Anybody Shining (2 page)

So on the following Saturday, after chores, Mr. Simms brung his Luranie over to the home place to visit. I had spent the week in a state of pure excitement and decided for the special occasion to write and perform a play for my guest. It was the story of the haints in our barn, and I called it
The Headless Haints and All Their Little Headless Haint Children
. I believed Luranie Simms would surely feel welcomed by having a girl such as myself write a play for her enjoyment and would want to be my friend and sit and talk and talk.

Sad to say, this is not how things turned out.

I wished I had some pictures to send to Cousin Caroline, so she could see in her mind everything I was telling her about, such as the Toe River and the plain-faced Luranie Simms. I think
pictures make a story better, but since I didn't have a Brownie box camera like Doc Weems nor the talent to draw more than sticks and circles, I would have to draw my pictures with words.

The very minute Daddy told me that Luranie Simms was coming, I knowed we had to make a grand occasion out of it, and a grand thought come to me. I could put on a play! Wouldn't that just make Luranie Simms so happy, and wouldn't she see how good it would be to be friends with one such as me? Besides, I had the perfect story to tell. At last having a barn filled to the rafters with haints was going to come in handy.

I'd not seen the ghosts myself, but Daddy was all the time telling stories about them. He'd come in of an evening and say, “Well, if I didn't see Sam and Joe in Old Dan's stall smoking their pipes this afternoon! I was about to put up a fuss about the foolishness of smoking in a barn full of hay, but then them two old fellers just plain disappeared and took their pipes with 'em.”

When I sat down to write my play, I started to tell about Sam and Joe, but I realized something pretty quick. For haints, Sam and Joe weren't all that interesting. Mostly, according to Daddy, they smoked their pipes in the barn or slapped Old Dan's flanks and spooked him. There weren't much of a story to that. But what if our barn was haunted by other spooky things? The more I thought about it, the more I convinced myself it must be true.

I went to find James, who was getting ready to go fish the creek. “What is the scariest kind of haint you can think of? So scary you'd run a mile in the other direction if you saw one.”

“I think if I walked into the barn and saw old Sam and Joe, only they didn't have heads? Why, I'd probably fall over dead right there.”

Now, James is a strong and sturdy boy who ain't scared of much other than the sight of his own blood, so I reckoned headless haints must be the scariest things going. But even better to my mind than a headless Sam and Joe was a headless Sam and Josephine and
some headless little babies. Oh, I liked that idea just fine!

To give credit, Lucille come up with the idea for costumes. I had planned on me by myself telling the story of Sam and Josephine and all their headless young'uns, acting out all the parts myself. When I told this to Lucille, she said, “Only problem is, you got a head.”

We was on our way back from the schoolhouse, and I was trying to shake all the new learning out of my mind so I could get back to the business of writing my play. “Why is that a problem?” I asked.

“It seems to me your play would be a lot scarier if somebody without a head was part of the goings-on. 'Cause otherwise, it's just you telling a scary story and doing different voices. But if a headless person wandered out behind you while you was telling the story . . . well, that could have an effect on your audience, don't you think?”

“There's only one problem I can think of.”

“What's that?”

“Everybody I know has a head. And I can't rightly imagine them agreeing to get their head chopped off for my play.”

Lucille rolled her eyes, like she couldn't believe how foolish I was. “You just need the right costume, Arie Mae. Like, say if James put on one of Daddy's shirts, only before he put it on, he buttoned all the buttons and strung the neck closed. Then he could pull it on and the collar would sit on the top of his head, like he was Headless Sam.”

I could just picture it. “And you could do the same with one of Mama's dresses. Only, how would you be able to move around without being able to see?”

“I could use a dress she put in the play-pretend box, and I could cut tiny holes where my eyes will be. And then I can hold James's hand while we're walking around behind you so he won't trip.”

Well, didn't it work out exactly the way Lucille featured it? And weren't it the scariest thing in the world when we practiced my play
with James and Lucille walking around without their heads?

It seemed like a hundred years between the time I woke up Saturday morning and the time Luranie Simms come walking up to the house. She was a drab-looking sort of girl, pale with skimpy brown hair, but her face warmed up with her smile, and I just knowed we was going to be the best of friends!

“I'll show you my room I share with Lucille and Baby John,” I told her, “and then we can have a bite of something to eat, and then I'll do my play for you.”

