Anybody Shining (4 page)

Maryland, it turns out, is two states above North Carolina. Baltimore is a large city where fishing boats bring to port such items as blue crabs, rockfish, catfish, and perch.

“It is a lovely city,” Miss Sary told us. “We must go there on our travels one day.”

Me and James and Miss Sary have all sorts of adventures planned for when me and James grow up. Miss Sary and James especially want to journey to the land of Brazil, but that's where they have them boa constrictor snakes, so I'm arguing against it. Couldn't we go to Peru instead? I suggest, but James is dead set on going to a jungle and shooting him a gorilla.

“Do they talk English?” James asked of the Baltimore, Maryland, children, for which I kicked his shin under the table.

“Of course they talk English, you ignorant boy,” I told him. “They're in America. What else would they talk?”

“They speak English,” Miss Sary said, resting a calming hand on my shoulder. “But they sound different from folks up here.”

“Like you do?” I asked. Miss Sary is from Person County, close to Virginia, and when she talks it's more like someone singing to a baby. She is the prettiest talker I know.

Miss Sary laughed. “No, not exactly. Their talk is—well, flatter than the way you or I talk. Not as . . . curly.”

That set James to laughing. “Curly? We talk curly? Who ever heard of such a thing as curly talking?”

“Oh, I don't know what I mean,” Miss Sary said, blushing a pretty pink. “You'll just have to meet them. There will be several children your age.”

Well, you can guess how them words excited me! The Baltimore children will be staying for a whole month while their folks study on the songcatchers' school so that they might start their own school for the fishermen who live up their way.

I wondered if the Baltimore children would find the settlement school disappointing. It is more like a house than the type of redbrick school you will see in books. They built it out of boards and made it two stories tall, which is unusual for these parts. Old Uncle Cecil Buchannan give the songcatchers twenty acres upon which to build and said they could cut
all the trees they needed. All he asked in return is that they would put on a play by William Shakespeare now and again, as he thought it would be good for us children to see such a thing. When the songcatchers asked him if he had read Mr. Shakespeare's plays for himself, he said no, but he had heard tell that if you knew them plays and the Bible, you would know everything there is to know about how folks do and think and feel.

Inside the schoolhouse there are tables and chairs, weaving looms and cooking pots and chopping blocks, but no desks. There are many windows along the walls, so the rooms have a light and airy feeling about them. It used to be that we could go visit of an afternoon. That was before Miss Keller spoke out against the barn dances. I would sit in the front parlor of the songcatchers' school and smell the fresh-cut wood smell and oh, how I wished it were a school where you raised your hand and said the date of the Declaration of Independence and recited poetry.

When you look outside the front window, you can see the farm where they are teaching young men how to be farmers who make money. The man who is teaching them is named Mr. Gutterson, and he's from Denmark, Scandinavia. The way he talks sounds like nobody you have ever heard.

If you look out the back window, you can see several little buildings, such as a woodworking shop where they make split-bottom chairs, which are chairs with seats made from split cane or reeds, and other pieces of furniture to sell off the mountain. There is also a building for making pots, and another one for making baskets out of reeds.

If you look over toward the edge of the woods past the woodworking shop, you will see several cabins for the folks who come to visit from off the mountain. Of course that is where James and I went to search for the children from Baltimore, Maryland, last night after we finished our evening chores. We didn't tell Mama nor Daddy where we was going, though
it's true I might have hinted we were headed for Miss Sary's. But we didn't ever say for sure.

“Those children won't want to know us,” James said as we made our way down the path to the school. “Do you remember them ones who come up last fall, right after the school got opened? Their noses were stuck so far up in the air, a righteous rainfall would have drowned them.”

“Children from Baltimore, Maryland, are different,” I insisted. “They ain't snooty in the least. If they were, Miss Sary wouldn't say it was a pleasant city worth traveling to.”

“Well, don't get your hopes up is all I'm saying.”

Of course, James could say such a thing. He already has a true friend in Will Maycomb and don't have to worry about collecting more.

When we got to the school, we heard singing. I guess because it's a school started by songcatchers, they are always singing one song or another. There's morning singing after breakfast, and then end-of-day singing after supper.
Some Friday nights Miss Keller sends around word that they're having what she calls a Folk Sing, and everyone meets in the barn. Will Maycomb says that at the last one Mr. Gutterson taught songs from his country of Denmark, and Miss Keller and Miss Pittman showed off a dance from there too.

Daddy snorted when he heard this. “I guess we ain't good enough for them anymore. They have done got tired of our mountain songs and dances.”

“Miss Keller and Miss Pittman learned some of their ideas from schools in Denmark,” Lucille explained to Daddy. “And at those schools they sing Denmark songs and dance Denmark dances.”

