We left our last patron, Loretta Adams, as shadow-draped mountains folded into a coal-dust sky. Eager for the safety of our cove, Junia led us there with nary a falter in her fast stride.
I pulled off her bridle and saddle, then the bags, and hung it all inside the tiny shed Pa’d reluctantly built for her.
Junia rolled on the grassy patch outside, enjoying her freedom. After a few minutes, I cleaned her hooves, then led her into the stall. Inspecting her coat, I found a few scratches and nursed the scrapes with salve. After latching her wooden half door, I tossed hay over her gate. The mule pushed her nose inside the small bin by the doorway and crooked her mouth, showing teeth.
“Long day, ol’ girl,” I said, tired. “Let me tend to me now.” I tickled her floppy ears. Solemn, she eyed me and nudged my hand.
I fetched a bucket of water for the cabin and my book bag and then hurried to the porch.
Pausing, I leaned my forehead to the door, dreading the long night without Pa, the loneliness that came after he left for the mine. I never felt it so much out there carrying my books, but as soon as I stepped onto my porch, an emptiness loomed and struck when I thought about the fat, dark hours coming.
Creek waters rippled over stone, the murmurs swirling around the cove, as damp breaths of fog pressed down. Inhaling, I took a long pull of the night air to forget my troubles, to forget that Frazier was out there hunting. Sometimes on a clear night I would carry out a chair, sit in the yard with Junia, and watch the stars until my breathing slowed and I could muster enough courage to go back inside the cabin.
Pa must’ve heard I was home. Coughing, he called out for me.
“Evening, Pa,” I said, stepping inside and trying to dip some cheer into my greeting. I set down the bucket and dropped my book bag.
Pa had just awakened. He yawned, scratched the stubble on his face, then pulled on his overalls over his long johns.
“You’re late, Daughter.”
“Sorry, Pa. It was a bothersome day,” I admitted.
“Did you meet trouble out there?” Concern crawled across his coal-stained brows.
“I… No, sir,” I fibbed and hid it behind a feeble smile. “It was a long ride my first day back. I caught folks up on their reading, and they wanted me to sit a spell.”
I wouldn’t tell him about Vester Frazier. It was one thing to find the intruder sneaking onto your land, a Kentucky law that protected all colors from the violation. But we Blues dared not mete out punishment if the harm was off our land.
Over the years, more than one mistreated Blue who’d tried to right a wrong, defend a kin’s honor, or stand up to their persecutor had received a whipping or gone missing in these hills. Pa’s uncle Colton, a hard-working miner, was one of them, dumped into an abandoned coal-mine shaft after he’d punched a man who’d accosted his wife. They didn’t find Colton’s bones for five years.
There’d been other talk—whispers from my folks when they thought I was asleep, or out of earshot—the tales of other Blues being hanged for something as simple as back-talking white folk.
“I got a new patron today,” I said. “Mr. Lovett.”
“Cause you any trouble?”
“No, sir. He’s—” What was he? “He’s a nice enough fellar. Went out west and built a dam for the president. He’s bought the old Gentry homestead. Mr. Lovett hankered for the books, and I loaned him one of Irvin Cobb’s.”
Pa didn’t say anything, just sat down on the bed and wrestled on his boots, then thrust his chin to the stove. “Went ahead and helped myself to the beans you made this morning.”
Relieved he weren’t in the mood to fuss about my job, I crossed to the stove, the old sloping floorboards protesting under my feet. I grabbed two slices of bread from a loaf I’d baked the day before, then scooped out some of the beans from the pot, straining the juices off. I mashed the beans, spread them onto the bread, packing the meaty sandwich into his lunch bucket, adding an apple and a stringy carrot from the cellar to top it off.
“Pa, let me fix you some tea,” I said.
“No time. I’m running late myself.”
“Another union meeting?”
“Yup.”
“Mama said they were too dangerous.”
“It’s not a female’s affair.”
“But I’m afraid for you. Pa, if there’s another strike, there’ll surely be more deaths. Three miners died in the last one, and a few others were left beaten and crippled, spent for life. The Company’s guards will take up arms again and shoot anyone who tries to strike. I’m frightened—”
“Daughter, take a look at the fright out there. They’re murderers, gun thugs, them Company men are. Something must be done. Folks are worse off than before they arrived.” Pa coughed. “We’re working seventeen-hour days down on a rocky floor with bloody kneecaps in a black hole for scratch, and all the while fearing the next cave-in, the next blast that sends us to our fiery grave. Hell, we’re worth less than that ornery beast of yours. Same as Daniel.”
