On Snowden Mountain

by Jeri Watts

  There was an empty house. It wasn’t decrepit yet, despite the weeds and the forlorn look that hung about it. I figured a man like my father had lived there, a man who signed up to do his duty and had no one left to take care of the house. It was waiting for his return, but it was not waiting well. Next to it was the store, right beside the edge of the rising mountain, then the school and former church. Before all of this ran the James River, and a road, if it could be called such, that took desperate individuals to Lynchburg.

  Not much of a village: a store, a school/church, and two houses. But across the river lay only a cluster of houses, with one big one, set off a bit, and a road. So, I suppose the store and the school were what made the village what it was. And the spiderweb of trails that climbed the mountain behind it. There was the promise of so much up the mountain behind the village. I suppose that was counted as part of the village too. I wanted nothing to do with any of it — I knew that.

  Still, I snaked up and up, the passage meandering under sturdy oaks and maples, past dormant mountain laurel and scraggly brown dogwoods. I was dawdling, but I noted that no path here would go straight up; that would be foolhardy. Going at a mountain in a circuitous way saved energy. Too bad my aunt Pearl had never learned that in her way of dealing with people. “Don’t have time for such nonsense,” she’d said to me when I complained that no one took the time to talk about the lovely fall weather, to enjoy a nice dress. The only “bow” to not meeting life head-on was this, trails that refused to head straight up, and that was simple common sense.

  I thought back to my third-grade leaf-and-tree study, which enabled me to easily identify the trees I passed. But the memory of my class in Baltimore, the way Mama’d helped me iron pretty leaves under the slick, smooth waxed paper, brought anger to my throat. I pushed the anger, and the memory, down and away. What good did it do to remember Baltimore and days when I’d had teachers who took time for activities such as that; Baltimore, where I had a mother bright and shining, fun parties and colorful dresses, and me, so different from the me I was now? It was all as lost to me as the father who had chosen to walk off to a war so far away I couldn’t even imagine it. A war, I felt bitterly, he had chosen over staying with Mama and me.

  A thin trail of smoke rose into my view, and I doggedly marched toward it and away from the memories of Baltimore.

  Before me stood a ramshackle cabin with a porch clinging to it. The chimney leaned at a precarious angle away from the logs. Russell and an old woman stood with a spray of chickens at their feet.

  Russell tossed a handful of feed. “What do you want?” he snapped, towering over the woman and the scrambling chickens.

  I tried to make my voice hard, like flint, the way his sounded. “Bringing goods. From the church.”

  “We don’t need charity.”

  The old woman put her hand on his arm. “Russell.” She only spoke his name, but it was clear she was correcting him.

  I smirked at him, and he rolled his eyes behind her back. Her ancient limbs moved her slowly, but she climbed the two decrepit steps and collapsed into a porch rocker. “Well, girl, bring the things here so I can have a look.”

  Russell protested, his voice rising an octave in midsentence: “Ma, we ain’t needing no charity.”

  I felt my mouth drop open. His ma? I looked closer. There were wrinkles, but even more there was a patina of weariness on her skin. I could see, on closer inspection, that while Russell’s mother had hands clawed like a vulture to add to that impression of being old, she didn’t have the sagging bosom or white hair of the elderly women I’d known. No, she wasn’t old, just . . . beaten down.

  I set the cans in a pile beside her. She didn’t look at them, just reached out and grabbed my arm in a grip of iron. “You got a familiar look about you. Your name, girl?”

  “Ellen. Ellen Hollingsworth.” I tried to pull away without being obvious, but my wrist was locked between her thumb and forefinger.

  “Don’t know any Hollingsworths. Your people from around here?”

  “My aunt Pearl Simmons lives down in Snowden village and . . .”

  Mrs. Armentrout peered closer into my face. “Your mama one of them Simmons girls? Martha?”

  I nodded.

  She laughed then, a brittle laugh that fell flat at her feet, and she released me. “Martha was my best friend when we’s growing up. You don’t look much like her, with that dark hair so curly and them deep-set eyes of your’n. Still, there’s something about you. Maybe what Martha used to call her ‘carriage.’ She always had airs like that, but she was kind to me.”

