Blue Ridge Billy

by Lois Lenski

“O-o-o-oh!” screamed Sarey Sue, dancing on her bare toes. “I’m skeered! I’m skeered!”

  If only she had a pole, she could poke them back. But she had no pole. Old Hamby came out again. “Here’s your poke o’ meal,” he said, placing it on her shoulder.

  A sudden notion seized her. She must stop the fighting before Billy Honeycutt got killed. She passed the boys quickly and ran over to the hitching rail. She heaved her sack up on Old Bet, Billy’s mule, and looked back to see if the boy was watching. Sure enough, a tousled head poked itself up from the tangled, rolling mass and a voice shouted: “Hold on there, Sarey Sue! You can’t take my mule. I got two pokes o’ my own to tote.”

  The fighters paused to draw breath, the mass wavered and became still. Three tousled heads looked in the girl’s direction, which was just what she wanted.

  “Then I’ll take Burl’s nag,” answered Sarey Sue shrilly. She lifted her sack from the mule’s to the horse’s back. “I’m just too doggone tired to tote this heavy poke all the way up that ere mountain. What’s horses fer, nohow, but to tote meal for gals?”

  She untied the reins. She threw herself across the horse’s back, lifted a leg and sat astride. “Well, let’s go!” she called gaily. “You-all can just keep right on fightin’!”

  Old Hamby and the loafing men, standing in the mill door, roared with laughter.

  The fight ended abruptly.

  “Hey there!” shouted the angry Burl. “Where you a-goin’, gal, on my horse? Don’t you dare take that horse. I ain’t never said you could!” He started out on a run to follow her. “Hey there!” he screamed. “That nag’s wild! She’s mean and ornery. She’ll throw you shore!”

  But Sarey Sue was speeding up the road, well out of hearing.

  It did not take Billy long to follow. He flung his sacks on Old Bet and was off up the road while Burl and Buck stood gaping.

  “Burl says his horse is wild!” he called to Sarey Sue, as he came up beside her.

  Sarey Sue nodded her head. Although she had no horse of her own, she was quite at home on a horse’s back. She rode every chance she got—on other people’s horses.

  “I can beat anybody ridin’,” she answered. “There ain’t a hoss in these mountains I can’t ride. The wilder, the better.”

  “Ain’t you never got throwed?” asked Billy.

  “Once,” she admitted. “Once I was ridin’ Uncle Fred’s nag, when a cussed little ole dog jumped out in front and scared her, and she throwed me smack-dab in a mud puddle.”

  “Did you git hurt?”

  “No—just covered with mud!”

  They followed the road up Roundabout Creek, loping along easily and splashing through the fords. A flock of geese scattered as they dashed through, and a few stray sheep pelted blindly against the fence to get out of their way.

  “Let’s race!” shouted Billy, as they came to a smooth stretch.

  Sarey Sue nodded. They both slapped the reins. Neck to neck they moved along, then Burl’s horse began to leave Old Bet behind.

  Billy fell back. Old Bet was a small mule, with a smooth even gait, and Billy liked to ride her because there was no jolting. But she couldn’t keep up with Burl’s horse.

  “You better not beat me,” called Billy. “A little ole mule can’t keep up with a big race-horse. Wait for me, Sarey Sue …”

  An overhanging limb from a tree close by the road nearly brushed him off. He dodged.

  “No fair—you takin’ the creek side,” he complained. “Makin’ me dodge all the bushes.”

  Sarey Sue turned, a broad smile on her face. “Hurry along! Hurry, why don’t you?”

  Another limb hung low, then a whole cluster of them. Billy warded off the biggest one with his arm, but it came down again with full force on his top sack of meal. The sack fell off and spilled. The sharp limb had torn a hole in the cloth. Old Bet stopped of her own accord.

  “Looky here what you done, Sarey Sue,” called the boy. “Looky here! You—racin’ that wild hoss that don’t belong to you! And Pappy told me not to tarry …”

  But Sarey Sue did not see or hear. She and her wild horse had vanished up the creek. Billy shook his fist after her. Then he bent over to gather up the spilled meal. He tied up the sack as best he could and started on again.

