The Librarian of Boone's Hollow

by Kim Vogel Sawyer

  “Nanny Fay, since I’m living here”—

  Her heart smiled bigger.

  —“would you mind if I shared your mail cubby?”

  Nanny Fay chuckled. “I don’t mind a bit. Can’t even recall the last time somethin’ showed up in that cubby. Don’t got nobody to write to me. But I reckon your folks an’ friends’ll be sendin’ you letters an’ such fairly regular.”

  The girl’s eyebrows pinched together, and it sure looked like she was biting on the inside of her lip. A sorrowful face if Nanny Fay had ever seen one. Adelaide touched Nanny Fay’s arm. “Don’t you have any family at all?”

  “None I know of. Not livin’, anyways.” In her mind’s eye, Nanny Fay traveled through the trees, up the mountain, to a small clearing and a row of wooden crosses. “But I got kin in heaven. My man, o’ course, an’ our young’uns.”

  Now Adelaide’s eyebrows shot up. “You had children?”

  The mix of joy and agony that always came when she thought about her babies swooped through her like a hawk swooping under the wind currents. “Can’t call ’em children since not a one of ’em ever took a breath here on earth. But their little souls are well an’ happy with Jesus. Along with their pappy’s. I’ll be with ’em again, by an’ by.”

  Adelaide blinked real hard. “I’m sorry. Is that why you stay here in Boone’s Hollow—because your husband and children are buried close by?”

  Nanny Fay spread her apron neat across her knees and smoothed the faded fabric. “Honey, I stay here ’cause I ain’t never had any other home. Me an’ my man, we was here before anybody else come along. Boone’s Holler sort of growed up beside us.” She chuckled, recalling Eagle proclaiming those folks coming along and settling meant her and him were right smart to choose this place. ’Course, it was his people who’d settled the area before any of the white folks come this way.

  “But if you were here first, then they”—she waved her dirty hand in the direction of the town—“are the outsiders, not you. Why do they treat you as if you don’t belong here?”

  “Well, now, I s’pose it’s ’cause I was married to a part-Cherokee man. They see me as differ’nt from theyselves.”

  “But you aren’t Cherokee. Not even a little bit.”

  Nanny Fay narrowed her eyes and peered at Adelaide. “Would you be friendly to me if I was?”

  “I…I…” The girl bit on her lip again, uncertainty showing as plain as the dirt smudges on her face. “I’ve never encountered any Cherokees, nor anyone who’d married a Cherokee. To the other people living in Boone’s Hollow, it must make a great deal of difference, but I don’t think it would matter to Mother and Daddy. Penrose and Fern Cowherd are friendly to everyone, no matter their origin of birth or the color of their skin, even when it means being snubbed by others who hold a different opinion.”

  Nanny Fay smiled. “Sounds like your folks read an’ follow the teachin’ in the Good Book about how to treat folks.”

  She offered a slow nod. “You’re right. They do. Even if you were Cherokee, they’d be friendly to you, and I would be, too.”

  Tears stung Nanny Fay’s eyes, but she couldn’t stop smiling. “That’s good. That’s real good.” She plucked a long grass stem from next to the rock and picked off the seeds from its head one by one, dropping them onto her lap.

  Adelaide pulled a stalk free and imitated Nanny Fay. “May I ask you a question?”

  “Seems to me you just did.”

  The girl grinned. “I meant may I ask how you came to marry a Cherokee? I thought all the Cherokees were gone from Kentucky a long time ago.”

  Such pain attacked that Nanny Fay cringed.

  Adelaide tossed the stalk of grass and took hold of Nanny Fay’s wrinkled hand. The sadness crinkling her sweet face pained Nanny Fay more. “Please forgive me. I shouldn’t have—”

  “No. No.” A warm tear rolled down Nanny Fay’s cheek and landed on her lip. She licked its saltiness and shook her head. “It’s good for someone to know. ’Cause I’ll leave this earth, same as my Eagle did, an’ I got no child to carry on our story. Tellin’ you…that means somebody’ll know.” Her lips trembled, and another tear ran down. “Then Eagle, his folks, an’ his granny, they won’t be forgot. If I tell you, will you write it down on paper? Like a real story?”

