That day, leavin’ my mountain behind and followin’ the dirt road into town, I threw the remains of my cigarette into the dust and blocked them memories from my mind. I needed to contend with the chores on my list, and I couldn’t do that surrounded by ghosts. Another mile and I entered what passed for the main drag. A low row of buildin’s flanked either side of the road. Although they was nearly all built of red brick most of ’em had at some point been painted white, and after years and layers of coal dust they was now all a dingy gray. A barbershop with a spinnin’ red and white striped pole, a butcher shop, and what had, years ago, been Dr. Leary’s office, still apparently a doctor’s office but not one I’d ever known of. The Cedar Hollow Library was next, and I was pleased to see it was open. Peggy’s Diner was still there, with what looked to be the same group of men as had been there thirty years ago, smokin’ and cacklin’ and coughin’ on them worn, wooden benches outside the diner’s door.
They hushed their talk and looked up at me as I walked by. They recognized me, and some of ’em gave me a nod as I passed. I imagine a lot of ’em had known my daddy. I nodded back at ’em, and after a minute they returned to their stories, coughin’ as before. Always the coughin’ with them old retired miners; they have to work hard to catch a breath against the black dust in their lungs. It sometimes seemed like my whole childhood had been filled up with the sound of old men hackin’ up little bits of coal and lung while they fell to pieces from the inside out.
The school was farther down, farther than I would go today, but I figured it was still the same, a smallish red brick buildin’ with a playground out front, teachers on the front steps ringin’ an old cowbell like they had done when I was a girl. I remembered some fun times in that old schoolyard, playin’ chase and baseball and kick-the-can. Behind the school there was an old drainage culvert, and I reckoned it was still there, probably not known by very many, but surely known to me and a handful of others. Yes, indeed.
I made my way to the fourth buildin’ on the right, Mr. Smith’s General Store, owned by Mr. Gerald Smith for at least the last fifty years, and by his daddy before him. Even the window display looked about the same, showin’ overalls and dusty water buckets alongside chicken feed and sorghum molasses. Mr. Smith might have been the one man in town who had altogether escaped the tragedy of the mines, but tragedy had touched him in other ways. He had always been kind to me and Momma, slippin’ a little extra cornmeal or a piece of candy into our packages when we shopped for Dr. Leary. Mr. Smith knew times was tough, and he tried to help folks out as best he could, bless his heart. He was one of them people I was talkin’ about, one of them who lifts you up. Pullin’ open the door, I stomped the dust off my boots and took a minute to let my eyes adjust to the dim light before I walked in. The jinglin’ of the bell had signaled my arrival, and heads turned to see who it was, but I didn’t look back at none of ’em. I had learned that was the best way.
For a minute there wasn’t nothin’ but silence, and then there it came, as I had feared it would. “Wal, if it ain’t our little Injun queer. How’re they hangin’ these days, Billy May?” An all too familiar voice yelled out from somewhere in the shadows to my left, over by the old wood stove where the men always gathered between shifts at the mine.
I ignored the voice, along with the nervous laughs that followed, and made my way to the back of the store, past gardenin’ tools and bolts of cloth, penny nails and sacks of cornmeal. I was relieved when I seen that Mr. Smith was still there in his usual place behind the counter, more stooped than last time, maybe, but otherwise the same. As I approached the counter I seen the kindness in his eyes, and I had to look away. This wasn’t no time for me to show weakness, and the look in Mr. Smith’s eyes had brought a burnin’ to the back of my own. Lookin’ down, I set my rucksack on the counter, untyin’ the roll of skins I had affixed to the top and spreadin’ them out for him to see. This was our ritual, had been for years. I brought skins, and he traded me my staples. I didn’t know if he really wanted the skins, or if he did it out of kindness. It was hard to know with Mr. Smith, but either way I was full of appreciation. I reckon I loved that old man, but I wasn’t the type to tell it back then. Later, after everythin’ had happened, I was to find out just how much he had loved me, too.
That day at the store Mr. Smith had adjusted his glasses and leaned forward. “Bear this time,” he said, admirin’ the skins, and his voice was weaker than I remembered.
