Mandie and the Secret Tunnel (2 page)

“Jim Shaw—one brother. He never come see. Jim Shaw take me for brother.”

“Is my grandmother still living?”

“No, she go to happy hunting ground when Jim Shaw little brave.”

“What about my grandfather? Is he living?”

“I do not know. Jim Shaw never tell me when he come to see Cherokee.”

“My daddy used to come to see you? Where do you live, Uncle Ned?”

“Over the hills. That way.” He pointed toward one of the hills above the cabin. “Follow Nantahala River.”

“Could I come to see you sometime?”

“No, bear get Papoose. Wolf, panther wait for Papoose to come.”

“But they don’t get you.”

“I shoot with arrow.” He patted the sling over his shoulder holding his huge witch hazel bow and his arrows with turkey feathers. “I kill.”

“I’ve never been anywhere except to school and to church. The schoolhouse is just down the road apiece, and we go in the wagon to church at Maple Springs. And all the Sunday school teacher ever says is ‘Honor thy mother and thy father,’ and all that stuff. I never can remember the rest of it.
Uncle Ned, do you think God really means for us to honor our mother?”

“Big Book say that?”

“Yes, that’s what it says, the Bible.”

“Then you do what it say. Jim Shaw say, we don’t do what Big Book say, we don’t get see Big God.”

“But my mother—” she hesitated.

“I know. I see. I hear. She bad squaw.”

The girl smiled at his description. “Even if she is bad, do I still have to honor her?”

“Book say that?”

“The Bible doesn’t say whether your mother has to be good or bad. It just says honor thy mother.”

“Then close ears, eyes. Honor mother.” Uncle Ned stood up. “Papoose go sleep now. I come again soon. Go now.”

Mandie scrambled to her feet and picked up Snowball, who was rubbing around her feet. She would go back to bed, but now she would have other things to think about. She was part Cherokee Indian! Why had her father never told her? If she could get enough courage, she would ask her mother about it.

Back in her bed, with Snowball curled up by her side, she finally fell asleep. Her mother woke her, yelling from downstairs. It was morning, but Mandie felt as though she had just closed her eyes.

“Git up, Amanda. Work to be done. Amanda, you hear me?”

“Yes, Mama.” She sat up. Irene was still asleep. She reached over and shook her sister. “Irene, Mama is up.”

“Leave me alone. I’m not ready to git up yet.” Irene pulled the cover over her head.

Mandie quickly dressed in the early morning chill, remembering cold mornings when she was small and her father had held her in his lap by the fireplace downstairs while he put on her shoes and stockings.

Then she remembered her conversation with Uncle Ned. Maybe she could catch her mother in the right mood if she hurried and she could ask some questions about what Uncle Ned had told her. But when she reached the last rung of the ladder, her mother was waiting for her with the milk bucket.

“Go milk Susie while I start breakfast. Git a move on,” Etta Shaw scolded.

Without a word, Mandie took the bucket, set Snowball down as she went outside and raced with the kitten to the barn. She didn’t mind Susie at all. Susie was her friend. She always stood still and made mooing sounds while Mandie milked her, but when her mother tried it, Susie kicked up a fuss and would turn the bucket over if she got a chance. She would also use her tail to slap Etta Shaw in the face. Only Jim and Mandie were able to handle her and now that her father was gone, she could see the job falling entirely upon her.

“Good morning, Susie.” She rubbed the cow’s
head. “You gonna give me a good bucketful of milk this morning? If you don’t, Mama will scold me and I want to get her in a good mood so I can find out some things.” She drew up the little three-legged stool. Susie looked back at her and began her mooing, and the bucket was soon full to the brim.

“Thank you, Susie. Now I’ll let the bars down so you can get outside and get your breakfast. Please don’t go too far away, because I know I’ll have to come and get you tonight.” The cow moved out into the pasture. She set the milk bucket down and followed. It was such a beautiful spring morning. Her eyes roamed over the fields, seeing her father as she remembered him and she fell to her knees on the soft, green grass.

“Dear God, please take good care of my daddy,” she implored. “And, dear God, I still love you even if you don’t love me anymore.”

She hurried back to the house, certain that her mother would be pleased to see so much milk, but she only took the bucket and set it on the sideboard.

