The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek Read online

  We chatted on about books, went over the routes and patrons, and both marveled how lucky we were to be Pack Horse librarians, doing important pioneer library work, as the WPA administrator reminded us. I told Queenie how I’d done the same as her and bypassed Eula by sending the job application directly to the bosses in the city.

  Queenie’d told me her husband, Franklin, had been killed in a mine explosion, same as her pa, leaving her to fend for her three small boys and her widowed, ailing grandma. Her mama died from the fever, and the tiny family was all she had now.

  Again, Eula stabbed the air, pointing to the sign.

  “Best go, Cussy,” Queenie said. “I’ll see you Wednesday as usual.” She walked over to her table to gather her bags.

  I stared up at the sign. It seemed a bad waste of paint and fine wood, of city running water and the fancy indoor latrine installed this winter when there were outhouses scattered around town. Weren’t but a handful of “coloreds” around these parts anyway. Queenie, her kids, and her grandma Willow. There was Doc’s housekeeper, Aletha, the woman who’d come from a place called Jamaica. Eight counting me and Pa.

  Eula wagged her finger, but this time at me, her shaming eyes landing on mine. “You’re only allowed in to clean it, Widow Frazier.”

  I looked down, knowing my place, knowing I was the one they were really afraid of, detested most.

  It was difficult enough being colored, much less being my odd, ugly color and the last colored of my kind. Somehow, folks like Harriett and Eula made it worse, made sure their color, any color was better than mine. I was an affliction on their kind and mankind. And I was to stay put, and exactly where they wanted to keep me put. Beneath them. Always and alone.

  “You know the rules. Blues and Coloreds outside,” Eula said, shaking her head, darting her nervous eyes between Queenie and me. “We can’t have you using the indoor facilities. We wouldn’t want to chance passing on a… Well, we just can’t have it!”

  Harriett jumped out of her seat, sending her chair tumbling backward. “Good heavens,” she screeched and pressed a fat finger to her warted jaw. “Why, they could pass a disease. Take yourselves outside to the well pump right now. And take that filthy beast home, Bluet, before I shoot it myself!”

  Her eyes said she’d do just that, and would like to do the same to me. I scampered for my things and shot out the door past a bewildered Birdie, almost spinning the young Pack Horse librarian around.

  Nine

  The following Monday, I made it to Angeline’s only to find her missing. I didn’t want to disturb Mr. Moffit, so I dawdled out in the yard, wasting a good twenty minutes before reckoning she was out hunting food.

  Junia slow-poked along on the paths. “Ghee,” I pleaded when she stalled on the trail where we’d seen Frazier. I looked all around, rubbing the chills on my neck. After a few minutes, my nerves crawled, and I yelled, “We’re late. Ghee up!” She wouldn’t budge, and I became frantic and climbed down, searching the woods with a sharp eye, dragging her onto another longer path that cost us more time. When I mounted, she picked up speed, perking her ears to make sure he weren’t coming after her. Bent, I scrunched down close to her head, keeping my eyes wide to make sure too.

  We rode on to my next three cabins and left loans on the stoops of thimble-sized homes. I didn’t have a book for Mr. Lovett, so I journeyed on past to my next patrons.

  In the dust-bitten yard, a leaning chicken coop and tiny wooden goat pen nestled beside the tall one-room school, its chestnut harvested from the forest, the log gaps daubed with mud and grasses. Smoke percolated from the chimney, curling over black hand-split shingles and skittering up the side of a craggy, treed hill. The school door was shut, the yard empty of students. Junia called out a bossy neigh to the goat, and two chickens flew up from their perch and squawked back.

  From inside the schoolhouse, small faces peeked out the narrow windows. I heard the scrambling of little feet and the sounds of smothered giggles before the door swung open.

  Teacher Winnie Parker pushed through the doorway with a flared skirt of eight scruffy young’uns circling her. The thirty-six-year-old woman clapped her hands when she saw me.

  I dismounted, and Winnie exclaimed, “Cussy Mary, you’re here.” She grabbed the reins and passed them to one of her older pupils. “Come with me, Miss Junia,” the girl said and trotted the mule over to the hitching post.