“Some rabbit and ’coon, too,” I pointed out, my own voice gruff. I wasn’t used to conversin’ with people no more. The most exercise my vocal chords ever got was me yellin’ at the goats or talkin’ to the chickens.
Fingerin’ the skins and gruntin’ his approval, Mr. Smith set about gettin’ my supplies, already familiar with what I needed. While he did that, my eye fell on the jars of penny candy along the counter, and before I even knew what I was doin’ I made a request of him. “Do you reckon I have enough to get a handful of them Mary Janes?” I asked, no one more surprised than myself at my askin’. Mr. Smith looked back at me quick-like, and then he smiled. “Of course you do, honey. You go ahead and get yourself some.” He turned back to the scale, then, weighin’ my beans.
When our dealin’ was completed, I packed my rucksack, nodded my thanks and turned to go, only to find my path blocked by a burly man a few years older than I was. The owner of the hecklin’ voice, he was dressed in brown camouflage huntin’ gear, his big old belly strainin’ at the buttons, and he had a cap pulled down low over his thick, mottled up face; his veins was broken across his nose. Dark, greasy hair curled out from underneath the crown of that old cap, and I felt my breakfast risin’ up into my throat.
“What’s the matter, Billy May?” he asked me then. “Ain’t you goin’ to speak? Seein’ as how we’re old friends, and all.”
He was a bull of a man, leerin’ down at me with them rotted teeth, tobacco juice spillin’ down his chin. He leaned towards me and his foul breath washed over my face, makin’ my breakfast rise up a little higher. I wasn’t goin’ to let myself be goaded into speakin’ to him, but when I moved to go past him he grabbed my arm with his beefy hand. His fingernails was crusted and black against my faded red flannel sleeve, and he was pressin’ them through the cloth and into my flesh. I was scared then, that’s the honest truth, but I was even more angry than I was scared. The hatred I had towards that man ballooned up in me and I looked at him then, into his bloodshot eyes, and I seen that the whites was yellowed from all the liquor. He was a ugly man in every way there is for a man to be ugly.
“Give me an excuse to shoot and I’ll kill you where you stand,” I said to him. I said it soft; I wasn’t tryin’ to draw no attention to us, but I knew everyone was watchin’ us, anyway. I meant it, too. I’d have blown him away in about a heartbeat, and I’d have felt just fine doin’ it.
For a minute there wasn’t nothin’, and then I put my finger on the trigger.
“Let her go, Jimmy.” It was the quiet voice of Mr. Smith, and then Jimmy let me go and stepped back, whether from the sight of my finger on the trigger or from Mr. Smith’s order I did not know, nor did I care.
I stepped around the sweaty bulk of him and made my way out of the store, fightin’ against the urge to retch. I would not give him the satisfaction of knowin’ how he upset me. Outside the store, I gripped my rifle hard against me. I hadn’t never yet had to use it on them cursed trips to town, but if the occasion arose, I wouldn’t think twicet. Maybe that was why the hecklin’ never went no further than that. No one moved to stop me, and I retraced my steps, headed back the way I had come, towards the Cedar Hollow Library.
I stepped through the door into the cool, musty air of the library and all of a sudden I felt ten years old again. As a young girl, steppin’ into the library had always made me feel clumsy, no matter how quiet I had tried to be. I was a fast child, it’s true, always blunderin’ my way into things without stoppin’ to think. Maybe that’s why enterin’ the library always made me feel like I’d just interrupted somethin’ important, like a religious ceremony or a meetin’ of some kind. From the way I’m goin’ on, you’d think I didn’t like the library but that ain’t true. I spent a whole lot of afternoons there, sittin’ at one of them wooden tables with my legs curled up under me, lost in the pages of Little Women or Tom Sawyer, or my favorite, a new addition to the Cedar Hollow Library, The Long Winter. It had made me feel special somehow, like a grown up, to sit in all that quiet and read them books. That particular day, the library soothed me. It was a welcome feelin’ after my encounter with Jimmy.
