On Snowden Mountain

by Jeri Watts

  It was Russell. Why in the world did I offer to teach him? He often smelled horrible, and he didn’t even make the effort to come to school. He was pitiful.

  I pulled the quilt to my chin. Maybe that was it. He was pitiful. So what if I didn’t teach him well? So what if he knew about Mama? It didn’t matter if he knew because he didn’t matter. He didn’t matter at all.

  Which meant that I might not matter either.

  YOU MEAN I got another letter?”

  It had been less than a week since the last letter from Daddy; my fear began to rise. Had something happened to him? It was only November 12 now, not even Thanksgiving; somehow, I’d just assumed nothing could happen to him before Christmas at the very first. It just couldn’t before a big holiday. Plus, I’d just received a letter, so how could I get another one?

  “The U.S. Post Office never lies.” Mr. Pritchard dug through his big sack.

  “Here ’tis.” He smiled as he handed over the envelope. It was a square envelope that looked like the ones Aunt Pearl gave me to mail my letters to Daddy.

  “There’s no stamp on it,” I said.

  “Well, don’t really need a stamp to send a letter to a neighbor. I saw a person fixing to deliver it, and I offered to bring it myself.”

  As my heart eased, I tried to look scandalized. “Mr. Pritchard. Would the United States Post Office approve of delivering mail without proper postage?”

  He looked askance, blushed, and turned. “The postmaster general don’t control everything I do. My regards to Pearl. And your mother.”

  I smiled and waved a farewell. It was chilly, too chilly to take my missive to the woods to read. I slipped the mystery envelope beneath my plain woolen coat and hurried inside.

  “Where you been, child?” Aunt Pearl carried a bowl of steaming soup, aiming her steps toward Mama’s room. “You know, I could use some help around here.”

  For some reason, I didn’t want to tell her about the time I’d been spending with Russell. Maybe I thought she’d tell me I was wasting my time, that he was just too dumb to learn. Maybe I worried she’d instruct me on the right way to teach him. Or maybe I knew she’d ask me why I was making the effort to teach a boy who smelled like skunks — and I didn’t like the answer I’d come up with, about neither Russell nor I mattering.

  I felt sure Aunt Pearl would have a ready lecture on that kind of talk.

  I pulled up some kind of answer. “I was just, uh, looking at how pretty Snowden is. Fall is a pretty time.”

  Aunt Pearl’s large face softened. “It’s a sight. I used to have a hard time with chores in autumn myself.” Her look shaped back to the normal one, less soft, more back-to-business. “But there’s not much left to see, Ellen. The leaves have mostly dropped.”

  “They’re still beautiful when they’ve fallen. You can kick them with your feet and pile them up. Some of them crackle just a little, and some have this enormous crunch.” I realized as I spoke that what I said was true. Russell’d done all of these things as we’d walked. I’d tried to teach him more of the alphabet, but he had surrounded me with the sounds of fall. He’d said, “Listen,” as he took different leaves in his hands, leaves of gold and red and earthy brown, and crushed them close to our ears. I’d liked the leaves and the forest that day. I really had.

  “Uh, Mr. Pritchard sent his regards,” I said, changing the subject.

  Aunt Pearl blushed. I clutched the letter beneath my coat and rushed up the stairs. Aunt Pearl looked foolish, reddening like that. I shook my head as I took the letter out and put it on the bed. Aunt Pearl was surely beyond romance. And so was Mr. Pritchard. They both had to be forty at least.

  I hung my coat up, to make the wonder of it all last just a little longer, and then I sat on the bed. What neighbor could be sending a letter to me?

  I slid the flap open, and a stiff invitation touched my hand. It was scented (something pretty strong — gardenias?), and it had painted bluebells edging the border. Very fancy. I scanned it. Moselle Toms invited me to join her and her husband, Rucker, for dinner on Thanksgiving. I checked the calendar I kept on the small desk. Two weeks away. I could imagine dinner with Moselle Toms. She’d have fancy china and real silver. Mama had told me about a really fancy party she’d been to once, and I thought Moselle Toms would have a Thanksgiving like that: fancy little place cards and finger bowls and peas with baby onions. The discussion at the table would be about books and plays and who knew what else. And the whole house would smell of fresh-cooked turkey, simmering yams, and fresh yeast rolls.