  “Of course I will. I’ll write it all out for you.”

  “No, child.” Nanny Fay cupped Adelaide’s cheeks. Her rough palms were probably chafing her flesh, but she needed to connect with the girl. “Will you write it out for you? To remember?”

  “Yes.”

  Nanny Fay lowered her hands, almost collapsing with joy and relief. “Good. Good.”

  Adelaide shifted to the grass and folded her legs to the side. She fixed her focus on Nanny Fay’s face. “I’m listening.”

  Nanny Fay closed her eyes. Gathered her thoughts. Then she aimed her sight on the tips of the waving trees branches. “Eagle’s story starts over a hunnerd years ago, with a young Cherokee maiden named White Fawn. She an’ her tribe lived right here on the mountain. They hunted some, an’ they farmed some, an’ they lived in peace on this land.” Even without trying, her voice turned almost singsong, the same way Eagle’s had when he talked of times long ago. “White Fawn was promised to a man from her tribe, a brave man named Wohali. They was gonna marry late in the spring of her seventeenth year, after Wohali built their house. But he didn’t get the chance to build it.

  “Soldiers came, sent by the president named Jackson.” Pictures formed in Nanny Fay’s head, and while she talked, the words played out in her mind’s eye. “They forced White Fawn’s tribe to leave their homes. The Cherokee was marched off this mountain, allowed to take nothin’ with ’em except what they could carry. But White Fawn had a crippled leg from a bad fall when she was still a itty-bitty girl. She couldn’t keep up with the march. She fell behind, an’ the soldiers left her to die. So many of her people died on that long march to Oklahoma Territory. But White Fawn, she was stronger’n them soldiers knew. She didn’t die. She found her way to a cabin, where a Scottish man an’ woman an’ their son took pity on her. She stayed with them all that summer, an’ when fall came, the son—a man named Ben Tuckett—made her his bride.”

  “Is that who Tuckett’s Pass was named after?”

  Nanny Fay jumped. She’d almost forgot Adelaide was there. She nodded and looked at her to tell the rest of the story. “After Samuel Tuckett. He was Ben’s daddy. Now, three boys was born to Ben an’ White Fawn, but only one growed to manhood. That one was named Chetan, which means ‘hawk.’ In the year 1858, he married up with a red-haired girl named Sarah McKee, who come from Ireland as what they call an indentured servant. She birthed a boy they named Wohali in 1860.”

  “Wohali…After White Fawn’s first love?”

  Nanny Fay nodded, pleased. “You’re rememberin’ real good. Sarah caught a fever only two years after that little boy was born, an’ Chetan buried her up in the mountain a piece, right close to where White Fawn’s tribe had lived. White Fawn and Ben are laid to rest up there, too.”

  A frown sagged Adelaide’s pretty face. “That’s so sad.”

  Nanny Fay shrugged. “Maybe. But that’s the way o’ things, with people bein’ born an’ people dyin’. We ain’t made to live forever. Our bodies gotta die afore our souls can go on to heaven.”

  “That might be true, but I don’t like it.” The girl’s eyes spit fire. “Too many people die too soon. My birth parents”—

  Nanny Fay gave a little jolt. The girl was took in by folks who didn’t birth her?

  —“and the Cherokees who were forced off the mountain. Sarah McKee. Your husband, and the babies you birthed…You didn’t even get to nurse them.”

  Nanny Fay hung her head, pain stabbing anew.

  “I think everybody ought to be able to live as long as they want to. It isn�
��t right for mothers to die when their children are so young or for babies to die before they’ve even had a chance to take a breath.”

  Head low, Nanny Fay sniffled. “That ain’t our choice to make. Only the Good Lord knows the number of our days, an’ He’s the only one wise enough to make the decision, so we’d best leave that to Him.”

  Adelaide sighed. “I suppose you’re right. Please finish telling me the story.”

  Nanny Fay lifted her face and shrugged. “It’s all done.”

  Adelaide frowned. “No, it’s not. You haven’t told me about Eagle yet.”

