Walk on Earth a Stranger (3 page)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

D
addy always says I was born with a gold nugget in my left hand and a pickax in my right. That's why Mama had such a hard time birthing me; she had to squeeze a lot more out of her belly than just a bundle of baby girl. The first time I heard it told, I gave my rag doll to Orpha the dog and announced I would never have children of my own.

It didn't take me long to figure it for a fancy lie, like the one about St. Nicholas bringing presents on Christmas, or how walking backward around the garden three times would keep the aphids out of our squash. But that's Daddy for you, always telling tall tales.

I don't mind. I love his stories, and his best ones are the secret ones, the mostly true ones, spoken in whispers by the warmth of the box stove, with no one to hear but me and Mama. They're always about gold. And they're always about me.

After shucking my boots and banging them against the
porch rail to get off the mud, I walk inside and find Daddy settled in his rocking chair, his big, stockinged feet stretched as near to the box stove as he dares. He starts to greet me but coughs instead, kerchief over his mouth. It rattles his whole body, and I can practically hear his bones shake. He pulls away the kerchief and crumples it in his fist to hide it. He thinks I don't know what he's coughing up.

The bed quilt drapes across his shoulders, and a mug of coffee steams on the tree-stump table beside him. The house smells like burning pine and freshly sliced turnips.

“Mama said you found some gold today,” Daddy says calmly as I set my boots next to the stove to dry.

“Yes, sir.” I head back to the table, where I reach into my pocket for the eggs I gathered and set them beside Mama's stew pot.

He sips his coffee. Swallows. Sighs. “Did I ever tell you about the Spanish Moss Nugget?” he asks. Then he doubles over coughing, and I dare to hope it's not so violent as it was yesterday.

“Tell me,” I say, though I've heard it a hundred times.

Mama's gaze meets mine over the stew pot, and we share a secret smile. “Tell us,” she agrees. I pull up a chair, then lay my rifle on the table and start taking it apart.

“Well, since you insist. It happened in the spring of '35,” he begins. “The easy pickings were long gone by then, and I'd had a hard day with nothing to show. I was walking home creekside, trying to beat the coming storm, when I chanced on a moss-fall under a broad oak. A wind came up and blew
away the moss, and there she was, bright and beautiful and smiling; bigger than my fist, just sitting there, nice as you please.”

Never in my life have I seen a nugget so big. I've heard tales, but I'm not sure I believe them. Still, I nod as if I do.

He says, “But the storm was something awful, and night was falling. I couldn't get to town to get her assayed, so I brought her home. I showed her off to your mama, then I hid her under the floorboards for safekeeping until the storm passed.”

He pauses to take another sip of coffee. The fire inside the stove pops. As soon as I'm done cleaning my gun, I'll take off my stockings and lay them out to dry too.

“And then what happened?” I ask, because I'm supposed to.

He sets down his cup and rocks forward, eyes wide with the fever. “When I got up in the morning, what did I see but my own little Lee with that nugget in her chubby hand, banging it on the floor and laughing and kicking out her legs, like she'd found the greatest toy.”

Mama sighs with either remembrance or regret over the first time I divined gold. I was two years old.

He says, “So I re-hid it. This time in the larder.”

“But I found it again, didn't I, Daddy?” I cover the ramrod in a patch of clean cloth and shove it down the muzzle. It comes out slightly damp, which means I might have faced a nasty backfire the next time I shot.

“Again and again and again. You found it under the
mattress, lodged in the toe of my boot, even buried in the garden. That's when I knew my girl was special. No,
magical
.”

Mama can't hold back a moment more. “These are rough times,” she warns as she drops pieces of turnip into the pot. She has a small, soft voice, but it's sneaky the way it can still a storm. Mostly, the storm she stills is my daddy. “Folks'd be powerful keen to hear tell of a girl who could divine gold.”

“They would, at that,” Daddy says thoughtfully. “Since there's hardly a lick of surface gold left in these mountains.”

This is why we are not rich, and we never will be. Sure, the Spanish Moss Nugget bought our windows, our wagon, and the back porch addition. But the Georgia gold rush played itself out long ago, and it turns out that not even a magical girl can conjure gold from nothing or lift it from stubborn rock with just her thoughts. We've labored hard for what little I've been able to divine, and I've found less and less each year. Last summer, we diverted the stream and dug up the dry bed until not a speck remained. This year, we attacked the cliff side with our pickaxes until Daddy got too sick.

