by Tony Earley
The subject that day was the early European exploration of America, but Jim paid only sporadic attention. He studied instead, with a scholar’s single-minded intensity, the way the light reflected off Chrissie’s black hair. The day before, Jim had noticed that when the sun hit it just right, it sparkled with the deep colors of a prism hanging in the window of a science class. Today he wanted to see if he had imagined it. He studied it so closely that his eyes slipped out of focus and the scale of the room swelled in an instant and became immense around him; he felt suddenly microscopic, a tiny creature swimming in a drop of pond water. At that moment Chrissie’s hair seemed to take on an infinite depth; it became a warm, rich space into which it suddenly seemed possible to fall and become lost. Off in the distance somewhere he heard Miss Brown say the word conquistador. She always trilled the r and added a long a sound to the end of the word, a pronunciation that made most of the students snicker. But Jim thought it sounded romantic and filled with adventure, an altogether fitting word for men who sailed across oceans and waded into strange jungles, searching for lost cities of gold. “Conquistador,” Jim whispered, adding the long a. He leaned forward almost imperceptibly and moved his head slightly in relation to the sunlight falling through the tall windows.
There.
The colors of the spectrum flared in Chrissie’s hair with the hopeful radiance of undiscovered stars. Jim sat very still and held his breath, aware that he had entered a magical place where it would not be possible to stay. The colors and lights swirled around him in their private orbits. He was sure that he knew something about Chrissie Steppe that no one else knew, that maybe no one else in the world would ever know. He certainly doubted that Bucky Bucklaw, who was a lunkhead, knew about Chrissie’s hair. The moment he thought about Bucky Bucklaw, however, the colors in Chrissie’s hair blinked out, and the scale of the room spun back to normal. Jim found himself back in North Carolina, in Aliceville, at his desk in history class, his history book covered with the beautiful hair of a girl he barely knew, who probably didn’t like him, anyway. According to Miss Brown, Ponce de León’s men staggered through the swamps of Florida until they collapsed, their lungs filled with the mosquitoes they had no choice but to inhale. They never discovered the fountain of youth.
Jim sighed.
He opened his notebook and wrote “ROY G. BIV” in block letters at the top of a clean piece of paper. Then he wrote “RED ORANGE YELLOW GREEN BLUE INDIGO VIOLET.” He looked at what he had written and realized it wouldn’t be much help in studying for a history test. He forced himself to turn his attention to Miss Brown, who had moved from Ponce de León on to Hernando de Soto. Jim wrote “de Soto” in his notebook.
“We North Carolinians,” Miss Brown said, “speak with justifiable pride about Sir Walter Raleigh and the Lost Colony, and about poor Virginia Dare, born on the hostile shores of the New World, never to be heard from again, but what we do not regularly speak of, perhaps because we are of English descent, is the expedition of the great conquistador Hernando de Soto into what is now North Carolina in the early fifteen forties, years before our beloved Raleigh was even born. Search in the history book on your desk all you like and you will find no mention of de Soto’s expedition into the Tarheel State. Why is that? I do not know, children. Most of the decisions made in Raleigh have always struck me as illogical, if not arcane. But, had history played out in a slightly different manner, this class today would be conducted entirely in Spanish. And wouldn’t you find that confusing?”
Miss Brown seemed to think this very funny. She put her hand to her chest and snorted, her face reddening. “Oh, my,” she said. “Muy bueno.”
Jim wrote “#1” and “NC” in his notebook beside the word “de Soto.” This, finally, seemed to be a fact worth remembering.
“Allow me to tell you a story,” Miss Brown continued when she recovered.
Here we go, thought Jim.
