Anybody Shining

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

  So Miss Pittman has a severe look about her, and she’s hickory-switch thin, but when she opens her mouth and commences to speak, you see that she is actually quite jolly and full of fun. She also eats a bodacious amount, but no one can say where it goes, because she is all lean and no fat.

  “Idy, you and I have got to talk,” she said first thing upon taking her seat on the chair Mama had pulled out for her. It’s the chair in least need of repair and saved special for company. “I know you think I’m nothing but a bother and a meddlesome pest, but we do so need your help at the settlement school. We have a group of visitors coming on Friday all the way from Baltimore, Maryland, and they would benefit so much from your singing.”

  Now, the settlement school was the school Miss Pittman and her colleague Miss Keller started last year. When they come to our mountains, they hadn’t intended to stay much longer than a few months, but then they seen how poor some folks up here was, and thought a new school was just what we needed.

  A settlement school ain’t a regular sort of school. We already had us a regular sort of school up to the church, taught by Miss Sary, where children learned the usual run of things, reading, writing, sums, and such. No, folks of all ages go to the songcatchers’ settlement school to learn practical things, such as how to make baskets and chairs to sell off the mountain so we won’t be so poor, and how to practice good habits of health and hygiene.

  The songcatchers is also interested in teaching girls how to bake beaten biscuits and light bread, and how to make hemmed tablecloths. So there are lessons in cooking and sewing, too. Miss Pittman and Miss Keller have so many ways to improve our lot in life!

  Daddy thought our lot in life was just fine, but he didn’t turn his back on the settlement school until they come out against the Saturday night barn dances that he and Mr. Larry Peacock hold at Truman Taylor’s place. Daddy and Mr. Peacock play radio music instead of the traditional mountain songs that the songcatchers thought they should stick to. That right there did the trick for Daddy, and we Sparks had to stay away from the settlement school from then on.

  This was a disappointment to all us children, and I could see the disappointment written across Mama’s face now as she answered Miss Pittman. “Oh no, ma’am,” Mama said, taking her own seat across the table and picking up her piecework. She kept her eyes on her needle, but I could see from the way she was biting on her lip that she was near to bursting to sing at that school. “You know Zeke can’t tolerate nothing about that school. He likes you good enough, but not your school. He wouldn’t never let me sing.”

  Miss Pittman twisted her hands in the folds of her skirt like she wished to be wringing my daddy’s neck. “I just don’t understand it, Idy. One of the purposes of the school is to preserve the music and the customs of these mountains. How could Mr. Sparks possibly have anything against that?”

  Mama poked her needle in and out between two pieces of calico, one gray and the other one brown. She opened her mouth to speak, shut it again, and then finally said, “You like some of our ways, but not others. You like it if’n we sing you an old tune, but turn your nose up at a fiddle or a banjo.”

  “But the banjo isn’t native to the mountains,” Miss Pittman explained in a patient tone. “It’s a corrupting influence.”

  “I don’t rightly know about that, ma’am. I only know Zeke don’t want none of us to have dealings with that school of yourn,” Mama said, poking her needle hard through the calico fabric. “He says you’uns are outsiders and ain’t got no business here.”

  Miss Pittman sighed, but she turned the talk to the peach tree blossoms that we are so enjoying right now and then told us children a story about when she was a girl in the state of Maine and a creature called a crab grabbed aholt of her finger and wriggled and wiggled and wouldn’t let go.

  I think it is purely a shame Mama can’t sing at the songcatchers’ settlement school. She has the highest, prettiest voice you ever heard. Some say it carries a lonesome sound, but I believe the lonesomeness makes it even prettier.

  Miss Pittman stayed for lunch, which is her way. She ain’t one to pass up the offer of food, which pleases folks considerably. There are some who come up to our mountains because they want to help us, but most won’t never let you help them back. Miss Pittman ain’t that way. If you give her a chicken, she won’t say, Oh, no, I could not take this, you are too poor to be giving such away.

