Weeping Willow (12 page)
Authors: Ruth White
Pea Blossom? Love has no sense.
Connie Collins looked better and better when I saw her practicing after school sometimes. Nobody could deny she was a good dancer—too good. Fear started gnawing at me. What if she beat me?
Bobby Lynn helped me pick out the prettiest dress I ever had, and it cost the most, too. It was royal blue, elbow-length sleeves, slightly off the shoulders, fitting me snugly to right below the knee.
And the next thing I knew, it was the big night. I was in the wings peeping out at the crowd through the curtains. There was Mama and Phyllis right on the front row with Roy and Rosemary, Cecil and Jesse.
As I watched Willard Newberry playing his guitar and struggling through “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” I thought it was funny I didn’t feel anything at all—no excitement or nervousness or any other emotion. Maybe I was in shock. Then Willard’s number was over and I stepped out on the stage and looked at the sea of waiting, expectant faces. Hundreds of eyes were on me, hundreds of ears tuned into my frequency, hundreds of brains clicking into the fact that Tiny Lambert was on stage and fixing to sing. Hundreds of minds were asking themselves, “Can Tiny Lambert sing?” “Is Tiny Lambert going to make a big fool of herself?”
And a great, cold monster of fear clutched me right around the middle so hard it like to have knocked the breath out of me, and it began to play my heart like a kettle drum.
The lights went down. A deathly stillness settled over the auditorium, and Bobby Lynn played a terrifyingly short introduction to “Over the Rainbow.” I was frozen. She played it again.
I opened my mouth and my lips stuck to my teeth, as the usual moisture there had totally evaporated. I heard this little bitty squeak come out of my throat.
“Some … where …”
That was all.
Bobby Lynn tried again with the introduction.
“Some … where …” the tiny voice squeaked again.
Was it hours and hours that I stood there trying to move on to the word “over”? Or was it only a minute before some kind soul mercifully rang down the curtain? I left the stage in humiliation.
Connie Collins won the talent contest that year.
“I think you ought to cut it about an inch,” Rosemary was saying to me about my hair.We were lying in the daisies up on Ruby Mountain by the natural spring. It was a day … well, it was the most heavenly Sunday in spring you can imagine.
“And curl it.”
“What about the ponytail? Am I too old for a ponytail?”
“You will be in two weeks.”
In two weeks I would be seventeen.
“But for now?” I said.
“You’re still sweet sixteen!” she said, laughing.
It was two weeks after the disaster. I wouldn’t let anyone, including myself, speak of “that night.”
“I’ll get it cut when I am officially a senior, and not wear a ponytail anymore,” I declared.
Rosemary was the first girl of our crowd to get her driver’s license. That day she had driven her daddy’s pickup, and we couldn’t think of anyplace to go, so I decided to show her Ruby Mountain.
We were sitting by the spring and I was dipping my fingers in the cold, cold water and flicking poor Nessie in the face. She jumped up, shook her head, and lay back down again.
“Wouldn’t you think she’d move to another spot?” Rosemary said.
“You’d think so,” I agreed.
It was the first day I could remember with just me and Rosemary. There was always somebody else around us.
“She ain’t too bright,” I said, and flicked Nessie again.
That time she got up and walked away from me about ten feet, where she lay down in the sunshine. We laughed. We were wearing our shorts and halters, trying to get some sun.
“Well, how many months, weeks, hours until the wedding day, Rosemary?”
Rosemary brushed away a stray strand of dark hair from her face and mumbled, “I dunno. I lost count.”
“What’sa matter, Rosemary?”
“Nothing.”
“You still plan to marry Roy, don’t you?”
“Oh, sure! We love each other. What else would we do?”
“Yeah, what else?” I said.
“Well, there’s college,” Rosemary said.
I wasn’t sure I heard her right.
“Come again?”
“Well, Mr. Gillespie keeps talking about that school in North Carolina where they teach a lot of music. And sometimes …”
She paused and looked out at the distant hills.
