Faith, Hope, and Ivy June (21 page)

Catherine listened. “I don’t hear anything.”

“It’s not going to whistle just for you. Wait for a breeze,” Ivy June told her.

Catherine clasped her knees and slowly turned her head from left to right. “Wow!” she said. “I think I see your house down there. And there’s the little bridge. Look how Thunder Creek winds around!”

Ivy June pointed out the trail to Vulture’s Pass, and the hill they used for sledding in the winter.

“It’s all so beautiful,” said Catherine. “Do you ever come here with Jimmy Harris?”

Ivy June gave her leg a poke. “Of course not.” Then she added, “When I come up here, it’s like everything starts out new. You want to sing something? Sometimes I come up here and sing.”

“What song?” asked Catherine.

Ivy June thought for a moment. Then she lifted her head and sang out clear and steady:
“Annie, Annie …”

And as soon as she started
“… was the miller’s daughter,”
Catherine joined in:

“Annie, Annie …”
Her singing was a little shaky at first, but then she sang louder, more sure of herself.
“… was the miller’s daughter; far she wandered, by the singing water …”

When Ivy June finished singing it the first time, she began all over again, and their voices seemed to echo against the rock walls of the mountain:
“… by the singing water …”

After the third time, Ivy June slowed on the last few words:
“… bring your white sheep home,”
and Catherine’s voice trailed after:
“… bring … your … white … sheep … home.”

Struck by the beauty of it, they sat for a moment, as though the echo was yet to come, pleased at the sounds they had made.

And then, from somewhere below them,
“Annie, Annie, wah wah wah wah wah wah.”

The girls jerked around.

“Howard!” Ivy June yelled, springing to her feet.

But with a whoop and a bellow, Howard was already scrambling back down the path, slipping and sliding, laughing himself sick.

After Papaw came home from the mine on Friday, the family ate an early supper so that he could get to bed about eight. He had to work on Saturday this week, so he would be going off before dawn one more morning before he could rest. Ivy June and Catherine waited until they were sure he was in bed before they prepared for their baths and hair-washing out on the enclosed back porch.

“Be sure Howard doesn’t walk in on us,” Ivy June said to Mammaw.

“I don’t think Howard’s going to show himself any time soon, the way you girls were chasin’ and screechin’ at him yesterday. Got all the dogs to howlin’ clear up to Vulture’s Pass.”

“Well, he’d better
not
show up, because I’m going to punch him good when he does,” Ivy June declared.

The girls took their soap and shampoo and towels out to the big tin washtub and made sure that Mammaw’s flowered curtains were pulled over every square inch of window. They pumped cold water from the porch pump until it was four inches deep in the washtub, then added the large pail of hot water Mammaw had left on the bench. When Ivy June came back into the kitchen for the teakettle, Mammaw said, “Land sakes, Ivy June, add some cold to the kettle before you pour it over yourselves. Water’s always hotter on your head than it is on your hand.”

Ivy June did, and checked the temperature with one finger before she took it back out and closed the door. Catherine had already slipped off her clothes and was clutching a towel around her body. She looked about uneasily before stepping, giggling, into the tub, letting the towel drop at the last possible second. When she sat down, knees scrunched up to her chin, the water came within an inch of the top.

Ivy June slowly poured a bit of water from the kettle over Catherine’s head. Catherine shivered, then quickly added shampoo and began to scrub. “Oh, man, this feels good,” she said.

“Well, scratch away,” said Ivy June. “Mammaw’s got another kettle ready if we need it.”

Catherine’s teeth chattered as soap suds rose on her head and water trickled down her body. “I’m already freezing,” she said. “How do you ever wash yourselves in winter?”

“We bring the tub into the kitchen in front of the stove,” said Ivy June. “If Papaw didn’t have ten people to support, two houses, two cars, and a broken-down truck, he’d have his indoor bathroom by now. That’s what Mammaw wants more than anything.”

“What about your friends?”

“Some of them have bathrooms. It’s us up here in the hollows who are waaaaay behind on that.”

Catherine scrubbed a little more. “Rinse time!” she said finally, and Ivy June reached again for the kettle.

When Catherine was through at last, she wrapped herself in the towel as she stood up and she and Ivy June traded places.

“You’re bathing in my dirty water?” Catherine asked, horrified.

“Not
that
dirty,” Ivy June replied. “You want to heat some more water and empty this tub out the door, it’s okay with me.”

Catherine reconsidered. “Well, I don’t care if you don’t,” she said.

Afterward, when they were dressed, Catherine stood in front of the small mirror in Ivy June’s bedroom, blow-dryer plugged into the one electric outlet. Her hair dryer and shampoos and conditioners had almost filled one of the smaller bags she’d brought with her. She used a stiff-bristled brush to roll up the ends of her hair, laboriously drying each lock. Ivy June watched enviously as the curls fell loosely around Catherine’s shoulders.

Catherine caught her expression. “Want me to do yours?”

Ivy June thought of Shirl—the way she had reacted to the matching headbands. But then, thinking of Jimmy Harris, she said, “Curl away,” and stood patiently while Catherine worked the brush and the blow-dryer.

