Thousandsticks, Kentucky 1953
The bitter howls of winter, uncertainty, and a soon-to-be forgotten war rolled over the sleepy, dark hills of Thousandsticks, Kentucky, in early March, leaving behind an angry ache of despair. And though we’d practiced my escape many times, it still felt terrifying that this time was no longer a drill.
I remember when I was twelve, and the shrill air-raid alarm sounded in the schoolyard as we were dropping books off at the stone school over in Troublesome Creek. The teacher yelled out to Mama, “It’s a duck-and-cover drill,” and then rushed us all inside, instructing everyone to crawl under the desks and cover our heads. It had been scary, but I still felt safe under the thin, wooden lip of the school desk.
Today, at sixteen, I realized how foolish it was to think that a little desk could protect anyone from a bomb—how difficult it was now to believe that hiding would somehow save me from the bigger scatter bombs coming.
I shifted my feet on the stiff, frozen grass umbrella’d under the Cumberland Forest, breathing in the cold as Mama helped me into her heavy coat. In every direction, hoarfrost crowned the forest surrounding our cabin, its gray crystals shimmering through pines, hickories, and oaks, as the twining psalms of chickadees and warblers announced the morning. Overhead, a turkey buzzard glided low, scanning for dead flesh. I shivered as the ugly bird dipped lower and lower.
“You must hurry,” Mama chided for the second time, a pull of the cold escaping her breath. “He’ll be coming up here to escort us to court anytime now. Remember everything we told you. Everything we practiced.”
From the side of our cabin, the hood of a lawman’s parked automobile poked out behind a thicket of chokeberries, the first rays of sunlight flashing off headlights and polished chrome.
“I’m frightened, Mama.”
“That’s not a bad thing, darling daughter. It’ll make you more cautious.”
Two weeks ago, my parents hid me in the cellar when the law showed up to arrest them for violating miscegenation laws, after a peddler happened upon our family and remarked back in town about Mama’s strange blue color. Papa hired counsel, bond was posted, and yesterday word came of a revocation hearing while I stayed hidden in the cellar. Today they would go in front of a judge because of Papa’s parole violation on his 1936 banishment order and for daring to marry a woman of mixed color—a blue-skinned Kentuckian.
After Papa got out of prison, we’d moved over to Thousandsticks from Troublesome Creek, and our family had been living in secret here for the last twelve years.
I saw the fear in Mama’s eyes as she reached for the scarf. Her hearing was also set for today.
Hiding inside after the lawman arrived last night, I peeked out the curtains and saw him watching from his automobile to make sure Mama and Papa didn’t flee the county before the hearing. He’d stayed all night and was out there right now sleeping in his official vehicle.
“Mama, I don’t want to leave you and Papa. My home.” I swiped at my eyes with the cuff of her scratchy wool coat.
“You’re not safe here.” She wrapped a knit scarf around my neck.
“I want to stay and wait for you and Papa to come back after the hearing. I’m nearly grown, almost seventeen—”
“It’s too dangerous, Honey Mary-Angeline,” she said, including my middle names she and Papa christened me with years ago when one of the saddlebag preachers stopped at our small cabin hidden near the forest. Mama asked what name I’d like to take and I had said Mary, for her middle name, Cussy Mary Lovett, the distinguished Book Woman of these ol’ hills who’d worked for the Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project when I was little. Then I asked if I could have two, and added Angeline for my first mama.
Angeline and my first papa, Willie Moffit, had been Blues, too, but neither of them knew it, Mama had told me later. Angeline died in ’36, right after she birthed me. Mama never said much about my first papa, only that an accident caused his demise. By the time I turned six, I had lost most of the methemoglobinemia, the gene disorder that the ol’ doc over in Troublesome Creek said me and Mama and the Moffits had.
Doc explained that Mama’s parents, the Carters, like other clans ’round the country, were all kin to themselves, same as the royalty in Europe. Only difference, we didn’t have us a family tree like most folk. Instead, we’d gotten twisty vines that knotted, wrapped, and wound around each other. And although my hands and feet still turned a bruising blue whenever I got scared or excited, only those parts of me took on the strange color.
I was grateful I could easily hide the affliction. Affliction. A hard word for me to swallow, but it wasn’t nothing compared to hearing how Mama had been treated. How the law ripped her and Papa apart on their wedding day, calling them immoral and sinners and worse. Mama said I was only three months old when the Troublesome Creek sheriff had beaten and arrested Papa and threatened to lock Mama up, too, and throw me into the Home of the Idiots on that October day in ’36.
