Faith, Hope, and Ivy June (2 page)

At three o’clock Ivy June thrust her arms through the straps of her backpack and glanced furtively down the hall, hoping that Jimmy Harris might come along to tell her goodbye. The eighth graders usually kept to the other end of the building, though, and this day was no exception. Ivy June wondered if she only imagined that his eyes followed her in the cafeteria, and that when he did happen to meet her in the hall, his smile seemed especially friendly.

But Miss Dixon was coming down the corridor instead, the sleeves of her pink sweater pushed up to the elbows. She was the one teacher in middle school who truly looked good in jeans, Ivy June thought. Miss Dixon smiled as she tucked an envelope into the side pocket of the backpack.

“The teachers wanted you to have a little spending money when you go to Lexington,” she said. “It’s not much, but it might come in handy.”

Ivy June didn’t know if it would be more polite to accept or refuse it. “Well … thank you,” she said, surprised. “You didn’t have to….”

“No, but we wanted to,” Miss Dixon said, giving Ivy June’s arm a squeeze. “After all, you’re our ambassador, remember.”

Ivy June gave her a shy smile. “Thanks a lot,” she said.

On the bus, she slid in beside Shirl and put her backpack on the floor between her feet.

“What was Miss Dixon saying to you?” Shirl asked.

Ivy June tried not to smile. “Called me an ambassador.”

“Huh! I’ve called you a lot of names in my life, but I never called you that,” Shirl joked. She dug in her bag for a small pocket dictionary and thumbed through the “A” pages. “‘Ambassador,’” she read. “‘An official envoy. A diplomatic agent of the highest rank.’” She turned to Ivy June. “It means you stink.”

“Does
not!”

“Does!” Shirley flipped through the pages to “R” and looked up “rank,” then held it out for Ivy June to see. “‘Offensive in odor. Offensively gross.’”

Ivy June laughed and gave her a shove. “Anyway,” she said, unzipping the pocket of her backpack, “she gave me an envelope.”

“Yeah? A going-away card? Bet there’s a ten-dollar bill,” said Shirl.

Ivy June took out the envelope. She found a congratulations card inside, along with two twenties. Shirley whistled. Ivy June could scarcely believe it.

With every good wish for a remarkable journey
, the message read, and all the teachers had signed it.

“Wow! Two weeks in Lexington and two twenties besides?” said Shirl, this time letting the envy show.

“You should have put your name in for the exchange program,” Ivy June said. “Might have been you who was going.”

“Yeah, but last thing in this world I’d want is one of those Academy girls staying with
me
for two weeks after I got back,” Shirl told her. “And Pa wouldn’t hear of it.” Which meant that she’d tried.

The fact was that when the invitation had come from the Buckner Academy for Girls to participate in a seventh-grade student exchange, the teachers at Thunder Creek Middle School had decided that any seventh-grade girl could submit her name. But she had to bring a note from home saying that the family was able and willing to take on a guest for two weeks. Ivy June had supposed that at least half the seventh-grade girls would turn in notes the next day, but at the end of the week, only six families had said they were willing. After a teacher’s visit to each of those homes, the names had been placed in a coffee can and shaken around. The principal herself had drawn the winning name: Ivy June Mosley.

As the bus bounced along the pockmarked road that rimmed Parson’s Gap, Ivy June looked for signs of spring in the still-desolate landscape. The state road led up into the mountains, where all roads leading off it were even narrower. Like the limbs of a tree, there were branches off branches, and most of them were wet and rutted. The bus stuck to the main route. At each stop its passengers had to hike the rest of the distance home themselves.

White leafless birches stood out like skeleton trees, their bones spread-eagled against a backdrop of pine.
At the end—you meet God
was carved into a wooden post, almost obscured by the brown vines of kudzu that covered tree and bush as far as Ivy June could see. One day the kudzu looked like wire strung out over the landscape, and the next it would be green and leafy once again.

As the bus maneuvered a switchback, Shirl asked, “What time do you leave tomorrow?”

“Papaw’s driving me to Hazard at eleven. That’s where the Academy folks will pick me up,” Ivy June told her.

“Scared?” asked Shirl, her squinty eyes studying Ivy June closely.

“Why should I be?” asked Ivy June, wondering if Shirl could read her face.

Shirl shrugged. “No particular reason. Hope you don’t have to spend the whole vacation being their maid or something.”

“You’re crazy,” Ivy June told her. “It’ll be fun.”

Shirl gave her a mischievous grin. “You’ll miss me, though.”

“Sure I will. But you won’t miss me. You’ll be too busy kissing Fred Mason.”

“I
never!”
Shirl objected, punching Ivy June’s arm, then laughed.

Ivy June laughed too and stood up as the bus came to a stop at a tiny roadside shack not much bigger than a phone booth. Two or even three children could squeeze into it while they waited for a bus in bad weather. Elementary school buses, for grades one through six, stopped there first, and Ivy June’s eight-year-old brother, Ezra, always headed home as soon as he got off, eager for a snack. But Howard liked to fool around. Today he was poking a long stick at a winter-dazed toad in the weeds. One year younger than Ivy June, Howard was already an inch taller; he was growing lankier by the day, and his feet seemed too big for his body. He grinned as he watched Ivy June climb down off the bus.

“Who-eee!” he called, glad for vacation. “Won’t have to ride the bus for nine whole days!” As the bus moved on, he said, “Me and Kenny’s got this wood wagon, you know? And we found this old bike? And we took off the handlebars?”

He and Ivy June started up the narrow side road that ran along a creek.

“Yeah? What are you fixing to do?” Ivy June asked.

