Christy

by Catherine Marshall

  I was thinking about all this as I started for the spot at the base of Pebble Mountain where Fairlight and I had agreed to meet today. Her husband and some of the other men were helping David complete the stringing of the telephone wire. We wanted to see the men at work. The telephone was a big event. It would be the Cove’s first real link with civilization, and we could scarcely wait to hear that telephone start ringing in the mission house.

  The school grounds and the road running past the mission were still quagmires of mud. I paused for an instant at the end of the boardwalk, but could see no dry spots, so there was nothing for it but to plunge into the sea of mud. With every footfall there was a scrunch and then a sucking sound.

  I thought back to Mr. Pentland’s cryptic comments about spring mud in general and the Big Mud Hole in particular during our walk together through the snow. Now I could appreciate what he had meant. Once frozen ground had thawed through April rains, there was mud everywhere in our big front yard, tracked into the mission house. Even pernickety Miss Ida had almost given up scrubbing floors after us.

  In the valley the blossoms of the “sarvice” tree were fading now. But as I began climbing Pebble Mountain, I was delighted to find the trees still in full bloom, clouds of creamy-white blossoms, incredibly beautiful set against the dark green background of the firs and spruces.

  For a few minutes the trail was in the open, then it passed again through forest cover. All at once I came upon an astonishing performance—a ruffed grouse doing his courting dance before his lady-love. I half-hid myself behind a tree, scarcely daring to breathe lest I interrupt this fascinating sight. As the male strutted, his tail feathers were spread and held erect, his neck feathers ruffled, his body swollen. At intervals he would wag his head to the ground giving the effect of a courtly bow. I wondered how often Fairlight Spencer had seen this dance.

  She was waiting for me now sitting on a fallen log at the edge of a clearing. I could tell by the childishly eager look on her face that she had something to show me.

  “Pyxie lichen.” She pointed to an unusual-looking moss that covered the rotting balsam log. “Jest a-settin’ here I spied nine kinds. That thar’s reindeer moss. That’s beard lichen.”

  All of this was new to me. Some of the mosses were so delicate as to be elfin. Week by week I was finding that Fairlight knew so much about the woods: where to find fields of bluets and crowfoot violets and maidenhair ferns and jack-in-the-pulpits; the spots for “Monkey-jugs,” as she called them (really wild ginger); trillium—as gorgeous a wildflower as I had ever seen; and “sang”—the gingseng so wanted in the Orient that they are willing to pay big prices for the roots.

  She also had favorite spots for all the herbs she needed for her family doctoring: mullen, out of which she made cough syrup; crabapple bark for asthma and sneezing; wild ginger for diarrhea; witch-hazel bark from which she made a salve for burns and skin sores; gingseng and sassafras mixed together for a tea.

  When Fairlight had finished showing me the mosses and the lichens, she pointed in the direction of the hill behind us, “Men-persons jest over there—yan.” But I had already been hearing their voices.

  “Bin workin’ since sunup,” she commented as she rose and tried to smooth her wrinkled cotton skirt. “They’ll most likely be chiseled down by now, I reckon.”

  “Yes, they’re just pigs for work today.”

  Fairlight looked me in astonishment. “Why Miz Christy, that’s not the way to call it. You jest don’t know pigs a-tall. Why pigs never work.”

  We were both laughing as we scrambled through the bushes to find David and some men lifting a tall pole into a hole; another group was following the same procedure several hundred feet on up the slope. David waved to us; he had on his oldest work clothes and looked almost as dirty and sweaty as the rest. Yet there was no question as to who was directing the operation. His voice was as loud and booming as always; listening to him, I wondered if he realized how abrupt and overbearing his orders sounded.

  “Eas-sy, Jeb. Two more feet. To the left, Jeb, more to the left. Now—let her drop!” With a thump the pole hit the bottom of the hole, and while two men held the pole steady, the rest shoveled in the dirt and tamped it in around.