I was too young to remember, but when Pa’s older brother, Daniel, worked the coal, the men tricked him into being a miner’s sacrifice, saying they’d already sent the mule in because they’d just lost a Company beast two weeks before. Daniel went in first with a lantern, and there’d been an explosion. He cried out for help, but the Company couldn’t dig him out without causing another collapse. For two days and nights, Pa stayed at the site, talking to his brother through a hairline crack in the debris and rock while Daniel lay in the cold, dark belly of the mine, tortured from blistering burns, begging for mercy. The third morning, when Daniel went silent, the Company sealed the entrance and called their chaplain to say a few words.
Pa’s eyes filled with a sadness as he spoke. “Yesterday they suspended Jonah White after a pillar collapsed and came down on his working mule and broke the creature’s back. Jonah had his arm crushed clean to the bone.”
I rubbed my own arm Frazier had broken, horrified by the suffering of the miner and his mule.
Pa’s voice cracked. “Boss Man told ol’ Jonah he just bought himself a dead ass and then put a rock on the poor fellar’s pay. A man best not let one of them Company mules get killed or harmed down there unless it’s for checking leaks. They’ll fire or suspend you like that.” Pa snapped his fingers. “But let a miner lose his limb or die in that black hellhole and they don’t blink, just replace him. They’re stealing the very breath of the Kentucky man, the land.” He knocked back a cough. “It’s all disappearing, Daughter. The tracks of muck in and out of this town, up our brown-dying mountains. Up”—Pa’s anger throbbed in his hardening jaw, and he hacked again—“up our dying ass! The devil Company won’t release its tether on us until they are good an’ sure they’ve fattened themselves on our black gold, spent us, and not a fast Kentucky second sooner.”
“Let someone else go. Why do they always pick you? You haven’t had a day off in over a month—”
“That’s exactly why I have to, Daughter.” He hooked the overall straps up over his shoulders, then shrugged on his coat. I handed him his lunch bucket and set his old carbide lamp helmet atop his head.
Pa’s tired face folded into worry lines, and here his shift hadn’t even started. He’d have to walk five miles to the mine. I wished he’d be willing to work with Junia so he could ride her, but he’d said, “I’d rather walk a hundred miles barefoot on briars than ride that cursed beast.”
“You going to the Center this week?” He turned to ask at the door.
“No, sir, going the week after next.” I glanced at the calendar nailed to the wall and saw my scribbles on the second Tuesday in May.
“I was able to clear part of the path for your ride.”
“Thank you, Pa.” I kissed his cheek. “Don’t forget your bear stick,” I reminded. You never know’d what four-legged beast, bear, pack of dogs, or mean two-legged ones would be out there lurking to do harm. I thought about Vester Frazier and tucked my mottling hands behind my back, away from Pa’s eagle eyes.
“Get some rest, Daughter.” And he was out the door, coughing his way to the airless job.
Rest sounded good. But there weren’t none coming just yet. After a bowl of soup, I donned my apron to tidy the cabin, swept the big area rag rug I’d knotted last year, and mopped the dark wooden floors where Pa’s coal-dusted boots had landed.
It was near impossible to keep a clean house when a man worked coal, and you couldn’t get a second behind in your chores trying.
Even with my weekend off from the book route every week, it seemed like there was more to clean because of what more Pa kept bringing in.
I stripped Pa’s mattress and boiled the soot-stained linens, wrung them in the yard, then hooked them over a rope tacked across the ceiling behind the woodstove, worrying about Pa’s safety in the dark hole, worrying about leaking gas, explosions, and fallen rocks. It was enough to cause a right-headed folk to lose their mind, and it was all I could do to tuck back the thoughts.
I rubbed my chapped hands together, wishing I had Mama to worry with. She used to read the Bible, her novels, and sing French songs, her voice a soothing balm, distracting us both when Pa was at work. Humming one of her tunes, I made Pa’s bed with fresh muslin sheets I’d sewn from the bolt of fabric he’d bought in town at the mine’s Company store last year.
Finished with the bedding, I gathered a lantern and the pile of Pa’s work clothes, washed them on the scrub board with a bar of lye out in the yard, soaped, rinsed, and washed again, wringing the fabric until my hands cramped, then emptying the black water four times until the clothes came clean of the coal dust. Last, I tackled my grubby long skirts, undergarments, and socks.