  Nanny Fay held back a grin. My, but the girl looked arguesome. “Yes, I did. Chetan and Sarah McKee’s little boy, Wohali—he’s my Eagle. Wohali means ‘eagle’ in English.”

  Adelaide’s mouth fell open. “Ohhhhh…” Then she shook her head. “Something’s still missing. You didn’t tell me how you met Eagle. How you came to be his bride.”

  Nanny Fay ducked her head, remembrances rushing in and bringing with them a shame she’d carry to her dying day. The squirrels ceased their chatter, like they, too, sensed her worthlessness in the eyes of those who’d birthed her. But it was part of the story, and she should tell it all. “I was sold to him, in exchange for two goats an’ a barrel o’ gun powder.”

  Adelaide gasped.

  With as much effort as it took to force her ax blade through a chunk of wood, Nanny Fay shoved the shame aside and looked into Adelaide’s shocked brown eyes. “An’ he said it was the best trade any man ever made.”

  Addie

  SHE SHOULD EXTINGUISH THE LAMP and go to bed, but her mind refused to shut down. These words must be given release to the page. Nanny Fay’s confession about being sold by her very own parents to a man they didn’t even know horrified her. Oh, such a deep, moving story existed in the woman’s life! At the tender age of thirteen, she was purchased by and wed to a complete stranger, not knowing he’d only done it to protect her. Then she grew to love the man and became his wife in every way three years later.

  Addie had been stunned to learn that the photograph on the mantel of the young girl in a simple muslin dress, her hair in braids, was of Nanny Fay on her wedding day. Addie’s eyes were opened to a world beyond anything she could have imagined. She’d never encountered a more tender love story than the one she heard from Nanny Fay’s lips. Not even her own Mother and Daddy’s story of meeting by chance on an April evening and marrying a mere four months later topped it. She would record every word of it not only for herself, as the old woman had requested, but for others.

  If the folks of Boone’s Hollow knew the truth of Nanny Fay’s difficult childhood, of how she learned to gather herbs and roots for medicinal cures from an old Cherokee woman named White Fawn, of how she used her knowledge and treatments to cure fevers, heal wounds, and ease women’s pain during childbirth, would they still view her as a witch, as someone to distrust and ostracize?

  Addie prayed that putting Nanny Fay’s story into a fictional account of a little girl named Lydia—in honor of Miss West, who’d assured her of the power of words—would help the people in Boone’s Hollow realize their fears were misguided. She prayed Nanny Fay would find a place of acceptance before her body gave out and she joined Eagle and her stillborn babies in the little burial plot up the mountain.

  Lamplight flickered, casting dancing shadows across the page. Addie paused and adjusted the wick. The light brightened, reflecting off the room’s glass windowpanes. She applied pencil to paper again, writing as quickly as her aching fingers allowed, aware that outside, night creatures went about their business of hunting and stars winked behind a sheer curtain of clouds. Folks in the hollow were asleep, as was Nanny Fay, evidenced by the steady snore carrying from the other side of Addie’s bedroom wall. But Addie couldn’t sleep. Not until the entire story had been released from deep in her soul.

  It was wrong to sell a child.

  It was wrong to brand someone a witch.

  It was wrong to reject someone simply because the person’s heritage differed from one’s own.

  The injustices burned as hot in Addie’s chest as the flame did in the lamp, but she didn’t state the truths. She showed them in the terror and helplessness of a little girl, in the heartache of a young woman who desired friends and acceptance, in the pride and determination of a tribe of people who carved a life on the mountainside.

  “Books, Addie, have the power to change people for the better.”

  If she was going to live and work and worship in this community, then she would do her best to leave the town of Boone’s Hollow better than she’d found it. Just as Miss West had tried to do.

  Bettina

  BETTINA FASTENED THE silver barrette in her hair, then gave herself a quick look-see in the round cracked mirror hanging on her wall. She’d cracked that mirror herself so her soul could escape if the mirror captured it, but she didn’t want to take no chances by looking at herself too long. Still, she wanted to know. Miz Tharp had said she looked pretty with her bangs clipped away from her face—said it brought out her eyes. But maybe that wasn’t such a good thing.