“They ain't in Denmark now,” Daddy pointed out. “We got plenty of good dances of our own right here.”

Mostly we have got the stomping kind of dances here, and I wouldn't mind to see a new step or two. But this ain't something I would say to Daddy, as he's partial to our ways.

James and I waited at the edge of the clearing for the singing to end. We couldn't decide whether we should greet the children when they came out of the barn, or if we should just spy on them to see if they looked to be the sort of boys and girls you could be friendly with. I thought we should spy for a bit and then walk over very natural-like and introduce ourselves.

I almost changed my mind when the Baltimore children come out and begun streaming across the field to the cabins. They were eleven in number and most of them was little, a couple were medium, but there was a boy and a girl who I could tell even from far away was about the right age, twelve like me or eleven like James. I squinted good at the girl, and will say that even from across a field she had a bossy look about her.

Do you know that kind of girl, the one who has a mouth set in a firm line like she's about to tell you what to do and won't never stop telling you what to do? Mariella Treadway is
just that way. We've been knowing each other since she come to live with her granny at the age of eight, and from the first second we was put in the same room, she commenced to bossing me about. “We will play tea party now,” she told me, “so you go collect acorn caps for the cups.”

Well, what I did was head straight for home. I ain't a disagreeable person, but I do not like being bossed by girls my same age.

So the Baltimore, Maryland, girl in the field was not promising. She had brown curls done up in ringlets, which is a pretty style that Lucille is always trying, though her straight hair won't hold a curl to save its life. The Baltimore girl wore a yellow ribbon in her hair, and her dress was yellow as well and looked store-bought. I looked down at my own dress, which was the brown one cut down from Mama's old everyday dress, and knowed I was in no state to meet a girl in store-bought clothes.

Oh, but the boy who was walking next to
her! Cousin Caroline, have you ever seen anyone who shined? Well, this boy did. Even though he walked with a limp and was a little bit sideways, he was shining.

And I thought to myself, Anybody shining, well, they are the one to be my friend. I'll tell you, up to then I'd always hoped my one true friend would be a girl, one such as who could talk about pretty things and would read poetry aloud with me. But when I saw the shining boy across the field, I thought him and me would be friends, even with the way he limped and was lopsided.

Sometimes you just know these things.

Signed,

Your Cousin,

Arie Mae Sparks

Dear Cousin Caroline,

This is the fifth time I have written to you. I have to say I am starting to wonder about the manners of folks who live down to Raleigh. I have heard of big city ways, and now I have to ask myself if some of what I've heard ain't the truth.

But I don't like to judge.

Lucille says maybe you don't write because your handwriting is a sight and mine is so very nice. If that is the case, I will tell you the secret of my nice writing. I have practiced it over and over until I made it just as pretty as could be.
In truth, I'm left-handed, but Mama wouldn't let me stay that way. She believes left-handedness is of the devil and ain't to be tolerated.

When I learned writing, the pen was placed in my right hand and it was so hard for me I cried and cried over it. But Daddy said he would buy me a bag of molasses candy if I could make my writing nice. I'll do almost anything for molasses candy. Also, I didn't want to write with the devil's handwriting. It's bad enough having light-red hair and no freckles.

My red hair is what caught the eye of the Baltimore children just as soon as me and James stepped foot into the clearing. One of the little ones pointed at me and said, “Look! She has hair the same as Cousin Clara!”

The tall, bossy-looking girl shook her head fiercely. “Clara's hair is brown with a hint of red when the sun shines on it. This girl's hair is practically pink, and quite unbecoming.”

James whistled underneath his breath. “You still think them Baltimore children's so nice?”

“Not that particular one, no.” I put my hand on my cheek, which felt hot, like someone had slapped it. “But she don't speak for the whole crowd.”

“Maybe she does,” James said. “You gonna wait to find out?”

A whispered voice popped up from behind us. “You want me to kick her in the pants, Arie Mae? I'll do it, just don't tell Lucille.”

I turned around to see Harlan Boyd hiding behind a bush. If I ain't never described Harlan Boyd to you, well, he's a mess. He's ten years old, scrawny as a half-starved cat, with muddy freckles splashed all over his skin and brown hair that sticks up in clumps no matter how much he spits in his hand and pats his head.

“That's all right, Harlan,” I told him. “Some folks just ain't partial to red hair.”

“Some folks ain't got the manners that God taught 'em,” Harlan replied, coming out from his hiding place.

“God don't teach manners,” James told him.
“You're getting your Sunday school learning mixed up with what Lucille's learning you.”

“It's hard to keep it all straight, that's a fact,” Harlan admitted, shoving his hands in his pockets and taking a good spit at the dirt. Then he yelled over to the Baltimore children, “Hey, there, ya rascals! Leave ol' Arie Mae alone! She can't help how she looks, now can she?”