“Make a go-cart or something. See if we can’t hook up a motor to it.”

“Where are you going to get a motor, Howard Paul?”

“Lawn mower, maybe.”

“And what are you going to do for gas?” Ivy June demanded. She looked over at the toad that Howard held out in front of him, wedged now between the ends of two sticks. “You thinking of siphoning any gas out of Daddy’s pickup, he’ll kill you.”

“Wouldn’t take much,” said Howard, tipping the sticks one way, then the other, as though he were toasting a marshmallow.

“Howard, quit worrying that toad and listen to me,” Ivy June said. “Ma’s going to need your help while I’m gone. Don’t you be off with Kenny Holland all the time.”

“She won’t need me more’n she ever did. You’re not around that much anyway,” said Howard, letting the toad go free.

It stung. “I’m around enough to help out now and then,” Ivy June said. “I’m only a spit away at Mammaw’s, and don’t think I don’t have work to do there.”

“So, I’m around too!” said Howard.

“If you’re not off breaking your neck on some go-cart,” said Ivy June. They trudged on up the road, skirting the puddles.

Howard glanced over at her. “You really want to do this? Go off up there, don’t even know anybody?”

“Yes! I really want to!”

“Bet they’re just waitin’ to pull some mean trick on you, make everybody laugh.”

“You only think that because you’ve got ideas of your own when Catherine comes here,” Ivy June said, then regretted that she was arguing with one of her three brothers on her last afternoon home. “Anyway,” she said, “Mammaw and I made an apple cake last night for you all to eat over vacation.”

Howard’s eyes lit up. “The kind with holes poked on top and brown sugar syrup poured through?”

“Yep,” said Ivy June. “She’s got it there on the shelf—said you could come up and get it this afternoon.”

Howard’s feet picked up speed. “Tell Ma I’m off to get the cake,” he said, and hurried on ahead.

Each day after school, Ivy June stopped in first to check with Ma—see if there was anything needed—before going on up the hollow to her grandparents’. She didn’t have to do this, but she felt obliged. It was Ivy June, after all, whom Mammaw and Papaw had chosen to live with them a year ago when her own house had gotten too crowded.

When Danny was born, that had made five kids in the family, counting nineteen-year-old Jessie. The two girls had shared one bedroom, their parents and Danny another, while Howard and Ezra had taken turns, one on the couch, the other on the floor. With Ivy June at her grandparents’, Ma had been able to fix up the tiny back room off the kitchen just for Jessie, so that all three boys could sleep in the room the girls used to share.

So why didn’t she get the same welcome in the house she’d left that she got at Mammaw’s? Ivy June wondered. It was as though she’d moved ten miles away. Why wasn’t the family glad that her leaving had meant more space for the rest of them? Why did Jessie seem so resentful lately, and Ma have a frown on her face when Ivy June came by after school?

“I didn’t ask to go live at Mammaw’s. She and Papaw invited me,” Ivy June reminded herself. But down deep she knew the real reason her parents and siblings were chilly toward her: she had been offered the chance to go to Lexington and she’d taken it. She was going to stay in the kind of house you only saw in magazines and mix with the kind of people who worked in offices, not mines. For two weeks she was going to attend a private school with girls who didn’t wear their sisters’ hand-me-downs. And that made the distance between Ivy June’s old house and Papaw and Mammaw’s seem greater still.

CHAPTER THREE

March 7

I’m supposed to write down what I expect Ivy June and her family to be like, so I can compare it with my impressions after I get to know them.

I’m excited I was chosen for this project. Even more excited to have someone my own age in the house. It’ll be like one long sleepover. But the assignment assumes I have these stereotypes or prejudices against people who live a lot more simply than we do, and I’d like to think I don’t.

Mom and Dad say it will be a great experience, Ivy June coming here for two weeks and then me going there. The twins are mostly curious. Rosemary says these projects sound good at the beginning but
don’t usually turn out like they’re supposed to, and that they end up making the poor resent the rich. I don’t see us as rich, but Rosemary’s been on my case ever since she married Grandpa. If she doesn’t argue about one thing, it’s another. At least she and Gramps live across town, not with us. That’s one thing to be grateful for.

I’m ready for anything I’ve gone camping a lot, so I can do without luxuries when I go to Thunder Creek, and I know exactly what an outhouse is. Peter had to describe one for Claire, and she screamed “Ewwww!” I hope they don’t embarrass Ivy June by asking her about it when she comes.

What if she hates the city or gets homesick or can’t do some of the assignments at school? What if I get homesick when I go there? What if I find them strange? I think I can handle it, though.

Here’s what I expect the Mosleys will be like: sort of hard to get to know at first, but they’ll tell me just what they think if I ask their opinion about something They’ll be easily offended if they feel I’m putting them down. And it’s probably true that they’re mistrustful of outsiders and want to stick to tradition. Are these stereotypes? Maybe. (I’m glad I don’t have to show this journal to anyone unless I want to.)

Mom says we’ll do everything we can to make Ivy June feel welcome. I told her the best way we can do that is to lock Rosemary in the basement if she visits. (If you’re reading this, Rosemary, I’m joking! I’m joking! And you know you’re not supposed to be snooping in my stuff.)

Catherine Combs

CHAPTER FOUR

As Ivy June trudged along the narrow dirt road, the wall of rock on her right grew higher and steeper; the creek on her left grew wider. On up ahead she could hear Howard’s footsteps on the planks of the swinging bridge, which had a cable along one side as a handrail. A misty rain was falling, just enough for her to feel on her face. It had been raining on and off for a week, and from the gray look of the sky, it would go on raining forever.