  “What the hell is all that jawing out there?” A ragged voice rose out of the house. An equally ragged man emerged to match it. Mrs. Armentrout shrank into herself, and the wrinkles melded into one large look of fear.

  The man’s words sliced the air. “Ain’t you supposed to be working out here?” He looked at Russell. “Boy?” His voice was hard.

  Russell stepped forward. “Mama was just visiting with a friend, Pa.” He pointed to me, as if to prove he wasn’t lying. “I’ll take her on down the mountain.”

  The man lashed out, his hand threatening to strike Russell square across the jaw. He was wiry and small, but I knew he must have some power, because Russell reeled to escape even the hint of a strike. I gasped and moved toward Russell, who stepped away from me, his eyes averted.

  The man took a step closer to me. “Don’t like folks nosing around here. I’m Rooster Armentrout.” A smell of mint wafted from him and, as he spoke, incredibly white teeth flashed.

  I swallowed. When I spoke, my voice sounded as if it came from the hollow behind the school. “I’m Ellen Hollingsworth. I just, I mean, I brought . . .” My voice ran dry as he stared at me. My skin felt the way it had the day I’d touched the bathhouse light switch at the lake we visited summers in Baltimore — electrified and not in any good way at all.

  Russell touched my arm, and I gazed for a moment at his hand, checking to see if he’d been seared by my skin. He said, “She was just going. I’ll walk her down the mountain.”

  His father glared at him. “You do that. And see if any traps need tending while you’re down there. Old Mumfrey won’t pay if you ain’t got goods.”

  Mr. Armentrout turned on his wife then. “What are you doing, sitting when there’s work what needs doing?” I fled and my feet found the trail. Words bounced behind me, but I refused to catch them. Words of anger, of fear, words that whipped and bit and hurt. I stumbled on, my legs shaking.

  Russell tramped behind me, quiet.

  I needed to sit down. I dropped heavily on a fallen log near the path, and Russell loomed over me. I put my face into shaking hands and tried to gain control.

  Russell’s voice winnowed between my fingertips. “You all right?”

  I nodded. Russell stood with his back to me, staring below at the faraway community of Snowden nestled beside the James River. “I hate this place,” I said.

  Russell seemed not to have heard me. He turned and looked at me, his large eyes sad. “You won’t tell, will you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said. I stared away from him. Tell how cruel his father was, how awful his home was, or all of it put together? And probably everyone around here already knew; it was the kind of little village where you sneezed and everyone knew.

  “You won’t tell.” His voice was fierce now, and he wasn’t asking.

  I understood. If anyone saw my life the way it was, my mother a shell of a person and my father writing stupid letters full of justifications I didn’t want to read when what I needed was advice on how to get her better so we could leave this godforsaken place with people who trapped skunks and had to live with monsters for fathers, would I want them to talk about it?

  Russell and I were cut from the same cloth, it seemed to me; mine was fabric that just smelled better.

  I answered him. “No. I won’t tell a living soul.”

  I sat beside my mother on the couch that nig
ht. My hands were supposed to be mending a sock, but it had all become a tangled mess. Aunt Pearl was across from us, darning, efficient as ever.

  My words were tentative. “Do you know Russell’s mother, Aunt Pearl?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old would you say she was?”

  Aunt Pearl looked up from her darning. “That’s a rather personal question.”

  “It’s just that, well, I met her today. She looked tired and all . . .” My voice trailed off. I could hear what my words sounded like. They were nosy, intrusive, silly. “I just wondered — that’s all.”

  She smiled a bit. Though Aunt Pearl snapped at me a lot, she sometimes seemed to be a trifle sorry afterward. When she was sorry, she talked more. I smiled encouragingly, and she answered.

  “His mother’s thirty-eight, same as your mother. She and Martha were good friends.”

  “Have you seen her lately?”

