Carry the World

by Susan Fanetti

  Chancey Maclaren ran around the front of his truck and opened the passenger-side door. He’d offered Ada a ride into town this morning, and she had happily accepted. After spending twenty-six days of the past month in the saddle, she was glad to give Henrietta this day off—and her own backside as well. Besides, riding in the truck with Chancey meant that she could dress up nicely for her librarian meeting.

  “How long you need, Mizz Ada?” Chancey asked as he helped her to the sidewalk.

  Ada thought about that and checked her wristwatch, another treasured gift from George. She wore it only for church and special days. It was ten minutes to ten in the morning. “Well, this meeting starts at ten and goes for four hours, and then I’ll need to do some shopping.”

  He dug under his canvas jacket and pulled his heavy old pocket watch from his overalls. “I’ll meet you at the front of the dry goods store at three o’clock, then. That alright, Mizz Ada? If’n you ain’t done shopping, I’ll help. I wouldn’t want you carryin’ nothing heavy or dusty in that pretty dress.”

  “That’s perfect, Chancey. Thank you.”

  “Always happy to help you, Mizz Ada.” He grinned and ducked his chin a bit. He stood at the side of his truck like a guard while she went into the library and didn’t get in and pull away until she went to the window and waved him away.

  Ada turned to face the library and grinned at what she saw.

  Her first time here, Mrs. Pitts had been alone, and the space had been quiet and a bit gloomy. Ada had loved it, because of the books and the order and the peace, but it had felt lonely, too. Today, however, two large tables had been brought into the main part of the room and pushed together, and circled with plain chairs, and seven women besides Mrs. Pitts milled about that meeting space. They all faced her and offered her smiles of welcome.

  “Mrs. Donovan, excellent.” Mrs. Pitts bustled up. “You may put your coat and things over there”—she indicated the other side of the room, where coats and bags and lunch pails lay neatly scattered over another long table—“and I’ll make introductions. Then we’ll get to work. You’re the last in, but that’s understandable. You’ve the farthest to come.”

  She set her things in amongst the others, then stood for a moment with her back to the others, feeling a flash of awkwardness. She’d taken the last route and was the last to arrive today. How naïve was she compared to the others? How would she be judged?

  After a moment, her practical soul took hold of such silly worries and shook her back to sense. With a quick smooth of her dress and a check to make sure her hair was in place, Ada put on her professional teacher’s smile and went to the others.

  Mrs. Pitts was still standing, but the others had taken seats. Only two remained empty—the one Mrs. Pitts stood behind, at the head of the table, and another at the end of one side. She went to that chair.

  “Ladies,” Mrs. Pitts said with an arm outstretched toward Ada. “Please welcome Mrs. Ada Donovan to our ranks.”

  The other women nodded, smiled, or said “Hi Ada.” Ada returned their greeting with a nod and smile of her own.

  “Ada comes to us from Barker’s Creek and has taken our last route. We’ve got this corner of Eastern Kentucky covered now, ladies. So let’s all introduce ourselves and get down to our business of the day.”

  As her fellow librarians introduced themselves, they said where they lived and what route they had. Ada focused on remembering names, but she was also struck with a powerful feeling of community. These were mountain women, too. Mrs. Pitts might have been sent in by the government from away—Ada wasn’t sure about that, but suspected it was true—but her fellow librarians knew the mountains just like she did. They were women doing a service for their own people.

  They were all literate, of course, but they weren’t all teachers. Only one other librarian had been a teacher. Another had been a reporter for a newspaper that had gone bust. The rest were simply women who loved books and needed to earn. Every one of them was either married or widowed.

  She sat and listened as they talked, describing their victories and challenges, complaining about the string of days of wet weather, fretting about the cold to come, exchanging hints for keeping their feet dry and warm inside their boots. They talked about books that had been lost or ruined while out on loan, and others that were getting, in the words of Mrs. Tolliver, “just loved to death, so much the strings are coming loose from the bindings, and they’re all but loose pages.”

