by Ruth White
“You might not believe this,” Clint said kindly, interrupting my thoughts, “but in them fancy New York magazines, you see the models with this same cut. They call it the Pixie.”
“Maybe we’ll start a trend, Clint,” I said, feeling slightly light-headed in more ways than one. “Everybody’ ll want a Gypsy Leemaster cut.”
“Yeah, the Gypsy Pixie!” Clint said.
“Or maybe the Clint Cut!” Porter spoke up. “We’ll run an ad for you in the Echo.”
“In the Hick-o Echo?” I joined in. “Are you loco? We’ll put it in the Bristol Herald!”
“Why stop there? Let’s do The New York Times!” Porter said.
“The Dixie Pixie! That’s it!” Clint said.
Porter and I laughed together. Fancy that—me and Porter.
“I’m serious, y’all,” Clint said. “See, in New York it’s called the Pixie, but in Coal Station, Virginia, it’s the Dixie Pixie!”
We were joking around, of course, but when I went back to my solitary confinement, I started imagining myself at school tomorrow with all the stares and questions, and kids pointing at me and snickering behind my back. How could I explain? What could I say?
I dreaded the whole ordeal, and for the first time I regretted having cut my hair. Just like Aunt Belle, I had painted myself into a corner. Funny how people had been comparing me to her, and now I was doing it myself.
Impulsive—that was the word Mrs. Cooper had used for Aunt Belle. Yeah, you could say I had done an impulsive thing.
Then gradually a plan began to take shape up there under my new do. I got myself into this, now I would get myself out.
Twenty
“It’s not all that bad,” Woodrow said kindly—talking about my hair.
We were beginning the walk to school the next morning. I couldn’t tell if he meant it or not. I glanced around nervously for other kids.
“I’m sorry you had to hear … those words from Buzz,” Woodrow said.
“It’s okay, Woodrow. I guess I needed to hear them. I can talk about it now.”
“I didn’t know all the details about your daddy, Gypsy,” he said softly. “Granny told me last night. I’m sorry.”
“What details? You knew he … how he died, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I knew that. But I didn’t know you were the one who found him … like that. We were still so little then, both of us. Maybe that’s why nobody ever told me anything. Mama never did want to talk about it.”
I didn’t answer.
“That day you got delirious at the movies, you kept hollering, ‘Don’t look in the window!’ That’s what you were remembering, I reckon?”
“I reckon. My mind was all muddled,” I said.
“I used to think …” Woodrow went on. “Well, I was jealous of you because I thought you had it so easy. I thought … but I just didn’t know how much you had been through … how you were hurt inside …”
“From what I hear, cousin,” I said, in an effort to change the subject, “between you and the chiggers, Buzz Osborne has not had a great summer.”
Woodrow grinned sheepishly.
“That’s right. You shoulda seen him blubbering and whimpering like a little puppy,” he said.
“What did Mr. Collins do?”
“He wormed his way between us, but he was kinda slow in doing it, you know? I think he liked the way the fight was going. And he said …”
Here Woodrow stood still and took on a prim expression to do Mr. Collins.
“‘I am seriously disappointed in you. I was under the assumption that you were gentlemen!’
“By that time my fists were raw and Buzz was pretty well licked. So I said, ‘Beggin’ your pardon, Mr. Collins. I wouldn’t spoil your first day on the job for nothing in the world, but this feller has been asking for it, so I finally give it to him.’
“Then he took us both to Mr. Cooper.”
“Did … did any of the kids talk about me?” I asked hesitantly.
“Yeah. They all said it was real mean of Buzz to hurt your feelings like that, and they were glad I beat him up.”
“Does anybody know about me … you know, whacking my hair off?”
“I don’t think so. Nobody mentioned it at school yesterday, and I sure didn’t tell anybody. They just wondered why you weren’t there. But they’ll know about your hair soon enough. Here comes Mary Lee.”
She was coming out of her house as we approached.
“Hey, Woodrow! Hey—Gypsy! Is that you?”
She stopped in her tracks.
