Jolene

by Mercedes Lackey

  Well this was the first time Anna had heard anyone say anything good about an Indian; she didn’t know quite what to think. Except that . . . Aunt Jinny had the respect of everyone who knew her. And Aunt Jinny was rich by Anna’s standards. And Aunt Jinny was smart by anyone’s standards. So . . . maybe everyone else was . . . wrong?

  As she and her aunt washed up before supper, and she changed into her nightgown, she decided to ask more about Aunt Jinny’s Granny, who seemed to have been a formidable person.

  “Granny? Oh she knowed more’n anyone hereabouts had any notion,” Aunt Jinny said with a smirk, as she dished up bean soup and cornbread, with sliced strawberries drizzled with honey on the side. “She come over from England. Devon. But afore thet, she met Granpappy, and he’s the one what built this here cabin all hisself, with his bare hands an’ the sack of tools he brung with him. An’ when my Pa’s Pa turned up an’ homesteaded the front of the Holler, he he’ped raise thet house an’ barn too, cause he could see my Ma was gettin’ sweet on my Pa. Built that there stove,” she added, nodding at the peculiar fireplace.

  “Stove?” Anna exclaimed. “It don’t look like no stove!”

  “But thet’s what ’e called it. He was from a place I bet y’all niver heerd of. Roosha! He was Rooski!” She chuckled at Anna’s bewilderment. “’Tis as fur from England as England is from here. Halfway ’round the world! They gots them kinda stoves all over where he come from, on account of the winter’s so bitter hard. ’E useter tell me our winter was like spring t’him. ’E made friends with Old Raven’s Granpappy Eagle Sight fust, then brought Eagle Sight t’meet Granny. Sometimes ’e useter talk t’me in thet Rooski palaver an’ I couldn’ make heads nor tails of it. But ’e made this ’ere cabin so it were good for a Rooski winter, an’ I reckon thet’s one reason why Granny lived as long as she did. Nary a chink t’let in the winter wind. An’ y’all kin sleep up there on t’stove if yore bones ache.”

  “Why’d ’e come t’ ’Merica?” she asked.

  “Same as ’bout anybody else. It were purdy bad where ’e was.” She shrugged. “He didn’ talk ’bout it much, so I reckon it were plenty bad. He purely loved these hills. An’ he was blood brothers with Eagle Sight. It were Eagle Sight an’ his wife what taught him how t’plant the Three Sisters t’gether, an’ as I said, taught Granny the Root Woman ways.”

  “Three Sisters?” Anna asked, now thoroughly bewildered.

  “Corn, beans, an’ squash,” Aunt Jinny told her. “Maybe a liddle manure or fish head in each hill fer good measure. The three of ’em are like sisters, they he’p each other grow. Corn give beans a place t’climb, beans feed corn’n’ squash, squash leaves cover th’ground so no weeds grow, an’ the prickles on the squash leaves is nasty t’bugs.”

  “I ain’t niver heerd that,” Anna marveled, knowing it had to be true, because hadn’t she seen the results with her own eyes?

  “Tha’s on account of fools don’t listen t’ them as knows, ’cause they’s too busy a-babblin’ ’bout how smart they be,” Jinny said, with a touch of acid. “But wise men keeps their mouths shut, and gets wiser.”

  And that certainly gave her something to think about, as she climbed the ladder to the loft and her warm feather bed. Roosha! What must that be like, if Tennessee winters were like spring to Aunt Jinny’s Granpappy?

  When she slept, she dreamed of dreaming, drowsing in a warm featherbed on top of the stove, while snow piled up to the roof, and the fire sang to itself on the hearth.

  6

  THE next day was Sunday by Anna’s reckoning, but Aunt Jinny showed no signs of it being any different than any other day. So finally, as they were finishing breakfast, Anna spoke up timidly. “Aunt Jinny? Ain’t we a-gonna put on our good thangs an’ go t’church?”

  Her aunt didn’t even pause in gathering up the dishes and taking them to the sink. “Nearest church is Ducktown. Even if I’d let y’all go there, which I ain’t gonna, we ain’t got no wagon nor mule. So we’d hev t’ hev started out at dawn, we’d just get there ’bout time for afternoon service, an’ it’d be past dark when we got home. Who’d feed an’ muck out th’ pigs? Who’d see the chickens was put up? Leave ’em out arter dark an’ there won’t be no chickens left.”

