The room erupted.
“Settle down, settle down!” Then the sheriff’s face turned red as he tried to regain control. “Hold on. You’re getting me all confused.” His voice took on a desperate plea. “This meeting is about putting an end to Mrs. Stewart’s Moonlight Schools.”
Cora rose to join him in front and his eyes went wide in panic. “The sheriff is proving exactly why we need to eradicate illiteracy from Rowan County. Our illiterates have been the victims of educated scoundrels, who have taken advantage of their ignorance. The only way to lift people is to teach them to lift themselves. Literacy is the only road to true freedom. And that does not mean a road leading your loved ones elsewhere—as the sheriff would have you believe—but to a better life right here, in Rowan County.” She had the crowd in her hands now, and she knew it. “Literacy is the means to many good ends. And these ends are not just the immediate practical ones, but literacy gives a voice to the silent.” She cast a sideways glance at the sheriff, who was practically whimpering. “Only a literate people can have a truly democratic government.”
Her gaze swept the room. “Together, we can do this. We can teach all the illiterates in our county with this Moonlight School campaign. Why would we not do what we can to help others? Indifference is our only obstacle, and Rowan County is not indifferent. Not at all. We take care of each other.”
Miss Lettie lifted her birdlike hand. Slowly she rose to a stand. After hesitating a moment, she spoke with a quiet certainty. “Well, I think it’s a fine idea. I believe all right-minded people here should support it.” She lowered her head so she could see over her half-moon spectacles as if she dared anyone to contradict her. “That’s all I have to say.” She sat down again.
One person clapped, then another, and another, and the sheriff’s shoulders slumped. The meeting was over.
In her own brilliant way, Cora had done the impossible. The Moonlight School campaign was safe.
Lucy looked over to Andrew, but his chair was empty.
Twenty-Three
FINLEY JAMES LEFT THE MEETING as soon as it ended to feed the horses at the livery. It chapped his hide to find out the sheriff had been dippin’ into the lumber companies’ purse, which meant he was taking money from his maw. Never again. Never again would he let his maw get taken. He could read now, sailing through sixth grade books, and no one could ever take him being book red away from him.
Ol’ Angie Cooper was right. If’n he coulda read better, he coulda protected his maw. Oh heck.
Fin went around back to the lean-to where the feed was kept, and stopped abruptly. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Someone had pushed the jolt wagon filled with Brother Wyatt’s wooden slates into the creek that ran behind the livery, and flipped it over.
Fin bolted over to the top of the creek and looked down. The slates were scattered below—some broken into pieces as they hit rocks, some floating in the water, some on the edges of the creek, some downstream. He skidded down the creek bed to gather as many as he could. He scrambled back up to get help. When he reached the top, he saw someone watch him from across the road, then turn on his heels and leave.
Andrew Spencer.
LUCY REMAINED IN THE TOWN HALL, chatting with Wyatt, as they waited for Cora to finish talking to her many fans. The door burst open and in flew Fin, breathing heavily from running, or panic, or both.
“The slates!” he yelled. “They’re down the creek!”
They bolted from the town hall and followed him to the creek. Wyatt and Fin made their way down the creek bed, gathering the slates. Lucy stationed herself on a level spot, halfway down. They created a human chain. Fin handed them up to Lucy, who in turn handed them to Cora, and a few others who came to help. She remained at the top of the creek, next to the uprighted jolt wagon. When Wyatt and Fin finished, they climbed back up to join Cora. Wyatt examined the slates in the wagon.
Cora picked one up to brush mud from it. “Are they salvageable?”
Wyatt, calm as a man could be, sorted through the wagon. “The wet ones will dry out.” He took broken ones out of the cart and tossed them in a pile. So many were beyond repair.
“Fin,” Cora said, “tell us again what happened.”
He pointed to the front of the livery. “I left the jolt wagon over yonder, then I went to the meetin’. When I come back, the wagon was here, flipped over. Someone done this.” He rested his hands on his hips. “I shoulda put the wagon inside the livery afore I went to the meetin’. It’s my fault.”
“Not your fault at all.” Wyatt put a hand on Fin’s shoulder. “Can you find more lumber?”
