The Day of Small Things (3 page)

(Least)

T
he yard dog speaks and I look up from the peas I’m shelling. They’s a woman and a girl coming up the road. Mama takes the bowl of peas from me and sets it on the floorboards of the porch, then jerks her chin at the door. “Go on,” she says. “Through the house and out the back way. Git you a hoe and go to work on them beans. I’ll call you when the folks is gone.”

I duck my head yes ma’am and go quick-like into the house. But once I’m to where Mama can’t see me, I stay near the window so’s I can hear them talk. Mama don’t never talk much but for when she’s telling me what to do. Back when Fairlight was still living here,
she
would talk to me and read to me too. But since she run off and got herself married, they ain’t no one to talk to, being as Brother’s as close-jawed as Mama, and if he ain’t in the field, he’s gone down the road. I had wished for Fairlight to take me with her and she might have too but she was going with her man up to Detroit and Mama said I’d never stand the trip.

“Come git you uns a chair,” says Mama as the woman and the girl start up the porch steps. I hear the mule-ear chair’s hickory bark bottom squeak like they’s mouses in it as the woman sets herself down.

“Ooo-eee!” she says, fanning her face with her handkerchief, “now it’s been a time since I come up here to Dark Holler. Like to forgot what a hard climb it is. But I had in mind to git up to the burying ground and tend to my mamaw and papaw’s graves, for come Decoration Day, I’ll be going with Henry over to the Buckscrape where his people lie.”

Mama don’t say nothing and I kin hear the pop of the pea pods and the little ringing sounds as the peas fall into her enamel dishpan.

The visitor woman keeps on talking. “Fronie, tell me, was that your least un I saw just now, scooting into the house? Law, she’s growed like a weed. Don’t she go to school? Lilah Bel here’s in Three-B now and reading like one thing. It beats all, the way that child has took to learning.”

I skooch close to the window. Careful-like, I peek round the edge to look at the girl who can read. Fairlight taught me my letters and C-A-T cat and H-A-T hat but then she went off, that was the end of it. I have hid the book about Baby Ray what she give me. I look at the pictures of Baby Ray with his dog and his kitties and all and pretend that he is my little brother. Mama don’t hold with me learning to read or going to school and right now she is telling the visitor, “It’ll just aggravate them funny spells she takes if she gets all tired out with trying to learn more ’n she’s able.”

The girl who can read is taller than me and her eyes are as deep as the night. Her straight dark hair is real
pretty—cut short like the girls in the wish book. She picks up my bowl of peas, sets down on the top step, and goes to shelling without no one even telling her to.

Mama looks at her and nods her head. “Now, there’s a good girl. You don’t know what it is, Voncel, to have a young un what ain’t right.”

The woman called Voncel cuts her eyes around and leans in closer to Mama. She whispers, “Well, I had heard a thing or two …”

And Mama leans back in her chair and draws in a deep breath. Then she lets it out
shhhhh
and says, “I tell you what’s the truth, Voncel, that least un of mine has ways that are beyond my understanding.… Why, I’ll give you a for instance—take the time she weren’t yet three and I had set her on a quilt on the edge of the field where me and Brother was a-hoeing. She had her a biscuit she was gnawing on and a sugar tit to keep her happy.”

Mama hitches her chair closer. “You know how it is, Voncel, you can’t be with a young un ever minute and still raise a crop. So there I was, working along, chopping at the weeds and lifting my head ever so often to look and see she ain’t got off the quilt. And then as I stop to catch my breath at the far end of the row, I hear Least singing. She does it all the time now, but this was the first time I heard it—a funny little high sound like the wind—and then I see they’s something on the quilt beside her. I take a few steps towards her, curious to see what it could be, a branch that has fell down or—but then I see it ain’t no branch. No, it is the awfullest big old copperhead you ever did see, just laying there next to her and her looking down at the ugly thing and singing that funny song.”

The visitor woman makes a squealing sound like a pig. “Eee! Eee!” she says. “Fronie, whatever did you do?”

“Why, Voncel, I crept down that row of corn as quiet as ever I could creep.” Mama’s talking real low now, but she’s told this story afore and I know the way of it. Mama goes on, spinning it out to make it last, to make the visitor woman set there with her mouth open all the while.

“Brother was in the next row over,” Mama points her finger as if she could see him yet, “and he was hoeing along, not paying no mind. So when I come even with him, I spoke soft-like and pointed to the least un so’s he could see for hisself that serpent laying there next to his sister. ‘Don’t call out,’ I told him, speaking low, ‘hit might startle her and was she to move sudden …’ ”

I put my fingers in my ears. I don’t want to hear the rest of this story. I wait, thinking about something else. When I see the visitor woman raise her hands to her mouth and then reach over to pat Mama’s shoulder, I take my fingers out and listen some more. Mama is laying back in her chair and fanning her face with her apron. The visitor woman is saying something about the school they have down the branch, but Mama cuts her off and says real sharp, “No, like I said, Voncel, Least ain’t able to go to school—on account of she takes these funny spells now and again.”

And then Mama says like she always does, “The child’s simple and that’s the truth. And seems like it worries her to be around folks. But we get on. Now tell me, Voncel, was you able to bring me them rug patterns?”

I see that the girl named Lilah Bel is looking right at the window where I’m peeking out. I stick my tongue out at her, then I jerk back out of sight and go quick and quiet out the back way. My special hoe, the light one with its blade worn down to where it looks like a piece of the moon, is leaning against the logs there on the back porch.
I grab it and take the little path through the dark whispering trees to the bean patch.