As the door swung shut behind me, I found myself hopin’ to evade the wrath of Ms. Temple, the old librarian, though if I’d had my head on straight I’d have realized she must surely be dead; that woman had been older than dirt thirty years before. Sometimes I forgot how long it had been. As I moved forward, I seen that the current librarian wasn’t nothin’ like Ms. Temple; was, in fact, probably a good twenty years younger than me, blonde and petite, dressed in wide-legged dungarees and a sleeveless peasant blouse, a beaded turquoise headband holdin’ back her long hair.
“Can I help you?” the young woman asked, glancin’ with curiosity at my own getup. I supposed I did look strange to her. I didn’t remember the last time I’d looked in a mirror, and I wasn’t in no hurry to do it then, either.
I chose to ignore her curiosity and stepped towards the counter, lookin’ up at the young woman. When I was a girl, the librarian’s desk had seemed huge to me, like a big old throne or somethin’, and I had always been a little bit afraid to approach it. I had wondered back then, in my youthful ignorance, if the librarian was more than just a keeper of the books; I had wondered if over the years she had somehow gained all the knowledge out of them books as well.
Given all the things I’d lived through since then, it would have taken a lot more than a librarian to scare me that day, so I said, real steady, “I’m lookin’ for a book called Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Do you happen to have it? It was written by a man named Richard Bach.”
She plumb lit up at the title. “Well, of course,” she said, all excited. “It was a New York Times best seller, you know.”
I didn’t, in fact, know, but I was willin’ to listen.
“It’s one of the best selling books in the whole country,” the young woman told me. “Let me get it for you.”
Gatherin’ my thoughts, I held up a hand to slow the young woman down. Mall sios, beag amhain, I thought, but I didn’t say it. I figured she thought I was crazy enough as it was, and I didn’t want to scare her none.
“Hold on a minute,” I said. “I live up on Crutcher Mountain. I want to read the book, but I won’t be able to get it back down here ’til spring. When the snow comes, I cain’t get off the mountain ’til the spring thaw.”
She looked at me hard then, like maybe she thought she knew me. “Oh!” she said, and I seen that I had succeeded in slowin’ her down, because she stopped dead still. “You must be Billy May Platte. I’ve heard about you living up on that mountain. That must be so exciting, like a real pioneer woman. What fun!”
Lord have mercy, I remember thinkin’, this here is a very young and inexperienced woman if she believes livin’ up on a mountaintop is fun. Like I said before, I loved my mountain, and I realized I’d been out of society for a long time, but from what I remembered, swingin’ an axe and churnin’ butter wasn’t ordinarily thought of as fun. But she was a sweet little thing, and I didn’t want to hurt her feelin’s none, so I just smiled and said, “Well, it can be interestin’, I guess.”
“Honey, you take the book,” she said, “And I know you’ll bring it back in the spring. We have several copies,” she continued. “And no one in this town reads, anyway, you know? Besides, Mr. Smith will vouch for you, he talks about you all the time.”
She was a chatty one, that girl, and my ears wasn’t used to so many words. I waited quietly while she fetched the book and made a notation about its whereabouts, then I added it to my rucksack as she returned to her seat high behind that big desk.
“Now you let me know what you think about it, a free spirit such as yourself,” she smiled down at me. “Oh, I’m so jealous. I’d love to get off into the wilderness like that, be my own woman, you know? Take care, honey!”
My head spinnin’, I made my way towards the door. So far that day I’d nearly been forced to shoot a man and I’d been called “honey” three times. You have to realize, aside from when that old mongrel came around, the closest thing to socialization I had up on that mountain was when them chickens squawked at me or one of them goats head butted me off my feet when I wasn’t payin’ attention. I wasn’t used to all that stimulation, and I didn’t think I could take much more of it. I was feelin’ crowded. I thanked her kindly and pushed my way outside, suckin’ in the fresh mountain air and longin’ for the safety and isolation of my cabin on the summit. Not quite yet, though. I still had one more place to go. I reached the road and turned right, headin’ east.
The church was white clapboard and needed paintin’ somethin’ awful. The peelin’, hand painted sign out front announced it as Cedar Hollow Baptist Church, and reminded people that There is no SUN without the SON!
