On Snowden Mountain

by Jeri Watts

  As I spoke, I realized that I was handling this situation very matter-of-factly, as if I were used to blood and violence, as if I knew at my age that she wasn’t injured badly, when in fact I had no sure knowledge. Was it dealing with Mama in Baltimore that had made me push my helper self to the front as needed? I didn’t get to think of an answer, as Russell’s voice broke through my pondering.

  “Guess this’ll teach me to go off half-cocked,” he said. “Sorry to trouble you.”

  “I still think she should be seen by a doctor; I’m not saying these are small things, just not as bad as you feared. I’ll sit with her,” I offered. “If you’re sure he’s not coming back.”

  “He’s likkered up,” Russell said. “Won’t be back for days.” He didn’t move toward the door, though.

  “The doctor.”

  Russell shook his head. “I’ll walk you home.”

  “Not yet.” As I said it, I braced, sure I would again hear the edges in his voice. But he merely nodded and joined me in tending to his mother. She wouldn’t look at me, kept her eyes closed, but she smiled when my fingers trailed through her hair as I pulled out bits of crockery. I grabbed a comb, the one bit of “frippery,” from the dresser that stood against the wall. As I smoothed her hair, Russell finished washing her face. His features got a set look to them, and I heard him murmur, “This ain’t going to happen again. I won’t let it happen again.” I ignored his talk — why would this time be different? I plaited her gray-streaked hair, and then he and I left her to sleep.

  It was when we stepped out into the night air that I realized I’d been unconsciously blocking the smell of his cabin. Not just the blood, but the smell of violence, the odor of decay. And the faint scent of mint. I shuddered and quickly fell into step behind Russell.

  We were halfway back to Aunt Pearl’s when he sniffed and touched my arm. “Be still.”

  For more than four minutes, by my estimation — four minutes when I feared Rooster Armentrout would pounce on us, attacking me for daring to come back to his world — we stood. And then a family of deer crossed the path in front of us. The male and female were almost interchangeable to me at first, but then the male’s size loomed clearer in the moonlight. Twin fawns were high-stepping along behind. A slight smell, of fur and dirt and something I couldn’t touch with my mind, filtered through the night to fill my nostrils. There was not one sound.

  “How did you know they were there?” I asked.

  Russell shrugged. “Just knew.”

  It was only after I’d gotten in bed, after I’d said my prayers for my daddy’s quick return from the army and my mama’s quick return from her fears, after I hastily added Russell and his mother in my requests to God, only then that I thought about the night. Russell had come to me for help. Surely any of the mountain people would’ve been a better choice. Surely, they knew about his family.

  I remembered. He said, “You already know.” So maybe he meant the others didn’t. I turned over, restless in my sheets. Maybe, though, it didn’t matter whether people knew or not. Maybe it was something different from that.

  Out of all the people here, folks he’d grown up with, people he knew from all of his life, he’d come to me. And I realized I wasn’t the only outsider in these mountains.

  IT WAS LATE for making apple butter, I guess, but it was already November 7 when Aunt Pearl got to it. I’d never participated in the ritual, though Mama told me about it once, one of the few stories I could remember her sharing of her past, a story of romantic days lazily stirring a large copper pot, set just so over a warming fire on a crisp fall day.

  It was not as Mama had described it. The stirring was anything but lazy, my arms feeling as if they’d break off at the shoulder, my turns away from the stirring filled with gathering more wood, hauling sugar, working, working always. The fire raged beneath the enormous cauldron, and the air was filled with popping and hissing and crackling. My skirt was singed and blackened in a matter of moments and my face masked by the rising ashes. The air lay heavy and acrid beside the pot, too warm and too close. But not a step away, a chill sliced the air; in short, there was no comfort in the apple buttering.

  Mama sat, a shawl and blanket draped around her. Aunt Pearl had hauled her out when the proceedings began. Mama didn’t smile or look about in wonder at the ritual I thought she’d enjoyed those years before. Her nose ran a bit, and every once in a while, she reached up with her linen handkerchief and wiped daintily. She would never have let her nose run one bit back home.