Back inside, I flexed my stiff hands, then remembered the bucket on the porch. I hauled in the old zinc tub, filled it, and dragged the bath over to the feet of the stove for warmth.
It took two more trips back to the springhouse to ready Pa’s bath and still another to top it off. On the third, I cocked my ear, listened to the quiet, taking note of anything amiss. Junia called out to me softly, and I walked over and gave her a quiet greeting. The old girl’s ears were relaxed, eyes sleepy, her stance loose. She would alert me of trouble.
Look to the beast, the bird, the wild dog, the critters, Pa’d taught me long ago. God spent all their might on the ears so they would have protection. And that safeguard ensures ours.
After one more good night to the mule, I lugged in the last bucket. In the morning, Pa’d come home spent, heavy in his bones and blackened. I’d have him strip to his waist, then kneel down over the bucket for me to scrub the sticking coal dust off his back, same as all the other miners who were fortunate to have family to help.
Up in the loft, I gathered a pile of my clothes for wash tomorrow, then took the pillow from my mattress and carried it all down.
With the clean wash hanging to dry, the cabin near spotless, and my chores done, I put on the teakettle and settled at our wooden table to cut fabric and paper into sheets and rolled glue across it all to bind Angeline’s book.
From a nearby shelf, I pulled down the library scrapbook I had been compiling for my patrons, fattened with what I hoped were interesting things. I’d cut up a feed sack with a sunny floral print for the dust cover. In our spare time, us librarians made books filled with hill wisdom, recipes and sewing patterns, health remedies, and cleaning tips that folks passed on. Newspapers sent us their old issues, and we’d cut out poems, articles, essays, and other news from the world, and pack the mountain books. The scrapbooks had become a vital part of the library project and were passed from one little home to another.
I opened the book and pasted handwritten instructions for creating a broom from broom corn onto the opposite page from where I’d put a tatting pattern with a swatch of old lace some stranger had donated.
In between sips of tea, I thumbed through the pages. Two were filled with cartoons from the Sunday funnies the hillfolk favored. The mountain men liked Dick Tracy and Li’l Abner, while the women couldn’t get enough of Blondie. And their young’uns clamored for Little Orphan Annie and Buster Brown. I’d made sure to take the time to hunt for comics, snip carefully from used newspapers and old magazines, and put them aside for more scrapbooks. I only had three scrapbooks and two were on loan, tattered and barely holding. If only I could get my hands on more reading material.
I reminded myself to look for Mr. Lovett’s book and turned a few more leaves and stopped. Mountainfolk looked forward to this section filled with the latest home remedies from magazines and to the health pamphlets the government sent in. It made me happy that a lot of folks, especially the elders, insisted on sharing their own too.
Someone had written instructions for use of a lodestone, advised readers to wear the mineral around their necks to attract money, love, and luck. Beneath that was a note on cock stones from the old midwife Emma McCain, instructing women to find the small stone from the knee of an old cock and hold it during birthing to protect the babe. The midwife had dropped the note off at the library herself, insisted the cock stone worked, praised its worth, and begged me to paste the message into the book. Underneath the amulet’s instructions, Emma had penned a special reminder written to husbands: Wear a cock stone to excite and make your wife more agreeable.
Wincing, I moved on to the following page. It advised to keep a mole’s foot in my pocket to protect against toothaches. Pa didn’t put much stock in that remedy, but he did carry a crystal rock, the old madstone he’d taken from the belly of a whitetail, same as most hillmen who were lucky to find one. The stone was said to protect against the mad dog and coon diseases. Once someone was bitten, it was necessary to stick the madstone onto the wound to draw out the poisonous rabies.
A few more sheets budded with soap recipes and cleaning tips; one touted a mix of water, vinegar, and lemon for sooty pine floors and winter-baked walls. A drawing with instructions showing how to make a stovetop took up a whole leaf. Construction of a two-seater outhouse filled another.
The poetry section I’d made filled several pages, and I paused to reread one of my favorites, “In a Restaurant” by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson. I loved how I could hear the music of the violin he’d written into it. Beside it, I’d pasted “Trees in a Garden” by D. H. Lawrence. The poem was a pretty one about trees, and I could almost smell the naked scents of woody barks, budding leaves, and fruits.
I closed the mountain scrapbook and admired the clean cabin while kneading my calves and thighs, tight from the day’s long ride. Remembering my schedule, I went over to the wall and grabbed the Company store calendar.
