Chapter 24
Seth White meant for his son to have schooling. At eleven, Jason was falling behind year after year. Seth’s father and grandfather had spent their lives in dark mines. He wanted sunshine and polished shoes for his son. Knowing that he would have no more children out of Juanita, he laid out a plan before Jason had his twelfth birthday.
Breakline Camp had never had a real school. Ed Breakline had seen no need for education. He wanted each consecutive generation to stay in the valley and see that his profits remained high enough that he could keep his gentleman’s lifestyle in Bristol and New York City. Winston Rafe had not changed Breakline’s plan. When a new generation questioned that there was no school for their children, Rafe agreed to pay for one teacher to hold school in Unity Church three days a week, but such an arrangement did not fit White’s plans for Jason.
The spring before what would have been Jason’s new grade, White stopped Rafe as he was leaving the commissary. “I been thinking about the camp kids going over the mountain. To Covington for schooling.” He removed his hat and slapped it against his thigh. “My boy, he’s smart. He’ll go far,” White said. “He needs to get out of here.” He looked up at Rafe standing on the commissary porch.
Rafe raised his eyebrow. “Mining ain’t good enough for him?”
“His ma and me, we want a better life for him. There ain’t much here ’cept eating and working.” White refused to waver. “There ought to be more to life than that.”
“Taking kids to Covington’ll take money. Kids find ways not to come back where they belong,” Rafe said. “Don’t take up my time with your foolishness, Seth.”
White stepped forward and put his foot on the first step. “Not meaning no disrespect, Mr. Rafe, but I been with you all these years. Remember, I was with you at Big Mama #2 the day Mr. Breakline stroked out. You remember. Doc Braxton and the decision making and all.” White felt sweat appear on his upper lip. “I been as good a worker as you might want. I’ll keep on keeping on. I just want more for my kid.”
Rafe glared at White. “You thinking of blackmailing me, Seth?”
“No, sir. I wouldn’t do such a thing,” White said. “I’ll pay somebody to truck kids over Turtleback. Just them who wants to go can go.” He pulled his foot aside so Rafe could step down. “Give it a try, and I won’t be thinking about Mr. Breakline and his lawyers no more.”
Winston Rafe spit into the dust by White’s brogan. “Your missus still working up the house?”
“Yes, sir. She is,” Seth said. “But I see to it that she don’t carry no gossip up your hill.”
“Give it a year,” said Rafe. “If it works, it works. If not, I ain’t out no money, but you are.” Rafe lit a match with his thumbnail and put the flame to a cold Lucky Strike. He cupped his hand over the match to protect its flame.
White spent the next month working up what he came to call his school truck. He built sideboards, one set for each side and one across the back of the cab. He nailed a 2x8 down each side inside the bed for sitting and added a short bench behind the cab. He folded a tarp and tied it with rope. This he tossed into the cab so the driver could slash it over the bed for a makeshift roof in bad weather. When he finished, he had room for more than a dozen kids to sit, their backs flat against sideboards so ruts would not bounce them out and into the road.
With the school truck finished, Seth met Eck Wetzel’s father when he came out of the mine’s mouth. Seth asked for Eck. “Seeing as he can’t work the mine because of his crooked arm and seeing as how he’s already thirteen he can work for me. A dollar a week to truck kids to Covington and back five days a week for schooling. That’s good money. If he wants, he can stay and learn while he’s there,” Seth said. “He’ll be adding to the family instead of sitting on your porch ever’ day.”
“He’s been driving my old truck since he was eight, so he ought to know what it’s about.”
And there it was. Seth White had his school truck and his driver.
Juanita canvassed house-to-house evenings to see which mothers wanted their kids to cross Turtleback for schooling. “I’m thinking we might have about a dozen going,” Seth said. “Kids can meet at Unity Church and Eck can pick up Anna Goodman’s girl at Boone Station.”
The first day the school truck stopped in the road at Boone Station, the fog was thick. Eck had the tarp bound over the top to keep out the wet. He slammed on the horn. Lily thought Eck’s noise meant she was late. She ran to the back of the truck. Lily looked over the tailgate into darkness that showed several sets of eyes. She backed off.
“Go on, Lily,” Anna said. “It’s what you do when you’re six.”
Tears filled Lily’s eyes.
