Darby (2 page)

In 1878, back when cotton growing earned money, my granddaddy built our house and named it Ellan after the town in Scotland that his granddaddy came from. It’s a big house, with three floors and wide hallways and pretty windows. It’s painted white and has long steps that climb up to the front door and porch, where Mama sometimes sits, hiding from the sun in a rocking chair. Chimneys run all through the insides of Ellan, and we got electricity and plumbing that Daddy bought in 1916, the year before I was born. The floor is dark, and on the walls somebody painted a fake wood grain that I love because I sometimes check to see if it’s real, but it never is.

From the road, our house looks like a mansion, with its whiteness and windows and porches that come off the second and third floors. You can’t see the peeling paint and chipping wood at all. Rising up around the house, giant trees look like flagpoles before their limbs open halfway to the top. And on account of my daddy collecting camellia bushes, in the fall and winter we always got bright flowers around. When he’s not home, I sometimes break one off and put it in my hair. Then I go hide so Mama won’t see me.

In back, we got about twenty little half-tumbling-down outbuildings for holding things, including one where me and Beth wrote
THE
DARBY
AND
BETH
SKOOL
. When my mama saw it, though, she said that the teachers don’t know how to spell, so me and Beth crossed out
SKOOL
and wrote
SCHOOL
, which looked better anyway. Later, off in the woods, me and Evette put a sign on a tree that said,
THE EVETTE AND DARBY SCHOOL
.

When I wrote my newspaper story on toads, I sat in the Darby and Beth School and thought for a few hours before I even started anything. It wasn’t nearly as fun as Evette made it sound, either. In a way, it was like work. Frustrated, I finally started my article by saying that toads are different from frogs because they’re uglier and got shorter legs. And both those things are true. Following that, I said that my mama called the wart story an old wives’ tale. Then I said that McCall reads all the time, and he wants to be a doctor, and he found out that toads don’t give warts, either. Last, I wrote how a girl I knew had carried a toad all day, and she never got a single wart, “and that’s the truth,” I put at the end.

Since McCall had been late for dinner the night before, he was home, so I carried my newspaper story up to his room for him to see.

Sitting on his bed, he read my article and looked right at me. “Darby,” he said, “this isn’t so good.”

“Why?”

“Mostly because you only got one paragraph. You need to break it up different. You gotta have an introduction and middle part and end, and you gotta spell things right.” Scratching notes beside my sentences, he said, “See?”

“Yeah,” I said, hating writing.

“Aside from that, it’s okay.”

“You think?” I asked, perking up.

“Sure. A lotta people don’t know about toads.”

After dinner, I fixed my story. Then I took it to Daddy, who was sitting downstairs and drinking a glass of headache medicine. “You think this is a good newspaper article?” I asked him.

Holding my notebook, he read what I’d written. “It’s very good,” he told me.

“You think if I ask, Mr. Salter will put it in the
Bennettsville Times
, since you know him?”

“You’ll have to check with him, honey,” he said, squeezing one of my shoulders.

Before Mama wakes me in the morning, somebody starts the fire in my bedroom. I stand beside it when I put my clothes on, but no matter how cold I get I try to be quiet. My aunt Greer shares my room, and I don’t wanna make her stir.

Mama, McCall, Daddy, and me sit at the big table for breakfast. After saying grace, Daddy passes the grits and sausages and eggs that Annie Jane makes. When my daddy’s done, he goes out and gives instructions to his farm hands. Then he drives to Carmichael Dry Goods in the Buick. Not too much later, me and McCall leave for school in the old Chevrolet.

The morning after I wrote my story, I took it to school with me so that during lunch I could show it to Mr. Salter, who owns one of the two newspapers in town. Sitting in arithmetic, my mind wandered on to Evette, and I wondered what she would think when I showed her how fast I had become a writer. I thought for sure she’d be real proud of me.

At lunch, I straightened my dress and spit on my hands to wipe the dust off my shoes. Then I ran through the yard, over a few blocks, and up the steps to the newspaper office, where Mr. Salter and another man sat at two desks, working.

