Chapter 25

On a warm October day in Kee Granny’s Month of the Harvest Moon, Lily had been explaining to Julie Hudson the difference in a hemlock and a pine. Julie lived in Covington on First Street. Her mother bought her school dresses at Martin’s Ladieswear. Dresses with lace and ribbons. Dresses in solid colors. Anna made Lily’s dresses, even her coats. In summer, Lily wore shorts or overalls, sometimes without a shirt.

Julie’s yellow braids reached almost to her waist. That she would even talk to Lily made Lily at first a bit suspicious. Julie could have been a snob. She had money. Her daddy owned the bank across the street from the miner statue on the town square. Lily figured Julie went in the bank anytime she wanted and got money much like Lily went under the back of Boone Station and gathered eggs.

To solidify the friendship, Lily wanted to share all Kee Granny had taught her about what made her mountain so magnificent. Lily used a stick to draw an outline in the dirt to show Julie that the leaf of the red oak could be as big as a girl’s foot. It was clear to Lily that Julie Hudson knew nothing about trees. But then, Julie Hudson knew nothing about nothing.

Lily felt it her responsibility to inform Julie of those things in life she would never have a chance to know. Julie was not always receptive. The two had been arguing about the size of tree leaves when Miss Snow rang the bell to begin the day. They walked into the classroom and sat in their desk chairs, one across the aisle from the other. “I can bring you a red oak leaf that’s longer than your mama’s shoe,” Lily bragged.

“No you can’t. No leaf’s that big.”

“Yes, it is. I’ll show you tomorrow.” It was then Lily noticed that they were the only pupils talking. Lily stopped.

“Draw me a picture of a hemlock.” Julie leaned over and said in a loud whisper, “I’ll look for one when Daddy takes us back to the Falls. And draw me a red oak.”

Lily’s eyes bugged. the Falls? They were her falls. It was her secret place. Like Old Man Farley’s cabin. Knowing that Julie and her daddy had been to the Falls set fire aglow in Lily’s chest, and her lips squeezed together.

“You ain’t been to the Falls.” Though she knew Miss Snow would be mad, she couldn’t stop. “You don’t even know where they are.”

“I do so. Daddy takes us there to swim every summer. He tries to scare us with stories of Old Man Farley and how he got away from the Home Guard who was planning to make him go to the Great War or skin him alive. He moved up on Turtleback Mountain and was hiding out there. Home Guard found him and shot him so much his guts flew into the trees and his ghost is still there. If you stay late at night, you can hear him moaning and hollering.”

Lily’s teeth clinched. Although she detested it, that was her story. The Falls were her falls.

Julie caught her breath. “And if you’ve been bad, he’ll fly up behind you, all white, and grab you by the hair and fling you into a tree.”

Lily didn’t believe a word about white, flying ghosts. She almost told her the moaning and clacking was Owl talking to other night birds, but she didn’t want Julie to know about Owl.

“Humph. I got my own diamondback rattler,” Lily’s anger said. She hated herself the minute she said it. Only she and Kee knew about Uktena.

Across the room, Eli snickered.

“You shut up, Eli O’Mary,” Lily demanded.

“You have not. Nobody’s got a rattlesnake. They bite you and you’re dead,” Julie argued.

Lily whirled to face Julie. “My snake, his name’s Rattler, he won’t bite me, but he’ll bite you so you better stay off my mountain. ‘Cause he hides in mist and you won’t be able to see him before he bites you hard.” Lily’s voice rose, nearing a full room announcement.

“Turtleback Mountain does not belong to you, and I can go there if I want to,” Julie said, now coming out of her chair. She bumped the leg, and her tablet thumped on the floor with a thud. Her pencil rolled down the aisle.

“Girls,” said Miss Snow as she walked in from the hall. “What’s going on here?”

Both girls talked at once.

Miss Snow shushed them. “Julie, you first.”

“Lily says Turtleback Mountain belongs to her and she’s got a giant rattler for a pet and she’ll let the rattler bite me to death, and she says I can’t go with my daddy to the Falls because it belongs to her and I don’t want her to be my friend anymore.” Julie wound down, out of breath. She crossed her arms tight over her chest, shutting out any chance of her heart hearing what was coming.

“Fine. Sit down. Now you, Lily.”

Lily pushed out her lip. She chewed the inside of her cheek, moving her lower jaw as a chipmunk might when trying to crack a hard nut. She said nothing.

