Anybody Shining

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

  “Now, breaking your leg that way, is that how come you favor your right leg so?” Aunt Jennie asked, and Tom give her a straightforward nod like it didn’t bother him a bit to be asked.

  “I figured it had to be something like that,” Aunt Jennie said as she poked the cornbread with her finger to see if it were done. “I twisted my ankle real bad once when I was a little one. I’d just seen my first Indian out in the woods and was running home so fast I about outpaced the wind. I didn’t see that root sticking up out of the ground, and Lord-a-mercy, didn’t I go flying.”

  Tom’s eyes grew big and round. “There were Indians here?” he asked, leaning across the table toward Aunt Jennie. We was eating our dinner by then, me and Tom, Aunt Jennie hovering over us and putting more food on our plates every time there was an empty spot.

  “When I was a girl, there was Indians everywhere. Cherokee, don’t you know. President Jackson sent most of ’em off before I was full grown. He claimed this land was the white man’s land, and my mommy agreed with him, but Daddy did not. Weren’t many white folks in these parts then. We was one of the first families to settle. You see, my mommy and daddy had been indentured servants. You know what that is?”

  Tom nodded, but I shook my head. “Well, it’s like this,” Aunt Jennie explained. “Some folks got to this country by signing on to be a servant to a rich family. They’d pay for you to come across the ocean from England on a ship, and you agreed to do work for ’em for however many years. Daddy and Mommy come over on the same boat, and both of ’em had to work five years before they earned out their freedom. They was up in Massachusetts, where Mommy always said it were so awful cold. The minute they got the papers declaring they was free, they hitched up a mule to the wagon and come here. Mommy said this land was unsettled as unsettled could be. Nothing but Indians and deer and squirrels. They built this homestead right where you’uns are sitting, though most of it’s gone now, fallen to the weather. I moved back here after my Clayton died and all my young’uns gone off into the world. A lot of this land used to be cleared, and Daddy and Mommy farmed it. Mommy birthed fourteen young’uns and raised eight of ’em.”

  “And were there Indians?” Tom asked, lifting up his plate so Aunt Jennie could drop another ladleful of soup beans on it. “Did you know any?”

  “Like I said, they was here when I was a young’un. We didn’t mix and mingle much. One winter, though, when it was so cold and the animals had gone deep into the woods, our whole family almost starved to death, except for the Indians would lay bundles of food outside that very door there. Dried jerky meat and clay pots filled with stew. I reckon that food’s all what kept us alive. Daddy said they could have just as easy starved us out. But I think they knowed he tried hard to be a good neighbor. He knowed where their sacred places on the river was and never tread on ’em.”

  Well, we could have stayed the whole day visiting and hearing Aunt Jennie’s stories, but it become clear to us after dinner that Aunt Jennie had grown weary. “I do like to take a nap of an afternoon,” she admitted when we said we thought we best go. “But I hope you children will come back. You’ve brung up all sorts of memories to me. I’ll think on ’em and see if I can’t find some more Indian stories to tell you, Master Tom. And I’ll write down that souse receipt for your mommy to make.”

  We said our good-byes and promised to come back on Tuesday morning and bring Aunt Jennie some greens from the garden and some fatback, which she’d been lacking since the loss of Joseph.

  “You reckon your mama’s going to make you some souse when you get back to Baltimore?” I asked Tom as we began our walk back through the woods toward home.

  He laughed. “Mother doesn’t step foot in the kitchen, and Sally Ann is the least adventuresome cook you’ve ever met in your life. Mostly she just boils things until they’re hardly recognizable as food. Father complains, but Mother stays loyal to Sally Ann because she cooked for Mother’s family growing up.”

  “I never heard of somebody having a cook come in from outside the home to make your meals, except in books. I don’t know if Mama would like that or not. She’s particular about her cooking.”

  “Look at it this way. Having a cook frees up Mother to do other things with her time, such as start schools for fishermen and take trips up to the mountains.”

  “I’m glad she has a cook then,” I said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

  Tom grinned. “I’m glad about it too. Now let’s keep our eyes open in case Oza appears.”

