Weeping Willow (2 page)

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Authors: Ruth White

BOOK: Weeping Willow
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It was a perfect September morning. The sky was a still blue above the hills, where some of the trees were just beginning to turn. I could smell smoke, and bacon frying somewhere.
Cecil Hess was down by the roadside, the first as always, waiting for the bus.
“Hey, Cecil,” I said breathlessly.
“Hey, Tiny,” he said and grinned at me.
Cecil was one of those boys everybody liked. You couldn’t help it. He was friendly and good-natured, with freckles and a turned-up nose. He made you laugh, and he was dependable. In the last year he had shot up a head taller than me.
“I was so excited I was up at 5 a.m.,” he said, laughing. “I saw the sun come up.”
That was another thing about Cecil—he was an open book. You knew you could trust him because what he thought he said. What other boy would admit to looking forward to the first day of high school?
Cecil and I had grown up together and we were used to each other in a brother-sister kind of way, but you couldn’t call us friends because he was a boy. We had missed only one year being in the same room at school, which was the previous year, and that was because I took beginner’s band and Cecil didn’t. I played the clarinet. Mr. Stewart, the county band director, came to our school every day to give us music lessons, and the eighth-grade band members had to be in the same room.
Cecil lived across the road and the creek with his parents and four little brothers and sisters. Next door to them were the Combs family. Beside our house on the hillside lived the Horns. Behind us, farther up the hill, was Aunt Evie Delong’s shack, and closer to the road on our side were the Boyds. These six houses in a cluster made up our neighborhood here in the bend. There were plenty of other houses scattered throughout the holler, but no more in sight of us.
The high school bus appeared around the bend. Mrs. Stacy, the driver, waved as she drove by. She would go up the holler first, then pick us up on the way back down.
J. C. Combs, Dolly Horn, and Joyce Boyd came out of their houses and joined us at the bus stop. They were all seniors, and they talked about things like guidance counselors and class rings. Cecil and I felt inferior, so we didn’t say anything.
Directly, the bus came back down the road and stopped for us. We climbed aboard and I glanced around quickly at the girls. I groaned because nobody else had on a plaid dress or saddle oxfords. They were wearing skirts and blouses and white bucks. Last year, when I was still in brown lace-ups, they had saddle oxfords. So I got me a pair of saddle oxfords, and now they were sporting white bucks! How did they know these things? Nobody ever said, “Hey, let’s get together and buy white bucks.” No, it just happened by instinct or something, and I was the one who never was tuned in.
Cecil and I settled down in a back seat, perfectly still, but taking in everything.
After making frequent stops to pick up more students, we left the mouth of Ruby Valley and went over a big steel bridge and onto the main highway, which followed the river into Black Gap. The whole trip took about twenty minutes.
Black Gap High School was a large two-story redbrick building with a white steeple over the front entrance. Behind it the hills rose dark against the sky.
Mrs. Stacy told us to go to the auditorium for instructions. I was grateful for Cecil’s presence. Together we found the auditorium, where sheets of paper were tacked along the wall listing the homerooms and who was in them. They were done alphabetically, so that once again Cecil and I were assigned to the same room.
We followed the white bucks down the black-and-white-tiled hallway and found the right place—Mrs. Yates’s homeroom. There we settled in again and watched and listened and waited.
Some of our classmates from Ruby Valley were there, along with many strange faces from other hollers, and of course the town kids dominated everything.
Mrs. Yates gave us our schedules for the year. I was to have English, algebra, history, science, home ec., and band. I could hang on to Cecil most of the day, since his schedule was the same as mine until fifth period, when he had shop instead of home ec. Then sixth period he had phys. ed. and I had band.
That first day we spent only thirty minutes in each class, being introduced to our teachers and the subject matter. I tried to take careful notes, but by third period it occurred to me that all the teachers were saying the same things I had heard for eight years in a row. Maybe they were just like me—all fired up the first day, then gradually fizzling out by the end of the week, making the rest of the school year just as boring as every other year.
Fifth period, I followed a strange girl to the home ec. room when I heard her say she was going there, and after that Judy Snead, a band girl from Ruby Valley, helped me find the band room.
