Anybody Shining (17 page)

And then, to my surprise, Lucille piped up. “Now wait one minute, Ruth Wells! Arie Mae is not your brother's keeper! If he chased her up the mountain, well, that's not her fault, now is it? I'm sorry that he's ailing, but I reckon if you were to ask him would he do it again, he'd say yes.”

I tell you, Ruth's mouth dropped open into a big, wide O, and oh, didn't she give Lucille the most icy stare?

I stared, too. I stared like Lucille had took aholt of my shoulders and shook me. It was just the way she said. Everything Tom did, he did it because he wanted to. I thought about him at the creek, hardly budging in the face of that bear. He might have had a bad leg and a weak heart, but that didn't stop him from living his life full to the hilt.

Maybe I weren't ignorant. Maybe sometimes Tom Wells was a reckless fool.

But he was still my own true friend.

Ruth stuck her nose in the air, as if Lucille weren't worth listening to. Then she turned to me and said, “Tom said to tell you he lost his book, and he needs you to find it. He said you'd know what that means.”

Then she turned on her heel and walked out of the room. James watched her go and then said, “She always did have something up her craw. I guess it's 'cause nobody likes her all that much.”

“Oh, I like her,” Lucille said, brushing a spot of dust from her sleeve. “I just don't think it's
right for her to blame Arie Mae for Tom's troubles. It's not her fault he had to go home.”

And that's when it truly hit me. Tom had gone home. Who was I going to have adventures with if Tom weren't here? Who would help me collect interesting stories?

“Come on, Arie Mae,” Harlan said, grabbing my hand. “Let's go get us a seat in the front row so we can hear Mama real good.”

So all of us children went to the very front of the room and sat right in front of where Mama would sing and Daddy would fiddle. I had James to my left and Harlan to my right, and as soon as we sat down, Mama came over and put Baby John on my lap. I hugged him to me tight, hoping that the nearness of him would keep my heart from breaking half in two.

Mama and Daddy come to the front of the stage, and Mama looked so beautiful, even if her dress was homemade and not from Mrs. Green on Eager Street in Baltimore. She sang all the songs we love so well, such as “Barbry
Allen” and “Fair Rosamond,” and Daddy played fiddle behind her. All us children snuggled in together, letting the music wash over us, feeling our pride at first, but then just feeling like our own selves. We knowed we was rich, Cousin Caroline, even if we was poor.

And still, my heart is broke, and I fear it will never mend.

Signed,

Your Cousin,

Arie Mae Sparks

Dear Cousin Caroline,

I woke this morning with only one thought on my mind, and that was to fetch Tom's book. I snuck out of bed as not to wake Lucille or Baby John, and I went to find James, who was, as I expected, still asleep in the room he shares with Harlan. I poked him in the side a couple of times and whispered “Shh!” when his eyes popped wide open.

“If you'll do my chores this morning, I'll do yourn this afternoon,” I whispered. “And if Mama asks where I am, tell her I went sassafras hunting.”

“Is that what you're really doing?” James mumbled in a sleepy voice.

“I'll pick some to make it true.”

James rolled back over with a snort. “All right then.”

The morning dew soaked my feet as I crossed the yard to the woods. I knowed the first place to look for Tom's book was Aunt Jennie's. I remember handing it to him when we was last at her place, and him setting it on the bed beside him. He must have never slipped it back into his pocket, but left it lying there. Aunt Jennie would have put it in a safe place, I reckoned, and it would be waiting for me when I knocked on her door.

I ran fast as a jackrabbit up the woody path toward Pilgrim's Gap. I wanted to fetch Tom's book and give it to Ruth that very day. It would make him feel better if he could look at all the stories he wrote down while he was in these mountains, I just knowed it. Oh, I wished he could have been there to hear Mama sing
the night before! He would have filled many a page with those old songs of hers, full of murder and love and shallow graves.

As I got close to Miss Sary's, I thought about stopping in to say hello, but I feared disturbing Pastor Campbell as he wrote his Sunday sermon, which according to Miss Sary he liked to work on first thing of a morning. According to Miss Sary, sometimes Pastor Campbell walked about outdoors with paper and pen in hand, hoping that nature would inspire godly words in him.

When I heard a rustling off the path, I figured that it must be Pastor Campbell out walking and writing. But then something caught my eye, something shining like a coin held up to the light.