There's more gold to be found deep in the ground—my honey-sweet sense tells me so—but there's only so much two people can accomplish. Daddy refuses to buy slaves; he was raised Methodist, back in the day when the church was against slavery.

Today's nugget is my first big find in more than a year.

Lord knows we need the money. Which is a mighty odd thing to need, considering that we have a bag of sweet, raw gold dust hidden beneath the floorboards. Daddy says we're
saving it for a rainy day.

But Mama says we hid it because taking so much gold to the mint would attract attention. She's right. Whenever we bring in more than a pinch or two of dust, word gets out, and strangers start crawling all over our land like ants on a picnic, looking for the mother lode. In fact, I've earned my daddy a nickname: Reuben “Lucky” Westfall, everyone calls him. Only the three of us know the truth, and we've sworn to keep it that way.

In the meantime, the barn roof is starting to leak; the cellar shelves are still half empty, with the worst cold yet to come; and we owe Free Jim's store for this year's winter wheat seed. A big nugget like the one I found could take care of it all. It's a lucky find, sure, but not so lucky as an entire flour sack of gold dust worked from a played-out claim.

“So, Leah,” Daddy says, and I look up from wiping the stock. He never calls me that. It's always “Lee” or “sweet pea.”

“Yes, Daddy?”

“Where
exactly
did you find that rock?”

“By a new deer trail, west of the orchard.”

“I heard the rifle shot. Sounded like it came from a long ways off.”

“Sure did. Longer still before I got him. I nicked him in the flank, and he ran off. I tracked him down the mountain and across the creek to . . . Oh.”

I had crossed over onto McCauley land.

Daddy's rocking chair stills. “It doesn't belong to us,” he
says softly.

“But we need—” I stop myself. Jefferson and his da need it as bad or worse than we do.

“We're not thieves,” Daddy says.

“I found it fair and square!”

He shakes his head. “Doesn't matter. If Mr. McCauley came by and ‘found' our peaches in the orchard, would it be all right to help himself to a bushel?”

I frown.

“She should put it right back where she found it,” Mama says.

“No!” I protest, and Daddy gives me the mind-your-mother-or-else look. I swallow hard and try to lower my voice, but I've never mastered the gentle firmness of Mama's way. I'm a too-loud-or-nothing kind of girl. “I mean, if we can't keep it, then the McCauleys should have it. Their cabin is in bad shape, and their milk cow died last winter, and . . . I'll take it back. I'll give it over to Jefferson's da.”

Mama carries her pot to the box stove and sets it on top. “What will you tell him?” she asks, giving the stew a quick stir.

“The truth. That I was hunting, that I tracked my wounded buck onto his claim and chanced upon a nugget.”

Mama frowns. “Knowing Mr. McCauley, the story will be all over town within a day.”

“So? No one needs to know I witched it up.”

She slams the pot lid into place and turns to brandish her wooden spoon at me. “Leah Elizabeth Westfall, I will not
have that word in my house.”

“It's not a bad word.”

“If anyone hears it, even in passing, they'll get the wrong idea. I know we live in modern times, but no one suffers a . . . that word. There's no forgiveness for it. No explaining that will help. I know it full well.”

Mama does this sometimes. She alludes to something that happened to her when she was a girl, something awful. But I know better than to press for details, because it won't get me anything but more chores or an early trip to bed.

“And I'll not remind the entire town that we send our fifteen-year-old daughter out hunting on the Lord's Day,” she continues, still waving that spoon. “Our choices are our choices, and our business is our business, but no good will come from throwing it in people's faces.”

“I'll take it back,” Daddy says. “I'll tell him I was the one out hunting.”

“Reuben, you can hardly walk,” Mama says. “No one will believe it.”

“I'll wait a few days. Let this cough settle. Then I'll go. Maybe I'll do it right before heading to Charlotte.”

This is what Daddy tells us every day. That when his cough “settles,” he'll take to the road with our bag of gold. He'll have it assayed at the mint in Charlotte, North Carolina, where no one knows us and no one will ask questions.

“Sure, Daddy.” I don't dare catch Mama's eye and give space for the worry rising in both our hearts.

I rise from the table and walk with heavy steps to Daddy's
rocking chair. I pull the nugget from my pocket and place it in his outstretched palm. The gold sense lessens as soon as it leaves my hand, and for the briefest moment I am bereft, like I've lost a friend.

“Well, I'll be,” he says breathlessly, turning it over to catch the morning light streaming through our windows. “Isn't it a beauty?”

“Sure is,” I agree. It's so much more than beautiful, though. It's food and shelter and warmth and
life
.

