On Snowden Mountain

by Jeri Watts

  Miss Spencer sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “You are just not here enough, Russell.”

  He shook his head. “No, ma’am.” His voice was as quiet as hers.

  She went on with the lesson.

  A few minutes later, we switched, the lower reading group returning to the pews to do their seat work. Sara Ann, Polly, and I read the assigned chapter from the history book quietly. I read carefully — Miss Spencer asked comprehension questions at the end of every chapter, and I didn’t want her to say anything to me in that defeated voice.

  Her words washed over me, although she was talking to the other group. “Now, I’m going to give each of you a piece of paper, and I want you to write a thank-you note. You should be very careful with it and think of words you know to write on this paper. If you need help, raise your hand and I will tell you how to spell what you want. Mr. Lockburn over at the paper mill in Big Island saved us this one ream, and we must tell him how much it means to us.” I looked up from the page long enough to see her handing out the paper, frugally halved so none would be wasted.

  After she’d given out the last of the carefully allotted paper to the smaller children and Russell, she turned to my group. Obviously, we were going to write our notes later — we were continuing with our lesson, the one we’d had for homework.

  “What is the reason indentured servants came to this country?” Miss Spencer looked over our faces, and I could see her readying to call on Polly. Polly, poor thing, just didn’t know what was happening in the lesson. Or any lesson. She was what my teachers back in Baltimore referred to as a “word caller.” When she read, she pronounced everything like a talking dictionary, but the words bounced out of her mouth and out the window as far as I could tell — not one stayed in her mind to make any sense. I shot my hand into the air and, as I answered, Polly’s shoulders relaxed.

  After another question, Miss Spencer assigned us the next few pages, then rose to check on the younger students (and Russell) with the thank-you notes. I leaned over to Polly. “Just try to say the words out loud in your head when you’re reading. Or let your lips move. Maybe that’ll help.”

  She whispered back. “I try to say them in my head and I think I’m remembering everything, but then I come to the end of the paragraph and I know I can’t pull up one thing.”

  A shriek interrupted Polly.

  “What in the world?” Miss Spencer’s hand dropped onto the paper in front of Russell, and she snatched it with dismay. “What are you doing? Wasting paper with drawings? How . . . how could you? You can’t even come on a regular basis, or learn your alphabet or your numbers, but you can waste precious paper like . . . like this.” Her voice shook with her disappointment, and she waved the paper over her head.

  Paper had become more and more precious as the war went on; here, in Snowden, I wrote my letters to Daddy in pencil in hopes he would erase the words and use the paper again. Aunt Pearl had told me to do that, but so far he had not followed my request. Even so, with paper scarce and precious, Miss Spencer’s reaction to Russell’s drawing on the notepaper seemed a bit extreme.

  There was so much in this place I just did not understand.

  “Go to the front of the room,” Miss Spencer ordered Russell. Her hands, clenched at her sides, shook and her face reddened. Russell paced with measured steps to the front of the building and stood beside our group. He put out a hand. Miss Spencer marched to her desk, grabbed her ruler, and smacked it across his open palm. The ruler rose and fell twice more. Russell didn’t flinch or cry out or react in any way.

  Moments later, as welts rose on his calloused flesh, we were dismissed to recess. Miss Spencer stayed inside. It all seemed a ridiculously extreme price to pay for drawing instead of writing, even if paper was in short supply.

  I found Russell at the far edge of the churchyard, his shoulder pushed hard against an old tulip poplar. Pity washed over me, and I forgave him all over again for calling my mother crazy. Illiterate, unloved — even the teacher didn’t like him. I put out my hand, touched his shoulder slightly, and he turned.

  “Don’t,” he commanded. I pulled my fingers back from the fire of his word. I thought he meant not to touch him, but then the word pierced my brain and I knew he meant for me not to give him pity.

  Chills overtook me and my teeth chattered. I hurried inside to the stove. Miss Spencer passed me on her way out, and her face was set with hard features. How, when I first met her, how could I have thought she looked gray? She was filled with all of the angry colors of the world, purple and black and deep blue. Miss Spencer was like an ugly bruise right here in Snowden.

