Jolene Read online

  Caleb continued to regale her with proud stories about his wife and children, and it was clear he was a very fond husband and father. If she was to believe him, no one made better jelly, pie, and pickles than his wife did. No one fried a better hoe-cake. His boy was the best muleteer on the Ducktown-to-Cleveland road, bar himself—and actually, she believed this one, if only because he surely had trained his boy to take as good a care for the mules as he did. His eldest daughter—who was Anna’s age—was as pretty as a flower and could sing like a bird, and picked up songs on a single hearing. The rest of his children were similarly talented.

  Wisht Ma and Pa’d talk ’bout me thet way.

  When praise of his family ran out, he told her odd stories about his mules, and how he chose them, and all about what excellent creatures they were. According to him—and she had no reason to doubt him—a mule was superior to a horse in every way except speed. “An’ iffen y’all kin give a mule a good reason he can unnerstan’ why he should run, he’ll outrun a hoss ever’ time!” He grinned, but with a hint of chagrin. “Trouble is, I ain’t niver been able t’ figger out how to give one a good reason he can unnerstan’!”

  She learned more about mules in the time it took them to get from that lunch stop to Lonesome Holler than she had ever known in her life.

  She knew she was about to meet her aunt at last when Caleb turned off the main road onto a little bare track he probably could not have managed if the cart had been fully loaded. As it was, it took some very careful work by the mules to make the turn. The track took them between two hills, but there was more than enough space between them for a good farm, as she quickly learned when they passed by just such an establishment. A lively crick ran through the holler, deep enough to turn a small water wheel—and this farm had just such an object, attached to what must be small millhouse. It also had a good, big garden, a lot of corn, two mules, a pigsty, a big henhouse, and four cows, two of them with calves. There was a huge house, not built of clapboard, but of logs, and a big barn to match. Why, there must have been at least four rooms in the house, plus a big loft, or even a full second story! It even had two chimneys, which meant two fireplaces!

  For a moment she thought wildly that this must be Aunt Jinny’s place, and wondered how her Pa could ever have thought that Jinny was some sort of crazy woman out in the wilderness. But then she saw a man coming out of the barn, and a woman with a younger one—probably her daughter—coming out of the house with a basket of laundry to hang, and she realized her mistake. No, this was a proper farm that belonged to a family. But that meant neighbors for Aunt Jinny. So she wouldn’t be out here all alone with her aunt.

  The mules had to pick their way slowly and carefully once they got past that farm. Roots had grown across the track, and the cart swayed from side to side as it rolled slowly over them. She held on to the seat with both hands, and the empty dinner basket bounced around in the cart bed with a rattling noise. The huge trees met overhead, closing them in a tunnel of dim, green gloom.

  They must have gone on for at least another hour when she saw light ahead; there was a clearing up there. Was that Aunt Jinny’s place, finally?

  It was not; it was merely a clearing, though one big enough that the mules could turn the wagon around. And standing at the other side of that clearing was—a figure.

  At first, Anna thought it was a man. It wore denim overalls, a red flannel shirt, and a straw hat. But then Caleb hailed it as he whoa’d the mules.

  “Howdy, Miz Jinny! I got the liddle gel, safe an’ sound!” He beamed at the figure, who came forward and tipped up its head, showing, by its beardlessness at least, that it was a woman.

  “Howdy, Caleb Strong. Niver doubted y’all would.” Aunt Jinny smiled slightly at him. “Le’s get her down so y’all kin git home in time fer supper.”

  The mules stood, steady as statues, as Caleb hopped off the seat, came around to Anna’s side, and helped her down by the simple expedient of putting both hands around her waist and lifting her down. Anna stood there awkwardly while he got her bundle and managed to get hold of the basket as well, handing them both to Jinny.

  Jinny reached down and picked up a similar basket that had been hidden in the weeds at her feet. “Here y’all be, Caleb. Much obliged. An’ give my thenkee to Jebediah Sawyer when y’all see ’im.”

