Anybody Shining (16 page)

“Well, evening come and the skies grew dark, and still no Daddy. The excitement I'd been feeling all day had started to fade, and I begun to feel afraid instead. What if Mommy was right? What if Daddy was lying somewhere right that very minute, chopped all to bits?

“Somehow, we children fell asleep, even though we'd swore we would wait up till Daddy got home, even if it weren't until the
next day. But one by one, we fell across the bed and our eyes fluttered closed. Then suddenly—crash!—the door flew open and it was Daddy! We all screamed when we saw him and scrambled to our feet to run and see the little captured girl, Addie Birch.

“But it turned out, she weren't there. ‘Would they not accept the horse in trade, John?' Mommy asked, but Daddy shook his head.

“ ‘No, they saw the merit of that horse, just as any man would,' he said, taking a seat at the table right here where I sit and pulling off his boots. ‘It was the girl. She didn't want to leave.'

“Mommy looked as though someone had slapped her. ‘How could that be? Did you even see her?'

“ ‘Oh, I seen her all right. They brought her into the hut and showed her to me. She's a pretty little thing, and they say she's smart, but when I spoke to her, she acted like she didn't understand me. There was a woman who spoke English and Cherokee, and she told the girl what I was saying, that I'd come to trade
for her and bring her back to her folks. Well, the girl started moaning and crying and shaking her head no. I thought the Indians was going to make her go with me, but finally they turned to me and said, “No trade.”'

“Well, we just couldn't believe that! But Daddy said he reckoned that if she was captured when she was four, she probably didn't remember much if anything about her old life. He said it might not be a kindness to send her back, given how set she was in her ways.

“Six months later, the army come in and made the trade, this time for five Cherokee braves they'd been holding in their jail. So she did go back to her folks. But here's the interesting part of the story to me. Four more years passed, and we pretty much forgot all about Addie Birch. And then one day, Daddy was out in the field when he saw a young woman walking toward him. When she reached him, she asked if he knew where Al-Le-Teek's camp was, and Daddy said no, but he reckoned if she headed for the river she'd find someone who
could tell her, and then he told her how to get to the river from where they was.

“Of course, he thought it odd that a white girl would come looking for a Cherokee camp, but in them days, folks didn't meddle much, not even with young'uns. So he watched her walk off, but right as she was about to disappear over the ridge, he called out, ‘Addie Birch!' Sure enough, didn't that girl turn around and look before she took off running!”

“So she come back!” I said, scribbling down the last words of the story. “She didn't want to live with white folks anymore and she walked all the way back from Georgia!”

“That's what I think,” Aunt Jennie said. “Weren't too long after that the Cherokees was sent out West, and I reckon Addie Birch went with them.”

Well, Cousin Caroline, I found that to be a satisfying tale, and I reckon Tom did too. When the telling was over, he looked tired, but there was a better color to his cheeks. I
handed him back his book, which he put on the bed beside him, patting its cover as though it contained considerable treasures.

All of us was quiet as we trekked back down the mountain to home. Tom was conserving his strength, and I was thinking on the story Aunt Jennie had told us. How I wished I had lived in the time of the Cherokee and could have knowed me one or two!

Miss Pittman seemed lost in her own thoughts as well. But when we got to the home place, she put her hand on my arm and said, “Arie Mae, thank you for taking me to meet Aunt Jennie. Every day that I live and breathe in these mountains, I find it more and more satisfying to call them home.”

I stared at her. “You think of this place as your home? Even with the way it is? I mean, with some folks being ignorant and all?”

I couldn't bring myself to say “ignorant and filthy,” even if I knowed that's what Miss Pittman thought about us.

Miss Pittman gave me a long look.
“Whatever would cause you to say that, child?”

“Didn't—well, didn't you write that letter?” I asked, my face hot in the sun. “That's what folks are saying.”

“That confounded letter!” Miss Pittman said, her voice shaking. “I rue the day I wrote it. I understand why people are angry with me, but what no one understands is that I meant well. I truly did! When we first arrived, we met people who didn't take baths all winter. We saw babies with open sores on their skin and children with lice crawling through their hair. It was shocking and terrible.”

“But it weren't a true picture of this place,” I told her, surprised that the words I'd been longing to say finally freed themselves from my throat. I was almost whispering when I said, “It weren't the least bit true of all kinds of folks who live up here.”

Tom come over and stood by my side. “I don't think it's true either, Miss Pittman.”

Miss Pittman took in a deep breath. “Yes, I know that now. We've met so many wonderful
people since then. Hardworking people who just needed a helping hand to make their lot in life a little easier. That's why we decided to start our school, don't you see? We did it out of love, Arie Mae. I hope you believe me when I tell you that.”

