We were living at Logan’s camp when Uncle Jolly appeared on the plank road, heading toward our house. We hadn’t seen him since spring. He arrived on an idle Thursday when only the loggers were at work, and folks sat visiting or being visited on porches. The mill operated three days a week. The saws were quiet, the steam boiler sighing instead of puffing. Smoke raised from the burning sawdust mountain as straight as a pencil.
Word had reached Uncle Jolly that Dan had lost two of his fingers and they needed transporting for burial on Sporty Creek. The third and fourth fingers of Dan’s left hand had been severed while he played at the mill. For Pap, who was already fed up with eight months of short workweeks, Dan’s accident was the last button on Gabe’s coat.
Uncle Jolly came riding his anticky horse down the plank road with Jenny Peg prancing sideways. Upon sighting them, Pap announced, “Here comes the witty,” and to make Dan brighten sang out:
The biggest fool you could ever seek
Dwells in the head of Sporty Creek;
He puts on his shirt over his coat,
Buttons his breeches around his throat.
Dan’s face lightened. Since losing his fingers, he had become pampered beyond endurance. Any time Pap took seat he climbed onto his knees. He had turned into a worse pet than the baby.
The trick horse bowed. Jenny Peg bowed so low Uncle Jolly slid down her neck to the ground. He caught up Dan, sprang onto the animal’s back, and circled the house before saying a hey-o or a howdy-do to us.
Everybody humored Dan. Although the bandage was long off, the edge of the palm healed, he still drew attention. My playfellows broke off their games to stare at him, to gaze at the stake in the corner of the yard where the fingers were interred in a baking powder can. We had visitors aplenty. Camp folk made our narrow porch their porch.
They came with gifts for Dan: chestnuts, hickory sugar, trifles. Cass Logan, Pap’s boss, was a regular caller, dropping in for a moment with popcorn or a trinket, flashing gold teeth, and saying, “There you are, little master.” Cass was concerned that Pap might law him.
Uncle Jolly swung Dan to Pap. Pap handled him as carefully as he might a basket of eggs. Teasing, Uncle Jolly inquired, “Does sawdust smell as sweet to you as coal dust?”
“The same difference,” said Pap.
Sawmilling was as slack as mining, and on off days Pap had taken to searching the woods for wild herbs. A string of ginseng roots hung from a nail on the porch wall.
To low-rate Uncle Jolly’s farming, Pap went on, “Lumbering beats grubbing new-ground in February and pushing a hardtail along a corn furrow in the heat of the gnats.”
“I’m hearing you,” said Uncle Jolly, “but I’d bet my ears you’ll be moving again. Here you are on your honkers in the middle of the week.”
“He’s talking it,” said Mother.
“Yes, sir,” admitted Pap. “The hawk appears about to light.”
“A born gypsy if one ever walked the earth,” breathed Uncle Jolly.
Then Uncle Jolly noticed me, and the baby, and Holly. To me he said, “Hey-o, dirty ears.” I regretted not having on my sharp-toed boots. I was barefoot, hardening my soles for the winter. Of the baby he asked, “From what worm tree did you shake this grub?” As many times as he had pranked with it on Sporty, he acted like he’d never glimpsed it before. He keened his eyes at Holly and said, “This young lady is still at home, aye? I’d of sworn some boy rooster would of crowed by now, and she’d of gone a-running.”
Holly pitched her chin. “Silly,” she scoffed, and turned her back.
Pap reproved her, “I wish you’d change your byword again. I’m getting burnt out on this ’un.” And to Uncle Jolly he said, “Speaking of matrimony how’s the wife hunt?”
“Courting to marry,” chimed Uncle Jolly.
“You’ve been singing that tune a dozen years.”
“The trouble is females don’t trip over each other to get to me.”
“The switchtail you sparked on Bee Branch four or five seasons—what’s become of her?”
“She chose another.” Uncle Jolly sighed. “And you know what? I was beginning to like the girl.”
“Like?” Pap repeated. “Is that the right word?” His chest began to heave. “So you’ve run out of courting material.”
Pap had to laugh a spell before he could go on.
Changing the subject, Uncle Jolly asked Mother, “Are you packing your plunder to move? I’m figuring you’re not long for the saw camp.”
“With everything in a slump,” Mother replied, “it’s my hope. It’s up to Mr. Hard Skull.”
Pap swept an arm toward the string of roots hanging on a nail. “Back to the Old Place some far day,” he said, “but not the next go. I’m speculating on something.”
Pap turned grave. “Know what ginseng roots fetch nowadays? Thirty-five dollars the pound, and rising. These I found hereabouts, and they’re pea-jibbits to what must grow in the wild place I told you about—the territory owned by a lumber company. Besides ginseng there’s snakeroot and goldenseal and wild ginger and a host of other medicine roots that haul in big prices.”
