On Snowden Mountain

by Jeri Watts

  We headed back down the mountain to pick up my pile of kindling. “Why would he pick that tree, I wonder?”

  Russell refused to be baited into assigning genders to animals. “It picked that tree because a stream is nearby. Raccoons like fresh water.”

  “So they can wash their food.”

  He shook his head. “No, dope.” Russell’s eyes grew big. “Sorry. I, uh . . . Well, they don’t wash their food. They have real sensitive front paws. You watch one eat, you’ll see it turn its food and sometimes dip its paws in water. It’s just making its paws more sensitive to touch by wetting them.”

  “Oh.” I fretted at Russell’s discomfort. It seemed okay, as far as he was concerned, for me to call him a dope, to bicker with and tease him. But he never quite loosened up to see himself as my equal, to tease back. I didn’t mind him calling me a dope. That’s what friends do. Maybe he didn’t see us that way. I cleared my throat and picked up the pace.

  We walked in silence back to the pile of sticks. Russell put some in my outstretched arms and loaded the rest in his own. “Any more letters from your daddy?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Nope. Nothing. At first I worried. But lately I don’t even care. I mean, as far as I’m concerned, he’s abandoned me and . . .” Russell’s jaw tightened. I went on. “His last letter was just telling me what I ought to do for Mama, anyway, and a long paragraph about how lucky I am to have Aunt Pearl. I’m tired of being preached at.”

  Russell didn’t say anything.

  “Oh, I know,” I went on. “You think Aunt Pearl is so special, but I don’t know why. She never talks to me except to make me feel stupid, and she hasn’t been able to help Mama one little bit.”

  “I don’t know nothing about your aunt Pearl except she brings apple butter to us every year, and it’s the best stuff I ever laid on my tongue. That makes her pretty all right with me.”

  “Do you live only by your stomach?” I snapped. “Honestly, Aunt Pearl doesn’t have a poetic bone in her body. She does nothing just for joy, like read a book or have a party. You told me once you think skunks bring a bit of pretty to the world. Aunt Pearl wouldn’t notice pretty if it came up behind her and knocked her in the head.

  “Back in Baltimore, my mother would listen to opera and weep at poetry and admire great works of art. She has a soul. We took walks, went to the park, laughed at the jokes my father told, and she’d spend whole days with me sometimes, days when she paid attention to only me. Those were days when she brushed my hair or curled it, let me try on any of her dresses I wanted, or we’d go out to fancy stores and have tea and look at which clothes I might get when I was older, so I might feel as pretty as she thought I was, instead of the lump I really am. My mama thought I was beautiful, and she told me that every night and every morning. She was a woman who filled our home with laughter and love, and she sang in a little off-key voice that was so fun, while Aunt Pearl doesn’t sing —”

  “Well, all that might be fine and dandy,” Russell cut in, “but it ain’t got your mama much of anywhere. I mean, which one of them is sitting in her room all day staring out the window, cain’t even talk?”

  A vision of Mama rose in my mind, a vision of the emptiness. Russell’s words bit into me, scored my soul, and left it raw and blistered. I dropped the kindling and flew at him. I was filled with the color red: anger, complete anger. And I hurt him. My short nails bit into his bruise, and he cried out, a piercing, low moan. At the sound, my anger fled, my hands fell to my side. “Oh, Russell, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  He turned away and held his face.

  “Please,” I begged. “I’m sorry. I just —”

  He interrupted again. “No reason for you to be sorry. I shouldna said what I did ’bout your mama.” He wiped away the small amount of blood spots on his cheek.

  “Did I hurt you?”

  “Not much,” he answered. He cleared his throat, then asked me in a quavering voice, “Did I hurt you?”

  I leaned against a leafless tree and gazed down at the river flowing between the mountains. “Yes.” I tried to swallow the rising tears. “Oh, Russell. She sits and does nothing. I walk into her room, and I can feel the sad, like a weight, just enveloping me. It’s like every bit of space in her room, in her body, is filled with sad. And blackness. I feel like she’s locked in a dark room where there’s no light, no air, just darkness closing in on her. Heaviness. Darkness. And silence.”

