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Pa
ripped our family apart just as spring began whispering sweet promises up on
Cumberland Mountain.
Serviceberry buds swelled fuzzy and silver.
A red fox birthed five kits in an old woodchuck burrow near the meadow.
Fiddlehead ferns uncurled by the springhouse.
At dawn and twilight, wrens sang their pretty come-to-me,
come-to-me song from the fence rails.
And
the frost wriggled out of our corn patch, bringing a new crop of stones to light
as it went. On one of those
warm-in-the-sun, cool-in-the-shade afternoons I put the twins down to nap on a
blanket while my little brother Jasper and I picked stones.
I stopped when I heard Maude laughing.
She was dancing after a yellow butterfly, soft fingers outstretched, her
joy bubbling out like a stream blessed with new rain.
“Keep
an eye on Mary,” I told Jasper. “She’ll
likely wake soon. I’ll go fetch
some cornbread, and we’ll take a break.”
My
back complained as I stepped onto the porch, so I stopped to stretch out a kink.
But my feet chose to plant themselves right there when I heard Mama and
Pa arguing inside the cabin.
“I’m
fixing to go,” Pa was saying. “And
there’s a few other men of like mind. We’re
thinking to leave next week.”
Mama’s
voice edged like an ax. “Your
family needs you.”
“I
know that,” he said. “But the
army needs me more.”
All
that frost got sucked right into my gut.
Folks
in East
Tennessee had been making a fuss about Mr. Lincoln’s war for weeks.
Some believed in the Union that the Yankee soldiers were trying to hold together.
Some cheered when Tennessee
joined the new Confederacy of southern states.
Some had no tolerance for either side.
I’d never heard Pa speak about it in particular.
I didn’t even know which army he thought to join.
Mama’s
rocking chair began to creak, faster and faster.
“You’d leave this place. You’d
leave your wife and children.”
“The
Yankees will come take charge of East Tennessee,” Pa said. “And
I’ll come home with ‘em. Sometimes
a man just knows when a thing’s got to be done.
This is one of those times. We
Camerons know the difference between right and wrong.”
I
heard a sound behind me—Jasper, come after his cornbread.
His eyes had gone wide.
Mama’s
voice was low and cold. “So you
men are going to run off and have yourselves a fine adventure.”
Creak, creak. “Well, never
you mind about your family, then. I’ll
guard this hearth. I’ll
hold this family together.” Creak-creak-creak!
“Don’t speak to me of a thing that’s got to be done, Jeb Cameron.
In the end, it’s always the women who have to do what needs doing.”
“Your
bitter tongue won’t change what’s right,” Pa growled.
“I’m going hunting.”
He
was out the door in two paces, rifle in hand.
Mama slammed the door shut behind him.
Jasper bolted off the porch.
I
held my ground. Papa stopped when he
saw me, worked his mouth some, blew out a short breath.
“It’ll smooth over,” he told me.
Then he stamped down the steps and started across the yard.
I
ran after him. “Wait!”
He
turned, the anger already draining from his face.
“If you heard me speak my mind, there’s no need to say it again.”
“But—but
Pa,” I stammered. “We can’t
manage!”
He
faced me with feet fixed firm, arms folded, eyes watchful but calm—just as he
stood when facing a new field that needed clearing, or a bear after our
livestock, or a fierce storm blowing over the ridge.
“Hush now, Hannah. You may
look like a girl, but I know you too well. You’re
stubborn as a mule. You’ll help
see things through. I wouldn’t go
off if I didn’t believe that. You’ll
manage fine. I’m leaning on
you.”
“But
why do you have to go?” The ache
in my chest turned hot and started to smolder like banked coals.
“I’m
for the Union,”
he said. “It’s like a family.
A clan.” He said more
things too, but I stopped hearing the words.
After a minute he ran a rough hand over my head, then tromped off.
I
dragged back to the cornfield. Jasper,
eyes shiny, wrestled a stone from the ground and heaved it onto the rock sled.
He was skinny as a whittled stick, just nine years old but already game
for hard work. And
a good thing for that, I thought, as I wrapped my fingers around a rock and
pried it free. The dirt felt damp
and cool against my skin. A vireo
twittered from the walnut tree, but all I could hear was the echo of Pa and
Mama’s arguing. They most often
spoke in silence: a thoughtful nod,
a mouth hinting at a smile, a long shared glance.
I’d never before heard them heave up ugly words from some dark cold
place to throw at each other.