  Aunt Pearl cocked her head and gave the matter thought. “Not for a while, I suppose. In fact, I’ve seen no one there when I’ve taken items to the Armentrout home. Still, she married that Rooster Armentrout back twenty years ago, and he’s pretty much kept her up there on that mountain. All those Armentrouts stay away from folks. And Rooster, he’s a jealous sort anyway. Then, too, she was never any particular friend of mine.” She shook her head. “She was a pretty thing as I recollect. Ask your mama.”

  Mama’s head was turned to look out into the dark that was Snowden Mountain. “Mama, do you remember Mrs. Armentrout?” Her head didn’t turn at all.

  I swallowed my promise to Russell and spoke. “Mr. Armentrout yelled at her something fierce today. She looked old and scared and —”

  Aunt Pearl interrupted me. “Did he hurt you? I’d not have sent you if I thought he’d be there.” Her voice was cold and hard.

  “No, ma’am, but . . .”

  “Then that is none of your business, Ellen. You mind your manners.”

  I dropped the sock onto the floor and shakily placed the needle onto the mantle as I rose.

  A few words carried to me as I mounted the steps for bed. The sound of the tiny voice stopped me, surprised me, wound tighter my already-knotted stomach. It was Mama speaking. “She was beautiful then. And her name was Hannah Tucker.”

  RUSSELL WAS AT SCHOOL the next day. He didn’t pay attention to his lesson, and Miss Spencer had to crack his knuckles with her ruler three times to get him to mind.

  He kept turning to look at me. His hard brown eyes made me squirm in my seat.

  At recess, he hustled over to where I sat alone in a spot of late-fall sun and stared at me. “Well?” he asked.

  I tried to inhale as little as possible. Although it had been a couple of weeks since I’d been skunked with Russell, it hadn’t been that long since he’d last been skunked. “Well, what?”

  “Keeping your mouth shut?”

  “I’m trying,” I said.

  Russell stepped closer, and his eyes narrowed. I steeled myself for the expected threat.

  “I’d be obliged if you’d try hard.” His voice broke. It didn’t sound like anger or his voice cracking. It just sounded like sad.

  I nodded.

  After dinner that evening, Aunt Pearl pulled her plain, large coat about her and went to prayer meeting, a group, I had learned, that rotated among various houses (there were only so many) and included sometimes feisty discussions of Bible stories selected by the host or hostess. I washed the dishes. I always washed the dishes, a task I’d found odious in Baltimore. In Snowden village, though, I really didn’t mind. Aunt Pearl’s beautiful plates felt delicate yet also sturdy, and I loved to swirl the heated-on-the-stove water around and around the willows captured on the dishes. I scrubbed carefully, delicately, along each scalloped edge, to make the plates pure and clean again.

  As I washed, I tried to picture the dishes I felt would match characters from my favorite books. For Jane Eyre, something simple but valuable. White bone china perhaps, with small elegant flowers etched around the edges. Sherlock Holmes would have used Mrs. Hudson’s dishes — and paid no attention at all to the dainty blue-and-white floral china left from her pre-widowed days when she didn’t have to let out rooms to men who carelessly dropped tobacco on her rugs. Unless, of course, there was a mystery connected to that service, in which case he would pay more attention than she might care for.

  I could conjure a mystery to go with these plates in my hands; perhaps, in earlier times, Aunt Pearl had been a grand lady in Richmond, the toast of the South, a woman who gave extravagant parties and extravagant presents, to match her extravagant personality. A woman of passion and emotion-filled moments, who had a secret source of money, who was sought after by . . .

  My mystery ran dry as I carried the water out to the yard to pitch it. What man could ever be attracted to the woman who was my aunt, gruff and without a speck of romance in her? I heaved the shallow washing pan, and the dirty water arced to land at the edge of the forest that threatened to take over every part of Snowden.

  I smelled skunk. It was Russell. He was perched at the shadows that lay at the edge of the trees.

  I dropped the pan and accused him: “You’re spying on me.”

  He looked down. “Sorry.”

  “What do you want?” I stooped and picked up the pan.

  “I . . . I need help.”

  I stared at him, the washtub now hanging limply by my side.

  “It’s my ma.”

  I turned. “Aunt Pearl isn’t here.”

