Anybody Shining (7 page)

“But folks like to dance to 'em,” Daddy said. “You against dancing?”

“No, I am not,” Miss Keller informed him. “But I am against throwing out the good and bringing in the bad. You have a tremendous tradition of music in these mountains. You should work to preserve it, not dilute it with silly songs about lovers' quarrels.”

“Them ballads you like so much, what are they about other than lovers' quarrels?” Daddy asked. “You just like 'em 'cause they're old. Ain't nothing special about old. The songs we listen to on the radio, they'll be old someday too, and folks will jump up and down about how precious they are.”

Now Mama, she loves the old songs just like Miss Keller and Miss Pittman, and like Pastor Campbell, she believes dancing leads to sin.
The problem is, ain't nobody on this mountain loves to dance better than Mama.

Mama didn't turn Baptist until she was fifteen years old, when she went to a tent revival and the spirit of the Lord entered into her and wiped her soul clean. Before that, her family read the Bible on Sundays and wouldn't work on account of the Sabbath, but they were not churchgoing. They could dance and play music to their hearts' content. Mama says she wishes she had been Baptist from the minute she was born, because then she would never have gotten the love of dancing in her and she would not have to try so hard to get it out.

“How you get to be a Catholic?” she asked Miss Pittman out on the porch this morning. “They let any sort of folks do it?”

“Yes, but I believe the closest Catholic church in these parts is in Asheville,” Miss Pittman informed her. “Perhaps you should try the Methodist Church over in Spruce Pine.”

Mama sighed. You could tell she weren't going to give up being Baptist, even if the pope
offered to take her out dancing every Saturday night.

“So do you think you would sing if Mr. Sparks played?” Miss Pittman asked again. “Perhaps the whole family could join you.”

Mama's eyes sparked, and I knowed she was pondering whether or not she could convince Daddy to let her sing at the school. Mama loves to sing better than she loves to dance even, and singing for a crowd of folks is her idea of standing in high cotton.

Just then Harlan walked up from the barn, where he'd been helping James muck Old Dan's stall. “I'll sing. I'm the best singer you'uns probably ever heard.”

Harlan sung about as well as a cat caught in a paper bag screeching to get out. Given this particular falsehood, I should have knowed he was capable of others.

“Tell Miss Pittman about the ghost that nearly strangled you,” I urged. “She never believes me when I tell her about the ghosts in these parts.”

The tips of Harlan's ears turned red. “Ah, she don't want to hear about no ghosts. Grown-up ladies ain't interested in them kind of things.”

“On the contrary,” Miss Pittman said, leaning toward Harlan. “I am riveted by such tales.”

Well, by the time Harlan had tripped over his own tongue, mixing up the story so bad nobody who had actually been there would have recognized it, it was clear to Miss Pittman and everybody else that the whole thing had been a scandalous deception.

“You ain't right,” I told Harlan. “You and James are the worst two boys I know.”

“Ah, we ain't so bad,” Harlan said with a grin. “We just like a little fun, is all.”

I would have been madder at him than I was, but for the fact that I have made up some ghost stories myself once or twice. Between you and me, Cousin Caroline, I ain't actually ever seen old Sam and Joe who Daddy says lives in our barn. I don't think James has
either, but we both talk about it like we have. In fact, we may have convinced each other that them haints exist even though we know they probably don't.

At least I don't think they do.

Do you like ghost stories, Cousin Caroline? Because I know several that will send the shivers up and down your spine. Just the minute you write me back, I will tell them to you.

Signed,

Your Cousin,

Arie Mae Sparks

Dear Cousin Caroline,

You are not to breathe a word of what I am about to tell you! Today I snuck down to the settlement school so I could get better acquainted with them Baltimore, Maryland, children. I just had to go, is the thing. Why, I can barely sleep at night knowing them children is right down the mountain from where I lay, just waiting to be my friends.

It is easy enough to get to the settlement school from our home place. You follow the path that rambles alongside Cane Creek on its way to the river. It's been fairly trampled down
ever since they built the post office next to the train station last year. Anybody looking for something to do will say, “I'm off to see what the news is,” and head for the post office, where Miss Ellie Mize sorts letters and packages and collects the gossip. If you want to know who's sick, who's courting, or who got in a fight on Saturday night, why, it's to the P.O. you need to go.

Sometimes me and James go down to the train station to watch the three o'clock train come through. It don't stop unless there's a mailbag hanging on the post waiting to be picked up, but it always slows down. Me and James like to take a gander at the folks inside the train. We always wave, and some of them wave back while others act like they don't see us.

The settlement school ain't but a couple minutes farther down the road, and it don't take but maybe fifteen minutes to walk from here to there. The only problem is, Daddy don't want us to go.

