On Snowden Mountain

by Jeri Watts

  In Baltimore, we’d each had our own books, kept in a clean and tidy supply closet where raccoons couldn’t go. I did not mention this to Miss Spencer.

  I could have sat by the river, watching the packet boat come and go. Not as much labor. But the work made me tired, and that stopped me from thinking about my mother and father, Baltimore, and everything I was missing.

  Besides, the alternative was to pretend to read or to walk up and down the small road by the river that held the store, the school, an empty house, and Aunt Pearl’s. I knew a small trail led up the mountain behind the empty house and that there were other trails behind the school and the store, but I’d been forbidden to follow them (nor did I wish to try; the mountain was beautiful but somehow made me uneasy). There was a small bridge across the James River, and over there, I could see quite a few houses and one very large one. That road led to the settlement of Big Island, where the paper plant was located, the place most folks had jobs.

  I couldn’t see the paper mill, nor could I see Big Island; my aunt had said I would never go there, for she didn’t, and we wouldn’t have any reason to do so. It was good, for it provided jobs; it was nasty in that it smelled horrible. Additionally, she simply had no reason to go there. The small hamlet of Snowden provided all she needed. My world had been reduced to this large mountain and the little road and village at its base.

  It seemed amazing to me that it took so long for school to actually begin. But finally, after all the scrubbing and checking of books and other mindless labor Miss Spencer put my time into, school did start, on September 22. Harvesting must have taken longer than originally thought. After only one hour, Miss Spencer moved me to the bench at the back of the class. (No desks like in Baltimore. The school was, like the church it had been, set up with benches.) Since I was new, she’d started me up front with the little children; she’d told me ahead of time that was one of her inviolate rules: new students started in the front row. But I’d shown I could hold my own even with students older than I was.

  I sat, then, with a couple of fifteen-year-old girls, Polly and Sara Ann. Polly was tall (though not as tall as I was) and blond, with light freckles across the bridge of her nose and a chocolate-brown dress. Sara Ann (she said it “Say-ra” when she told me her name) was shorter than Polly, much shorter than I was, and round. She wasn’t fat, but what my aunt Pearl called “stout.” She had dark hair and dark eyes that were round as silver dollars. I thought her prettier than Polly. They were polite girls and quickly slid over for me to take a spot on the bench, but I knew we wouldn’t be friends. I would not be friends with anyone here.

  ONE MORNING IN MID-OCTOBER, when I’d been in Snowden a month and a half, I kicked my feet along the leafy path on the way to school. I’d been as good as my word: I still had no friends, and no plans to acquire any. Aunt Pearl had smirked when I’d asked about a library. Miss Spencer wouldn’t loan out her books and, of course, I’d not been allowed to fit any of mine into the tightly packed bags we brought from home. That smirk could mean anything, but I figured this time it meant there was no library in Snowden.

  But there was Snowden Mountain, beside the river, bursting like a volcano of color. The burnished oranges, the fiery yellows, and my favorites, the rich russets, blazed across the mountain in splendor. It reminded me of the towering elm that grew outside my window back home. A knot started to fill my throat.

  Suddenly, a sharp odor enveloped me. A skunk was shuffling through the underbrush, crossing directly in front of me. I looked back in the direction it had come from and saw a boy I recognized from school. Russell. He’d attended only a few days since classes began. He was taller than me — and I was very tall for a girl of twelve, about five feet eight inches. He had to be fifteen or so; he had the beginnings of scraggly whiskers.

  When Russell did come to school, he sat in the front row, with the youngest students. Russell looked enormous beside the little ones, his long gangling legs spreading out on and on. He spoke to the small children gently, I noticed, and although Mama had taught me not to stare, I found myself stealing glances whenever I could. Maybe because I wasn’t used to the setup of a big guy with little ones. Maybe because his head stood out so when he was there.

  He didn’t know his alphabet and couldn’t add numbers past ten or subtract at all. The worst thing about him, and probably the reason I risked staring, was the aroma that seemed to visibly rise from him. Russell smelled. Of skunk. Every time he came to school, Russell smelled strongly of skunk.