“Lily?”

Still nothing.

“Okay, girls. Come to my desk so we can talk.” Miss Snow directed the class to take their seats and rest their heads on their desks. Several had moved to the other side of the room amazed by an argument between girls. Boys argued and fought, not girls. At the front of the room, Miss Snow spoke quietly to both girls. “Lily’s right, Julie.”

Lily grinned at the affirmation and opened her mouth to speak.

“Be quiet, Lily. You had your turn and let it go by. Lily’s family does own Turtleback Mountain. Always has. I don’t know about any rattlesnake.” She shot an accusing glance toward Lily. “But I know Lily would not let her pet bite you, no matter what pet it is. You girls have been friends since you started first grade.”

Lily smirked. Turtleback Mountain did belong to her. Before she had only hoped so. Miss Snow, who knows all, said it was true. She knew Rattler was true. She knew Julie would never get to see him, even if she came to Boone Station because he could be invisible when anyone other than Lily came around. He wouldn’t even appear for Kee. In her joy, Lily danced a primitive little dance, spinning round and round like a leaf caught in an eddy.

“Lily Marie Goodman!” Anger on Miss Snow’s face stopped Lily mid-spin. “You stay in at recess and keep your nose in the ring, young lady.”

Lily glimpsed around the room to see who might have heard her punishment. Eli O’Mary tucked his head back into his crossed arms and did not move. Julie sulked back to her seat and hid behind Anne of Green Gables.

Recess came, and Miss Snow drew the circle on the blackboard just above Lily’s head.

Lily knew the routine. Stand on tiptoe and place your nose in the ring. Stay still until Miss Snow says you can sit down. Lily had seen the boys in her class get the nose ring, but she had never seen a girl get it.

She slinked up to the blackboard. When all her classmates had left the room, she lifted herself and, crossing her eyes, decided where the ring was. She pressed hard but relaxed. Pressing too much made it hard to breathe.

Within minutes, the balls of Lily’s feet burned. She needed to look around to see if Miss Snow had left the room, but to do so meant she would have to lower her feet and drop out of the ring. So she stayed put.

Her feet continued to burn and tingle. Her right calf cramped. Then her left. She grabbed the wooden chalk tray so she would not fall backward.

Miss Snow spoke from behind her, “No holding on, Lily.”

Lily released the wooden tray and dropped her heels. She could breathe now.

“Up to the ring,” Miss Snow directed.

Tears filled Lily’s eyes, and she sniffled to hold them on the ring.

“Just a minute more and you can go to the outhouse.” Miss Snow spoke so softly Lily was not sure she had heard.

Lily measured hours by nature’s signs. The length of a tree’s shadow. The space between the setting sun and the top of Old Oak up from Breakline Camp. The lift of mist from the cold stream when warmth of the sun worked its way out of the gloaming. She had no idea how long a minute would be. Rather than try to reason it out, she hoisted her weight back up on the balls of her feet and waited.

After Miss Snow rang the last bell, Julie sidled up to Lily. “Sorry you got the nose ring.”

“It wasn’t bad,” she lied. “Just standing still for a minute.”

At twilight, mountain shadows, more than loss of sun, darkened the gap where the town of Covington sat. Heavy shades discolored the ground where Lily had played the last of the afternoon away with one of Julie’s new kittens—the striped one. She stepped to the edge of the porch and stood between two pots of anemone, their leaves an emerald green. In Julie’s back yard, the dirt was so dark with coal dust and the light so weak Lily could not be sure where the yard ended and the street began. She placed the kitten in the cardboard box on the porch and set a window screen over the top to keep the kitten inside. Julie, walking the cow to her backyard shed, called to Mama Big Cat to come up from the riverbank for the night.

Lily shuffled back across the porch and settled into an unpainted ladder back chair in the far corner shadow before going in for the night. An empty loneliness had overtaken her here in Covington, one she had never known. If loneliness approached on the mountain, Lily trekked into the woods and the wind or leaves would brush it away.

She had not imagined Turtleback as high, perhaps because she was always there on the mountain. But here in Covington at the foot of the Turtleback, she saw a mountain high enough to block out wind and sun. Its height and the on-coming darkness smothered her as surely as if she slept with her face under a feather pillow.

At Julie’s, she slept with her paper shade down. Eli O’Mary, hearing that Lily was staying the weekend with Julie, had twice whispered to Lily, saying he planned to peek under the shade. She did not dare crack the shade, because she did not know if the shadows she had seen on there the night before were Eli or if she had dreamed them.