Do you always do what your daddy says,
Cousin Caroline? Until the Baltimore, Maryland, children come to visit, I almost always did, partly because I try to be good when I can, and part because it don't pay to go against my daddy. He ain't mean, but he can be fierce as a bearcat when you vex him. James is the same way. Daddy is teaching James his habit of walking out of the room when his temper starts to rise. I have seen him do this on many occasions. To me, when Daddy leaves the room it is a sign to make yourself scarce as well.

Well, I don't like to go against my daddy, but I woke up this morning knowing that I must. It seemed clear to me that Tom Wells and I were meant to be friends, but how could we be such as that if I'm always here and he's always there? No, there weren't nothing to do but for me to go.

I done my morning chores as quick as I could, and then I found James over to the barn throwing slop into the pigpen. When I told him of
my plan, he shook his head. “You know there'll be a price to pay if Daddy finds out you gone down there.”

“But my chores are all done until the afternoon,” I replied. “There ain't no law I have to stay put till then.”

“But there is a law that says you're not to go to the songcatchers' school.”

“All I'm asking is that you tell Mama and Daddy I gone to the post office to visit with Miss Ellie. And to make it the truth, I'll stop by and say hey to her on my way down the mountain.”

James thought on that a second and said, “I won't tell 'em you gone to the school if'n I don't have to.”

I knowed that was the best I'd get from James, who will joke and tell tales for fun, but when it comes to serious matters hates to be false. I didn't reckon they'd ask my whereabouts anyway. Mama and Daddy let us roam fairly free of a morning if we done our chores and weren't needed to take care of Baby John.

Oh, and didn't I feel so free as I headed
toward the creek! There was butterflies floating across the sky and a breeze lifting up the leaves, making a sweet hush sound over everything. A slew of birds chirped from their branches, the bobwhite calling “Hoyee! Hoyee!” and the mourning dove answering back with its “Who-whoooo, whoooo.”

I started thinking on all the fine things that have come to our mountains in the last few years. There's the settlement school and the post office, Miss Sary, the barn dances, and Doc Weems and his wife, Miss Olivia, who is a nurse. They come up last year because Miss Olivia has a lung sickness and the mountain air is good for what ails her. She was at the house on the night that Baby John was born and helped Mama with the birthing.

And now them Baltimore children! They are just one more good thing that has come to us, I thought as I trotted down the path, and I felt lucky to be Arie Mae Sparks who lived in Stone Gap, North Carolina.

Here is another secret: the nearer I come to
the settlement school, the shakier my insides got. I've been knowing most folks around here since I first entered this world, and they are as familiar to me as the ten toes on my feet. But Ruth and Tom Wells and the others might as well have been kings and queens from Paris, France. What if they thought I weren't worth their time? Tom had been nice enough when we gone to the caves to see the ghost of ol' Wendell McBean, but we had been in a clutch of children, and it was too many of us to suss out his true opinion of me.

All I could do to ease my nerves was to say over and over, “You are a good girl, Arie Mae Sparks,” which is what Mama says when I've pleased her. I singsonged them words all the way down to the post office.

“Well, hey there, Arie Mae!” Miss Ellie called when she saw me. She was leaning across the counter, not doing a thing but chomping on a piece of gum. “You got another letter to send to your cousin down in Raleigh?”

“Not today, but most likely I will tomorrow,”
I told her. “I just thought I'd wander in and give a holler, see how you was doing.”

“Oh, my bones is tired and my head is aching something fierce. You ever heard of something called bursitis? I just read an article about it in the
Ladies' Home Journal
.”

Sometimes I think I'd like to work in the post office, just so I could look at all the magazines that come through the way Miss Ellie does. Some folks complain about it, because she's always dripping her morning coffee on their copies of
The Progressive Farmer
and
The Saturday Evening Post
before they even get a chance to read them, but I don't drink coffee, so that wouldn't be a problem with me.

Miss Ellie went on for a while about the many things that ailed her, and then someone else come in and she shooed me away, like I'd been taking up her valuable time. So I headed on to the settlement school, telling myself what a good girl I was and remembering what Mama always says, that folks is folks, more alike than different.

The Baltimore children was all out in the big garden behind the main building when I got there. The garden is Miss Pittman's pride and joy, as they are able to grow most of the school's food in it. A fair number of the younger students live at the school and take their meals there. They come from Stone Gap, Bakersville, Cranberry, and Spruce Pine, and most of them are between fifteen to seventeen years old. The boys stay in a house called a dormitory to one side of the main building, and the girls stay in a dormitory to the other side of the main building.

Miss Pittman was standing in the middle of the garden when I got there, a hoe in hand, but when she saw me she waved and walked over. “Why, Arie Mae, I'm surprised to see you here. Is everything all right?”