  Russell cleared his throat, said, “I ain’t needing to know this iffen you don’t want to tell.”

  I stared out against the sky, past the mountains, past the clouds, into nothing and talked on. “When we lived in Baltimore, she would have days where she’d be in . . . well, in pain. She would look so . . . brittle. You could see the sad pulsing through her. She seemed to count the hours until she could go to bed.

  “Or she’d fly into a black rage. She used to get so frustrated on some days, angry with life, with something I couldn’t even see, with my father, and she’d scream at him and hit him, and I’d be so afraid. I could smell the anger.”

  I took a deep breath. “My dad says she can control it. That she’s stronger than she thinks and that she’s just giving in to weakness. And sometimes, for a minute or two, I’ll see a look in her eyes, a clear look that holds a promise of the past and the mama I knew. But in spite of those little ‘visits’ from the old mama, I don’t think she can help it, not at all. Not now, and not then. And Russell” — I turned to look at him — “I think I might be like her.”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Moselle Toms says the apple never falls far from the tree.”

  “Moselle Toms is full of crap.” He turned his face so it looked up the mountain and puckered his features at a crackling stick, a crunching leaf.

  I shrugged. “I just got angry with you, didn’t I? I think that’s how it starts, with that frustrated anger.” I turned away from him. “Russell, what if I go crazy like her?”

  Russell sighed. “Your ma ain’t crazy, Ellen. She’s just, I don’t know — it’s like she cain’t feel the arms of God wrapped around her.”

  “Arms of God?”

  He blushed. “Not to see. I ain’t no prophet or nothing. But . . .” He kicked at the forest floor and cleared his throat. “I believe you can feel God holding you. When I let loose a trapped animal, when I watch a squirrel hiding nuts for the winter, I close my eyes and I can feel it. A warm feeling, tight around me, and I know things’ll be fine. Not that they’ll be fine right away. But that, well, that I got hope.”

  “And when your father hurts you?”

  Russell’s face hardened. “That’s got nothing to do with God.”

  “But then how do you stop yourself from striking back?”

  He shrugged, looked again at the forest as we heard a crackling. “It ain’t a matter of hitting back at him or fighting at school when they laugh. I just, I don’t know, gotta take what the world gives me and stay me. That’s the onliest way I can have those minutes in God’s arms. To be me and feel the hope.”

  A voice, hard and firm, sliced through the air. “Boy!”

  “My pa,” Russell warned.

  I grabbed a stack of the kindling Russell held and scampered behind the tree. Russell moved up the path a few steps and met his father coming down the path.

  “Been looking all over for you, boy. There’s traps need checking.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Old Man Mumfrey says he ain’t getting much from you these days. Says he don’t see you but ’bout every other day.”

  Russell spread his hands. “Hasn’t been much in the traps, Daddy. Besides, I been thinking of a new way to earn money. Maybe.”

  An arm reached out and delivered a hard blow to Russell’s bruised cheek. “You think I’m an idiot? This here is prime hunting time. They’re in the traps, all right. I don’t know if you’re letting them go or not checking or what. But you get off your ass and do what you’re supposed to do or you won�
��t have no home to come to. We don’t need you thinking new ideas. We’ll stick with the old ways. Understand me?” His face was sparked by so much anger, I felt myself shaking even though I knew I was well hidden.

  “Get on up here and check them traps.”

  Russell hurried up the path, his father stalking along behind. I closed my eyes, waiting for a warm, tight feeling. But there was nothing, just the smell of mint wafting in the air, and then I was left alone.

  I wished for a book. A book that would require so much concentration, I wouldn’t have to think about what I had seen on that mountain. About what I had seen when Russell’s father caught up to him.

  I ached to wrap my fingers around any of the confusing books my mother had back in Baltimore that Aunt Pearl had forced me to leave behind. I knew she did it only because we needed to go quickly; I knew there was no room in the hurried bags we packed. Yet I longed to lose myself in a book so confusing that it would not, could not, make me think about all that was going on around me. But there were no books. Instead, I sat down at the kitchen table while Aunt Pearl fried apples. The room was dressed in a warm, flavorful aroma. The air almost shook with it. It draped its fabric around me and made me feel hugged. Maybe this was as close as I’d get to God’s arms holding me.