“Git a move on, Amanda. School today, as usual.” Going to the ladder, she called, “Irene, git up. Breakfast is ready. School today.”

Mandie sat down to her grits and biscuits with honey without another word. She kept staring at her father’s empty place at the table. She could see it was no time to talk to her mother.

Irene joined her and then they prepared their
lunch in baskets their father had bought from Uncle Ned. They put in sausage and biscuits, and buttermilk in tightly closed jars which would be warm by the time recess came at school. They took their sunbonnets down from the pegs by the door, tied them on and together they began their mile-long walk down the road to the one-room schoolhouse. Even Irene was glad to get away from her mother to enjoy the company of her classmates.

There were only sixteen pupils in the school and one teacher, Mr. Tallant. They were divided into four groups of four, one group in each corner of the big schoolroom. Mr. Tallant would go from group to group giving assignments, listening to reading, and recitation of arithmetic. He was not a strict schoolmaster and as long as a student made good grades he pretended not to notice the passing of notes during the time they were reading to themselves.

Mandie frequently received notes written in poetry from Joe Woodard, whose father was the only doctor in the vicinity. Joe had been her best friend from the day she had begun school, young, shy, and bewildered. Joe was two years older, an experienced hand in the schoolroom, and he immediately took Mandie under his protection. Irene was jealous and made life miserable for the boy.

Joe passed a folded note to Mandie with the explanation that he had had to return home with his mother after her father’s funeral because his father, the doctor, had to make some urgent sick calls.
Even though he lived a good two miles from the Shaws, he showed up there quite often. Etta Shaw tried her best to get him interested in Irene, but Joe had eyes only for Mandie. His note told her that he had permission to walk home with her, and his father would pick him up on his way home.

The two strolled along the road, ignoring Irene who tagged by the side. Joe carried Mandie’s books and she tried to listen to his attempt to cheer her up, but her thoughts kept reverting to the fact that her father would not be home when she got there. Her father usually finished the many chores around the farm by the time school was over each day and almost always lately he would be splitting logs at the chopping block for the fence he planned to put around the property. She knew this would take quite a while because the farm had one hundred and twenty acres. The pile had steadily grown and he had begun hauling the rails around the boundary line a few days before he became ill.

“I’m sure glad to feel the weather getting warmer,” Joe remarked, throwing back his thin shoulders and taking a deep breath. “When hot weather comes I always feel better, for some reason.”

“I never thought about it,” Mandie remarked. “Yeh, I suppose I like hot weather better, too, even though there are spiders and bugs and snakes crawling around.”

“I ain’t afraid of them things. I’m bigger than they are,” Irene put in.

“You might be bigger, but you’d still better not fool around with snakes,” Joe told her.

“That’s why Daddy planted the gourds, to keep the snakes away from the house,” Mandie added.

“Yeh, I know,” Joe said. “Here comes Snowball. It’s a miracle to me how that kitten knows when you’re coming home.”

“He’s smart. He always knows.” Mandie stopped to pick up the kitten. “He knows when it’s time to go to bed, too. He waits for me at the ladder every night.”

As they walked into the yard, Etta Shaw saw them coming and was waiting to give out the chores.

“Change your dress, Mandie. The yard needs sweeping after all that mob of wagons and people here yesterday,” and turning to Irene, she said, “You can churn the milk, Irene.”

Mandie hurried upstairs and changed into her old faded dress and came back down to find Joe waiting with the broom in his hand.

“I’ll help,” he told her. “You pick up the trash, papers, and things around and I’ll do the sweeping. We’ll get it done in no time.”

“Thanks, Joe,” Mandie said.

The rough handmade broom always made blisters on her hands and then when she had to wash dishes her hands would feel like they were on fire.

She ran about collecting papers, moving rocks out of the way that had been used to prop wagon wheels. Joe swept furiously and they were soon finished.

Etta Shaw came to the front door with the
water bucket. She took the gourd dipper out of the pail and handed it to Mandie. “Fetch me some water. And then take this bucket of slop down to the hog walla.” She indicated another bucket sitting in the doorway.

So, between Mandie and Joe they brought the water from the spring and then went to feed the pigs. By that time, Dr. Woodard was pulling up in his buggy.

