A Bird On Water Street (17 page)

In my bedroom I put on a long-sleeved T-shirt, a dry pair of overalls, and thick socks.

I lay on my bed and pulled the faded quilt my mom made over me. I couldn't get rid of the chill.

In the gray light of the rainy day, my blue walls appeared washed out and dirty. The locomotive border that ran around the top was peeling in the corners. My baseball trophies and the General Lee were dusty, and my desk, which used to belong to Grandpa, was chipped around the edges.
When did it all get so worn down?

Again, my eyes were drawn to my poster of trees, a scene so different from Coppertown.

So it's not perfect,
I thought.
But it's home and I want to stay
.

O

I didn't realize I had dozed off until Mom gently shook me awake.

“Dinner's ready, Jack,” she said. “White beans and cornbread.”

“Mom, I don't want to move,” I said.

“Well, I'm not gonna bring it to you,” she said.

“No, I mean I don't want to leave Coppertown.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked. “Oh, did you overhear your dad and me?” She sat on the end of my bed.

I nodded. “Things are gettin' better around here,” I said. “Nature is coming back, things are growing.”

“Honey, your garden might be doing well, but the town is drying up. Your dad needs a job.”

“He'll find something,” I said. “He has to.”

“Oh, Jack, you're too young for all these worries. Heck, I am too.” She ran her hand over the quilt she'd made for me, stopping on the flannel print that had been my baby blanket. “And you're getting too skinny. Come eat.”

r

Chapter 25

Fairy Cross

Piran and I met at the bridge the next day and decided to check on the tadpoles up at the tailings pond. On the way there I told Piran what I'd overheard my parents saying the night before. “We might have to move if my dad can't find work.”

“Heck, I figured you'd be leaving eventually too.” He frowned. “I'm gonna be the last kid left in Coppertown.”

I didn't know what to say and tried to change the subject. “Did you see the article in the paper?” I asked.

“What?”

“The Rockets are in the championships.”

“You got any more bad news there, Jack?” Piran said. “'Cause I don't think I'm quite depressed enough yet.”

“Sorry.”

But our moods changed completely when we got to the tadpoles.

“They've got legs!” Piran shouted.

“Except for their tails, they're almost frogs.” I smiled. I felt like a proud papa.

The water had dried up with the warm weather like I expected. All that was left of the feeder creeks was a shallow pond, but the tiny frogs didn't need water for much longer before they'd be able to hop away. There was still enough for them to kick around and get the feel of their new limbs. Even Piran couldn't stop starin' at 'em.

As I sat and watched the tadpoles, I ran my fingers through the sand on the bank. Sunlight glittered on a small object. “Piran, look at this.” I dug it out. It was a rock, no bigger than a quarter, but it had two faceted rods that ran straight through each other forming a perfect cross.

“Oh cool!” Piran said, “That's a fairy cross!”

“Since when are you into rocks?”

“Ever since I wanted to be a miner is all.” Piran rolled his eyes. “They're really called staurolite crystals, but most folks just call 'em fairy crosses. Outside of the Copper Basin I hear they're pretty rare, but we have more here than anywhere else. Hasn't your Grandpa told you about 'em?”

“No.” I shook my head and looked at my friend with new eyes. All the bad grades and laziness—I figured there wasn't anything Piran really cared about. But here it was. His face lit up like a firecracker as he told me about fairy crosses.

“Well, one story is that when the Cherokee Indians were forced to leave this land, their tears fell to the ground and froze in the shape of little crosses. Did you know the Cherokee used to play sports where our ball field is? I found an arrowhead up there once.

“There's another story about the fairy crosses. Some say when Jesus was crucified the fairies here in the Appalachians could feel it and cried. Their tears fell to the ground in the shape of crosses.

“They're considered really good luck. Even President Roosevelt carried one in his pocket.”

“That's cool! You should have it.” I grinned and handed it to him.

“Naw, I can't. You found it,” he said.

“I have my frogs,” I said. “And you have your rocks.”

He held it up to the light and spun it around with a smile. “Thanks!”

Danged if he didn't find another one a short time later and gave it to me. We had good luck times two, and Lord knows we needed it.

r

Chapter 26

Blackberries

Summer was in its prime. The little hairs on my arms stood out bleached blond against my brown skin and the last signs of where my cast had been were officially gone. The soles of my feet were as tough as horse's hooves, and my baseball hat was permanently attached to my head.

On July first, Mom popped in my room. “It's blackberry pickin' day, Jack. Why don't you call Piran and see if he wants to join us? We're going someplace new.”

Picking blackberries meant driving outside of Coppertown! I leaped out of bed.

“Put on boots and a long-sleeved shirt,” Mom called from down the hall.

“I don't need shoes,” I hollered back.

“You will where we're going! Not an inch of skin showing, y'hear?”

My boots felt weird and too tight, like weights smotherin' my toes. Long sleeves made my arms feel like they were wrapped in plaster again. I wasn't used to having anything against my skin anymore, and I didn't like it.

Mom had torn the kitchen apart. She was buried deep in the pantry, rattling metal and glass. “Jack, grab these, will ya?”

She handed me box after box of half-pint Mason jars and a basket full of metal lids and rings. She dusted herself off as she climbed out. “I wanted to see how many I had.” She smiled. “I'd say a good many!”

Every summer Mom would go to the Spencer farm to buy fresh fruits and veggies and then put up jars of tomatoes, fruit, jam, and beans—she loved to can. She said it was a carryover from her Beech Mountain days when they used to put up all sorts of food for winter.