  Why shouldn’t I give Russell pity? I thought. He didn’t have a shred of dignity, even if he didn’t cry when he got his hand cracked. I huddled beside the wood stove, and gradually my shivering eased. I stepped toward the pew where I sat with Sara Ann and Polly, and my foot touched the crumpled paper Miss Spencer had thrown to the floor.

  I retrieved it, smoothed it out, and looked in astonishment. It was recognizable; it was shaded and well fashioned; it was good. The image on the paper, drawn with a pencil to look like a charcoal drawing, practically walked off the page. It was a deer and her babies — perhaps the deer I’d seen with him coming from his mother’s house, the twin fawns spotted and furred.

  I put the drawing in my school bag and gazed out the window at the solitary figure in the distance, shouldering the tree.

  Mama was bad that night. Aunt Pearl couldn’t even lift her off the bed. Each limb hung like a sack of flour.

  “You’re not getting the better of me, Martha,” Aunt Pearl huffed. “I’ll not watch and do nothing as you waste away in a bed.” But in the end, Mama did get the better of Aunt Pearl. My mother’s passive stubbornness reminded me of disobedient children I used to see at the market who went limp when their mothers didn’t let them have their way. But while a mother can lift a twenty-or thirty-pound child, Aunt Pearl just couldn’t get a grip on Mama, even though she was getting tinier every day.

  Finally, we just left the door ajar and sat in the living room with the oil lamp.

  I saw Mama’s feet, motionless, near the foot of the bed, encased in crooked stockings. The crooked stockings reminded me of Russell’s crooked letters in the dust. And of his words.

  Was Mama crazy? Would I be too?

  Aunt Pearl cleared her throat, interrupting my thoughts. “I need to apologize to you.”

  I looked up, still a little caught in my thoughts from the day. So I merely said, “Apologize?”

  “I’ve done wrong to you, child. Technically, I suppose, it’s a legal matter, but since I’m in a guardian situation, I don’t suppose anyone would question that.” She put down the handwork she’d been busy with and looked me in the eye. “I’ve been reading your letters from your father.” She put up a hand as I began to protest. “Never before you, Ellen. Only after. You have a tendency to leave them scattered about,” she said, “as you take a mood and, I admit, I take advantage of that to read them.

  “That has been wrong of me. But I want to speak with you about them. And your father.”

  I sat, waiting. I don’t know why I didn’t rail at her; I wanted to. But I think watching her fight to get my mother up that night, and seeing her fail, seeing Russell humiliated, worrying I would become my mother — it all just sort of piled on me. Or maybe I was waiting for the right words to spit at her. I don’t know. She went on.

  “I admit I haven’t always liked your father. He’s a spit-and-polish man; men like that are good to look at but rarely have any substance to them. I know, oh, I know.” She looked at her hands. “I warned your mother, but she did not listen. And to be fair, I warned your father of the sad spells your mother has. He didn’t really listen. I should have made it clearer, I imagine. But I let it be.

  “I suppose love is like that.” She sighed and then looked directly at me and smiled. Aunt Pearl had rarely smiled at me. “His letters seem to show a new man, your father. He’s chang
ed. And for the better. I’ve heard war can do that, and I just wanted you to know I think well of him. I am sorry to have snooped, and I won’t do that again. I’d like to read his letters, but I’ll only do so with your permission.

  “Still, I did want you to know I think better of him. I think he’s matured, grown wiser. I doubt you care much of my opinion but, nevertheless, you have it. With my apology.”

  I nodded; I had no words. I was stunned, I supposed, at what she’d done and all she’d said. The biggest thing I’d heard was what she and my father had known about Mama.

  I realized, sitting there with Aunt Pearl in the small circle of light cast by the lamp, that this was why I’d been so angry with Russell. Perhaps this is why I’d felt so angry reading my father’s letters. Why I felt angry with Aunt Pearl for having nice plates, why I suspected her of being a spy.