“My maternal grandmother grew up not far from here, near Tryon. Her family owned a small plantation, which, by the way, the male descendants of my family have managed to squander over the years until not a shred of it remains in our possession. Not a shred, children. Be that as it may, my grandmother’s people owned a few slaves, no more than ten, I suppose, at any one time — this was only a small plantation, you see — but they owned a few. One of those slaves, an old fellow named Big Walker, told my grandmother, when she was just a little girl herself, that, when he was a young man on a neighboring plantation, he had plowed up a steel helmet and a fine sword. The helmet and sword were, of course, Spanish in provenance, which would prove, incontrovertibly, that de Soto passed not only through western North Carolina but through our part of western North Carolina. The helmet and sword were, naturally, turned over by Big Walker to his master, in whose possession they remained until the War Between the States. According to my grandmother, when that gentleman went off to fight for the Confederacy, he reburied that helmet and sword, lest those artifacts be seized by Yankee foragers in his absence. Alas, he did not tell anyone where he had buried these treasures, and he did not return from the war to reclaim them. To my knowledge, they are to this day buried still beneath the soil of Polk County, waiting to be discovered yet again.”
Miss Brown sighed theatrically. “To think,” she said, “that I knew someone who knew someone who once held in his very hands a sword and helmet worn by a member of de Soto’s army.”
Jim held his pencil poised above his notebook, his brow furrowed. He wondered if any Spanish artifacts were buried in the uncles’ fields but had no idea what to write down. Miss Brown rarely seemed to talk about anything that was actually in the history book. After almost a month of classes, he had no idea what she would put on their exams. She had yet to give them even a quiz. Jim decided to read the book, anyway, just in case. He glanced down at the book and wondered what Chrissie’s hair smelled like.
“I have often wondered,” Miss Brown went on, “how that helmet and sword came to be abandoned by their Spanish owner. For surely nothing could be more important to a soldier in a hostile land than his helmet and sword. Without them he would be defenseless against his enemies. Obviously, some great tragedy must have befallen him. The only plausible answer I can think of to such a perplexing question is that he was slaughtered by the Cherokee, whose ancestral lands the Spanish were at the time claiming for the crown of Spain. Miss Steppe, you are at least partially descended from the Cherokee, are you not?”
Jim saw Chrissie stiffen.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Wasn’t your father a Cherokee? That’s what I have always heard. That would explain your lovely hair.”
“I’m not sure. He never said.”
In his notebook Jim wrote “INDIAN?”
“Perhaps he was only part Cherokee?” Miss Brown went on.
“Which part?” Dennis Deane asked, to a smattering of coughs and snorts, from across the room.
That’s enough, Dennis Deane, Jim thought. He squirmed in his seat, cleared his throat, raised his hand, and asked, “Miss Brown, do you think de Soto and his army might have come through Aliceville?”
“That’s an interesting question, Mr. Glass,” Miss Brown said. “In the future, please wait until I acknowledge you before speaking.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jim said.
“To answer your question, asked rudely though it may have been, I think it’s entirely possible that de Soto’s army passed through Aliceville, although, of course, it wasn’t Aliceville at the time. If it had a name at all, it would have been some Cherokee name we could never hope to recall. Still, our river passes near Tryon, where Big Walker discovered the Spanish helmet and sword, and was de Soto following our river west, which seems to me a likely route, he easily could have passed this way. Isn’t that something to think about?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jim said.
“Indeed, de Soto himself might have climbed this very hill to survey the surrounding countryside, for this is the only vantage poin
t of any elevation nearby. Perhaps he saw our blue mountains in the distance and thought that surely there he and his men would find the cities of gold they sought.”
Jim wrote, “gold?” in his notebook, then looked at the word “INDIAN?” and underlined it. Jim had heard years ago that Chrissie’s father was a Cherokee, but he had forgotten it until that moment. Chrissie had gone to school in Aliceville until the third grade, when she moved with her mother and father to the deep mountains west of Asheville. From there they had moved on to Oklahoma. Jim didn’t remember much about her, although she had been in his grade. Her hair had been very long even then, and she had been very quiet. His only vivid memory of her was of something that happened during recess just before she moved away. It was the last day of school in the old building, before the new building (the one in which they now sat) opened the next fall. Jim had seen Chrissie standing alone on the playground. Something about the way she stood by herself had made him angry, and a sudden fury had overcome him. Without knowing why, he had rushed up behind her and shouted, “Have a nice TRIP!” before shoving her down. Chrissie had skinned both knees and cried, but she had not told on him. Jim was never punished, although he felt he had deserved to be, and he never told her he was sorry, although he had been. He didn’t see Chrissie again until the first day of school this year, when he had watched her walk around the front of the bus from Lynn’s Mountain and up the stairs toward him. And, without knowing why, he had watched for her ever since.
