Read Weeping Willow Online

Authors: Ruth White

Weeping Willow (5 page)

 
In the weeks following, autumn exploded and so did my social life.
Splatters of orange and red … the aroma of burning leaves and sharp winds crackling down the holler … the shrill new sound of the telephone ringing!
“It’s for Tiny … again!”
Football season, first downs and touchdowns … perfect skies and a flurry of blue and gold ever whichaway you looked … “The Star-Spangled Banner” … cold, clear nights and school spirit.
Hail, Black Gap High School,
Three cheers for our dear alma mater!
 
Pounding drums and parades … left—right … chills and cheers.
Strawberry shortcake, huckleberry pie!
V-I-C-T-O-R-Y.
Will we win it?
You doggone right!
Black Gap High School,
Fight! Fight! Fight!
 
Boys, winks and giggles, hot chocolate and Sousa marches … our rivals—Blueneid and Richlands and Big Lick—tucked away in the little dips and grooves of the hills like lurking beasts … my first best friends, Bobby Lynn and Rosemary, and Mr. Gillespie, of course, presiding over all, laughing and cheering with us, waving his baton, flitting in and out of my dreams, both waking and sleeping.
It was truly a magic season, but as suddenly as it had begun, it ended. The last football game was played at Black Gap. Afterward, as the crowd milled around, and the parking lot turned into a traffic jam, Rosemary, Bobby Lynn, and I slipped away to a quiet spot on the front campus. In our band uniforms we lay on our backs, looking up at the white steeple of the school against the sky. We were so close by then nothing needed to be said.
Suddenly our thoughts were interrupted by a frightening male voice.
“What’s yer name, girl?”
The three of us jumped to our feet gasping as a man stepped out of the shadows. We faced the intruder.
He was old and stooped over, using a walking stick. He had a long, white beard, and was wearing a toboggan cap over his ears, a red plaid jacket, and overalls.
We were speechless.
“Speak up! What’s yer name?” he repeated, and he poked me so hard in the shoulder with his stick I about fell backward, but Bobby Lynn and Rosemary caught me.
“Ti—Tiny Lambert,” I stammered.
“Huh!”
he snorted loudly, and spit a big splat of tobacco juice on the grass. “You live up Ruby Valley with them Mullinses?”
I nodded.
Rosemary edged away from me. She was about to run for help.
“What? Can’t hear your head shaking, girl!” he hollered.
“Yes!” I spoke up. “I live up Ruby Valley with my mother, Hazel Mullins, and my stepfather, Vernon Mullins. Who are you?”
“None of yer goddamn business!”
That made me mad, and we stood glaring at each other for a minute. Then he turned abruptly and left us standing there.
“Who do you reckon … ?”
“I don’t know,” I said quickly, shivering. “Let’s get back to the others.”
Late that night the face of the old man came back to haunt me. Oh, I knew him all right, though I was surprised I could remember. It was a face from the misty past—a face I associated with Willa, and running across a windy mountaintop, and the taste of strawberries. Grandpa Lambert.
 