  Thanksgiving dinner at Aunt Pearl’s? Well, she’d have pretty china, I’d have to give her that. I loved using those pretty dishes every single day. I felt special each time we sat down to a meal. But as for the rest of the dinner, I felt sure it wouldn’t measure up. She’d have boiled potatoes probably and no pumpkin pie. The conversation would be what it always was — nonexistent. All our meals were silent. Mama pushed her food around on her plate, I swallowed as quietly as I could, and Aunt Pearl chewed her food automatically, with no apparent pleasure or interest, just eating to stay alive.

  I eased down the steps and stood at the kitchen table. Aunt Pearl was peeling potatoes. She looked up when I cleared my throat. Her meaty hands dropped to her lap, giving me her attention. I blinked twice.

  “I got an invitation in the mail,” I began.

  Aunt Pearl said nothing.

  “It’s from Moselle Toms. She’s invited me to dinner on Thanksgiving.”

  Aunt Pearl sniffed, picked up the potato lying on the table, and attacked that poor potato as if it were a killer. I waited.

  “Your decisions are your own,” she said. She didn’t look at me.

  She didn’t even try to talk me into staying at the house for Thanksgiving. Didn’t she care if I was gone for a day traditionally spent with family? I really was an orphan. Only a stranger was kind to me. I felt a wild anger roiling in my stomach and snapped, “Fine, I’m going.”

  “You’ll need to write her your acceptance.”

  “I’m very well aware of what I need to do in polite society. We had real society in Baltimore.” I stomped out the door, my hand gripping the invitation so tightly, it all but ripped in my hand. I had no coat on now, but I marched on, aiming to put distance between hateful old Aunt Pearl and me. I kept my eyes on my feet, feet that were determinedly gobbling ground. My steps swallowed the yard, swallowed the path. They only stopped devouring distance when I all but walked into Moselle Toms.

  “You got your invitation, I see.” She pointed to my hand.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, then you’ve come to accept!”

  I looked behind her and realized I was apparently in front of her house. I’d crossed the bridge to the other side of the river; I’d never even been that far from the village of Snowden. I took a look: a trim little cottage with a white picket fence surrounding it. It was nice but not the mansion I’d expected from all the airs Moselle Toms had put on.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “Oh, do come in for a moment. And you mustn’t ‘ma’am’ me,” she said. “Why, we’re such good friends already — you just call me Moselle, you hear?” She opened the gate. “I was just wishing someone would come by for a visit and you appeared. It’s like a wish come true!”

  I followed her — it seemed the polite thing to do — but I was already regretting my rash decision. We weren’t good friends already; I’d met her only once. And suddenly, it mattered a great deal to me that Aunt Pearl disliked her. I reminded myself that Aunt Pearl had not insisted I refuse the invitation, and followed Moselle Toms into her home.

  There was a fire in the grate, and the room we entered felt warm. The air reeked of perfumes, different ones, as if the room held each one it had been exposed to. I tried to breathe through my mouth as I perched on the edge of a delicate straight-backed chair, the one Moselle Toms pointed me to; the legs seemed terribly thin, and I wasn’t sure it could hold me. Moselle Toms (why couldn’t
I just call her Moselle as she’d asked me to do?) eased onto a similar chair that caught the fading afternoon light. It looked as if it might break too.

  “I hear you’ve been spending some time with that Armentrout boy.”

  I nodded dumbly and continued huffing through my mouth.

  She squinted in thought, patted her curls into place, and nodded as she decided to speak again. “Now, I’m not one to speak ill of folks, but you really ought to be careful how much you see him. You know, his family isn’t — well, they’re just not nice folks.”

  “My mama was friends with his mama, Mrs., uh, Moselle,” I offered. (I silently said the “Toms” part in my head.)

  “Oh, yes, Hannah. Well, now, I suppose they were friends of a sort. I thought Martha was being a bit too kind to hang around that Tucker girl, and I told Pearl just that in so many words. What with their daddy being the schoolteacher, it just wasn’t seemly for Martha to gad about with one of the Tuckers. And then once she started seeing that Armentrout man, well.” Moselle reached over, patted my hand. “I suppose that’s where you get that streak of going with the wrong crowd, though, from your mother. They say an apple never falls far from the tree. They do say that.” She pursed her lips and nodded slightly.

