by Ann Hite
parties.” Granddaddy barked.
“I’m not much of a party person, sir. I have to be back up here on Saturday. I’d love to meet you there.” He smiled at me and soft dimples appeared in his cheeks.
Charles Ray was the quiet sort, but his thoughts were always written in his eyes.
Ronald Carter pulled a blue glass jar from a shelf. “Mr. Jenkins said you’d be needing this liniment for your shoulder, Mr. Green.”
Granddaddy grunted. “How much of that cloth you gonna buy, Talley May?”
“Five yards would do perfect.”
Ronald Carter pushed the whole bolt at me. “This is for you. It’s a Christmas present.”
“We ain’t taking that for free.” Granddaddy looked at me like he might run right through me.
“I’ll pay for it, as a gift.” Charles Ray watched me with this silly soft look. Those eyes of his were comfortable to gaze into. A girl could find peace there, but they were country boy eyes and I needed more.
“I don’t need but five yards, thank you, and I’ll pay for it just fine. Much obliged to you both.” I pulled my little change purse out.
Ronald Carter shrugged. “I like an independent thinking woman.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll see you Saturday.” I smiled.
That evening I was sitting on the porch in a rocker just cause that cabin seemed to smother me. The air was icy and the moon was pushing through the tree tops. Granddaddy snored from his little room. And I drifted off to that place between sleep and awake. The breath on my cheek made me alert. The woman touched the back of the rocker where I sat, moving it slightly, humming O HOLY NIGHT.
“What do you want?” I kept my voice calm. The lantern on the porch rail flickered.
She backed away like she might disappear.
“Who are you?”
She tilted her head to the side. A tinkle of laughter floated in the air.
“Are you my angel?”
She took a step toward me. “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will open.” Her voice was like music playing on the wind. She moved down the steps into the night.
“Please don’t leave. What do you mean?” I stood.
The laugh came from the sky. She had to be flying. Her wings flapped in the cold night wind.
“What are you doing, Talley May?” Granddaddy stood in the door.
“Did you see her? It was the angel. She came to me. She’s beautiful. She flew away, Granddaddy.”
His face turned soft. “Talley May Green, get on in here and sleep. That angel of yours is here cause you’re stirring up the mountain. It’s plain as day you got eyes for that town boy.” His words were tired.
“What do you mean?”
“A pretty girl deserves pretty things, but you can’t go chasing the pot man’s son. Do you understand? He is way too uppity for us.”
“I’m old enough to decide what I want.”
“You’re a girl, and girls have to be looked after. You ain’t no grownup either, or you’d know town folks and mountain folks never make a life together.” He turned away from me.
“That ain’t one bit fair.”
“Fair or not, don’t be around that boy. He ain’t nothing but trouble.”
Now, I wished I could say Ronald Carter was my heart’s desire, but he wasn’t. No, I didn’t even know what I really wanted. Yes, yes I did. I wanted a mama.”
One thing about living on Black Mountain, life wasn’t ever boring. I worked way too hard to get bored. I was churning butter on the back porch. My breath rode the air in puffs of steam. Charles Ray came bouncing up the through the yard in that dern old truck. He jumped down and nodded.
“How you doing today, Talley May?”
I refused to notice the way his hair curled up in the breeze, making him look more like a boy than a man. “I’m nearly freezing to death. It’s going to be a cold Christmas.” I churned harder.
“Can you come with me?” His cheeks turned a warm pink.
“Why?” I looked down at the churn. “I’m making butter.”
“Can’t you just let it be? There’s something real important you got to see.”
Now it wasn’t like Charles Ray to be so insistent. “What’s wrong?”
“Just hush up for once, Talley May. I got something real important you got to see.”
“And it’s important enough to let my butter go bad?” I let go of the paddle.
“Yes ma’am.” He held out his hand. Snow began to spit from the sky.
I stepped off the porch. My old faded dress didn’t even cause him to look twice. He wasn’t bothered with those kinds of things. That’s one reason I tolerated him sometimes. His hand was warm. “This better be real good, Charles Ray.”
“Oh it is, Talley May.” He helped me in the truck. “It’ll just take a bit. You’re butter might not even ruin.”