Fin lifted his head to look down the road at the lumberyard. “Not a problem.”
“Good, that’s good,” Wyatt said. “I’ll clean up those that are worth saving and tomorrow we’ll get to work on new ones.”
How could Wyatt be so calm, so resilient? He’d spent hours and hours working on those slates. “But who could have done this?” Lucy said. “We should find him. Make him responsible. Make him pay for this!”
Wyatt stopped rifling through the wagon to answer her. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”
Lucy blinked. “You don’t think we should seek justice?”
“If I take revenge into my own hands, then I am no better than the one who did this.”
She turned to Cora with a question on her face.
“I agree with Wyatt,” Cora said. “The town hall meeting resulted in our favor. This . . . mischief . . . is the result of someone who didn’t like its outcome. I don’t think we should waste time and create any more animosity by seeking the perpetrator.”
“Asides,” Fin said, scowling, “the sheriff wouldn’t do nothin’ ’bout it.”
Cora sighed. “Well, we know it wasn’t him. He’s still in the town hall.”
Lucy noticed the light was on in Andrew’s office at the lumberyard. She rinsed mud off her hands in a bucket and went across the road to talk to him. She found him packing up his office. He didn’t smile when she came in.
“You’ve been giving the sheriff a finder’s fee to locate loblollies?”
He set the box he’d been packing on the floor and plopped in his desk chair. “Everyone does. It speeds up the process.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desktop. “Let me remind you, Lucy, that those contracts have provided cold hard cash to those landowners.”
“Loblolly stands are everywhere in Rowan County. Valley View Lumber contracts happen to all be with illiterates. The sheriff fed illiterates to you.”
Andrew rose to his feet and banged his palms on the desk. “I was just doing my job the best way I knew how. Lucy, you’ve got to believe me.”
The funny thing was that she did believe him. Andrew just wanted the contracts. Nothing else mattered to him . . . but him. It made her pity him. To think of only himself, all the time.
“You need to direct your woodsmen to return every single holding pen in the county to their original state.”
“What?”
“Every single one. This very week.” She notched her chin up a bit. “Or I will see to it that you never work in the lumber industry again. Have I made myself clear?”
He stared at her, a standoff, but she held his gaze—not even blinking—until he dropped his eyes. He nodded once, a jerk of his head. “I’ll take care of them. This week.”
She turned to leave, then pivoted to face him. “Do you have any idea what happened to that wagon load of wooden slates over by the livery?”
“What wagon?”
“Wyatt had made slates to be used in the Moonlight School campaigns. He left them stacked in a jolt wagon by the livery. You left the meeting early. I just wondered if you might have seen someone push them over the edge of the creek.”
“Are you accusing me?”
“Just asking if you might have seen someone.” At the door, she said, “Goodbye, Andrew.” It was more than a goodbye.
Heading back up the mountain on Jenny to return to the Co
opers’ cabin, Lucy thought of how far she had come in the last few months. It was embarrassing to think she had once needed a mounting block to hoist herself up on this small horse, even more so to think of how frightened she’d been by the gentle animal. Riding Jenny felt natural to her now. They understood each other. They’d become partners. She stroked the pony’s neck.
Before the turnoff in the trail to the Cooper place, Lucy paused for a moment and dropped the reins so Jenny could drink from the creek, clear water murmuring and bubbling over the stony bed. On an impulse, she detoured to the overlook spot that Wyatt had once shown her, and inhaled the sight of the tree-lined valley below. It might just be the prettiest sight she’d ever seen. She couldn’t believe she thought so, but she did. She couldn’t believe she was teaching school, but she was, and enjoying it. While she still didn’t relish being in front of a classroom all day, and she still felt like she was not at all gifted at teaching—not like Angie or Cora—she did care about the children.
And she also knew that whenever Cora mentioned that “we” would spend the summer writing up the newspapers and readers, she meant Lucy. Knowing that didn’t bother her anymore. In fact, Lucy looked forward to the coming summer, and especially to the Moonlight Schools in the fall.