Dark on Turtleback Mountain moved in soft each night, but this town-dark grated on Lily’s sleep. The weak darkness was lessened only by an occasional porch light, rather than moonlight. Artificial light filtered into the room even with the shade down. It turned the room a hollow yellowish glow, not unlike the color of a dying fire. Even before the sun dropped below Turtleback the previous night, she wanted to go home, to her mama and Boone Station.

Saturday afternoon, Julie made blackberry jelly sandwiches and dropped them unwrapped into her mother’s navy purse, the one with the gold clasp. She handed the purse to Lily and went out the back door. Julie led the way down one street, then another. From time to time, she kicked a rock off the roadway and into the ditch. After a try or two, Lily’s rock aim was as true as Julie’s.

When they passed the fire station, Julie lifted Lily around the waist in an attempt to let her look through the window so she could see Engine #1. Lily tried to grasp the bottom ledge of the window to hoist herself higher, but her own weight pulled her down. On the second try, the girls tumbled back on their bottoms, both giggling.

Once past the fire station, they headed for the iron miner’s statue in the town square. Lily could not hide her astonishment at the size and blackness of the miner who stood on a block of limestone as tall as Lily herself. The pickax propped on his shoulder stuck high into the air as if ready to snag a passing bird. His lunch bucket sat on the block at his feet.

“He sure is big,” she said.

“It’s just an old statue,” Julie said.

The miner’s carbide light atop his cap should have shown into the darkness as it would have underground, but it was no more than a black circle. At the base of the block had been etched:

 

Heroes live and die in darkness

So that we can live in light

 

Julie, accustomed to the statue, pulled Lily along. They passed the closed drugstore. “If we’d come sooner, we could’ve had a limeade or ice cream,” Julie said. “It’s almost dark. Let’s go to the cemetery.”

“I don’t know. I never been to a cemetery in the dark.”

“Don’t be a scaredy cat,” Julie teased, her green eyes glittering.

“Kee Granny says spirits of white men live there and come out at night, ’cause they weren’t buried proper, so I stay away.” Lily had not moved. “We don’t go in the graveyard at Flatland.”

“Who’s Kee Granny and how does she know so much?” Julie propped her hands on her hips as if daring Lily to know something she did not.

Lily hung back. She was uncertain about telling Julie too much, yet she had to defend Kee Granny. “She lives at Flatland in an old church, and she’s teaching me about animals and plants and stuff.”

“Humph,” Julie answered. “I don’t believe you. Nobody cares about nature stuff. Nobody but Jesus lives in a church anyhow. ‘Sides, what makes your old mountain better than my town?”

Lily couldn’t answer that.

“I’m hungry,” said Julie. She stopped beside two tall brick walls marking the cemetery entrance. “Let’s stop here and eat.”

“It’s a cemetery.”

“So what? I’m hungry,” said Julie.

Give Lily Marie Goodman a steep mountain footpath, a meandering creek, or a rock bluff and she is home. Give her a dark hillside and flat boxy headstones laid out in rows facing east and Lily has no idea which way to turn.

The girls sat on prickly grass and Lily handed out the two sandwiches. Lily licked tangy blackberry jam from her fingers. “Your mama’s going to be awful mad. Jelly’s all inside her pocketbook.”

“That’s just a play pocketbook. She keeps the good ones in her closet.”

Lily moved aside, tore off a piece of her bread, wiped jelly from the purse lining and ate the chunk. Putting her bread back together, she bit into her sandwich.

Julie finished her sandwich and popped up, surprising Lily. “Let’s check out old Eli’s daddy’s bar.” Julie grabbed the picnic purse from Lily’s lap. “Come on.” She ran back toward the center of town, calling back, “Come on, slowpoke!”

From a faraway porch light, Lily could see large red metal bins at the end of the back wall. The alley behind O’Mary’s Bar waited in deep, deep dark. The sour smell of rotting vegetables met the girls as they neared the alley. The idea of going into the stinky blackness pulled against Lily’s feet like heavy mud. On Turtleback, stars speckled the sky in every direction. Nothing shiny in this alley. Not in this whole town. What stars porch lights did not hide, trees did.