The rest of the class passed slowly while Miss Brown talked about her extended family and the occasional Spanish explorer. The afternoon had grown hot and still, the air rapidly thickening with the smell of teenagers ripening against their will in the heat, an odor poorly masked by vanilla extract and cheap perfume and scented hair oil. Several of the boys were sound asleep, their heads down on their desks. Dennis Deane picked something off the tip of his chin and tried to show it to the girl sitting beside him, who refused to look.
Jim leaned back and stretched. He tapped his pencil on his notebook. He glanced over at Norma Harris, his old girlfriend, with whom he had broken up during the summer. She was getting a head start on her math homework, which filled Jim with contempt. Norma was pretty, probably the prettiest girl in Aliceville School, but she was a know-it-all. A goody-goody and a know-it-all and a cold fish. Her yellow hair was exactly the same color as Jim’s, and for that reason, and because they both made good grades, people had always assumed that they would go together some day.
And so they had.
But Norma had barely let Jim kiss her, and never for very long, and he had gotten tired of arguing about it. She had absolutely refused to climb into the rumble seat of his car to look at the stars. The night he finally broke up with her, Norma had said, “I can see the stars from my house, Jim.” That, somehow, had been the last straw. Some girls were just too religious. I can see the stars from my house, Jim. He didn’t want an easy girlfriend, just one that was easier than Norma Harris. The girl actually had a picture of Abraham Lincoln on the wall in her bedroom. Jim had never set foot in Norma’s bedroom, of course, but he had glimpsed Lincoln from the hallway. Mama was still upset with Jim for breaking up with Norma, but he didn’t care. He had decided that he liked black hair better than blond anyway, especially when it was long.
Why was Chrissie’s hair so long?
Jim considered the possible reasons. Maybe she was a member of the Holiness church. Holiness women weren’t allowed to cut their hair. But most of the Holiness girls Jim knew piled their hair into elaborate, impossibly tall hairdos and kept it in place with complicated arrays of hairpins and bows, or even nets. Jim wrote, “HOLINESS?” in his notebook underneath “INDIAN?” but then crossed it out, hoping it wasn’t true. Holiness girls were even stricter than Baptist girls. A Holiness girl probably wouldn’t let you kiss her at all until you married her. And then you’d still be kissing a Holiness girl, and she’d tell you not to mess up her hair and she’d want you to go to church for six hours every Sunday, and three hours on Wednesday night. You’d probably have to sit beside her father while she sat with the women on the opposite side of the church and waved her arms in the air and shouted in unknown tongues. Besides, Chrissie just didn’t seem to be Holiness. He drew another, darker line through “HOLINESS?” and put another question mark after “INDIAN?” Jim knew that Mama would throw a fit if he ever tried to date a Holiness girl and wondered if she would throw a bigger one or a smaller one if he tried to date a Cherokee.
Chrissie shifted in her seat, and the hair lying on Jim’s history book moved slightly and became a small, glossy animal curled and napping in the sun. A muskrat, Jim thought. No, a mink. No, a small, black fox. A kit. Jim wondered if a kit fox would bite you if you tried to pet it. He placed his left hand on his history book and drummed his fingers. He slowly slid his fingers up the page toward Chrissie’s hair. Chrissie shifted again. The kit twitched in its sleep, dreaming of green fields lush with mice. Jim stopped. He felt his heart stuttering beneath his skin. He pursed his lips and almost inaudibly whispered, “Shh.” The kit remained still. He moved his hand up the slick paper, a line, a half line at a time, through the Yankee blockade at Wilmington. Only the bravest blockade-running captains, under cover of darkness, were able to bring desperately needed supplies into the besieged port. Jim raised his middle finger and inched his hand forward until his finger was suspended above Chrissie’s black hair. He took a deep breath. He lowered his finger and touched her hair as gently as he knew how to touch anything. He had never felt anything so soft.
