Ghost Girl (2 page)

The car rolled to a stop, and a man in a black suit hopped out of the driver's seat. He hurried around to open up the back door, and then out stepped two city ladies bundled up in thick coats with fur collars. I could almost hear the squeak of Dewey's jaw dropping open.

One of the women marched right up to all those fellows staring and introduced herself as Miss Fesler, personal secretary to Lou Henry Hoover. She shook hands with a tall man, who said he was the building foreman, and then with Preacher Jessup. I was so anxious to hear what they were talking about, I almost forgot to stay hunkered down behind my woodpile.

“That's right,” the woman was saying. She spoke fast, with a voice full of good manners. “We drove down from Washington just this morning. The first lady wanted me to check on the progress of the school and bring along one of our candidates for the teaching position here.”

The other woman stepped forward to shake hands. “How do you do?” she said. “I'm Christine Vest.” Preacher Jessup bobbed his head hello. I could see Dewey sliding closer, trying to get noticed.

“Mrs. Hoover wanted Miss Vest to come for a visit,” the secretary went on, “so she could see what she might be getting into.” She gave a tinkly little laugh. “She might head straight back home after the drive this morning. With the condition of these roads up here, sometimes those hundred miles from Washington seem more like a thousand.”

Christine Vest.
The sound of her name was so clean and crisp, I couldn't help whispering it back to myself. She was pretty, too, with big, soft deer eyes and wavy brown hair tucked up under a hat with a tiny red feather peeking out the side.

“We were hoping you could take us on a little tour of the building site,” Mrs. Hoover's secretary said to the foreman. “I'd like to give Miss Vest a better idea of what the schoolhouse will look like once it's finished.”

I strained to hear more, but soon they were drifting away and I could make out only snatches of talk about the classroom and electric lights and the adjoining teacher's quarters, about the finest this and the best of that. My legs were aching with cold and so much squatting. If it hadn't been for Dewey standing a stone's skip away, gawking at that long black car with the driver sitting inside, I would have tried to make a run for Aunt Birdy's.

But then I saw Miss Vest, the teacher lady, heading toward me, wandering over to take in the view. She stopped right alongside my lumber pile, close enough for me to hear her sigh when she looked out over the mountainside. When I calmed myself enough to peek out again, she was biting her lip and pulling her fur collar tighter around her neck. I saw her frown down at her high-heel shoes sinking into the red clay.

I wondered if what the secretary said was true, if Miss Vest might want to head straight home after seeing our mountains. I glanced over my shoulder at the valley, and all of a sudden I saw things the way she might be seeing them. Everything was winter-brown and lonely looking, especially with all the dead chestnut trees standing like skeletons below.

Before the blight came and started killing all the trees off, folks on the mountain used to pick up chestnuts by the bushel to sell down at Taggart's. Mama said when she was a little girl, she could earn enough money from the nuts to buy all her family's shoes plus sugar and coffee for the year. And like a lot of other men, Daddy worked at the tannery, where they used the acid from the chestnut bark to cure animal hides and turn them into leather.

But then the blight hit and the tannery closed down. Daddy had to start taking odd jobs to make ends meet. By the time I was old enough to go chestnut hunting, nuts were hard to come by and I was used to seeing whole forests of dying trees. Sometimes at night the mountain looked near haunted, with all those bare, towering trunks shining silver under the moon.

Pretty soon people started calling the chestnuts ghost trees, just like they took to calling me ghost girl right about the time my little brother, Riley, passed on. But I never used that name—ghost tree—myself. I knew there was life still hiding way down inside those old chestnut trees.

I was so sad and lost in thinking about the chestnuts and Riley and our old Victrola that I didn't even notice that Miss Vest had turned and was staring straight at me. My white hair must have caught her eye. She took a step closer and smiled. I stared back for a second, soaking up her sweet face. But then I saw Dewey coming, looking like he had just smelled something rotten.

So I tore out of there, with the shoestrings on my boots flapping, and I ran off down the mountain, leaving Dewey and Miss Christine Vest gazing after me.

When I got home to Doubletop,
Mama was standing out back at the battling bench, pounding dirt out of Daddy's overalls. Even with the cold bite in the air, I could see that her face was hot and shiny with all the pounding and standing over the steaming wash pot. “Shoot,” I whispered to myself, knowing I was already in trouble. Ever since I turned eleven back in April, the washing had been left to me. But now Mama was near halfway through the basket of dirty clothes sitting at her feet.

Mama hardly looked up when I came running around the side of the cabin. Still, I could see her mouth tightening up into a hard little line—the same one that seemed to have been marking her face like a scar for the past year. I hurried back and forth, throwing more kindling into the fire under the big iron wash pot.

Pretty soon Mama hoisted Daddy's wet overalls into the pot. I grabbed up the paddle and gave them a stir in the boiling water and lye soap. “Where you been all morning?” she finally asked.

I was still trying to get my breath back from running so far. “I been up to where they're building the new schoolhouse, Mama,” I said, panting. “And wait till you hear. There was two ladies up there from Washington, D.C. One of 'em might be the new teacher for President Hoover's school, if she decides to come. And you should have seen her, Mama. She was wearing stockings and high-heel shoes with a handbag to match and—”

Mama cut me off with her look, staring at me like I was addled. “What are you thinking about, April? You think when those Hoovers finish building that schoolhouse that me and your daddy are just gonna let you traipse up there for lessons all day long?”

I was too surprised to answer. Mama sighed and wiped a lock of sweaty hair off her forehead with the back of her hand. “Just look at this place,” she said. I watched her glancing round at the pile of dirty clothes, the chickens waiting to be fed, the door of the springhouse hanging off its hinges.