  “Aunt Pearl,” I said, “what do you think about when you’re frying apples?”

  She glanced back at me, her round face filling the space above her shoulders. “What are you going on about?” she asked.

  “Just wondering if you think about things.”

  She turned back to the apples, spattering in the pan. “I suppose. Why? What are you thinking on?”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t expected her to ask me. I decided to be honest. “I was just wondering about people around here. Like, uh, I don’t know, about Mr. Armentrout, for instance.”

  I waited for her to tell me that was none of my business, to hush me as she usually did when I would tread too close to criticizing anything in the mountains.

  She just sighed and pushed back a bit of gray hair from her forehead. Only in the heat — of cooking, of apple buttering — did any of her locks dare to stray from the tight bun. It made her look softer, kinder.

  She turned the heat under the apples to low, put the cover on the pan, and sat across from me at the table. “I heard from Moselle Toms today at market that you were spending time with Russell, Rooster’s boy. I don’t like hearing things from Moselle, things about my family that I ought to know.

  “There I am, picking over Noel Abramson’s puny pork roasts, and this voice comes needling into my brain. ‘I never expected a girl as fine as Ellen to spend time with an Armentrout.’”

  “An Armentrout,” I said.

  “My Lord but she lit up like a Yule log then. ‘She does spend a lot of time with that Russell. Amy Pickens saw them once and Esther Madison too. Oh, they’re spending time together. Maybe sparking?’ She made it sound filthy. I even looked at my shirtfront, to see if it was soiled.”

  I started to speak. She raised a beefy hand and went on. “Rooster Armentrout is from a long line of men who live off the land. They don’t like anything that isn’t familiar, anything that hasn’t been done before. They don’t trust new. So all the old ways stay with them. Change is hard for ’em.”

  I thought of Rooster’s reaction when Russell’d mentioned a new way to earn money.

  “Rooster’s daddy never saw any point in schooling, since none of the Armentrouts could write or read or cipher, so Rooster didn’t go to school. Russell, I think, doesn’t go much either. I suppose you know more about that than I do. When I came here” — she could see my look of wonder — “that’s right, I came here and so did your mother — we were girls then.”

  She closed her eyes for a bit, then opened them as she continued. “I was thirteen. I tried to be friends with Rooster, but he didn’t care for me. He liked people to surround him who did as they were told, people who never asked a question, people who didn’t see anything wrong with doing things the old way, even if the old way took twice as long.” She shook her head.

  “Don’t get me started, child. The only good thing I know about Rooster is he’s always taken an inordinate amount of pride in those pretty teeth of his, gathering mint in the good weather to scrub his teeth all year long. I don’t have a high opinion of Rooster Armentrout, but as Christians, we all need to remember that there’s things that have turned people the way they are. I think I understand why Russell’s daddy is the way he is. Still, understanding doesn’t lead to approving — I can’t approve of how he’s handled the life he was given. Rooster Armentrout is a man who’s sat in one place, with a cup of homemade liquor in his hand, while the rest of the world has moved on.”

  I smiled. Moved on? Snowden?

  Aunt Pearl grinned back. “Yes, I know. We don’t have electricity, roads that are paved, or many of the things you think of as progress, but we are progressed, compared to where we started. Sometimes you have to take baby steps, if you’re going to move at all.”

  Aunt Pearl went back to her apples, but she turned once more and looked worried. “You be careful around that family, you hear?”

  I sat in the layer of apple odor for a long, long time.

  Late, around midnight, I crept to Mama’s room. The sharp late-fall sky was so clear, so deep, it seemed I could see all the way to the stars of tomorrow night. The moonlight spilled across the room through the cracked window, lighting Mama’s bed and her eyes — eyes that lay open and staring.

  I perched softly on the edge of her bed. The room smelled clean, soapy, like her. She wore none of the delicate perfumes she’d spritzed on herself in Baltimore; none of the citrusy powder she loved still clung to her. But, as I inhaled, I took in a trace of a familiar scent that could be no one but my mama.