Shirl was at Earl’s store, and so was Fred Mason. Ivy June saw them at the far end of the parking lot. They were dancing as close as the slices of bread in a grilled cheese sandwich. Howard had not been allowed to come—his punishment for teasing the girls—so Ivy June and Catherine had ridden alone with Jessie. Ivy June noticed that her sister had traded her sweatshirt for a sweater and put on eyeliner.

“You going to come back for us at ten?” she asked as they got out of the car at the edge of the parking area.

“Oh, I’ll be around,” Jessie said casually, and Ivy June was pleased to see her park the car down the road and walk back to where a dozen or so couples were dancing on the asphalt.

Older couples, Ma and Daddy’s age, sat together on Earl’s steps or in the rockers up on the long porch. But there were a few couples in their twenties—several more hanging around the edges of the crowd—and they had come a bit more dressed up, the girls in slick-soled shoes, not sneakers. Earl himself—a big man in a plaid shirt and suspenders—called out to ask if the music was loud enough, then turned the volume up even more. The first song ended and a second, a number called “Blue Rockabilly,” blared through the speakers at either end of the porch.

Laughing self-consciously, Ivy June and Catherine faced each other and began to dance, mimicking each other’s foot swivels and finger snapping, exaggerating the movements of their hips to make each other laugh.

When they felt a little bolder, they moved into the more brightly lighted half of the parking lot while couples edged into the shadows. Ivy June nudged Catherine when she saw Jessie dancing with a young man who looked as new at it as Jessie was.

Jimmy Harris was there, standing over at the side of the porch with the other boys, horsing around. Ivy June was sure he had seen her, but he didn’t seem to be paying attention. Like a lot of boys, she thought, he was shy with girls around his friends. But later that evening, he and a buddy came over and began a crazy kind of dancing that made Ivy June and Catherine smile.

“You want something to drink?” Jimmy asked when there was a break in the music. Earl was selling cans of Coke and Mountain Dew chilled in a tub of ice. “Thanks,” said Ivy June. “I’ll take a Coke.”

His buddy bought one for Catherine.

They sat on tree stumps serving as a fence at one end of the parking lot. Jimmy’s buddy was trying to do a trick with his Mountain Dew can, balancing it on the end of one finger, but it spilled all over his jeans, and Jimmy hooted at him. The boy laughed too, and took off his shirt to wipe his jeans, showing a fine, broad chest that made Catherine smile and turn away.

Fred Mason had his arm around Shirl and was trying to maneuver her back behind Earl’s store. She was giggling and turning him around toward the parking lot, and when she saw Ivy June and Catherine sitting side by side on the tree stumps, she guided him over.

Stepping right in front of Ivy June, Shirl studied the long blond hair, shiny under the high-intensity bulbs of the lot, the curls at the ends, and then at Catherine’s dark hair, curled the same way.

“That the new hairstyle up in Lexington?” she asked with a laugh and, pulling Fred Mason around in a circle, danced back across the lot.

When Ivy June opened her eyes the next morning, she wasn’t sure if it was Saturday or Sunday. She didn’t hear Papaw moving around in the kitchen making flapjacks the way he did on weekends, but it couldn’t be a school morning because it was already light outside.

Then she remembered that Papaw was working six days this week. It was Saturday, and there was nowhere she had to go, so she snuggled down under the blanket and let her mind play out scenes from the night before: she and Catherine doing the new duck dance, everybody waddling around and laughing; Jimmy Harris’s buddy spilling Mountain Dew on his jeans; and—she’d saved the best till last—Jimmy holding her hand as he walked her back to Jessie’s car after the dancing was over. Jessie had had a good time too, talking to Earl’s cousin up there on the porch. Then Ivy June remembered Shirl’s remark about her hair. She frowned to herself and rolled over.

Catherine’s bed was empty, so Ivy June got up and slipped out the back way, passing Catherine coming back from the outhouse.

“Your grandmother says we can have breakfast in our pajamas on the front porch,” Catherine told her.

“The
porch
?” exclaimed Ivy June.

“She’s got Grandmommy out there. Says it’s turning colder this afternoon, so we should enjoy the weather while we can.”

It
was
a beautiful morning, Ivy June decided. The kind of morning that if she were on a ranch in Oklahoma, or a stage in Lexington, she’d be sitting on a fence singing “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’.”

Mammaw had placed a platter of scrambled eggs and bacon on a small wooden table just outside the front door. There was also some of her fried toast, thick slices of buttered bread grilled on top of the iron stove. Papaw had told her long ago that they could afford an electric one, but Mammaw wouldn’t have it. Said she’d have to learn to cook a whole new way, that she’d take a new washing machine before she got a new stove.

Grandmommy was enjoying the sun. She had her feet on a stool, sticking right out where the sun could reach them, and her toothless mouth worked itself up and down as she rubbed her thin fingers together and turned her head to the right or left when she heard a crow’s call or the distant bark of a dog. It seemed to Ivy June that the worse her vision got, the more her hearing improved.