  Miss Pittman will say, Do you have any potatoes I could cook up with that chicken?

  That’s why folks like Miss Pittman so, even my daddy.

  In fact, Daddy was mightily pleased when Miss Pittman and Miss Keller first come up to our mountains two years ago to write down our songs. He’s a fiddle player and can learn a song off the radio faster than you can spit in your hand. When he heard the songcatchers had come, he took every spare moment to practice his songs so they would be just right for the listening.

  On the day the songcatchers first come to visit, Miss Keller led the way up the path into our holler. She is stout where Miss Pittman is lean, though not so much in a round way as thick, and on that day she wore a black dress with a high collar that made me feel choky even though my own dress had no collar at all. I will say that Miss Keller has the prettiest brown eyes that spark at you when you say something that catches her interest. I don’t like her as much I like Miss Pittman, but I am always hoping for her esteem.

  The two ladies was panting by the time they reached the porch, and had to catch their breath before speaking. We all just waited and a-waited, even Harlan Boyd, who by that time had come to live with us. Lucille was training Harlan to act right in company, pinching him when he spit or cussed or turned squirmy, so he was sitting straight as could be on the top step, still as a Sunday school boy.

  “I am Louise Keller,” the high-collared woman introduced herself once she was breathing normal again. “And this is my colleague, Betsy Pittman. We work for the Russell Sage Foundation. You might call us cultural explorers, which is another way of saying—”

  “I reckon you’re them songcatcher ladies we been hearing about,” Daddy said, standing to welcome them. “My wife Idy knows many a song sung down from her granny and her granny’s granny before her. As for me, I reckon I have a good fifty fiddle tunes I would be happy for you’uns to hear.”

  I thought I heard Miss Keller sniff at the mention of fiddle tunes, but how could that be? A fiddle sounds so sweet and will make you feel things so deep you will wonder why you don’t bust open on the spot.

  “We are most interested in the old ballads,” Miss Keller explained to Daddy. “It can take a day, sometimes many days, to record a song correctly, so we will be taking up a good amount of your time. You’ll have to come to the cabin where we keep our recording equipment, down at Katie’s Fork. When would it be convenient to begin?”

  Daddy looked at Mama. “Why don’t you sing one of your songs, Idy? You could sing ’em ‘Barbry Allen.’ ”

  All us children clamored, “Yes, please sing ‘Barbry Allen,’ Mama!” even Harlan Boyd, who had taken to calling Mama “Mama” just as soon as Daddy had collected him from the old cabin on Cane Creek and brought him home to us.

  Mama is shy about some things, but she ain’t about others, so it come as no surprise when she threw back her head and commenced to singing.

  All in the merry month of May

  When the green buds they were swelling

  William Green on his deathbed lay

  All for the love of Barbry Allen

  Miss Pittman covered her heart with her hands and closed her eyes, just taking in the sound of Mama’s voice. Miss Keller whipped open a book, plucked a pen from a hiding spot behind her ear, and commenced to writing. I snuck over to her side to get a look inside that book and saw that it was just blank pages but for Miss Keller’s twisty lettering. This was Miss Keller’s songcatching book, and she carried it with her everywhere she went. At night, Miss Pittman would copy over in another book what Miss Keller had writ
ten down that day. That way, if one book got lost, they would have the other for safekeeping.

  When Mama was done, we all just beamed from our pride. Then we waited for the songcatcher ladies to ask Daddy to fetch his fiddle and play one of them tunes he’d been practicing so hard on. But they did no such thing, instead saying they would be back the following evening to hear more of Mama’s songs.

  They never did ask for Daddy to play his fiddle.

  Cousin Caroline, does your mama sing the songs that got passed down from the old days? Maybe one day the songcatchers will knock on your door. Seems we get all manner of folks knocking on ours. Songcatchers, missionaries come to save our souls, all types of folks who want to help us one way or the other.