“Well, hello, Darby,” Mr. Salter said.

“Hello, sir,” I answered, and the walls of the newspaper office seemed about forty feet high, near about as tall as a Georgia pine.

“Can I help you?”

I nodded.

“Your daddy need something?”

“No, sir, Mr. Salter.”

He stared at me. “Okay, Darby, do you need something?”

“Nothing real big,” I said, “except for I wrote a newspaper article, and I wanted to know whether you might put it in your paper.”

“Well, Darby, what’s it on?” he said, smiling.

“Toads,” I said. “About how it’s not true they cause warts when you pick ’em up.”

Mr. Salter stood and put a hand to his chin so that he could think on what I’d just told him. He asked, “What got you to write an article?”

“On account of my friend saying it’s fun.”

He went over to the window behind him, then came back. “I’d have to see it before I say yes or no. Can you drop it by here later?”

My heart nearly stopped cold. “I don’t need to ’cause I got it with me, sir.” I gave it to him.

Opening my newspaper notebook, Mr. Salter read it slow, and I was sure he was relieved to know about toads; he smiled the whole way. “Darby, would you let me edit it a little?”

“You mean fix the spelling, Mr. Salter?”

“Mostly, yes. You can come back by and pick up your notebook after school. I’ll have it copied by then.”

I nearly jumped for joy. “Sure,” I said. Then, with my skinny knees nearly knocking like a woodpecker on a tree, I asked, “You think I can do some more articles?”

“If you write ’em, I’ll look ’em over.”

Smiling, I believed he meant that I could.

When I got home that afternoon, I was so happy that I skipped one of Annie Jane’s snacks and rushed off through my daddy’s camellia shrubs and into the cotton rows. For almost an hour, I waited for Evette. Standing close by her house, I hollered for her until I knew she wasn’t home. Then I trudged back to Ellan and sat on the back steps, wanting to tell somebody about getting my story in the paper. Fidgety, I got up and started kicking a ball against a fence. Then I found my pole-vaulting stick and aimed at the hurdle my daddy had rigged for me.

I ran at the hurdle, jabbing my stick into the ground and swinging into the air and over the low bar, the same way I always do. On the other side, my feet dug into the bed of soft sand, and I was suddenly full up with so much happiness that I decided to go again. And while I was backing up, I thought that Evette was right, that it was nice to be a newspaper girl. I even thought that I might be the best and most natural one who ever lived, even better than all the boys and maybe even better than Evette, because she wasn’t going to be in a newspaper any time soon. Still, one thing scared me. How was I ever going to make myself think of a good second story? It seemed like it would be real hard to find anything as easy and near as misunderstood as toads causing warts.

After my daddy said grace and we started eating dinner, I said, “In case anyone wants to know, the newspaper story I was writing is gonna be in the
Bennettsville Times.
Mr. Salter told me so today.”

Mama said, “Really?” She put a surprised hand against her chest.

“I never thought you’d even go ask him, Darby,” my daddy said.

“One thing about you, Darby,” Mama said, “you’ve always been stubborn.”

Daddy chewed and swallowed a fork’s worth of ham. “When’s the story going to run?” he asked.

“What do you mean
run
?”

“When’s Mr. Salter going to put it in the paper?”

“Oh,” I kind of hemmed. “Well . . . he told me he thinks it’ll get
runned
next week.”

Smiling, Daddy said to Mama, “I suppose he thought it was sweet.”

I shook my head. “I think he just liked it.”

McCall declared, “Darby, it’s true. He thinks it’s funny, is all.”

“Does not,” I replied. “He said it was real good. He . . . he told me it was one of the best newspaper reports he’s ever seen.” After lying, I decided to frown at McCall.

Mama clanked her fork against her water glass. “McCall, if you can’t say something nice, don’t say a word.” She made slits of her eyes the way she did when she was a teacher at the Murchison School. Back then, she’d caused all sorts of shivers.

“That’s right,” my daddy told him. “Fact is, we’re real proud of your sister, and the wherefore doesn’t matter.”