“It’s a nowhere place,” said Uncle Jolly. “A nobody world.”
“Hit’s not altogether uninhabited,” defended Pap. He was wound up. “There are scatterings of settlers on the outer boundary, and there’s Kilgore post office. When the company lumbered it twenty years ago, they had their sawmill in what’s named Tight Hollow. The bunkhouse is still standing, in dandy shape. Aye, I aim to talk to the lawyer in Thacker who has say-so over the property.”
“They’ll call it Dunce Hollow hereafter, if you move there. But I figure you’re talking to hear your head rattle. Or you’re dreaming.”
“If he’s asleep,” pronounced Mother, “he’d better wake up.”
Pap rushed on. “Stands to reason such a territory is crammed with herbs, the waters jumping with fish, the woods crawling with game. Minks and muskrats who’ve never smelled a steel trap.” He paused, overcome by such prospects. “Have you an idea what a mink skin fetches in the market? A muskrat?”
Uncle Jolly shook his head. He appealed to Mother, “Are you certain your man hasn’t been cracked on the noggin?”
Mother answered dolesomely, “He’s given to bad judgment sometimes. I can’t picture myself stuck in such a wilderness.”
Holly said, “I don’t aim to move a jillion miles from creation.”
“I want to,” I cried. “I do.”
“Me, too,” said Dan.
Uncle Jolly jerked his chin in my direction. “I’d of sworn you favored Sporty where you can plow.”
“I do,” said I.
“First you want to go crawl with the varmints?”
I thought about it. My mind spun. “I want to live everywhere,” I said.
“And what is it that you want to do in the world?”
I weighed that in my head. “Everything,” I said. There was no other truth.
Uncle Jolly reached and tapped my head and listened. “Not quite as empty as it used to be. Something in there, a little something.”
On the porch of the dwelling across the plank road, a neighbor began to pick a familiar song on his guitar. We could see the guitar player’s head bobbing, his arm jerking. The Plunker, Pap had nicknamed him. Presently a girl of six or seven skipped into our yard with a stick of peppermint in her hand. She dropped it into Dan’s lap and departed without a word.
“Dadburn!” Uncle Jolly swore. “Six years old and already drawing the women. Never saw the beat.”
“The neighbors are ruining him,” complained Mother. “He’s so spoiled salt wouldn’t save him.”
“You’ve done your share,” reminded Pap.
I scurried indoors and pulled on my sharp-toed boots. When I returned, Uncle Jolly had the baby in his arms, counting its fingers. He tallied, “Thumbo, Lickpot, Long Man, Ring Man, Little Man.” He wagged his chin in mock surprise. “I expected six.” Then he glimpsed Dan hiding his crippled hand in a pocket.
“Golly Moses!” Uncle Jolly crowed. He surrendered the baby to Mother and declared, “Dan is in luck. With a pair of fingers short, the picks and shovels won’t get him, the army won’t capture him. It opens up the world. My belief is he’ll amount to a real something, something worth the candy. Aye, he’ll be a somebody.”
I forgot the boots. They were nothing compared to this. To do something; to be somebody! I was half envious. Mother said quickly, “Yes,” and again, “Yes.”
“If Dan is to have a chance,” Uncle Jolly said, “teachers such as Duncil Hargis and his sort won’t help. And with school closed on Sporty, Buffalo Wallow is a far piece to walk. I say send him to the Settlement School at the forks of Troublesome Creek. There the scholars work out their room and board.”
Dan pursed his lips. “I hain’t a-going.”
Uncle Jolly turned solemn. “Listen,” said he. “The Settlement’s teachers are the knowingest. They will do for you. They’ll fit you for living in a hard world. Anyhow, the Buffalo Wallow teacher is a whip-jack. He’ll put the bud to you. A bad sign.”
Pouting, Dan snuffed, “I don’t want to.”
A cry raised on my tongue. “I do! I aim to!” Menifee Thomas, a Sporty Creeker, had told me a bushel about the Settlement.
“Send the both,” Uncle Jolly said, and spying at me, he added, “When I tapped your head last, I heard more brains than I let on. Didn’t want to get you stuck up.”
He was staring at my boots as he spoke. He closed an eye, cracked it, and shut the other, acting as if he couldn’t credence what he beheld. “I swear to my Never!” he blurted. “If I had a pair as good-looking as that, I could borrow money at the Thacker bank.”
Pap explained, “They’re his calf boots. Bought them out of his own pocket. First dollars earned.” He sighed, feigning envy. “Wears better leather than his own pappy.”
Pap’s shoes were in sad shape. He bought for himself only when he had to.