Autumn Winifred Oliver Does Things Different Read online

  Autumn Winifred Oliver

  Does Things Different

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Copyright

  For Byron.

  Love!

  Acknowledgments

  There are a few people whose life’s work helped make this story possible. Durwood Dunn, a professor at Tennessee Wesleyan College, was born and raised in Cades Cove, and he has shared his rich history through several books. Much of the flavor of Cades Cove captured in this story is thanks to the detailed accounts of life in the Cove recorded by Dr. Dunn. Also vitally important to the spirit of this text is the work of Veta Wilson King. Ms. King, a feature writer for the Mountain Press, a newspaper in Sevier County, Tennessee, has the gift of drawing stories out of people and the foresight to record them for future generations. Thank you, too, to Randy Russell and Janet Barnett, who have preserved many of the ghost stories popular in east Tennessee. A. Randolph Shields and Carlos C. Campbell are both Great Smoky Mountains National Park historians whose work I cherish.

  My thanks to the members of the CAPS critique group: Kathy Rhodes, Susie Dunham, Colleen Speroff, Currie Powers, and Chance Chambers. They were the first to lay eyes on Autumn, and she’s stronger for it. Thank you, too, to the numerous members of the Midsouth chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, who offered suggestions on this story. Special thanks to Shirley Amitrano and Linda Ragsdale, perhaps the two best critiquers on the planet. Hugs to you both!

  My gratitude to Kathryn Knight, friend and mentor, who opened the door to children’s publishing for me. And to Wendy Loggia, my editor, who took Autumn by the hand and gently led her toward better, smarter choices: many, many thanks! Autumn’s a hard one to rein in, and you did it masterfully.

  Big hugs to the members of the St. Paul’s Playgroup, especially Tina Cahalan Jones, who helped with many of the behind-the-scenes aspects of this book.

  I’m blessed to have a mother-in-law, Theresa Tubb, who understood my dream and who volunteered her babysitting /grandmotherly services to help me achieve it. My parents, Jack and Helen O’Donnell, told me I could do anything I want to do, and then gave me every opportunity to do it. I love you both. And to my beautiful kiddos, Chloe and Jack: thank you for believing in “someday.” You are deeply loved.

  1

  I do things different.

  It helps to remind

  yourself of that

  when you’re attending

  your own funeral.

  So there I stood, on something akin to a big, bald behind. Mighty appropriate circumstances, considering what came next.

  I was in the Meadow in the Sky on top of Thunderhead Mountain. Thunderhead gets its name because it’s so high up, thunderstorms crack and boom and dump rain below you. There aren’t any trees up there, so the mountaintop is nothing but a big, swishy meadow. Folks around here call it a “bald,” and it looks enough like a hairless head. But all those mountains together, they look more to me like they’re baring their rumps to the heavens above. So I figure all this talk about a national park is nothing but a bunch of hoo-ha. Who’d travel across the country to see this?

  Truth be told, I cotton to the balds, myself. Those balds, they’re a bit of a mystery. Nobody knows for sure why trees don’t grow on them. It’s not that the mountains are too tall, or that the weather is too cold. I suppose those balds just don’t want to be like every other mountain.

  Yeah, I guess I’ll miss old Thunderhead most of all once we finally join Pop in Knoxville. Knoxville. I glow like a lightning bug every time I think about all that big-city living. Just nineteen more days.

  Knoxville’s thirty miles away as the crow flies, but boy, are those some bumpy miles by land. There’s but one road out of Cades Cove, and it’s snowed in three months of the year. Cades Cove is like an island, a speck of a town surrounded by wave after wave of mountains. (Course, I’ve never seen the ocean. I hear it’s salty. Me, I prefer sweets.) Those mountains circling our tiny town serve to keep out all that’s new. Others in the Cove are just fine with the old, but me, I like new.

  Don’t get me wrong—for the most part, I love this here Cove. But I’m not cut from the same chunk of wood as the folks who’ve whittled away their lives here. I reckon I’m a chain saw in a stack of axes. See, Autumn Winifred Oliver does things different. Least that’s what our neighbors are fond of saying. Course, they don’t use that exact word, “different.” They’re more apt to say “rascally” or “rampageous” or “up to no good.”