“Anyways,” I went on, “Mr. Salter wants me to write more newspaper reports, too.”

Dabbing the sweat on his head with a napkin, my daddy said. “Is that so? What’s your next one going to be about?”

I froze.

“She doesn’t even know,” McCall declared.

“I do,” I yipped. “Since . . . since Great-Uncle Harvey is coming for a visit, I was gonna interview him about what he does all day.”

Aunt Greer said, “Darby, sweetie, he doesn’t do anything but sit in his chair.”

“He talks,” I said, feeling a little dumb. “And he tells family stories. Anyways, I don’t know for sure that I’ll do him. I mean, I got other ideas.”

“Yeah,” McCall muttered as he ate a biscuit, “I can’t wait.”

Mama said, “McCall!” and she clanked her glass again.

The day after Mr. Salter said he would run my newspaper article, Great-Uncle Harvey arrived for a visit. It was a Saturday, and I wanted to rush out first thing and tell Evette my news, but I couldn’t, not with the way we had to clean up Ellan, especially the basement, the place where Great-Uncle Harvey usually parks himself.

At around one in the afternoon, after cleaning and cleaning, me, Aunt Greer, Mama, and McCall loaded into the Chevrolet. Then McCall drove us all down to the train depot, where we sat and waited for the Bennettsville & Cheraw train to arrive.

Great-Uncle Harvey’s real friendly and dresses good, but he can’t see. When he was a kid, he lost his eyesight from the measles, so whenever he visits, he sits in a rolling chair while a black-man nurse pushes him around. As a matter of fact, when he got off the train that day we were waiting, a black-man nurse named Jacob carried him down the steps and over to us, then went back to fetch some bags and the rolling chair.

Also, since Great-Uncle Harvey is old and doesn’t stand much, he isn’t a good stander. So usually, when he’s on his feet, he wants to hug somebody, and he was the same that day. Smiling, he said, “Now, who’s here? Who’s gonna give me a hug?”

My mama answered. “Great-Uncle Harvey, you got Big and Small Darby, Aunt Greer, and McCall located around you.”

“Big Darby,” he said, following my mama’s voice and giving her a squeeze. Then he chased Aunt Greer, me, and McCall the same sort of way, following our voices.

“How are you, Great-Uncle Harvey?” Mama asked when he was done.

“I’m fine now. But that journey from Charleston is a rough, lonely ride.”

Riding back to Ellan, Great-Uncle Harvey sat in the front passenger seat, discussing the smells and sounds of his trip, the way a fly had landed over and over on his cheek during the first couple of hours out of Charleston. I was stuffed in back next to my mama and Aunt Greer. Meanwhile, McCall was driving and real quiet on account of being a little mad. He had to drop us off, then go back and fetch Jacob, the black-man nurse, and he didn’t want to.

“Excuse me, Great-Uncle Harvey,” I said when he finally stopped talking, “you wanna go to McPherson’s Pond later?” It was something me and him always did together.

“He needs to rest,” Mama declared, nudging me softly with her elbow.

“That’s not so,” Great-Uncle Harvey told her. “A little headache medicine, and an hour of sitting, and I’m gonna want some fresh air.”

“Great-Uncle Harvey,” my mama said, “you’ve got all weekend.”

“I don’t mind.”

Mama gave me an uncomfortable hawk-eye. “If you’re gonna take him to the pond, Darby, you have to bring Jacob along with you. Either that, or you can’t go.”

I nodded, but I already figured Jacob was coming. I knew I wasn’t strong enough to steer the rolling chair very good, and I didn’t want Great-Uncle Harvey coasting out of my grip and into the water or something.

The reason me and Great-Uncle Harvey always go to McPherson’s Pond is so that he can get me to hear things I normally don’t. He’s got real sensitive ears, and he recognizes bugs and birds and bullfrogs from their noise. While we were walking, he said to me, “Darby, is there a water bird of some sort fishing the pond over yonder?” With a shaky hand, he pointed off through some sphagnum moss that was dangling in a bristle of tree limbs.