  “Book Woman’s here!” the students sang.

  “She’s here sure enough,” a littler one piped up.

  “Miss Book Woman, I have you a big surprise!” A small girl missing her milk teeth pushed forward, waving a scrap of paper. “Mama said to give you her counterpane pattern for your scrapbooks.”

  I took the note and saw it was for a knitted cross-centered bedcover with a knotted fringe border. “That’ll make a pretty counterpane, and a lot of folks’ll appreciate knitting it. Thank your mama for me,” I said, inspecting the pattern again before slipping it into my pocket. The girl blushed and gave a small curtsy before scrambling behind Winnie and the others.

  A boy rushed up to me. “Miss Book Woman, I need a book about the war. ’Bout the World War. I’m going to grow up and go to fight!”

  Another little boy said, “I want a book about China, like the one you brought us last year.”

  “It was The Chinese Twins the Perkins lady done wrote,” a girl in tatty braids proudly announced. “Uh, Lucy…I reckon was her name.”

  “Lucy Fitch Perkins,” I said, impressed.

  “Yup! The Chinese Twins.” The boy brightened. “And I’m gonna take the big locomotive and live there… Soon as I grow’d a little more, my ma says.”

  I loved that the books were growing their little minds. Pa was wrong. They needed books more than anything else this place had to offer. They were starved for the learning, the know-how on leaving this hard land for a better, softer one.

  Winnie said, “Time to let her get her books.”

  “I brought you two new ones,” I told Winnie.

  Winnie’s eyes popped. “Two? Heavens!”

  Usually I couldn’t get but one, but last Wednesday, Queenie had slipped it to me from her own bundle.

  “Farmer Boy and Mountain Path,” I announced. “Got something for you too, ma’am.”

  Winnie clapped her slender hands once more, shooing the class back into the schoolhouse. “Stay seated,” she called to them before turning back to me. “Let’s go have a look at the reading material.”

  I pulled out books from my bags, then dug around and found the rolled-up magazine and handed it to her.

  “Oh!” Winnie peeked at it, the partly slick but tattered cover splatted with tape, its back replaced with stiff paperboard. She fanned through the dog-eared pages. “You remembered.”

  “It was finally returned, and I know’d how you wanted the loan. You keep it as long as you like, ma’am.”

  “Thank you. This’ll keep me company until Albert gets home.” She pressed the Love Story magazine to her face, breathing in the ink. “I’ll take good care of it.”

  The magazine was one I’d kept in circulation for the women who secretly requested excitement reads, the one I’d snuck out of the Center last year before the supervisor could approve it, knowing she wouldn’t allow it. The one I kept hidden from Pa.

  Winnie had spent a long winter cooped up in her attic nest above the classroom, where she slept. Nobody else in the hills had the room or food to take in a teacher like that. Her man up and moved to Detroit to work in the big factory and hadn’t come back for her yet. A lot of mountaineers sought work in the city, leaving behind their wives until they could care for them proper—get ahead with a few paychecks. I figured Winnie was lonesome, same as me. And any type of reading softened that.

  “Weren’t no trouble,” I said, meaning it and feeling proud I’d gotten the magazine for her. I handed her th
e sheet music.

  “Oh, new music too, my Lawd, thank you!” She examined the sheets. Then, “How’s Elijah?”

  “Good, thank you for asking. But he has himself some long hours of mining, and they’s working him before his time.”

  “These hills birth the old. How are you this week, Cussy Mary?”

  “I’m fit.” Out of habit I tucked my hands into my pocket, hiding the coloring, though it weren’t necessary here, and my skin was a comfortable gray-blue.

  Winnie’d been the only one to come calling after Charlie Frazier died—the only one to bring a pie and sit with me one long Sunday, and then the very next, reading to me while I recovered from Frazier’s beating. She never asked what happened or pried none, and I never offered, but I could see the understanding in her eyes. A mixture of concern and anger in there too.