  “It’s me that’s obliged, Miz Jinny,” Caleb replied with deep respect. “My Mary sets a powerful store by y’all’s potions.” He stowed the basket under the wagon seat and fastened it there securely with a bit of twine he took from his pocket. “Now I’ll get my team turned about and be on my way.”

  “Safe journeys,” Aunt Jinny said. She took the basket with Anna’s bundle in one hand and Anna’s elbow in the other, and steered her up the path, deeper into the holler, before Caleb had even gotten to the front of his team to lead them back around to the track.

  This was not a track; it was a path. Ferns encroached on either side, and foliage met just above their heads. There was barely enough room for the two of them to walk side by side, but the moss-covered path felt quite cool, soft, and utterly wonderful on Anna’s bare feet.

  Aunt Jinny let go of her elbow once they’d gone a few feet. It wasn’t as if she was going to have to guide Anna anywhere, when the path was clear. And it wasn’t as if Anna was going to run back to Caleb Strong to beg him to take her home—although given how odd and stern Aunt Jinny looked, that idea had certainly passed through her mind.

  They walked on for almost an hour. The path went up a slight incline, and there was bright light at the end of it, so presumably there was a house up there and Aunt Jinny didn’t actually live in the woods, or a cave, or a hollow tree.

  They emerged from the forest into a clearing under bright sunlight. If there had ever been any trees here, the least vestige of them had been cleared away a long time ago. The path went to a split-rail fence with a stile they used to get over it, then passed between two farmed sections: one all corn, the other a mixed garden of vegetables and herbs. Or—wait, no, that wasn’t just corn in the first field; each hill supporting a corn stalk also had a winter squash vine trailing out of it, and a pinto bean bush. Bean pods studded the bushes, and the squash plants each had hard little green shapes on them. Chickens, brown, white, and speckled, scratched at the earth and hunted vigorously for bugs in both fields, watched over by a sharp-eyed red rooster. The sheer amount of food growing here, presumably all for just one person, left Anna feeling stunned.

  Ma was right. We all coulda lived here, an’ Aunt Jinny wouldn’t hev noticed.

  At the end of the path was a log cabin. There was a stone well with a little roof over it to the left of the cabin, a sturdy henhouse built of smaller logs to the right of that, and a stone pigsty beside that. At this end of the garden plot were four beehives. Aunt Jinny might not be as prosperous as Jebediah Sawyer or Caleb Strong, but she clearly was several pegs above the Joneses.

  Anna stood mesmerized by all this bounty, as her aunt went on ahead, then paused to look back at her. “Foller me, girl,” she said. “Don’ stand there with yore mouth open. Happen my bees might take it fer a new hive.”

  She snapped her mouth shut and followed her aunt, who stopped right by the well, turned, then seized Anna’s chin in a hard, strong hand, turning her head this way and that to look her over critically without saying a word. “How long since y’all had a bath?” Aunt Jinny demanded, scowling. “A proper bath. All over.”

  Torn between acute embarrassment and indignation, Anna stammered, “Soon’s it got warm in April, an’ agin in May . . .”

  “Lawsy.” Aunt Jinny shook her head. “Take off yore close. All on ’em.” And when Anna hesitated, flushing to the roots of her hair, embarrassment now total, Jinny snapped, “Now, goldangit! There ain’t nobuddy t’see but me’n God, an’ nuther one of us cares whut y’all look like nekkid!”

  Hands shaking, she pulled off her
dress, then her petticoat, her thin, sad little excuse for a chemise, and her drawers. Aunt Jinny snatched them up, but held them in a way that made it look like she thought they were filthy, and went into the cabin with them and the basket with Anna’s bundle in it. When she came out again, she had a big piece of flour sack, a smaller rag, a wide-toothed comb, and a rough chunk of yeller soap. “Here,” she said, thrusting the soap, rag, comb, and sacking at Anna. “Scrub. All over. Hard. Wash yore hair. Keep pullin buckets’a water outa the well t’do it with.” Then she stomped back into the cabin, leaving Anna standing there, stark naked, with a rag in one hand and the piece of soap in the other. It was handmade soap, and she’d seen pieces like it before; it came in the baskets of potions her Ma got from Aunt Jinny to sell. And it smelled wonderful, like all the flowers in the world.