His bushy eyebrows knit together as he looks at me, straight on. “This nugget is nothing, Lee. Even your magic is nothing. You're a good girl and the best daughter. And that? That's something.”

I can't even look at him. “Yes, Daddy.”

I return to the table to finish cleaning my rifle. It's a good time for quiet thinking, so I think hard and long. If Mama won't let us sell our gold dust, and Daddy refuses to let me keep that nugget, then I need to figure out another way to make ends meet.

I pause, my rag hovering over the wooden stock. “I could do it,” I say.

“What's that, sweet pea?” Daddy says.

“I could take our gold to get assayed in North Carolina. I'll drive Chestnut and Hemlock. The colts'd be glad for—”

“Absolutely not,” Mama says.

“It's nice of you to offer,” Daddy says in a kinder tone. “But the road is no place for a girl all alone.”

“You'd be robbed for sure,” Mama adds. “Or worse.”

I sigh. It was worth a try.

Mama's gaze on my face softens. “You are such a help, my Leah, and I love you for it. But you would do too much if I let you.”

“Tell you what,” Daddy says. “When this cough settles, maybe your mama will let you come with me.”

“Maybe I would,” Mama says unconvincingly.

“I'd like that,” I say.

When this cough settles, when this cough settles, when this cough settles.
I've heard it so many times it's like a song in my head.

Maybe I'll set traps this winter. Maybe we'll have another big flood, which will give us an excuse to say we found more gold. Maybe our winter wheat will do better than expected. Maybe I'll escape to Charlotte with that bag of gold and beg forgiveness afterward.

Maybe I'll become a real witch, who can cast a spell that will keep our barn dry and fill our cellar.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

B
y morning, the air has warmed enough that fog slithers thick and blue through the creases of my mountains. Because of yesterday's hunting success, Daddy lets me hitch Peony to the wagon and drive to school.

As soon as I pull up, I can tell something is amiss. Instead of pelting one another with snowballs or playing tag or hoops, the little ones stand clutched together for warmth, holding tight to their dinner pails, speaking in hushed tones. It's like someone important has died, like the governor. Or even the president. But no, the courthouse flag is not at half-mast.

I hobble Peony and scan the schoolyard for Jefferson. He has a knack for seeing everything around him, and if anyone can speak truth to me, it's him.

Annabelle Smith, the judge's daughter, finds me first. “Well, if it isn't Plain Lee!” she calls out. “Driving to school like the good boy she is.” The girls my age are clustered around her, and they giggle as I approach.

“You seen Jefferson?” I ask.

“Shouldn't you be out hunting?” Her smile shows off two adorable dimples. God must have a wicked sense of humor to make such a devil of a girl look like such an angel. “Or mucking around in the creek?”

“Please, Annabelle,” I say wearily. “Not today. I just want to talk to my friend.”

Her smile falters, and she indicates a direction with a lift of her chin. “I think he has something you'll want to see.”

I'm not sure what that means, but I nod acknowledgment and head off toward the outhouse.

Behind it is Jefferson, surrounded by a gaggle of braids and skirts, which is odd because the town girls—even the younger ones—usually avoid him. He stands at least a head above them all; tall enough so the hem of his pants sits high, revealing feet that are bare, even in winter—He must have outgrown his boots again. His face is framed by thick, black hair and a long, straight Cherokee nose he got from his mama. An old bruise yellows the sharp line of his cheekbone.

He sees me, and waves a bit of paper. He extricates himself from the girls and meets me halfway, at the entrance to the small white clapboard that serves as our schoolhouse. The girls eye me warily, but they don't follow.

“It's
gold
, Lee,” he blurts before I can open my mouth to ask. “Discovered in California.”

My stomach turns over hard. “You're sure?”

He hands me a newspaper cutout. It's already smudged from too many fingers, and it's dated December 5, 1848—more
than a month ago.

“President Polk announced it to Congress. So it has to be true.”

Thoughts and feelings tumble around too hard and fast for me to put a name to them. I sink down on to the slushy steps, not caring that my second-best skirt will get soaked, and I rub hard at my chin. Gold is everywhere. At least a little bit of it. How much gold would it take for the president to make a special announcement?

“Lee?” he says. “What are you thinking?” His usually serious eyes blaze with fever, a look I know all too well. A look that might be mirrored in my own eyes.

“I'm thinking you're going to head west, along with this whole town.” That's why everyone's so somber. Dahlonega was built on a gold rush of its own, and every child for miles will understand that change is coming, whether they want it to or not.