  I stared at the floor, disconcerted. I thought Moselle Toms was Mama’s friend. But she didn’t sound friendly now. Toward Mama or to me.

  “Of course, your mother was just the prettiest thing we ever had in this village. Why, from the time the family moved here, when her daddy started teaching school, it was like a bit of heaven came here in Martha.” Her eyes gazed past me and the look on her face softened. “For the first time in my life, I had someone to talk about clothes with, to look at pictures from the big cities — Martha knew so much, coming from Baltimore like she did. You might be surprised to learn this, dear, but I don’t have many friends in these parts. People just don’t value what I do. Of course, now that you’re here, I have someone who understands me, a real, true friend.”

  My mind was a whirl. I hardly heard Moselle Toms’s declaration of friendship. My grandfather a teacher? They came from Baltimore? I knew nothing of this.

  Moselle Toms clapped a hand to her cheek, the manicured red nails showing her porcelain skin to advantage. “Here I am chattering away and we could be having a cup of tea.” She rose from her spindly chair and I followed suit. Moselle Toms crossed the room to a door and yanked it open. Her voice lost its cultured sound. “Rucker, git on in here.”

  A small man, his head shaped like a lightbulb and his thin fingers gripping a pencil, appeared. “Yes, dear?”

  She cleared her throat. “We have company. This is Ellen Hollingsworth.” He nodded and she continued to talk. “I told you about her. She’s here now, which is lovely, and we’d like tea.”

  He sighed. “Yes, dear.”

  The pencil found its way behind his ear, where I could tell it spent a lot of time, since there was a pencil-shaped indentation there. I remembered vaguely that I’d heard at MacIntosh’s store that he was an accountant for the paper mill. He shuffled to the kitchen, and I heard preparations begin. We sat again.

  “I don’t want to impose,” I said.

  “No trouble at all,” she said. “Rucker likes to take care of me. He says I’m his grand lady and I should be spoiled. Isn’t that what you say, Rucker?” She fingered her hem delicately and flashed a genuinely warm smile at me. There was no answer from the kitchen.

  “I understand you’re quite the student.” Moselle Toms aimed this remark my way as Rucker gingerly carried a tray of odds and ends to the table before the fire. “I wasn’t ever interested in all that learning. Ever since third grade, I knew, I just knew, that homemaking was my career. But you, well, Clara Spencer speaks highly of you.”

  “She does?” I took the plate Moselle Toms had filled for me and nibbled as I waited for my cup of tea. The plate was nice enough, a pale blue and serviceable, but not nearly so elegant as Aunt Pearl’s china. It was definitely not what I’d expected. The cookies — ladyfingers and butter bars and coconut macaroons — were . . . adequate. I’d thought store-bought cookies would be special and mouth-melting, but Aunt Pearl’s lacy butter crisps put the packaged brands to shame.

  “Oh, my, yes. Clara just goes on and on about how you and two other little local girls are her pride and joy. Of course” — she leaned toward me — “we must realize that Clara can have no other pride and joy. She lives her life through the children she teaches. She hasn’t a husband. Probably never will. An old spinster is all she is.” Moselle Toms pulled up her left hand, displaying a small marquis-shaped diamond and a narrow wedding band.

  “Like Pearl. Why, no man would have her. All that firmament of muscle and stolidity. Pearl is intimidating and solid, not at all what men look for, am I right, Rucker?” She smiled at him and batted her eyelashes in a very obvious way. He smiled back, a shaky smile, but a smile nevertheless. I felt a surprising urge to defend Aunt Pearl.

  “Now, your mother, Martha, she was never like Pearl. Small-boned and, Lord, my mother used to refer to Martha as ‘puny.’” She raised her head and stared off, pausing as if on a stage. Then she pulled a cup to her hand. “But I always think of your dear mother as fragile, myself, being a bit more educated than dear Mama. Fragile in many ways, if you know what I mean.”

  My sip of muddy tea went down hard, the swallow taking all my energy to push along my throat.

  Moselle Toms leaned toward me and whispered, “It runs in families, I believe.” She patted at her mouth with her napkin and nodded in self-assurance.

