I CAME BACK to being myself, of course. Or whatever of myself I could still find. I had to. Our family didn’t hold with self-pity, everybody had their duties and was expected to do their best soon’s they felt middling well. I helped Aunt Martha a bit around the house. I visited with Ma. Pa was away most all the time with posses he formed. The county judge himself, Mr. Tobias Wagnor, went to Frankfort to get arms for Pa and his men. I don’t know where they kept them, but not in our new house in Pikeville that we moved into that spring. Ma wouldn’t countenance it, she said.
“No guns in this house. I won’t have it, Ranel. If’n I ever see a Winchester or even a Colt pistol, I’ll get a smotherin’ fit, for sure.”
Ma got smothering fits all the time now.
While we were at Aunt Martha Cline’s, Ro nursed Ma. I know it to be true that it was only Ro’s nursing that brought Ma around again. You have to give the Devil his due.
Come right down to it, it wasn’t nary a one of Adelaide’s remedies, though she tried half a dozen. Not even Alifair’s faith-healing group, who came one day and prayed over Ma and anointed her with oil. And acted like they expected her to get up and start dancing to fiddle music at supper. She didn’t. And they went away disappointed, leaving Ma in tears with only Ro to comfort her, because at that time I was still talking only to the cat.
But my sister Ro brought Ma back with her care and soft words. Seems like she never left Ma’s side in the month after the attack. By spring Ma was able to get off her couch and wobble around with a cane a little. But she was all crooked, like a bent tree. She couldn’t hold her head straight. Had to turn her whole body to look you in the face. But she still praised Jesus every chance she got.
In April we moved into the Pikeville house and Ro came along with us. Nobody asked her and nobody told her she couldn’t. We just all knew Ma couldn’t do without her. So she came. But we still didn’t talk much, me and Ro. We exchanged sentences is what we did.
“Did Ma eat any of her supper?” she’d ask.
I’d answer no. Then she’d ask when Pa was expected home. Or would I go to the store for her. And I’d answer. But we didn’t speak to each other, only at each other. I guess we both just knew there was nothing more to say.
All that summer Pa, his men, and my brothers raided West Virginia and brought back men who’d attacked our house that night. On one of these trips they brought in Ellison Mounts.
I HATED THE house in Pikeville from the minute we moved in. It was a small dwelling, not like our place on Blackberry Creek. The only good part was the river out back. I’d go down there of a summer afternoon, read, and watch fishermen go by in small boats. They came regular-like and after a while would wave at me. I’d wave back. There was one man who wore a wool hat, even in the middle of summer. Another brought his small grandson along. Still another had his small black dog in the boat with him. I’d conjure up lives for them, families, homes.
Someone said that creek found its way to West Virginny. I worried some that Hatfields would learn where we lived now and come by boat to attack us. But it didn’t happen, and so I stopped worrying. In September I wanted to go back to school, but it was too far so Mr. Cuzlin came once a week to tutor me. He wouldn’t take any money for it, either. All he wanted, he said, was for me to study, serious-like, on the idea of going to normal school and becoming a teacher.
I looked forward to his visits more than I like to lay claim to. But I couldn’t bring my mind around to thinking on becoming a teacher. In my head there was no future for any of us at all.