“From a storm? No, child. We’re safe here. We’ll head to Baines Creek soon.”
Daddy added, “If the good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise.”
I slept for a spell, and when I opened my eyes, the good Lord had willed the rain to stop and tamed the creek like we wished for. Then the warm sun came up on as special a day as I’d ever witnessed.
What I saw for the first time was colors. At ten years old, I had to learn my colors like a baby cause I don’t know a single one. There was greens and yellows and reds. But it was the blue sky and white clouds that tickled me most. They was pure is what they was, and surely a peek at heaven. I wish my brothers coulda seen colors.
My folks told me they give me Mother Jones’s whole name and hoped I’d grow a backbone straight and strong as hers. They hoped the red hair on my baby head was a sign I had spirit to spare.
Truth is, I won’t much of a fighter. The good and bad of me is that I see blessings most every day in every way. Even when it’s a speck that shines in a gray sea of sad. It’s how my heart looks at things. My folks was kind not to let me know they was disappointed in me.
That hero, Mary Harris Jones, she’s been gone forty years now, and folks still say her name Mother Jones respectful, like in church. On the day I take my leave, this Mary Harris Jones—who was lucky enough to marry sweet Willis Jones and don’t have to get used to different, and whose name always got scrunched in tight to Marris Jones that fits me better—is gonna ride out on the next puff of wind. That’ll be fine by me. I don’t look for glory in this world.
We come to Baines Creek after a long walk part the way and rides from strangers the rest. Mama said baines is another word for bones so I thought I’d see a lot of bones on the ground, but I don’t see any that first day. They must have been underground like my brothers.
We go to cousin Luther Hicks’s place with our heads down low from loss and our bellies empty. They feed us beans and give us a roof outta the weather.
They got a boy named Walter who’s twelve to my ten, and a nasty bugger. He tried to catch a look at me when I use the privy or wash at the creek or change clothes in the shed where we stay. I stay away from him as best I can, but he’s a sneaky little snot with too much time on his hands.
One time, Mama asked me to pick blackberries before the critters eat em all, and I make a bark basket and go like I’m told, but I watch out for Walter. I pick as fast as I can when somebody shoots at me! I drop my basket and fall to my knees. I look round while my heart knocks like knuckles on wood. Then they shoot again and miss me by a foot. Dirt kicked up off the ground to the side of me.
Then I know it was ornery Walter. I pick up my basket and go back to picking berries. He shoots off to the side again to mess with me, but he gets tired after a while when I don’t pay him no mind.
I think Mother Jones would have kept right on picking berries, too.
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I got a handful of days to fill before Skeeter comes and it’s chicken-killing time, and my Sadie needs tending to in the worst kind of way. I seen her a handful of times since Gladys and me went to lay eyes on the teacher, Miss Kate Shaw, at the start of September. What I saw that day was Sadie beat up and it tore me apart, her just married a few weeks back. I never feel more helpless than when I see Sadie watching Roy and following after him and that lizard Billy Barnhill who’s more dumb than danger.
Now everybody’s talking bout that D-name girl gone missing. That could happen to our Sadie if somebody don’t do something. She needs to hear somebody loves her and that she’s got a place to come to if she’s inclined to leave.
I cook since sunup cause I don’t visit empty-handed, specially for family. I put the huckleberry cobbler and potato bread on the truck seat. Add a jar of my watermelon-rind pickles cause they’re Roy’s favorite. He’s got a sweet tooth, and them pickles is a peace offering if he’s at the trailer and don’t want to let me in. I don’t think to ask Gladys to go with me this morning cause she already give up on the girl. Plus Sadie’s life looks a lot like her granny’s. I don’t blame Gladys if she shies away.
The old truck starts on the first try so that’s a good sign. I drive past Gladys’s place. She’s out in the yard looking down at the rusty plow that’s been sitting useless in the weather for years. Her and me can’t move that plow though we aimed to long ago. It’s like it growed roots into the earth a mile down. It’s where Walter got killed years back by the perfect storm sent by God. Gladys don’t look up when I toot the horn and wave.
Walter’s death was a miracle is what some folks called it, and I think a lot of halfway Christians studied their Bible more after Walter got smote for his sins. I hear moonshine was off for a spell back then. Everybody now knew for a fact that God slays sinners and strikes em down for their transgressions.
I was the one who come up on Walter the morning after the storm cause I needed to see if Gladys was okay. I saw Walter even from a distance down the road and could tell it won’t right how he leaned on that plow. I could tell he won’t passed out drunk in the yard like a hundred times before. This time puffs of smoke come off his blackened body.
From top to bottom, Walter Hicks was scorched. His clothes was burned clear off the front of him, and his skin was black as coal dust he never worked in. Even his pecker was shriveled like a burnt sausage. What little hair Walter had on his head was gone.
It was his face that was the clincher. It was the face of a man who saw the devil straight on and knew the forever fires of damnation waited for him: Walter’s eyes was burned out. The skin on his nose, cheeks, and lips was burned clear down to the hard white of his bone. I guess he had so much hooch soaked in him that he lit up like kindling when lightning struck.
I looked down on that dead man fried by fire back then and wondered how many sins Walter Hicks carried to damnation in that charred, black soul of his. He beat on Gladys cause she stayed. He beat on Carly till she run away. He messed with me, too. Once. Almost. But I grew a backbone.
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It’s the same tired story these hills hear a million times. A nasty boy who can’t keep his britches buttoned. A coward who sneaked his daddy’s hooch to find courage.