  Aunt Pearl and I were reduced to wiping our noses on our sleeves — we didn’t have time to pull out our handkerchiefs, and they would’ve been filthy in no time if we had. Perhaps making apple butter is simply not meant to be done by two women alone. It certainly seemed that way to me.

  “Best keep that fire high,” Aunt Pearl directed. “May take more wood.”

  I turned to drag another scramble of sticks over. A crunch at the edge of the woods, the woods nearest the village proper, announced a visitor. A woman stood, her dainty feet placed together carefully. She was dressed as if she were going to a dance, her frilly dress showing to advantage a generous bosom, her tiny feet encased in patent-leather pumps. Silky nylons, sheerer than anything Mama’d worn since before Hitler invaded Europe, highlighted shapely calves and delicate ankles. She wore deep-red lipstick on pouty lips and blush on her cheeks. I was sure she would smell like springtime; I hoped she wouldn’t come close enough to smell how much I reeked of the fire and the apple butter. Not as bad as skunk, but not like springtime.

  I thought she was beautiful.

  “Where’s those logs?” Aunt Pearl snapped. She grabbed some of the sticks from where they lay at my feet, then stopped when she followed my gaze.

  “Moselle.” She nodded a greeting to the stranger.

  The stranger’s words gushed out, in a deep drawl, sugary and sweet. “I declare, I couldn’t believe my ears when Rucker told me your sister was home from the big city. And look-a here!” She eased toward me. She had carefully plucked eyebrows, manicured nails, and curled hair. She looked so chic, so cosmopolitan. I felt enraptured. I also felt embarrassed; she, whoever she was, looking as if she were straight from the cover of a magazine, while I was sweaty and red-faced and wearing one of the dowdy sack-like dresses Aunt Pearl deemed appropriate for work days in Snowden.

  There I was, a mess, a downright mess, and she was looking at me and smiling.

  “I’m Ellen Hollingsworth,” I said. I couldn’t help it; a word came to me that I had never thought before: Damn.

  “Charmed, I am sure,” she replied. She came closer, put out her hand, and grazed my own. “I’m Moselle Toms, and I knew your mama when she was your size. We’re just about the same age.”

  Aunt Pearl’s mutter snaked from beside the cauldron of apple butter. “Are not. You’re closer to my age.”

  “Martha?” Moselle Toms baby-stepped closer to Mama, her eyes squinting for recognition. There was none.

  “My mama’s —”

  “A trifle under the weather,” Aunt Pearl finished for me as she planted her large hips as a barrier between Moselle Toms and Mama. “Can we do something for you, Moselle?” she asked.

  The stranger laughed, a light sound that trilled like a bird. “No, no. Don’t let me keep you from your work. I was just out and about and thought I’d stop by.

  “I’ll come back to see you, Ellen Hollingsworth,” she said. “Maybe Rucker and I will invite you over for dinner one night soon, and we can have a real visit.” She sauntered off down the trail, wiggling her fingers back at me.

  Aunt Pearl slung a log under the kettle.

  “She’s beautiful.” I got no answer. “I didn’t know Mama had any friends still around here. She never talked about here.”

  “Moselle Toms is no friend of anyone. Best keep that in mind, child.”

  Daddy’s next letter arrived that afternoon while we were still sweating over the apple buttering. Mr. Pritchard delivered it
around four. Most days he didn’t stop at Aunt Pearl’s at all. She didn’t get mail from anyone, apparently. But every time there was a letter from Daddy, Mr. Pritchard came as soon as he could.

  Mr. Pritchard put those men on the packet boat to shame; he took his mailman role seriously. He wore a gray uniform with a badge that said U. S. POST OFFICE. He had everything that could shine polished and all manner of creases that might’ve even rivaled Daddy’s uniform. He got a fair number of prickers stuck on that uniform (I guess the paths were narrow on his delivery route in some places) and a lot of dust and mud on his feet, so he wasn’t too spiffy-looking from the knees down, but from the knees up, he was as dapper as they come.

  I suppose men who wear uniforms take pride in them; before he left, my father had pressed his uniform, though it was “only a private’s,” he’d pointed out, as if to keep himself from getting too proud. Still, he’d put a crease in the khaki pants so sharp, it seemed you could slice meat with it; the long-sleeved shirt matched too, and he often talked about how it would look when he wore it in parades after he returned from the war.