  “But . . .” she was bewildered. “If we ain’t a-goin’ t’church—”

  “Y’all kin sit an’ read yore Bible arter supper, while th’ light lasts,” Jinny replied, in tones that brooked no argument. “We got work t’do, Sunday or no Sunday. Ain’t no day of rest fer a farmer till winter.”

  After that, Anna didn’t dare say anything. She just washed her clothing as always (including, at Jinny’s prompting, the nightgown), and weeded as always, and there was no real change.

  Though Jinny proclaimed that this was the day for the weekly full bath. “I allus takes mine on Sunday, so y’all might as well too.” They both took their baths at the well, Anna doing her best to avert her eyes from her aunt’s nakedness.

  Then it was a full day of chores, and writing down a new receipt—this one for “coughs and croup” that featured comfrey and “Indian tobacco,” which, her aunt explained, was not tobacco at all, but a kind of bellflower. They sat down to supper. There had been a second nightgown on the line next to Anna’s, and that was what Jinny was sporting at supper. Well, now she knew what her aunt wore to sleep.

  Then they both took stools out to sit on the front porch in the last of the light. Anna read her Bible. But Jinny didn’t have a Bible, or, indeed, any book. Instead, she stared fixedly at what looked like a black glass or ceramic plate that she had taken down from the shelf where she kept her receipt book.

  Anna could not understand what she was doing . . . but . . . maybe it was a way of praying? Certainly Jinny wasn’t doing anything else but staring into the shining surface.

  When it got too dim to see the letters clearly, Anna shut her Bible and went back into the cabin. She felt a little guilty, because she actually hadn’t been reading anything improving, like out of the New Testament. Instead, she’d been reading some of her favorite parts about King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. No morals, nothing “sacred” about it, just beautiful words. And . . . secretly she had kind of been wishing for one of those books like Missus Sawyer had. Those stories had been scary—but they’d been exciting and fascinating too. And she wished she could read more of them.

  Her aunt followed and put that black plate back on the shelf. “I’m hankerin’ fer tea,” she said aloud. “Iffen y’all ain’t sleepy, jest put by yore book an’ set a spell. Happen y’all might hev some more questions by now.”

  Well, actually . . . she did. She put her Bible up on the same shelf as the receipt books and accepted a sweetened mug of tea from her aunt. “All this,” she said, waving her hand at the cured meat overhead, and vaguely out at the garden. “Is thet all y’all need fer a year?”

  “Prolly more’n a year, but I allus put by plenty in case somethin’ happens,” her aunt replied. “Hailstorm, wet spring, early frost—iffen what I put by is older’n a couple years, I takes it down t’Matt Holcroft ev’ six months, an’ he an’ Maddie take their extrees, an’ makes up boxes fer widders in Ducktown. I got money put by, too, from sellin’ potions, but I try not t’spend it iffen I kin he’p it. I got trade-deals a-goin’ with Matt an’ Old Raven. Matt’s got a water mill; he grinds my corn. Thet was part’a the bargain Granpappy made with his Pa for helpin’ build it. I tans my own leather, makes my own shoon. With y’all here, I reckon I’m a-gonna hev t’buy some cloth, on account of yore gonna fatten up iffen I hev anythin’ t’say ’bout it, an’ Ma’s close ain’t gonna fit y’all fer long; other than thet, I jest buys a liddle flour now’n agin, salt, bakin’ soda.” She thought a moment. “Vinegar. Some other trifles. Pots an’ jars fer preservin’. Could make m’own, an’ I useter, but I cain’t make glass. When I gets a hankerin’ fer butter or cheese, I go trade with Matt. Don’t go t’town m
uch; iffen y’all think Soddy’s done been pizened, y’all’s got no ideer what Ducktown’s like.”

  Looking around at the shelves filled with the fruits (and vegetables) of her aunt’s labor, Anna could well believe that Jinny had enough for “a bad year.” Shelves as high as she could comfortably reach, all loaded down with supplies and bunches of dried herbs above that. Ranged, now that she came to think about it, by type, according to some system only Jinny knew.

  Other people would have had pictures on the walls, even if they were nothing more than pictures cut out of an old newspaper or a magazine nobody wanted anymore, and framed by hand with scrap wood. Not Aunt Jinny. Every exposed inch of wall was covered in food, tools and cookware, herbs, and a couple of shelves of odds and ends that were supremely practical, like her receipt book, ink, and quill pens.