  He jogged contentedly along the road, watching the creek. The water was much higher now. The “branches” that ran into it from the hillsides were babbling noisily and were white with foam. There had been a lot of rain and it was going to rain again. The sky looked dark and lowering.

  Billy remembered what Old Hamby had said: A sow can see the wind. What color was it then? And how did the old man know? Hogs couldn’t talk. And what did a sow have to do with the weather, anyway? But—a black storm was really coming. Thunder began to roll.

  Billy thought again of Jeb Dotson’s bed, perched so perilously close to Roundabout Creek. Why did the storekeeper build his store with one leg in the creek, when there was plenty of high land to build on? He wished he had stopped in at the store and talked to Jeb about it. But Pappy had told him not to tarry.

  He slapped Old Bet and called “Giddap.”

  Then Jeb Dotson and his problems faded from the boy’s mind, for he saw the spotted Moseley horse coming back down the road, without a rider. Had Sarey Sue reached home, unloaded her meal and sent the horse back? Or, if the horse was wild as Burl said, had it thrown her? Everybody said that if Sarey Sue Trivett didn’t stop riding other people’s horses, she was sure to get killed some day. What if the horse had thrown her and she was lying under a bush half dead?

  The Moseley horse began to nibble grass by the fence. She was quiet enough now. Billy patted her on the nose and talked to her. Then he shooed her off down the road toward the mill. She could find her way home all right, all the way to Buckwheat Hollow, if Burl was not waiting for her at the mill.

  Billy rode on until he came to a fork. Straight ahead, following the creek, the road led to his own home in Hoot Owl Hollow. To the right, a narrow trail ran up the mountainside to the Half-Way-Up House where the Trivetts lived.

  Billy hesitated. Should he ride up and see what had happened to Sarey Sue? Or, should he go on home where Pappy would be waiting?

  A loud peal of thunder answered the question. The rain began to come down in torrents.

  “Golly! The meal’s gettin’ wet,” said Billy. He raised his hand to his left eye and was surprised to find it badly swollen.

  “What’ll Pap say—me late, and a black eye! He’ll know I fit!”

  CHAPTER III

  Spring Freshet

  “Go fill the tubs and washpot, Billy,” said Mrs. Honeycutt.

  “Aw, hit’s too wet to wash clothes today,” grumbled the boy. “Golly! What a cloudburst that was! Mighty near washed our house away, didn’t it?”

  “Nothin’ but a spring freshet,” said Mammy, unconcerned.

  Breakfast was over, and Billy, bruised and sore from his fight the day before, did not feel like carrying innumerable buckets of water.

  “Cloudburst or not, I’m washin’ today,” said his mother. “Time we git the clothes hung up, the sun’ll be over the mountain. Your Pappy said you should help, afore he went off this morning. When he seen your black eye, he said he wouldn’t thrash ye, but just work ye, this time. That’ll learn you to stay away from them Buckwheat Holler boys.”

  “Where’s Pappy gone, Mammy?” asked Billy.

  “Yonder, up Laurel Mountain, to see about them logs,” said Mrs. Honeycutt, “and slide ’em down the holler. After that big rain, them old logs sure will slide in the mud.”

  “Wisht I could watch ’em,” said Billy. “After a cloudburst they’ll shore go hell-a-kitin’ or faster.”

  “Well, you can’t. Go git that water like I told ye.”

  Billy took the cedar buckets and went out the back door. The two little redheads followed at his heels—Mazie, the “least un,” three, and Red Top, five, whose real name was Rudolphus, like his father’s.

/>   Billy turned on them. “Stop taggin’ after me,” he said. “Go back in the house and behave yourselves. Skedaddle quick!” They ran.

  He set the buckets down, stood for a moment and stretched. If only he could stretch all the soreness out of his bones and muscles. That was the worst thing about a fight—you didn’t feel it while you were fighting, but you felt it for such a long time afterwards.

  The rain was over and the skies were blue again. Billy looked around in surprise. The weather changes in the mountains were so sudden. He remembered how hard it had poured all night, and how the lightning flashed and the thunder roared. He’d been wakened by trees banging on the roof and doors and windows rattling. A cloudburst, Pap said. It was hard to believe it could end so soon.

  But the creek—Roundabout Creek must be high. It had been high for several days and must have risen even higher in the night. He ran down to see.

