Anybody Shining (8 page)

“Why, yes, ma'am, I was just out walking and thought I'd come by and see how the children was doing. Pastor Campbell says that the practice of hospitality is the centerpiece of a Christian life.”

Miss Pittman nodded her approval. “I fully
concur! As for the children, they are enjoying their morning in the fresh mountain air.”

I couldn't help but believe Miss Pittman and I saw a different picture. Oh, a few of the little ones seemed to be having a fine time pulling up clumps of weeds and throwing them at each other, but the rest of them Baltimore children was leaning against their hoes and wiping the sweat from their brows. They looked purely miserable.

I searched the crowd for Tom and found him planted at the end of an okra row, peering at something he was holding. When he saw me, he held out his hand.

“This is an odd-looking creature,” he called, pointing at the fuzzy bug crawling across his fingers. “I've never seen the likes of it.”

“Why, that's a woolly worm,” I informed him when I got close enough to see. “You can tell how bad the winter's going to be by looking at its stripes. See how some are black and some are brown? Well, if the brown stripes is wider, than the winter's going to be nice and
mild. But if the black stripes is wider? Boy, it's going to snow something fierce and you won't see a thaw until April.”

Tom watched as the woolly warm crawled from his hand to the edge of his sleeve. “I've heard a theory about acorns predicting winter weather. If the trees make more than the usual amount of acorns, it means the winter will be colder than usual. It's nature's way of providing for the squirrels. But my question is, how does nature know the winter's going to be bad?”

Now that brought up all sorts of topics for me. “Nature knows lots of things, and you can tell a lot of things by what nature does. Did you know if the sun keeps shining while it's raining, that means the rain won't last no more than half an hour? And if you see a crow flying real low, that means a big wind is commencing to blow.”

Tom held up his hand, like he wanted me to stop. “Let me get my book out. I want to write all this down.”

And then from his back pocket he pulled out
a book the size of a deck of cards. “I like to collect interesting information and stories,” he told me, brushing the woolly worm from his sleeve onto the grass. “One day I'm going to be an author or a newspaper reporter.”

I had never met nobody before who wanted to be an author or a newspaper reporter, and right away I thought maybe that's what I'd like to be too. “What kind of training do you need for that sort of work?”

“If you want to be a writer, you write. At least that's what my tutor, Mr. Sheard, says. ‘Don't just want to be a writer, Tom, be a writer!' He's always telling me that.” Tom leaned down and give his left knee a rub, like it pained him. “Would you mind if we found someplace to sit?”

“How about under that tree over yonder?” I pointed to a pretty chestnut tree a little ways away from the garden.

We sat down under the tree, and Tom took a minute to get hisself comfortable. You could tell his leg was a bother to him, and I wanted
to ask him what had happened to cause his limp, but I reckoned it wouldn't be polite. Instead I asked him if he'd written any stories yet or if he'd just been thinking about it so far.

“I've written a hundred at least,” he declared. “I'm not much good at running or games, so I have a lot of time to write. I don't mind, though. I'd rather be writing stories than doing most anything else. Sometimes I make them up, and sometimes I visit my neighbors and ask them to tell me about interesting things that have happened to them. I practice my newspaper reporting skills that way. It's all about collecting the details, Mr. Sheard says.”

“I wish there was more news around here to report,” I told him. “You'uns coming up from Baltimore is the biggest news we've had all year. I guess it would be odd for you to write a story about yourself, though.”

Tom give me a shy look. “If we worked together, well, I bet—I bet we could scare up some good stories. You could be my guide, and then Mother couldn't complain about me
going off on my own. She's sure I'm going to be eaten by a mountain lion the minute I'm out of her sight.”

I wanted to be a reporter alongside of Tom so bad the taste of it was in my mouth! Only I didn't know the first thing about collecting stories or how to go about finding interesting things to write about. Tom might be sorry he'd asked for my help.

But if you are looking for your own true friend, and somebody who might be your own true friend is sitting right next to you, you will make every effort to help them.

“I reckon I could come up with a hundred good story ideas if you give me time to think of them,” I declared. “I just have to set my mind on it, is all.”

Tom looked pleased. “Good. Now tell me more about this woolly worm, so I can get all the facts down in my book.”

Well, Cousin Caroline, didn't we spend the rest of the morning trading stories back and
forth beneath that tree? Oh, we talked over all manner of things, from the interesting ways of animals to our beliefs about the afterlife. I told Tom I reckoned heaven must look a lot like Stone Gap, North Carolina, and he reckoned he agreed.

When I got home for dinner, Mama give me a questioning look, but she never come out and asked me where I been. As for Daddy, he'd spent the whole morning in the upper field and never even knowed I was gone.