He plunks down beside me, resting his forearms on skinny knees that practically reach his ears. “They're saying the land over there is so lush with gold you can pluck it from the ground. Someone like me could . . .”

Silence stretches between us. He hates giving voice to the thing that hurts his heart most; he hardly even talks about it to me. Jefferson is the son of a mean Irish prospector and a sweet Cherokee mama who fled with her brothers ten years ago when the Indians were sent to Oklahoma Territory. Not a soul in Dahlonega blamed her one bit, even though she left her boy with his good-for-nothing da.

So when Jefferson says “someone like me,” he means “a stupid, motherless Injun,” which is one of the dumber things people call Jefferson, if you ask me, because he's the smartest boy I know.

“Daddy will want to go,” I whisper at last. And I want to go too, to be honest. Gold is in my blood, in my breath, even in my eyes, and I love it the same way Jefferson's da loves his moonshine.

But, Lord, I'm weary. Weary of trying to be as good to Daddy as three sons, weary of working as hard as any man, weary of the other girls scorning me. And I'm weary of bearing this troubled soul, of knowing things could go very badly if someone learned about my gold-witching ways. If we moved west, to a place where there was still gold to be had, it would start all over again, harder and more troublesome than before.

Then again, maybe California is a place where a witchy girl like me wouldn't need an explanation for finding so much gold. Maybe it's a place where we can finally be rich.

“Da will want to go,” Jefferson says. “But we don't have enough money to put an outfit together. Look at this.”

He unfolds the newspaper, and the bottom of the article is a list of all the items a family needs to go west: four yoke of oxen, a wagon, a mule, rifles, pistols, five barrels of flour, four hundred pounds of bacon . . .

“That'd cost more than six hundred dollars,” I say.

“For a family of three, like yours. But even one person needs at least two hundred.” He shakes his head. “There's
got to be a different way.”

I know from his tone, as surely as I know Mama's locket doesn't contain a lick of brass, that Jefferson wants to go west more than anything. “You're going to run away,” I say.

“Maybe. I don't know.” He scuffs his bare foot against the step, sending a wave of sludge over the edge. “I could take the sorrel mare. Hunt my way there. Or work for somebody else, taking care of their stock. It's just that . . . It's just . . .”

“Jeff?” I peer close to try to figure him. He has a wide mouth that jumps into a smile faster than lightning. But there's nothing of smiling on his face right now.

“Remember the year the creek dried up, and we caught fifty tadpoles in the stagnant pool?” he says softly.

“Sure,” I say, though I have no idea why he'd bring it up. “I remember you dropping a handful down my blouse.”

“And I remember you screaming like a baby.”

I punch him in the shoulder.

He jerks backward, staring at me in mock disapproval. “Your punches didn't used to hurt so much.”

“I like to get better at things.”

His gaze drifts far away. Rubbing absently at his shoulder, he says, “You're my best friend, Lee.”

“I know.”

“We're too old for school. I only come to see you.”

“I know.”

All at once he turns toward me and grasps my mittened hands in his bare ones. “Come west with me,” he blurts.

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.

“Marry me. Or . . . I mean . . . We could tell people we're married. Brother and sister, maybe! Whatever you want. But you're like me. With your daddy sick, I know it's really you working that claim, same way I work Da's. I know it's your own two hands as built that place up.” His grip on my hands is so tight it's almost unbearable. “This is our chance to make our own way. It's only right that—Why are you shaking your head?”

His words brought a stab of hope so pure and quick it was like a spur in the side. But now I've a sorrow behind my eyes that wants to burst out, hot and wet. Jefferson is partly right: I'm the one who makes our claim work. He just doesn't know how much.

“Leah?”

I sigh. “Here's where you and I are different. I
love
my mama and daddy. I can't leave them. And yes, it's my claim as much as anyone's. I'm proud of it. I can't leave it neither.”

He releases my hands. Together, we look out over the snow-dusted yard to find the others staring at us. They saw us holding hands, for sure and certain. But we ignore them. We're used to ignoring them.

“You might not have a choice,” he says. “If your daddy wants to go to California—”

That stab of hope again. “Mama will convince him not to. He's too sick.”

“But
if
you go—”

The school bell peals, calling us inside.

“We'll talk later,” I say, more than a little glad to let the
subject go. I've lots of thinking to do. In fact, I do so much thinking during the next hours that I'm useless for helping the little ones with their sums, and when Mr. Anders calls on me to recite the presidents, I mix up Madison and Monroe.