  I was puzzled to notice one man half-slumped behind a tree trunk off to one side, absently whittling on a piece of wood with a jackknife. I recognized him as Ozias Holt, the father of eight children in my school including Wraight and Vella. David had apparently not yet noticed that Mr. Holt was taking it easy on the job. What had begun as a volunteer project had now turned into a paid one.

  At first David had thought that he and two or three other men would have no trouble stringing the telephone wire. He had soon learned differently. The first bad news had been to find that the insulators and pins could not be fastened to live trees. The mere thought of having to cut tall straight trees, skin and smooth them, lug them where there were no roads, plant them up and down mountains, meanwhile hacking off branches of any living trees that might swing against the wire, was staggering. And I had started all this by one innocent little letter to the telephone company!

  David had, first of all, studied a map to plot the route for the wire. He found that the closest point where we could tap into an existing line was at Centerport, not quite three miles across country from the mission, four and a half miles east of Lyleton.

  For the portion of the route which cut across any land owned by mountain men, there was no problem about getting permission to cut the necessary trees for poles. But one strip which had to be crossed belonged to the Scottish Timber and Land Company. They had given David permission to string the wire across their land, but were adamant about any timber-cutting, so the poles for that section had to be hauled. They would have to be brought partway in the Harvester wagon, carried on shoulders the rest of the distance. Worse, close to Centerport the wire was going to have to be taken across the French Broad River by boat before being tapped into the line on the other bank. Fortunately at that place, the river was only about three hundred feet wide.

  So much work was involved that David finally decided to give out the word that he would pay his helpers twenty cents an hour. David was taking part of this money for wages from his own pocket; the mission helped a little. Eleven men had volunteered, but David soon found he never knew when any given man would show up for work. I had to admit that the same relaxed attitude toward life which I so admired in Fairlight did make for some working problems. A case in point was Mr. Holt loitering behind the tree, unnoticed.

  “Men, we’ve got to get at least six more poles in the ground before dark,” David was announcing.

  “Announcing” was the right word too. You would have thought that David was talking to a congregation of two thousand. The Cove folks were always saying that their new preacher had “good wind.” Well, probably the residents of Centerport were hearing this pronouncement.

  At that moment Mr. Holt slid from a sitting position to stretch himself full length on the ground, hands under his head staring up at the clouds. The movement caught David’s eye. Amazement in every movement, he strode over to where the man was stretched out. “And just what ails you, Ozias?” The big mountaineer did not stir. “Why, Rev’end, hit’s jest not generated in me to work right now. I’m bodaciously tired out.”

  “Tired out! Well, now isn’t that too bad! You’re being paid for this job, Ozias. The rest of us are tired too. You don’t see us quitting.” A thought struck David and his voice rose higher. “Come to think of it, Ozias, you haven’t done much work all day long.”

  As if in answer, Mr. Holt raised himself on one elbow and let go a stream of tobacco juice aimed at the nearest tree trunk.

  David stood there shaking with fury. “Ozias Holt, I’ll be blasted if I’m going to pay you one red cent for loafing around here all day. Start working—or quit.”

  Mr. Holt still would not look at David. He answered nothing, spat again. Finally very slowly, he rose and stretched and yawned
, turned, and slouched off through the woods.

  David watched him go, making no comment. Obviously he was still seething inside. Embarrassed, the rest of the men turned back to their tasks—mostly in silence now, and a somewhat thoughtful and chastened David picked up where he had left off.

  Fairlight crept close to me. “It puzzles me a little grain,” she said in a low voice. “Some folks are an everlastin’ despair. Lordamercy, that Ozias now. Always has been tough as a laurel burl. Tetchious too. Shorely wearin’ his gredges outside his shirt this day.” She sighed. “Never did like up-scuddles myself. Sorter wears the bright off the day.” Her voice sank to a whisper. “But I don’t like preacher-parson tanglin’ with Ozias Holt. He’s a mean’un. Don’t want nothin’ t’happen.”