Norma
WHEN THE bell rang, ending the day, Jim took his time heading home. He wandered slowly down the hallway while his schoolmates swirled noisily from the classrooms, their feet pounding on the wooden floors; he sauntered down the front steps while the fleeing students parted into streams around him. One by one his friends climbed onto the idling buses or walked down the hill toward town. Once the schoolyard was empty, the buses folded their doors and one at a time pulled away. The Lynn’s Mountain bus was the last to leave. Chrissie Steppe sat by Ellie Something near the front and didn’t look out the window toward Jim. The bus eased down the drive and turned right onto the state highway. Jim watched it disappear from sight; he listened until the drone of its engine and, finally, the last, happy shouts of its passengers simply vanished from earshot. Aliceville School suddenly seemed a lonely place. Somewhere inside, a teacher laughed, a ghostly sound in the nearly deserted building. A stray breeze blew one of the classroom doors closed, and the bang echoed through the hallway.
Jim reluctantly started for home and only then turned his attention to Norma Harris, who waited for him underneath the tall pine tree at the top of the driveway. Every Tuesday and Thursday she visited Jim’s house to work on a quilt that she and his mother had started the previous winter. And Mama insisted that Jim be a gentleman and walk Norma down the hill. After he broke up with Norma, he had been shocked that his mother chose to continue working on the quilt, and shocked that Norma even wanted to finish it. When Jim complained about Norma’s visits, his mother only shook her head and stared at him as if he needed a bath.
Jim could tell that Norma was angry with him as he crossed the schoolyard. She had been mad at him more or less continuously since he had broken up with her. This school year their walks down the hill to Jim’s house had not been pleasant. He walked past Norma without acknowledging her; she fell in beside him without speaking. Her heels scuffed on the pavement as they descended the hill, making a sound that Jim had once found endearing but that now simply irritated him; once he had thought that the worn-down heels of Norma’s shoes were cute, but now he thought they looked shabby.
“Everybody knows we’re not dating anymore,” Norma said. “You don’t have to make me stand by myself like that. It’s embarrassing.”
“You know where I live,” Jim said. “You don’t have to wait on me if you don’t want to.”
Back when they were going together, Jim a
nd Norma had walked down the hill holding hands almost every day. The teasing and needling spilling from the passing buses had simultaneously pleased and annoyed him. He had shouted at the boys hanging from the windows, but only halfheartedly; he had smiled proudly while his ears burned. In those days he occasionally let go of Norma’s hand and tried to drop back a step just so he could watch her walk from behind. Watching her walk had made him want to grab her and kiss her over and over — although she wouldn’t have let him if he had tried. Now he thought the way she walked made her look smug and bossy, the walk of a know-it-all, and he no longer wanted to kiss her. Jim could not understand how he could have loved Norma so much then and feel so differently now. His head seemed filled with memories belonging to another person, and he wished he could give them back.
“You act like it might kill you to be seen walking with me,” Norma said.
“You act like you can’t walk by yourself.”
“When did you become so impolite?”
“Four score and seven years ago.”
“Jerk,” Norma said.
At the bottom of the hill, they had to pause at the highway while three cars and a truck passed. The traffic seemed intentionally spaced to prolong their time together as much as possible.
When the last car went by, Jim bowed and extended his arm toward the highway. “After you,” he said.
Norma lifted her chin and tossed her hair in response.
They crossed the road and cut through the fallow field that separated the highway from Depot Street, where Jim lived with his family. They walked on the path he had worn clean over the last eight years while walking to school. He saw his footprints from that morning, and some from the day before; he wondered, as he often had, why the path had never been quite straight. There was no reason it shouldn’t be.
“I saw you today,” Norma said.