  Well . . . there didn’t seem any good reason, or any reason, really, to disobey. A bath wouldn’t hurt her, to be sure, and it wasn’t as if this were the dead of winter. So Anna pulled up her first bucket of water and began to wash.

  The water was quite cold, but the sun, in the windless little clearing, was hot. And it wasn’t too long before Anna forgot her embarrassment and began enjoying how a really good, thorough bath was making her feel, a much more thorough bath than she could ever have gotten in the old tin tub. She hadn’t really thought about it, but the ugly on the rag didn’t lie; she had soot and grime almost everywhere, especially her hair. As she washed and poured water from the bucket over herself, the water all ran down the slight incline into the garden, where it quickly soaked into the earth.

  When the water finally ran clean from her hair, she dried herself on the sacking and began to comb her hair out. That was when Aunt Jinny emerged and handed her a shapeless white garment.

  Shapeless—but not ugly. There were pretty little ruffles all around the hem, at the ends of the sleeves, and around the drawstring neck. When she slipped it on, it was softer than anything she had ever worn, and although there was a darned spot where it had been ripped a little, it was almost as good as new. There were ribbons at the wrists to draw the sleeves closed, and another ribbon threaded around the neck, so you could gather it tighter, or let it looser.

  “Tha’s a nightgown, an’ it belonged t’y’all’s Granny, my Ma,” said Aunt Jinny. “Reckon I got some more pieces of her close, an’ y’all are about her size. Yore stuff ain’t fit t’wear till it’s been give a good wash.”

  Anna opened her mouth to object, then closed it again. The dirt on the rag and in the water didn’t lie. Her clothing was probably just as filthy as she’d been.

  “Now y’all’re fit t’come in,” Jinny continued, and turned and went back into the cabin. Anna followed, still combing the knots out of her wet hair. Without any drawers or petticoat on, being in the loose nightgown, which came down to just above her ankles, felt like being naked. It was disconcerting, but also cool and comfortable at the same time.

  It was a one-room cabin, although the room was surprisingly large, with a pair of lofts. And the very first thing that caught Anna’s attention was the fireplace—because it didn’t look like any fireplace she had ever seen in her entire life.

  It absolutely dominated the room and took up most of the back wall. It was made of stone that had been plastered over and whitewashed, so it really stood out in the dimly lit room. It stuck out into the room at least six feet. It was at least five feet tall! There was a hearth with a fire in it—but it was set deep into the fireplace, at about waist-high, and not directly under the chimney, a big alcove with a hearth large enough for three pots, and the fireplace deeper in that.

  It occurred to her using this kind of fireplace—if you could even call it a fireplace—would be as easy as cooking on the Jones’s coal stove, if not easier. No getting down on your hands and knees, no real bending over.

  There was another deep place to the right and directly under the chimney that looked as if it could be a hearth—or maybe it was an oven—and several more niches along the side to the left. Did the whole big construction keep things constantly warm? There was a ladder going up to the flat top, which must have been about five feet off the ground and big as Ma and Pa’s bed. And there was, in fact, bedding up there. As if—well, if someone slept up there in the winter, it would keep them mighty warm and comfortable.

  There were two pots and a fry-pan at the hearth, and more in the niches.

  It was such an extraordinary contraption that it took Anna a while to look away from it and survey the rest of the room.