  I wonder why there are so many folks who look at us and are unsatisfied by what they see?

  I have asked Mama many a time to tell me about your mama, what she was like as a little girl, the games the two of them played growing up on Cub Creek all them years ago, and why she decided to leave these mountains for good. But my questions bring a tear to Mama’s eye, and Daddy is all the time telling me, “Hush now, don’t ask no more questions about Anna, she is pert near dead and gone to us.”

  Well, as you might expect, that only makes Mama cry all the more.

  When you write me back, I hope you will tell me all manner of things about my aunt Anna and whoever your daddy is. I know he is a doctor. Is he the sort that gives out red suckers to children? I have read about that sort of doctor in a book at school, and I thought it sounded right nice.

  Well, Mama is calling me to go feed the chickens, so I will end here. Do you like chickens? I like them best for eating, second best for hearing them cluck in the yard first thing of a morning. It is a comfort, that sound.

  Signed,

  Your Cousin,

  Arie Mae Sparks

  Dear Cousin Caroline,

  I fear you are ill. Get your mama to boil you up some comfrey tea. Comfrey tea will cure what ails you. I will be happy to receive your letter when you are feeling your old self again.

  You’ll be excited to hear them folks from Baltimore, Maryland, have arrived. Last night, me and James went over to Pastor Campbell’s place to look at Miss Sary’s book of maps called an atlas. We wanted to find out the exact spot where Maryland sits. Miss Sary, you will be interested to know, is Pastor Campbell’s third bride. The first Mrs. Pastor Campbell drowned in the New River five days after her wedding day. Ain’t that the saddest story you have ever heard? The second Mrs. Pastor Campbell passed after taking ill with the influenza four years ago.

  The newest one, Miss Sary, is about as new as they come. She ain’t but twenty-five years old. Pastor Campbell went off the mountain to find her, and we was so happy he brought back such a young thing. It turns out she is filled with learning, too, which is why she has such books as an atlas and, The World Book Encyclopedia, 1922, the one they made just two years ago. Oh, that encyclopedia is filled with so many exciting things! Me and James like to go visit of an evening just to look at the pictures. Have you ever seen a picture of a boa constrictor snake? It will curl your toes.

  Maryland, it turns out, is two states above North Carolina. Baltimore is a large city where fishing boats bring to port such items as blue crabs, rockfish, catfish, and perch.

  “It is a lovely city,” Miss Sary told us. “We must go there on our travels one day.”

  Me and James and Miss Sary have all sorts of adventures planned for when me and James grow up. Miss Sary and James especially want to journey to the land of Brazil, but that’s where they have them boa constrictor snakes, so I’m arguing against it. Couldn’t we go to Peru instead? I suggest, but James is dead set on going to a jungle and shooting him a gorilla.

  “Do they talk English?” James asked of the Baltimore, Maryland, children, for which I kicked his shin under the table.

  “Of course they talk English, you ignorant boy,” I told him. “They’re in America. What else would they talk?”

  “They speak English,” Miss Sary said, resting a calming hand on my shoulder. “But they sound different from folks up here.”

  “Like you do?” I asked. Miss Sary is from Person County, close to Virginia, and when she talks it’s more like someone singing to a baby. She is the prettiest talker I know.

  Miss Sary laughed. “No, not exactly. Their talk is—well, flatter than the way you or I talk. Not as . . . curly.”

  That set James to laughing. “Curly? We talk curly? Who ever heard of such a thing as curly talking?”

  “Oh, I don’t know what I mean,” Miss Sary said, blushing a pretty pink. “You’ll just have to meet them. There will be several children your age.”

  Well, you can guess how them words excited me! The Baltimore children will be staying for a whole month while their folks study on the songcatchers’ school so that they might start their own school for the fishermen who live up their way.