All I could do was nod. And here it is, late in the evening, and Cousin Caroline, I am still studying the meaning of Miss Pittman's words. I have thought about what Mama says, that people run good and bad, and no one is made up of all one and none of the other. I know Miss Pittman has a lot of good in her, and I reckon she's telling the truth when she says she feels this place is now her home. I believe her when she says she and Miss Keller started their school out of love for the poor people living here.

It just makes me wonder if love is the be-all and end-all that everybody thinks it is.

Signed,

Your Cousin,

Arie Mae Sparks

Dear Cousin Caroline,

Today my heart is breaking. Outside the sun shines like everything is just the same, and I wish I could yank it out of the sky.

Last night, as I walked down to the settlement school to listen to Mama sing, I felt as though the world was mine wrapped in a bow. There we was, all us Sparks as fancy as we knowed how to get, with Mama so cheerful because she was going to sing in front of folks, and Daddy acting jolly because he loved to play his fiddle for a crowd. Us children was as excited as could be, even Baby John, who
wriggled his toes and giggled up a storm all the way down the mountain.

If I had one worry nipping at the back of my mind, it was whether or not Miss Pittman and Miss Keller would keep up their end of the bargain. Mama was singing at their school. Would they come to the barn dance next week? Whichever way, if they did or if they didn't come next Saturday, I would know whether me and Miss Pittman could ever again be friends.

But even that worry could not cut into my good feelings about the evening. The singing was to take place on the first floor of the main school building with a big crowd in attendance. When we got there, the room was filled up with Baltimore folks. I recognized the children, but many of the adults was new to me. There was seven in all, four women and three men, and they nodded and smiled when they seen us, like our whole family was the star attraction. They looked like a friendly enough bunch. I wondered if they would be sad to leave us next week, or if they was so excited to start their own school that they couldn't wait to go.

And for the first time, I wondered about them fishermen who was about to get themselves a school. Did they even want one? That is the question that school starters don't ever seem to ask.

Me and James and Lucille and Harlan planned to sit with Tom and Ruth and the others. I of course was going to sit smack-dab next to Tom so I could look at his book with the stories he'd been collecting. I'd not seen him since our last visit to Aunt Jennie's, and I wanted to read again the story of Addie Birch so that I'd remember it all my days.

“There's Ruth over thataway,” Harlan said, pointing to a table where a punch bowl and cups was laid out. We started walking in her direction, but as soon as she seen us, she lickety-split run from the room.

James looked at me with eyebrows raised. “What d'you reckon is wrong with her?”

“Maybe she's heartbroke about having to bid me farewell come next week,” Harlan said. “I think she's sweet on me.”

Lucille leaned over and popped him in the arm. “I don't know what's come over you these past few weeks, Harlan Boyd, but I'm about to set you to rights.”

Harlan looked Lucille straight in the eye for almost three whole seconds before he lowered his head and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Ah, I'm just having some fun, Lucille. Ain't a feller allowed to have some fun ever' once in a while?”

Well, me and James was laughing and shaking our heads when out of nowhere Ruth Wells stood smack right in front of us, pointing a bony finger in my face.

“You're the most selfish girl I've ever met, Arie Mae Sparks! Mother told you Tom was ill and shouldn't go off climbing mountains, but did you listen? Not for a minute!”

I took a step back. At the same time, James took a step closer to me and grabbed aholt of
my arm to keep me steady. “I don't rightly know what you're talking about, Ruth,” I replied in a shaky voice. Except that I did, of course. Hadn't Tom gone up to Aunt Jennie's two days before, even though his skin was pale and he couldn't hardly breathe? Hadn't I let him?

Ruth glared at me, her hands on her hips. “Tom's gone home, where the doctors say he'll have to stay in bed for the next month if he's to recover. Father came and retrieved him this morning.”

If James hadn't been holding on to me, I reckon I would have fallen to the floor. “Me and Miss Pittman tried to stop him,” I told her. “But he wouldn't be stopped.”

“Miss Pittman is the one who told us of your ill-advised trip,” Ruth informed me. “She feels terribly guilty about it, but of course she didn't know about Tom's heart condition.”

“He told me it weren't as bad as your mama made it sound.”

Ruth pursed her lips. “And you believed him. How ignorant can you be?”

That's when the tears come to my eyes, because I knowed she was right. I was ignorant. I'd not paid attention to the true facts of the situation. Anybody would have knowed that Tom shouldn't have been climbing up to Aunt Jennie's. Why, the second trip up he could hardly breathe. How could I have believed him when he'd said he was coughing because he'd swallowed a bug? A bug! That right there just went to show how ignorant I was.

James said, “Come on, Arie Mae, let's go sit down,” but I wouldn't budge. I was going to stand there and let Ruth Wells yell at me as much as she wanted. She had a right to.