  That morning, emerging from the leaves where the skunk had trundled out, Russell looked pitiful. His eyes streamed with tears, his face was puckered, and he was positively embalmed in the musky odor.

  “That’s horrible,” I said.

  He nodded, his fingers gripping a snare.

  I held my breath as long as I could, then, against my will, inhaled the offending odor. The smell seemed to be growing around me, wrapping an arm around me, tightening its grip. I hadn’t been where the skunk was aiming. Could it really have covered me too?

  I raised my sleeve to my nose. “Oh, I smell too!”

  Russell laughed.

  At once all my anger — at being laughed at, at being away from home and my books, at my mother, who appeared more lost to me behind the tightly closed door at Aunt Pearl’s than she had behind the tightly closed drapes in Baltimore — came pouring out at him. “I’m glad you missed that stupid skunk, even if it did leave us in a cloud of stink. Why in the world would you be hunting a skunk, anyway?”

  His eyes narrowed and he didn’t look pitiful any longer. I took a step back and another and another, until suddenly I turned and fled to the house.

  Aunt Pearl bustled to her pantry when I appeared, gathered an armload of supplies, and shooed me back outside. She shoved me to the outhouse and peeled my clothing off. I moved to shut the door to the outhouse extension, where in warm weather there were bathing possibilities — Aunt Pearl couldn’t expect me to bathe out here in October and certainly not with the door open!

  “Don’t.” She slapped at my hands. “We’ll never survive if you shut off the air.”

  “Someone might see me,” I whispered.

  “You should have thought of that before you went poking around a skunk.” Aunt Pearl continued on, a waterfall of words telling me she’d known I was a city girl but she’d thought I could at least tell the difference between a skunk and a kitty. I closed my lips over my explanation, vowing silently that I’d never clarify things for her, if she honestly thought I was that stupid. Frankly, I didn’t understand how I could have so much of the odor on me when the skunk must have sprayed Russell; I suppose the spray doesn’t just hit directly or maybe because I was near Russell right after? Whatever the reason, I wasn’t about to ask Aunt Pearl for help with understanding. After dousing me first with vinegar, lye soap, and a tad of castor oil, which I’d always thought was only good for your insides, she poured tomato juice over me. Still, the redolent smell clung like a baby to its mother.

  After I rinsed off, Aunt Pearl informed me that I was not excused from school. As she walked me to the church, she scolded me. “All that tomato juice I could have put to better use — tsk. But that’s what it takes to get the smell out for skunk. And we’ll be lucky if it’s gone and that’s a fact.” Walking and talking at the same time, she didn’t even breathe heavily at the rapid clip she hurried me through. I was puffing and panting, and I’d said not one thing.

  She had a quick word with Miss Spencer as I hurried to my seat, my face burning. The snickers of my classmates spread over me like a blanket. “Russell’s girlfriend,” Polly taunted me quietly in my ear. She and Sara Ann sat as far from me as they could.

  That night, I did my homework beside the fire while Aunt Pearl attended to her piecework. My aunt had taken to forcing my mother out of her room once a day, to sit with us. Mama huddled on the couch, unmoving, unspeaking. I didn’t like to ask anything of Aunt Pearl, but I wanted to know about Russell.


  “There’s a boy,” I said.

  Aunt Pearl nodded, not looking up, pushing the needle through until it gained purchase.

  “He sits with the little children, learning easy stuff, but he’s bigger than me. He has whiskers too.”

  Aunt Pearl nestled her work on her lap and looked up. Her pinched nose twitched as if she were a possum sniffing out berries. “What is your point, girl?”

  “He smells awful. Like a skunk. And I ran into him today. He was chasing a skunk, with a snare in his hand. He’s the one who got me smelling like this.” I bit my lip. So much for that vow.

  Aunt Pearl picked up her piecework, her gray hair shivering a bit as she shook her head slightly. “The smell will go away in time. You’re speaking of Russell Armentrout. He helps Old Man Mumfrey with trapping. It’s trapping keeps him behind at school. But it’s trapping keeps food on the table.” Aunt Pearl’s face was set. “His father is lazy as the day is long, and his mother is . . . poorly. Russell’s all there is at that house as far as work goes.”

