hat off and fanned her face with it. Finally, she let out a long, low whistle.