  I’m sorry to report that we did not see Oza on our walk down the mountain to home. But maybe we will when we come back with the creasy greens and the fatback. Maybe this time she won’t disappear so fast on us and we can get to know her.

  I know you must believe me addled to think such things, but if you were here with me, I feel assured you would be thinking them too.

  Signed,

  Your Cousin,

  Arie Mae Sparks

  Dear Cousin Caroline,

  I just finished my chores and decided to sit down and write you before Mama puts supper on the table. The whole time I was weeding in the garden, I was pondering once again why you ain’t ever wrote me back. I have written you fourteen letters in a month’s time, which is a righteous good number for you to not have answered nary a one, even if your mama is against the idea of it.

  Here’s something I ain’t told you. I have copied over every letter I’ve wrote you so I will remember all the things I’ve said. That’s right, I have copied fourteen letters word for word! And every time I sit down to write a new one, I read the one I wrote before, so I won’t repeat a thing. I have worked hard to make my letters interesting to you and worth the time it takes to read them.

  I got to thinking out there while I was pulling up the sow thistle and the bindweed, wondering if maybe my letters never got to your house. Why, maybe Miss Ellie stole each and every one of them, so she would have gossip to share out every morning when folks come in to pick up their mail. Or maybe it’s the person who’s in charge of getting the mail delivered down in Raleigh. Maybe your post office man is so lazy he throws my letters away so he won’t have to carry them to your house.

  And then it come to me. Maybe your mama is not showing you the letters I send! Maybe every time one of my letters arrives at your door, she scoops it up and throws it in the fire! The more I thought about it, the more I become convinced that your mama is getting in the way of you and me being friends.

  I don’t rightly know much about your mama, Cousin Caroline, but I remember every detail Mama ever told me. I think I remember it so well because of the way Mama’s eyes would light up when she got to talking, and how dark they was by the end of the tale.

  I know your mama’s name is Anna and that she is two years younger than Mama, and in the year of 1908 she run off with a young doctor from Raleigh, who four years later would become your daddy. Mama says he was doing missionary work with folks from his church, tending to the sick and the dying, and your mama, Anna, went to see him because her eyes had been bothering her. “Anna always had bad allergies come summer,” Mama would say. “Mommy give her all sorts of teas and tinctures, but not a one helped.”

  When Anna went to the doctor, he give her some drops that cleared her allergies right up, and then they fell in love. No one was surprised, as Anna Blevins was knowed to be the prettiest girl in Cranberry.

  I know that your mama wrote a few letters home and then fell silent. Her daddy, our granddaddy, Elvin Blevins, rode a horse to Raleigh and found her, and she said she loved him and all her family, but she weren’t ever coming back to the mountains. Once Granddaddy and Granny Blevins died, she stopped sending word back to Stone Gap. Anna was done with us for good.

  I wonder why that is. Ever since our visit with Aunt Jennie Odom, I have been feeling better about being a mountain girl. I would like to see Ruth Wells living by herself in a cabin, cooking up a pig’s head and making do without help from anybody else! If I was in a war, I woul
d want Aunt Jennie on my side, and if I was taking a long journey, I would pick her to go with me. I reckon she has enough stories to fill a hundred miles of walking.

  Aunt Anna, if you are reading this letter, please know we are fine people here, made of strong stock, and we would be proud to know you again. Well, I never knowed you in the first place, but I would like to have a chance to. Raleigh must be a fine and fancy town, but it cannot possibly compare to how pretty the mountains is in spring or how the leaves of the trees here turn yellow and red in the autumn. Folks is generous to a fault, and we have so many new things, many of which I’ve told of in my letters.

  Please do not throw this letter in the fire, Aunt Anna! Please know my mama, Idy Blevins Sparks, pines to see your face once more and sit on the porch, talking and a-singing. She has not said this to me, but I believe it to be true. I hope you will remember that you are always welcome here, as are your doctor husband and my dear cousin Caroline, who I hope to hear from soon.

