A MONTH WENT by. A month of heat and locusts. Of chores and church and no Roseanna. Me alone in the room, looking at her stripped bed, her things setting there in the corner in a burlap bag, as Pa had decreed they be. A month of Alifair herding me around, bossing me, and knowing there was no Ro to take my part. Alifair wanted to move into my room to “take charge” of me, she told Ma. I told Ma I’d die first. I begged her not to allow it, so she didn’t. “We’ll wait a bit,” she told Alifair. “Ro may be back.” It was part of the world Ma lived in that made her believe this.
“Why would she be back if’n she’s wed?” Alifair asked. Usually she let Ma live in her world. Because that’s what gave her leave to take over the kitchen. Now she wasn’t about to.
“Maybe she isn’t,” Ma answered.
“Well, if she isn’t then she’s living in sin. And Pa won’t let her back.”
Ma didn’t answer and Alifair didn’t move in. Ma was still woman of the house after all.
The sheep came home and left again. Ma made me, Trinvilla, and Adelaide new dresses for school. Nights got cool and there was a ring around the full moon. I went to my playhouse a lot and saw that the muskrats had built their houses big and the north side of the beaver dam on the creek was more covered with sticks than the south side. All signs of a bad winter.
Pa and my brothers started gathering in the crops. We planted fall turnips and cabbages. They pushed over the collards and put pine bark and dirt over them to keep ’em for the winter. We stored the pumpkins in the shuck pen, the sweet potatoes in the smokehouse. My brothers cut and stacked wood. We made a batch of soap from the hickory and oak ashes. I started school.
From the first day there were strange looks and whisperings. I knew the other kids were talking about Ro. I kept my nose to my primer and stayed to myself. Adelaide and Trinvilla told Alifair how embarrassed they were that Ro was now common gossip. She told them that’s what happened when you came to perdition and they should just learn from it.
One especially chilly September morning Ma sent me with a basket to Belle Beaver’s shack. Adelaide and Trinvilla teased me about it all the way, and shouted “ask her about Ro” when they continued on to school as I stopped.
Belle came to the door, all wrapped in something silk that didn’t go with her surroundings and made you think of far-off places. She wasn’t a bit embarrassed. “Thank that nice mama of yours,” she said. “She’s a true Christian.”
I said I would. Her hair was some color I’d never seen. She had rouge on her cheeks. Was this what happened when a person came to perdition? Would Ro look like this someday?
“Heard your sister wed that nice Johnse Hatfield,” she said. “And they’re all carryin’ on like she run off with some Yankee. I know what it is to be vilified. You wait here.” And while I stood there wondering what vilified meant, she disappeared into her shack and in a little bit came out with a hair comb. “Give this to her. She’ll like it, bein’ new wed and all.”
I was so touched by her gift that I took it, mumbled my thanks, and went on my way. What a beautiful comb! But I couldn’t give it to Ro. It would make her vilified, like Belle. I threw it in the woods on my way to school, mourning the loss of its purtiness. I’d probably never see another like it.
At recess I was out at the pump fetching some water for Mr. Cuzlin when out comes Nancy McCoy, all gussied up in her new calico. Pink it was, and with her dark curls she looked right purty in it. Most girls were through with school by Nancy’s age and were home helping out. But Nancy kept right on coming, when she pleased. And it wasn’t like Calvin, who wanted to learn. Nancy came because she had nothing else to do. And she was always making sheep eyes, either at Mr. Cuzlin or Calvin. Both paid her no nevermind.
She was carrying a green peach-tree stick, forked at the end. “You want to see me find water?” she asked. “I can find water with this. I’m doing an experiment.”
I went right on pumping. “Got all the water I need.”
She stopped to look at me. “Bet I could find your sister for you, too.”
I went right on pumping. “What do you know about Ro?”
“She’s living with Johnse Hatfield. At Devil Anse’s house. And they ain’t married.”
My face flamed. “Not true.”
“It is so. My brother Lark told me. And he knows.”
I finished filling my bucket with water, and we stood there staring at each other. “Living without benefit of marriage,” Nancy whispered. “Lark has friends in West Virginny. And he knows. And soon so will everybody. You see? I told you I could find your sister for you with my peach stick, didn’t I?”
I took the peach stick from her and broke it in two. “Liar!”
“That’s no way to treat kin,” she said gravely.
“Don’t care if you’re kin. You’re a liar!” I threw the water at her. It went all over her new pink calico. I dropped the bucket and ran. Not back to the schoolhouse, but home. All the way, crying. And who was there in the yard? Alifair. Demanding to know why I was home. I wouldn’t tell her, of course. I couldn’t. And that’s when she put my head under the pump, trying to make me tell, and Ma came out and stopped her and packed my bag and sent me to Tolbert and Mary’s.
SO I WASN’T there at supper when my family got the news that Ro and Johnse weren’t wed. Bad news travels faster than a brushfire in these parts. I was just setting down to supper with Tolbert, Mary, and little Cora, my hair still wet, when Calvin rode up and came in to tell us.
“Pa found out that Ro’s been at Devil Anse’s all this time with Johnse. Not wed.” Calvin spoke the words without feeling and accepted a dish of food from Mary. “Pa’s all fit to be tied. It’s the first time he spoke her name since she left, and I wish he hadn’t.”
Tolbert and Mary had stopped eating. “What’d he say?” Tolbert asked.
“He’s mad all right,” Calvin said. “But it’s a quiet mad.”
“That’s the worst kind,” Tolbert said.
“He didn’t hold forth about it,” Calvin went on. “Als’t he said was that our good name was ruined.”
Ruined. I thought of things ruined. A corncob doll I’d left out in a flooding rain. Or a hog if a wildcat got hold of it. But a name? Our name was still McCoy, wasn’t it? How could it be ruined?
“He said old Devil Anse did this to him on purpose. That it was the onliest way he could strike out at him. And that we’ll just have to show him, is all.”
Tolbert nodded. “What’s Pa want?”
“Wants you to ride over to West Virginny tomorrow and bring Ro home.”
I almost knocked over my glass of milk. But all Tolbert did was nod. “Alone?”
“No,” Calvin said. And then he looked at me. “Wants you to take Fanny with you, bein’ as she’s Ro’s favorite.”
I had all I could do to keep from jumping up and down and yelling yes, yes, I’ll go. But I knew enough to keep a still tongue in my head.
“Alifair wants to know if you knew anything about Ro not bein’ wed, Fanny?” Calvin asked. “She thinks you knew all along.”
Before I had a chance to answer, Tolbert did for me. “Tell Alifair to mind her own business. And stop picking on Fanny, or she’ll answer to me. She damn near drowned her today.”
“I wasn’t to home,” Calvin said. “I was fishing. Or I would of stopped it. Well, so you’ll go tomorrow then? I can tell Pa?”
“You can tell him.” Tolbert stood up, and he and Calvin shook hands and they walked out the door together.
I WAS UP early the next morning to have breakfast with Tolbert, made by Mary even before she was out of her long nightdress. It was still half-light in the kitchen and it felt like Christmas for the excitement. I was to go with Tolbert to bring Ro home. Just him and me! And I didn’t have to go to school and answer to Mr. Cuzlin why I’d run off yesterday. Tolbert said he’d write me a note about that, because I’d told him about Nancy McCoy. And that’s why, I suppose, Tolbert and Mary weren’t surprised at Calvin’s news.
Riding through the September woods with Tolbert was certainly a sight better than going to school. That’s when I asked him about our sheep. Because that was when I still thought that sheep, and people, always came home because they knew they belonged there.