“Your hair … ?”
I took a deep breath and plunged right in. “I am just tickled to death with it!” I gushed.
Then I sashayed around so she could see it from all angles.
“It’s called a Dixie Pixie!” I went on breathlessly. “The latest thing out of New York City!”
There was dead quiet except for the morning birds singing, as Mary Lee—and Woodrow, too—studied me with puzzlement on their faces.
Was this going to work?
“Why … it’s really something,” Mary Lee said at last. “A Dixie … ?”
“A Dixie Pixie! I just love it!” I said with all the enthusiasm I could muster.
“But all your pretty curls … ?” Mary Lee began.
“They were just too much of a burden!” I interrupted, using Mama’s words. “I should have done this years ago.”
Woodrow was still eyeing me.
Then here came Garnet and Willy. Practically the same exchange took place.
“I declare! I think I like it!” Garnet said. “I do! Who did it, Stella Smith at the Cut ’n’ Curl?”
“Oh no. It has to be done by a real barber,” I said nonchalantly.
“A barber? A man?”
“Yeah, sure. Clint Akers is the only one in this area qualified to do it. He’s up on it. He reads the styling magazines, you know.”
“Clint Akers?”
“Oh, yeah. He’s the best.”
“Clint? No foolin’?”
Then Peggy Sue fell in with us.
“For two cents I’d do mine like that,” she said. “What’s it called again?”
“The Dixie Pixie!” Mary Lee piped up. She knew all about it. “Just go in and tell Clint Akers you want a Dixie Pixie. He’s up on it.”
Yes! It was working!
I caught Woodrow’s eye and gave him a quick wink. A funny smile was playing around the corners of his mouth, and I could almost hear him saying, “Nice goin’, Gypsy.”
I think in that moment I knew me and Woodrow would be friends for life. We had something. We understood each other.
I was bombarded as soon as I stepped foot on the school grounds. The word spread even faster than I thought it would. “Gypsy’s hair” was the topic of the day. I managed to keep a level of excitement in my voice until I really was as tickled as I pretended to be.
“I was the first one she told,” I heard Mary Lee say.
Occasionally Woodrow would drop a “Yeah” or “Ain’t it the truth?” or something like that to back me up.
Then Patty Jo Blankenship, a popular tenth-grader, announced that she was going to the barbershop that very evening for a Dixie Pixie.
“It seems like such a modern thing to do!” she said.
“Me too!” June Lester agreed. “It’s just the look I want.”
Then Jewell Smith, whose mother was the aforementioned Stella Smith, beautician at the Cut ‘n’ Curl on Main Street, made me nervous for a second when she said, “What the heck is a Dixie … a what?”
Patty Jo explained, and Jewell said quickly, “Oh yeah. Sure. That Dixie Pixie. I know all about it. I thought you said something else.”
The next day, Friday, six or seven girls, including Patty Jo and June, were sporting the new look, and about thirty others had plans to take the plunge over the weekend. It wasn’t hard to figure out Clint’s business was fixing to pick up.
I was elated.
I recko
ned I was a different person in more ways than just my appearance, and a person who was anything but invisible.
Twenty-one
That night, as I lay reading a Nancy Drew in my room, Woodrow came whispering at my window.
“Gypsy!”
I looked out.
“The moon is full,” he said. “Let’s go on an adventure.”
“An adventure? Woodrow, we’re confined, remember?”
“So what? Turn out your light, and they’ll think you’re in bed asleep. Come on!”
“Where to?” I said.
“Everywhere. We’re going with Blind Benny on his rounds.”
In a second I was slipping jeans and a shirt over my shortie pajamas, and putting on socks and shoes.
Out by the street Blind Benny was waiting for us with Dawg.
“Hidy, Miz Beauty,” he said to me as I came up beside him and spoke. “How is things with you?”
“I’m okay. Please call me Gypsy,” I said.
“Why, shore, if it’s what you want.”
His face, even with its peculiar eyes, seemed happy and peaceful in the bright moonlight.