It was the only church in town, leavin’ those who didn’t identify themselves as Baptist without options. My daddy had been Catholic and my momma had been raised with a different kind of religious belief, one that she learned from her people and that didn’t really have a church attached to it. We wasn’t regular members of the church, but we did go as a family sometimes before Daddy died, and I went by myself sometimes later, not so much to worship but because it was a social meetin’ place, and isolated up as we was in them mountains, we took what we could get.
Although the church had seen better days, the settin’ was still pretty, stuck back like it was between the stone sides of them mountain walls. Azaleas was planted all along the front walk. They was flowerless now, but from my springtime trips I knew they was deep pink in season. Oaks and elms towered up way higher than the little church, leavin’ it in the shadows. Not even the steeple, topped with that big white cross, could compete with them trees for height.
I remembered the day that cross had come, ordered from some exotic far away place. It was made of a new thing called fiberglass, one of the first ever made. The townsfolk had worked so hard to buy that cross, scrimpin’ and savin’ for the better part of three years. The women had held bake sales and the men had had carwashes, not just in Cedar Hollow but in the city, over in Huntington, nearly an hour away from Cedar Hollow. Back in them days, it was an ordeal to travel that far. Plenty of folks in Cedar Hollow, myself included, had never got any farther out of Cedar Hollow than they could walk to and from in a day’s time.
The cross was supposed to be lighter than wood so the steeple could support it, but lookin’ at it all them years ago I had had my doubts. It was so big, much too big to fit on that church’s little steeple. I can still remember how surprised I was later that evenin’ to see how much smaller it had looked once it was in the air, bolted onto that steeple as if it had always belonged.
The whole town had come for the cross hangin’, as we called it, which as I reflect was an odd name to give it, but I reckon we didn’t know no better. The excitement was just buzzin’ through the street; you could feel it in the air. It was the closest thing to a carnival most of the townsfolk had ever experienced; it was also the closest most of us was likely to ever get. I remember the church choir, sweatin’ in them robes, singin’ “The Old Rugged Cross” without no piano music to help them along. Their voices was floatin’ out in the breeze under the elm trees, while Brother Hudson, with his eyes closed like they always was when he was experiencin’ the rapture, was praisin’ God at the top of his lungs, his voice tremblin’ so I was afraid he might cry. I hoped he wouldn’t. I hadn’t never seen a grown man cry, and it seemed to me back then that it would be a terrible thing to witness. Members and nonmembers alike was there, bein’ saved and gettin’ dunked in the creek, moved by the spirit of the Lord, or at least by the spirit of the celebration. I myself even considered gettin’ dunked. It was mighty hot that day, and some cool creek water seemed to me like a good idea. Only the thought of my momma’s ire kept me from it. She didn’t hold to dunkin’ people in a creek. Brother Hudson did, though, and even old man Pritchett got dunked, reekin’ of the moonshine everyone pretended he didn’t make down in that still out back of his shed.
I remember, too, how much my mouth was waterin’ at the food. Cain’t nobody cook like a good Baptist woman, and that is just the truth. There was casseroles and pies, sweet tea and lemonade, even a roasted hog the men cooked up in a hole in the ground. I hadn’t never seen nothin’ like that. Someone had even put a apple in that pig’s mouth, and I could not get over how funny that was. Food was just plumb everywhere, all spread out on red and white checked tablecloths thrown over tables made from planks and sawhorses. The women was fussin’ over the food and the babies while the men was fussin’ over tools and ladders. Wasn’t no one quite sure exactly how they was supposed to attach that cross, but everyone was sure they would figure it out. And they did, too. Thirty-five years later, there I was lookin’ up at it.
It had seemed to me all them years ago that the only townsperson absent was my momma. Momma hadn’t never been comfortable in crowds, especially not after Daddy was gone. She always found reasons not to participate in social gatherin’s, preferrin’ to stay by herself in the doctor’s house, rewashin’ them windows or scrubbin’ them spotless floors. Not me, though. Back then, I looked for every chance to escape that lonely old house; it was so dark with them thick draperies and all that heavy furniture. In my imagination, that darkness sucked the air clean out of that house and made me feel like I was suffocatin’ if I stayed inside too long. More than anythin’, I loved to run around with the other younguns. We was all friends back then; there wasn’t a one of us that was on the outs. It didn’t pay to put no one on the outs; there wasn’t enough of us as it was. I reckon we must have been ten or eleven on the day of the cross hangin’. Old enough to get into trouble and young enough not to care, as Momma used to say.