The
earth smelled raw. The mountain
murmured of new life, of plowing and planting, but everything had turned up-side
down. I heaved a rock at the
sled—missed. Heaved another.
Missed again. I wished Pa
would come back. Then I might find
my aim.
Mind
the sled!” Jasper complained, blinking hard.
I
might have kept on wasting time if a familiar whistle hadn’t startled a
chickadee from its song. I sucked in
a fierce, glad breath as Ben McNeill came ‘round the doghobble thicket by the
hog pen, a fishing pole over his shoulder.
“You
got nothing better to do with your time than whistle?” I asked, when I could
wrap my tongue around the words. On
a normal day I took a fierce joy in any tune, but not today.
Ben
grinned and followed a furrow until he stood at my shoulder.
We were the same height. I
liked that. I liked the way his dark
hair curled around his ears when the air grew damp.
I liked how his mind tended toward curiosity.
“That’s
a fine greeting for someone who came to bide some time,” Ben said.
Then he cocked his head, his eyes going narrow as he studied first me,
then Jasper. But all he said was,
“You want some help?”
“We’d
be grateful,” I allowed, and he tossed his pole aside.
The McNeills were our closest neighbors, and good ones—the kind to
share chores with, like husking and hog butchering.
I didn’t dare go fishing with Ben, not with Pa and Mama simmering.
But Ben made any work lighter.
I’d
known Ben for all thirteen of my years. Summers
we fished for trout and madtoms and darters in Sandy
Spring, and tried to figure out where the salamanders went when the cold bore
down. Come autumn, we borrowed our
papas’ rifles and ranged the hills for turkey and wondered why they didn’t
grow head feathers. In winter, long
after nutting season, we’d search for white-bellied mice nests in hollow
trees, and wonder how they knew to hide away only chestnuts that weren’t
wormy. They even knew to eat the
tiny heart from each nut so they didn’t sprout when the weather got warm and
damp. We never could figure that
out.
Ben
dragged the laden sled to the side of the corn patch and dumped the stones where
they couldn’t nick a plow blade. “Pa’s
fixing to leave,” I said, when he’d dragged the empty sled back.
“He’s joining up with the Union Army.”
Ben
gave me another long look, chewing that news over before getting on with the
job. He could talk my ear off, but
he knew when to hold his tongue and give a body time.
I
dropped a couple of stones on the sled. “Your
pa heading off, too?”
“Not
so far as I’ve heard.”
“I wish I was going somewhere too,” Jasper said
suddenly. “I wish it like
anything.”
A
new vine of fear twined around my heart. “You’re
needed here!”
Jasper
scowled. “I don’t care.
I want to go places like Papa. I’m
sick and tired of Cumberland
Mountain. I’ve had my fill of
hoeing corn and chopping tobacco and picking
rocks.”
I
crossed my arms. “Jasper Cameron,
if you think we aren’t staring at enough trouble – ”
“Me,
I like picking rocks,” Ben said. He
studied the rock in his hands as if it was a rare thing.
“This came from the heart of Cumberland Mountain.”
I’d
never thought about it quite like that.
Ben shook his head in admiration.
“Don’t you ever wonder where these stones come from?”
“They
rise up when the ground freezes and thaws, just to devil us,” Jasper said
sourly. “Everybody knows that.”
“But
how deep do they start?” Ben asked. “What
fills the holes they leave behind? If
enough years went by, would this mountain run out of rocks to keep shoving our
way? Does it keep making more?”
“You
might find out if you got off this mountain,” Jasper pointed out.
“There are big schools down in the flatlands.”
“I
don’t need a school,” Ben said. “I
figure all the answers I need are right here.”
The
hot coals of worry and anger I’d banked inside my chest started to fade some.
Ben stepped into the next row, crouched, and came back
with an oval stone about the size of a bread loaf.
“Here,” he said, dumping it into my hands.
“This is a fine one.”
I
stared at the heavy stone. It was
gray like a dappled mare—as if all the grays of twilight had sunk into the
ground and formed together and popped out again.
“It is a fine one.”
“You
two are daft,” Jasper snorted. But
his eyes weren’t tear-bright any more.
“It
would make a first-rate hearthstone,” Ben added, and then went back to work.
Mama’s words rang in my head:
“I’ll guard this hearth. I’ll
hold this family together.” A seed
of something good planted itself in my heart.
Ben
and Jasper and me spent the rest of the afternoon clearing the corn patch.
Later, I hauled that dappled rock into the woods and left it cradled in
the roots of my favorite old oak tree, safe ‘til I might need it.
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