“Benny has new shoes,” Woodrow said, and pointed to Benny’s feet. “See?”
“Ain’t they fine?” Benny said proudly.
He raised one foot, then the other, for my inspection.
“They are,” I said. “They are wonderful shoes.”
“Brand new. Boys down at the hardware bought ‘em fer me,” Blind Benny went on. “They seen I wuz pert near barefooted in my old ones with my toes a-sticking out. And they sez it’s gonna be a cold winter. Woolly worms is wearing thick coats a’ready.”
“Where we going to?” Woodrow asked, impatient to get started.
“Toward the station,” said Benny. “We’ll go down the tracks tonight.”
Quietly but rapidly we set off down the street three abreast, with Benny holding on to Woodrow’s arm.
“So’s we can move faster,” he explained. “When I got nobody to hold on to, I hef to feel my way, and it slows me down considerable.”
Hiccup, the Hickses’ dog, and the Comptons’ Sandy fell in step with Dawg behind us.
“Boys at the hardware is like family to me,” Benny said. “I live in a room up over the store, y’know. I have your mama and pappy to thank for that, Gypsy.”
“How’s that?” I said, curious to know what business Mama would ever have with Blind Benny.
“Well, it beginned way back there in Cold Valley, Kentucky, a long time ago. I wuz borned like I am, don‘tcha know, with hardly no eyes a’tall, and blind. My own mama and pappy, bless their hearts, died of the consumption when I wuz going on twelve. So I had nobody to keer fer me and give me food. That’s how I got to be the sin eater.”
“The what?” I said.
“Yeah. The sin eater. Don‘tcha know about sin eatin’, Gypsy?”
“No, what is it?”
“Well, it’s this real old-timey backwoods tradition. And it goes like this: When a person dies, at the wake they take and spread out a banquet on his casket—all kinds of good eats. Then they call in the sin eater to eat the food.
“They say what happens is, all the dead person’s sins goes into the food, and it’s the sin eater’s job to eat up the food and take the sins into his own sef, so the dead person can go to his glory clean and free.”
“I never heard the beat!” I sputtered. “They made you do that?”
“They shore did. They always give the job of sin eatin’ to somebody who’s down on their luck and can’t do no better. That were me in them hard days in Cold Valley. To look at how good I’m doing now, you’d never know I was a sin eater for nearabout fifteen years.
“The sin eater wuz always shunned and scorned by the town folks, ’cause I had all them sins inside me I had et, see? There weren’t no more miserble person living than I wuz then. What got to bearing on my mind wuz who would eat poor old Blind Benny’s sins when he passed on?
“Why nobody would, that’s who! No matter how down and out a body might be, he wouldn’t take the chance on eating the sin eater’s sins. Which meant I would have to pass on when my time come with all them sins in me, and nobody to eat them for me.
“Then Amos Leemaster sez to me one day, ‘Nonsense, Benny! That’s what it is! A bunch of ignorant superstitious nonsense!’
“Them were his very words, and I shore was relieved to hear it from a man I respected and trusted. I believed him, and he took a load off’n my mind fer me.
“Then Amos sez I should go with him to Coal Station, Virginia, where nobody knew me, and start a brand-new life.
“‘I’m opening a hardware store there, Benny’‘sez he. ’And you are welcome to come with me. I’ll give you a room above the store and plenty to eat. You won’t ever hef to eat sins again!’
“So that’s how I come here fifteen years ago. I done all I could to hep out in the store, and in the volunteer fire department Amos started, too, but being blind and all, I weren’t able to hep much.
“When Amos died, Love sold the store, but she put it in legal writin’ that Blind Benny would always have a room at the hardware. ’Cause Amos promised. Nobody objected to that, and the new owners have been kind to me, too. I’m a lucky man.”
How good it was of Mama and Daddy, I was thinking, to do what they did for Blind Benny and not brag about it one bit!
We reached the quiet coal yards, where the railroad cars were lined up neatly in the station, some full, some empty. You could smell the coal.