  He never talked about how it would look when he was fighting in the war. And now, he never wrote about it in his letters.

  “Here you go, Ellen,” Mr. Pritchard called. I ran to the road, leaving the apple butter behind. I snatched the letter from his hand and turned as I ripped open the envelope.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Thank you, Mr. Pritchard.”

  He tipped his hat, held the brim in his hand as he wiped his brow. The slight scent of a nutmeggish aftershave tussled for space with the aroma of cooking apple butter. I sniffed. Sadly, the apple butter won. “You and your aunt making some apple butter, eh?”

  I nodded.

  “Pearl’s known around these parts for the finest apple butter ever spread on a drop biscuit.”

  “I’m not going to take one bite. It stinks to high heaven.”

  He put his hat back on his head. “Funny. I’ve always thought it smelled like . . . I don’t know, like home. And tastes like all the colors of fall, trapped in a jar.”

  I looked at him closely, surprised to hear such poetic descriptions from a mailman. But he was very serious. “Well, you can have my share,” I offered.

  “Might take you up on that.” He laughed. “Might just.”

  I marched off, mentally daring Aunt Pearl to try to stop me from reading my letter that very moment, to force me back to the hateful heat and labor near the fire. She said nothing.

  I deliberately headed into the woods at the back of the house, the woods that climbed the slope of the mountain. And I climbed a ways, just to make sure I had privacy. I didn’t look at how far I went or quite where I went; I just climbed away from Aunt Pearl and that stupid apple buttering.

  I looked at the envelope. It might’ve been from Baltimore for all it looked like every other envelope of the world. And yet it was special, because it had my daddy’s big, loopy cursive scrawled across it.

  I might be angry with my daddy for leaving Mama and me, but I’d no intention of letting Aunt Pearl know it.

  I found a gnarled old oak to lean against and slid my back down until I was sitting at the base so I could read the letter there. The tree spread out a canopy of fingers above me, each of the branches clasping a clump of brown shriveling leaves. It was cold on the floor of the forest, but I didn’t care, I was so excited by what the letter might hold.

  I scanned it, looking for words like coming home or Baltimore or save you. But they weren’t there. I sighed and watched the letter flutter to my lap. My eyes traveled up to the tree-lined sky-ceiling. The clear, crisp blues of November slatted through the mostly barren branches in a dazzling puzzle pattern. It reminded me of the dot-to-dots I used to fill out — always looking like a jumbled mass only to miraculously metamorphose into a clear outline. I was too sad, however, to connect the dots to see what outline lay above me.

  I picked up the letter and sniffed it. It smelled like Mr. Pritchard, a mix of nutmeg and sweat. I didn’t smell Daddy. I sighed and then I read.

  Dear Ellie,

  I miss you so. The routine of barracks life goes on. My idea of war, gleaned from books, sounded brave and fearless and full of daring. How stupid of me. So far it’s mostly tedium and boredom interspersed with periods of grueling hard work. The plan for us seems uncertain.

  Things are very different from what I thought all of this would be like. I am sorry to put this on you, daughter . . . but you and I both are having to learn some hard truths. It is time for us both to . . . well . . . to grow up.

  I know this is unfair for me to say to you when I am the one who ran off. I would come back and face this with you if I could, my Ellen. I cannot. But you are lucky. I know you don’t think so, but you are.

  Your last letter hurt me, Ellie. I don’t mean to ignore your feelings. I know you’re sad and worried. But you’ll be fine with your aunt Pearl. There’s a lot to admire in her if you’ll only stir yourself to find it. I didn’t stir myself soon enough; I stir myself now and see it in your letters. As for your mother, she’s a wonderful woman who is stronger than she thinks. At least I hope so. You, with Pearl, must lead her to that kind of thinking. I must help her too, when I return.

  It isn’t that I don’t care about you both or don’t worry about you. I worry about you every minute, somewhere in my mind. But I also know that the world’s been cracked open, with little girls no older than you left orphans, taking care of themselves in ways I hope you can’t ever imagine. I must stick with the path I’m on and try to stop all of the anger and hate of the adult world from taking away the world of children.