Bobby Lynn started spending every Saturday with Aunt Evie learning how to yodel. On pretty days I could hear them up there practicing outside. At lunch I joined them and we gossiped and giggled as we ate something good that Bobby Lynn had brought from her house.
Rosemary’s birthday was on a Saturday in February and she invited me and Bobby Lynn to come to her house and spend the day and night with her. She lived about twelve miles outside of Black Gap. Then a big snow came on that very day, but Bobby Lynn’s daddy put chains on his tires and took us anyway.
It was fun driving through the snow and seeing how pretty everything was. We were in high spirits as we climbed out of Mr. Clevinger’s car and went into Rosemary’s daddy’s store.
Rosemary was helping out, but when we went in, her daddy excused her. She bundled up and we went out the back door of the store right on the river. Before us was a swinging bridge suspended all the way across the river—about thirty or forty yards to the opposite bank where the railroad tracks were. Beyond the tracks, nestled against the hillside, was the Laynes’ cozy white house with smoke coming from the chimney.
“You live over there?” I cried out in amazement. “We have to go over that bridge?”
“Sure,” Rosemary said. “Come on, I’ll show you how to walk it. It’s fun.”
Rosemary struck off across the bridge. It was about three feet wide, with a high mesh-wire fence and a cable on each side so there was no danger of falling off.
It was obvious Rosemary was an expert at navigating that bridge. It began to sway—tike a bed does when you walk on it. She grabbed a cable and grinned at me and Bobby Lynn from the center.
“Come on! You have to pick up the rhythm of the bridge.”
So we took off after her, laughing. But that bridge was a trick you didn’t learn just by watching somebody else. Every time you thought it was going to swing to the right, it went left. And every time you thought it was going to dip, it rose up at you instead. After about ten steps, Bobby Lynn and I had the silly giggles so bad we just stood there hanging on to each other, and to the cable. Rosemary had to come and get us. A few steps at a time, she guided us across the river and up onto the railroad tracks on the other side.
Rosemary’s house was comfortable and clean. They had a big fire going in a fireplace in the living room, and in front of it was a huge round thick rug. I could smell some good sweet thing baking—probably a birthday cake. A television set was turned on in the corner of the room.
Hassell came out of the kitchen with a glass of milk and an enormous sandwich in his hands, and his mouth was pooched out and running over.
“Hi, Hassell!” we said, and he waved his full hands around, while trying to do justice to the load in his mouth.
We laughed. We were prone to laugh at anything.
Mrs. Layne came in from the kitchen wiping her hands on her apron. She was a warm, friendly woman who looked like a middle-aged version of Rosemary.
“Come in, girls. Take off your coats. Ain’t it awful out there?”
“No, no, we’re going to build a snowman,” Rosemary said. “I just came in to ask you to make us some hot tea to drink with the cake.”
“Fine, fine,” Mrs. Layne said.
We went back outside.
“I want to go on the bridge again,” Bobby Lynn said when the snowman was almost finished.
“Me too!” I said.
“Sure we will,” Rosemary said.
The bridge probably was not that much fun for Rosemary, but she was always agreeable.
“After that we’ll go in and have some cake and tea and watch television,” Rosemary said.
“Yeah!”
We finished our snowman and went on the bridge. Back and forth we traipsed, lunged, swayed, giggling all the time until suddenly Bobby Lynn and I discovered the secret, picked up the rhythm, and waltzed across without missing a step.
We met in the middle, hung on to the cable for balance, and gazed out at the half-frozen river and the white hills. The sun was out by then, and we knew the snow wouldn’t last long under its brilliance.
“Yodel for us, Bobby Lynn,” I said.
“Oh, do!” Rosemary squealed.
“I’m not too good at it yet,” she said.
“We don’t care. Do it,” I said.
“Okay,” Bobby Lynn conceded. “Y‘all sing ‘When I Lived in the Valley,’ and when you get to the yodeling part, I’ll do it.”
So we did.
When I lived in the valley,
And my sweetheart in the hills,
Our signal was
Odel
…
odel
…
le … di … whoo!
 
Off she went. She wasn’t Aunt Evie, but her yodeling sounded pretty.
One day I went to call upon
My pretty little miss,
And I didn’t hear her
Odel … odel
…
le
…
di
…
whoo!
 
Rosemary and I applauded for her. We were in the mood and we sang some more. We did “It Don’t Hurt Anymore,” “Oh Baby Mine,” and “The Great Pretender.” Then we started on “I’ll See You in the Spring.” I really loved that song, and let loose. I threw back my head and looked at the sky where the sun was dancing, and I was thinking what a wonderful day it was.
I’ll see you in the willow
Weeping in the stream.
I’ll see you in the newborn fawn
Soft as in a dream.
I’ll stand high on a mountain
And watch young birds take wing.
And though you won’t be there,
I’ll see you in the spring.
 
That’s when it occurred to me that I was singing all by myself. I clamped my mouth shut and jerked my head toward Bobby Lynn and Rosemary. They were just looking at me with these goofy, dumbfounded expressions. I felt the blood rush to my face. What kind of blunder had I made this time?
“What’sa matter?”
“What’s the matter?” Bobby Lynn said incredulously as she put her hands on her hips. “Girl, I never knew you could sing like that!”
“Like what?”
“I never knew anybody could sing like that,” Rosemary added with awe in her voice. “Except Patti Page or Teresa Brewer.”
I was too stunned to speak.
“That was wonderful, Tiny,” Bobby Lynn said.
They were serious. They really liked my singing.
“You know,” Rosemary said, “they’re doing a talent show this year.”
“No, I didn’t know,” Bobby Lynn said. “When?”
“After the beauty contest. They’re doing it so the boys will have something to compete in. But it’s for everybody. Y’all have to be in it. Tiny can sing and you can yodel.”
“Sing some more,” Bobby Lynn said to me.
But I had a sudden attack of shyness.
“Not by myself. Y’all sing with me.”
We started a lot of songs together, which I finished by myself. Afterward we went in and watched television. Mrs. Layne made sandwiches and popcorn, birthday cake and tea.
We watched
Judge Roy Bean
,
Fury,
and
Huntington Dance Party
before the evening news came on.
All the time my mind was racing giddily: “I can sing! I can sing!”
 