TWO NIGHTS IN A ROW, Angie had tossed and turned. Her stomach hurt and her appetite was gone. When Paw and Lucy asked what was wrong, she jest shrugged and said her monthlies. But that weren’t it. It was something else entirely. Paw had a saying, “Sin is sweet in the mouth but bitter in the belly.” That was it. That was what was wrong with her.
On Saturday afternoon, when Paw asked her to go to town to get something he left at the livery, she jumped at the chance. Brother Wyatt was in the back, crafting another batch of wooden slates for Miss Cora. He looked up and smiled when he saw her, that kind smile of his where the corners of his eyes went all crinkly. She figured he wouldn’t ever smile at her again, not after she told him.
“Howdy, Angie.”
“Howdy,” she said softly, her smile wavering.
He kept whittling away at a board, glancing up at her once or twice. “Looking for your paw?”
“No.” She walked around the edges of the small room, touching the harnesses hanging on the wall.
“Something on your mind?”
She stopped. “Brother Wyatt, I got something to tell you.” She lowered her face into her hands and let out a shaky sigh. A long moment passed before the words would come. “I’m the one. I did it.”
“Did what?”
She dropped her hands. “I sent your wooden slates tumbling down the creek.”
There was a long silence. “You? Why, Angie?”
“Jealous. Terrible jealous.” She couldn’t look at him. “The devil’s done got hold o’ me. Twistin’ my innards. Makin’ me think and do dreadful things.” Wiping away tears, she told him the whole story, how she’d pushed and pulled and yanked that jolt wagon all the way to the top of the creek and dumped those beautiful wooden slates right down into the water, then hurried to the town hall meeting acting like everything was right as rain. She’d scared herself with how mean and ugly and deceitful she could be—that’s how awful she was.
“All because Finley James is so fond of Miss Lucy?”
She nodded, tears starting to spill down her cheeks. “And it’s my own fault too. I put a spell on him. I jest cain’t figure out how to unspell him.” She wiped away tears with her arm, swallowed and raised her chin. “Devil’s gotten hold of me, I’m afreared.” Her shoulders slumped. “Happened to my maw now and then. She’d have bouts when she’d have to wrestle the devil. I remember. She’d lie in bed all day and all night, sad and sorrowful.” She sighed. “Devil turned Maw inwardlike. Devil turns me mean and hateful.” She lifted her shoulders in a defeated shrug.
He didn’t say anything for a frightfully long while. So long that she chanced a peek at him and realized he still had that kind look in his eyes. “Angie, there’s something important you need to know about the devil. ‘Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world.’”
She tilted her head. “What’s that mean?”
“It’s a verse from the Bible. As much as the devil would like you to do wrong and think wrong and act wrong, if God lives in your heart, then there’s no room for the devil.”
“The devil goes?” She snapped her fingers. “Jest like that?”
“Just like that. He has to go. God is greater, and bigger, and mightier. He won’t tolerate the devil.”
A flicker of hope began. “How do I do that?”
Wyatt smiled. “Just a simple prayer, Angie. Invite the All Mighty into your heart.”
“And then the devil be gone?”
“He goes, and with him goes jealousy, worry, fear, anger.”
Angie bowed her head and asked God to move on in and kick the devil out. And when she finished that prayer, her heart didn’t feel quite so heavy anymore.
Brother Wyatt, waiting beside her, was watching her like he’d been praying too. “Angie, as far as anyone knows, the jolt wagon rolled into the creek all by itself.”
She stared at him. “But I know better. And you know better.”
“And I’m already halfway done with a new batch of slates. Better than the first batch.” He blew some wood shavings off the bench. “Some things are best forgotten. Makes it easier to move forward.” He gave her a wink. “I do believe this is one of those things.”
FIN HAD FOUND a nice fishing hole to spend his summer afternoon, and some sweet honeysuckle to chew on. School was out, he was done with it—and he had done it well, if he did say so himself—the sun was shining, Arthur Cooper didn’t need him at the livery, and Maw was off visiting her auntie. For a few hours, he was a free man. Unfettered.
U-N-F-E-T-T-E-R-E-D. He grinned, imagining himself beating Angie Cooper in a spelling bee over that half-dollar word.
