On Snowden Mountain

by Jeri Watts

  The question blurted from me. “Am I like her? Will I become her?”

  Aunt Pearl shrugged, took my hand into one of her own. It felt so odd, to be touched by her, but I clung to her, odd or not. She let me cling, and she answered me honestly. “You’re like her in the way you laugh, with your whole body thrown into the laughing. You’re like her when you walk up the mountain, attacking it with your busy long steps. But will you be like Martha in her emptiness, like my mother in her sorrow?” She shook her head. “I don’t know. I think it’s something you’re wise to think on, but I just don’t know. You have some of the moodiness, some of the anger, but then isn’t that what all teenagers have?” She rubbed my cheek, her sturdy fingers feeling calloused yet gentle. The faint smell of potatoes and gravy clung to her skin.

  “You also have a lightness, a grace, a steadiness that neither of them ever possessed. I think you will be just fine, Ellen Hollingsworth, just fine.” She dropped her hand to mine and squeezed tightly.

  I found Russell the next day, sitting on a log in a clearing near Mr. Pritchard’s. The air was crisp and cold, but the sky was clear. A good day. Russell was whittling. He whittled with anger; no shapes could emerge from the shattering wood in his hands. Chips flew from his slicing knife.

  I settled beside him on the large stump. The cold began to seep into my backsides immediately. I shook my head. I could finally sit close to Russell without fear of smell, only to be defeated by chill. Well, I wouldn’t be defeated. I stayed put.

  “Didn’t expect you’d be around,” Russell said in a low voice.

  “Of course I’m around.” My bright tone sounded false, even to me. I tried again, pointing to his whittling. “You’ve still got to make me an animal, remember?”

  He dropped them then, the stick, the knife. “No.” He looked in the direction of his family’s mountain. “Won’t be doing none of that. Nor drawing neither.”

  A cool wind whipped through, coming off the river below us. I sniffed and smelled a heaviness in the air, or maybe a lightness. Snow? “Russell,” I said, “you can’t give up. Maybe you don’t need to be creating anything new right now — wouldn’t anyone need time to grieve for what you’ve lost? — but don’t shut it out forever. You’ve a gift. And you need to use it.

  “I lay awake most of last night, Russell, watching it snow and thinking I was scared of your father, and angry at him, and confused. And finally, around dawn, I figured out that it wasn’t confusion I felt. It was that moment when the snow fell and your head was up that was in my mind. Your eyes were filled with the deepest sad I hope to know, watching your parents climb that mountain without you. And as I lay there, Russell, I heard your voice in my ears, heard you saying to take what the world gives you and stay true to yourself. And right then, with your words in my head, right then I felt God holding me. I was wrapped in the arms of God.”

  Russell picked up his stick and his knife. He closed the knife and pitched the stick away. “We’ll see,” he said.

  The telegram was waiting when I got back to Aunt Pearl’s. She and Mama sat on the sofa together. Aunt Pearl was clutching Mama’s hand. The telegram lay on the dining-room table.

  “Telegram,” Aunt Pearl said. “I . . . couldn’t open it.”

  My fingers ripped the thin paper, and my eyes skimmed the world punctuated with stops. My mind raced over my imagined words — dead or missing. I thought of the long, long time it’d been since we had news from him. And slowly, I let out my breath.

  “It’s all right, Aunt Pearl. Daddy’s coming home.”

  RUSSELL MET ME at the train station, arriving just minutes before we were to leave. Aunt Pearl had been quick, no doubt of that; the telegram about Daddy had only come the week before, and she’d packed us in a flurry. He was home — well, home in Baltimore, but not at the house. He was in the hospital. Aunt Pearl told me matter-of-factly that he’d have at least a limp, if we were lucky, not more than a limp. He’d be damaged, but he was alive. And he was home.

  Mama still moved and spoke as if in a haze, but she was moving and speaking. I knew I’d have to work at keeping her from shrinking back into herself, but I’d have Daddy to help me, and Aunt Pearl promised to stay at least until Christmas.

  Russell stood with his fists jammed into his pants pockets, a piece of paper shoved under his arm, his feet shuffling in the cold. I put out a hand to him. “I’m so glad you came to see me off.”

  He shrugged. “Your mama seems better now.”

  “Thanks to your mama. I, uh, I never said, but I’m glad you told your mama. She made all the difference. But it was you who told her. So, I guess, in a way, you helped Mama get better too.

  “Of course,” I said, watching Mama boarding the train, her steps careful and strained, “she’s not right, exactly. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I wish it wasn’t that way, but . . .”

  Russell stomped his feet in the cold, kept his head down. “I’ll take good care of your aunt Pearl’s place. Maybe fix a few things.” He paused, then added, “You won’t be coming back, I reckon.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I plan to talk to my father about it. I think it would do my mother a powerful good.