  After Mrs. Owens had mentioned a trouble she was having with one family, and her concern for the children there, Ada piped up. “Yes, I have a family or two I’m concerned about as well.”

  They all turned to her, and Ada felt a bit shy, like she’d interrupted where she ought not have. But Mrs. Owens said, “A family like my Cranes?”

  “Something like, I think. The Devlins. Mr. Devlin has been very hostile to me, and I’m worried about his wife and children. He beats his wife, it’s clear. And when last I visited, the youngest children were hardly dressed, though the temperature couldn’t have been more than fifty degrees. They won’t even let me dismount. I’m not sure what to do, but I’m worried.”

  “We can’t meddle, Mrs. Donovan.” That was one of the older women, a staunch lady of about forty, Mrs. Castle. “We can only cause more harm if we meddle. Unless Mrs. Devlin is asking for your help?”

  “No. She’s not. She wants me to stay away.”

  “I say,” offered Mrs. Galway, “To you and Mrs. Owens—keep these families on your route. At least, you can see if things get worse, and if Mrs. Devlin wants help, you can help her. Leastwise, your visits let her know she’s not forgotten.”

  “I agree,” said Mrs. Pitts. “Don’t give up, ladies. Keep yourself safe, of course. I trust your judgment to know when a home’s not safe for a visit, and to make a note of it in your ledger. But remember our mission. It’s more than books we bring.”

  “We carry the world,” several of the women said, their wry grins and sidelong looks suggesting they heard that line frequently and had made it a joke among them.

  Ada liked it. She didn’t think it was funny at all. It was important.

  Chapter Six

  Jonah checked the last knot, found it tight, and stood back. “You did good, boy.”

  “Thank you, Pa.” Elijah frowned at the sled, studying his work in tying down the load. He was a serious boy, and took compliments and approval with no special pleasure Jonah could see. They two were cut from the same dark cloth. Bluebird favored her mother and brought them all the light they had.

  “Now. What’ll you do while I’m away?” Jonah asked his boy.

  “Stay inside. Bar the door. Keep the rifle close, but out of Bluebird’s reach. Keep her close and safe.”

  “If somebody comes, what’ll you do?”

  “Get the rifle and take Bluebird under the stairs. Stay quiet till they leave.”

  “If there’s trouble for me, when will you know?”

  “If morning comes and you ain’t home.”

  “And what’ll you do?”

  “Pack Bluebird up nice and warm and walk down t’store in Red Fern Holler.”

  Where Jonah was headed today. It was a long trek, and slick today, but the path was fairly clear, so long as more hard weather didn’t block it or bury it. If he wasn’t home by dark, it would be trouble that kept him away, but better the children wait until dawn to find help.

  Elijah was eight years old. Too young to be in charge, maybe, but he was born older than his years, and since his momma died, when he was two, he’d featured himself as Jonah’s right hand.

  If not for these children, Jonah would have walked himself off a cliff the day he’d put Grace in the ground. He lived for them, and only them, and he hated to leave them so long on their own. But he couldn’t take them down the mountain with him today. The ice storm last night would make the way hard. They were safer home.

  More importantly, he might have to humble himself before Hez Cummings at the
general store to get the supplies he needed to keep the children through the winter. He didn’t want them to see him beg.

  “Alright then.” He set his hand on his son’s shoulder and drew him back toward the house.

  Inside, Bluebird sat on the floor near the fire, flipping through the latest picture story the book woman had left with her. Every couple weeks, that skinny little redhead would tromp up to the cabin on her big bay mare and bring books for the children to choose from. Bluebird adored her, sure she was an angel. Elijah maybe thought so, too, though he was quieter about his affections.

  Jonah didn’t know what he thought about her, except she was a stranger, and he didn’t like those. The more she showed up, the less a stranger she felt, and he liked that even less. He hoped the onset of a hard winter would keep her down the mountain before his children got too attached to her.

  Elijah went to his sister and knelt before her. “Bluebird, Pa’s goin’. Go say ‘bye.”