We headed down the railroad. You could see the steel tracks like deep blue ribbons stretching far and away through the valley in the moon’s light, following Black River as it snaked between the hills. There was a cool breeze over this still, ghostly scene, and I knew all of it was carving an impression deep into my mind. I would be able to call up this picture again and again whenever I wanted to see it. The memory is clever that way.
By the tracks there were houses anchored securely on the hillside. Here Benny moved in and out of the yards, feeling his way without a sound, to find his treasures. Woodrow and I watched curiously from the tracks while waiting for him.
Some people left things on their porches for Benny—wom-out clothing, coffee, potatoes, tobacco. These items he slipped into a pillowcase attached to his belt. Other useful things Benny found in the trash—an empty lard can, a newspaper, a piece of clothesline.
More dogs came up to us, nosing out me and Woodrow to see if we were acceptable. And finding us to be fairly decent critters, let us stay. They leapt about, greeting each other with endless sniffing and tail wagging and dog talk. You could tell they were old friends. I counted nine doggy heads.
Benny patted each one and called them by their names, though he couldn’t tell you the names of their owners. I suspected he made up names as he went along.
We continued until we reached a long stretch where there were no houses at all.
“I smell a polecat,” Benny said, as he stopped to sniff the air.
“Hope we don’t run into him,” Woodrow said. “Me and Gypsy might have a hard time explaining how we got sprayed by a polecat while we were supposed to be in bed asleep.”
Benny chuckled. “We’re safe,” he said. “Even a panther wouldn’t mess around with this pack o’ dogs.”
“Wanna hear a joke?” I said suddenly, as the railroad tracks reminded me of a good one.
Naturally they did.
“There were these two men, see, walking down the railroad tracks, when all of a sudden they came upon a human leg laying there on the tracks.
“‘O Lordy, Lordy,’ said the first man. ‘That looks like Joe’s leg!’
“‘yep!’ said the second man. ‘That is Joe’s leg.’
“So they walked on and they came upon an arm.
“‘O Lordy, Lordy,’ said the first man. ‘That looks like Joe’s arm!’
“‘yep!’ said the second man. ‘That is Joe’s arm.’
“So the
y walked on and they came upon a torso.
“‘O Lordy, Lordy,’ said the first man. ‘That looks like Joe’s torso!’
“‘Yep!’ said the second man. ‘That is Joe’s torso.’
“So they walked on and they came upon a head.
“‘O Lordy, Lordy,’ said the first man. ‘That looks like Joe’s head.’
“‘Yep!’ said the second man. ‘That is Joe’s head.’
“So the first man walked over and picked up the head by its ears, see, looked it in the face, shook it, and hollered, ‘Joe! Joe! Are you okay?’”
Well, that was a winner. We laughed till we couldn’t laugh a bit more. It seemed like nothing ever had been so funny. And for years after, whenever me and Benny would chance to meet up again, he’d say to me, “Joe! Joe! Are you okay?”
The dogs trotted along happily at our heels like they were glad to be there with us even if we didn’t have good sense.
My spirits soared. I felt like skipping except you can’t skip on a railroad track. I wanted to sing, but Benny did it for me. He broke into song so smoothly it was like part of the natural night.
He was some mother’s darling
Some mother’s son
Once he was fair
And once he was young
Mary, she rocked him
Her baby to sleep.
Then they left him to die
Like a tramp on the street.
And I remembered something Mrs. Compton said to us in Sunday school one time. She said Jesus might come to us in disguise.
“He may be dressed in rags,” she said. “He may be old and ugly. He may be diseased or crippled. So be careful how you treat people.”
On down the tracks there was a huge rock jutting out of the bank and way over the river. We climbed out on it, helping Blind Benny along so’s he wouldn’t fall. The dogs nosed around the water’s edge while we sat on the rock looking at the moon reflected in the water. There were billions of stars dancing between the mountaintops, and we could hear the water lapping gently against the bank.
A light breeze played with what was left of my hair. I ran my hand through it and marveled at the sensation. It felt like somebody else’s head.