“And how are you today, Mandie?” the doctor greeted the girl.

“Fine, Dr. Woodard.” She smiled shyly at the old man.

“Come in, Dr. Woodard,” Etta yelled from the doorway. “You younguns come in, too. We’ll have a piece of that pound cake Mrs. Shope brought yesterday.”

“I only want a glass of sweetmilk,” Mandie told her. She didn’t want anything that would remind her of yesterday.

“Well, Etta, what are you going to do now?” Dr. Woodard asked, as they all sat at the round table in the kitchen.

“Marry the first man that’ll have me, Doc. That’s the only thing I can do. I’m poor as Job’s turkey, you know.” She smiled as she tossed her head.

Mandie’s heart thumped loudly.
Marry—another man—soon as my father is gone
, she was thinking.

“Well, I suppose so. You could never make it
on your own here with two girls and no man around. I certainly wish I could have saved Jim, Etta. He was a fine man. He’ll be hard to replace.”

Mandie jumped up and ran out the back door. Joe came closely on her heels. She had tears in her eyes and didn’t want Joe to see. He followed her as she raced up the mountain road to the cemetery where her father was buried and fell on her knees beside his grave, weeping uncontrollably.

“Mandie!” was all Joe said as he caught up with her, but she understood.

Finally she rose and wiped her tears on her apron. Joe held her small white hand.

“Just wait, Mandie. One day you and I will grow up and I will see that you are taken care of.”

“That’s a long time, Joe. Things may get worse.”

“But I’ll be around to help in the meantime,” he assured her.

Joe came to the Shaw house more frequently after that and went with Mandie to put wild flowers on her father’s grave. It was always a silent affair, neither speaking until they were back down the rough road.

Only one month after Jim Shaw had been laid to rest, Etta Shaw and Zach Hughes went into town together and came back to say they were married, and he moved into their house.

Mandie had seen him around a lot. He belonged to the same church and he was always offering to bring supplies from the store for them, or
take them somewhere. He had never paid much attention to Mandie, but evidently he had been doing a lot of thinking and she was shocked when she was told what was planned for her.

They were sitting around the supper table on Friday night, two weeks after the wedding, when it happened.

“Well, Amanda,” began Etta, clearing her throat. “We’re a-fixin’ to send you to live with the Brysons over yonder at Almond Station. They have a new baby and need some help.”

“Mama!” was all she could say.

“Now, no argument! It ain’t but two hoots and a holler away. We can’t make a livin’ here as ’tis and you’ll just be one less mouth to feed. They’ll give you a better home than we got here and plenty to eat,” Etta told her.

“But, Mama—”

“Now, Amanda,” Zach Hughes cut in. “We have already made the arrangements. They’ll be here atter you tomarra morning so git your thangs together tonight.”

Mandie, knowing she was beaten, fled from the table and went outside to sit in the dark under the chestnut trees. Snowball followed her and spread himself out across her feet.

She wished with all her might that Uncle Ned would come to see her. He had promised to watch over her and he had shown up at least once a week since her father had died. But he had already been there on Wednesday night and she didn’t have much hope.

“Please, God, help me!” she pleaded, her face turned toward the moonlit sky. “Even if you don’t love me anymore, won’t you please help me?”

“Papoose need help. Me help.” She couldn’t believe her eyes when Uncle Ned stepped out from behind the tree in front of her and came forward. “Me help Papoose.”

“Uncle Ned, how did you know? I didn’t expect you again this week.”

The old man sat down on the uncovered roots of the tree. “I know things. I hear things. I walk, no sound. I watch Papoose. Sit Pow-wow. Tell trouble.”

She sat down next to the old man and put her head against his deerskin jacket. She repeated what her mother and Zach had just told her.

“I know. I listen to talk. So, I come back.” He put an arm around the child.

“But what can I do, Uncle Ned?”

“Papoose must go. Uncle Ned watch over her at new house. I promise Jim Shaw. I keep promise.”

“I wish you were really my uncle.” She smiled wistfully at the old Indian. “Then I could go live with you. You said I’m part Cherokee. Couldn’t I just go home with you, Uncle Ned, please?”

“No, Papoose must get book learning. Jim Shaw say, you must go to school. When Papoose big squaw, then Papoose live with Cherokees.”