I pick up my tea to give my hands somewhere to go, and say, “Those things sound awful simple. Helping somebody and wanting to read. They don’t sound special to me.” Miss Kate hears the sad in my words, and her face folds in like a drying leaf, curling round the edges.
“Please don’t underestimate those fantastic gifts. Look deeper. There’s more to discover about yourself, and this will become clearer over time.” She tops our mugs again from the teapot, but mine’s still mostly full.
“At the age of fifty-one, I still discover new things about myself.” She opens a tin a sugar biscuits; I take one.
“Like what?” I ask, but really want to talk about me.
Miss Kate scratches her head, and the stand-up cowlick flops to the side. She gazes over my shoulder at some place far away. “Before I came to Baines Creek I lived in a community of five hundred students and teachers. I had two rooms to call my own but I was rarely alone. Rarely ate a meal on my own or took a walk on my own. Until I moved here.” Her eyes come back to me. “I find I love my cabin, the challenges, the solitude, the beauty of this place. I lived in a crowd and thought I belonged in a crowd, but—surprise—I’m more content on my own.”
We sit still for a minute, then take in a big breath at the same time. Then Miss Kate asks a question out of the blue. “What can you tell me about the teacher’s cottage burning down? Do you think it was an accident or on purpose?”
“It be accidentally on purpose is what I think,” I say, and dunk my cookie in my tea.
Miss Kate giggles like a girl and shakes her head.
“What’s funny?” I say, scared I say something wrong.
She says, “Well, what you said, Sadie. Accidentally on purpose. It’s what is called an oxymoron. A perfectly executed oxymoron, if I may say so.”
“Oxy-what?” I scrunch up my nose.
“Oxymoron. You see”—she sits up taller, getting in that teacher way—“it’s one thing for something to be accidental—not planned—and entirely another for it to be on purpose, planned.”
I squirreled those thoughts round, then say, “But accidentally on purpose is what I mean.”
Miss Kate puts another log in the woodstove and wipes her hand on her britches, then sits back down. The fire pops; the logs shift and settle. “I wasn’t criticizing you. And oxymoron isn’t wrong words, Sadie; it’s a play on opposite words, like alone in a crowd and pretty ugly.” Her hands flutter in the air trying to help me see.
“Can you think of another one?” she asks.
She cocks her head to the side but don’t rush me. I want to make Miss Kate proud so bad, but now my belly turns sour, and my eyes wander, looking for the answer. I look at the wet marks my mug leaves on the table. Chew on my thumbnail. Watch a line of ants in the corner who wanna get outta the cold and pick here to be safe.
Then, when my head hurts from trying, it comes to me easy, and I say, “Awful good?”
Miss Kate’s face lights up like a sunrise. She reaches cross the table and squeezes my hands. “Sadie Blue, you are a wonder.”
This woman makes me feel good. Granny don’t like her but she never saw her cept once at church when we hear Miss Kate got fired and wants us to give her a job. Roy Tupkin don’t like her cause she’s my friend, so that don’t count.
I go to wash our cups in the wash bucket when out the window I see Birdie coming up the trail, huffing. Miss Kate sees her too and opens the door, but Birdie won’t come in. She yells, “Come on, you two. Gotta git to the Rusty Nickel,” and she whips right round and heads back down the trail. Hips rock to and fro, walking stick jigs, her making good time. I grab my shawl and Miss Kate her sweater, and we head out the door.
“What’s happened, Birdie?” Miss Kate calls out while she walks with long legs and I run to catch up. My insides rumble cause none of this can be good.
“Bad news for the Dillards. It’s Buck,” Birdie says, and a sad wallop hits me square in the chest.
The Dillards is the family me and Aunt Marris been helping through a hard time, and they helped me through my hard time, too. Aunt Marris is smart cause she knows when we bring food and comfort to somebody else, it brings us comfort, too. I can’t stay in bed when hungry babies need tending to. I can’t cry for long being round happy ones.
Now this. Something happened to Buck Dillard.
When we get to the Rusty Nickel, we see through the window everybody and his brother is already there. On a good day, Jolene and Horace Dillard and their kids are a spindly lot on the puny side going downhill, needing Aunt Marris and me to feed them. Today, they’ve got a room full of friends to hold em up in their hour of need. Mooney’s behind the counter sitting on his stool; the Dillards are in front near the radio to hear good. We slip inside the door. Aunt Marris stands by the Dillards and she sees me come in and motions for me to come on up with her.
I see Mr. Turner, the mailman, who looks different not riding in his truck, sitting tall, delivering news like I seen him do all my days. I don’t figure him for a puny man short as me. I squeeze past Fleeta Wright, who smells like pumpkin pie, and Preacher Eli pats my shoulder, and Jolene Dillard holds out arms to give me a hug. I hug her back, and she whispers in my ear what Birdie said: “It’s Buck.” Jolene and me hold each other while the man on the radio talks. I can’t tell which one of us is shaking more, but we hold each other up and listen.
“…five hours since the explosion rocked this coal town at five thirty this morning, trapping ninety-nine men. It’s a sad situation…”
Buck Dillard. He’s seventeen like me, and on the shy and quiet side like his daddy, Horace. In my mind, I see a tender picture when Buck was fifteen, two years back. He walked outta church with young Eddie in his arms. Tiny Weeza and Pearl on each side held to his coattails, coming careful down the steps, them not up to his waist high, and Buck goes slow so the little girls don’t fall or have to let go of him. He is a kind soul. I bet this morning he don’t plan for his special life to be locked in coal dark, trapped in a mine.
The terrible truth is that paying work in Baines Creek is spotty, and some men go off to work the mines or cut timber. Some men don’t come back whole; some don’t come back at all. Sometimes paying work costs more than the paycheck.