“Go on,” Anna said. She walked toward Lily, but before Anna reached the school truck, Jason White appeared out of the dim cavern. He reached both hands down and pulled Lily up on the tailgate. She moved into the darkness and sat by Jason, who dropped her hand as soon as she settled. A pudgy boy banged his fist against the school truck’s oval cab window. Eck let the school truck roll down the mountain. It jerked, and the motor caught.
Lily’s eyes adjusted to the lack of light. She knew nobody except Jason White. Six boys dressed in overalls and lace-up brogans with no socks. Lily and one other girl wore pleated skirts with button-up suspenders over a flour sack blouse. Lily noticed that the girl’s shoes were much longer than her feet. She wondered if the shoes belonged to an older sister.
Nobody talked. The pudgy kid rubbed his runny nose on the back of his hand and sneezed. Snot blew toward Lily and then threaded down his face. He cleaned his mouth and chin with his shirtsleeve. The school truck bumped up and down.
“Jimmy Frazier,” Jason said. “Ain’t you got no handkerchief?”
Jimmy Frazier looked straight at Jason and said in a flat voice, “No, I ain’t.”
“Well, you ought,” said Jason.
Lily moved closer to Jason White. She had not seen him the past two years when his mother came to visit her mother. Even then, Lily was often in the woods with her Kee Granny. The silence after the sneeze bore on Lily. She glanced at the blonde-haired girl wearing the giant shoes. She sat next to Jimmy Frazier.
“You got a sister?” Lily asked.
The school truck hit something in the road and jerked everybody’s head back. Lily’s shoulder hit the sideboards. She gripped her plank seat with both hands and held her sack lunch between her knees.
“No,” said the girl.
“You got a granny?” Lily spoke to the boy named Jimmy.
“Naw,” he said. “But my ma give me a pig for a pet.”
“My name’s Lily,” she said.
“I don’t care,” said the blonde.
“We might eat it when it fattens,” said Jimmy.
Lily decided right then and there if this was what school was going to be all about, today would be her first and last day. For the remainder of the trip, Lily put school out of her mind. In her head, she ran Turtleback and warmed to what it offered her. Ferny fronds with their bumpy seeds and how the they felt against her fingers, the whispering voice of the creek behind Boone Station, and the fun of trying to decide what the water was telling her. Squirrels chasing squirrels and their laughing chatter. Smooth rocks that made the start of the path to Kee Granny’s easy on her bare feet. Kee Granny’s bees talking to each other in their square wooden boxes. Bad Billy and his coarse hair that refused to stand up straight when she ran her hands up his spine. Gertie. Gertie’s sweet, sweet milk. And the feel of home each time she heard chains that held the Boone Station sign as they squeaked in the breeze.
Eck stopped the school truck in the schoolyard. Every child lunged forward with the jolt. Lily let Jason help her out of the truck bed. She puffed out her sack lunch as Eck stomped the starter and ground the gears before driving away.
Covington Elementary School stood before the cluster of kids. Behind them, a set of double doors with windows across the top opened to what seemed like a black hole. A woman dressed in a navy blue dress and white lace-up shoes walked out of the dark and stood at the top of the steps. Lily stared at the shoes. No dirt had ever settled there. They had to be town shoes. She knew without asking that this woman had never climbed a tree or waded a branch. She was to be Lily’s teacher for the next few years. Miss Snow. Lily would come to both fear and adore her.
In the fall of the fourth grade, Eli O’Mary appeared in Miss Snow’s classroom. Lily stared at the skinny boy whose white hair lay in tight curls on his head. He wore black suspenders over a blue and red plaid shirt, unlike the other boys who wore overalls and plain shirts. Lily giggled at his strange clothes and hair whiter than lye soap. He stared at the back wall. Eli O’Mary had come from Grundy where he lived with his grandma. She had died the previous week and Eli had come to live with his daddy. Hearing such news bowed Lily’s head. She shamed herself for the giggle. What would she do without her Kee Granny?
“Tell the class something about yourself, Eli,” said Miss Snow. Her right hand lay on his shoulder. If she stooped, she would have been able to give him a hug from behind.
Eli scraped his shoe across the floor. He didn’t wear brogans. Instead, his oxfords were new and polished, though his laces hung loose.
“Yeah, Eli,” said Jimmy Frazier. Lily’s jaw dropped every time Jimmy Frazier spoke without permission. Miss Snow didn’t call Jimmy Frazier down this time. She rubbed Eli’s shoulder the same way Lily rubbed Bad Billy’s back when he grew tired of his rope.
Eli looked up to Miss Snow. “I gotta cat.” That was all he said.