Fin jammed the fishing pole up his overall pants leg so it could keep workin’ while he lay back for a little shut-eye. The soft summer air swirled around him, as did mosquitos, so he plopped his hat on his face and, drowsy, soon dozed off.
“Finley James, you can jest keep on loving Miss Lucy. It’s fine by me.”
He startled, eyes blinking. “Huh?” He whipped his hat off his face and found Angie Cooper standing there, blocking the sun, staring down at him. Rubbing his eyes, he pushed himself up, leaning back on his elbows.
Angie crouched down, leaned in, and gently touched her lips to his, jest a whisper. “So long, Finley James.” She rose and disappeared into the woods.
Fin was about as confused a man as there could be. Muddled. He’d never had thoughts like that before. What was happening to him? He scratched his head and spat out a new cuss word he’d heard at the livery. If Angie Cooper was saying goodbye to him, that meant she was saying hello to somebody else.
AS LUCY PACKED HER SADDLEBAGS, Angie had sat cross-legged on the bed. She was unusually quiet, lacking her spit and fire, so much so that Lucy asked what she was brooding over.
Angie looked at her with blue eyes wide, and she reminded Lucy so much of Charlotte that her breath caught. “Did I pass my grade 8 exam?”
Lucy had wanted to let Cora give Angie the news . . . but . . . why not just tell her? “You passed. With flying colors.” And she meant it. Not a single mistake, not in math, not in English, nor civics. Not even in conjugating basic Latin verbs. She knew, from Cora, that Angie would be offered the chance to teach at Little Brushy School in the fall. Cora had also told her that Finley James would be teaching one of the bigger schools. Somehow, he had passed his grade 8 exam. His marks weren’t quite as high as Angie’s, but his progress was astounding.
Lucy felt Angie watch her every move, noticing each skirt and shirtwaist. She thought of the clothes waiting for her at Miss Maude’s. “Angie, these skirts just aren’t fitting me right. Too much of your good cooking, I suppose. Any chance you could use them? You’d be doing me a favor.”
Angie g
ave a nonchalant half shrug of a shoulder, though Lucy knew she was pleased. “I suppose so,” she said, already hanging them up on her wall pegs. The gifts of clothes seemed to chase away Angie’s low spirits, and she hopped off the bed to help Lucy pack.
Later, long after supper, as Arthur rose from his chair to bring the horses into the barn for the night, Lucy stopped him. He looked so tired. “Let me do it.”
Surprised, Arthur responded with a nod.
They had an amiable relationship, Lucy and Arthur, though he’d never brought up Angie’s adoption again. That discussion, as far as Arthur Cooper was concerned, was closed.
But not for Lucy Wilson.
The letter she had written to Angie was tucked in her pocket, safely away from snooping eyes. She was still undecided about whether she should share it. Still waiting for a word from the Lord, the one Wyatt had promised would come. She wasn’t quite so sure.
One by one, she led the horses into their stalls in the barn. Jenny, being the stubborn cuss she was, wouldn’t come to her, so Lucy grabbed a rope and crossed the yard. As she slipped the rope around Jenny’s neck, she glanced over the pony’s head at the house. Dusk had come, and a soft buttery glow spilled from the kitchen window. Seated at the table were Angie, Arthur, and the twins, playing a game.
Jenny’s nose pushed against Lucy and she heard the crinkle sound of the letter. From somewhere, somehow, a question emerged: Are you going to rip her out of this happy home?
She looked up at the sky, at the first evening star near the moon, and answered back, loud and clear. “God, did you not rip Charlotte from her home? Did you not ignore my desperate prayers?”
She scanned the skies, waiting for an answer, demanding a response. And suddenly she realized she was not going to get the answer she wanted. But she also realized she was, indeed, getting an answer, and the thought made her shiver, for she felt so unwilling to accept that answer.
Without any warning, she dropped to her knees, overcome by emotion, by despair. “How? How can I keep this from Father? Angie Cooper is his daughter Charlotte, his baby girl.” The tears began to flow, and she could barely choke out the words that were on her heart. It isn’t fair. It isn’t right! Aria Cooper had stolen someone’s child. My sister! Father’s daughter.
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