  Unlike the Jones’s clapboard house, where you could see light coming in through tiny spaces between the boards, the logs were chinked so tightly and expertly there was no chance of a draft once you closed the doors and the solid shutters over the windows. There were two windows in the wall behind her, with the front door between them, two windows in the wall to her right, and two and a door in the wall to her left. There were two lofts with ladders going up, one above the front door, the other above the fireplace, and she thought she saw a hint of a window up in the wall of the loft above the fireplace. Running under the one window to the right of the door was a counter with a sink in it, and beneath the counter, shelves laden with pots and jars and a few full or mostly full sacks. Above the counter, more shelves, one with a few books on it. At the end of the counter against the right wall was a huge cupboard. In front of the fireplace was a small table and a pair of stools atop a rag rug. The rest of the cabin held another huge cupboard, shelves loaded with bags, baskets, pots, jars, and rough boxes, another two chairs made of small, peeled logs, and a bed made of the same peeled logs. And that made Anna stare as well; she had never seen furniture made of logs before. Especially a bed. The well-off had fancy brass beds with wool mattresses. The not-so-well-off had iron beds with straw mattresses. Those just getting by had box beds made of whatever planks they could find and a corn-shuck mattress. The Joneses had an iron bed and a straw mattress with a trundle under it that her Pa had made with another straw mattress. The really poor slept on whatever they could find, piled up on the floor, sometimes contained within the confines of a rough plank bed. She didn’t know what to make of a log bed.

  And there was food and bunches of drying plants everywhere: not only (presumably) in those bags and boxes and pots and jars, but hanging from peeled saplings tied up to the rafters. Sausages and hams, smoked meat she couldn’t identify, smoked fish. Onions in bunches. Potatoes in nets.

  Before she could get over the shock of seeing such bounty, her aunt went over to the hearth and started frying something. There was the mouth-watering scent of bacon in the air. And when she turned back from the hearth, she had two plates in her hand, which she set on the little table. A moment later two bowls joined the plates. All four dishes were made of wood. So were the two cups she filled with liquid from a metal pitcher she took from one of the niches in the fireplace. “Set,” Aunt Jinny ordered.

  Anna sat herself down, and took the spoon Aunt Jinny handed to her. She couldn’t identify what it was made of, until it dawned on her that it was cow horn.

  She waited for her aunt to say grace, but Jinny just sat down and dug straight into her food. After a moment, so did Anna.

  The plate held a thick, fried-cornmeal hoecake. The bowl held soup virtually identical to the one Missus Sawyer had served her last night, except that there was less pepper and more things she couldn’t identify in it. The liquid was an herb tea of some sort, and there was honey to spoon into it to sweeten it. There was blackberry jam as well, and a horn knife she and Jinny shared to spread it on the hoecake. She ate carefully, so as not to get a crumb or a drop on the white gown she wore, and she felt—well, she felt a little like Pharoah’s daughter in her white shift with naught underneath, feasting on fine vittles. Jinny didn’t say much, except to ask when her plates were empty if she wanted more of anything. She hesitated, and Jinny sighed with exasperation. “This ain’t Lew Jones’s house,” she said cro
ssly, and waved her hand at all the food. “I could feed three more of y’all and niver notice the lack. Are y’all hungry, or not?”

  Anna allowed as how she was hungry, and got another helping of soup. There didn’t appear to be any more hoecake batter, but Jinny went to the nearest cupboard and opened it, and came back with a square of cornbread for her to crumble into the soup.

  When the meal was over, Jinny showed Anna that the privy was, as she had hoped, in a little shed attached to that side door, was made of logs, and smelled not at all, except of dried peppermint and spearmint, from the bunches tied to nails along the inside. So—in bad weather you didn’t even have to go through the rain or snow to go to the privy!

  Her aunt got warm water from another big metal pitcher in the niches along the fireplace, and wordlessly washed the dishes while Anna dried and stacked them on the counter.

  “Now, lessee what we kin do about close,” Jinny said when the chore was done. She went over to the tall log bed and pulled a wooden chest out from under it.

  The first things to come out were a couple of sets of drawers, a petticoat, and a couple chemises. Jinny held them up and examined them critically, then turned to Anna.

  “C’n y’all mend?” she demanded.

  “Yes’m,” she said obediently.

  “Take thet there stool an’ go outside fer the last light,” Jinny ordered. Once Anna had set herself down beside the front door, Jinny put the underthings in Anna’s hand along with a woven willow workbasket full of spools of thread, a needle-flannel, a pincushion, and a pair of scissors and let her go to work.