THE SHANTY
“Stop being a scaredy-cat,” I said to myself once I was a safe distance from the old house. Like as not, the sound in the hemlock grove had been the wind. I took a deep breath and headed home, crossing the board that spanned the creek and follering the trail up the hill through the woods.
Coming from the trees behind our shanty, I stopped and stared. After the old house, the shanty seemed smaller than ever. Its three rooms was more like one room and two half-rooms. And it weren’t truly ours. It belonged to the Smoke Ridge Mine Company, which was owned by Mr. Clarence Putney, who took the rent out of Daddy’s pay.
Lonesome dozed on the back porch, but he opened one eye to let me know he was doing his job. We only had a couple chickens and a small garden patch, but we needed ever’ egg, potato, green bean, cabbage, tomato, and ear of corn that grew there. That dog made sure no greedy hand swiped nothing when we wasn’t looking.
Last year, after the A&P in Evarts was broke into twice and its shelves picked clean, Daddy brung home the mutt puppy.
I patted Lonesome’s head as I walked past and stepped into the house, where the smell of bean soup filled the space that served as kitchen, eating room, sitting room, and even Pick’s bedroom. Daddy was at work in the mine that afternoon, and Raynelle stirred soup at the stove. I noticed the way her hand held the wood spoon, easing it through the soup. Surely I’d watched Mama cook when I was a young’un, but when I tried to recall it, all’s I saw was Raynelle.
“Did you find dress goods?” she asked over her shoulder.
I shook my head and lied. “Pickings was poor for what you give me to spend.” I plinked the steel coin on the table.
The scrip Mr. Putney paid Daddy with, after he took out the rent, was good only at the company stores. All two of ’em. And at the cookhouse, where miners who didn’t have someone at home to cook for ’em could grab a meal.
“It’s all we kin afford,” Raynelle said, “at least until work picks up.”
Mine shifts was cut to two days a week the last year or so. Banner Fork Mine near Wallins Creek, a mine owned by Mr. Henry Ford, closed down completely last fall. If Mr. Ford couldn’t keep a mine running, what chance did Mr. Putney have? I reckoned we was lucky Smoke Ridge Mine was still open and Daddy had a job.
When the Citizens National Bank down in Harlan closed in January, I didn’t understand what that had to do with us. We didn’t have no money in the bank anyhow. Pick said one body’s Hard Times becomes ever’body’s Hard Times after a spell.
“The dress Blissie wore to church last week used to be yours,” Raynelle told me, “and mine afore that. It’s threadbare and too tight. There’s old ones of yours still packed away, but ever’ one has some kind of stain or t’other.” She turned from the stove to scold me with her eyes. “You never was a neat child.”
“I ain’t a child no more.”
“But you still ain’t neat. Blissie’s goin’ need a proper dress afore school starts in September, and without a sewing machine, it’ll likely take me the rest of the summer to make it.”
Blissie was the only Cutler young’un who still went to school. The rest of us had to do our share of work at home. Daddy never seemed to be around often enough to tend to the garden or house like other daddies did. And when he was home, he was seldom sober enough to walk straight, much less hoe a garden or patch a shed.
Me, I never truly missed school, but Pick seemed to crave it like Daddy craved drink. He still stopped by the schoolhouse to visit with Teacher Bromley. He swore he was goin’ fill his head with learning and not work in the mines like Daddy.
Pick would be sixteen next year, old enough to git a job. But the Hard Times had dried up all kinds of work. He’d be lucky not to be one of them pencil-sellers on a Wallins street corner.
“Take a look in that trunk yonder,” Raynelle said. “Maybe I kin make over one of Mama’s old dresses for Blissie.”
Mama’s dresses? That was the second time in one day I’d heard Mama spoke of. Why hadn’t I known she left dresses behind? Why couldn’t I remember her?