  Why couldn’t she have green eyes like Alba or brown like Glory? Instead, she got a muddy mix of the two. Hazel, her maw had called it. Not even a real color name. She yanked out the barrette, losing a few brown hairs with it, and let her bangs flop over her forehead. She grunted. No better.

  She sank onto her bed and fiddled with the barrette. She didn’t have no other way to make herself look nice for Emmett. She couldn’t change into a dress. Mule would buck her right off if she tried climbing on his back while wearing a skirt. That ol’ mule, he was plain peculiar about flapping fabric. Of course, the other girls’d all be in their overalls or dungarees, too, including Addie Coward, so wearing her overalls didn’t trouble her near so much as having something that would set her apart from the others in a good way.

  All her playing with the barrette had left fingerprints behind. She rubbed it shiny again on her pant leg and returned to the mirror. She sucked in her breath to keep hold of her soul and stared at her reflection, trying to see herself the way Miz Tharp had. Now, Damaris Tharp, she was a kind lady. Maw and her had been the best of friends, and that’s what put Bettina and Emmett together so much. Seemed to Bettina it meant they was s’posed to always be together. Miz Tharp thought her eyes was pretty, even if they didn’t have a real color name. Did Emmett maybe think the same as his maw?

  She ducked away from the mirror and let her breath whoosh out. Standing here staring at herself wouldn’t change her looks. It’d only make her late to work, and she wanted to be the first one through the door on Emmett’s first day of directing the library.

  On her way across the dewy grass to the barn, she slicked her bangs away from her forehead and clipped them into place. The morning mist was already fading away from the treetops, looking more like spiderwebs than clouds. She’d piddled too much, messing with her hair. Now she’d be late. She growled under her breath, thinking hard. If she didn’t saddle Mule, she could get going a lot faster. Staying on his back on some of those steep climbs wouldn’t be easy without a saddle, but if she held real tight with her heels, she could do it.

  She put his harness on him and led him from their lean-to barn. The carrots she’d put in her pocket for lunch, along with a brown-sugar-and-butter sandwich, made a fine bribe to keep him moving. She kept them right out of his reach until she got to the library. At the smokehouse, she tossed his reins over a holly bush and gave him one of the carrots as a reward. Then she darted for the open doorway, setting her face in a smile.

  The mumble of voices brought her to a skidding halt. She tilted her ear to the opening, then let out a huff. Oh, that Addie! She’d got there first! Bettina stomped to the stoop, then jerked backward. Addie stood on the other side of the threshold.

  The girl smiled big, like she knew she’d bested Bettina. �
�Good morning, Bettina. Please excuse me. I need to go get Russet.”

  Bettina eyed Addie up and down. She’d rolled the cuffs of her overalls and fixed the straps so the bib didn’t hang so low. How could she look so respectable, even without a silver barrette holding her wavy hair away from her brown eyes? Probably ’cause she was tall.

  Bettina stretched out her chin. “How come you didn’t fetch her already?”

  “I tried, but the livery wasn’t open yet. So I came here instead.”

  She must’ve got up before the sun even peeked over the mountains to reach the library so early. Tomorrow Bettina would leave at the same time as Pap. Then she’d be waiting on the stoop when Emmett opened the door.

  Addie eased past Bettina, still smiling all cheerful-like, and headed up the street, walking high headed and straight shouldered. If that girl didn’t think she belonged in the movies, Bettina would put ketchup on her barrette and eat it for dinner.

  But now Emmett was in there all by hisself, so it was her turn to get his attention. She sashayed through the doorway like she didn’t have a care in the world. Emmett was at the table in Miz West’s chair. Giving her head a toss to show off her silver barrette, she crossed to the table and rested her palms on its top. “Howdy, Emmett. You already workin’? My, ain’t you as busy as a bee.”

  He took off his wire spectacles and laid them next to the lamp. “I’m not working yet, just glancing over what Addie gave me.”

  Bettina’s heart jumped a little in her chest. “Since when’s she doing reports?”

  He laughed real soft, like she’d said something funny. “It’s not a report. It’s a story.”