“You're going to do a play?” Luranie asked, sounding confused. “Don't you need all sorts of folks to do a play?”

“Oh, just you wait! You'll be surprised like you ain't never been surprised before!”

It's a funny thing to put on a play. Even if you have practiced it a hundred times, you will still fill up with butterflies before the show begins. Me and James had strung a sheet across the front porch to make it look like what
we thought a real, live theater would look like, and we placed a chair facing the stage for Luranie to sit in.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I announced, coming out from behind the curtain, even though it were just Luranie in the audience. “Welcome to our show,
The Headless Haints and All Their Little Headless Haint Children!
”

Luranie got a pale look about her, and she scooched her chair back, like she wished to be as far away from the stage as possible.

“This is the true story of the headless haints that live up yonder in our barn,” I continued, and I thought I saw a green aspect come to Luranie's pale face. “They are named Sam and Josephine, and they have a right fine passel of headless haint babies.”

That's when Lucille come out from behind the curtain, her head hid underneath the collar of Mama's old dress. In her arms she carried her most wore-out and least loved baby doll, whose head she had detached for this occasion. A moment later, a headless James followed her
out and bellowed, “Hello, Josephine, I'm home from the fields!”

Right about then is when Luranie commenced to crying, and then she run down the porch steps to the yard. She made a right good number of funny noises before she leaned over and was sick across the tops of her shoes.

It turns out that Luranie Simms is very scared of haints and all manner of spooky things, such as poltergeists, boogers, and most of all, the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow. So I guessed I could see how my play might have troubled her.

Cousin Caroline, at first I felt as sorry as could be that I'd picked the wrong theme for my play. But while I was helping Luranie clean the sick off her shoes, it come to me that I couldn't have true friendship with a girl who turned green over a headless haint. I am as refined as any other girl you might meet, but I'm not a scaredy cat, nor can I abide one. I hope that you ain't scared by ghosts,
poltergeists, haints, boogers, or made-up things that don't have heads. If you're scared of true living things that don't have heads, well, we are alike in that way.

Mama says she's worried she don't have the right address for you in Raleigh, but Daddy said that your daddy's people is high stock and fancy, and all my letters sent to Raleigh will reach them sooner or later.

If you're thinking my daddy don't like your daddy nor your daddy's people, you're right, but that don't mean you and I can't be the best of friends.

Signed,

Your Cousin Who Hopes You Will Write Back Soon,

Arie Mae Sparks

Dear Cousin Caroline,

I am still awaiting your fine letter. I think you must be on a trip, as it's summer and some folks like to travel during the pleasant warm weather. I have never took a trip except for the time we went to see Daddy's brother Roland over in Buncombe County, who had such pretty red horses. We have but the one horse, Old Dan, and he ain't in the least way pretty nor is he nice.

Today one of the songcatcher ladies, Miss Pittman, come to visit. When she was talking to Mama, I thought, I best remember
everything she says and does so I can tell it to my Dear Cousin Caroline in a letter. I have found that since I started writing letters to you I've been paying close attention to all the doings and comings and goings of a day. It's like saving secrets to share with a friend late in the evening, when the lights are dimmed but for a single lantern hanging on a neighbor's porch across the holler.

Do you have songcatcher ladies in Raleigh? If you don't, well, they are folks who come to your home place and write down the songs you and your family has been singing all through the years. Not only that, they have a machine the likes of which you ain't never seen. You sing into a big horn and the sound of your voice gets captured on a wax disc. Mama has done this two times now, and the first time we heard that wax disc played back to us, the sound of Mama's voice coming through the machine, why, I thought all of us was going to topple over from the shock.

Of the two songcatcher ladies, Miss Pittman is the friendliest. She don't look friendly, but that's because she wears her hair too tight on her head. It's pulled back like Samson himself took aholt of it and yanked. Lucille says it gives her a headache to look at Miss Pittman's hair. She is afeared that one of these days Miss Pittman's eyes are going to pop straight out of her eyeball pockets, her hair is pulled back so tight.

So Miss Pittman has a severe look about her, and she's hickory-switch thin, but when she opens her mouth and commences to speak, you see that she is actually quite jolly and full of fun. She also eats a bodacious amount, but no one can say where it goes, because she is all lean and no fat.