  “Got a storage shed an’ a root cellar behind th’ cabin too,” Jinny continued. “You ain’t niver had call to go there yet. I’ll shew y’all termorrow.” She sat in thought for a moment. “I’fact, I’m a-thinkin’ it’s time y’all met Matt an’ Maddie Holcroft. We’ll go visit ’em termorrow.”

  And with that astonishing statement she shooed Anna up to bed.

  The next day, Jinny was as good as her word. She showed Anna the storage shed, as stoutly built as the cabin and definitely bear-proof, full of pottery jars and wooden casks—mostly corn and dried beans, her aunt said—plus an emergency supply of seed in case the first planting was completely ruined. And she showed her the root cellar—dug under the cabin and entered by a trap door in the floor, barren of everything but a couple sacks of white and sweet potatoes, and some other odds and ends of last fall’s root vegetables, waiting for the fall harvest.

  “Didja ever hev a hankerin’ fer a cow?” Anna asked, as they closed up the cabin, and set off down the trail to the Holcroft’s farm.

  “Too much trouble,” her aunt replied. “Iffen y’all want milk, gotta keep ’er in calf. Cain’t rely on a tether t’keep ’er where y’all want ’er, an’ cain’t tether a calf. They’d be in the garden ever’ time my back was turned. More work than it’s wuth for one person, even two. A fambly now, thet’s different. There’s ’nuff call fer milk t’hev a herd an’ clear an’ fence off a pasture.”

  The walk down the long, gradual slope was lovely—even if Anna did keep catching those odd glimpses of things that weren’t quite there out of the corners of her eyes. “Aunt Jinny?” she said finally, with great hesitation. “Is these woods got hants in ’em?”

  She was afraid Aunt Jinny would laugh at her. But instead, her aunt just pursed her lips a little. “Not hants, ’xactly. But they say there’s things what ain’t what y’all’d call proper critters. The Ravens got lotsa stories ’bout ’em.”

  Once again, her aunt gave her an odd, sideways look when she thought Anna wouldn’t notice.

  There’s somethin’ there that she ain’t tellin’ me about, Anna decided. I wish’t I knowed what ’twas.

  But her aunt immediately changed the subject by turning the walk into a lesson on various plants along the way, and what they were good for. And she kept quizzing Anna on what she’d been told, so Anna didn’t have any time to think about her aunt’s enigmatic statements.

  Brilliant light at the end of the tunnel of trees told her they were about to meet the actual road, and come to the Holcrofts’ farm. By that time she was as eager to end the lesson as she was to meet the neighbors.

  When they emerged into sunlight, the farm lay spread out in front of them on the left side of the road. And now that she had a better look at it, it was clear that the log farmhouse was not one, but two full stories, and the second probably held as many as six rooms. Certainly four, which were probably bedrooms for the children. The whole was quite a bit larger than her aunt’s farm, but then, there were six children here besides the couple themselves. I reckon that not only means more mouths t’feed, but more hands t’he’p. A figure she supposed was Matt Holcroft worked in the distance behind a team of two mules. She wasn’t sure what he was doing—wasn’t plowing supposed to be over by now? But then again, everything she knew about farming she’d learned most of in the last couple of days.

  I didn’ know plants fed each other. Didn’ know I was s’posed to feed them. No wonder our garden didn’ grow thet good.

  A dog started barking just as they approached the house, and a woman came out of it, hands shading her eyes to see what all the ruckus was about. She obviously recognized Aunt Jinny, because she took her hand away from her eyes to wave enthusiastically.

  “Jinny!” the woman called in a throaty voice—the kind that carries far when someone is calling errant children in to supper. “Come up t’ the house! Been too long!”

  Aunt Jinny just waved in return, and lengthened her steps a little; Anna had to trot to keep up, and despite the fact that she was feeling better than she had in a long, long time, she started feeling breathless.

  Mrs. Holcroft was a tall woman, with yellow hair with just a couple of gray streaks in it done up at the nape of her neck in a knot. She wore a nice sprig-cotton dress in blue and white with a worn white bib apron over it. That dress fabric never came from flour sacks. Anna was very glad she was dressed decently in that nice canvas skirt with a proper shirtwaist and petticoat; if she’d come to visit turned out in the shabby flour-sack gown she’d arrived in, she’d have been mortified.

