Faith, Hope, and Ivy June (3 page)

As Ivy June rounded the bend, her eyes checked the small clearing beside the bridge. Jessie’s car would be there, of course, unless she’d left early for her shift at the sweatshirt factory. What Ivy June didn’t want to see was her father’s pickup, which would mean he hadn’t found enough work to keep him away till sundown. What she did want to see was Papaw’s dusty blue Chevy, which would mean he was home from the mine, safe for another day. This time both her daddy’s pickup and the old Chevy were in the clearing, so they sort of canceled each other out.

Ivy June stepped onto the bridge, and it swayed as she walked. Each footstep made a hollow thunking sound, and after nine steps she was walking toward the little frame house with its covered front porch, a single window on each side of the door. In back, Daddy was splitting wood and stacking it on the pile.

Ivy June went around the house.

“Papaw’s driving me to Hazard tomorrow, so I came to say goodbye,” she said.

It was Papaw letting her go, so Papaw’s gas was getting her there.

Russell Mosley glanced her way momentarily, then lifted the sledgehammer again and brought it down on the iron wedge with a clank.

“You all set, then?” he asked, reaching down to toss the splintered chunks to one side.

“Just have to close my suitcase,” Ivy June told him.

“Well then,” he said, and after another silence added, “Supposed to rain all week. Good you’re outta here before the road turns mud.”

He was a man of few words, her daddy. Tall and thin, with a sallow look about his face. After two or three swings of the sledgehammer, he’d stop to rest a bit, leaning on the end of the handle. Any day he felt up to it, he was out driving around picking up scrap metal for a company that bought aluminum. If he was lucky, he was doing carpentry work. But a carpenter’s job was hard to come by.

“If ever there was a hard-luck boy, it was Russell,” Mammaw told Ivy June once. “Like the runt in a litter, he was always the sickly one. Asthma and allergies … Had the fever when he was twelve, and we thought we were going to lose him then. But he hung on and growed up to marry your mama. Ruth don’t like it here, but at least they’re close by. Long as we got legs and our backs don’t give out, your grandpa and I can grow food enough for all of us.”

Ivy June watched her daddy now. It was probably difficult for him to feel good about himself when he had to depend on someone else, and his own job didn’t even have a name to it. Handyman came closest, but there wasn’t enough outside work to fill more than a day or two a week.

“Well,” she said finally, shifting to her other foot. “I’ll probably write a postcard or two.”

“We’ll look for ’em,” her daddy said, and gave her a little smile.

She’d never been away from home for more than a night. For a moment she considered walking around the pile of wood chips and giving her daddy a hug. But his arms didn’t offer, so her feet didn’t move. She gave him a small smile back and went on inside.

As Ivy June stepped onto the worn linoleum, she heard her mother’s voice from beyond the kitchen:

“Hold up that end, Jessie, if you want those curtains to hang straight. I can’t use the hammer and keep up both ends myself.” Seeing Ivy June, she said sharply, “Can’t you give us a hand?”

Ivy June slid the backpack off her shoulder and entered the tiny room, more like a pantry. There was scarcely enough space for the single bed and a dresser, though a straight-backed chair had been crammed in one corner. “What you want me to do?”

“Give me a couple those nails on the bed there, and tell me if this rod is straight,” said her mother. “Saw these in the Penney’s catalog, half price, so we got us a pair.”

Ivy June handed her the nails and stepped back a little. “Raise up your end about an inch, Jessie,” she said. “Now down a little. Yeah. Right about there.”

Ruth Mosley began to pound, then handed the hammer to Jessie—Jessie with the dark hair and high cheekbones.

“Looks nice,” Ivy June said, over the pounding. “The green matches the squares in the quilt.” One of Grandmommy’s quilts, of course, from back when she could still sew.

“Well, it’s not a Lexington bedroom, but at least I’ve got it to myself,” said Jessie as she and her mother worked to even out the folds of the curtain.

There was that tone again. Jessie couldn’t seem to say the word “Lexington” without it. And the fact that both her mother and Jessie had their backs to her gave Ivy June the courage to say, “You’ve had this room for a year, Jessie. What are you angry about now? That I’m going to Lexington?”

Jessie turned around. “Why should I be angry?” She reached for the sweater she’d tossed on the bed. “I just think it’s a dumb idea, is all. You’re like to feel you’re living in a hotel, and when that Academy girl gets here, she’s going to feel like she’s anywhere but.”

“You don’t know what I’ll feel, or Catherine, either!” Ivy June said hotly.

Ruth Mosley stepped down off the box where she’d been standing, her voice more gentle. “What she’s sayin’, Ivy June, is don’t be tryin’ to rise above your raisin’. We’re not ever likely to have the things they’ve got up in Lexington, and why your Mammaw and Papaw thought it was a good idea for you to go up there is more than I can figure.”

“This isn’t about ‘things,’ it’s about meeting new people and seeing new places and getting new ideas, is all,” said Ivy June. “I’m not looking for ‘things.’”

Her mother grunted, gathering up the remaining nails and dropping them in the pocket of her baggy sweatpants. “Well, whether you’re lookin’ or not, you’ll see ’em,” she said. “And there’s plenty of ‘things’ we need here we’re not ever goin’ to have. I’m not lookin’ for no diamond ring—just the money to pay the electric and some seed money, but they don’t have to worry about that up in Lexington.”

Ivy June reached down for her backpack and silently pulled out the envelope, removing the congratulations card. She handed the envelope to her mother.

“Well then, here,” she said. “This is for you … while I’m away.”

Ruth Mosley looked inside the envelope and stared at the bills, then slowly pulled them out. “What’s this?”