  I climbed farther onto the bed so as to prop my back against the headboard. I pulled this ghost of my old mama into my lap, spread her blond hair across me, so carefully brushed by Aunt Pearl each day, and slid against her until she rested in my arms, her head propped at my bony shoulder. Her ribs, sharp and pointy, pressed at my palms, but I crossed my arms over her and held her as closely as I dared.

  “Oh, Mama. I’m sorry I haven’t been in here for a while, haven’t combed your hair or talked to you. But, Mama . . . I’m so scared. I thought I’d feel better if I just stayed to myself, stayed angry at you and Daddy and Aunt Pearl.” I waited for her to reach around to me, to pat my cheek, to rub my arms. She didn’t stir in my grasp.

  “I thought I’d feel better. But I don’t. And I worry. Worry about, well, whether I’ll have trouble with my mind.” I felt tears running down my cheeks. They pooled on Mama’s shoulders, and I asked her the question that’d brought me to her. “Do you feel them, Mama? Do you ever feel the arms of God?”

  MOSELLE TOMS was standing in front of the empty house when I passed her on my way to school the next Monday. She clutched a bright-red purse, coordinated with her pumps and coat. “Well, how are you, Ellen Hollingsworth?” she asked. “Rucker and I are off for a day of shopping in Lynchburg. He’s just picking up a little something down at the store. Maybe a present for me — who knows? I didn’t want to go in there and start smelling like cigars! No, sir.” She took a breath and stopped herself. It seemed she knew she was telling too much. She started over. “First stop, Millner’s. They have beautiful dresses. Rucker says I need a new dress to make me feel perky, now that we’re into dreary old November.”

  “What do you think about Rooster Armentrout?” The words spewed out unbidden. I didn’t even care what she’d been rambling on about.

  Moselle Toms looked askance. “Now, Ellen, I do hope you’ll be over early on Thanksgiving. I’ve a surprise for you, a big-city surprise. I don’t know when I’ve looked forward to a holiday so much.”

  “What do you think,” I repeated, “about Rooster Armentrout?”

  She swallowed, then answered, her words tumbling out in a rush, the way she’d been talking b
efore. “Oh, he’s a bully. But I could handle him if I needed to, never you fear. You could too. He’s all talk. Why, Rooster took quite a shine to me when we were in school. I remember . . .” A car pulled up beside us. “There’s Rucker now. Hate to run, but I’ve got to get to Millner’s. Bye now.” She waved with her fingers bent at the knuckle, the way children wave, and climbed into her car. “Rucker, do you have the heat turned on? I can’t stand to get chilled and I’ve been waiting out here a bit —” The car door slammed.

  I trudged on. Why did I ask her about Rooster Armentrout? What was it I hoped she would say? Maybe that Rooster Armentrout was actually her best friend, and that he’d be at dinner with her, and that Rucker was going to be helping Rooster Armentrout with his traps from now on? There would be an answer to Russell’s problems. And if Rooster Armentrout were coming to that Thanksgiving meal, I could bow out. Because I knew that I didn’t want to go to dinner with her anymore. Seeing her the other day, the way she really was, I didn’t want to eat with her or be with her. I bet Rooster Armentrout didn’t even know who she was when they were growing up. He didn’t care.

  I didn’t know if Aunt Pearl was a spy or really good with money, but my aunt Pearl was for certain right about Moselle Toms.

  The whole experience of being in Snowden was turning my life upside down. Things I had counted on my whole life were just plain mixed up. I knew, deep down, that Mama had always had that skittery problem, but Daddy’d been there to bring her back to right-side up. I never expected Daddy would bolt on us, leaving me to either take care of Mama alone or call for help from Aunt Pearl, a woman he used to make fun of but now spoke of almost reverently in his letters.

  Things I took for granted in Baltimore — electricity, a library, a school with books, paper, indoor plumbing, paved roads — were gone. And even though we’d heard there might be blackouts back at home, every night here was a blackout since there were only oil lamps — which weren’t bright enough to be seen past the drapes pulled to of an evening. There was no need for heavy blackout curtains or patrols.