  He put his hand out, as if in question. “No. I mean, I thought just you. You could help.”

  I looked at him closely then, because he spoke so softly. Russell spoke like that to the small children, but never to me. Except, I realized, for earlier that day, when he’d said he’d be obliged. And there, standing in the dark of an early-November night, sounding as he did when he talked to Bobby Waid and the younger students. Russell’s voice had no edges, no corners.

  “Is she sick? I don’t know much about sick people,” I said.

  “You can help. Maybe. She’s bleeding around . . .” His voice trailed off as his hands flitted across his chest. He muttered, “And you . . . already know about things.”

  In my mind, I heard again the voice of his father, railing at Russell’s ma. I saw the crack of a hand and Russell falling away from it. Yes, I knew about things. “Will he be there?”

  Russell shook his head. “He’s gone. Mebbe for days. He . . . does this sometimes.” He turned, heading for his mountain. “Come.”

  I went.

  I should have left a note for Aunt Pearl. I should have thought of Mama, at least checked on her. Still, I didn’t think of anything but the voice that was reaching out to me. I couldn’t see a thing at first, yet it didn’t matter. I trudged behind Russell, a vague presence before me. He walked quickly, and I had to hurry to keep up. My head rocked up and down, trying to see roots and loose stones beneath my feet and still look after him to hold his direction so I wouldn’t lose my way.

  “It’s easier to see than I thought it would be,” I said, huffing a bit. “Things lighten up as we go.”

  “The moon,” Russell explained. “It’s full tonight.”

  I glanced up at the night sky and, as should have been obvious to me, the full moon all but blazed. Funny, I’d noticed the moon many nights since Mama and I came to the mountains, but it never lit much of anything that I could see. Out here, in the darkness, the glow made a difference.

  When we reached the cabin, I slowed. How could I be sure Mr. Armentrout hadn’t returned? I hesitated on the front porch until I heard a pitiful moan from inside. I found Russell’s mother in her bed, just gaining consciousness; Russell must have moved her there before he came to get me.

  “She’s bleeding from her mouth,” he said. “But it ain’t like when he knocked out her tooth, like a heavy flow. Blood’s running real thin and stringy-like. And bleeding from . . . Well, a woman should tend her.”

  Mrs. Arme
ntrout moaned again, and I shook her shoulders gently. “Ma’am, can you tell me what hurts?” She didn’t respond. I turned to Russell. “I can’t see much. Can you make some light?”

  My fingers trembled as he took a step in the dark. He lit the lamp without a word, and I could see why he might have wished to stay in the dark. There had obviously been a row — the table broken to bits, a chair smashed against the wall, flour spread in a trail across the floor, and a whiskey bottle in the middle of it. In the lamplight, I saw that Mrs. Armentrout had, beneath the blood, bruises on her face and neck and a livid black eye. Blood edged where there was slashed material across her breasts. Like a knife had sliced there. I swallowed hard and pushed the images I imagined back into the furthest reaches of my mind.

  I glanced at Russell in the light, and realization sank in. He’d not been spared either. His nose was bleeding and he had a gash over his right eye. I straightened up.

  He shook his head. “I’m all right. It’s her what needs tending.”

  He got me a rag and some water, and I started to clean her some. Russell modestly turned his back. The blood around her face turned out to be mostly from her nose, though her lips appeared to be cut some too. This all didn’t seem to be a much better situation than what he’d thought, but Russell heaved a relieved sigh when I told him. And the blood that laced the edge of her sliced dress — well, there wasn’t a deep wound there. It seemed Mr. Armentrout had either been just trying to scare them with a waving knife or too drunk to do much real damage, thank goodness. Russell found some bandages and antiseptic I could use. For the wounds she had, and they weren’t anything to sneeze at — I really still felt everything should be looked at by a doctor, frankly — I was still surprised at the sheer amount of blood all over the place. Did that mean Mr. Armentrout was hurt too? I was surprised that the thought of his blood didn’t make me feel sympathetic at all. I didn’t mention these ideas to Russell, but I did point out that she wasn’t hurt as badly as he’d thought.