Lifting my palms, I watched the tint of a robin’s-egg blue rise and spread with a darker tinge outlining them. Nothing as dark as Mama’s color that covered every inch of her. I thought of the fright, scorn, and horror that would appear in others’ eyes when they glimpsed Mama’s ink-blue skin. The embarrassment, shame, and sadness leaching into Mama’s.
Once, when I was six years old, we were buying apples inside a store in Tennessee when the man behind the counter called Mama an ugly name and ordered us out. When I saw the hurt pooling in Mama’s eyes, a blinding fury like no other rose inside me. Unable to tamp it down, I threw my apple at the shopkeeper. He snatched up a thick wooden broom. Mama apologized to the angry man and scolded me as she rushed us out the door, shielding my small frame while taking the brunt of the shopkeeper’s battering strikes and raging curses.
Mama received eight stitches on her scalp. After that, I learned to keep quiet and lower my head—learned what a Blue had to do to stay safe.
I looked over at the lawman’s automobile, my stomach stitched in knots. Mama’s hands trembled as she reached into my coat pocket, pulled out a pair of gloves, and handed them to me. She’d been knitting these to hide my blue skin and to keep me, the last of our kind, hidden from the rest of the world. Papa, wanting to contribute, had stitched me black leather ones to switch out. They were my armor, a shield against folk who hunted the Blues.
“Can I go to Tennessee and visit Papa’s kin instead?”
“Great Uncle Emmet’s place is bursting at the seams. There’s fourteen in the home and they can’t squeeze in another soul. I’m sorry, Honey, there’s no one else.”
She flipped down the thick collar on the coat and straightened it. “I packed your brown journal. You be sure to keep writing those pretty poems of yours.”
I nodded, feeling the tremble on my chin. The journal was my favorite and what I wrote down all my poetry in.
“Papa’s packed your .22 for the journey,” Mama went on, fussing with the bulky leather-wrapped coat buttons, pausing to wipe away a tear.
I glanced at our mule, standing to the side and out of sight from the law, and spotted my rifle poking out of the rawhide scabbard.
“Take Junia and ride straight to Troublesome, and don’t stop till you reach Miss Loretta’s,” Mama said, her voice thickening.
The next county over was thirty-some miles away, but with all the rough terrain, narrow mountain trails, and countless switchbacks, it might as well have been three hundred.
“Straight to Loretta’s,” she said again. “If you meet any trouble, find Devil John.”
Moonshiner Devil John was one of Mama’s old library patrons who also lived over in Troublesome Creek. He’d been visiting us here in the Cumberland for years.
“Mama, I love Retta, but she’s got to be one hundred years old. How will she care for me?”
“Ninety-one, and you’ll help out Miss Loretta, and she’ll keep you safe till we can all be together again.” Her words were swollen in grief, pained.
“Yes, ma’am, I will,” I whispered.
“Listen to your mama, li’l Book Woman.” Papa stepped outside, his bright eyes now troubled and dark. He raked his fingers through thick brown hair, peeked at the law’s automobile, and dropped his voice to a whisper. “You need to hurry. He’ll be waking up any time now, and we dare not let him see you here. Remember, your mama has sewn a little emergency money into the lining of your coat. Be gentle with old Junia, and she’ll see you safely there.”
“Ol’ Junia never minds me like she does Mama,” I said stalling. “Can’t I stay just a bit longer—”
“We talked about this, Honey. Your mama and I have been accused of breaking the law. If the judge finds us guilty”—he stole a glance to Mama—“there will be a punishment.”
I tugged on Papa’s coat and squinted up at him. “But won’t your lawyer fight it? What—”
“Shh. We have to be prepared. Slip on those gloves now,” he said more sternly, more slowly, making me latch on to his every word.
If my folks were found guilty and taken away, the court could send me to the orphans’ home until I turned eighteen or, worse, to the House of Reform where the children wear chains and toil from sunup to sundown on the farms till they’re twenty-one.
“C’mon, Honey,” Papa said. “Let’s put the pannier on Junia and get you home to Loretta.”
“Papa, what should I say if the law comes after me?” I glanced out at the automobile and pulled my gloves on.
“Right now they only know we have a daughter, but they don’t know where you are, Honey, or what you look like. And they won’t find you where you’re going. Mr. Morgan shares the same office as our attorney, Mr. Faust. He’s signed up with the courts to represent you and is working on the legal papers to get you a guardian. You remember Bob Morgan, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Just don’t say anything except that you want to talk to Mr. Morgan if anyone asks. He’ll help you.”