  Another storm stirred below. My dusty blond hair whipped across my face, stinging it like a sunburn. I smelled the drops in the air. The pine trees way below bent practically in half in all the frenzy. It’d make a right nice drawing if I were inclined to sit and sketch. But, wind aside, the weather up on Thunderhead was clear as glass. When it’s clear, it feels like you can reach right up and touch the sun, and that’s what I was aiming to do. So I’m surprised I heard the bells at all.

  Church bells ringing on any day other than the Sabbath is a sound that prickles your neck hairs. On those days, ringing bells tally up the age of the Cove’s latest dearly departed. Most times, just counting the number of tolls tells you who’s passed. So I listened hard and counted: ding, dong, ding, dong, ding, dong, ding, dong, ding, dong, ding.

  Eleven tolls total. Wait . . . eleven? That ain’t right! I did some quick figuring: me, Donnie Dunlap, and Twig Ogle hit the mark. But Donnie’d been in the Sugarlands all summer helping his uncle, and Twig and her family were on their fancy vacation to Gatlinburg that week. So time being, I was the only one in the whole dang Cove who was eleven! But the bells stopped ringing right at that number, no joshing.

  So that’s pretty much how I found out I’d died.

  Now, it doesn’t take a cartful of clever and cunning to know that had I really died, I wouldn’t be here to tell this story. But I’d never passed on before, so I bit myself between my thumb and forefinger just to make certain. Nope—definitely still (ouch!) here. Yet after I found out what happened, I’d like to have died.

  I scrambled home quicker than spit on a griddle to see what my death was all about. I’d just slid down a muddy slope into our backyard when my eyes locked with big fat Aunt Lydia, my mama’s cousin. There she was, all puffy and puckered and fanning herself because she’d apparently run over from her farm when she heard the tolls, too. As soon as she laid those beady little black eyes of hers on me, the walking dead, her lips formed a tiny pink O and she passed out cold. And God has a sense of humor, as Mama likes to say, because right then the sky broke open and buckets of rain dumped on us both.

  I do things different. It helps to remind yourself of that when you’re dragging one of your heftiest kin through the mud.

  I heaved and hauled and pushed big ole Aunt Lydia into the dogtrot so’s she’d stay dry. And let me tell you, I might be small for my age, but I’m scrappy. I hefted that sack of potatoes onto that porch and I left her there. I figured I’d suffer my punishments for seeing h
er knickers later on (as if seeing her knickers wasn’t punishment enough).

  “Mama!” I yelled into the kitchen, then into the parlor. “Mama?”

  There was a small crowd inside. Mo Jackson and his son, Beef, were there. So were Uncle John and Uncle John Too and Uncle Mack. Katie and Mama and Aunt Patsy and Mrs. Tillman were all packed in as well. They huddled over the davenport, where my gramps lay sputtering and coughing like a cat working up one heckuva hairball. Mama was all teary.

  “It’s a miracle!” she muttered, dabbing her moist eyes with the corner of her apron. The neighbors nodded with hung-open jaws. “It’s a miracle!”

  “What’s a miracle?” I asked, pushing my way up to the front of the crowd. After all, those bells had just rung up my death. Wasn’t this my funeral? Shouldn’t I have a good view of the goings-on?

  Gramps pulled himself up on one of his shriveled old elbows. His milky eyes finally focused on the crowd above him, and his face twisted into deep ruts like those you see in the creek beds when it hasn’t rained in weeks. He grunted.

  “What the hell are you lookin’ at?”

  He did—he said it! He said the h-word outside of church, right there in front of all those ladies. Now, if that room hadn’t been silent before, he hushed us all up with that little gem. And at this point, more and more rain-soaked folks had crowded into our tiny parlor, on account of those bells announcing my death and all. So practically half the Cove heard my gramps rip that one out. Jeez!