“Sometimes I think maybe—just maybe, mind you—I might like to go to college—even for a year—you know, just to see what it’s like.”
“College?”
“Yeah, college. You know—where people go to get educated.”
“Sure, I know what college is. The town kids go to college.”
“Does that mean we can’t go, Tiny, because we’re not town kids?”
“No.”
Rosemary’s parents had the store and they could probably afford to send her to school if they wanted to. But her family was like mine. None of them ever went to college.
“What for?” I said.
“What d’you mean, what for? To get an education, that’s what for.”
“Then what?”
“I would marry Roy.”
“Oh.”
“I know it’s crazy.” Rosemary laughed at herself. “I really don’t want to go. I just like to think about it.” She rolled over on her back and gazed up at the sky.
College? I was thinking. Well, that’s one I never. considered before, because I knew it wasn’t one of my choices. I always knew I would finish high school and get married and have babies, because that’s what girls do. And now that I was in love with Jesse, I knew that’s what I wanted.
“What would you study?” I said.
“Music,” she replied promptly. “And if I finished, it would be nice to have a job like Mr. Gillespie’s. It would be fun.”
“Yeah, it would be. Then why don’t you do it, Rosemary?”
“Oh, I’m just talking, Tiny. I want to marry Roy. I don’t think he can wait much longer for … you know.”
We giggled.
“I want to get married, Rosemary,” I said. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted. I just know I’m going to be happy with Jesse.”
“It’s nice here with you and without anybody else around,” she said. “I don’t know when me and Roy have spent a Sunday apart”
“Where is Roy, anyway?”
“He’s helping his daddy overhaul an engine or something. Where’s Jesse?”
“He took his mama to Honaker to see her relations.”
“Why didn’t you go, Tiny?”
I had been wondering that myself.
“He didn’t ask me to go. That seems funny, don’t it?”
“You oughta be glad he didn’t. Nothing’s more boring than sitting around listening to relations talking about other relations, and you don’t know any of them.”
“I know. I’m glad you came by. This is fun.”
I lay back on the grass, closed my eyes, and let the sun fall on my face and throat. It was like a caress, soft and warm. I loved this place above all others.
“I wish I had me a car,” Rosemary said. “One of my very own.”
“Me too. Did you know Mrs. Clevinger is trying to sell the Henry J?”
“No, is she?”
“Yeah, she has her eye on a ’57 Plymouth Fury, two-toned burgundy and white.”
“How much does she want for the Henry J?” Rosemary said.
“Three hundred.”
“That’s not much, but Daddy would never let me have it.”
“Why don’t we … ?” I sat up quickly as an idea took root. “We could buy it together, you, me, and Bobby Lynn. I know she’d like that.”
“I don’t have a hundred, Tiny, do you?”
“Not now. But the strawberries are ready to ripen again. I’ll have at least a hundred in a few weeks.”
Rosemary lit up.
“Can I help pick?”
“Sure! There’s enough for everybody. Bobby Lynn, too. There’s our three hundred.”
“Tiny, you are a genius! Can we really make that much on strawberries?”
“We can make as much as we have time to make,” I said. “We have to go to school.”
“Then we’ll come up here every day after school and every weekend.”
Suddenly Rosemary got a funny look on her face as she turned toward the cabin.
“What’s it like in there?” she said.
“In the cabin? Oh, it’s okay. It’s small.”
“Furniture?”
“Yeah, just like Grandpa left it.”
“Beds?”
“Yeah, two. What are you thinking?”
“We could come up here and stay through strawberry season!”
“You mean it, don’t you?” I said.
“I do. I mean it. Gosh, think of the fun we could have—just the three of us.”
“But what about school?”
“Oh, we’ll go to school. Daddy can drive the Studebaker and I’ll borrow his truck. He’ll let me have it—to get up here and to school.”
“And we could bring food from home,” I said. “And here’s our water. But there’s no electricity, Rosemary. No lights.”