It was a girl. It was a shining girl. She wore a white dress that was so crisp and clean, it must have been made brand-new that morning. She smiled when she saw me and said, “I'm lost. Could you help me find my way home?”

I stood perfectly still. “Oza?”

“You know me?” the girl asked, and her smile got even bigger. “Do you know my mama? Her
name is Jennie Odom, and she lives over to Pilgrim's Gap.”

“I know her,” I replied in a shaky voice. “I'm heading that way now.”

“Can you show me how to get there?”

Every part of me was a-trembling, but I said, “I'll show you the way, Oza.”

Only it was her who trotted up the path ahead of me! I had to hurry my steps to keep up with her, and a few times she dropped away from sight and I was sure that I'd lost her. But then there she was again, waiting for me to catch up, still smiling.

We reached the place where you could see smoke rising out of Aunt Jennie's cabin. “Your mama lives just over that ridge,” I told Oza. “We'll be there shortly.”

“Thank you, Arie Mae,” she said. And then, just like that, she disappeared.

My heart was thumping so hard in my chest, I thought it was going to bust through. Oh my goodness! My legs shook, and every part of me went cold and then hot.

“Oza!” I called. “Oza, where are you?”

Nobody answered. I looked all around me, but she was gone. I was alone in a clearing, the only sound around me the chatter of squirrels and a lone bird chirping. Had I really seen the ghost of Oza Odom? Or was my mind all twisted and turned from the heartbreak of losing my own true friend, Tom Wells?

When I saw the tree stump in the middle of the clearing, I thought to sit and catch my breath and calm my mind before traveling on to Aunt Jennie's. But when I reached the stump, I noticed something laying smack-dab at its center.

It was Tom's book. Oza had led me straight to it.

Oh, didn't I grab it and hold it tight! It was like having a piece of Tom right there with me. But what was it doing out here? I examined the pages and saw they was wet around the edges, as though the book had been lying on the grass and had soaked up a bit of morning dew.

“Oza?” I called out again, and a voice called back, “Arie Mae?”

Only it weren't Oza's voice, but Aunt Jennie's.

She come into the clearing, stooped over and walking with a stick. “Tom left that book at my place when you'uns were there last,” she said when she saw me. “I thought I'd walk it down to Miss Sary's yesterday afternoon so she could give it to him, and then I got curious and sat down right on that stump to read it. I reckon I left it there. Don't look any worse for the wear, now do it?”

I shook my head. “No, ma'am. Just a little wet here and there.”

“You see Oza this morning?”

“Yes, ma'am. Well, I seen somebody—or something.”

Aunt Jennie lowered herself slow and careful as could be until she was sitting down on the stump. “Oh, it were Oza all right. I seen her run past the window.”

I sat next to her. “Don't it spook you to see her?”

“Arie Mae, I'm a hundred years old. Nothing spooks me. I just wish she'd go on over to the
other side, to be with her daddy. I've asked her to, but she seems to like it here.”

I held up Tom's book and looked at it. “Tom got sick and had to go home to Baltimore. I reckon it's halfway my fault. I knowed his heart weren't good enough to come up here. Only he told me it was. He were stubborn when it come to doing what he wanted.”

“Everybody tells a lie from time to time. Tom's just the same. Weren't your fault he come up here, Arie Mae. He did what he wanted to do. Now what you aim to do with that book?”

“Give it to his sister, for her to take to him.” I flipped through a few of the pages, reading a line here and there. “Though Lord knows if she'll give it back to him. It's filled with ghost stories, and she's against them. Maybe it's best to mail it.”

“His address is in there too,” Aunt Jennie said. “I saw it on the inside cover. It's 1306 St. Paul Street. Why, you could just mail that book to him. Everybody likes to get something in the mail.”

That's when I knowed exactly what to do. “I
wish I had a pencil. Tom always had a pencil with him to write things down right away so he wouldn't forget, and I don't want to forget what I want to tell.”

Well, I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, but didn't Aunt Jennie pluck Tom's pencil from behind her ear and hand it to me! Then she used her walking stick to push herself back up, saying, “I reckon I'll leave you to it. You come visit me now. Bring me some more greens!”

“I'll come tomorrow,” I promised, opening Tom's book and finding the first blank page. There I wrote the story of Oza the ghost, and when I was done I cried a little, wishing so bad that Tom had seen her this morning too.

Signed,

Your Cousin,

Arie Mae Sparks