  Finally, a soaking wet Paul Peterson stepped forward, grabbed my knobby elbow, and shook me a little, almost to test if I was really there. He looked down at me, then over at my wheezing gramps, then at my mother.

  “Martha,” he said. “Exactly who here is dead?”

  Mama blinked once, twice, three times, as if she was looking into the sun rather than at this soggy crowd of neighbors.

  “Why, Daddy, of course,” she said, turning to Gramps on the couch. “At least, he was. Fell from the loft of Jackson’s barn. We were just about to put the pennies over his eyes”—at this, the crowd sucked in their breaths—“when he started wheezing. It’s a miracle, I tell ya! A miracle!” Mama rapped her knuckles on the wooden table beside her to keep future miracles from passing by our house altogether.

  “I should’ve never burned that sassafras wood last week,” she said, shaking her head. A couple of folks in the crowd clicked their tongues—sassafras wood burned indoors? Well, no wonder!

  Then Mama cocked her head like our old porch dog, Jeb, and a frazzled lock of brown hair loosed itself from her bun. “Who else would it be?”

  I stepped forward. “Mama,” I whispered. Suddenly I felt itchy in my skin after the news of my death had rung through the Cove and echoed off the mountains. “The bell rang eleven times.”

  Now, I reckon that normally, on a day when the bell at the Missionary Baptist Church had just toted up the age of her youngest baby girl, Mama’d be a slobbering, blubbery mess. At least, I like to imagine that. But today, instead of fainting cold dead on the spot like big fat Aunt Lydia, Mama just whistled. Whistled!

  “Looks like we’ve dodged that old Grim Reaper twice today. We are truly blessed.”

  “But Mama,” my voice squeaked. “Why eleven?”

  “ ’Twas a mistake, Winnie,” she said, and ruffled my tangled hair. (She’s the only one who can call me Winnie without suffering a black-and-blue shin afterwards. Not to mention the hair-ruffling thing.) “I sent Joe Jackson to the church to ring it fifty-three times for Daddy. Just after he left, the wheezing begun. Somebody must’ve sent word to stop the ringing. Funny how they stopped right on your number, huh, Win?” She was all smiles.

  “Funny? It’s thumbing my nose at fate, more likely! Now I’m jinxed for sure!” There. I’d said it. I knew by the faces of our neighbors, who were still crowding into our parlor one by one, that they thought so, too. There goes Autumn Oliver, they’d say later. She’s supposed to be dead.

  Me, a walking ghost? Now, that’s different.

  Gramps silenced the crowd with a grunt, which just goes to show you how bad off he must’ve been, to stay quiet as long as he did. “This is all well and good, folks, but show’s over. I got work to do.” He groaned his way to his feet and quickly hunched over, placing his hands on his knees to steady himself. I’d never seen Gramps look so weak.

  Mama cleared her throat, adjusted her apron, and turned to me and Katie. “That does it. Girls, we’re moving in with your gramps.”

  “What?” I shrieked in unison with Katie. Normally, me and my big sis don’t think enough alike to shriek anything in unison. But this! Death suddenly didn’t look so bad.

  “No Knoxville?” Katie asked, clamping her arms across her broad chest. She shook her head, flinging tight brown pincurls around her face.

  “But we gotta go to Knoxville!” I shouted. “What about Pop? He’s been there long enough without us girls.”

  “Yeah! Autumn’s right,” Katie said. I squinched my eyes at her to see if she was being sassy, but it looked like my sister actually agreed with me. That’s a first.

  Mama chewed on the inside of her lip, and I thought we had her. Mama couldn’t leave Pop alone! If I knew anything at all, I knew how much my parents loved each other. Salt and pepper, they were. Everyone said so. Tears pooled in Mama’s soft brown eyes, and she swiped at one with a raw, red knuckle. “He’ll just have to wait awhile longer, I suppose. Kin is kin. Your gramps needs us.”

  No Knoxville!

  No movie theaters.

  No soda counters.

  No clear-as-a-bell radio play.

  No Pop.