“We don’t need lights. We’ll be too tired to stay up after dark anyway.”
“Let’s do it!”
We stood up and hugged each other and squealed.
Then we went into the cabin. Everything we needed was there to live for a few weeks. A coal stove for cooking, beds, dishes, pots and pans, odds and ends of furniture, and an outdoor toilet. We drove back down the mountain in high spirits. First step was to ask Mama. She was getting ready to go to the hospital and wasn’t very interested in anything else.
“Reckon so,” was all she said as she glanced out the window to look for Dixie’s car.
Vern said, “As long as there ain’t no boys up there after dark.”
I groaned inside, and didn’t look at him.
“Did you hear me, girlie?” he said.
“I heard.”
“No boys after dark,” he repeated.
I was wondering how he was going to know if we had boys up there after dark or not.
“I’ll be checking up on you,” he said like he was reading my mind. “And if I ever catch a boy with you after dark, it’s all over.”
Rosemary and I looked at each other and shrugged. After all, the object was to pick as many strawberries as possible.
“Fine with me,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”
Next we called Rosemary’s mama, who asked a lot of questions, but she finally said yes.
Then we called Bobby Lynn, who was very excited, and of course Mrs. Clevinger said, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” because she wanted to sell us the Henry J.
So that’s how it happened that when the first strawberry on Ruby Mountain turned red, Rosemary, Bobby Lynn, and I were standing there looking at it. We pounced upon it and were off and running.
To tell the truth, the first week we didn’t get many berries at all. They weren’t quite ready, but we sure had a good time. After we picked what berries were ripe in the afternoons after school, we took them down to Mama, and she and the kids went out selling just before dark. We went back up on Ruby Mountain and cooked hot dogs mostly, or beans and taters. Sometimes we had sandwiches and pop.
By Saturday afternoon of that first week we ran out of anything to do and we got bored. Only I knew what was coming the next week and the next. We sure wouldn’t have time to get bored when the strawberries really came on thick.
But that day I suggested we cook up some hamburgers for the fellers who were coming up there directly. Rosemary went down to the company store, while Bobby Lynn and I cleaned up the cabin and fixed the fire outside. Nessie knew something exciting was coming about and she got under our feet and barked at us like she was trying to talk. So I talked to her and told her what was happening.
Rosemary came back and we started frying hamburgers, and baking taters in the fire. It was beginning to smell good when Jesse and Roy arrived with Cecil in Cecil’s daddy’s truck. Cecil backed the truck up to the outside fire and turned on the radio.
“So fine, yeah!” the radio blared out. Jesse grabbed me around the waist, and we started dancing around the fire as free as Indians.
“My baby’s so doggone fine,” Jesse sang with the radio, but he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. We laughed hard.
Then Roy and Rosemary, Cecil and Bobby Lynn all started dancing, too.
“She sends those chills up and down my spine.”
We were whirling around the fire, and all over the mountaintop, while Nessie barked at our feet.
“Oh … oh … yeah … So fine.”
Afterward we sat on the ground and ate hamburgers hot off the fire, and drank pop. We could have stayed together for hours, but you could see the sun tapping a distant mountaintop and WBGV Radio in Black Gap was signing off with “Come home, come home, it’s supper time,” as it did every day.
“Vern says y’all have to be gone by dark,” I said.
“Yeah, I know,” Jesse said.
Then he took my hand and whispered, “Let’s go for a walk.”
We walked away from the others and around to the other side of the cabin, where the weeping willow was softly sweeping.
“Let’s crawl up under the willow,” Jesse said.
So we did.
Well, it was nice—cool and dark and private under there. We lay on the ground and started kissing. Pretty soon I had to push him away as I was always doing these days.
“What’sa matter, Tiny?”
“Stop.”
“I don’t want to stop, and I don’t want to wait no more.”
“We’ve talked about this before, Jesse.”
“Yeah, but it’s time to reconsider.”
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