When the townswomen asked about Momma, I always answered ’em politely, sayin’ only, “She’s busy at the house, but I’ll tell her you asked about her, ma’am.” I wasn’t old enough back then to see the things Momma thought she saw, so I cain’t speak as to their existence. Don’t get me wrong; Momma would not lie, but sometimes the way one person sees somethin’ ain’t necessarily the way another person does. She didn’t feel a part of the town, but I did.
I ran and chased and teased and aggravated with the best of ’em. The townswomen always told me I was a beautiful child, but I don’t know if I was, or if they was just pityin’ me. I did have Momma’s high cheekbones and thick, black hair, and Daddy’s strong, slender build. I also had Daddy’s quick laughter back then, though that changed later. I am not braggin’ when I say I was a favorite with my peers. I didn’t have no fear of high ledges and dark places, and I was always willin’ and ready to try blamed near everythin’, much to Momma’s despair. I was as darin’ and high spirited as any of them boys, and even faster than freckle-faced, red haired Raymond O’Brien, the fastest boy in school. Lord, that boy’s hair was red, and we used to tease him that maybe he was runnin’ so fast on account of his head was on fire.
On the day the cross arrived, for the first time in my memory children was allowed up them rickety narrow steps into the tower where the bell was hung. We was even allowed one pull on that thick rope, and if we was strong enough, the bell would ring itself out over the whole valley. Corinne Pruitt and me climbed them steps and pulled together, soundin’ that bell clear across West Virginia. We was quite pleased with ourselves, and we teased Darryl Lane and Eugene Cooper terribly when they wasn’t strong enough to ring it themselves. To add to Darryl’s shame, he’d thrown up on the steps leadin’ up to the tower, claimin’ the stomach flu, but we all knew that was a lie. Darryl was deathly afraid of heights. He always took sick when he had to climb. We all knew it, but that didn’t stop us from teasin’ him. By the time the women called us to eat, Darryl had made a miraculous recovery.
Corinne Pruitt, with her blue eyes and white-blonde hair had been, in my opinion, anyway, the most beautiful girl in the world, and she was my best friend to boot. You just couldn’t get no closer than we was, back then, before everythin’ happened. Corinne’s daddy had also worked in the mines, but he had been a foreman, high above my daddy in terms of pay. Still and yet, losin’ our daddies at such a young age had brought us close in spite of that difference. Corinne wasn’t one of them girls that put on airs; she was just a regular person.
Corinne lived just down the street from Dr. Leary’s, in a clean yellow house with white trim. They had a brick walk leadin’ up to the door and the yard was surrounded by rose bushes. I thought it was the prettiest house in town. Corinne herself was surrounded by grandparents, aunts and uncles, and even cousins. I visited over there all the time, every chance I could get. Dr. Leary’s house was dark and quiet, but Corinne’s house was bright and noisy. I suppose I was hungerin’ for family, though I didn’t think of it that way back then. I loved Corinne’s momma, too. She was gentle and nice, and when she laughed, it sounded to me like a little bell tinklin’ in the wind. She used to call me her other daughter, and she had this way of smoothin’ my hair back off my face. I don’t know as I ever told her what that meant to me, but it warmed my heart every time she did it.
Corinne also had an older brother named William, Willy to his family. I didn’t know him, other than to see him lurkin’ around when I came to visit Corinne and her momma. He was so much older than me when the mine exploded, nearly in his teens. What I remember of him at that time was that he was always frownin’, and his tone with his momma was not a nice one. My momma would have washed my mouth out had I spoke that way to her. On the day the cross came he was far away at boot camp, trainin’ to be a soldier. The rumor was that the U.S. was goin’ to have to join up in the war over in Europe, and Willy wanted to be ready when the call came.
I shook my head, irritated with myself. I hadn’t gone to town that day to be rememberin’ all them things, and my destination at that time wasn’t the tower or even the church. Bypassin’ the church, I wound my way along an old stone path, around the side of the church and farther on, until I came to the tall, black wrought iron cemetery gate.