  Mama had cried for two days solid when Pop first sprang the idea of moving to Knoxville a few months ago. Katie and I had danced in circles—we were moving to a real city, with drugstores and train tracks and strangers! But Mama’d said she’d never live in that durn city and that Pop must be out of his blasted mind. I’d never heard Mama talk so salty.

  “Kin is kin,” Mama now repeated in a whisper, and her face softened. “We’ll just have a little delay, is all.” It occurred to me just how grim Mama had grown over the past few weeks: her plump features had pulled taut, and her round brown eyes had narrowed into a squint. But now that she had an excuse to stay in the Cove, she appeared to melt like butter before our eyes. She said we were staying to take care of Gramps, but I knew we were really staying because Mama was scareder than a possum in daylight to live in a city as big and noisy and dangerous as Knoxville. But I’d had no idea Mama would move in with her father just to stay in the Cove. She was either mighty concerned about him or mighty scared of that slice of heaven.

  Tilly McBroom stepped forward and scooped out the plug of tobacco resting between her gum and front lip.

  “Tom,” she croaked at Gramps, “don’t make these girls give up movin’ to the big city. You gots a house. I gots furniture. What say you?”

  Two or three giggles got loose from the crowd, but I could feel the jealousy of the other old biddies crackle in the air. I knew what they were thinking: Why didn’t I think to propose? Gramps was quite the catch, as he was the only widower over forty in the whole Cove. And he’d likely be rich soon, what with all the work he’d done on this national park. Good. Let ’em fight over him. Better they end up with him than me.

  “There!” Katie spun toward Mama, and parts of her plump frame spun farther than others. “Gramps’ll get married. Done. Now can we move to Knoxville?”

  Gramps unfolded from his hunch to his full six-foot-plus height and hooked his thumbs through his overall straps. “Thank you for the offer, Miz Tilly, but I think I’ll pass. And Martha, I surely don’t want you and your two leeches comin’ over and stealin’ all my food.”

  “Leeches!” Katie shrilled. Her green eyes flared, and those shiny curls of hers hopped around her head like wet frogs. “No suitor will come knocking at my door if we’re at that place!”

  “Can’t we at least move him in here?” I waved my hand aroun
d our tiny parlor. “Our house is so much bigger than his . . . his . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word.

  “Winnie, this house is sold, remember?” Mama reminded me.

  “Quicker than a snap, this house went,” Tilly McBroom said, and snapped, as if to underline her point.

  “Sight unseen,” Uncle John Too added.

  It had been the talk of the Cove for weeks—how fast our house had sold once we decided to move. Whoever bought it must be rich or crazy or both. They’d never laid eyes on the place, and they up and paid cash money for the thing. Mama says it’s because her house is full of clean living. Everyone else says it’s someone going to turn this box into a hotel when the park opens. Fine by me, long as I’m in Knoxville.

  But I’m not in Knoxville, and it’s looking like I won’t be anytime soon.

  Mama patted Gramps’s arm. “We’ll be in by the end of the week, Daddy.”

  That happy, glowy lightning bug that once was Autumn Winifred Oliver? Squashed flat and fizzled out.

  2

  I do things different.

  It helps to remind

  yourself of that

  when you’re doing

  your kin’s dirty work.

  Gramps’s house was just eleven miles away on the other side of the Cove, but it felt like the other side of the moon. It was off the main road, down a winding dust trail, through a tangled mess of trees, over a swinging suspension bridge that groaned under the weight of a toad, and across a trickle of muddy creek. There sat his drafty, dirty old cabin.

  Cabin! There—I said it. Cabin. Gramps didn’t have a modern frame house like most folks in the Cove. His home was made of huge chiseled logs, worn as smooth as smoky glass over the years. The only thing stopping the wind from blowing right through the chinks in the wood were the layers of rotting newspaper that someone had crammed into the holes long ago.

  Gramps was right proud of this heap of logs, he was. Said it was built by his grandparents, one of the first houses in the Cove. When he’d told us that, Katie’d run her finger across a windowpane and lifted off a generous lot of dust. “I can tell,” she’d huffed.