  The Honeycutt house sat on a level plain in the valley of the Roundabout, in what was called Hoot Owl Hollow. The valley was hemmed in on both sides by steep hills which were really young mountains. On the far side, the wooded hill rose up thick and impenetrable from the creek below. On the near side, behind the house with its narrow fore yard, behind the few farm buildings and the fenced-in lots for garden, chicken yard, hog-pen and cow-yard, the Honeycutt farm of cultivated fields and woods rose steeply up to meet the sky.

  The house had front and back porches, hand-riven shingles on the roof and a large rock chimney at the end, like most other mountain homes. The front porch had a “plunder room” for storage at one end.

  Billy ran down to the creek. Both its banks had overflowed.

  “Golly!” he said, as he stared. “I never seen Old Roundabout so high before.” Suddenly he screamed out: “Mammy! Mammy!”

  His mother put her head out the open front door.

  “Mammy! Looky how high the creek is,” the boy called.

  “What you yellin’ for, like somebody’s been drownded?” answered his mother. “Go fill them buckets like I told ye, and get that fire a-goin’ under the washpot.” She disappeared from sight.

  “Jumpin’ crickets!” exclaimed Billy. “Old Roundabout’s shore on a rampage.”

  He ran to the ford, the widest, shallowest place in the stream, where Pappy always drove his wagon across to the road. It was waist-high in water.

  “I bet hit’s over the top of the wagon wheels,” said Billy. “Little Old Bet couldn’t walk through that, without gittin’ washed off her feet and carried right down with the current.”

  Then he saw the footlog. It rested on piles of rocks, to keep it high off the water. There were steps up and down at the ends. The water was lapping the under side of the log. Who’d want to walk over it now?

  “Golly!” said Billy to himself. “Even I’d be skeered.”

  Logs and loose brush, sticks and rails from fences were being carried downstream. Pieces of short firewood from somebody’s woodpile went sailing by. A hencoop with a live rooster riding on top came along. Billy poked at it with a stick, wading deep in the water. He tried to bring it to shore, but it went floating on. Then he remembered Jeb Dotson’s bed.

  He looked at the footlog again. How could anybody get to the store? He tore madly into the house.

  “Mammy, I got to go to the store. I got to go right off, quick!” he cried excitedly.

  “You got to go fill that washpot and start that fire,” said his mother. She was a small, plump woman, and wore her hair drawn back in a knot on top of her head. She was young, but already wrinkles were showing in her good-natured face. She set her lips in a firm line.

  “Your Pap said I should work you hard today. What do you want to go to the store for? I ain’t said I need anything.” She sounded cranky.

  “Just want to see Jeb Dotson,” mumbled Billy.

  He turned to his sister, who was fifteen and nearly grown up.

  “Letty Jo,” he whispered, “can’t you spill the sody or hide the coffee, so I’ll have to get some more at the store?”

  “I know what you want,” Letty Jo answered. “You want to have another fight with Burl Moseley and get t’other eye blacked up to match.” She laughed.

  “No, I want to …”

  But it was no use. He knew he could not go to Solitude again today, after staying so long the day before. Slowly he went out the back door and picked up the wooden buckets.

  “Fetch me that jar o’ buttermilk from the spring-house, son,” his mother called after him.

  It was cold inside the spring-house. Water from the spring flowed over the flat rocks where the milk crocks sat. Outside the door, the water poured from a pipe into a banked-up pool, which overflowed into the “branch.” Billy picked up the gourd dipper and took a drink—the water was always ice-cold. He carried the buttermilk to the house and came back. He dipped the buckets and filled them.

  The “branch” was high and its banks had overflowed. Under a tree on a rise of land, the washtubs sat on a bench. Not far off, the black iron washpot rested on three rocks over a bed of wet ashes. Billy carried a good many buckets of water to fill the pot, crossing back and forth over the shaky plank.

  Letty Jo came out of the house with a basket of soiled clothes, the two little ones tagging behind her.

  “Drink o’ water,” said Mazie.

  “Drink o’ water,” echoed Red Top.

  They started over the plank, but Billy stopped them just in time. The water suddenly carried the plank off down the branch.