“You're the only help I got now,” Mama went on in a sagging voice. “I can't be sending you off to spend all your time with some lady in stockings and high heels. So you best just clear that idea right out of your head.” Then she wiped her hands on her apron and headed inside, letting the screen door bang shut behind her.

There was no use running after her trying to argue. Mama never listened. All I could do was swallow down my words and add a few tears to the water boiling away in the wash pot.

I ended up where I always did when some worry or another kept chewing at me. I ended up at Aunt Birdy's. As soon as she opened the door of her little clapboard house, I held out the stone I had been saving for her. She plucked it out of my hand, then raised it up to a streak of sunlight pouring through the tangle of old wisteria vines.

“I found it up at the falls,” I told her.

Aunt Birdy's face crinkled into a smile. “Look a'there,” she marveled. “Looks like one of them scairdy little brook trout that nobody can ever get their hands on.”

“You think it's good enough for your porch railing, Aunt Birdy?”

“Well, let's see how she shines up,” she said, and pulled her polishing rag and tin of beeswax from her sweater pocket. Even though a cold breeze was rustling through the vines, she stepped out on the porch and settled herself down in her old cane rocker.

While she worked on the fish stone, I walked up and down along the railing, gazing at her collection. Ever since she was a girl, Aunt Birdy had been collecting stones with wondrous shapes. She found them in streams like Mill Prong and Laurel Run, carved out by ages of running water. The first one she found worth keeping looked just like a crescent moon. Then came the egg in a nest, a little bitty footprint, and two perfect halves of a heart that fit together. And on and on. Lined up on Aunt Birdy's railing, all those shiny black rocks glowed like jewels in a bracelet. I must have worn a rut walking up and down that porch so many times, forever stopping to pick up my favorites and hold them in my hand.

I sat on the top step to watch Aunt Birdy for a while. She smiled and turned her head this way and that while she worked. You never would have guessed she was my Mama's mother. Her real name was Bertha Lockley, but everybody called her Aunt Birdy—Birdy, I think, because she was small-boned and quick as a sparrow, always hopping from one chore to the next. Folks said I had her eyes, but I wasn't so sure. Aunt Birdy's eyes were blue jay blue. Mine were mostly gray, like two shallow pans of water.

While we were sitting there, the sound of hammers started up again over the ridge. Aunt Birdy stopped rocking. Her tiny feet barely touched the ground. “I near forgot, Apry,” she said all in a rush. “I been wanting to ask if you heard about the schoolhouse they're building up yonder.”

I nodded, wishing I could cover up my ears to shut out that clanking.

A faraway look wandered across Aunt Birdy's face. “Shame your Grandpap Lockley's not alive to see it. First the president of the United States moving next door and now us getting our own schoolhouse.” She shook her head. “
Law!
. . . Preacher Jessup says the school will be ready come New Year's.”

Then all at once Aunt Birdy fixed me with those sharp eyes of hers. “Aren't you excited about the new school, Apry?”

I swallowed hard, trying to push down the aching in my throat. “Mama don't want me going,” I managed to say.

“Why's that?” Aunt Birdy asked. I didn't look at her, but I could hear her voice bristling up.

“She wants me home for chores.”

“Did you tell her you could do your work 'fore school, then more when you get home?”

“No, ma'am.”

“Well, why not, honey?”

I felt old suddenly, older than Aunt Birdy with her skin so brown and papery. It was all I could do to muster up words to try and tell how I'd been feeling. “I can't scrap with Mama now, Aunt Birdy,” I finally said, sighing. “Least not since Riley died. She's too sad still. Even Daddy tries not to cross her.”

Riley. It was the first time I had let my brother's name spill out in months. Mama wouldn't even let us mention him since the accident, and sometimes I could see why. Just saying his name made me miss him even more—his flop of yellow hair and the new batch of freckles across his nose every summer. His steady breathing next to me at night and the way he always tried to carry things that were way too heavy for him.

Maybe if I could have just remembered the good, happy times with my brother, it would have been all right, but I couldn't stop there. Whenever I thought of Riley, that night came washing over me. I kept seeing it—the flames climbing up the tail of his nightshirt, the surprised look on his face after I had shoved him to the floor and wrapped him round and round in a quilt to put out the fire.

“You better not, Apry,” he had cried, his blue eyes round as glass buttons. “That's Mama's best quilt.”

“Hush,” I had scolded. “You just hush and lie still.”

Aunt Birdy was watching me, shaking her head. “You still think you're to blame, don't you? You still think it never would have happened if you hadn't gone out to fetch more wood?”

I nodded, squenching my eyes tight to keep the tears in.

“Well, that ain't true, Apry Sloane,” Aunt Birdy went on. “It weren't your fault. You only left for a minute! How were you supposed to know he'd go playing by that fire. We
all
thought he knew better than that . . . but the Lord works his mysteries, and sometimes there ain't nothing we can do but hold tight and ride along. And I'm sorry to say it, but your mama's not helping one bit with all of her grieving and keeping you shut up at home.”

She sprang out of her rocker and came to stand beside me, so close that I could smell the wood smoke clinging to her old sweater with the calico patches. “Hold out your hand,” she said. Then she set the fish stone in my palm. It was beautiful, gleaming with wax and still warm from her polishing.

“Now, you worry about finding a spot for that on my railing,” she said with her eyes blazing, “and I'll worry about making sure you get up to that school.”

I closed my fingers over the stone and thanked the Lord and all his mysteries for Aunt Birdy.