The square on today’s date was blank, and I made a note on Monday, April 24, marking it 1st Book Route, New Patron. J. Lovett, and then looked over my schedule for the rest of the week.
On Monday I had nine stops, including the school. It’d been wonderful to see the children today, and I smiled to myself thinking about how excited they’d been to see me. Along the path, I’d spotted two older boys walking with buckets. The tallest one saw me, and his eyes rounded and he said to the other, “Ain’t going crawdad huntin’ today, Thad. I gotta get to school. Yonder comes Book Woman!” Then he dashed off ahead of me.
In the schoolyard, a little boy climbed a tree and swung upside down from the back of his knees on a branch, crying out, “Yonder comes Book Woman. Book Woman’s here!” The teacher had been so pleased to have the library service back, she didn’t bother to scold the mischievous young’un.
I reminisced about visiting the other patrons my first day back. Martha Hannah dropped her clean laundry in the dirt when I rode into the yard. Mr. Prine actually stepped out onto his porch to quietly ogle me and share a small smile, an unheard of. And Miss Loretta had cried, though she’d never admit it, and instead insisted it was her old eyes ailing when I offered to get her a handkerchief. The memories warmed me, and I was suddenly struck by my tender affection for my precious patrons.
With the back of my hand, I dabbed at my damp lashes and blinked at the calendar. On Tuesday, I’d follow the creek bed and hand out reading materials to folks who would accept them. Wednesday, there would be the dangerous Hogtail Mountain to climb, the Evans home, and a visit to young Master Flynn. And on Thursday, I’d spend the day at my outpost, exchanging material for new books and whatever the courier had dropped off for me; sometimes, there were letters waiting to be handed out when the mail couldn’t reach a home. There was Friday, my last route, where I would journey eighteen miles to get the material to Oren Taft’s Tobacco Top community.
I made a few more notes and then, satisfied, set the calendar aside. Pulling my pillow atop the table, I rested my head and rubbed a hand across the embroidered blue hem, cuddling against the folds of the fabric Mama’d given me long ago.
She’d sewn us matching dresses with it when I was five. Soft blue ones with striking slashes of deeper blue that she’d somehow thought made our skin look whiter and a lot less colored. “A trick and it works,” she’d said as she dressed us to go to town for a rare visit. “The color is like a bright-blue Kentucky sky that the angels dotted with bluebirds”—Mama’d winked—“and those sweet li’l birds are what catches the eye first.”
She’d made Pa promise he’d bury her in it. I’d kept my dress and made the soft pillow slip out of the threadbare fabric after she passed, embroidering flying bluebirds onto the hem to remind me of her, us.
I glided my finger over the threads and stared out into the room, the sound of my breathing giving stingy life to the cabin’s loneliness, my eyes glazing, fixed on the nothingness my home now held. My mind pulled to the Fraziers, and I turned to one of Mama’s old French lullabies, imagining her hands stroking my hair, her airy fingertips tracing my face. Before long, my voice quieted, my lids grew heavy and closed.
I don’t know how long I’d been dozing when I startled awake to Junia’s brayings, and jumped up and scrambled across the room. Falling to my knees, I pulled Pa’s shotgun out from under the bed and edged over to the window. Peeking through the curtain, I saw nothing but darkness. Junia called out again, and I moved to the door.
The shotgun wobbled in my grip as I fumbled with the lock. A curse slipped off my tongue, and I flung open the door and scampered down the steps. Lifting the gun to my shoulder, I scanned the yard for any wild creatures. Nothing. But I could feel something, someone out there in the darkness. I squinted at the tree line and then turned toward the creek. A noise struck to my left, and again I searched the woods. Weren’t no small critter stirring through the leaves. It was a bigger movement, and I was sure someone was out there. Maybe Frazier and his congregation, or some townsfolk bent on hunting Blues. Once more the sound shifted, and I raised the shotgun higher and gripped the stock. I couldn’t tell how many there were, or who it might be, but one thing I know’d: they were hunters.
Junia lifted a long, watery bray into the silence. I tilted my head, trying to hear, and picked up footfalls and more faint rustling. A fear pounded in my good ear, muddling my hearing. The mule snorted, then quieted. I stood there a moment before the darkness enveloped, pulling a panic into my bones.
Inside, I slumped against the door. The long day back on the route latched hold of my nerves, doubled me over, leaving me gasping for air. The shotgun trembled in my hand. Pa would take care of any creatures, but who would take of Frazier and the hunters?
In a few moments, I straightened and carried the gun up to my loft.