  “Go back to the house,” ordered Billy, “afore you fall in the branch and drownd yourselves.”

  They ran to the back steps and sat down.

  “Did you hide the coffee, Letty Jo?” Billy asked. “Did you tell Mammy she’s outa coffee and needs some more?”

  Letty Jo tossed her head. “You can’t play no such tricks as that, just to get to the store.”

  Billy brought some dead chestnut wood, shaved off some kindling with his knife and started the fire. He brought an armful of larger wood and stayed only long enough to see the flames burning. Then he disappeared around the front of the house, where he waited. He waited until he saw, by peeping round the corner, that the washing was well under way. Mammy was rubbing clothes at the tub, Letty Jo had a long stick and was punching down the clothes in the washpot to keep them from boiling over. Mazie and Red Top were making mud pies in the wet mud beside the branch.

  Billy decided it was safe to go. They were all so busy, they would never miss him. He hurried to the footlog.

  He stood and looked at it. It was wet and slippery. The angry creek water was touching its under side, ready to lift it off its foundations and carry it downstream. The railing was gone. Billy himself had torn off some of its supports and broken them up for kindling. There was nothing to hold onto.

  The boy looked from the footlog to the ford. He could wade through the ford and get soaked to the skin, or he could cross over the footlog and stay dry—maybe. He decided to try to stay dry. He took two steps on the log.

  He had never liked the footlog much. When he was six, and first started to school, and had to cross it every day in the wintertime, Mammy always told him not to look down at the water. But he always did, and then he got scared and dropped his dinner bucket. He had to take time to fish it out of the creek with a long stick, and that made him late and his “school biscuits” were wet for his dinner.

  But now, all he had to do was to watch each step. He took a third and a fourth. He looked down at the water. He wasn’t afraid of low water any more, but when it was high like today … “Golly!” he exclaimed, and flopped down on the log and held on tight. Then he began to crawl.

  When he was halfway over, he slipped, and reaching out to grab the limb of an overhanging tree, nearly fell in. Just then, an uprooted tree came crashing down and slid under the footlog.

  “Gosh-almighty!” whispered Billy in a frightened voice. “That was a close shave!”

  He got over safely. His hands and feet were
wet—that was all.

  Then he tore down the road as fast as he could go. It was a long way to Solitude without a mule to ride. But he had to get to the store.

  It was long past dinnertime when he returned.

  This time he ran across the footlog, balancing himself with his two arms outstretched. It wasn’t so scary now. The water had gone down more than a foot.

  The washing was done—he was glad of that. He could tell because all the clothes were hanging on the rope line on the front porch and across the boards that served for a railing. He thought it wise to circle the house and come in by the open back door.

  “Danged if I ain’t hungry!” he said to himself. “I come nigh forgettin’ all about dinner.”

  He lifted the cloth on the kitchen table, but there was nothing there—only the sugar bowl and spoon holder. Dinner had been eaten and everything washed up and put away. Hadn’t they even missed him?

  Then he heard voices in the front room. Who could it be? He slid in as quietly as he could.

  There was Old Man Pozy sitting comfortably by the fireplace. There sat Mammy with her quilt patches on her lap and Letty Jo with her knitting. And at Uncle Pozy’s feet, Mazie and Red Top were building a house out of corncobs. Over by the door was a large pile of Uncle Pozy’s baskets.

  Billy almost wished he hadn’t gone away. His feet were soaked and he was chilled through. He shivered.

  Uncle Pozy was talking. He was a good storyteller. He was telling about a bear hunt: “The man sot stock still on the end of the log. The bear got tired o’ waitin’, picked herself up and come closer … and closer … and then …”

  Ker-CHEW! Billy sneezed. “Then what happened?” The question popped out of his mouth before he knew it.

  They all turned their eyes from Uncle Pozy to look at Billy, forgetting the bear story.

  “What? You here?” demanded Letty Jo.

  “Where you been, you disobedient rascal?” asked his mother. “I been nigh in a franzy, thinkin’ you’d fell in the creek and got drownded. Where you been?”

  “Just out roamin’,” answered Billy, shamefaced. He sat down on a stool on the hearth and tucked his wet feet under him. The heat felt good on his back. He tried to stop shivering.