  Not that Mrs. Holcroft seemed to take note even of Aunt Jinny’s outrageous men’s bib overalls. Unlike Mrs. Sawyer, Mrs. Holcroft didn’t seem to care what Jinny and Anna wore.

  But Anna would still have been mortified.

  Now that they were out of the trees, the sun beat down on them in a way she couldn’t remember ever happening in Soddy. Maybe it was because of all the smoke and soot in the air in Soddy, that thinned out the sunlight. She was hot and uncomfortable when they reached the welcome shelter of the cabin’s cooler kitchen.

  The first thing she noticed was that there was no fire in the hearth nor in the stove, and she wondered why. How could you get any cooking done if you had to keep building the fire over and over? The second thing she noticed was that the enormous kitchen was a room all to itself; this huge cabin wasn’t just one big room downstairs, it was partitioned up. The upstairs must be, too. But the Holcrofts weren’t so high-falutin’ as to have a parlor, or that’s where she and Aunt Jinny would have been invited, so the rest of the house probably was made of a workroom and several bedrooms.

  There were many cupboards and pantries here, a circle of ladderback chairs at the hearth, and a proper spindle-leg table and set of ladderback chairs around it. The table had a red-and-white checkered oilcloth tablecloth on it.

  “Set a spell, I got some’a yore tea right here,” the woman said, nodding at the table and chairs as she picked up a pitcher and began pouring cups of tea—proper pottery cups, not the wooden ones Aunt Jinny used. Without being asked, she dripped some honey into all three. “So, this must be yore sister’s gal?”

  “This’s Anna May,” Aunt Jinny confirmed, as they took their places at the table. “Anna, this’s Maddie Holcroft.”

  “Please ter meetcher, Missus Holcroft,” Anna said shyly, ducking her head a little.

  “Reckon I should make ’er known t’yer,” Jinny continued. “Seein’ as she’s stayin’.”

  “Wall, good. I worry ’bout y’all up there all alone,” Mrs. Holcroft said. “I ain’t a-gonna worry iffen y’all got a young gal stayin’.” Aunt Jinny snorted.

  “There ain’t nothin’ t’worry ’bout, Maddie,” Jinny retorted. “I’m meaner’n a rattlesnake and sneakier than a panther. Ain’t no man nor beast a-gonna meddle with me.”

  “It ain’t man nor beast I’m a-worried ’bout, Jinny. It’s slips of th’ axe, a branch a-rollin’ out from under y’all, and y’all fallin’ an’ crackin yore fool haid, or fallin’ on th’ ice.” Maddie chuckled. “Though hard as thet
haid of yores is, prolly no harm ’ud come to y’all.”

  “Takes one ter know one, Maddie,” Jinny snickered, and then the two of them were off, chattering away, with Maddie offering gossip about people Anna had never heard of, and Jinny asking about the six Holcroft children. Early on in the gossip session, Maddie offered around a plate of pale yellow sugar cookies. Jinny took one absently. There was nothing absent-minded about the way Anna helped herself, but she did manage to restrain herself to taking only two.

  Four of the six Holcroft children were scattered about the farm. One was milking, one was fishing, one was gathering vegetables, and one was chopping wood. The eldest girl was in the “kitchen-shed.” And that explained the cold stove. In summer, people who were well enough off to afford it moved their cooking to a shed attached to, but separate from, the house. Everything that needed heat from a stove or a hearth—baking, stewing, or frying—was done there instead of in the house. Anna had only heard about people well off enough to do this; she’d never actually known anyone who did, herself.

  “An’ Josh has another job fer ol’ Cavenel,” Mrs. Holcroft concluded.

  “Who died?” Jinny asked with a sort of morbid interest, although Anna could not connect “having a job” with someone dying.

  “It’s fer Hopper, what runs the Company store. Their baby took sick an’ died last week.” She shook her head. “Poor liddle thang, it weren’t even four months old. Missus Hopper took it hard, an’ so did he.”

  “Said it afore, an’ I’ll say it agin. Thet there mine pizens ev’thin’ around it,” Aunt Jinny growled. “Half the babies in Ducktown niver see their fust birthdays. It oughter be shet down.”