I drive home as soon as school lets out, not bothering to say bye to Jefferson, though I wave from a distance. I need to get away, and fast, find some open air for laying out all my thoughts about California and gold and going west, not to mention the stunning and undeniable fact that Jefferson just asked me to marry him.

As offers go, it's not the kind a girl dreams about while fingering the linens from her hope chest. I'm not even sure he meant it, the way he stumbled over it so badly.

I've thought about marriage—of course I have—but no one seems to have taken a shine to me. It's no secret I spend my days squatting in the creek bed or hefting a pickax or mucking the barn, that I have an eagle eye and a steady shot that brings in more game than Daddy ever did, even during his good spells. I might be forgiven my wild ways if I was handsome, but I'm not. My eyes are nice enough, as much gold as brown, just like Mama's. But I have a way of looking at people that makes them prickly, or so Jefferson says, and he always says it with a grin, like it's a compliment.

One time only did I mourn to Daddy about my lack of prospects. He just shrugged and said “Strong chin, strong heart,” then he kissed me quick on the forehead. I never complained again. My daddy knows my worth.

I suppose Jefferson does too, and my heart hurts to think
of him leaving and me staying. But the truth is I've never thought of him in a marrying kind of way. And with an awful proposal like that, I don't know that Jefferson's too keen on the idea either.

A gunshot cracks through the hills, tiny and miles distant. A minute later, it's followed by a second shot. Someone must be out hunting. I wish them luck.

By the time my wagon comes in view of the icy creek and the faint track that winds through the bare oaks toward home, I decide there's no help for it but to talk everything out with Mama and Daddy. We share secrets among ourselves, maybe, but we have none from one another.

Peony tosses her head, as if sensing my thoughts. No, it's the surrounding woods that have put a twitch in her. They are too silent, too still.

“Everything's fine, girl,” I say, and my voice echoes back hollowly.

As the leafless trees open up to reveal our sprawling homestead, right when I yell “Haw!” to round Peony toward the barn, something catches my eye.

A man's boot. Worn and wrinkled and all alone, toppled into a snowbank against the porch.

“Daddy?” I whisper, frozen for the space of two heartbeats.

I leap from the bench, and my skirt catches on the wheel spoke, but I rip right through and sprint toward the house. I don't get far before I fall to my knees, bent over and gasping.

Because Daddy lies on his back across the porch steps, legs spread-eagled, bootless. Crimson pools beneath his head and
drips down the steps—tiny rapids of blood. His eyes are wide to the sky, and just above them, like a third eye in a brow paler than snow, is a dark bullet hole.

“Mama!” I yell, and then I yell it again. I can't take my eyes off Daddy's face. He seems so surprised. So alive, except for that unblinking stare.

What should I do? Drag him away before he ruins the porch, maybe. Or put his boots back on. Why did Daddy go outside without his boots?

My hands shake with the need to do something. To fix something. My eyes search the steps, the porch, the wide-open doorway, but I can only find the one boot, shoved into the snowbank. “Mama? Where are Daddy's boots?” My voice is shrill in the winter air, almost a scream.

I use the porch railing to pull myself to my feet. If I can just find that blasted boot, everything will be fine. Why isn't Mama answering?

The world shifts, and I stumble hard against the railing.

Two gunshots. I heard two. “Mama,” I whisper.

I start running. Through the drawing room, the bedroom, the kitchen still messy from supper. Upstairs to the dormer room where I sleep, then back down again. Sunshine has broken through the clouds, streaming light through our windows. Mama's touches of love are everywhere—the blue calico curtains of my bedroom, the pine boughs winding our otherwise plain banister, the wrapping-paper flowers stained yellow with wild mustard, poking from the vase on our mantel. Yesterday's venison stew, still warm on the box stove.

But Mama is nowhere to be found, and the place feels so bare it's like an ache in my soul.

Still calling for her, I race outside and bang on the outhouse. I search the barn. I splash through our tiny stream and sprint into the peach orchard.

Under the trees, I stop short. The world is so empty and quiet. Too quiet, as if even the trees need to be hushed and sad for a spell. Which is just as well; I must stop panicking and start thinking.
You're a smart girl, Lee,
Daddy always says, especially when I struggle with algebra.
You can figure this.

Winter chill works its way through my boots, which aren't quite dry from yesterday's hunt, and I wrap my arms around myself against the cold and the dread. In the distance, Peony snorts at something. I left the poor girl hitched to the wagon. She'll have to keep.

I close my eyes and concentrate, turning in place like a compass.