  She looked up and smiled. Mercy, how much like her momma she looked. Grace knelt primly by her side, as beautiful as the day he’d met her, and gave him the exact same smile.

  Jonah wasn’t a superstitious man, and he didn’t put much stock in God, not since Grace was taken so cruelly from him. He thought it more likely that his mind conjured the vision of his wife out of grief and wishing than that she was truly haunting him, but he didn’t care one way or the other. She was with him and had never left, and that was all that mattered.

  All his life, Jonah had lived high on the mountain in Cable’s Holler. He’d been born in the same cabin his children were born in, the same cabin his father and grandmother had been born in. Once upon a time, when he was a child and then a young man, the holler had been a community and even managed to thrive a bit, with three other families calling that quiet nook high in the side of the mountain their home. They’d made regular treks down to Red Fern Holler in those days, traveling together every Sunday for services and to do trade with the bigger community there. That was how he’d had the good fortune to meet and court a pretty, yellow-haired preacher’s daughter named Grace.

  It had been a good life. Simple and quiet, and not easy, but full.

  But then, a year or so after he’d made Grace his wife and brought her home, a sickness came and took most of the people of Cable’s Holler, including his parents and younger sister. The ones who’d survived that hellish winnowing packed up and walked away. All but Jonah and Grace. He couldn’t leave the house his great-granddad had built, and she couldn’t leave him.

  They’d lived together alone in the holler for near three years, and they’d been happy, with no need of more than the mountain offered up, except for a couple trips a year down for supplies.

  She’d delivered both their children with no more help to her than what Jonah could give her. When the bleeding wouldn’t stop after Bluebird came, and the fever struck her the next day, he couldn’t go for help—he couldn’t leave her or their children, and even if he could have left Grace on her own, he didn’t know how he could carry a newborn and their boy still in diapers down to Red Fern Holler for the healing woman, or to send for a doctor.

  It was the first time ever he’d felt real isolation. Not even when his parents and sister died had he felt trapped on the mountain. In those weeks of illness, they’d had a doctoring man up three times, but everybody still died anyway.

  But sitting at the side of their bed, holding a squalling, hungry newborn, while Grace moaned and thrashed until she was quiet evermore, Jonah had hated the mountain with his whole heart.

  He’d meant to pack up his children and walk away from Cable’s Holler. But the morning after he’d buried Grace, he’d woken with both children sleeping in his arms, and he’d found his wife sitting on the bed beside him, propped against the iron headstead, dressed in her pretty, wedding-night dressing gown, looking as beautiful and happy as she’d been that night.

  She’d followed him around most of the day, but never left the walls of the house. When he went to the barn, or out into the woods, she’d stayed behind.

  She wasn’t transparent, like he imagined a ghost would be. She wasn’t solid, either. She was an image, a memory, a wish. That was all, and he was too sensible a man to think otherwise. But it didn’t matter. She was here, and only here. So Jonah and their children stayed, and made the life they could, alone at the top of the mountain.

  It wasn’t long before he began to talk to her, and she to answer him. Not in words anyone could hear, not even him, not with his ears. But she spoke to him nevertheless.

  He knew right well only he could see her. She’d never shown herself to their children, which was as good a sign as he could imagine that she was a figment of his loneliness and not an actual ghost. If Grace could give her children comfort, she would. Still, he never questioned her presence.

  That he saw his dead wife every day was no sign of madness. It was the reason he was sane.

  Today, when he went away to carry what wares he’d mustered for trade, Jonah would leave his children and his dead wife behind. He hated this day fiercely, every time it came around.

  He hunkered low and opened his arms. When his little daughter ran up to hug him, her mother, who’d died of fever four days after bringing their girl into the world, set her hand on his shoulder. He could almost feel its weight.