  You are capable and you are safe. If you’re unhappy, well, you must learn, darling, to find your happiness in yourself.

  Love, Daddy

  I wanted to ball up the letter and throw it away. I knew I would regret that, though. I simply let it drop in my lap, thinking of all I wanted to read that was left unsaid, and all that I didn’t want to read that was in the letter.

  How could he? He was my answer, my savior, my salvation out of this place. Oh, sure, he wrote pretty — pretty as those sonnets he read to us from Shakespeare on snowy Sunday afternoons — but where did his pretty words leave me? He said Mama was stronger than she thought, but she wasn’t trying to fall apart — she just was. He spoke of children orphaned, but who was more orphaned than I was — my father off with the army, my mother adrift in a shadow land more unreachable than Daddy?

  We’d been here just two months, but it felt like two years. How could it be such a little bit of time but feel so long? And how could he know so little of Mama and what she was like? I might resent Aunt Pearl for much, but at least she knew what Mama needed. Which was not to be left, alone, with me to care for her.

  A sound skittered into my brain, a scrabbling nearby. I sat very still, my tears stopped from falling by a sudden fear. I listened closely. I closed my eyes and bargained with God. Please don’t let whatever it is eat me and I promise I’ll be nicer to Aunt Pearl. A smell drifted along, a smell wafting the way odors did in the cartoons I’d seen at movie theaters, an odor hanging at one level, pulsing a bit in the air.

  I eased open my eyes and turned my head quickly. I saw a rabbit-size skunk thrashing in a snare farther up the mountain, between two sycamore trees. I almost laughed in relief, me scared of a skunk, and a trapped one at that, but then I heard leaves crunching, and I pulled back into myself and watched.

  It was Russell. He walked swiftly and glanced over his shoulder twice before he knelt beside the skunk. It thumped madly at the ground with its back feet and raised its tail.

  “I know you’re scared,” he muttered. “Don’t make it worse.”

  His large hands grabbed the animal in one swoop, and he caught the tail and pointed it down with one hand and arched the neck with the other so the mouth couldn’t snap at him. I’d never seen hands splay to such a degree — they looked enormous. Then, when the animal shivered and held fairly still in h
is hands, his fingers moved to the snare’s loop, and he quickly released the leg held in the knot.

  The skunk trundled off into the underbrush, away from Russell, now left coated in a smell so strong I thought I could see it, as if it were a blue haze surrounding him. He watched the disappearing skunk, and I thought I heard him whisper, “Run.”

  More leaves crackled as Russell rose to his feet. His father appeared, looked at the empty snare, and backhanded his son. “Idiot.”

  Russell seemed to flinch from the burning word more than he did from the smack. “I’m sorry, Pa, it got away from me. Was too fast.”

  “Stupid idiot.” Mr. Armentrout flailed his gun at Russell, who dodged it smoothly. “Sorry son of a —” He interrupted himself, “Get out there and find something else we can skin. You lost him — you find one what can take its place.” Mr. Armentrout stalked up the mountain.

  Russell stood for a moment, staring after his father. His name rose in my throat, but then it was swallowed back into place. I didn’t speak. Not until Russell stalked off himself.

  Then I reached out and closed my fingers around the letter from my daddy. I clasped it and slowly, carefully, I smoothed it out, folded it neatly, and put it in my pocket.

  THE NEXT MONDAY, the youngest children had already surrounded Miss Spencer with their slate work before Russell arrived. “You’re late,” she announced as he slid into place with his reading group. Bobby leaned over and shared his slate with Russell.

  Miss Spencer rose from the tiny chair she’d perched on and towered over Russell and Bobby. She swallowed every few words, since Russell smelled strongly of skunk again. “We’re spelling words we must learn. You take the next one, Russell. Bobby already has it written here. C-A-T. What does that spell?”

  His large hands wiped his cheek and his face puzzled up. “I know that’s a C, and I know that next one there is A. But I don’t remember the sounds . . . I forgot. And I ain’t seen that other letter yet.”