  Last summer, I’d been caught in a fierce summer storm, and Winnie had insisted on making me a pallet beside the school’s woodstove for the night. It didn’t feel right sleeping in a room below a patron, so when the rain quieted before midnight, I’d folded the quilts, stacked them, slipped out to Junia, and headed home, our lantern lighting our way like a bright firefly, the drizzling rain illuminated in swaying yellow shadows, combing the path ahead.

  “Cussy Mary.” Winnie held up a book. “Do you have a few minutes to read to them?”

  I loved the way she said my name, always called me by my given one, never once by the doc’s old nickname, or worse, the new title, Widow Frazier. She had kindly asked my partiality long ago when we’d met.

  “Ten minutes maybe?” Winnie coaxed.

  I didn’t have myself even one, much less ten of them minutes. Junia had rode slow today, and waiting on Angeline had eaten up twenty of them. These hills stole a whole lot too, what with the lazy sun struggling to climb over the mountains and the nights dropping fat and fast. Time was something there weren’t enough of in these parts.

  My route was seventeen-and-a-half miles as the crow flies, but longer by mule. I was already late for my next stop. It’d be dark when I got home. I’d have to feed and groom Junia, and there was Pa’s supper to fix before he went off to the mine, and I’d be left to finish my other chores.

  But Winnie asked so sweetly. And if I hurried, and Junia didn’t tarry or get difficult, I might not be too late.

  “I reckon I have some time for the children,” I said.

  Inside the chalk-dusted schoolroom, Winnie led me over to the piano that butted up to the far wall. A wood ax and cross-stitch sampler of the Ten Commandments hung above the fine upright. An old regulator clock hung from the wall, its pendulum silent. Rough-hewn benches formed a neat line on slanted chestnut planks in front of the teacher’s desk.

  In the corner, a fire crackled, spitting sap and bark inside an old woodstove.

  Winnie pulled out the piano stool for me. Two years ago, Doc had donated the pretty mahogany-and-spruce Story & Clark piano to the school after his wife passed, and he’d made sure to leave Winnie the beautiful red-fox-skin bench cover he’d bought from a trapper to fancy it.

  She said it’d been the devil getting the horse-drawn wagon to tote the heavy furniture up the mountain. She worried it was too prideful and pretty. But folks came from miles around for the chance to see a real piano like that, to touch the gleaming wood and tap the ivory keys. It was a sight, and to this day, folks still happened by to beg a peek, or sneak a shy tapping.

  Winnie smoothed down the slipping pelt and righted the fox’s dangling head, tail, paws, and hind legs.

  The young’uns gathered on the worn puncheon floor and sat in front of me in a semicircle. Henry, a frail ten-year-old, scooted close and snuck a rub of the fox’s furry feet.

  He tugged lightly on my skirts. “Book Woman, ma’am, I love the Peter and Wendy book. Please bring it again.”

  “I’ll try, Henry.” I smiled warmly.

  The small boy looked sickly, and I know’d it came from hunger.

  The mountain children were thinner than the young’uns in the picture books I brought them, and they’d noticed more than once and pointed it out, marveling about the fictional towns the characters lived in and all the food available there.

  Still, I couldn’t help notice again how the students waited for me, looked up at me, all quiet and not a single fidget or wiggle, as hungry for the stories in these books as they were for the food that always seemed sparse in this real land.

  “Book Woman?” A small girl named Nessie raised her hand. “Can you git me a cookbook next time? Sister is going to Pie Bake Dance in two weeks, an’ she needs herself a good recipe, ma’am.”

  “Pie Bake Dance, the Old Maid’s Chance!” Several boys sang out, making kiss-smacking noises until Winnie clapped her hands.

  “I’m happy to bring one for your sister,” I said. We always had church cookbooks coming in from around the state. And there would be recipes in the newspapers and magazines.

  I opened Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book and read the first chapter of Farmer Boy.

  Fifteen minutes later, I finished.

  Henry raised his hand. “Ma’am, I’m gonna be a librarian like you when I get grow’d up.”

  A few boys snickered. “You ain’t a’growin’ up, and you ain’t a girl, stupid.”

  “Am too,” Henry said to the boys. “Peter and Wendy says all children grow’d up. An’ I’m gonna be a librarian if I want.”