  Signed,

  Arie Mae Sparks

  Dear Cousin Caroline,

  When Tom come up to the house this morning, guess who he brung with him? Miss Pittman! I was waiting on the porch with a jar full of salt pork and a pillowcase filled with greens to take to Aunt Jennie, and I nearly dropped them both when I saw Miss Pittman walking up our path. I have not given her the time of day ever since I heard about what she wrote in her letter, and I still weren’t interested in being friends with her.

  “Look who I met on the road!” Tom called. “Miss Pittman was out for a walk, and when I told her where we were going, she asked to come along.”

  Miss Pittman waved. “I hope that suits you, Arie Mae! I’ve never met Aunt Jennie Odom, but I’ve heard so many interesting stories about her!”

  Well, it didn’t suit me one bit, but what was I to say? I just nodded my head and joined them in the yard. Close up, Tom’s cheeks looked flushed, like he was already finding the day too warm for his liking.

  “Whatever do you have in that jar?” Miss Pittman asked, and I had to bite my tongue not to declare, Why, it’s just the sort of food ignorant folks eat, Miss Pittman.

  Instead, I held the jar up so she could see it better and said, “It’s salted pork. Aunt Jennie says she lacks fatback now that her pig run off. Salted pork’s just fatback that’s been preserved.”

  “You know, I’d like to learn more about food preservation,” Miss Pittman said as we headed into the woods. “I know how to can food, of course, but I know less about salting and drying it. I’d like to learn how to dry apples, for instance. Why, after our picnic the other day, Miss Keller found an apple cake that one of our mountain children had brought, and it was the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted!”

  Then she give me a funny look, like she knowed the whole story behind that cake, knowed it was mine, and knowed why I hid it.

  “It’s easy to dry apples,” I told her. “Mama can show you how in the fall. You dry ’em in the sun, but you got to watch over them so the birds don’t get ’em.”

  “Excellent! Oh, I have so much to learn from the people here! Every day it’s something new.”

  Now, Cousin Caroline, that surprised me. How could she be saying such a thing when she’d been writing letters off the mountain saying how ignorant and filthy we was? Why would she think she had something to learn from backwards folk such as us?

  “I’ve been wondering something,” Tom said, his breath coming out huffy and puffy, even though we’d just started our hike. “Why do you call Aunt Jennie ‘Aunt’ if she’s not your aunt at all?”

  I had to think on this a minute. It’s funny how you will do something your whole life and never stop to ponder why it’s so. “I guess when somebody gets old enough, they don’t just belong to their own people anymore, they belong to everybody. They know all the stories of a place, and it makes them feel like they’re kin to you. If you go talk to Uncle Cecil Buchannan, why, he’ll tell you every baby that’s been born in these mountains for the last eighty years.”

  “He’s a repository of memories!” Miss Pittman proclaimed.

  I nodded. “Something like that, I reckon.”

  We walked for a while without talking, just enjoying the coolness of the woods on such a warm morning and the pretty songs of the birds. It come to me that I was feeling a bit low, and I wondered if that was due to Miss Pittman being there, getting in the way of me and Tom having one of our good conversations.

  And then I wondered if it was because I missed having Miss Pittman for a friend.

  I almost blurted out, Why’d you say that about us, Miss Pittman? I so badly wanted to understand. But it was like there was a hand on my throat, squeezing on it to keep the words inside me. Then Tom started to cough. I turned to see him working to catch his breath, his face a ghosty white.

  “You ought not to be making this trip, Tom Wells!” I exclaimed. “Why, look at you! You’re about to collapse.”

  “No, I’m not,” Tom insisted when he got to breathing right again. “I had a bug in my throat, that’s all.”

  “Tom, you look pale,” Miss Pittman said. “Do you think you should be making such an arduous journey?”

  Tom dug into the pocket of his britches and pulled out his little book. “We’re leaving for Baltimore in ten days, and I want to write down more of Aunt Jennie’s stories while there’s still time. Also, I need to give Aunt Jennie my address. She has a recipe she wants to send Mother.”

  Well, I about fell out laughing. “You really think your mama is going to make head cheese?”