“Where we going?”
He turned the truck on the road that ran up behind Daniels Cemetery. That’s where Daddy and Mama were buried, except I never went to their graves. Granddaddy said I couldn’t start following after the dead. I was young and had a life to live.
“I don’t like going this far up the mountain. What’s so important?”
“You’ll see. Don’t be worrying. The ghosts don’t come out till dusk. I’ll have us out of here way before then.”
“Did you bring me out here cause you’re still mad.” I didn’t bother to look at him.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about, Talley May. I ain’t mad.”
“You’re telling me you didn’t get mad cause I ask Ronald Carter to the Christmas party?”
“Who’s he.” He grinned.
“It’s your fault it happened.”
“How am I the cause of you mooning over that guy?” He sounded like he didn’t even care.
“You thought you could just up and take me to the party without even really asking me. I don’t like being taken for granted.”
“So that’s why you got a bee in your bonnet?” He actually laughed at me.
I rubbed my hands together. “That ain’t the way to talk to a lady, Charles Ray. I want you to know right here and now that you don’t stand a chance with me.” There I said it. “I plan on leaving this old mountain as soon as I can.”
He looked over at me and pulled off his gloves while the truck bounced along. “You won’t leave this mountain. You got it in your blood. You’d be lost if you weren’t here. You just don’t know it yet. You know what the old folks say.” He pushed his gloves toward.
I took them. “I don’t care about what they say. Lots of our friends plan on leaving.”
“Not you.”
“I’m grown. I won’t spend my life here, wearing blisters on my hands.”
“I got me a tractor.” He looked at me sideways with a grin.
“How’d you get a tractor?”
“I bought it from the pot man. That boyfriend of yours is bringing it up on Saturday.”
“He’s not my boyfriend and where’d you get the money?” I turned to watch him.
“I built a new room on the pot man’s house. It looks right good. Maybe I’ll be a carpenter and travel around building houses.”
“Where are we going?” Nothing but trouble could come from being in that part of the woods. I’d heard tell a witch lived there.
Charles Ray whipped the truck down a path. “We’re going right in there. We got to get out and walk now.” He turned off the truck. “You got to be real quiet, Talley May, or you’re going to miss it all.”
My stomach did its butterfly thing.
“Come on,” he whispered.
We moved deeper into the woods. In places the sky had disappeared, and it was almost dark. Charles Ray took my hand and squeezed it as we moved further up the mountain.
“You got to tell me where we’re going,” I whispered.
Charles Ray held his finger to his lips
and pointed. A house, maybe more of a shack, sat in the thickest part of the woods. A flash of white. Her hair was pulled back in a ribbon. The angel. She gathered evergreens, humming a Christmas song. Something deep inside of me ached to just touch her hand, to look into her eyes.
Charles Ray pulled my hand. I followed but not without looking back at my angel one more time. Maybe she was the mountain in human form. He tugged me hard. We didn’t make a bit of noise even after we were way out of hearing.
When we climbed back into his truck, I looked at him. “Why did you take me to her?”
He shrugged. “I found her three days ago.” He looked at me. “I thought she was a ghost, but she’s not. Something told me you’d seen her before too.”
“I saw her dancing the other night in the field. She knows my name.”
“I know. I heard her call it.” He looked away. “She cries a lot.”
He dropped me off at the farm without us saying a whole lot of anything. Between us sat this powerful knowing and the feeling rushed through my bones. All of a sudden Ronald Carter seemed silly. I had three days to come up with a good excuse not to go with him to the Christmas party.
The angel stayed rooted in my thoughts. Some burning passion had spilled over inside of me. It took me a whole day and night to get up the courage to go walking on my own. The sun was bright, but the air was frosty cold. I found my way through the woods without a problem.
“Take me to the angel, old mountain,” I whispered into the air. “Is she real? Or is she some old discarded spell cast by the witch that roamed this part long ago?”
The place was deadly silent. The shed door was open. The angel was nowhere to be seen. Just inside the door was a decent size Christmas tree covered in little store-bought ornaments. There was a little bed and on it was a
