The radio man goes on. “We’ve been told two dozen miners escaped right after the explosion before we got here. They’re badly burned and have been taken to Morgantown, but we don’t know…” Jolene and me squeeze each other and rock back and forth, and hope rises in the crowded room like a bubble of air coming to a gasping man. Bad luck threw Buck a bone, to be burned but not buried. At least there’s a sliver of hope.
The telephone shocks us, ringing loud over the radio talk, and everybody stops and looks at it like it’s alive and gonna bite us. Mooney turns down the radio and nods for Buck’s daddy, Horace Dillard, to pick up the ringing phone, and the poor man trembles and shuffles up to it. On the fourth ring, he lifts the receiver, and nobody makes a sound while Horace listens to a faraway voice, then says yes, yes, and bye. He hangs up, and his shoulders go to trembling, and Jolene hurries to him and takes his crying face in her tender hands, and he whispers, “He’s in the hospital.”
My empty belly fills with sweet joy I feared won’t ever come again, and the Dillard babies run and put arms round their mama and daddy, hugging each other. Buck will come home when he can.
Aunt Marris and me take the Dillards home on a day the sun pokes out from low clouds and shines a little warmth on blessed souls. Jolene and Horace sit in front, and I climb in back with the little ones, and we ride off, waving to Miss Kate and Birdie, who wave back. Preacher Eli does a happy jig in the road to make the children laugh, and they turn young for a minute, giggling at him. Their oldest sister, Lucy, and me hug em extra to keep em warm. By the time we get to the Dillard home, people from church are already there on the porch with food and helping hands. We leave today knowing hope walked in their front door and will stay for a spell.
Heading back to my place, Aunt Marris says, “It don’t seem right that beat-down folks gotta get their hearts bruised, too. Buck Dillard’s life changed today, but his mama and daddy’s gonna take whatever comes home. They got help from folks so they can float awhile.”
I’m lucky, too. When I get home, Roy’s truck ain’t there.
? ? ?
That night, with no sign of Roy, I got the trailer to myself. A wind whips through the trees, and hard rain clacks on the roof like BBs. I sit straight up in bed when a thought flies outta the dark. It’s bout when Mama left me behind and went off on her own.
My mama, Carly Hicks Blue, who I don’t recollect these years later, but all the same, we look alike and I carry her blood…
Did Mama go off looking for her special life?
Did she have to leave Baines Creek to find it?
Did she have to leave me behind?
Birdie Rocas
Some folks call me a witch, and that’s a good thing when it comes to digging ginseng. They come up on me in my long dress dragging the ground, catching twigs and leaves and stones. Got me a crow nesting in my topknot. I talk a little crazy, and folks back away and turn tail. Those who get forceful to my face got Tattler Swann to deal with. He’s scrawny and wiry, but Tattler and me is a pair.
Him and me dug ginseng back in the early days of September, before falling leaves covered the red berries and men turned desperate when the money plant’s gone.
When the ginseng was ready for harvest, Tattler showed up at my place at first light that morning with his digging stick. He got leather strips tied below his knees in case of rattlers. I got on three wool dresses so if them snakes strike, they get a mouthful of wool.
“What’s seng going for this year, Tattler?”
“Romey’s doing seventy dollars a pound.”
“That’ll do.”
The root of ginseng was what we gonna dig that day, hang it to dry, keep some for what ails us, and sell the rest to Romey for big money. Romey sends seng from our mountains all the way to New York City and cross the water to where the Chinaman lives. Seems rich folks far off got burdens of worry this plant can fix.
That’s why Tattler and me headed into danger that day, but when that money plant come in late summer, lazy men turn greedy. They mess with the hardworking. Take what ain’t theirs. We got digging sticks and burlap sacks. I got a pistol in my pocket.
There’s a honey hole on the north side of Shetland Holler where we headed that belongs to Chilly Dodd. He let me dig on his land cause I plant back what I take. He say he won’t shoot if he saw me with my digging stick.
“You a caretaker of the land, Birdie Rocas. I’m pleased to share my seng with you once in a while.”
Cause of Chilly Dodd, finding ginseng this year was easy; getting seng home without it getting stole was another matter. Tattler and me got time enough to get to Shetland Holler and back in daylight. We didn’t dawdle. Didn’t wanna end up in the woods at night with seng poachers.
? ? ?
Tattler always looks like a bundle of twigs, all legs and arms with no meat on his twelve-year-old self. That hunting day last month won’t different.
“You eat anything?”
“Had me an egg. Won’t near enough,” Tattler said, looking like the beggar he was.
“Get you some hardtack and whatever’s on the table,” I said.
Like usual, my crow friend, Samuel, was on a branch outside my door. When he seen me take holt of my digging stick, he glided down easy and settled in my hair, then we three was gone in the shy morning light.
It rained a big one last night, and we waded through mud in the low spots and crossed through the creek to wash it off. It was all the same. When the air stirred that morning, leftover rain dropped on us. We’d dry when the sun popped up.
We got to the top of the first ridge, and I stopped and Tattler stopped. He looked off in the distance while I rubbed my knee and twisted my foot thisaway and thataway. Gout was acting up mean and I got a nasty cramp in my arch. When I walked on, Tattler walked, too. The boy got natural manners.
Been couple of years since I head over Shetland Holler way, but the way don’t change. We cut through Old Nate’s farm that’s stood empty for ten years. We walked under pieces of pale bones hung long ago from a tall tree, dangling and clanking in the breeze.
“Them really damn Yankee soldier bones?” Tattler asked.
“Yep. Nate come up on em in a gully with their flesh rotted off. There was buttons, scraps of uniforms, and musket balls there for the telling. He don’t want to bury them bones on his land. Don’t want em to poison his dirt so his crops won’t never grow again. He strung em up at the edge a his land in insult and disrespect.”
I muttered, “Wonder what kinda rope he used that don’t rot?”
Tattler don’t say, but cut his eyes up at the ribs and hips and leg bones swaying at rope’s end, and curled his lips in disgust. He spit to the side to get the taste of Yankee outta his mouth.
We passed a shell of Nate’s cabin with the door missing. The roof blowed off from strong wind years back but the cockeyed walls still stand. Squatters, who gotta be worse off than most, took up here now and then. Today, it was empty. A barn on the hill leaned to the left like Jerome Biddle and his short leg.
“Birdie, you believe that stuff they say bout Old Nate’s ghost who still walks these woods and scares folks to death? You think he’s real?”