Me and Mr. Gillespie are sitting in his car at the drive-in movie at the mouth of Glory on a Saturday night. We are both wearing short sleeves and our arms touch …
“Play me some checkers.” Luther plopped down beside me in the porch swing, and jolted Mr. Gillespie right out of my head. It was a beautiful Sunday in early May, a few days after my fifteenth birthday. I was in shorts for the first time of the season, and a bird was singing from a treetop, “Pret-ty! Pret-ty!”
“Oh, Luther,” I groaned. “Not now. It’s not a checkers day.”
Luther grinned. “Wouldn’t you like to whup me today?”
“Huh!”
That was a joke. Luther was the undisputed checkers champ of Ruby Valley—maybe the world. He could beat anybody. Sometimes strangers showed up at the door to challenge Luther, and they always went away shaking their heads. Luther had just turned nine and he’d been at it for three years. It was a freak thing because he couldn’t do anything else. He still couldn’t read, or add more than two numbers together. Sometimes he had trouble tying his shoestrings, but he sure could play checkers.
“You ain’t played me in a long time,” he said. “Maybe you can beat me now.”
He grinned again, showing two big rabbit teeth in front and a red tongue where he’d been licking dry cherry Jell-O out of the package.
“Sure, Luther,” I said. “And maybe President Eisenhower will come to supper tonight.”
“Oh, come on, Tiny.”
I looked at the hills, which were all filled out with green again. Oh, what a perfect day, I thought, to spend with someone wonderful like Mr. Gillespie … to go romping in the wild places, holding hands.
“If you’ll play me a game, I’ll tell you something I heard Cecil say about you.”
“What? What’d he say? Cecil Hess? Huh! Was he talking about me? I don’t care what Cecil Hess said about me. What was it?”
“Play me a game.”
“I don’t want to play checkers and I don’t care what Cecil Hess said about me. Was it good or bad?”
“I’ll lay out the board,” Luther said and pulled up a crate he kept there on the porch for this very purpose. Then he sat down on the floor cross-legged and laid out the checkers. He always played black. I was red.
“Who did he say it to?”
“Your move.”
“Was he talking to you?”
“No, he was talking to Roger Altizer on the telephone.”
“Luther! Were you listening in on the party line?”
“No, I just picked it up and heard your name.”
Luther made one of his brilliant moves.
“Why don’t you just jump ’em all now and get it over with?” I said.
He laughed. He was in his glory.
“So what’d Cecil say about me?”
“He said somebody likes you.”
“Somebody? Who?”
“I dunno. Some boy thinks you’re cute and he likes you”
“Who? Who?”
“That’s all I heard.”
“You mean Cecil said,
‘Somebody
likes Tiny’? Just
somebody?”
“No, he said the name.”
“And?”
“And what? Tiny, you can’t move there.”
“His name, stupid, what’s his name?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Luther, did you make all that up?”
“No, go ask Cecil.”
“I can’t do that.”
He jumped my last two men, and the game was over.
“One more game,” he said.
“No!”
“Why not? Didn’t I tell you what Cecil said?”
“But you didn’t get the name.”
The telephone rang.
Inside the house I heard Beau and Phyllis go scrambling, and at the same time I made my own mad dash, stumbling over Luther on the way, and the checkers went flying.
Luther said a real bad word, and I yelled at him over my shoulder, “You had something in your mouth I wouldn’t even have in my hand!”
Phyllis beat me to the phone.
“Hey, Dixie,” she said. “Mama’s still in bed. Daddy is, too. What d’you want?”
Dixie was Mama’s childhood friend who I couldn’t stand. She was always asking me personal questions like, “What size bra you into now, Tiny?”
“Here, talk to Tiny,” Phyllis said, and thrust the phone into my hands.
“Hey, Dixie,” I said
“Tiny, I need to talk to Hazel right now, so go git ’er.”
“I can’t do that, Dixie. She’s asleep, and you know how she is when she’s woke up.”
“Well, Tiny Lambert, your Grandpa Lambert died last night. I just found out when I got to the hospital for my shift. You want to be the one to tell your mama?”
“Died? What of?”
“Meanness probably, but that’s not for me to say. You want to break the news to Hazel?”
“No, I’ll go get her.”
“Well, make it snappy. I ain’t got all day.”
I went slow, rehearsing what I was going to say to Mama. I knocked on her door.
“Mama?”
No answer. I waited.
I knocked a second time.
“Mama?”
“Don’t knock on that door again, Tiny!” she hollered.
“Mama, Dixie’s on the phone, and she says it’s real, real important.”
“Dixie’s hind end!” Vern snorted.
“Mama,” I said. “It’s an emergency.”
I didn’t hear anything for a long time.
“Mama,” I called again, exasperated.
Being between Mama and Dixie was a hard place to be.
“All right. All right,” Mama mumbled. “Tell’er I’m coming.”