That’s when my whole life changed. I didn’t know it right away, but that’s when it happened—that very moment when I stepped into the band room. It was a very large room on the second floor overlooking a graveyard smack on the hill outside the window. Around the room were semicircles of chairs and music stands clustered around a podium on a platform front and center. That’s where Mr. Stewart would stand and direct. Each section of the room was labeled—woodwinds, percussion, brass. I settled down in the woodwinds section. I didn’t see the band director come in and take his place on the platform because other students were milling around me. But when my section was seated, and I looked up, it was not pudgy little Mr. Stewart I saw—oh no. Here was a creature wonderful in proportion and appeal—a joy to behold right there in front of me. He was tall, tan, blond, and blueeyed, but it was his marvelous arms that held me spellbound. With a baton in one hand, the arms were raised, perfectly poised. Did I say he had blond hairs on his arms? Well, he did. Then he lowered those arms and tapped the baton on his music stand.
“Attention please,” was all he said.
And he had us in his back pocket.
“I am Mr. Gillespie.”
He did not talk like people in Black Gap, Virginia. He did not move like somebody who grew up in a holler, and I could not picture him as the son of a coal miner. You could be sure he was from elsewhere—Hollywood, California, maybe.
“I am your band director. As you probably know, Mr. Stewart resigned during the summer. I am a recent graduate of the University of Virginia, and I feel very fortunate to be here with you.”
Then he smiled.
I snapped a photo of that smile into my brain so that, afterward, I could close my eyes and see him standing there with his golden arms, smiling down at us.
The girl beside me giggled and poked me.
“He’s cute,” she whispered, and I glanced at her briefly.
She was petite, blond, and green-eyed.
“I’m Bobby Lynn Clevinger,” she said.
But I was lost in Mr. Gillespie’s spell. Already I had forgotten Bobby Lynn Clevinger.
“What’s your name?” she insisted, poking me again.
“Tiny Lambert,” I said, irritated.
“I mean your real name,” she came back.
“Tiny Lambert!”
“We have to play for all the football games,” Mr. Gillespie was saying. “So we have to practice on the field. Starting tomorrow, you must bring your instruments every day.”
“Tiny is not a name; it’s an adjective,” Bobby Lynn whispered.
“And Bobby is a boy’s name!” I shot back.
She giggled again.
“It’s short for Roberta. So what’s Tiny short for? Teenie Weenie? Little Bitty?”
That was the first but far from the last time Bobby Lynn started me giggling in band.
“So where do you live, Little Bitty?” Bobby Lynn teased me after we left the band room.
“Ruby Valley. Where do you live?”
“In town.”
And that was the final remarkable event of that most remarkable half hour when I was giggling with a town girl while falling in love with a god.
 
Climbing up the hill to home after getting off the bus was always the worst part of the school day. But since that day had been only three hours long, I was home by twelve forty-five, and I practically ran up the hill. That was a big mistake because when I got to the porch steps I ran smack into them and bumped my shins. I was always doing stupid things like that.
I rubbed my legs and glanced around to see if anybody was looking at me, and right next door, in the Horns’ fenced-in front yard, was the most beautiful collie dog I ever saw. I about fainted because
I’d
always wanted a collie, and Vern wouldn’t let me have a dog at all. I walked around and knelt beside the fence.
“Hey, boy,” I whispered to him and put my fingers through the wire.
He wagged his tail and came to me. I can’t tell you how much I loved that dog!
“It’s a girl,” Dolly said as she entered her yard.
“She’s so pretty, Dolly. What’s her name?”
“Tennessee, ’cause that’s where she came from. We call her Nessie for short.”
“Is she yours?”
“Yeah.”
Nessie kept looking at me and made no move to go to Dolly. Dolly went inside.
“If you were mine, Nessie,” I said, “you would never leave my side.”
Nessie grinned.
After a while I reluctantly left the dog and went into my own house. The kids were eating cold beans and light bread. I poured myself a glass of buttermilk.
“So how was school?” I said to nobody in particular as I parked myself at the table.
“Awful,” from Beau.
“Stupid,” from Luther.
“Miz Matney don’t like me,” from Phyllis.
“Already?” from me.
“Nobody likes you,” from Beau.
“Daddy does,” from Phyllis.
“Daddy does,” Luther mimicked her.
“Oh, shut up, Luther,” Phyllis said.
Luther cracked Phyllis on the head with his knuckles and she started bawling.