“Nice thing about blackberries is they're free,” she said. “Grab three buckets and the two coolers from your dad's metal shop while I make some sandwiches.” She packed lunch into the smaller cooler and we loaded everything into the trunk of the car.

We were about to leave when Mom stopped and ran back to the house. “Almost forgot!” She returned with a can of bug spray—the logo was faded it was so old. “We're gonna need this.”

We drove down to pick up Piran, who was also dressed in boots and a long-sleeved shirt. Mom nodded her approval and called out to Mrs. Quinn, “I'll have him home before sunset, Doris.” We waved and headed out with high spirits.

Mom turned on the radio and we all sang along with the new song by Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt about wildflowers not caring where they grow, because they're survivors. Mom's pretty voice fit right in with the trio.

O

We headed west into the Tohachee River Gorge, but cut north on that same winding road I'd seen Eli go up when we'd gone pumpkin huntin' before Halloween. The trees that had looked like Fruity Pebbles last fall were now covered in leaves of a million shades of green. The longer we drove, the more lush it became. Piran and I gaped out the windows at the Georgia pines that towered above us with their deep green needles and spiky gray trunks. Light fell across the road, playing tricks on our eyes as we sped through the mottled pattern of calm blue shadows and blinding sun.

“Where we goin'?” I asked.

“To a new blackberry patch your Aunt Livvy told me about—up in a place called Devil's Den, or at least that's what it used to be called.”

My ears perked up.
Why did that sound familiar?

“How'd it get that name?” Piran asked.

“There used to be a lot of moonshining in these parts,” she said. “It was pretty wild in its day. But that's all gone now.”

After an hour, she turned off the pavement into the woods and slowly drove up a long-forgotten dirt road. The car rocked wildly over the bumps and small ditches caused by rainwater runoff.

“There's an old log cabin development up here,” Mom told us. “Remember a few years back when some developers from the city were gonna put in vacation rentals? They cut the road in and cleared some of the lots before they went bankrupt or somethin'. Now it's one gigantic blackberry patch.”

O

About a quarter mile in, a small road cut off to the right to a rundown trailer. Animal skins were nailed to its sides and a hand-scrawled
Keep Out!
sign was nailed to a tree out front.

But what really caught my attention was the yellow Jeep parked out front. “What's Eli Munroe doin' way out here?” I asked. A puzzle was coming together in my head, but it was like rememberin' Grandma Chase—the pieces were fuzzy and I couldn't make sense of 'em.

“I . . . I don't know,” Mom said and revved the engine to speed by.

The weeds closed in around us as we drove another twenty minutes or so. They brushed against the car and slapped our arms until we rolled up the windows to keep from getting cut or worse, losing an eye.

Finally, the dark woods gave way to a large open area, silvery white. We stopped right in the middle.

When Mom turned the key, a loud buzzing noise—as loud as a sawmill—replaced the sound of the engine.

“What is that!?” Piran yelled over the din. He covered his ears.

“Cicadas,” Mom shouted back. “It was on the news the other night. It's their thirteen-year swarm. They're really thick this year.”

“Chickadees?” Piran asked.

“No, cicadas,” she replied. “Sick-Ay-daas.”

Piran couldn't say it right for nothin'. “I've never heard anything like it!” he said. “Do they bite or sting?”

“Cicadas won't bother you, but the mosquitoes and chiggers will. C'mere boys, let me spray you.” She covered us with so much bug spray from our necks down that we were wet with the stuff. Then she told us to close our eyes tight as she sprayed our heads. I was a toxic cloud.

Piran looked at me with a frown and whispered, “I better not be getting no bug bites.”

Mom sprayed herself too. “Yu'uns grab a bucket and get picking!”

O

I walked up to the tangled vines that created a dense wall of thorns in front of me. It took a minute to get my eyes used to lookin' for berries, but once they adjusted, it was all I could see. There were still some red ones, but mostly I saw the deep purple masses of ripe bumpy blackberries.

I had to try the first one—it wouldn't have been right not to. It was so ripe it fell into my hand when I touched it. I pressed it to the roof of my mouth with my tongue. The warm juice squirted, bitter and sweet at the same time, while the berry skin melted.

Piran pelted me with a handful of blackberries and I threw some back. It was an all-out blackberry war until Mom said, “Wastin' blackberries just means less pie!”

Piran and I froze. My mom made the best blackberry pie in Coppertown. We hunkered down and got to work.

The next one I picked I dropped into my bucket with a satisfying
plunk
. I grabbed handfuls at a time and dropped them in until the sound went from
plunk
to
thump
from the berries landin' on top of each other.

It was an awkward job. I kept getting snagged on the thorns and spent more time trying to get loose than picking berries.

Piran hollered, “They keep falling down!”

“You have to cup your hand under them, sugar,” Mom said and came over to give us a proper lesson in blackberry pickin'. She looked at the scratches on my hands. “If you move really slow, the thorns won't grab you. Here, watch me.”

She gracefully stretched her arm deep into a thicket and cupped her hand under a cluster of berries. Her fingers tickled them loose until they fell gently into her palm. She removed her arm just as slowly and didn't get snagged once.

“See?” She smiled.

“Shouldn't we be worried 'bout bears or mountain lions out here?” Piran asked.

“I imagine the sound of the car scared 'em off,” she said. “But I like to sing while I pick so I don't accidentally surprise anything.”