  It all boiled down to my fear of being just like my mother. I wasn’t much like her in the looks department. But I had some of her mannerisms. I was sure. I’d been watching. Not before, not when we lived in Baltimore. There, she was fun and merry and loved people and brightness and parties. She had my father’s heart; other men watched her too, I’d seen.

  But maybe, back then in our old life, I’d already begun to notice how much my parents valued things. The parties, the people who had importance. My father bragged when he had fitted shoes on someone from the mayor of Baltimore’s office, but he whined when he’d spent much of the day fitting the boy who wore braces on his legs and feet, even though he told us the boy’s shoes appeared to be helping him walk more sturdily.

  My mother sometimes had what she called “a spell of the sad.” The spells always seemed to follow a time of happiness, when Mama would be so excited; she’d be bouncier and livelier than the other mothers I knew. In my mind, I saw her as sort of like the rubber balls all of us kids had. For Mama, every up had a down, every high had a low. She needed Daddy to be the pavement for her to keep bouncing back up. Without Daddy, I wasn’t sure Mama would bounce.

  I suppose, sitting in Snowden, I knew Aunt Pearl never needed anyone to help her with her feelings. She depended on herself. My mother insisted I read “important” books I couldn’t understand, even when I told her I didn’t understand them and that I preferred Nancy Drew. My parents left me at home some nights when they went to parties, even though I’d told them I was scared to be by myself. I knew, though I did not tell them, that because of my mother’s strangeness, I had no friends besides the ones between the pages of a book. And I knew no one else’s parents left them alone at twelve whether they were scared, as I was, or fearless.

  Nor had they been left at age eight. That was the first time I’d awakened to realize my parents weren’t in the house and I was alone. My father told me the next morning that I must have been dreaming — but then he admitted that I hadn’t been. I think he only confessed because I kept looking at him without saying anything. He muttered they’d just gone to a party for a couple of hours. But I knew my father didn’t take my mother out to parties always. He said that’s what they did. But sometimes, I think, they went so he could get her away from a day where she’d been alone (even though I’d been with her all day) and she needed something to make her bounce. I have no idea what they did to make her feel better. But she would be. Better.

  For a while.

  I started to be much quieter at school. I started spending even more time reading even if I didn’t understand and my eyes merely passed over the words. And I very much enjoyed the company of my mother and my father. When I could get it.

  But there was no enjoyment when we were alone and my mother would start to get a look in her eyes that scared me more than the sounds I heard from the wind in the trees, a look that was empty and hollow. A look that had not a bit of bounce.

  It was the look I saw in her after Daddy went off to war, running away from us. I guess he just got tired of being responsible for her bounce. And when he was gone, I’d run out of the groceries I’d begged from our neighbors. I’d already gone through everything in the house: milk, graham crackers, the pot roast I tried to cook that charred so badly I couldn’t even cut into it, and, as much as it pained me, I had to throw it out. I’d actually gone to the store for that roast, knowing there would be talk about us when the neighborhood saw me shopping and not my mother.

  That look was what greeted me now as I left Aunt Pearl in the room below and looked in the small mirror in my tiny bedroom. Empty eyes, hands that fluttered sometimes like a bird’s wings caught in a trap (such as when Miss Spencer called on me when I’d been reading and was caught unawares), a jumpiness if I thought Mr. Armentrout might be anywhere about.

  I put out the light Aunt Pearl left on in my room and didn’t even bother to undress. Another likeness to my mother, who didn’t care what she wore when she was like this.

  I pulled the covers over me and closed my eyes to shut out the possible reality. What if Russell was right? What if my mother was crazy? And I was crazy too?

  The next day after school, November 10, I found Russell scratching in some mud on Snowden Mountain. I was hustling down the overgrown path, thinking if I got back from delivering cider and applesauce to the Sensabaugh family, I could sneak a snack before Aunt Pearl came in from boiling laundry. Aunt Pearl was careful with her distribution of food from the pantry. It made me wonder even more what she did to earn money. Maybe she made white lightning. I’d read about that once. Powerful stuff. It must be illegal. Maybe I’d helped her make a batch when she pretended we were making apple butter. I decided to take a peek in the pantry when I poked around for a snack.