  “And I want to.” This surprised even me as I said it. But even though I was surprised, I was sure of it. It would be good. For my mother, and for me. My mother was not going to be better just because we were going back to Baltimore. Not because she had started on a path to being better or because Aunt Pearl would stay for a bit. I truly believed she would need to “touch home” every so often. And I felt I needed that too. I looked at Russell. “What about you? Will you eventually go back home?”

  Russell looked up, his blue eyes sparkling at me. “No. I won’t. I tried to talk Ma into leaving too, but she just shook her head and said ‘no’ real quiet. I guess we can’t change our folks.”

  “No,” I agreed. “But we don’t have to be like them either.”

  Russell smiled, cleared his throat. I realized his voice didn’t break anymore. When had that happened? I wondered. He said, “It ain’t been a trade yet. Haven’t taught you nothing and can’t teach you nothing now. But here. Take this — it makes things . . . sort of even.” He pushed the paper into my mittened hands.

  Aunt Pearl’s voice sliced the air. “Ellen! The train is moving. Get on board, child!”

  I jumped aboard the moving steps, grabbed on to a handle, and shouted back. “Keep practicing takeaways, Russell,” I said, “and don’t forget to work on the sounds of your vowels. You still mess up on short e and short a.”

  I hoped he would do what I said. I needed him to read better; I planned to write to him so I could keep up on Aunt Pearl and Mr. Pritchard’s romance once she returned to Snowden after Christmas. I refused to count on Moselle Toms for my information, and I knew there was more there than Aunt Pearl would tell me. It was my plan for my little family — Daddy, Mama, and me — to return at least part of every summer to Snowden. I believed Mama needed this place like a touchstone. I knew I needed it too.

  And I had no intention of missing the wedding I knew loomed in the future; I fully intended to be included in it as well. Even if Aunt Pearl (and Mr. Pritchard) didn’t quite know it yet, I could see that it was going to be happening. Oh, yes, indeed.

  The train’s whistle filled the spaces around us. Russell nodded and raised his hand in farewell. Something in the way he waved, the way he stood . . . I don’t know. It was so odd, but I had this feeling of certainty that I’d hear from Aunt Pearl upon her return that somehow he’d gotten his mother away from Rooster Armentrout. And, in the future, yes, for sure, I would again see Russell Armentrout. And Snowden, Virginia.

  I didn’t look at the paper I was clutching until we were almost to Balcony Downs. In my palm rested a picture, a sketch really. A number of scenes filled the page; first, a tiny black nose sniffed from inside a burrow entrance. Then the nose emerged, followed by a black-and-white body. Finally, smaller versions of the same were shuffling out. A mama
skunk and her brood.

  The shading was so real, so vivid, the family looked as though they would amble right off the page. I wrinkled my nose in anticipation of the acrid, bitter odor; I thought of my friend Russell. I shook my head and made sure to keep the paper smooth, the sketch I would treasure. It had been a trade — a friendship, which never depends on tit for tat, on making sure things are even, really — long before I was given that drawing. So, I didn’t need that family of skunks, but I held them all the way home, just the same.

  There are so many people to thank when a book is published. This book has been a long time in the works, so if I forget to thank anyone, please know it is a mental lapse, not one from the heart.

  The nugget of this story rests with a tale shared with me by writing friend Chip Barnett. His mother knew a boy growing up, a boy they called the Skunk Boy because he trapped skunks for their pelts. I couldn’t imagine it. And then, I could.

  My mother told me much about the days back home during World War II; my father said only a little about the time he served.

  The people in the Snowden/Big Island area of Virginia were so kind to my husband and me when we lived there early in our marriage.

  The issues in this book — depression, mental illness, and physical abuse — were very much hidden in the 1940s. Today, people are more open, but it is still hard to discuss these topics. I encourage teachers, counselors, and parents to reach out to readers.

  I thank Candlewick Press and, specifically, my editor and dear friend Liz Bicknell. There are many others to thank at Candlewick who helped this book along the path to publication: Hannah Mahoney, Erin Dewitt, Jackie Shepherd, Allison Hill, JoAnne Sweeney, Kate Hurley, Andrea Corbin, Sally Bratcher, Phoebe Kosman, Teri Keough, Christine Engels, and Gregg Hammerquist. Thanks to Jessica Courtney-Tickle for the gorgeous cover artwork.

  Thanks to family and friends: Chander Watts and Russell Batra, Mary and Gavin Worley (and their sons Silas and Jeter), Gay Lynn and Bill Van Vleck.

  And of course, my husband, Chuck, who has loved me every day.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2019 by Jeri Watts

  Cover illustration copyright © 2019 by Jessica Courtney-Tickle

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  First electronic edition 2019

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2019939004

  Candlewick Press

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  Somerville, Massachusetts 02144

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