  I wondered if the Baltimore children would find the settlement school disappointing. It is more like a house than the type of redbrick school you will see in books. They built it out of boards and made it two stories tall, which is unusual for these parts. Old Uncle Cecil Buchannan give the songcatchers twenty acres upon which to build and said they could cut all the trees they needed. All he asked in return is that they would put on a play by William Shakespeare now and again, as he thought it would be good for us children to see such a thing. When the songcatchers asked him if he had read Mr. Shakespeare’s plays for himself, he said no, but he had heard tell that if you knew them plays and the Bible, you would know everything there is to know about how folks do and think and feel.

  Inside the schoolhouse there are tables and chairs, weaving looms and cooking pots and chopping blocks, but no desks. There are many windows along the walls, so the rooms have a light and airy feeling about them. It used to be that we could go visit of an afternoon. That was before Miss Keller spoke out against the barn dances. I would sit in the front parlor of the songcatchers’ school and smell the fresh-cut wood smell and oh, how I wished it were a school where you raised your hand and said the date of the Declaration of Independence and recited poetry.

  When you look outside the front window, you can see the farm where they are teaching young men how to be farmers who make money. The man who is teaching them is named Mr. Gutterson, and he’s from Denmark, Scandinavia. The way he talks sounds like nobody you have ever heard.

  If you look out the back window, you can see several little buildings, such as a woodworking shop where they make split-bottom chairs, which are chairs with seats made from split cane or reeds, and other pieces of furniture to sell off the mountain. There is also a building for making pots, and another one for making baskets out of reeds.

  If you look over toward the edge of the woods past the woodworking shop, you will see several cabins for the folks who come to visit from off the mountain. Of course that is where James and I went to search for the children from Baltimore, Maryland, last night after we finished our evening chores. We didn’t tell Mama nor Daddy where we was going, though it’s true I might have hinted we were headed for Miss Sary’s. But we didn’t ever say for sure.

  “Those children won’t want to know us,” James said as we made our way down the path to the school. “Do you remember them ones who come up last fall, right after the school got opened? Their noses were stuck so far up in the air, a righteous rainfall would have drowned them.”

  “Children from Baltimore, Maryland, are different,” I insisted. “They ain’t snooty in the least. If they were, Miss Sary wouldn’t say it was a pleasant city worth traveling to.”

  “Well, don’t get your hopes up is all I’m saying.”

  Of course, James could say such a thing. He already has a true friend in Will Maycomb and don’t have to worry about collecting more.

  When we got to the school, we heard singing. I guess because it’s a school started by songcatchers, they are always singing one song or another. There’s morn
ing singing after breakfast, and then end-of-day singing after supper. Some Friday nights Miss Keller sends around word that they’re having what she calls a Folk Sing, and everyone meets in the barn. Will Maycomb says that at the last one Mr. Gutterson taught songs from his country of Denmark, and Miss Keller and Miss Pittman showed off a dance from there too.

  Daddy snorted when he heard this. “I guess we ain’t good enough for them anymore. They have done got tired of our mountain songs and dances.”

  “Miss Keller and Miss Pittman learned some of their ideas from schools in Denmark,” Lucille explained to Daddy. “And at those schools they sing Denmark songs and dance Denmark dances.”

  “They ain’t in Denmark now,” Daddy pointed out. “We got plenty of good dances of our own right here.”

  Mostly we have got the stomping kind of dances here, and I wouldn’t mind to see a new step or two. But this ain’t something I would say to Daddy, as he’s partial to our ways.

  James and I waited at the edge of the clearing for the singing to end. We couldn’t decide whether we should greet the children when they came out of the barn, or if we should just spy on them to see if they looked to be the sort of boys and girls you could be friendly with. I thought we should spy for a bit and then walk over very natural-like and introduce ourselves.

  I almost changed my mind when the Baltimore children come out and begun streaming across the field to the cabins. They were eleven in number and most of them was little, a couple were medium, but there was a boy and a girl who I could tell even from far away was about the right age, twelve like me or eleven like James. I squinted good at the girl, and will say that even from across a field she had a bossy look about her.