  I topped a slight rise in the trail, and there he was, squatting with a long stick in his hands, his face screwed up with thinking, scattered undergrowth pitched askew where he’d cleared a space.

  I moved toward him. “Russell?”

  He stood and kicked a foot over his scratching, but not before I saw a few numbers. “Hey,” he said in greeting.

  “Doing some arithmetic?” I asked.

  He kicked his long foot some more. “Nah. Just doodling.” He shoved his hair out of his eyes, the yellow strands falling back as soon as he dropped his hand.

  “I like to doodle too.” I picked up the stick and knelt. I scratched the number three in the dirt at my knee.

  Russell squatted again.

  I added a plus sign and wrote a two, then handed Russell the stick.

  He drew the equals sign, put his fingers to his lips to make me stay quiet, and then gazed off through the bare trees. He gazed and he gazed and he gazed.

  My stomach rumbled. I blushed when Russell turned suddenly, but he pointed to the path, and I spotted a large brown rabbit who scampered into the brush.

  “I saw you let a skunk go once, a skunk about that size. Why did you let it go?”

  Russell looked surprised. “Don’t matter.”

  “But why?” I persisted.

  He turned his back to me. “I said it don’t matter.” He dropped the stick and lumbered off.

  I darted after him. “But, Russell, I already know why you ought to catch them. Bobby told me. So why let them go?”

  He sighed and faced me. “They kill bugs and small varmints. They got a purpose. Should be left alone to serve that purpose.” Russell seemed to warm to the topic. “And even though they eat almost anything, they got their peculiarities. Won’t eat a caterpillar plain. They roll it to get the hair off so’s they don’t have to eat fuzz.” He seemed to run out of steam when he saw me listening closely. “Besides, they’re kind of pretty.”

  He walked on, nodded toward the nearby peak. “That’s Three Sisters’ Knob. See if you can guess why it be called that.”

  “I don’t know.” The name reminded me of the three in the scratchings we’d done in the dirt. “Hey, you didn’t finish that arithmetic problem,” I said.

  Russell pushed at a branch crossing the path, held it as I slipped past. “No.”

  I plopped onto a fallen log and sur
prised myself, saying, “Well, I could teach you.”

  He stared at the scattered leaves at my feet.

  “It isn’t like I’m doing anything else,” I went on. “I don’t have any friends in this horrible place.”

  “I don’t take to charity.” He picked up a stick, lofted it up over a small patch of brush. “Have to teach you something in return.”

  “Fine,” I agreed. I couldn’t imagine what he could teach me.

  The bargain seemed to make him happy. He said, “Let’s do some now.”

  I sighed as my stomach rumbled more. Too late for a snack; Aunt Pearl was through with the boiling for sure.

  I scratched Russell some problems in a space we cleared, but each one overwhelmed him. I talked and talked, and he shook his head over and over. It seemed hopeless. As we worked, I noticed that he didn’t smell. How nice! And how ashamed I felt that I’d only concentrated on his ability to grasp math. I rose and walked down the mountain toward the banks of the James. Russell followed, shambling along in a loose, apologetic way. I noticed two deer, drinking hesitantly by the river. I was determined to try math again.

  “Look, Russell. See the deer? If one were to leave, how many would there be?”

  “Four.”

  I turned to him. “No. There are two deer and if one leaves, there’ll be one left.”

  “But there ain’t two deer there,” he said, his voice soft as he raised his finger to point. “There’s three hiding in the brush.”

  I looked closely and saw what he saw. Three fawns, pressed at the edge of shadow and sun, waiting for a signal that they could drink. I nodded slowly. “Five take away one is four. You got it right.” A smile spread across his face, just as one spread across mine.

  I sat in my room that night, unable to sleep. I’d had warm milk, flipped through one of Aunt Pearl’s recipe books (she didn’t seem to value Nancy Drew any more than Mama did), even counted sheep. But I was too agitated to drift off.