Julie grabbed Lily’s hand and pulled her into the alley. “Come on,” Julie said. “We’ll be spies.” The two ran. Julie crouched, bent over at the waist as she did when the girls played secret agent. She stopped beneath a dirty four-on-four window. She took a wooden whiskey box someone had thrown toward the trash bins and propped it against the wall under the window. The box felt wet and smelled rank. Lily lagged behind.

“Let’s look in,” Julie whispered. “We might see a whore.”

“What’s a whore?” Lily whispered back.

“Lily Goodman, you don’t know nothing,” Julie said. “Climb up and tell me what you see.”

“No.” Lily shifted away from the wall.

Julie stepped on the crate. Once she stabilized her feet, she lifted herself to tiptoe and rubbed filth from the glass.

“What is it?” Lily jiggled herself up and down. “Is it a whore?”

“I don’t know. You look.”

Lily climbed up. She peered inside and adjusted her eyes to the dimness. A sliver of smoky light and men’s laughter came from where a door stood slightly ajar. Shadows filled the little room where cardboard boxes were stacked high, almost to the ceiling. On the far wall was a roll top desk. In the middle of the room was a rolling chair, overturned, its wheels still spinning. Above the chair was a boy, suspended in mid-air. His body swayed forward and then back like a bug on a string. He rotated his face toward the window and looked at Lily. It was Eli O’Mary, in his underwear, his mouth open, his eyes staring at her.

Lily jumped down and grabbed Julie’s hand. “Run!” she shouted. She yanked Julie toward the street.

“It’s a whore!” Julie cried. “You saw a real whore.”

Lily rounded the corner dragging Julie behind. “Come on.”

“Quit pulling me. I want to see.”

Lily dropped Julie’s hand and ran headlong through the open bar door.

“You can’t go in there.” Julie reached for Lily.

“Shut up, Julie!” She slapped Julie’s hand away. “Mr. O’Mary!” She shouted over the hubbub of clinking bottles and laughter. “Mr. O’Mary,” she said more quietly this time. Shattering quiet hit Lily in the face. She could barely see for so much smoke.

A large man with dingy hair and a grey beard appeared, chewing on an unlit cigar stub. He rubbed one hand on his stained apron. “Kids ain’t allowed here. Get on out.” He popped a wet rag against his thigh as he neared Lily. She glanced around. Coal-stained faces filled the barroom. White eyes looked at her from every direction. Lily cringed.

A long-boned man stepped between Lily and O’Mary. “What you girls want?”

“This is my place, Rafe. Let me handle this,” said O’Mary.

Lily noticed the man’s clean hands, trimmed nails and light blue shirt. He did not have black rings collared around his eyes like other men in the room. “Leave her alone, O’Mary,” he said. “She’s not old enough…” The man stared at Lily so intently that she turned her head toward O’Mary and whispered.

“Eli,” she spoke to O’Mary. “He’s going round and round.” She pointed toward the cracked door. “In that room.”

“Leave him be. He’s serving his time for not mopping up last night.” O’Mary started back to the bar. “Broke a whole case of my best Irish whiskey.” He slapped his thigh again. “Whole damn case,” he grumbled.

“But he’s going round and round.” Lily had to push the words up from her throat. “And he looked at me out the window.”

“I’ll see,” said the blue-shirted man. He knifed himself through the men and pushed open the door. Beer drinkers crowded behind him to see what waited on the other side.

“Good God, O’Mary!” The crowd parted at the tall man’s words. “This boy’s hung hisself.” The tall man’s eyes cut into O’Mary. “And he’s been horsewhipped.”

Overhead lights flickered for a second as if a rat had gnawed into some hidden wire. Lily edged back toward the door.

“Get the doc, somebody. He’s still alive.” The tall man gave the order as if he gave orders every day.

A squatty miner dashed out the door and across the street. Miners punctuated the quiet with murmurs of “God Damns” and “Sorry Son-of-a-Bitch.”

Lily and Julie backed against the doorframe. The tall man carried Eli in his arms. As they stepped into the street, Eli looked at Lily. He said in a scratchy voice, “Get the cat.”

“God, Rafe. I didn’t mean…” O’Mary followed on the thin man’s heels. “I done stood him in a chair many a time…”

“Shut up,” said the tall man as they walked away.

Miners turned back to their drinking tales. This one would linger for a while. Lily stayed where she was, frozen by Eli’s command, listening.

“What’d he mean about the cat?” Julie asked.

“Shh.” Lily pushed Julie behind her. “Be quiet.”