I make haste along the narrow trail so’s I can get them beans hoed and Mama won’t be ill with me, but I stop for a minute at the place where the Little Things stay. And then I hear the drums and see the edges of their world.

It’s always like that—first the drums and the lights and then they show themselves. I step off the path and hunch down low so’s I can crawl up under the drooping branches. It’s under that biggest one of them old groaning trees where they have their nest. I hunker down there by the place I have fixed for them, the dancing ground with the smooth river rocks, and I listen to their sounds. Then I make a picture in my mind and begin my song and the Little Things creep out.

(Lilah Bel)

L
ilah Bel!” Mommy calls to me from the porch and I leave my kitties and go see what it is she wants.

“Lilah Bel,” she says when I get to the front steps, “I need for you to go up Dark Holler and tell Miz Fronie I got to have my rose rug pattern back. The feller at the store sent word there’s a lady in Asheville wants her one of the big uns and if I can get it done afore the end of the month, I’ll get paid extry.”

I look down at the ground and drag my toe in the dirt. Dark Holler is where the quare girl lives, the one who takes fits and can’t go to school. I don’t say nothing but I make a cross in the dirt, then rub it out.

Mommy is setting in a chair with her hurt foot up on a stool. She has mended ever thing she could find to mend and has finished piecing the Dutch Girl quilt she started last winter. She can’t get in the garden, not till her foot heals, and she is like to bust with being laid up this way.

She makes her voice all sad and begging, like the preacher at church giving the altar call. “Won’t you do this fer me, honey? You’re a big girl. And there’s time aplenty fer you to get there and back afore first dark. You remember the way—down the branch past your Uncle Farnham’s barn and up that next holler. I wouldn’t ask you but the others is busy in the field and we could surely use the rug money long about now.”

I have gone to Uncle Farnham’s by myself lots of times—Mommy and Aunt Alva are always borrowing things from one another and I am the one to carry those things. So I light out but as I go, Mommy calls after me, “Dalilah Belva—you take the dog along; he’ll see you safe.”

I’m not scared as I walk up the road to Dark Holler with Old Drover keeping close. Me and Mommy come up this way only last month and I’m a big girl, nine years old. I’m not scared of them dark old trees nor of the quare girl who lives up there—even if she did put out her tongue at me. I’m not scared as I go past them big green bushes where it feels like someone is watching me.

Old Drover’s neck fur goes up and he stops and growls real low. A skinny arm pokes out of the bush and stretches out an open hand like it was asking fer something. Old Drover drops his head and walks sideways over to the hand and puts his nose up to it. He sniffs of it real good and goes to back up a few steps. Then he circles around three times the way dogs always do and lays down there in the dirt and puts his head on his paws. He keeps his eyes on the bush like he is waiting for it to tell him what to do.

The arm pulls back and I hear someone scrabbling around in there. Then the arm shoots out again and in the open hand is a pretty rosy-orange Injun spearhead. The hand is holding it out to me and I wonder what should I do. I reckon it must be the quare girl and that maybe she wants me to look at the pretty she’s found. So I come a little closer.

“That’s a right fine spearhead you got,” I say out loud, like it was a real person I was talking to and not just a skinny arm sticking out of a bush. “I have found me some but none of them is that big.”

The bush don’t say nothing but I go on talking to it. “My daddy says the Injuns used to hunt all through this country. He says they most always camped by the water and that’s where you’re liable to find the most of their leavings. Did you find this un nigh a branch?”

The hand kindly jerks up and down and pushes towards me, like it wants me to take the spearhead. I start to reach out for it but then I pull back right quick, suddenly afeared that the quare girl will grab me and pull me into the bushes where she’s hiding.

“I ain’t gone hurt you,” the bush says. “Go on, you can have it.”

She is quare, that’s for certain sure. But she ain’t mean and she didn’t take no fits whilst I was there. She showed me her play house under them big bushes, and along with the spearhead, she give me some pretty marvels. She said she had found them by the field where her brothers used to play. They’s a yellow and green one and a solid blue one, what’s cracked, and some others. She told me that
she ain’t never been away from their farm, not to school, nor church nor even down the road to Uncle Farnham’s and Aunt Alva’s.

“I have been
up
the road,” says she, all excited and acting like that was some grand thing, such as going to Asheville on the train or such. “I been once with Mama and once with my sister Fairlight but she’s gone to Detroit now. And lots of times all by myself. Visiting.”

“There ain’t nobody lives up there,” says I. “What do you mean—visiting?”

She looks at me like I was the quare one and rolls her eyes. “Visiting the Quiet People, who’d you think? Them Quiet People up there sleeping on the hogback ridge. They like for me to set with them and tell them how the day looks and what flowers are blooming and how the sun feels. They—”

Just then there’s a whistle, loud and shrill, like someone calling a dog. The quare girl freezes and shrinks down into herself like she’s afraid of something. The whistle sounds again and I crawl to where they’s a gap in the bush and I can see Miz Fronie standing at the open door of the house. She whistles again and then she hollers, “Least, quit your loafering and come here! I need me some more wood for the cookstove!”

I turn around to tell the quare girl that I’ll help her carry in some wood, but she has vanished clean away. I see that there is a back door out of the bush, a little worn-down trail that tunnels through the thick green leaves and over the knobbly roots. It comes to me that maybe she don’t want her mama to know she was talking to me.