“What kind?” asked Julie Hudson.
“Just a cat.” Eli’s head hung low, and Lily had to strain to hear his answer.
“Can you tell us its name?” asked Miss Snow.
“Just Cat.”
Somebody behind Lily snickered.
“Fine,” said Miss Snow. “You can take the seat in the middle of the room. Next to Lily Goodman there.” She motioned toward Lily. “Raise your hand, Lily, so Eli will know where to sit.”
Eli O’Mary sat on a bench by himself during recess through mid-September. On an especially warm day, Jimmy Frazier prissed around holding up one hand, the other propped on his hip. He swung one hip, then the other. He sauntered up to Eli and said, “You’re a sissy-butt.” Other boys moved in to see what Eli O’Mary would do.
In an instant, Eli jumped off the bench as if he had been sitting on a tight spring. “My papa kicked your daddy out of his bar last night ’cause he won’t pay his tab.” Eli’s voice rose higher as he spoke. “Your daddy’s a no-count drunk and lays out of work and beats your mama.”
Jimmy Frazier’s face flushed as scarlet as if he had fallen asleep in the sun. “Take it back,” Jimmy said.
“I won’t. It’s true what Papa said.” Eli stood nose to nose with Jimmy.
“Fight on the playground!” The rallying cry resounded off the back of Covington Elementary School.
Jimmy jerked Eli’s curls so hard that his head yanked back. “Say it ain’t so or I’ll break your head clean off your neck,” demanded Jimmy.
Eli grabbed Jimmy’s hands and, head to head, pulled him up on the playground bench. “You crawl out of some mine hole like some old snake and ride down here in that old rickety truck,” Eli spit out between clenched teeth. “Your mama eats dirt.”
Before Jimmy Frazier could react, Eli hit Jimmy in the gut and ran around the building. Jimmy followed, his fist raised to attack.
Lily stared at the fight, her mouth agape. The noise sounded like two territorial cardinals so crazy mad they try to peck each other to death.
“Why did Jimmy say that? Eli’s mama’s dead.” Lily couldn’t answer Julie Hudson’s confusion.
Great Spirit, satisfied that Jimmy Frazier can fend for himself, flags down a grey mass of clouds. He climbs on and settles in for an easy ride. He signals West Wind. Ever strong, the wind picks up the clouds, setting them underway as if they powered the massive Star of India. West Wind knows how fond Great Spirit is of any fully rigged Barque, so the grand cloud-ship sails on. Earth hurls itself round and round. Great Spirit watches the blue orb whirl and smiles.
The next day, Lily meant to avoid Eli, but Miss Snow moved him so he would not be near Jimmy Frazier. He now sat behind Lily, rather than next to her. After lunch during silent reading, Lily relaxed. Before she had read to the middle of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, she felt something oozing down the back of her head. She reached up and touched gummy liquid. She ran her fingers down her hair. Eli laughed and whispered “white trash” in her ear. She looked around. His bottle of yellow glue sat empty on his desk. When she felt it dampen the back of her dress, she dropped her head. Her eyes welled with tears.
They both had to stand before Miss Snow. She did not really cry, Lily told Miss Snow. “The glue smelled sour. It burned my eyes.”
Miss Snow washed Lily’s eyes with clear water and sopped the glue out of Lily’s mass of hair as best she could.
Lily spoke to Miss Snow in a low voice. “Are you going to tell Eli’s mama about the fight and glue?”
“We need to be patient with Eli. Remember he doesn’t have a mama to care for him.”
“That don’t matter,” Lily said. “My mama’s sick, and my Kee Granny takes care of me.” Lily jutted out her chin. “That don’t make me be mean.”
“Not everybody has a good granny,” Miss Snow said.
Lily spent the remainder of the day with a towel wrapped around her head. Eli had to stay in the cloakroom, hidden away from other students. That afternoon, from where Lily sat high on Seth White’s makeshift bus, she saw Eli crouched by a prickly holly, his head on his knees. For a second, he glanced up at the passing truck. Sunlight reflected tears on his face. Lily looked away.
Her hair still damp, Lily climbed down the tailgate of the school truck at Boone Station. Seeing her mother standing at the stove, she cried again. Anna washed Lily’s hair with warm water and the special Ivory soap. She drew Lily into her lap, wrapped her hair in a soft towel, and rocked her across the room until it was time for supper.
The next morning when Lily entered the classroom, Eli sat so close to Miss Snow’s desk that he had to scrunch up his legs.