  I thought about work. Aunt Pearl certainly did her share around the house, cleaning and cooking and mending and caring for Mama. But how did she get money for living? She had a garden, but even she wasn’t industrious enough to grow all she needed. I pinched myself, remembering not to ask, not to care. I returned to the subject of Russell. “I think he’s disgusting.”

  She stared at me, and her eyes were hard as the crushed stones in a macadam road. “You’re being uncharitable.”

  I went to my room, still considering Russell. Trapping, Aunt Pearl said. Trapping skunks. What would you trap skunks for?

  I was still thinking on that question when I entered school the next day. Miss Spencer looked up. “Well, Ellen, you smell much better today.”

  “Not like Russell,” a voice called out.

  The laughter of the others bounced around the room. “Yes, ma’am,” I answered Miss Spencer.

  I wanted to ask Polly or Sara Ann about skunk trapping and whether Aunt Pearl was having fun with me at my expense, but I remembered how they’d scooted away the day before.

  At recess, I eased my way over near Bobby Waid. Bobby was one of the smaller children. In Baltimore he would maybe have been a second-grader. I watched him bouncing a small rubber ball. After a time, he missed, and the ball rolled to my feet. I picked it up and greeted him. He smiled shyly.

  “Sorry for them laughing this morning,” he said. He kept his head turned away a bit from me, but at least he didn’t pinch his nose. “It’s just, you get skunked and” — he shrugged — “it means you’re buddies with Russell. The skunk boy’s teasing bait. The big kids mock him. But it’s just a bit of fun.”

  “I can’t stand him. He looks mean and shifty.”

  “Oh, Russell ain’t a bad hat. He’s always helping us to get our slates cleaned good and he —”

  I cut him off. “Well, it doesn’t seem he can help you with much. He’s never here, and he doesn’t know anything to boot. He’s dumb.”

  He looked at me with his eyes narrowed. “Some things you don’t understand iffen you ain’t from around here.” Bobby took his ball from my hand.

  I dropped the topic of Russell’s academic ability and put my hand on Bobby’s shoulder. “Why would he trap skunks, anyway? What in the world can anyone do with a skunk?”

  “My daddy says some places pay five dollars for the pelt of a skunk, more if it’s all black without the stripe.”

  I stared at Bobby, as second-graders in Baltimore would not know the word pelt. But this wasn’t Baltimore. Five dollars for the skin of a skunk. “Why?” I didn’t understand. “Why would anyone buy skunk skin?”

  “Makes coats, hats, stuff.” He bounced his ball again on the hard, dusty ground.

  I punched his arm a little, but friendly-like. “I’m not stupid. I see it can be made into something, like any animal hide. But who would ever wear a skunk-skin coat?”

  He rubbed his arm. “Air it out enough, smell goes. My daddy says. We don’t do it. Skunk trapping is for poor people.”

  I did my work the rest of the afternoon, but my mind couldn’t stop turning over. I felt as if I’d entered some strange world: the war that had captured my daddy wasn’t even mentioned here — it was as if it didn’t exist; people hunted and used skunk for clothing and Lord knew what else; Mama was gone from me, swallowed into herself.

  Aunt Pearl began using me as her personal beast of burden, sending me with crocks of relish and baked beans, jars of put-up vegetables and fruits, and selected items of warm clothes and bedding to various needy neighbors. I’d noticed, as school commenced, that an area of cleaned-up, dusted shelves had begun to fill not with school materials but with these other items. So while the church no longer had a pastor, the building still served as a church in some ways. And since Aunt Pearl was in charge of the distribution of these goods, that made me her delivery girl.

  “There is no reason to test the will of a mule when you’re available to do the work,” she explained. I noticed that we were never in need of the items being delivered. I shrugged inside, determined not to care.

  On my third trip to the McKemy place, getting on to late October, with yet another load of canned lima beans, Russell and I met again.

