Anybody Shining (15 page)

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 would 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 sit, 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.

“Oh, folks was in such a state! Mommy was afeared that if those men grabbed Addie away from the Indians they would come and massacre
all of us in our beds. But at the same time she grieved for little Addie Birch living with them heathens and practically a wild animal by now.

“Daddy, as always, kept a calm head. He told the others that they couldn't just go and steal Addie Birch away. They would have to trade for her. Because he had always been friendly with the Indians, he said he would be the one to go and make the trade, only they needed something good as gold to trade with. But these were folks who didn't have much. Would the Indians trade Addie Birch for a bag of sugar or a yard of fabric? That didn't seem too likely.

“But then a young man name of Will Seaton come up to the house and said, ‘Mr. Faught'—for that was my daddy's name, John Faught—‘I have a horse that is the finest animal I have ever knowed, only she is too high-strung for plowing and of no use to me. I will trade the horse for the girl.'

“Daddy went to see the horse, and when he come back he said it was the most beautiful animal he'd ever laid eyes on, golden and tall,
and any man would be proud to own her. So the next day he collected the horse and headed to the Indians' village. Me and my brothers and sisters was so excited, but Mommy, she cried and cried, fearing that the Cherokee would chop Daddy up into little pieces.

“It was hard to get anything done that day, I tell you! We was covered up with excitement! Me and my brother Samuel spent the whole day coming up with questions for to ask Addie Birch when Daddy brought her back. We was especially hoping she'd tell us all sorts of Indian secrets and words, for we was as fascinated with the Indians as young Master Tom here.