  The day after the big shipment of books and maps arrived, David and I spent all of the evening into the small hours unpacking everything and putting up the maps. Then I could scarcely wait to get through the opening exercises and the singing period the first morning so that I could announce, “Now I have a big surprise for you!” And I began pulling down the large colorful maps from their shiny roller-cases fastened to the wall, then holding up one by one some of the new textbooks from the piles on my desk for all the children to see. It was easy to make a story for my pupils out of my trip to Knoxville, with Mr. Smith as the hero-benefactor.

  They were entranced with the beauty of the maps and their brilliant colors. Immediately we found Tennessee on the map of the United States and stuck in a pin with a red paper flag at the approximate location of Cutter Gap. At last I had some tools to help me convey some notion of the world beyond this isolated Cove. At last, we could get on with geography and even history.

  I was the only person in the classroom who had ever before seen books so fresh and clean, with all their covers still there, with not a page missing, with no tears and fingermarks. I made a speech about taking care of the books. “Books are like friends. We must treat them like friends. Let’s have clean hands before we handle them. Turn the pages carefully. Never, never bend the covers of the books backwards.”

  Already John Spencer had located the calculus book and was turning the pages joyfully, looking as if he had been handed a gift of the moon.

  On the whole, Mr. Smith had centered on textbooks for the High School level, partly because he had guessed correctly that this was our greatest need, partly because he was a man whose inclination, I already knew, was to help the more advanced and superior students. So we had algebra and geometry books, Latin texts for four years and especially fine literature books. I noticed that Rob Allen and Isaak McHone were fascinated with the latter.

  Later on that day I read from one of our new copies of English Romantic Poets, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” thinking that my pupils—even those too young to understand the meaning—would enjoy the rhythm and harmonious sound of the words.

  I had no sooner finished reading than Isaak raised his hand to ask, “Kin I learn it by heart, Teacher? All of it?” And before school let out that day he proceeded to do just that, memorizing every beautiful line of the poem. Exuberantly, he left school that afternoon rolling the rhythms over his tongue, marching out the door reciting to the other children:

  “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

  A stately pleasure-dome decree;

  Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

  Through caverns measureless to man

  Down to a sunless sea . . .”

  I could hear his voice going down the road proclaiming to the mountains, exulting to the heavens . . .

  “A damsel with a dulcimer

  In a vision once I saw:

  It was an Abyssinian maid,

  And on her dulcimer she play’d

  Singing of Mount Abora.

  Could I revive within me

  Her symphony and song,

  To such a deep delight ’twould win me,

  That with music loud and long,

  I would build that dome in air.

  And all who heard should see them there,

  And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

  His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

  For he on honey-dew hath fed,

  And drunk the milk of Paradise.”

  On Friday morning I started for the schoolhouse early to make some extra preparations for the end-of-the-week spelling bee. I wanted to find some especially hard and tricky words because the eight best spellers on each of our two teams were to compete that afternoon for “head marks.” As I crossed the yard, I noticed some papers on the ground. I quickened my steps. Even from a distance I could see that the schoolhouse door was standing ajar.

  Fearing I did not know what, I pushed the door open—and drew in my breath sharply. The room was wrecked. Books littered the floor around my desk. I ran toward the front of the room for a better look. Books had been thrown wildly and were lying where they had fallen, some on their faces with bent covers, some face up with their pages fluttering in the breeze from the open doorway, looking as if several pairs of feet had tramped through them and over them, not once but again and again. Pages had been ripped out, some slashed and then wadded up. Our books! Our beautiful new books! Hot anger rose in me. I stooped and picked up one of them lying by my toe. It was a Cicero book with pages torn out, only pieces left, the spine broken. I stood there looking at the mutilated book in my hands through a blur of tears. What is the point of this? I don’t understand. I just don’t understand. Are some people mad at the mission? Mad at the school? Why? Why would they be?