“Holy cow,” I said in disgust. “Can’t y’all get along for five minutes?”
I put my dirty glass in the sink with the breakfast dishes.
“Look who’s so high and mighty since she’s in high school!” Beau said.
I ignored him.
“Luther’s a nasty old …” Phyllis struggled to find the right word. “ … slop jar!” she bellowed at last.
“A what?” Beau, Luther, and I said together.
“A nasty old slop jar!” Phyllis cried.
That set the rest of us to laughing.
“A nasty old slop jar, huh?” I said. “Well, let’s get him, what d’you say?”
“Yeah!” Phyllis smiled through her tears, and we all made a dive for Luther.
The floor was covered with a roll-down linoleum rug, and it was sticky and grimy, but that’s where we were rasslin’, tickling Luther, squealing, and giggling, when Mama’s voice cut through the din. I wondered what she was doing up and with a dress on, too.
“What’s all this racket?” she said crossly.
Of course we didn’t pay her any attention. We never did. She grumbled and went to the sink. She filled it full of hot, soapy water, acting like she was going to do the dishes.
We stopped playing and settled around the table again.
“You can just do the dishes, Miss Smarty,” Mama said to me. “Since all you have to do is waller on the floor.”
I went to the sink without a word. Syrup and grease were congealed on the plates. Oh well, she did cook breakfast, and in all fairness to Mama, she rarely made me do the work she hated to do herself.
Mama turned on the electric stove to heat up the morning coffee, which had grown strong enough to stand alone. Then she sat down at the table.
“The telephone company’s coming at two,” she said.
“The telephone company!” we chorused.
So that’s why Mama was up and dressed.
“Yeah, they said if we could get everybody in the bend to join a party line, they’d run us a pole up here.”
“And are they all going in?” I said.
“Yeah, all except Aunt Evie. We’re meeting at the Hesses’.”
“You mean it?”
“Yeah,” Mama said, pleased with herself. “I mean it.”
“We don’t know nobody to call,” Beau said.
I went on washing dishes and looked out at the hills against the sky. My mind was racing through the next four years of high school. Bobby Lynn Clevinger probably had a telephone. All the town kids did. Maybe she would call me, and maybe a boy would call me.
“Mama, can I have a pair of white bucks?”
“A pair of what?”
“White bucks. They’re shoes. And everybody—”
“And what’s wrong with your saddle oxfords is what I’d like to know?”
“Oh, I love my saddle oxfords, but if I had two pairs of shoes for school, they wouldn’t wear out so fast, see?”
“No, I don’t see, and I’ll tell you one thing right now, you can just get this new-shoes disease out of your system. I’ll not hear no more about it.”
The coffee began to perk, and she poured herself a cup. I finished the dishes.
“Now, go see if Aunt Evie wants anything from the A & P,” Mama said.
“Are we going to the A & P?”
“Yeah, when Vern comes home.”
We went to the A & P about every two or three weeks because they had so much more stuff than the small coal company store down the holler.
I went out the back door, which opened onto the hillside, and I turned to the right and followed a wellworn path that curved around the hill to Aunt Evie’s shack above us.
Aunt Evie was nobody’s aunt that I knew of, but everybody called her that. She was sixty-three and just as poor as you can possibly be and still exist. She had no known income whatsoever. She couldn’t even take in washing because she had no washing machine and no well. Once in a while she did some sewing and canning for people, but that was about it. That’s why our community pitched in and gave her things all the time, like coal in winter. Every time any of us went to the store, we picked up something for her, too, like cornmeal, or beans, or lard. And always when you took it to her, she said, “I don’t have no change right now. I’ll pay you later.”
“Okay,” we said.
She owed us about a thousand dollars apiece, but nobody was counting, because everybody loved Aunt Evie. Like Cecil, she was the kind of person you naturally loved.
When Aunt Evie was a young girl of seventeen and dressed up in white at the church, she was jilted. She never got over it; in fact, she talked about it almost every day these forty-six years later. She was always laying plans for “when Ward comes back …” She was convinced that something prevented him from showing at the church that day, and she still expected him to return to her. Even though Ward had disappeared from these parts altogether and never contacted Aunt Evie again, she never gave up hope. When she had candles on winter nights she burned them in the windows for Ward. In the summer she sat out on her tiny porch and watched every car that came up the holler. She was pitiful.