“Just something they gave me for Lexington, but I don’t need it,” Ivy June told her.

“Forty dollars?” Jessie exclaimed.

“Who give you this, Ivy June?” her mother demanded.

“Miss Dixon and the other teachers wanted me to have some spending money, but I already got me some saved up,” Ivy June said, knowing it wasn’t more than twelve or thirteen dollars.

“Then you shouldn’t have took this!” her mother said. “We’re not poor folk dependin’ on handouts.”

“They didn’t say I was poor, Ma,” Ivy June told her. “They said I was the ambassador for their school,
that’s
what they called me.”

Mrs. Mosley studied her daughter for a moment, then looked down at the money in her hand.

“They
wanted
her to have it, Ma, so keep it!” Jessie said impatiently.

Mrs. Mosley’s face softened. “You’re sure you don’t need this, Ivy June?”

“One hundred percent positive,” Ivy June declared.

There were hurried footsteps on the porch; then the door banged open as Howard came in, bringing the apple cake, his two younger brothers at his heels—Ezra, with his round cheeks, and three-year-old Danny, dressed in his hand-me-downs.

“Mammaw sent us down her apple cake!” Howard chortled. “Her and Ivy June made it.”

“Can we have a piece now?” begged Ezra, one finger poised to scoop up the syrup around the edge of the platter.

“And me!” said Danny, crawling up on a kitchen chair.

Ruth Mosley tucked the two twenties into her pocket and smiled. “Yes, we’ll all of us have a piece right now. Go get your daddy, Ezra. Set down, Ivy June, and let’s celebrate.”

CHAPTER FIVE

A pair of gray flannel long johns jiggled and flapped in the wind like an old man trying to dance. The heavier items, the overalls and sheets strung on a line across Mammaw’s front porch, tried to resist the gusts that blew through the hollow.

As Ivy June approached her grandparents’ house, she thought about how the babbling water in Thunder Creek would soon become a loud rush; it would be the last thing they’d hear before falling asleep at night, the first sound to greet them in the morning. Every spring the questions were the same: would the water get as high as the footbridge, and would it flood the road? Flooding was something Papaw had to consider every morning when he left for work at the mine.

By the time Catherine Combs came in April, however, the shadbush and wild honeysuckle would be in bloom, and every day the sun would reach the valley floor a little sooner. It was nice in the mountains then, and there was nowhere Ivy June would rather be.

She missed the wagging welcome of old Nancy, Papaw’s dog, a loving, protective black-and-white mutt that never skipped a chance to lick your hand. They’d lost her over the winter—she’d been older than Ivy June.

Now, as Ivy June went up the steps of the frame house, only the two cats were there, huddled down on chairs. A damp sheet obscured the washing machine that sat next to the rocker, and she had to duck under a towel to get inside the door. She made her way back to the kitchen, where the fragrant smell of stewed chicken met her nostrils.

“And dumplings?” she asked, grinning at Mammaw.

The thin little woman with the gray braid around her head smiled, still stirring. “Figured you ought to get all your favorites, your last night here.”

“You make it sound like execution day,” Ivy June said, and slipped her arms around her grandmother, hugging her from behind. “I’ll never get chicken and dumplings up there.”

Mammaw reached back and poked her affectionately. “Don’t be makin’ up your mind about things in advance, Ivy June. Pray they
don’t
live the same as we do, or what’s the point a goin’ a’tall?”

Ivy June dropped her backpack on a chair. “I’m going to miss you,” she said, studying her grandmother’s faded print dress, her full apron that slipped over her head, and her two spindly legs, which ended with white canvas Keds on her feet.

“Not as much as we’ll miss you, honey,” Mammaw said.

There was the sound of water splashing on the enclosed back porch—Papaw washing up. He would get the worst of the coal dust off when he showered at the mine, but it took another scrubbing when he got home, he said, to get rid of the second layer.

“Water ready?” he’d ask, opening the door from the back porch, where he’d piled his dirty clothes, and Mammaw would carry the teakettle out and fill the basin next to the pump. The coveralls, the boots, the work shirt and helmet were left at the mine, hanging high overhead in the locker room to dry. But the grime even coated the clothes he wore underneath, and he changed once again before dinner.

Ivy June could remember the mine where Papaw had worked before; it had had no shower at all. She could remember his passing their house on his way up the hill when he came home—the way the coal dust had so blackened the lines on either side of his mouth and the wrinkles in his neck that she couldn’t understand how he would ever get it out. In some places he couldn’t. Even now it filled the space beneath his fingernails, as well as the deep crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

Ivy June loved this time of day—the security of having Papaw home, the sound of sloshing water back on the porch. Once in a while Papaw whistled as he scrubbed. Occasionally he even hummed. She wondered sometimes if she felt closer to her grandparents than she’d ever felt to her parents. Yet when Papaw and Mammaw had been raising their six boys, perhaps they’d had no more time to spare than Ma and Daddy did for her. Whatever the reason, she loved that special feeling of being the only child here.

Ivy June and Mammaw wouldn’t see Papaw again until he entered the kitchen in his twill trousers and flannel shirt, his weathered neck red from scrubbing. Then he’d take his glass of cider into the parlor and sit by the coal stove, letting his stocking feet recover from the confines of his knee-high rubber boots.

Ivy June set about her daily chores. If there wasn’t enough kindling in the wood box by the iron stove, then Mammaw would have to go out to the woodpile herself. If Ivy June didn’t empty Grandmommy’s chamber pot, you could smell it along about mealtime. If she didn’t feed the cats, they’d be meowing and scratching at the back door for scraps, and if she didn’t keep up with the dust in the parlor, either Mammaw or Grandmommy would get to sneezing.