A miner, hoarse from breathing coal dust and tobacco spoke. “O’Mary threatens to put that rat-chaser in a croaker sack and throw it in the river ever time he found the boy wasting time with it. Looks like he might have done it this time.”

“The river?” Lily whispered. “Did you see how wet Eli’s hair was?”

“You don’t reckon…” Julie stopped.

Lily leaned closer toward the inside. “Shh. Listen.”

The miner stubbed out his cigarette and struck a match to fire another one. “It’s his cat and his kid. Do what he wants. The old SOB. O’Mary’s a might stout on his ideas.”

His drinking partner chuckled. “Yeah. Make O’Mary mad, he’ll hoist you up by the britches and you’ll find yourself sittin’ in the street.”

Lily heard his belch and shivered.

“Ort to ’member the kid’s the last of the O’Mary’s ’fore he chooses his punishment, though.” The hoarse one puffed out a spiral of smoke.

Julie tugged at Lily’s shorts. “Where they taking Eli?” she whimpered.

Lily whirled around and said aloud, “Hush, Julie.”

A dark face appeared at the door. “Okay now, go on. Get out of here. Girls and kids ain’t allowed,” he snapped. He leaned against the doorframe and swallowed a long drink from his beer. “You heard O’Mary.”

Lily straightened her back. “What’s his cat look like?”

“How do I know?” The miner bent down so close she felt his spit on her cheek. “Get out of here, girlie.” A miner in the dusky room laughed. “Scat.”

Lily looked around the smoky room. In the far corner stood Briar Slocomb in his long pale duster, flat against the wall. He glared at Lily from under his long hair.

Julie snatched Lily’s hand. “C’mon, Lily.”

Lily broke away from Slocomb’s stare. Julie pulled her back down Town Street toward the miners’ monument and home.

 

The dream came on fast and spiraled itself into Lily’s long-term memory. When it showed itself, Lily flailed and kicked, knotting the sheet around her legs.

O’Mary’s Bar emerged in shades of grey. Men sat three to a table, their beers clustered in the center of the round as if they waited to break a fast. Every miner resembled every other miner, their heads low under metal hardhats. No carbide lamplights glowed. Lily could see no eyes, but she felt their eyes move across her skin.

In unison, one miner at each table reached to the floor and brought up a tin dinner bucket. They removed the lid and took out a white bread sandwich wrapped in opaque paper. Lily looked around the room and noticed that each sandwich had a cat’s tail hanging out of the paper fold. The miners opened their mouths to take a bite. Lily screamed, but no sound came out.

From the center of the room, Eli hung from a rafter, his white hair glowing like a lamp, its globe dingy with soot. She expected him to spin as he did when she saw him through the window, but he didn’t. She tried to call to him, but something large and viscous clogged her throat.

Back at the tables, miners worked their mouths as if talking, but Lily heard nothing but um, um, um, as if swarms of flies had invaded the bar. No one noticed Eli.

The unreliability of dreams dropped her on a riverbank. She sat on a place higher than any she had ever seen. An open brown paper bag floated downstream. A cat’s head, its eyes, ears and two front paws rested on one side of the sack. The cat smiled, as if he were enjoying a Sunday afternoon boat ride.

Eli hung above her from a tree limb. He mouthed, “Get the cat.”

A miner clothed in black stood on the far bank. His carbide lamp glowed a hazy golden circle that cut through a curtain of darkness. The dark, solidifying more into wall than curtain, stopped before reaching the other side. The miner stayed but a moment, looking for all the world more Cyclops than human, then vanished, taking his light with him.

Lily slid on her butt toward rushing water, through mud that appeared just before she reached it, brown sticky mud where moments ago soft grass had been. When she hit the water, she knew she was peeing, but the water said, “We are akin, so I don’t mind.” On the bank, Uktena watched and swayed approval.

The cat floated close. As Lily opened her bladder, the cat slapped Lily’s cheek hard with a paw. Lily cried out against the cut.

Julie rocked the bed and moved away from Lily. “Ew. Ew.” Once her feet smacked the floor, she yelled, “Mama, Lily peed on me!”

Sunday morning, Julie’s father drove Lily to Boone Station and let her out. He never killed the car’s motor.

Eli did not come back to school. For a time, Covington remembered him as being no more than a shadow, someone no one could describe. With the passage of years, he became invisible. So no one noticed on the morning, two weeks before his seventeenth birthday, when he walked out of Covington, carrying a burlap bag, headed northwest.