  For no reason at all I thought of little Vella Holt and that mean prank on the first day of school—the rock camouflaged to look like an innocent rag and string ball. This assault on our books was of the same order: there was viciousness in our midst.

  But I was not finished with nasty surprises. I looked up and—oh, no! Two of our new maps had been drawn down out of their cases and then slashed with something sharp—like a boy’s Barlow knife. Weak-kneed, I sank into the nearest seat and sat staring at the rampage of destruction spread out before me. The faces of different children, all sorts of thoughts went chasing through my mind. But I had to tell David about this. I went to get him.

  There were some sad faces in school that day but a great many more enigmatic ones. Most of the children were withdrawn, subdued, suddenly remote, unwilling to say much of anything. We spent much of the morning putting torn books and maps back together as best we could, matching pieces, mending and pasting those that could be mended. I hoped that all this effort would at least impress on everyone the seriousness of such malicious destructiveness.

  After mending books we went on to preparation for the spelling bee. I started to put a long list of words on the board for the contestants to study when I realized how chilly the room was. We were having another spell of “dogwood winter” with clouded skies and a cold wind, so I went over to poke up the fire. But I had no sooner opened the iron grating and thrust the poker in than a series of explosions like a gun going off spit sparks and flame into my face and onto my hair and dress. With an involuntary cry I backed away, slapping at the sparks.

  Ruby Mae, who was sitting in the nearest seat, rushed to me, frantically raking burning pieces of something out of my hair. When we had finally gotten all the tiny conflagrations stamped out, I saw that there were several scorched places and burned holes in my dress, and the way one place on my neck was stinging, I knew that it must be burned. Ruby Mae examined it. “Hit’s burned right enough, Teacher. It’s a-raisin’ a water-bubble already.”

  I stood there with flushed face and disheveled hair looking at my schoolroom, so flustered that for a moment I could not trust myself to speak. Finally with a shaking voice I asked, “What was it that exploded?”

  There was a long silence. Some of the children would not look at me. Finally Joshua Bean Beck spoke up, “Hit be buckeyes, ma’am. Buckeyes in the ashes. They git hot and then pop and fly all t’pieces when the air hits ’em.”

  I was op
ening my mouth for the next obvious question but Joshua Bean was ahead of me. “No ma’am, Teacher. I wouldn’t do that to ye. Not me, Teacher.”

  Then who? Who? . . . Haven’t I gotten through to these youngsters at all? Mrs. Tatum’s voice came back to me as through a tunnel, “Goin’ to be well nigh impossible for you to help them. Only person that could stick it out was Miss Henderson. Other teachers has had to give it up as a bad job.” A bad job . . . Was this the beginning of the end for me too?

  Then I heard a torrent of words pouring out of my own mouth, “I bragged about you in my letters to Mr. Smith, talked you up, told him you were different from boys and girls in other schools. Told him how proud I was of you—that there never had been students so eager for a school, so wanting to learn, so longing for books in order to learn.

  “So what do I tell Mr. Smith now? That I was mistaken in believing in you?” I bit my lip, choked back the words. In an effort to get control of myself I whirled to the blackboard to get on with the writing of the spelling words which the buckeye trick had interrupted. You’re going too far. You’re angry and don’t know what you’re saying. Only a few are to blame. There were tears in the eyes of some of the children. Don’t lump them all together. That’s not fair. That’s not the way to handle it.

  But I had written only a few words when a steady noise at the back of the room penetrated my tortured thoughts. I whirled just in time to see Lundy stalking down the aisle, poking a stick into Mountie O’Teale’s back, loudly “He-heeing” as he went.

  It was deliberate defiance. The sneer on his face and the shifty look in his eyes made me suspect that he was the one responsible for the buckeyes. Yet of course I could not be sure. “Lundy,” I said with an immense effort to speak calmly. “Stop talking and get back to your seat. Do you know anything about this?”