  I sputtered an excuse about being needed to help with dinner, managed to hand off my cup to the ever-hovering Rucker (who hadn’t sat down once), saw myself out, and walked briskly back across the bridge.

  Moselle Toms had to be a liar. Miss Spencer might have bragged about me, but she would never have done so about Polly. Poor Polly. And if Moselle Toms had lied about that, well, maybe what she’d said about Mama was a lie too.

  I did help Aunt Pearl with dinner. I can’t say I ate much of it, though.

  ALL RIGHT, RUSSELL,” I said as we gathered kindling. “You’ve got almost all your consonant sounds. But some of them can make two sounds. Take c, for example. Now, that can sound like it does when it starts cake or like it does at the start of celery.”

  “Selery starts with a s.”

  “No, with a c.”

  “Then how do you know whether to spell words with a s or with a c?” Russell smacked at a tree with the stick he was carrying.

  “There are rules to explain everything, although some things are exceptions to the rules, but there are rules.” I plunged on. “You’re not ready for that yet, though. All the rules. You’ve got to learn the sounds first. And you’ve got to trust me.”

  “I trust you. Why else would I be doing your work, picking up sticks your aunt Pearl told you to get for kindling? If I didn’t trust you, I’d think you was making me do your work ’cause you was lazy.” He bent over, gathering a few more sticks.

  “You said you wanted to trade for the lessons. I can’t help it if you haven’t figured out something to trade yet. Just trying to make sure you don’t feel like you’re getting charity.” Russell smirked when I said that. He’d said it so often, worried on it so much, that it’d become a standing joke between us. I picked up a stick, to look like I was working too, and tried to sound casual as I asked, “Where’d you get that big bruise on your cheek?”

  Russell added more sticks to the pile and turned his head away from me. “Did I tell you I passed that test Miss Spencer give our group? I hadn’t been to school since, well, since that day she took my picture away, and finally got a day I could go.”

  “I saw you there.”

  “Well, blamed if she wasn’t giving a test on them everyday words. You know, the ones you give me on that paper?”

  I nodded.

  “I couldn’t remember it but knew cat and dog and the others, and then I sounded out it
and I saw Bobby yesterday and he said he saw my slate the next day and it had checks by all of ’em. He said Miss Spencer’s eyes just about popped right out of her head!”

  “I wish you could get there every day.”

  Russell shrugged. “This is working out pretty good. Miss Spencer always makes me feel dumb anyhow. Besides, morning times I got to get some hunting done for Mr. Mumfrey. He don’t pay ’less the pelts are delivered.”

  Russell squinted at the sticks, sizing up the pile. “That oughtta be enough kindling for a while. C’mere. I want to show you something I found a couple of days ago. Up this way.”

  I followed Russell up the side of Three Sisters’ Knob. I looked around a little as I walked. The river gorge loomed below us. The James River had changed from when I arrived, turning from the muddy river it was in late summer to a pristine, sparkling one. It looked like a silver ribbon, marking my place in the mountains the way a bookmark saved my place in a book.

  Russell motioned for me to walk carefully. My shoes had changed too since I arrived in Snowden — switching from the pointy-toed, slightly heeled shoes I’d finally been old enough to wear in Baltimore to a soft-soled, comfortable brogan Aunt Pearl had the village cobbler make for me. They were serviceable shoes, which of course meant ugly shoes, but with all the tramping Russell and I did, they kept blisters at bay.

  We climbed a patch of rocks, and I had to really watch my step — it seemed better suited for goat walking! When we reached the top of the outcropping, we were at eye level with some of the branches on a tree. Russell pointed at one particular fat branch.

  I saw it — a raccoon, lying flat on its back, front paws covering its eyes. Big, about the size of a bear cub, and stretched out behind it was its bushy tail, encircled at the tip with six dark rings. Under its front paw I could make out the familiar stripe of black fur that looked like a mask.

  We stood for ten minutes or so, watching the raccoon sleep. Its fur looked so soft, so smooth, I wanted to reach out and touch it. But Russell had pulled a promise from me that I would never try to touch the wild animals he showed me. I had been flattered that he didn’t want me to get hurt, but he’d assured me that wasn’t it at all. He felt he had a gift, to be able to get so close to animals, and touching them, intruding on them, was demeaning to the gift.