But every person I knew, adult or child, visited Aunt Evie. She listened to you, and she remembered everything you said to her. She never judged or shamed you, and you always left her feeling like you had solved something.
I knocked on her door, then walked in, because in the first place, I knew she was home. Where else would she be? And in the second place, nobody in Ruby Valley ever locked a door. It was such a bother to have to stop whatever it was you were doing to unlock it when somebody came.
Aunt Evie’s house was very small and dark. It used to be a miner’s shack a hundred years ago, and it still looked the same as it did then. There were two rooms—a sitting room and kitchen together, and a small bedroom tucked right into the hillside in back. There was a side door leading to a huge clearing in the woods which served as her back yard.
“Hidy, girl,” she greeted me.
She was eating boiled potatoes at the kitchen table.
“Pull up a cheer and have a tater.”
I sat down with her.
“No thanks, Aunt Evie. Mama says you need anything from the store?”
“I’d like to have me some brown sugar if hit’s not a bother to you.”
“Anything else?”
“Not today, honey. How was school?”
“Okay. I made a friend, Aunt Evie.”
“First day? That’s good, Tiny.”
So I told her about Bobby Lynn Clevinger.
“Clevingers are good folks,” she said. “Is she Jacob’s girl or Horace’s girl?”
“I didn’t ask her daddy’s name.”
“If she’s Horace’s girl, she’s got the finest daddy ever lived and breathed. Horace’s daddy, Clint, was Ward’s good friend.”
I leaned in close in the dim room and whispered, “Guess what, Aunt Evie?”
She wiped a bit of potato from the corner of her mouth and grinned.
“Hit’s a boy, ain’t hit?”
“No, it’s a teacher,” I said, giggling. “It’s our new band director, Mr. Gillespie. It was love at first sight.”
“So tell me,” she said breathlessly, like she was interested and excited for me, and I believe she really was. She hung on to every word I said, and asked me to repeat the part about the blond hairs on his arms. She liked that. Pretty soon she was giggling with me.
“Tiny’s in love! Tiny’s in love!” she chanted like a schoolgirl.
“Oh, Aunt Evie, nobody’s ever going to love the likes of me.”
“And what do you mean by the likes of you? You’re about as fine as they come.”
“Oh, you know, I’m not pretty and popular. I never know what to wear. Everybody else seems to know. And I don’t know what to say to boys. I’m always daydreaming, and I run into things, and—”
“My goodness,” Aunt Evie interrupted me. “I’m sure glad you told me how awful you are. ‘Cause if you hadn’t a’told me, Tiny Lambert, I woulda thought you’s an all-right gal. But I reckon you orta know.”
“You know what I mean, Aunt Evie.”
“I know you sell yourself short. Just keep telling yourself how bad you are, and sure enough you’ll live up to your own expectations.”
“What d’you mean?”
“Have you got time for a story?”
“Sure.”
I always loved Aunt Evie’s stories.
“Well, I knowed this family when I was a girl of twenty. They were smart enough, I reckon, and good folks, too, but ugly! Whoo—ee! They were nearabout the ugliest people I ever saw. They all had tiny, squinty eyes set real close together, humped noses, and big elongated chins. It was embarrassing to see them all out together. Folks looked away. Well, poor Lila was my age and probably the ugliest one of the bunch, but the tenderest-hearted. Hit hurt her real bad not to have one spark of good looks to her name. She nearly cried her eyes out before Clyde Justus come along, twenty years older’n her, and no looker hisself, but a good man, and he took her to wed. In a year’s time, Lila found herself with child, and confided to me, as I was her onliest friend.
“‘Evie,’ she said to me. ‘My baby’s going to be the loveliest child ever seed in these parts.’
“I said, ‘Course hit will be, Lila.’
“I honestly didn’t see how Lila and Clyde could have a pretty child. But, Tiny, I was wrong and I learned a valuable lesson.”
“You mean they did have a pretty baby?”
“Yeah, the most adorable little girl, who grew up into the most beautiful woman ever I beheld. Hit was a pleasure just to look at her.”
“How do you explain it, Aunt Evie?”
“Why, hit’s easy, honey. From the day that child was conceived, she heard only good things said about herself. Her mother talked to her constantly before and after she was born.

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