  He shouldn’t have been there. It wasn’t his house. Besides, Leann McKemy was even younger than Bobby Waid. Still, there he was. He didn’t see me at first. Little Leann was standing next to where Russell squatted in the dirt near the corner of the house. Russell’s blond hair fell into his eyes as he leaned to scratch a crooked form in the dust, and Leann shook her head. Something about it made me smile.

  “No,” she said patiently, “that’s not the way you make capital R. You’re mixing it up with B.”

  “Show me one more time,” he said. “Please?”

  As he looked up to her, he must have seen me from the corner of his eye. He rose quickly, and his mouth set into a frown. “Whaddya want?”

  I felt the hairs on the nape of my neck rise and my mouth droop out of my smile. “None of your business. This isn’t your house. And get away from me. You smell.”

  “Least I ain’t got a crazy ma. You crazy too?”

  My fingers curled tighter around a can of beans. “Take that back.”

  Leann smiled. “You brought more beans. Baby loves ’em.”

  I made myself look at her and away from the skunk boy. “Leann,” I said, “every time I come, you call that child Baby. She must have a name. What is it?”

  “Ain’t got one yet, except for Baby. Mama says she don’t get a name until she’s getting ready for school.”

  I stepped to the front porch under Russell’s stare, unloading the cans onto the rickety, teetering table. “That’s dumb.”

  Leann shrugged. “Might die. I had three brothers older and two younger what have died before they made it to Miss Spencer. Not worth using a good name for one that won’t live.”

  I almost dropped the can I was holding; I placed it very carefully on the table. Leann chattered on, but I didn’t hear another word she said.

  Russell must’ve slipped off, because as I waited for Leann’s mother to come out, I didn’t see him anymore. I headed back to Aunt Pearl’s and went to sit in Mama’s room, the one thing I could do to feel I still had a life with her.

  She was sitting up in her bed, gazing out the window. On the counterpane lay a letter from my father, a jigsaw of holes where the censors had chopped out this or that reference to a place that could not be named. It didn’t look as if it had been read; it just lay there, where Aunt Pearl had placed it.

  Daddy’d written a few times since he found out we were here. I wrote him as soon as we’d arrived, filling my pages with desperate pleas for his return. His letters back were filled with fancy words. But he never really addressed the fact that we were no longer in Baltimore, never said he knew I was suffering, never even talked of his own pain (if he had any — wouldn’t you have pain, fighting? Or being away from family?). He just
tried to sound cheerful and what Aunt Pearl termed “high-falutin’.”

  I shoved the letter out of the way and began to comb my mother’s hair. Mama always liked that. When I was little, I’d go to her each night before bedtime. She would read me a story or tell me about when her Prince Charming came to take her away, although I never had asked her what he took her away from. I’d comb her beautiful golden hair and work it around and around into all sorts of strange yet alluring styles.

  Mama sighed and leaned toward me a bit. Her light-blue eyes looked vacant and sunken, and I closed my own eyes so as not to look into hers. I couldn’t be like that, could I? All empty and withered and sad? I smelled the lilac water Aunt Pearl used to wash Mama’s hair, concentrated on smoothing the hair beneath the comb, and dreamed of the mama I’d known in Baltimore — wishing, as I’d never wished before, I could be back in the life I’d had, where babies were named when they were born, where mothers didn’t fade, where fathers didn’t run away, and where I could be the one who had her hair brushed and was told stories.

  I WON’T GO THERE,” I said. “Anyplace else, but not there.”

  “You’ll go where the Lord sends you,” Aunt Pearl answered. She inhaled through her tight nostrils and, defeated, I gathered the corn and green beans and headed for the Armentrout home place. It was only the day after I’d had that run-in with Russell; what if he was there when I arrived?

  “Does the Lord speak only through her? How does she know the will of God? Even Reverend Graham back home said he’d never heard the Lord’s voice directly.” My words echoed off the baring trees and ricocheted back to me. A cold wind had ended October, and November wrapped around us like a threadbare blanket.

  I found the winding path that led to Russell’s home right where Aunt Pearl had said it would be; I was amazed that it was one of the many trails that led up the mountain behind the school. Snowden Mountain rose behind the village, but it also rose beside it; there was a bottom to it where the village had formed, a natural landing for the riverboats.