I am writing this letter in the last light of the day. In the morning I will walk it over to Miss Ellie at the post office, and maybe, just maybe, I will go visit the Baltimore children for a minute or two, hospitality being the centerpiece of a Christian life, as Pastor Campbell will tell you.

Signed,

Your Cousin,

Arie Mae Sparks

Dear Cousin Caroline,

Sometimes I wonder about writing these letters to you, just what good is coming of it? I know that it makes Mama happy for us to be friends, even if our friendship is only on my side, so that is one reason I keep writing. Also, I find that I like remembering the things I done of a day and what folks said and the thoughts that I thought. Sometimes I am surprised I have so much to write about. Turns out my life is fairly interesting, even if certain cousins of mine don't appear to agree.

Today I learned that there is another good reason to write letters, and that is you never know who you will meet at the post office. Why, you might even run into your own true friend and have yourself an adventure.

Now Tom Wells was the last person in the world I expected to see as I come up the post office path this morning. Didn't he have something he needed to be learning, like how to make a chair or weave a basket? I didn't even know they let them Baltimore, Maryland, children off the school grounds by their own selves.

But there he was, sitting on the bench where me and James liked to sit to wait for the train. My heart quivered a bit at the thought Tom might be leaving, but then I noticed there weren't no packed bags by his feet, and I calmed down.

“Why ain't you at school?” I called as I run over to him. “You got skills to learn, son!”

“I spent two hours this morning learning how to weave a tablecloth on a loom. That's enough skills for one day.” Tom waved a packet of letters at me. “Miss Pittman asked me if I'd mind posting her correspondence. I think she was trying to get rid of me.”

“Why? Were you making trouble?”

“I think I was asking too many questions and they were getting in the way of her history lesson. I now know more about the history of looms and weaving than any other boy my age in the country.”

I sat down next to him. “I think it would be right fun to make a tablecloth. Or anything like that. I never done it.”

Tom looked at me all curious. “Doesn't everyone up here weave?”

“Not to my knowledge. I think my granny did, but now you can get cloth at the store. No need to make it yourself.”

“I wonder if Miss Pittman knows that?”

“I think she's fairly against buying things at the store. She likes the old ways best.”

Tom tapped his stack of letters against the bench so that they was all even with one
another. “I don't have to be back at the school until noon. You want to go exploring?”

I glanced at Tom's leg, the one that don't work so good. Only the day before I'd been so excited by the thought of us having adventures and hunting for stories, but now I wondered if Tom was really up to tramping around the hills and hollers. “It's a lot of climbing to get anywhere around here,” I said. “Lots of tree roots and rocks.”

The color rose up in Tom's cheeks. “I can climb. I can do just about anything except run.”

I nodded, figuring that Tom knew best about what he could and could not do. “That's fine then. Let's mail our letters and I'll show you the creek.”

Now, Cane Creek is a well-traveled area, and mostly what there is to look at is birds and fishes and a snake or two swimming through the water. If you hear something crunching down the path, why, it's almost always someone on their way down to the post office or the settlement school. But I figured to Tom, who
growed up in a city, Cane Creek would be high adventure.

I had no idea how much adventure we was about to have.

Tom, as it turned out, was an admirer of rocks. “Look at that one,” he said, pointing to a craggy piece of quartz crystal sticking out from the water. “I wonder how old it is? A thousand years? A hundred thousand?”

I'd not ever wondered about the age of rocks. They seemed like forever things to me, not items with their very own birthdays. “How can you tell?”

“There's a scientific method,” Tom assured me. “But I don't know much about it. It has something to do with looking at the layers, I think.”

I started examining the rocks along the creek bed. There was quartz crystal and limestone and lots of shiny mica. I reached down to pick up a piece of mica to show Tom how you could peel its layers off one by one, and when I looked back up, well, that's when I seen the bear.

It was actually a black bear cub, and it was
standing on the other side of the creek, looking over at us.

“Tom,” I said, keeping my voice low. “If I was you, I wouldn't make any sudden moves. We're just going to back up real slow.”

Tom, to his credit, did not startle or shout or even say a word. He just did exactly what I did, which was one slow step backwards, then another slow step backwards. Still talking soft and low, I said, “Now, you may not have noticed this, but there is a bear cub across the creek from us, and I can tell by the look in his eye he finds us a right interesting sight.”

Tom stopped in his tracks. “I see him!” he said in an excited whisper. “Is he going to come after us?”

My experience with bears is fairly limited, but I have heard the stories from others, so I knowed what the possibilities was. “He ain't going to attack us, if that's what you mean, but if his mama is around, she just might. So the best thing is for us to move away real slow like we're doing.”