I clung to Mama, afraid. That I could lose them both because men would punish my parents for loving each other was terrifying. And I knew somehow that going back to Troublesome was going to be troublesome for me.
“Mama.”
“My darling daughter, you’ll be safer there.” Mama wrapped me in a hug. A moment later, she said quietly, “When we went back to your grandparents’ cabin last fall to visit and clean the cemeteries, you’ll remember we stocked the root cellar with food.”
“Yes, ma’am, I remember.”
“Your papa took some more victuals over last month. Key’s in your pocket. Don’t lose it. And you be sure and share everything with Miss Loretta.” She gave one last hug, then kissed my cheek. “I’ll send word when it’s safe. If all goes well, you might be able to come home tomorrow at first light.” She drew back and gave me a small, reassuring smile. “I’ll come straight to you. I promise.”
But there was no promise to be had in her worried eyes, the darkening blue flesh of her face betraying the words. “Mama,” I said, chasing down the ghosts of childhood to return to a safer place—any place other than where they were going and where I was being sent. I searched their faces. “Mama, Papa, I love you.”
Mama laid her head against mine. “I love you, darling daughter.”
Papa pulled us into his embrace and spoke softly: “I love you. Ride safe, li’l Book Woman.” He drew back, kissed my forehead, then pulled us close once again. When he released his hold, he turned back toward the automobile. But not before I saw a small tear fall from the corner of his eye.
“Papa,” I whispered, my heart breaking, the ache deep, my love and the pain of losing them cutting even deeper.
“Be quick, Honey,” he said hoarsely, keeping his back to me. “You’ll return when we come for you, or when we send word it’s safe.” Once more he peeked out at the automobile, then snuck quietly over to Junia.
There was a sober finality in our brief goodbye, and we all felt it. Our future together was about to be erased, the same as in 1936 when the sheriff over in Troublesome erased my papa and mama’s marriage and then the courts banished him from entering Kentucky again for twenty-five years. What was coming loomed bigger, bolder, and the fear seized hold, punching hard at my bones.
I hugged him once more and climbed atop Junia, then rode her out on the narrower trail on the other side of the yard, away from the lawman and his automobile, the cold winds lashing at my stinging wet cheeks, the pounding of the beast’s hooves raging in my chest, stoking the anger and sorrow inside.
When I was at a safe distance but could still make them out, I climbed down. From behind a grove of trees, I stood beside Junia, peeking over her withers, waiting, and then watched as the lawman sauntered up to the cabin. In a minute my parents stepped out the door.
Mama stood helpless, clasping her hands while Papa talked to the official, their conversation lost to the wilderness. Several times, the lawman shook his head, his face darkening to a mottled red. With each shake it felt like a knife piercing, and I held my breath, watching until Junia swished her tail and a rumble threatened to leap from her chest.
“Shh,” I hissed. But it was too late. The ol’ girl pinned back her ears as the man took a step toward them. Mama cowed, raised an arm protectively over her face, and tried to back away. But the lawman latched hold and twisted her arm up behind her back, pinning her tight against the automobile. Mama tilted back her head and, with deep, guttural anguish, howled into Junia’s startled whinny, drowning the beast’s fury.
I didn’t need to hear the crushing snap to know he’d broken her arm.
Again, cries pulled from the mule’s chest, and I quickly put my hand on her muzzle. “Quiet, Junia,” I warned, not taking my eye off my parents.
Papa grabbed the lawman by the shoulders, pulling him off Mama, but the man spun around, whipped out his billy club, and struck Papa hard upside the head. He crashed to the ground on both knees, cradling his face with both palms. Shouts lifted as the lawman handcuffed him and knocked him over onto the cold ground. He gave a swift kick to Papa’s side and turned back to Mama.
Junia pawed the earth when she saw the man shove Mama into the back seat of his automobile.
Calling out for Papa, Mama banged on the window with her fist.
I wanted to scream and curse the man. Instead I clamped my hand over my mouth, watching in horror as tears streamed from my eyes.
Junia lifted her muzzle and bawled into the sleeping woods, and I ducked lower, barely peeking over her withers.
The lawman stopped and turned our way. My gaze dropped to my .22, then fell back on the man, and my breathing hitched as I shifted toward the scabbard.
He took a few steps forward and cupped a hand over his brows, searching. My gloved palm slid over the shoulder stock. Seconds later, he dropped his arm and turned away.
Quickly, I tugged Junia deeper into the trees, climbed atop, and rode the mule hard toward Troublesome Creek.