So I went to the phone and told Dixie Mama was coming, then I went back out on the porch and sat in the swing.
“I can’t find all my checkers!” Luther sputtered. “You gotta buy me some more!”
“Shh …” I tried to hush him. “I’ll help you find them. Now listen …”
Mama could be heard on the stairs.
“What is it?” Luther whispered, and sat down by me.
“Just listen.”
“Hey, Dixie,” Mama said. “Something the matter?”
Silence for a minute.
Then, “Oh.”
That’s all she said
“Grandpa Lambert died,” I whispered to Luther.
“Mama’s daddy?”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you, Dixie,” Mama said. “No, you don’t need to come. I gotta think. ’Bye now.”
And that was that. Mama went back to bed. Derndest thing.
I thought about the night I saw Grandpa Lambert at school. I never did tell Mama about that because I thought it would upset her. One time I heard her say she saw him in Black Gap and he wouldn’t talk to her. She cried. But that was long ago. Maybe she didn’t care anymore.
I sat swinging and thinking about Grandpa and Mama for a long time. It seemed like such a waste for them not to see each other all those years just because … because why? A stupid feud between the Mullinses and the Lamberts a hundred years ago.
About an hour later, Mama came downstairs wearing her britches, an old plaid shirt, and a straw hat. She came out and sat beside me and lit a cigarette.
“Did Dixie tell you what happened?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Tiny, let’s you and me go up to Ruby Mountain.”
“Okay.”
“I got to decide what to do. The body’s at Childress’s Funeral Home, and I don’t want to bring it here.”
“Don’t he have some more kin somewheres?”
“No, his family all moved down to Ohio back in the thirties, ’cept for him. He lost track of them, and I don’t even know their names. There was me and my mother and my brother, Danny James. But they both died of scarlet fever when I was fourteen. That left just me and Daddy till you came along two years later.”
Vern came down the stairs and stood in the doorway with the screen door open.
“Well, come on,” he said, and took the pickup key off its hook just inside the front door.
“Where you going to?” Phyllis called from inside the house. “I wanna go.”
“No,” Mama said. “Just me and Tiny. Get me a bucket out of the kitchen, Phyllis.”
Phyllis came out and stood beside Vern.
“A bucket? What for?”
“The strawberries are ripe up on the mountain. Go on now.”
“Cain’t I go, Daddy?” Phyllis said sweetly and sidled up to him.
“She can ride along,” Vern said to Mama. “We’ll drop y’all off and come back for you later.”
“I reckon,” Mama conceded. “But get me that bucket, Phyllis. The blue chipped one with the daisies on it.”
“I get to go, too,
Ha! Ha! Ha!”
Phyllis couldn’t help needling me as she went in.
The rest of us went down the tall steps. I climbed in the back of the truck because I wasn’t about to sit beside Vern in my shorts. Then Phyllis came out with the bucket and we backed down the hill onto the dirt road. We headed up the holler toward Ruby Mountain, and Phyllis started singing a silly song about a poor old woman who swallowed a fly, and my mind drifted away.
Mama was just a year older than me when she got pregnant with me.
Mama, I thought, what were you like? Did you have daydreams like mine? Did you love my daddy like I love Mr. Gillespie?
The truck began to climb up between two mountains that grew closer and closer together, and the road grew narrower and rockier. Pretty soon it was no more than a cow path with big rocks sticking out of the ground; then the road wound around the face of the mountain like a belt riding up, and you could look down over the side of the truck straight down into a holler far, far below. One slip of the wheel, and …
I visualized the truck bouncing down the mountain, turning over and over, spilling us out and squashing us.
It is stroll-and-perch time on Monday morning. Tiny Lambert is on everyone’s lips.
“She was a wonderful person,” they say. “Wonderful.”
“Nobody knew just how wonderful she really was,” Bobby Lynn says.
“She was never appreciated for her marvelous singing talent,” Rosemary says.
And in band, Mr. Gillespie announces that Tiny Lambert is to be buried in the graveyard there on the hill outside the band-room window where she can always hear the music she loved so much …
“I don’t want to pick strawberries anyhow,” Phyllis was saying.
The road leveled out and we were riding across the top of the mountain. It was covered with daisies and violets and other blooming things. You could look out and see for miles—mountains and valleys, and the sky was all around us. You didn’t have to look straight up to see it.
A memory flashed before my mind’s eye: a memory of me and Willa, tumbling and laughing in the wildflowers. And I felt like I was coming home.

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