  Under the best conditions, when the path was clear and dry, and he wasn’t pulling the cart or the sled, the walk down to Red Fern Holler was about two hours, and about half an hour more than that back up. Pulling the cart added about another hour each way. Today, with a few inches of snow on the ground from a fall several days earlier, and another half-inch of hard ice skimmed over the top from last night’s storm, Jonah pulled the sled, and it was near noon before he made Red Fern Holler and Hezekiah Cummings’ general store.

  This holler was much bigger than his own, with enough people to constitute a village. Still too remote for cars or trucks to reach, they managed with horses and mules, and Hez kept his store pretty well stocked. He was also open to trade with men like Jonah, who’d forsaken the world below—or, as in his own case, had never known much of it in the first place.

  He pulled the sled down from the woods and onto the holler’s wider path, wide enough to be considered a road. There weren’t many people out of doors—the day was cold and the ice still held—but those he saw gave him a distant, civil nod, which he returned. All the people of Red Fern Holler were known to him, and he to them, but they also knew he wasn’t someone who’d flex his jaw with them.

  At the head of the holler, he pulled his sled up before the general store and climbed the wooden stairs. His feet had long ago given up their complaints about the cold and were little more than dead stone in his old boots, but he wiped those boots carefully on the reed mat before he opened the door and went in.

  The store was warm and smelled of cinnamon. Hez’s wife sold baked goods and sweets. Jonah’s belly rumbled, but he ignored the pang and went to the counter, pulling his hat from his head and smoothing down his hair as best he could without a glass to see the success of his effort.

  There were no other customers in the store, and no sign of Hez or his wife, either. Jonah waited, as patient as he could be.

  “Jonah!” Hez called, coming up from the back. “Good to see you, friend.”

  “Hez.” Jonah made himself extend his cold hand and let Hez Cummings grip it and shake. “Hope you been well.”

  The niceties of social activity were hard for him. Most of the year, he spoke only to his children.

  Hez’s expression of friendly welcome faded. “Well, it’s hard for ever’body, you know. With all that’s goin’ on in the world, gets harder every year.”

  Jonah nodded vaguely. He didn’t know what was going on in the world, but he agreed that every year was harder than the one before.

  “I guess you come down with somethin’ to trade?” Hez asked.

  “Yessir, I do. Got the sled out front.”

&n
bsp; Hez patted him warmly on the back. “Lessee what you got, then.”

  Jonah was a simple man but not a stupid one. He understood that Hez Cummings considered himself his better, and believed he offered charity when he made a trade with him. Jonah understood it and hated it, but he had no other option. Maybe it was charity after all, then.

  They went back out into the cold. Jonah unfastened the ties his son had so carefully tightened and turned back the waxed canvas tarp. On the sled were twenty neatly bundled packs of hewn logs for firewood, two dozen tanned deer hides, and two crates of Mason jars of canned pumpkin.

  All the people in and around Red Fern Holler, all the people who shopped at Hez’s store, could chop their own firewood, hunt their own game, and can their own pumpkin. But he had nothing else he could do to earn for his family. All he needed was to make a trade for supplies he couldn’t make on his own. He counted on his work making convenience for those who had other work they could do. Like Hez himself. Likely, the storekeeper used all Jonah’s firewood bundles for the store itself.

  Jonah didn’t care. He worked hard, and offered the fruits of his labor.

  Hez eyed the sled critically. “Well, like I said, things get tougher ever’ year. I don’t know what-all I can do for you, but let’s see. What’re you lookin’ for in trade?”

  He didn’t like to talk, but there was no time in his life more important to be friendly and conversational than now. With a stone of worry pulsing at the bottom of his gut, Jonah made his list. “Four sacks of wheat flour, three of sugar, a couple boxes of salt. A pack of that soap I get. A box of nails. Lamp oil. And a new whetstone.” Hez’s expression showed a readiness to dispense hard news, so Jonah pushed on quickly. “There’s a panther skin under the deers. Maybe that’ll get me some shoes for the children. They grow faster’n I can keep up.” He’d meant to hold that back a bit and get deeper into the negotiations before he threw in the panther skin, but he wasn’t good at haggling. Desperation was a poor bargaining position.