  Tom cracked a grin. “No, but I’d like to see the expression on her face as she reads the list of ingredients. We better get moving, though. Mother said I have to be back by two for the wood-carving demonstration.”

  I got serious then. “Tom, you can’t climb all the way up to Aunt Jennie’s, looking all pale and ghosty the way you do. It’s too much for you.”

  “It wasn’t too much for me before, why should it be too much for me today?”

  Well, what was I to do? Tom was in charge of his own self. I weren’t his mama, just his friend. “At least let’s go slower,” I told him. “We’ll get there with plenty of time for you to get your stories.”

  Aunt Jennie met us at the door when we got there, a welcoming smile on her face. “You’uns come back, just like you said! Oh, I have had many folks a-promise, but it’s an awful long ways from anywhere up to here. I don’t blame ’em for deciding against it, but it does my heart good to see you children.”

  “And Miss Pittman,” I said. “She’s come with us. She’s one of them songcatchers you might have heard about.”

  Miss Pittman stepped forward and stuck out her hand. “I’m Betsy Pittman from the Mountain Settlement School.”

  Aunt Jennie looked at Miss Pittman’s hand like it was some foreign species she’d never seen before. But after a moment, she reached out and took it in both of her hands, saying, “I’ve heard tell of your school. I reckon you’re learning as much as you’re teaching.”

  At first, Miss Pittman looked taken aback, like she was wondering why this dried apple doll of an old woman felt she could make such a declaration. But then a smile broke out over her face and she nodded her head vigorously. “Oh, yes indeed! I can’t even begin to make a list of all the things I’ve learned, from the names of the local flora and fauna to the best way to dress a chicken. Every day adds to my education.”

  Aunt Jennie looked over at Tom. “You’re pale, son. Let’s get you inside and I’ll fix you up some comfrey tea mixed with a few drops of hawthorn. It’ll get your blood flowing.”

  We all followed Aunt Jennie into the cabin. Tom and me sat on the bed and Miss Pittman took a seat at the table. Aunt Jennie pulled some jars from that shelf over the stove and in a few minutes had the tea ready for Tom to drink. She come over to the bed with a steaming mug. “Now you drink this slow and steady, Master Tom. I hope you can bear the taste, for it’s a touch bitter.”

  I helped Tom s
it, and he took a sip of tea, making a funny face as soon as he did. “It’s sour as lemons!”

  “You go on and drink it anyway. I can’t let you go back down that mountain till you do. In the meantime, I’ll tell you a story to make it go down easier.”

  Tom handed me the mug to hold and pulled his little book and a pencil from his pocket. “Arie Mae, can you write this down?”

  We traded mug for book. “I’ll do my best,” I told him. Then I turned to Aunt Jennie and said, “Don’t tell it too fast.”

  Aunt Jennie took a seat at the table and turned her chair so she was facing Tom directly. “Well, Master Tom, I can tell you like stories about Indians roaming these mountains, so I got to thinking about it, trying to come up with a good one for you. Then the story of little Addie Birch come to me, and that’s the one I’ll tell.

  “By the time we children was growing up, there was more and more white folks settling in these parts, and most of ’em come here for the same reason that Mommy and Daddy had, to make a new life for themselves. But not all of ’em was like Daddy when it come to the Indians. They weren’t respectful the way he was, staying away from their sacred places and only hunting what he needed.

  “Well, of course, that caused many an ill feeling on the part of the Indians, and they grew less and less friendly. Then one day we got word that a little white girl had been seen at the river with a clutch of Indian squaws doing their wash. The little girl had been dressed like an Indian, but was surely not one, her skin being white and her hair having a curl to it. All us children were so excited by this story, as we couldn’t think of nothing more terrible nor more wonderful as being stolen away by Indians.

  “Not long after, a neighbor man by the name of George Otis stopped by and said the white girl was believed to be Addie Birch, a child taken from over in Georgia when she was but four years old. She was ten now, and her folks had been searching for her all the time she’d been gone. So now all the white folks in these parts were putting together a party of men to capture little Addie Birch back and return her home.