  “Ain’t true,” one snipped back. “It said except one! That’s you, stupid.”

  Hurt, Henry shrank back.

  Winnie glared her disapproval, quieting them.

  Clementine, an older girl sitting back on her legs, popped up on her knees and said, “I want to join the Pack Horse, Book Woman!”

  “’Cause you ain’t never gonna get yourself hitched, beanpole,” said a tall, barefoot boy sitting next to her in baggy pants and a tattered shirt, who yanked her braid.

  Clementine punched his arm.

  He tried to pinch her back, nabbing her shoulder. “Here, I can help,” he whispered as a tease. “You ain’t blue enough.”

  Winnie gave a sharp, scolding clap. “Quiet.”

  I softly cleared my throat and told the class, “The Pack Horse librarians ain’t just for girls. We have a man who rides over in Woodford now. And, Master Norton,” I said to the boy who’d pulled Clementine’s braid, “we also have ourselves women in the project who are widowed with young’uns.”

  I heard of at least two other women whose husbands had left them to find work in the city factories. The librarians had fibbed to the WPA and said they’d been abandoned so they could feed their family until their men sent for them.

  Norton dropped his head and murmured, “Sorry. Yes, ma’am.”

  Several students raised their hands, wriggling for permission to talk.

  Winnie clapped her hands again for a hush. “Let’s thank Book Woman for her visit, boys and girls.”

  Outside, I said goodbye to the teacher and mounted Junia.

  “See you soon. Be safe, Cussy Mary,” Winnie said, rubbing the mule’s ear.

  Henry ran out of the schoolhouse. “Book Woman! Miss Book Woman! Wait!”

  He looked at his teacher, feet itching, a plea of permission in his weak eyes.

  Winnie said, “Be quick, Henry. We’ve kept her long enough.”

  “Miss Book Woman, I’ve been saving this for you,” he said, breathless, and then thrust out a grubby fist with a wadded-up piece of paper inside. “I got it for winning Mrs. Parker’s spelling bee,” he beamed.

  Winnie placed a hand on his bony-ribbed back. “That’s right,” she said. “Henry spelled all his words with nary a hitch.”

  Henry passed it to Winnie who reached up and dropped the gift into my hand.

  I peeled back a piece of the paper wrapper, and Henry cried, “Don’t undo it, ma’am, don�
�t…until you feel a’might hungry.”

  “Thank you. I’ll save it then,” I said, pocketing the curious little package.

  “Has the new baby come, Henry?” I remembered he’d mentioned a new baby back in December.

  “No, ma’am, but Ma thinks it’ll be here soon. She’s gotten too big to walk me partway to school now. She says I’m big ’nough to come all the way by myself.”

  Most of the schoolchildren did walk miles by themselves. A few had brothers and sisters to join them. Others would meet up with students along the way if they were lucky enough to live nearby.

  “It’ll be nice having yourself another brother or sister,” I said.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m hoping this one’ll live.” He scrunched up his small face, worrying the thought. Shifting his body, he nudged the dirt with a bare toe. Henry’s ribs jutted from a thin shirt that was too small, his collarbone cut sharp, an unnatural easel for his pallid face.

  His mama had lost the last one. Or was it the last two? I couldn’t remember. There were always new babies in the mountains if you didn’t count the dying ones.

  “A new little one,” I said, trying to sound warm and positive and a tad excited.

  “I like the new babies best.” Henry grinned.

  “Give her my best wishes.”

  “I can spell ‘pineapple,’ want to hear?” Henry boasted.

  “That’s a mighty big word,” I said and waited. Winnie had spelling contests from the books I brought. It always pleased me to be a small part of it.

  “P-I-N-E-A-P-P-L-E,” Henry burst out. “And don’t you open it none until you’re good an’ hungry.” He scurried back to the schoolhouse.

  “What could it be?” I wondered as I rode off.

  Ten

  As I left the schoolyard, low gray clouds rolled overhead. In the distance, a dog barked at the thunder, and the scent of passing rain sweetened the swirling billows of ghost fog.